The French Revolution 0- Hippolyte Taine the French Revolution

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 0- HIPPOLYTE TAINE THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

HIPPOLYTE TAINE

Translated by John Durand Introduction by Mona Ozouf

VOLUME I

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Introduction by Mona Ozouf reprinted here by permission of the publishers from A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution, edited by Franc¸ois Furet and Mona Ozouf, translated by Arthur Goldhammer, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, ᭧ 1989 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

Footnotes to the Introduction ᭧ 2002 Liberty Fund, Inc. Frontispiece from Corbis

The French Revolution is a translation of La Re´volution, which is the second part of Taine’s Origines de la France contemporaine.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Taine, Hippolyte, 1828–1893. [Origines de la France contemporaine. English. Selections] The French Revolution / Hippolyte Taine; translated by John Durand. p. cm. “The French Revolution is a translation of La Re´volution, which is the second part of Taine’s Origines de la France contemporaine”—T.p. verso. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-86597-126-9 (alk. paper) ISBN 0-86597-127-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. France—History—Revolution, 1789–1799. I. Title. DC148.T35 2002 944.04—dc21 2002016023

ISBN 0-86597-126-9 (set: hc.) ISBN 0-86597-127-7 (set: pb.) ISBN 0-86597-363-6 (v. 1: hc.) ISBN 0-86597-366-0 (v. 1: pb.) ISBN 0-86597-364-4 (v. 2: hc.) ISBN 0-86597-367-9 (v. 2: pb.) ISBN 0-86597-365-2 (v. 3: hc.) ISBN 0-86597-368-7 (v. 3: pb.)

Liberty Fund, Inc. 8335 Allison Pointe Trail, Suite 300 Indianapolis, Indiana 46250-1684 9 CONTENTS =

Introduction by Mona Ozouf / xi Bibliography / xxxi Preface / xxxv

BOOK FIRST. Spontaneous Anarchy Chapter I / 3 I. The Beginnings of Anarchy—Dearth the first cause— Bad crops—The winter of 1788 and 1789—Dearness and poor quality of bread—In the provinces—At Paris— II. Hopefulness the second cause—Separation and laxity of the Administrative forces—Investigations of local Assemblies— The people become awake to their condition—Convocation of the States- General—Hope is born—The coincidence of early Assemblies with early difficulties— III. The provinces during the first six months of 1789— Effects of the famine— IV. Intervention of ruffians and vagabonds— V. The first jacquerie in Provence—Feebleness or ineffectiveness of repressive measures.

Chapter II / 26 Paris up to the 14th of July— I. Mob recruits in the environs—Entry of vagabonds—The number of paupers— II. Excitement of the press and of opinion—The people take part— III. The Re´veillon aﬀair— IV. The Palais-Royal—Popular gatherings become a political power—Pressure on the Assembly— V. Defection of the soldiery— VI. July 13th and 14th— VII. Murders of Foulon and Berthier— VIII. Paris in the hands of the people.

Chapter III / 60 I. Anarchy from July 14th to October 6th, 1789—Destruction of the Gov- ernment—To whom does real power belong?— II. The Provinces—

v vi / Contents

Destruction of old Authorities—Incompetency of new Authorities— III. Disposition of the People—Famine— IV. Panic—General arming— V. Attacks on public individuals and public property—At Strasbourg—At Cherbourg—At Maubeuge—At Rouen—At Besançon—At Troyes— VI. Taxes are no longer paid—Devastation of the Forests—The new game laws— VII. Attacks upon private individuals and private property—Aris- tocrats 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 chateaux, feudal estates, and property—Preparations for other jacqueries.

Chapter IV / 95 I. Paris—Powerlessness and discords of the authorities—The people, King— II. Their distress—The dearth and the lack of work—How men of executive ability are recruited— III. The new popular leaders—Their ascendency—Their education—Their sentiments—Their situation— Their councils—Their denunciations— IV. Their interference with the Government—Their pressure on the Assembly— V. The 5th and 6th of October— VI. The Government and the nation in the hands of the revolutionary party.

BOOK SECOND. The Constituent Assembly, and the Result of Its Labours Chapter I / 127 The Constituent Assembly—Conditions required for the framing of good laws— 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 overexcitement of the Assembly—Its paroxysms of enthusiasm—Its tendency to emotion—It encourages theatrical display—Changes which these displays introduce in its good intentions— 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— III. Ascendancy of the revolutionary party—Theory in its favour—The constraint thus imposed on men’s minds—Appeal to the passions—Brute force on the side of the party—It proﬁts by this— Contents / vii

Oppression of the minority— 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.

Chapter II / 159 Destruction— I. Two principal vices of the ancient re´gime—Two principal reforms proposed by the King and the privileged classes—They suffice for actual needs—Impracticable if carried further— II. Nature of societies, and the principle of enduring constitutions— III. The classes which form a State—Political aptitude of the aristocracy—Its disposition in 1789— Special services which it might have rendered—The principle of the As- sembly 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 As- sembly 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— IV. The corporations of a State—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 and mortmain—Disestablishment and disendowment of all corporations—Uncompensated suppression of tithes—Confiscation of ecclesiastical possessions—Effect on the Treasury and on disendowed 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 believers on their side—Persecution of believers and of priests.

Chapter III / 217 Construction—The Constitution of 1791— I. Powers of the Central Gov- ernment—The Assembly on the partition of power—Rupture of every tie between the Legislature and the King—The Assembly on the subordina- viii / Contents

tion of the executive power—How this is nullified—Certainty of a conflict—The deposition of the King inevitable— II. 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— III. The municipal bodies—Their great task— Their incapacity—Their feeble authority—Insufficiency of their means of action—The roˆle of the National Guard— IV. The National Guard as electors—Its great power—Its important task—The work imposed on active citizens—They avoid it— V. The restless minority—Its elements— The clubs—Their ascendency—How they interpret the Rights of Man— Their usurpations and violence— VI. Summary of the work of the Con- stituent Assembly.

BOOK THIRD. The Application of the Constitution Chapter I / 253 I. The Federations—Popular application of philosophic theory—Idyllic celebration of the Contrat-Social—Two phases of human volition—Per- manent disorder— II. Independence of the municipalities—The causes of their initiative—Sentiment of danger—Issy-l’Eveˆque 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 of the ministers—Mar- seilles in 1790— 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.

Chapter II / 287 The Sovereignty of Unrestrained Passions— I. Old religious rancours— Montauban and Nismes in 1790— II. Passion supreme—Dread of hunger its acutest form—The noncirculation 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— Contents /ix

Aggravation of the disorder after August 10th—The dictation of unbridled instinct—Its practical and political expedients— 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— 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.

Chapter III / 346 Development of the Ruling Passion— I. Attitude of the nobles—Their moderate resistance— 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— III. Domiciliary visits—The fifth jacquerie—Burgundy and Lyonnais in 1791—M. de Chaponay and M. Guillin-Dumoutet— IV. The nobles obliged to leave the rural districts—They take refuge in the towns— The dangers they incur—The eighty-two gentlemen of Caen— V. Per- secutions in private life— VI. Conduct of officers—Their self-sacrifice— Disposition of the soldiery—Military outbreaks—Spread and increase of insubordination—Resignation of the officers— VII. Emigration and its causes—The first laws against the emigrants— VIII. Attitude of the nonjuring 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 centre— IX. General state of opinion— The three convoys of nonjuring priests on the Seine—Psychological aspect of the Revolution.

9 BIBLIOGRAPHY =

Ayer, Alfred S. Logical Positivism. New York: Free Press, 1966. Castex, Pierre Georges. Critique d’art en France au XIXe sie`cle. Paris: Centre de documentation universitaire, 1966. Castiglioni, Guilio. Taine. Brescia: “La Scuola” editrice, 1945. Charlton, D. G. Positivist Thought in France during the Second Empire, 1852–1870. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959; Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1976. Chevrillon, Andre´. Taine; formation de sa penseé. Paris: Plon, 1932. Ciureanu, Petre. Renan, Taine et Brunetie`re a quelques amis italiens: correspondance. Florence: Institut français de Florence, 1956. Codazzi, Antonella. Hippolyte Taine e il progetto filosofico di una storio- grafia scientifica. Firenza: La nuova Italia, 1985. Engel, Otto. Einfluss Hegels auf die Bildung der Gedankenwelt Hippo- lyte Taines. Stuttgart: F. Frommann, 1920. Eustis, Alvin. Hippolyte Taine and the Classical Genius. Berkeley: Uni- versity of California Press, 1951. Evans, Colin. Taine: essai de biographie inte´rieure. Paris: Nizet, 1975. Gautier, Theóphile. Honore´ de Balzac, sa vie et ses oeuvres: biographie par Theóphile Gautier; analyse critique de la Come´die humaine, par H. Taine. Bruxelles: Melina, Cans, 1858. Gibaudan, Rene´. Ideés sociales de Taine. Paris: E´ditions Argo, 1928. Giraud, Victor. Essai sur Taine, son oeuvre et son influence. Paris: Hachette, 1902. . Hippolyte Taine: e´tudes et documents. Paris: J. Vrin, 1928. Goetz, Thomas H. Taine and the Fine Arts. Madrid: Playor, 1973.

xxxi xxxii / Bibliography

Gummere, Francis Barton. Democracy and Poetry. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911. Jeune, Simon. Poe´sie et syste`me, Taine interpre`te de La Fontaine. Paris: A. Colin. Kahn, Sholom J. Science and Aesthetic Judgment: A Study in Taine’s Critical Method. New York: Columbia University Press, 1953. Kuczynski, Ju¨rgen. Muse und der Historiker: Studien u¨ber Jacob Burck- hardt, Hyppolite Taine, Henry Adams. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1974. Lacombe, Paul. Psychologie des individus et des socie´te´s chez Taine, historien des litte´ratures. Paris: F. Alcan, 1906. . Taine, historien et sociologue. Paris: F. Alcan, 1909. Le´ger, François. Jeunesse d’Hippolyte Taine. Paris: Albatros, 1980. . Monsieur Taine. Paris: Crite´rion, 1993. Leroy, Maxime. Taine. Paris: Rieder, 1933. Petitbon, Pierre Henri. Taine, Renan, Barre`s: e´tude d’influence. Paris: Socie´te´ d’edition “Les Belles lettres,” 1934. Pozzi, Regina. Hippolyte Taine: scienze umane e politica nell’Ottocento. Venezia: Marsilio, 1993. Roe, Frederick Charles. Taine et l’Angleterre. Paris: E´. Champion, 1923. Rosca, Dumitru D. Influence de Hegel sur Taine, theóricien de la con- naissance et de l’art. Paris: J. Gamber, 1928. Saint-Rene´-Taillandier, Georges. Aupres de M. Taine: souvenirs et vues sur l’homme et l’oeuvre. Paris: Hachette, 1928. Schaepdryver, Karl de. Hippolyte Taine: Essai sur l’unite´ de sa penseé. Paris, 1938. Schuin, Anik. Pessimisme historique au XIXe sie`cle: Hippolyte Taine. Gene`ve: Institut universitaire de hautes e´tudes internationales, 1982. Seys, Pascale. Hippolyte Taine et l’ave`nement du naturalisme: un intel- lectuel sous le Second Empire. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999. Siqueira, Esmeraldo. Taine e Renan. Rio de Janeiro: Pongetti, 1968. Taine, Hippolyte. Ancien regime. Translated by J. Durand. New York: H. Holt, 1896. . Arte en Grecia. Madrid: La Espanã moderna, 1893. Bibliography / xxxiii

. Balzac, a critical study. Translated and with an appreciation by Lorenzo O’Rourke. New York: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1906. . Carnets de voyage; notes sur la province, 1863–1865. Paris: Hachette, 1897. . Correspondance. Paris: Hachette, 1902–1907. . De l’ideal dans l’art. Paris: G. Balliere & Cie, 1879. . De l’intelligence. Paris: Hachette, 1870. . Essais de critique et d’histoire. Paris: Hachette, 1866. . Essai sur Tite-Live. Paris: Economica, 1860. . Etienne Mayran. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1931. . Fontaine et ses fables. Paris: Hachette, 1861. . French Revolution. Translated by J. Durand. New York: H. Holt, 1878. . H. Taine: sa vie et sa correspondance. Paris: Hachette, 1908. . Histoire de la litte´rature anglaise. Paris: Hachette, 1863. . Introduction a` l’histoire de la litte´rature anglaise, avec des re- marques pre´liminaires par Gilbert Chinard. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1944. . Introduction a` l’histoire de la litte´rature anglaise (l’histoire, son pre´sent et son avenir). Edited from the original text by H. B. Charl- ton. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1936. . Introduction a` l’histoire de la litte´rature anglaise, par H. Taine. Edited and with an essay on Taine by Irving Babbitt. Boston: D. C. Heath & Company, 1898. . Italy: Florence and Venice. Translated by J. Durand. New York: Leypoldt & Holt, 1869. . Italy: Naples and Rome. Translated by J. Durand. New York: Leypoldt & Holt, 1867. . Journeys through France, Being Impressions of the Provinces. London: T. F. Unwin, 1897. . Lectures on Art. Translated by J. Durand. New York: H. Holt, 1889. . Modern Re´gime. Translated by J. Durand. New York: H. Holt, 1890. xxxiv / Bibliography

. Notes on England. Translated by J. Durand. New York: H. Holt, 1872. . Notes on England. Translated, with an introductory chapter by W. F. Rae. London: Strahan & Company, 1872. . Notes on Paris. Translated with notes by John Austin Stevens. New York: H. Holt, 1875. . Notes sur Paris, vie et opinions de M. Fre´de´ric-Thomas Grain- dorge. Recueillies et publieés par H. Taine, son exećuteur testamen- taire. Paris: Hachette, 1868. . On Intelligence. Translated by T. D. Haye. New York: Holt & Williams, 1872. . Origines de la France contemporaine. Paris: Hachette, 1899. . Origins of Contemporary France. Translated by J. Durand. New York: P. Smith, 1931. . Philosophes français du XIXe sie`cle. Paris: Hachette, 1860. . Philosophes français du XIXe sie`cle, extraits. Paris: J. J. Pau- vert, 1966. . Philosophie de l’art, par H. Taine; leçons professeés a` l’Ećole des beaux-arts. Paris: G. Baillie`re, 1865. . Positivisme anglais: e´tude sur Stuart Mill. Paris: G. Baillie`re, 1864. . Taine’s Notes on England. Translated with an introduction by Edward Hyams. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1971. . Tour through the Pyrenees. Translated by J. Safford Fiske, with illustrations by Gustave Dore´. New York: H. Holt, 1874. . Voyage aux Pyreńeés. Paris: Hachette, 1860. . Voyage en Italie. Paris: Hachette, 1866. Weinstein, Leo. Hippolyte Taine. New York: Twayne, 1972. Wiarda, Rein. Taine et la Hollande. Paris: E. Droz, 1938. 9 PREFACE =

HIS second part of “Les Origines de la France Contemporaine” Twill 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, gets possession of the power, and exercises it in conformity with that doctrine; this will form the subject of the second volume. A third volume would be required to criticize authorities. For this I have no room, and I merely state the rule that I have observed. The most trustworthy testimony is that of the eye-witness, especially when this witness is an honourable, attentive, and intelligent man, writing on the spot, at the moment, and under the dictation of the facts themselves—if it is manifest that his sole object is to preserve or furnish information, if his work is not a piece of polemics planned for the needs of a cause, or a passage of eloquence arranged for popular effect, but 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 materials.—I have found many of this character in the national archives, principally in the manuscript correspondence of ministers, intendants, subdelegates, 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.

xxxv xxxvi / Preface

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 foot notes at the bottom of the pages indicate the condition, office, name, and dwelling-place 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 will 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

9 CHAPTER I =

I. The beginnings of anarchy—Dearth the first cause—Bad crops—The winter of 1788 and 1789—Dearness and poor quality of bread—In the provinces—At Paris— II. Hopefulness the second cause—Separation and laxity of the Admin- istrative forces—Investigations of local Assemblies—The people become awake to their condition—Convocation of the States-General—Hope is born—The coincidence of early Assemblies with early difficulties— III. The provinces during the first six months of 1789—Effects of the famine— IV. Intervention of ruffians and vagabonds— V. The first jacquerie in Provence—Feebleness or ineffectiveness of repressive measures.

DURING the night of July 14–15, 1789, the Duc de la Rochefou- cauld-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 it had not fallen into those of the Assembly; it lay on the ground, ready to the hands of the unchained populace, the violent and overexcited 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 a 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.

3 4/THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

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,1 a terrible hailstorm burst over the region around Paris, from Nor- mandy 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 ࿝3 Њ to Havre, while the thermometer stood at 184 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 Rhoˆne 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 importations, 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 Bernardins feeding twelve hundred poor

1. Marmontel, “Me´moires,” ii. 221.—Albert Babeau, “Histoire de la Re´- volution 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 du Languedoc).—Buchez et Roux, “Histoire Parlementaire,” i. 283. Spontaneous Anarchy /5 persons for six weeks.2 All was not sufficient. 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 population3 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,4 who was travelling through France at this time, heard of nothing but the dearness 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 artisans unemployed flock to the relief works, where they can earn only twelve sous a day. In Lor- raine, 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.5 In the beginning of July, at Montereau, the market is empty. “The bakers could not have baked” if the police officers had not fixed the price of bread at five sous per pound; the rye and barley which the intendant is able to send “are of the worst possible quality, rotten

2. See “The Ancient Re´gime,” p. 34. Albert Babeau, i. 91. (The Bishop of Troyes gives 12,000 francs, and the chapter 6,000, for the relief workshops.) 3. “The Ancient Re´gime,” 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.) 4. Arthur Young, “Voyages in France,” June 29th, July 2nd and 18th.— “Journal de Paris,” January 2, 1789. Letter of the cure´ of Sainte-Marguerite. 5. Roux and Buchez, 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. Jamin, July 11th; from M. Prioreau, July 11th, &c.) Montjoie, “Histoire de la Re´volution de France,” 2nd part, ch. xxi. p. 5. 6/THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 subdelegate. At Chevreuse the barley has sprouted and smells bad; the “poor wretches,” says an employe´, “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”; those, again, 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.6 Paris thus, in a perfect state of tranquillity, 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 eye-witness,7 “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

6. Roux and 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.” 7. Montjoie, “Histoire de la Re´volution de France,” ch. xxix. v. 37. De Goncourt, “La Socie´te´ Française pendant la Re´volution,” p. 53. Deposition of Maillard (Criminal Inquiry of the Chaˆtelet concerning the events of October 5th and 6th). Spontaneous Anarchy /7 bowels. I have seen flour of detestable quality at the military school and at other depoˆts. I have seen portions of it yellow in colour, 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’hoˆte, I avoided this kind of food altogether. In the evening I went to the Cafe´ 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, and 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 tomorrow.” 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 plough. 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 formerly. 8/THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

II It is because through this opening 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, 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, Lomeńie de Brienne has in 1778 just added nineteen others; under each of these are assemblies of the arrondissement; under each assembly of the arrondissement are parish assemblies.8 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 subdelegate, the e´lu,9 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, “husbandmen,”10 and oftentimes common farmers, sit by the side of lords and prelates. They listen to and

8. De Tocqueville, “L’Ancien Re´gime et la Re´volution,” 272–290. De Lavergne, “Les Assembleés provinciales,” 109. Proce`s-verbaux des assembleés provinciales, passim. 9. 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. 10. “Laboureurs”—this term, at this epoch, is applied to those who till their own land. Spontaneous Anarchy /9 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 neighbour. 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 the cultivator pays and how much he suffers, how many privileged persons there are in the parish; the amount of their fortune, whether they are residents, what their exemptions amount to; and, in the replies, 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?—Suppose a beast of burden to which a sudden gleam of reason should reveal the equine species contrasted with the human species; and imagine, if you can, what his first ideas would be in relation to the postillions and drivers who bridle and whip him, and again in relation to the good-natured travellers and sensitive ladies who pity him, but who to the weight of the vehicle add their own and that of their luggage. So, in the mind of the peasant, athwart his perplexed broodings, 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. To- 10 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION wards 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.11 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 memorials 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 cure´s, “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, 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 months after, in July,12 the only

11. Duvergier, “Collection des lois et dećrets,” i. 1 to 23, and particularly p. 15. 12. Arthur Young, July 12th, 1789 (in Champagne). Spontaneous Anarchy /11 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 right is on their side, the resolution to aid it with every possible means; and, consequently, an anxious waiting, a ready impulse, a tension of the will which simply stays for the opportunity to relax and launch forth like a resistless arrow towards the unknown end which will reveal itself all of a sudden. It is hunger that so suddenly marks out for them this aim: the market must be supplied with grain; the farmers and owners must bring it; wholesale buyers, whether the Government or individuals, must not transport it elsewhere; it 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;13 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 re´gime, the conflagration was smouldering in a closed chamber; the great door is suddenly opened, the air enters, and immediately the flame breaks out.

III 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, and 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 out-

13. Montjoie, 1st part, 102. 12 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION breaks may be counted in France. They take place from month to month, and from week to week, in Poitou, Brittany, Touraine, Orleánais, 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-Loˆ, Mortain, Gran- ville, 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 Orleánais. 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”14—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 Montlhe´ry, 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,15 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.16 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

14. Floquet, “Histoire du Parlement de Normandie,” vii. 508.—“Archives Nationales,” H. 1453. 15. Arthur Young, June 29th (at Nangis). 16. “Archives Nationales,” H. 1453. Letter of the Duc de Mortemart, Sei- gneur of Bray, May 4th; of M. de Ballainvilliers, intendant of Languedoc, April 15th. Spontaneous Anarchy /13 four thousand, compel the husbandmen and farmers who have brought grain with them to sell it at 3 livres, instead of 4 livres 10 sous the bushel; and threaten to do the same thing on the following market-day. The farmers will not come again, the storehouse will be empty, and 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 clamour; they feel that they are likely to be trodden under foot or thrown out of the windows. Others, with more firmness, are aware that a riotous crowd is mad, and scruple to spill blood; at least, they yield for the time, hoping that at the next market-day there will be more soldiers and better precautions taken. At Amiens, “after a very violent outbreak,”17 they decide to take the wheat belonging to the Jacobins, 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 Angouleˆme, 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

17. “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. Mealan d’Ablois, June 22nd; of M. de Ballainvilliers, April 15th. 14 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 neighbour. The inhabitants of Fouge`res beat and drive out those who come from Erneé to buy in their market; like violence is shown at Vitre´ to the inhabitants of Maine.18 At Sainte-Leónard 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 sabre 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 Chantenay, near Mans,19 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 waggon-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

18. “Archives Nationales,” H. 1453. Letter of the Count de Langeron, July 4th; of M. de Meulan d’Ablois, June 5th; “Proce`s-verbal de la Marećhausseé de Bost,” April 29th. Letters of M. de Chazerat, May 29th; of M. de Bezenval, June 2nd; of the intendant, M. Amelot, April 25th. 19. “Archives Nationales,” H. 1453. Letter of M. de Bezenval, May 27th; of M. de Ballainvilliers, April 25th; of M. de Foullonde, April 19th. Spontaneous Anarchy /15 in the cellars, and leave the taps running. At Nevers, the bakers not having put bread on their counters for four days, the populace 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 domiciliary visits, 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 whom 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.20 At Amiens “the people are arranging to pillage and perhaps burn the houses of two merchants, who have built labour-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 deputed 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 first of all property, that of provisions, is violated in hundreds of places, and everywhere is menaced and precarious. The intendants and subdelegates 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.

20. “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, &c. 16 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

IV We have seen how numerous the smugglers, dealers in contraband salt, poachers, vagabonds, beggars, and escaped convicts21 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,22 even up to the environs of Rouen, at Roncherolles, Que´vre- villy, Preáux, Saint-Jacques, and in all the surrounding neighbourhood bands of armed ruffians 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 Belle`me, chop away everything that opposes them, and force grain to be given up to them at their own price.” In the vicinity of E´tampes, fifteen bandits enter the farmhouses at night and put the farmer to ransom, threatening him with a conflagration. In Cambre´sis they pillage the abbeys of Vauchelles, of Verger, and of Guillemans, the chateau of the Marquis de Besselard, the estate of M. Doisy, two farms, the waggons 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 Cambre´sis, 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

21. “The Ancient Re´gime,” pp. 380–389. 22. Floquet, vii. 508 (Report of February 27th). Hippeau, “Le Gouverne- ment de Normandie,” iv. 377. (Letter of M. Perrot, June 23rd.)—“Archives Nationales,” H. 1453. Letter of M. de Sainte-Suzanne, April 29th. Ibid. F7, 3,250. Letter of M. de Rochambeau, May 16th. Ibid. F7, 3,185. Letter of the Abbe´ Duplaquet, Deputy of the Third-Estate of Saint-Quentin, May 17th. Letter of three husbandmen in the environs of Saint-Quentin, May 14th. Spontaneous Anarchy /17 carabinier, sabre 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, and 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, resell at a profit, which amounts to even 45 livres the sack; 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-doers 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 Use`s 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.23—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;24 the stores are forced open, train waggons 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

23. “Archives Nationales,” H. 1453. Letter of the Count de Perigord, military commandant of Languedoc, April 22nd. 24. Floquet, vii. 511 (from the 11th to the 14th July). 18 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 incendiarism; the savagery which is unchained adding its unlimited violence to the limited revolt of necessity.

V 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 authorised, and that by those whose duty it is to repress it. Here and there words and actions of a brutal frank- ness break forth, and reveal beyond the sombre present a more threatening future.—After the 9th of January, 1789, among the populace which attacks the Hoˆtel-de-Ville and besieges the bakers’ shops of Nantes, “shouts of Vive la Liberte´!25 mingled with those of Vive le Roi! are heard.” A few months later, around Ploe¨rmel, 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 Ise`re 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

25. “Archives Nationales,” H. 1453. Letter of the municipal authorities of Nantes, January 9th; of the subdelegate of Ploe¨rmel, July 4th; ibid. F7, 2,353. Letter of the intermediary commission of Alsace, September 8th; ibid. F7, 3,227. Letter of the intendant, Caze de la Bove, June 16th; ibid. H. 1453. Letter of Terray, intendant of Lyons, July 4th; of the pre´vot des ećhevins, July 5th and 7th. Spontaneous Anarchy /19 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, and that, meanwhile, the King, in favour of the reassembling 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 Guillotie`re 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 depoˆt. In the mean time a rumour has circulated all round through the country that there is free entrance into the town for all provisions, and during the following days the peasantry stream in with enormous files of waggons loaded with wine and drawn by several oxen, so that, in spite of the reestablished 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,26 “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 which is 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; again, “they wish to nominate consuls who have sprung up out of their body,” and 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

26. “Archives Nationales,” H. 1453. Letter of the mayor and councils of Agde, April 21st; of M. de Perigord, April 19th, May 5th. 20 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 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;27 “here the faction is united and governed by uniform principles; the same errors are diﬀused through all minds....Theprinciples 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

27. “Archives Nationales,” H. 1453. Letters of M. de Caraman, March 23rd, 26th, 27th, 28th; of the seneschal Missiessy, March 24th; of the mayor of Hye`res, March 25th, &c.; 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-geńe´ral, M. d’Antheman, April 17th, and the report of June 15th; of the municipal authorities of Toulon, April 11th; of the subdelegate of Ma- nosque, March 14th; of M. de Saint-Tropez, March 21st.—Proce´s-verbal, signed by 119 witnesses, of the insurrection at Aix, March 5th, &c. Spontaneous Anarchy /21 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 piquet, or meal-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 house of the slaughter-house contractor, 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, and, 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 meal-tax, the towns have no longer a revenue; and, 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 22 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION mayor, who signs the tax-list, and of the keeper of the records; they are trodden under foot, and their houses are ransacked. At Ma- nosque, the Bishop of Sisteron, who is visiting the seminary, is accused of favouring 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 subdelegate 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, he succeeds in reaching his carriage, amidst a volley of stones, wounded on the head and on many parts of his body, and is finally saved only 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.28 “The most excited said to the bishop, ‘We are poor and you are rich, and we mean to have all your property.’”29 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 half-pillaged.—At Aupt, M. de Montferrat, in defending himself, is killed and “hacked to pieces.”—At La Seyne, the populace, led by a peasant, assemble 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 honour of burying him.” He escapes; his house is pillaged, as well as the bureau of the meal-tax; and, 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 Pre´sident de Peinier, an octogenarian, is “besieged in his chateau by a band of a hundred and fifty artisans and peasants,” who bring with them

28. A rising of the peasants. The term is used to indicate a country mob in contradistinction to a city or town mob.—TR. 29. “Archives Nationales,” H. 1274. Letter of M. de la Tour, April 2nd (with a detailed memorial and depositions). Spontaneous Anarchy /23 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, sack the house of his business agent, pillage the chateau, demolish the roof, chapel, altar, railings, and escutcheons, enter the cellars, stave in the casks, and carry away everything that can be carried, “the transportation taking two days”; all of which is a damage of a hundred thousand crowns for 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 who 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, conduct themselves like sovereigns, 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 Ursuline 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 24 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 re- dresses 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 wrong- doers, 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 Hye`res, 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 grist-mills 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 thanks- giving to be celebrated in the Cordeliers. Formidable omens, these! which mark the inward purpose, the determined will, 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 Spontaneous Anarchy /25 towns to suppress unjust taxation.30 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 Co- lossus, 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 mainspring at the centre which puts the rest in motion, and the destruction of which will throw the whole machinery into confusion.

30. “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 labourers. 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’Anthe´man, April 17th; of M. de Barentin, June 11th. 9 CHAPTER II =

Paris up to the 14th of July— I. Mob recruits in the environs—Entry of vagabonds—The number of paupers— II. Excitement of the press and of opinion— The people take part— III. The Re´veillon aﬀair— IV. The Palais-Royal— Popular gatherings become a political power—Pressure on the Assembly— V. Defection of the soldiery— VI. July 13th and 14th— VII. Murders of Foulon and Berthier— VIII. Paris in the hands of the people.

INDEED it is in the centre that the convulsive shocks are strongest. Nothing is lacking to aggravate the insurrection—neither the most lively provocations 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.1 Wheaten 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, stopon the main road vehicles which they suppose to be loaded with grain. At Montlhe´ry seven brigades of the police are dispersed by stones and clubs: an immense throng of

1. “Archives Nationales,” H. 1453. Letter of M. Miron, lieutenant of police, April 26th; of M. Joly de Fleury, procureur-ge´ne´ral, 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 subdelegate of Montlhe´ry, April 14th.

26 Spontaneous Anarchy /27 eight thousand persons, women and men, provided with bags, fall upon the grain exposed for sale, 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 subdelegate; “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 hailstorm, “despair” seized the peasantry; well disposed as the proprietors may have been, it was impossible to assist them; “not a workshopis open; 2 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, Chenevie`res, at Cergy, Pontoise, Ile-Adam, Presle, and Beaumont, men, women, and children, the whole parish, range the country, set snares, and destroy the burrows. “The rumour 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,” and therefore, 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 neighbourhood 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 dif-

2. “Archives Nationales,” H. 1453. Letter of the subdelegate 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.” 28 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION ference whether the proprietor has been benevolent, like M. de Talaru,3 who had supported the poor on his estate at Issy the preceding winter. The peasants destroy the dyke which conducts water to his communal mill; condemned by the parliament to restore it, they declare that not only will they not obey, but that if M. de Talaru rebuilds it they will return, to the number of 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 in May,4 near Villejuif, a band of five or six hundred vagabonds strive to force Biceˆtre 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 promptings of hunger and the rumours of the public thoroughfares. During the last days of April,5 the clerks at the toll-houses 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,

3. 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. 4. 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 famine. 5. De Bezenval, “Me´moires,” i. 353. Cf. “The Ancient Re´gime,” p. 388. Marmontel, ii. 252 and following pages. De Ferrie`res, i. 407. Spontaneous Anarchy /29 the multitude of artisans brought there by recent demolitions and constructions, all the craftsmen whom the stagnation of manufactures, the augmentation of octrois, the rigour of winter, and the dearness of bread have reduced to extreme distress. Remember that in 1786 “two hundred thousand persons are enumerated whose property, all told, has not the intrinsic worth of fifty crowns”; that, from time immemorial, they are at war with the city watchmen; that in 1789 there are twenty thousand poachers in the capital; that, to provide them with work, it is found necessary to establish national workshops; “that twelve thousand are kept uselessly occupied dig- ging on the hill of Montmartre, and paid twenty sous per day; that the wharfs and quays are covered with them, that the Hoˆtel-de-Ville is invested by them, and that, around the palace, they seem to be a reproach to the inactivity of disarmed justice”; that 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 may anticipate the fury and the force with which they will storm any obstacle to which their attention may be directed.

II This obstacle has been pointed out to them for a couple of years: the Ministry, the Court, the Government, the ancient re´gime. Who- ever protests against it in favour of the people is sure to be followed as far, and farther, than he chooses to lead. The moment the Par- liament 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 an army is necessary to put down the rebellious city, and after this a permanent camp, four regiments of infantry and two of cavalry, under the command of a Marshal of France.6 The following year, when the Parliaments turn over to the side of the privileged class, the disturbance again begins, but this time against the Parlia- ments. In February, 1789, at Besançon and at Aix, the magistrates

6. Arthur Young, September 1st, 1788. 30 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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? To begin—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 leaven has been infused among the ignorant and brutal masses, and the new ideas are producing their effect. They have been insensibly filtering for a long time from layer to layer, and after having gained over the aristocracy, the whole of the let- tered portion of the Third-Estate, the lawyers, the schools, all the young, they have insinuated themselves dropby dropand by a thousand fissures into the class which supports itself by the labour of its own hands. Noblemen, at their toilettes, have scoffed at Chris- tianity, 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.7 Instead of gen-

7. Barre`re, “Me´moires,” i. 234. Spontaneous Anarchy /31 eral 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 Sieye`s; “Me´moire pour le Peuple Français,” by Cerutti; “Conside´- rations sur les Inte´reˆts des Tiers-Etat,” by Rabtau Saint-Etienne; “Ma Pe´tition,” by Target; “Les Droits des Etats geńe´raux,” by M. d’Entraigues, and, a little later, “La France libre,” by Camille Des- moulins, and others by hundreds and thousands,8 all of which are repeated and amplified in the electoral assemblies, where new-made citizens come to declaim and increase their own excitement.9 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 fruiterers of the Halle come to recommend the interests of the people to the bodies of electors, and to sing rhymes in honour 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 re´gime, but the whole people, the craftsmen, the shopkeepers and the domestics, workmen of every kind and degree, the populace underneath the people, the vagabonds, street rovers, and mendicants, 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.

8. See, in the National Library, the long catalogue of those which have survived. 9. Malouet, i. 255. Bailly, i. 43 (May 9th and 19th).—D’Hezecques, “Sou- venirs d’un page de Louis XVI.” 293.—De Bezenval, i. 368. 32 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

III Suddenly it 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.10 But the uproar made around the suffering brute would alone suffice to make it shy, and explain its sudden start.—On the 21st of April the Electoral Assemblies have begun in Paris; they are held in each quarter for the clergy, the nobles, and 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,11 a rumour is current that Re´veillon, an elector and manufacturer of wall-paper, Rue Saint-Antoine, and Le´rat, a commissioner, have “spoken badly” at the Electoral Assembly of Sainte-Marguerite. To speak badly means to speak badly of the people. What has Re´- veillon said? Nobody knows, but popular imagination, with its ter-

10. 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.” 11. “Archives Nationales,” Y. 11441. Interrogatory of the Abbe´ Roy, May 5th. Y. 11033, Interrogatory (April 28th and May 4th) of twenty-three wounded persons brought to the Hoˆtel-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. du Chaˆtelet. Almost all other narratives are amplified or falsified through party spirit. Spontaneous Anarchy /33 rible 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 rumour, it must be noted, is false.12 Re´veillon pays his poorest workman twenty-five sous a day, is the means of supporting 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 entice in their lodgings are just as ignorant as they are. When irritation has accumulated, it breaks out at haphazard. Just at this time the clergy of Paris renounce their privileges in the way of imposts,13 and the people, taking friends for adversaries, add in their invectives the name of the clergy to that of Re´veillon. During the whole of the day, and also during the leisure moments 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-Se´ve´rin, “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 abbe´, shout ‘Priest!’” Another band parades an effigy of Re´veillon decorated with the ribbon of the order of St. Michael, which undergoes the parody of a sentence and is burnt on the Place de Gre`ve, after which they threaten his house. Driven back by the guard, they invade that of a manufacturer of saltpetre, who is his friend, and burn and smash his effects and

12. De Ferrie`res, vol. iii. note A. (justificatory explanation by Re´veillon). 13. Bailly, i. 25 (April 26th). 34 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION furniture.14 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 misery15 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 helphimself, and all should helpeach 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 Fau- bourg Saint-Marceau to obtain recruits, and on their way, with uplifted clubs they enrol, willingly or unwillingly, all they encounter. Others, at the Porte 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!”16 Meanwhile the crowd has increased before Re´veillon’s dwelling; the thirty men on guard are unable to resist; the house is invaded and sacked from topto bottom; the furniture, provisions, clothing, registers, waggons, 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;17 also a hundred cavalry

14. Hippeau, iv. 377 (Letters of M. Perrot, April 29th). 15. 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.” 16. Dammartin, “Eveńements qui se sont passe´s sous mes yeux,” &c. i. 25:—“We turned back and were arrested 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.” 17. Dammartin, ibid. i. 25:—“I was dining this very day at the Hoˆtel d’Ecquevilly, in the Rue Saint-Louis.” He leaves the house on foot and witnesses Spontaneous Anarchy /35 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 troopwhich rifles the baker’s shopcarries bread off to the women staying at the corner of the Rue Saintonge. Brigandage is another: in the middle of the night M. du Chaˆtelet’s spies, gliding alongside of a ditch, “see a group of ruffians” assembled beyond the Barrie`re du Troˆne, 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 sharpon 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 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.” 36 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION spirit unite to provide an ever-ready insurrection for the agitators who desire to raise one.

IV 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.18 The Palais-Royal, the centre of prostitution, of play, of idleness, and of pamphlets, attracts the whole of that unrooted 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 hells, adventurers, and social outcasts, the overplus or forlorn hope of literature, arts, and the bar, attorneys’ clerks, students of the schools, cockneys, loungers, strangers, and the occupants of furnished lodgings, 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,”19 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,20 “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

18. De Goncourt, “La Socie´te´ Française pendant la Re´volution.” Thirty- one gambling-houses are enumerated here, while a pamphlet of the day is entitled “Pe´tition des deux mille cent filles du Palais-Royal.” 19. Montjoie, 2nd part, 144. Bailly, ii. 130. 20. Arthur Young, June 24th, 1789. Montjoie, 2nd part, 69. Spontaneous Anarchy /37 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 theatre, unknown among the unknown, requiring sensational impressions and transports, a prey to the contagion of the passions around him, borne along in the whirl of sounding phrases, of ready- made news, growing rumours, and other exaggerations by which fanatics keepoutdoing each other. There are shoutings, 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 dumbfounded at what he sees.21 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; thirteen came out today, sixteen yesterday, and ninety-two last week. Nineteen-twentieths of these productions are in favour of liberty”; and by liberty is meant the extinction of privileges, numerical sovereignty, the application of the Contrat-Social, “the Republic,” and more besides, a universal levelling, 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 entrapped, let him be knocked on the head....Neverwill the victors have a richer prey. Forty thousand palaces, mansions, and chateaux, two-fifths of the property of France, will be the recompense of valour. Those who pretend to be the conquerors will be conquered in turn. The nation shall be purged.” Here, in advance, is the programme of the Reign of Terror.

21. Arthur Young, June 9th, 24th, and 26th. “La France libre,” passim, by C. Desmoulins. 38 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

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.”22 “The coffee- houses . . . present astonishing spectacles . . . expectant crowds are at the doors and windows, listening a` gorge de´ployeé to certain orators, who from chairs or tables harangue each his little audience; 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; Conde´ 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 Cafe´Foy.23 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 Conde´, Duc de Bourbon, and the Prince de Conti), one favourite (Madame de Polignac), MM. de Vandreuil, de la Tre´moille, du Chaˆ- telet, de Villedeuil, de Barentin, de la Galaisie`re, Vidaud de la Tour, Berthier, Foulon, and also M. Linguet.” Placards are posted demanding the pillory on the Pont-Neuf for the Abbe´ Maury. One orator proposes “to burn the house of M. d’Espre´meńil, his wife, children, furniture, and himself: this is passed unanimously.”—No opposition is tolerated. One of those present having manifested some

22. C. Desmoulins, letters to his father, and Arthur Young, June 9th. 23. Montjoie, 2nd part, 69, 77, 124, 144. C. Desmoulins, letters of June 24th and the following days. Spontaneous Anarchy /39 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 hand him over to the populace, 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 inflictions. 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 le`se-majeste´, and at once punished. In the first week of July, an abbe´ 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 centre at a time like this. A new power has sprung up side by side with legal powers, a legislature of the highways and public squares—anonymous, irresponsible, without restraint, driven onward by coffee-house theories, by transports of the brain and the vehemence of mountebanks, while the bare arms which have just accomplished the work of destruction in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, form its body-guard and ministerial cabinet. 40 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

V This is the dictatorshipof 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.”24 On Monday, June 22nd, “d’Espre´meńil barely escapes being knocked down; the Abbe´ Maury . . . owes his escape to the strength of a cure´, who takes him upin his arms and tosses him into the carriage of the Archbishopof Arles.” On the 23rd, “the Arch- bishopof Paris and the Keeperof the Seals are hooted, railed at, scoffed at, and derided, until they almost sink with shame and rage,” and so formidable is the tempest of vociferation 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 Bishopof Beauvais is almost knocked down by a stone which strikes him on the head. On the 25th, the Archbishopof Paris is saved only by the speed of his horses, the multitude pursuing him and pelting him with stones; his hotel 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”;25 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 col-

24. Etienne Dumont, “Souvenirs,” p. 72. C. Desmoulins, letter of June 24th. Arthur Young, June 25th. Roux and Buchez, ii. 28. 25. Bailly, i. 227 and 179. Monnier, “Recherches sur les causes,” &c., i. 289, 291; ii. 61. Malouet, i. 209; ii. 10. “Actes des Apoˆtres,” 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.” Spontaneous Anarchy /41 lateral Assembly which often imposes its own will on the other. They take note of and put down the names of their opponents, which names, transmitted to chair-bearers in attendance at the entrance of the hall, and from them to the populace waiting for the departure of the deputies, are from that time regarded as the names of public enemies.26 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, among them, that by which the commons declare themselves the National Assem- bly and assume supreme power. The night before, Malouet had proposed to ascertain, by a preliminary vote, on which side the majority was: the noes instantly gathered around him to the number of three hundred, “upon which a man 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.” More- over, 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 “opposant” after his name. Insulted by many of his 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 keepaway from the meetings. 27 Owing to this intervention of the

26. Manuscript letters of M. Boulle´, 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.” 27. Letters of M. Boulle´, June 23rd. “How sublime the moment, that in which we enthusiastically bind ourselves to the country by a new oath! . . . 42 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION galleries the radical minority, numbering about thirty,28 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. Bouche, 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, and, 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 Legis- lative, the Convention, submit to it entirely. The public in the galleries are 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.

Why should this moment be selected by one of our number to dishonour 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 upto that time, and he voted for the Constitution.” 28. De Ferrie`res, i. 168. Malouet, i. 298 (according to him the faction did not number more than ten members), and ix. 10. Dumont, 250. Spontaneous Anarchy /43

When a commanding general sits in council with his staff-officers and his counsellors, 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;29 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,30 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.31 “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 Chaˆtelet, 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.

29. Declaration of June 23rd, article 15. 30. Montjoie, 2nd part, 118. C. Desmoulins, letters of June 24th and the following days. A faithful narrative by M. de Sainte-Feˆre, formerly an oﬃcer in the French Guard, p. 9. De Bezenval, iii. 413. Roux and Buchez, ii. 35. Manuscript souvenirs of M. X. 31. Peuchet (“Encyclope´die Me´thodique,” 1789, quoted by Parent Duchaˆ- telet): “Almost all of the soldiers of the Guard belong to that class (the bullies of public women): many, indeed, only enlist in the corps that they may live at the expense of these unfortunates.” 44 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

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 Cafe´ 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 retaken.— 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 gone over to the people. 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....Weseenothing but the rabble at- taching themselves to soldiers whom they chance to encounter. ‘Al- lons, 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 keepthem 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 cannoneers 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 which was relied on to restrain the mob, furnished the instigation to rebellion. Spontaneous Anarchy /45

VI 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.32 Like a tame elephant suddenly become wild again, the populace throws off its ordinary driver, and the new guides whom 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;33 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,34 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. Bar- tholomew of patriots.” The crowd embrace him, adopt the green cockade which he has proposed, and oblige the dancing-saloons and theatres 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 upon 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.35 Elsewhere, on the Boulevard,

32. Gouverneur Morris. Liberty is now the general cry; authority is a name and no longer a reality. (Correspondence with Washington, July 19th.) 33. Bailly, i. 302. “The King was very well-disposed; his measures were intended only to preserve order and the public peace....DuChaˆtelet was forced by facts to acquit M. de Bezenval of attempts against the people and the country.” Cf. Marmontel, iv. 183; Mounier, ii. 40. 34. C. Desmoulins, letter of the 16th July. Roux and Buchez, ii. 83. 35. Trial of the Prince de Lambesc (Paris, 1790), with the eighty-three depo- 46 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION before the Hoˆtel Montmorency, some of the French Guards, escaped from their barracks, fired on a loyal detachment of the “Royal Al- lemand.” The tocsin is sounding on all sides, the shops where arms are sold are pillaged, and the Hoˆtel-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,36 “all the barriers, from the Faubourg Saint-Antoine to the Faubourg Saint-Honore´, 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 populace, which, above all things, wants to have cheapwine. “Ruffians, armed with pikes and sticks, proceed in several parties to give up to pillage the sitions 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 grey horse with a grey 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 grey clothes fired at him with a pistol. . . . The prince tried hard to free himself, and succeeded by making his horse rear upand by flourishing his sword; without, however, upto this time, wounding any one. . . . He deposes that he saw the prince strike a man on the head with the flat of his sabre 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 keepoff the crowd which assailed them with stones, and even with firearms, from the topof 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 officers were extreme. Nevertheless “on the following day, the 13th, some one posted a written placard on the carrefour Bussy recommending the citizens of Paris to seize the prince and quarter him at once.”—(Deposition of M. Cosson, p. 114.) 36. Bailly, i. 336. Marmontel, iv. 310. Spontaneous Anarchy /47 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 house37 the street is full of the wreck, 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 troopcomes 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,

37. Montjoie, part 3, 86. “I talked with those who guarded the chateau 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, “Me´moires,” i. 374. Dussaulx, “L’oeuvre des sept jours,” 352. “Revue Historique,” March, 1876. Interrogatory of Desnot. His occupation during the 13th of July (published by Guiffrey). 48 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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.38 It is stated that there were fifty thousand 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,39 “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 enrol themselves; 48,000 men are formed into battalions and companies; the bourgeoisie buy guns of the vagabonds for three livres apiece, and sabres 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 populace. Dussaulx, its panegyrist, confesses40 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 Hoˆtel-de-Ville, has no other resource but to send for six barrels of gunpowder, 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,

38. Mathieu Dumas, “Me´moires,” 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.” 39. Dussaulx, 379. 40. Dussaulx, 359, 360, 361, 288, 336. “In effect their entreaties resembled commands, and, more than once, it was impossible to resist them.” Spontaneous Anarchy /49 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 centre, while the Palais-Royal is the main centre. 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 stategy 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 invalide 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 Hoˆtel-de-Ville to inspect the fortress; he receives several discharges without returning them, and lets the first bridge be carried without firing a shot.41 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 infat-

41. Dussaulx, 447 (Deposition of the invalides). “Revue Re´trospective,” iv. 282 (Narrative of the commander of the thirty-two Swiss Guards). 50 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION uated 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 upthe passage. “The Bastille was not taken by main force,” says the brave Elie, one of the combatants; “it surrendered before even it was attacked,”42 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,43 and, on the other hand, they were unnerved by the sight of the immense crowd. Eight or nine hundred men only44 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,45 “were a number of fashionable women of very good appear-

42. Marmontel, iv. 317. 43. Dussaulx, 454. “The soldiers replied that they would accept whatever happened rather than cause the destruction of so great a number of their fellow- citizens.” 44. Dussaulx, 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.” 45. Souvenirs Manuscrits de M. X., an 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 of a troopof unfortunate creatures, most of them Spontaneous Anarchy /51 ance, 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 and 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 honour; 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 sabre, 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 clamour; a hue and cry is all that it now needs; the moment one strikes, all

Germans and almost all provincials, the Parisians presented themselves before the fortress, curiosity alone having led them there.” 52 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION want to strike. “Those who had no arms,” says an officer, “threw stones at me;46 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 Hoˆtel-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 (ga- leux) 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, a cook out of place, 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 sabre which is lent to him, he strikes the bare neck, but the dull sabre 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 populace,” he marches along, and, in the Rue Saint-Honore´, he has two inscriptions attached to the head, to indicate without mistake whose head it is. They grow merry

46. Narrative of the commander of the thirty-two Swiss. Narrative of Cho- lat, wine-dealer, one of the victors. Examination of Desnot (who cut off the head of M. de Launay). Spontaneous Anarchy /53 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 ends the mockery: some of it is found in every triumph, and beneath the butcher the buffoon becomes apparent.

VII Meanwhile, at the Palais-Royal, other buffoons, who with the levity of gossips sport with lives as freely as with words, have drawn up, 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’Espre´meńil, Lefe`vre d’Amećourt, and others besides;47 a reward is promised to whoever will bring their heads to the Cafe´ 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 lampat the street corner, but not beyond it. Throughout the day of the 14th, this improvised tribunal holds a permanent session, and follows upits decisions with its actions. M. de Flesselles, provost of the merchants and president of the electors at the Hoˆtel-de-Ville, having shown himself somewhat lukewarm,48 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

47. Montjoie, part 3, 85. Dussaulx, 357, 287, 368. 48. Nothing more. No witness states that he had seen the pretended note to M. de Launay. According to Dussaulx, he could not have had either the time or the means to write it. 54 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION the State. With no other examination, nothing less was spoken of then but the seizure of their persons, the ruin of their houses, and the levelling of their hotels. One young man exclaimed: ‘Follow me this moment, let us start oﬀ at once to Bezenval’s!’” Their brains are so scared, and their minds so distrustful, that at every stepin the streets “one’s name has to be given, one’s profession declared, one’s residence, and one’s intentions....Onecanneither 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 Gre`ve; 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 revolutionists and to itself, continues to perform the same bloody antics, while the municipal chiefs49 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 Hoˆtel-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.50 On the 22nd of

49. 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.” 50. M. de Lafayette, “Me´moires,” iii. 264. Letters of July 16th, 1789. “I have already saved the lives of six persons whom they were hanging in diﬀerent quarters.” Spontaneous Anarchy /55

July, upon the denunciations which multiply around Paris like trains of gunpowder, two administrators of high rank, M. Foulon, Coun- cillor of State, and M. Berthier, his son-in-law, are arrested, one near Fontainebleau, and the other near Compie`gne. M. Foulon, a strict master,51 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 equalise 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 campagainst 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 Re´veillon, 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:52 “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 several 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

51. Poujoulat, “Histoire de la Re´volution Française,” p. 100 (with supporting documents). Proce`s-verbaux of the Provincial Assembly, Ile-de-France (1787), p. 127. 52. 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. 56 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION lantern; the cord breaks twice, and twice he falls upon the pavement; rehung with a fresh cord and then cut down, his head is severed from his body and placed on the end of a pike.53 Meanwhile, Berthier, sent away from Compie`gne 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 op- probrious 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 must needs account for the evil by some evil- doer, he is the author of the famine. Conducted to the Abbaye, his escort is dispersed and he is pushed on to the lantern. 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 sabre 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 Hoˆtel-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 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

53. Bailly, ii. 108. “The people, less enlightened and as imperious as despots, recognise no positive signs of good administration but success.” Spontaneous Anarchy /57 not dare,” says Bailly,54 “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 Conde´, 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 subsistences, 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,55 “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 its plunging becomes more violent; for not only do both spurs which maddened it—I mean the desire for innovation and the daily scarcity of food—continue to

54. Bailly, ii. 95, 108. Malouet, i. 14. 55. De Ferrie`res, i. 168. 58 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION prick it on, but also the political hornets which, increasing by thousands, buzz around its ears, while 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 enquiry. Rewards are bestowed upon the conquerors of the Bastille; it is declared that they have saved France. All honours are awarded to the people—to their good sense, their magnanimity, their justice. Adoration is paid to the 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 prefer the theories of their books to the experience of their eyes; they persist in the idyl which they have fashioned for themselves. At the worst their dream, driven out from the present, takes refuge in the future. Tomorrow, 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 harbour. Meanwhile, beyond the King, inert and disarmed, beyond the Assembly, disobeyed or submissive, appears the real monarch, the people—that is to say, the mob of a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand beings gathered together haphazard, 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 spectres at the gates of Hell.

“The one seemed woman to the waist, and fair, But ended foul in many a scaly fold, Voluminous and vast, a serpent armed With mortal sting. About her middle round A cry of hell-hounds never ceasing bark’d Spontaneous Anarchy /59

With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung A hideous peal: and 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 called, 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.” 9 CHAPTER III =

I. Anarchy from July 14th to October 6th, 1789—Destruction of the Govern- ment—To whom does real power belong?— II. The Provinces—Destruction of old Authorities—Incompetency of new Authorities— III. Disposition of the Peo- ple—Famine— IV. Panic—General arming— V. Attacks on public individuals and public property—At Strasbourg—At Cherbourg—At Maubeuge—At Rouen—At Besançon—At Troyes— VI. Taxes are no longer paid—Devasta- tion of the Forests—The new game laws— VII. Attacks 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 chateaux, feudal estates, and property—Preparations for other jacqueries.

HOWEVER bad a particular government may be, there issomething still worse, and that is the suppression of all government. For, it is owing to government that human willsform a harmony insteadof a 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 isdone, for through it the body standserect,marcheson and guidesitssteps.Without it there isno 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

60 Spontaneous Anarchy /61 relationships, full and accurate information, in short, the superior intelligence which conceives what is best for the common interests, and adaptsmeansto ends.If it faltersand isno 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 returnsto hisoriginal feeble state,while power is vested in passing aggregates which spring up like whirling vortices amongst 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 starting up from the ground. The question is of provisions, their possession, price, and distribution; of taxation, its proportion, apportionment, and collection; of private property, its varieties, rights, and limitations; of public authority, its province and its limits; of all those delicate cog-wheels which, working into each other, constitute the great economic, social, and political machine. Each band in itsown canton laysitsrude handson the wheelswithin itsreach, wrenching or breaking them haphazard, under the impulse of the moment, heedless and indifferent to consequences, even when the reaction of tomorrow crushes them in the ruin which they cause today. Thusdo unchained negroes,each pulling and hauling hisown way, undertake to manage a ship of which they have just obtained the 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, asthisband tumultuouslycarriesout itsviolent 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, accustomed to danger, cool-blooded, alive to the sentiment of honour, 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 62 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION to which he is sure to rise, should he strike one blow too many. All these restraints, inward as well as outward, are wanting to the man who plungesinto insurrection.He isa novice in the actsof violence which he carriesout. He hasno fear of the law, becausehe abolishes it. The action begun carrieshim further than he intended to go. His anger is exasperated by peril and resistance. He catches the fever from contact with those who are fevered, and follows robbers who have become hiscomrades. 1 Add to thisthe clamours,the drunkenness, the spectacle of destruction, the nervous tremor of the body strained beyond itspowersof endurance, and we can comprehend how, from the peasant, the labourer, and the bourgeois, pacified and tamed by an old civilisation, we see all of a sudden spring forth the barbarian, and, still worse, the primitive animal, the grinning, sanguinary, wanton baboon, who chuckleswhile he slays,and gambols over the ruin he hasaccomplished.Such isthe actual government to which France isgiven up, and after eighteen months’experience, the best qualified, most judicious, and profoundest observer of the Revolution will find nothing to compare to it but the invasion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century.2 “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 When in a building the principal beam givesway, cracksfollow 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

1. Dussaulx, 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 permitted it.”—“ArchivesNationales,”D. xxix. 3. (Letter of the municipal authoritiesof Cre´mieux, 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.” 2. Mercure de France, January 4, 1792. (“Revue politique de l’anneé 1791,” by Mallet-Dupan.) Spontaneous Anarchy /63 the King being broken, all the powerswhich he delegated fall to the ground.3 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 De Launay, the imprisonment of Bezenval, the flight of Marshal de Broglie, the assassinations of Foulon and Berthier, know what it costs to perform their duties, and, lest this should be forgotten, local insurrections intervene, and keep them in mind of it. The officer in command in Burgundy isa prisonerat Dijon, with a guard at hisdoor; and he isnot allowed to speakwith any one without permission, and without the presence of witnesses.4 The Commandant of Caen isbesieged in the old palace and capitulates. The Commandant of Bordeaux surrenders Chaˆteau-Trompette with itsgunsand equipment. The Commandant at Metz, who remains firm, suffers the insults and the orders of the populace. The Com- mandant of Brittany wandersabout hisprovince “like a vagabond,” while at Renneshispeople, furniture, and plate are kept aspledges; as soon as he sets foot in Normandy he is surrounded, and a sentinel isplaced at hisdoor. The Intendant of Besanc ¸on takesto 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 isarrested,maltreated, kept in hisroom 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.”5 At Besançon, the President of the Parliament is con-

3. Albert Babeau, i. 206. (Letter of the deputy Camuzet de Belombre, Au- gust 22, 1789.) “The executive power is absolutely gone today.” Gouverneur Morris,letter of July 31, 1789: “Thiscountry isnow asnear in a stateof anarchy asit ispossible for a community to be without breaking up.” 4. “ArchivesNationales,”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). 5. M. de Rochambeau, “Me´moires,” i. 353 (July 18th).—Sauzay, “Histoire de la Persećution Re´volutionnaire dansle De´partement du Doubs,” i. 128 (July 64 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION strained to let out of prison the insurgents arrested in a late outbreak, and to publicly burn the whole of the papersbelonging 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 remainsof hisdwelling but the wallsand a portion of the roof; all hisfurniture and effectsare broken up, burnt, or stolen; he isforced to sign,along with hiswife, an act by which he binds himself to refund all penalties inflicted by him, and to abandon all claimsfor damagesfor the injuriesto which he hasjustbeen subjected. In Franche-Comte´ the authoritiesdare not condemn delinquents, and the police do not arrest them; the military commandant writesthat “crimesof every kind are on the increase,and that he hasno meansof punishingthem.” Insubordinationispermanent in all the provinces; one of the provincial commissions states with sad- ness: “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 daresmake itselffelt, and it isa crime to have been clothed with it, what can be expected of our effortsto restoreorder?” 6 All that remainsof thisgreat demolished State is forty thousand knots of men, each separated and isolated,

19th.)— “ArchivesNationales”F 7, 3,253. (Letter of the deputiesof 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. 6. Leónce de Lavergne, 197. (Letter of the intermediate commission of Poi- tou, 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 guaranteesof 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 an aliment which all stomachs can digest without some preparation for it.” Spontaneous Anarchy /65 in townsand smallmarket-villageswhere 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 bodieshave no longer the power to resist anything.” Especially in the rural districts the mayor or syndic,who isa farmer, makesit hisfirstaim to make no enemies, and would resign his place if it were to bring him any “unpleasant- ness” 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-chairsat the town-hall, sitover a mine which may explode at any time. Tomorrow, perhaps, some resolution passed at a tavern in the suburbs, or some incendiary newspaper just received from Paris, will furnish the spark.—No other defence against the populace isat hand than the sentimentalproclamationsof the Na- tional 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 sovereigns, 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,7

7. “Archives Nationales,” D. xxix. I. (Letter of the clergy, consuls, pre´sidial- councillors, and principal merchants of Puy-en-Velay, September 16, 1789.)— H. ix. 53 (letter of the Intendant of Alençon, July 18th). “I must not leave you in ignorance of the multiplied outbreakswe have in all partsof 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- 66 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION a town of twenty thousand inhabitants, the pre´sidial,8 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 itshands,hasannounced to the new magistratesthe fate that awaitsthem. “What will become of usthiswinter,” they exclaim, “in our impoverished country, where bread is not to be had! We shall be the prey of wild beasts!”

III 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 Lan- guedoc,” writesthe intendant, 9 “would be to give an account of calamitiesof every description.The panic which prevailsin all communities, and which is stronger than all laws, stops traffic, and would cause famine even in the midst of plenty. Commodities are enormously high, and there is a lack of cash. Communities are ruined by the enormousoutlaysto which they are exposed—thepayment of the deputies to the seneschal’s court, the establishment of the burgess guards, guardhouses for this militia, the purchase of arms, uniforms, and outlays in forming communes and permanent councils; printing of all kinds, for the publication of the most unessential deliberations; the loss of time due to disturbances occasioned by these circumstances; the utter stagnation of manufactures and of

Estate, and, under this pretext, they pillage their houses, taking whatever they can find, the ownersonly avoiding death by flight.” 8. A body of magistrates forming one of the lower tribunals.—[TR.] 9. “Archives Nationales,” H. 942. (Observations of M. de Ballainvilliers, October 30, 1789.) Spontaneous Anarchy /67 trade”—all these causes combined “have reduced Languedoc to the last extremity.”—In the centre, and in the north, where the crops are good, provisions are not less scarce, because wheat is not allowed a circulation, and iskept concealed. “For five months,”writesthe municipal assembly of Louviers,10 “not a farmer hasmade hisap- pearance in the marketsof thistown. Such a circumstancewasnever known before, although, from time to time, high priceshave prevailed to a considerable extent. On the contrary, the markets were alwayswell suppliedin 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 burgess militia, 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 earnstwelve sousaday at the relief works,and, on going into the country, he seesthatthe grain crop isgood. What conclusioncan he come to but that the dearth isdue 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

10. “Archives Nationales,” D. xxix. I. 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. 68 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION amongst the bourgeoisie and the rich. A rumour 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 grain in the stalk. In Brittany, it ismaintained that grain isexported and storedup abroad. In Touraine, it iscertain that thisor that wholesaledealer allowsit to sprout in his granaries rather than sell it. At Troyes, a story prevailsthat another haspoisonedhisflour 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 From the earliest of these weeks they were already alarmed. Ac- customed to being led, the human herd is scared at being left to itself; it misses its leaders whom it has trodden under foot; in throwing off their trammelsit hasdeprived itselfof their protection. It feelslonely, in an unknown country, exposedto dangersof 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 putsthem 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 dust, suddenly sweeps over hundredsof leaguesof territory. The brigandsare coming! they are firing the crops! they are only six leagues off, and then only two—it is proved by the fugitives who are escaping in confusion. Spontaneous Anarchy /69

On the 28th of July, at Angouleˆme,11 the tocsin is heard about three o’clock in the afternoon; the drumsbeat to arms,and cannon are mounted on the ramparts; the town has to be put in a state of defence 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-waggon on its way to Bordeaux. After this the number of brigandsisreduced to 1,500, but there isno doubt that they are ravaging the country. At nine o’clock in the evening 20,000 men are under arms,and thusthey passthenight, alwayslisteningwith- out hearing anything. Towardsthree o’clock in the morning there is a fresh alarm with the tocsin, and the people form themselves in battle array; it iscertain that the brigandshave burned Ruffec, Ver- neuil, 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 had to be grateful.” Asthe banditsdo 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 isnot allayed; “during the following daysa guard iskept mounted, and companies are enrolled among the burgesses,” 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, “isthat at ten leaguesoff in the neighbourhood, in each parish, a similar disturbance took place, and at about the same hour.”—That a girl returning to the village at night should meet two men who do not belong to the neighbourhood issufficientto give rise to these panics. 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

11. “Archives Nationales,” D. xxix. I. Letter of M. Briand-Delessart (An- gouleˆme, August 1st).—Of M. Bret, Lieutenant-General of the provostship of Mardogne, September 5th.—Of the Chevalier de Castellas (Auvergne), Sep- tember 15th (relating to the night between the 2nd and 3rd of August).— Madame Campan, ii. 65. 70 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 their lives seem to resume the even tenor of their way. But such large masses are not unsettled with impunity; a tumult like this is, in itself, a fruitful 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,12 hearsat the public dinner-tablesthat 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 hasany eﬀect againstthe multiplying phantomsof an overexcited 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 francsfor the purchaseof 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 equipments, on the requisition of municipal bodies, while, in case of refusal, the arsenals are pillaged, and, voluntarily or by force, four hundred thousandgunsthuspassintothe hands of the people in six months.13 Not content with thisthey musthave

12. Arthur Young, “Voyages in France,” July 24th and 31st, August 13th and 19th. 13. D. Bouille´, 108.—“ArchivesNationales,”KK. 1105. Correspondenceof M. de Thiard, September 20, 1789 (aproposof one hundred gunsgiven 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 brigandsand in enemies,whereasneither exist.” September 25th, “Vanity alone impelsthem, and the pride of having cannon is their sole motive.” Spontaneous Anarchy /71 cannon. Brest having demanded two, every town in Brittany does the same thing; their amour-propre isexcited, and alsothe need of feeling themselves strong. They lack nothing now to render themselves masters. All authority, all force, every means of constraint and of intimidation isin their hands,and in theirsalone; 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 It would take too much space to recount all the violent acts which were committed—convoys arrested, grain pillaged, millers and corn-merchantshung, decapitated, slaughtered,farmerscalled upon under threats of death to give up even the seed reserved for sowing, proprietors ransomed and houses sacked.14 These outrages, unpunished, tolerated, and even excused or badly suppressed, are constantly repeated, and are, at ﬁrst, directed against public men and public property. Asiscommonly 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 interpretsafter itsown fashionthe public joy which it witnesses. Five or six hundred beggars,15 their numberssoonin-

14. “ArchivesNationales,”H. 1453. Lettersof 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 cultivatorsof Breteuil (Picardy), July 23rd (their granarieswere 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, hasbeen visitedin hishouseby the populace, and hislife hasbeen threatened.” Letter of Moreau, Procureur du Roi at the Seneschal’s Court at Bar-le-Duc, September 15, 1789, D. xxix. I. “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,” &c. 15. Chronicle of Dominick Schmutz (“Revue d’Alsace,” v. iii. 3rd series). These are his own expressions: Gesindel, Lumpen-gesindel.—De Rochambeau, “Me´moires,” i. 353. Arthur Young (an eye-witness), July 21st. Of Dammartin 72 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION creased by the petty tradesmen, rush to the town-hall, the magis- tratesonly having time to fly through a back door. The soldiers,on their part, with armsin their hands,allow all thesethingsto 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 crow-bars, and the populace enter amid a burst of accla- mationsfrom the spectators.Immediately, through every opening in the building, which hasa façade 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 archivesare thrown to the wind, and the surrounding streets are strewed with them; the letters of enfranchisement, the chartersof privileges,all the authentic actswhich, since LouisXIV., have guaranteed the libertiesof the town, perishin 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 burgesses 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 neighbourhood 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—

(eye-witness), i. 105. M. de Rochambeau shows the usual indecision and want of vigour: 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. Spontaneous Anarchy /73 the instigators are always of this stamp. At Cherbourg, on the 21st of July,16 the two leadersof the riot are “highway robbers,”who place themselves at the head of women of the suburbs, foreign sailors, the populace of the harbour, and it includes soldiers in workmen’ssmocks.They force the delivery of the keysof the grain warehouses, and wreck the dwellings of the three richest merchants, also that of M. de Garantot, the subdelegate: “All records and papers are burnt; at M. de Garantot’salone the lossisestimatedat 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 moment of the assembly of the representatives of the commune,17 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 thisanother band followsuttering criesof death, and smashesthe windows, while the garrison, which has been ordered out, quietly contemplatesthe damage done. Death to the mayor, to all rulers, and to all employe´s! The rioters force open the prisons, set the prisoners free, and attack the tax-offices. The octroi officesare demolished from top to bottom: they pull down the harbour 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 acquittances. The houses of the registrar and of the sheriff, that of the revenue comptroller, two hundred yardsoutsidethe town, are sacked; the doors and the windows are smashed, the furniture and linen istorn to shreds,and the plate and jewellery isthrown 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” ispreserved; their work, moreover, is

16. 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. 17. “ArchivesNationales,”F 7, 3,248. (Letter of the mayor, M. Poussiaude de Thierri, September 11th.) 74 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION conscientiously done, without stopping a moment, “from ten in the evening up to ten in the morning on the following day.” In addition to thisthe mayor, who hasserved for thirty-four years,resignshis office at the solicitation of the well-disposed but terrified people, and leavesthe country.—At Rouen, after the 24th of July, 18 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 thiswe 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.” Thisisequal to telling the populace that it isfree to do asit pleases. On the strengthof thisthe leadersof 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 isa strolling actor from Parisnamed Bordier, famousin the part of harlequin,19 a bully in a house of ill-fame, “a night-rover and drunkard, and who, fearing neither God nor devil,” hastaken up patriotism, and comes down into the provinces to play tragedy, and that, tragedy in real life. The fifth act beginson 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

18. Floquet, vii. 551. 19. De Goncourt, “La Socie´te´ Française pendant la Re´volution,” 37. Spontaneous Anarchy /75 which the royal revenue iscollected, are wrecked. Immensebonfires are lighted in the streets and on the old market square; furniture, clothes, papers, kitchen utensils, are all thrown in pell-mell, while carriagesare dragged out and tumbled into the Seine. It isonly when the town-hall isattacked that the national guard, beginning to be alarmed, makesup itsmind to seizeBordier and someothers. 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 favour as to require the pointing of loaded cannon on them to keep them down.—At Besançon,20 on the 13th of August, the leaders consist of the servant of an exhibitor of wild animals, two gaol-birdsof whom one hasalready been branded in consequence of a riot, and a number of “inhabitantsof 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 hisrefusingto give it they tear off their cockadesand 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 hisdwelling and break up hisfurniture. 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 eatablesasmuch asthey 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 isto fraternize with the whole garrison;but the banquet turns into a drinking-bout, entire companiesremaining under the tables dead drunk; other companiescarry away with them four hogsheads

20. “ArchivesNationales,”D. xxix. I. Letter of the officersof the bailiwick of Doˆle, August 24th. Sauzay i. 128. 76 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 neighbouring 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 thisorgy, to prevent Besanc ¸on and itsoutskirtsfrom being indefinitely treated asa conquered country, the burgessguard, 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 insurrection!21 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,22 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 sabre; fortunately, “all the honest folks among the burgesses” immediately form themselves into a national guard, and this first attempt at a jacquerie isput down. But the agitation continues,and

21. 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 peniten- tiary, and force innkeepersand the keepersof drinking-placesto give up their provisions. The shops are all closed, and, for twenty-four hours, the officers are not obeyed. (De Dammartin, i. 105.) 22. Albert Babeau, i. 187, 273.—Moniteur, ii. 379. (Extract from the provost’s verdict of November 27, 1789.) Spontaneous Anarchy /77 false rumours 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 tocsin sounds in the villages, and the peasants go forth armed.—Henceforth, a vague idea of some impending danger fills all minds; the necessity of defence and of guarding againstenemiesismaintained. The new dem- agoguesavail themselvesof thisto 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 only recently they welcomed Necker with enthusiastic shouts; that the priests, the monks, and canons were the first to adopt the national cockade; that the noblesof the city and itsenvironsare the mostliberal 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 leadersare objectsof distrust.—Onthe 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 officersasaristocrats,and electsnew ones.On the 27th of Au- gust, 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 depoˆt 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 isscarceit isbecauseHuez, 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 growlsfiercely 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,” writesthe deputy of Troyesto the sheriffs,“and act towardsthe people asto a friend; be asgentle with them asyou would be with your equals, and rest assured that they are capable of responding to it.” ThusdoesHuez act, and he even doesmore, paying no attention 78 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 isto provide somethingfor the unfortunate poor when he isgone: he bequeathsin hiswill 18,000 livresto the poor, and, on the eve of hisdeath, sends100crownsto the bureau of charity. But what avail self-abnegation and beneficence against blind, insane rage! On the 9th of September, three loadsof 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 hisplace!”—Huez, on leaving hiscourt- room, isknocked down, murdered by kicksand blows,throttled, dragged to the reception hall, struck on his head with a sabot, and pitched down the grand staircase. The municipal officers strive in vain to protect him; a rope isput around hisneck 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 hiseyes.He isdragged along with the rope around hisneck up to the Pont de la Selle, and thrown into the neighbouring ford, and then drawn out, again dragged through the streets and in the gutters, with a bunch of hay crammed in hismouth. 23 In the meantime, hishouseaswell asthat 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; objectsof value are divided, and the rest,even down to the iron balcony, isdemolishedor broken; the rioterscry out, on leaving,

23. 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 con- triving 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. Huez, found on him when he wasarrestedin hisflight.” Spontaneous Anarchy /79 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 ladiesof charity; the latter are sofrightened that they throw up their office, while a number of persons move off into the country; othersbarricade themselvesin their dwellingsand only open their doors with sabre 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,24 wascut to pieceslike Laperousein the Fiji Islands,and a woman ate hisheart.

VI We can divine, under such circumstances, whether taxes come in, and whether municipalitiesthat swayabout in every popular breeze have the power of keeping up odiousrevenue rights.—Towardsthe end of September,25 I find a list of thirty-six committees or municipal bodieswhich, within a radiusof fifty leaguesaround 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 employe´sin the excisedepartment. In a third the municipal officers were the first to provide themselves with contraband salt and contraband tobacco.

24. Mercure de France, September 26, 1789. Lettersof the oﬃcersof the Bourbon regiment and of membersof the general committee of Caen.—Flo- quet, vii. 545. 25. “ArchivesNationales,”H. 1453. Ibid. D. xxix. I. Note of M. de la Tour- du-Pin, October 28th. 80 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

At Peronne and at Ham, the order having come to restore the toll-houses, the people destroy the soldiers’ quarters, conduct all the employe´sto 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.26—Of all the creditorswhosehand each one felt on hisshoulders,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,27 are in danger of their livesand are obliged to fly. At Falaise,in Normandy, the people threaten to “cut to piecesthe director of the excise.”At Baignes,in Saintonge, hishouseisdevastatedand hispapersand effectsare 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 hoursthe clerksare on the point of being torn to pieces; through the entreaties of the lord of the manor, who sees scythes and sabres 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 reportsthat “the

26. Decree, February 1, 1789, enforced May 1 following. 27. “ArchivesNationales,”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, &c. Moniteur, I. 303, 387, 505 (sessions of August 7th and 27th and of September 23rd). “The royal revenues are diminishing steadily.” Roux and Buchez, 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 employe´shave 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.” Spontaneous Anarchy /81 uprising is general in almost all the towns under his generalship.” On the following day the Intendant of Alençon writesthat, in his province, “the royal dueswill 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 hasbeen 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 “convoysand by open force” in Picardy, in Lorraine, and in the Trois-Eveˆche´s; that the indirect tax doesnot come in, that the receivers-general and the receiversof 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 reachesit, it ceasestopropel 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 ego- tistic, 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 taxesin 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,28 “the people generally refused to make any payments, until those who were exempt and privileged should have been inscribed on the

28. “ArchivesNationales,”F 7, 3,253 (Letter of September 8, 1789). 82 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION local lists.” In many places the peasants threaten to obtain the reimbursement of their instalments, 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 fulfil 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 belongsto the Nation belongsto 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 hisown grounds,the impulseto break the law becomes irresistible. Every man who can procure a gun begins operations;29 the crops which are still standing are trodden under foot, the lordly residences are invaded, and the palings are scaled; the King himself at Versaillesiswakened by shotsfiredin hispark. 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 belongsto him who killsit. At Choiseul,in Champagne, not only are all the haresand partridgesof the barony exterminated, but the pondsare exhausted

29. Arthur Young, September 30th. “One would think 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. 141. “Archives Nationales,” D. xxix. I. Letter of the Chevalier d’Allonville, September 8, 1789 (environsof 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 waggons to Pont-Saint-Dizier, where they sell them. In other placesthey fishin the pondsand break the embankments.” Spontaneous Anarchy /83 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 neighbourhood 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 Indeed, a proscribed class already exists, and a name has been found for it: it is the “aristocrats.” This deadly term, applied at first to the noblesand prelatesin the States-General who declined to take part in the reunion of the three orders,isextended soasto embrace all whose titles, offices, alliances, and manner of living distinguish them from the multitude. That which entitled them to respect is that which marksthem out asobjectsof ill-will; while the people, who, though suffering from their privileges, did not regard them personally with hatred, are 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 centre, the peasants range themselves on the side of the conspirators.30 Thus does the peasant jacquerie commence, and the wild enthusiasts who have fanned the flame in Parisare likewisefanning the flame in the provinces. “You wish to know the authors of the agitations,” writes

30. “Archives Nationales,” D. xxix. I. Letter of the assessor of the police of Saint-Flour, October 3, 1789. On the 31st of July, a report 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 troublesdisturbingthe province at thistime, and that he was concealed in his chateau.” On the strength of this shots are fired into the windows, and there are searches, &c. 84 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 poverty, and never failing to blacken everything.31 It ishighly probable that he isthe one who composesandcirculatesthe placardscalling on the people, in the King’sname, to resortto violence.—At Secon- digny, in Poitou, on the 23rd of July,32 the labourersin 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 crimesgo 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 thishouse!”At thismoment the neighbouring 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-

31. “ArchivesNationales,”K. 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. Boulle´, deputy of Pon- tivy, to hisconstituents,isa type of thisdeclamatory and incendiary writing. Letter of the consuls, priests, and merchants of Puy-en-Velay, September 16th.—“The Ancient Re´gime,” p. 396. 32. “ArchivesNationales,”D. xxix. I. Letter of M. Despretz-Montpezat,a former artillery officer, July 24th (with several other signatures). On the same day the tocsin is sounded in fifty villages on the rumour spreading that 7,000 brigands, English and Breton, were invading the country. Spontaneous Anarchy /85

Estate has done the same thing to all the gentlemen of the town; one, who refused,wascut to piecesbefore 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 precedesor follows them. “Nobody dares write,” M. Despretz sends word; “I attempt it at the riskof my life.”—Noblesand prelatesbecome objectsof suspicion everywhere; village committees open their letters, and they have to suffer their houses to be searched.33 They are forced to adopt the new cockade: to be a gentleman, and not wear it, isto deserve hanging. At Mamers, in Maine, M. de Beauvoir refuses to wear it, and isat the point of being put into the pillory and at once knocked on the head. Near La Fle`che, 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 Vasse´, who had come to ask the consent of their constituents to their joining the Third-Estate, are recognised near Mans; their honourable scruples and their pledges to the constituents are considered of no importance, nor even the step that they are now taking to fulfil 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,34 had issued orders during the famine, and, having retired to hischateau of Nouay, had

33. “Archives Nationales,” D. xxix. I. Letter of Briand-Delessart, August 1st (domiciliary visits to the Carmelites of Angouleˆme where it ispretended that Mme. de Polignac hasjustarrived.—Beugnot, I. 140.—Arthur Young, July 20th, &c.—Roux and Buchez, iv. 166, Letter of Mamers, July 24th; of Mans, July 26th. 34. Montjoie, ch. lxii. p. 93 (according to actsof 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. 86 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 tocsin, and all that was necessary was that they should remain quiet. Accordingly he issetdown asbeing in league with the brigands, and besidesthisheisa monopolist,and a buyer of standingcrops. The peasantsleadhim off, along with hisson-in-law, M. de Mon- tesson, to the neighbouring village, where there are judges. On the way “they dragged their victimson the ground, pummelled 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 cutsoff the two headswith a double-edged axe, and children bear them along to the sound of drums and violins. Meanwhile, the judgesof 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 thinksthat it hasthe 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-Comte´, Bur- gundy, Maˆconnais, Beaujolais, Auvergne, Viennois, Dauphiny—the whole of thisterritory resemblesa continuousmine which explodes at the same time. The first column of flame which shoots up is on the frontiersof Alsaceand Franche-Comte´, in the vicinity of Belfort and Ve´soul—a feudal district, in which the peasant, overburdened with taxes, bears the heavier yoke with greater impatience. An instinctive argument isgoing on in hismind without hisknowing 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 Spontaneous Anarchy /87 the 16th of July, the chateau of Sancy, belonging to the Princesse de Beaufremont, is sacked, and on the 18th those of Lure, Bithaine, and Molans.35 On the 29th, an accident which occurswith some fireworks at a popular festival at the house of M. de Memmay, leads the lower class to believe that the invitation extended to them was a trap, and that there wasa desireto get rid of them by treachery. 36 Seized with rage they set fire to the chateau, and during the following week37 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.38 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 Baˆle alone, it is said that twelve hundred of these unfortunate fugitives arrived with their families.—The distance between the Jew creditor and the Christianproprietor isnot great, and thisissooncleared. Remire- mont isonly saved by a detachment of dragoons.Eight hundred men attack the chateau of Uberbru¨nn. 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,

35. Mercure de France, August 20th (Letter from Ve´soul, August 13th). 36. M. de Memmay proved hisinnocence later on, and wasrehabilitated by a public decision after two years’ proceedings (session of June 4, 1791; Mercure of June 11th). 37. Journal des De´bats et Dećrees, i. 258. (Letter of the municipality of Ve´- soul, July 22nd.—Discourse of M. de Toulougeon, July 29th.) 38. De Rochambeau, “Me´moires,” i. 353. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,253. (Letter of M. de Rochambeau, August 4th.)—Chronicle of Schmutz (ibid.), p. 284. “ArchivesNationales,”D. xxix. i. (Letter of Mme. Ferrette, of Remiremont, August 9th.) 88 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 floorsof 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 remainsentire. “Wine streamsthrough the cellars. One cask of sixteen hundred measures is half lost; the plate and the linen are carried off.”—Society isevidently being overthrown, while with the power, property ischanging hands. These are their very words. In Franche-Comte´ 39 the inhabitants of eight communescome and declare to the Bernardinsof Gra ˆce- Dieu and of Lieu-Croissant “that, being of the Third-Estate, it is time now for the people to rule over abbotsand monks,considering that the domination of the latter haslastedtoo long,” and thereupon they carry off all the titlesto property and to rentalsbelonging to the abbey in their commune. In Upper Dauphiny, during the destruction of M. de Murat’s chateau, a man named Ferreól 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!”40 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 prevailsthat 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 thisbrigandage, pillage, and destruction” ispermitted. In Dau- phiny, 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 noblesthey encounter, it isnot through personalhatred.

39. Sauzay, i. 180. (Lettersof monks,July 22nd and 26th.) 40. “ArchivesNationales,”D. xxix. I. (Letter of M. de Bergeron, attorney to the pre´sidial 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 Serrie`re, in Dauphiny, July 31st.) Spontaneous Anarchy /89

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 isforced with uplifted axe to sign a relinquishment of his seignorial rights over twenty-three estates, has dwelt among them for forty-six years, and hasbeen wholly devoted to them. 41 In the canton of Cre´mieu, “where the havoc isimmense,”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 ladiesof Vanes,who had been so charitable; but they burn all their title-deeds, and torture the business agent at three different timesby 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 themselvesasbrigands,commit actsof brigandage. But here the situationismore tragical, for it iswar in the midst of peace, a war of the brutal and barbarised multitude against the highly cultivated, well-disposed, and confiding, who had not antic-

41. Letter of the Count of Courtivron, deputy substitute (an eye-witness).— “ArchivesNationales,”D. xxix. I. Letter of the municipal officersof Cre ´mieu (Dauphiny), November 3rd. Letter of the Vicomte de Carbonnie`re (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 neighbours; their virtues ought to have commanded the love of the poor, for whose resentment there was no cause.” 90 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION ipated anything of the kind, who had not even dreamt of defending themselves, and who had no protection. The Comte de Courtivron, with hisfamily, wasstayingat the watering-place of Luxeuil with hisuncle, the Abbe´ 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 noblesand magistrateswho 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 asthe mayor, allowsthe 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 tocsin is sounded and they are pursued, and with difficulty obtain refuge in Plombie`res. The bourgeoisie of Plombie`res, 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 hisreturn, M. de Courtivron isshotat 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 issentthem that at Dijon “the noblesare 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 homesnor in the homesof others,nor in placesalong the roads, fugitives being stopped in all the small villages and market- towns. In Dauphiny42 “the Abbess of St. Pierre de Lyon, one of the

42. “Archives Nationales,” xxix. 1. (Letter of the commission of the States of Dauphiny, July 31st.) Spontaneous Anarchy /91 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 Coˆte Saint-Andre´, 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 ex- tendsfrom abbeysand chateaux to the “housesof the bourgeoisie.” 43 The grudge at firstwasconfined to the holdersof charters;now it is extended to all who possess anything. Well-to-do farmers and priests abandon their parishes and fly to the towns. Travellers 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 neighbourhood hascarried away wine and returnsthe following day in search of hay. All the furniture of a chateau in Dauphiny isremoved, even to the hingesof 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-Comte´, “nearly forty chateaux and sei-

43. “De´sastres du Maˆconnais,” by Puthod de la Maison-Rouge (August, 1789). “Ravagesdu Maˆconnai”—Arthur Young, July 27th. Roux and Buchez, iv. 211, 214. Arthur Young, July 27th.—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 neighbourhood, 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. 92 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION gnorial mansions have been pillaged or burnt.”44 From Langresto Gray about three out of five chateaux are sacked. In Dauphiny twenty-seven are burned or destroyed; five in the small district of Viennois, and, besides these, all the monasteries—nine at least in Auvergne, seventy-two, it is said, in Maˆconnaisand Beaujolais,without counting those of Alsace. On the 31st of July, Lally-Tollendal, on entering the tribune, hashishandsfull of lettersof distress,with a list of thirty-six chateaux burnt, demolished, or pillaged, in one province, and the details of still worse violence against persons:45 “in Languedoc, M. de Barras, cut to pieces in the presence of his wife who isabout to be confined, and who isdead in consequence; in Normandy, a paralytic gentleman left on a burning pile and taken off from it with hishandsburnt; in Franche-Comte ´, Madame de Bathilly compelled, with an axe 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 histhroat 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 dropt down or whether he should die in some other way; the Chevalier d’Ambly, torn from hischateau and dragged naked into the village, placed on a dung-heap after having hiseyebrowsand all hishair pulled out, while the crowd kept on dancing around him.”

44. Letter of the Count de Courtivron.—Arthur Young, July 31st.—Roux and Buchez, ii. 543.—Mercure de France, August 15, 1789 (sitting of the 8th, discourse of a deputy).—Mermet, “Histoire de la Ville de Vienne,” 445.— “ArchivesNationales,” ibid. (Letter of the Commission of the States of Dau- phiny, 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 Maˆcon). “They have not the less destroyed most of the chateaux and bourgeoisdwellings,at one time burning them and at another tearing them down.” 45. Lally-Tollendal, “Second Letter to my Constituents,” 104. Spontaneous Anarchy /93

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 hasbegun by violence, and which, like the invasionsof 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,”46 writesa gentleman of Auvergne, “we were notified that the fruit-tithe (percie`res) would no longer be paid, and that the example of other provinces wasonly being followed which no longer, even by royal order, pay tithes.” In Franche-Comte´ “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

46. Doniol, “La Revolution et la Feódalite´,” p. 60 (a few daysafter the 4th of August).—“Archives Nationales,” H. 784. Letters of M. de Langeron, military commander at Besançon, October 16th and 18th. Ibid., D. xxix. 1. 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 unburnt; 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. Thischateau, splendid even in ruins, with the fortune and lives of the owners, is at the mercy of an armed rabble.” 94 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION and feudal titlesare stillintact in three-fourthsof France, that it is the interest of the peasant to ensure their disappearance, and that he isalwaysarmed. To securea 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 Parisaswell asat 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 labouring to accomplish it. 9 CHAPTER IV =

I. Paris—Powerlessness and discords of the authorities—The people, King— II. Their distress—The dearth and the lack of work—How men of executive ability are recruited— III. The new popular leaders—Their ascendency—Their education—Their sentiments—Their situation—Their councils—Their denunciations— IV. Their interference with the Government—Their pressure on the Assembly— V. The 5th and 6th of October— VI. The Government and the nation in the hands of the revolutionary party.

THE powerlessness, indeed, of the heads of the Government, and the lackof 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,”1 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

1. Bailly, “Me´moires,” ii. 195, 242.

95 96 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 himself, “a man whose feet, hands, and limbs possessed intelligence and a will, whose one leg would wish to walkwhen 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” 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-Augustins2 “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 Mole´. On the 30th, that of the Oratoire annuls the amnesty which the representatives of the commune in the Hoˆtel-de-Ville had granted, and orders two of its members to go to a distance of thirty leagues to arrest M. de Be- zenval. 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 Hoˆtel-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

2. Bailly, ii. 74, 174, 242, 261, 282, 345, 392. Spontaneous Anarchy /97 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. Today the Hoˆtel-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 Hoˆtel-de- Ville. Tomorrow 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:3 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.4 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 rumour 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’s feˆte 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

3. Such as domiciliary visits and arrests apparently made by lunatics. (“Ar- chives de la Pre´fecture 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. 4. Bailly, ii. 46, 95, 232, 287, 296. 98 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION elect of the people, the most esteemed magistrates, those who are in best repute, are at the mercy of the throng who clamour at their doors. In the district of St. Roch,5 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 subsistences, 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;6 the multitude, in pursuit of him, attach a rope to the nearest street-lamp, ransackthe Hoˆtel-de- Ville, force every door, mount into the belfry, and seekfor 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’clockin the morning, and he takesrefuge 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.7 Veritably this is sovereign

5. “Archives de la Pre´fecture de Police,” proce`s-verbal of the section of Butte des Moulins, October 5, 1789. 6. Bailly, ii. 224.—Dussaulx, 418, 202, 257, 174, 158. The powder transported was called poudre de traite (transport); the people understood it as poudre de traıˆtre (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. 7. Floquet, vii. 54. There is the same scene at Granville, in Normandy, on Spontaneous Anarchy /99 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 Hoˆtel-de-Ville, in the presence of the electors and of the public, has said in set terms: “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 As- sembly 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 stuckon the ends of two poles.8

II A pitiable monarch, whose recognised 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.9 The life 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,” overset the scaffold, and save the two assassins. 8. Bailly, ii. 274 (August 17th). 9. Bailly, ii. 83, 202, 230, 235, 283, 299. 100 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 Septem- ber, marches day and night as an escort, not a boat-load of grain would reach Paris from Rouen.10—The commissaries charged with making purchases or with supervising the expeditions are in danger of their lives. Those who are sent to Provins 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 backdoor 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 stockfor 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 flockin 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 a slack season. 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 weekwith 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,

10. Mercure de France, the number for September 26th. De Goncourt p. 111. Spontaneous Anarchy / 101 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—Count d’Artois, Prince de Conte´, 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 was a city of luxury, the European hot-house of costly and refined pleasures: the glass once broken, the amateurs leave and the delicate plants perish; 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 favour of being employed at twenty sous the day.” Enumerate, if you can, in one or two recognised callings, the hands which are doing nothing:11 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, carriage-makers, binders, engravers, and all the other producers of Parisian nick-nacks! For

11. Mercier, “Tableau de Paris,” i. 58; x. 151. 102 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION those who are still at workhow 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 Hoˆtel-de-Ville,12 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-hair-dressers in the Champs- Elyseés, 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 “lantern” 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 street-lamp 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,”13 having received from the National Assembly 50 livres each, maintained by the King in the enjoyment of their advance-money, regaled by the

12. De Ferrie`res, i. 178.—Roux and Buchez, ii. 311, 316.—Bailly, ii. 104, 174, 207, 246, 257, 282. 13. Mercure de France, September 5th, 1789. Horace Walpole’s Letters, Sep- tember 5, 1789.—M. de Lafayette, “Me´moires,” i. 272. During the weekfol- lowing the 14th of July, 6,000 soldiers deserted and went over to the people, besides 400 and 500 Swiss Guards and six battalions of the French Guards, who remain without officers and do as they please. Vagabonds from the neighbouring villages flockin, and there are more than “30,000 foreigners and vagrants” in Paris. Spontaneous Anarchy / 103 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.14 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 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 places have presented themselves to unrestrained ambitions; “attorneys, notaries’ clerks, artists, merchants, shopmen, comedians, and especially advocates;15 each wants to be either an oﬃcer, a director,

14. 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.” 15. De Ferrie`res, 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.” Mar- montel, ii. 243. “Since the ﬁrst elections of Paris, in 1789, I remarked,” he says, 104 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION a councillor, or a minister of the new reign; while the journals, which are established by dozens,16 form a permanent tribune, where orators 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 legit-

“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.”—Roux and Buchez, 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.” 16. Euge`ne Hatin, “Histoire de la Presse,” vol. v.—Le Patriote français, by Brissot, July 28, 1789.—L’Ami du Peuple, by Marat, September 12, 1789.— Annales patriotiques et litte´raires, by Carra and Mercier, October 5, 1789.—Les Re´volutions de Paris, chief editor Loustalot, July 17, 1789.—Le Tribun du Peuple, letters by Fauchet (middle of 1789).—Re´volutions 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 du Jour, by Barre`re, the Courrier de Versailles, by Gorsas, the Courrier de Provence, by Mirabeau, the Journal des De´bats et Dećrets, the official reports of the National Assembly, the Bulletin de l’Assembleé Nationale, by Marat, besides the newspapers above cited for the period following the 14th of July, and the speeches, which are printed separately. Spontaneous Anarchy / 105 imately theirs. “When that man opened his mouth,” says a cool- blooded witness, “we were sure of being inundated with quotations and maxims, often apropos of lanterns, 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 phrensy. 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 shop which every morning offers them for sale, and if they suit the overexcited public it is simply owing to their acid or bitter flavour. Their empty, unpractised minds are wholly void of political conceptions; they have no capacity or practical experience. Des- moulins 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. To minds of this class, empty or led astray, the Contrat-Social could not fail to be 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 equalisation until everything is brought down to a dead level. “With my principles,” writes Des- moulins,17 “is associated the satisfaction of putting myself where I

17. C. Desmoulins, letters of September 20th and of subsequent dates. (He 106 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 cloakthe interests of ambition with the interests of humanity? Let us picture to ourselves these directors of public opinion as we find them three months before this: 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 employe´ of literary pirates, has roamed over the world for fifteen years, without bringing backwith 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 quotes a passage from Lucan in the sense indicated.)—Brissot, “Me´moires,” passim.—Biography of Danton by Robinet. (See the testimony of Madame Roland and of Rousselin de Saint-Albin.) Spontaneous Anarchy / 107 one among the principal authors 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 jerkof 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 Hoˆtel-de-Ville and the Na- tional 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 “Solicitor-General of the Lantern,”18 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 Marat19 denounces the King, the ministers,

18. “Discours de la Lanterne.” See the epigraph of the engraving. 19. Roux and Buchez, iii. 55; article of Marat, October 1st. “Sweep all the suspected men out of the Hoˆtel-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, “Dis- cours de la Lanterne,” passim.—Bailly, ii. 326. 108 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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, so as to force us to buy bread which poisons us for its weight in gold.” 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 Ver- sailles. 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 Cafe´ Foy lays claim to the government of France.” Spontaneous Anarchy / 109

IV On the 13th of July, the harlequin who led the insurrection at Rouen having been arrested, “it is openly proposed at the Palais-Royal to go in a body and demand his release.”20 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 veto21—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.22

20. Mounier, “Des causes qui ont empeˆche´ les Franc¸ais d’eˆtre libre,” i. 59.— Lally-Tollendal, second letter, 104.—Bailly, ii. 203. 21. De Bouille´, 207.—Lally-Tollendal, ibid., 141, 146.—Mounier, ibid., 41, 60. 22. Mercure de France, October 2, 1790 (article of Mallet-Dupan: “I saw it”). Criminal proceedings at the Chaˆtelet on the events of October 5th and 6th. Deposition of M. Feydel, a deputy, No. 178.—De Montlosier, i. 259.—Des- moulins (La Lanterne). “Some members of the communes are gradually won over by pensions, by plans for making a fortune, and by caresses. 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 (in Rome) and who had the veto. They represent the capital, and, fortunately, it is under the batteries of the capital that the constitution is being framed.” (C. Desmoulins, who is a naif politician, always lets the cat out of the bag.) 110 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Many of these are French Guards, in citizen’s dress, and who relieve each other: previously they have asked of their favourite 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 The´- roigne de Me´ricourt, 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 “lantern” to the refractory, “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.23— 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 bark- ers, 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 being

23. “Proce´dure du Chaˆtelet,” 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.” Spontaneous Anarchy / 111 deputies of the commons, who must be expelled to begin with, and then must be brought to judgment.24 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 Hoˆtel-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 jeop- ardise 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. Embold-

24. Roux and Buchez, i. 368, 376.—Bailly, ii. 326, 341.—Mounier, ibid., 62, 75. 112 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION ened 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 backto chaos. Mirabeau, in favour of the veto for life, saw the crowd imploring him with tears in their eyes to change his opinion: “Mon- sieur le Comte, if the King obtains this veto, what will be the use of a National Assembly? We shall all be slaves!”25 Outbursts of this description are not to be resisted, and all is lost. Already, near the end of September, the remarkapplies which Mirabeau makesto 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 As- sembly 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 Two distinct currents again combine in 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 lust of dominion. “Now

25. Etienne Dumont, 145.—Correspondence between Comte de Mirabeau and Comte de la Marck. Spontaneous Anarchy / 113 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—let him give them his sanction; his guards refuse to wear our cockade—let them accept it; they want to carry him off to Metz—let 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.26 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 ...inpulling off the cockades of but one colour....These are torn off and trampled under foot with threats of the lantern, in case of fresh offence; a soldier who is trying to refasten his, changes his mind on seeing a hundred sticks raised against him.”27 These are the pre-

26. “Proce´dure criminelle du Chaˆtelet,” Deposition 148.—Roux and Buchez, 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.” 27. 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. Leroi, “Histoire de Versailles,” ii. 20–107. Ibid. p. 141. “As to that proscription of the national cockade, all 114 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION monitory 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 levelling and destroying everything around them?28 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 regaled 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 backwith 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 recognised, notwithstanding their rouge, by their badly-shaven beards, and by their voices and gait.29 No difficulty has been found in obtaining men and women witnesses deny it.” The originator of the calumny is Gorsas, editor of the Courrier de Versailles. 28. “Proce´dure Criminelle du Chaˆtelet.” Depositions 88, 110, 120, 126, 127, 140, 146, 148.—Marmontel, “Me´moires,” a conversation with Champfort, in May, 1789.—Morellet, “Me´moires,” i. 398. (According to the evidence of Garat, Champfort gave all his savings, 3,000 livres, to defray the expenses of manoeuvres of this description.)—Malouet (ii. 2) knew four of the deputies “who tookdirect part in this transaction.” 29. “Proce´dure Criminelle du Chaˆtelet.” 1st. On the Flemish soldiers. Depo- Spontaneous Anarchy / 115 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.30—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 The´roigne. Madeleine Chabry Louison, who is selected to address the King, is a pretty grisette who sells flowers, and something else doubtless, at the Palais-Royal. Some appear to belong to the first rankin 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, barefooted 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 Hoˆtel-de-Ville. Others are sitions 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. 30. “Proce´dure Criminelle du Chaˆtelet.” Deposition 61. “During the night scenes, not very decent, occurred among these people, which the witness thought it useless to relate.” 116 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 markat every stage of its overflow. The first troop, consisting of four or five hundred women, begin operations by forcing the guard of the Hoˆtel-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.31 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 abbe´. The abbe´ is cut down, and the fire extinguished only just in time: such are the in- terludes of the popular drama. In the meantime, the crowd of women increases on the Place de Gre`ve, 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

31. “Proce´dure Criminelle du Chaˆtelet.” Depositions 35, 44, 81.—Roux and Buchez, iii. 120. (Proce`s-verbal of the Commune, October 5th.) Journal de Paris, October 12th. A few days after, M. Pic, clerkof 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. Spontaneous Anarchy / 117 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.32 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 spouter? Silence that babbler; 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 subsistences 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 thinkthat 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. “Send backthe 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 lantern!” 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 subsistences, 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.33 Thus are the new principles of justice

32. “Proce´dure Criminelle du Chaˆtelet.” Depositions 61, 77, 81, 148, 154.— Dumont, 181.—Mounier, “Expose´ justificatif,” passim. 33. “Proce´dure Criminelle du Chaˆtelet.” Deposition 168. The witness sees 118 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION established, the grand outlines of the Constitution, the abstract axioms of political truth under the dictation of a crowd which extorts not only blindly, but which is half-conscious of its blindness. “Mon- sieur le Pre´sident,” 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 subsidised in Paris are pursuing their calling.34 They slip through into the lines of the regiment drawn up on the square, in spite of the sentinels. The´roigne, 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, al- luring 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, clamour, disorder, longings, and fasting, end in a state of phrensy, from which nothing can issue but dizzy madness and rage.—This phrensy began to show itself on the way. Already, on setting out, a woman had exclaimed, “We shall bring backthe Queen’s head on the end of a pike!”35 On reaching the Se`vres 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 on leaving the King’s apartment “several women dressed as fish-dealers, one of whom, with a pretty face, has a paper in her hand, and who exclaims as she holds it up, ‘Heh! we forced him to sign.’” 34. “Proce´dure Criminelle du Chaˆtelet.” Depositions 89, 91, 98. “Promising all, even raising their petticoats before them.” 35. “Proce´dure Criminelle du Chaˆtelet.” Depositions 9, 20, 24, 30, 49, 61, 82, 115, 149, 155. Spontaneous Anarchy / 119 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 Abbe´ 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!” To- wards 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 riff-raff of the crowd examine the rope of the lantern in the court of the National Assem- bly, 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’Espre´meńil.”—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.36 “If M. de Lafayette is not disposed to accompany us,” says one of the grenadiers, “we will take an old

36. “Proce´dure Criminelle du Chaˆtelet.” Depositions 7, 30, 35, 40.—Cf. Lafayette, “Me´moires,” and Madame Campan, “Me´moires.” 120 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION grenadier for our commander.” Having come to this decision, they go after the general at the Hoˆtel-de-Ville, while delegates of six of the companies make known their orders to him. “General, we do not believe that you are a traitor, but we thinkthat the Government is betraying us. . . . The committee on subsistences 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 Gre`ve; 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 lantern. He then dismounts and endeavours to return to the Hoˆtel-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 Hoˆtel-de-Ville, who send him their authorisation, 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.37 The King is prisoner in his own palace, he and his, with his ministers and his court, and with no defence. 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,38 he

37. “Proce´dure Criminelle du Chaˆtelet.” Deposition 24. A number of butcher-boys run after the carriages issuing from the Petite-Ecurie shouting out, “Don’t let the curs escape!” 38. “Proce´dure Criminelle du Chaˆtelet.” 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!” Spontaneous Anarchy / 121 has forbidden his own guards to fire on the crowd, so that they are only there for show. With common right in his favour, 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’clockin the morning they prowl around the palace- railings. Lafayette, exhausted with fatigue, has taken an hour’s repose,39 which hour suffices for them.40 A populace armed with pikes and clubs, men and women, surrounds a squad of eighty-eight Na- tional 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

39. Malonet, II. 2. “I felt no distrust,” says Lafayette in 1798; “the people promised to remain quiet.” 40. “Proce´dure Criminelle du Chaˆtelet.” Depositions 9, 16, 60, 128, 129, 130, 139, 158, 168, 170. M. du Repaire, body-guard, being sentry at the railing from two o’clockin the morning, a man passes his pikethrough the bars saying, “You embroidered , your turn will come before long.” M. du Repaire, “retires within the sentry-box without saying a word to this man, considering the orders that have been issued not to act.” 122 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION the balcony with her son and daughter, a howl arises of “No children!” She is the one they want to cover with their guns—and this she comprehends. 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 overexcited crowd. Both man and woman, 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,41 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. The good time has come: “the people have got backtheir King.” Nothing is to be done now but to rejoice; and the corte`ge moves on. The royal family and a hundred deputies, in carriages, form the centre, 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 hair- dresser’s, in Se`vres, to have these heads powdered and curled;42 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 drinkon the road, and oblige the guards to clinkglasses 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

41. “Proce´dure Criminelle du Chaˆtelet.” Depositions 82, 170.—Madame Campan, ii. 87.—De Lavalette, i. 33.—Cf. Bertrand de Molleville, “Me´moires.” 42. 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 Parkof 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 lantern with the bishops!” Spontaneous Anarchy / 123 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 according to its phrensy, that it may hold them under its pikes until it is pleased to slaughter them.

VI 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.”43 Two days afterwards the Abbe´ Gre´goire 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 Abbe´ 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 weekfive or six hundred deputies have their passports44 made out, and hold themselves ready to depart. During the following month one hun-

43. 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.” 44. De Ferrie`res, i. 346. (On the 9th of October, 300 members have already taken their passports.) Mercure de France, No. of the 17th October. Correspon- dence of Mirabeau and M. de la Marck, i. 116, 126, 364. 124 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION dred 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-Dupan writes, “Opinion now dictates its judgment with steel in hand. Be- lieve 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, invig- orates 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 theatre 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, “hor- rifies 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-Dupan, Mirabeau, Malouet, 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 weakbeyond all expression, his character resembles those oiled ivory balls which one vainly strives to keep together.”45 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.

45. Correspondence of Mirabeau and M. de la Marck, i. 175. (The words of Monsieur to M. de la Marck.) BOOK II

The Constituent Assembly, and the Result of its Labours

9 CHAPTER I =

The Constituent Assembly—Conditions required for the framing of good laws— 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 overexcitement of the Assembly—Its paroxysms of enthusiasm—Its tendency to emotion—It encourages theatrical display—Changes which these displays introduce in its good intentions— 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— III. Ascendancy of the revolutionary party—The- ory in its favour—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— 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.

IF there is any work in this world difficult to achieve it is a constitution, and especially a complete one. To replace the old forms in which a great nation has lived by others that are different, appropriate, and enduring; to fit a mould of a hundred thousand compartments to the life of twenty-six millions of men; to fashion this so harmoniously, adapt it so well, so closely, with such an exact appreciation of their needs and faculties, that they may enter it of themselves and move about in it without collisions, and that their spontaneous activity should at once find the ease of old routine—is

127 128 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION a prodigious 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 too carefully guard itself against all sources of disturbance and error. An Assembly, and 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 recognised leaders. Do we ﬁnd anything of all this in the Constituent Assembly?

I 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, in our Assem- blies 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 farther increased by the uproar of the galleries.1 “In the British Parliament,” writes Mallet-Dupan, “I saw the galleries

1. Arthur Young, June 15, 1789.—Bailly, passim.—Moniteur, iv. 522 (June 2, 1790).—Mercure de France (Feb. 11, 1792). The Constituent Assembly / 129 cleared in a trice because the Duchess of Gordon happened unin- tentionally to laugh too loud.” Here, the thronging crowd of spectators, the newsmongers of the pavement, the delegates from the Palais-Royal, the soldiers disguised as citizens, and the prostitutes who are collected and marshalled, 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.”2 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 theatre, 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 an 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 usages, some written precedents, by which its acts may be prepared and defined, considered in detail, and properly passed. The best of these codes is ready to hand: at the request of Mirabeau, Romilly has sent over the standing orders of the English House of Commons.3 But, with the presumption of novices, they pay no attention to this code; they imagine it is needless for them; they will

2. Moniteur, v. 631 (Sep. 12, 1790), and September 8th (what is said by the Abbe´ Maury).—Marmontel, book xiii. 237.—Malouet, i. 261.—Bailly, i. 227. 3. Sir Samuel Romilly, “Me´moires,” i. 102, 354.—Dumont, 158. (The official rules bear date July 29, 1789.) 130 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 recognised 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 connection 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. Self-esteem, moreover, is as yet too vigorous an element to allow of concessions. Each of these improvised legislators has come satisfied with his own system, and to break him in under a leader to whom he would intrust 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 realising.4 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 Gouver- neur Morris.5 “One large half of the time is spent in hallooing and bawling. . . . Each member comes to retail the result of his lucubra- tions” amidst this noise, taking his turn as inscribed, without reply-

4. Cf. Ferrie`res, i. 3. His repentance is affecting. 5. Letter to Washington, January 24, 1790.—Dumont, 125.—Garat, letter to Condorcet. The Constituent Assembly / 131 ing 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 bombasticstyle.” Chatter and clamour, 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....Allmyefforts 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 endeavoured 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 French- men 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.6 All at once they are transported to 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

6. Arthur Young, i. 46. “Tame and elegant, uninteresting and polite, the mingled mass of communicated ideas has power neither to offend nor instruct. . . . All vigour 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. 132 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 idyl, 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 theatre, the chamber in which the sessions of the Assembly are to be held.7 “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 idyl suddenly changes into a drama, he is so frightened that it seems to him as if a landslip 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 Ferrie`res, “filled my eyes. . . . In a state of transport . . . 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!” This susceptibility repeatedly breaks out in the course of the session, and carries decrees which had never been dreamt of. “Sometimes,”8 writes the American ambassador, “an orator 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 huzzah. Thus, in considering the plan of a national bank proposed by M. Necker, one of them took it into his head to

7. Marmontel, book xiii. 237.—Malouet, i. 261.—Ferrie`res, i. 19. 8. Gouverneur Morris, January 24, 1790.—Likewise (De Ferrie`res, i. 71) the decree on the abolition of nobility was not the order of the day, and was carried by surprise. The Constituent Assembly / 133 move that every member should give his silver buckles—which was agreed to at once, and the honourable mover laid his upon the table, after which the business went on again.” Thus, overexcited, 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,9 “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 French- men,” says Mirabeau again, “they spend a month in disputes about syllables, and overthrow, in a single night, the whole established system of the Monarchy!”10 The truth is, they display the nervous- ness 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

9. Ferrie`res, i. 189.—Dumont, 146. 10. Letter of Mirabeau to Sieye`s, June 11, 1790. “Our nation of monkeys with the throats of parrots.”—Dumont, 146.—“Sieye`s and Mirabeau always entertained a contemptible opinion of the Constituent Assembly.” 134 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION satisfied with the orations made amongst themselves. Lally and Necker, having made “affecting and sublime” speeches at the Hoˆtel- de-Ville, the Assembly wish them to be repeated before them:11 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 enthusiasticeffusions, their imperious advice, their doctrines of dissolution. Today it is Danton, in the name of Paris, with his bull visage and his voice that seems a tocsin of insurrection; tomorrow, 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 patrioticopera, where the eclogue,the melodrama, and sometimes the masquerade, mingle with the cheers and the clappings of hands.12—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 corte`ge, “M. Bourbon de la Crosnie`re, director of a patriotic school, asks permission to take charge of the august old man, that he may be waited on by the young people of all ranks, and especially by the

11. Moniteur, 256, 431 (July 16 and 31, 1789).—Journal des De´bats et Dećrets, i. 105, July 16th. “A member demands that M. de Lally repeats his discourse, which is seconded by the whole Assembly.” 12. Moniteur (March 11, 1790). “A nun of St. Mande´, 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). The Constituent Assembly / 135 children of those whose fathers were killed in the attack on the Bastille.”13 Great is the hubbub and excitement. The scene seems to be in imitation of Berquin,14 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, Per- sians, Hindoos, Mongols, and Chinese, conducted by the Prussian Anacharsis Clootz, enter, under the title of Ambassadors of the Hu- man Race, to declaim against tyrants, and they are admitted to the honours of the sitting. On this occasion the masquerade is a stroke devised to hasten and extort the abolition of nobility.15 At other times, there is little or no object in it; its ridiculousness is inexpress- ible, 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 old, 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, Treilhard, a sober lawyer, replies to the little gamins with perfect gravity in a similar strain, employing metaphors, personifi- cations, 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

13. Moniteur, October 23, 1789. 14. A well-known writer of children’s stories.—[TR.] 15. Ferrie`res, ii. 65 (June 10, 1790).—De Montlosier, i. 402. “One of these masqueraders came the following day to get his money of the Comte de Bil- lancourt, mistaking him for the Duc de Liancourt. ‘Monsieur,’ says he, ‘I am the man who played the Chaldean yesterday.’” 136 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 honours of the sitting.16 Such are the tricks of the stage and of the platform by which the managers here move their political puppets. Emotional susceptibility, once recognised 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 If reason could only resume its empire during the lucid intervals! But reason must exist before it can govern, and in no French As- sembly, 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

16. Roux and Buchez, x. 118 (June 16, 1791). The Constituent Assembly / 137 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 illuminat- ing, and are soon extinguished in the tempest. The venerable Ma- chault 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,17 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 publicaffairs. 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 pre´sidial, bailiffs and lieutenants of the bailiwick, simple practitioners confined from their youth to the narrow circle of an inferior jurisdiction or to a routine

17. See the printed list of deputies, with the indication of their baillage or seńećhausseé, quality, condition, and profession. 138 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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.18 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, honourable fathers of a family, or, at best, provincial academicians, add two hundred and eight cure´s, 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.19 “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 intrust to them 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 ship- builders! 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.

18. De Bouille´, 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?” (Roux and Buchez, iv. 39.) 19. Gouverneur Morris, July 31, 1789. The Constituent Assembly / 139

The Minister of the United States writes, two months before the convocation of the States-General:20 “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

20. Gouverneur Morris, February 25, 1789.—Lafayette, “Me´moires,” v. 492. Letter of Jefferson, February 14, 1815.—Arthur Young, June 27 and 29, 1789. 140 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 wilfully breaking. “As they have21 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,22 with the exception of a King instead of a President, without reflecting that they have not 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. “Nowhere23 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 fulfilment of these predictions, and the predictions grow gloomier and more gloomy. It is a flock of wild birds:24 “It is very difficult to guess whereabouts the flock will settle when it flies so wild....This unhappy country,

21. Morris, July 1, 1789. 22. July 4, 1789. 23. Mallet-Dupan, Mercure, September 26, 1789. 24. Gouverneur Morris, January 24, 1790; November 22, 1790. The Constituent Assembly / 141 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 taken from that fierce, ferocious people every restraint of religion and respect....Sucha state of things cannot last....Theglorious 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 dictation 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-Dupan, 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,25 “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....TheFrenchman 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 on 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

25. Dumont, 33, 58, 62. 142 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 had 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 neighbourhood; 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 behind the age; the Assembly is too enlightened to follow 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.26 According to this process, by virtue of political geometry alone, the ship is to be ideal, and since it is ideal it is certain that it will sail, and much better than any empirical craft. They carry out their legislative hobbies according to this principle, and it is easy to divine

26. S. Romilly, “Memoirs,” i. 102. “It was their constant course first, dećre´ter le principe, and leave the drawing up of what they had so resolved (or, as they called it, la re´daction) for a subsequent operation. It is astonishing how great an influence it had on their debates and measures.”—Ibid. i. 354. Letter by Du- mont, June 2, 1789. “They prefer their own folly to all the results of British experience. They revolt at the idea of borrowing anything from your 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.” The Constituent Assembly / 143 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,” a succession of pamphlets27 fresh every morning for several days. On the question of the Rights of Man fifty-four orators are placed on the list. “I remember,” says Dumont, “that long discussion, which lasted for weeks, as a period of mortal ennui—vain disputes over words, a metaphysical jumble, and most tedious babble; the Assembly was turned into a Sorbonne lecture-room,” and 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 Lower 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 labour, 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 no doubt of this; and the parties now formed reveal the measure of their presumption, improvidence, incapacity, and obstinacy. “This Assembly,” writes the American ambassador, “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 sepa-

27. Dumont, 138, 151. 144 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION rate 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,28 instead of conciliating the cure´s, 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 over- whelms them with numbers, they become still more maladroit, and conduct the defence 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 finding out that the result of its labours is impracticable is disposed to render it less democratic, the whole of the right side will refuse to share in the debates, and, what is worse, will vote with the revolutionists to exclude 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,”29 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

28. Marmontel, xii. 265.—Ferrie`res, i. 48; ii. 50, 58, 126.—Dumont, 74. 29. Gouverneur Morris, January 24, 1790. According to Ferrie`res this party comprised about three hundred members. The Constituent Assembly / 145 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 logicand serve to enlarge the flockof theorists.—The latter form the third party, which is called the “enrage´s” (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 satisfied with their present situation. 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 re´gime, 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 Fre´teau, Rabout Saint-Etienne, Volney, Sieye`s, are hatching out a long arrear 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. Sieye`s, the most important of them all, judges that “the whole English constitution is charlatanism, designed for imposing on the people;”30 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 Clavie`res, 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

30. Dumont, 33, 58, 62. 146 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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. Overweening conceit of this kind among men of experience would seem ridiculous; in this assembly of novices it is a power. A flock which has lost its way follows those who go in front; they are the most irrational but they are the most confident, and in the Chamber as in the nation it is the breakneck-riders who become its leaders. III 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 revolutionists, and they alone are 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 re´gime, 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.31 That 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,

31. De Lavergne, “Les Assembleés Provinciales,” 384. Deliberations of the States of Dauphiny, drawn up by Mounier and signed by two hundred gentlemen (July, 1788). “The rights of man are derived from nature alone, and are independent of human conventions.” The Constituent Assembly / 147 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 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 148 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION pillaging, incendiarism, and murder are going on in all the provinces, has just declared in the name of the Committee on Feudalism32 that “a law must be presented to the people, the justice of which may enforce silence on the feudatory egotists who, for the past six months, so indecently protest against spoliation; 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 revolutionists 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”;33 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

32. “Rapport de Merlin de Douay,” February 8, 1790, p. 2. Malouet, ii. 51. 33. Dumont, 133. De Monblosier, i. 355, 361. The Constituent Assembly / 149 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 1790,34 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 Assem- bly, where they are to hoot or applaud at a given signal. Their leader

34. Bertrand de Molleville, ii. 221 (according to a police report).—Schmidt, “Tableaux de la Re´volution,” i. 215. (Report of the agent Dutard, May 13, 1793.)—Lacretelle, “Dix Ans d’E´preuves,” 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.) 150 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 fourpenny 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,bymeans of a tolerably shrill voice, which was always well moistened, has acquired some reputation in the galleries of the As- sembly.” 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 publicsentiment in the galleries confided to his care, and, for his useful and satisfactory services, the Con- stituent Assembly will award him a recompense,” to which the Leg- islative 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 galleries35 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 terrifichowls.” 36 On the arrival of the news of the sacking

35. Moniteur, v. 237 (July 26, 1790); v. 594 (September 8, 1790); v. 631 (September 12, 1790); vi. 310 (October 6, 1790). (Letter of the Abbe´ Peretti.) 36. De Ferrie`res, ii. 75.—Moniteur, vi. 373, 374 (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 the Deputy voting, I call you to order. You speak of hindrances to a free vote; there has never been anything of the kind in this Assembly.” The Constituent Assembly / 151 of the Hoˆtel 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.37 The Assembly is obliged several times to double its guard. On the 27th of Septem- ber, 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 clamour ascends in the Tuileries, and even penetrates into the Cham- ber. “To the lantern 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 Cazale`s just misses “being torn to pieces by the people.”38 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 Abbe´ 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

37. Sauzay, i. 140. Letter of M. Lompre´, liberal deputy, to M. Se´guin, cha- noine (towards the 2nd 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.” 38. Mercure de France, Nos. of January 15, 1791; October 2, 1790; May 14, 1791. Roux and Buchez, v. 343 (April 13, 1790); vii. 76 (September 2, 1790); x. 225 (June 21, 1791).—De Montlosier, i. 357.—Moniteur, iv. 427. 152 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 Capucins, 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.39 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.”40 “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 despatch them. Such was the impression which the assemblage of nobles, bishops, and parliamentarians41 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”42 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 clamours 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

39. Archives of the Police, exposed by the Committee of the district of Saint- Roch. Judgment of the Police Tribunal, May 15, 1790. 40. Malouet, ii. 68.—De Montlosier, ii. 217, 257 (Speech of M. Lavie, Sep- tember 18, 1791). 41. I.e., members of the old local parlements. 42. Mercure, October 1, 1791. (Article by Mallet-Dupan.) The Constituent Assembly / 153 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;43 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, 1791,44 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 still attend, two hundred and seventy announced that they would 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 ascendancy within the walls of Parliament.

IV 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

43. Malouet, ii. 66. “Those only who were not intimidated by insults or threats, nor by actual blows could come forward as opponents.” 44. Roux and Buchez, x. 432, 465. 154 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 detail, surrounded by skilful counsellors 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 stubbornest 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 recognise for itself that its constitutional machine will not work, except in the way of destruction; and it is the principal revolutionists, Barnave, Duport, the Lameths, Chapelier, and Thouret,45 who undertake to make alterations in the mechanism so as to lessen its friction. This source of knowledge and judgment, however, to which they are induced to resort for a moment, in spite of themselves and too late, has been closed up 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 a mere academy of legislation. 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 lukewarm or suspicious hands, it is always uneasy, and all its decrees bear an uniform stamp, not only of the wilful ignorance to which it

45. Malouet, ii. 153. The Constituent Assembly / 155 shuts itself up, 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 manoeuvre 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 re´gime must be traitors, who would rather have the ship go down than submit; they are publicenemies 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 hotel 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.”46 What could be more vague than such

46. Decrees of July 23rd and 28th, 1789.—“Archives Nationales.” Papers 156 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 Fouche´, makes up for its incapacity by violence, and its proceedings anticipate those of the Jacobin inquisition.47 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’e´tat, makes examinations, domiciliary visits, nocturnal surprises, and arrests;48 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;49 then the plot for hiring brigands to destroy the crops; then the plot of the 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—with others from week to week, not counting those which swarm in the brains of the journalists, and which Desmoulins, Fre´ron, 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 of the 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 (“Me´moires,” ii. 12). 47. Roux and Buchez, iv. 56 (Report of Garan de Coulon); v. 49 (Decision of the Committee of Investigation, December 28, 1789). 48. The arrests of M. de Riolles, M. de Bussy, &c., of Madame de Jumilhac, of two other ladies, one at Bar-le-Duc and the other at Nancy, &c. 49. Sitting of July 28, 1789, the speeches of Duport and Rewbell, &c.— Mercure, No. of January 1, 1791 (article by Mallet-Dupan).—Roux and Buchez, v. 146. “Behold five or six successive conspiracies—that of the sacks of flour, that of the sacks of money, &c.” (Article by Camille Desmoulins.) The Constituent Assembly / 157 people of Paris inhaling them along with the pestilential vapours of our mud.”50 Now, in this aspect, as well as in a good many others, the Assem- bly is the people; satisfied that it is in danger,51 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 machine, it distrusts all the old and all the new wheels. The old ones seem to it an obstacle, and, instead of utilising 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.52 Thanks to these precautions

50. “Archives de la Pre´fecture de Police.” Extract from the registers of the deliberations of the Conseil-Ge´ne´ral of the district of Saint-Roch, October 10, 1789: Arreˆte´: to request Messieurs de la 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 publicthe authors, abettors, and adherents of the said plots, whatever their rank may be; to secure their persons and ensure their punishment with all the rigour 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.” 51. Letter of M. de Guillermy, July 31, 1790 (“Actes des Apoˆtres,” 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 powder had no odour until it was burnt.” 52. Dumont, 351. “Each constitutional law was a party triumph.” 158 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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. In building, as well as in destroying, the Assembly had two bad counsellors, on the one hand fear, on the other hand theory; and on the ruins of the old machine which it has demolished without discernment, the new machine, which it has constructed without forecast, will work only to its own ruin. 9 CHAPTER II =

Destruction— I. Two principal vices of the ancient re´gime—Two principal reforms proposed by the King and the privileged classes—They suffice for actual needs—Impracticable if carried further— II. Nature of societies, and the principle of enduring constitutions— III. The classes which form a State—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— IV. The corporations of a State—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 and mortmain— Disestablishment and disendowment of all corporations—Uncompensated suppression of tithes—Confiscation of ecclesiastical possessions—Effect on the Trea- sury and on disendowed 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—Obliga- tions of the oath—The majority of priests refuse to take it—The majority of believers on their side—Persecution of believers and of priests.

159 160 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

INTHEstructure of the old society there were two fundamental vices which called for two reforms of corresponding importance.1 In the first place, those who were privileged having ceased to render the services for which the advantages they enjoyed constituted their compensation, their privileges were no longer anything but a gratuitous charge imposed on one portion of the nation for the benefit of the other, and hence the necessity for suppressing them. In the second place, the Government, being absolute, made use of public resources as if they were its ownprivate property, arbitrarily and wastefully; it was therefore necessary to impose upon it some efficacious 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 declarationof 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 centre, there were to be thirty

1. Cf. “The Ancient Re´gime,” books i. and v. The Constituent Assembly / 161 subordinate controlling powers at the extremities. There was to be no more exemption or distinction in the matter of taxation; the road- tax (corveé) was to be abolished, also the right of franc-fief 2 imposed on plebeians, the rights of mortmain,3 subject to indemnity, and internal customs-duties. There was to be a reduction of the captainries, 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 operationwhich is to strike off the last of the feudal manacles. Moreover, six weeks later, on the 4th of August, the privileged, inanoutburst of generosity, come forward of their ownaccord to cut off or undothe 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.4 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 on 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;5 anenormous relief, and one which, with the proposed revisal of the excise and

2. A special tax paid by a plebeianonacquiringreal estate. 3. A tax imposed on the inheritance of property. 4. Arthur Young, i. 209, 223. “If the communes steadily refuse what is now held out 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.” 5. According to valuations by the Constituent Assembly, the tax on real property ought to produce 240,000,000 francs, and provide one-fifth of the net revenue of France, estimated at 1,200,000,000. The personal (mobilie`re) tax, which replaced the capitation, ought to produce, besides, 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 re´gime (190,000,000, according to Necker’s report in May, 1789), this impost would only have provided one-sixth of the net revenue, or sixteen per cent. 162 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION salt duties, made a complete change in his condition. Add to this the gradual redemption of ecclesiastical and feudal dues, and at the end of twenty years the peasant, already proprietor of a fifth of the soil, was in the way of attaining, without the violent procedure of the Revolution, a degree of independence and well-being which he has only achieved 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.6 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

6. 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 is the source of the evil. They wanted to rule the King, instead of ruling through him.” The Constituent Assembly / 163 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,7 to get rid 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 remake 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 Con- tract.

II Apply the Social Contract, if you like, but apply it only to those for whom it was drawn up. These consist of human abstractions, men of no age and of no country, pure entities hatched under the divining rod of metaphysics. In reality they are formed by eliminating the differences which distinguish one man from another8—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. The essence thus obtained is a prodigiously meagre one, an infinitely curtailed extract of humannature,that is, inthe phraseology of the day, “a being with a desire to be happy and the faculty of reasoning,” no more and no less. Millions of individuals, all precisely alike, are fashioned according to this pattern, 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 re-

7. 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.” 8. Cf. “The Ancient Re´gime,” book iii. 164 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION sponsibility, 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, it follows that it 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 unsubstantial image from the real and complete man. In any event an entity, man so reduced and mutilated as to be only the minimum of man, is not now the subject in hand; but, on the contrary, 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, a complete mental and moral organization, hereditary and deeply rooted, bequeathed to them by the primitive race, and to which every great event, each political or literary era for twenty centuries, has brought an accretion, a metamorphosis or convolution. It is like some tree of a unique species whose trunk, thickened by age, preserves in its annual rings and in its knots, branchings, and curvatures, the deposits which its sap has made and the imprint of the innumerable seasons through which it has passed. Philosophic definitions, so vague and trite, applied to such an organism are meaningless labels which teach 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 The Constituent Assembly / 165 of these, it is clear that, according to the average of human life,9 one-half of the population is composed of children, and, besides this, one-half of the adults are women. In every twenty inhabitants eighteenare Catholic, of whom sixteenare 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, labour, make acquisitions, become enlightened and civilised, 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 onlyanaccumulationof cells, but the cell is born, subsists, develops, and attains its individual ends only by 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. Each individual that comes into the world is indebted to the State, and this debt keeps on increasing up to maturity, for it is with the cooperationof the State, underthe guardianship of its laws, and protected by the public power, that his ancestors, and after them his parents, have transmitted to him life, property, and education. His faculties, his ideas, his sentiments, his

9. According to Voltaire (“L’Homme aux Quarante Ećus”), the average duration of human life was only twenty-three years. 166 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION whole moral and physical being, are products to which the community has nearly or remotely contributed, 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 is entitled to food, to services, and, in all the powers or resources at his disposal it justly lays claim to a certain portion. This he knows and feels; the idea of country is deeply implanted within him, and when occasion calls for it, it will show itself in ardent emotions, prolonged sacrifices, and heroic actions.—Such are veritable Frenchmen, and we at once see how different they are from the simple, indistinguishable, detached mo- nads which the philosophers insist on substituting for them. Their association need not be created, for it already exists; for eight centuries they have had a “commonweal” ( 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 State is not to be disintegrated. Public powers 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 neutralising 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 interests of a single class, evenif 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 The Constituent Assembly / 167 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 intrusted 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 presentbut inthe future, as far as the eye canreach. 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 oligarchical, monarchical, 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 civilisation, 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, and distribute from the centre to the extremities, through inheritance or through election, through equalisation or through privilege, the rights of the citizenandthe powers of the community. 168 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

III Was it essential as a preliminary thing to clear the ground, 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 favours it monopolized 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 opento abuse, they should be deprived of protectionfor personand property on their domains, and of inﬂuence and occupation under the Government. A favoured aristocracy, when it is unoccupied and renders none of the services which its rank admits of, when it monopolizes all honours, oﬃces, promotions, preferences, and pensions,10 to the detriment of others not less needy and deserving, is undoubtedly a serious evil. But when an aristocracy is subject to the commonlaw, whenit is occupied, especially whenits occupationis in conformity with its aptitudes, and more particularly when it is available for the formationof anupper elective chamber or anhe- reditary peerage, it is of 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 be- tweentwo 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

10. 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. The Constituent Assembly / 169 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 such as members of the parliaments, intendants, capitalists who have risento the top 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 counsellor of the people, the independent and able politician is most naturally developed.—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 give his services gratuitously; 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 mainspring 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 manis self-respect, andto obtainthat he is inducedto 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 thana poor manof 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, 170 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION with his own eyes, at once in general outline and in detail, 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 statesmanbefore 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 inthe nickof time the touch to the helm which will save the ship. Such is the service to which anupper class is adapted. There is no other but this special stock-breeding system which can furnish a regular supply of racers, and, now and then, the favourite winner that distances all his competitors in the European field. But inorder that they may prepare themselves for this career and take to it naturally, the way must be clear, and a man must not be compelled to travel too repulsive a road. If rank, inherited fortune, personal dignity, and refined manners are sources of disfavour with the people; if, to obtaintheir suffrages, 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 The Constituent Assembly / 171 other occupation he loiters about, entertains his friends, chats, indulges inthe tastes andhobbies of anamateur, amuses himself or dies with ennui, and accordingly is one of the great forces of the State lost to the State. In this way the best and largest acquirements of the past, the heaviest accumulations of material and of moral capital, remainunproductive. Ina 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 e´lite part 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 inall other directionsits rivals, who are bornbelow it, can serve as usefully and as well as itself. But this one it must have, for on this side its aptitudes are superior, natural, unique, and the State which refuses to give it air resembles the gardener who in his fondness for a plane surface would repress his best shoots. Hence, in the constructions which aim to utilise the permanent forces of society and yet maintain civil equality, the aristocracy is brought to take a part inpublic affairs by the durationandgratuitous 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, onthe conditionthatit shows itself worthy of exercisingit.—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;11 many of them remain so under the knife of the guillotine. The magistrates of the superior tribunals, in particular, traditionally

11. “The Ancient Re´gime,” p. 297, and the following pages.—“Le Duc de Broglie,” by M. Guizot, p. 11. (Last words of Prince Victor de Broglie, and the opinions of M. d’Argenson.) 172 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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,12 “of the Court and the Ministers that most of them were democrats.” For many years, inthe ProvincialAssemblies 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, while its mode of studying, discussing, and assigning the local taxation indicates what it would have done with the general budget had this been intrusted to it. It is evident that it would have protected the general taxpayer as zealously as the tax- payer of the province, and have 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 collect them together. 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 inits saloonswould, inall 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 ina State, no avowed or concealed political privileges, no constitutional complications or electoral combinations by which an aristocracy, however liberal and capable, can secure to itself any portion of the public power.—On the contrary, because it was once privileged to enjoy, it is now suspected as a candidate for service; and all projects which, directly or indirectly, reserve or provide a place for it, are rejected: first, the Royal Declaration, which, in

12. De Ferrie`res,i.p.2. The Constituent Assembly / 173 conformity with historical precedents, maintained the three orders in three distinct chambers, and only summoned them to deliberate together “on matters of general utility”; next, the plan of the Con- stitutional 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, which confided to these same Assemblies the election of a Senate for six years, renewed by thirds every two years, composed of menof at least thirty-five years of age, and with an income in real property of 10,000 livres per annum. The instinct of equality is too powerful. A second Cham- ber is not wanted, even if accessible to plebeians. Through it13 “the smaller number would control the greater”; “we should fall back on the humiliating distinctions” of the ancient re´gime; “we should re- vivify the germ of anaristocracy 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 trammels, 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 directing 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 a community of officials and administrators; in sinking the level of humanity; in reducing to sloth and brutalising or blighting the e´lite of the families which maintain or raise themselves; and in withering the most precious of nurseries, that in which the State recruits its statesmen.

13. Moniteur, sitting of September 7, 1790, i. 431–437. Speeches of MM. de Silhery, de Lanjuinais, Thouret, de Lameth, and Rabaul 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.” 174 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

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 drawback in a modernState. If appropriate inanepoch whenproperty andsov- ereignty 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, whenthe re´gime is a pacific one, and when the necessary servitudes which, in the tenth century, reestablished security and agriculture, are, in the eighteenth century, purposeless servitudes which impoverish the soil and fetter 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 estate, 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, recognised 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, remain in the families of the original proprietors. “The largest portion of the titled estates,” says a contemporary,14 “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 labour of their purchasers.—More- over, whoever the actual holders may be, whether old or whether

14. “De Bouille´,” p. 50: “All the old noble families, save two or three hundred, were ruined.” The Constituent Assembly / 175 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 guard- ianof 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 incases of expropriationfor 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 takenup with the creditors, he has onlyhalf 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—inshort, as inS avoy in 1771, in England in 1845,15 and in Russia in1861, he will relieve the poor without despoilingthe rich;

15. Cf. Doniol, “La Re´volutionet la Feódalite´.” 176 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION he will establish liberty without violating the rights of property; he will conciliate interests and classes; he will not let loose a brutal 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.16 Nobody dreams that the State which was a party to this transaction is the responsible guarantor. Only one scruple affects the Assembly; its legists 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 givena perpetual lease of a certainportionof 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 incase of the transmissionof the lease. These

16. 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 recognised 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. The Constituent Assembly / 177 two obligations could not be cancelled without indemnity; if it were done, more than one-half of the proprietors in France would be dispossessed in favour 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 certainrate 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 legitimate by overthrowing illegitimate property, and that in the feudal scheme of obligations, it has separated the wheat from the chaff.17 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.—Practically both are bound up together in the same sheaf. If the noble formerly brought menundersubjectionby the sword, it is also by the sword that he formerly acquired possessionof the soil. If the subjectionof 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 Assem- bly, 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

17. Duvergier, “Collectiondes Lois et Dećrets.” Laws of the 4–11 August, 1789; March 15–28, 1790; May 3–9, 1790; June 15–19, 1791. 178 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 onproduce, 18 nor contingent rents, nor lord’s dues and fines, or fifths. 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 ne- cessities19 is heard. “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 all lease-holders. It has thrown the villages into a state of consternation. The nobles reap all the advantage of it. . . . Never will redemptionbe possible. Redemptionof unrealclaims! Redemption of dues that are detestable!” Invainthe Assembly insists, specifies, and explains by examples and by detailed instructions the mode of procedure and the conditions of redemption. Neither the mode of procedure nor the 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 to redeem his quota of dues which he shares with others apart from his co-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

18. Agrier percie`res—terms denoting taxes paid in the shape of shares of produce. Those which follow—lods, rentes, quint, requint—belong to the taxes levied onreal property.—[T R.] 19. Doniol (“Nouveaux cahiers de 1790”). Complaints of the copy-holders of Rouergues and of Quercy, pp. 97–105. The Constituent Assembly / 179 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 himself, 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 rumour 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 openhis safe, andthrow his title-deeds into the fire.20 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 favour. 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.21 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

20. See further on, book iii. ch. ii. § 4, also ch. iii. 21. Moniteur, sitting of March 2, 1700. Speech by Merlin: “The peasants have beenmade to believe that the destructionof the banalite´s (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.” 180 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION derived from their real property, which they had let onperpetual 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 inspite 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 tolerationof the NationalAssembly, 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 axe 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 preeminence 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, M. de Lafayette, and M. de Montmorency, under the new names of M. Riquetti, M. Mottie´, and M. Bouchard. Besides, it would be a 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 The Constituent Assembly / 181 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.”22 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 onhis carriage. Incase of anyinfractionof 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 aneffort is made to efface all remembranceof them. Ina 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 Mont- perreux instead of Vannod, and, for this infraction, he will be guillotined along with his brother and his sister-in-law.23 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 Assembly24 had supposed that annual dues, like ground-rents, and contingent dues, like feudal

22. 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). 23. Sauzay, v. 400–410. 24. Duvergier, laws of June 15–19, 1791; July 6, 1792; August 25–28, 1792. 182 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 in1720, 25 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 exceptionandwithout 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.26 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 redivided 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 inthis way, but it must never be reformed. The aristocracy, being once declared a venomous plant, it is not suﬃcient to prune it away, but it must be extirpated, not only dug up by the

25. “Institution du Droit Français,” by 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 commonlaw.” 26. 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. The Constituent Assembly / 183 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 fervour 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 brain, nourished by magniloquent phrases, but the more destructive, because phantoms are created out of words, and against phantoms no reasoning nor actual facts canprevail. 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 submission is merely a feint, their resignation hypocrisy, their favourable 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. Infact, illegal persecutionprecedes legal prosecution;the privileged personwho, by the late decrees, seems merely to be brought withinthe pale of the commonlaw, is, infact, drivenoutside 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 whenhe is simply oppressed. His income,his prop- 184 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION erty, 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 anamnesty: 27 it is established by innumerable precedents that he may be rundownwith impunity. To preventhim 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 provocations 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 honour, 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,28 “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.

27. See farther on, book iii. ch. iii. 28. Mercure, September 10, 1791. Article by Mallet-Dupan.—Ibid. October 15, 1791. The Constituent Assembly / 185

Through a wrong of the greatest magnitude, an entire class which have no share in the favours 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 e´lite 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. After 1789, they begin to feel that their position is no longer tenable.29 “It is absolutely inoppo- sition to the rights of man,” says another letter from Franche-Comte´, “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 onemigration;otherwise it may be said that people are purposely kept here to be assassinated.

29. “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 Poterat, July, 1790.—“Archives Nationales,” papers of the Com- mittee onReports, liasse 4, letter of M. le Belin-Chatellenot to the President of the National Assembly, July 1, 1791.—Mercure, October 15, 1791. Article by Mallet-Dupan: “Such is literally the language of these emigrants; I do not add a word.”—Ibid. May 15, 1790. Letter of the Baronde Bois d’Aizy, April 29, 1790, demanding a decree of protection for the nobles. “We shall know (then) whether we are proscribed or are of any account in the rights of man written out with so much blood, or whether, ﬁnally, any other resource is left to us but that of bearing the remains of our property and our wretched existences under other skies.” 186 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

. . . Incase 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 notthenbe lulled to sleep by the protectionof 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 lantern. We do not enjoy one hour of repose; not a night that we are certainto pass through without trouble. Our personsare 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 iniquitously 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 anold cure´ 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 operationis successful. The Assembly, through its decrees and institutions, through the laws it enacts and the violence which The Constituent Assembly / 187 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 onthe 15th of July, 1789, alongwith the Prince de Conde´, 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, inlarger numbers, left after the occurrences of the 6th of October. During the last months of the Constituent Assembly,30 “the emigrationgoes onincompanies composed of menof 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 Consti- tution. All the nobles in Brittany have left, and the emigration has begun in Normandy, and is going on in the frontier provinces.”— “More thantwo-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 honour 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.31 Inboth 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 themselves. In both cases it ended in a confiscation of their property, and in the penalty of

30. 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. 31. Cf. the “Me´moires” of M. de Boustaquet, a Norman gentleman. 188 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION death to all who should harbour them. Inboth cases, by dintof persecution, they are driven to revolt. The insurrection of La Vendeé corresponds with the insurrection of the Ce´vennes; 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 downinthe nameof equality. For the second time, an absolute principle, and with the same effect, buries its blade inthe heart of a livingsociety. 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 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.32 Too many episcopal sees, and arranged according to the Christian distribution of the population in the fourth century; a revenue still more badly apportioned— bishops and abbe´s with one hundred thousand livres a year, leading the lives of amiable idlers, while cure´s, overburdened with work, have but seven hundred; in one monastery nineteen monks instead of eighty, and in another four instead of ﬁfty;33 a number of mon-

32. Cf. “The Ancient Re´gime,” books i. and ii. 33. Boivin-Champeaux, “Notice Historique sur la Revolution dans le De´- partement de l’Eure,” the grievances stated in the memorials. In 1788, at Rouen, there was not a single profession made by men. In the monastery of the Deux- The Constituent Assembly / 189 asteries 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;34 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 world35—it is evident from all this that the primitive inspiration has been diverted or has cooled; that the endowment only partially fulfils its ends; that one-half of its resources are employed in the wrong way or remainsterile; inshort, that there is a needof reformationinthe body.—That this ought to be effected with the cooperationof 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,

Amants the chapter convoked in 1789 consisted of two monks. “Archives Na- tionales,” papers of the ecclesiastic committee, passim. 34. “Apologie de l’Etat Religieux” (1775), with statistics. Since 1768 the declineis “frightful”; “it is plainlyto be seenthat intenor twelve years most of the regular bodies will be absolutely extinct, or reduced to a state of feebleness akinto death.” 35. Sauzay, i. 224 (November, 1790). At Besançon, out of two hundred and sixty-six monks, “seventy-nine 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 barefooted 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 Mi- nimes but three, all the Capuchins but five, the Bernardins, Dominicans, and Augustins, all preferring to leave.—Montalembert, “Les Moines d’Occident,” introduction, pp. 105–164. Letter of a Benedictine of Saint-Germain-des-Pre´s 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. inthe “Me´moires” of Merlinde Thionvillethe descriptionof the Chartreuse of Val St. Pierre. 190 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 favours 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 hurtful. Such was the rule under the ancient re´gime, 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 Par- liament; 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.36 There was a revisionof the primitive Consti- tutions; 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—up 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-Beńe´dict, that of the Holy Ghost of Mont- pellier, and those of Sainte-Brigitte, Sainte-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie, Saint-Ruff, and Saint-Antoine”—in short, nine complete congre-

36. Ch. Guerin, “Revue des Questions Historiques” (July 1, 1875; April 1, 1876). Abbe´ Guetteé, “Histoire de l’Eglise de France,” xii. 128. (“Proce`s-verbal de l’Assembleé du Clerge´,” in 1780.) “Archives Nationales,” official reports and memorials 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 Re´gime,” p. 403. The Constituent Assembly / 191 gations 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 oninthis way; before the endof the century, merely by the applicationof the edict, the institutionwould 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 modernState. But, because these ecclesiastical bodies stood inneedof reform it does not follow that it was necessary to destroy them, nor, in general, that proprietary corporations 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 unhealthy excrescences.—In the first place, through their institution, a great public benefit is secured without any charge upon the budget— worship, scientific research, primary or higher education, help for the poor, care of the sick—all set apart and sheltered from the retrenchments which public financial embarrassments might make necessary, and supported by the private generosity which, finding a ready receptacle at hand, collects into it from century to century its thousands of scattered rivulets: as a case in point, 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 afford a breakwater against the tide-level of absolute monarchy or of pure democracy. A man can here freely develop himself without donning the livery of either courtier or demagogue, acquire wealth, consideration, and authority, without being indebted to the caprices of royal or popular favour; he can maintain himself against established power or against prevailing opinions through his position in a body which is held to- 192 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION gether by a spirit of association. Such, at the present day, is a professor at Oxford, Go¨ttingen, and Harvard. Such, under the ancient re´gime, were a bishop, a member of the Parliaments, and even a plain attorney. What can be worse than the universal bureaucracy, which produces mechanical and servile uniformity! Those who serve the public need not all be Government clerks; in countries where anaristocracy has perished, bodies of this kindare their last place of refuge. In the third place, through their institution, distinct original societies are formed in the midst of the great commonplace world around them, in which certain natures 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 dykes which restrain and direct them in a channel of masterly contrivance and of infinite benefit. In this way thousands of men and women execute at the least possible expense, voluntarily and gratuitously, and with the greatest possible effect, the least attractive or most repulsive of social requirements, thus fulfilling in human society the purpose of the sexless workers of anant-hill. 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, labour 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 neighbourhood demand the conser- vationby the NationalAssembly. 37 I have to mention the nuns,

37. “The Ancient Re´gime,” p. 33. Cf. Guerin: “The monastery of the Trois- Rois, in the north of Franche-Comte´, founded four villages collected from foreign colonists. It is the only centre of charity and civilisation in a radius of The Constituent Assembly / 193 thirty-seven thousand in fifteen hundred convents. Here, except in the twenty-five chapters of canonesses, which are a semiworldly rendezvous for poor young girls of noble birth, fervour, frugality, and usefulness are almost everywhere incontestable. One of the members of the Ecclesiastical Committee admits inthe Assembly tribunal that, in all their letters and addresses, the nuns ask to be allowed to remainintheir cloisters; their entreaties, infact, are as earnest as they are affecting.38 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 As- sembly 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 commerce 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 ardour than when we first pronounced them.”39 Many of the communities have no means of subsistence 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-Comte´, and in the late hailstorm it supplied the whole neighbourhood with food.” 38. Moniteur, sitting of February 13, 1790. (Speech of the Abbe´ de Montes- quiou).—“Archives Nationales,” papers of the Ecclesiastical Committee, DXIX. 6, Visitationde Limoges, DXIX. 25, Annonciades de Saint-Denis; ibid. Annon- ciades de Saint-Amour; Ursulines d’Auch, de Beaulieu, d’Eymoutier, de la Cio- tat, de Pont Saint-Esprit, Hospitalie`res d’Erneé, de Laval; Sainte-Claire de Laval, de Marseille, &c. 39. 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. 194 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 two hundred and fifty livres a year. The Annonciades of Saint-Amour say, “We, thirty-three nuns, both choristers and those of the white veil, live on four thousand four hundred 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 incharity. 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 “Vis- itation” is an asylum for “those who are not favoured 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 small pox. Widows are received here, as well as girls without means and without protection, persons “worn out with the agitations of the world,” those who are too feeble to support the battle of life, those who withdraw from it wounded or invalided, 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, inthose for womenthere is anaverage of twenty-four. Here, at Saint-Flour, is one which is bringing up fifty boarders; another, The Constituent Assembly / 195 at Beaulieu, instructs one hundred; another, in Franche-Comte´, has charge of eight hundred abandoned children.40—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 there are eighty-six thousand— that is to say, forty-five in every ten thousand women instead of twenty-eight. 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 insociety 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,

40. “Archives Nationales.” Papers of the Ecclesiastical Committee, passim.—Sauzay, i. 51.—Statics of France for 1866. 196 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 onthe highway, which the exchequer canappropriate or assignto 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 re´gime, 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 Gov- ernment, although absolute and needy, was sufficiently honest to admit 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 Amer- ica, 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 The Constituent Assembly / 197 of a school-mistress, the wages of a parish nurse, or for a bowl of broth ina hospital. 41 The Assembly remains deaf to all these arguments, and that which stops its ears 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 statesmen, the supply of a deficit 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 dust of separate humanmolecules. Special associations, specific groups, collateral corporations are not wanted, even to fulfil functions which the State is incapable of fulfilling. “As soon as one enters a corporation,” says an orator, “one must love it as one loves a family”;42 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 menare to remainequal 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 mentogether through geographical position,through climate, his-

41. Felix Rocquain, “La France apre`s le 18 Brumaire.” (Reports of the Councillors of State dispatched on this service, passim). 42. 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. iii. and ix. 198 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION tory, pursuits, and trade, are sundered. The old provinces, the old provincial governments, the old municipal administrations, parliaments, wardenships, 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.43 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, “in the community at large, break up the unity of its principles and destroy the equilibrium of its forces. Large political bodies ina State are dangerous through the strength which results from their coalition and the resistance which is bornout of their interests.”—That of the clergy, besides, is inherently bad,44 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 instrumentalities fabricated by the law.45 What does the workmando when 43. Duvergier, decree of June 14–17, 1791. “The annihilation of every corporation of citizens of any one condition or profession being one of the foundation-stones of the French constitution, it is forbiddento reestablish 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 relationto their assumed commoninterests.” 44. Moniteur, sitting of February 12, 1790. Speeches of Dally d’Agier and Barnave. 45. Moniteur, sitting of August 10, 1789. Speech by Garat; February 12, 1790, speech by Pe´tion; October 30, 1789, speech by Thournet. The Constituent Assembly / 199 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,46 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“toadmit inits bosom as proprietors a large body of mento 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 evermore, incapable of holding any personal or landed estate.”47 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.”48 “Since the nation has

46. 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. 47. Moniteur, sitting of October 23, 1789. Speech by Thouret. 48. Moniteur, sitting of October 23, 1789. Speech by Treilhard; October 24th, speech by Garat; October 30, speech by Mirabeau. Onthe 8th of August, 1789, Al. de Lameth says in the tribune: “When an endowment was made, it is the nation which was endowed.” 200 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION permitted their possessionby the clergy, she may redemandthat which is possessed only through her authorisation.” “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 decree49 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 bo- tanical gardens; the confiscation of all communal possessions not previously divided; and the confiscation of all the property of hospitals and other philanthropic establishments.50—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

49. Duvergier, laws of August 18, 1792; August 8–14, 1793; July 11, 1794; July 14, 1792; August 24, 1793. 50. 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 Larochefoucauld-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.) The Constituent Assembly / 201 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 onothers insmock frocks, is a vexatious usurpation,andresembles 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 ownobject. Ineffect, sincethe 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.51 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 inwoodenshoes, anassembly of democrats adds thirty millionsa 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

51. Moniteur, sitting of August 10, 1789. Speech by Sieye`s. The figures given here are deduced from the statistics already given in the “Ancient Re´gime.” 202 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 property, it proves, after all, to be ruinous, although promising to be lucrative. It makes the same impressiononour statesmenthat the inheritance of a great estate makes on a needy and sanguine parvenu. Regarding it as a bottomless well of gold, he draws upon it without stint and strives to realise all his fancies; as he can afford to pay, he is free to break as he pleases. 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.52 “Inthe monthof May, 1789,” says Necker, “the reestablishment of order in the finances was 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 new 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 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, but a number of buildings, all monastic personalty, and a portion of the ecclesiastical, diverted from its natural course, becomes swallowed up in the same gulf. At Besançon,53 three churches out of eight, with their

52. Moniteur, v. 571, sitting of September 4, 1790. Report of the Committee on Finances—v. 675, sitting of September 17, 1790. Report by Necker. 53. Sauzay, i. 228 (from October 10, 1790, to February 20, 1791). “The total The Constituent Assembly / 203 land and treasure, the funds of the chapter, all the money of the conventual 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? Evenafter the decree 54 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.55 Already, in 1790, there are no funds with which to pay the monks and nuns their small pensions for their maintenance. In Franche-Comte´ the Capuchins of Baume have no bread, and, to live, they are obliged to resell, 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, weight of the spoil of the monastic establishments in gold, silver, and plated ware, sent to the Mint, amounted to more than 525 kilogrammes (for the department).” 54. Duvergier, law of October 8–14. 55. 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. 204 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

“that they have nothing to put into their mouths. We have to contribute something every day amongst ourselves to keep them from starving.”56 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 Besan- çon, 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 centre as the commander- in-chief. There is no corporation more solid, more antipathetic, or more attacked. For, against it are opposed implacable hatreds and fixed opinions: the Gallicanism of the legists 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 our religion,” say some

56. Sauzay, 1. 252 (December 3, 1790. April 13, 1791). The Constituent Assembly / 205 of the deputies inthe tribune. 57 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 reconstruction may be effected at discretion without the concurrence of the ecclesiastical power. Here there is anusurpation,for anecclesiastical as well as civil society has the right to choose its ownform, its ownhierarchy, its own government.—On this point, every argument that can be ad- vancedinfavour of the former canbe repeated infavour of the latter, and the moment one becomes legitimate the other becomes legitimate also. The sanction of a civil or of a religious society consists in the 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. 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, the State encroaches when it pretends to regulate the constitution of the Church: if the former claims the respect of the latter onits 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 betweenthe 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

57. Moniteur, sitting of June 1, 1790. Speeches by Camus, Treilhard, &c. 206 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION is the case in America. At another, they may, by a carefully considered contract, each accord to the other specific rights on the intermediate zone, and both exercise their divided authority on that zone, which is the case inFrance.Inboth cases, however, the two powers, like the two societies, must remain distinct. It is needful for each of them that the other should be an equal with which it treats, and not a subordinate to which it prescribes conditions. Whatever the civil system may be, whether monarchical or republican, oligarchical or democratic, the Church abuses its credit when it condemns or attacks it. Whatever may be the ecclesiastical system, whether papal, epis- copalian, 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 retires into the background, while discipline has come to the front. Believers who, according to Church law, are required to regard spiritual authority as dogma, infact attach their faith to the authority much more thanto the dogma. Faith insists, inrelationto disciplineas well as to dogma, that if onerejects the decisionof the Romish Church oneceases to be a Catholic; that spiritual authority comes from above and not from below; that without the institutionofa bishop there canbe nopriest; that without the institution of a Pope there can be no bishop; that an illegitimate bishop or priest cannot administer valid sacraments; that a child baptized by one of these is not Christian; that a dying man thus absolved is not absolved; and that two believers thus married live in concubinage. It is a matter of fact that believers are no longer The Constituent Assembly / 207 theologians or canonists; that, save a few Jansenists, they no longer read the Scriptures or the Fathers; that, if they accept the dogma, 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 cure´. 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 but by this cure´ authorised 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 soul—conscience and habit. And observe the effect. You not only convert the State into a gendarme 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 inorthodox 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 Ultra- montane. 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 in1789 with that of a bishop sixty years later. In1789, the Archbishop of Besançon, out of fifteen hundred offices and benefices, 208 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 abbe´ 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.58 At the present day in a diocese the bishop appoints all the cure´s 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.59 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 if, according to the maxims of the Assembly, faith and worship are free inrelationto the secular State, before the State as sovereignchurches are subjects.—For these are societies, administrations, and hierarchies, and no society, administration, or hierarchy may subsist in the State without entering into its departments under the title of subordinate, delegate, or employe´. A priest is essentially a salaried officer like the rest, a functionary60 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.

58. Sauzay, i. 168. 59. Personal knowledge, as I visited Besanc¸onfour times between1863 and 1867. 60. Moniteur, sitting of May 30, 1790, and others following. (Report of Treilhard, speech by Robespierre.) The Constituent Assembly / 209

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 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.61 In the first place the diocese is to be in extent and limits the same as the department; consequently, all ecclesiastical circumscriptions 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. Inthe third place, the metropolitanor bishop is forbiddento exact from the new bishops or cure´s “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 habits, and refuse them canonical installation, but in this case his reasons must be given in writing, and be 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 brokenup; the ecclesiastical superior has his hands tied; if he still delegates sacerdotal functions it is only as a matter of form. Betweenthe cure´ and the bishop subordination ceases to exist just as it has ceased to exist betweenthe bishop andthe Pope, and the Church of France becomes Presbyterian. The people now, in effect, choose their own ministers, as they do inthe Presbyterianchurch; the bishop is appointedby 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

61. Duvergier, laws of July 12th–August 14th; November 14–25, 1790; Jan- uary 21–26, 1791. 210 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Nismes, 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 Chris- tianity itself. The bishop and the cure´ must be chosenby 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 cure´ the same length of time without the per- missionof the district, evento attendupona dyingfather 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 inthe Hoˆtel-de-Ville.62 He must assent to all these innovations, not only with passive obedience, but by a solemn oath. All old or new ecclesiastics, archbishops, bishops, cure´s, 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

62. 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 could contract marriage; on the priest or monk presenting himself with his bride before the cure´, the latter should be obliged to give them the nuptial benediction, &c. Mirabeau wrote, June 2, 1790: “Robespierre...has juggled me out of my motiononthe 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.) The Constituent Assembly / 211 book, andto signthe book is to signthe chapter. Besides, inthe formula to which the ecclesiastics inthe Assembly are obliged to swear in the tribune, the chapter is precisely indicated, and no ex- ceptionor reservationis allowed. 63 The Bishop of Clermont, with all those who have accepted the Constitutioninfull,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 cure´ who presumes to hear confession or officiate at a mass.64 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.65 The result is that scrupulous Catholics are ex-

63. 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. 64. 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 Sieye`s.) 65. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,235. Letter of M. de Chaˆteau-Randon, 212 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION cluded 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.66— What an admirable law, that which, under the pretext of reforming 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 sceptical, and notorious for their licentiousness; the others are influenced by their consciences, above all, by their esprit de corps and a point of honour. Most of the cure´s rally around this staff of officers. In the diocese of Besançon,67 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 Loze`re, 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 ques- tionable character. There are two parties, after this, in each parish; deputy of la Loze`re, May 28, 1791. After the decree of May 23rd, all the functionaries of the department handed in their resignations. 66. Duvergier, law of May 21–29, 1791. 67. Sauzay, i. 366, 538 to 593, 750.—“Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,235. Letter of M. de Chanteauredon, May 10, 1791.—Mercure, April 23rd, and April 16, 1791. Articles of Mallet-Dupan, letter from Bordeaux, March 20, 1791. The Constituent Assembly / 213 two faiths, two systems of worship, and permanent discord. Even when the new and the old cure´s 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 downby force. Inother words, the former draws everybody away from the latter, while the latter sends the gendarmes against the former, and persecution begins.—Through a singular reversion of things, it is the majority which undergoes persecution, and the minority which practises it. The mass of the constitutional cure´ is, everywhere, deserted.68 InLa Vendeé there are tenor 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 cure´ canonlybe restored to them, they will gladly pay a double tax.” In Alsace, “nine-tenths, at least, of the Catholics refuse to recognise the legally sworn priests.” The same spectacle presents itself in Franche-Comte´, 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 cure´; 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 cure´ consist of sceptics, deists, the indifferent, members of the clubs and of the administration, who resort to the church as to the Hoˆtel-de-

68. Roux and Buchez, xii. 77. Report of Gallois and Gensonne´senttoLa Vende´e and the Deux Se`vres (July 25, 1791).—“Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,253, letter of the Directory of the Bas-Rhin(letter of January 7, 1792).—“Le District de Machecoul de 1788 a` 1793,” by Lallier.—“Histoire de Joseph Lebon,” by Paris.—Sauzay, vol. i. and ii. in full. 214 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

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 cure´; not only the law which they aggravate through their forced inter- pretationof it andthrough their arbitrary verdicts, but also the riots which they stir up by their instigations and which they sanction by their toleration.69 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-Rhinbanishesthem to Strasbourg or to fifteenleagues from the frontier. At Saint-Leónthe 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 archepiscopal 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 sabres 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

69. Mercure, January 15th, April 23rd, May 16th and 30th, November 23, 1791.—“Le District de Machecoul,” by Lallier, 173.—Sauzay, i. 295.—Lavi- rotte, “Annales d’Arnay-le Duc (February 5, 1792).—“Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,223. Petition of a number of the inhabitants of Montpellier, November 17, 1791. The Constituent Assembly / 215

Paris, inthe church of Saint-Eustache,the cure ´ 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 Theátins, 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 aneye-witness, “torndownamidst 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, 1791, 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 Mont- pellier, two or three hundred ruffians, armed with large iron-bound sticks, murder the men and outrage the women.—Nothing remains but to put the male-factors 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.70 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 grey 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

70. Duvergier, decree of November 29, 1791.—Mercure, November 30, 1791 (article by Mallet-Dupan). 216 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION virtuous sisters of charity or to the ruffians armed with cow-hides who, at Nismes and Montpellier, outrage all the laws of decorum and of liberty for six whole months, the nonjuring 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 Nismes, Franche-Comte´, La Vendeé, 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-labourers, sempstresses, 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 inorder to dig through it anopendoor, 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 utilise 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 init, will fall incompletely underthe weight of the incongruous or extravagant constructions which it proceeds to ex- temporise. 9 CHAPTER III =

Construction—The Constitution of 1791— I. Powers of the Central Govern- ment—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 Kinginevitable— II. 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— III. The Municipal bodies—Their great task—Their incapacity—Their feeble authority—Insufficiency of their means of action—The roˆle of the National Guard— IV. The National Guard as electors—Its great power—Its important task—The work imposed on active citizens—They avoid it— V. The restless minority—Its elements—The clubs— Their ascendency—How they interpret the Rights of Man—Their usurpations and violence— VI. Summary of the work of the Constituent Assembly.

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 conductors 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 implement.—Two conditions are requisite to render this implement serviceable and effective. In the first place,the public powers must harmonize with each

217 218 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION other,or one neutralises 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 centre 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,overheated,under clouds of waste steam,creaking and thumping in such a manner as to show clearly that it must explode.

I 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 provision for an umpire,in case of conflict between them,in the institution of an Upper Cham- ber. 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,and,if it be wise for the Assembly to restrain the King by refusing him subsidies,it is wise 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 of the King to take his ministers from the Chamber. Generally,the leaders of the majority become the ministry,their nomination being the means of restoring harmony between the King and the Assembly; they are at once men belonging to the Assembly and men belonging to the King. Through this The Constituent Assembly / 219 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 in a position to judge whether a law is useful and practicable; obliged to put it into execution,they can calculate its effects before proposing it or accepting it. 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 founds or rescues them, but which oppresses or exhausts them,there is a gradual substitution of differentiated powers,held together through the mediation of a third party (tiers-arbitre),by reciprocal dependence and an organ which is common to both. Experience,however,is of no avail with the members of the Constituent Assembly; under the banner of principles they sunder one after another all the ties which should keep the two powers together harmoniously.—There must not be an Upper Chamber, because this would be an asylum or a nursery for aristocrats. More- over,“the nation being of one mind,”it is averse to “the creation of different organs.” So they go on with theoretical definitions and distinctions,in the application of ready-made formulas and metaphors. 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 suspensive veto. Sieye`s here enters with his protest declaring that this is a “lettre de cachet 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 As- sembly; he has no voice in or oversight of the details of its formation; 220 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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;1 permission 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: 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 ascendency.2 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.3 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,4 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

1. 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 Mi- rabeau. 2. Speech by Lanjuinais,November 7,1789. “We determined on the separation of the powers. Why,then,should the proposal be made to us to unite the legislative power with the executive power in the persons of the ministers?” 3. See the attendance of the Ministers before the Legislative Assembly. 4. “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. The Constituent Assembly / 221 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,cure ´s,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 As- sembly,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 222 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION empty,to which news is brought,and from which laws depart,to spread abroad like a common rumour. 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.”5 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 Min- isters,eight causes for condemnation to from twelve to twenty years of constraint,and eight grounds for condemnations to death. 6 Every- where between the lines of the Constitution,we read the constant disposition to assume an attitude of defence,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.”7 If the nomination of Ministers is conceded,it is on the ground that “Min- isters appointed by the people would necessarily be too highly es-

5. Mercure de France, an expression by Mallet-Dupan. 6. Constitution of 1791,ch. ii. articles 5,6,7.—Decree of September 25– October 6,1791,section iii. articles 8 to 25. 7. Speeches by Barnave and Roederer in the Constituent Assembly.— Speeches by Barnave and Duport in the Jacobin Club. The Constituent Assembly / 223 teemed.” 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 trammelled 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 fulfil it to the letter. Because he is powerless the Assembly regards him as lukewarm,and imputes to him the jarrings 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 Rev- olution.—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 neutralised: 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 Let us leave the centre for the extremities,and observe the various administrations in working operation.8—For any service to work

8. Principal texts. (Duvergier,“Collection des Lois et Dećrets.”)—Laws on municipal and administrative organization,December 14 and 22,1789; August 224 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION well and with precision,there must first be one head,and,next,this head should have the appointment of his subordinates and be empowered to pay,punish,or dismiss them. 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 set of commissioners are incapable; corporate follies or defects do not involve any one in particular,and authority is efficacious 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 at their posts. 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. 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. At best,in certain cases,he can annul their acts and inflict on them a provisional suspension of their

12–20,1790; March 15,1791. 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. The Constituent Assembly / 225 functions,which can be contested and is revocable. 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 Min- ister 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. A like 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 act on those of the district,and those of the district on 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 warning 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 directories of four or eight members,or in bureaux of two,three,four, six,and seven members whose elected chief,a president or mayor, 9 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. Elective and collective as these powers are,mea-

9. 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.” 226 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION sures 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 reelected. 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. 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 too 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 recognised as essential,as the army and the gendarmerie.10 In the army,on the appointment of a noncommissioned officer,the other noncommissioned 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 sublieutenant,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 brigadier,quartermaster,or lieutenant,there is,besides the directory and the colonel,another intervention,that of the officers,both commissioned and noncommissioned. 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

10. 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 noncommissioned 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. The Constituent Assembly / 227 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 underofficers up to the grade of captain are elected by their own men. All the superior officers are elected by the inferior officers. All underofficers and all inferior and superior officers are elected for one year only,and are not eligible for reelection until after an interval of a year,during which they must serve in the ranks.11—The result is manifest: command,in every civil and in every military order,becomes enervated; 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. 12 Assisted by commissioners who are appointed by the council-general

11. Law of July 28th,August 12,1791. 12. Laws of November 14,1789 (article 52),August 10–14,1789.—Instruc- tion of August 10–20,1790; § 8.—Law of October 21,November 21,1789. 228 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 insolvents,answer for returns,and authorise prosecutions.13 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, 14 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

13. Laws of November 14,23,1790; January 13th,September 26th,October 9,1791. 14. Albert Babeau,i. 327 (Feˆte of the Federation,July 14,1790).—“Archives Nationales,” F7,3,215(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.” The Constituent Assembly / 229 hundred men and two cannon to force the submission of a neighbouring 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,co nvoys 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 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,inven- toried,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,cure ´s,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 230 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION the department. They have to convoke,lodge,and protect the numerous primary and secondary Assemblies,to supervise their operations,which sometimes last for weeks; to install those elected by them,justices of the peace,officers of the National Guard,judges, public prosecutors,cure´s,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,equalised,and transformed in vain by the National Assem- bly,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, 15 “the municipal officers,in twenty thousand out of forty thousand municipalities,do not know how to read or write.” The cure´,in effect,is excluded from such offices by law,and,save in La Vende é,the noble is excluded by public opinion. Besides,in many of the provinces,nothing

15. Moniteur, x. 132. Speech by M. Labergerie,November 8,1791. The Constituent Assembly / 231 but patois is spoken;16 the French tongue,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 be- hindhand,not having (yet) returned either rolls or estimates.” 17 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.”18—It is much worse when,thinking that they do understand it,they under-

16. At Montauban,in the intendant’s salon,the ladies of the place spoke patois only,the grandmother of the gentleman who gives me this fact not understanding any other language. 17. Moniteur, v. 163,sitting of July 18,1791. Speech by M. Lecoulteux, reporter. 18. 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.” 232 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION take 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 authorises 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 effectually. 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 Nismes. 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 re´gime,hostile to Catholicism and feudal rights,unfavourable to the clergy and the nobility,inclined to extend the bearing and exaggerate the rigour of recent decrees,partisans of the rights of man,and,therefore,humanitarians and optimists,disposed to excuse the misdoings 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 The Constituent Assembly / 233 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 exigences 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 Hoˆtel-de-Ville what they were when they went into it,so many legists and scribes,fruitful in proclamations,reports,and correspondence. Such is wholly their ro ˆle, and,if any amongst them,with more energy,desires to depart from it,he has no hold on the commune which,according to the Con- stitution,he has to direct,and on that armed force which is intrusted to him with a view to ensure the observance of the laws. To ensure 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 roˆle of sovereign electors to that of docile subjects of the administration,and recognise a commander in one of their own creatures. 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”—which 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 234 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 Hoˆtel-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 ploughs,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. Un- doubtedly,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 authorise by his presence,and to legalise 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 himself. Instead of holding it by the hilt,he feels the point: the armed force which he ought to make use of makes use of him. The Constituent Assembly / 235

IV Behold,accordingly,the true sovereign,the elector,both National Guard and voter. This is the King desired 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 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 cure´s,the members of the National Assembly,and jurors of the higher National Court.19 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 Con- stitution 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

19. Law of May 11–15,1791. 236 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 of 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 cure´s. 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;20 at Troyes,in January,1790,instead of three days

20. Proce`s-verbal of the Electoral Assembly of the Department of Indre-et- Loire (1791,printed). The Constituent Assembly / 237 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 cure´,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 mass of these disarrangements and disturbances, all this loss of time,all the labour 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 reelection 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 238 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 adminis- tration21 keeps two thousand nine hundred and eighty-eight officials busy in the departments,six thousand nine hundred and fifty in the districts,one million one hundred and seventy-five thousand 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 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 one-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 labour with their hands or with their heads. The law exempts only domestics devoted to personal service or common labourers 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 yeoman 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

21. De Ferrie`res,i. 367. The Constituent Assembly / 239 or department. According to this standard the eligible are innumerable; in Doubs,in 1780, 22 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 e´lite,who could best fill them. On the contrary,the nobles,the ecclesiastical dignitaries,the members of the parliaments,the grand functionaries of the ancient re´gime,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,employe ´s, 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,23 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 a 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

22. Sauzay, i. 191 (21,711 are eligible out of 32,288 inscribed citizens). 23. 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 labour 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.” 240 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 done a heavy piece of collar-work,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;24 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 measureless falsehood lies at the basis of the political combinations of the day and those of the next ten years. Arbitrarily,and without examining it,a certain weight and a certain power of 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 In default of the majority,who shirk their responsibilities,it is the minority which does the work and assumes the power. The majority

24. Sauzay,i. 147,192. The Constituent Assembly / 241 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.25 These are the 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-cry 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 labour,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 26—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 cure´s,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:

25. For the detail of these figures,see vol. ii. book iv. 26. De Ferrie`res,i. 367. Cf. the various laws above mentioned. 242 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 experts 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 around like so much seed scattered broadcast,vegetating in the 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; and 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 cure´,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 propagandism and to action.— During the second half of the year 1790 we see them everywhere The Constituent Assembly / 243 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 cooperating for the safety of the commonwealth.”27 This is a new and spontaneous organ,an excrescence 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 Assem- bly itself invites us to do so. For it announces that “ignorance,

27. Constant,“Histoire d’un Club Jacobin en Provence” (Fontainebleau), p. 15. (Proce`s-verbaux of the founding of the clubs of Moret,Thomery,Nemours, and Montereau.) 244 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 enunciates 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,28 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,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,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

28. 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. The Constituent Assembly / 245 the passers-by.29 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 authorisation 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. Consider,indeed,these rights as they are proclaimed,along with the commentary of the haranguer who expounds them at the club before an audience of heated and daring spirits,or in the street to

29. Article 1. “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 conviction; 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,&c. 246 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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.30 Among “these natural and imprescriptible rights” the legislator has placed “resistance to oppression.” We are oppressed: let us resist and take up arms. Ac- cording to this legislator,“society has the right to bring every public agent of the Administration to account.” Let us away to the Hoˆtel- 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 proletaires 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 “there is no longer hereditary right to any public office.” Hereditary royalty is therefore illegitimate; let us go to the Tuileries and overthrow the throne! In the very terms of the Declaration “the law is the expression of the universal will.” Listen to these clamours 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 leaders 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

30. Roux and Buchez,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.” The Constituent Assembly / 247 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 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, 31 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 intrusted 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 to its theories,not only the tumours,the enlargements, and the inflamed parts of the organs,but also the organs themselves, and even the vital governing centres around which the cells arrange themselves to recompose an injured organ. That is,the Assembly destroyed on the one hand the time-honoured,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 des-

31. Decrees of September 25–October 6,1791; September 28–October 6, 1791. 248 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION ignated 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, twenty-six millions of equal and disconnected atoms. Never was so much disintegrated matter,less capable of resistance,offered to hands undertaking to mould 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 the Emperor Alexander. The new Constitution,32 on the contrary,reduces the

32. 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.) The Constituent Assembly / 249

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; and the mutual independence of the powers,from the centre 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; in which active citizens,overtasked,avoid the performance of public duty; in which a minority of fanatics and of the ambitious monopolize all organs of communication,all influence,all rights of suffrage,all power,and all action,and sanction their multiplied usurpations,their unbridled despotism,their increasing encroachments by the Declaration of the Rights of Man. The masterpiece of ideal abstractions and of practical absurdities is perfected; spontaneous anarchy,by means of the Constitution,becomes legalised anarchy. The latter is more perfect; nothing finer of the kind has been seen since the ninth century.

“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, Roux and Buchez,xi. 237).

BOOK III

The Application of the Constitution

9 CHAPTER I =

I. The Federations—Popular application of philosophic theory—Idyllic celebration of the Contrat-Social—Two phases of human volition—Permanent disorder— II. Independence of the municipalities—The causes of their initiative—Sentiment of danger—Issy-l’Eveˆque 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 of the ministers—Marseilles in 1790— III. Independent Assem- blies—Why they took the initiative—The people in council—Powerlessness of the municipalities—The violence to which they are subject—Aix in 1790—Gov- ernment disobeyed and perverted everywhere.

IFTHEREever was an Utopia which seemed capable of realisation, 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 once 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

253 254 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION again become brothers.1 The sudden and surprising concord of all volitions and all intelligences is to revive the golden age on earth. It is proper, accordingly, to regard the social contract as a festival, an affecting, sublime idyl, 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 idyl is performed as if according to a written programme. On the 29th of November, 1789, at Etoile, near Valence, the federations began.2 Twelve thousand National Guards, from the two banks of the Rhoˆne, promise “to remain for ever united, to ensure the circulation of grain, and to maintain the laws passed by the National Assembly.” On the 13th of December, at Monte´limart, six thousand men, the representatives of twenty-seven thousand 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-Comte´ 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. Forty- eight thousand in the Vosges send their deputies to Epinal. During February, March, April, and May, 1790, in Alsace, Champagne, Dau- phiny, Orleánais, Touraine, Lyonnais, and Provence, there is the same spectacle. At Draguignan eight thousand National Guards take the oath in the presence of twenty thousand spectators. At Lyons fifty thousand men, delegates of more than five hundred thousand others, take the civic oath.—But local unions are not sufficient to complete the organization of France; a general union of all French-

1. 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. 2. Roux and Buchez, iv. 3, 309; v. 123; vi. 274, 399.—Duvergier, Collection of Laws and Decrees. Decree of June 8 and 9, 1790. The Application of the Constitution / 255 men 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, on 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 centre 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 at the capital. To the latter, each body of National Guards is to send deputies in the proportion of one man to every two hundred; and each regiment one officer, one noncommissioned officer, and four privates. Fourteen thousand representatives of the National Guard of the provinces appear on the Champ de Mars, the theatre 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. 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 An- jou 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 cure´ and the Prot- 256 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION estant pastor embrace each other at the altar; the pastor occupies the best seat in the church, and at the Protestant meeting-house the cure´ has the place of honour, and listens to the sermon of the pastor.3 Distinctions of rank and condition will no longer exist; at Saint- Andeól “the honour 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 fishwomen, 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 wheel- barrows and handling the pick-axe 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 labourer. 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.4 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 regaled 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

3. Michelet, “Histoire de la Re´volution Française,” ii. 470, 474. 4. De Ferrie`res, ii. 91.—Albert Babeau, i. 340. (Letter addressed to the Chevalier de Poterat, July 18, 1790.)—De Dammartin, “Eveńements qui se sont passe´s sous mes yeux,” &c., i. 155. The Application of the Constitution / 257 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 civilisation is disinterred, and again appears as in early days, as in Otaheite, 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 today, gives himself up unrestrainedly to his social, sympathetic, and generous instincts. Whatever the imagination of the day offers him to increase his emotion, all the classical, rhetorical, and dramatic material at his command, are employed for the embellishment of his festival. Al- ready 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 altar dedicated to the country 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 amphitheatre; two hundred priests, draped in their albs and with tricoloured belts, officiate around the Bishop of Autun; three hundred drums and twelve hundred musicians all play at once; forty pieces of cannon are discharged at one volley, and four hundred thousand cheers go up as if from one throat. 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 258 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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. 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 memoriter speeches that have been put into their mouths. At Be- sançon, on the return of the confederates, hundreds of “youthful citizens” from twelve to fourteen years of age,5 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 boys 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.”6 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

5. Sauzay, i. 202. 6. Albert Babeau, ibid. i 330.—De Ferrie`res, ii. 92. The Application of the Constitution / 259 refreshments at the Corn-Exchange, and on the site of the Bas- tille.”—At Tours, where fifty-two detachments from the neighbouring provinces are collected, about four o’clock in the afternoon,7 through an irresistible outburst of insane gaiety, “the officers, inferior officers, and soldiers, pell-mell, race through the streets, some with sabre 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 lantern.” 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 hanging him.8—Such is the fruit of the susceptibility and philosophy of the

7. “Archives Nationales,” H. 1453. Correspondence of M. de Bercheney, May 23, 1790. 8. “Archives Nationales,” ibid. May 13, 1790. “M. de la Rifaudie`re was dragged from his carriage and brought to the guard-house, which was immediately filled with people, shouting, ‘To the lantern, the aristocrat!’—The fact is this: after his having repeatedly shouted Vive le Roi et la Nation! they wanted 260 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 sentiment and an act of the will would suffice. The inspiration has come and the act is fulfilled; the transports and the ravishment have been experienced, and minds have been wrought up to the highest pitch of excitement. 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 effusions and phrases, a verbal and not a real contract, ostentatious fraternity skin-deep, a well-meaning masquerade, an ebullition of feeling evaporating through its own pageantry—in short, an agreeable carnival of a day’s duration. The reason is that in the human will there are two strata, one superficial, of which men are conscious, the other deep down, of which they are unconscious; the former unstable and vacillating like shifting sand, the latter stable and fixed like a solid rock, to which their caprices and agitations 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.—Cer- tainly embraces have been interchanged and oaths have been taken; but after, as before the ceremony, men are just what many centuries of administrative thraldom 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 him to shout Vive la Nation! alone, upon which he gave Vive la Nation tant qu’ell pourra.”—At Blois, on the day of the Federation, a mobpromenade the streets with a wooden head covered with a wig, and a placard stating that the aristocrats must be decapitated. The Application of the Constitution / 261 hands on public property which is badly protected; finally, they are disposed to regard gendarmes and proprietors as baneful, 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 practised on their expectations. In this violent state, due to unbounded hopes, every prompting of their will seems legitimate, and all opinions are stamped with certainty. They are no longer capable of self-distrust and self-restraint. In their brain, overflowing with emotions and enthusiasm, there is no room but for one intense, absorbing, fixed idea. Each is confident and overconfident 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 overexcited imagination clothes with the fine name of patriotism their natural appetite for despotism and usurpation. France, accordingly, in the three years which follow the taking of the Bastille, presents a strange spectacle. Everywhere there is philanthropy in words and symmetry in the laws; everywhere there is violence in acts and disorder in all things. Afar, is the reign of philosophy; at hand is the chaos of the Carlovingian era. “Foreign- ers,” remarks an observer,9 “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,

9. Mercure de France, the articles by Mallet-Dupan (June 18th and August 16, 1791; April 14, 1792). 262 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 there 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 twenty-four hours. Always in advance of or lagging behind the laws; alternately bold and pusillanimous; 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 tranquillity; 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 might of government. In all sections of the empire, 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 one 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 Things could not work otherwise. For, before the 6th of October, and the King’s captivity in Paris, the Government had already been The Application of the Constitution / 263 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 commune.—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 cure´, and accomplish the transformation by which an old society takes the place of a new society, amidst so many eager passions and so many injured interests. It alone has to ward off the perpetual or 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 extemporised 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, 1789,10 near Autun, the market-town of Issy- l’Eveˆque declares itself an independent State. The parish assembly is convoked by the cure´, 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 repair of prisons, the

10. 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. 264 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION road taxes and price of grain, the administration of justice, fines, confiscations, and the diet of the National Guards.” He is a provincial Solon, zealous for the public weal, 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, sabre 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 octrois; he has boundary walls thrown down; he goes in person to the houses of cultivators and makes requisitions for grain; he seizes the convoys which have not deposited their quota 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 curial right, to assign to himself a portion of it. All this is done in public and conscientiously, 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, and proceeds too quickly; and first the bailiwick, next the Chaˆtelet, 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 Na- tional 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 subdelegate, appointed, maintained, and ill used by him, kept aloof from The Application of the Constitution / 265 transactions of any importance, unable to defend themselves except by humble protestations against the aggravations of taxation, concerned with precedences and the conflicts of etiquette,11 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 this same bourgeois or villager depends the safety of the neighbouring 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, with his communal council, fixes their rate of taxation as he pleases. It is he who, granting or refusing a passport, obliges them to stay at home or allows them to depart. 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 mobwhich has elected him.—In the towns, especially, and notably in the large towns, the contrast between what he was and what he is 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

11. “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 pre´sidial, the bourgeois militia, and the permanent committee. Each is anxious to take precedence of 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 haranguers 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.” 266 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

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, procureurs or advocates, 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 parvenus, 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 roˆle in the past and their present roˆle: anxious on account of the State, anxious on their own account, they find no security but in usurpations. The municipalities, on the strength of the reports which emanate 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 anybody, 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,12 will comply with no other. Military commanders in the provinces, after Septem- ber, 1787, declare themselves powerless; when they and the municipality give orders, it is only those of the municipality which the troops recognise. “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.”13 “Without any reasonable motive,” writes the commander of the forces in Brittany, “Vannes and Auray made opposition to the detachment which I thought it

12. Decree of August 10–14, 1789. 13. “Archives Nationales,” KK. 1105. Correspondence of M. de Thiard, September 11, 1789. “The troops now obey the municipalities only.” Also July 30th, August 11, 1790. The Application of the Constitution / 267 prudent to send to Belle-Ile, to replace another one....TheGov- ernment cannot move without encountering obstacles....TheMin- ister of War no longer has the direction of the army....Noorders 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,14 the towns and villages make demands on me for arms and even cannon....Thewhole 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

14. “Archives Nationales,” KK. 1105. Correspondence of M. de Thiard, September 11 and 25, November 20, December 25 and 30, 1789. 268 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

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, and, on all sides, with a sure and persistent instinct, through the capture of fortresses, the pillage of arsenals, the seduc- tion 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.15 At Nantes the municipal body refuses to recognise 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 clubwrites to the National Assemblyto demand its demolition. At Valence, the commandant, M. de Voisin, on taking measures of defence, 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.16

15. Roux and Buchez, v. 304 (April, 1790).—“Archives Nationales.” Papers of the Committee of Investigation, DXXIX. I (note of M. Latour-du-Pin, October 28, 1789).—Roux and Buchez, iv. 3 (December 1, 1789); iv. 390 (Feb- ruary, 1790); vi. 179 (April and May, 1790). 16. Mercure de France, Report of M. Emery, sitting of July 21, 1790, Number for July 31.—“Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,200. Letter of the directory of Cal- vados, September 26 and October 20, 1791. The Application of the Constitution / 269

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 Sarrelouis 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 Gov- ernment 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, Ambas- sador of France.17—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.18 In the month of July, 1791, a French vessel on

17. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,207. Letter of the minister Dumouriez, June 15, 1792. Report of M. Caillard, May 29, 1792. 18. Mercure de France, No. for July, 1791 (sitting of the 6th); Nos. for No- vember 5 and 26, 1791. 270 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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, for “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?19 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 Saoˆne- 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 are prevented from holding amidst insubordination, license, contempt for all the authorities, and, consequently, the absolute impossibility of performing the duties which were imposed upon us.” The directory of the Bouches-du-Rhoˆne, 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

19. Albert Babeau, “Histoire de Troyes,” vol. i passim.—“Archives Natio- nales,” F7, 3,257. Address of the Directory of Saoˆne-et-Loire to the National Assembly, November 1, 1790.—F7, 3,200. Letter of the Directory of Calvados, November 9, 1791.—F7, 3,105. Proce`s-verbal of the municipality of Aix, March 1, 1792 (on the events of February 26th); letter of M. Villard, President of the Directory, March 10, 1792.—F7, 3,220. 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.) The Application of the Constitution / 271 less respected than the directories; they are constantly denounced to the Assembly, while the municipalities send back their dispatches without deigning to open them,20 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.21 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, that there is no longer a central authority, that there is no longer a France, but merely so many disintegrated and independent communes, like Or- leans 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.22 If, however, the dominant minority is a small

20. Mercure de France, No. for October 30, 1790. 21. “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. 22. Fabre, “Histoire de Marseille,” ii. 442. Martin had but 3,555 votes, when shortly after the National Guard numbered 24,000 men. 272 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION one, it is resolute and not inclined to stop at trifles. “Scarcely is it organized,”23 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;24 entrenchments and barricades, at the Hoˆtel-de-Ville, are increasing, also the artillery; 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 Au- gust, 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-pre´voˆt, and put into those of the seńećhausseé, the former, meanwhile, together with his councillors, undergoing punishment for having performed their duty: the municipality, on its own authority, interdicts them from further exercise of their functions. They are publicly denounced, “threatened with poniards, the scaffold, and every species of assassination.”25 No printer dares publish their de-

23. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,196. Letter of the minister, M. de Saint- Priest, to the President of the National Assembly, May 11, 1790. 24. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,196. Letters of the military commandant, M. de Miran, March 6, 14, 30, 1790. 25. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,196. Letter of M. de Bournissac, grandpre´voˆt, March 6, 1790. The Application of the Constitution / 273 fence, 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-pre´voˆt, 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 rearrest, while 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 seńećhausseé, 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.26 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 clubsets the ballin motion, and, forciblyor 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 Na-

26. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,196. Letters of M. du Miran, April 11th and 16th, and May 1, 1790. 274 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION tional 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 which they provoke by their refusal, and if they resist they are declared promoters of civil war.27 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 Hoˆtel-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.28 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 counterrevolution!”—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,29 order the munici-

27. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,196. Proce`s-verbal of events on the 30th of April. 28. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,196. Letters of the Municipality of Mar- seilles to the National Assembly, May 5 and 20, 1790. 29. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,196. Order of the king, May 10. Letter of The Application of the Constitution / 275 pality 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 understanding 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; and, 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 labourers, 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 labourers 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 authorise only that of the part overlooking the town.” On the 18th of May the Jacobin club, at once agent, accomplice, and councillor of the municipal body, compels private individuals to contribute something towards de- fraying the expenses of the demolition, and “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

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.” 276 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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”; and, 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 theatres 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,30 and 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

30. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,196. 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 “Requeˆte a` Desmoulins, procureur- geńe´ral 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 counterrevolution, 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, &c.” The Application of the Constitution / 277 it. Henceforth the municipal body has full sway, “observes only those laws which suit it, makes others to its own liking, and, in short, governs in the most despotic and arbitrary manner,”31 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 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 demeanour and manner all is changed.” “There was great agitation everywhere,”32 says M. de Se´gur; “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

31. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,198. Letters of the royal commissioners, April 13 and 15, 1791. 32. De Se´gur, “Me´moires,” iii. 482 (early in 1790). 278 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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,33 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 calibre 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 fishwoman in an outlying village or a populous suburb, on imbruted or almost brutal minds, especially when they are lively, heated, and overexcited—the effect is tremen- dous. 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

33. De Dammartin, i. 184 (January, 1791). The Application of the Constitution / 279 enemies? What is more pernicious than passive deference and patient waiting under timid or blind magistrates? 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.”34 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 depoˆt, 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. Be- hold 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,35 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

34. “Archives Nationales,” KK. 1105. Correspondence of M. de Thiard (Oc- tober 12, 1789). 35. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,250. Proce`s-verbal of the directory of the department, March 18, 1792. “As the ferment was at the highest point and fears were entertained that greater evils would follow, M. le Pre´sident, 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.” 280 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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.36 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,37 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 E´tampes,38 “we were closed in by bayonets levelled at us and with pistols at our breasts”; and they were obliged to sign a

36. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,250. Letter of M. Duport, minister of justice, December 24, 1791. 37. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,248, Proce`s-verbal of the members of the department, finished March 18, 1791.—Roux and Buchez, ix. 240 (Report of M. Alquier). 38. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,268. Extract from the deliberations of the directory of Seine-et-Oise, with the documents relating to the insurrection at E´tampes, September 16, 1791. Letter of M. Venard, administrator of the district, September 20—“I shall not set foot in E´tampes until the reestablishment of order and tranquillity, 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.” The Application of the Constitution / 281 dismissal of the troops which had arrived to protect the market. At present “we are all away from E´tampes; 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,39 the magistrates 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,40 “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. Ve´teau, 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

39. Moniteur, March 16, 1792. Mortimer-Ternaux, “Histoire de la Terreur” (Proceedings against the assassins of Simoneau), i. 381. 40. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,226. Letter and memorial 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). 282 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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, 1790,41 in opposition to the two Jacobin clubs, a club had been organized, had complied with all the formalities, and, like the “Clubdes Mo- narchiens” at Paris, claimed the same right of meeting as the others. But here, as at Paris, the Jacobins recognise no rights but for themselves alone, and refuse to admit their adversaries to the privileges of the law. Moreover, alarming rumours 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 neuvaine42 was held in Saint-François- de-Paule to pray God to enlighten the French.” A counterrevolution 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 Guiramand, an old officer

41. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,195. 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, 1791. (Letters from Aix, and notably a letter from seven officers shut up in the prison at Aix, January 30, 1791.) The oldest Jacobin club, formed in February, 1790, was entitled “Clubdes vrais amis de la Constitution.” The second Jacobinclub, formed in October, 1790, was “composed from the beginning of artisans and labourers from the faubourgs and suburbs.” Its title was “Socie´te´ des fre`res anti-politiques,” or “fre`res vrais, justes et utiles a` 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 De´fenseurs de la religion, des personnes et des proprie´te´s.” 42. A special series of religious services. The Application of the Constitution / 283 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 lantern 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 stabin 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 clubsave themselves bytaking to the roof. Abouta 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 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 284 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION of his professional brethren the parliament which had been dissolved, 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. Conse- quently, 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 mobstrives 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 dykes all give way at the same moment. At the first clamours 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 authorise 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 The Application of the Constitution / 285 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 scarfs, who arrive on the ground, dare not give the order which the commandant requires, plainly showing that at this decisive moment, when it is necessary to shed blood and kill a number of men, they 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, 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, possessing 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 club. Writs of arrest, sum- 286 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION monses 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 clubrules, and “makes everybody tremble.”43 “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....Aslong 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 left Aix when three or four hundred families will abandon it....Andwhatmaninhissenses would dare guarantee that each village will not soon have some one hung in it?...Coun- try valets arrest their masters....Thehope of doing evil deeds with impunity leads the inhabitants of villages to commit all sorts of depredations in the forests, which is exceedingly dangerous 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 magistrates; 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.

43. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,195. Letters of the commissioners, March 20, February 11, May 10, 1791. 9 CHAPTER II =

The sovereignty of unrestrained passions— I. Old religious rancours—Montau- ban and Nismes in 1790— II. Passion supreme—Dread of hunger its acutest form—The noncirculation 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 dictation of unbridled instinct—Its practical and political expedients— III. Ego- tism 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— 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.

IN THIS state of things the passions have full sway. Any one of themthat is powerful enough to group together a few hundred men suﬃces for the formation of a faction or band, which dashes through the relaxed or feeble meshes of a government that is passive or disregarded. 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 possible to measure the force of the

287 288 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 is shown; just as that of the water which floats a ship, but which at the first leak enters into it and sinks it. I 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.1—In vain have the odious edicts which oppressed themfallen into desuetude for the past twenty years; in vain have civil rights been restored to themsince 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 Uze`s2 the Catholics, two thousand in number, take possession of the bishop’s palace and the Hoˆtel-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 Jale`s 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.3 According

1. The expression is that of Jean Bon Saint-Andre´ to Mathieu Dumas, sent to reestablish tranquillity in Montauban (1790): “The day of vengeance, which we have been awaiting for a hundred years, has come!” 2. De Dammartin, i. 187 (an eye-witness). 3. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,223 and 3,216. Letters of M. de Bouzols, major-general, residing at Montpellier, May 21, 25, 28, 1790. The Application of the Constitution / 289 to himthe 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 thembe responsible “with their heads” for any mob, insurrection, or attempt to debauch the army; let a tribunal of twelve judges be selected fromthe municipalbodies of twelve towns, and all delinquents be brought before it; let this be the court of final appeal, and its sentence immediately executed. The systemin 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,4 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 Na- tional Guards march to the Hoˆtel-de-Ville, and take forcible possession of the guard-house which protects it. The municipal authorities order themto 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

4. Mary Lafon, “Histoire d’une Ville Protestante” (with original documents derived fromthe archives of Montauban). 290 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 tricolour 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 reestablish order. One month after this a more bloody affray takes place at Nismes5 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 favour; 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,6 hunt up recruits among the market-gardeners of the suburbs, retain the white cockade, and, when this is prohibited, re-

5. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 2,216. Proce`s-verbal of the Municipality of Nismes and report of the Abbe´ 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 Nismes, by Froment (1790).—New address of the Municipality of Nismes, presented by M. de Mar- guerite, mayor and deputy (1790), printed.—Mercure de France, February 23, 1791. 6. The petition is signed by 3,127 persons, besides 1,560 who put a cross declaring that they could not write. The counterpetition of the club is signed by 162 persons. The Application of the Constitution / 291 place 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 and patriotic dragoons arrive “three times as many as usual, with loaded muskets and pistols, and with full cartridge-boxes,” and they patrol the surrounding neighbourhood. The red rosettes, on their side, royalists and Catholics, complain of being threatened and “treated contemptuously” (nargue´s). 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.7 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.”8 There is no one to act between them. The municipality authorities, far fromissuing orders, receive them:they are roughly handled, hustled and jostled about, and made to march about like servants.

7. 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. 8. An insurrection in the sixteenth century, when the Protestants ﬁred on the Catholics on St. Michael’s Day.—[TR.] 292 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

The patriots seize the Abbe´ de Belmont, a municipal officer, at the Hoˆtel-de-Ville, order him, on pain of death, to proclaim martial law, and place the red flag in his hand. “March, rascal, you ! 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 neighbourhood, the Protestants fromthe mountains, the rude Ce ´venols, 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. To- wards 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 defence”; 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 whatever cannot be carried away is broken.” One hundred and twenty houses are sacked in Nismes The Application of the Constitution / 293 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 bed-ridden 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 sabres 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 sulphur matches all ready; he is hacked to pieces with a sabre, 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 himwith bayonets, saying to him,“Eat, you , 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 farmhouse. 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 fromthe club of patriots. It is for this reason that those who are held in durance are prejudged as guilty. “No officer of the court dare give themthe benefit of his services; they are not allowed to bring forward justificatory facts in evidence, while everybody knows that the judges are not free.”9

9. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,216. Letter of M. de Lespin, Major at Nismes, to the Commandant of Provence, M. de Perigord, July 27, 1790: “The 294 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

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 whomthe illegal force of his own strong hand has stricken down. II 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 neighbour 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 subsistences it possesses, or takes fromothers the subsistences which it does not possess. At the end of 1789,10 “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 lanterned, 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 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.” 10. Roux and Buchez, iii. 240 (Memorial of the Ministers, October 28, 1789).—“Archives Nationales,” D. xxix. 3.—Deliberation of the Municipal Council of Vernon (November 4, 1789). The Application of the Constitution / 295 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 ensure 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.11 In Brittany, Auray and Vannes retain the convoys for Nantes, and Lan- nion 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 outbreaks 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,12 “have again cut off provisions fromthe 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, waggons are pillaged, bread is forcibly lowered in price, stones are thrown and guns discharged; the populace contend with

11. “Archives Nationales,” KK. 1105. Correspondence of M. de Thiard, November 4, 1789.—See similar occurrences, September 4, October 23, No- vember 4 and 19, 1789, January 27 and March 27, 1790. 12. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,257. Letter fromGex, May 29, 1790.— Roux and Buchez, vii. 198, 369 (September, October, 1790). 296 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION the National Guard, peasants with townsmen, purchasers with dealers, artisans and labourers with farmers and landowners, at Castel- naudary, Niort, Saint-Etienne, in Aisne, in Pas-de-Calais, and especially along the line stretching fromMontbrison 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 centre 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 freedomwhich the Con- stitution 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.13 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-Ge´ran the same course is taken with regard to bread, wheat, and meat; at Chaˆtillon-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.14 It is the programme of villagers. Its diverse articles, save

13. “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. 14. “Archives Nationales,” H. 1453. Proce`s-verbal of a dozen parishes in 1 Nivernais, June 4. “White bread is to be 2 sous, and brown bread 1 ⁄2 sous. Husbandmen are to have 30 sous, reapers 10 sous, wheelwrights 10 sous, bailiffs The Application of the Constitution / 297 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’Estreés. 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

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 seignieurs of our department are to give up all servile holidays and ill-acquired property. The cure´ of Bie`ze 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 hima salary. He is to be paid 6 sous for masses, and not to leave his cure 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. Cure´s are to have none but circumspect females of fifty for domestics. Cure´s are not to go to either fairs or markets. All cure´s are to be on the same footing as the one at Bie`ze. 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 Feˆte-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. 298 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION there is a swarmof blouses, 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, subsistences, 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 neighbouring 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 Bour- bonnais, 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 see 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.15 Bourbon-Lancy, Bourbon-l’Archambault, Saint-

15. “Archives Nationales,” H. 1453. The same correspondence, May 29, June 11 and 17, September 15, 1790.—Ibid., F7, 3,257. Letter of the municipal authorities of Marsigny, May 3; of the municipal oﬃcers of Bourbon-Lancy,June 5. Extract fromletters written to M. Amelot,June 1. The Application of the Constitution / 299

Pierre-le-Moutier, Montluçon, Saint-Amand, Chateau-Gontier, De- cises, 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 fromfour to five hundred villagers arrests the convoys of Saint-Amand, and forces their escorts to capitulate; another band intrenches 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 fromthe uncertainty of subsistences 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, 300 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Brie and Beause, 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 Laon16 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, “subsistences are 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 nonproducers; and for it to reach themfreely, 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 subsistences 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 centre, 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 E´tampes,17 where they are convoked by the commissioners of the department to take steps to reestablish 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

16. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,185, 3,186. Letter of the President of the Tribunal of the district of Laon, February 8, 1792. 17. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,268. Proce`s-verbal and observations of the two commissioners sent to E´tampes, September 22–25, 1791. The Application of the Constitution / 301 accordingly stay away. “Thus,” write the commissioners, “the common-weal is given up to artisans and labourers 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 rumours 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 E´tampes, “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 kingdomfromthere to be sold abroad.” In the suburbs of Rouen they imagine that grain is purposely “ingulfed 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 mil- lionaires grow rich at the expense of the people. They know the popular strength,” and, not daring to measure their forces with it, “in an honourable 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.”18— 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

18. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,265. The following document, among many others, shows the expedients and conceptions of the popular imagination. Pe- tition of several inhabitants of the commune of Forges (Seine Infe´rieure) “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 re´gime wheat was superabundant; hogs were fed with it, and calves were fat- tened with bread. It is certain, therefore, that wheat is diverted by monopolizers and the enemies of the new regime. The farms are too large; let them be divided. There is too much pasture-ground: sow it with wheat. Compel each farmer and landowner 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 be confiscated. Oblige all the cultivators of the neighbourhood to sell their wheat at Forges only, &c.” 302 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION require leaders, and they are chosen wherever they can be found, at one time amongst the e´lite, 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 E´tampes 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,19 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 E´tampes, “the two principal assassins of the mayor are a poacher repeatedly condemned for poaching, and an old carbineer dismissed from his regiment with a bad record against him.”20 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 roamabout the country everywhere, all restrictions against themhaving ceased.

19. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,268. Report of the commissioners sent by the department, March 11, 1792 (apropos of the insurrection of March 4).— Mortimer-Pernaux, i. 381. 20. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,268. Letters of several mayors, district administrators, cultivators of Velizy, Villadoublay, La Celle-Saint-Cloud, Mon- tigny, &c. November 12, 1791.—Letter of M. de Narbonne, January 13, 1792; of M. Sureau, justice of the peace in the canton of E´tampes, September 17, 1791.—Letter of Bruye`res-le-Chatel, January 28, 1792. The Application of the Constitution / 303

“For a year past,” write several parishes in the neighbourhood of Versailles, “we have seen no gendarmes except those who come with decrees,” and hence the multiplication of “murders and brigandage” between E´tampes and Versailles, on the highways and in the country. Bands of thirteen, fifteen, twenty, and twenty-two beggars rob the vineyards, enter farmhouses 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 Sep- tember, 1791, and, on the same day, a bourgeois and his wife are garotted and robbed. On the 22nd of September, near Saint-Re´mi- Honore´, eight bandits ransack the dwelling of a farmer. On the 25th of September, at Ville´rs-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 themat yonder fire.” Six similar outrages are committed by armed ruffians in dwelling-places, within a radius of fromthree to four leagues, accompanied with the threats of the chauffeurs.21 “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 monopolizers, and the superfluity of the rich the property of the poor! This is what the peasants say who devastate the forest of Bruye`res-le-Chatel: “We have neither wood, bread, nor work—necessity knows no law.”

21. 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.—[TR.] 304 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

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, ship- ments, 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 performtheir duties, and where every transaction in produce, even the most legal and the most serviceable, is subject to the caprice of a dozen villains whomthe 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 E´tampes, 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,22 grain-waggons are

22. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,203. Letter of the Directory of Cher, Au- gust 25, 1791.—F7, 3,240. Letter of the Directory of Haute Marne, November 6, 1791.—F7, 3,248. Proce`s-verbal of the members of the department of the North, March 18, 1791.—F7, 3,250. Proce`s-verbal of the municipal officers of Montreuil-sur-Mer, October 16, 1791.—F7, 3,265. Letter of the Directory of Seine Infe´rieure, July 22, 1791.—D. xxix. 4. Remonstrances of the municipalities assembled at Tortes, July 21, 1791. Petitions of the municipal officers of the districts of Dieppe, Cany, and Caudebec, July 22, 1791. The Application of the Constitution / 305 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 Hoˆtel-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, “Be`quelin, called Petit-Gueux,” the latter with his sabre 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-Infe´rieure, six thousand armed men belonging to the surrounding parishes forma deliberative armedbody; the better to establish their rights, they bring two cannon with themfastened 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. 306 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

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,23 at Gonesse, Dour- dan, Corbeil, Mennecy, Brunoy, Limours, Brie-Comte-Robert, and especially at E´tampes and Montlhe´ry, the holders of grain are compelled almost weekly, through the clamours 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,24 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 E´tampes, the people repeat that “they are sent for and paid by the flour-dealers”; at Montlhe´ry, that “they merely serve to arm citizens against each other”; at Limours, that “they make grain dearer.” All pretexts seemgood in this direction; the popular will is absolute, and the authorities complacently meet its decrees half-way. At Montlhe´ry, the municipal body orders the gendarmerie to remain

23. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,268 and 3,269, passim. 24. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,268 and 3,269, passim. Deliberation of the Directory of Seine-et-Oise, September 20, 1791 (apropos of the insurrection, September 16, at E´tampes).—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 Commis- sioners, March 4, 1792 (on the insurrection at Montlhe´ry, 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, &c. The Application of the Constitution / 307 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 Hoˆtel-de-Ville, led to the market-place, 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 neighbouring market, it carries its mayor along with it in spite of himself, as an official instrument which belongs to it.25 “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 himthat “he is getting to be an aristocrat.” “Aristocrat” and “the gallows” argument is irresistible, and all the more so because it is practically 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 himare demolished.At Montlhe´ry, a seeds- man, accused of mixing the flour of beans (twice as dear) with wheaten flour, is massacred in his own house. At E´tampes, the mayor who promulgates the law is cudgelled 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 E´tampes often contained fifteen or sixteen hundred sacks of flour; the week following this insurrection there were, at

25. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,268 and 3,269, passim.—Proce`s-verbal of the Municipality of Montlhe´ry, 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.” 308 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION most, sixty brought to it. At Montlhe´ry, 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.26 Drums roll constantly on the roads around Montlhe´ry, 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 themsomethingto 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. Useless pains. 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,27 subject grain to a forced reduction of price. Wheat becomes scarcer and dearer from month to month, rising in price fromtwenty-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 fromParis.”—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 fromattributing all this to their own insubordination; the magistrates are accused; these, in the eyes of the populace, are “in league with the monopolizers.” On this

26. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,268 and 3,269, passim. Reports of the gendarmerie, February 24, 1792, and the following days.—Letter of the Briga- dier of Limours, March 2; of the manager of the farm of Plessis-le-Comte, February 23. 27. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,268 and 3,269, passim.—Memorial to the National Assembly by the citizens of Rambouillet, September 17, 1792. The Application of the Constitution / 309 incline no stoppage is possible. Distress increases rage, and rage increases distress; and on this fatal declivity men are precipitated fromone 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 Montlhe´ry.28 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 en- campment, while signalmen stationed in the belfries of the surround-

28. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,268 and 3,269, passim. Proce`s-verbal of the Municipality of Montlhe´ry, February 27, 1792.—Roux and Buchez, 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, &c.)—Moniteur, sitting of February 15, 1792. 310 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION ing villages have only to sound the alarmto 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. Fromthis timeforth not only is the law which protects subsistences powerless against the disturbers of sale and circulation, but the Assembly actually sanctions their acts, since it decrees29 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 subsistences are for those who are disposed and able to take them. “You will be told,” says a petition,30 “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 ensure an uniform price for wheat throughout the Republic. For, there is no doubt about it, the purest patriotismdies out ( sic) when there is no bread to be had. . . . Re- sistance 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....Joinusand‘Ç a 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,31 a band of from four to five thousand men assume the name

29. Decree of September 3, 1792. 30. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,268 and 3,269. Petition of the citizens of Montfort-l’Amaury, Saint-Leger, Gros-Rouvre, Gelin, Laqueue, and Me´re´, to the citizens of Rambouillet. 31. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,230. Letter of an administrator of the district of Vendoˆme, with the deliberation of the commune of Vendoˆme, November 24, 1792. The Application of the Constitution / 311 of “Sovereign Power.” They go fromone market-town to another, to Saint-Calais, Montdoubleau, Blois, Vendoˆme, reducing the cost of provisions, their troop rolling up 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 reproduced, 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 contributes anything to the market passes (at home) for an aristocrat,32 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.33 It is admitted in the rural districts that each municipality has the right to isolate itself fromthe rest. It is admittedin the towns that each town has the right to derive its provisions fromthe country. It is admittedby 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

32. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,255. Letter of the Administrators of the Department of Seine-Infe´rieure, October 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.” 33. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,265. Letter of David, a cultivator, October 10, 1792.—Letter of the Department Administrators, October 13, 1792, &c.— 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 sumin the north.) 312 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 ship- wrecked beings without food, there is a reversion to a state of nature. The light tissue of habit and of rational ideas in which civilisation 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 himand through himis animalnecessity 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 whomRoland, Minister of the Interior, sends to Lyons, are able to see within a few days the carnival and the slaughter-house.34—On the one hand the peasants, all along the road, arrest everybody; the people regard every traveller 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 in 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 34. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,255. Letters of Bonnemant, September 11, 1792; of Laussel, September 22, 1792. The Application of the Constitution / 313 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. Re- spectable 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 The fear of starvation is only the sharper formof a moregeneral passion, which is the desire of possession, and the determination not to give up the possessions attained. No popular instinct had been longer, more rudely, more universally tried under the ancient re´- gime; 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 themas 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. 314 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

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.35 Here, probably, as elsewhere, arrangements had been made for an affecting 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 vine-dressers 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 themfromParis, or which emanatefrom 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 tax-payer happens to be found, he is not allowed to pay the dues; this seems a defection and almost treachery. An entry of three pun- cheons of wine having been made, they are stove in with stones, a

35. “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 vine-dressers burnt the archives and tax-offices and dragged an employe´ through the streets, shouting out at each street-lamp, “Let himbe hung!” The general sent to repress the outbreak entered the town only through a capitulation; the moment he reached the Hoˆtel-de-Ville a man of the Faubourg de Rome put his pruning-hook around his neck, exclaiming, “No more clerks where there is nothing to do!” The Application of the Constitution / 315 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 Hoˆtel-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-Etienne-en-Forez, Bertheás, a clerk in the excise office, falsely accused of monopolizing grain,36 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 to death. 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

36. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,203. Letter of the Directory of Cher, April 9, 1790.—Ibid., F7, 3,255. Letter of August 4, 1790. Verdict of the pre´sidial, November 4, 1790.—Letter of the Municipality of Saint-Etienne, August 5, 1790. 316 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 town37 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 tax-payers, 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.38 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 legists. 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 infil- trations of fraud; it repairs the dyke 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

37. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,248. Letter of M. Seńac de Meilhan, April 10, 1790.—Letter of the grands baillis, June 30, 1790. 38. Roux and Buchez, vi. 403. Report of Chabrond on the insurrection at Lyons, July 9 and 10, 1790.—Duvergier, “Collection des Dećrets.”—Decrees of August 4 and 15, 1790. The Application of the Constitution / 317 condemn delinquents, where public force dares not support the courts,39 where popular favour 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 authorised in Paris it will be necessary to authorise themthroughout the kingdom,” decides that it is best “to veil the statue of the Law.”40 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 fromsixteen to six sous.41 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

39. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,255. Letter of the Minister, July 2, 1790, to the Directory of Rhone-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.” 40. Roux and Buchez, vi. 545. Report of M. Muguet, July 1, 1790. 41. Proce`s-verbaux of the National Assembly. (Sitting of October 24, 1789.)—Decree of September 27, 1789, applicable the 1st of October. There are other modiﬁcations applicable on the 1st of January, 1790. 318 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

January, 1790, at Be´ziers, thirty-two employe´s, who had seized a quantity of contraband salt on the persons of armed smugglers,42 are pursued by the crowd to the Hoˆtel-de-Ville; the consuls decline to defend themand 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,43 the bourgeois militia refuse to give assistance to the employe´s, 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.44 Fromthe 1st of May, 1789, to the 1st of May, 1790, the general collections amount to one hundred and twenty-seven millions instead of one hundred and fifty millions; the dues and excise combined return only thirty-one, instead of fifty 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

42. Mercure de France, February 27, 1790. (Memorial 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. 43. “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.” 44. 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, its abolition will be secured. Elsewhere, smuggling is openly carried on by force; the people favour 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.”—Memorial to the National Assembly by M. Necker, July 21, 1790. The Application of the Constitution / 319 month of March, 1790,45 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 at last carried everything, 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 all topers.46 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 fromall 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

45. Decrees of March 21 and 22, 1790, applicable April 21 following.— Decrees of February 19 and March 2, 1791, applicable May 1 following. 46. De Goncourt, “La Socie´te´ Française pendant la Re´volution,” 204.— Maxime du Camp, “Paris, sa Vie et ses Organes,” vi. 11. 320 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION the face of so many outbreaks, any indirect taxation 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 tax-payer 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, whomhe 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 authorised 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 subdelegate, commissioner, collector, and clerk! Fromthe 1st of May, 1789, to the 1st of May, 1790, 47 the general returns, the taille and its accessories, the poll-tax, and “twentieths,”

47. “Compte des Revenus et De´penses au 1er Mai, 1789.”—Memorial of M. Necker, July 21, 1790.—Memorials presented by M. de Montesquiou, Sep- tember 9, 1791.—Comptes-rendus by the minister, Clavie`res, October 5, 1792, February 1, 1792.—Report of Cambon, February, 1793. The Application of the Constitution / 321 instead of yielding 161,000,000 francs, yield but 28,000,000 francs in the provinces which impose their own taxes (pays d’E´tats); 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 formthe 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 is48 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 Jan-

48. Boivin-Champeaux, 231. 322 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION uary 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.49 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.”50 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 authorised and prolonged by the Constituent Assembly, and all that is obtained fromthemis wrested fromthem. 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 patriotismthey 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

49. Mercure de France, May 28, 1791. (Sitting of May 22.) Speech of M. d’Allarde: “Burgundy has paid nothing belonging to 1790.” 50. Moniteur, sitting of June 1, 1790. Speech by M. Freteau.—Mercure de France, November 26, 1791. Report by Lafont-Ladebat. The Application of the Constitution / 323 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 1790,51 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 themthe municipal officers of three market-towns, come and declare to the town authorities “that for all taxes they will not pay more than forty-

51. “Archives Nationales,” H. 1453. Correspondence of M. de Bercheny, June 5, 1790, &c.—F7, 3,226. Letters of Chenantin, cultivator, November 7, 1792, also of the procureur-syndic, November 6.—F7, 3,202. Letter of the Min- ister 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 whomthere is no check.” 324 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

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 humoured. 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, whomthey 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 factories52 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 practised 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

52. Report of the Committee on Finances, by Ramel, 19th Floreál, year II. (The Constituent Assembly had fixed the real tax of a house at one-sixth of its letting value.) The Application of the Constitution / 325 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 per cent.; 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, 1789,53 bands of sixty men or more chop down the trees in the Bois de Boulogne and at Vincennes. In

53. Mercure de France, December 12, 1789.—“Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,268. Memorial of 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. 326 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

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.” 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;54 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 fromthe pond is drawn off to enable themto 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 Assem- bly issue three decrees and regulations, placing the forests under the supervision and protection of administrative bodies—the 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 favour 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,

54. 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 20, 1791. The Application of the Constitution / 327 sanction their inertia. Similarly, near Toulouse,55 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.”56 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 cancelled.” 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 Gov- ernment, 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 depredators go so far as to say that, since the Government no longer represses them, they act under its

55. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,219. Letter of the bailli of Virieu, January 26, 1792. 56. Mercure de France, December 3, 1791. (Letter from Sarrelouis, November 15, 1791.)—“Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,223. Letter of the Municipal Officers of Montargis, January 8, 1792. 328 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION authority.57 “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.—Com- munal 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 labourers, 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.58 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

57. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,268. Letter of the overseer of the national domains at Rambouillet, October 31, 1792.—Compte-rendu of the minister Cla- vie`res, February 1, 1793. 58. Decrees of August 14, 1792, June 10, 1793.—“Archives Nationales,” Missions des Repre´sentants, D. § 7. (Deliberation of the district of Troyes, 2 Ventose, an. III.)—At Thunelie`res, the drawing took place on the 10th Fruc- tidor, 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. Ab- stract 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.” The Application of the Constitution / 329 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 preva- lence 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 themthe rights of the majority. IV 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 systemis abolished let nothing remainof 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 seemto 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,59 on an estate spared

59. Mercure de France, January 7, 1790. (Chateau of Auxon, in Haute- Saone.)—“Archives Nationales,” F 7, 3,255. (Letter of the minister to the Di- 330 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 neighbours who come to the assistance of its inmates.—In other places, in the districts of Saint-Etienne 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 neighbourhood 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,60 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 informher 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 sabre, her armis cleft fromthe 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 rectory 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.) 60. Mercure de France, March 19, 1790. Letter fromAmiens, February 28. (Mallet-Dupan publishes in the Mercure only letters which are signed and authentic.) The Application of the Constitution / 331 succeeds the other almost without interruption, the fever encroach- ing 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 defence.— A report spreads61 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 honour 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, Ploe¨rmel, Rennes, Guingamp, and other villages. Everywhere, writes the Mayor of Nantes,62 “the country-people believe that in burning deeds and contracts they get rid of their debts; the very best of themconcur in this belief,” or let things take their

61. “Archives Nationales,” KK. 1105. (Correspondence of M. de Thiard; letters of Chevalier de Be´vy, 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). 62. “Archives Nationales,” KK. 1105. (Correspondence of M. de Thiard.) Letters of the Mayor of Nantes, February 16, 1790, of the Municipality of Redon, February 19, &c. 332 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 Ploe¨rmel 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 tumour makes its appearance at the same time at another point.63 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 fromAgen to Pe´rigueux and Cahors, extending over three departments.—Then, also, expectancy is the cre- ator, 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 Assem- bly have ordered deputations to set up the maypole64 and to ‘light up’ the chateaux.”—Farther, and quite according to custom, bandits,

63. Mercure de France, February 6 and 27, 1790. (Speech of M. de Foucault, sittings of February 2 and 6). —Moniteur (same dates). (Report of Gre´goire, February 9; speeches by MM. Salle´ de Chaux and de Noailles, February 9.)— Memorial of the deputies of the town of Tulle, drawn up by the Abbe´ Morellet (fromthe deliberations and addresses of eighty-three boroughs and cities in the province). 64. In allusion to the feudal customof paying seignorial dues on the first of May around a maypole. See further on.—[TR.] The Application of the Constitution / 333 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 neighbours 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 fromthe cure´, 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 cure´, 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 Ageńois: 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 Montau- ban and in Limousin are assaulted with firearms, and several are pillaged.—Bands of twelve hundred men swarm the country; “they 334 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 conformto the new code he is punished, and to the advantage of the new sovereigns. In Ageńois, a gentleman having paid the rent which was associated with his fief, the people take his receipt from him, mulct him in a sumequal to that which he paid, and comeunder 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. Every- body 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 pre´voˆte´s.65 In reply to this, the Assembly inflicts upon the parliament of Bor- deaux its disapprobation in the rudest manner, and enters upon the demolition of every judicial corporation.66 After this, the execution of all pre´votal decisions is adjourned. A few months later the As- sembly 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.67—New

65. Criminal courts without appeal.—[TR.] 66. Moniteur, sitting of March 4, 1790.—Duvergier, decrees of March 6, 1790, and August 6–10, 1790. 67. The address is dated February 11, 1793. This singularly comic document The Application of the Constitution / 335 conflagrations, as an inevitable consequence, kindle around live coals which have been imperfectly extinguished. In the district of Saintes,68 M. Dupaty, counsellor 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 systemorganized 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 fulfil 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 cham- parts, 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. would alone suffice to make the history of the Revolution perfectly comprehensible. 68. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,203. (Letters of the royal commissioner, April 30 and May 9, 1790.)—Letter of the Duc de Maille´, May 6.—Proce`s- verbaux of the department of administrators, November 12, 1790.—Moniteur, vi. 515. 336 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

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 himto Saint-Jean-d’Angely, and demandthe 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. La- tierce, 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 overspreads Brittany as it has spread over Limousin. This is owing to the will of the peasant being of another nature than our will, possessing a great deal more fixity and tenacity. When an idea obtains a hold on himit 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 spoliation, 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, 1791,69 bands again formin Brittany, owing to

69. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,225. Letter of the Directory fromIle-et- The Application of the Constitution / 337 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 themfor their timeand journey.” Such are the operations of two of the principal bands, one of themnumberingfifteen hundred men, around Dinan and St. Malo; for greater security they burn title-deeds in the chateaux of Saint-Tual, Besso, Beaumanoir, La Rivie`re, La Bellie`re, 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 fromthe steward, they oblige the mayor to give them his consent in writing; at Yvi- gnac, their chief, called upon to show the authority under which he acted, declares that “he is authorised by the general will of the populace of the nation.”70—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 fromMalestroit, 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 garrotted. The

Vilaine, January 30, 1791, and letter fromDinan, January 29.— Mercure de France, April 2 and 16, 1791. Letters fromRennes, March 20th; fromRedon, March 12. 70. So expressed in the proce`s-verbal. 338 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 (chauffe´). In the meantime the plate, linen, stuffs, jewellery, 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.71 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 themdown, the tocsin is at once sounded: a crowd of peasants, amounting to four or five thousand, arrives fromevery surrounding parish, armedwith 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. He´bray, de Fon-

71. 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, De- cember 7.)—Ibid., January 22, 29, 1791. (Letter fromM. de Clarac, January 18.) The Application of the Constitution / 339 tange, 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, instals himself in the Hoˆtel-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 tumultuary 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;72 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,73 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

72. December 17, 1790. 73. January 7, 1791. 340 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 Montcuq, is demolished at the same time. The abbey of Es- pagnac, 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 neighbouring departments.—In Creuse,74 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 formthe 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 thema waggon full of arms:this is for the revision and reconstitution of the ownership of the soil.—In Dordogne, 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 re`ve;75 any agreement to this end is forbidden; whoever shall transgress the new order of things, proprietor or farmer, shall be hung. Accord-

74. Revolutionary archives of the department of Creuse, by Duval. (Letter of the administrators of the department, March 31, 1791.)—“Archives Natio- nales,” F7, 3,200. (Deliberation of the Directory of the Department, May 12, 1791.—Proce`s-verbal of the municipality of La Souterraine, August 23, 1791.) 75. A sort of export duty.—[TR.] The Application of the Constitution / 341 ingly, the rural militia in the districts of Bergerac, Excideuil, Ribe´rac, 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 desistance; 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, or- ganizing 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 fromthemthe abolition of debts, and even the agrarian law. At Ribe´rac, which is invaded by the people of the neighbouring parishes, a village tailor, taking the catechismof the Constitution fromhis pocket, argues with the procureur-syndic, and proves to himthat 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, the nation is composed of all Frenchmen, 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 road, for every mob considers that this means immediate enjoyment, and enjoyment according to its own ideas. There is no care for neighbours or for consequences, even when imminent and 342 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION physical, and in twenty places the property which is usurped perishes in the hands of the usurpers. This voluntary destruction of property can be best observed in the third department, that of Corre`ze.76 Not only have the peasants here refused to pay rents fromthe beginning of the Revolution; not only have they “planted maypoles, supplied with iron hooks, to hang” the first one that dared to claimor 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 steep declivities, the consequences of such an operation may be imagined. Three leagues from Tulle, in a valley forming a semicircle, 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 dyke. The proprietor, M. de Sedie`res, 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

76. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,204.—Letters fromthe Directory of the Department, June 2, 1791; September 8 and 22.—Letter from the Minister of Justice, May 15, 1791.—Letter fromM. de Lentilhac, September2.—Letter from M. Melon-Padon, Royal Commissioner, September 8.—Mercure de France, May 14, 1791. (Letter of an eye-witness, M. de Loyac, April 25, 1791.) The Application of the Constitution / 343 and hardly ever successful, are no defence 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 Corre`ze. 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 dykes begins as the month of May approaches. This operation continues unopposed on a vast pond, a league and a half fromthe 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 Cor- re`ze,77 M. de Saint-Victour, has been absent for five years. Fromthe 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 themwere collected. Moreover,

77. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,204. Letters fromM. de Saint-Victour, September 25, October 2 and 10, 1791.—Letter from the steward of his estate, September 18. 344 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 neighbouring 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 levellers; 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 neighbourhood, the inhabitants of which came and closed it up. Five other ponds belonging to himare demolishedin the course of the two following weeks; fish to the value of fromfour 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 buckler 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 The Application of the Constitution / 345 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 labourer 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 spoliation with proscriptions. 9 CHAPTER III =

Development of the ruling passion— I. Attitude of the nobles—Their moderate resistance— II. Workings of the popular imagination with respect to them—The monomania of suspicion—The nobles distrusted and treated as enemies—Situ- ation of a gentleman on his domain—M. de Bussy— III. Domiciliaryvisits— The fifth jacquerie—Burgundyand Lyonnaisin 1791—M. de Chaponayand M. Guillin-Dumoutet— IV. The nobles obliged to leave the rural districts— Theytake refuge in the towns—The dangers theyincur—The eighty-twogen- tlemen of Caen— V. Persecutions in private life— VI. Conduct of officers— Their self-sacrifice—Disposition of the soldiery—Military outbreaks—Spread and increase of insubordination—Resignation of the officers— VII. Emigration and its causes—The first laws against the emigrants— VIII. Attitude of the nonjuring priests—How theybecome distrusted—Illegal arrests bylocal administrations—Violence or complicityof the National Guards—Outrages bythe 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 centre— IX. General state of opinion—The three convoys of nonjuring priests on the Seine—Psychological aspect of the Revolution.

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 defence 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

346 The Application of the Constitution / 347 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 example 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,1 “we had the honour 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 Na- tional Assembly.—In Arles,2 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,

1. Moniteur, xi. 763. (Sitting of March 28, 1792.)—“Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,235. (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.) 2. “Archives Nationales,” F5, 3,198. Proce`s-verbal 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. 348 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

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 Constitu- tion, 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 neighbours (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 Com- tat, flocked there under the pretext of maintaining liberty and of forestalling the counterrevolution, but, in reality, to pillage 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 counterrevolutionists. Those who are subject to the license- tax came in crowds to the Hoˆtel-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 flattered by such different hopes.” In short, during more than thirty months, and under a steady fire of threats, outrages, and spoliations, the nobles who remain in France neither commit nor undertake any hostile act against the Govern- ment that persecutes them. None of them, not even M. de Bouille´, 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 labours 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 Vendeé for Languedoc and Provence; The Application of the Constitution / 349 and this person is a bourgeois, Froment of Nismes.3 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 Jale`s, find, not a stronghold, but a temporary asylum, where they never succeed in transforming their inclinations into determina- tions.4—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 centre, while at the centre the King, their hereditary general, a captive in the hands of the people, commands them to be resigned and to do nothing. More- over, like other Frenchmen, they have been brought up in the philosophy of the eighteenth century. “Liberty is so precious,” wrote the Duc de Brissac,5 “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

3. “Me´moire” of M. Me´rilhon, for Froment, passim.—Report of M. Alquier, p. 54.—De Dammartin, i. 208. 4. De Dammartin, i. 208. They would exclaim to the Catholic peasants: “Allons, mes enfans, 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 Uze`s, and withdraw into their mountains on the first sign of the approach of the National Guard. 5. Dauban, “La Demagogie a` Paris,” p. 598: Letter of M. de Brissac, August 25, 1789. 350 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION there are not enough post-horses for many days to supply the emigrants who are coming back.6 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 neighbours, had their property and persons been respected, they might have accepted the new re´gime 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 ministerial favour. Little does it matter to them that power, whether ministerial or popular, has changed hands: they are not accustomed to its favours, 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.7

6. Moniteur, x. 339. (Journal de Troyes, and a letter from Perpignan, No- vember, 1791.) 7. 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, ﬁ- The Application of the Constitution / 351

II Popular passion, unfortunately, is a blind power, and, for lack of enlightenment, suffers itself to be guided by spectral illusions. Imagi- nary conceptions work, and work in conformity with the structure of the excited brain which has given birth to them. What if the ancient re´gime 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 foreigners; 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,8 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 nally, which allows no oppressor to go unpunished, and which does not crush peaceable citizens beneath the weight of the chains it has broken.” 8. Rivarol, “Me´moires,” p. 367. (Letter of M. Servan, published in the “Ac- tes des Apoˆtres.”) 352 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

English travelling-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 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 inmates happens to flash in the pan; a peasant who is aiming at them says to his neighbour, “Give me a twenty-four-sous piece, and I will plant both my balls in their bodies!” Finally, M. de Gilliers, who was absent, attending a baptism, returns with the Royal Chas- seurs 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.9 In the month

9. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,257. Official reports, investigations, and correspondence in relation to the affair of M. de Bussy (October, 1790). The Application of the Constitution / 353 of July, 1789, during the jacquerie in Maˆconnais, 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 rumour 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 Cour- celles.—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 354 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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.10 “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 Bois-d’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 Se´mur, 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 cure´ 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

10. 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. (Of- ficial statement of the Justice of the Peace of Vitteaux, April 28.) The Application of the Constitution / 355 he meditates no wrong to the National Guard or to the people. He proposed, at the outset, to the volunteers of Maˆcon 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 neighbouring parishes, and keep outside the enclosure so as not to give offence. 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 councillor 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 356 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 neighbourhood 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 sabres, left there in passing by M. de Bussy’s old dragoons: to these must be added two double-barrelled 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 awk- wardness or carelessness of so many inexperienced National Guards, a stray ball reaches a farmhouse 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 neighbouring towns. The municipal body of Valence, hearing that two youths had ordered coats made “of a colour 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 The Application of the Constitution / 357 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 Conde´, with forty thousand men, will come by the way of Pont Saint-Esprit in Languedoc, rally the disaffected of Carpentras and of the Jale`s 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, Chalons, Maˆcon, and others beside. On the strength of this the municipal body of Maˆcon, “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 neighbouring parishes. M. de Bussy, on being told that they were springing over 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 Maˆcon. A trial takes place, with depositions and interrogatories, in which the 358 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 blinder 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 Maˆcon, “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 He would be nothing but a hostage there. Alone against thousands, sole survivor and representative of an abolished re´gime which all detest, it is the noble against whom everybody turns whenever a political shock seems to shake the new re´gime. 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 nonjuring11 priests and ci-devant nobles

11. “Archives Nationales,” DXXIX. 4. Letter of M. Belin-Chatellenot (near Arnay-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 The Application of the Constitution / 359 are exposed to the horrors of persecution.” Bands forcibly enter houses to seize arms: Commarin, Grosbois, Montculot, Chaudenay, Creánce´, Toisy, Chatellenot, and other houses are thus visited, and several are sacked. During the night of June 26–27, 1791, at the chateau of Creánce´, “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-Creánce´, 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 neighbourhood, 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 cure´, whether he had formerly exacted fines, and finally, whether any of the inhabitants had any complaint to make completest 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 offence. 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,’” &c.—Ibid., F7, 3,229. Letter of the Directory of the Department of Marne, July 13, 1791. (Searches by the National Guard in chateaux and the disarmament 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. 360 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 practised 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 neighbouring 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,12 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 Mora- neé, 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

12. “Archives Nationales,” DXXIX. 4. Letters of the Administrators of the Department of Rhoˆne-et-Loire, July 6, 1791. (M. Vilet is one of the signers.)— Mercure de France, October 8, 1791. The Application of the Constitution / 361 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 Moraneé, 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 rumour 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....Theofficers 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.—Mean- 362 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION while 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 Baye`re, 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.13 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 neighbourhood. 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 Poleymieux, along with two other bodies in their scarfs, 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,

13. Mercure de France, August 20, 1791, the article by Mallet-Dupan. “The details of the picture I have just sketched were all furnished me by Madame Dumoutet herself.” I am “authorised by her signature to guarantee the accuracy of this narrative.” The Application of the Constitution / 363 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 neighbourhood, 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, clamour, incendiarism, robbery, and murder had aroused in them not only the cruel instincts of the savage, but the carnivorous appetites of the 364 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION brute; some of them, seized by the gendarmerie at Chasselay, had roasted the dead man’s arm and dined upon it.14—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 de- pendencies, 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.”15

IV 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

14. Mercure de France, August 20, 1791, the article by Mallet-Dupan. “The proceedings instituted at Lyons confirmed this cannibal banquet.” 15. The letter of the Department ends with this either naı¨ve or ironical expression: “You have one triumph to complete, that of the obedience and submission of the people to the law.” The Application of the Constitution / 365 hundred gentlemen, who were threatened on their estates, sought refuge with their families in Caen;16 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 cure´ of Saint-Loup, the great bloodhound of the aristocrats, and all of them very suspicious persons, harbouring the worst intentions.”—Thus denounced and singled out, it is evident that they can no longer sleep tranquilly: moreover, now that their addresses are published, they are openly threatened with domiciliary visits and violence. As to the administrative authorities, their interference cannot be depended 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,17 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 defence of the oppressed, the Constitution is a dead letter.—Hence it is that the refugees, finding protection only in

16. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,200. See documents relating to the affair of November 5, 1791, and the events which preceded it or followed it, and among others “Lettres du Directoire et du Procureur-syndic du Department”; Pe´tition et Me´moire pour les De´teńus”; Lettres d’un Te´moin,” M. de Morant.— Moniteur, x. 356. “Proce`s-verbal de la Municipalite´ de Caen” and of the “Direc- toire du De´partement,” xi. 164, 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. G—d de Pontećoulant, President of the Department Directory, February 3, 1792.—Proclamation by the Directory. 17. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,200. Letter of September 26, 1791.—Letter found on one of the arrested gentlemen. “A cowardly bourgeoisie, directors in cellars, a clubbist municipality, waging the most illegal war against us.” 366 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 favour. 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 Co- blentz, 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 enrol, and of whom they demanded his opinions. He had stated that he was in favour 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 cure´ 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 The Application of the Constitution / 367 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 neighbouring 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 sabre 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 Saffrey. 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’He´ricy, 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. Ac- cording 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 Hoˆtel-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 counterrevolution. The uproar against them is terrible. “To keep 368 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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’He´ricy—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 Hoˆtel-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 recognising 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, misun- derstood, 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.— The Application of the Constitution / 369

Neither in the country nor in the town18 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 Prot- estants and vagabonds during the worst years of the ancient re´gime. “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 of them and who abuse the use of them? Why should one be on an equality for purposes of payment, and distinguished only for purposes of annoyance and insult?”—He has spoken right, and that which rules henceforth is an aristocracy in an inverse sense, contrary to the law, and yet more contrary to nature. For, by a violent inversion, the lower grades in the graduated scale of civilisation and culture now are found up- permost, while the superior grades are found undermost. The Con- stitution 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.

18. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,200. Letter of the Attorney-General of Bayeux, May 14, 1702, 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 neighbouring districts, and who have been forced to leave their ﬁresides after having been, or fearing to become, victims of religious intolerance or of the threats of factions and of brigands.” 370 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

V 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,19 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 neighbour, 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 Car- thusian 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 bought in, under notarial sanction, a church which was sold by the district, along with the ornaments and objects of worship it contained, the mayor and municipal offi-

19. Mercure de France, June 4, 1790 (letter from Cahors, May 17, and an Act of the Municipality, May 10, 1790). The Application of the Constitution / 371 cers, 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.”20 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.21—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-Honore´, 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

20. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,223. Letter of Comte Louis de Beaumont, November 9, 1791. His letter, in a very moderate tone, thus ends: “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.” 21. Mercure de France, January 7, 1702. 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 ensure 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 pretence 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.” 372 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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.”22 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 recognised; there is a gathering, and the cry is soon heard, “Down with Mirabeau- Tonneau (barrel-Mirabeau)!”23 “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 overpolished and too worldly, the overexcited 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

22. De Ferrie`res, ii. 268 (April 19, 1791). 23. De Montlosier, ii. 307, 309, 312. The Application of the Constitution / 373 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. “Aristo- crat” 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.”24—The nobles must beware of defending their honour in the usual way and of meeting an insult with a challenge! At Castelnau, near Cahors,25 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 lantern!” 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

24. Moniteur, vi. 556. Letter of M. d’Aymar, commodore, November 18, 1790. 25. Mercure de France, May 28, and June 16, 1791 (letters from Cahors and Castelnau, May 18). 374 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION bayonets. His brother receives a sabre-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 Na- tional Guards from Cahors arrive to reinforce the besiegers. The house is taken, and the guardsman, escaping across the fields, sprains his ancle 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 offence, knows no other punishment than death. At Tulle, M. de Massy,26 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

26. 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 manoeuvre. He was accused of treason to the nation on account of this, and obliged to leave Tulle for several months.—“Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,204. Extract from the minutes of the tribunal of Tulle, May 10, 1791. The Application of the Constitution / 375 the three administrative bodies, is at once massacred.—At Brest, two antirevolutionary 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.27 VI 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. With the exception of a few fops, frequenters of drawing-rooms, and the court favourites 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

27. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,215. “Proce`s-verbal des Officiers Munici- paux de Brest,” June 23, 1791. 376 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION characters and minds of the highest order.”28 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 meagre 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 favours29 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 honour 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 unrecognised nobility. Un- der a polished, brilliant, and sometimes frivolous exterior, they have

28. “Me´moires de Cuvier” (“Eloges Historiques,” by Flourens), i. 177. Cu- vier, who was then in Havre (1788), had pursued the higher studies in a German administrative school. “M. de Sarville,” he says, “an officer in the Artois regiment, has one of the most 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.” 29. De Dammartin, 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 men.’”—M. de la Rochejacquelein, after his great success in La Vendeé, said: “I hope that the King, when once he is restored, will give me a regiment.” He aspired to nothing more (“Me´moires de Madame de la Roche- jacquelein”).—Cf. “Un Officier royaliste au Service de la Re´publique,” by M. de Bezancenet, in the letters and biography of General de Dommartin, killed in the expedition to Egypt. The Application of the Constitution / 377 a serious soul; the old sentiment of honour 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, fulfil 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 extemporised bourgeois municipal body,30 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 folded31—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

30. Correspondence of MM. de Thiard, de Caraman, de Miran, de Bercheny, &c., above cited, passim.—Correspondence of M. de Thiard, May 5, 1790: “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.” 31. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,248, 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. 378 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 cartouch, 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 theatre, 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.32 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 wit- ticisms. 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 vol-

32. 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. The Application of the Constitution / 379 unteer enlistments “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.”33 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,34 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 Penthie`vre “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 Eure-et-Loir, the dragoons,35 with sabre 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- Geńe´ral” 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

33. “De Dammartin,” 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 Crance´, an old musketeer and one of the future “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). 34. “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.” 35. “Archives Nationales,” H. 1453. Correspondence of M. de Bercheny, July 12, 1790. 380 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 laboured 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.36 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

36. “Me´moire justificatif” (by Gre´goire), on behalf of two soldiers, Emery and Delisle.—De Bouille´, “Me´moires.”—De Dammartin. i. 128, 144.—“Ar- chives Nationales,” KK. 1105. Correspondence of M. de Thiard, July 2 and 9, 1790.—Moniteur, sittings of September 3 and June 4, 1790. The Application of the Constitution / 381 ask for. A few months after this fresh complaints arise, and there is a new verification: an ensign, accused of malversation and whom they wished to hang, is tried in their presence; he is clearly irresponsible; 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 cal- culators, 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 the completest 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 mortifi- cations and humiliations, and, as the climax of horror, commanders slaughtered under the eyes and almost in the arms of their own soldiers.” It is much worse after the July Federation. Regaled, caressed, and indoctrinated at the clubs, their delegates, inferior officers and privates, return to the regiment Jacobins; and henceforth correspond 382 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION with the Jacobins of Paris, “receiving their instructions and reporting to them.”37—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 recognise a sublieutenant sent to it. “Every day the minister’s cabinet is filled with soldiers who are deputed 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,38 there is

37. De Bouille´, 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 Roux and Buchez, 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 (de´sacquer). 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.” 38. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,215. Letters of the Royal Commissioners, September 27, October 1, 4, 8, 11, 1790. “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, The Application of the Constitution / 383 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 Na- tional Assembly itself. The latter, after remonstrating in vain, is obliged not only not to take rigorous measures, but again to revise its laws.39 From this time forth, I cannot enumerate the constant outbreaks in the fleet and in the army.—Authorised 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. Clamours, 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.40—They have no scruples in relation to him. Present or absent, a noble officer must 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.” 39. 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 a` la lanterne!’ The mob have set up a gibbet before the house of M. de Marigny, major-general of marines; he has given in his resignation. M. d’Albert tenders his resignation.”—Ibid., June 18, 1791 (letter from Dunkirk, June 3). 40. De Dammartin, i. 222, 219. Mercure de France, September 3, 1791. (Sit- ting of August 23.)—Cf. Moniteur (same date). “The Ancient Re´gime,” p. 377. 384 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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. Fre´teau, 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.41—Others depart at the end of the

41. Marshal Marmont, “Me´moires,” i. 24. “The sentiment I entertained for The Application of the Constitution / 385

Constituent Assembly, “because they are afraid of 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.42 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,”43 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, the person of the King is difficult to define....(Itwas) 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.” 42. De Dammartin, i. 179. See the details of these resignations (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. 43. Rousset, “Les Volontaires de 1791 a` 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. 386 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION drive away, imprison, or murder their officers, and especially the nobles.—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 battle-field and even in the ministerial offices of Carnot.

VII It is, accordingly, necessary that the officers and nobles should go away, should go abroad; and not only they, but their families. “Gentlemen who have scarcely six hundred livres income set out on foot,”44 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, had not been put in practice, that crimes committed by the mob are the judgments of heaven, 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 informations,” to the denunciations of “their corrupted domestics, to domiciliary visits” prompted by the commonest street rumour, “to arbitrary imprisonments by the Com-

44. Mercure de France, March 5, June 4, September 3, October 22, 1791. (Articles by Mallet-Dupan.)—Ibid., April 14, 1792. More than six hundred naval officers resigned after the mutiny of the squadron at Brest. “Twenty-two grave insurrectionary acts in the ports 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....Itisnotnecessary 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.” The Application of the Constitution / 387 mittee 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 enemyof the nation. After this representation of malcontents as so many conspirators, every crime committed against them has been legitimated in public opinion. 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....Wasitforeseen that, at the end of two years, France, teeming with laws, with magistrates, with courts, with citizen-guards, bound by solemn oaths in the defence 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 Assembly45 trebled their real and personal

45. Duvergier, “Decrees of August 1–6, 1791; February 9–11, 1792; March 388 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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-Dupan, exclaims,46 “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 a 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 spoliation! 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

30 and April 8, 1792; July 24–28, 1792; March 28 and 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. 46. Mercure de France, February 18, 1792. The Application of the Constitution / 389 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. VIII The ruling passion flings itself on all obstacles, even those placed by itself across its own track. Through a vast usurpation the in- credulous minority, 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.47 In vain does he confine

47. 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 nonjurors 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 390 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION himself to his special and recognised 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 themselves, 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, Loze`re, Deux Seˆvres and Vendeé, Finiste`re, Morbihan, and Coˆtes-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;48 that disaffection, which thus far had only 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.” 48. On these spontaneous brutal acts of the Catholic peasants, cf. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,236 (Loze`re, 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 cure´, calls upon the municipality to proceed to his installation. “The ceremony could not take place, owing to the hootings 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 impos- The Application of the Constitution / 391 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 unskilful, 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 grey robes, more than forty thousand priests, over thirty thousand nuns, sibility 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 cure´. 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 cure´, Richard, attempting to ring them himself, the people threaten him with ill-treatment if he runs the risk.—Sep- tember 8, 1791. Letter from the cure´ of Fau, district of Saint-Che´ly. “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 cure´ 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 hootings. If we go out we are threatened with cowardly assassination, and with being beaten with clubs.”—F7, 3,235 (Bas-Rhin, letter from the Directory of the Department, April 9, 1792): “Ten out of eleven, at least, of the Catholics refuse to recognise sworn priests.” 392 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION and several thousand monks, but also the orthodox that are anywise fervent, 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 favours 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 battue 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 29,49 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 authorised 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 offence, without trial, nonjurors 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.50

49. 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. 50. Lallier, “Le District de Machecoul,” p. 261, 263.—“Archives Natio- nales,” F7, 3,234. 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, 3,264. Act of the Council-General of Corre`ze (July 16, 17, 18, 1792) to place in arrest all nonjuring priests.—Between these two dates, acts of various kinds and of increasing severity are found in nearly all the departments against the nonjurors. The Application of the Constitution / 393

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, endeavour to aggravate them in their application; and there is nothing strange in their animosity. Commerce is at a stand-still, 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,51 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 neighbouring 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 centre of counterrevolutionary gatherings. Moreover, in the houses which were broken into, the furniture was smashed, casks stove in, and the

51. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,250. Oﬃcial statement by the directory of the department, March 18, 1791, with all the documents in relation thereto.— F7, 3,200. Letter of the Directory of Calvados, June 13, 1792, with the interrogations. The damages are estimated at 15,000 livres. 394 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 satiates on the proscribed class its customary instincts of cruelty, pillage, wanton- ness, 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 shivered to pieces.52 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 cure´, 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 neighbouring 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.53 Stripped, bruised,

52. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,234. An Act of the Directory of Lot, Feb- ruary 24, 1792, on the disturbances at Marmande.—F7, 3,239, 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, 3,219. Letter of the royal commissioner at the tribunal of Castelsarrasin, March 5, 1792.—F7, 3,203. 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.” 53. Memorial by Camille Jourdan (Sainte-Beuve, “Causeries du Lundi,” xii. The Application of the Constitution / 395 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, Uze`s, Alais, Nismes, Carpentras, and in most of the towns or burgs of Gard, Vaucluse, and l’He´rault, 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.”54 Their pretext is the protection of sworn priests; and for twenty months, beginning with April, 1791, they operate to this effect “with heavy knotted clubs garnished with iron points,” without counting sabres 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

250). The guard refuses to give any assistance, coming too late and merely “to witness the disorder, never to repress it.” 54. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,217. Letters of the cure´ of Uze`s, January 29, 1792; of the cure´ of Alais, April 5, 1792; of the administrators of Gard, July 28, 1792; of the procureur-syndic, M. Griolet, July 2, 1792; of Castanet, former gendarme, August 25, 1792; of M. Griolet, September 28, 1792.—Ibid., F7, 3,223. Petition by MM. Thueri and Deve`s 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, procureur-syndic, August 23, 1791; Act of the Department, August 9, 1791; Petition of the inhabitants of Courmonterral, Au- gust 25, 1791. 396 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION to death on the spot. Besides this, the band also works by day in the streets, lashes the women, enters the churches sabre 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 Nismes, under the leadership of a patriotic dancing-master, not content with “decreeing proscriptions, killing, scourging, and often murdering,” these new champions of the Gallician 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 defence 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 neighbouring 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.55

55. 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....Theonly 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.” The Application of the Constitution / 397

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 reestablish the salt-tax, the excise, feudal dues, tithes, and to retake national property already sold and resold, with the aid of the gentry who have not left, or who have returned, and the connivance of nonjuring 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,56 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,57 his wife also, and likewise his mother; and if he, exceptionally, does not think this of consequence,

56. 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. 57. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,225. Letter of the Directory of Ile-et-Vi- laine, 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 theywould not fail to cause at Easter. ” 398 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 nonjuror, who is the only one able to give valid ab- solutions. 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 nonjurors 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 nonjurors, 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,58 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,59 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

58. Moniteur, xi. 420. (Sitting of February 18, 1792.) Report by M. Cahier, Minister of the Interior. 59. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,250. Deposition of the municipal officers of Gosnay and Hesdiguel (district of Bethune), 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, 3,225. Letter of the Directory of Ile-et-Vilaine, March 24, 1792, and official statement of the commissioners for the district of Vitre´; letter of the same directory, April 21, 1792, and report of the commissioners sent to Acigne´, April 6. The Application of the Constitution / 399 neighbouring parish, another band operates in the same fashion in the houses of the mayor and of the old cure´, 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 consequence of their very violence until they form bands of two thousand men, 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 counsellors 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 that they themselves may not be pillaged or hung. The same spectacle presents itself in Mayenne, in Orne, in Moselle, and in the Landes.60 These, however, are but isolated irruptions, and very mild; in the south and in the centre, the plague is apparent in an immense leprous spot, which extending from Avignon to Perigueux, and from Auril- lac to Toulouse, suddenly overspreads, scarcely with any break, ten departments—Vaucluse, Arde`che, Gard, Cantal, Corre`ze, Lot, Dor- dogne, Gers, Haute-Garonne, and He´rault. 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,61 the commander of a village National Guard demands

60. 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.” 61. Mercure de France, April 7, 1792. Letters written from Aurillac.—“Ar- chives Nationales,” F7, 3,202. 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. Du- 400 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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’Humie`res, 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 Nios- sel, a former lieutenant of a criminal court, put in prison for his safety, is dragged out, and his severed head is thrown on a dungheap; 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,62 it is ranthon, 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.” 62. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,219. 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. The Application of the Constitution / 401 also “against nonjurors and their followers” that the insurrection has begun. This is promoted by the fact that in various parishes the constitutional cure´ 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,63 and the expense of the expedition may be defrayed by the aristocrats. Not merely the upholders of nonjurors 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 na-

63. The following are some examples of this rustic creed:— At Lunel, four thousand 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, 3,223. Letter of the municipal body of Lunel, November 4, 1791.) At Uze`s 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 humour, 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 Dammartin, i. 195.) In relation to the siege of Nantes by the Vendeáns: “An old woman said to me, ‘Oh, yes, I was there, at the siege. My sister and myself had brought along our sacks. We were quite sure of their entering at least as far as the Rue de la Casserie’” (the street of jewellers’ shops). (Michelet, v. 211.) 402 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION tion, 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 Tou- louse 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 Roqueferrie`re, 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, authorise 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,64 “under the pretext of driving away nonjuring priests, frequent mobs pillage and rob whatever comes in their way. . . . All the grain that is found in houses with weathercocks is sequestrated.” Rustics turn the forests to account as communal property, 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 Corre`ze, fifteen thousand armed peasants, who have come to Tulle to disarm and drive off the supporters of the nonjurors, break ev-

64. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,209. 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, 3,204. 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.” The Application of the Constitution / 403 erything 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 wain- scotings, “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,”65 their masters 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 faubourg. 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

65. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,223. 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 Barrie´ (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. 404 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 sabre-strokes, all who have been proscribed in their assemblies,” without any officer or advocate daring to 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 re´gime, 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 centre is elsewhere, around Nismes, 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.66 Looking at the three departments of Gard, Bouches-de- Rhoˆne, 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 reproduce 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 Nismes, Sommie`res, Uze`s, Alais, Jalais, and Saint-Hippolyte, title-deeds are burnt, proprietors put to ran-

66. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,217. Official reports of the commissioners of the Department of Gard, April 1, 2, 3, and 6, 1792, and letter of April 6. One landowner is taxed 100,000 francs.—Ibid., F7, 3,223. Letter of M. Dupin, prosecuting attorney of l’He´rault, 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 Dammartin, ii. 85. At Uze`s, 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. The Application of the Constitution / 405 som, 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,67 given up to the bands of Marseilles and of the Comtat, see confiscations and massacres approaching.—Around the commandant, who has received the order to evacuate Arles,68 “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 Rhoˆne 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 sabre committee” disposes of lives, proscribes, and executes: it is the reign of sailors, porters, and the dregs of the populace.—At Avignon,69 it is that of simple brigands, incendiaries, and assassins, who, six months previously, converted the Glacie`re into a charnel-house. They return in triumph and state that “this time the Glacie`re 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 neighbouring

67. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,196. Official statements of Augier and Fa- bre, administrators of the Bouches-du-Rhoˆne, sent to Avignon, May 11, 1792. (The reappearance of Jourdain, Mainvielle, and the assassins of La Glacie`re took place April 29.). 68. De Dammartin, ii. 63. Portalis, “ll est temps de parler” (pamphlet), passim. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 7,090. Memorial of the commissioners of the municipal administration of Arles, year iv., Nivose 22. 69. Mercure de France, May 19, 1792. (Sitting of May 4.) Petition of forty inhabitants of Avignon at the bar of the Legislative Assembly.—“Archives Na- tionales,” F7, 3,195. Letter of the royal commissioners at the tribunal of Apt, March 15, 1792; official report of the municipality, March 21; Letters of the Directory of Apt, March 23 and 28, 1792. 406 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION towns dare not entertain emigrants. In fact, from this time forth, both departments throughout Vaucluse and Bouches-de-Rhoˆne 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”; and 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 Rhoˆne, awaiting a moment of respite to cross the river and take refuge in the neighbouring department.70 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, spoliation, 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 old 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 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 is passing the frontier, 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 Ven-

70. “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, 3,217. Letter of the Justice of the Peace at Roque-Maure, October 31, 1792. The Application of the Constitution / 407 deé 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,71 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 sabres, 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. We can judge of this by one example. On the 31st of August, 1792,72 eight thousand nonjuring 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 tempest of “yells, blas- phemies, 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.

71. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,246. Oﬃcial report of the municipality of Metz (with supporting documents), May 15, 1792. 72. “Me´moires de l’Abbe´ Baton,” one of the priests of the third convoy (a bishop appointed from Se´ez), p. 233. 408 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

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 sig- naled, 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, and carefully watched. Boats filled with volunteers and peasants row around it uttering insults and threats: in the neighbouring 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 favourable 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 vise´ 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 lantern!” is heard, and, to save them, National Guards are obliged to conduct them to prison in the centre of a circle of bayonets.—It must be noted that these madmen are “at bottom the kind- est 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 The Application of the Constitution / 409 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 Lyons73 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 (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, overtaxed 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 overexcited and

73. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,225. Letter of citizen Bonnemant, commissioner to minister Roland, September 11, 1792. 410 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 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 but 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. Then, he makes a spring, 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.— So France, exhausted by fasting under the monarchy, made drunk by the bad drug of the Social-Contract, and 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 twitchings of her discordant organs. At this time she has traversed the period of joyous madness, and is about to enter upon the period of sombre 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 FRENCH REVOLUTION 0-

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

HIPPOLYTE TAINE

Translated by John Durand

VOLUME III

LIBERTY FUND Indianapolis This book is published by Liberty Fund, Inc., a foundation established to encourage study ofthe ideal ofa society offree and responsible individuals.

Printed in the United States ofAmerica 02 03 04 05 06 C 54321 02 03 04 05 06 P 54321

Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Taine, Hippolyte, 1828–1893. [Origines de la France contemporaine. English. Selections] The French Revolution / Hippolyte Taine; translated by John Durand. p. cm. “The French Revolution is a translation ofLa Re´volution, which is the second part ofTaine’s Origines de la France contemporaine”—T.p. verso. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-86597-126-9 (alk. paper) ISBN 0-86597-127-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. France—History—Revolution, 1789–1799. I. Title. DC148.T35 2002 944.04—dc21 2002016023

Liberty Fund, Inc. 8335 Allison Pointe Trail, Suite 300 Indianapolis, Indiana 46250-1684 9 CONTENTS =

Preface / xv

BOOK FIFTH Establishment of the Revolutionary Government Chapter I / 841 I. Weakness of Former Governments—Energy of the new government— The despotic creed and instincts of the Jacobin— II. Contrast between his words and his acts—How he dissimulates his change of front—The Con- stitution of June, 1793—Its promises of freedom— III. Primary Assem- blies—Proportion of Absentees—Number of Primary Assemblies—Una- nimity of the voters—Their motives for accepting the Constitution— Pressure brought to bear on voters—Choice of Delegates— IV. They reach Paris—Precautions taken against them—Constraints and Seduc- tions— V. They make their profession of Jacobin faith—Their part in the Feˆte of August 10th—Their enthusiasm— VI. Manoeuvres of the “Moun- tain”—The Jacobin Club on the eve of August 11th—Session of the Con- vention on the 11th of August—The Delegates initiate Terror—Popular consecration of the Jacobin dictatorship— VII. Eﬀect of this manoeuvre— Extent and Manifesto of the departmental insurrection—Its fundamental weakness—The mass of the population inert and distrustful—The small number of Girondists—Their lukewarm adherents—Scruples of fugitive deputies and insurgent administrators—They form no central government—They leave military authority in the hands of the Convention— Fatal progress of their concessions —Withdrawal of the departments one by one—Palinode of the compromised authorities—Eﬀect of administrative habits—Failings and illusions of the Moderates—Opposite character of the Jacobins— VIII. The last local resistances—Political orthodoxy of the insurgent towns—They stipulate but one condition—Reasons of State for granting this—Party arguments against it— IX. The rebel cities vi / Contents

crushed—Bordeaux—Marseilles—Lyons—Toulon— X. Destruction of the Girondist party—Proscription of the Deputies of the “Right”—Im- prisonment of the 73—Execution of the 21—Execution, suicide, or ﬂight of the rest— XI. Institutions of the Revolutionary Government—Its principle, object, proceedings, tools, and structure—The Committee of Public Safety—Subordination of the Convention and ministry—The use of the Committee of General Security and the Revolutionary Tribunal—Admin- istrative centralization—Representatives on Mission, National Agents and Revolutionary Committees—Law of Le`se-majesty—Restoration and Ag- gravation of the institutions of the old monarchy.

BOOK SIXTH. The Jacobin Programme Chapter I / 901 I. Programme of the Jacobin Party—Abstract principle and spontaneous development of the theory— II. The Jacobin conception of Society—The Contrat-Social.—Total surrender of the Individual to the Community— Everything belongs to the State—Conﬁscations and Sequestrations—Pre- emption and requisitions of produce and merchandise—Individuals belong to the State—Drafts of persons for Military service—Drafts of persons for the Civil service—Personal sentiments and ideas subject to the State, at once philanthropist, pedagogue, theologian, censor, moralist, and director— III. The object of the State is the regeneration of man—Two branches of this work—Restoration of the Natural man—Formation of the Social man—Grandeur of the undertaking—Force a right and duty in carrying it out— IV. The two distortions of the natural man—Positive religion—Proscription of the orthodox cult—Measures against unsworn priests—Measures against the loyal orthodox—Destruction of the constitutional cult—Pressure on the sworn priests—Churches closed and ceremonies suppressed—Prolongation of these persecutions until the Consu- late— V. Social inequality—Evil doings of the upper aristocracy— Measures against the King and Nobles—Evil doings of the aristocracy of wealth—Measures against landowners, capitalists and people with incomes—Destruction of large fortunes—Measures taken to prevent large fortunes— VI. Conditions requisite for making a citizen—Plans for suppressing poverty—Measures in favor of the poor— VII. Repression of Egoism—Measures against agriculturists, manufacturers and merchants— Socialistic projects—Repression of Federalism—Measures against the lo- Contents / vii

cal, professional and family spirit— VIII. Formation of soul and intellect— Civil religion—National education—Measures for equality—Obligatory civism—The recasting and reduction of human nature to the Jacobin type.

Chapter II / 946 I. Retrograde conception of the State—Analogy between this idea of the State and that of antiquity—Difference between antique and modern society—Difference in circumstances— II. Difference between men’s souls—Conscience and its Christian origin—Honor and its feudal origin— The individual of today refuses to surrender himself entirely—His motives—Additional motives in modern democracy—Character of the elective process and nature of the mandatory— III. Origin and nature of the modern State—Its functions, rights and limits— IV. Temptation to encroachments—Precedents and reasons for its pretensions— V. Direct common interest—This consists in the absence of constraint—Two reasons in favor of freedom of action—Character, in general, of the individual man— Modern complications— VI. Indirect common interest—This consists in the most economical and most productive employment of spontaneous forces—Difference between voluntary labor and forced labor—Sources of man’s spontaneous action—Conditions of their energy, work and products—Motives for leaving them under personal control—Extent of the private domain—Individuals voluntarily extend it—What they leave to the State—Obligatory functions of the State—Optional functions of the State— VII. Fabrication of social instrumentalities—Application of this principle—How all kinds of useful laborers are formed—Respect for spontaneous sources, the essential and adequate condition—Obligation of the State to respect these—They dry up when it monopolises them—The aim of Patriotism—The aim of other liberal dispositions—Impoverishment of all the productive faculties—Destructive effect of the Jacobin system— VIII. Comparison between despotisms—Philip II. and Louis XIV.— Cromwell and Frederic the Great—Peter the Great and the Sultans— Proportions of the weight they sustain and the forces they control—Dis- proportion between the Jacobins’ attempt to raise this weight and their forces—Folly of their undertaking—Physical force the only governmental force they possess—They are compelled to exercise it—They are compelled to abuse it—Character of their government—Character requisite in their leaders. viii / Contents

BOOK SEVENTH. The Governors Chapter I / 981 I. Psychology of the Jacobin Leaders— I. Marat—Disparity between his faculties and pretensions—The Maniac—The Ambitious delirium—Rage for persecution—A confirmed nightmare insanity—Homicidal frenzy— II. Danton—Richness of his faculties—Disparity between his condition and instincts—The Barbarian—His Work—His Weakness— III. Robes- pierre—Mediocrity of his faculties—The Cuistre—Absence of ideas— Study of phrases—Wounded self-esteem—Intensity of this trait—Satisfied self-esteem—His infatuation—He plays the victim—His gloomy fancies—His resemblance to Marat—Difference between him and Marat— The sincere hypocrite—The Festival in honor of the Supreme Being, and the law of Prairial 22—The external and internal characters of Robespierre and the Revolution.

Chapter II / 1036 The Rulers of the Country— I. The Convention—The “Plain”—The “Mountain”—Degradation of Souls—Parades which the Convention is obliged to make— II. How these are carried out—Its slavery and servility—Its participation in crime— III. The Committee of Public Safety— Men who do the work—Carnot, Prieur de la-Coˆte d’Or, Jean Bon Saint Andre´, Robert Lindet— IV. The Statesmen—Billaud-Varennes, Collot d’Herbois, Robespierre, Couthon, and Saint-Just—Conditions of this rule—Dangers to which they are subject—Their dissensions—Pressure of Fear and Theory— V. Their oﬃcial organs—Reports of Saint-Just and Bare`re—Quality of reports and reporters— VI. Representatives on Mis- sion—Their absolute power—Their perils and their fear—Fit for their work—Eﬀect of this situation— VII. Eruption of brutal instincts—Du- quesnoy at Metz—Dumont at Amiens—Drunkards—Cusset, Bourbotte, Moustier, Bourdon de l’Oise, Dartigoyte— VIII. Approach of madness— Loss of common-sense—Fabre, Gaston, Guiter, in the army of the Eastern Pyrenees—Baudot, Lebas, Saint-Just, and their predecessors and successors in the army of the Rhine—Furious excitement—Lebon at Arras, and Carrier at Nantes— IX. The development of vice—Vanity and the need of gambling—Collot d’Herbois, Ysabeau, Tallien—The Robbers—Tal- lien, Javogues, Rove`re, Fouche´—Two sources of cruelty—Need of demonstrating one’s power—Saint-Just in the Pas-de-Calais department, and Contents /ix

in Alsace—Collot d’Herbois at Lyons—Pressure exercised by the Repre- sentatives on the tribunals—Pleasure caused by death and suffering—Mo- nestier, Fouche´, Collot d’Herbois, Lebon and Carrier. Chapter III / 1097 The Rulers (continued)— The administrative body at Paris—Composition of the group out of which it was recruited—Deterioration of this group— Weeding-out of the Section Assemblies—Weeding-out of the popular clubs—Pressure of the government— II. Quality of the subaltern leaders—How they rule in the section assemblies—How they seize and hold office— III. A Minister of Foreign Affairs—A General in command—The Paris Commune—A Revolutionary Committee— IV. The administrative staff in the provinces—Jacobinism less in the departmental towns than in Paris—Less in the country than in the towns—The Revolutionary Com- mittees in the small communes—Municipal bodies lukewarm in the villages—Jacobins too numerous in bourgs and small towns—Unreliable or hampered as agents when belonging to the administrative bodies of large or moderately-sized towns—Local rulers recruited on the spot inadequate— V. Importation of a foreign staff—Paris Jacobins sent into the provinces—Jacobins of enthusiastic towns transported to moderate ones— The Jacobins of a chef-lieu spread through the district—Resistance of public opinion—Distribution and small number of really Jacobin agents— VI. Quality of the staff thus formed—Social state of the agents—Their unfitness and bad conduct—The administrators in Seine-et-Marne—Drunk- enness and feastings—Committees and Municipalities in the Coˆte d’Or— Waste and extortions—Traffickers in favors at Bordeaux—Seal-breakers at Lyons—Monopolisers of national possessions—Sales of personal property—Embezzlements and Frauds—A proce`s-verbal in the office of the mayor of Strasbourg—Sales of real estate—Commissioners on declarations at Toulouse—The administrative staff and clubs of buyers at Provence— The Revolutionary Committee of Nantes— VII. The Armed Force— National Guard and Gendarmerie—Its composition and operations—The Revolutionary armies in Paris and in the departments—Quality of the recruits—Their employment—Their expeditions into the country towns— Their exploits in the vicinity of Paris and Lyons—The company of Mar- atists, the American Hussars and the German Legion at Nantes—General character of the revolutionary government and of the administrative staff of the Reign of Terror. x/Contents

BOOK EIGHTH. The Governed Chapter I / 1181 The Oppressed— I. Magnitude of revolutionary destructiveness—The four ways of effecting it—Expulsion from the country through forced emigration and legal banishment—Number of those expelled—Privation of liberty—Different sorts of imprisonment—Number and situation of those imprisoned—Murders after being tried, or without trial—Number of those guillotined or shot after trial—Indication of the number of other lives destroyed—Necessity of and plan for wider destruction—Spolia- tion—Its extent—Squandering—Utter losses—Ruin of individuals and the State—The Notables the most oppressed— II. The value of Notables in society—Various kinds and degrees of Notables in 1789—The great social staff—Men of the world—Their breeding—Their intellectual culture—Their humanity and philanthropy—Their moral temper—Practical men—Where recruited—Their qualifications—Their active benevolence—Scarcity of them and their worth to a community— III. The three classes of Notables—The Nobility—Its physical and moral preparation through feats of arms—The military spirit—High character—Conduct of officers in 1789–1792—Service for which nobles were adapted— IV. The Clergy—Where recruited—Professional inducements—Independence of ecclesiastics—Their substantial merits—Their theoretical and practical information—Their distribution over the territory—Utility of their office— Their conduct in 1790–1800—Their courage, their capacity for self- sacrifice— V. The Bourgeoisie—Where recruited—Difference between the functionary of the ancient re´gime and the modern functionary—Prop- erty in offices—Guilds—Independence and security of office-holders— Their limited ambition and contentedness—Fixed habits, seriousness, and integrity—Ambition to secure esteem—Intellectual culture—Liberal ideas—Respectability and public zeal—Conduct of the bourgeoisie in 1789–1791— VI. The demi-notables—Where recruited—Village and trade syndics—Competency of their electors—Their interest in making good selections—Their capacity and integrity—The sorting of men under the ancient re´gime—Conditions of a family’s maintenance and advancement— Hereditary and individual right of the Notable to his property and rank— VII. Principle of socialistic equality—All superiorities illegitimate—Bear- ing of this principle—Incivique benefits and enjoyments—How revolutionary laws reach the lower class—Whole populations affected in a mass— Contents /xi

Proportion of the lowly in the proscription lists—How the revolutionary laws specially affect those who are prominent among the people— VIII. Their rigor increases according to the elevation of the class—The Notables properly so called attacked because of their being Notables— Orders of Taillefer, Milhaud, and Lefiot—The public atonement of Mon- targis— IX. Two characteristics of the upper class, wealth and education— Each of these is criminal—Measures against rich and well-to-do people— Affected in a mass and by categories—Measures against cultivated and polite people—Danger of culture and distinction—Proscription of “honest folks”— X. The Governors and the Governed—Prisoners in the rue de Se`vres and the “Croix-Rouge” revolutionary committee—The young Dauphin and Simon his preceptor—Judges, and those under their jurisdiction—Trinchard and Coffinhal, Lavoisier and Andre´ Cheńier.

Chapter II / 1253 Subsistences— I. Complexity of the economical operation by which articles of prime necessity reach the consumer—Conditions of the operation— Available advances—Cases in which these are not available—Case of the holder of these being no longer disposed to make them— II. Economical effect of the Jacobin policy from 1789 to 1793—Attacks on property— Direct attacks—Jacqueries, effective confiscations and proclamation of the socialistic creed—Indirect attacks—Bad administration of the public funds—Transformation of taxation and insignificance of the returns—In- creased expenditures—The War budget and subsistences after 1793—Pa- per money—Enormous issues of it—Credit of the Assignats run down— Ruin of public creditors and of all private credit—Rate of interest during the Revolution—Stoppage of trade and industry—Bad management of the new land-owners—Decrease of productive labor—Only the small rural land-owner works advantageously—Why he refuses Assignats—He is no longer obliged to sell his produce at once—Dearness of food—It reaches a market with difficulty and in small quantities—The towns buy at a high price and sell at a low one—Food becomes dearer and famine begins— Prices during the first six months of 1793— III. First and general cause of privations—The socialistic principle of the revolutionary government— Measures against large as well as small properties—Dispossession of all remaining corporations, enormous issues of paper money, forced rates of its circulation, forced loans, requisitions of coin and plate, revolutionary xii / Contents

taxes, suppression of special organs of labor on a large scale—Fresh measures against small proprietorship—The Maximum, requisitions for food and labor—Situation of the shopkeeper, cultivator and laborer—Effect of the measures on labor on a small scale—Stoppage of selling— IV. Fam- ine—In the provinces—At Paris—People standing in lines under the revolutionary government to obtain food—Its quality—Distress and chagrin— V. Revolutionary remedies—Rigor against the refractory—Decrees and orders rendering the State the only depositary and distributor of food—Efforts made to establish a conscription of labor—Discouragement of the Peasant—He refuses to cultivate—Decrees and orders compelling him to harvest—His stubbornness—Cultivators imprisoned by thousands—The Convention is obliged to set them at liberty—Fortunate circumstances which save France from extreme famine— VI. Relaxation of the revolutionary system after Thermidor—Repeal of the Maximum— New situation of the peasant—He begins cultivation again—Requisition of grain by the State—The cultivator indemnifies himself at the expense of private persons—Multiplication and increasing decline of Assignats— The classes who have to bear the burden—Famine and misery during year III. and the first half of year IV.—In the country—In the small towns— In large towns and cities— VII. Famine and misery at Paris—Steps taken by the government to feed the capital—Monthly cost to the Treasury— Cold and hunger in the winter of 1794–1795—Quality of the bread—Daily rations diminished—Suffering, especially of the populace—Excessive physical suffering, despair, suicides and deaths from exhaustion in 1795— Government dinners and suppers—Number of lives lost through want and war—Socialism as applied, and its effects on comforts, well-being and mortality.

BOOK IX. The End of the Revolutionary Government Chapter I / 1335 I. The Convention after Thermidor 9—Reaction against the Terrorists— Aversion to the Constitutionalists—The danger they run if they lose power— II. Decrees for the reelection of the Two-thirds—Small number of Voters—Manoeuvres for preventing electors from voting on the decrees—Frauds in the returns of votes—Maintenance of the decrees by force—Recruiting of Roughs—The military employed—The 13th of Ven- Contents / xiii

de´miaire— III. The Directory chosen among the regicides—It selects agents of its own species—Leading Jacobins are deprived of their civic rights—The Terrorists are set free and restored to their civic rights— Example at Blois of these releases and of the new administrative staff— IV. Resistance of public opinion—Elections, year IV., at Paris and in the provinces—The Directory threatened by ultra Jacobins—Forced amelioration of the Jacobin administration— V. Elections of year V.—Character and sentiments of the elected—The new majority in the Corps Le´gislatif— Its principles and programme—Danger and anxiety of the Jacobin minority—Indecision, division, scruples and weakness of the moderate party— Decision, want of scruples, force and mode of procedure of the Jacobin faction—The 18th of Fructidor— VI. Dictatorship of the Directory—Its new prerogatives—Purgation of the Corps Le´gislatif—Purification of the administrative and judicial authorities—Military commissions in the provinces—Suppression of newspapers—The right of voting reserved to Jac- obins alone—Despotism of the Directory—Revival of Terror—Trans- portation substituted for the guillotine—Treatment of the transported— Restoration of Jacobin feudalism— VII. Application and aggravation of the laws of the reign of Terror—Measures taken to impose civic religion— Arrest, transportation and execution of Priests—Ostracism proposed against the entire anti-Jacobin class—The nobles, or the ennobled, not e´migre´s, are declared foreigners—Decrees against e´migre´s of every class— Other steps taken against remaining proprietors—Bankruptcy, forced loan, hostages— VIII. Propagandism and foreign conquests—Proximity and advantages of peace—Fructidoreans’ motives for breaking off peace negotiations and abandoning foreign invasions—How they found new republics—How governed—Estimate of foreign rapine—Number of French lives sacrificed— IX. National antipathy to the established order of things—Paralysis of the State—Intestinal discords of the Jacobin—Coup de e´tat of Floreál 22, year VI.—Coup de e´tat of Prairial 30, year VII.— Impossibility of establishing a practicable government—Plans of Barras and Sie`yes— X. Antisocial character of the sect and the faction—Contrast between civil and military France—Elements of reorganisation—Charac- ter of the re´gime instituted on the 18th of Brumaire, year VIII.

Index / 1411

9 PREFACE =

“ N EGYPT,” says Clement of Alexandria, “the sanctuaries of the Itemples are shaded by curtains of golden tissue.But on going further into the interior in quest of the statue, a priest of grave aspect, advancing to meet you and chanting a hymn in the Egyptian tongue, slightly raises a veil to show you the god.And what do you behold? A crocodile, or some indigenous serpent, or other dangerous animal, the Egyptian god being a brute rolling about on a purple carpet.” We need not visit Egypt or go so far back in history to encounter crocodile worship, as this can be readily found in France at the end of the last century.Unfortunately, a hundred years is too long an interval, too far away, for an imaginative retrospect of the past.At the present time, standing where we do and regarding the horizon behind us, we see only forms which the intervening atmosphere embellishes, shimmering contours which each spectator may interpret in his own fashion; no distinct, animated figure, but merely a mass of moving points, forming and dissolving in the midst of pic- turesque architecture.I was anxious to have a nearer view of these vague points, and, accordingly, transported myself back to the last half of the eighteenth century, where I have been living with them for twelve years, and, like Clement of Alexandria, examining, first, the temple, and next the god.A passing glance at these is not sufficient; a step further must be taken to comprehend the theology on which this cult is founded.This one, explained by a very specious theology, like most others, is composed of dogmas called the principles of 1789; they were proclaimed, indeed, at that date, having

xv xvi / Preface been previously formulated by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the well- known sovereignty of the people, the rights of man, and the social contract.Once adopted, their practical results unfolded themselves naturally; in three years, the crocodile brought by these dogmas into the sanctuary installed himself there on the purple carpet behind the golden veil; in effect, he was intended for the place on account of the energy of his jaws and the capacity of his stomach; he became a god through his qualities as a destructive brute and man-eater. Comprehending this, the rites which consecrate him and the pomp which surrounds him need not give us any further concern.We can observe him, like any ordinary animal, and study his various attitudes, as he lies in wait for his prey, springs upon it, tears it to pieces, swallows it, and digests it.I have studied the details of his structure, the play of his organs, his habits, his mode of living, his instincts, his faculties, and his appetites.Specimens abounded.I have handled thousands of them, and have dissected hundreds of every species and variety, always preserving the most valuable and characteristic examples, but for lack of room I have been compelled to let many of them go because my collection was too large.Those that I was able to bring back with me will be found here, and, among others, about twenty individuals of different dimensions, which—a difficult undertaking—I have kept alive with great pains.At all events, they are intact and perfect, and particularly the three largest. These seem to me, of their kind, truly remarkable, and those in which the divinity of the day might well incarnate himself.The bills of butchers, as well as housekeeping accounts, authentic and regularly kept, throw sufficient light on the cost of this cult.We can estimate about how much the sacred crocodiles consumed in ten years; we know their bills of fare daily, their favorite morsels.Nat- urally, the god selected the fattest victims, but his voracity was so great that he likewise bolted down, and blindly, the lean ones, and in much greater number than the fattest.Moreover, by virtue of his instincts, and an unfailing effect of the situation, he ate his equals once or twice a year, except when they succeeded in eating him. This cult certainly is instructive, at least to historians and men of Preface / xvii pure science.If any believers in it still remain I do not aim to convert them; one cannot argue with a devotee on matters of faith.This volume, accordingly, like the others that have gone before it, is written solely for amateurs of moral zoology, for naturalists of the understanding, for seekers of truth, of texts, and of proofs—for these alone and not for the public, whose mind is made up and which has its own opinion on the Revolution.This opinion began to be formed between 1825 and 1830, after the retirement or withdrawal of eye witnesses.When they disappeared it was easy to convince a credulous public that crocodiles were philanthropists; that many possessed genius; that they scarcely ate others than the guilty, and that if they sometimes ate too many it was unconsciously and in spite of themselves, or through devotion and self-sacrifice for the common good. Menthon Saint Bernard, July, 1884.

BOOK FIFTH

Establishment of the Revolutionary Government

9 CHAPTER I =

I. Weakness of former governments—Energy of the new government—The despotic creed and instincts of the Jacobin— II. Contrast between his words and his acts—How he dissimulates his change of front—The Constitution of June, 1793—Its promises of Freedom— III. Primary Assemblies—Proportion of Ab- sentees—Number of Primary Assemblies—Unanimity of the voters—Their motives for accepting the Constitution—Pressure brought to bear on voters—Choice of Delegates— IV. They reach Paris—Precautions taken against them—Con- straints and Seductions— V. They make their profession of Jacobin faith—Their part in the Feˆte of August 10th—Their enthusiasm— VI. Manoeuvres of the “Mountain”—The Jacobin Club on the eve of August 11th—Session of the Con- vention on the 11th of August—The Delegates initiate Terror—Popular consecration of the Jacobin dictatorship— VII. Effect of this manoeuvre—Extent and Manifesto of the departmental insurrection—Its fundamental weakness—The mass of the population inert and distrustful—The small number of Girondists— Their lukewarm adherents—Scruples of fugitive deputies and insurgent administrators—They form no central government—They leave military authority in the hands of the Convention—Fatal progress of their concessions—Withdrawal of the departments one by one—Palinode of the compromised authorities—Effect of administrative habits—Failings and illusions of the Moderates—Opposite character of the Jacobins— VIII. The last local resistances—Political orthodoxy of the insurgent towns—They stipulate but one condition—Reasons of State for granting this—Party arguments against it— IX. The rebel cities crushed— Bordeaux—Marseilles—Lyons—Toulon— X. Destruction of the Girondist party—Proscription of the Deputies of the “Right”—Imprisonment of the 73— Execution of the 21—Execution, suicide, or flight of the rest— XI. Institutions of the Revolutionary Government—Its principle, object, proceedings, tools, and structure—The Committee of Public Safety—Subordination of the Convention

841 842 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION and ministry—The use of the Committee of General Security and the Revolu- tionary Tribunal—Administrative centralization—Representatives on Mission, National Agents and Revolutionary Committees.—Law of Le`se-majesty—Res- toration and Aggravation of the institutions of the old monarchy.

SO FAR, the weakness ofthe legal government is extreme. For four years, whatever its kind, everywhere and constantly, it has been disobeyed; for four years, whatever its kind, it has never dared enforce obedience. Recruited among the cultivated and reﬁned class, the rulers ofthe country have brought with them into power the prejudices and sensibilities ofthe epoch; under the empire ofthe prevailing dogma they have deferred to the will of the multitude and, with too much faith in the rights of man, they have had too little in the rights ofthe magistrate; moreover, through humanity, they have abhorred bloodshed and, unwilling to repress, they have allowed themselves to be repressed. Thus, from the 1st of May, 1789, to June 2, 1793, they have carried on the administration, or legislated, athwart innumerable insurrections, almost all ofthem going unpunished; while their constitutions, so many unhealthy products oftheory and fear, have done no more than transform spontaneous anarchy into legal anarchy. Wilfully and through distrust of authority they have undermined the principle ofcommand, reduced the King to the post ofa decorative puppet, and almost annihilated the central power: from the top to the bottom of the hierarchy the superior has lost his hold on the inferior, the minister on the departments, the departments on the districts, and the districts on the communes; throughout all branches ofthe service, the chief,elected on the spot and by his subordinates, has come to depend on them. Thenceforth, each post in which authority is vested is found isolated, dismantled and preyed upon, while, to crown all, the Declaration ofRights, proclaiming “the jurisdiction ofconstituents over their clerks,”1 has invited the assailants to make the assault. On the

1. The words ofMarat. The Revolutionary Government / 843 strength ofthis a factionarises which ends in becoming an organized band: under its clamorings, its menaces and its pikes, at Paris and in the provinces, at the polls and in the parliament, the majorities are all silenced, while the minorities vote, decree and govern; the Legislative Assembly is purged, the King is dethroned, and the Con- vention is mutilated. Ofall the garrisons ofthe central citadel, whether royalists, constitutionalists, or Girondists, not one has been able to defend itself, to refashion the executive instrument, to draw the sword and use it in the streets: on the first attack, often at the first summons, all have surrendered, and now the citadel, with every other public fortress, is in the hands of the Jacobins. This time, its occupants are ofa different stamp. Aside from the great mass ofwell-disposed people fondofa quiet life,the Revo- lution has sifted out and separated from the rest all who are fanatical, brutal or perverse enough to have lost respect for others; these form the new garrison—sectarians blinded by their creed, the roughs (assommeurs) who are hardened by their calling, and those who make all they can out oftheir offices. None ofthis class are scrupulous concerning human life or property; for, as we have seen, they have shaped the theory to suit themselves, and reduced popular sovereignty to their sovereignty. The commonwealth, according to the Jacobin, is his; with him, the commonwealth comprises all private possessions, bodies, estates, souls and consciences; everything belongs to him; the fact of being a Jacobin makes him legitimately czar and pope. Little does he care about the wills ofactually living Frenchmen; his mandate does not emanate from a vote; it descends to him from aloft, conferred on him by Truth, by Reason, by Virtue. As he alone is enlightened, and the only patriot, he alone is worthy to take command, while resistance, according to his imperious pride, is criminal. Ifthe majority protests it is because the majority is imbecile or corrupt; in either case, it merits a check, and a check it shall have. Accordingly, the Jacobin does nothing else from the outset; insurrections, usurpations, pillagings, murders, assaults on individuals, on magistrates, on assemblies, violations oflaw, attacks on the State, on communities—there is no outrage not committed by him. He has always acted as sovereign instinctively; he was so 844 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION as a private individual and clubbist; he is not to cease being so, now that he possesses legal authority, and all the more because ifhe hesitates he knows he is lost; to save himselffrom the scaffold he has no refuge but in a dictatorship. Such a man, unlike his predecessors, will not allow himselfto be turned out; on the contrary, he will exact obedience at any cost. He will not hesitate to restore the central power; he will put back the local wheels that have been detached; he will repair the old forcing-gear; he will set it agoing so as to work more rudely and arbitrarily than ever, with greater contempt for private rights and public liberties than either a Louis XIV. or a Napoleon.

II In the mean time, he has to harmonize his coming acts with his recent declarations, which, at the first glance, seems a difficult operation: for, in the speeches he has made he has already condemned the actions he meditates. Yesterday he exaggerated the rights ofthe governed, even to a suppression ofthose ofthe governors; tomorrow he is to exaggerate the rights ofgovernors, even to suppressing those ofthe governed. The people, as he puts it, is the sole sovereign, and he is going to treat the people as slaves; the government, as he puts it, is a valet, and he is going to endow the government with the prerogatives ofa sultan. He has just denounced the slightest exercise ofpublic authority as a crime; he is now going to punish as a crime the slightest resistance to public authority. What will justify such a summerset, and with what face can he repudiate the principles on which he has founded his own usurpation? He takes good care not to repudiate them; it would drive the already rebellious provinces to extremities; on the contrary, he proclaims them with renewed vigor, through which manoeuvre, the ignorant crowd, seeing the same flask always presented to it, imagines that it is always served with the same liquor, and is thus forced to drink tyranny under the label offreedom.Whatever the charlatan can do with his labels, signboards, shoutings and lies for the next six months, will be done The Revolutionary Government / 845 to disguise the new nostrum; so much the worse for the public if, later on, it discovers that the draught is bitter; sooner or later it must swallow it, willingly or by compulsion: for, in the interval, the instruments are being got ready to force it down the public throat.2 As a beginning, the Constitution, so long anticipated and so often promised, is hastily fabricated:3 declarations ofrights in thirty-five articles, the Constitutional bill in one hundred and twenty-four articles, political principles and institutions ofevery sort, electoral, legislative, executive, administrative, judicial, financial and military;4 in three weeks, all is drawn up and passed with race-horse speed. Ofcourse, the new constitutionalists do not propose to produce an effective and serviceable instrument; that is the least oftheir anxieties. He´rault Sećhelles, the reporter ofthe bill, writes on the 7th of June, “to have procured for him at once the laws of Minos, of which he has urgent need”; very urgent need, as he must hand in the Constitution that week.5 Such a circumstance is sufficiently charac-

2. After the Constitution is completed, said Legendre, in the Jacobin club, we will make the federalists dance. 3. Archives Nationales, F. I. C., 56. (Circular ofGohier, Minister ofJustice, to the French people, July 6, 1793). “Certain persons are disposed to pervert the events ofMay 31 and June 2, by atrocious exaggerations and the grossest fables, and prevent the fortunate results they present from being seen. They are absolutely determined to see nothing but violations ofthe liberty ofthe people’s representatives in a step which was specially designed to hasten on the Constitutional Act on which the liberty ofall is established. Ofwhat consequence is it who are the authors ofthe Constitution presented to you? What does it matter whether it issues from a mountain amidst lightnings and the rolling thunder, like the Tables ofthe Law given to the Hebrews, or whether it comes, like the laws given to the early Romans, inspired in the tranquil asylum ofa divinity jealous ofhis religious surroundings? Is this Constitution worthy ofa freepeople? That is the only question which citizens who wear the livery ofno party need examine!” 4. Buchez et Roux, xxviii., 177. (Report by He´rault Sećhelles, June 10, 1793). Ibid, xxxi., 400. (Text ofthe Constitution submitted to discussion June 11th, and passed June 24th.) 5. De Sybel, II., 331. (According to the fac-simile published in the Quarterly Review). “He´rault says that he and four of his colleagues are ordered to furnish the draft of a constitution by Monday.” 846 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION teristic ofboth the workmen and the work. All is mere show and pretence. Some ofthe workmen are shrewd politicians whose sole object is to furnish the public with words instead of things; others, ordinary scribblers ofabstractions, or even ignoramuses, and unable to distinguish words from things, imagine that they are framing laws by stringing together a lot ofphrases. It is not a difficult job; the phrases are ready-made to hand. “Let the plotters ofantipopular systems,” says the reporter, “painfully elaborate their projects! Frenchmen . . . have only to consult their hearts to read the Republic there!”6 Drafted in accordance with the Contrat-Social, filled with Greek and Latin reminiscences, it is a summary “in lapidary style” ofthe manual ofcurrent aphorisms then in vogue. Rousseau’s mathematical formulas and prescriptions, “the axioms of truth and the consequences flowing from these axioms,” in short, a rectilinear constitution which any school-boy may spout on leaving college. Like a handbill posted on the door ofa new shop, it promises to customers every imaginable article that is handsome and desirable. Would you have rights and liberties? You will find them all here. Never has the statement been so clearly made, that the government is the servant, creature and tool ofthe governed; it is instituted solely “to guarantee to them their natural, imprescriptible rights.”7 Never has its mandate been more strictly limited: “The right ofexpressing one’s thoughts and opinions, either through the press or in any other way; the right ofpeaceably assembling, the freeexercise ofworship, cannot be interdicted.” Never have citizens been more carefully guarded against the encroachments and excesses ofpublic authority: “The law should protect public and private liberties against the oppression ofthose who govern . . . offences committed by the people’s mandatories and agents must never go unpunished. Let free men instantly put to death every individual usurping sovereignty.... Every act against a man outside ofthe cases and forms which the

6. Report by He´rault Sećhelles. (Buchez et Roux, xxviii., 178.) 7. Buchez et Roux, xxxi., 400. (Articles ofthe Declaration ofRights, 1, 7, 9, 11, 27, 31, 35.) The Revolutionary Government / 847 law determines is arbitrary and tyrannical; whoever is subjected to violence in the execution ofthis act has the right to repel it by force. . . . When the government violates the people’s rights insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred ofrights and the most indispensable ofduties.” To civil rights the generous legislator has added political rights, and multiplied every precaution for maintaining the dependence of rulers on the people. In the first place, rulers are appointed by the people and through a direct choice or nearly direct choice: in primary meetings the people elect deputies, city officers, justices ofthe peace, and electors ofthe second degree; the latter, in their turn, elect in the secondary meetings, district and department administrators, civil arbitrators, criminal judges, judges ofappeal and the eighty candidates from amongst which the legislative body is to select its executive council. In the second place, all powers ofwhat- ever kind are never conferred except for a very limited term: one year for deputies, for electors of the second degree, for civil arbitrators, and for judges of every kind and class; as to municipalities and also department and district administrations, these are one-half renewable annually. Every first ofMay the fountain-headofau- thority flows afresh, the people in its primary assemblies, spontaneously formed, manifesting or changing at will its staff of clerks. In the third place, even when installed and at work, the people may, ifit pleases, become their collaborator: means are provided for“deliberating” with its deputies. The latter, on incidental questions, those ofslight importance, on the ordinary business ofthe year, may enact laws; but on matters ofgeneral, considerable and permanent interest, they are simply to propose the laws, while, especially as regards a declaration ofwar, the people alone must decide. The people have a suspensive veto and, finally, a definitive veto, which they may exercise when they please. To this end, they may assemble in extraordinary session; one-fifth of the citizens who have the right to vote suffice for their convocation. Once convoked, the vote is determined by a Yes or a No on the act proposed by the legislative body. If, at the expiration of forty days, one-tenth of the primary 848 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION assemblies in one-halfofthe departments vote No, there is a suspensive veto. In that event all the primary assemblies ofthe Republic must be convoked and ifthe majority still decides in the negative, that is a definitive veto. The same formalities govern a revision of the established constitution. In all this, the plan ofthe Montagnards is a further advance on that of the Girondists; never was so insignificant a part assigned to governors nor so extensive a part to the governed. The Jacobins profess a respect for the popular initiative which amounts to a scruple.8 According to them the sovereign people should be sovereign de facto, permanently, and without interregnum, allowed to interfere in all serious affairs, and not only possess the right, but the faculty, of imposing its will on its mandatories. All the stronger is the reason for referring to it the institutions now being prepared for it. Hence, after the parade is over, the convocation by the Convention on the 24th ofJune, also the primary assemblies, and the submission to them ofthe ratification ofthe Constitutional bill which it has drawn up. III That the ratification will be given admits ofno doubt. Everything has been combined beforehand to secure it, also to secure it as wanted, apparently spontaneously, and almost unanimously. The primary assemblies, indeed, are by no means fully attended; only one- half, or a quarter, or a third of the electors in the cities deposit their votes, while in the rural districts there is only a quarter, and less;9

8. Buchez et Roux, xxviii., 178. Report by He´rault Sećhelles. “Each ofus had the same desire, that ofattaining to the greatest democratic result. The sovereignty ofthe people and the dignity ofman were constantly in our minds. . . . A secret sentiment tells us that our work is perhaps the most popular that ever existed.” 9. Archives Nationales, B. II., 23. (Table ofvotes by the commission appointed to collect the proce`s-verbaux ofthe adoption ofthe Constitution, August 20, 1793.) Number ofprimary assemblies sending in their proce`s-verbaux, 6,589 (516 cantons have not yet sent theirs in). Number ofvoters on call, 1,795,908; Yes, 1,784,377; Noes, 11,531. Number ofprimary assemblies voting Yes unanimously, not on call ofnames, 297. At Paris 40,990 voters, at Troyes 2,491, at The Revolutionary Government / 849 repelled by their experience with previous convocations they know too well the nature ofthese assemblies; how the Jacobin faction rules them, how it manages the electoral comedy, with what violence and menaces it reduces all dissidents to voting either as figurants or claqueurs. From four to five millions of electors prefer to hold aloof and stay at home as usual. Nevertheless the organization ofmost of the assemblies takes place, amounting to some six or seven thousand. This is accounted for by the fact that each canton contains its small group ofJacobins. Next to these come the simple-minded who still believe in official declarations; in their eyes a constitution which guarantees private rights and institutes public liberties must be accepted, no matter what hand may present it to them. And all the more readily because the usurpers offer to resign; in effect, the Con- vention has just solemnly declared that once the Constitution is adopted, the people shall again be convoked to elect “a new national assembly . . . a new representative body invested with a later and more immediate trust,”10 which will allow electors, ifthey are so disposed, to return honest deputies and exclude the knaves who now rule. Thereupon, even in the insurgent departments, the mass ofthe Girondist population, after a good deal of hesitation, resign themselves at last to voting for it.11 This is done at Lyons and in the

Limoges, 2,137. Cf. for details and motives of abstention, Sauzay iv., pp. 157– 161. Albert Babeau, ii., pp. 83 and 84. Moniteur, xvii., 375 (speech by the representative Des Wars). 10. Ibid., Moniteur, xvii., 20. (Report by Barre`re on the convocation ofthe primary assemblies, June 27, 1793.) Ibid., 102 (Report ofCambon, July 11). “It is now a fortnight since you demanded a Constitution. Very well, here it is. . . . Respect for persons and property is amply secured in it. Yes, more definitely than in any other constitution. Does it provide for its own revision? Yes, for in six weeks, we can convoke the primary assemblies and express our desire for the reform that may appear necessary. Will the popular wish be respected? Yes, the people then will make definitive laws.” 11. Guillon de Montleón, i., 282, 309.—Buchez et Roux, xxviii., 356, 357. (Journal de Lyon Nos. 223 and 224.) “The acceptance ofthe Constitution was neither entire nor very sincere; people took credit to themselves for accepting a vicious and sketchy production.” Meillan, “Me´moires,” 120. (In July he leaves Caen for Quimper). “Although we were assured that we should pass only 850 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION department ofCalvados only on the 30th ofJuly. A number of constitutionalists or neutrals have done the same thing, some through a horror ofcivil war and a spirit ofconciliation, and others through fearofpersecution and ofbeing taxed with royalism; 12 one conception more: through docility they may perhaps succeed in depriving the “Mountain” ofall pretext forviolence. In this they greatly deceive themselves, and, from the first, they are able to see once more how the Jacobins understand electoral liberty. At first, all the registered,13 and especially the “suspects,” are compelled to vote, and to vote Yes; otherwise, says a Jacobin journal,14 “they themselves will give the just measure ofthe opinion one ought to entertain oftheir sentiments, and no longer have reason to complain ofsuspicions that are foundto be so well grounded.” They come accordingly, “very humble and very penitent.” Nevertheless they meet with a rebuff, and a cold shoulder is turned on them; they are consigned to a corner ofthe room, or near the doors, and are openly insulted. Thus received, it is clear that they will keep quiet through Maratist towns, we had the satisfaction of finding nearly all the inhabitants regarding Marat with horror. They had indeed accepted the Constitution offered by the Committee ofPublic Safety, but solely to end the matter and on conditions which would speak well for them; for, everywhere the renewal of the Convention was exacted and the punishment ofassaults made on it.” This desire, and others analogous to it, are given in the proce`s-verbaux ofmany of the primary assemblies (Archives Nationales, B.II., 23); for example, in those of the thirteen cantons of Ain. A demand is made, furthermore, for the rein- tegration ofthe Twenty-two, the abolition ofthe revolutionary Tribunal, the suppression ofabsolute proconsulates, the organization ofa department guard for securing the future of the Convention, the discharge of the revolutionary army, etc. 12. Moniteur, xvii., 20. Report ofBare`re: “The Constitutional Act is going to draw the line between republicans and royalists.” 13. Archives Nationales, F.I.C., 54. (Circular ofthe Minister, Gohier, July 6, 1793.) “It is today that, summoned to the altar ofthe country, those who desire the Republic will be known by name, and those who do not desire it, whether they speak or keep silent, will be equally known.” 14. Sauzay, iv., 160, 161. (Article by the Vidette.) Consequently, “all the unconstitutionalist nobles and priests considered it a duty to go to the assemblies and joyfully accept a constitution which guaranteed liberty and property to everybody.” The Revolutionary Government / 851 and not risk the slightest objection. At Macon, “a few aristocrats muttered to themselves, but not one dared say No.”15 It would, indeed, be extremely imprudent. At Montbrison, “six individuals who decline to vote,” are denounced in the proce`s-verbal ofthe Can- ton, while a deputy in the Convention demands “severe measures” against them. At Nogent-sur-Seine, three administrators, guilty of the same offence, are to be turned out ofoffice; 16 a few months later, the offence becomes a capital crime, and people are to be guillotined “for having voted against the Constitution of 1793.”17 Almost all the wrong-thinkers foresaw this danger; hence, in nearly all the primary assemblies, the adoption is unanimous, or nearly unanimous;18 at Rouen, there are but twenty-six adverse votes; at Caen, the centre ofthe Girondist protestants, fourteen;at Rheims, there are only two; at Troyes, Besançon, Limoges and Paris, there are none at all; in fifteen departments the number of negatives varies from five to one; not one is found in Var. Could there be a more edifying concert of action? The commune ofSt. Donau, the only one in France, in a remote district ofCoteˆs-du-Nord, dares demand the restoration of the clergy and the son ofCapet forking. The rest vote as directed; they have got at the secret ofthe plebiscite; an honest vote is not wanted; the object is to impose on them a Jacobin manifestation.19

15. “Journal des De´bats de la Socie´te´ des Jacobins,” No. for July 27, 1793 (correspondence, No. 122). 16. Moniteur, xvii., 163, 156. 17. Sauzay, iv., 158: “The motives for judgments were thus stated by judges themselves.” 18. Moniteur, xvii., 40, 48, 72, 140, 175, 194, 263. (Cf. Speeches by Chau- mette, July 14, and Report by Gossoin, August 9).—Archives Nationales, B.II., 23. Negative votes in Arde`che 5, in Aude 5, Moselle 5, Saone-et-Loire 5, Coˆte d’Or 4, Creuse 4, Haut-Rhin 4, Gers 4, Haute-Garonne 3, Aube 2, Bouches- du-Rhone 2, Cantal 2, Basses-Alpes 1, Haute-Marne 1, Haute-Vienne 1, Var 0, Seine 0. The details and circumstances ofvoting are curious. In the department ofAube, at Troyes, the second section in agreement with the third, excluded “suspects” from the vote. At Paris, the section “Gardes Francaise, Fourcroy president, announces 1,714 voters, ofwhich 1,678 are citizens and 36 citoyennes. In the “Mont Blanc” section, the secretary signs as follows: Trone segretaire general de la semble´. 19. Moniteur, xvii., 375. (Session ofthe Convention, August 11, 1793). Cha- 852 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

In effect, the Club carries out the job it has undertaken. It beats to arms around the ballot-box; it arrives in force; it alone speaks with authority; it animates officers; it moves all the resolutions and draws up the report ofproceedings, while the representatives on mission add to the weight ofthe local authority that ofthe central authority. In the Macon assembly “they address the people on each article; this speech is followed by immense applause and redoubled shoutings of Vive la Re´publique! Vive la Constitution! Vive le Peuple Français!” Beware, ye lukewarm, who do not join in the chorus! They are forced to vote “in a loud, intelligible voice.” They are required to shout in unison, to sign the grandiloquent address in which the leaders testify their gratitude to the Convention, and give their adhesion to the eminent patriots delegated by the primary assembly to bear its report to Paris.20 IV The first act ofthe comedy is over and the second act now begins. It is not without an object that the faction has convoked the delegates ofthe primary assemblies at Paris. Like the primary assemblies, they are to serve as its instruments for governing; they are to form the props ofdictatorship, and the object now is to reduce them to that bot: “I demand a law requiring every man who does not appear at a primary meeting to give good reason for his absence; also, that any man who has not favored the Constitution, be declared ineligible to all constitutional franchises.” Ibid., 50. (Meeting ofthe Commune, July 4th). Leonard Bourdon demands, in the name ofhis section, the Gravilliers, a register on which to inscribe those who accept the Constitution, “in order that those who do not vote for it may be known.”—Sauzay, iv., 159. M. Boillon, ofBelleherbe, is arrested “forbeing present at the primary assembly ofthe canton ofVaucluse, and when called upon to accept the Constitutional Act, leaving without voting.” 20. Moniteur, xvii., 11. (Instructions on the mode ofaccepting the Consti- tution).—Sauzay iv., 158.—Moniteur, xvii., 302. (Speech by Garat, August 2.) “I have dispatched commissioners to push the Constitutional Act through the primary assemblies.”—Durand-Maillane. 150. “The envoys ofthe departments were taken from the sans-culotterie then in fashion, because they ruled in the Convention.” The Revolutionary Government / 853 roˆle. Indeed, it is not certain that all will lend themselves to it. For, among the eight thousand commissioners, some, appointed by refractory assemblies, bring a refusal instead of an adhesion;21 others, more numerous, are instructed to present objections and point out omissions:22 it is very certain that the envoys ofthe Gir ondist departments will insist on the release or return oftheir excluded representatives; in fine, a good many delegates who have accepted the Constitution in good faith desire its application as soon as possible, and that the Convention should fulfil its promise of abdication, so as to give way to a new Assembly. It is important to suppress at once all these independent fancies and the formation of an opposition party: to this end, a decree ofthe Convention “authorises the Committee ofGeneral Security to order the arrest of‘suspect’ commissioners”; it is especially to look after those who, “charged with a special mission, would hold meetings to win over their colleagues, . . . and engage them in proceedings contrary to their mandate.”23 In the first place, and before they are admitted into Paris, their Jacobinism is to be verified, like a bale in the custom-house, by the special agents ofthe executive council, and especially by Stanislas Maillard, the famous September judge, and his sixty-eight bearded ruffians, each receiving pay at five francs a day. “On all the roads, within a circuit offifteenor twenty leagues ofthe capital,” the

21. Sauzay, iv., 158. 22. Moniteur, xvii., 363. (Report ofGossuin to the Convention, August 9). “There are primary assemblies which have extended their deliberations beyond the acceptance ofthe Constitution. This acceptance being almost unanimous, all other objects form matter for petitions to be intrusted to competent committees.”—Ibid., 333. (Speech ofDelacroix). “The antirevolutionary delegates sent by the conspirators we had in the Convention must be punished.” (August 6.)—Durand-Maillane. 23. Moniteur, ibid., 333. Speech and motions ofBazire, August 8.—xix., 116. Report ofVouland, January 2, 1794. The pay ofMaillard and his acolytes amounted to twenty-two thousand livres.—xviii., 324. (Session ofAugust 5. Speeches ofGossuin, Thibault, and Lacroix.)— Ibid., xxiv., 90. (Session of Germinal 8, year III.) Speech by Bourdon de l’Oise: “We have been obliged to pick men out ofthe envoys in order to find those disposed forrigorous measures.” 854 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION delegates are searched; their trunks are opened, and their letters read. At the barriers in Paris they find “inspectors” posted by the Commune, under the pretext ofprotecting them against prostitutes and swindlers. There, they are taken possession of, and conducted to the mayoralty, where they receive lodging tickets, while a picket ofgendarmerie escorts them to their allotted domiciles. 24—Behold them in pens like sheep, each in his numbered stall; there is no fear ofthe dissidents trying to escape and form a band apart: one of them, who comes to the Convention and asks for a separate hall for himselfand his adherents, is snubbed in the most outrageous manner; they denounce him as an intriguer, and accuse him ofa desire to defend the traitor Castries; they take his name and credentials, and threaten him with an investigation.25 The unfortunate orator hears the Abbaye alluded to, and evidently thinks himselffortunate to escape sleeping there that night. After this, it is certain that he will not again demand the privilege ofspeaking, and that his colleagues will remain quiet; and all this is the more likely because the revolutionary tribunal holds permanent sessions under their eyes, because the guillotine is set up and in operation on the “Place de la Re´volution”; because a recent act ofthe Commune enjoins on the police “the most active surveillance” and “constant patrols” by the armed force; because, from the first to the fourth of August, the

24. Moniteur, xvii., 330. Ordinance ofthe Commune, August 6. 25. Moniteur, xvii., 332. (Session ofthe Convention, August 6.)—Cf.the “Diurnal” ofBeaulieu, August 6. Beaulieu mentions several deputations and motions ofthe same order, and states the alarm ofthe “Mountain.”—Durand- Maillane, “Me´moires,” 151. “Among the envoys from the departments were sensible men who, far from approving of all the steps taken by their brethren, entertained and manifested very contrary sentiments. These were molested and imprisoned.”—“Archives des Affaires Etrange`res,” vol. 1411. (Report ofthe agents ofAugust 10 and 11.) The department commissioners . . . seemed to us in the best disposition. There are some intriguers among them, however; we are following up some of them, and striving by fraternising with them to prevent them from being seduced or led away by the perfidious suggestions of certain scoundrels, the friends of federalism, amongst them. . . . A few patriotic commissioners have already denounced several oftheir brethren accused ofloving royalty and federalism.” The Revolutionary Government / 855 barriers are closed; because, on the 2d ofAugust, a raid into three ofthe theatres puts five hundred young men in the lock-up: 26 the discontented soon discover, ifthere are any, that this is not the time or the place to protest. As to the others, already Jacobin, the faction takes it upon itself to render them still more so. Lost in the immensity ofParis, all these provincialists require moral as well as physical guides; it agrees to exercise toward them “hospitality in all its plenitude, the sweetest ofRepublican virtues.” 27 Hence, ninety-six sans-culottes, selected from among the sections, wait on them at the Mayoralty to serve as their correspondents, and perhaps as their guarantees, and certainly as pilots to give them lodging-tickets, to escort and install them, to indoctrinate them, as formerly with the federates of July, 1792, to prevent their getting into bad company, to introduce them into all the exciting meetings, to see that their ardent patriotism quickly rises to the proper temperature ofParisian Jacobinism. 28 The theatres must not offend their eyes or ears with pieces “opposed to the spirit ofthe Revolution.” 29 An order is issued for the performance three times a week of“republican tragedies, such as ‘Brutus,’ ‘William Tell,’ ‘Caius Gracchus,’ and other dramas suitable for the maintenance ofthe principles ofequality and liberty.” Once a week the theatres must be free, when Cheńie´r’s alexandrines are spouted on the stage to the edification ofthe delegates, crowded into the boxes at the expense ofthe State. The following morning, led by flocks

26. Buchez et Roux, xxviii., 408. 27. Moniteur, xvii., 330. (Act passed by the Commune, August 6.) 28. Archives des Affaires Etrange`res, vol. 1411. (Reports ofagents, Aug. 10 and 11). “Citizens are, today, eager to see who shall have a commissioner at his table; who shall treat him the best....The Commissioners ofthe primary assemblies come and fraternise with them in the Jacobin club. They adopt their maxims, and are carried away by the energy ofthe good and true republican sans-culottes in the clubs.” 29. Moniteur, xvii., 307, 308. (Report ofCouthon to the Convention, Aug. 2.) “You would wound, you would outrage these Republicans, were you to allow the performance before them of an infinity of pieces filled with insulting allusions to liberty.” 856 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION into the tribunes ofthe Convention, 30 they there find the same, classic, simple, declamatory, sanguinary tragedy, except that the latter is not feigned but real, and the tirades are in prose instead of in verse. Surrounded by paid vociferators, as on the previous evening by the Romans “ofthe lamp,” our provincials applaud, cheer and get excited, the same as on the previous evening at the signal given by the claqueurs and other frequenters of the house. Another day, the procureur-syndic Lhullier summons them to attend the “Evećhe´,” to “fraternise with the authorities of the Paris department”;31 the “Fraternite´” section invites them to its daily meetings; the Jacobin club lends them its vast hall in the morning and admits them to its sessions in the evening. Thus taken possession ofand kept, as in a diving bell, they breathe in Paris nothing but a Jacobin atmosphere; from one Jacobin den to another, as they are led about in this heated atmosphere, their pulse beats more rapidly. Many ofthem, who, on their arrival, were “plain, quiet people,”32 but out oftheir element, subjected to contagion without any antidote, quickly catch the revolutionary fever. The same as at an American revival, under the constant pressure ofpreaching and singing, ofshouts and nervous spasms, the lukewarm and even the indifferent have not long to wait before the delirium puts them in harmony with the converted.

V On the 7th ofAugust things come to a head. Led by the department and the municipality, a number ofdelegates march to the bar ofthe Convention, and make a confession of Jacobin faith. “Soon,” they exclaim, “will search be made on the banks of the Seine for the foul marsh intended to engulfus. Were the royalists and intriguers to die ofspite, we will live and die Montagnards.”33 Applause and embraces.

30. Ibid., 124. (Session ofAug. 5.) 31. Ibid., 314; (Letter ofLhullier, Aug. 4.)—322, Session ofthe Commune, Aug. 4th; 332, (Session ofthe Convention, Aug. 6).—Buchez et Roux, xxviii., 409. (Meeting ofthe Jacobin Club, Aug. 5th). 32. Buchez et Roux, 411. (Article in the Journal de la Montagne.) 33. Moniteur, xvii., 348. The Revolutionary Government / 857

From thence they betake themselves to the Jacobin Club, where one ofthem proposes an address prepared beforehand:the object ofthis is to justify the 31st of May, and the 2d of June, “to open the eyes” ofprovincial France, to declare “war against the federalists.” “Down with the infamous libelers who have calumniated Paris!...Wecher- ish but one sentiment, our souls are all melted into one....Weform here but one vast, terrible mountain, about to vomit forth its ﬁres on the royalists and supporters oftyranny.” Applause and cheers. Robespierre declares that they are there to save the country.34 On the following day, August 8th,35 this address is presented to the Convention and Robespierre has a resolution adopted, ordering it to be sent to the armies, to foreign powers and all the Communes. More applause, more embracings, and more cheers. On the 9th of August,36 by order ofthe Convention, the delegates meet in the Tuileries garden, where, divided into as many groups as there are departments, they study the programme drawn up by David, in order to familiarise themselves with the parts they are to play in the festival of the following day. What an odd festival and how well it expresses the spirit of the time! It is a sort ofopera played in the streets by the public authorities, with triumphant chariots, altars, censers, an Ark ofthe Covenant, funeral urns, classic banners and other trappings! Its divinities consist ofplaster statues representing Nature, Liberty, the People, and Hercules, all ofwhich are personiﬁed abstractions, like those painted on the ceiling ofa theatre. In all this there is no spontaneity nor sincerity; the actors, whose consciences tell them that they are only actors, render homage to symbols which they know to be nothing but symbols, while the mechanical procession,37

34. Buchez et Roux, xviii., 415 and following pages. 35. Moniteur, xvii., 342. 36. Ibid., 352.—Cf. Beaulieu, “Diurnal,” Aug. 9. 37. On the mechanical character ofthe festivalsofthe Revolution read the programme of“The civic fe ˆte in honor ofValor and Morals,” ordered by Fouche´ at Nevers, on the 1st day ofthe 1st decade ofthe 2nd month ofthe year II, (De Martel, “Etude sur Fouche´,” 202); also, the programme ofthe “Feˆte de 858 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION the invocations, the apostrophes, the postures, the gestures are regulated beforehand, the same as by a ballet-manager. To any truth- loving mind all this must seem like a charade performed by puppets. But the festival is colossal, well calculated to stimulate the imagination and excite pride through physical excitement.38 On this gran- diose stage the delegates become quite intoxicated with their part; for, evidently, theirs is the leading part; they represent twenty-six millions ofFrenchmen, and the sole object ofthis ceremony is to glorify the national will of which they are the bearers. On the Place de la Bastille39 where the gigantic effigy of Nature pours forth from its two breasts “the regenerating water,” He´rault, the president, after offering libations and saluting the new goddess, passes the cup to the eighty-seven elders (les doyens) ofthe eighty-seven departments, each “summoned by sound ofdrum and trumpet” to step forward and drink in his turn, while cannon belch forth their thunders as if for a monarch. After the eighty-seven have passed the cup around, the artillery roars. The procession then moves on, and the delegates again are assigned the place ofhonor. The elders, holding an olive- branch in one hand, and a pike in the other, with a streamer on the end ofit bearing the name oftheir department, “bound to each other by a small tricolor ribbon,” surround the Convention as ifto convey the idea that the nation maintains and conducts its legal representatives. Behind them march the rest ofthe eight thousand delegates, likewise holding olive-branches and forming a second distinct body, the largest ofall, and on which all eyes are centred. For, in their wake, “there is no longer any distinction between persons and functionaries,” all being confounded together, marching pell-mell, executive council, city officials, judges scattered about haphazard and, by virtue ofequality, lost in the crowd. At each station, thanks to l’Etre Supre´me,” at Sceaux, organized by the patriot Palloy, Presidial 20, year II. (Dauban, “Paris en 1794,” p. 187). 38. It cost one million two hundred thousand francs, besides the travelling expenses ofeight thousand delegates. 39. Buchez et Roux, xxviii., 439, and following pages. Proce`s-verbal ofthe National Festival ofthe 10th ofAugust.—Dauban “La Demagogie en 1791.” (Extract from the Republican Ritual.) The Revolutionary Government / 859 their insignia, the delegates form the most conspicuous element. On reaching the last one, that ofthe Champ de Mars, they alone with the Convention, ascend the steps leading to the altar ofthe country; on the highest platform stands the eldest of all alongside of the president ofthe Convention, also standing; thus graded above each other, the seven thousand, who envelope the seven hundred and fifty, form “the veritable Sacred Mountain.” Now, the president, on the highest platform, turns toward the eighty-seven elders; he con- fides to them the Ark containing the Constitutional Act and the list ofthose who voted forit; they, on their part, then advance and hand him their pikes, which he gathers together into one bundle as an emblem ofnational unity and indivisibility. At this, shouts arise from every point ofthe immense enclosure; salvos ofartillery follow again and again; “one would say that heaven and earth answered each other” in honor “ofthe greatest epoch ofhumanity.” Certainly, the delegates are beside themselves; the nervous machine, strained to the utmost, vibrates too powerfully; the millennium discloses itself before their eyes. Already, many among them on the Place de la Bastille, had addressed the universe; others, “seized with a prophetic spirit,” promise eternity to the Constitution. They feel themselves “reborn again, along with the human species”; they regard themselves as beings ofa new world. History is consummated in them; the future is in their hands; they believe themselves gods on earth. In this critical state, their reason, like a pair ofill-balanced scales, yields to the slightest touch; under the pressure ofthe manufacturers ofenthusiasm, a sudden reaction will carry them away. They consider the Constitution as a panacea, and they are going to consign it, like some dangerous drug, to this coffer which they call an ark. They have just proclaimed the liberty ofthe people, and are going to perpetuate the dictatorship ofthe Convention.

VI This summerset must, ofcourse, seem spontaneous and the hand of the titular rulers remain invisible: the Convention, as usual with usurpers, is to simulate reserve and disinterestedness. Consequently, 860 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION the following morning, August 11, on the opening of the session, it simply declares that “its mission is fulfilled”:40 on motion ofLacroix, a confederate of Danton’s, it passes a law that a new census of the population and ofelectors shall be made with as little delay as possible, in order to convoke the primary assemblies at once; it welcomes with transport the delegates who bring to it the Constitutional Ark; the entire Assembly rises in the presence ofthis sacred receptacle, and allows the delegates to exhort it and instruct it concerning its duties.41 But in the evening, at the Jacobin Club, Robespierre, after a long and vague discourse on public dangers, conspiracies, and traitors, suddenly utters the decisive words: “The most important of my reflections was about to escape me.42 . . . The proposition made that morning tends to put in the place ofthe suitable members of the actual Convention the envoys of Pitt and Cobourg.” Words of terrible import in the mouth ofa man ofprinciples! They are at once understood by the leaders, great and small, also by the selected fifteen hundred Jacobins then filling the hall. “No! no! shouts the entire club.” The delegates are carried away: “I demand,” exclaims one ofthem, “that the dissolution ofthe Convention be postponed until the end ofthe war.” At last, the precious motion, so long desired and anticipated, is made: the calumnies ofthe Girondists now fall to the ground; it is demonstrated that the Convention does not desire to perpetuate itselfand that it has no ambition; ifit remains in power it is because it is kept there; the delegates ofthe people compel it to stay. And better still, they are going to mark out its course ofaction. The next day, the 12th ofAugust, with the zeal ofnew converts,

40. Moniteur, xvii., 366. (Session ofAug. 11. Speech by Lacroix and decree in conformity therewith.) 41. Ibid., 374. “Remember that you are accountable to the nation and the universe for this sacred Ark. Remember that it is your duty to die rather than suffer a sacrilegious hand. . . .” 42. Buchez et Roux, xxviii., 458. It is evident from the context of the speech that Robespierre and the Jacobins were desirous ofmaintaining the Convention because they foresaw Girondist elections. The Revolutionary Government / 861 they spread themselves through the hall in such numbers that the Assembly, no longer able to carry on its deliberations, crowds toward the left and yields the whole of the space on the right that they may occupy and “purify” it.43 All the combustible material in their minds, accumulated during the past fortnight, takes fire and explodes; they are more furious than the most ultra Jacobins; they repeat at the bar ofthe house the extravagancies ofRose Lacombe, and ofthe lowest clubs; they even transcend the programme drawn up by the “Mountain.” “The time for deliberation is past,” exclaims their spokesman, “we must act44 . . . Let the people rouse themselves in a mass . . . it alone can annihilate its enemies....Wedemand that all ‘suspects’ be put in arrest; that they be despatched to the frontiers, followed by the terrible mass of sans-culottes. There, in the front ranks, they will be obliged to fight for that liberty which they have outraged for the past four years, or be immolated on the tyrants’ cannon....Women, children, old men and the infirm shall be kept as hostages by the women and children of sans-culottes.” Danton seizes the opportunity. With his usual perspicacity he finds the expression which defines the situation: “The deputies ofthe primary assemblies,” he says, “have just taken amongst us the initiative of terror.” He moreover reduces the absurd notions ofthe fanatics to a practical bearing: “An uprisal en masse, yes, but with order” by at once calling out the first class ofconscripts, all men from eighteen to twenty-five years of age; the arrest of all ‘suspects,’ yes, but not to lead them against the enemy; “they would be more dangerous than useful in our armies; let us shut them up; they will be our hostages.” In fine, he imagines employment for the delegates who are now in the way in Paris and ofuse in the provinces. Let us make ofthem “various kinds ofrepresentatives charged with

43. Moniteur, xvii., 382. (Session ofAug. 12. Speech by Lacroix). 44. Ibid., 387.—Cf. Ibid., 410, session ofAugust 16. The delegates return there to insist on a levy, en masse, the levy ofthe first class not appearing sufficient to them.—Buchez et Roux, xxviii., 464. Delegate Royer, Cureóf Chalons-aur-Saone, demands that aristocrats “chained together in sixes” be put in the front rank in battle “to avoid the risks of sauve qui peut.” 862 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION animating citizens....Let them, along with all good citizens and the constituted authorities, take charge ofthe inventories ofgrain and arms, and make requisitions for men, and let the Committee of Public Safety direct this sublime movement. . . . All will swear that, on returning to their firesides, they will give this impulse to their fellow citizens.” Universal applause; the delegates exclaim in one voice, “We swear!” Everybody springs to his feet; the men in the tribunes wave their hats and likewise shout the same oath. The scheme is successful; a semblance of popular will has authorised the staff ofofficials, the policy, the principles and the very name of Terror. As to the tools employed, they are fit only to be sent back to the places they came from. The delegates, of whose demands and interference the “Mountain” is still in dread, are consigned to their departmental holes, where they serve as agents and missionaries.45 There is no further mention of putting the Constitution into operation; this was simply a bait, a decoy, contrived for fishing in turbid waters: the fishing ended, the Constitution is now placed in a conspicuous place in the hall, in a small monument for which David furnished the design.46 “The Convention, now,” says Danton,“will rise to a sense of its dignity, for it is now invested with the full power ofthe nation.” In other words, astuteness completes what violence had begun. Through the outrages committed in May and June, the Convention had lost its legitimacy; through the manoeuvres ofJuly and August it recovered the semblance ofit. The Mon- tagnards still hold their slave by his leash, but they have restored his prestige so as to make the most ofhim to their own profit.

VII With the same blow, and wearing the same mask, they have disarmed their adversaries. On learning the events ofMay 31 and June 2, a loud cry ofindignation arose among Republicans ofthe cultivated class in this generation, who, educated by the philosophers, sincerely

45. Decrees ofAugust 14 and 16. 46. Moniteur, xvii., 375. The Revolutionary Government / 863 believed in the rights ofman; 47 sixty-nine department administrations had protested,48 and, in almost all the towns ofthe west, the south, the east and the centre ofFrance, at Caen, Alenc¸on, Evreux, Rennes, Brest, Lorient, Nantes and Limoges, at Bordeaux, Toulouse, Montpellier, Nismes and Marseilles, at Grenoble, Lyons, Clermont, Lons-le-Saulnier, Besanc¸on, Macon and Dijon,49 the citizens, assembled in their sections, had provoked, or maintained by cheering them on, the acts oftheir administrators. Rulers and citizens, all declared that, the Convention not being free, its decrees after the 31st of May, no longer had the forceoflaw; that the troops ofthe departments should march on Paris to deliver that city from its oppressors, and that their substitutes should be called out and assemble at Bourges. In many places words were converted into acts. Already before the end ofMay, Marseilles and Lyons had taken up arms and checkmated their local Jacobins. After the 2d of June, Normandy, Brittany, Gard, Jura, Toulouse and Bordeaux, had also raised troops. At Marseilles, Bordeaux and Caen the representatives on mission, arrested or under

47. Riouffe, “Me´moires,” 19: “An entire generation, the real disciples of Jean-Jacques, Voltaire, and Diderot, could be, and was annihilated, to a large extent under the pretext offederalism.” 48. Moniteur, xvii., 102. (Speech by Cambon, July 11, 1793). Archives Na- tionales, AF. II., 46. (Speech ofGeneral Wimpfento the “Socie ´te´ des amis de la Liberte´ et de l’Egalite´,” in session at Cherbourg, June 25, 1793). “Sixty-four departments have already revoked the powers conferred on their representatives.” Meillan, “Me´moires,” 72: “The archives ofBordeaux once contained the acts passed by seventy-two departments, all ofwhich adhered to measures nearly the same as those indicated in our document.” 49. Buchez et Roux, xviii., 148. Meillan, 70, 71. Guillon de Montleón, i., 300 (on Lyons) and i., 280 (on Bordeaux). Archives Nationales, AF.II., 46. (Deliberations ofthe Nantes section July 5). Letter ofMerlin and Gillet, representatives on mission, Lorient, June 12. Dissatisfaction at the outrages of May 31 and June 2, was so manifest that the representatives on mission, Merlin, Gillet, Savestre, and Cavaignac, print on the 14th ofJune a resolution authorising one oftheir body to go to the Convention and protest “in their name” against the weakness shown by it and against the usurpations ofthe Paris commune. Sauzay, iv., 260, at Besançon, in a general assembly ofall the administrative, judicial, and municipal bodies ofthe department joined to the commissioners ofthe section, protest “unanimously” on the 15th ofJune. 864 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION guard, were retained as hostages.50 At Nantes, the National Guard and popular magistrates who, a week before, had so bravely repulsed the great Vendeán army, dared do more than this; they limited the powers ofthe Convention and condemned all intermeddling; according to them, the sending ofrepresentatives on mission was “an usurpation, an attack on national sovereignty”; representatives had been elected “to make and not to execute laws, to prepare a constitution and regulate all public powers, and not to confound these together and exercise them all at once; to protect and maintain intermediary powers which the people have delegated, and not to encroach upon and annihilate them.”51 With still greater boldness, Montpellier enjoined all representatives everywhere to meet at the headquarters oftheir respective departments, and await the verdict ofa national jury. In short, by virtue even ofthe democratic creed, “nothing was visible amid the ruins ofthe Convention,” mutilated and degraded, but interloping “attorneys”; “the people’s workmen” are summoned “to return to obedience and do justice to the reproaches addressed to them by their legitimate master”;52 the nation

50. Archives Nationales, ibid. (Letter ofRomme and Prieur, Caen, June 10th, to the Committee ofPublic Safety).The insurgents are so evidently in the right that Romme and Prieur approve oftheir own arrest. “Citizens, our colleagues, this arrest may be ofgreat importance, serve the cause ofliberty, maintain the unity ofthe Republic and revive confidence if, as we hasten to demand it of you, you confirm it by a decree which declares us hostages.... We have noticed that among the people ofCaen, there is a love ofliberty, as well as ofjustice and docility.” 51. Archives Nationales, A.F.II., 46. (Printed July 5). Result ofthe deliberations ofthe Nantes sections. The act is signed by the three administrative bodies ofNantes, by the district rulers ofClisson, Anceries, and Machecoul, who had fled to Nantes, and by both the deputies ofthe districts ofPaimboeuf and Chateaubriand, in all, eighty-six signatures. 52. Archives Nationales, ibid., (letter ofGeneral Wimpfento the “Socie ´te´ des Amis de l’Egalite´ et de la Liberte´” in session at Cherbourg, June 25, 1793).— Mortimer-Ternaux, viii. 126.—On the opinion ofthe departments cf.Paul Thi- baud (“Etudes sur l’histoire de Grenoble et du Department de l’Ise´re”).—Louis Guibert (“Le Parti Girondin dans le Haute Vienne”).—Jarrin (“Bourg et Bellay pendant la Re´volution”). The Revolutionary Government / 865 cancelled the pay ofits clerks at the capital, withdrew the mandate they had misused, and declared them usurpers ifthey persisted in not yielding up their borrowed sovereignty “to its inalienable sovereignty.” To this stroke, which strikes deep, the “Mountain” replies by a similar stroke; it also renders homage to principles and falls back on the popular will. Through the sudden manufacture of an ultrademocratic constitution, through a convocation ofthe primary assemblies, and a ratification ofits work by the people in these assemblies, through the summoning ofdelegates to Paris, through the assent ofthese converted, fascinated,or constrained delegates, it exonerates and justifies itself, and thus deprives the Girondists of the grievances to which they had given currency, ofthe axioms they had displayed on their standards, and ofthe popularity they thought they had acquired.53 Henceforth, the ground their opponents had built on sinks under their feet; the materials collected by them dis- integrate in their hands; their league dissolves before it is completed, and the incurable weakness ofthe party appears in fulldaylight. And in the first place, in the departments, as at Paris,54 the party is without roots. For the past three years, all the sensible and orderly people occupied with their own affairs, who are not politicians, nine- tenths ofthe electors, either through taste or interest, stay away from the polls, and in this large mass the Girondists have no adherents. As they themselves admit,55 this class remains attached to the institutions of1791, which they have overthrown; ifit has any esteem for them, it is as “extremely honest madmen.” Again, this esteem is mingled with aversion: it reproaches them with the violent

53. Albert Babeau, ii., 83. (Pamphlet by the cure´ ofCleray). “Every primary assembly that acepts the Constitution strikes the factions a blow on the head with the club ofHercules.” 54. Cf. “The Revolution,” Vol. ii., ch. xi. 55. Buzot.—Archives Nationales, AF. II., 157. Reports by Baudot and Ysa- beau to the Convention. The 19th ofAug. at the Hoˆtel-de-Ville ofBordeaux, they eulogise the 21st of January: “There was then a roar as frightful as it was general. A city official coolly replied to us: What would you have? To oppose anarchy we have been forced to join the aristocrats, and they rule.” Another says ironically to Ysabeau: “We did not anticipate that—they are our tribunes.” 866 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION decrees they have passed in concert with the “Mountain”; with persecutions, confiscations, every species ofinjustice and cruelty; it always sees the King’s blood on their hands; they, too, are regicides, anti-Catholics, anti-Christians, destructionists and levellers.56 Un- doubtedly they are less so than the “Mountain”; hence, when the provincial insurrection breaks out, many Feuillants and even Roy- alists follow them to the section assemblies and join in their protests. But the majority goes no further, and soon falls back into its accustomed inertia. It is not in harmony with its leaders:57 its latent preferences are opposed to their avowed programme; it does not wholly trust them; it has only a half-way affection for them; its recent sympathies are deadened by old animosities: everywhere, instead of firmness there is only caprice. All this affords no assurance ofstead- fast loyalty and practical adhesion. The Girondist deputies scattered through the provinces relied upon each department arousing itself at their summons and forming a republican Vendeé against the “Mountain”: nowhere do they find anything beyond mild approval and speculative hopes. There remains to support them the e´lite ofthe republican party, the scholars and lovers ofliterature, who are honest and sincere thinkers, who, worked upon by the current dogmas, have accepted the philosophical catechism literally and seriously. Elected judges, or department, district, and city administrators, commanders and officers ofthe National Guard, presidents and secretaries ofsections,

56. Jarrin, “Bourg et Belley pendant la Re´volution” (“Annales de la Socie´te´ d’Emulation de l’Ain, 1878, Nos. for January, February, and March, p. 16). 57. Louvet, 103, 108.—Guillon de Montleón, i., 305 and following pages.— Buchez et Roux, xxviii., 151. (Report ofthe delegates ofthe district ofAndelys). “One ofthe members observed that there would be a good deal oftrouble in raising an armed force of one thousand men.” An administrator (a commissioner ofCalvados) replied: “We shall have all the aristocrats on our side.” The principal military leaders at Caen and at Lyons, Wimpfen, Prećy, Puisaye, are Feuillants and form only a provisional alliance with the Girondists properly so called. Hence constant contentions and reciprocal mistrust. Birotteau and Chapet leave Lyons because they do not find the spirit ofthe place sufficiently republican. The Revolutionary Government / 867 they occupy most ofthe places conferredby local authority, and hence their almost unanimous protest seems at first to be the voice ofall France. In reality, it is only the despairing cry ofa group of staff-officers without an army. Chosen under the electoral pressure with which we are familiar, they possess rank, office and titles, but no credit or influence; they are supported only by those whom they really represent, that is to say, those who elected them, a tenth of the population, and forming a sectarian minority. Again, in this minority there are a good many who are lukewarm; with most men the distance is great between conviction and action; the interval is filled up with acquired habits, indolence, fear and egoism. One’s beliefin the abstractions ofthe Contrat-Social is oflittle account; no one readily bestirs oneselfforan abstract end. Uncertainties beset one at the outset; the road one has to follow is found to be perilous and obscure, and one hesitates and postpones; one feels himself a home-body and is afraid of engaging too deeply and of going too far. Having expended one’s breath in words one is less willing to give one’s money; another may open his purse but he may not be disposed to give himself, which is as true of the Girondists as it is ofthe Feuillants. “At Marseilles, at Bordeaux,” says a deputy, 58 “in nearly all the principal towns, the proprietor, slow, indifferent and timid, could not make up his mind to leave home for a moment; it was to mercenaries that he entrusted his cause and his arms.” Only the federates of Mayenne, Ile-et-Vilaine, and especially of Finisterre, were “young men well brought up and well informed about the cause they were going to support.” In Normandy, the Central Com- mittee, unable to do better, has to recruit its soldiers, and especially artillerymen, from the band of Carabots, former Jacobins, a lot of ruffians ready for anything, pillagers and runaways at the first cannon-shot. At Caen, Wimpfen, having ordered the eight battalions ofthe National Guard to assemble in the court, demands volunteers

58. Louvet, 124, 129.—Vaultier et Mancel, “L’Insurrection Normande.” Buchez et Roux, xxviii., 360. (Notice by Genl. Wimpfen), July 7. Puisaye, “Memoires.” 868 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION and finds that only seventeen step forth; on the following day a formal requisition brings out only one hundred and thirty combatants; other towns, except Vire, which furnishes about twenty, refuse their contingent. In short, a marching army cannot be formed, or, ifit does march, it halts at the first station, that ofEvreux before reaching Vernon, and that ofMarseilles at the walls ofAvignon. On the other hand, by virtue ofbeing sincere and logical, those who have rebelled entertain scruples and themselves define the limits oftheir insurrection. The fugitive deputies at their head would believe themselves guilty ofusurpation had they, like the “Mountain” at Paris, constituted themselves at Caen a sovereign assembly:59 according to them, their right and their duty is reduced to giving testimony concerning the 31st ofMay and the 1st ofJune, and to exhorting the people and to being eloquent. They are not legally qualified to take executive power; it is for the local magistrates, the e´lus ofthe sections, and better still, the department committees, to command in the departments. Lodged as they are in official quarters, they are merely to print formal statements, write letters, and, behaving properly, wait until the sovereign people, their employer, reinstates them. It has been outraged in their persons; it must avenge itselfforthis outrage; since it approves ofits mandatories, it is bound to restore them to office; it being the master ofthe house, it is bound to have its own way in the house. As to the department committees, it is true that, in the heat ofthe first excitement, they thought of forming a new Convention at Bourges, either through a muster of substitute deputies, or through the convocation ofa national commission ofone hundred and seventy members. 60 But time is wanting, also the means, to carry out the plan; it remains suspended in the air like vain menace; at the end ofa fortnightit vanishes in smoke;

59. Mortimer-Ternaux, viii., 471. Letter ofBarbaroux, Caen, June 18.— Ibid., 133. Letter ofMadame Roland to Buzot, July 7. “You are not the one to march at the head ofbattalions (departmental). It would have the appearance ofgratifyingpersonal vengeance.” 60. Buchez et Roux, xxviii., 153. (Deliberations ofthe constituted authorities ofMarseilles, June 7.) The Revolutionary Government / 869 the departments succeed in federating only in scattered groups; they desist from the formation of a central government, and thus, through this fact alone, condemn themselves to succumb, one after the other, in detail, and each at home. What is worse, through conscientiousness and patriotism, they prepare their own defeat: they refrain from calling upon the armies and from stripping the frontiers; they do not contest the right ofthe Convention to provide as it pleases for the national defence. Lyons allows the passage of convoys of cannon- balls which are to be subsequently used in cannonading its defenders.61 The authorities ofPuy-de-Dome aid by sending to Vende´e the battalion that they had organised against the “Mountain.” Bordeaux is to surrender Chateau-Trompette, its munitions ofwar and supplies, to the representatives on mission; and, without a word, with exemplary docility, both the Bordelais battalions which guard Blaye suﬀer themselves to be dislodged by two Jacobin battalions.62 Com- prehending the insurrection in this way, defeat is certain beforehand. The insurgents are thus conscious oftheir falseposition; they have a vague sort offeelingthat, in recognising the military authority ofthe Convention, they admit its authority in full;insensibly they glide down this slope, from concession to concession, until they reach complete submission. From the 16th ofJune, at Lyons, 63 “peo-

61. Guillon de Montleón, ii., 40. The contrast between the two parties is well shown in the following extract from the letter of a citizen of Lyons to Kellerman’s soldiers. “They tell you that we want to destroy the unity ofthe Republic, while they themselves abandon the frontiers to the enemy in order to come here and cut their brethren’s throats.” 62. Guillon de Montleón, i., 288.—Marcelin Boudet, “Les Conventionnels d’Auvergne,” p. 181.—Louvet, 193.—Moniteur, xvii., 101. (Speech ofCambon, July 11). “We have preferred to expose these funds (one hundred and five millions destined for the army) to being intercepted, rather than to retard this dispatch. The first thing the Committee ofPublic Safetyhave had to care for was to save the Republic and make the administrations fully responsible for it. They were fully sensible of this, and accordingly have allowed the circulation ofthese funds ....They have been forced, through the wise management of the Committee, to contribute themselves to the safety of the Republic.” 63. Archives Nationales, Letter ofRobert Lindet, June 16, AF. II., 43. The 870 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION ple begin to feel that it will not answer to break with the Conven- tion.” Five weeks later, the authorities ofLyons “solemnly recognise that the Convention is the sole central rallying point ofall French citizens and republicans,” and decree that “all acts emanating from it concerning the general interests ofthe Republic are to be executed.”64 Consequently, at Lyons and in other departments, the administrations convoke the primary assemblies as the Convention has prescribed; consequently, the primary assemblies accept the Consti- tution which it has proposed; consequently, the delegates ofthe primary assemblies betake themselves to Paris according to its orders. Henceforth, the Girondist cause is lost; the discharge of a few cannon at Vernon and Avignon disperse the only two columns ofsol- diery that have set out on their march. In each department, the Jacobins, encouraged by the representatives on mission, raise their heads; everywhere the local club enjoins the local government to submit,65 everywhere the local governments report the acts they pass, make excuses and ask forgiveness. Proportionately to the retracta- tion ofone department, the rest, feelingthemselves abandoned, are more disposed to retract. On the 9th ofJuly forty-ninedepartments are enumerated as having given in their adhesion. Several ofthem correspondence ofLindet, which is very interesting, well shows the sentiments ofthe Lyonnese and the policy ofthe “Mountain.” “However agitated Lyons may be, order prevails; nobody wants either king or tyrant; all use the same language: the words republic, union, are in everybody’s mouth.” (Eight letters.) He always gives the same advice to the Committee ofPublic Safety:“Publish a constitution, publish the motives ofthe bills ofarrest,” which are indispensable to rally everybody to the Convention (June 15). 64. Guillon de Montleón, i., 309 (July 24). 65. Sauzay, iv., 268.—Paul Thibaud, 50.—Marcelin Boudet, 185.—Archives Nationales AF. II., 46. Extract from the registers of the Council of the department ofLoire-Inferieure,July 14. The department protests that its decree of July 5 was not “a rupture with the Convention, an open rebellion against the laws ofthe State, an idea very remote from the sentiments and intentions of the citizens present.” Now, “the plan ofa Constitution is offered to the acceptance ofthe sovereign. This fortunatecircumstance should bring people to one mind, and, with hope thus renewed, let us at once seize on the means ofsalvation thus presented to us.”—Moniteur, xvii., 102. (Speech ofCambon, July 11.) The Revolutionary Government / 871 declare that the scales have dropped from their eyes, that they approve ofthe acts ofMay 31 and June 2, and thus ensure their safety by manifesting their zeal. The administration of Calvados notifies the Breton fe´de´re´s that “having accepted the Constitution it can no longer tolerate their presence in Caen”; it sends them home, and secretly makes peace with the “Mountain”; and only informs the deputies, who are its guests, ofthis proceeding, three days afterwards, by posting on their door the decree that declares them outlaws. Disguised as soldiers, the latter depart along with the Breton fe´de´re´s; on the way, they are able to ascertain the veritable sentiments ofthis people whom they believe imbued with their rights and capable oftaking a political initiative. 66 The pretended citizens and republicans they have to do with are, in sum, the former subjects of Louis XVI. and the future subjects of Napoleon I., that is to say, the rulers and the ruled, trained to feel all one way and instinctively subordinate, requiring a government just as sheep require a shepherd and a watch-dog, accepting or submitting to shepherd and dog, provided these look and act the part, even ifthe shepherd be a butcher and the dog a wolf. To avoid isolation, to rejoin the most numerous herd as soon as possible, to always form masses and bodies and thus follow the impulsion which comes from above, and gather together scattered individuals, such is the instinct ofthe flock. In

66. Louvet, 119, 128, 150, 193.—Meillan, 130, 141. (On the disposition and sentiments ofthe provinces and ofthe public in general, the reader will find ample and authentic details in the narratives ofthe fugitives who scattered themselves in all directions, and especially in those ofLouvet, Meillan, Dulaure, and Vaublanc.) Cf. the “Memoires de Hua” and “Un Se´jour en France in 1792 and 1795.”—Mallet-Dupan already states this disposition before 1789 (MS. journal). “June, 1785: The French live simply in a crowd; they must all cling together. On the promenades they huddle together and jostle each other in one alley; the same when there is more space.” “Aug., 1787, (after the first riots): I have remarked in general more curiosity than excitement in the multitude. . . . One can judge, at this moment, the national character; a good deal ofbravado and nonsense; neither reason, rule, nor method; rebellious in crowds, and not a soul that does not tremble in the presence ofa corporal.” 872 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION the battalion offederates, they begin by saying that, as the Consti- tution is now accepted and the Convention recognised, it is no longer allowable to protect deputies whom it has declared outlaws: “that would be creating a faction.” Thereupon, the deputies withdraw from the battalion, and, in a little squad by themselves, march along separately. As they are nineteen in number, resolute and well armed, the authorities ofthe market-towns through which they pass make no opposition by force; it would be offering battle, and that surpasses a functionary’s zeal; moreover, the population is either indifferent toward them or sympathetic. Nevertheless, efforts are made to stop them, sometimes to surround them and take them by surprise; for, a warrant of arrest is out against them, transmitted through the hierarchical channel, and every local magistrate feels bound to do his duty as gendarme. Under this administrative network, the meshes ofwhich they encounter everywhere, the proscribed deputies can do naught else but hide in caves or escape by sea. On reaching Bordeaux, they find other sheep getting ready and preparing their companions for the slaughter-house. Saige, the mayor, preaches conciliation and patience: he declines the aid of four or five thousand young men, three thousand grenadiers of the National Guard, and two or three hundred volunteers who had formed themselves into a club against the Jacobin club; he persuades them to disband; he sends a deputation to Paris to entreat the Con- vention to overlook “a moment oferror” and pardon “brethren that had gone astray.” “They flattered themselves,” says a deputy, an eye-witness,67 “that prompt submission would appease the resentment oftyrants and that these would be, or pretend to be, generous enough to spare a town that had signalised itselfmore than any other during the Revolution.” Up to the last, they are to entertain the same illusions and manifest the same docility. When Tallien, with his eighteen hundred peasants and brigands, enters Bordeaux, twelve thousand National Guards, equipped, armed and in uniform,

67. Meillan, 143.—Mortimer-Ternaux, viii., 203. (Session ofAugust 30). Mallet-Dupan, ii., 9. The Revolutionary Government / 873 receive him wearing oak-leafcrowns; they listen in silence to “his astounding and outrageous discourse”; they suffer him to tear off their crowns, cockades and epaulettes; the battalions allow themselves to be disbanded on the spot; on returning to their quarters they listen with downcast eyes to the proclamation which “orders all inhabitants without distinction to bring their arms within thirty- six hours, under penalty ofdeath, to the glacis ofthe Chateau- Trompette; before the time elapses thirty thousand guns, swords, pistols and even pocketknives are given up.” Here, as at Paris, on the 20th ofJune, 10th ofAugust, 2d ofSeptember, 3d ofMay and 2d ofJune, as at every critical moment ofthe Revolution in Paris and the provinces, habits ofsubordination and ofamiability, stamped on a people by a provident monarchy and a time-honored civilisation, mollify in man the foresight of danger, the militant instinct, the facultyofself-dependence, oftaking his own part, oflooking out for his own salvation. Inevitably, when anarchy brings a nation back to the state ofnature, the tame animals will be eaten by the savage ones—these are now let loose and immediately they show their natural disposition. VIII Ifthe men ofthe “Mountain” had been statesmen, or even sensible men, they would have shown themselves humane, ifnot forthe sake ofhumanity, at least through calculation; forin this France, so little republican, all the republican strength is not too great for the founding ofthe Republic, while, through their principles, their culture, their social position and their number, the Girondists form the e´lite and the force, the flower and the sap of the party. The death-cry of the “Mountain” against the insurgents ofLoze´re68 and Vendeè is intelligible: they had raised the white flag; they accepted leaders and instructions from Coblentz and London. But neither Bordeaux, Mar- seilles nor Lyons are royalist, or in alliance with the foreigner. “We,

68. Ernest Daudet, “His. des Conspirations royalistes dans le midi.” (books ii. and iii.) 874 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION rebels!” write the Lyonnese;69 “Why we see no other than the tricolor flag waving; the white cockade, the symbol ofrebellion, has never been raised within our walls. We, royalists! Why, shouts of ‘Long live the Republic’ are heard on all sides, and, spontaneously (in the session ofJuly 2nd) we have all sworn to fallupon whoever should propose a king....Yourrepresentatives tell you that we are antirevolutionists, when we have accepted the Constitution. They tell you that we protect emigre´s when we have offered to surrender all those that you might indicate. They tell you that our streets are filled with refractory priests, when we have not even opened the doors ofPierre-en-Cize (prison) to thirty-two priests confined there by the old municipality, without indictment, without any charge whatever against them, solely because they were priests.” Thus, at Lyons, the pretended aristocrats were, then, not only republicans but democrats and radicals, loyal to the established re´gime, and submissive to the worst ofthe revolutionary laws, while the same state ofthings prevailed at Bordeaux, at Marseilles and even at Toulon. 70 And better still, they accepted the outrages ofMay 31 and June 2; 71

69. Guillon de Montleón, i., 313. (Address to the National Guards demanded against Lyons, July 30., ii., 40. Address ofa Lyonais to the patriot soldiers under Kellermann.) 70. Mortimer-Ternaux, viii., 222. The insurrection ofToulon, Girondist at the start, dates July 1st.—Letter ofthe new administrators ofToulon to the Convention. “We desire the Republic, one and indivisible; there is no sign of rebellion with us. . . . Representatives Barras and Fre´ron lie shamefully in depicting us as antirevolutionists, on good terms with the English and the families ofVendeć.” The Toulon administrators continue furnishing the Italian army with supplies. July 19, an English boat, sent to parley, had to lower the white flag and hoist the tricolor flag. The entry ofthe English into Toulon did not take place before the 29th of August. 71. Guillon de Montleón, ii., 67. (Letter ofthe Lyonnese to the representatives ofthe people, Sep. 20): “The people ofLyons have constantly respected the laws, and if, as in some departments, that of Rhone-et-Loire was for a moment mistaken in the events ofMay 31, they hastened, as soon as they believed that the Convention was not oppressed, to recognise and execute its decrees. Every day, now that these reach it, they are published and observed within its walls.” The Revolutionary Government / 875 they stopped contesting the usurpations ofParis; they no longer insisted on the return ofthe excluded deputies. On the 2nd of August at Bordeaux, and the 30th ofJuly at Lyons, the Committee- Extraordinary ofPublic Safetyresigned; there no longer existed any rival assembly opposed to the Convention. After the 24th of July,72 Lyons solemnly recognised the supreme and central authority, reserving nothing but its municipal franchises. Better still, in striking testimony ofpolitical orthodoxy, the Council-General ofthe department prescribed a civic festival for the 10th of August analogous to that ofParis; already blockaded, the Lyonnese indulged in no hostile manifestation; on the 7th of August, they marched out of their advanced positions to fraternise with the first body of troops sent against them.73 They conceded everything, save on one point, which they could not yield without destruction, namely, the assurance that they should not be given up defenceless to the arbitrary judgment oftheir local tyrants, to the spoliations, proscriptions, and revenge oftheir Jacobin rabble. In sum, at Marseilles and Bordeaux, especially at Lyons and Toulon, the sections had revolted only on that account; acting promptly and spontaneously, the people had thrust aside the knife which a few ruffians aimed at their throats; they had not been, and were not now, willing to be “Septemberised,” and that was their sole concern; provided they were not handed over to the butchers bound hand and foot, they would open their gates. On these minimum terms the “Mountain” could terminate the civil war before the end of July; it had only to follow the example of Robert Lindet who, at Evreux the home ofBuzot, at Caen the home ofCharlotte Corday and central seat ofthe fugitive Girondists,

72. Moniteur, xvii., 269. (Session ofJuly 28). (Letter ofthe administrators ofthe department ofRhone-et-Loire to the Convention, Lyons, July 24). “We present to the Convention our individual recantation and declaration; in conforming to the law we are entitled to its protection. We petition the court to decide on our declaration, and to repeal the acts which relate to us or to make an exception in our favor....Wehavealways professed ourselves to be true republicans.” 73. Guillon de Montleón, i., 309, 311, 315, 335. Mortimer-Ternaux, viii., 197. 876 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION established permanent obedience through the moderation he had shown and the promises he had kept.74 The measures that had pacified the most compromised province would have brought back the others, and through this policy, Paris, without striking a blow, would have secured the three largest cities in France, the capital ofthe South-west, that ofthe South, and the capital ofthe Centre. On the contrary, should the Paris faction persist in imposing on them the domination ofits Maratists there was a risk oftheir being thrown into the arms ofthe enemy. Rather than fallback into the hands ofthe bandits who had ransomed and decimated them, Tou- lon, starved out, was about to receive the English within its walls and surrender to them the great arsenal ofthe South. Not less famished, Bordeaux might be tempted to demand aid from another En- glish fleet; a few marches would bring the Piedmontese army to Lyons; France would then be cut in two, while the plan ofstirring up the South against the North was proposed to the allies by the most clear-sighted oftheir councillors. 75 Had this plan been carried out it is probable that the country would have been lost. In any event, there was danger in driving the insurgents to despair: for, between the unbridled dictatorship oftheir victorious assassins and the musketry ofthe besieging army, there could be no hesitation by men ofany feeling;it was better to be beaten on the ramparts than allow themselves to be bound for the guillotine; brought to a stand under the scaffold, their sole resource was to depend on themselves to the last. Thus, through its unreasonableness, the “Mountain” condemns itselfto a number ofsieges or blockades which lasted several months,76 to leaving Var and Savoy unprotected, to exhausting the

74. Mortimer-Ternaux viii., 141. 75. Mallet-Dupan, i., 379 and following pages; i., 408; ii., 10. 76. Entry ofthe Republican troops into Lyons, October 9th, into Toulon, December 19th. Bordeaux had submitted on the 2d ofAugust. Exasperated by the decree ofthe 6th, which proscribed all the abettors ofthe insurrection, the city drives out, on the 19th, the representatives Baudot and Ysabeau. It submits again on the 19th ofSeptember. But so great is the indignation ofthe citizens, Tallien and his three colleagues dare not enter before the 16 of October. (Mortimer-Ternaux, viii., 197 and following pages.) The Revolutionary Government / 877 arsenals, to employing against Frenchmen77 men and munitions needed against foreigners, and all this at the moment the foreigner was taking Valenciennes78 and Mayence, when thirty thousand royalists were organising in Loze´re, when the great Vendean army was laying siege to Nantes, when each new focus of incendiarism was threatening to connect the flaming frontier with the conflagration in the Catholic countries.79 With a jet ofcold water aptly directed, the “Mountain” could extinguish the fires it had kindled in the great republican towns; otherwise, nothing remained but to let them increase at the risk ofconsuming the whole country, with no other hope than that they might at last die out under a mass ofruins, and with no other object but to rule over captives and the dead. But this is precisely the Jacobin aim; for, he is not satisfied with less than absolute submission; he must rule at any cost, just as he pleases, no matter how, no matter over what ruins. A despot by instinct and installation, his dogma has consecrated him King; he is King by natural and divine right, in the name ofeternal verity, the same as Philip II., enthroned by his religious system and blessed by his Holy Office. Hence he can abandon no jot or tittle ofhis authority without a sacrifice ofprinciple, nor treat with rebels, unless they surrender at discretion; simply for having risen against legitimate authority, they are traitors and malefactors. And who are greater malefactors than the backsliders who, after three years of patient effort, just as the sect finally reaches its goal, oppose its accession to power!80 At Nismes, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Toulon, and

77. Seventy thousand men were required to reduce Lyons (Guillon de Mont- le´on, ii., 226), and sixty thousand men to reduce Toulon. 78. Archives des Aﬀaires Etrange`res, vol. cccxxix. (Letter ofChe´py, political agent, Grenoble, July 26, 1793). “I say it unhesitatingly, I had rather reduce Lyons than save Valenciennes.” 79. Ibid., vol. cccxxix. (Letter ofChe´py, Grenoble, August 24, 1793): “The Piedmontese are masters ofCluse. A large body ofmountaineers have joined them. At Annecy the women have cut down the liberty pole and burnt the archives ofthe club and commune. At Chambe´ry, the people wanted to do the same, but they forced the sick in the hospitals to take arms and kept them under.” 80. Moniteur, xviii, 474. (Report ofBillaud-Varennes, October 18, 1793). 878 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Lyons, not only have they interfered with or arrested the blow which Paris struck, but they have put down the aggressors, closed the club, disarmed the fanatical, and imprisoned the leading Maratists; and worse still, at Lyons and at Toulon, five or six massacreurs, or promoters ofmassacre, Chaˆlier and Riard, Jassaud, Sylvestre, and Le- maille, brought before the courts, have been condemned and executed after a trial in which all the forms were strictly adhered to. That is the inexpiable crime; for, in this trial, the “Mountain” is involved; the principles ofSylvestre and Chaˆlier are its principles; what it accomplished in Paris, they have attempted in the provinces; ifthey are guilty, it is also guilty; it cannot tolerate their punishment without assenting to its own punishment. Accordingly, it must proclaim them heroes and martyrs, it must canonise their memory,81 it must avenge their tortures, it must resume and complete their assaults, it must restore their accomplices to their places, it must render them omnipotent, it must fetch each rebel city under the yoke of its populace and malefactors. It matters little whether the Jacobins be a minority, whether at Bordeaux, they have but four out of twenty- eight sections on their side, at Marseilles five out ofthirty-two, whether at Lyons they can count up only fifteen hundred devoted adherents.82 Suffrages are not reckoned, but weighed, for legality is

“The combined eﬀorts ofall the powers ofEurope have not compromised liberty and the country so much as the federalist factions; the assassin the most to be dreaded is the one that lives in the house.” 81. The convention purposely reinstates incendiaries and assassins. (Moni- teur, xviii., 483. Session ofBrumaire 28, year II.): xvii., 176. (Session ofJuly 19, 1793). Rehabilitation ofBordier and Jourdain, hung in August, 1789. Can- celling ofthe proceedings begun against the authors ofthe massacre ofMelun (September, 1792) and release ofthe accused.—Cf.Albert Babeau, (i., 277.) Rehabilitation, with indemnities distributed in Messidor, year II, to the rioters and assassins condemned for the riot of September 9, 1789, at Troyes, or to their relatives.—“Archives des Aﬀaires Etrange`res,” vol. 331. (Letter ofChe´py, Grenoble, Frimaire 8, year II). “The criminal court and jury ofthe department have just risen to the height ofthe situation; they have acquitted the castle- burners.” 82. Mortimer-Ternaux, viii., 593. (Deputation oftwenty-foursections sent from Bordeaux to the Convention, August 30).—Buchez et Roux, xxviii., 494. The Revolutionary Government / 879 founded, not on numbers, but on patriotism, the sovereign people being composed wholly of sans-culottes. So much the worse for towns where the antirevolutionary majority is so great; they are only the more dangerous; under their republican demonstrations is concealed the hostility ofold parties and ofthe “suspect” classes, the Moderates, the Feuillants and Royalists, merchants, men ofthe legal profession, property-holders, and muscadins.83 These form nests of reptiles and there is nothing to be done but to crush them out.

IX In effect, whether brought under subjection or not, they are crushed out. Those are declared traitors to the country, not merely members ofthe departmental committees, but, at Bordeaux, all who have “aided or abetted the Committee ofPublic Safety”;at Lyons, all administrators, functionaries, military or civil officers who “convoked or tolerated the Rhone-et-Loire congress,” and furthermore, “every individual whose son, clerk, servant, or even day-laborer, may have borne arms, or contributed to the means ofresistance,” that is to say, the entire National Guard who took up arms, and nearly all the population which gave its money or voted in the sections.84 By virtue ofthis decree, all are “outlaws,” or, in other words, subject to the guillotine on the mere declaration ofidentity, and their property is confiscated. Consequently, at Bordeaux, where not a gun had been fired, the mayor Saige, and principal author of

(Report ofthe representatives on mission in Bouches-du-Rhone, September 2d).—Ibid., xxx., 386. (Letter ofRousin, commandant ofthe revolutionary army at Lyons. “A population ofone hundred twenty thousand souls ....There are not amongst all these, one thousand five hundred patriots, even one thousand five hundred persons that one could spare.—Guillon de Montleón, i., 355, 374. (Signatures oftwenty thousand Lyonnese ofall classes, August 17th). 83. Guillon de Montleón, i., 394. (Letter ofDubois-Crance´ to the Lyonnese, August 10th.) 84. Mortimer-Ternaux, viii., 198. (Decree ofAug. 6.)—Buchez et Roux, xxviii., 297, (Decree ofJuly 12.).—Guillon de Montleón, i., 342. Summons of Dubois-Crance´, Aug. 8.) 880 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION the submission, is at once led to the scaffold without any form of trial,85 while eight hundred and eighty-one others succeed him amidst the solemn silence ofa dismayed population. 86 Two hundred prominent merchants are arrested in one night; more than fifteen hundred persons are imprisoned; all who are well off are ransomed, even those against whom no political charge could be made; nine millions offines are levied against “rich egoists.” One ofthese, 87 accused of“indifference and moderatism,” pays twenty thousand francs “not to be harnessed to the car of the Revolution”; another, “convicted of having manifested contempt for his section and for the poor by giving thirty livres per month,” is taxed at one million two hundred thousand livres, while the new authorities, a swindling mayor and twelve knaves composing the Revolutionary Committee, traffic in lives and property.88 At Marseilles, says Danton,89 the object

85. Meillan, 142.—“Archives des Affaires Etrange´res,” vol. cccxxxii. (Letter ofDesgranges, Bordeaux, Brumaire 8, year II.): “The execution ofMayor Saige, who was much loved by the people for his benefactions, caused much sorrow; but no guilty murmur was heard.” 86. Archives Nationales, AF. II., 46. (Letter ofJulien to the Committee of Public Safety, Messidor 11, year II.) “Some time ago a solemn silence prevailed at the sessions ofthe military commission, the people’s response to the death- verdicts against conspirators; the same silence attended them to the scaffold; the whole commune seemed to sob in secret at their fate.” 87. Berryat Saint-Prix, “La Justice Re´volutionaire,” pp. 277–299.—Ar- chives Nationales, AF. II., 46. (Registers ofthe Com. ofSurveillance, Bor- deaux). The number ofprisoners, between Prairial 21 and 28, varies from 1504 to 1529. Number ofthe guillotined, 882. (Memoirs ofSe ńart). 88. Archives Nationales, AF. II., 46. Letter ofJulien, Messidor 12, year II. “A good deal has been stolen here; the mayor, now in prison, is charged with defalcations to a considerable amount. The former Committee of Surveillance was gravely compromised; many folks that were outlawed only got back by paying; the fact is verified. . . . Of the number of those who have thus purchased their lives there are some who did not deserve to die and who, nevertheless, were threatened with death.”—Buchez et Roux, xxxii., 428. (Extracts from the Memoirs ofSeńart). “The president ofthe military commission was a man named Lacombe, already banished from the city on account of a judgment against him for robbery. The other individuals employed by Tallien comprised a lot ofvalets, bankrupts, and sharpers.” 89. Buchez et Roux, xxviii., 493. (Speech by Danton, August 31, and decree in conformity therewith by the Convention). The Revolutionary Government / 881 is “to give the commercial aristocracy an important lesson”; we must “show ourselves as terrible to traders as to nobles and priests”; consequently, twelve thousand ofthem are proscribed and their possessions sold.90 From the first day the guillotine works as fast as possible; nevertheless, it does not work fast enough for Represen- tative Fre´ron who finds the means for making it work faster. “The military commission we have established in place ofthe revolutionary Tribunal,” he writes, “works frightfully fast against the conspirators. . . . They fall like hail under the sword of the law. Fourteen have already paid for their infamous treachery with their heads. Tomorrow, sixteen more are to be guillotined, all chiefs of the legion, notaries, sectionists, members ofthe popular tribunal; tomorrow, also, three merchants will dance the carmagnole, and they are the ones we are after.”91 Men and things, all must perish; he wishes to demolish the city and proposes to fill up the harbor. Restrained with great difficulty, he contents himselfwith a destruction of“the haunts” ofthe aristocracy, two churches, the concert-hall, the houses around it, and twenty-three buildings in which the rebel sections had held their meetings.

90. Mallet-Dupan, ii., 17. “Thousands oftraders in Marseilles and Bordeaux, here the respectable Gradis and there the Tarteron, have been assassinated and their goods sold. I have seen the thirty-second list only ofthe Marseilles emigres, whose property has been conﬁscated....There are twelve thousand ofthem and the lists are not yet complete.” (Feb. 1, 1794.)—Anne Plumptre. “A Nar- rative ofThree Years’ Residence in France, from 1802 to 1805.” “During this period the streets ofMarseilles were almost those ofa deserted town. One could go from one end of the town to the other without meeting any one he could call an inhabitant. The great terrorists, ofwhom scarcely one was a Marseillaise, the soldiers and roughs as they called themselves, were almost the only persons encountered.” The latter, to the number ofﬁftyor sixty, in jackets with leather straps, fell upon all whom they did not like, and especially on anybody with a clean shirt and white cravate. Many persons on the “Cours” were thus whipped to death. No woman went out-doors without a basket, while every man wore a jacket, without which they were taken for aristocrats. (ii., 94.) 91. “Me´moires de Fre´ron.” (Collection Barrie´re and Berville). Letters of Fre´ron to Moise Bayle, Brumaire 23, Pluviose 5 and 11, Nivose 16, II, published by Moise Bayle, also details furnished by Huard, pp. 350–365.—Archives Na- tionales, AF. II., 144. (Order ofrepresentatives Fre´ron, Barras, Salicetti, and Ricard, Nivose 17, year II.) 882 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

At Lyons, to increase the booty, the representatives had taken pains to encourage the manufacturers and merchants with vague promises; these opened their shops and brought their valuable goods, books, and papers out oftheir hiding-places. 92 No time is lost in seizing the plunder; “a list ofall property belonging to the rich and to antirevolutionists” is drawn up, which is “confiscated for the benefit ofthe patriots ofthe city”; in addition to this a tax ofsix millions is imposed, payable in eight days, by those whom the confiscation may have still spared;93 it is proclaimed, according to principle, that the surplus ofeach individual belongs by right to the sans- culottes, and whatever may have been retained beyond the strictly necessary, is a robbery by the individual to the detriment ofthe nation.94 In conformity with this rule there is an universal swoop, prolonged for ten months, which places the fortunes of a city of one hundred and twenty thousand souls in the hands ofits rowdies. Thirty-two revolutionary committees “whose members stick like lice” choose “thousands ofkeepers devoted to them.” 95 In confiscated dwellings and warehouses, they affix seals without an inventory; they drive out women and children “so that there shall be no witnesses”; they keep the keys; they enter and steal when they please, or install themselves for a revel with prostitutes. Meanwhile, the guillotine is kept going, and people are fired at and shot down with grape-shot. The Revolutionary Committee officially avow one thousand six hundred and eighty-two acts ofmurder committed in five months, while a confederate of Robespierre’s privately declares that there were six thousand.96 Blacksmiths are condemned to death for having shod the Lyon-

92. Mallet-Dupan, ii., 17.—Guillon de Montleón, ii., 259. 93. Mallet-Dupan, ii., 17.—Guillon de Montleón, ii., 259. 94. Ibid., ii., 281. (Decree ofthe Convention, Oct. 12); ii., 312. (Orders of Couthon and his colleagues, Oct. 25); ii., 361, 372. (Instructions for the temporary commission, Brumaire 26.) 95. Ibid., iii., 153–156. Letter ofLaporte to Couthon, April 13, 1794. 96. Ibid., ii., 135–137. (Resolutions ofthe Revolutionary Commission, Ger- minal 17.) and Letters ofCadillot to Robespierre, Floreál, year II). iii., 63. The Revolutionary Government / 883 nese cavalry, firemen for having extinguished fires kindled by republican bombshells, a widow for having paid a war-tax during the siege, market women for “having shown disrespect to patriots.” It is an organized “Septembrisade” made legal and lasting; its authors are so well aware ofthe factas to use the word itselfin their public correspondence.97 At Toulon it is worse; people are slaughtered in heaps, almost haphazard. Notwithstanding that the inhabitants the most compromised, to the number of four thousand, take refuge on board English vessels, the whole city, say the representatives, is guilty. Four hundred workmen in the navy-yard having marched out to meet Fre´ron, he reminds them that they kept on working during the English occupation ofthe town, and he has them put to death on the spot. An order is issued to all “good citizens to assemble in the Champ de Mars on penalty ofdeath.” They come there to the number ofthree thousand; Fre´ron, on horseback, surrounded by cannon and troops, arrives with about a hundred Maratists, the former accomplices of Lemaille, Sylvestre, and other well-known assassins, who form a body of local auxiliaries and counsellors; he tells them to select out ofthe crowd at pleasure according to their grudge, fancy, or caprice; all who are designated are ranged along a wall and shot.98 The next morning, and on the following days, the operation is renewed: Fre´ron writes on the 16th ofNivose that “eight hundred Toulonese have already been shot.” . . . “A volley ofmus- ketry,” says he, in another letter, and after that, volley after volley, until “the traitors are all gone.” Then, for three months after this, the guillotine despatches eighteen hundred persons; eleven young women have to mount the scaffold together, in honor ofa republican festival; an old woman of ninety-four is borne to it in an armchair;

97. Guillon de Montleón, ii., 399. (Letter ofPerrotin, member ofthe temporary commission to the revolutionary committee ofMoulin.) “The work before the new commission may be considered as an organisation of the Septem- brisade: the process will be the same, but legalised by an act passed.” 98. “Me´moires de Fre´ron.” (Coll. Barrie´re et Berville) 350–360. Letters of Fre´ron; evidence ofsurviving Toulonese and eye-witnesses.—Lauvergne,“His- toire du De´partement du Var.” 884 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION a population oftwenty-eight thousand fallsdown to six thousand or seven thousand. All this is not enough; the two cities that dared maintain a siege must disappear from the French soil. The Convention decrees that “the city ofLyons shall be destroyed; every house occupied by a rich man shall be demolished; only the dwellings ofthe poor shall remain, with edifices specially devoted to industry, and monuments consecrated to humanity and public education.”99 The same at Tou- lon: “the houses within the town shall be demolished; only the buildings that are essential for army and navy purposes, for stores and munitions, shall be preserved.”100 Consequently, a requisition is made in Var and the neighboring departments for twelve thousand masons to level Toulon to the ground. At Lyons, fourteen thousand laborers pull down the Chateau Pierre-Encize; also the superb houses on Place Bellecour, those ofthe Quai St. Clair, those ofthe Rues de Flandre and de Bourgneuf, and many others; the cost of all this amounts to four hundred thousand livres per decade; in six months the Republic expends fifteen millions in destroying property valued at three or four hundred millions, belonging to the Repub- lic.101 Since the Mongols ofthe fifthand thirteenth centuries, no such vast and irrational waste had been seen—such frenzy against the most profitable fruits of industry and human civilisation. Again, one can understand how the Mongols, who were nomads, desired to convert the soil into one vast steppe. But, to demolish a town whose arsenal and harbor is maintained by it, to destroy the leaders of manufacturing interests and their dwellings in a city where its workmen and factories are preserved, to keep up a fountain and stop the stream which flows from it, or the stream without the fountain, is so absurd that the idea could only enter the head ofa Jacobin. His contracted mind is so worked up that he is no longer aware of

99. Buchez et Roux, xxix., 192. (Decree ofOctober 12). 100. Ibid., xxx., 457. (Decree ofNovember 23). 101. “Me´moires de Fre´ron.” (Letter ofFre´ron, Nivose 6).—Guillon de Montleón, ii., 391. The Revolutionary Government / 885 contradictions; the ferocious stupidity of the barbarian and the fixed idea ofthe inquisitor meet on common ground; the earth is not big enough for any but himself and the orthodox of his species. Em- ploying absurd, inflated and sinister terms he decrees the extermination ofheretics: not only shall their monuments, dwellings and persons be destroyed, but every vestige ofthem shall be eradicated and their names lost to the memory ofman. “The name ofToulon shall be abolished; that commune shall henceforth bear the name of Port-la-Montagne....Thename ofLyons shall be stricken off the list oftowns belonging to the Republic; the remaining collection of houses shall henceforth bear the name of Ville-Affranchie. A column shall be erected on the ruins ofLyons bearing this inscription: ‘ Lyons made war on Liberty! Lyons is no more!’”102 X In all this there is no idea ofsparing the chiefsofthe insurrection or ofthe party, either deputies or ministers; on the contrary, the object is to complete the subjection ofthe Convention, to stifle the murmurs ofthe “Right,” to impose silence on Ducos, Fonfre `de, Vernier, and Couhey, who still speak and protest.103 Hence the decrees ofarrest or death, launched weekly from the top ofthe “Moun- tain,” fall on the majority like guns fired into a crowd. Decrees of accusation follow: on the 15th of June, against Duchatel, on the 17th against Barbaroux, on the 23d against Brissot, on the 8th ofJuly

102. Decrees ofOctober 12 and December 24.—Archives Nationales, AF. II., 44. The representatives on mission wanted to do the same thing with Mar- seilles. (Orders ofFre´ron, Barras, Salicetti, and Ricard, Nivose 17, year II.) “The name ofMarseilles, still borne by this criminal city, shall be changed. The National Convention shall be requested to give it another name. Meanwhile it shall remain nameless and be thus known.” In effect, in several subsequent documents, Marseilles is called the nameless commune. 103. Buchez et Roux, xxviii., 204. (Session ofJune 24: “Strong expressions ofdissent are heard on the right.” Legendre. “I demand that the first rebel, the first man there (pointing to the “Right” party) who interrupts the speaker, be sent to the Abbaye.” Couhey, indeed, was sent to the Abbaye for applauding a Federalist speech.—Cf. on these three months.—Mortimer-Ternaux, vol. viii. 886 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION against Deve´rite´ and Condorcet, on the 14th against Duperret and Fauchet, on the 30th against Duprat Jr., Valleé, and Mainvielle, on the 2d ofAugust against Roulhier, Brunel, and Carra; Carra, Du- perret, and Fauchet, present during the session, are seized on the spot, which is plain physical warning: none is more efficacious, to checkmate the unruly. Decrees are passed on the 18th ofJuly accusing Coustard, on the 28th ofJuly against Gensonne´, Lasource, Vergniaud, Mollevault, Gardien, Grangeneuve, Fauchet, Boileau, Valaze´, Cussy, and Meillan, each being aware that the tribunal before which he must appear is the antechamber to the guillotine. Decrees ofcondemnation are passed on the 12th ofJuly against Birotteau, on the 28th ofJuly against Buzot, Barbaroux, Gorsas, Lanjuniais, Salles, Louvet, Bergoeing, Pe´tion, Guadet, Chasset, Chambon, Li- don, Valady, Fermon, Kervele´gen, Larivie`re, Rabaut St. Etienne, and Lesage; pronounced outlaws and traitors, they are to be led to the scaffold without trial as soon as they can be got hold of. Finally, on the 3d ofOctober, a great haul ofthe net in the Assembly itself sweeps off the benches all the deputies that still seem capable ofany independence: the first thing is to close the doors ofthe hall, which is done by Amar, reporter ofthe Committee ofGeneral Security; 104 then, after a declamatory and calumnious speech, which lasts two hours, he reads off names on two lists ofproscriptions: forty-five deputies, more or less prominent among the Girondists, are to be at once summoned before the revolutionary Tribunal; seventy-three others, who have signed secret protests against the 31st ofMay and 2d ofJune, are to be put in jail. No debate, the majority not being allowed even to express an opinion. Some ofthe proscribed attempt to exculpate themselves, but they are not allowed to be heard; none but the Montagnards have the floor, and they do no more than add to the lists, each according to personal enmity; Levasseur has Vigeé put down, and Duroi adds the name ofRichon. On their names being called, all the poor creatures who happen to be inscribed,

104. Buchez et Roux, xxix., 175.—Dauban: “La De´magogie a` Paris en 1793,” 436. (Narrative by Dulaure, an eye-witness). The Revolutionary Government / 887 quietly advance and “huddle together within the bar ofthe house, like lambs destined to slaughter,” and here they are separated into two flocks; on the one hand, the seventy-three, and on the other, the ten or twelve who, with the Girondists already kept under lock and key, are to furnish the sacramental and popular number, the twenty-two traitors whose punishment is a requirement ofthe Jac- obin imagination;105 on the left, the batch for the prison; on the right, the batch for the guillotine. To those who might be tempted to imitate them or defend them this is a sufficient lesson. Subject to the hootings and foul insults of the hags posted along the street, the seventy-three106 are conducted to the prisoners’ room in the mayoralty, already full; they pass the night standing on benches, scarcely able to breathe. The next day they are crammed into the prison for assassins and robbers, “la Force,” on the sixth story, under the roof; in this narrow garret their beds touch each other, while two ofthe deputies are obliged to sleep on the floor for lack of room. Under the skylights, which serve for windows, and at the foot of the staircase are two pig-pens; at the end ofthe apartment are the privies, and in one corner a night-tub, which completes the poisoning ofthe atmosphere already vitiated by this crowded mass ofhuman beings; the beds consist ofsacks of straw swarming with vermin; they are compelled to endure the discipline,107 rations, and mess ofconvicts. And they are lucky to escape at this rate: for Amar takes advantage of their silent deportment to tax them with conspiracy; other Montagnards likewise want to ar- raign them at the revolutionary Tribunal: at all events, it is agreed

105. There were really only twenty-one brought before the revolutionary Tribunal. 106. Dauban, xxvi., p. 440. (Narrative ofBlanqui, one ofthe seventy-three.) 107. Buchez et Roux, xxix., 178, 179. Osselin: “I demand the decree of accusation against them all.”—Amar: “The apparently negative conduct ofthe minority ofthe Convention since the 2d ofJune, was a new complot devised by Barbaroux.” Robespierre: “Ifthere are other criminals among those you have placed under arrest the Committee ofGeneral Security will present to you the nomenclature ofthem and you will always be at liberty to strike.” 888 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION that the Committee ofGeneral Security shall examine their records and maintain the right ofdesignating new culprits amongst them. For ten months they thus remain under the knife, in daily expectation ofjoining the twenty-two on the Place de la Re´volution. With respect to the latter, the object is not to try them but to kill them, and the semblance ofa trial is simply judicial assassination; the bill ofindictment against them consists ofclub gossip; they are accused ofhaving desired the restoration ofthe monarchy, ofbeing in correspondence with Pitt and Cobourg;108 ofhaving excited Vendeé to insurrection. The betrayal ofDumouriez is imputed to them, also the murder ofLepelletier, and the assassination ofMarat; while pretended witnesses, selected from amongst their personal enemies, come and repeat, like a theme agreed upon, the same ill-contrived fable: nothing but vague allegations and manifest falsehoods, not one definite fact, not one convincing document; the lack of proof is such that the trial has to be stopped as soon as possible. “You brave b forming the court,” writes He´bert, “don’t trifle away your time. Why so much ceremony in shortening the days ofwretches whom the people have already condemned?” Care is especially taken not to let them have a chance to speak. The eloquence ofVergniaud and logic ofGuadet might turn the tables at the last moment. Con- sequently, a prompt decree authorises the tribunal to stop proceedings as soon as the jury becomes sufficiently enlightened, which is the case after the seventh session of the court, the record of death suddenly greeting the accused, who are not allowed to defend them-

108. Ibid., xxix., 437, 432, 447.—Report by Amar. (This report served as the bill ofindictment against them, “cowardly satellites ofroyal despotism, vile agents offoreigntyrants.”—Wallon, ii., 407, 409. (Letter ofFouquier-Tinville to the Convention). “After the special debates,will not each of the accused demand a general prosecution? The trial, accordingly, will be interminable. Besides, one may ask why should there be witnesses? The Convention, all France, accuses those on trial. The evidence oftheir crimes is plain; everybody is convinced oftheir guilt ....ItistheConvention which must remove all formalities that interfere with the course pursued by the tribunal.”—Moniteur, xvii. (Session ofOctober 28), 291. The decree provoked by a petition ofJac- obins, is passed on motion ofOsselin, aggravated by Robespierre. The Revolutionary Government / 889 selves. One ofthem, Valaze´, stabs himselfin open court, and the next day the national head-chopper strikes off the remaining twenty heads in thirty-eight minutes. Still more expeditious are the proceedings against the accused who avoid a trial. Gorsas, seized in Paris on the 8th ofOctober, is guillotined the same day. Birotteau, seized at Bordeaux, on the 24th ofOctober, mounts the scaffold within twenty-four hours. The others, tracked like wolves, wandering in disguise from one hiding-place to another, and most of them arrested in turn, have only the choice ofseveral kinds ofdeath. Cambon is killed in defending himself. Lidon, after having defended himself, blows out his brains. Condorcet takes poison in the guard- room ofBourg-la-Reine. Roland kills himselfwith his sword on the highway. Clavie`re stabs himselfin prison. Rebecqui is found drowned in the harbor ofMarseilles, and Pe´tion and Buzot halfeaten by wolves on the moor ofSt. Emilion. Valady is executed at Peri- gueux, Duche´zeau at Rochefort, Grangeneuve, Guadet, Salles, and Barbaroux at Bordeaux, Coustard, Cussy, Rabaut St. Etienne, Ber- nard, Mazuyer, and Lebrun at Paris. Even those who resigned in January, 1793, Kersaint and Manuel, atone with their lives for the crime ofhaving sided with the “Right” and, ofcourse, Madame Roland, who pays as the leader ofthe party, is one ofthe first to be guillotined.109 Ofthe one hundred and eighty Girondists who led the Convention, one hundred and forty have perished or are in prison, or fled under sentence ofdeath. Aftersuch a curtailment and such an example the remaining deputies cannot be otherwise than docile;110 neither in the central nor in the local government will the

109. Louvet, “Me´moires,” 321. (List ofthe Girondists who perished or who were proscribed. Twenty-four fugitives survived.) 110. Mortimer-Ternaux, viii., 395, 416, 435. The terror and disgust ofthe majority is seen in the small number ofvoters. The abstaining from voting is the more signiﬁcant in relation to the election ofthe dictators. The members ofthe Committee ofPublic Safety, elected on the 16th ofJuly, obtain from one hundred to one hundred and ninety-two votes. The members ofthe Committee ofSecurity obtain from twenty-two to one hundred and thirteen votes. The members ofthe same committee, renewed on the 11th ofSeptember, obtain from ﬁfty-two to one hundred and eight votes. The judges of the revolutionary 890 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

“Mountain” encounter resistance; its despotism is practically established, and all that remains is to proclaim this in legal form. XI After the 2d of August, on motion of Bazire, the Convention decrees “that France is in revolution until its independence is recognised,” which means111 that the period ofhypocritical phrases has come to an end, that the Constitution was merely a signboard for a fair, that the charlatans who had made use ofit no longer need it, that it is to be put away in the receptacle ofother advertising lumber, that individual, local, and parliamentary liberties are abolished, that the government is arbitrary and absolute, that no institution, law, dogma, or precedent affords any guarantee for it against the rights ofthe people, that property and lives are wholly at its mercy, that there are no longer any rights ofman. Six weeks later, when, through the protest ofthe forty-five and the arrest ofthe seventy- three, obedience to the Convention is assured, all this is boldly and officially announced in the tribune. “Under the present circumstances ofthe Republic,” says Saint-Just, “the Constitution cannot

Tribunal, completed on the 3d of August, obtain from forty-seven to sixty-five votes.—Meillan, 85. (In relation to the institution ofthe revolutionary government, on motion ofBazire, Aug. 28.) “Sixty or eighty deputies passed this decree . . . it was preceded by another passed by a plurality ofthirty against ten. . . . For two months the session, the best attended, contains but one hundred deputies. The Montagnards overran the departments to deceive or intimidate the people. The rest, discouraged, keep away from the meetings or take no part in the proceedings.” 111. The meaning and motives ofthis declaration are clearly indicated in Bazire’s speech. “Since the adoption ofthe Constitution,” he says, “Feuillantism has raised its head; a struggle has arisen between energetic and moderate patriots. At the end ofthe Constituent Assembly, the Feuillants possessed themselves ofthe words law, order, public, peace, security, to enchain the zeal ofthe friends of freedom; the same manoeuvres are practiced today. You must shatter the weapon in your enemies’ hands, which they use against you.”—Durand- Maillane, 154. “The simple execution ofconstitutional laws,” said Bazire, “made for peaceable times, would be impotent among the conspiracies that surround you.”—Meillan, 108. The Revolutionary Government / 891 be established; it would be self-immolated; it would become the guarantee ofattacks on liberty, because it would lack the violence which is necessary to repress these.” To govern “according to maxims ofnatural peace and justice” is no longer an object; “these maxims will do among the friends of liberty”; but, between patriots and the malevolent, they are not applicable. The latter are not of the country, “they do not belong to its sovereignty,” they are outside the law, excluded from the social pact, rebellious slaves, fit for chastisement or constraint, and, amongst these, must be placed “the indifferents.” “You are to punish whoever is passive in the Republic and does nothing for it”;112 for his inertia is a betrayal and ranks him among public enemies. Now, between the people and its enemies, there is nothing in common but the sword; steel must control those who cannot be ruled “by justice”; the monarchical and the neutral majority must be “kept down”; the Republic will be founded only when the sans-culottes, the sole representatives ofthe nation, the only citizens, “shall rule by right of conquest.”113 That is intelligible, and more besides. The re´gime ofwhich Saint-Just presents the plan, is that by which every oligarchy ofinvaders installs and maintains itselfover a subjugated nation. Through this re´gime, in Greece, ten thousand Spartans, after the Dorian invasion, mastered

112. Moniteur, xviii., 106. (Report ofSaint-Just on the organisation ofthe revolutionary government, October 10th, and the decree in conformity therewith.) Ibid., 473.—Report ofBillaud-Varennes on a mode ofprovisional and revolutionary government, Novem. 18, and decree in conformity therewith.)— Ibid., xviii., 479. (Convention, Session ofNovember 22d, 1793.—Speech of He´brard, spokesman ofa deputation from Cantal). “A central committee of surveillance, a revolutionary army, has been established in our department. Aristocrats, suspects, the doubtful, moderates, egoists, all gentlemen without distinguishing those who have done nothing for the revolution from those who have acted against it, await in retirement the ulterior measures required by the interests ofthe Republic. I have said without distinction of the indiﬀerent from the suspects; for we hold to these words of Solon’s: “He who is not with us is against us.” (Honorable mention in the proce`s-verbal.) 113. Moniteur, (Speech by Danton, March 26, 1794.) “In creating revolutionary committees the desire was to establish a species ofdictatorship ofcitizens the most devoted to liberty over those who rendered themselves suspects.” 892 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION three hundred thousand helots and pe´riocques; through this re´gime, in England, sixty thousand Normans, after the battle of Hastings, mastered two million Saxons; through this re´gime in Ireland, since the battle ofthe Boyne, two hundred thousand English Protestants have mastered a million ofCatholic Irish; through this re´gime, the three hundred thousand Jacobins ofFrance will master the seven or eight millions ofGirondists, Feuillants, Royalists, or Indiﬀerents. It is a very simple one and consists in maintaining the subject population in a state ofextreme helplessness and ofextreme terror. To this end, it is disarmed;114 it is kept under surveillance; all action in common is prohibited; its eyes are always directed to the up-lifted axe and to the prison doors always open; it is ruined and decimated. For the past six months all these rigors are decreed and applied, disarmament of“suspects,” taxes on the rich, the maximum against traders, requisitions on land-owners, wholesale arrests, rapid executions ofsentences, arbitrary penalties ofdeath, and ostentatious, multiplied tortures. For the past six months, all sorts ofexecutive instruments are manufactured and put in operation—the Committee ofPublic Safety, the Committee ofGeneral Security, ambulating proconsuls with full power, local committees authorised to tax and imprison at will, a revolutionary army, a revolutionary tribunal. But, for lack of internal harmony and of central impulsion, the machine

114. Mallet-Dupan, ii., 8. (February, 1794). “At this moment the entire people is disarmed. Not a gun can be found either in town or country. If anything attests the supernatural power which the leaders ofthe Convention enjoy, it is to see, in one instant, through one act ofthe will and nobody offering any resistance, or complaining ofit, the nation from Perpignan to Lille, deprived ofevery means ofdefenceagainst oppression, with a facilitystill more unprec- edented than that which attended the universal arming ofthe nation in 1789.”— “A Residence in France,” ii., 409. “The National Guard as a regular institution was in great part suppressed after the summer of 1793, those who composed it being gradually disarmed. Guard-mounting was continued, but the citizens performing this service were, with very few exceptions, armed with pikes, and these again were not fully entrusted to them; each man, on quitting his post, gave up his arms more punctually than ifhe had been bound to do so through capitulation with a victorious enemy.” The Revolutionary Government / 893 only halfworks, the power not being sufficient and its action not sufficiently sweeping and universal. “You are too remote from assaults on you,” says Saint-Just”;115 “it is essential that the sword of the law should everywhere be rapidly brandished and your arm be everywhere present to arrest crime. . . . The ministers confess that, beyond their first and second subordinates, they find nothing but inertia and indifference.” “The like apathy prevails among all the government agents,” says Billaud-Varennes;116 “the secondary authorities forming the props of the Revolution serve only to impede it.” Decrees, transmitted through administrative channels, arrive slowly and are indolently applied. “You are wanting in that coactive forcewhich is the principle ofbeing, ofaction, ofexecution .... Every good government should possess a centre ofvolition and levers connected with it....Everyemanation ofpublic forceshould be exclusively derived from its source.” “In ordinary governments,” says Couthon, finally,117 “the right ofelecting belongs to the people; you cannot take it away from them. In extraordinary governments all impulsion must proceed from the centrality; it is from the Con- vention that elections must issue....Youwould injure the people by confiding the election ofpublic officers to them, because you would expose them to electing men that would betray them.” The result is that the constitutional maxims of1789 give way to contrary maxims; instead ofsubjecting the government to the people, the people is made subject to the government. The hierarchy ofthe ancient re´gime is reestablished under revolutionary terms, and henceforth all powers, much more formidable than those of the ancient re´gime, cease to be delegated from below upward that they may be delegated from above downward. At the summit, a committee oftwelve members, similar to the former royal council, exercises collective royalty; nominally, au-

115. Moniteur, xviii., 106. (Report by Saint-Just, Oct. 10th). 116. Ibid., 473. (Report ofBillaud-Varennes, Nov. 13th). 117. Ibid., xviii., 591. (Speech by Couthon, December 4th). Ibid., Bare`re: “Electoral assemblies are monarchical institutions, they attach to royalism, they must be specially avoided in revolutionary times.” 894 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION thority is divided amongst the twelve; really, it is concentrated in a few hands. Several occupy only a subaltern position, and amongst these, Bare`re, who, official secretary and mouthpiece, is always ready to make a speech and indite an editorial; others, with special functions, Jean Bon St. Andre´, Lindet, and above all, Prieur de la Coˆte d’Or and Carnot, confine themselves each to his particular department, navy, war, supplies, with blank signatures, for which they give in return their signatures to the political leaders; the latter, called “the statesmen,” Robespierre, Couthon, Saint-Just, Collot d’Herbois, Billaud-Varennes, are the real monarchs, and they direct things generally. It is true that their mandate has to be renewed monthly; but this is a certainty, for, in the present state of the Con- vention, its vote, required beforehand, becomes an almost vain formality. More submissive than the parliament ofLouis XIV., the Convention adopts, without discussion, the decrees which the Com- mittee ofPublic Safetypresent to it ready made; it is no more than a registry-office, and scarcely that, for it has relinquished its right ofappointing its own committees, that office being assigned to the Committee ofPublic Safety;it votes in a lump all lists ofnames which the Committee send in. Naturally, none but the creatures of the latter and the faithful are inscribed;118 thus, the whole legislative and parliamentary power belongs to it. As to executive and administrative power, the ministers have become mere clerks ofthe Com- mittee ofPublic Safety;“they come every day at specified hours to receive its orders and acts”;119 they submit to it “the list with explanations, ofall the agents” sent into the departments and abroad; they refer to it every minute detail; they are its scribes, merely its puppets, so insignificant that they finally lose their title, and for the “Com-

118. Mortimer-Ternaux, viii., 40. (Decree passed on the proposition ofDan- ton, session ofSeptember 13th). The motive alleged by Danton is that “members are still found on the committees whose opinions, at least, approach federalism.” Consequently the committees are purified, and particularly the Committee of General Security. Six ofits members are stricken off (Sept. 14), and the list sent in by the Committee ofPublic Safetypasses without discussion. 119. Moniteur, xviii., 592. (Session ofDecember 4, speech by Robespierre.) The Revolutionary Government / 895 missioner on External Relations” a former school-master is taken, an inept clubbist, the pander ofa billiard-room and liquor-saloon, scarcely able to read the documents brought to him to sign in the cafe´ where he passes his days.120 Thus is the second power in the State converted by the Committee into a squad ofdomestics, while the foremost one is converted into an auditory of claqueurs. To maintain them true to their obligations it has two hands. One, the right, which seizes people unawares by the collar, is the Com- mittee ofGeneral Security, composed oftwelve extreme, Monta- gnards, such as Panis, Vadier, Lebas, Geoffroy, David, Amar, Lavi- comterie, Lebon, and Ruhl, all nominated, that is to say, appointed by it, being its confederates and subalterns. They are its lieutenants ofpolice, and once a week they come and take part in its labors, as formerly the D’Argengons, the Sartines, and the Lenoirs assisted the Comptroller-general. A man whom the conventicle deems a “suspect,” suddenly arrested, no matter who, whether representative, minister, or general, finds himselfthe next morning under bolt and bar in one ofthe ten new Bastilles. There, the other hand seizes him by the throat; this is the revolutionary Tribunal, an exceptional court like the extraordinary commissions ofthe ancient re´gime, only far more terrible. Aided by its police gang, the Committee ofPublic Safety itself selects the sixteen judges and sixty jurymen121 from among the most servile, the most furious, or the most brutal of the fanatics:122 Fouquier-Tinville, Hermann, Dumas, Payan, Coffinhal,

120. Miot de Melito, “Me´moires,” i., 47. 121. Buchez et Roux, xxviii., 153. Mortimer-Ternaux, viii., 443. (Decree of September 28th).—Wallon, “Histoire du Tribunal Re´volutionaire de Paris,” iv., 112. 122. Buchez et Roux, xxxiv., 300. (Trial ofFouquier-Tinville and associates). Bill ofindictment. “One ofthese publicly boasted ofalways having voted death. Others state that they were content to see people to give their judgment; physical inspection alone determined them to vote death. Another said, that when there was no oﬀence committed it was necessary to imagine one. Another is a regular sot and has never sat in judgment but in a state ofintoxication. Others come to the bench only to ﬁre their volleys.” (Supporting evidence.) “Observe, moreover, that judges and juries are bound to kill under penalty of 896 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Fleuriot-Lescot, and, lower down on the scale, apostate priests, ren- egade nobles, disappointed artists, infatuated studio-apprentices, journeymen scarcely able to write their names, shoe-makers, joiners, carpenters, tailors, barbers, former lackeys, an idiot like Ganney, a deafman like Leroy-Dix-Aout, whose names and professionsindi- cate all that is necessary to be told; these men are licensed and paid murderers; the jurymen themselves are allowed eighteen francs a day, so that they may attend to their business more leisurely. This business consists in condemning without proof, without any pleadings, and scarcely any examination, in a hurry, in batches, whoever the Committee ofPublic Safetymight send to them, even the most confirmed Montagnards: Danton, who contrived the tribunal, will soon find all this out. Through these two government engines the Committee ofPublic Safetykeeps every head under the cleaver and each head, to avoid being struck off, bows down,123 in the provinces as well as at Paris. Owing to the mutilation ofthe local hierarchy, in the provinces as well as at Paris, and the introduction ofnew authorities, the omnipotent will ofthe Committee becomes everywhere present. Di- rectly or indirectly, “for all government measures or measures of death (Ibid., 30).” Fouquier-Tinville states that on the 22d ofPrairial he took the same step (to resign) with Chatelet, Brochet, and Lerry, when they met Robespierre, returning to the National Convention arm-in-arm with Bare`re. Fouquier adds, that they were treated as aristocrats and antirevolutionists, and threatened with death ifthey refusedto remain on their posts.” Analogoes declarations by Pigeot, Ganne, Girard, Dupley, Foucault, Nollin, and Madre. “Sellier adds, that the tribunal having remonstrated against the law ofPrairial 22, he was threatened with arrest by Dumas. Had we resigned, he says, Dumas would have guillotined us.” 123. Moniteur, xxiv., 12. (Session ofVentose 29, year III., speech by Bail- leul.) “Terror subdued all minds, suppressed all emotions; it was the force of the government, while such was this government that the numerous inhabitants ofa vast territory seemed to have lost the qualities which distinguish man from a domestic animal. They seemed even to have no life except what the government accorded to them. Human personality no longer existed; each individual was simply a machine, going, coming, thinking, or not thinking as he was impelled or stimulated by tyranny.” The Revolutionary Government / 897 public safety, all that relates to persons and the general and internal police,” “all constituted bodies and all public functionaries, are placed under its inspection,”124 I leave it to be supposed whether they expose themselves to its guillotine. To suppress in advance any tendency to administrative inertia, it has had withdrawn from the too powerful, too much respected, department governments, “too inclined to federalism,” their departmental pree¨minence and their “political influence”;125 it reduces these to the levying oftaxes and the supervision ofroads and canals; it winnows them out through its agents; it even winnows out the governments ofmunicipalities and districts. To suppress beforehand all probability of popular opposition, it has had the sessions ofthe sections reduced to two per week; it installs in them for about forty sous a day a majority of sans-culottes; it directs the suspension “until further orders” of the municipal elections.126 Finally, to have full control on the spot, it appoints its own men, first, the commissioners and the representatives on missions, a sort oftemporary corps ofdirectors sent into each department with unlimited powers;127 next, a body ofnational agents, a sort ofpermanent body ofsubdelegates, through whom in each district and municipality it replaces the procureurs-syndics.128 To

124. Decree ofFrimaire 14, year II., Dec. 4, 1793. 125. Moniteur, xviii., 473, 474, 478. (Speech by Billaud-Varennes.) “The sword ofDamocles must henceforthbe brandished over the entire surface.” This expression ofBillaud sums up the spirit ofevery new institution. 126. Moniteur, xviii., 275. (Session ofOct. 26, 1793, speech by Bare`re.) “This is the most revolutionary step you can take.” (Applause.) 127. Ibid. 520. (Report ofBare`re and decree in conformity). “The representatives sent on mission are required to conform strictly to the acts of the Committee ofPublic Safety. Generals and other agents ofthe executive power will, under no pretext, obey any special order, that they may refuse to carry out the said acts.”—Moniteur, xviii., 291. (Report by Bare`re, Oct. 29, 1793.) At this date one hundred and forty representatives are on mission. 128. Archives Nationales, AF. II., 22. (Papers ofthe Committee ofPublic Safety. Note on the results of the revolution government). “The law of Frimaire 14 created two centres ofinfluence from which action spread, in the sense of the Committee, and which affected the authorities. These two pivots ofrevolutionary rule outside the Committee were the representatives ofthe people on 898 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION this army offunctionariesis added in each town, bourg, or large village, a revolutionary committee, paid three francs a day per member, charged with the application ofits decrees, and required to make reports thereon. Never before was such a vast and closely-woven network cast from above to envelope and keep captive twenty-six millions ofmen. Such is the real constitution which the Jacobins substitute for the constitution they have prepared for show. In the arsenal ofthe monarchy which they destroyed they took the most despotic institutions—centralisation, Royal Council, lieutenants of police, special tribunals, intendants, and subdelegates; they disinterred the antique Roman law ofle`se-majesty, refurbished old blades which civilisation had dulled, aiming them at every throat and now wielded at random against liberties, property and lives. It is called the “revolutionary government”; according to official statements it is to last until peace is secured; in the minds ofgenuine Jacobins it is to last until, as declared in its formula, all Frenchmen are “regenerated.”

missions and the national agents controlling the district committees. The words revolutionary government alone exercised an incalculable magical inﬂuence.”— Mallet-Dupan, “Me´moires,” ii., p. 2, and following pages. BOOK SIXTH

The Jacobin Programme

9 CHAPTER I =

I. Programme of the Jacobin party—Abstract principle and spontaneous development of the theory— II. The Jacobin conception of Society—The Contrat- Social—Total surrender of the Individual to the Community—Everything belongs to the State—Conﬁscations and Sequestrations—Preemption and requisitions of produce and merchandise—Individuals belong to the State—Drafts of persons for Military service—Drafts of persons for the Civil service—Personal sentiments and ideas subject to the State, at once philanthropist, pedagogue, theologian, censor, moralist and director— III. The object of the State is the regeneration of man—Two branches of this work—Restoration of the Natural man—Formation of the Social man—Grandeur of the undertaking—Force a right and duty in carrying it out— IV. The two distortions of the natural man— Positive religion—Proscription of the orthodox cult—Measures against unsworn priests—Measures against the loyal orthodox—Destruction of the constitutional cult—Pressure on the sworn priests—Churches closed and ceremonies suppressed—Prolongation of these persecutions until the Consulate— V. Social inequality—Evil doings of the upper aristocracy—Measures against the King and Nobles—Evil doings of the aristocracy of wealth—Measures against land- owners, capitalists and people with incomes—Destruction of large fortunes— Measures taken to prevent large fortunes— VI. Conditions requisite for making a citizen—Plans for suppressing poverty—Measures in favor of the poor— VII. Repression of Egoism—Measures against agriculturists, manufacturers and merchants—Socialistic projects—Repression of Federalism—Measures against the local, professional and family spirit— VIII. Formation of soul and intellect— Civil religion—National education—Measures for equality—Obligatory civism—The recasting and reduction of human nature to the Jacobin type.

901 902 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

NOTHING is more dangerous than a general idea in narrow and empty minds: as they are empty, it finds no knowledge there to interfere with it; as they are narrow it is not long before it occupies the place entirely. Henceforth they no longer belong to themselves but are mastered by it; it works in them and through them, the man, in the true sense of the word, being possessed. Something which is not himself, a monstrous parasite, a foreign and disproportionate conception, lives within him, developing and giving birth to the evil purposes with which it is pregnant. He did not foresee that he would have them; he did not know what his dogma contained, what venomous and murderous consequences were to issue from it. They issue from it fatally, each in its turn, and under the pressure of circumstances, at first anarchical consequences and now despotic consequences. Having obtained power, the Jacobin brings his fixed idea along with him; whether at the head of the government or in opposition to it, this idea is fruitful, and the all-powerful dogma projects over a new domain the innumerable links of its endless chain. II Let us trace this inward development and go back, along with the Jacobin, to first principles, to the original pact, to the first organisation of society. There is but one legitimate society, that founded on the “contrat-social,” and “the clauses of this contract fully understood, reduce themselves to one, the total alienation of each individual, with all his rights, to the community, . . . each surrendering himself up absolutely, just as he actually stands, he and all his forces, of which the property he possesses forms a part.”1 There must be no exception or reservation. Nothing of what he previously was, or had, now belongs to him in his own right; henceforth, what he is,

1. This and the following text are taken from the “Contrat-Social” by Rous- seau. Cf. “The Ancient Re´gime,” book iii., ch. iv. The Jacobin Programme / 903 or has, devolves upon him only through delegation. His property and his person now form a portion of the commonwealth. If he is in possession of these, his ownership is at second hand; if he derives any benefit therefrom, it is as a concession. He is their depository, trustee, and administrator, and nothing more.2 In other words, with respect to these he is simply a managing director, that is to say a functionary like others, with a precarious appointment and always revocable by the State which has commissioned him. “As nature gives to every man absolute power over the members of his body the social pact gives the social body absolute power over all its members.” The State, as omnipotent sovereign and universal proprietor, exercises at discretion, its boundless rights over persons and things; consequently we, its representatives, take all things and persons into our hands; as they belong to it, so do they belong to us. We have confiscated the possessions of the clergy, amounting to about four billion livres; we confiscate the property of the emigre´s, amounting to three billion livres;3 we confiscate the property of the guillotined and transported: all this amounts to some hundreds of millions; later on, the count will be made, because the list remains open and is being daily added to. We sequestrate the property of “suspects,” which gives us its usufruct: here are many hundred millions more; after the war and the banishment of “suspects,” we shall seize the property along with its usufruct: here, again, are millions of capital.4 Meanwhile, we take the property of hospitals and of other benevolent institutions, about eight hundred million livres; we take

2. This idea, so universally prevalent and precocious, is uttered by Mirabeau in the session of the 10th of August, 1789. (Buchez et Roux, ii., 257.) “I know of but three ways of maintaining one’s existence in society, and these are to be either a beggar, a robber, or a hireling. The proprietor is himself only the first of hirelings. What we commonly call his property is nothing more than the pay society awards him for distributing amongst others that which is entrusted to him to distribute through his expenses and through what he consumes; proprietors are the agents, the stewards of the social body.” 3. Report by Roland, January 6, 1793, and by Cambon, February 1, 1793. 4. Buchez et Roux, xxxi., 311. Report by Saint-Just, Ventose 8, year II., and decree in conformity therewith. 904 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION the property of factories, of endowments, of educational institutions, and of literary and scientific associations: another lot of millions.5 We take back the domains rented or alienated by the State for the past three centuries and more, which gives again about a couple of billions.6 We take the possessions of the communes up to the amount of their indebtedness. We have already received as an inheritance the ancient domains of the crown, also the later domain of the civil list. More than three-fifths7 of the soil thus falls into our hands, which three-fifths are much the best stocked; they comprise almost all the large and fine edifices, chaˆteaux, abbeys, mansions, houses of superintendents; and nearly all the royal, episcopal, seignorial, and bourgeois stock of rich and elegant furniture; all plate, libraries, pictures and artistic objects accumulated for centuries. Remark, again, the seizure of specie and all other articles of gold and silver; in the months alone of November and December, 1793, this swoop puts into our coffers three or four hundred millions,8 not assignats, but ringing coin. In short, whatever the form of established capital may be we take all we can get hold of, probably more than three- fourths of it. There remains the portion which is not fixed capital, that which disappears in use, namely, all that is consumed, all the fruits of the soil, every description of provision, all the products of

5. Decree of 13 Brumaire, year II.—Report by Cambon, Feb. 1, 1793. Cam- bon estimates the property alone of the order of Malta and of the colleges at four hundred million livres. 6. Moniteur, xviii., 419 and 486. Reports by Cambon, 1 Frimaire and Bru- maire 22, year II. “Let us begin with taking possession of the leased domains, notwithstanding preceding laws.” 7. Cf. “The Ancient Re´gime,” p. 14. 8. Mallet-Dupan, “Me´moires,” ii., 19. Moniteur, xviii., 565. (Report by Cam- bon, 11 Frimaire, year II.) Requested to do so by a popular club of Toulouse, the department of Haute-Garonne has ordered all possessors of articles in gold or silver to bring them to the treasuries of their districts to be exchanged for assignats. This order has thus far brought into the Toulouse treasury about one million ﬁve hundred thousand or one million six hundred thousand livres in gold and silver. The same at Montauban and other places. “Several of our colleagues have even decreed the death penalty against whoever did not bring their gold and silver within a given time.” The Jacobin Programme / 905 human art and labor which contribute to the maintenance of existence. Through “the right of preemption” and through the right of “requisition,” “the Republic becomes temporary proprietor of whatever commerce, manufacture, and agriculture have produced and added to the soil of France”: all food and merchandise9 is ours before being owned by their holder. We carry out of his house whatever suits us; we pay him for this with worthless paper; we frequently do not pay him at all. For greater convenience, we seize objects directly and wherever we ﬁnd them, grain in the farmer’s barn, hay in the reaper’s shed, cattle in the fold, wine in the vats, hides at the butcher’s, leather in the tanneries, soap, tallow, sugar, brandy, cloths, linens, and the rest, in stores, depots, and ware-houses. We stop vehicles and horses in the street. We enter the premises of mail or coach contractors and empty their stables. We carry away kitchen utensils to obtain the copper; we turn people out of their rooms to get their beds; we strip them of their coats and shirts; in one day, we make ten thousand individuals in one town go barefoot.10 “When public needs require it,” says representative Isore´, “all belongs to the people and nothing to individuals.”

9. Moniteur, xviii., 320. (Session of Brumaire 11, year II.), the words of Bare`re, reporter of the law. 10. Archives Nationales, AF.II., 106. (Orders by representative Beauchamp, l’Isle Jourdain, Pluviose 2, year II.) “All blue and green cloaks in the departments of Haute-Garonne, as well as of the Landes, Gers, and others, are put in requisition from the present day. Every citizen possessing blue or green cloaks is required to declare them at the depot of the municipality or other locality where he may chance to be.” Simon, “suspect” is treated as such. Ibid., AF.II., 92. (Order issued by Taillefer, Brumaire 3, year II., at Villefranche- l’Aveyron.)—De Martel, “Etude sur Fouche´,” 368. (Order by Fouche´, Collot d’ Herbois and Delaporte: Lyons, Brumaire 21, year II.) Moniteur, xv., 384. (Session of 19th Brumaire. Letter of Barras and Fre´ron, dated at Marseilles.)— Moniteur, xviii., 513. (Orders by Lebon and Saint-Just, at Strasbourg, Brumaire 24 and 25, year II.) Letter of Isore´ to the minister Bouchotte, November 4, 1793. (Legros, “La Revolution telle qu’elle est.”) The principle of these measures was laid down by Robespierre in his speech on property (April 24, 1793), and in his declaration of rights unanimously adopted by the Jacobin Club (Buchez et Roux, xxvi., 93 and 130). 906 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

By virtue of the same right we dispose of persons as we do of things. We decree a general uprising of the people, and, stranger still, we carry it out, at least in many parts of the country, and we keep it up for months: in Vendeé, and in the northern and eastern departments, the entire male, able-bodied population, all up to fifty years of age, are driven in flocks against the enemy.11 We afterwards muster in an entire generation, all young men between eighteen and twenty-five, almost a million of men:12 whoever fails to appear is put in irons for ten years; he is regarded as a deserter; his property is confiscated, and his relations are punished along with him; later, he is assimilated with the emigrants, condemned to death, and his father, mother, and progenitors, treated as “suspects,” are imprisoned and their possessions taken. To clothe, shoe, and equip our recruits, we must have workmen: we summon to head-quarters all gunsmiths, blacksmiths, and locksmiths, all the tailors and shoemakers of the district, “foremen, apprentices, and boys”;13 we imprison those who do not come; we install the rest in squads in public buildings and assign them their tasks; they are forbidden to furnish anything to private individuals; henceforth, French shoemakers must work only for us, and each must deliver to us, under penalty, so many pairs of shoes per decade. But, the civil service is no less important than the military service, and to feed the people is as urgent as it is to defend them. Hence we put “in requisition all who have anything to do with handling, transporting or selling provisions and articles of prime necessity,”14 especially combustibles and

11. Rousset, “Les Volontaires,” p. 234 and 254. 12. Report by Cambon, Pluviose 3, year III., p. 3. “One-fifth of the active population is employed in the common defence.”—Decrees of May 12 and Aug. 23, 1793.—Decree of November 22, 1793.—Order of the Directory, October 18, 1798. 13. Moniteur, xix., 631. Decree of Ventose 14, year II. Archives Nationales, D.SI., 10. (Orders by representatives Delacroix, Louchet, and Legendre; Pont- Audemer, Frimaire 14, year II.) Moniteur, xviii., 622.—(Decree of Frimaire 18, year II.) 14. Decree of 15—Floreál 18, year II. Decree of September 29, 1793, (in which forty objects of prime necessity are enumerated).—Article 9 decrees three days imprisonment against workmen and manufacturers who “without legiti- The Jacobin Programme / 907 food—wood-choppers, carters, raftsmen, millers, reapers, threshers, wine-growers, mowers, field-hands, “country people” of every kind and degree. Their hands belong to us: we make them bestir themselves and work under the penalty of fine and imprisonment. There shall be no idlers, especially in crop time: we take the entire population of a commune or canton into the fields, comprising “the lazy of both sexes”;15 willingly or not, they shall do the harvesting under our eyes, banded together in fields belonging to others as well as in their own, and they shall put the sheaves indiscriminately into the public granary. But in labor all hangs together, from the initial undertaking to the final result, from the raw material to the most finished production, from the great manufacturer down to the pettiest jobber; grasping the first link of the chain involves grasping the last one. The requisition here again answers the purpose: we apply it to all pursuits; each is bound to continue his own; the manufacturer to manufacture, the trader to trade, even to his own detriment, because, if a loser by this, the public gains, and every good citizen ought to prefer public profit to his own profit.16 In effect, let his office be what it will, he is an employee of the community; therefore, the community may not only prescribe task-work to him, but select his task; it need not consult him in the matter, for he has no right to refuse. Hence it is that we appoint or maintain people in spite of themselves, in the magistracy, in the army and in every other species of employment; in vain may they excuse themselves or get out of the way; they must remain, or become generals, judges, mayors, national agents, town councillors, commissioners of charity or of the government, in self-defence.17 So much the worse for them if the mate reason, shall refuse to do their ordinary task.”—Decrees of September 16 and 20, 1793, and that of September 11, articles 16, 19, 20, and 21. 15. Archives Nationales, AF.II., iii. Order of the representative Ferry; Bourges, 23 Messidor, year II. Ibid., AF.II., 106. Order of the representative Dartigoyte, Auch, Prairial 18, year II. 16. Decree of Brumaire 11, year II., article 7. 17. Gouvion Saint Cyr, “Me´moires sur les campagnes de 1792 a` la paix de Campo-For mio,” i., 91–109. “Promotion, which every one feared at this time.” 908 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION duty be onerous or dangerous, if they cannot afford the time, if they do not feel themselves qualified for it, if the rank or service seems to them to be a step in the direction of a prison or the guillotine; on their alleging that the office is a burdensome tax we reply that they are taxable property of the State. Such is, henceforth, the condition of all Frenchmen, and likewise of all French women. We force mothers to take their daughters to the meetings of popular clubs. We oblige women to parade in companies, and march in procession at republican festivals; we invade the family and select the most beautiful to be draped as antique goddesses, and publicly promenaded on a car; we often designate those among the rich who must wed patriots:18 there is no reason why marriage, which is the most important of all services, should not be put in requisition like the others. Accordingly, we enter families, we carry off the child, we subject him to a civic education. We are schoolmasters, philanthro-

...Ibid., 229. “Men who had any resources obstinately held aloof from any kind of advancement.” Archives Nationales, D. SI., 5. Mission of representative Albert in L’Aube and La Marne, and especially the order issued by Albert, Chalons, Germinal 7, year III., with the numerous petitions of judges and town officers soliciting their removal.—Letter of the painter Gosse (published in Le Temps, May 31, 1872), which is very curious, showing the trials of those in private life during the Revolution. “My father was appointed charity commissioner and quartermaster for the troops; at the time of the Reign of Terror it would have been imprudent to have refused any office.”—Archives Nationales, F7, 3,485. The case of Girard Toussaint, notary at Paris, who “fell under the sword of the law, Thermidor 9, year II.” This Girard, who was very liberal early in the revolution, was president of his section in 1789, but, after the 10th of August, he had kept quiet. The committee of the section of the “Amis de la Patrie,” “considering that citizen Girard . . . came forward only at the time when the court and Lafayette prevailed against the sans-culottes”; that, “since equality was established by the Revolution he has deprived his fellow citizens of his knowledge, which, in a revolution, is criminal, unanimously agree that the said citizen is “suspect” and order “him to be sent to the Luxembourg.” 18. Ludovic Sciout, “Histoire de la Constitution civile du clerge´,” iv., 131, 135, (orders issued by Dartigoyte and de Pinet).—“Recueil de pieces authentiques serrant a` l’histoire de la re´volution a` Strasbourg,” vol. i., p. 230. (Speech by Schneider at Barr, for marrying the patriot Funck.) Schneider, it appears, did still better on his own account. (Ibid., 317). The Jacobin Programme / 909 pists, theologians, and moralists. We impose by force our religion and our ritual, our morality and our social customs. We lord it over private lives and consciences; we dictate ideas, we scrutinise and punish secret inclinations, we tax, imprison and guillotine not only the evil-disposed, but again “the indifferent, the moderate and the egotistical.”19 Over and above his visible acts we dictate to the individual his ideas and his deepest feelings; we prescribe to him his affections as well as his beliefs, and, according to a preconceived type, we refashion his intellect, his conscience and his sensibilities. III There is nothing arbitrary in this operation; for the ideal model is traced beforehand. If the State is omnipotent, it is for the purpose of regenerating man, and the theory which confers rights on it, at the same time assigns to it its object. In what does this regeneration of man consist? Consider an animal in a domestic state, the dog or the horse. Emaciated, flogged, tied or chained, a thousand are strained and overworked against one which has an easy time and dies of good living; and with all of them, whether fat or lean, the soul is still more abused than the body. A superstitious respect keeps them cowed under the load they carry, or makes them cringe before their master. Servile, slothful, glutton- ous, feeble, incapable of resisting changes in the weather, if they have learned to adapt themselves to slavery they have also contracted its infirmities, necessities, and vices. A crust of absurd habits and perverse inclinations, a sort of artificial and supplementary existence, has covered over their original nature. Again, on the other hand, the better side of their original nature has had no chance to develop itself, for lack of use. Each separated from the other, they have not acquired the sentiment of community; they do not know, like their brethren of the prairies, how to help each other and sub-

19. Buchez et Roux, xxix., 160. (Report of Saint-Just, October 20, 1793.) “You have to punish not only traitors, but even the indifferent; you must punish all in the Republic who are passive and do nothing for it.” 910 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION ordinate private interests to the interests of the flock. Each pulls his own way, nobody cares for others, all are egoists; social interests have miscarried. Such is man nowadays, a disfigured being that has to be made over, an imperfect creature that has to be completed. Our task, accordingly, is two-fold; we have to demolish and we have to construct; we must first set free the natural man that we may afterward build up the social man. It is a vast enterprise and we are conscious of its vastness. “It is necessary,” says Billaud-Varennes,20 “that the people to which one desires to restore their freedom should in some way be created anew, since old prejudices must be destroyed, old habits changed, depraved affections improved, superfluous wants restricted, and inveterate vices extirpated.” How sublime the undertaking, for the object is “to fulfil the desires of nature,21 accomplish the destinies of humanity, and fulfil the promises of philosophy.” “Our purpose,” says Robes- pierre,22 “is to substitute morality for egoism, honesty for honor, principles for usages, duties for proprieties, the empire of reason for the tyranny of fashion, contempt of vice for indifference to misfortune, dignity for insolence, nobleness for vanity, love of glory for the love of lucre, good people for good society, merit for intrigue, genius for intellectual brilliancy, the charm of contentment for the satiety of pleasure, the majesty of man for the high-breeding of the

20. Buchez et Roux, xxxii., 338. Report of the Convention on the theory of democratic government, by Billaud-Varennes (April 20, 1794). 21. Buchez et Roux, xxxi., 270. Report by Robespierre, on the principles which should guide the National Convention in the internal administration of the Republic, February 5, 1794.—Cf. “The Ancient Re´gime,” 227–230, the ideas of Rousseau, of which those of Robespierre are simply a recast. 22. Ibid., 270. The pretension of reforming men’s sentiments is found in all the programmes. Ibid., 305. (Report of Saint-Just, February 26, 1794.) “Our object is to create an order of things such as a universal tendency toward the good establishes, and to have factions immediately hurled upon the scaffold.”—Ibid., 337. (Report of Saint-Just, March 13, 1794.) “We see but one way of arresting the evil, and that is to convert the revolution into a civil power and wage war on every species of perversity, as designedly created amongst us for the enervation of the republic.” The Jacobin Programme / 911 great, a magnanimous, powerful, and happy people, for an amiable, frivolous and wretched people, that is to say, every virtue and miracle of the Republic in the place of the vices and absurdities of the monarchy.” We will do this, the whole of it, cost what it will. Little do we care for the present generation; we are working for generations to come. “Man, forced to isolate himself from society, anchors himself in the future and presses to his heart a posterity innocent of existing evils.”23 He sacrifices to this work his own and the lives of others. “On the day that I am satisfied,” writes Saint-Just, “that it is impossible to render the French people kind, energetic, tender, and inexorable against tyranny and injustice, I will stab myself.” “What I have done in the South I will do in the North,” says Baudot; “I will convert them into patriots; either they or I must die.” “We will make France a cemetery,” says Carrier, “rather than not regenerate it our own way.” In vain may the ignorant or the vicious protest; they protest because they are ignorant or vicious. In vain may the individual plead his personal rights; he has none, for, through the social contract, which is obligatory and solely valid, he has surrendered his entire being; having made no reservation, “he has nothing to claim.” Undoubtedly, some will kick, because, with them, the old wrinkle remains and artificial habits still cover over the original instinct. Untie the mill-horse, and he will still go round in the same track; let the mountebank’s dog be turned loose, and he will still raise himself on his hind-legs; if we would bring them back to their natural gait we must handle them roughly. In like manner, to restore man to his normal attitude, you must handle him roughly. But, in this respect, have no scruples,24 for we do not bow him down,

23. Ibid., xxxv., 276. (Institutions, by Saint-Just.—Ibid., 287.)—Moniteur, xviii., 343. Meeting of the Jacobin Club, Brumaire 13, year II., speech by Baudot. 24. Buchez et Roux, xxix., 142. (Speech by Jean Bon St. Andre´ in the Con- vention, Sep. 25, 1793.) “We are said to exercise arbitrary power, we are charged with being despots. We, despots!...Ah,nodoubt, if despotism is to secure the triumph of liberty, such a despotism is political regeneration.” (Applause.) Ibid., xxxi., 276. (Report by Robespierre, Pluviose 17, year II.) “It has been said that terror is the mainspring of despotic government. Does yours, then, 912 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION we raise him up; as Rousseau says, “we compel him to be free”; we confer on him the greatest boon a human being can receive; we bring him back to nature and to justice. For this reason, now that he is warned, if he persists in his resistance, he is criminal and merits every kind of chastisement,25 for, he declares himself a rebel and a perjurer, inimical to humanity, and a traitor to the social compact. IV Let us begin by figuring to ourselves the natural man; certainly we of today have some difficulty in recognising him; he bears but little resemblance to the artificial being who stands in his shoes, the creature which an antiquated system of constraint and fraud has deformed, held fast in his hereditary harness of thraldom and superstition, blinded by his religion and held in check by prestige, speculated on by his government and trained by blows, always with a halter on, always made to work in a counter sense and against nature, whatever stall he may occupy, high or low, however full or empty his crib may be, now in menial service like the blinded hack- horse which turns a mill-wheel, and now on parade like the learned dog which, decked with flags, shows off its antics before the public.26 resemble despotism? Yes, as the sword which flashes in the hands of the heroes of liberty resembles that with which the satellites of tyranny are armed.... The government of the Revolution is the despotism of freedom against tyranny.” 25. Ibid., xxxii, 253. Decree of April, 1791. “The Convention declares, that, supported by the virtues of the French people, it will insure the triumph of the democratic revolution and show no pity in punishing its enemies.” 26. The bombast and credulity of the day, in this portrayal of the ancient re´gime, overflows in the most extravagant exaggeration. (Buchez et Roux, xxxi., 300, Report, by Saint-Just, February 26, 1794.) “In 1788, Louis XVI. caused eight thousand persons of both sexes and of every age to be sacrificed in the rue Meslay and on the Pont-Neuf. These scenes were repeated by the court on the Champs de Mars; the court had hangings in the prisons, and the bodies of the drowned found in the Seine were its victims. There were four hundred thousand prisoners in confinement; fifteen thousand smugglers were hung in a year, and three thousand men were broken on the wheel; there were more prisoners in Paris than there are now....Look at Europe. There are four The Jacobin Programme / 913

But imagine all these out of the way, the flags and the bands, the trammels and compartments in the social stable, and you will see a new man appearing, the original man, intact and healthy in mind, soul, and body. In this condition, he is free of prejudice, he has not been circum- vented by falsities, he is neither Jew, Protestant, nor Catholic; if he tries to form an idea of the universe and of the origin of things he will not allow himself to be duped by a pretended revelation; he will listen only to his own reason; he may chance, now and then, to become an atheist, but, generally, he will settle down into a deist. In this condition of things he is not fettered by a hierarchy; he is neither noble nor commoner, land-owner nor tenant, inferior nor superior. Independent of the others, all are equal, and, if all agree in the forming of an association, their common-sense will stipulate that its first article shall secure the maintenance of this primordial equality. Such is man, as nature made him, as history has unmade him, and as the Revolution is to remake him.27 One cannot batter away too vigorously against the two casings that hold him tight, one the positive religion which narrows and perverts his intellect, and the other the social inequality which perverts and weakens his will;28 millions of people shut up in Europe whose shrieks are never heard.”—Ibid., xxiv., 132. (Speech by Robespierre, May 10, 1793). “Up to this time the art of governing has simply consisted in the art of stripping and subduing the masses for the benefit of the few, and legislation, the mode of reducing these outrages to a system.” 27. Buchez et Roux, xxxii., 353. (Report by Robespierre to the Convention, May 7, 1794.) “Nature tells us that man is born for freedom while the experience of man for centuries shows him a slave. His rights are written in his heart and history records his humiliation.” 28. Ibid., 372. “Priests are to morality what charlatans are to medical practice. How different is the God of nature from the God of the priests! I know of nothing which is so much like atheism as the religions they have manufactured!” Already, in the Constituent Assembly, Robespierre wanted to prevent the father from endowing a child. “You have done nothing for liberty if your laws do not tend to diminish by mild and efficacious means the inequality of fortunes.” (Hamel, i., 403.) 914 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION for, at every effort, some band is loosened, and, as each band gives way, the paralysed limbs recover their action. Let us trace the progress of this liberating operation. Always timid and at loggerheads with the ecclesiastical organisation, the Constit- uent Assembly could take only half-measures; it cut into the bark without daring to drive the axe into the solid trunk. Its work reduced itself down to the confiscation of clerical property, to a dissolution of the religious orders, and to a check upon the authority of the pope; its object was to establish a new church and transform priests into sworn functionaries of the State, and this was all. As if Ca- tholicism, even administrative, would cease to be Catholicism! As if the noxious tree, once stamped with the public seal, would cease to be noxious! Instead of the old laboratory of falsehoods being destroyed another is patented alongside of it, so that there are now two instead of one. With or without the official label it operates in every commune in France and, as in the past, it supplies the public with its nostrum with impunity. This is precisely what we cannot tolerate. We must, indeed, keep up appearances, and, as far as words go, we will decree anew freedom of worship.29 But, in fact and in practice, we will demolish the laboratory and prevent the nostrum from being sold; there shall no longer be any Catholic worship in France, no baptism, no confession, no marriage, no extreme unction, no mass: nobody shall preach or listen to a sermon; nobody shall administer or receive a sacrament, save in concealment, and with the prospect before him of imprisonment or the scaffold. To this end, we will take things in their order. There is no difficulty in regard to the self-styled orthodox Church: its members having re-

29. Decree of Frimaire 18, year II. Note the restrictions. “The Convention, in the foregoing arrangement, has no idea of derogating from any law or precaution for public safety against refractory or turbulent priests, or against those who might attempt to abuse the pretext of religion in order to compromise the cause of liberty. Nor does it mean to disapprove of what has thus far been done by virtue of the ordinances of the representatives of the people, nor to furnish anybody with a pretext for unsettling patriotism and relaxing the energy of public spirit.” The Jacobin Programme / 915 fused to take the oath are outlaws; one excludes oneself from an association when one repudiates the pact; they have lost their qualifications as citizens and have become ordinary foreigners under the surveillance of the police; and, as they propagate around them discontent and disobedience, they are not only foreigners but seditious persons, enemies in disguise, the authors of a secret and widespread Vendeé; it is not necessary for us to prosecute them as charlatans, it is sufficient to strike them down as rebels. As such, we have already banished from France all unsworn ecclesiastics, about forty thousand priests, and we are transporting those who did not cross the frontier within the allotted time: we allow only sexagenarians and the infirm to remain on French soil, and, again, as prisoners and in seclusion; they incur the penalty of death if they do not of their own accord crowd to the prisons of their county town; the banished who return home incur the penalty of death, and there is penalty of death against those who harbor priests.30 Consequently, in default of an orthodox clergy, there must no longer be an orthodox worship; the most dangerous of the two manufactories of superstition is shut up. That the sale of this poisonous food may be more surely stopped we punish

30. Decrees of May 27 and August 26, 1792, March 18, April 20, and Oc- tober 20, 1793, April 11, and May 11, 1794.—Add (Moniteur, xix., 697) the decree providing for the confiscation of the possessions of ecclesiastics “who have voluntarily left or been so reported, who are retired as old or infirm, or who have preferred transportation to retirement.”—Ibid., xviii., 492, (session of Frimaire 2). A speech by Forester. “As to the priesthood, its continuation has become a disgrace and even a crime.”—Archives Nationales, AF. II., 36. (An order by Lequinio, representative of the people in Charante-Infe´rieur, la Vendeé and Deux-Se´vres, Saintes, Nivose 1, year ii.) “In order that freedom of worship may exist in full plenitude it is forbidden to all whom it may concern to preach or write in favor of any form of worship or religious opinion whatsoever,” and especially “it is expressly forbidden to any former minister, belonging to any religious sect whatever, to preach, write, or teach morality under penalty of being regarded as a suspect and, as such, immediately put under arrest. . . . Every man who undertakes to preach any religious precepts whatsoever is, by that fact, culpable before the people. He violates . . . social equality, which does not permit the individual to publicly raise his ideal pretensions above those of his neighbor.” 916 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION those who ask for it the same as those who provide it, and we prosecute not only the pastors, but, again, the fanatics of the flock; if these are not the authors of the ecclesiastical rebellion they are its promoters and accomplices. Now, thanks to the schism among them, we already know who they are, and, in each commune, the list is made out. We style as fanatics all who reject the ministry of the sworn priests, the bourgeois who calls him an interloper, all the nuns who confess to him, all the peasants who stay away from his mass, all the old women who do not kiss his paten, all the relations of an infant who do not wish him to baptise it. All these people and those who associate with them, whether nearly related, kinsmen, friends, guests, or visitors, of whatever class, either men or women, are seditious at heart, and, therefore, “suspects.” We deprive them of their electoral rights, we withdraw their pensions, we impose on them special taxation, we confine them to their dwellings, we imprison them by thousands, and guillotine them by hundreds; the rest will gradually become discouraged and abandon an impracticable cult.31 The lukewarm remain, the sheep-like crowd which holds on to its rites: the Constituent Assembly will seize them wherever it finds them, and, as they are the same in the authorised as in the refractory church, instead of seeking them with the priest who does not submit, it will seek them with the one who does. But it will proceed without zeal, without confidence, often even with distrust, questioning itself whether these rites, being administered by one who is excommunicated, are not base metal. Such a church is not substantial, and we have only to give it a push to knock it down. We will do all we can to discredit constitutional priests: we will prohibit them from wearing the ecclesiastical costume, and force them by law to bestow the nuptial benediction on their apostate brethren; we will employ terror and imprisonment to constrain them to marry; we will give them no respite until they return to civil life, some

31. Ludovic Sciout, “Histoire de la Constitution Civile du clerge´,” vols. iii. and iv., passim.—Jules Sauzay, “Histoire de la perse´cution re´volutionaire dans le Doubs,” vols. iii., iv., v., and vi., particularly the list, at the end of the work, of those transported, guillotined, sent into the interior and imprisoned. The Jacobin Programme / 917 admitting themselves to be impostors, many by surrendering their priestly credentials, and most of them by resigning their places.32 Deprived of leaders by these voluntary or forced desertions, the Catholic ﬂock will allow itself to be easily led out of the fold, while, to remove all temptation to go back, we will tear the enclosure down.

32. Order of the day of the Convention September 17, 1792; circular of the Executive Council, January 22, 1793; decrees of the Convention, July 19, August 12, September 17, November 15, 1793.—Ludovic Sciout, iii., ch. xv., and the following chapters; iv., chapters i. to vii.—Moniteur, October and November, 1793, passim. (November 23, Order of the Paris Commune, closing the churches.)—In relation to the terror the constitutional priests were under, I merely give the two following extracts (Archives Nationales, F7, 3,1167); “Citizen Pontard, bishop of the department of Dordogne, lodging in the house of citizen Bourbon, No. 66 Faubourg St. Honore´, on being informed that there was an article in a newspaper called “le Republicain” stating that a meeting of priests had been held in the said house, declares that he had no knowledge of it; that all the officers in charge of the apartments are in harmony with the Revolution; that, if he had had occasion to suspect such a circumstance, he would have moved out immediately, and that if any motive can possibly be detected in such a report it is his proposed marriage with the niece of citizen Caminade, an excellent patriot and captain of the 9th company of the Champs-Elyseés section, a marriage which puts an end to fanaticism in his department, unless this be done by the ordination of a priest a` la sans-culotte which he had done yesterday in the chapel, another act in harmony with the Revolution. It is well to add, perhaps, that one of his cure´s now in Paris has called on him, and that he came to request him to second his marriage. The name of the said cure´ is Greffier Sauvage; he is still in Paris, and is preparing to be married the same time as himself. Aside from these motives, which may have given rise to some talk, citizen Pontard sees no cause whatever for suspicion. Besides, so thoroughly patriotic is he, he asks nothing better than to know the truth, in order to march along unhesitatingly in the revolutionary path. He signs his declaration, promising to support the Revolution on all occasions, by his writings as well as by his conduct. He presents the two numbers of his journal which he has had printed in Paris in support of the principles he adheres to. At Paris, September 7, 1793, year II. of the Republic, one and indivisible. F. Pontard, bishop of the Republic in the department of Dordogne.”—Dauban La Demagogie en 1793, p. 557. Arrest of representative Osselin, letter of his brother, cure´ of St. Aubin, to the committee of section Mutius Scaevola, Brumaire 20, year II., “Like Brutus and Mutius Scaevola, I trample on the feelings with which I idolised my brother! O, truth, thou divinity of republicans, thou knowest the incorruptibility of my intentions!” (and so on for fifty-three lines). “These are my sentiments. I am fraternally, Osselin, minister of worship at St. Aubin.”—P.S. “It was just as I 918 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

In the communes in which we are masters we will make the Jacobins of the place demand the abolition of worship, while, in other communes, we will get rid of this authoritatively through our missionary representatives. We will close the churches, demolish the steeples, melt down the bells, send all sacred vessels to the Mint, smash the images of the saints, desecrate relics, prohibit religious burials, impose the civil burial, prescribe rest during the dećadi,33 and labor on Sundays. No exception whatever. Since all positive religions maintain error, we will proscribe every form of worship: we will exact from Protestant clergymen a public abjuration; we will not let the Jews practise their ceremonies; we will have “an ‘auto-da-fe´,’ of all the books and symbols of the faith of Moses.”34 But, of all these various juggling machines, the worst is the Catholic, the most hostile to nature in the celibacy of its priesthood, the most opposed to reason in the absurdity of its dogmas, the most opposed to democracy, since its powers are delegated from above downwards, the best protected from civil authority because its head is outside of France. Accordingly, we must be most furious against it; even after Ther- midor, we will keep up constant persecution, great and small; up to the Consulate, we will transport and shoot down priests, we will revive against fanatics the laws of the Reign of Terror, we will hamper their movements, we will exhaust their patience; we will keep them anxious during the day and restless at night; we will not give them a moment’s repose.35 We will restrict the population to the decadal cult; we will pursue it with our propagandism even to the dinner-table; we will change the market-days, so that no believer shall be able to buy fish on a fast-day.36 We have nothing more at was going to answer a call of nature that I learned this afflicting news.” (He keeps up this fustian until words fail him, and finally, frightened to death, and his brain exhausted, he gives this postscript to show that he was not an accomplice.) 33. A term denoting the substitution of ten instead of seven days as a division of time in the calendar, and forced into use during the Revolution. 34. “Recueil de pieces authentiques servant a` l’histoire de la revolution a` Strasbourg,” ii., 299. (A district order.) 35. Ludovic Sciout, iv., 426. (Instructions sent by the Directory to the Na- tional Commissions, Frimaire, year II.)—Ibid., ch. x. to xviii. 36. Ibid., iv., 688. An order of the Directory, Germinal 14, year VI. “The The Jacobin Programme / 919 heart than this war against Catholicism; no article on our programme will be carried out with more determination and perseverance. The question involved is truth. We are its guardians, its champions, its ministers, and never did the servants of truth apply force with such minute detail and such effect to the extirpation of error. V Alongside of superstition there is another monster to be destroyed, and, on this side also, the Constituent Assembly began its attack. But on this side also, through lack of courage or of logic, it stopped, after two or three feeble blows. All that it did to restore natural equality consisted in this—an interdiction of heraldic insignia, titles of nobility and territorial names; the abolition, without indemnity, of all the dues belonging to the seigneur by right of his former proprietorship over persons; the permission to purchase other feudal rights at a price agreed upon, and the limitation of royal power. This was little enough; when it concerns usurpers and tyrants they must be treated in another fashion; for their privilege is, of itself, an outrage on the rights of man. Consequently, we have dethroned the King and cut off his head;37 we have suppressed, without indemnity, the entire feudal debt, comprising the rights vested in the seig- municipal governments will designate special days in each decade for market days in their respective districts, and not allow, in any case, their ordinance to be set aside on the plea that the said market days would fall on a holiday. They will specially strive to break up all connection between the sales of fish and the days of fasting designated on the old calendar. Every person exposing food or wares on sale in the markets on days other than those fixed by the municipal government will be prosecuted in the police court for obstructing a public thorough- fare.”—The Thermidorians remain equally as anti-Catholic as their predecessors; only, they disavow open persecution and rely on slow pressure. (Moniteur, xiii., 523. Speech by Boissy d’Anglas, Ventose 3, year II.) “Superintend what you cannot hinder; regulate what you cannot prohibit....Itwill not be long before these absurd dogmas, the offspring of fear and error, whose influence on the human mind has been so steadily destructive, will be known only to be despised....It will not be long before the religion of Socrates, of Marcus Aurelius and Cicero will be the religion of the whole world.” 37. Moniteur, xiv., 646. (The King’s trial.) Speech by Robespierre: “The right of punishing the tyrant and of dethroning him is one and the same 920 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION neurs by virtue of their being owners of real-estate, and merely lessors; we have abandoned their persons and possessions to the claims and rancor of local jacqueries; we have reduced them to emigration; we imprison them if they stay at home; we guillotine them if they return. Reared in habits of supremacy, and convinced that they are of a different species from other men, the prejudices of race are incorrigible; they are incapable of companionship with their social equals; we cannot too carefully crush them out, or, at the very least, hold them firmly down.38 Besides, they are guilty from the fact of having existed; for, they have taken both the lead and the command without any right to do so, and, in violation of all right, they have misused mankind; having enjoyed their rank, it is but just that they should pay for it. Privileged the wrong way, they must be treated the same as vagabonds were treated under their reign, stopped by the police and sent off with their families into the interior, crowded into prisons, executed in a mass, or, at least, expelled from Paris, the seaports and fortified towns, put on the limits, compelled to present themselves daily at the municipality, deprived of their political rights, excluded from public offices, “popular clubs, committees of supervision and from communal and section assemblages.”39 Even this is indulgence; branded with infamy, we ought to class them with galley-slaves, and set them to work on the public highways.40 “Justice condemns the people’s enemies and the partisans of tyranny to eternal slavery.”41

thing.”—Speech by Saint-Just: “Royalty is an eternal crime, against which every man has the right of taking up arms. . . . To reign innocently is impossible!” 38. Epigraph of Marat’s journal: Ut redeat miseris, abeat fortuna superbis. 39. Buchez et Roux, xxxii., 323. (Report of Saint-Just, Germinal 21, year II., and a decree of Germinal 26–29, Art. 4, 13, 15.)—Ibid., 315. 40. Buchez et Roux, xxix., 166. (Report of Saint-Just, October 10, 1793.) “That would be the only good they could do their country. . . . It would be no more than just for the people to reign over its oppressors in its turn, and that their pride should be bathed in the sweat of their brows.” 41. Ibid., xxxi., 309. (Report of Saint-Just, Ventose 8, year II.) The Jacobin Programme / 921

But that does not suffice; for, apart from the aristocracy of rank, there are other aristocracies which the Constituent Assembly has left untouched,42 especially the aristocracy of wealth. Of all the sovereignties, that of the rich man over the poor one is the most burdensome. In effect, not only, in contempt of equality, does he consume more than his share of the common products of labor, and without producing anything himself, but again, in contempt of liberty, he may fix wages as he pleases, and, in contempt of humanity, he always fixes them at the lowest point. Between himself and the necessitous he never makes other than the most iniquitous contracts. Sole possessor of land, capital and the necessaries of life, he imposes conditions which others, deprived of means, are forced to accept at the risk of starvation; he speculates at his discretion on wants which cannot be put off, and makes the most of his monopoly by maintaining the indigent in their indigent situations. “Hence,” writes Saint-Just,43 “opulence is infamous; it consists in feeding fewer natural or adopted children according to every thousand livres of in-

42. Ibid., xxvi., 435. (Speech by Robespierre on the Constitution, May 10, 1793.) “What were our usages and pretended laws other than a code of impertinence and baseness, where contempt of men was subject to a sort of tariff, and graduated according to regulations as odd as they were numerous? To despise and be despised, to cringe in order to rule, slaves and tyrants in turn, now kneeling before a master, now trampling the people under foot—such was the ambition of all of us, so long as we were men of birth or well-educated men, whether common folks or fashionable folks, lawyers or financiers, pettifoggers or wearing swords.”—Archives Nationales, F7, 3,1167. (Report of the observateur Charmont, Nivose 10, year II.)—“Boileau’s effigy, placed in the college of Lisieux, has been lowered to the statues of the saints, the latter being taken out of their niches. There is now no kind of distinction. Saints and authors are of the same class.” 43. Buchez et Roux, xxxv., 296. (“Institutions” by Saint-Just.) Meillan, “Me´- moires,” p. 17. Anne Plumptre, “A narrative of three years’ residence in France, from 1802 to 1805,” ii., 96. At Marseilles: “The two great crimes charged on those who were doomed to destruction, were here as elsewhere, wealth and aristocracy....Ithadbeen decreed by the Terrorists that no person could have occasion for more than two hundred livres a year, and that no income should be permitted to exceed that sum.” 922 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION come.” “The richest Frenchman,” says Robespierre, “ought not to have now more than three thousand livres rental.” Beyond what is strictly necessary, no property is legitimate; we have the right to take the superfluous wherever we find it; not only today, because we now require it for the State and for the poor, but at all times, because the superfluous, in all times, confers on its possessor an advantage in contracts, a control of wages, an arbitrament over the means of living, in short, a supremacy of condition worse than pree¨minence in rank. Consequently, our hand is not against the nobles merely, but against the rich and well-to-do bourgeois,44 also the large land-owners and capitalists; we are going to demolish their crafty feudalism from top to bottom.45 In the first place, we prevent, and solely through the operation of new institutions, any recipient of a large income from levying on, as is customary with him, the best portion of the fruits of another’s labor; the drones shall no longer annually consume the honey of other bees. To bring this about, we have only to let the assignats and the forced rate (at which they shall be received) work things out. Through the depreciation of paper-money, the indolent land-owner or capitalist sees his income melting away in his hands; his receipts consist only of nominal values. On the 1st of January, his tenant pays him really for a half

44. Archives Nationales, F7, 4,437. (Address of the people’s club of Clav- isson (Gard), Messidor 7, year II.) “The Bourgeoisie, the merchants, the large land-owners have all the pretension of ex-nobles. The law provides no means for opening the eyes of the common people in relation to these new tyrants. The club desires that the revolutionary Tribunal should be empowered to condemn this proud class of individuals to a prompt partial confinement. The people would then see that they had committed a misdemeanor and would withdraw that sort of respect in which they hold them.” A note in the hand-writing of Couthon: “Left to the decision of popular commissions.” 45. Gouverneur Morris, in a letter of January 4, 1796, says that French capitalists have been financially ruined by assignats, and physically by the guillotine.—Buchez et Roux, xxx., 26. (Notes written by Robespierre in June, 1793.) “Internal dangers come from the bourgeois . . . who are our enemies? The vicious and the rich.” The Jacobin Programme / 923 term instead of a full term; on the 1st of March, his farmer settles his account with a bag of grain;46 the effect is just the same as if we had made fresh contracts, and reduced by one-half, three-quarters, or, even more, the rate of interest on loans, the rent of houses and the leases of farm lands. Whilst the revenue of the landlord evaporates, his capital melts away, and we do the best we can to help this along. If he has claims on ancient corporations or civil and religious establishments of any description, whether provincial governments, congregations, associations, endowments or hospitals, we withdraw his special guarantee; we convert his title-deeds into a state annuity, we combine his private fortune with the public fortune whether he will or not, we drag him into the universal bankruptcy, toward which we are conducting all the creditors of the Republic.47 Besides, to effect his ruin, we have more direct and prompt means. If an emigre´, and there are hundreds of thousands of emigre´s, we confiscate his possessions; if he has been guillotined or transported, and there are tens of thousands of these, we confiscate his possessions; if he is “a marked enemy of the Revolution,”48 and “all the rich pray for the counter-revolution,”49 we sequestrate his property;

46. Narrative by M. Silvestre de Sacy (May 23, 1873): His father owned a farm bringing in four thousand francs per annum; the farmer offered him four thousand francs in assignats or a hog; M. de Sacy took the hog. 47. Buchez et Roux, xxxi., 441. (Report by Cambon on the institution of the grand livre of the public debt, August 15, 1793.) 48. Ibid., xxxi., 311. Report by Saint-Just, February 26, 1794, and decree in accordance therewith, unanimously adopted. See, in particular, article 2.—Mon- iteur, 12 Ventose, year II. (meeting of the Jacobin club, speech by Collot d’Herbois). “The Convention has declared that prisoners must prove that they were patriots from the 1st of May, 1789. When the patriots and enemies of the Revolution shall be fully known, then the property of the former shall be inviolable and held sacred, while that of the latter will be confiscated for the benefit of the republic.” 49. Buchez et Roux, xxvi., 1455. (Session of the Jacobin Club, May 10, 1793, speech by Robespierre.)—Ibid., xxxi. (Report by Saint-Just, Feb. 26, 1794.) “He who has shown himself an enemy of his country cannot be one of its proprietors. Only he has patrimonial rights who has helped to free it.” 924 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION we enjoy the usufruct of it until peace is declared, and we shall have the property after the war is over; usufruct or property, the State, in either case, inherits; at most, we may sometimes grant temporary aid to the family, which is not even entitled to food. It is impossible to uproot fortunes more thoroughly. As to those which are not at once eradicated we get rid of them piece-meal, and against these we employ two axes. On the one hand, we decree the principle of progressive taxation, and on this basis we establish the forced loan:50 in incomes, we distinguish between the essential and the surplus; we fix the essential at one thousand francs per head; according as the excess is greater or less we take a quarter, a third or the half of it, and, when above nine thousand francs, the whole; beyond its small alimentary reserve, the most opulent family will keep only four thousand five hundred francs income. On the other hand, we cut deep into capital through revolutionary taxes; our committees and provincial proconsuls levy arbitrarily what suits them, three hundred, five hundred, up to one million two hundred thousand francs,51 on this or that banker, trader, bourgeois or widow, payable within a week; all the worse for the person taxed if he or she has no money on hand and is unable to borrow it; we declare them “suspects,” we imprison them, we sequestrate their property and the State enjoys it in their place. In any event, even when the amount is paid, we force him or her to deposit their silver and gold coin in our hands, sometimes with assignats as security, and often nothing; henceforth, coin must circulate and the precious metals are in requisition;52 everybody will deliver up what plate he possesses.

50. Buchez et Roux, xxxi., 93 and 130. (Speech by Robespierre on property, and the declaration of rights adopted by the Jacobin club.) Decree of Septem. 3, 1794 (articles 13 and 48). 51. Moniteur, xxii., 719. (Report by Cambon, Frimaire 6, year III.) At Bor- deaux Raba was condemned to a fine of one million two hundred thousand francs, Pećhotte to five hundred thousand, Martin-Martin to three hundred thousand.—Cf. Rodolphe Reuss, “Se´ligmann Alexandre, ou les Tribulations d’un Israe´lite de Strasbourg.” 52. Ibid., xviii., 486. (Report by Cambon, Frimaire 1, year II.) “The egotists who, some time ago, found it difficult to pay for the national domains they had The Jacobin Programme / 925

And let nobody presume to conceal his hoard; all treasure, whether silver-plate, diamonds, ingots, gold or silver, coined or uncoined, “discovered, or that may be discovered, buried in the ground or concealed in cellars, inside of walls or in garrets, under floors, pave- ments, or hearthstones, or in chimneys and other hiding places,”53 becomes the property of the Republic, with a premium of twenty per cent. in assignats to the informer. As, furthermore, we make requisitions for bed-linen, beds, clothes, provisions, wines and the rest, along with specie and the precious metals, the condition of a mansion may be imagined, especially after we have lodged in it; it is the same as if the house had been on fire; all personal capital is gone, as well as other capital. Now that both are destroyed they must not be allowed to accumulate again. To ensure this, we abolish, according to rule, the freedom of bequest,54 we prescribe equal and obligatory divisions of all inheritances;55 we include bastards in this under the same title as legitimate children; we admit repre´sentation a` l’infini,56 “in order to multiply heirs and parcel out inheritances;”57 acquired from the Republic, even in assignats, now bring us their gold.... Collectors of the revenue who had buried their gold have come and offered to pay what they owe the nation in ingots of gold and silver. These have been refused, the Assembly having decreed the confiscation of these objects.” 53. Decree of Brumaire 23, year II. On taxes and confiscations in the provinces see M. de Martel, “Etude sur Fouche´ et Pieces authentiques servant a` l’histoire de la revolution a` Strasbourg.” And further on the details of this operation at Troyes.—Meillan, 90: “At Bordeaux, merchants were heavily taxed, not on account of their incivisme, but on account of their wealth.” 54. Decree of March 7–11, 1793. 55. Moniteur, xviii., 274, decrees of Brumaire 4, and ibid., 305, decree of Brumaire 9, year II., establishing equal partition of inheritances with retroactive effect to July 14, 1789. Adulterous bastards are excepted. The reporter of the bill, Cambace`re´s, laments this regretable exception. 56. Rights of inheritance allowed to the descendants of a deceased person who never enjoyed these rights, but who might have enjoyed them had he been living when they fell to him.—TR. 57. Fenet, “Travaux du Code civil.” (Report by Cambace`re´s on the Code civil, August 9, 1793). The framer of the bill makes excuses for not having deprived the father of all the disposable portion. “The committee believed that such a clause would seriously violate our customs without being of any benefit 926 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION we reduce the disposable portion to one-tenth, in the direct line, and one-sixth in a collateral line; we forbid any gift to persons whose income exceeds one thousand quintals of grain; we inaugurate adoption, “an admirable institution,” and essentially republican, “since it brings about a division of large properties without a crisis.” Already, in the Legislative Assembly a deputy had stated that “equal rights could be maintained only by a persistent tendency to uniformity of fortunes.”58 We have provided for this for the present day and we likewise provide for it in the future. None of the vast excrescences which have sucked the sap of the human plant are to remain; we have cut them away with a few telling blows, while the steady- moving machine, permanently erected by us, will shear off their last tendrils should they chance to sprout again. VI Through this restoration of the natural man we have prepared for the advent of the social man. The object now is to form the citizen, and this is possible only through a levelling of conditions; “neither rich nor poor are necessary” in a well constituted society;59 we have already destroyed the opulence which corrupts; it now remains for us to suppress the indigence which degrades. Under the tyranny of to society or of any moral advantage. We assured ourselves, moreover, that there should always be a division of property.” With respect to donations: “It is repugnant to all ideas of beneficence to allow donations to the rich. Nature is averse to the making of such gifts so long as our eyes dwell on misery and misfortune. These affecting considerations have determined us to fix a point, a sort of maximum, which prohibits gifts on the part of those who have reached that point.” 58. Moniteur, xii., 730, (June 22, 1792) speech by Lamarque.—But this principle is encountered everywhere. “Equality, indeed, (is) the final aim of social art.” (Condorcet, “Tableau des progre`s de l’esprit humain,” ii., 59.—“We desired,” writes Baudot, “to apply to politics the equality which the Gospel awards to Christians.” (Quinet, “Revolution Française,” ii., 407.) 59. Buchez et Roux, xxxv., 296. (The words of Saint-Just.)—Moniteur, xviii., 505. (Ordinance of the Paris Commune, Frimaire 3. year II.), “Wealth and Poverty must alike disappear under the re´gime of equality.” The Jacobin Programme / 927 material things, which is as oppressive as the tyranny of men, man falls below himself; never will a citizen be made out of a poor fellow condemned to remain valet, hireling, or beggar, to think only of himself and his daily bread, to ask in vain for work, to plod twelve hours a day at a monotonous pursuit, to live like a beast of burden and die in a hospital.60 He must have his own bread, his own roof and all that is indispensable for life; he must not be overworked, nor suffer anxiety or constraint; “he must live independently, respect himself, have a tidy wife and healthy and robust children.”61 The community should guarantee him comfort, security, the certainty of not going hungry if he becomes infirm, and, if he dies, of not leaving his family in want. “It is not enough,” says Bare`re,62 “to bleed the rich, to pull down colossal fortunes; the slavery of poverty must be made to disappear from the soil of the Republic.” “The unfortunate,” says Saint-Just, “are the powerful of the earth; they have a right to speak as masters to the governments which neglect them;63 they have a right to national beneficence. . . . In a democracy under organisation, everything should tend to raise each citizen above the prime necessities, by labor if he is fit for work, by education if he is a child, by succor if he is an invalid or in old age.”64 And never was there so propitious a moment. “Rich in domains, the Republic is calculating the millions intended by the rich for counter revolution, for the amelioration of the lot of its less fortunate citizens.... Those who would assassinate liberty have made it the richer.... The possessions of conspirators exist for the benefit of the unfor-

60. Buchez et Rouz, xxxv., 296. (“Institutions,” by Saint-Just.) “A man is not made for trades, nor for a hospital, nor for an asylum; all this is frightful.”— Ibid., xxxi., 312. (Report of Saint-Just, Ventose 8, year II.) “Let Europe see that you will not allow a miserable man on French territory!...Happiness is a new idea in Europe.” 61. Buchez et Roux, xxxv., 296. (“Institutions,” by Saint-Just.) 62. Moniteur, xx., 444. (Report by Bare`re, Floreál 22, year II.) “Mendicity is incompatible with popular government.” 63. Ibid., xix., 568. (Report by Saint-Just, Ventose, year II.) 64. Ibid. Report by Bare`re, Floreál 22. 928 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION tunate.”65 Let the poor take with a quiet conscience: it is not a charity but “an indemnity” which we provide for them; we save their pride by providing for their comfort, and we solace them without humiliating them. “We leave charitable enterprises to monarchies; this vile and insolent way of furnishing assistance is fit only for slaves and masters; we substitute for it a system of national works, on a grand scale, over the whole territory of the Republic.”66 On the other hand, we cause a statement to be drawn up in each commune, of “the condition of citizens without property,” and “of national possessions not disposed of”; we divide these possessions in small lots; we distribute them “in the shape of national sales” to poor folks able to work; we give, “through form of rental,” an acre to each head of a family who has less than an acre of his own; “we thus bind all citizens to the country as well as to property; we restore to the soil idle and robust arms, and families lost or enervated in the workshops and in the towns.” As to old and infirm farmers or me-

65. Ibid., xix., 568. (Report by Saint-Just, Ventose 8, and decree of Ventose 13.) “The Committee of Public Safety will report on the means of indemnifying the unfortunate with property belonging to the enemies of the Revolution.” 66. Ibid. xix., 484. (Report by Bare`re, Ventose 21, year II.)—Ibid., xx., 445. (Report by Bare`re, Floreál 22, year II.)—Decrees on public assistance, June 28, 1793, July 25, 1793, Frimaire 2, and Floreál 22, year II.—This principle, moreover, was set forth in the Constitution of 1793. “Public help is a sacred obligation; society owes a subsistence to unfortunate citizens, whether by providing work for them, or by ensuring the means of existence to those who are not in a condition to work.”—Archives Nationales, AF.II., 39. The character of this measure is very clearly expressed in the following circular of the Com- mittee of Public Safety to its representatives on mission in the departments, Ventose, year II. “A summary act was necessary to put the aristocracy down. The national Convention has struck the blow. Virtuous indigence was to recover property of which the usurpations of crime had deprived it. The national Convention has proclaimed its rights. A general list of all prisoners should be sent to the Committee of General Security, charged with deciding on their fate. The Com- mittee of Public Safety will receive the statement of the indigent in each commune so as to regulate what is due to them. Both these proceedings demand the utmost despatch and should go together. It is necessary that terror and justice be brought to bear on all points at once. The Revolution is the work of the people and it is time they should have the benefit of it.” The Jacobin Programme / 929 chanics, also poor mothers, wives, and widows of mechanics and farmers, we keep in each department a “big ledger of national beneficence”; we inscribe thereon for every thousand inhabitants, four farmers, two mechanics, five women, either mothers or widows; each registered person shall be pensioned by the State, the same as a maimed soldier; labor-invalids are as respectable as war-invalids. Over and above those who are privileged on account of poverty, we relieve and elevate the entire poor class, not alone the thirteen hundred thousand indigent enumerated in France,67 but, again, all who, having little or no means on hand, live from day to day on what they can earn. We have passed a law68 by which the public treasury shall, through a tax on large fortunes, “furnish to each commune or district the necessary funds for adapting the price of bread to the rate of wages.” Our representatives in the provinces impose on the wealthy the obligation of “lodging, feeding, and clothing all infirm, aged, and indigent citizens and orphans of their respective cantons.”69 Through the decree on monopolisation and the establishment of the maximum we bring within reach of the poor all objects of prime necessity. We pay them forty sous a day for attending district meetings; and three francs a day for serving on committees of surveillance. We recruit from amongst them our revolutionary army;70 we select amongst them the innumerable custodians of se- questre´s: in this way, hundreds of thousands of sans-culottes enter into the various public services. At last, the poor are taken out of a state of poverty: each will now have his plot of ground, his salary

67. Moniteur, xx., 449. (Report by Bare`re, Floreál 22, year II.) 68. Decree of April 2–5, 1793. 69. Moniteur, xviii., 505. (Orders of Fouche´ and Collot d’Herbois, dated at Lyons and communicated to the commune of Paris, Frimaire 3, year II.)—De Martel, “Etude sur Fouche´,” 132. Orders of Fouche´ on his mission in the Nievre, Sept. 19, 1793. “There shall be established in each district town a Committee of Philanthropy, authorised to levy on the rich a tax proportionate to the number of the indigent.” 70. Decree of April 2–5, 1793. “There shall be organised in each large commune a guard of citizens selected from the least fortunate. These citizens shall be armed and paid at the expense of the Republic.” 930 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION or pension; “in a well-ordered republic nobody is without some property.”71 Henceforth, among individuals, the difference in welfare will be small; from the maximum to the minimum, there will be only a degree, while there will be found in every dwelling about the same sort of household, a plain, simple household, that of the small rural proprietor, well-off farmer or factory foreman; that of Rousseau at Montmorency, or that of the Savoyard Vicar, or that of Duplay, the carpenter, with whom Robespierre lodges.72 There will be no more domestic servitude: “only the bond of help and gratitude will exist between employer and employee.”73 “He who works for another citizen belongs to his family and sits at his table.”74 Through the transformation of low conditions into average conditions we restore men to their dignity, and out of the proletaire, the valet, and the workman, we begin to liberate the citizen. VII Two leading obstacles hinder the development of civism, and the first is egoism. Whilst the citizen prefers the community to himself, the egoist prefers himself to the community. He cares only for his own interest, he gives no heed to public necessities; he sees none of the superior rights which take precedence of his derived right; he supposes that his property is his own without restriction or condition; he forgets that, if he is allowed to use it, he must not use it to another’s detriment.75 Thus, even in the middle or low class, do those

71. Moniteur, xx., 449. (Report of Bare`re, Floreál 22, year II.) 72. Ibid., xix., 689. (Report by Saint-Just, Ventose 23, year II.) “We spoke of happiness. It is not the happiness of Persepolis we have offered to you. It is that of Sparta or Athens in their best days, the happiness of virtue, that of comfort and moderation, the happiness which springs from the enjoyment of the necessary without the superfluous, the luxury of a cabin and of a field fertilised by your own hands. A cart, a thatched roof affording shelter from the frosts, a family safe from the lubricity of a robber—such is happiness!” 73. Buchez et Roux, xxxi., 402. (Constitution of 1793.) 74. Ibid., xxxv., 310. (“Institutions,” by Saint-Just.) 75. Ibid., xxvi., 93 and 131. (Speech by Robespierre on property, April 24, 1793, and declaration of rights adopted by the Jacobin Club.)—Mallet-Dupan, The Jacobin Programme / 931 who possess the necessaries of life, act. The greater the demand for these the higher they raise their prices; soon, they sell only at an exorbitant rate, and worse still, stop selling and store their goods or products, in the expectation of selling them dearer. In this way, they speculate on another’s wants; they augment the general distress and become public enemies. Nearly all the agriculturists, manufacturers, and tradesmen of the day, little and big, are public enemies—farmers, metayers, market-gardeners, cultivators of every degree, as well as foremen, shopkeepers, especially wine-dealers, bakers, and butchers. “All tradesmen are essentially antirevolutionists, and would sell their country to gain a few sous.”76 We will not tolerate this legal brigandage. Since “agriculture has done nothing for liberty and has sought only its own gain,”77 we will put it under surveillance, and, if necessary, under control. Since “commerce has become a species of miserly tyrant,” since “it has become self-paralysed,” and, “through a sort of antirevolutionary contempt, neglected the manufacture, handling, and expedition of diverse materials,” we will “defeat” the calculations of its barbarous arithmetic, and purge it of the aristocratic and corrupting fermentation which oppresses it.” We make monopoly “a capital crime”;78 we call him a monopolist who

“Me´moires,” i., 401. (Address of a deputation from Gard.) “Material wealth is no more the special property of any one member of the social body than base metal stamped as a circulating medium.” 76. Moniteur, viii., 452. (Speech by He´bert in the Jacobin Club, Brumaire 26, year II.) “Un Se´jour en France de 1792 a` 1795,” p. 218. (Amiens, Oct. 4, 1794.) “While waiting this morning at a shop door I overheard a beggar bar- gaining for a slice of pumpkin. Unable to agree on the price with the woman who kept the shop, he pronounced her ‘gaugrened with aristocracy.’ ‘I defy you to prove it!’ she replied. But, as she spoke, she turned pale and added, ‘Your civism is beyond all question—but take your pumpkin.’ ‘Ah,’ returned the beggar, ‘what a good republican!’” 77. Ibid., xviii., 320. (Meeting of Brumaire 11, year II. Report by Bare`re.)— Meillan, 17. Already, before the 31st May: “The tribune resounded with charges against monopoly, every man being a monopolist who was not reduced to living on daily wages or on alms.” 78. Decrees of July 26, 1793, Sept. 11 and 29; Brumaire 11, and Ventose 6, year II. 932 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

“takes food and wares of prime necessity out of circulation,” and “keeps them stored without daily and publicly offering them for sale.” Penalty of death against whoever, within eight days, does not make a declaration, or if he makes a false one. Penalty of death against any person who keeps more bread on hand than he needs for his subsistence.79 Penalty of death against the cultivator who does not bring his grain weekly to market. Penalty of death against the dealer who does not post up the contents of his warehouse, or who does not keep open shop. Penalty of death against the manufacturer who does not verify the daily use of his workable material. As to prices, we intervene authoritatively between buyer and seller; we fix the extreme price for all objects which, near or remotely, serve to feed, warm, and clothe man; we will imprison whoever offers or demands anything more. Whether the dealer or manufacturer pays expenses at this rate, matters not; if, after the maximum is fixed, he closes his factory, or gives up business, we declare him a “suspect”; we chain him down to his pursuit, we oblige him to lose by it. That is the way to clip the claws of beasts of prey, little and big! But the claws grow out again, and, instead of paring them down, it would, probably be better to pull them out. Some amongst us have already thought of that; the right of preemption might be applied to every article; “in each department, national storehouses might be established where cultivators, land-owners, and manufacturers would be obliged to deposit at a fixed price, paid down, the surplus of their consumption of every species of merchandise. The nation would distribute this merchandise to wholesale dealers, reserving a profit of six per centum. The profit of the wholesale dealer would be fixed at eight per centum and that of the retailer at twelve per centum.”80

79. Moniteur, xviii., 359. “Brumaire 16, year II. Sentence of death of Pierre Gourdier, thirty-six years of age, stock-broker, resident in Paris, rue Bellefond, convicted of having monopolised and concealed in his house a large quantity of bread, in order to breed scarcity in the midst of abundance.” He had gastritis and could eat nothing but panada made with toast, and the baker who furnished this gave him thirty pieces at a time (Wallon, ii., 155). 80. Journal of the debates of the Jacobin Club, No. 532, Brumaire 20, year The Jacobin Programme / 933

In this way, agriculturists, manufacturers, and merchants would all become clerks of the State, appointed on a premium or a discount; unable to gain a great deal, they would not be tempted to gain too much; they would cease to be greedy and soon cease to be egoists. Since, fundamentally, egoism is the capital vice and individual proprietorship the food that nourishes it, why not suppress individual proprietorship altogether? Our extreme logicians, with Baboeuf at the head of them, go as far as that, and Saint-Just seems to be of that opinion.81 A decretal of the Agrarian law is not the point; the nation would reserve the soil to itself and divide among individuals, not lands but rents. The outcome of this principle aﬀords us a glimpse of an order of things in which the State, sole proprietor of real-estate, sole capitalist, sole manufacturer, sole trader, having all Frenchmen in its pay and service, would assign to each one his task according to his aptitude, and distribute to each one his rations according to his wants. These various uncompleted plans still ﬂoat in a hazy distance; but their common purpose is clearly distinguishable. “All which tends to concentrating human passions in the ab- jection of personality must be repudiated or repressed”;82 the point is, to annihilate special interests, to deprive the individual of the motives and means for self-isolation, to suppress preoccupations and ambitions by which he makes himself a centre at the expense of the veritable centre, in short, to detach him from himself in order to attach him wholly to the State. This is why, outside the narrow egoism through which the individual prefers himself to the community, we follow out the broad egoism by which the individual prefers to the community the group of which he forms a part. Under no pretext must he separate himself

II. (Plan of citizen Dupre´, presented in the Convention by a deputation of the Arcis Club.)—Dauban, “Paris en 1794,” p. 483 (a project similar to the former, presented to the Committee of Public Safety by the Jacobin Club of Montereau, Thermidor, year II.) 81. Buchez et Roux, xxxv., 272. (“Institutions,” by Saint-Just.) 82. Buchez et Roux, xxxi., 273. (Report by Robespierre, Pluviose 17, year II.) 934 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION from the whole; at no price, must he be allowed to form for himself a small patrimony within the large one, for, by the affection he entertains for the small one, he frustrates the objects of the large one. Nothing is worse than political, civil, religious and domestic federalism; we combat it under all its forms.83 In this particular, the Constituent Assembly has paved the way for us, since it has broken up all the principal historic or material groups by which men have separated themselves from the masses and formed a band apart, provinces, clergy, nobles, parliaments, religious orders, and trades- unions. We complete its work: we destroy churches, we suppress literary or scientific associations, educational or benevolent societies, even down to financial companies.84 We prohibit any departmental or commercial “local spirit”: we find “odious and opposed to all principles, that, amongst municipalities, some should be rich and others poor, that one should have immense patrimonial possessions and another nothing but indebtedness.”85 We regard these possessions as the nation’s, and we place indebtedness to the nation’s account. We take grain from rich communes and departments, to feed poor communes and departments. We build the bridges, roads, and canals of each district, at the expense of the State; “we centralise the labor of the French people in a broad, opulent fashion.”86 We

83. Moniteur, xix., 653. (Report by Bare`re, Ventose 21, year II.) “You should detect and combat federalism in all your institutions, as your natural enemy. . . . A grand central establishment for all the work of the Republic is an efficacious means against federalism.”—Buchez et Roux, xxxi., 351, and xxxii., 316. (Report by Saint-Just, Ventose 23, and Germinal 26, year II.) “Immorality is a federalism in the civil state....Civil federalism, by isolating all parts of the state, has dried up abundance.” 84. Decree of Germinal 26–29, year II. “Financial companies are and hereby remain suppressed. All bankers, commission merchants, and other persons, are forbidden to form any establishment of this order under any pretext or under any denomination.” 85. “Me´moires de Carnot,” i., 278. (Report by Carnot.) “That is not family life. If there are local privileges there will soon be individual privileges and local aristocracy will bring along in its train the aristocracy of inhabitants.” 86. Moniteur, xix., 683. (Report by Bare`re, Ventose 21, year II.) This report The Jacobin Programme / 935 want no more local interests, souvenirs, idioms, and patriotisms. One tie only should subsist between individuals, that which attaches them to the social body; we sunder all others; we do not tolerate any special aggregation; we do the best we can to break up the most tenacious of all, the family. To this end, we assimilate marriage with ordinary contracts: we render this loose and precarious, as nearly resembling the free and transient union of the sexes as possible; it shall be dissolved at the option of both parties, and even of one of the parties, after one month of formalities and of probation; if the couple has lived separate six months, the divorce may be granted without any probation or delay; divorced parties may remarry. On the other hand, we suppress marital authority: since spouses are equal, each has equal rights over common property and the property of each other; we deprive the husband of its administration and render it “common” to both parties. We abolish “paternal authority”; “it is cheating nature to enforce her rights through constraint. . . . The only rights that parents have are those of protection and watchfulness.”87 The father can no longer control the education of his children; the State takes charge of it. The father is no longer master of his possessions; the portion he can dispose of by donation or testament is of the smallest; we prescribe an equal and forced division of property. Finally, we preach adoption, we efface bastardy, we confer on children born of free love, or of a despotic will, the same rights as those of legitimate children. In short, we break up that sacred circle, that exclusive group, that aristocratic organisation which, under the name of the family, was created out of pride and egoism.88 Henceforth, affection and obedience will no longer be frit- should be read in full to comprehend the communistic and centralising spirit of the Jacobins. 87. Feret, “Travaux du Code civil,” 105. (Reports by Cambace`re´s, August 9, 1793, and Septem. 9, 1794.)—Decrees of September 20, 1793, and Floreál 4, year II. (on Divorce.)—Cf. “Institutions,” by Saint-Just. (Buchez et Roux, xxxv., 302.) “A man and woman who love each other are married; if they have no children they may keep their relationship secret.” 88. This article of the Jacobin programme, like the others, has its practical 936 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION tered away; the miserable supports to which they have clung like ivy vines, castes, churches, corporations, provinces, communes, or families, are ruined and rooted out; on the ground which is thus levelled, the State alone remains standing, and it alone offers any point of adhesion; all these vines are about to twine themselves in one trunk about the great central column. VIII Let them not go astray, let us lead them on, let us direct minds and souls, and, to this end, let us enfold man in our doctrines. He needs general ideas and the daily experiences flowing out of them; he needs some theory explaining the origin and nature of things, one which result.—“At Paris, in the twenty-seven months after the promulgation of the law of September, 1792, the courts granted five thousand nine hundred and ninety-four divorces, and in year VI. the number of divorces exceeded the marriages.” (Glasson, “Le Mariage Civil et le Divorce,” p. 51).—“The number of foundlings which, in 1790, in France, did not exceed twenty-three thousand, is now (year X.) more than sixty-three thousand. (“Statistique de la Sarthe,” by Auvray, pre´fet, year X.).—In Lot-et-Garonne (“Statistique,” by Pieyre, pre´fet, year X.), more than fifteen hundred foundlings are counted: “this extraordinary number increased during the Revolution through the too easy admission of foundlings into the asylums, through the temporary sojourning of soldiers in their homes, through the disturbance of every moral and religious principle.”—“It is not rare to find children of thirteen and fourteen talking and acting in a way that would have formerly disgraced a young man of twenty.” (Moselle, “Analyse,” by Ferrie`re).—“The children of workmen are idle and insubordinate; some indulge in the most shameful conduct against their parents”; others try stealing and use the coarsest language.” (Meurthe, “Statis- tique,” by Marquis, pre´fet.)—Cf. Anne Plumptre (A narrative of three years residence in France, from 1802 to 1805, i., 46). “You would not believe it, madame, said a gardener to her at Nismes, that during the Revolution we dared not scold our children for their faults. Those who called themselves patriots regarded it as against the fundamental principles of liberty to correct children. This made them so unruly that, very often, when a parent presumed to scold its child the latter would tell him to mind his business, adding, ‘we are free and equal, the Republic is our only father and mother; if you are not satisfied, I am. Go where you like it better.’ Children are still saucy. It will take a good many years to bring them back to minding.” The Jacobin Programme / 937 assigns him his place and the part he has to play in the world, which teaches him his duties, which regulates his life, which fixes the days he shall work and the days he shall rest, which stamps itself on his mind through commemorations, festivals and ceremonies, through a catechism and a calendar. Up to this time Religion has been the power charged with this service, interpreted and served by the Church; now it is to be Reason, interpreted and served by the State. In this connection, many among us, disciples of the encyclopedists, constitute Reason a divinity, and honor her with a system of worship; but it is plain that they personify an abstraction; their improvised goddess is simply an allegorical phantom; none of them see in her the intelligent cause of the world; in the depths of their hearts they deny this Supreme Cause, their pretended religion being merely a show or a sham. We discard atheism, not only because it is false, but again, and more especially, because it is disintegrating and unwholesome.89 We want an effective, consolatory, and fortifying religion, and that religion is natural religion, which is social as well as true. “Without this,” Rousseau says, “it is impossible to be a good citizen.90 . . . The existence of divinity, the future life, the sacredness of the social contract and of the laws,” all are its dogmas; “no one may be forced to believe in these, but whoever dares say that he does not believe in them, sets himself up against the French people, the human species and nature.” Consequently, we decree that “the French people recognises the Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul.” The important thing now is to plant this entirely philosophic faith in all hearts. We introduce it into the civil order of things, we take the calendar out of the hands of the Church, we purge it of its Christian imagery; we make the new era begin with the advent of the Republic; we divide the year according to the

89. Buchez et Roux, xxxii., 364. (Report by Robespierre, Floreál 8, year II.)—At Bayeux, the young girl who represented Liberty, had the following inscription on her breast or back: “Do not make me an instrument of licentiousness.” (Gustave Flaubert, family souvenirs.) 90. Ibid., 385. (Address of a Jacobin deputation to the Convention, Floreál 27, year II.) 938 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION metric system, we name the months according to the vicissitudes of the seasons, “we substitute, in all directions, the realities of reason for the visions of ignorance, the truths of nature for a sacerdotal prestige,”91 the decade for the week, the dećadi for Sundays, lay festivals for ecclesiastical festivals.92 On each dećadi, through solemn and appropriate pomp, we impress on the popular mind one of the highest truths of our creed; we glorify, in the order of their dates, Nature, Truth, Justice, Liberty, Equality, the People, Adversity, Hu- manity, the Republic, Posterity, Glory, Patriotism, Heroism, and other virtues. Besides this, we honor the important days of the Rev- olution, the taking of the Bastille, the fall of the Throne, the punishment of the tyrant, the expulsion of the Girondists. We, too, have our anniversaries, our relics, the relics of Chalier and Marat,93 our processions, our services, our ritual,94 and the vast system of visible pageantry by which dogmas are made manifest and propagated. But ours, instead of leading men off to an imaginary heaven, brings them back to a living patrimony, and, through our ceremonies as well as through our creed, we inculcate civism. If it is important to preach this to adults, it is still more important to teach it to children, for children are more easily moulded than adults. Our hold on these still flexible minds is complete, and, through national education “we possess ourselves of coming gen-

91. Buchez et Roux, xxxi., 415. (Report by Fabre d’Eglantine. October 6, 1793.)—(Gre´goire, “Me´moires,” i., 341.) “The new calendar was invented by Romme in order to get rid of Sunday. That was his object; he admitted it to me.” 92. Ibid., xxxii., 274. (Report by Robespierre, Flore´al 18, year II.) “National Festivals form an essential part of public education. . . . A system of national festivals is the most powerful means of regeneration.” 93. Ibid., xxviii., 335. Marat’s heart, placed on a table in the Corde´liers Club, was an object of religious reverence.—(Gre´goire, “Me´moires,” i., 341.) “In some schools the pupils were obliged to make the sign of the cross at the names of Marat, Lazowski, etc.” 94. De Martel, “E´tude sur Fouche´,” 137. Feˆte at Nevers, on the inauguration of a bust of Brutus.—Ibid., 222, civic festival at Nevers in honor of valor and morals.—Dauban, “Paris en 1704.” Programme of the feˆte of the Supreme Being at Sceaux. The Jacobin Programme / 939 erations.”95 Naught is more essential and naught is more legitimate. “The country,” says Robespierre, “has a right to bring up its own children; it cannot conﬁde this trust to family pride nor to the prejudices of individuals, the eternal nourishment of aristocracies and of a domestic federalism which narrows the soul by keeping it isolated.” We are determined to have “education common and equal for all French people,” and “we stamp on it a great character, analogous to the nature of our government and the sublime doctrines of our Republic. The aim is no longer to form gentlemen (messieurs) but citizens.”96 We oblige97 teachers, male and female, to present certificates of civism, that is to say, of Jacobinism. We close their school if “precepts or maxims opposed to revolutionary morality” are taught in it, that is to say, in conformity with Christian morality. Children will learn to read in the Declaration of Rights and in the Constitution of 1793. Republican manuals and catechisms will be prepared for their use.98 “They must be taught the virtuous traits which most honor free men, and especially the traits characteristic of the French Revolution, the best calculated to elevate the soul and render them worthy of equality and liberty.” The 14th of July, 10th of August, 2d of September, 21st of January, and 31st of May must

95. An expression by Rabaut Saint-Etienne. 96. Buchez et Roux, xxxii., 373. (Report by Robespierre, Floreál 15, year II.)—Danton had expressed precisely the same opinion, supported by the same arguments, at the meeting of Frimaire 22, year II. (Moniteur, xviii., 654.) “Chil- dren first belong to the Republic before belonging to their parents. Who will assure me that these children, inspired by parental egoism, will not become dangerous to the Republic? What do we care for the ideas of an individual alongside of national ideas? . . . Who among us does not know the danger of this constant isolation? It is in the national schools that the child must suck republican milk! . . . The Republic is one and indivisible. Public instruction must likewise relate to this centre of unity.” 97. Decree of Vende´miaire 30 and Brumaire 7, year II.—Cf. Sauzay, vi., 252, on the application of this decree in the provinces. 98. Albert Duruy, “L’Instruction publique et la Revolution,” 164 to 172 (extracts from various republican spelling-books and catechisms).—Decree of Frimaire 29, year II., section i., art. 1, 83; section ii., art. 2; section iii., arts. 6 and 9. 940 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION be lauded or justified in their presence. They must be taken to meetings of the municipalities, to the law courts,99 “and especially to the popular clubs; from these pure sources they will derive a knowledge of their rights, of their duties, of the laws, of republican morality,” and, on entering society, they will find themselves imbued with all good maxims. Over and above their political opinions we shape their ordinary habits. We apply on a grand scale the plan of education drawn out by Jean-Jacques (Rousseau).100 We want no more literary prigs; in the army, “the ‘swell’ breaks down the first campaign”;101 we want young men able to endure privation and fatigue, toughened, like Emile, “by hard work” and physical exercise. We have, thus far, only sketched out this department of education, but the agreement amongst the various plans shows the meaning and bearings of our principle. “Children generally, without distinction and without exception,” says Lepelletier de Saint-Fargeau,102 “boys from five to twelve, and girls from five to eleven years of age, must be brought up in common at the expense of the Republic; all, under the sacred law of equality, are to receive the same clothing, the same food, the same education, the same attention” in boarding-schools distributed according to cantons, and containing each from four to six hundred pupils. “Pupils will be made to submit every day and every moment to the same rigid rules....Their beds must be hard, their food healthy, but simple, their clothing comfortable, but coarse.” Servants will not be allowed; children must help themselves and, besides this, they must wait on the old and infirm, lodged with or near them. “Among daily duties, manual labor will be the principal thing; all the rest will be accessory.” Girls must learn to spin, sew and wash

99. Moniteur, xviii., 653. (Meeting of Frimaire 22, speech by Bouquier, reporter.) 100. Moniteur, xviii., 351–359. (Meeting of Brumaire 15, year II., report by Cheńier.) “You have made laws—create habits. . . . You can apply to the public instruction of the nation the same course that Rousseau follows in ‘Emile.’” 101. The words of Bouquier, reporter. (Meeting of Frimaire 22, year II.) 102. Bouchez et Roux, xxiv., 57. (Plan by Lepelletier St. Fargeau, read by Robespierre at the Convention, July 13, 1793.)—Ibid., 35. (Draft of a decree by the same hand.) The Jacobin Programme / 941 clothes; the boys will work the roads, be shepherds, ploughmen and work-hands; both will have tasks set them, either in the school- workshops, or in the fields and factories in the neighborhood; they will be hired out to surrounding manufacturers and to the tillers of the soil. Saint-Just is more specific and rigid.103 “Male children from five to sixteen years of age, must be raised for their country. They must be clad in common cloth at all seasons, and have mats for beds, and sleep eight hours. They are to have common food only, fruits, vegetables, preparations of milk, bread and water. They must not eat meat before sixteen....Their education, from ten to sixteen, is to be military and agricultural. They will be formed into companies of sixty; six companies make a battalion; the children of a district form a legion; they will assemble annually at the district town, en- camp there and drill in infantry tactics, in arenas specially provided for the purpose; they will also learn cavalry manoeuvres and every other species of military evolution. In harvest time they are to be distributed amongst the harvesters.” After sixteen, “they enter the arts,” along with some farmer, artisan, merchant, or manufacturer, who becomes their titulary “instructor,” and with whom they are bound to remain up to the age of twenty-one, “under the penalty of being deprived for life of a citizen’s rights.104 . . . All children will dress alike up to sixteen years of age; from sixteen to twenty-one, they will dress as workmen; from twenty-one to twenty-five, they will dress as soldiers, if they are not in the magistracy.” Already we show the effects of the theory by one striking example; we founded the “Ecole de Mars”;105 we select out of each district six boys from sixteen to seventeen and a half years old “among the children of

103. Ibid., xxxv., 229. (“Institutions,” by Saint-Just.) 104. Buchez et Roux, xxxi., 261. (Meeting of Nivose 17.) On the committee presenting the final draft of the decrees on public instruction the Convention adopts the following article: “All boys who, on leaving the primary schools of instruction, do not devote themselves to tillage, will be obliged to learn some science, art or occupation useful to society. Otherwise, on reaching twenty, they will be deprived of citizens’ rights for ten years, and the same penalty will be laid on their father, mother, tutor or guardian.” 105. Decree of Prairial 13, year II. 942 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION sans-culottes”; we summon them to Paris, “to receive there, through a revolutionary education, whatever belongs to the knowledge and habits of a republican soldier. They are schooled in fraternity, in discipline, in frugality, in good habits, in love of country and in detestation of kings.” Three or four thousand young people are lodged at the Sablons, “in a palisaded enclosure, the intervals of which are guarded by chevaux de frises and sentinels.”106 We put them into tents; we feed them with bran bread, rancid pork, water, and vinegar; we drill them in the use of arms; we march them out on national holidays and stimulate them with patriotic harangues. Suppose all Frenchmen educated in such a school; the habits they acquire in youth will persist in the adult, and, in each adult we shall find the sobriety, energy and patriotism of a Spartan or Roman. Already, under the pressure of our decrees, civism affects customs, and there are manifest signs, on all sides, of public regeneration. “The French people,” says Robespierre, “seem to have outstripped the rest of humanity, by two thousand years; one might be tempted to regard them, living amongst them, as a different species. In the rest of Europe, a ploughman, an artisan, is an animal formed for the pleasures of a noble; in France, the nobles are trying to transform themselves into ploughmen and artisans, but do not succeed in obtaining that honor.”107 Life in all directions is gradually assuming democratic forms. Wealthy prisoners are prohibited from purchasing delicacies, or procuring special conveniences; they eat along with the poor prisoners the same ration, at the common mess.108 Bakers

106. Langlois, “Souvenirs de l’Ecole de Mars.” 107. Buchez et Roux, xxxii., 355. (Report by Robespierre, Floreál 18, year II.) 108. Moniteur, xviii., 326. (Meeting of the Commune, Brumaire 11, year II.) The commissary announces that, at Fontainebleau and other places, “he has established the system of equality in the prisons and places of confinement, where the rich and the poor partake of the same food.”—Ibid., 210. (Meeting of the Jacobins, Vende´miaire 29, year II. Speech by Laplanche on his mission to Gers.) “Priests had every comfort in their secluded retreats; the sans-culottes in the prisons slept on straw. The former provided me with mattresses for the latter.”—Ibid., xviii., 445. (Meeting of the Convention, Brumaire 26, year II.) The Jacobin Programme / 943 have orders to make but one quality of bread, the brown bread called equality bread, and, to obtain his ration, each person must place himself in line with the rest of the crowd. On holidays109 everybody will bring his provisions down into the street and eat as one family with his neighbor; on the dećadi, all are to sing and dance together, pell-mell, in the temple of the Supreme Being. The decrees of the Convention and the orders of the representatives impose the republican cockade on women; public opinion and example impose on men the costume and appearance of sans-culottes; we see even “swells” wearing mustaches, long hair, red cap, vest, and heavy wooden shoes.110 Nobody calls a person Monsieur or Madame; the only titles allowed are citoyen and citoyenne while thee and thou is the general rule. Rude familiarity takes the place of monarchical politeness; all greet each other as equals and comrades. There is now only one tone, one style, one language; revolutionary forms constitute the tissue of speech, as well as of written discourse; thought now seems to consist entirely of our ideas and phrases. All names are transformed, those of months and of days, those of places and of monuments, baptismal names and names of families: St. Denis has become Franciade; Peter Gaspard is converted into Anaxagoras,

“The Convention decrees that the food of persons kept in places of confinement shall be simple and the same for all, the rich paying for the poor.” 109. Archives Nationales. (AF.II., 37, order of Lequinio, Saintes, Nivose 1, year II.) “Citizens generally in all communes, are requested to celebrate the day of the decade by a fraternal banquet which, served without luxury or display . . . will render the man bowed down with fatigue insensible to his forlorn condition; which will fill the soul of the poor and unfortunate with the sentiment of social equality and raise man up to the full sense of his dignity; which will suppress with the rich man the slightest feeling of pride and extinguish in the public functionary all germs of haughtiness and aristocracy.” 110. Archives Nationales, AF.II., ii., 48 (Act of Floreál 25, year II.) “The Committee of Public Safety request David, representative of the people, to present his views and plans in relation to modifying the present national costume, so as to render it appropriate to republican habits and the character of the Revolution.”—Ibid., (Act of Prairial 5, year II.) for engraving and coloring twenty thousand impressions of the design for a civil uniform, and six thousand impressions of the three designs for a military, judicial, and legislative uniform. 944 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION and Antoine-Louis into Brutus; Leroi, the deputy, calls himself La- loi, and Leroy, the jurist, calls himself August-Tenth. By dint of thus shaping the exterior we reach the interior, and through outward civism we prepare internal civism. Both are obligatory, but the latter much more so than the former; for that is the fundamental principle,111 the mainspring which sustains and impels a democratic and popular government. “It is impossible to apply the social contract if everybody does not scrupulously observe the first clause of it, namely, the complete surrender of himself to the community; everybody, then, must give himself up entirely, not only actually but heartily, and devote himself to the public weal, which public weal is the regeneration of man as we have defined it. The veritable citizen is he who thus marches along with us. With him, as with us, abstract truths of philosophy control the conscience and govern the will. He starts with our articles of faith and follows them out to the end; he derives from them all the consequences which we derive from them; he endorses our acts, he recites our creed, he observes our discipline,

111. Buchez et Roux, xxxi., 271. (Report by Robespierre, Pluviose 1, year II.) “This sublime principle supposes a preference for public interests over all private interests; from which it follows that the love of country supposes again, or produces, all the virtues.” “As the essence of a republic or of democracy is equality, it follows that love of country necessarily comprises a love of equality.” “The soul of the Republic is virtue, equality.”—Lavalette, “Me´moires,” i., 254. (Narrated by Madame Lavalette.) She was compelled to attend public festivals, and, every month, the patriotic processions. “I was rudely treated by my associates, the low women of the quarter; the daughter of an emigre´, of a marquis, or of an imprisoned mother, ought not to be allowed the honor of their company; . . . it was all wrong that she was not made an apprentice. . . . Hortense de Beauharnais was apprenticed to her mother’s seamstress, while Eugene was put with a carpenter in the Faubourg St. Germain.” The prevailing dogmatism has a singular eﬀect with simple-minded people. (Archives Nationales, AF. II., 135, petition of Ursule Riesler, servant to citizen Estreich and arrested along with him, addressed to Garnerin, agent of the Committee of Public Safety. She begs citizen Garnerin to interest himself in obtaining her freedom. She will devote her life to praying to the Supreme Being for him, since he will redeem her life. He is to furnish her, moreover, with the means for espousing a future husband, a genuine republican, by whom she is pregnant, and who would not allow her to entertain any idea of fanatical capers. The Jacobin Programme / 945 he is a believing and practicing Jacobin, an orthodox Jacobin, unsullied, and without taint of heresy or schism. Never does he swerve to the left toward exaggeration, nor to the right toward toleration; without haste or delay he travels along on the narrow, steep and straight path which we have marked out for him; this is the pathway of reason, for, as there is but one reason, there is but one pathway. Let no one swerve from the line; there are abysses on each side of it. Let us follow our guides, men of principles, the pure, especially Couthon, Saint-Just, and Robespierre; they are choice specimens, all cast in the true mould, and it is this unique and rigid mould in which all French men are to be recast. 9 CHAPTER II =

I. Retrograde conception of the State—Analogy between this idea of the State and that of antiquity—Difference between antique and modern society—Differ- ence in circumstances— II. Difference between men’s souls—Conscience and its Christian origin—Honour and its feudal origin—The individual of today refuses to surrender himself entirely—His motives—Additional motives in modern democracy—Character of the elective process and nature of the mandatory— III. Origin and nature of the modern State—Its functions, rights, and limits— IV. Temptation to encroachments—Precedents and reasons for its pretensions— V. Direct common interest—This consists in the absence of constraint—Two reasons in favor of freedom of action—Character, in general, of the individual man—Modern complications— VI. Indirect common interest—This consists in the most economical and most productive employment of spontaneous forces— Difference between voluntary labor and forced labor—Sources of man’s spontaneous action—Conditions of their energy, work, and products—Motives for leaving them under personal control—Extent of the private domain—Individuals voluntarily extend it—What they leave to the State—Obligatory functions of the State—Optional functions of the State— VII. Fabrication of social instrumentalities—Application of this principle—How all kinds of useful laborers are formed—Respect for spontaneous sources, the essential and adequate condition— Obligation of the State to respect these—They dry up when it monopolizes them—The aim of Patriotism—The aim of other liberal dispositions—Impov- erishment of all the productive faculties—Destructive effect of the Jacobin system— VIII. Comparison between despotisms—Philip II. and Louis XIV.— Cromwell and Frederic the Great—Peter the Great and the Sultans—Proportions of the weight they sustain and the forces they control—Disproportion between the Jacobins’ attempt to raise this weight and their forces—Folly of their undertaking—Physical force the only governmental force they possess—They are com-

946 The Jacobin Programme / 947 pelled to exercise it—They are compelled to abuse it—Character of their government—Character requisite in their leaders.

THE LOGICAL creation of a curtailed type of humanity, the effort to adapt the living man to this type, the interference of public authority in every branch of public endeavor, restrictions put upon labor, exchanges, and property, upon the family and education, upon worship, habits, customs, and sentiments, the sacrifice of the individual to the community, the omnipotence of the State—such is the Jacobin theory. None could be more retrograde; for the modern man is made to revert back to social forms which, for eighteen centuries, he had already passed through and left behind him. Dur- ing the historical era preceding our own, and especially in the old Greek or Latin cities, in Rome and Sparta, which the Jacobins take for their models,1 human society was shaped after the pattern of an army or convent. In a convent as in an army, one idea, absorbing and unique, predominates: the aim of the monk is to please God at any sacrifice; the soldier makes every sacrifice to obtain a victory; accordingly, each renounces every other desire and entirely abandons himself, the monk to his rules and the soldier to his drill. In like manner, in the antique world, two preoccupations were of supreme importance. In the first place, the city had its gods who were both its founders and protectors: it was therefore obliged to worship these in the most reverent and particular manner; otherwise, they abandoned it; the neglect of any insignificant rite might offend them and ruin it. In the second place, there was incessant warfare, and the rights of war were atrocious; on a city being taken every citizen might expect to be killed or maimed, or sold at auction, and see his children and wife knocked down to the highest bidder.2 In short,

1. Buchez et Roux, xxxii., 354. (Speech by Robespierre in the Convention, Floreál 18, year II.) “Sparta gleams like a flash of lightning amidst profoundest darkness.” 2. Milos taken by the Athenians; Thebes, after Alexander’s victory; Corinth, after its capture by the Romans.—In the Peloponnesian war, the Plateans, who surrender at discretion, are put to death. Nicias is murdered in cold blood after his defeat in Sicily. The prisoners at Aegos-Potamos have their thumbs cut off. 948 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION the antique city, with its acropolis of temples and its fortified citadel surrounded by implacable and threatening enemies, resembles for us the institution of the Knights of St. John on their rocks at Rhodes or Malta, a religious and military confraternity encamped around a church. Liberty, under such conditions, is out of the question: public convictions are too imperious; public danger is too great. With this pressure upon him, and thus hampered, the individual gives himself up to the community, which takes full possession of him, because, to maintain its own existence, it needs the whole man. Henceforth, no one may develop apart and for himself; no one may act or think except within fixed lines. The type of man is distinctly and clearly marked out, if not logically at least traditionally; each life, as well as each portion of each life must conform to this type; otherwise public security is compromised: any falling off in gymnastic education weakens the army; passing the images of the gods and ne- glecting the usual libation draws down celestial vengeance on the city. Consequently, to prevent all deviations, the State, absolute master, exercises unlimited jurisdiction; no freedom whatever is left to the individual, no portion of himself is reserved to himself, no sheltered corner against the strong hand of public force, neither his possessions, his children, his personality, his opinions, or his conscience.3 If, on voting days, he shares in the sovereignty, he is a subject all the rest of the year, even to his private sentiments. Rome, to serve these ends, had two censors; one of the archons of Athens was inquisitor of the faith; Socrates was put to death “for not believing in the gods in which the city believed.”4 In reality, not only in Greece and in Rome, but in Egypt, in China, in India, in Persia, in Judea, in Mexico, in Peru, during the first stages of civilisation,5

3. Fustel de Coulanges: “La Cite´ Antique,” ch. xvii. 4. Plato, “The Apology of Socrates.” See also in the “Crito” Socrates’ reasons for not eluding the penalty imposed on him. The antique conception of the State is here clearly set forth. 5. Cf. the code of Manu, the Zendavesta, the Pentateuch, and the Tcheou- Li. In this last code (Biot’s translation), will be found the perfection of the system, particularly in vol. i., 241, 247, ii., 393, iii., 9, 11, 21, 52. “Every district The Jacobin Programme / 949 the principle of human communities is still that of animal associations: the individual belongs to his community the same as the bee to its hive and the ant to its ant-hill; he is simply an organ within an organism. Under diverse forms and in diverse applications authoritative socialismalone prevails. It is just the opposite in modern society; what was once the rule has now become the exception; the antique system survives only in temporary associations, like that of an army, or in special associations, as in a convent. The individual has liberated himself by degrees, and, fromcentury to century, he has extended his domain; the two chains which once bound him fast to the community, are broken or become loosened. In the first place, public power has ceased to consist of a militia protecting a cult. Through the institution of Christianity, civil society and religious society have become two distinct empires, Christ himself having separated the two jurisdictions; “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.” On the other hand, through the rise of Protestantism, the great Christian Church is split into numerous sects which, unable to destroy each other, have been so compelled to live together that the State, even when preferring one of them, has found it necessary to tolerate the others. Finally, through the development of Protestantism, philosophy and the sciences, speculative beliefs have multiplied; there are almost as many faiths now-a-days as there are thinking men, and, as thinking men are becoming daily more numerous, opinions are daily becoming more numerous, so that, if the State should try to impose any one chief, on the twelfth day of the first moon, assembles together the men of his district and reads to themthe table of rules; he examinestheir virtue, their conduct, their progress in the right path, and in their knowledge, and encourages them; he investigates their errors, their failings and prevents them from doing evil....Superintendents of marriages see that young people marry at the prescribed age.” The reduction of man to a State automaton is plain enough in the institution of “Overseer of Gags . . .” “At all grand hunts, at all gatherings of troops, he orders the application of gags. In these cases gags are put in the soldiers’ mouths; they then fulfill their duties without tumult or shoutings.” 950 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION of these on society, this would excite opposition froman infinity of others; hence the wisdomof the State is found, first, in remaining neutral, and, next, in acknowledging that it is not qualified to interfere. In the second place, war has become less frequent and less destructive because men have not so many motives for waging it, nor the same motives to push it to the same extremes. Formerly, war was the main source of wealth; through victories man acquired slaves, subjects, and tributaries; he turned these to the best account; he leisurely enjoyed their forced labor. Nothing of this kind is seen now-a-days; people no longer think of providing themselves with human cattle; they have discovered that, of all animals, these are the most troublesome, the least productive, and the most dangerous. Comforts and security are obtained much more readily through free labor and machinery; the great object now is not to conquer, but to produce and interchange. Every day, man, pressing forward more eagerly in civil careers, is less disposed to put up with any obstacle that interferes with his aims; if he still consents to be a soldier it is not to become an invader, but to provide against invasion. Mean- while, war has become more scientific and, through the complications of its machinery, more costly; the State can no longer call out and enlist for life every able-bodied man without ruining itself, nor put too many obstacles in the way of that free industry which, through taxation, provides for its expenses; however short-sighted the State may be, it consults civil interests, even in its military interest. Thus, of the two nets, in the toils of which it has enveloped all human activity, one is rent asunder and the other has relaxed its meshes. There is no longer any reason for making the community omnipotent; the individual need not alienate himself entirely; he may, without inconvenience, reserve to himself a part of himself, and, if now called upon to sign a social contract, you may be sure that he would make this reservation.

II Outward circumstances, indeed, are not only changed, but the very depths of the soul are changed; the breast of man is animated by a The Jacobin Programme / 951 sentiment which is repugnant to antique stipulations. Undoubtedly, in extreme cases and under the pressure of brutal necessity I may, without special instructions and for a time, give the State my signature in blank. But, never, with a full comprehension of the meaning of the terms, will I sign away in good faith the complete and permanent abandonment of myself: it would be against conscience and honor, which two possessions are not to be alienated. My honor and my conscience are not to go out of my keeping; I am their sole guardian and depositary; I would not even entrust themto myfather. Both these terms are new and express two conceptions unknown to the ancients,6 both being of profound import and of infinite reach. Through them, like a bud separated from its stem and taking root apart, the individual has separated himself from the primitive body, clan, family, caste, or city in which he has lived indistinguishable and lost in the crowd; he has ceased to be an organ and appendage; he has become a personality. The first of these conceptions is of Christian origin and the second of feudal origin; both, following each other and conjoined, measure the enormous distance which separates an antique soul froma modern soul. Alone, in the presence of God, the Christian feels every tie dissolving like wax that binds himto the group around him;he stands face to face with the Great Judge, and this infallible judge sees all souls as they are, not confusedly and in masses, but distinctly and each by itself. At the bar of this tribunal no one is answerable for another; each answers for himself alone; one is responsible only for one’s acts. But those acts are of infinite consequence, for the soul, redeemed by the blood of a God, is of infinite price; hence, according as it has or has not profited by the divine sacrifice, so will the reward or punishment be infinite; at the final judgment, an eternity of torment or bliss opens before it. All other interests vanish alongside of

6. These two words have no exact equivalents in Greek or Latin. Conscien- tia, dignitas, honos denote different shades of meaning. This difference is most appreciable in the combination of the two modern terms delicate conscience, scrupulous conscience, and the phrase of stake one’s honor on this or that, make it a point of honor, the laws of honor, etc. The technical terms in antique morality, beautiful, virtuous, sovereign good, indicate ideas of another stamp and origin. 952 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION an interest of such vast disproportion; thenceforth, righteousness is the most serious of all aims, not in the eyes of man, but of God, and again, day after day, the soul renews within itself that tragic questioning in which the Judge interrogates and the sinner responds. Through this dialogue, which has been going on for eighteen centuries, and which is yet to continue, conscience has grown more and more sensitive, and man has conceived the idea of absolute justice. Whether this is vested in an all-powerful master, or whether it is a self-existent truth, like mathematical truths, in no wise takes away fromits sacredness nor, consequently, fromits authority. It commands with a superior voice and its commands must be obeyed, cost what it will: there are strict duties to which every man is rigorously bound. No pledge may relieve him of these duties; if not fulfilled because he has given contrary pledges he is no less culpable on this account, and besides, he is culpable for having pledged himself; the pledging of himself to crimes was in itself a crime. His fault thus appears to himtwofold, and the inward prick galls himtwice instead of once. Hence, the more sensitive the conscience, the greater its repugnance to self-abdication; it repels in advance any pact tending to wrong-doing, and refuses to give to men the right of imposing remorse. At the same time another sentiment has arisen, not less precious and still more energetic, more human and more efficacious. Solitary in his stronghold, the feudal chieftain, at the head of his band, could depend on nobody but himself, for a public force did not then exist. It was necessary that he should protect himself, and, indeed, over- protect himself; whoever, in the anarchical and military society in which he lived, allowed the slightest encroachment, or left unpunished the slightest approach to insult, was regarded as weak or cra- ven and at once became a prey; one had to be proud-spirited under penalty of death. And do not fancy this a difficult task for him. Sole proprietor and absolute sovereign, with no equals or peers on his domain, he lived there a unique being of a superior kind, and disproportionate with every one else.7 Hence his soliloquising during

7. Montaigne, “Essais,” book i., ch. 42. “Observe in the provinces far from The Jacobin Programme / 953 the long hours of a dreary solitude, which soliloquy has lasted for nine centuries.8 Thus, in his own eyes, his person and all that depends on himare inviolable; rather than tolerate the slightest in- fringement on his prerogatives he will dare all and sacrifice all.9 A proud sensibility (orgueil exalte´) is the best of sentinels to protect a right; for, not only does it mount guard over the right to preserve it, but, again, and especially, for its own satisfaction; the imagination has conceived a character which befits the rank, and this character the man imposes on himself as a password. Henceforth, he not only forces the respect of others, but he respects himself; he possesses the sentiment of honor, a generous self-esteem which makes him regard himself as noble and incapable of doing anything mean. In discriminating between his actions, he may err; fashion or vanity may sometimes lead him too far, or lead him astray, either on the path of recklessness or on that of puerility; his point of honor may be fixed in the wrong direction. But, in sum, and thanks to this being a fixed point, he will maintain himself erect even under an absolute monarchy, under a Philip II. in Spain, under a Louis XIV. in France, under a Frederic II. in Prussia. Fromthe feudal baron or gentleman of the court to the modern gentleman, this tradition persists and descends fromstory to story down to the lowest social substratum: today, every man of spirit, the bourgeois, the peasant, the workman, has his point of honor like the noble. He likewise, in spite of the social encroachments that gain on him, reserves to himself his private the court, in Brittany for example, the retinue, the subjects, the duties, the ceremony, of a seignior living alone by himself, brought up among his dependents, and likewise observe the flights of his imagination than which nothing is more royal; he may allude to his superior once a year, as if he were the King of Persia. . . . The burden of sovereignty scarcely affects the French gentilhomme twice in his life, who cares only to nestle at his own hearthstone and who knows how to rule his household without dispute or trial; he is as free as the Duke of Venice.” 8. “Me´moires de Chateaubriand,” vol. i. (“Les Soireés au Chateau de Cam- bourg.”) 9. In China, the moral principle is just the opposite. The Chinese, amidst obstacles and embarrassments, always enjoin siao-sin, which means, “abate thy affections.” (Huc, “L’Empire Chinoise,” i., 204.) 954 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION nook, a sort of moral stronghold wherein he preserves his faiths, his opinions, his affections, his obligations as son, husband, and father; it is the sacred treasury of his innermost being. This stronghold belongs to himalone; no one, even in the nameof the public, has a right to enter it; to surrender it would be cowardice; rather than give up its keys he would die in the breach;10 when this militant sentiment of honor is enlisted on the side of conscience it becomes virtue itself.11 Such are, in these days, the two master ideas of our European morality.12 Through the former the individual recognises duties from which nothing can exempt him; through the latter, he claims rights of which nothing can deprive him: our civilization has vegetated fromthese two roots, and still vegetates. Consider the

10. In the United States the moral order of things reposes chiefly on puritan ideas; nevertheless deep traces of feudal conceptions are found there; for instance, the general deference for women which is quite chivalric there, and even excessive. 11. Observe, from this point of view, in the woman of modern times the preservatives of female virtue. The sentiment of duty is the first safeguard of modesty, but this has a much more powerful auxiliary in the sentiment of honor, or deep innate pride. 12. The moral standard varies, but according to a fixed law, the same as a mathematical function. Each community has its own moral elements, organisation, history, and surroundings, and necessarily its peculiar conditions of vitality. When the queen bee in a hive is chosen and impregnated this condition involves the massacre of useless male and female rivals (Darwin). In China, it consists of paternal authority, literary education, and ritual observances. In the antique city, it consisted of the omnipotence of the State, gymnastic education, and slavery. In each century, and in each country, these vital conditions are expressed by more or less hereditary passwords which set forth or interdict this or that class of actions. When the individual feels the inward challenge he is conscious of obligation; when he does not respond he experiences remorse: the moral conflict consists in the struggle within himself between the universal password and personal desire. In our European society the vital condition, and thus the general countersign, is self-respect, coupled with respect for others (including women and children). This countersign, new in history, has a singular advantage over all preceding ones: each individual being respected, each can develop himself according to his nature; he can accordingly invent in every sense, bring forth every sort of production, and be useful to himself and others in every way, thus enabling society to develop indefinitely. The Jacobin Programme / 955 depth and extent of the historical soil in which they penetrate, and you may judge of their vigor. Consider the height and unlimited growth of the trees which they nourish, and you may judge of their healthiness. Everywhere else, one or the other having failed, in China, in the Roman Empire, in Islamism, the sap has dried downward and the tree has become stunted, or has fallen. Through them our civilisation lives and keeps on growing; they give substance to its noblest branches, to its best fruits; their human offshoots are more or less beautiful, according as the sap which reaches themis more or less pure, and these the Jacobin axe seeks to cut away. It is the modern man, who is neither Chinese, nor antique, nor Mussulman, nor negro, nor savage, the man formed by Christian education and taking refuge in his conscience as in a sanctuary, the man formed by feudal education and entrenched behind his honor as in a fortress, whose sanctuary and stronghold the new social contract bids him surrender. Now, in this democracy founded on the preponderance of numbers, into whose hands amI required to make this surrender? The- oretically, to the community, that is to say, to a crowd in which an anonymous impulse is the substitute for individual judgment; in which action becomes impersonal because it is collective; in which nobody acknowledges responsibility; in which I amborne along like a grain of sand in a whirlwind; in which all sorts of outrages are condoned beforehand for reasons of state: practically, to the plurality of voices counted by heads, to a majority which, overexcited by the struggle for mastery, will abuse its victory and wrong the minority to which I may belong; to a provisional majority which, sooner or later, will be replaced by another, so that if I amtoday oppressor I am sure of being oppressed tomorrow; still more particularly, to six or seven hundred representatives, among whom I am called upon to choose but one. To elect this unique mandatory I have but one vote amongten thousand; and in helping to elect himI amonly the ten-thousandth; I do not even count for a ten-thousandth in electing the others. And it is these six or seven hundred strangers to me to whomI give full power to decide for me—notethe expression full 956 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION power—which means unlimited power, not alone over my possessions and life, but, again, over my conscience, with all its powers combined; that is to say, with powers much more extensive than those I confer separately on ten persons in whomI place the most confidence—to my legal adviser who looks after my fortune, to the teacher of my children, to the physician who cares for my health, to the confessor who directs my conscience, to friends who are to serve as executors of my last will and testament, to seconds in a duel who decide on my life, on the waste of my blood, and who guard my honor. Without reference to the deplorable farce, so often played around the ballot-box, or to the forced and spurious elections which put a contrary interpretation on public sentiment, or to the official fictions by which, actually at this moment, a few fanatics and madmen, who represent nobody but themselves, assume to represent the nation, measure what degree of confidence I may have, even after honest elections, in mandatories who are thus chosen! Frequently, I have voted for the defeated candidate; in which case I amrepre- sented by the other whomI did not want for a representative. In voting for the elected candidate, I did it because I knew of no better one, and because his opponent seemed to me worse. And even him I have seen only half the time, at odd moments; I scarcely knew more of him than the color of his coat, the tone of his voice, and the way he has of thumping his breast. All I know of him is through his “platform,” vague and declamatory, through editorials, and through drawing-room, coffee-house, or street gossip. His title to my confidence is of the flimsiest and shallowest kind; there is nothing to substantiate to me his integrity or competency; he has no diploma, and no one to indorse himlike the preceptor; he has no guarantee fromthe incorporation to which he belongs, like the physician, the priest or the lawyer; with certificates of character such as he has I should hesitate in engaging a domestic. And all the more because the class fromwhich I amobliged to take himis almostalways that of politicians, a suspicious class, especially in countries in which universal suffrage prevails; for, this class is not recruited among the most independent, the ablest, and the most honest, but among vol- The Jacobin Programme / 957 uble, scheming men and zealous charlatans, who, having failed in private careers for lack of character, in situations where one is watched too closely and too nicely weighed in the balance, have fallen back on vicious courses in which the want of scrupulousness and discretion is a force instead of a weakness; to their indelicacy and impudence the doors of a public career stand wide open. Such is the august personage into whose hands, according to the theory, I am called upon to surrender my will, my will in full; certainly, if self-renunciation were necessary, I should risk less in giving myself up to a king or to an aristocracy, even hereditary; for then would my representatives be at least recommended by their evident rank and their probable competency. Democracy, in its nature and composition, is a systemin which the individual awards to his representatives the least trust and deference; hence, it is the systemin which he should entrust themwith the least power. Conscience and honor everywhere enjoin a man to retain for himself some portion of his independence; but nowhere else will he cede so little of it. If, in every modern constitution the domain of the State ought to be limited, it is in modern democracy that it should be the most restricted.

III Let us try to define these limits. After the turmoil of invasions and conquest, at the height of social disintegration, amidst the combats daily occurring between private parties, there arose in every Euro- pean community a public force, which force, lasting for centuries, still persists in our day. How it was organised, through what early stages of violence it passed, through what accidents and struggles, and into whose hands it is now entrusted, whether temporarily or forever, whatever the laws of its transmission, whether by inheritance or election, is of secondary importance; the main thing is its functions and their mode of operation. Substantially, it is a mighty sword, drawn fromits scabbard and uplifted over the smallerblades around it, with which private individuals once cut each others’ 958 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION throats. Menaced by it, the smaller blades repose in their scabbards; they have become inert, useless, and, finally, rusty; with few exceptions, everybody save malefactors, has now lost both the habit and the desire to use them, so that, henceforth, in this pacified society, the public sword is so formidable that all private resistance vanishes the moment it flashes. This sword is forged out of two interests; it was necessary to have one of its magnitude, first, against similar blades brandished by other communities on the frontier; and next, against the smaller blades which bad passions are always sharp- ening in the interior. People demanded protection against outside enemies and inside ruffians and murderers, and, slowly and painfully, after much groping and many retemperings, the hereditary banding- together of persistent energies has fashioned the sole armwhich is capable of protecting lives and property with any degree of success. So long as it does no more I am indebted to the State which holds the hilt: it gives me a security which, without it, I could not enjoy; in exchange for this security I owe it, for my quota, the means for keeping this weapon in good condition: any service rendered is worth its cost. Accordingly, there is between the State and myself, if not an express contract, at least a tacit understanding analogous to that which binds a child to its parent, a believer to his church, and, on both sides, this mutual understanding is clear and precise. The State engages to look after my security within and without; I engage to furnish the means for so doing, which means consist of my respect and gratitude, my zeal as a citizen, my services as a conscript, my contributions as a tax-payer, in short, whatever is necessary for the maintenance of an army, a navy, a diplomatic organisation, civil and criminal courts, a militia and police, central and local administrations, in short, a harmonious set of organs of which my obedience and loyalty constitute the food, the substance, and the blood. This loyalty and obedience, whatever I am, whether rich or poor, Catholic, Protestant, Jew or free-thinker, royalist or republican, individualist or socialist, I owe in honor and in conscience, for I have received their equivalent; I amvery glad that I amnot vanquished, assassinated, or robbed. I pay back to the State The Jacobin Programme / 959 exactly what it expends in machinery and oversight for keeping down brutal cupidity, greedy appetites, deadly fanaticisms, the entire howling pack of passions and desires of which, sooner or later, I might become the prey, were it not constantly to extend over me its vigilant protection. When it demands its outlay of me it is not my property which it takes away, but its own property, which it resumes and, in this light, it may legitimately force me to pay. On condition, however, that it does not exact more than my liabilities, and this it does when it oversteps its original engagements; when it undertakes some extra material or moral work that I do not ask for; when it constitutes itself sectarian, moralist, philanthropist, or pedagogue; when it strives to propagate within its borders, or outside of them, any religious or philosophic dogma, or any special political or social system. For then, it adds a new article to the primitive pact, for which article there is not the same unanimous and assured assent that existed for the pact. We are all willing to be secured against violence and fraud; outside of this, and on almost any other point, there are divergent wills. I have my own religion, my own opinions, my habits, my customs, my peculiar views of life, and way of regarding the universe; now, this is just what constitutes my personality, what honor and conscience forbid me to alienate, that which the State has promised me to hold harmless. Consequently, when, through its additional article, it attempts to regulate these in a certain way, if that way is not my way, it fails to fulfill its primordial engagement and, instead of protecting me, it oppresses me. Even if it should have the support of a majority, even if all voters, less one, should agree to entrusting it with this supererogatory function, were there only one dissentient, he would be wronged, and in two ways. In the first place, and in all cases, the State, to fulfill its new task, exacts fromhiman extra amountof subsidy and service; for, every supplementary work brings along with it supplementary expenses; the budget is overburdened when the State takes upon itself the procuring of work for laborers or employment for artists, the maintenance of any particular industrial or commercial enterprise, the giving of alms, and the furnishing of education. To an expenditure 960 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION of money add an expenditure of lives, should it enter upon a war of generosity or of propagandism. Now, to all these expenditures that it does not approve of, the minority contributes as well as the majority which does approve of them; so much the worse for the conscript and the tax-payer if they belong to the dissatisfied group; like it or not, the collector puts his hand in the tax-payer’s pocket, and the sergeant lays his hand on the conscript’s collar. In the second place, and in numerous cases, not only does the State take unjustly over and beyond my liability, but, again, it uses unjustly the money it extorts frommein the application of this to new constraints; such is the case when it imposes on me its theology or philosophy; when it prescribes for me, or interdicts, a cult; when it assumes to regulate my ways and habits, to limit my labor or expenditure, to direct the education of my children, to fix the prices of my wares or the rate of my wages. For then, in support of its commands or prohibitions, it enacts against the refractory light or serious penalties, all the way from political or civil incapacity to fine, imprisonment, exile, and the guillotine. In other words, the crown I do not owe it, and of which it robs me, pays for the persecution which it inflicts upon me; I am reduced to paying out of my own purse the wages of my inquisitors, my jailor, and my executioner. A more glaring oppression could not be imagined! Let us take heed of the encroachments of the State and not allow it to become anything more than a watch- dog. Whilst the teeth and nails of other guests in the household have been losing their sharpness, its fangs have become formidable; it is now colossal and it alone still keeps up the practice of fighting. Let us supply it with nourishment against wolves; but never let it touch peaceable folks around the table. Appetite grows by eating; it would soon become a wolf itself, and the most ravenous wolf inside the fold. The important thing is to keep a chain around its neck and confine it within its own pale.

IV Let us inspect this fold, which is an extensive one, and, through its angles, reaching into almost every nook of private life. Each private The Jacobin Programme / 961 domain, indeed, physical or moral, offers temptations for its neighbors to trespass on it, and, to keep this intact, demands the superior intervention of a third party. To acquire, to possess, to sell, to give, to bequeath, to contract between husband and wife, father, mother, or child, between master or domestic, employer or employee, each act and each situation, involves rights limited by contiguous and adverse rights, and it is the State which sets up the boundary between them. Not that it creates this boundary; but, that this may be recognised, it draws the line and therefore enacts civil laws, which it applies through its courts and gendarmes in such a way as to secure to each individual what belongs to him. The State stands, accordingly, as regulator and controller, not alone of private possessions, but also of the family and of domestic life; its authority is thus legitimately introduced into that reserved circle in which the individual will has intrenched itself, and, as is the habit of all great powers, once the circle is invaded, its tendency is to occupy it fully and entirely. To this end, it alleges a new principle. Constituted as a moral personality, the same as a church, university, or charitable or scientific body, is not the State bound, like every corporate body that is to last for ages, to extend its vision far and near and prefer to private interests, which are only life-interests, the common interest which is eternal? Is not this the superior end to which all others should be subordinated, and must this interest, which is supreme over all, be sacrificed to two troublesome instincts which are often unreasonable and sometimes dangerous: to conscience, which overflows in mystic absurdities, and to honor, the excitements of which end in murder? Certainly not, and first, in its grandest works, when the State, as legislator, regulates marriages, inheritances, and testa- ments, it is not respect for the will of individuals which solely guides it; it does not content itself with obliging everybody to pay his debts, including even those which are tacit, involuntary, and innate; it takes into account the public interest; it calculates remote probabilities, future contingencies, all results singly and collectively. Manifestly, in allowing or forbidding divorce, in extending or restricting what a man may dispose of by testament, in favoring or interdicting sub- stitutions, it is chiefly in view of some political, economical, or social 962 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION advantage, either to refine or consolidate the union of the sexes, to implant in the family habits of discipline or sentiments of affection, to excite in children an initiatory spirit, or one of concord, to prepare for the nation a staff of natural chieftains, or an army of small proprietors, and always authorised by the universal assent. More- over, and always with this universal assent, it does other things outside the task originally assigned to it, and nobody finds that it usurps, when it coins money, when it regulates weights and measures, when it establishes quarantines, when, on condition of an indemnity, it expropriates private property for public utility, when it builds lighthouses, harbors, dykes, canals, roads, when it defrays the cost of scientific expeditions, when it founds museums and public libraries; at times, toleration is shown for its support of universities, schools, churches, and theatres, and, to justify fresh drafts on private purses for such objects, no reason is assigned for it but the common interest. Why should it not, in like manner, take upon itself every enterprise for the benefit of all? Why should it hesitate in commanding the execution of every work advantageous to the community, and why abstain from interdicting every disadvantageous work? Now, observe this, that in human society every act of omission or of commission, even when the most carefully concealed or avowed, is a loss or gain to society: if I neglect to take care of my property or of my health, of my intellect, or of my soul, I undermine or weaken in my person a member of the community who is rich, healthy, and strong only through the richness, health, and strength of his fellow members, so that, from this point of view, my private actions are all public benefits or public injuries. Why then, fromthis point of view, should the State scruple about prescribing some of these to me and interdicting others? Why, in order to better exercise this right, and better fulfill this obligation, should it not constitute itself the universal contractor for labor, and the universal distributor of productions? Why should it not become the sole agriculturist, manufacturer, and merchant, the unique proprietor and administrator of all France? Precisely because this would be opposed to the common weal. Here the second principle, that advanced against The Jacobin Programme / 963 individual independence, operates inversely, and, instead of being an adversary, it becomes a champion. Far from setting the State free, it puts another chain around its neck, and thus strengthens the pale within which modern conscience and modern honor have confined the public guardian.

V In what, indeed, does the common weal consist? In the interest of each person, while that which interests each person is the things of which the possession is agreeable and the deprivation painful. The whole world would in vain gainsay this point; every sensation is personal. My suffering and my enjoyments are not to be contested any more than my inclination for objects which procure me the one, and my dislike of objects which procure me the other. There is, therefore, no arbitrary definition of each one’s particular interest; this exists as a fact independently of the legislator; all that remains is to show what this interest is, and what each individual prefers. Preferences vary according to race, time, place, and circumstance; but, among the possessions which are ever desirable and the privation of which is ever dreaded, there is one which, directly desired, and for itself, becomes, through the progress of civilisation, more and more cherished, and of which the privation becomes, through the progress of civilisation, more and more grievous, and that is the entire disposition of one’s self, the full ownership of one’s body and property, the faculty of thinking, believing, and worshipping as one pleases, of associating with others, of acting separately or along with others, in all senses and without hindrance; in short, one’s liberty. That this liberty may be as extensive as possible is, in all times, one of man’s great needs, and, in our days, it is his greatest need. There are two reasons for this, one natural and the other historical. Man, in nature, is individual, that is to say a small distinct world in himself, a centre apart in an enclosed circle, a detached organismcomplete in itself and which suffers when his spontaneous inclinations are thwarted by the intervention of a foreign power. History has made 964 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION him a complex organism, wherein three or four religions, five or six civilisations, thirty centuries of assiduous culture have left their imprint; in which its acquisitions are combined together, wherein he- redities are intercrossed, wherein special traits have accumulated in such a way as to produce the most original and the most sensitive of beings; as civilisation increases, so does his complexity go on increasing: accordingly, his originality strengthens and his sensibilities become keener; from which it follows that, the more civilised he becomes, the greater his repugnance to constraint and uniformity. At the present day, each of us is the terminal and peculiar product of a vast elaboration of which the diverse stages occur in this order but once, a plant unique of its species, a solitary individual of superior and finer essence which, with its own inward structure and its own inalienable type, can bear no other than its own characteristic fruit. Nothing could be more adverse to the interest of the oak than to be tortured into bearing the apples of the apple-tree; nothing could be more adverse to the interest of the apple-tree than to be tortured into bearing acorns; nothing could be more opposed to the interests of both oak and apple-tree, also of other trees, than to be pruned, shaped, and twisted so as all to grow after a forced model, delineated on paper according to the rigid and limited imagination of a geometrician. The least possible constraint is, therefore, everybody’s chief interest; if one particular restrictive agency is established, it is that every one may be preserved by it from other more powerful constraints, especially those which the foreigner and evil- doers would impose. Up to that point, and no further, its intervention is beneficial; beyond that point, it becomes one of the evils it is intended to forestall. Such then, if the common weal is to be looked after, is the sole office of the State—to prevent constraint and, therefore, never to use it except to prevent worse constraints; to secure respect for each individual in his own physical and moral domain; never to encroach on this except for that purpose; to withdraw immediately; to abstain from all indiscreet meddling, and yet more, as far as is practicable, without any sacrifice of public security, to reduce old assessments, to exact only a minimum of subsidies and The Jacobin Programme / 965 services, to gradually limit even useful action, to set itself as few tasks as possible, to let each one have all the roompossible and the maximum of initiative, to slowly abandon monopolies, to refrain fromcompetitionwith private parties, to rid itself of functions which they can fulfill equally well—all clearly showing that the limits prescribed to the State by the common good are just those which duty and right render obligatory.

VI If we now take into consideration, no longer the direct, but the indirect interest of all; if, instead of caring for men we concern ourselves with their works; if we regard human society as a material and spiritual workshop, the perfection of which consists in its being the most productive and economical, and as well furnished and as well managed as possible—from this point of view again, with this secondary and subordinate aim, the domain of the State is scarcely less limited: very few new functions are to be attributed to it; nearly all the rest will be better fulfilled by independent persons, or by natural or voluntary associations. Contemplate the man who works for his own benefit, the agriculturist, the manufacturer, the merchant, and observe how attentive he is to his business. And because his interest and pride are involved; his welfare and that of those around himis at stake, his capital, his reputation, his social position and advancement; on the other side, are want, ruin, social degradation, dependence, bankruptcy, and the hospital. In the presence of this alternative he keeps close watch and becomes industrious; he thinks of his business even when abed or at his meals; he studies it, not afar off speculatively, in a general way, but on the spot, practically, in detail, in all its bearings and relationships, constantly calculating difficulties and resources, with such sharp insight and special information that for any other person to try to solve the daily problem which he solves, would be impossible, because nobody could possess or estimate as he can the precise elements which constitute it. Com- pare with this unique devotion and these peculiar qualifications the 966 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION ordinary capacity and languid uniformity of an administrative head- clerk, even when an expert and honest. He is sure of his salary, provided he does his duty tolerably well, and this he does when he is occupied during official hours. Let his papers be correct, as the rules and traditions of his bureau demand, and nothing more is asked of him; he need not tax his brain beyond that. If he conceives any economical measure, or any improvement of his branch of the service, not he, but the public, an anonymous and vague impersonality, reaps all the benefit of it. Moreover, why should he care about it, since his project or reformends in a report which finds its resting- place in a pigeon-hole? The machine is too vast and complicated, too unwieldy, too clumsy, with its rusty wheels, its “ancient rights and safe situations,” to be made over anew, just as one likes, the same as a farm, a warehouse or a foundry. Accordingly, he has no idea of troubling himself further in the matter; on leaving his bureau he dismisses it from his mind; he lets things go on automatically, just as it happens, in a costly way and with indifferent results. Even in a country of as much probity as France, it is calculated that every enterprise managed by the State costs one-quarter more, and brings in one-quarter less, than when entrusted to private hands. Conse- quently, if work were withheld fromindividuals in order that the State might undertake it, the community, when the accounts came to be balanced, would suffer a loss of one-half. Now, this is true of all work, whether spiritual or material not only of agricultural, industrial, and commercial products, but, again, of works of science and of art, of literature and philosophy, of charity, of education and of propagandism; not only when the motor is egoistic, like personal interest and vulgar vanity, but likewise when a disinterested sentiment is involved, like that which prompts the discovery of truth or the creation of beauty, the spread of a faith, the diffusion of convictions, religious enthusiasm, or natural generosity, affection on a broad or on a narrow basis, fromone who embraces all humanity to one who devotes himself wholly to his friends and kindred. The effect is the same in both cases, because the cause is the same. Always, in the shop directed by the free The Jacobin Programme / 967 workman, the motive force is enormous, almost infinite, because it is a living spring which flows at all hours and is inexhaustible. The mother thinks constantly of her child, the savant of his science, the artist of his art, the inventor of his inventions, the philanthropist of his endowments, Faraday of electricity, Stephenson of his locomotive, Pasteur of his microbes, De Lesseps of his isthmus, sisters of charity of their poor. Through this peculiar concentration of thought, man derives every possible advantage from human faculties and surroundings; he himself gets to be a more and more perfect instrument, and, moreover, he fashions others: with this he daily reduces the friction of the powerful machine which he controls and of which he is the main wheel; he increases its yield; he economises, maintains, repairs, and improves it with a capability and success that nobody questions; in short, he fabricates in a superior way. But this living spring, to which the superiority of the product is due, cannot be separated fromthe producer, for it issues fromhis own affections and profoundest sentiments. It is useless without him; out of his hands, in the hands of strangers, the fountain ceases to flow and production stops. If, consequently, a good and large yield is required, he alone must have charge of the mill; he is the resident owner of it, the one who sets it in motion, the born engineer, installed and specially designed for that position. In vain may attempts be made to turn the stream elsewhere; there simply ensues a stoppage of the natural issue, a dambarring useful canals, a haphazard change of current not only without gain, but with loss, the streamsubsiding in swamps or undermining the steep banks of a ravine. At the utmost, the millions of buckets of water, forcibly taken from private reservoirs, half fill with a good deal of trouble the great central artificial basin in which the water, low and stagnant, is never sufficient in quantity or force to move the huge public wheel that replaces the small private wheels, doing the nation’s work. Thus, even regarding men merely as manufacturers, in treating themsimplyas producers of what is valuable and serviceable, with no other object in view than to furnish society with supplies and to benefit consumers, the private domain comprehends all enterprises 968 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION undertaken by private individuals, either singly or associated together, through personal interest or personal taste: this suffices to ensure their being better managed than by the State; it is by virtue of this that they have devolved into their hands. Consequently, in the vast field of labor, they themselves decide on what they will undertake; they themselves, of their own authority, set their own fences. They may therefore enlarge their own domain to any extent they please, and reduce indefinitely the domain of the State. On the contrary, the State cannot pretend to more than what they leave; just in proportion to their advance on a partitioned soil with a doubtful frontier, it is bound to recede and leave the ground to them; whatever pursuit they may follow the State must let that alone, except in case of their default, or their prolonged absence, or on proof of their having abandoned it. All the rest, therefore, falls to the State; first, offices which they would never claim, and which they are always glad to leave in its hands, because they have not, and it withholds, the only instrumentality of any account, that special, indispensable instrumentality known as armed force—the protection of the community against foreign communities, the protection of individuals against one another, the levying of soldiers, the imposition of taxes, the execution of the laws, the administration of justice and of the police. Next to this, come matters of which the accom- plishment concerns everybody without directly interesting any one in particular—the government of unoccupied territory, the administration of rivers, coasts, forests, and public highways, the task of governing subject countries, the framing of laws, the coinage of money, the conferring of a civil status, the negotiating in the name of the community with local and special corporations, departments, communes, banks, institutions, churches, and universities. Add to these, according to circumstances, sundry optional cooperative services,13 such as subsidies granted to institutions of great public utility,

13. When the function to be performed is of an uncertain or mixed character the following rule may be applied in deciding whether the State or individuals shall be entrusted with it; also, in determining, in the case of coo¨peration, what The Jacobin Programme / 969 for which private contributions could not suffice, now in the shape of concessions to corporations for which equivalent obligations are exacted, and, again, in those hygienic precautions which individuals fail to take through indifference; occasionally, such provisional aid as supports a man, or so stimulates him as to enable him some day or other to support himself; and, in general, those discreet and scarcely perceptible interpositions for the time being which prove so advantageous in the future, like a far-reaching code and other consistent regulations which, mindful of the liberty of the existing individual, provide for the welfare of coming generations. Nothing beyond that. VII Again, in this preparation for future welfare the same principle still holds. Among precious productions, the most precious and important are, evidently, the animated instruments called men, since they produce the rest. The object then, is to fashion men capable of physical, mental, or moral labor, the most energetic, the most persistent, the most skillful, and the most productive; now, we already know the conditions of their formation. It is essential, and this suffices, that each living spring as above described, should flow in its own channel, each through its natural outlet, and under the control of its owner. On this condition the jet becomes more vigorous, for the acquired impetus increases the original outflow; the projector of labor becomes more and more skillful, for he gains knowledge portion of it shall be assigned to individuals and what portion to the State. As a general rule, when individuals, either singly or associated together, have a direct interest in, or are drawn toward, a special function, and the community has no direct interest therein, the matter belongs to individuals and not to the State. On the other hand, if the interest of the community in any function is direct, and indirect for individuals singly or associated together, it is proper for the State and not for individuals to take hold of it. According to this rule the limits of the public and private domain can be defined, which limits, as they change backward and forward, may be verified according to the changes which take place in interests and preferences, direct or indirect. 970 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION through practise; those around himlikewise becomebetter workmen, inasmuch as they find encouragement in his success and avail themselves of his discoveries. Thus, simply because the State respects, and enforces respect, for these individual springs in private hands, it develops in individuals, as well as in those around them, the will and the talent for producing much and well, the faculty for, and desire to, keep on producing more and better; in other words, all sorts of energies and capacities, each of its own kind and in its own place, with all compatible fulness and efficiency. Such is the office, and the sole office, of the State, first in relation to the turbid and frigid springs issuing fromselfishness and self-conceit, whose operations demand its oversight, and next, for still stronger reasons, in relation to the warmand pure springs whose beneficence is unalloyed, as in the family affections and private friendships; again, in relation to those rarer and higher springs, such as the love of beauty, the yearning for truth, the spirit of association, patriotism, and love of mankind; and, finally, for still stronger reasons, in relation to the two most sacred and salutary of all springs, conscience which renders will subject to duty, and honor which makes will the support of right. Let the State prevent, as well as abstain from, any interference with either; let this be its object and nothing more; its abstention is as necessary as its vigilance. Let it guard both, and it will see everywhere growing spontaneously, hourly, each in degree according to conditions of time and place, the most diligent and most competent workmen, the agriculturist, the manufacturer, the merchant, the savant, the artist, the inventor, the propagandist, the husband and wife, the father and mother, the patriot, the philanthropist and the sister of charity. On the contrary, if, like our Jacobins, the State seeks to confiscate every natural force to its own profit, if it seeks to make affection for itself paramount, if it strives to suppress all other passions and interests, if it tolerates no other preoccupation than that which concerns the common weal, if it tries to forcibly convert every member of society into a Spartan or Jesuit, then, at enormous cost, will it not only destroy private springs, and spread devastation over the The Jacobin Programme / 971 entire territory, but it will destroy its own fountain-head. We honor the State only for the services it renders to us, and proportionately to these services and the security it affords us, and to the liberty which it ensures us under the title of universal benefactor; when it deliberately wounds us through our dearest interests and tenderest affections, when it goes so far as to attack our honor and conscience, when it becomes the universal wrong-doer, our affection for it, in the course of time, turns into hatred. Let this system be maintained, and patriotism, exhausted, dries up, and, one by one, all other beneficent springs, until, finally, nothing is visible over the whole country, but stagnant pools or overwhelming torrents, inhabited by passive subjects or depredators. As in the Roman empire in the fourth century, in Italy in the seventeenth century, in the Turkish provinces in our own day, naught remains but an ill-conducted herd of stunted, torpid creatures, limited to their daily wants and animal instincts, indifferent to the public welfare and to their own prospective interests, so degenerate as to have lost sight of their own discoveries, unlearned their own sciences, arts and industries, and, in short, and worse than all, base, false, corrupted souls entirely wanting in honor or conscience. Nothing is more destructive than the unrestricted intermeddling of the State, even when wise and paternal; in Para- guay, under the discipline of Jesuits, so minute in its details, “Indian physiognomy appeared like that of animals taken in a trap.” They worked, ate, drank, and gave birth by sound of bell, under watch and ward, correctly and mechanically, but showing no liking for anything, not even for their own existence, being transformed into so many automatons; the least that can be said is that the means employed to produce this result were gentle, while before this they were mere brutes. The revolutionist-Jesuit now undertakes to transform men into automatons, and by harsh means.

VIII Frequently, in European history, despotisms almost equally harsh have borne down heavily on human effort; but never have any of 972 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION thembeen so thoroughly inept; for none have ever attemptedto raise so heavy a mass with so short a lever. In the first place, however authoritative the despot might be there was a limit to his interference. Philip II. burned heretics, persecuted Moors, and drove out Jews; Louis XIV. forcibly converted Protes- tants; but both used violence only against dissenters, about a fifteenth or a twentieth of their subjects. If Cromwell, on becoming Protector, remained sectarian, and the compulsory servant of an army of sectarians, he took good care not to impose on other churches the theology, rites, and discipline of his own church;14 on the contrary, he repressed fanatical outrages; protected the Anabaptists equally with his Independents, granted paid curates to the Presbyterians as well as the public exercise of their worship, also private worship with liberal toleration, to the Episcopalians; he maintained the two great Anglican universities and allowed the Jews to erect a syna- gogue. Frederick II. drafted into his army every able-bodied peasant that he could feed; he kept every man twenty years in the service, under a discipline worse than slavery, with the almost certain prospect of death; and in his last war, he sacrificed about one-sixth of his male subjects;15 but they were serfs, and his conscription did not touch the bourgeois class. He put his hands in the pockets of the bourgeois and of every other man, and took every crown they had; when driven to it, he adulterated coin and stopped paying his functionaries; but, under the scrutiny of his eyes, always open, the administration was honest, the police effective, justice exact, toleration unlimited, and the freedom of the press complete; the King allowed the publication of the most cutting pamphlets against himself, and their public sale, even at Berlin. A little earlier, in the great empire of the East,16 Peter the Great, with whip in hand, lashed his Mus- covite bears and made them drill and dance in European fashion;

14. Carlyle: “Cromwell’s Speeches and Letters,” iii., 418. (Cromwell’s address to the Parliament, September 17, 1656.) 15. Seeley, “Life and Times of Stein,” ii., 143.—Macaulay, “Biographical Essays,” Frederick the Great, 33, 35, 87, 92. 16. Eugene Schuyler, “Peter the Great,” vol. 2. The Jacobin Programme / 973 but they were bears accustomed from father to son to the whip and chain; moreover, he stood as the orthodox head of their faith, and left their mir (the village commune) untouched. Finally, at the other extremity of Europe, and even outside of Europe, the caliph or sultan, in the seventh century, in the fifteenth century, an Omar or a Mahomet, a fanatical Arab or brutal Turk, who had just overcome Christians with the sword, himself assigned the limits of his own absolutism: if the vanquished were reduced to the condition of heavily ransomed tributaries and of inferiors daily humiliated, he allowed themtheir worship, civil laws, and domesticusages; he left themtheir institutions, their convents, and their schools; he allowed them to administer the affairs of their own community as they pleased under the jurisdiction of their patriarch, or other natural chieftains. Thus, whatever the tyrant may have been, he did not attempt to make man over again, nor recast all his subjects according to one pattern. Far as his tyranny went, it stopped in the soul at a certain point; that point reached, the sentiments were left free. How- ever overwhelming this tyranny may have been, it affected only one class of men; the others, outside of its network, remained untram- melled. In touching all sensitive chords, it affected only those of a small minority incapable of self-defence; with the majority, able to protect itself, the main sensibilities were respected, especially the most sensitive, this one or that one, as the case might be, now the conscience which binds man to his religion, now that amour-propre on which honor depends, and now the habits which make man cling to customs, hereditary usages and outward observances. As far as the others were concerned, those which relate to property, personal welfare, and social position, it proceeded cautiously and with moderation. In this way the discretion of the ruler lessened the resistance of the subject, and a daring enterprise, even when mischievous, was not outrageous; it might be carried out; nothing was required but a force in hand equal to the resistance it provoked. Again, on the other hand, the tyrant possessed this force. Very many and very strong arms stood behind the prince ready to coo¨p- erate with himand countervail any resistance. Behind Philip II. or 974 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Louis XIV. stood the Catholic majority, either exciting or consenting to the oppression of dissenters, as fanatical or as illiberal as their king. To aid and coo¨perate with Philip II., Louis XIV., Frederick II. and Peter the Great, stood the entire nation, equally violent, rallied around the sovereign through his consecrated title and uncontested right, through tradition and custom, through a rigid sentiment of duty and the vague idea of public security. Peter the Great counted among his auxiliaries every eminent and cultivated man in the country; Cromwell had his disciplined and twenty-times victorious army; the caliph or sultan brought along with him his military and privileged population. Aided by cohorts of this stamp, it was easy to raise a heavy mass, and even maintain it in a fixed position. Once the operation was concluded, there followed a sort of equilibrium; the mass, kept in the air by a permanent counterbalance, only required a little daily effort to prevent it fromfalling. Just the reverse with the measures of the Jacobins. According as these are carried out, their theory, more exacting, adds extra weight to the uplifted mass, and, finally, a burden of almost infinite weight. At first, the Jacobin confined his attacks to royalty, to nobility, to the Church, to parliaments, to privileges, to ecclesiastical and feudal possessions, in short, to mediaeval foundations; now, he attacks yet more ancient and more solid foundations—positive religion, property and the family. For four years he has contented himself with demolition; he now aims at reconstruction; his object is not merely to do away with a positive faith and suppress social inequality, to proscribe revealed dogmas, hereditary beliefs, an established cult, the supremacy of rank and superiority of fortunes, wealth, leisure, refinement and elegance, but, in addition to all this, he must refashion the citizen, create new sentiments, impose natural religion on the individual, civic education, uniformways and habits, Jacobin conduct, Spartan virtue; in short, nothing is to be left in a human being that is not prescribed, enforced, and constrained. Henceforth, there is opposed to the Revolution, not alone the partisans of the ancient re´gime—priests, nobles, parliamentarians, royalists, and Catholics—but, again, every man imbued with European civilisa- The Jacobin Programme / 975 tion, every member of a regular family, any possessor of capital much or little; every kind or degree of proprietor, agriculturist, manufacturer, merchant, artisan, or farmer, even most of the revolutionists who, nearly all, count on themselves escaping the constraints they impose, and who like the straight-jacket only when it is on another’s back. The pressure of resistant wills at this moment becomes incalculable. It would be easier to raise a mountain, while, just at this moment, the Jacobins have deprived themselves of every moral force through which a political engineer acts on human wills. Unlike Philip II. and Louis XIV. they are not supported by the intolerance of a vast majority, for, instead of fifteen or twenty orthodox against one heretic, they count in their church scarcely more than one orthodox against fifteen or twenty heretics.17 They have not at their back, like legitimate sovereigns, the stubborn loyalty of an entire population, following in the steps of its chieftain through the prestige of hereditary right and through habits of ancient fealty. On the contrary, their reign is only a day old and they themselves are interlopers, at first installed by a coup d’e´tat and afterwards by

17. Cf. “The Revolution” vol. ii., pp. 46 and 323, and vol. iii., ch. 1. Ar- chives des Affaires Etrange`re´s, vol. 332. (Letter by Thiberge, Marseilles, Bru- maire 14, year II.) “I have been to Marteygne, a small town ten leagues from Marseilles, along with my colleague Fournet; I found (je trouveé) seventeen patriots in a town of five thousand population.”—Ibid. (Letter by Regulus Leclerc, Bergues, Brumaire 15, year II.) At Bergues, he says, “the municipality is composed of traders with empty stores, and brewers without beer since the law of the maximum.” Consequently there is universal lukewarmness, “only forty persons being found to forma popular club, holding sessions as a favor every five days....Public spirit at Bergues is dead; fanaticismrules.”—Ar- chives Nationales, F7, 7,164 (Department of Var, reports of year V. “general idea.”)—“At Draguignan, out of seven thousand souls, forty patriots, exclusifs, despised or dishonest; at Vidauban, nine or ten exclusifs, favored by the municipality and who live freely without their means being known; at Brignolles, frequent robberies on the road by robbers said to have been very patriotic in the beginning of the Revolution: people are afraid of themand dare not name them; at Fre´jus, nine leading exclusifs who pass all their time in the cafe´.”— Berryat-Saint-Prix, “La Justice Re´volutionnaire,” p. 146.—Brutus Thierry, grocer, member of the Rev. Com. of Angers, said that “in Angers, there were not sixty revolutionists.” 976 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION the semblance of an election, having extorted or obtained by trick the suffrages through which they act, so familiar with fraud and violence that, in their own Assembly, the minority which succeeds has seized and held on to power by violence and fraud, putting down the majority by riots, and the departments by force of arms; while, to give to their brutalities the semblance of right, they improvise two pompous demonstrations, first, the sudden manufacture of a paper constitution, which moulders away in their archives, and next, the scandalous farce of a hollow and compulsory plebiscite. A dozen leaders of the faction centre unlimited authority in themselves; but, as admitted by them, their authority is derivative; it is the Conven- tion which makes them its delegates; their precarious title has to be renewed monthly; a turn of the majority may sweep them and their work away tomorrow; an insurrection of the people, whom they have familiarised with insurrection, may tomorrow sweep them away, their work and their majority. They maintain only a disputed, limited and transient ascendency over their adherents. They are not military chieftains like Cromwell and Napoleon, generals of an army obeyed without a murmur, but common stump-speakers at the mercy of an audience that sits in judgment on them. There is no discipline in this audience: every Jacobin remains independent by virtue of his principles; if he accepts leaders, it is with a reservation of their worth to him; selecting them as he pleases, he is free to change them when he pleases; his trust in themis intermittent,his loyalty provisional, and, as his adhesion depends on a mere preference, he always reserves the right to discard the favorite of today as he has discarded the favorite of yesterday. In this audience, there is no such thing as subordination; the lowest demagogue, any subaltern brawler, a He´- bert or Jacques Roux, who is ambitious to step out of the ranks, outvies the charlatans in office in order to obtain their places. Even with a complete and lasting ascendency over an organised band of docile supporters, the Jacobin leaders would be feeble for lack of reliable and competent instruments; for they have but very few partisans other than those of doubtful probity and of notorious incapacity. Cromwell had around him, to carry out the puritan programme, the moral e´lite of the nation, an army of rigorists, with The Jacobin Programme / 977 narrow consciences, but much more strict towards themselves than towards others, men who never drank and who never swore, who never indulged for a moment in sensuality or idleness, who forbade themselves every act of omission or commission about which they held any scruples, the most honest, the most temperate, the most laborious, and the most persevering of mankind,18 the only ones capable of laying the foundations of that practical morality on which England and the United States still subsist at the present day. Around Peter the Great, in carrying out his European programme, stood the intellectual e´lite of the country, an imported staff of men of ability associated with natives of moderate ability, every well-taught resident foreigner and indigenous Russian, the only ones able to organise schools and public institutions, to set up a vast central and regular systemof administration, to assign rank according to service and merit, in short, to erect on the snow and mud of a shapeless barbarisma conservatory of civilisation which, transplanted like an exotic tree, grows and gradually becomes acclimated. Around Cou- thon, Saint-Just, Billaud, Collot, and Robespierre, with the exception of certain men devoted, not to Utopianism but to the country, and who, like Carnot, conformto the systemin order to save France, there are but a few sectarians to carry out the Jacobin programme, men so short-sighted as not to clearly comprehend its fallacies, or sufficiently fanatical to accept its horrors, a lot of social outcasts and self-constituted statesmen, infatuated through incommensurate faculties with the parts they play, unsound in mind and superficially educated, wholly incompetent, boundless in ambition, with perverted, callous or deadened consciences, deluded by sophistry, cold- blooded through vain glory and vicious through crime, impunity and success. Thus, whilst other despots raise a moderate weight, calling

18. Macaulay. “History of England,” i., 152. “The Royalists themselves confessed that, in every department of honest industry, the discarded warriors prospered beyond other men, that none was charged with any theft or robbery, that none was heard to ask an alms, and that, if a baker, a mason, or a waggoner attracted notice by his diligence and sobriety, he was in all probability one of Oliver’s old soldiers.” 978 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION around them either the majority or the flower of the nation, employing the best strength of the country and lengthening their lever as much as possible, the Jacobins attempt to raise an incalculable weight, repel the majority as well as the flower of the nation, discard the best strength of the country, and shorten their lever to the utmost. They hold on only to the shorter end, the rough, clumsy, iron-bound, creaking, and grinding extremity, that is to say, to physical force, the means for physical constraint, the heavy hand of the gendarme on the shoulder of the suspect, the jailor’s bolts and keys turned on the prisoner, the club used by the sans-culottes on the back of the bourgeois to quicken his pace, and, better still, the Septem- briseur’s pike thrust into the aristocrat’s belly, and the blade falling on the neck held fast in the clutches of the guillotine. Such, henceforth, is the only machinery they possess for governing the country, for they have deprived themselves of all other. Their engine has to be exhibited, for it works only on condition that its bloody image be stamped indelibly on every body’s imagination; if the negro monarch or the pacha desires to see heads bowing as he passes along, he must be escorted by executioners. They must abuse their engine because fear, losing its effect through habit, needs example to keep it alive; the negro monarch or the pacha who would keep the fear alive by which he rules, must be stimulated every day; he must slaughter too many to be sure of slaughtering enough; he must slaughter constantly, in heaps, indiscriminately, haphazard, no matter for what offence, on the slightest suspicion, the innocent along with the guilty. He and his are lost the moment they cease to obey this rule. Every Jacobin, like every African monarch or pacha, must observe it that he may be and remain at the head of his band. For this reason, the chiefs of the sect, its natural leaders designated beforehand, consist of theorists able to grasp its principles, and logicians able to arrive at its conclusions, narrow-minded enough not to see that their undertaking exceeds their powers and all human powers, shrewd enough to see that brutal force is their only instrumentality, inhuman enough to apply it unscrupulously and without reserve, and perverted enough to murder on all sides that they may stamp an impression of lasting terror. BOOK SEVENTH

The Governors

9 CHAPTER I =

Psychology of the Jacobin leaders— I. Marat—Disparity between his faculties and pretensions—The Maniac—The Ambitious delirium—Rage for persecution—A confirmed nightmare insanity—Homicidal frenzy— II. Danton—Rich- ness of his faculties—Disparity between his condition and instincts—The Bar- barian—His work—His weakness— III. Robespierre—Mediocrity of his faculties—The Cuistre—Absence of ideas—Study of phrases—Wounded self- esteem—Intensity of this trait—Satisfied self-esteem—His infatuation—He plays the victim—His gloomy fancies—His resemblance to Marat—Difference between him and Marat—The sincere hypocrite—The Festival in honor of the Supreme Being, and the law of Prairial 22—The external and internal characters of Robespierre and the Revolution.

THREE men among the Jacobins, Marat, Danton, and Robespierre, merited distinction and possessed authority: owing to a malforma- tion, or distortion, of head and heart, they fulﬁlled the requisite conditions. Of the three, Marat is the most monstrous; he borders on the lunatic, of which he displays the chief characteristics—furious exaltation, constant overexcitement, feverish restlessness, an inexhaustible propensity for scribbling, that mental automatism and tet- anus of the will under the constraint and rule of a ﬁxed idea, and, in addition to this, the usual physical symptoms, such as sleepless- ness, a livid tint, bad blood, foulness of dress and person,1 with,

1. Harmand (de la Meuse): “Anecdotes relatives a`laRe´volution.” “He

981 982 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION during the last five months of his life, irritations and eruptions over his whole body.2 Issuing from incongruous races, born of a mixed blood and tainted with serious moral commotions,3 he harbors within him a singular germ: physically, he is an abortion, morally a pre- tender, and one who covets all places of distinction. His father, who was a physician, intended, from his early childhood, that he should be a savant; his mother, an idealist, meant that he should be a philanthropist, while he himself always steered his course towards both summits. “At five years of age,” he says, “it would have pleased me to be a schoolmaster, at fifteen a professor, at eighteen an author, and a creative genius at twenty,”4 and, afterwards, up to the last, an apostle and martyr to humanity. “From my earliest infancy I had an intense love of fame which changed its object at various stages of my life, but which never left me for a moment.” He rambled over Europe or vegetated in Paris for thirty years, living a nomadic life in subordinate positions, hissed as an author, distrusted as a man of science and ignored as a philosopher, a third rate political writer, aspiring to every sort of celebrity and to every honor, constantly presenting himself as a candidate and as constantly rejected, too great a disproportion between his faculties and ambition! Talentless,5 dressed about like a cab-driver ill at his ease. He had a disturbed look and an eye always in motion; he acted in an abrupt, quick, and jerky way. A constant restlessness gave a convulsive contraction to his muscles and features which likewise affected his manner of walking so that he never stepped but jumped.” 2. Chevremont, “Jean Paul Marat”; also Alfred Bougeard, “Marat” passim. These two works, with numerous documents, are panegyrics of Marat.—Bou- geat, i., 11 (description of Marat by Fabre d’Eglantine); ii., 259 and i., 83.— “Journal de la Re´publique Française,” by Marat, No. 93, January 9, 1793. “I devote only two out of the twenty-four hours to sleep, and only one hour to my meals, toilette, and domestic necessities. I have not had fifteen minutes play- spell for more than three years.” 3. Chevremont, i., pp. 1 and 2. His family, on the father’s side, was Spanish, long settled in Sardinia. The father, Dr. Jean Mara, had abandoned Catholicism and removed to Geneva where he married a woman of that city; he afterwards established himself in the canton of Neufchatel. 4. “Journal de la Re´publique Française.” No. 98, description of “l’Ami du peuple” by himself. 5. Read his novel “Les Aventures du jeune Comte Potowski,” letter 5, by The Governors / 983 possessing no critical acumen and of mediocre intelligence, he was fitted only to teach some branch of the sciences, or to practise some one of the arts, either as professor or doctor more or less bold and lucky, or to follow, with occasional slips on one side or the other, some path clearly marked out for him. “But,” he says, “I never had any thing to do with a subject which did not hold out . . . great results for myself, and show my originality, for I cannot make up my mind to treat a subject over again that has been well done, or to plod over the work of others.” Consequently, when he tries to originate he merely imitates, or commits mistakes. His treatise on “Man” is a jumble of physiological and moral common-places, made up of ill-digested reading and words strung together haphazard,6 of gratuitous and incoherent suppositions in which the doctrines of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, coupled together, end in empty phraseology. “Soul and Body are distinct substances with no essential relationship, being connected together solely through the nervous fluid”; this fluid is not gelatinous for the spirituous by which it is renewed contains no gelatine; the soul, excited by this, excites that; hence the place assigned to it “in the meninges.” His “Optics”7 is the reverse of the great truth already discovered by Newton more than a century before, and since confirmed by more than another century of experiment and calculation. On “Heat” and “Electricity” he merely puts forth feeble hypotheses and literary generalisations; one day, driven to the wall, he inserts a needle in a piece of rosin to make this a conductor, in which piece of scientific trickery he is

Lucile: “I think of Potowski only. My imagination, inflamed at the torch of love, ever presents to me his sweet image.” Letter of Potowski after his marriage. “Lucile now grants to love all that modesty permits . . . enjoying such transports of bliss, I believe that the gods are jealous of my lot.” 6. Preface, xx. “Descartes, Helvetius, Haller, Lelat all ignored great principles; man, with them, is an enigma, an impenetrable secret.” He says in a foot-note, “We find evidence of this in the works of Hume, Voltaire, Bonnet, Racine, and Pascal.” 7. “Me´moires Acade´miques sur la Lumie`re,” pref., vii. He especially opposes “the differential refrangibility of heterogeneous rays” which is “the basis of Newton’s theory.” 984 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION caught by the physicist Charles.8 He is not even qualified to comprehend the great discoverers of his age, Laplace, Monge, Lavoisier, or Fourcroy; on the contrary, he libels them in the style of a low rebellious subordinate, who, without the shadow of a claim, aims to take the place of legitimate authorities. In Politics, he adopts every absurd idea in vogue growing out of the Contrat-Social based on natural right, and which he renders still more absurd by repeating as his own the arguments advanced by those bungling socialists, who, physiologists astray in the moral world, derive all rights from physical necessities. “All human rights issue from physical wants.9 If a man has nothing, he has a right to any surplus with which another gorges himself. What do I say? He has a right to seize the indispensable, and, rather than die of hunger, he may cut another’s throat and eat his throbbing flesh....Manhasa right to self-preservation, to the property, the liberty and even the lives of his fellow creatures. To escape oppression he has a right to repress, to bind and to massacre. He is free to do what he pleases to ensure his own happiness.” It is plain enough what this leads to. But, let the consequences be what they may, whatever he writes or does, it is always in self-admiration and always in a counter sense, being as vain-glorious of his encyclopae- dic impotence as he is of his social mischievousness. Taking his word for it, his discoveries in Physics will render him immortal.10 “They will at least effect a complete transformation in Optics....Thetrue primitive colors were unknown before me.” He is a Newton, and still better. Previous to his appearance “the place occupied by the electric fluid in nature, considered as an universal agent, was completely ignored....Ihavemade it known in such a way as to leave no further doubt about it.”11 As to the igneous fluid, “that existence

8. Chevremont, i., 74. (See the testimony of Arago, Feb. 24, 1844). 9. Ibid., i., 104. (Sketch of a declaration of the rights of man and of the citizen.) 10. See the epigraph of his “Me´moires sur la Lumie`re.” “They will force their way against wind and tide.”—Ibid., preface, vii. “Dećonvertes de Mon- sieur Marat,” 1780, 2nd ed., p. 140. 11. “Recherches physiques sur l’electricite´,” 1782, pp. 13, 17. The Governors / 985 unknown before me, I have freed the theory from every hypothesis and conjecture, from every alembical argument; I have purged it of error, I have rendered it intuitive; I have written this out in a small volume which consigns to oblivion all that scientific bodies have hitherto published on that subject.”12 Anterior to his treatise on “Man,” moral and physical relationships were incomprehensible. “Descartes, Helvetius, Haller, Lecat, Hume, Voltaire, Bonnet, held this to be an impenetrable secret, ‘an enigma.’” He has solved the problem, he has fixed the seat of the soul, he has determined the medium through which the soul communicates with the body.13 In the higher sciences, those treating of nature generally, or of human society, he reaches the climax. “I believe that I have exhausted every combination of the human intellect in relation to morals, philosophy, and political science.”14 Not only has he discovered the true theory of government, but he is a statesman, a practical expert, able to forecast the future and shape events. He makes predictions, on the average, twice a week, which always turn out right; he already claims, during the early sessions of the Convention, to have made “three hundred predictions on the leading points of the Revolution, all justified by the event.”15 In the face of the Constituants who demolish and reconstruct so slowly, he is sufficiently strong to take down, put up, and complete at a moment’s notice. “If I were one of the people’s tribunes16 and were supported by a few thousand

12. Chevremont, i., 59. 13. “De l’Homme,” preface vii. and book iv. 14. “Journal de la Re´publique Française,” No. 98. 15. “Journal de la Re´publique Française,” by Marat, No. 1. 16. “L’Ami du Peuple” No. 173 (July 26, 1790). The memories of conceited persons, given to immoderate self-expansion, are largely at fault. I have seen patients in asylums who, believing in their exalted position, have recounted their successes in about the same vein as Marat. (Chevremont, i., 40, 47, 54). “The reports of extraordinary cures effected by me brought me a great crowd of the sick. The street in front of my door was blocked with carriages. People came to consult me from all quarters. . . . The abstract of my experiments on Light finally appeared and it created a prodigious sensation throughout Europe; the newspapers were all filled with it. I had the court and the town in my house 986 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION determined men, I answer for it that, in six weeks, the Constitution would be perfected, the political machine well agoing, and the nation free and happy. In less than a year there would be a flourishing, formidable government which would remain so as long as I lived.” If necessary, he could act as commander-in-chief of the army and always be victorious: having twice seen the Vendeáns carry on a fight he would end the war “at the first encounter.”17 “If I could stand the march, I would go in person and carry out my views. At the head of a small party of trusty troops the rebels could be easily put down to the last man, and in one day. I know something of military art, and, without boasting, I can answer for success.” On any difficulty occurring, it is owing to his advice not having been taken; he is the great political physician: his diagnosis from the beginning of the Revolution is always correct, his prognosis infallible, his therapeutics efficacious, humane, and salutary. He furnishes the panacea and he should be allowed to prescribe it; only, to ensure a satisfactory operation, he should himself administer the dose. Let the public lancet, therefore, be put in his hands that he may perform the humanitarian operation of blood-letting. “Such are my opinions. I have published them in my works. I have signed them with my name and I am not ashamed of it....Ifyouarenotequal to me and able to comprehend me so much the worse for you.”18 In other words, in his own eyes, Marat is in advance of everybody else and, through his superior genius and character, he is the veritable saviour. Such are the symptoms by which medical men recognise imme- for six months. . . . The Academy, finding that it could not stifle my discoveries tried to make it appear that they had emanated from its body.” Three academic bodies came in turn the same day to see if he would not present himself as a candidate. “Up to the present time several crowned heads have sought me and always on account of the fame of my works.” 17. “Journal de la Re´publique Française,” July 6, 1793. 18. Moniteur (Session of the Convention, Sep. 25, 1792). Marat, indeed, is constantly claiming the post of temporary dictator. (“L’Ami du peuple,” Nos. 258, 268, 466, 668 and “Appel a` la nation,” p. 53). The Governors / 987 diately one of those partial lunatics who may not be put in confinement, but who are all the more dangerous;19 the malady, as they would express it in technical terms, may be called the ambitious delirium, well known in lunatic asylums. Two propensities, one a habitually perverted judgment, and the other a colossal excess of self-esteem,20 constitute its sources, and nowhere are both more pro- lific than in Marat. Never did man with such diversified culture, possess such an incurably perverted intellect. Never did man, after so many abortive speculations and such repeated malpractices, conceive and maintain so high an opinion of himself. Each of these two sources in him augments the other: through his faculty of not seeing things as they are, he attributes to himself virtue and genius; satisfied that he possesses genius and virtue, he regards his misdeeds as merits and his crotchets as truths. Thenceforth, and spontaneously, his malady runs its own course and becomes complex; next to the ambitious delirium comes the mania for persecution. In effect, the evident or demonstrated truths which he supplies should strike the public at once; if they burn slowly or miss fire, it is owing to their being stamped out by enemies or the envious: manifestly, they have conspired against him, and against him plots have never ceased. First came the philosophers’ plot: when his treatise on “Man” reached Paris from Amsterdam, “they felt the blow I struck at their principles and had the book stopped at the custom-house.”21 Next came the plot of the doctors, who “ruefully estimated my enormous gains. Were it necessary, I could prove that they often met together to consider the best way to destroy my reputation.” Finally, came the plot of the Academicians; “the disgraceful persecution I had to undergo from the Academy of Sciences for two years, after being satisfied that my discoveries on Light upset all that it had done for

19. Cf. Moreau de Tours. “La Folie lucide.” 20. Chevremont, ii., 81. “Shortly after the taking of the Bastille and obliged to oppose the Paris municipality, I stated that I was the eye of the people and that I was of more consequence in the triumph of liberty than an army of one hundred thousand men.” 21. Chevremont, i., 40. (Marat’s letters, 1793.) 988 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION a century, and that I was quite indifferent about becoming a member of its body....Would it be believed that these scientific charlatans succeeded in underrating my discoveries throughout Europe, in exciting every society of savants against me, and in closing against me all the newspapers!”22 Naturally, the would-be-persecuted man defends himself, that is to say, he attacks. Naturally, as he is the ag- gressor, he is repulsed and put down, and, after creating imaginary enemies, he creates real ones, especially in politics where, on principle, he daily preaches insurrection and murder. Naturally, in fine, he is prosecuted, convicted at the Chatelet court, tracked by the police, obliged to fly and wander from one hiding-place to another; to live like a bat “in a cellar, underground, in a dark dungeon”;23 once, says his friend Panis, he passed “six weeks on one of his buttocks” like a madman in his cell, face to face with his reveries. It is not surprising that, with such a system, the reverie should become more intense, more and more gloomy, and, at last settle down into a confirmed nightmare; that, in his distorted brain, objects should appear distorted; that, even in full daylight men and things should seem awry, as in a magnifying, dislocating mirror; that, frequently, on the numbers (of his journal) appearing too blood-thirsty, and his chronic disease too acute, his physician should bleed him to arrest these attacks and prevent their return.24 But he has taken his bent: henceforth, falsities spring up in his brain as on their native soil; planting himself on the irrational he cultivates the absurd, even physical and mathematical. “Taking an extreme view of it,” he says, “the patriotic contribution of one-

22. Journal de la Re´publique Française, No. 98. 23. The words of Marat and Panes. (Chevremont, i., 197, 203; also “The Revolution” ii., 290, 2d note). 24. Michelet, “Histoire de la Re´volution,” ii., 89. (Narrated by M. Bourdier, Marat’s physician, to M. Serre, the physiologist.) Barbaroux, “Me´moires,” 355, (after a visit to Marat): “You should see how superficially Marat composed his articles. Without any knowledge of a public man he would ask the first person he met what he thought of him and this he wrote down, exclaiming ‘I’ll crush the rascal!’” The Governors / 989 quarter of one’s income will produce, at the very least, four billion eight hundred and sixty million francs, and perhaps twice that sum”; with this sum M. Necker may raise five hundred thousand men, which he calculates on for the subjugation of France.25 Since the taking of the Bastille, “the municipality’s defalcations alone amount to two hundred millions. The sums pocketed by Bailly are estimated at more than two millions; what ‘Mottie´’ (Lafayette) has taken for the past two years is incalculable.”26 On the 15th of November, 1791, the gathering of emigre´s comprises “at least one hundred and twenty thousand gentlemen and drilled partisans and soldiers, not counting the forces of the gentlemen-princes about to join them.”27 Consequently, as with his brethren in Biceˆtre (a lunatic asylum), he raves incessantly on the horrible and the foul: the procession of terrible or disgusting phantoms has begun.28 According to him, the savants who do not choose to admire him are fools, charlatans, and plagiarists. Laplace and Monge are even “automatons,” so many calculating machines; Lavoisier, “reputed father of every discovery that makes any noise in the world, has not an idea of his own”; he steals from others without comprehending them, and “changes his system as he changes his shoes.” Fourcroy, his disciple and horn- blower, is of still thinner stuff. All are scamps: “I could cite a hundred instances of dishonesty by the Academicians of Paris, a hundred breaches of trust”; twelve thousand francs were entrusted to them for the purpose of ascertaining how to direct balloons, and “they divided it among themselves, squandering it at the Rapeé, the opera

25. Chevremont, i., 361. (From a pamphlet against Necker, by Marat, July, 1790). 26. “L’Ami du Peuple,” No. 552. (August 30, 1791.) 27. Ibid., No. 626. (Dec. 15, 1791). Cf. “The Revolution,” ii., 129, on the number of armed emigre´s. At this date the authorised number as published is four thousand. 28. His filthy imputations cannot be quoted. See in Buchez et Roux, ix., 419 (April 26, 1791), and x., 220 (Nos. for June 17, 19, and 21), his statement against Lafayette; again, his list with its vile qualifications of “rascals and rogues,” who are canvassing for election, and his letters on the Academicians. 990 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION and in brothels.”29 In the political world, where debates are battles, it is still worse. The “Friend of the people” has merely rascals for adversaries. Praise of Lafayette’s courage and disinterestedness, how absurd! If he went to America it was because he was jilted, “cast off by a Messalina”; he maintained a park of artillery there as “powder- monkeys look after ammunition-wagons”; these are his only exploits; besides, he is a thief. Bailly is also a thief, and Malouet a “clown.” Necker has conceived the “horrible project of starving and poisoning the people; he has drawn on himself for all eternity the execration of Frenchmen and the detestation of mankind.” What is the Constituent Assembly but a set of “low, rampant, mean, stupid fellows?” “Infamous legislators, vile scoundrels, monsters athirst for gold and blood, you traffic with the monarch, with our fortunes, with our rights, with our liberties, with our lives!” “The second legislative corps is no less rotten than the first one.” In the Con- vention, Roland, “the officious Gilles and the forger Pasquin, is the infamous head of the monopolisers.” “Isnard is a juggler, Buzot a Tartuffe, Vergniaud a police spy.”30 When a madman sees everywhere around him, on the floor, on the walls, on the ceiling, toads, scorpions, spiders, swarms of crawling, loathsome vermin, he thinks only of crushing them, and the disease enters on its last stage: after the ambitious delirium, the mania for persecution and the settled nightmare, comes the homicidal mania. With Marat, this broke out at the very beginning of the Revo-

29. Buchez et Roux, x., 407 (Sept., 1791).—Cf. Ibid., 473. According to Marat, “It is useless to measure a degree of the meridian; the Egyptians having already given this measure. The Academicians obtained an appropriation of one thousand crowns for the expenses of this undertaking, a small cake which they have fraternally divided amongst themselves.” 30. Chevremont, i., 238–249. “L’Ami du peuple,” Nos. 419, 519, 543, 608, 641. Other falsities just as extravagant are nearly all grotesque. No. 630 (April 15, 1792). “Simonneau, mayor of d’Etampes, is an infamous ministerial monopoliser.”—No. 627 (April 12, 1792). Delessart, the minister, “accepts gold to let a got-up decree be passed against him.” No. 650 (May 10, 1792). “Louis XVI. desired war only to establish his despotism on an indestructible foundation.” The Governors / 991 lution. The disease was innate; he was inoculated with it beforehand. He had contracted it in good earnest, on principle; never was there a plainer case of deliberate insanity. On the one hand, having derived the rights of man from physical necessities, he concluded “that society owes to those among its members who have no property, and whose labor scarcely suffices for their support, an assured subsistence, the wherewithal to feed, lodge, and clothe oneself suitably, provision for attendance in sickness and when old age comes on, and for bringing up children. Those who wallow in wealth must (then) supply the wants of those who lack the necessaries of life.” Otherwise, “the honest citizen whom society abandons to poverty and despair, reverts back to the state of nature and the right of forcibly claiming advantages which were only alienated by him to procure greater ones. All authority which is opposed to this is tyrannical, and the judge who condemns a man to death (through it) is simply a cowardly assassin.”31 Thus do the innumerable riots which the dearth excites, find justification, and, as the dearth is permanent, the daily riot is legitimate. On the other hand, having laid down the principle of popular sovereignty he deduces from this, “the sacred right of constituents to dismiss their delegates”; to seize them by the throat if they prevaricate, to keep them in the right path by fear, and wring their necks should they attempt to vote wrong or govern badly. Now, they are always subject to this temptation. “If there is one eternal truth of which it is important to convince man, it is that the mortal enemy of the people, the most to be dreaded by them, is the Government.” “Any minister who remains twice twenty-four hours in office, when it is not impossible for the cabinet to operate against the Government is ‘suspect.’”32 Bestir yourselves, then, ye unfortunates in town and country, workmen without work, street stragglers sleeping under bridges, prowlers along the high-

31. Chevremont, i., 106. (Draft of a declaration of the rights of man and of the citizen, 1789).—Ibid., i., 196. 32. “L’Ami du peuple,” Nos. 24 and 274.—Cf. “Placard de Marat,” Sept. 18, 1792. “The National Convention should always be under the eye of the people, so that the people may stone it if it neglects its duty.” 992 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION ways, beggars without fuel or shelter, tattered vagabonds, cripples and tramps, and seize your faithless mandatories! On July 14th and October 5th and 6th, “the people had the right not only to execute some of the conspirators in military fashion, but to immolate them all, to put to the sword the entire body of royal satellites leagued together for our destruction, the whole herd of traitors to the country, of every condition and degree.”33 Never go to the Assembly “without filling your pockets with stones and throwing them at the impudent scoundrels who preach monarchical maxims; I recommend to you no other precaution but that of telling their neighbors to look out.”34 “We do not demand the resignation of the ministers—we demand their heads. We demand the heads of all the ministerialists in the Assembly, your mayor’s, your general’s, the heads of most of the staff-officers, of most of the municipal council, of the principal agents of the executive power in the kingdom.” Of what use are half-way measures, like the sack of the hotel de Castries?35 “Avenge yourselves wisely! Death! Death! is the sole penalty for traitors raging to destroy you! It is the only one that strikes terror into them. . . . Follow the example of your implacable enemies! Keep always armed, so that they may not escape through the delays of the law! Stab them on the spot or blow their brains out!” “Twenty-four millions of men shout in unison: If the black, gangrened, archigan- grened ministerialists dare pass a bill reducing and reorganising the army, citizens, do you build eight hundred scaffolds in the Tuileries garden and hang on them every traitor to his country—that infamous Riquetti, Comte de Mirabeau, at the head of them—and, at the same time, erect in the middle of the fountain basin a big pile of logs to roast the ministers and their tools!”36 Could “the Friend of the people” rally around him two thousand men determined “to save the country, he would go and tear the heart out of that infernal

33. “L’Ami du peuple,” Nos. 108–111 (May 20–23, 1790). 34. Ibid., No. 258 (Oct. 22, 1790). 35. Ibid., No. 286 (Novem. 20, 1790). 36. Ibid., No. 198 (August 22, 1790). The Governors / 993

Mottie´ in the very midst of his battalions of slaves; he would go and burn the monarch and his imps in his palace, impale the deputies on their benches, and bury them beneath the flaming ruins of their den.”37 On the first cannon shot being fired on the frontier, “it is indispensable that the people should close the gates of the towns and unhesitatingly make way with every priest, public functionary and antirevolutionist, known machinators and their accomplices.” “It would be wise for the people’s magistrates to keep constantly manufacturing large quantities of strong, sharp, short-bladed, double- edged knives, so as to arm each citizen known as a friend of his country. Now, the art of fighting with these terrible weapons consists in this: Use the left arm as buckler, and cover it up to the arm-pit with a sleeve quilted with some woollen stuff, filled with rags and hair, and then rush on the enemy, the right hand wielding the knife.”38 Let us use these knives as soon as possible, for “what now remains to us to end the evils which overwhelm us? I repeat it, nothing but executions by the people.”39 The Throne is at last down; but “be careful not to give way to false pity! . . . No quarter! I advise you to decimate the antirevolutionist members of the municipality, of the justices of the peace, of the members of the departments and of the National Assembly.”40 At the outset, a few lives would have sufficed: “five hundred heads ought to have fallen when the Bastille was taken, and all would then have gone on well.” But, through lack of foresight and timidity, the evil was allowed to spread, and the more it spread the larger the amputation should have been. With the sure, keen eye of the surgeon, Marat gives its dimensions; he

37. Ibid., Nos. 523 and 524 (July 19 and 20, 1791). 38. Ibid., No. 626 (Decem. 15, 1791). 39. Ibid., No. 668 (July 8, 1792).—Cf. No. 649 (May 6, 1792). He approves of the murder of General Dillon by his men, and recommends the troops everywhere to do the same thing. 40. Ibid., No. 677 (August 10, 1792). See also subsequent numbers, especially No. 680, Aug. 19th, for hastening on the massacre of the Abbaye prisoners. And Aug. 21st: “As to the officers, they deserve to be quartered like Louis Capet and his mane`ge toadies.” 994 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION has made his calculation beforehand. In September, 1792, in the Council at the Commune, he estimates approximatively forty thousand as the number of heads that should be laid low.41 Six weeks later, the social abscess having enormously increased, the figures swell in proportion; he now demands two hundred and seventy thousand heads,42 always on the score of humanity, “to ensure public tranquillity,” on condition that the operation be entrusted to him, as the summary, temporary justiciary. Save this last point, the rest is granted to him; it is unfortunate that he could not see with his own eyes the complete fulfilment of his programme, the batches condemned by the revolutionary Tribunal, the massacres of Lyons and Toulon, the drownings of Nantes. From first to last, he was in the right line of the Revolution, lucid on account of his blindness, thanks to his crazy logic, thanks to the concordance of his personal malady with the public malady, to the precocity of his complete madness alongside of the incomplete or tardy madness of the rest, he alone steadfast, remorseless, triumphant, perched aloft at the first bound on the sharp pinnacle which his rivals dared not climb or only stumbled up.

41. Buchez et Roux, xxviii., 105. (Letter of Chevalier St. Dizier, member of the ﬁrst Committee of Surveillance, Sep. 10, 1792.)—Michelet, ii., 94. (In De- cember, 1790, he already demands twenty thousand heads). 42. Moniteur, Oct. 26, 1792. (Session of the Convention, Oct. 24th.) “N—: I know a member of the Convention, who heard Marat say that, to ensure public tranquillity, two hundred and seventy thousand heads more should fall.”

VERMONT: “I declare that Marat made that statement in my presence.” MARAT: “Well, I did say so; that’s my opinion and I say it again.” Up to the last he advocates surgical operations. (No. for July 12, 1793, the eve of his death.) Observe what he says on the antirevolutionists. “To prevent them from entering into any new military body I had proposed at that time, as an indispensable prudent measure, cutting oﬀ their ears, or rather their thumbs.” He likewise had his imitators. (Buchez et Roux, xxxii., 186, Session of the Convention, April 4, 1796.) Deputies from the popular club of Cette “regret that they had not followed his advice and cut oﬀ three hundred thousand heads.” The Governors / 995

II There is nothing of the madman about Danton; on the contrary, not only is his intellect sound, but he possesses political aptitudes to an eminent degree, and to such an extent that, in this particular, none of his associates or adversaries compare with him, while, among the men of the Revolution, only Mirabeau equals or surpasses him. He is an original, spontaneous genius and not, like most of his contemporaries, a disputatious, quill-driving theorist,43 that is to say, a fanatical pedant, an artiﬁcial being composed of his books, a mill- horse with blinkers, and turning around in a circle without an issue. His free judgment is not hampered by abstract prejudices: he does not carry about with him a social contract, like Rousseau, nor, like Sie`yes, a social art and cabinet principles or combinations;44 he has kept aloof from these instinctively and, perhaps, through contempt for them; he had no need of them; he would not have known what to do with them. Systems are crutches for the impotent, while he is able-bodied; formulas serve as spectacles for the short-sighted, while his eyes are good. “He had read and meditated very little,” says a learned and philosophical witness;45 “his knowledge was scanty and he took no pride in investigation; but he observed and saw. ...His native capacity, which was very great and not absorbed by other things, was naturally closed to vague, complex, and false notions, and naturally open to every notion of experience the truth of which was made manifest.” Consequently, “his perceptions of men and things, sudden, clear, impartial, and true, were instinct with solid,

43. Danton never wrote or printed a speech. “I am no writer,” he says. (Garat, “Me´moires,” 31.) 44. Garat, Me´moires,” iii.: “Danton had given no serious study to those philosophers who, for a century past, had detected the principles of social art in human nature. He had not sought in his own organisation for the vast and simple combinations which a great empire demands. He had that instinct for the grand which constitutes genius and that silent circumspection which constitutes judgment.” 45. Garat, ibid., 311, 312. 996 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION practical discretion.” To form a clear idea of the divergent or con- cordant dispositions, fickle or earnest, actual or possible, of different parties and of twenty-six millions of souls, to justly estimate probable resistances, and calculate available forces, to recognise and take advantage of the one decisive moment, to combine executive means, to find men of action, to measure the effect produced, to foresee near and remote contingencies, to regret nothing and take things coolly, to accept crimes in proportion to their political efficacy, to manoeuvre in the face of great obstacles, even in contempt of current maxims, to consider objects and men the same as an engineer contracting for machinery and calculating horse-power46—such are the faculties of which he gave proof on the 10th of August and the 2nd of September, during his effective dictatorship between the 10th of August and the 21st of September, afterwards in the Convention, on the first Committee of Public Safety, on the 31st of May and on the 2nd of June:47 we have seen him busy at work. Up to the last, in spite of his partisans, he has tried to diminish or, at least, not add to, the resistance the government had to overcome. Nearly up to the last, in spite of his adversaries, he tried to increase or, at least, not destroy the available forces of the government. In defiance of the shoutings of the clubs, which clamor for the extermination of the Prussians, the capture of the King of Prussia, the overthrow of all thrones, and the murder of Louis XVI., he negotiated the

46. The head of a State may be considered in the same light as the superintendent of an asylum for the sick, the demented and the infirm. In the government of his asylum he undoubtedly does well to consult the moralist and the physiologist; but, before following out their instructions he must remember that in his asylum its inmates, including the keepers and himself, are more or less ill, demented, or infirm. 47. De Sybel: “Histoire de l’Europe pendant la Re´volution Française,” (Dosquet’s translation from the German) ii., 303. “It can now be stated that it was the active operations of Danton and the first Committee of Public Safety which divided the coalition and gave the Republic the power of opposing Eu- rope. . . . We shall soon see, on the contrary, that the measures of the “Moun- tain” party, far from hastening the armaments, hindered them.” The Governors / 997 almost pacific withdrawal of Brunswick;48 he strove to detach Prussia from the coalition;49 he wanted to turn a war of propagandism into one of interests;50 he caused the Convention to pass the decree that France would not in any way interfere with foreign governments; he secured an alliance with Sweden; he prescribed beforehand the basis of the treaty of Basle, and had an idea of saving the King.51 In spite of the distrust and attacks of the Girondists, who strove to discredit him and put him out of the way, he persists in offering them his hand; he declared war on them only because they refused to make peace,52 and he made efforts to save them when they were

48. Ibid., i., 558, 562, 585. (The intermediaries were Westermann and Du- mouriez.) 49. Ibid., ii., 28, 290, 291, 293. 50. Buchez et Roux, xxv., 445. (Session of April 13, 1793.) 51. According to a statement made by Count Theodore de Lameth, the eldest of the four brothers Lameth and a colonel and also deputy in the Leg- islative Assembly. During the Assembly he was well acquainted with Danton. After the September massacre he took refuge in Switzerland and was put on the list of emigre´s. About a month before the King’s death he was desirous of making a last effort and came to Paris. “I went straight to Danton’s house, and, without giving my name, insisted on seeing him immediately. Finally, I was admitted and I found Danton in a bath-tub. “You here!” he exclaimed. “Do you know that I have only to say the word and send you to the guillotine?” “Danton,” I replied, “you are a great criminal, but there are some vile things you cannot do, and one of them is to denounce me.” “You come to save the King?” “Yes.” We then began to talk in a friendly and confidential way. “I am willing,” said Danton, “to try and save the King, but I must have a million to buy up the necessary votes and the money must be on hand in eight days. I warn you that although I may save his life I shall vote for his death: I am quite willing to save his head but not to lose mine.” M. de Lameth set about raising the money; he saw the Spanish Embassador and had the matter broached to Pitt who refused. Danton, as he said he would, voted for the King’s death, and then aided or allowed the return of M. de Lameth to Switzerland. (I have this account through M . . . who had it from Count Theodore de Lameth’s own lips.) 52. Garat. “Me´moires,” 317. “Twenty times, he said to me one day, I offered them peace. They did not want it. They refused to believe me in order to reserve the right of ruining me.” 998 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION down. Amidst so many ranters and scribblers whose logic is mere words and whose rage is blind, who grind out phrases like a hand- organ, or are wound up for murder, his intellect, always capacious and supple, went right to facts, not to disfigure and pervert them, but to accept them, to adapt himself to them, and to comprehend them. With a mind of this quality one goes far no matter in what direction; nothing remains but to choose one’s path. Mandrin, under the ancient re´gime, was also, in a similar way, a superior man;53 only he chose the highway. Between the demagogue and the highwayman the resemblance is close: both are leaders of bands and each requires an opportunity to organise his band. Danton, to organise his band, required the Rev- olution. “Of low birth, without a patron,” penniless, every office being filled, and “the Paris bar unattainable,” admitted a lawyer after “a struggle,” he for a long time strolled about the streets without a brief, or frequented the coffee-houses, the same as similar men nowadays frequent the beer-shops. At the Cafe´ de l’Ecole, the proprietor, a good natured old fellow “in a small round perruque, grey coat, and a napkin on his arm,” circulated among his tables smiling blandly, while his daughter sat in the rear as cashier.54 Danton chat- ted with her and demanded her hand in marriage. To obtain her, he had to mend his ways, purchase an attorneyship in the Court of the Royal Council and find bondsmen and endorsers in his small native town.55 Wedded and lodged in the gloomy Passage du Commerce, “more burdened with debts than with causes,” tied down to a sed- entary profession which demands vigorous application, accuracy, a moderate tone, a respectable style, and blameless deportment; obliged to keep house on so small a scale that, without the help of

53. Cf. the “Ancient Re´gime,” p. 501. 54. “Danton,” by Dr. Robinet, passim. (Notices by Beón, one of Danton’s fellow-disciples.—Fragment by Saint Albin.)—“The Revolution,” ii., p. 35, foot-note. 55. Emile Bos, “Les Avocats du Conseil du Roi,” 515, 520. (See Danton’s marriage-contract and the discussions about his fortune. From 1787 to 1791, he is found engaged as counsel only in three cases.) The Governors / 999 a louis regularly advanced to him each week by his coffee-house father-in-law, he could not make both ends meet;56 his free-and-easy tastes, his alternately impetuous and indolent disposition, his love of enjoyment and of having his own way, his rude, violent instincts, his expansiveness, creativeness and activity, all rebel: he is ill- calculated for the quiet routine of our civil careers; it is not the steady discipline of an old society that suits him, but the tumultuous brutality of a society going to pieces, or one in a state of formation. In temperament and character he is a barbarian, and a barbarian born to command his fellow-creatures, like this or that vassal of the sixth century or baron of the tenth century. A colossus with the head of a “Tartar,” pitted with the small-pox, tragically and terribly ugly, with a mask convulsed like that of a growling “bull-dog,”57 with small, cavernous, restless eyes buried under the huge wrinkles of a threatening brow, with a thundering voice and moving and acting like a combatant, full-blooded, boiling over with passion and energy, his strength in its outbursts seeming illimitable like the forces of nature, roaring like a bull when speaking, and heard through closed windows fifty yards off in the street, employing immoderate imagery, intensely in earnest, trembling with indignation, revenge, and patriotic sentiments, able to arouse savage instincts in the most tranquil breast and generous instincts in the most brutal,58 profane, using emphatic terms,59 cynical, not monotonously so and affectedly like He´bert, but spontaneously and to the point, full of crude jests worthy of Rabelais, possessing a stock of jovial sensuality and good-humor, cordial and familiar in his ways, frank, friendly in tone; in short, outwardly and inwardly the best fitted for winning the confidence and sympathy of a Gallic, Parisian populace, and all contributing to

56. Madame Roland, “Me´moires.” (Statement of Madame Danton to Ma- dame Roland.) 57. Expressions used by Garat and Roederer. Larevilliere-Lepaux calls him “the Cyclop.” 58. Fauchet describes him as “the Pluto of Eloquence.” 59. Riouffe, “Me´moires sur les prisons.” In prison “every utterance was mingled with oaths and gross expressions.” 1000 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION the formation of “his inborn, practical popularity,” and to make of him “a grand-seign˜ior of sans-culotterie.”60 Thus endowed for playing a part, there is a strong temptation to act it the moment the theatre is ready, whether this be a mean one, got up for the occasion, and the actors rogues, scamps and prostitutes, or the part an ignoble one, murderous, and finally fatal to him who undertakes it. To with- stand temptation of this sort would require a sentiment of repugnance which a refined or thorough culture develops in both sense and soul, but which was completely wanting in Danton. Nothing disgusts him physically or morally: he embraces Marat,61 fraternises with drunkards, congratulates the Septembriseurs, retorts in blackguard terms to the insults of prostitutes, treats reprobates, thieves, and jail-birds as equals, Carra, Westermann, Huguenin, Rossignol, and the confirmed scoundrels whom he sends into the departments after the 2d of September. “Eh! f——, you think we ought to send young misses.”62 One must employ foul people to do foul work; one

60. Terms used by Fabre d’Eglantine and Garat. Beugnot, a very good observer, had a good idea of Danton.—M. Dufort de Cheverney (manuscript memoirs published by M. Robert de Cre`vecoeur), after the execution of Ba- boeuf, in 1797, had an opportunity to hear Samson, the executioner, talk with a war commissary, in an inn between Vendoˆme and Blois. Samson recounted the last moments of Danton and Fabre d’Eglantine. Danton, on the way to the scaffold, asked if he might sing. “There is nothing to hinder,” said Samson. “All right. Try to remember the verses I have just composed,” and he sang the following to a tune in vogue: “Nous sommes mene´s au tre´pas Par quantite´ de sce´le´rats, C’est ce qui nous de´sole Mais bientot le moment viendra Ou` chacun d’eux y passera, C’est ce qui nous console.” 61. Buchez et Roux, xxi., 108. Speech (printed) by Pe´tion: “Marat embraced Danton and Danton embraced him. I certify that this took place in my presence.” 62. Buchez et Roux, xxi., 126. (“To Maximilian Robespierre and his royalists,” a pamphlet by Louvet.)—Beugnot, “Me´moires,” i., 250, “On arriving in Paris as deputy from my department (to the Legislative Assembly) Danton The Governors / 1001 cannot stop one’s nose when they come for their wages; one must pay them well, talk to them encouragingly, and leave them plenty of sea-room. Danton is willing to add fuel to the fire, and he humors vices; he has no scruples, and lets people scratch and take. He has taken himself as much to give as to keep, to maintain his role as much as to benefit by it, squaring accounts by spending the money of the Court against the Court, probably inwardly chuckling, the same as the peasant in a blouse on getting ahead of his well-duped landlord, or as the Frank, whom the ancient historian describes as leering on pocketing Roman gold the better to make war against Rome. The graft on this plebeian seedling has not taken; in our modern garden this remains as in the ancient forest; its vigorous sap preserves its primitive raciness and produces none of the fine fruits of our civilisation, a moral sense, honor, and conscience. Danton has no respect for himself nor for others; the nice, delicate limitations that circumscribe human personality, seem to him as legal conven- tionality and mere drawing-room courtesy. Like a Clovis, he tram- ples on this, and like a Clovis, equal in faculties, in similar expedients, and with a worse horde at his back, he throws himself athwart society, to stagger along, destroy and reconstruct it to his own advantage. At the start, he comprehended the peculiar character and normal procedure of the Revolution, that is to say, the useful agency of popular brutality: in 1788 he had already figured in insurrections. He comprehended from the first the ultimate object and definite result of the Revolution, that is to say, the dictatorship of the violent minority. Immediately after the “14th of July,” 1789, he organised in his quarter of the city63 a small independent republic, aggressive sought me and wanted me to join his party. I dined with him three times, in the Cour du Commerce, and always went away frightened at his plans and energy....Hecontented himself by remarking to his friend Courtois and my colleague: ‘Thy big Beugnot is nothing but a devotee—you can do nothing with him.’” 63. The Cordeliers district. (Buchez et Roux, iv., 27.) Assembly meeting of the Cordeliers district, November 11th, 1789, to sanction Danton’s permanent 1002 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION and predominant, the centre of the faction, a refuge for the riff-raff and a rendezvous for fanatics, a pandemonium composed of every available madcap, every rogue, visionary, shoulder-hitter, newspaper scribbler and stump-speaker, either a secret or avowed plotter of murder, Camille Desmoulins, Fre´ron, He´bert, Chaumette, Clootz, The´roigne, Marat, while, in this more than Jacobin State, the model in anticipation of that he is to establish later, he reigns, as he will afterwards reign, the permanent president of the district, commander of the battalion, orator of the club, and the concocter of bold undertakings. Here, usurpation is the rule: there is no recognition of legal authority; they brave the King, the ministers, the judges, the Assembly, the municipality, the mayor, the commandant of the Na- tional Guard. Nature and principle raise them above the law; the district takes charge of Marat, posts two sentinels at his door to protect him from prosecutions, and uses arms against the armed force sent with a warrant to arrest him.64 And yet more, in the name of the city of Paris, “chief sentinel of the nation,” they assume to govern France: Danton betakes himself to the National Assembly and declares that the citizens of Paris are the natural representatives of the eighty-three departments, and summons it, on their injunction, to cancel an act it has passed.65 The entire Jacobin conception is therein expressed: Danton, with his keen insight, took it all in and proclaimed it in appropriate terms; to apply it at the present time on a grand scale,66 he has merely to pass from the small theatre to the large one, from the Cordeliers club to the Commune, to the Ministry, and the Committee of Public Safety, and, in all these theatres, he plays the same part with the same end in view and the presidency. He is always reelected, and unanimously. This is the first sign of his ascendency, although sometimes, to save the appearance of his dictatorship, he has his chief clerk Pare´ elected, whom he subsequently made minister. 64. Buchez et Roux, iv., 295, 298, 401; v., 140. 65. Ibid., viii., 28 (October, 1790). 66. Ibid., ix., 408; x., 144, 234, 297, 417.—Lafayette “Me´moires,” i., 359, 366. Immediately after Mirabeau’s death (April, 1791) Danton’s plans are apparent, and his initiative is of the highest importance. The Governors / 1003 same results. A despotism formed by conquest and maintained by terror, the despotism of the Jacobin Parisian rabble, is the end to which he directly marches. He employs no other means and, adapting the means to the end and the end to the means, manages the important days and instigates the decisive measures of the Revolu- tion—the 10th of August,67 the 2d of September, the 31st of May, the 2d of June;68 the decree providing for an army of paid sans- culottes “to keep down aristocrats with their pikes”; the decree in each commune where grain is dear, taxing the rich to put bread within reach of the poor;69 the decree giving laborers forty sous for attending the meetings of the Section Assemblies;70 the institution of the revolutionary Tribunal;71 the proposal to erect the Committee of Public Safety into a provisional government; the proclamation of Terror; the concentration of Jacobin zeal on useful works; the employment of the eight thousand delegates of the primary assemblies, who had been sent home as recruiting agents for the universal armament;72 the inflammatory expressions of young men on the frontier; the wise resolutions for limiting the levy en masse to men be-

67. “The Revolution,” ii., 238 (Note) and 283.—Garat, 309: “After the 20th of June everybody made mischief at the chateau, the power of which was daily increasing. Danton arranged the 10th of August and the chateau was thunder- struck.”—Robinet: “Le Proce`s des Dantonistes,” 224, 229. (“Journal de la Socie´te´ des amis de la Constitution,” No. 214, June 5, 1792.) Danton proposes “the law of Valerius Publicola, passed in Rome after the expulsion of the Tar- quins, permitting every citizen to kill any man convicted of having expressed opinions opposed to the law of the State, except in case of proof of the crime.” (Ibid., Nos. 230 and 231, July 13, 1792.) Danton induces the federals present “to swear that they will not leave the capital until liberty is established, and before the will of the department is made known on the fate of the executive power.” Such are the principles and the instruments, of “August 10” and “Sep- tember 2.” 68. Garat, 314. “He was present for a moment on the Committee of Public Safety. The outbreaks of May 31 and June 2 occurred; he was the author of both these days.” 69. Decrees of April 6 and 7, 1793. 70. Decree of September 5, 1793. 71. Decree of March 10, 1793. 72. August 1 and 12, 1793. 1004 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION tween eighteen and twenty-five, which put an end to the scandalous songs and dances by the populace in the very hall of the Conven- tion.73 In order to set the machine up, he cleared the ground, fused the metal, hammered out the principal pieces, filed off the blisterings, designed the action, adjusted the minor wheels, set it agoing, and indicated what it had to do, and, at the same time, he forged the plating which guarded it from the foreigner and against all outward violence. The machine being his, why, after constructing it, did he not serve as its engineer? Because, if competent to construct it, he was not qualified to manage it. In a crisis, he may take hold of the wheel himself, excite an assembly or a mob in his favor, carry things with a high hand and direct an executive committee for a few weeks. But he dislikes regular, persistent labor; he is not made for studying documents, for poring over papers and confining himself to administrative routine.74 Never, like Robespierre and Billaud can he attend to both official and police duties at the same time, carefully reading minute daily reports, annotating mortuary lists, extemporising ornate abstractions, coolly enunciating falsehoods and acting out the patient, satisfied inquisitor; and especially, he can never become the systematic executioner. On the one hand, his eyes are not obscured by the grey veil of theory: he does not regard men through the Contrat-Social as a sum of arithmetical units,75 but as they really are, living, suf-

73. See “The Revolution,” vol. iii., ch. i.—Buchez et Roux, xxv., 285. (Meeting of Nov. 26, 1793.)—Moniteur, xix., 726. Danton (March 16, 1794) secures the passing of a decree that “hereafter prose only shall be heard at the bar of the house.” 74. Archives Nationales, Papers of the Committee of General Security, No. 134.—Letter of Delacroix to Danton, Lille, March 25, 1793, on the situation in Belgium, and the retreat of Dumouriez....“Myletter is so long I fear that you will not read it to the end....Obligemebyforgetting your usual indolence.”—Letter of Chabot to Danton, Frimaire 12, year II. “I know your genius, my dear colleague, and consequently your natural indolent disposition. I was afraid that you would not read me through if I wrote a long letter. Nevertheless I rely on your friendship to make an exception in my favor.” 75. Lagrange, the mathematician, and senator under the empire, was asked The Governors / 1005 fering, shedding their blood, especially those he knows, each with his peculiar physiognomy and demeanor. Compassion is excited by all this when one has any feeling, and he had. Danton had a heart; he had the quick sensibilities of a man of flesh and blood stirred by the primitive instincts, the good ones along with the bad ones, instincts which culture had neither impaired nor deadened, which allowed him to plan and permit the September massacre, but which did not allow him to practise daily and blindly, systematic and wholesale murder. Already in September, “cloaking his pity under his bellowing,”76 he had shielded or saved many eminent men from the butchers. When the axe is about to fall on the Girondists, he is “ill with grief” and despair. “I am unable to save them,” he exclaimed, “and big tears streamed down his cheeks.” On the other hand, his eyes are not covered by the bandage of incapacity or lack of forethought. He detected the innate vice of the system, the inevitable and approaching suicide of the Revolution. “The Girondists forced us to throw ourselves upon the sans-culotterie which has devoured them, which will devour us, and which will eat itself up.”77 “Let Robespierre and Saint-Just alone, and there will soon be nothing left in France but a Thebiad of political Trappists.”78 At the end, he sees more clearly still. “On a day like this I organised the revolutionary Tribunal....Iaskpardon for it of God and man. ...In Revolutions, authority remains with the greatest scoundrels....It is better to be a poor fisherman than govern men.”79 Nevertheless, he professed to govern them; he constructed a new machine for the purpose, and, deaf to its creaking, it worked in conformity with its structure and the impulse he gave to it. It towers before him, this how it was that he voted for the terrible annual conscriptions. “It had no sensible effect on the tables of mortality,” he replied. 76. Garat, 305, 310, 313. “His friends almost worshipped him.” 77. Ibid., 317.—Thibeaudeau, “Me´moires,” i., 59. 78. Quinet, “La Re´volution,” ii., 304. (According to the unpublished memoirs of Baudot.) These expressions by Danton’s friends all bear the mark of Danton himself. At all events they express exactly his ideas. 79. Riouffe, 67. 1006 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION sinister machine, with its vast wheel and iron cogs grinding all France, their multiplied teeth pressing out each individual life, its steel blade constantly rising and falling, and, as it plays faster and faster, daily exacting a larger and larger supply of human material, while those who furnish this supply are held to be as insensible and as senseless as itself. Danton cannot, or will not, be so. He gets out of the way, diverts himself, gambles,80 forgets; he supposes that the titular decapitators will probably consent to take no notice of him; in any event they do not pursue him; “they would not dare do it.” “No one must lay hands on me, I am the ark.” At the worst, he prefers “to be guillotined rather than guillotine.” Having said or thought this, he is ripe for the scaffold. III Even with the firm determination to remain decapitator-in-chief, Danton would not be the true representative of the Revolution. It is brigandage, but carried on philosophically; its creed includes robbery and assassination, but only as a knife in its sheath; the showy, polished sheath is for public display, and not the sharp and bloody blade. Danton, like Marat, lets the blade be too plainly visible. At the mere sight of Marat, filthy and slovenly, with his livid, frog-like face, round, gleaming and fixed eyeballs, bold, maniacal stare and steady monotonous rage, common-sense rebels; people do not accept for their guide a homicidal bedlamite. At sight of Danton, with his billingsgate expressions, his voice like a tocsin of insurrection, his cyclopean features and air of an exterminator, humanity takes alarm; one does not surrender oneself to a political butcher without repugnance. The Revolution demands another interpreter, wearing like itself a specious exterior, and such is Robespierre,81 with his irre-

80. Miot de Melito, “Me´moires,” i., 40, 42.—Michelet, “Histoire de la Re´- volution Française,” vi., 34; v. 178, 184. (On the second marriage of Danton in June, 1793, to a young girl of sixteen. On his journey to Arcis, March, 1794.)— Riouffe, 68, In prison “He talked constantly about trees, the country, and nature.” 81. We can trace the effect of his attitude on the public in the police reports, The Governors / 1007 proachable attire, well-powdered hair, carefully brushed coat,82 strict habits, dogmatic tone, and formal, studied manner of speaking. No mind, in its mediocrity and incompetence, so well harmonises with the spirit of the epoch. The reverse of the statesman, he soars in empty space, amongst abstractions, always mounted on a principle and incapable of dismounting so as to see things practically. “That b there,” exclaims Danton, “doesn’t even know how to boil an egg!” “The vague generalities of his preaching,” writes another contemporary,83 “rarely culminated in any specific measure or legal provision. He combated everything and proposed nothing; the secret of his policy happily accorded with his intellectual impotence and with the nullity of his legislative conceptions.” Once the thread of especially at the end of 1793, and beginning of the year 1794. (Archives Na- tionales, F7, 3, 61, report of Charmont, Nivose 6, year II.) “Robespierre gains singularly in public estimation, especially since his speech in the Convention, calling on his colleagues to rally and crush out the monsters in the interior, also in which he calls on all to support the new revolutionary government with their intelligence and talents....I haveto state that I have everywhere heard his name mentioned with admiration. They wound up by saying that it would be well for all members of the Convention to adopt the measures presented by Robespierre.”—(Report of Robin, Nivose 8.) “Citizen Robespierre is honored everywhere, in all groupes and in the cafe´s. At the Cafe´ Manouri it was given out that his views of the government were the only ones which, like the magnet, would attract all citizens to the Revolution. It is not the same with citizen Billaud-Varennes.” (Report of the Purveyor, Nivose 9.) “In certain clubs and groups there is a rumor that Robespierre is to be appointed dictator. . . . The people do justice to his austere virtues; it is noticed that he has never changed his opinions since the Revolution began.” 82. “Souvenirs d’un de´porte´” by P. Villiers (Robespierre’s secretary for seven months in 1790), p. 2. “Of painstaking cleanliness.”—Buchez et Roux, xxxiv., 94. Description of Robespierre, published in the newspapers after his death; “His clothes were exquisitely clean and his hair always carefully brushed.” 83. D’Hericault, “La Re´volution du 9 Thermidor,” (as stated by Daunou).—Meillan, “Me´moires,” p. 4. “His eloquence was nothing but diffu- sive declamation without order or method, and especially with no conclusions. Every time he spoke we were obliged to ask him what he was driving at.... Never did he propose any remedy. He left the task of finding expedients to others, and especially to Danton.” 1008 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION his revolutionary scholasticism has spun itself out, he is completely used up. As to financial matters and military art, he knows nothing and risks nothing, except to underrate or calumniate Carnot and Cambon who did know and who took risks.84 In relation to a foreign policy his speech on the state of Europe is the amplification of a schoolboy; on exposing the plans of the English minister he reaches the pinnacle of chimerical nonsense;85 eliminate the rhetorical passages, and it is not the head of a government who speaks, but the porter of the Jacobin club. On contemporary France, as it actually exists, he has not one just or precise idea: instead of men, he sees only twenty-six millions of automatons, who, duly penned in, work together in peace and harmony; they are, indeed, naturally good,86 and, after a little necessary purification, they will become good again; accordingly, their collective will is “the voice of reason and public interest”; hence, on meeting together, they are wise. “The people’s assembly of delegates should deliberate, if possible, in the presence of the whole body of the people”; the Legislative body, at least, should hold its sittings “in a vast, majestic edifice open to twenty thousand spectators.” Note that for the past four years, in

84. Buchez et Roux, xxxiii., 437, 438, 440, 442. (Speech by Robespierre, Thermidor 8, year II.) 85. Ibid., xxx., 225, 226, 227, 228 (Speech, Nov. 17, 1793), and xxxi., 255 (Speech, Jan. 26, 1794). “The policy of the London Cabinet largely contributed to the first movement of our Revolution....Taking advantage of political tempests (the cabinet) aimed to effect in exhausted and dismembered France a change of dynasty and to place the Duke of York on the throne of Louis XVI. ... Pitt . . . is an imbecile, whatever may be said of a reputation that has been much too greatly puffed up. A man who, abusing the influence acquired by him on an island placed haphazard in the ocean, is desirous of contending with the French people, could not have conceived of such an absurd plan elsewhere than in a madhouse.”—Cf. Ibid., xxx., 465. 86. Ibid., xxvi., 433, 441 (Speech on the Constitution, May 10, 1793); xxxi., 275. “Goodness consists in the people preferring itself to what is not itself; the magistrate, to be good, must himself immolate himself to the people.” . . . “Let this maxim be first adopted that the people are good and that its delegates are corruptible.” . . . xxx., 464. (Speech, Dec. 25, 1793): “The virtues are the appanage of the unfortunate and the patrimony of the people.” The Governors / 1009 the Constituent Assembly, in the Legislative Assembly, in the Con- vention, at the Hoˆtel-de-Ville, in the Jacobin Club, wherever Robes- pierre speaks, the galleries have kept up constant vociferations: such a positive, palpable experience would open anybody’s eyes; his are closed through prejudice or interest; even physical truth finds no access to his mind, because he is unable to comprehend it, or because he has to keep it out. He is, accordingly, either obtuse or a charlatan, and both in fact, for both combine to form the cuistre, that is to say, the hollow, inflated mind which, filled with words and imagining that these are ideas, revels in its own declamation and dupes itself that it may dictate to others. Such is his title, character, and the part he plays. In this artificial and declamatory tragedy of the Revolution he takes the leading part; the maniac and the barbarian slowly retire in the background on the appearance of the cuistre; Marat and Danton finally become effaced, or efface themselves, and the stage is left to Robespierre who absorbs attention.87 If we would comprehend him we must look at him as he stands in the midst of his surroundings. At the last stage of an intellectual vegetation passing away, he remains on the last branch of the eighteenth century, the most abortive and driest offshoot of the classical spirit.88 He has retained nothing of a worn-out system of philosophy but its lifeless dregs and well-conned formulae, the formulae of Rousseau, Mably, and Raynal, concerning “the people, nature, reason, liberty, tyrants, factions, virtue, morality,” a ready- made vocabulary,89 expressions too ample, the meaning of which, ill-defined by the masters, evaporates in the hands of the disciple.

87. Cf. passim, Hamel, “Histoire de Robespierre,” 3 vols. An elaborate panegyric full of details. Although eighty years have elapsed, Robespierre still makes dupes of people through his attitudinising and rhetorical ﬂourishes. M. Hamel twice intimates his resemblance to Jesus Christ. The resemblance, indeed, is that of Pascal’s Jesuits to the Jesus of the Gospel. 88. “The Ancient Re´gime,” p. 262. 89. Garat, “Me´moires,” 84. Garat who is himself an ideologist, notes “his eternal twaddle about the rights of man, the sovereignty of the people, and other principles which he was always talking about, and on which he never gave utterance to one precise or fresh idea.” 1010 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

He never tries to get at this; his writings and speeches are merely long strings of vague abstract periods; there is no telling fact in them, no distinct, characteristic detail, no appeal to the eye evoking a living image, no personal, special observation, no clear, frank original impression. It might be said of him that he never saw anything with his own eyes, that he neither could nor would see, that false conceptions have intervened and fixed themselves between him and the object;90 he combines these in logical sequence, and simulates the absent thought by an affected jargon, and this is all. The other Jacobins alongside of him likewise use the same scholastic jargon; but none of them expatiate on it so lengthily. For hours, we grope after him in the vague shadows of political speculation, in the cold and perplexing mist of didactic generalities, trying in vain to make something out of his colorless tirades, and we grasp nothing. We then, astonished, ask what all this talk amounts to, and why he talks at all; the answer is, that he has said nothing and that he talks only for the sake of talking, the same as a sectary preaching to his congregation, neither the preacher nor his audience ever wearying, the one of turning the dogmatic crank, and the other of listening. So much the better if the hopper is empty; the emptier it is the easier and faster the crank turns. And better still, if the empty term he selects is used in a contrary sense; the sonorous words justice, humanity, mean to him piles of human heads, the same as a text from the gospels means to a grand inquisitor the burning of heretics. Through this extreme perversity, the cuistre spoils his own mental instrument; thenceforth he employs it as he likes, as his passions dictate, believing that he serves truth in serving these. Now, his first passion, his principal passion, is literary vanity. Never was the chief of a party, sect, or government, even at critical moments, such an incurable, insignificant rhetorician, so formal, so

90. Read especially his speech on the Constitution (May 10, 1793), his report on the principles of Republican Government (Dec. 15, 1793), his speech on the relationship between religious and national ideas and republican principles (May 7, 1794), and speech of Thermidor 8.—Carnot: “Me´moires,” ii., 512. “He brought to bear nothing but vague generalities in all business deliberations.” The Governors / 1011 pompous, and so vapid. On the eve of the 9th of Thermidor, when it was necessary to conquer or die, he enters the tribune with a set speech, written and rewritten, polished and repolished,91 overloaded with studied ornaments and bits for effect,92 coated by dint of time and labor, with the academic varnish, the glitter of symmetrical antitheses, rounded periods, exclamations, preteritions, apostrophes and other tricks of the pen.93 In the most famous and important of his reports,94 I have counted eighty-four instances of prosopopoeia imitated from Rousseau and the antique, many of them largely expanded, some addressed to the dead, to Brutus, to young Barra, and others to absentees, priests, and aristocrats, to the unfortunate, to French women, and finally to abstract substantives like Liberty and Friendship. With unshaken conviction and intense satisfaction, he deems himself an orator because he harps on the same old tune. There is no sign of true inspiration in his elaborate eloquence, nothing but recipes and those of a worn-out art, Greek and Roman common-places, Socrates and the hemlock, Brutus and his dagger, classic metaphors like “the flambeaux of discord,” and “the vessel of State,”95 words coupled together and beauties of style which a

91. Buchez at Roux, xxxiii., 406. (Speech delivered Thermidor 8th.) The printed copy of the manuscript with corrections and erasures. 92. Ibid., 420, 422, 427. 93. Ibid., 428, 435, 436. “O day forever blessed! What a sight to behold, the entire French people assembled together and rendering to the author of nature the only homage worthy of him! How affecting each object that enchants the eye and touches the heart of man! O honored old age! O generous ardor of the young of our country! O the innocent, pure joy of youthful citizens! O the exquisite tears of tender mothers! O the divine charms of innocence and beauty! What majesty in a great people happy in its strength, power and virtue!” “No, Charmette, No, death is not the sleep of eternity!” “Remember, O, People, that in a republic, etc.” “If such truths must be dissembled then bring me the hemlock!” 94. Speech, May 7, 1794. (On moral and religious ideas in relation to republican principles.) 95. Buchez et Roux, xxxiii., 436. “The Verres and Catilines of our country.” (Speech of Thermidor 8th.)—Note especially the speech delivered March 7, 1794, crammed full of classical reminiscences. 1012 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION pupil in rhetoric aims at on the college bench;96 sometimes a grand bravura air, so essential for parade in public;97 oftentimes a delicate strain of the flute, for, in those days, one must have a tender heart;98 in short, Marmontel’s method in “Belisarius,” or that of Thomas in his “Eloges,” all borrowed from Rousseau, but of inferior quality, like a sharp, thin voice strained to imitate a rich, powerful voice; a sort of involuntary parody, and the more repulsive because a word ends in a blow, because a sentimental, declamatory Trissotin poses as statesman, because the studied elegances of the closet become pistol shots aimed at living breasts, because an epithet skilfully directed sends a man to the guillotine. The contrast is too great between his talent and the part he plays. With a talent as petty and false as his intellect, there is no employment for which he is less calculated than that of governing men; he was cut out for another, which, in a peaceable community, would have stood him in stead. Suppress the Revolution, and Marat would have probably ended his days in an asylum. Danton might possibly have become a legal fillibuster, a Mandrin or bravo under certain circumstances, and finally throttled or hung. Robespierre, on the contrary, might have continued as he began,99 a busy, hard-working lawyer of good stand-

96. Ibid., xxxiii., 421. “Truth has touching and terrible accents which reverberate powerfully in pure hearts as in guilty consciences, and which falsehood can no more counterfeit than Salome can counterfeit the thunders of heaven.”—437: “Why do those who yesterday predicted such frightful tempests now gaze only on the fleeciest clouds? Why do those who but lately exclaimed ‘I affirm that we are treading on a volcano,’ now behold themselves sleeping on a bed of roses?” 97. Ibid., xxxii., 360, 361. (Portraits of the encyclopaedists and He´bertists.) 98. Ibid., xxxiii., 408. “Here I must give vent to my feelings.”—xxxii., 475– 478, the concluding part. 99. Hamel: “Histoire de Robespierre,” i., 34–76. An attorney at 23, a member of the Rosati club at Arras at 24, a member of the Arras Academy at 25. The Royal Society of Metz awarded him a second prize for his discourse against the prejudice which regards the relatives of condemned criminals as infamous. His eulogy of Gresset is not crowned by the Amiens Academy. He reads before the Academy of Arras a discourse against the civil disabilities of bastards, and then another on reforms in criminal jurisprudence. In 1789, he is president of The Governors / 1013 ing, member of the Arras Academy, winner of competitive prizes, author of literary eulogiums, moral essays, and philanthropic pamphlets; his little lamp, lighted like hundreds of others of equal capacity at the focus of the new philosophy, would have burned moderately without doing harm to any one, and diffused over a provincial circle a dim, commonplace illumination proportionate to the little oil his lamp would hold. But the Revolution bore him into the Constituent Assembly, where, for a long time on this great stage, the self-love that constitutes the sensitive chord of the cuistre, suffered terribly. He had already suffered on this score from his earliest youth, and his wounds being still fresh made him only the more sensitive. Left an orphan, poor, befriended by his bishop, becoming a bursar through favor at the college Louis-le-Grand, after this a clerk with Brissot under the revolutionary system of law-practice, and at length settled down in his gloomy rue des Rapporteurs as a pettifogger, living with a pee- vish sister, he adopts Rousseau, whom he had once seen and whom he ardently studies, for his master in philosophy, politics, and style. Fancying, probably, like other young men of his age and condition, that he could play a similar part and thus emerge from his blind alley, he published law pleadings for effect, contended for Academy prizes, and read papers before his Arras colleagues. His success was moderate: one of his harangues obtained a notice in the Artois Al- manack; the Academy of Metz awarded him only a second prize; that of Amiens gave him no prize, while the critic of the “Mercure” spoke of his style as smacking of the provinces. In the National Assembly, eclipsed by men of great and spontaneous ability, he remains a long time in the shade, and, more than once, through over self-assertion or lack of tact, makes himself ridiculous. With his sharp, thin, attorney’s visage, “dull, monotonous, coarse voice and wearisome delivery,” “an artesian accent,” and constrained air,100 his the Arras Academy, and publishes an eulogy of Dupaty and an address to the Artesian nation on the qualities necessary for future deputies. 100. See his eulogy of Rousseau in the speech of May 7, 1794. (Buchez et 1014 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION constantly putting himself forward, his elaboration of common- places, his evident determination to impose on cultivated people, still a body of intelligent listeners, and the intolerable ennui he caused them—all this is not calculated to render the Assembly indulgent to errors of sense and taste.101 One day, referring to certain acts of the “Conseil”: “It is necessary that a noble and simple formula should announce national rights and carry respect for law into the hearts of the people.” Consequently, in the decrees as promulgated, after the words “Louis, by the grace of God,” etc., these words should follow: “People, behold the law imposed on you! Let this law be considered sacred and inviolable for all!” Upon this, a Gascon deputy arises and remarks in his southern accent, “Gentle- men, this formula is useless—we do not sing psalms (cantique).” There is a general roar;102 Robespierre keeps silent and bleeds internally: two or three discomfitures of this stamp render a man sore from head to foot. It is not that his folly is foolishness to him; no pedant taken in the act and hissed would avow that he deserved such treatment; on the contrary, he is content to have spoken as becomes a philosophic

Roux, xxxii., 369.)—Garat, 85. “I hoped that his selection of Rousseau for a model of style and the constant reading of his works would exert some good influence on his character.” 101. Fieveé, “Correspondence” (introduction). Fieveé, who heard him at the Jacobin Club, said that he resembled a “tailor of the ancient re´gime.” Lare´veille`re-Lepeaux, “Me´moires.”—Buchez et Roux, xxxiv., 94.—Malouet, “Me´moires,” ii., 135. (Session of May 31, 1791, after the delivery of Abbe´ Raynal’s address.) “This is the first and only time I found Robespierre clear and even eloquent....Hespun out his opening phrases as usual, which contained the spirit of his discourse, and which, in spite of his accustomed rigmarole, produced the effect he intended.” 102. Courrier de Provence, iii., No. 52 (Octo. 7 and 8, 1789).—Buchez et Roux, vi., 372. (Session of July 10, 1790.) Another similar blunder was committed by him on the occasion of an American deputation. The president had made his response, which was “unanimously applauded.” Robespierre wanted to have his say notwithstanding the objections of the Assembly, impatient at his verbiage, and which finally put him down. Amidst the laughter, “M. l’Abbe´ Maury demands ironically the printing of M. Robespierre’s discourse.” The Governors / 1015 and moral legislator, and so much the worse for the narrow minds and corrupt hearts unable to comprehend him. Thrown back upon himself, his wounded vanity seeks inward nourishment and takes what it can find in the sterile uniformity of his bourgeois moderation. Robespierre, unlike Danton, has no cravings. He is sober; he is not tormented by his senses; if he gives way to them, it is only no further than he can help, and with a bad grace; in the rue Saintonge in Paris, “for seven months,” says his secretary, “I knew of but one woman that he kept company with, and he did not treat her very well . . . very often he would not let her enter his room”: when busy, he must not be disturbed; he is naturally steady, hard-working, studious and fond of seclusion, at college a model pupil, at home in his province an attentive advocate, a punctual deputy in the Assembly, everywhere free of temptation and incapable of going astray. “Ir- reproachable” is the word which from early youth an inward voice constantly repeats to him in low tones to console him for obscurity and patience. Thus has he ever been, is now, and ever will be; he says this to himself, tells others so, and on this foundation, all of a piece, he builds up his character. He is not, like Desmoulins, to be seduced by dinners, like Barnave, by flattery, like Mirabeau and Danton, by money, like the Girondists, by the insinuating charm of ancient politeness and select society, like the Dantonists, by the bait of joviality and unbounded license—he is the incorruptible. He is not to be deterred or diverted, like the Feuillants, Girondists, and Dantonists, like statesmen or specialists, by considerations of a lower order, by regard for interests or respect for acquired positions, by the danger of undertaking too much at once, by the necessity of not disorganising the service and of giving play to human passions, motives of utility and opportunity: he is the uncompromising champion of right.103 “Alone, or nearly alone, I do not allow myself to be corrupted; alone or nearly alone, I do not compromise the right;104

103. P. Villiers, p. 2. 104. Cf. his principal speeches in the Constituent Assembly—against martial law; against the veto, even suspensive; against the qualification of the silver 1016 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION which two merits I possess in the highest degree. A few others may live correctly, but they oppose or betray principles; a few others profess to have principles, but they do not live correctly. No one else leads so pure a life or is so loyal to principles; no one else joins to so fervent a worship of truth so strict a practice of virtue: I am the unique.” What can be more agreeable than this mute soliloquy? It is gently heard the first day in Robespierre’s address to the Third- Estate of Arras;105 it is uttered aloud the last day in his great speech in the Convention;106 during the interval, it crops out and shines through all his compositions, harangues, or reports, in exordiums, parentheses, and perorations, permeating every sentence like the drone of a bag-pipe.107 Through the delight he takes in this he can listen to nothing else, and it is just here that the outward echoes supervene and sustain with their accompaniment the inward cantata which he sings to his own glory. Towards the end of the Constituent Assembly, through the withdrawal or the elimination of every man marc and in favor of universal suffrage; in favor of admitting into the National Guard nonacting citizens; of the marriage of priests; of the abolition of the death penalty; of granting political rights to colored men; of interdicting the father from favoring any one of his children; of declaring the “Constituants” ineligible to the Legislative Assembly, etc. On royalty: “The King is not the representative but the clerk of the nation.” On the danger of allowing political rights to colored men: “Let the colonies perish if they cost you your honor, your glory, your liberty!” 105. Hamel, i., 76, 77 (March, 1789). “My heart is an honest one and I stand firm; I have never bowed beneath the yoke of baseness and corruption.” He enumerates the virtues that a representative of the Third Estate should possess (26, 83). He already shows his blubbering capacity and his disposition to regard himself as a victim: “They undertake making martyrs of the people’s defenders. Had they the power to deprive me of the advantages they envy, could they snatch from me my soul and the consciousness of the benefits I desire to confer on them.” 106. Buchez et Roux, xxxiii. “Who am I that am thus accused? The slave of freedom, a living martyr to the Republic, at once the victim and the enemy of crime!” See this speech in full. 107. Especially in his address to the French people (Aug., 1791), which, in a justificatory form, is his apotheosis.—Cf. Hamel, ii., 212; Speech in the Jac- obin Club (April 27, 1792). The Governors / 1017 at all able or competent, he becomes one of the conspicuous tenors on the political stage, while in the Jacobin Club he is decidedly the tenor most in vogue. “Unique competitor of the Roman Fabricius,” writes the branch club at Marseilles to him; “immortal defender of popular rights,” says the Jacobin crew of Bourges.108 One of two portraits of him in the exhibition of 1791 bears the inscription: “The Incorruptible.” At the Molie`re Theatre a drama of the day represents him as launching the thunderbolts of his logic and virtue at Rohan and Conde´. On his way, at Bapaume, the patriots of the place, the National Guard on the road, and the authorities, come in a body to honor the great man. The town of Arras is illuminated on his arrival. On the adjournment of the Constituent Assembly the people in the street greet him with shouts, crown him with oak wreaths, take the horses from his cab, and drag him in triumph to the rue St. Honore´, where he lodges with the carpenter Duplay. Here, in one of those families in which the semibourgeois class borders on the people, whose minds are unsophisticated, and on whom glittering generalities and oratorical tirades take full hold, he finds his worshippers; they drink in his words; they have the same opinion of him that he has of himself; to every soul in the house, husband, wife, and daughter, he is the great patriot, the infallible sage; he bestows benedictions night and morning; he inhales clouds of incense; he is a god installed in furnished apartments. The faithful, to obtain access to him form a line in the court;109 they are admitted into the reception room, where they gather around portraits of him drawn with pencil and stump, in sepia and in water color, and before miniature busts in red or grey plaster; then, on the signal being given by him, they penetrate through a glass door into the sanctuary where he presides, in the private closet in which the best bust of him, with verses and mottoes, supplies his place during his absence. His worshippers adore him on their knees, and the women more than the men. On

108. Hamel, i., 517, 532, 559; ii., 5. 109. Lare´veille`re-Lepeaux, “Me´moires.”—Barbaroux, “Me´moires,” 358. (Both, after a visit to him.) 1018 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION the day he delivers his apology before the Convention “the passages are lined with women110 . . . seven or eight hundred of them in the galleries, and but two hundred men at most”; and how frantically they cheer him! He is a priest surrounded by devotees.”111 On spouting his “rigmarole” at the Jacobin Club “the most aﬀecting sobbings, shoutings and stampings almost make the house tumble.”112 A looker-on who shows no emotion is greeted with murmurs and obliged to slip out, like a heretic that has strayed into a church on the elevation of the Host. The faster the revolutionary thunderbolts fall on other heads, so does Robespierre mount higher and higher in glory and deiﬁcation. Letters are addressed to him as “the founder of the Republic, the incorruptible genius who foresees all and saves all, who can neither be deceived nor seduced”;113 who has “the energy of a Spartan and the eloquence of an Athenian”;114 “who shields

110. Robespierre’s devotees constantly attend at the Jacobin Club and in the Convention to hear him speak and applaud him, and are called, from their condition and dress, “the fat petticoats.” 111. Buchez et Roux, xx., 197. (Meeting of Nov. 1, 1792.)—“Chronique de Paris,” Nov. 9, 1792, article by Condorcet. With the keen insight of the man of the world, he saw clearly into Robespierre’s character. “Robespierre preaches, Robespierre censures; he is animated, grave, melancholy, deliberately enthusiastic and systematic in his ideas, and conduct. He thunders against the rich and the great; he lives on nothing and has no physical necessities. His sole mission is to talk, and this he does almost constantly....His characteristics are not those of a religious reformer, but of the chief of a sect. He has won a reputation for austerity approaching sanctity. He jumps up on a bench and talks about God and Providence. He styles himself the friend of the poor; he attracts around him a crowd of women and ‘the poor in spirit,’ and gravely accepts their homage and worship....Robespierre is a priest and never will be anything else.” Among Robespierre’s devotees Madame de Chalabre must be mentioned (Ha- mel, i., 525), a young widow (Hamel, iii., 524), who offers him her hand with an income of forty thousand francs. “Thou art my supreme deity,” she writes to him, “and I know no other on this earth! I regard thee as my guardian angel, and would live only under thy laws.” 112. Fieveé, “Correspondance,” (introduction). 113. Report of Courtois on the papers found in Robespierre’s domicile. Justificatory documents No. 20, letter of the Secretary of the Committee of Surveillance of Saint Calais, Nivose 15, year II. 114. Ibid., No. 18. Letter of V——, former inspector of “droits reserve´s,” Feb. 5, 1792. The Governors / 1019 the Republic with the aegis of his eloquence”;115 who “illuminates the universe with his writings, fills the world with his renown and regenerates the human species here below”;116 whose “name is now, and will be, held in veneration for all ages, present and to come”;117 who is “the Messiah promised by the Eternal for universal reform.”118 “An extraordinary popularity,” says Billaud-Varennes,119 a popularity which, founded under the Constituent Assembly, “only increased during the Legislative Assembly,” and, later on, so much more, that, “in the National Convention he soon found himself the only one able to fix attention on his person . . . and control public opinion....Withthis ascendency over public opinion, with this irresistible preponderance, when he reached the Committee of Public Safety, he was already the most important being in France.” In three years, a chorus of a thousand voices,120 which he formed and led indefatigably, rehearses to him in unison his own litany, his most sacred creed, the hymn of three stanzas composed by him in his own honor, and which he daily recites to himself in a low tone of voice, and often in a loud one: “Robespierre alone has discovered the ideal citizen! Robespierre alone attains to it without exaggeration or shortcomings! Robespierre alone is worthy of and able to lead the Revolution!”121 Cool infatuation carried thus far is equivalent to a raging fever, and Robespierre almost attains to the ideas and the ravings of Marat.

115. Ibid., No. 8. Letter of P. Brincourt, Sedan, Aug. 29, 1793. 116. Ibid., No. 1. Letter of Besson, with an address of the popular club of Menosque, Prairial 23, year II. 117. Ibid., No. 14. Letter of D , member of the Cordeliers Club, and former mercer, Jan. 31, 1792. 118. Ibid., No. 12. Letter by C , Chateau Thierry, Prairial 30, year II. 119. Hamel, iii., 682. (Copied from Billaud-Varennes’ manuscripts, in the Archives Nationales). 120. Moniteur, xxii., 175. (Session of Vende´miaire 18, year III. Speech by Laignelot.) “Robespierre had all the popular clubs under his thumb.” 121. Garat, 85. “The most conspicuous sentiment with Robespierre, and one, indeed, of which he made no mystery, was that the defender of the people could never see amiss.”—(Bailleul, quoted in Carnot’s Memoirs, i., 516.) “He regarded himself as a privileged being, destined to become the people’s regen- erator and instructor.” 1020 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

First, in his own eyes, he, like Marat, is a persecuted man, and, like Marat, he poses himself as a “martyr,” but more skilfully and keeping within bounds, affecting the resigned and tender air of an innocent victim, who, offering himself as a sacrifice, ascends to Heaven, bequeathing to mankind the imperishable souvenir of his virtues.122 “I excite against me the self-love of everybody;123 I sharpen against me a thousand daggers. I am a sacrifice to every species of hatred....Itiscertain that my head will atone for the truths I have uttered. I have given my life, and shall welcome death almost as a boon. It is, perhaps, Heaven’s will that my blood should indicate the pathway of my country to happiness and freedom. With what transports I accept this glorious destiny!”124 “One does not wage war against tyrants for existence, and, what is still more dangerous, against miscreants; . . . the greater their eagerness to put an end to my career here below, the more eager I shall be to fill it with actions serving the welfare of my fellow-creatures.”125 “These miscreants all revile me;126 the most insignificant, the most legitimate actions of others are, in my case, crimes. Whoever becomes acquainted with me is at once calumniated. The luck of others is pardoned, my zeal is guilt. Deprive me of my conscience and I am the most wretched of men. I do not even enjoy the rights of a citizen.

122. Speech of May 16, 1794, and of Thermidor 8, year II. 123. Buchez et Roux, x., 295, 296. (Session June 22, 1791, of the Jacobin Club.)—Ibid., 294.—Marat spoke in the same vein: “I have made myself a curse for all good people in France.” He writes, the same date: “Writers in behalf of the people will be dragged to dungeons. ‘The friend of the people,’ whose last sigh is given for his country, and whose faithful voice still summons you to freedom, is to find his grave in a fiery furnace.” The last expression shows the difference in their imaginations. 124. Hamel, ii., 122. (Meeting of the Jacobin Club, Feb. 10, 1792.) “To obtain death at the hands of tyrants is not enough—one must deserve death. If it be true that the earliest defenders of liberty became its martyrs they should not suffer death without bearing tyranny along with them into the grave.”—Cf., ibid., ii., 215. (Meeting of April 27, 1792.) 125. Hamel, ii., 513. (Speech in the Convention, Prairial 7, year II.) 126. Buchez et Roux, xxxiii., 422, 445, 447, 457. (Speech in the Convention, Thermidor 8, year II.) The Governors / 1021

I am not even allowed to perform my duty as a representative of the people. . . . To the enemies of my country, to whom my existence seems an obstacle to their heinous plots, I am ready to sacrifice it, if their odious empire is to endure; . . . let their road to the scaffold be the pathway of crime, ours shall be that of virtue; . . . let the hemlock be got ready for me, I await it on this hallowed spot. I shall at least bequeath to my country an example of constant affection for it, and to the enemies of humanity the disgrace of my death.” Naturally, as always with Marat, he sees around him only “evil- doers,” “intriguers,” and “traitors.”127 Naturally, as with Marat, common sense with him is perverted, and, like Marat again, he thinks at random. “I am not obliged to reflect,” said he to Garat, “I always rely on first impressions.” “For him,” says the same authority, “the best reasons are suspicions,”128 and nought makes headway against suspicions, not even the most positive evidence. On September 4, 1792, talking confidentially with Pe´tion, and hard pressed with the questions that he put to him, he ends by saying, “Very well, I think that Brissot is on Brunswick’s side.”129 Naturally, finally, he, like Marat, imagines the darkest fictions, but they are less improvised, less grossly absurd, more slowly worked out, and more industriously interwoven in his calculating inquisitorial brain. “Evidently,” he says to Garat, “the Girondists are conspiring.”130 “And where?” demands Garat. “Every where,” he replies, “in Paris, throughout France, over all Europe. Gensonne´, at Paris, is plotting in the Faubourg St. An- toine, going about among the shopkeepers and persuading them that we patriots mean to pillage their shops. The Gironde (department)

127. Buchez et Roux, xx., 11, 18. (Meeting of the Jacobin Club, Oct. 29, 1792.) Speech on Lafayette, the Feuillants, and Girondists, xxxi., 360, 363. (Meeting of the Convention, May 7, 1794.) On Lafayette, the Girondists, Dan- tonists, and He´bertists.—xxxiii., 427. (Speech of Thermidor 8, year II.) 128. Garat, “Me´moires,” 87, 88. 129. Buchez et Roux, xxi., 107. (Speech of Pe´tion on the charges made against him by Robespierre.) Pe´tion justly objects that “Brunswick would be the first to cut off Brissot’s head, and Brissot is not fool enough to doubt it.” 130. Garat, 94. (After the King’s death and a little before the 10th of March, 1793.) 1022 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION has for a long time been plotting its separation from France so as to join England; the chiefs of its deputation are at the head of the plot, and mean to carry it out at any cost. Gensonne´ makes no secret of it; he tells all among them who will listen to him that they are not representatives of the nation, but plenipotentiaries of the Gi- ronde. Brissot is plotting in his journal, which is simply a tocsin of civil war; we know of his going to England, and why he went; we know all about his intimacy with that Lebrun, minister of foreign affairs, a Liegois and creature of the Austrian house. Brissot’s best friend is Clavie`re, and Clavie`re has plotted wherever he could breathe. Rabaut, treacherous like the Protestant and philosopher that he is, was not clever enough to conceal his correspondence with that courtier and traitor Montesquiou; six months ago they were working together to open Savoy and France to the Piedmontese. Servan was made general of the Pyrenean army only to give the keys of France to the Spaniards.” “Is there no doubt of this in your mind?” asks Garat. “None, whatever.”131 Such assurance, equal to that of Marat, is terrible and worse in its effect, for Robespierre’s list of conspirators is longer than that of Marat. Political and social, in Marat’s mind, the list comprehends only aristocrats and the rich; theological and moral in Robespierre’s mind, it comprehends all atheists and dishonest persons, that is to say, nearly the whole of his party. In this narrow mind, given up to abstractions and habitually classifying men under two opposite headings, whoever is not with him on the good side is against him on the bad side, and, on the bad side, the common understanding between the factious of every flag and the rogues of every degree, is natural. “All aristocrats are corrupt, and every corrupt man is an aristocrat”; for, “republican government and public morality are one

131. Ibid., 97. In 1789 Robespierre assured Garat that Necker was plundering the Treasury, and that people had seen mules loaded with the gold and silver he was sending off by millions to Geneva.—Carnot, “Me´moires,” i., 512. “Robespierre,” say Carnot and Prieur, “paid very little attention to public business, but a good deal to public officers: he made himself intolerable with his perpetual mistrust of these, never seeing any but traitors and conspirators.” The Governors / 1023 and the same thing.”132 Not only do evil-doers of both species tend through instinct and interest to league together, but their league is already perfected. One has only to open one’s eyes to detect “in all its extent” the plot they have hatched, “the frightful system of destruction of public morality.”133 Guadet, Vergniaud, Gensonne´, Dan- ton, He´bert, “all of them artificial characters,” had no other end in view: “they felt134 that, to destroy liberty, it was necessary to favor by every means whatever tended to justify egoism, wither the heart and efface that idea of moral beauty, which affords the only rule for public reason in its judgment of the defenders and enemies of humanity.” Their heirs remain; but let those be careful. Immorality is a political offence; one conspires against the State merely by making a parade of materialism or by preaching indulgence, by acting scandalously, or by following evil courses, by stock-jobbing, by dining too sumptuously; by being vicious, scheming, given to exaggeration, or “on the fence”; by exciting or perverting the people, by deceiving the people, by finding fault with the people, by distrusting the people,135 in short, when one does not march straight along on the prescribed path marked out by Robespierre according to principles: whoever stumbles or turns aside is a scoundrel, a traitor. Now, not

132. Buchez et Roux, xxxiii., 417. (Speech of Thermidor 8, year II.) 133. Ibid., xxxii., 361 (Speech May 7, 1794), and 359. “Immorality is the basis of despotism, as virtue is the essence of the Republic.” 134. Ibid., 371. 135. Buchez et Roux, xxxiii., 195. (Report of Couthon and decree in conformity therewith, Prairial 22, year II.) “The revolutionary Tribunal is organised for the punishment of the people’s enemies....Thepenalty for all offences within its jurisdiction is death. Those are held to be enemies of the people who shall have misled the people, or the representatives of the people, into measures opposed to the interests of liberty; those who shall have sought to create discouragement by favoring the undertakings of tyrants leagued against the Republic; those who shall have spread false reports to divide or disturb the people; those who shall have sought to misdirect opinion and impede popular instruction, produce depravity and corrupt the public conscience, diminish the energy and purity of revolutionary and republican principles, or stay their progress....Those who, charged with public functions, abuse them to serve the enemies of the Revolution, vex patriots, oppress the people, etc.” 1024 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION counting the Royalists, Feuillantists, Girondists, He´bertists, Danton- ists, and others already decapitated or imprisoned according to their deserts, how many traitors still remain in the Convention, on the Committees, amongst the representatives on mission, in the administrative bodies not properly weeded out, amongst petty tyrannic underlings and the entire ruling, influential class at Paris and in the provinces? Outside of “about twenty political Trappists in the Con- vention,” outside of a small devoted group of pure Jacobins in Paris, outside of a faithful few scattered among the popular clubs of the departments, how many Fouche´s, Vadiers, Talliens, Bourdons, Col- lots, remain amongst the so-called revolutionists? How many dis- sentients are there, disguised as orthodox, charlatans disguised as patriots, and pachas disguised as sans-culottes?136 Add all this vermin to that which Marat seeks to crush out; it is no longer by hundreds of thousands, but by millions, exclaim Baudot, Jean Bon St. Andre´ and Guffroy, that the guilty must be counted and heads laid low! And all these heads, Robespierre, according to his maxims, must strike off. He is well aware of this; hostile as his intellect may be to precise ideas, he, when alone in his closet, face to face with himself, sees clearly, as clearly as Marat. Marat’s chimera, on first spreading out its wings, bore its frenzied rider swiftly onward to the charnel house; that of Robespierre, fluttering and hobbling along, reaches the goal in its turn; in its turn, it demands something to feed on, and the rhetorician, the professor of principles, begins to calculate the voracity of the monstrous brute on which he is mounted. Slower than the other, this one is still more ravenous, for, with similar claws and teeth, it has a vaster appetite. At the end of three years Robes-

136. Buchez et Roux, xxxv., 290. (“Institutions,” by Saint-Just.) “The Rev- olution is chilled. Principles have lost their vigor. Nothing remains but red- caps worn by intrigue.”—Report by Courtois, “Pie`ces justificatives” No. 20. (Letter of Pays and Rompillon, president and secretary of the Committee of Surveillance of Saint-Calais, to Robespierre, Nivose 15, year II.) “The Mountain here is composed of only a dozen or fifteen men on whom you can rely as on yourself; the rest are either deceived, seduced, corrupted, or enticed away. Public opinion is debauched by the gold and intrigues of honest folks.” The Governors / 1025 pierre has overtaken Marat, at the extreme point reached by Marat at the outset, and the theorist adopts the policy, the aim, the means, the work, and almost the vocabulary of the maniac:137 armed dictatorship of the urban mob, systematic maddening of the subsidised populace, war against the bourgeoisie, extermination of the rich, proscription of opposition writers, administrators, and deputies. Both monsters demand the same food; only, Robespierre adds “vicious men” to the ration of his monster, by way of extra and preferable game. Henceforth, he may in vain abstain from action, take refuge in his rhetoric, stop his chaste ears, and raise his hypocritical eyes to heaven, he cannot avoid seeing or hearing under his immaculate feet the streaming gore, and the bones crashing in the open jaws of the insatiable monster which he has fashioned and on which he prances.138 These ever open and hungry jaws must be daily fed with an ampler supply of human flesh; not only is he bound to let it eat, but to furnish the food, often with his own hands, except that

137. Report by Courtois, N. 43.—Cf. Hamel, iii., 43, 71.—(The following important document is on file in the Archives Nationales, F7, 4,446, and consists of two notes written by Robespierre in June and July, 1793): “Who are our enemies? The vicious and the rich. How may the civil war be stopped? Punish traitors and conspirators, especially guilty deputies and administrators; . . . make terrible examples; . . . proscribe perfidious writers and antirevolutionists; . . . internal danger comes from the bourgeois; to overcome the bourgeois, rally the people; . . . the present insurrection must be kept up; . . . It is necessary that the same plan of insurrection should go on step by step....The sans-culottes should be paid and remain in the towns. They ought to be armed, worked up, taught.” 138. The Committee of Public Safety, and Robespierre especially, knew of and commanded the drownings of Nantes, as well as the principal massacres by Carrier, Turreau, etc. (De Martel, “Etude sur Fouche´,” 257–265.)—Ibid., (“Types re´volutionnaires,” 41–49.)—Buchez et Roux, xxxiii., 101 (May 26, 1794.) Report by Bare`re and decree of the Convention ordering that “No En- glish prisoners should be taken.” Robespierre afterwards speaks in the same sense. Ibid., 458. After the capture of Newport, where they took five thousand English prisoners, the French soldiers were unwilling to execute the Conven- tion’s decree, on which Robespierre (speech of Thermidor 8) said: “I warn you that your decree against the English has been cruelly violated; England, ill- treated in our discourses, is favored by our arms.” 1026 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION he must afterwards wash them, declaring, and even believing, that no spot of blood has ever soiled them. He is generally content to caress and flatter the brute, to excuse it, to let it go on. Nevertheless, more than once, tempted by the opportunity, he points out the prey and gives it the rein.139 He is now himself starting off in quest of living prey; he casts the net of his rhetoric140 around it; he fetches it bound to the open jaws; he thrusts aside with an absolute air the arms of friends, wives, and mothers, the outstretched hands of suppliants begging for lives;141 he suddenly throttles the struggling vic- tims142 and, for fear that they might escape, he strangles them in time. Towards the last, this no longer suffices; the brute must have grander quarries, and, accordingly, a pack of hounds, beaters-up, and, willingly or not, Robespierre must equip, direct, and urge them on, at Orange, at Paris,143 ordering them to empty the prisons, and be expeditious in doing their work. Destructive instincts, long repressed by civilisation, thus devoted to butchery, become aroused. His feline physiognomy, at first “that of a domestic cat, restless but mild, changes into the savage mien of the wildcat, and next to the ferocious mien of the tiger. In the Constituent Assembly he speaks with a whine, in the Convention he froths at the mouth.”144 The monotonous drone of a stiff subprofessor changes into the personal

139. On the Girondists, Cf. “The Revolution,” ii., 216. 140. Buchez et Roux, xxx., 157. Sketch of a speech on the Fabre d’Eglantine factim.—Ibid., 336. Speech at the Jacobin Club against Clootz.—xxxii., abstract of a report on the Chabot affair, 18.—Ibid., 69. Speech on maintaining Danton’s arrest. 141. Ibid., xxx., 378. (Dec. 10, 1793.) With respect to the women who crowd the Convention in order to secure the liberty of their husbands: “Are republican women insensible to the proprieties of citizenship by remembering that they are wives?” 142. Hamel, iii., 196.—Michelet, v., 394, abstract of the judicial debates on the disposition of the Girondists: “The minutes of this decree are found in Robespierre’s handwriting.” 143. De Martel, “Types re´volutionnaires,” 44. The instructions sent to the revolutionary Tribunal at Orange are in Robespierre’s handwriting.—(Archives Nationales, F7, 4,439.) 144. Merlin de Thionville. The Governors / 1027 accent of furious passion; he hisses and grinds his teeth;145 sometimes, on a change of scene, he affects to shed tears.146 But his wildest outbursts are less alarming than his affected sensibility. The festering grudges, corrosive envies and bitter schemings which have accumulated in his breast are astonishing. The gall vessels are full, and the extravasated gall overflows on the dead. He never tires of re- executing his guillotined adversaries, the Girondists, Chaumette, He´bert and especially Danton,147 probably because Danton was the active agent in the Revolution of which he was simply the incapable pedagogue; he vents his posthumous hatred on this still warm corpse in artful insinuations and obvious misrepresentations. Thus, inwardly corroded by the venom it distils, his physical machine gets out of order, like that of Marat, but with other symptoms. When speaking in the tribune “his hands crisp with a sort of nervous contraction”; sudden tremors agitate “his shoulders and neck, shaking him convulsively to and fro.”148 “His bilious complexion becomes livid,” his eyelids quiver under his spectacles, and how he looks! “Ah,” said a Montagnard, “you would have voted as we did on the

145. Buchez et Roux, xxxii., 71. (On Danton.) “Before the day is over we shall see whether the Convention will shatter an idol a long time rotten. . . . In what respect is Danton superior to his fellow-citizens? . . . I say that the man who now hesitates is guilty....The debate, just begun, is a danger to the country.”—Also the speech in full, against Clootz. 146. Ibid., xxx., 338. “Alas, suffering patriots, what can we do, surrounded by enemies fighting in our own ranks! . . . Let us watch, for the fall of our country is not far off,” etc.—These cantatas, with the accompaniments of the celestial harp, are terrible to one who considers the circumstances. For instance, on the 3d of September, 1792, while the massacres are going on, Robespierre enters the tribune of the electoral assembly and “declares that he will calmly face the steel of the enemies of public good, and carry with him to his grave the satisfaction of having served his country, the certainty of France having preserved its liberty.—(Archives Nationales, C. ii., 58–76.) 147. Buchez et Roux, xxxii., 360, 371. (Speech of May 7, 1794.) “Danton, the most dangerous, if he had not been the most cowardly, of the enemies of his country. . . . Danton, the coldest, the most indifferent, during his country’s greatest peril.” 148. Ibid., xxxiv., 94.—Cf. the description of him by Fieveé, who saw him in the tribune at the Jacobin Club. 1028 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

9th of Thermidor, had you seen his green eyeballs!” “Physically as well as morally,” he becomes a second Marat, suﬀering all the more because his delirium is not steady, and because his policy, being a moral one, forces him to exterminate on a grander scale. But he is a discreet Marat, of a timid temperament, anxious,149 keeping his thoughts to himself, made for a school-master or a pleader, but not for taking the lead or for governing, always acting hesitatingly, and ambitious to be rather the pope, than the dictator of the Revolution.150 He would prefer to remain a political Gran- dison; he keeps the mask on to the very last, not only to the public and to others, but to himself and in his inmost conscience. The mask, indeed, has adhered to his skin; he can no longer distinguish one from the other; never did impostor more carefully conceal intentions and acts under sophisms, and persuade himself that the mask was his face, and that in telling a lie, he told the truth. Taking his word for it, he had nothing to do with the September events.151 “Previous to these occurrences, he had ceased to attend the General Council of the Commune....Heno longer went there.” He was not charged with any duty, he had no inﬂuence there; he had not provoked the arrest and murder of the Girondists.152 All

149. Merlin de Thionville “A vague, painful anxiety, due to his temperament, was the sole source of his activity.” 150. Bare`re, “Me´moires.” “He wanted to rule France influentially rather than directly.”—Buchez et Roux, xiv., 188. (Article by Marat.) During the early sessions of the Legislative Assembly, Marat saw Robespierre on one occasion, and explained to him his plans for exciting popular outbreaks, and for his purifying massacres. “Robespierre listened to me with dismay, turned pale, and kept silent for some moments. This interview confirmed me in the idea I always had of him, that he combined the enlightenment of a wise senator with the uprightness of a genuine good man and the zeal of a true patriot, but that he equally lacked the views and boldness of a statesman.”—Thibaudeau, “Me´- moires,” 58.—He was the only member of the Committee of Public Safety who did not join the department missions. 151. Buchez et Roux, xx., 198. (Speech of Robespierre in the Convention, November 5, 1792.) 152. All these statements by Robespierre are opposed to the truth.— (“Proce`s-verbaux des Seánces de la Commune de Paris.”) Sep. 1, 1792, Robes- The Governors / 1029 he did was to “speak frankly concerning certain members of the Committee of Twenty-one”; as “a magistrate” and “one of a municipal assembly.” Should he not “explain himself freely on the authors of a dangerous plot?” Besides, the Commune “far from provoking the 2d of September did all in its power to prevent it.” In fine, but one innocent person perished, “which is undoubtedly one too many. Citizens, mourn over this cruel mistake; we too have long pierre speaks twice at the evening session.—The testimony of two persons, both agreeing, indicate, moreover, that he spoke at the morning session, the names of the speakers not being given. “The question,” says Pe´tion (Buchez et Roux, xxi., 103), “was the decree opening the barriers.” This decree is under discussion at the Commune at the morning session of September 1: “Robespierre, on this question, spoke in the most animated manner, wandering off in sombre flights of imagination: he saw precipices at his feet and plots of liberticides; he designated the pretended conspirators.”—Louvet (ibid., 130), assigns the same date (except that he takes the evening for the morning session), for Robespierre’s first denunciation of the Girondists: “Nobody, then,” says Robespierre, “dare name the traitors? Very well, I denounce them. I denounce them for the security of the people. I denounce the liberticide Brissot, the Girondist faction, the villainous committee of twenty-one in the National Assembly. I denounce them for having sold France to Brunswick and for having received pay in advance for their baseness.”—Sep. 2 (“Proce`s-verbaux de la Commune,” evening session), “MM. Billaud-Varennes and Robespierre, in developing their civic sentiments, . . . denounce to the Conseil-Geńe´ral the conspirators in favor of the Duke of Brunswick, whom a powerful party want to put on the throne of France.”—September 3, at 6 o’clock in the morning (Buchez et Roux, 16, 132, letter of Louvet), commissioners of the Commune present themselves at Bris- sot’s house with an order to inspect his papers; one of them says to Brissot that he has eight similar orders against the Gironde deputies and that he is to begin with Guadet. (Letter of Brissot complaining of this visit, Moniteur, Sep. 7, 1792.) This same day, Sep. 3, Robespierre presides at the Commune. (Granier de Cassagnac, “Les Girondins” ii., 63.) It is here that a deputation of the Mau- conseil section comes to find him, and he is charged by the “Conseil” with a commission at the Temple.—Septem. 4 (Buchez et Roux, xxi., 106, Speech of Pe´tion), the Commune issues a warrant of arrest against Roland; Danton comes to the Mayoralty with Robespierre and has the warrant revoked; Robespierre ends by telling Pe´tion: “I believe that Brissot belongs to Brunswick.”—Ibid., 506. “Robespierre (before Septem. 2), took the lead in the Conseil.”—Ibid., 107. “Robespierre,” I said, “you are making a good deal of mischief. Your denunciations, your fears, hatreds, and suspicions, excite the people.” 1030 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION mourned over it! But, as all things human come to an end, let your tears cease to flow.” When the sovereign people resumes its delegated power and exercises its inalienable rights, we have only to bow our heads. Moreover, it is just, wise, and good: “in all that it undertakes, all is virtue and truth; nothing can be excess, error, or crime.”153 It must intervene when its true representatives are hampered by the law: “let it assemble in its sections and compel the arrest of faithless deputies.”154 What is more legal than such a motion, which is the only part Robespierre took on the 31st of May. He is too scrupulous to commit or prescribe an illegal act. That will do for the Dantons, the Marats, men of relaxed morals or excited brains, who if need be, tramp in the gutters and roll up their shirt- sleeves; as to himself, he can do nothing that would ostensibly derange or soil the dress proper to an honest man and irreproachable citizen. In the Committee of Public Safety, he merely executes the decrees of the Convention, and the Convention is always free. He a dictator! He is merely one of seven hundred deputies, and his authority, if he has any, is simply the legitimate ascendency of reason and virtue.155 He a murderer! If he has denounced conspirators, it is the Convention which summons these before the revolutionary Tri- bunal,156 and the revolutionary Tribunal pronounces judgment on them. He a terrorist! He merely seeks to simplify the established proceedings, so as to secure a speedier release of the innocent, the punishment of the guilty, and the final purgation that is to render liberty and morals the order of the day.157 Before uttering all this he almost believes it, and, when he has uttered it he believes it fully.158

153. Garat, 86.—Cf. Hamel, i., 264. (Speech, June 9, 1791.) 154. “The Revolution,” ii., 338, 339. (Speech, Aug. 3, 1792.) 155. Buchez et Roux, xxxiii., 420. (Speech, Thermidor 8.) 156. Ibid., xxxii., 71. (Speech against Danton.) “What have you done that you have not done freely?” 157. Ibid., xxxiii., 199 and 221. (Speech on the law of Prairial 22.) 158. Mirabeau said of Robespierre: “Whatever that man has said, he believes in it.”—Robespierre, Duplay’s guest, dined every day with Duplay, a juryman in the revolutionary Tribunal and cooperator for the guillotine, at eighteen francs a day. The talk at the table probably turned on the current abstractions; The Governors / 1031

When nature and history combine, to produce a character, they succeed better than man’s imagination. Neither Molie`re in his “Tar- tuffe,” nor Shakespeare in his “Richard III.,” dared bring on the stage a hypocrite believing himself sincere, and a Cain that regarded himself as an Abel. There he stands on a colossal stage, in the presence of a hundred thousand spectators, on the 8th of June, 1794, the most glorious day of his life, at the feˆte in honor of the Supreme Being, which is the glorious triumph of his doctrine and the official consecration of his popedom. Two characters are found in Robes- pierre, as in the Revolution which he represents: one, apparent, paraded, external, and the other hidden, dissembled, inward, the latter being overlaid by the former. The first one all for show, fashioned out of purely cerebral cogitations, is as artificial as the solemn farce going on around him. According to David’s programme, the cavalcade of supernumeraries who file in front of an allegorical mountain, gesticulate and shout at the command, and under the eyes, of Henriot and his gendarmes,159 manifesting at the appointed time the emotions which are prescribed for them. At five o’clock in the morning “friends, husbands, wives, relations, and children will embrace....Theoldman, his eyes streaming with tears of joy, feels himself rejuvenated.” At two o’clock, on the turf-laid terraces of the sacred mountain “all will show a state of commotion and excitement: mothers here press to their bosoms the infants they suckle, and there offer them up in homage to the author of Nature, while youths, but there must have been frequent allusions to the condemnations of the day, and, even when not mentioned, they were in their minds. Only Robert Brown- ing, at the present day, could imagine and revive what was spoken and thought in those evening conversations before the mother and daughters. 159. Buchez et Roux, xxxiii., 151.—Cf. Dauban, “Paris en 1794,” p. 386 (illustration), and 392, “Feˆte de l’Etre Supreme a` Sceaux,” according to the programme drawn up by the patriot Palloy. “All citizens are requested to be at their windows or doors, even those occupying lodgings in by-streets.”—Ibid., 399. “Youthful citizens will strew flowers at each station, fathers will embrace their children and mothers turn their eyes upward to heaven.”—Moniteur, xxx., 653. “Plan of the feˆte in honor of the Supreme Being, drawn up by David, and decreed by the National Convention.” 1032 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION aglow with the ardor of battle, simultaneously draw their swords and hand them to their venerable fathers. Sharing in the enthusiasm of their sons, the transported old men embrace them and bestow on them the paternal benediction....Allthemendistributed around the ‘Field of Reunion’ sing in chorus the (first) refrain....Allthe women distributed around the ‘Field of Reunion’ sing in unison the (second) refrain....AllFrenchmen partake of each other’s sentiments in one grand fraternal embrace.” Such an idyl, performed to the beating of drums, in the presence of moral symbols and colored pasteboard divinities, what could better please the counterfeit moralist, unable to distinguish the false from the true, and whose skin- deep sensibility is borrowed from sentimental authors! “For the first time” his glowing countenance beams with joy, while “the enthusiasm”160 of the scribe overflows, as usual, in book phraseology: “Behold!” he exclaims, “that which is most interesting in humanity! The Universe is here assembled! O, Nature, how sublime, how exquisite is thy power! How tyrants must quail at the contemplation of this festival!” Is not he himself its most dazzling ornament? Was not he unanimously chosen to preside over the Convention and conduct the ceremonies? Is he not the founder of the new cult, the only pure worship on the face of the earth, approved of by morality and reason? Wearing the uniform of a representative, nankeen breeches, blue coat, tricolored sash, and plumed hat,161 holding in his hand a bouquet of flowers and grain, he marches at the head of the Convention and officiates on the platform; he sets fire to the veil which hides from view the idol representing “Atheism,” and suddenly, through an ingenious contrivance, the majestic statue of “Wisdom” appears in its place. He then addresses the crowd, over and over again, exhorting, apostrophising, preaching, elevating his soul to the Supreme Being, and with what oratorical combinations! What an academic swell of bombastic cadences, strung together to enforce his tirades! How cunning the even balance of adjective and

160. Buchez et Roux, xxxiii., 176. (Narrative by Valate.) 161. Hamel, iii., 541. The Governors / 1033 substantive!162 From these faded rhetorical flowers, arranged as if for a prize distribution or a funeral oration, exhales a sanctimonious, collegiate odor which he complacently breathes, and which intoxi- cates him. At this moment, he must certainly be in earnest; there is no hesitation or reserve in his self-admiration; he is not only in his own eyes a great writer and great orator, but a great statesman and great citizen: his artificial, philosophic conscience awards him only praise. But look underneath, or rather wait a moment. Signs of impatience and antipathy appear behind his back: Lecointre has braved him openly; numerous insults, and, worse than these, sar- casms, reach his ears. On such an occasion, and in such a place! Against the pontiff of Truth, the apostle of Virtue! The miscreants, how dare they! Silent and pale, he suppresses his rage, and,163 losing his balance, closing his eyes, he plunges headlong on the path of murder: cost what it will, the miscreants must perish and without loss of time. To expedite matters, he must get their heads off quietly, and as “up to this time things have been managed confidentially in the Committee of Public Safety,” he, alone with Couthon, two days after, without informing his colleagues,164 draws up, brings to the Convention, and has passed the terrible act of Prairial which places everybody’s life at his disposal. In his crafty, blundering haste, he has demanded too much; each one, on reflection, becomes alarmed

162. Buchez et Roux, xxviii., 178, 180. 163. Ibid., 177 (Narrative by Vilate). Ibid., 170, Notes by Robespierre on Bourdon (de l’Oise) 417. Passages erased by Robespierre in the manuscript of his speech of Thermidor 8.—249. Analogous passages in his speech as delivered, all these indications enable us to trace the depths of his resentment. 164. Ibid., 183. Memoirs of Billaud-Varennes, Collot d’Herbois, Vadier, and Bare`re. “The next day after Prairial 22, at the morning session (of the Com- mittee of Public Safety) . . . I now see, says Robespierre, that I stand alone, with nobody to support me, and, getting violently excited, he launched out against the members of the Committee who had conspired against him. He shouted so loud as to collect together a number of citizens on the Tuileries terrace.” Finally, “he pushed hypocrisy so far as to shed tears.” The nervous machine, I imagine, broke down.—Another member of the Committee, Prieur (Carnot, “Me´moires,” ii., 525), relates that, in the month of Floreál, after another equally long and violent session, “Robespierre, exhausted, became ill.” 1034 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION for himself; he is compelled to back out, to protest that he is mis- understood, admit that representatives are excepted, and, accordingly, to sheathe the knife he has already applied to his adversaries’ throats. But he still holds it in his grasp. He watches them, and, pretending to retreat, affects a renunciation, crouched in his corner,165 waiting until they discredit themselves, so as to spring upon them a second time. He has not to wait long, for the exterminating machine he set up on the 22d of Prairial, is in their hands, and it has to work as he planned it, namely, by making rapid turns and almost haphazard: the odium of a blind sweeping massacre rests with them; he not only makes no opposition to this, but, while pretending to abstain from it, he urges it on. Secluded in the private office of his secret police, he orders arrests;166 he sends out his principal bloodhound, Herman; he first signs and then despatches the resolution by which it is supposed that there are conspirators among those in confinement and which, authorising spies or paid informers, is to provide the guillotine with those vast batches which “purge and clean prisons out in a trice.”167 “I am not responsible,” he states later

165. Carnot, “Me´moires,” ii., 526. “As his bureau was in a separate place, where none of us set foot, he could retire to it without coming in contact with any of us, as in effect, he did. He even made a pretence of passing through the committee rooms, after the session was over, and he signed some papers; but he really neglected nothing, except our common discussions. He held frequent conferences in his house with the presidents of the revolutionary Tribunals, over which his influence was greater than ever.” 166. Dauban, “Paris en 1794,” 563.—Archives Nationales, AF.II., 58. The signature of Robespierre, in his own handwriting, is found affixed to many of the resolutions of the Committee of Public Safety, passed Thermidor 5 and 7, and those of Saint-Just and Couthon after this, up to Thermidor 3, 6, and 7. On the register of the minutes of the Committee of Public Safety, Robespierre is always recorded as present at all meetings between Messidor 1 and Thermidor 8, inclusive. 167. Archives Nationales, F7, 4,438. Report to the Committee of Public Safety by Herman, Commissioner of the Civil and Police administrations and of the Courts, Messidor 3, year II. “The Committee charged with a general supervision of the prisons, and obliged to recognise that all the rascals mostly concerned with liberticide plots are . . . still in the prisons, forming a band apart, and rendering surveillance very troublesome; they are a constant source of The Governors / 1035 on. . . . “My lack of power to do any good, to arrest the evil, forced me for more than six weeks to abandon my post on the Committee of Public Safety.”168 To ruin his adversaries by murders committed by him, by those which he makes them commit and which he imputes to them, to whitewash himself and blacken them with the same stroke of the brush, what intense delight! If the natural conscience murmurs in whispers at moments, the acquired superposed conscience immediately imposes silence, concealing personal hatreds under public pretexts: the guillotined, after all, were aristocrats, and whoever comes under the guillotine is immoral. Thus, the means are good and the end better; in employing the means, as well as in pursuing the end, the function is sacerdotal. Such is the scenic exterior of the Revolution, a specious mask with a hideous visage beneath it, under the reign of a nominal humanitarian theory, covering over the effective dictatorship of evil and low passions. In its true representative, as in itself, we see ferocity issuing from philanthropy, and, from the cuistre, the executioner.

disorder, always getting up attempts to escape, being a daily assemblage of persons devoting themselves wholly to imprecations against liberty and its defenders....It would be easy to point out in each prison, those who have served, and are to serve, the diverse factions, the diverse conspiracies....Itmaybenec- essary, perhaps, to purge the prisons at once and free the soil of liberty of their ﬁlth, the refuse of humanity.” The Committee of Public Safety consequently “charges the Commission to ascertain in the prisons of Paris . . . who have been more specially concerned in the diverse factions and conspiracies that the National Convention has destroyed.” The word “approved” appears at the foot of the resolution in Robespierre’s handwriting, then the signature of Robespierre, and lower down, those of Billaud and Bare`re. A similar resolution providing for the 7th of Messidor, signed by the same parties and ﬁve others, is despatched the same day. (M. de Martel came across and made use of this conclusive document before I did, most of it being quoted in “Les Types Re´volutionnaires.”) 168. Buchez et Roux, xxxiii., 434. 9 CHAPTER II =

The Rulers of the Country— I. The Convention—The “Plain”—The “Moun- tain”—Degradation of Souls—Parades which the Convention is obliged to make— II. How these are carried out—Its slavery and servility—Its participation in crime— III. The Committee of Public Safety—Men who do the work—Carnot, Prieur de-la-Coˆte d’Or, Jean Bon Saint Andre´, Robert Lindet— IV. The Statesmen—Billaud-Varennes, Collot d’Herbois, Robespierre, Couthon, and Saint-Just—Conditions of this rule—Dangers to which they are subject— Their dissensions—Pressure of Fear and Theory— V. Their official organs— Reports by Saint-Just and Bare`re—Quality of reports and reporters— VI. Rep- resentatives on Mission—Their absolute power—Their perils and their fear— Fit for their work—Effect of this situation— VII. Eruption of brutal instincts— Duquesnoy at Metz—Dumont at Amiens—Drunkards—Cusset, Bourbotte, Moustier, Bourdon de l’Oise, Dartigoyte— VIII. Approach of madness—Loss of common-sense—Fabre, Gaston, Guiter, in the army of the Eastern Pyrenees— Baudot, Lebas, Saint-Just, and their predecessors and successors in the army of the Rhine—Furious excitement—Lebon at Arras, and Carrier at Nantes— IX. The development of vice—Vanity and the need of gambling—Collot d’Herbois, Ysabeau, Tallien—The Robbers—Tallien, Javogues, Rove`re, Fouche´—Two sources of cruelty—Need of demonstrating one’s power—Saint-Just in the Pas- de-Calais department, and in Alsace—Collot d’Herbois at Lyons—Pressure exercised by the Representatives on the tribunals—Pleasure caused by death and suffering—Monestier, Fouche´, Collot d’Herbois, Lebon, and Carrier.

LET US follow the operations of the new government from the ﬁrst to the last of its derivations, those of its ruling bodies and leaders, its assemblies, committees, delegates, administrators, and underlings

1036 The Governors / 1037 of every kind and degree. Like living ﬂesh stamped with a red-hot iron, so do their brows bear the imprint of two stigmata, each with its own cicatrice and discoloration. In vain do they, too, strive to conceal their scars: we detect under the crowns and titles they assume the brand of the slave or the mark of the tyrant.

I At the Tuileries, the omnipotent Convention sits enthroned in the theatre, converted into an Assembly room. It carries on its deliberations daily, in grand style. Its decrees, received with blind obedience, startle France and upset all Europe. At a distance, its majesty is imposing, more august than that of the republican senate in Rome. Near by, the effect is quite otherwise; these undisputed sovereigns are serfs who live in trances, and justly so, for, nowhere, even in prison, is there more constraint and less security than on their benches. After the 2d of June, 1793, their inviolable precincts, the grand official reservoir fromwhich legal authority flows, becomesa sort of tank, into which the revolutionary net plunges and successfully brings out its choicest fish, singly or by the dozen, and sometimes in vast numbers; at first, the sixty-seven Girondist deputies, who are executed or proscribed; then, the seventy-three members of the “Right,” swept off in one day and lodged in the prison of La Force; next, the prominent Jacobins: Osselin, arrested on the 19th of Brumaire, Bazire, Chabot, and Delaunay, accused by decree on the 24th Brumaire, Fabre d’Eglantine, arrested on the 24th of Ni- vose, Bernard, guillotined on the 3d of Pluviose, Anacharsis Clootz guillotined on the 4th of Germinal, He´rault-Sećhelles, Lacroix, Phi- lippeaux, Camille Desmoulins and Danton, guillotined with four others on the 10th of Germinal, Simon, guillotined on the 24th of Germinal, and Osselin, guillotined on the 8th of Messidor. Naturally, the others take warning and are careful. At the opening of the session they are seen entering the hall, looking uneasy, “full of distrust,”1

1. Thibaudeau: “Me´moires,” i., 47, 70.—Durand-Maillane, “Me´moires,” 183.—Vatel, “Charlotte Corday et les Girondins,” ii., 269. Out of the seventy- 1038 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION like animals driven into a pen and suspicious of a trap. “Each,” writes an eye-witness, “acted and spoke with circumspection, for fear of being charged with some crime: in effect, nothing was unimportant, the seat one took, a glance of the eye, a gesture, a murmur, a smile.” Hence, they flock instinctively to the side which is best sheltered, the left side. “The tide flowed towards the summit of the Mountain; the right side was deserted. . . . Many took no side at all, and, during the session, often changed their seats, thinking that they might thus elude the spy by donning a mixed hue and keeping on good terms with everybody. The most prudent never sat down; they kept off the benches, at the foot of the tribune, and, on matters getting to be serious, slipped quietly out of the hall.” Most of themtook refuge in their committee-rooms; each tries to be overlooked, to be obscure, to appear insignificant or absent.2 During the four months following the 2d of June, the hall of the Convention is half or three- quarters empty; the election of a president does not bring out two hundred and fifty voters;3 only two hundred, one hundred, fifty votes, elect the Committees of Public Safety and General Security; about fifty votes elect the judges of the revolutionary Tribunal; less than ten votes elect their substitutes;4 not one vote is cast for the adoption of the decree indicting the deputy, Dulaure;5 “no member six presidents of the Convention eighteen were guillotined, eight transported, twenty-two declared outlaws, six incarcerated, three who committed suicide, and four who became insane, in all sixty-one. All who served twice perished by a violent death. 2. Moniteur, xviii., 38. (Speech by Amar, reporter, Oct. 3, 1793.) “The apparently negative behavior of the minority in the Convention, since the 2d of June, is a new plot hatched by Barbaroux.” 3. Mortimer-Ternaux, viii., 44. Election of Collot d’Herbois as president by one hundred and fifty-one out of two hundred and forty-one votes, June 13, 1793.—Moniteur, xvii., 366. Election of He´rault-Sećhelles as president by one hundred and sixty-five out of two hundred and thirty-six votes, Aug. 3, 1793. 4. “The Revolution,” vol. iii., ch. i.—Mortimer-Ternaux, vii., 435. (The three substitutes obtain, the first, nine votes, the second, six votes, and the third, five votes.) 5. Marcelin Boudet, “Les Conventionnels d’Auvergne,” 206. The Governors / 1039 rises for or against it; there is no vote”; the president, nevertheless, pronounces the act passed and “the Marais lets things take their course.” “Marais frogs” is the appellation bestowed on thembefore the 2d of June, when, amongst the dregs of the “Centre,” they “broke” with the “Mountain”; now, they still number four hundred and fifty, three times as many as the Montagnards; but they purposely keep quiet; their old name “renders them, so to say, soft; their ears ring with eternal menaces; their hearts shrivel up with terror;6 while their tongues, paralysed by habitual silence, cleave to the roofs of their mouths. In vain do they keep in the back-ground, consent to everything, ask nothing for themselves but personal safety, and surrender all else, their votes, their wills and their consciences; they feel that their life hangs by a thread. The greatest mute among them all, Sieýe`s, denounced in the Jacobin Club, barely escapes, and through the protection of his shoemaker, who rises and exclaims: “That Sieýe`s! I know him. He don’t meddle with politics. He does nothing but read his book. I make his shoes and will answer for him.”7 Of course, previous to the 9th of Thermidor, none of them open their mouths; it is only the Montagnards who make speeches, and on the countersign being given. If Legendre, the admirer, disciple, and confidential friend of Danton, dares at one time interfere in relation to the decree which sends his friend to the scaffold, asking that he may first be heard, it is only to retract immediately; that very evening, at the Jacobin club, for greater security, “he rolls in the mud”;8 he declares “that he submits to the judgment of the revolutionary Tribunal,” and swears to denounce “whoever shall oppose any obstacle to the execution of the decree.”9 Has not Robespierre taught him a lesson, and in his most pedantic manner? What is more beau-

6. Dussault: “Fragment pour servir a` l’histoire de la Convention.” 7. Sainte-Beuve: “Causeries du Lundi,” v., 216. (According to the unpublished papers of Sieýe`s.) 8. Words of Michelet. 9. Moniteur, xx., 95, 135. (Sessions of Germinal II. in the Convention and at the Jacobin club.) 1040 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION tiful, says the great moralist, more sublime, than an Assembly which purges itself?10 Thus, not only is the net which has already dragged out so many palpitating victims still intact, but it is enlarged and set again, only, the fish are now caught on the “Left” as well as on the “Right,” and preferably on the topmost benches of the “Mountain.”11 And better still, through the law of Prairial 22, its meshes are reduced in size and its width increased; with such admirable tackle, the tank could not fail to be exhausted. A little before the 9th of Thermidor, David, who was one of Robespierre’s devoted adherents, himself exclaimed: “Will twenty of us be left on the Moun- tain?” About the same time, Legendre, Thuriot, Leónard Bourdon, Tallien, Bourdon de l’Oise, and others, each has a spy all day long at his heels; there are thirty deputies to be proscribed and their names are whispered about; whereupon, sixty spring out of bed, feeling sure that they will be seized the next morning before they can get up.12 Subject to such a system, prolonged for so many months, people sink down and become discouraged. “Everybody stooped so as to pass beneath the popular yoke.13 Everybody became one of the low

10. Buchez et Roux, xxxii., 17. (Sessions of Ventose 26, year II. Speech of Robespierre.) “In what country has a powerful senate ever sought in its own bosom for the betrayers of the common cause and handed them over to the sword of the law? Who has ever furnished the world with this spectacle? You, my fellow citizens.” 11. Mio´t de Melito, “Me`moires,” i. 44. Danton, at table in the ministry of Foreign Affairs, remarked: “The Revolution, like Saturn, eats its own children.” As to Camille Desmoulins, “His melancholy already indicated a presentiment of his fate; the few words he allowed to escape himalways turned on questions and observations concerning the nature of punishment, inflicted on those condemned by the revolutionary Tribunal and the best way of preparing oneself for that event and enduring it.” 12. Buchez et Roux, xxxiii., 363, 357. (Police reports on the deputies, Mes- sidor 4, and following days.)—Vilate: “Coups secre`tes de la Re´volution du 9 et 10 Thermidor,” a list designated by Bare`re.—Denunciation by Lecointre. (2d ed. p. 13.) 13. Thibaudeau, i., 47. “Just as in ordinary times one tries to elevate oneself, so does one strive in these times of calamity to lower oneself and be forgotten, or atone for one’s inferiority by seeking to degrade oneself.” The Governors / 1041 class....Clothes, manners, refinement, cleanliness, the conveniences of life, civility and politeness were all renounced.” People wear their clothes indecently and curse and swear; they try to resemble the sans-culottes Montagnards “who are profane and dress themselves like so many dock-loafers”;14 at Armonville, the carder, who presides (at a meeting) wears a woolen cap, and similarly at Cusset, a gauze-workman, who is always drunk. Only Robespierre can appear in neat attire; others, without his ascendency, “big- bellied” demi-suspects, the remains of the ancient re´gime, might become dangerous; they do well not to attract the attention of the foul-mouthed spy who cannot spell;15 especially is it important at a meeting to be one of the crowd and remain unnoticed by the paid claqueurs, drunken swaggerers, and “fat petticoats” of the tribunes. It is even essential to shout in harmony with them and join in their bar-roomdances. The deputations of the popular clubs comefor fourteen months to the bar of the house and recite their commonplace or bombastic tirades, and the Convention is forced to applaud them. For nine months,16 street ballad-singers and coffee-house ranters attend in full session and sing the rhymes of the day, while the

14. Madame Roland: “Me´moires,” i., 23. 15. Archives Nationales, F7, 3,1167. This set of papers contains ﬁve hundred and thirty-seven police reports, especially those of Nivose, year II. The following is a sample Report of Nivose 25, year II. “Being on a deputation to the Convention, some coleagues took me to dine in the old Breteuil gardens, in a large roomwith a nice ﬂoor ....Thebill-of-fare was called for, and I found that after having eaten a ritz soup, some meat, a bottle of wine, and two potatoes, I had spent, as they told me, eight francs twelve sous, because I am not rich. ‘Foutre!’ I say to them, how much do the rich pay here?...Itiswell to state that I saw some deputies come into this large hall, also former marquises, counts, and knights of the poniard of the ancient re´gime . . . but I confess that I cannot remember the true names of these former nobles...forthedevil himself could not recognise those b disguised like sans-culottes.” 16. Buchez et Roux, xxviii., 237, 308. (July 5 and 14, 1793.)—Moniteur, xix., 716. (Ventose 26, year II.) Danton secures the passage of a decree “that nothing but prose shall be heard at the bar.” Nevertheless, after his execution, this sort of parade begins again. On the 12th of Messidor, “a citizen admitted to the bar reads a poem composed by him in honor of the success of our arms on the Sambre.” (Moniteur, xvi., 101.) 1042 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Convention is obliged to join in the chorus. For six weeks,17 the profaners of churches come to the hall and display their dance-house buffooneries, and the Convention has not only to put up with these, but also to take part in them. Never, even in imperial Rome, under Nero and Heliogabalus, did a senate descend so low. II Observe one of their parades, that of Brumaire 20th, 22d, or 30th, which masquerade often occurs several times a week and is always the same, with scarcely any variation. Male and female wretches march in procession to the doors of the deputies’ hall, still “drunk with the wine imbibed from chalices, after eating mackerel broiled in patens,” besides refreshing themselves on the way. “Mounted astride of asses, covered with a chasuble and guided by a stole,” they halt at each low smoking-den, holding a pyx in their hand; the bar-tender, with a mug in his hand, fills it, and, at each station, they toss off their bumpers, one after the other, in imitation of the Mass, and which they repeat in the street in their own fashion. On finishing this, they don copes, chasubles, and dalmatica, and, in two long lines, file before the benches of the Convention. Some of them bear on hand-barrows or in baskets, candelabra, chalices, gold and silver salvers, monstrances, and reliquaries; others hold aloft banners, crosses, and other ecclesiastical spoils. In the mean time “bands play the air of the carmagnole and ‘Malbrook.’ . . . On the entry of the dais, they strike up ‘Ah! le bel oiseau’”;18 all at once the masqueraders throw off their disguise, and, mitres, stoles, chasubles flung in the air, “disclose to view the defenders of the country in the national uniform.” Peals of laughter, shouts and enthusiasm, while the in- strumental din becomes louder! The procession, now in full blast,

17. Moniteur, xviii., 369, 397, 399, 420, 455, 469, 471, 479, 488, 492, 500, etc.—Mercier, “Le Nouveau Paris,” ii., 96.—Dauban, “La Demagogie en 1793,” 500, 505. (Articles by Prud’homme and Diurnal by Beaulieu.) 18. Moniteur, xviii., 420, 399.—“Ah, le bel oiseau,” was a song chosen for its symbolic and double meaning, one pastoral and the other licentious. The Governors / 1043 demands the carmagnole, and the Convention consents; even some of the deputies descend fromtheir benches and cut the pigeon-wing with the merry prostitutes. To wind up, the Convention decrees that it will attend that evening the feˆte of Reason and, in fact, they go in a body. Behind an actress in short petticoats wearing a red cap, representing Liberty or Reason, march the deputies, likewise in red caps, shouting and singing until they reach the new temple, which is built of planks and pasteboard in the choir of Notre Dame. They take their seats in the front rows, while the Goddess, and old frequenter of the suppers of the Duc de Soubise, along with “all the pretty dames of the Opera,” display before them their operatic graces.19 They sing the “Hymn to Liberty,” and, since the Conven- tion has that morning decreed that it must sing, I suppose that it also joined in.20 After this there follows dancing; but, unfortunately, the authorities are wanting for stating whether the Convention danced or not. In any event, it is present at the dance, and thus consecrates an unique orgy, not Rubens’s “Kermesse” in the open air, racy and healthy, but a nocturnal boulevard-jolliﬁcation, a “Mardi-gras” composed of lean and haggard scape-graces. In the great nave of the Cathedral, “the dancers, almost naked, with bare necks and breasts, and stockings down at the heel,” writhe and stamp, “howling the carmagnole.” In the side chapels, which are “shut oﬀ by high tapestries, prostitutes with shrill voices” pursue their avocation.21 To descend to this low level so barefacedly, to fraternise with barrier sots, and wenches, to endure their embraces and hiccoughs, is bad enough, even for docile deputies. More than

19. De Goncourt, “La Socie´te´ française pendant la Revolution,” 418. (Ar- ticle from“Peˆre Duchesne.”)—Dauban, ibid., 506. (Article by Prud’homme.) “Liberty on a seat of verdure, receives the homage of republicans, male and female, . . . and then . . . she turns and bestows a benevolent regard on her friends.” 20. Moniteur, xviii., 399. Session of Brumaire 20, on motion of Thuriot: “I move that the Convention attends the temple of Reason to sing the hymn to Liberty.”—“The motion of Thuriot is decreed.” 21. Mercier, ibid., 99. (Similar scenes in the churches of St. Eustache and St. Gervais.) 1044 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION one half of them loathed it beforehand and remained at home; after this they do not feel disposed to attend the Convention.22 But the “Mountain sends for them, and an officer brings them back”; it is necessary that they should coo¨perate through their presence and felicitations in the profanations and apostasies which ensue;23 it is necessary that they should approve of and decree that which they hold in horror, not alone folly and nonsense, but crime, the murder of innocent people, and that of their friends. All this is done. “Unan- imously, and with the loudest applause,” the Left, united with the Right, sends Danton to the scaffold, its natural chieftain, the great promoter and leader of the Revolution.24 “Unanimously, and with the loudest applause,” the Right, united to the Left, votes the worse decrees of the revolutionary government.25 “Unanimously,” with approbatory and enthusiastic cheers, manifesting the warmest sympathy for Collot d’Herbois, Couthon, and Robespierre,26 the Con-

22. Durand-Maillane, “Me´moires,” 182.—Gre´goire, “Me´moires,” ii., 34. On the 7th of November, 1793, in the great scene of the abjurations, Gre´goire alone resisted, declaring: “I remain a bishop; I invoke freedom of worship.” “Outcries burst forth to stifle my voice the pitch of which I raised proportionately. . . . A demoniac scene occurred, worthy of Milton....Ideclare that in making this speech I thought I was pronouncing sentence of death on myself.” For several days, emissaries were sent to him, either deputies or bandits, to try and make himretract. On the 11th of Novembera placard posted throughout Paris declared himresponsible for the continuance of fanaticism.“For about two years, I was almost the only one in Paris who wore the ecclesiastical costume.” 23. Moniteur, xviii., 480. (Session of Brumaire 30.) N....“Imustmake known the ceremony which took place here today. I move that the speeches and details of this day be inserted in full in the bulletin, and sent to all the departments.” (Another deputy): “And do not neglect to state that the Right was never so well furnished.” (Laughter and applause.) 24. Buchez et Roux, xxxii., 103. (Germinal 11.)—Moniteur, xx., 124. (Ger- minal 15.) Decree for cutting short the defence of Danton and his accused associates. 25. Moniteur, xx., 226. (Germinal 26. Report by Saint-Just and decree on the police.)—Ibid., xix., 54. (Report by Robespierre, and decree on the principles of revolutionary government, Nivose 5.)—Ibid., xx., 567, 589. Prairial 6 (Decree forbidding the imprisonment of any Englishman or Hanoverian), and xxi., 13. (Messidor 16.) 26. Moniteur, xx., 544. After the effort of Ladmiral against Collot d’Herbois, the latter appears in the tribune. “The loudest applause greets himfromall The Governors / 1045 vention, through multiplied and spontaneous reelections, maintains the homicidal government which the Plain detests, because it is homicidal, and which the Mountain detests, because it is decimated by it. Plain and Mountain, by virtue of terror, majority after majority, end in consenting to and bringing about their own suicide: on the 22nd of Prairial, the entire Convention has stretched out its neck;27 on the 8th of Thermidor, for a quarter of an hour after Robespierre’s speech,28 it has again stretched this out, and would probably have succumbed, had not five or six of them, whom Robespierre designated or named, Bourdon de l’Oise, Vadier, Cambon, Billaud, and Panis, stimulated by the animal instinct of self-preservation, raised their arms to ward off the knife. Nothing but imminent, personal, mortal danger could, in these prostrated beings, supplant long- continued fear with still greater fear. Later on, Sieýe`s, on being asked how he acted in these times, replied, “I lived.” In effect, he and others are reduced to that; they succeeded in doing this, at all costs, and at what a price!29 His private notes, still redolent of his daily disgust, his most secret memoranda, confirm the statement;30 on the sides of the house.”—Ibid., xxi., 173. (Messidor 21.) On the report of Bare`re who praises the conduct of Joseph Lebon, criticising nothing but “somewhat harsh formalities,” a decree is passed to the order of the day, which is “adopted unanimously with great applause.” 27. Moniteur, xx., 698, 715, 716, 719. (Prairial 22 and 24.) After the speeches of Robespierre and Couthon, “Loud and renewed applause; the plaudits begin over again and are prolonged.” Couthon, having declared that the Committee of Public Safety was ready to resign, “on all sides there were cries of No, No.”—Ibid., xxi., 268. (Thermidor 2.) Eulogy of the revolutionary government by Bare`re and decree of the police “unanimously adopted amidst the loudest applause.” 28. Moniteur, xxi., 329. 29. Lafayette, “Me´moires,” iv., 330. “At last came the 9th of Thermidor. It was not due to people of common sense. Their terror was so great that an estimable deputy, to whom one of his colleagues put the question, no witness being present, ‘how long must we endure this tyranny?’ was upset by it to such a degree as to denounce him.” 30. Sainte-Beuve, “Causeries du Lundi,” v., 209. (Sieýe`s’ unpublished papers.)—Moniteur, xviii., 631, containing an example of both the terror and style of the most eminent men, among others of Fourcroy the celebrated chemist, then deputy, and later, Counsellor of State and Minister of Public Instruction. 1046 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Committee of March 20, “Paillasse, half drunk, gives a dissertation on the way to carry on the war, and interrogates and censures the Minister; the poor Minister turns his questions with cafe´ gossip and a narrative of campaigns. These are the men placed at the head of the government to save the Republic!” “H , in his distraction, had the air of a lucky dog inwardly smiling at his own knavish thoughts.” “Ruit irrevocabile vulgus. . . . Jusque datum sceleri.”“You keep your mouth shut?” he is told: “Of what use is my glass of wine in this torrent of ardent spirits?” All this is very well, but he did not merely keep silent and abstain. He voted, legislated, and decreed, along with the unanimous Convention; he was a collaborator, not only passively, through his presence, but also through his active participation in the acts of the government which he elected and enthroned, reelected twelve times, cheered every week, and ﬂattered daily, authorising and keeping on to the end its work of spoliation and massacre. “Everybody is guilty here,” said Carrier in the Con- vention, “even to the president’s bell.” In vain do they constantly repeat to themselves that they were forced to obey under penalty of death: the conscience of the purest among them, if he has any, replies: “You too, in spite of yourself, I admit; less than others, if you please, but you were a terrorist, that is to say, a brigand and an assassin.”31

He is accused in the Jacobin Club, Brumaire 18, year II., of not addressing the Convention often enough, to which he replies: “After twenty years’ devotion to the practice of medicine I have succeeded in supporting my sans-culotte father and my sans-culottes sisters....Astothecharge made by a member that I have given most of my time to science....Ihaveattended the Lyceé des Arts but three times, and then only for the purpose of sans-culotteising it.” 31. Michelet, “Histoire de la Re´volution,” v., preface xxx (3rd ed.). “A young man and trying to find something to do, I was directed to an ultra Review, to a well-known philanthropist, devoted to education, to the people, and to the welfare of humanity. I found a very small man of a melancholy, mild and tame aspect. We were in front of the fire, on which he fixed his eyes without looking at me. He talked a long time, in a didactic, monotonous tone of voice. I felt ill at ease and sick at heart, and got away as soon as I could. It was this little man, I afterwards learned, who hunted down the Girondists, and had themguillo- The Governors / 1047

III On a man becoming a slave, said old Homer, the Gods take away the half of his soul; the same is true of a man who becomes a tyrant. In the Pavillon de Flore, alongside of and above the enslaved Con- vention, sit the twelve kings it has enthroned, twice a day,32 ruling over it as well as over France.33 Of course, some guarantee is re- tined, and which he accomplished at the age of twenty.”—His name is Julien de la Droˆme. I saw him once when quite young. He is well known: first, through his correspondence, and next, by his mother’s diary. (“Journal d’une bourgeoise pendant la Revolution,” ed. Locroy.)—We have a sketch of David (“La De- magogie a` Paris en 1793,” by Dauban, a fac-simile at the beginning of the volume), representing Queen Marie Antoinette led to execution. Madame Julien was at a window along with David looking at the funeral convoy, whilst he made the drawing.—Madame Julien writes in her “Journal,” September 3, 1792: “To attain this end we must will the means. No barbarous humanity! The people are aroused, the people are avenging the crimes of the past three years.”—Her son, a sort of raw, sentimental Puritan, fond of bloodshed, was one of Robes- pierre’s most active agents. He remembered what he had done, as is evident by Michelet’s narrative, and cast his eyes down, well knowing that his present philanthropy could not annihilate past acts. 32. Archives Nationales, AF. II., 46. Register of the Acts of the Committee of Public Safety, vol. ii., orders of August 3, 1793. 33. On the concentration and accumulation of business, cf. Archives Na- tionales, ibid., acts of Aug. 4, 5, 6, 1793; and AF. II., 23, acts of Brumaire 1 and 15, year II.—On the distribution and despatch of business in the Committee and the hours devoted to it, see Acts of April 6, June 13, 17, 18, Aug. 3, 1793, and Germinal 27, year II.—After August 3, two sessions were held daily, from 8 o’clock in the morning to 1 o’clock in the afternoon, and from 7 to 10 o’clock in the evening; at 10 o’clock, the Executive Council met with the Committee of Public Safety, and papers were signed about 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning.— The files of AF. II., 23 to 42, contain an account of the doings of the Committee, the minutes of its meetings and of its correspondence. A perusal of these furnishes full details concerning the initiative and responsibility of the Committee. For example (Nivose 4, year II., letters to Fre´ron and Barras, at Marseilles), “The Committee commend the vigorous measures you have sanctioned in your orders at Marseilles. Marseilles, through you, affords a great example. Accus- tomed, as you are, to wielding thunderbolts, you are best calculated for still governing it....How glorious, citizen colleagues, to be able like you, after long continued labors and immortal fame, how gratifying, under such auspices, 1048 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION quired fromthose who fill this place; there is not one of themwho is not a revolutionist of long standing, an impenitent regicide, a fanatic in essence and a despot through principle; but the fumes of omnipotence have not intoxicated them all to the same degree. Three or four of them, Robert Lindet, Jean Bon St. Andre´, Prieur de la Coˆte d’Or and Carnot, confine themselves to useful and secondary duties; this suffices to keep thempartially safe. As specialists, charged with an important service, their first object is to do this well, and hence they subordinate the rest to this, even theoretical exigencies and the outcries of the clubs. Lindet’s prime object is to feed the departments that are without corn, and the towns that are soon to be short of bread; Prieur’s business is to see that biscuits, brandy, clothes, shoes, gunpowder, and arms are manufactured;34 Jean Bon, that vessels are equipped and crews drilled; Carnot, to draw up campaign plans and direct the march of armies: the despatch of so many bags of grain during the coming fortnight to this or that town, or warehouse in this or that district; the making up of so many weekly rations, to be transported during the month to certain places on the frontier; the transformation of so many fishermen into artillerymen or marines, and to set afloat so many vessels in three months; to expedite certain corps of cavalry, infantry, and artillery, so as to arrive by such and such roads at this or that pass—these to return to the bosomof the National Convention!”—(AF. II., 36, Pluviose 7, year II., letter to the representatives on mission at Bordeaux, approving of the orders issued by themagainst merchants.) “Concealed behind the obscurity of its complots, mercantilism cannot support the ardent, invigorating atmosphere of Liberty; Sybaritic indolence quails before Spartan virtue.”—(AF. II., 37, Pluviose 20, letter to Prieur de la Marne, sent to Nantes to replace Carrier.) “Carrier, perhaps, has been badly surrounded; . . . his ways are harsh, the means he employs are not well calculated to win respect for the national authority: . . . he is used up in that city. He is to leave and go elsewhere.”—(AF. II., 36, Nivose 21, letter to Fouche´, Laporte, and Albitte, at Commune-affranchie, signed by Billaud-Varennes and composed by him.) “The Convention, Nivose 1, has approved of the orders and other measures taken by you. We can add nothing to its approval. The Committee of Public Safety subjects all operations to the same principles, that is to say, it conforms to yours and acts with you.” 34. Sainte-Beuve, “Nouveaux Lundis,” viii., 105. (Unpublished report by Vice-admiral Villaret-Joyeuse, May 28, 1794.) The Governors / 1049 are precise combinations which purge the brain of dogmatic phrases, which force revolutionary jargon into the background and keep a man sensible and practical; and all the more because three of them, Jean Bon, former captain of a merchantman, Prieur and Carnot, engineer officers, are professional men and go to the front to put their shoulders to the wheel on the spot. Jean Bon, always visiting the coasts, goes on board a vessel of the fleet leaving Brest to save the great American convoy; Carnot, at Watignies, orders Jourdan to make a decisive move, and, shouldering his musket, marches along with the attacking column.35 Naturally, they have no leisure for speechmaking in the Jacobin club, or for intrigues in the Convention: Carnot lives in his own office and in the committee-room; he does not allow himself time enough to eat with his wife, dines on a crust of bread and a glass of lemonade, and works sixteen and eighteen hours a day;36 Lindet, more overtasked than any body else, because hunger will not wait, reads every report himself, and “passes days and nights at it”;37 Jean Bon, in wooden shoes and woolen vest, with a bit of coarse bread and a glass of bad beer,38 writes and dictates until his strength fails him, and he has to lie down and sleep on a mattress on the floor. Naturally, again, when interfered with, and the tools in their hands are broken, they are dissatisfied; they know well the worth of a good instrument, and for the service, as they comprehend it, good tools are essential, competent, faithful employees, regular in attendance at their offices, and not at the club. When they have a subordinate of this kind they defend him, often at the risk of their lives, even to incurring the enmity of Robespierre. Cambon,39 who, on his financial committee, is also a sort of sover-

35. Carnot, “Me´moires,” i., 107. 36. Ibid., i., 450, 523, 527, “we often ate only a morsel of dry bread on the Committee’s table.” 37. Moniteur, xxi., 362. (Speech by Cambon, Session of Thermidor 11, year II.) 38. Beugnot, “Me´moires,” ii., 15. (Stated by Jean Bon himself in a conversation at Mayence in 1813.) 39. Gaudia, duc de Gae´te, “Me´moires,” i., 16, 28. “I owed my life to Cam- bon personally, while, through his firmness, he preserved the whole Treasury department, continually attacked by the all-powerful Jacobin club.”—On the 1050 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION eign, retains at the Treasury five or six hundred employees unable to procure their certificate of civism, and whom the Jacobins incessantly denounce so as to get their places. Carnot saves and employs eminent engineers, D’Arcon, de Montalembert, d’Obenheim, all of themnobles, and one of theman anti-Jacobin, without counting a number of accused officers whom he justifies, replaces, or maintains.40 Through these courageous and humane acts, they solace themselves for their scruples, at least partially and for the time being; moreover, they are statesmen only because the occasion and superior force makes it imperative, more led by others than leading, terrorists through accident and necessity, rather than through systemand instinct. If, in concert with ten others, Prieur and Carnot order wholesale robbery and murder, if they sign orders by twenties and hundreds, amounting to assassinations, it is owing to their forming part of a body. When the whole committee deliberates, they are bound, in important decrees, to submit to the preponderating opinion of the majority, after voting in the negative. In relation to secondary decrees, in which there has been no preliminary discussion in common, the only responsible member is the one whose signature stands first; the following signatures affixed, without reading the document, are simply a “formality which the law requires,” merely a visa, necessarily mechanical; with “four or five hundred business matters to attend to daily,” it is impossible to do otherwise; to read over and

8th of Thermidor, Robespierre was “very severe on the administration of the Treasury, which he accused of an aristocratic and antirevolutionary spirit. . . . Under this pretext, it was known that the orator meant to propose an act of accusation against the representative charged with its surveillance, as well as against the six commissioners, and bring them before the revolutionary Tri- bunal, whose verdict could not be doubtful.”—Buchez et Roux, xxxiii., 431, 436, 441. Speech by Robespierre, Thermidor 8, year II.... “Machiavellian designs against the small fund-holders of the State. . . . A contemptible financial system, wasteful, irritating, devouring, absolutely independent of your supreme oversight....Antirevolution exists in the financial department....Whoare its head administrators? Brissotins, Feuillants, aristocrats, and well-known knaves—the Cambons, the Mallarme´s, the Ramels!” 40. Carnot, “Me´moires,” i., 425. The Governors / 1051 vote in every case, would be “a physical impossibility.”41 Finally, as things are, “is not the general will, at least the apparent general will, that alone on which the government can decide, itself ultrarevolu- tionary?”42 In other words, should not the five or six rascals in a State who vociferate, be listened to, rather than a hundred honest folks who keep their mouths shut? With this sophism, gross as it is, but of pure Jacobin manufacture, Carnot ends by hoodwinking his honor and his conscience; otherwise intact, and far more so than his colleagues, he likewise undergoes moral and mental mutilation; constrained by the duties of his post and the illusions of his creed, he succeeded in an inward decapitation of the two noblest of human faculties, common-sense, the most useful, and the moral sense, the most exalted of all. IV If such are the ravages which are made in an upright, firm and healthy soul, what must be the havoc in corrupt or weak natures, in which bad instincts already predominate! And observe this, that they are without the protection afforded to Carnot and other occupied men, who are pursuing some specific and evidently useful object. They bear the title of “government men,” “revolutionists” properly

41. Moniteur, xxiv., 47, 50. (Session of Germinal 2, year II.) Speeches by Lindet and Carnot with confirmatory details.—Lindet says that he had signed twenty thousand papers.—Ibid., xxxiii., 591. (Session of Ventose 12, year III. Speech by Bare`re.) “The labor of the Committee was divided amongst the different members composing it, but all, without distinction, signed each other’s work. I, myself, knowing nothing of military affairs, have perhaps, in this matter, given four thousand signatures.”—Ibid., xxiv., 74. (Session of Germinal 6, year III.) Speech of Lavesseur, witness of an animated scene between Carnot and Robespierre concerning two of Carnot’s clerks, arrested by order of Robes- pierre.—Carnot adds “I had myself signed this order of arrest without knowing it.”—Ibid., xxii., 116. (Session of Vende´miaire 8, year II., speech by Carnot in narrating the arrest of General Huchet for his cruelties in Vendeé.) On appearing before the Committee of Public Safety, Robespierre defended him and he was sent back to the army and promoted to a higher rank: I was obliged to sign in spite of my opposition.” 42. Carnot, “Me´moires,” i., 572. (Speech by Carnot, Germinal 2, year III.) 1052 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION so-called, “folks who carry things with a high hand”;43 in effect, they direct all things according to their conception of unity. The creation, organisation, and application of Terror belongs wholly to them; they are the constructors, regulators, and engineers of the machine,44 the recognised heads of the party, of the sect, and of the government, especially Billaud and Robespierre, who never serve on missions,45 nor relax their hold for a moment on the central motor; the former, an active politician, with Collot for his second, is charged with urging on the constituted authorities, the districts, the municipalities, the national agents, the revolutionary committees, and the representatives on mission in the interior;46 the latter, a theologian, moralist, titular doctor, and preacher, is charged with ruling the Convention and indoctrinating the Jacobins with sound principles; behind him stands Couthon, his lieutenant, with Saint-Just, his disciple and executor of works of great importance; in their midst, Bare`re, the Committee’s mouthpiece, is merely a tool, but indispensable, conveniently at hand and always ready to start whatever drum-beating is required on any given theme in honor of the party which stuffs

43. Se´nart, “Me´moires,” 145, 153. (Details on the members of the two committees.) 44. Reports by Billaud on the organisation of the revolutionary government, November 18, 1793: and on the theory of democratic government, April 20, 1794.—Reports by Robespierre on the political situation of the Republic, No- vember 17, 1793; and on the principles of revolutionary government, December 5, 1793.—Information on the genius of revolutionary laws, signed principally by Robespierre and Billaud, November 29, 1793.—Reports by Robespierre on the principles of political morality which ought to govern the Convention, February 5, 1794; and on the relationship between religious and moral ideas and republican principles, May 7, 1794. 45. Billaud no longer goes on mission after he becomes one of the Com- mittee of Public Safety. Robespierre never went. Bare`re, who is of daily service, is likewise retained at Paris.—All the others serve on the missions and several repeatedly, and for a long time. 46. Moniteur, xxiv., 60. The words of Carnot, session of Germinal 2, year III.—Ibid., xxii., 138, words of Collot, session of Vende´miaire 12, year III. “Billaud and myself have sent into the departments three hundred thousand written documents, and have made at least ten thousand minutes (of meetings) with our own hand.” The Governors / 1053 his brain; below these comes the Committee of General Security, Vadier, Amar, Vouland, Guﬀroy, Panis, David, Jagot, and the rest, those who undertook, reported on, and acted in behalf of universal proscription. All these bear the imprint of their service; they could be recognised by “their pallid hue, hollow and bloodshot eyes,”47 habits of omnipotence stamped “on their brows, and on their deportment, something indescribably haughty and disdainful. The Committee of General Security reminded one of the former lieutenants of police, and the Committee of Public Safety, of the former ministers of state.” In the Convention, “it is considered an honor to talk with them, and a privilege to shake hands with them; one seems to read one’s duty on their brows.” On the days on which their orders are to be converted into laws “the members of the Committee and the reporter of the bill, keep people waiting, the same as the heads and representatives of the former sovereign power; on their way to the Assembly hall, they are preceded by a group of courtiers who seemto announce the masters of the world.”48 In fact, they reign—but observe on what conditions. “Make no complaints,” said Bare`re,49 to the composer of an opera, the performance of which had just been suspended: “as times go, you must not attract public attention. Do we not all stand at the foot of the guillotine, all, beginning with myself?” Again, twenty years later, in a private conversation, on being interrogated as to the veritable object, the secret motive of the Committee of Public Safety, he replied: “As we were animated by but one sentiment,50 my dear sir, that of self-preservation, we had but one desire, that of maintaining an existence which each of us believed to be menaced. You had your neighbor guillotined to prevent your neighbor from guillotining you.”51 The same apprehension exists in stouter souls,

47. Dussault, “Fragment pour servir a` l’histoire de la Convention.” 48. Thibaudeau, i., 49. 49. Arnault, “Souvenirs d’un Sexageńaire,” ii., 78. 50. “Me´moires d’un Bourgeois de Paris,” by Ve´ron, ii., 14. (July 7, 1815.) 51. Cf. Thibaudeau, “Me´moires,” i., 46. “It seemed, then, that to escape 1054 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION although there may have been, along with fear, motives of a less debased order. “How many times,” says Carnot,52 “we undertook some work that required time, with the conviction that we should not be allowed to complete it!” “It was uncertain53 whether, the next time the clock struck the hour, we should not be standing before the revolutionary Tribunal on our way to the scaffold without, perhaps, having had time to bid adieu to our families. . . . We pursued our daily task so as not to let the machine stand still, as if a long life were before us, when it was probable that we should not see the next day’s sun.” It is impossible to count on one’s life, or that of another, for twenty-four hours; should the iron hand which holds one by the throat tighten its grasp, all will be over that evening. “There were certain days so difficult that one could see no way to control circumstances; those who were directly menaced resigned themselves wholly to chance.”54 “The decisions for which we are so much blamed,” says another,55 “were not generally thought of two days, or one day, beforehand; they sprung out of the crisis of the moment. We did not desire to kill for the sake of killing . . . but to conquer at all hazards, remain masters, and ensure the sway of our principles.” That is true, they are subjects as well as despots. At the Committee table, during their nocturnal sessions, their sovereign presides, a formidable figure, the revolutionary Idea which confers on themthe right to slay, on condition of exercising it against everybody, and therefore on themselves. Towards two o’clock, or three o’clock in the morning, exhausted, out of words and ideas, not knowing where to slay, on the right or on the left, they anxiously turn to this figure and try to read its will in its fixed eyes. “Who imprisonment, or the scaffold, there was no other way than to put others in your place.” 52. Carnot, “Me´moires,” i., 508. 53. Carnot, i., 527. (Words of Prieur de la Cote d’Or.) 54. Carnot, ibid., 527. (The words of Prieur.) 55. “La Nouvelle Minerve,” i., 355, (Notes by Billaud-Varennes, indited at St. Domingo and copied by Dr. Chervin.) “We came to a decision only after being wearied out by the nightly meetings of our Committee.” The Governors / 1055 shall fall tomorrow?” Ever the same reply steadily expressed on the features of the impassable phantom: “the antirevolutionists,” under which name is comprised all who by act, speech, thought, or inmost sentiment, either through irritation or carelessness, through humanity or moderation, through egoism or nonchalance, through passive, neutral, or indifferent feeling, serve well or ill the Revolution.56 All that remains is to add names to this horribly comprehensive decree. Shall Billaud do it? Shall Robespierre do it? Will Billaud put down Robespierre’s name, or Robespierre put down Billaud’s, or each the name of the other, with those he chooses to select from among the two Committees? Osselin, Chabot, Bazire, Julien de Toulouse, La- croix, Danton, were on them, and when they left, their heads fell.57 He´rault-Sećhelles, again, was on them, maintained in office with honor through the recent approbation of the Convention,58 one of the titular twelve, and on duty when an order issued by the other eleven suddenly handed himover to the revolutionary Tribunal for execution. Whose turn is it now among the eleven? Seized unawares, the docile Convention unanimously applauding, after three days of a judicial farce, the cart will bear himto the Place de la Re´volution; Samson will tie him fast, shouters at thirty sous a day will clap their

56. Decree of September 17, 1793, on “Suspects.” Ordinance of the Paris Commune, October 10, 1793, extending it so as to include “those who, having done nothing against the Revolution, do nothing for it.”—Cf. “Papers seized in Robespierre’s apartments,” ii., 370, letter of Payan. “Every man who has not been for the Revolution has been against it, for he has done nothing for the country....Inpopular commissions, individual humanity, the moderation which assumes the veil of justice, is criminal.” 57. Mortimer-Ternaux, viii., 394, and following pages; 414 and following pages (on the successive members of the two committees). 58. Wallon, “Histoire du Tribunal Re´volutionaire,” iii., 129–131. He´rault de Sećhelles, allied with Danton, and accused of being indulgent, had just given guarantees, however, and applied the revolutionary re´gime in Alsace with a severity worthy of Billaud. (Archives des Affaires E´trange´re`s, vol. v., 141.) “Instructions for civil commissioners by He´rault, representative of the people” (Colmar, Frimaire 2, year II.), with suggestions as to the categories of persons that are to be “sought for, arrested, and immediately put in jail,” probably embracing nineteen-twentieths of the inhabitants. 1056 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION hands, and, on the following morning, the popular politicians will congratulate each other on seeing the name of a great traitor on the bulletin of the guillotined.59 To this end, to enable this or that king of the day to pass from the national Almanac to the mortuary list, merely required an understanding among his colleagues, and, perhaps, this is already arrived at. Among whom and against whom? It is certain that, as this idea occurs to the eleven, seated around the table, they eye each other with a shudder; they calculate the chances and turn things over in their minds; words have been uttered that are not forgotten. Carnot often made this charge against Saint-Just: “You and Robespierre are after a dictatorship.”60 Robespierre replied to Carnot: “I amready for you on the first defeat.” 61 On another occasion, Robespierre, in a rage, exclaimed: “The Committee is conspiring against me!” and, turning to Billaud, “I know you, now!” Billaud retorted, “I know you too, you are an antirevolutionist!”62

59. Dauban, “Paris en 1794,” 285, and following pages. (Police Reports, Germinal, year II.) Arrest of He´bert and associates “Nothing was talked about the whole morning but the atrocious crimes of the conspirators. They were regarded as a thousand times more criminal than Capet and his wife. They ought to be punished a thousand times over. . . . The popular hatred of He´bert is at its height. . . . The people cannot forgive He´bert for having deceived them. . . . Popular rejoicings were universal on seeing the conspirators led to the scaﬀold.” 60. Moniteur, xxiv., 53. (Session of Germinal 2, year III.) Words of Prieur de la Coˆte d’Or: “The ﬁrst quarrel that occurred in the Committee was between Saint-Just and Carnot; the latter says to the former, ‘I see that you and Robes- pierre are after a dictatorship.’”—Ibid., 74. Levasseur makes a similar statement.—Ibid., 570. (Session of Germinal 2, year III., words of Carnot): “I had a right to call Robespierre a tyrant every time I spoke to him. I did the same with Saint-Just and Couthon.” 61. Carnot, i., 525. (Testimony of Prieur.) Ibid., 522. Saint-Just says to Carnot: “You are in league with the enemies of the patriots. It is well for you to know that a few lines frommecould send you to the guillotine in two days.” 62. Buchez et Roux, xxx., 185. (Reply of Billaud, Collot, Vadier, and Bare`re to the renewed charges against themby Lecointre.)— Moniteur, xxiv., 84. (Ses- sion of Germinal 7, year III.) Words of Bare`re: “On the 4th of Thermidor, in the Committee, Robespierre speaks like a man who had orders to give and victims to point out.”—“And you, Bare`re,” he replies, “remember the report you made on the 2nd of Thermidor.” The Governors / 1057

There are conspirators and antirevolutionists, then, on the committee itself; what can be done to avoid this appellation, which is a sentence of death? Silently, the fatal phantomenthroned in their midst, the Erynnes through which they rule, renders his oracle and all take it to heart: “All who are unwilling to become executioners are conspirators and antirevolutionists.” V Thus do they march along during twelve months, goaded on by the two sharp thongs of theory and fear, traversing the red pool which they have created, and which is daily becoming deeper and deeper, all together and united, neither of themdaring to separate fromthe group, and each spattered with the blood thrown in his face by the others’ feet. It is not long before their eyesight fails them; they no longer see their way, while the degradation of their language betrays the stupor of their intellect. When a government brings to the tribune and moves the enactment of important laws, it confronts the nation, faces Europe, and takes a historical position. If it cares for its own honor it will select reporters of bills that are not unworthy, and instruct themto support these with available arguments, as closely reasoned out as possible; the bill, discussed and adopted in full council, will show the measure of its capacity, the information it possesses and its common-sense. To estimate all this, read the bills put forth in the name of the Committee; weigh the preambles, remark the tone, listen to the two reporters usually chosen, Saint-Just, who draws up the acts of proscription, special or general, and Bare`re, who draws up all acts indiﬀerently, but particularly military announcements and decrees against the foreigner; never did public personages, addressing France and posterity, use such irrational arguments and state falsehoods with greater impudence.63

63. Saint-Just, report on the Girondists, July 8, 1793; on the necessity of imprisoning persons inimical to the Revolution, Feb. 26, 1794; on the He´bertists, March 13; on the arrest of He´rault-Se´chelles and Simond, March 17; on the arrest of Danton and associates, March 31; on a general policy, April 15.—Cf., likewise, his report on declaring the government revolutionary until peace is declared, Oct. 10, 1793, and his report of the 9th of Thermidor, year II. 1058 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

The former, stiff in his starched cravat, posing “like the Holy Ghost,” more didactic and more absolute than Robespierre himself, comes and proclaims to Frenchmen from the tribune, equality, probity, frugality, Spartan habits, and a rural cot with all the voluptu- ousness of virtue;64 this suits admirably the chevalier Saint-Just, a former applicant for a place in the Count d’Artois’ body-guard, a domestic thief, a purloiner of silver plate which he takes to Paris, sells and spends on prostitutes, imprisoned for six months on complaint of his own mother,65 and author of a lewd poemwhich he succeeds in rendering filthy by trying to render it fanciful. Now, indeed, he is grave; he no longer leers; he kills—but with what arguments, and what a style!66 The young Laubardemont, the paid informers and prosecutors of imperial Rome, have less disgraced the human intellect, for these creatures of a Tiberius or a Richelieu still used plausible arguments in their reasoning, and with more or less adroitness. With Saint-Just, there is no connection of ideas; there is no sequence or march in his rhapsody; like an instrument strained to the utmost, his mind plays only false notes in violent fits and starts; logical continuity, the art then so common of regularly developing a theme, has disappeared; he stumbles over the ground, piling up telling aphorisms and dogmatic axioms. In dealing with facts there is nothing in his speech but a perversion of the truth; impostures abound in it of pure invention, palpable, as brazen as those of a charlatan in his booth;67 he does not even deign to disguise

64. Buchez et Roux, xxxi., 346. (Report of March 13, 1794.)—xxxii., 314. (Report of April 15.) 65. See “The Revolution,” ii., 313. 66. A single phrase often suffices to give the measure of a man’s intellect and character. The following by Saint-Just has this merit. (Apropos of Louis XVI. who, refraining fromdefending himself, left the Tuileries and took refuge in the Assembly on the 10th of August.) “He came amongst you; he forced his way here.... Heresorted to the bosomof the legislature; his soldiers burst into the asylum....Hemadehisway,sotosay,bysword thrusts into the bowels of his country that he might find a place of concealment.” 67. Particularly in the long report on Danton containing a historic survey of the factions (Buchez et Roux, xxxii., 76), and the report on the general police The Governors / 1059 themwith a shadow of probability; as to the Girondists, and as to Danton, Fabre d’Eglantine, and his other adversaries, whoever they may be, old or new, any rope to hang them with suffices for him; any rough, knotted, badly-twisted cord he can lay his hands on, no matter what, provided it strangles, is good enough; there is no need of a finer one for confirmed conspirators; with the gossip of the club and an Inquisition catechism, he can frame his bill of indictment. Accordingly, his intellect grasps nothing and yields himnothing; he is a sententious and over-excited declaimer, an artificial spirit always on the stretch, full of affectations,68 his talent reducing itself down to the rare flashes of a sombre imagination, a pupil of Robespierre, as Robespierre himself is a pupil of Rousseau, the exaggerated scholar of a plodding scholar, always rabidly ultra, furious through calculation, deliberately violating both language and ideas,69 confining himself to theatrical and funereal paradoxes, a sort of “grand vizier”70 with the airs of an exalted moralist and the bearing of the sentimental shepherd.71 Were one of a mocking humor one might

(Ibid., 304), with another historic document of the same order. “Brissot and Ronsin (were) recognised royalists....Since Necker a systemof faminehas been devised....Necker had a hand in the Orleans faction. . . . Double representation (of the Third Estate) was proposed for it.” Among other charges made against Danton; after the fusillade on the Champ de Mars in July, 1791: “You went to pass happy days at Arcis-sur-Aube, if it is possible for a conspirator against his country to be happy....When you knew that the tyrant’s fall was prepared and inevitable you returned to Paris on the 9th of August. You wanted to go to bed on that evil night....Hatred, you said, is insupportable to me and (yet) you said to us ‘I do not like Marat,’ etc.” There is an apostrophe of nine consecutive pages against Danton, who is absent. 68. Buchez et Roux, Ibid., 312. “Liberty emanated from the bosom of tempests; its origin dates with that of the world issuing out of chaos along with man, who is born dissolved in tears.” (Applause.)—Ibid., 308. Cf. his portrait, got up for effect, of the “revolutionary man” who is “a treasure of good sense and probity.” 69. Ibid., 312. “Liberty is not the chicanery of a palace; it is rigidity towards evil.” 70. Bare`re, “Me´moires,” i. 347. “Saint-Just . . . discussed like a vizier.” 71. Buchez et Roux, xxxii., 314. “Are the lessons furnished by history, the examples afforded by all great men, lost to the universe? These all counsel us 1060 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION shrug one’s shoulders; but, in the present state of the Convention, there is no roomfor anything but fear. Launched in imperioustones, his phrases fall upon their ears in monotonous strokes, on bowed heads, and, after five or six blows from this leaden hammer, the stoutest are stretched out stupified on the ground; discussion is out of the question; when Saint-Just, in the name of the Convention, affirms anything, it must be believed; his dissertation is a peremptory injunction and not an effort of reason; it commands obedience; it is not open to examination; it is not a report which he draws from his coat pocket, but a bludgeon. The other reporter, Bare`re, is of quite another stamp, a “patent- right” haranguer, an amusing Gascon, alert, “free and easy,” fond of a joke, even on the Committee of Public Safety,72 unconcerned in the midst of assassinations, and, to the very last, speaking of the Reign of Terror as “the simplest and most innocent thing in the world.”73 No man was ever less trammeled by a conscience; in truth, he has several, that of two days ago, that of the previous day, that of the present day, that of the morrow, of the following day, and still others, as many as you like, all equally pliant and supple, at the service of the strongest against the weakest, ready to swing round at once on the wind changing, but all joined together and working to one common end through physical instinct, the only one that lasts in the immoral, adroit and volatile being who circulates nimbly about, with no other aim than self-preservation, and to amuse him- to lead obscure lives; the lowly cot and virtue form the grandeurs of this world. Let us seekour habitations on the banksof streams, rockthe cradles of our children and educate themin Disinterestedness and Intrepidity.”—As to his political or economic capacity and general ideas, read his speeches and his “Institutions” (Buchez et Roux, xxviii., 133; xxx., 305, xxxv., 369), a mass of chemical and abstract rant. 72. Carnot, i., 527. (Narrated by Prieur.) “Often when hurriedly eating a bit of dry bread at the Committee table, Bare`re with a jest, brought a smile on our lips.” 73. Ve´ron, ii., 14.—Arnault, ii., 74.—Cf., passim, “Me´moires de Bare`re,” and the essay on Bare`re by Macaulay. The Governors / 1061 self.74 In his dressing-gown, early in the morning, he receives a crowd of solicitors, and, with the ways of a “dandified minister,” graciously accepts the petitions handed to him; first, those of ladies, “distributing gallantries among the prettiest”; he makes promises, and smiles, and then, returning to his cabinet, throws the papers in the fire: “There,” he says, “my correspondence is done.” He sups twice every decade in his fine house at Clichy, along with three more than accommodating pretty women; he is gay, awarding flat- teries and attentions quite becoming to an amiable protector: he enters into their professional rivalries, their spites against the reigning beauty, their jealousy of another who wears a blonde perruque and pretends “to set the fashion.” He sends immediately for the National Agent and gravely informs him that this head-dress, borrowed fromthe guillotined, is a rallying point for antirevolutionists, whereupon, the next day, perruques are denounced at the Commune-council, and suppressed; “Bare`re roared with laughter on alluding to this piece of fun.” The humor of an undertaker and the dexterity of a commercial drummer: he plays with Terror. In like manner he plays with his reports, and at this latter exercise, he improvises; he is never embarrassed; it is simply necessary to turn the faucet and the water runs. “Had he any subject to treat, he would fasten himself on Robespierre, He´rault, Saint-Just, or somebody else, and draw themout; he would then rush off to the tribune and spin out their ideas; “they were all astonished at hearing their thoughts expressed as fully as if reflected in a mirror.” No individual on the Committee, or in the Convention, equalled him in promptness and fluency, for the reason that he was not obliged to think before he spoke: with him, the faculty of speaking, like an independent organ, acted by itself, the empty brain or indifferent heart contributing nothing to his loquacity. Naturally, whatever issues fromhis

74. Vilate, Bare`re Edition, 184, 186, 244. “Fickle, frank, aﬀectionate, fond of society, especially that of women, in quest of luxuries and knowing how to spend money.”—Carnot, ii., 511. In Prieur’s eyes, Bare`re was simply “a good fellow.” 1062 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION mouth comes forth in ready-made bombast, the current jargon of the Jacobin club, sonorous, nauseous commonplace, schoolboy metaphors and similes derived from the shambles.75 Not an idea is found in all this rhetoric, nothing acquired, no real mental application. When Bonaparte, who employed everybody, and even Fouche´, were disposed to employ Bare`re, they could make nothing out of him for lack of substance, except as a low newsmonger, common spy, or agent engaged to stir up surviving Jacobins; later on, a listener at keyholes, and a paid weekly collector of public rumors, he was not even ﬁt for this vile service, for his wages were soon stopped; Na- poleon, who had no time to waste, cut short his drivelling verbiage. It is this verbiage which, authorised by the Committee of Public Safety, now forms the eloquence of France; it is this manufacturer of phrases by the dozen, this future sneak and prison-spy under the empire, this frolicking inventor of the blonde-perruque conspiracy, that the government sends into the tribune to announce victories, trumpet forth military heroism and proclaim war unto death. On the 7th of Prairial,76 Bare`re, in the name of the committee, proposes a return to savage law: “No English or Hanoverian prisoner shall henceforth be made”; the decree is endorsed by Carnot and passes the Convention unanimously. Had it been executed, as reprisals, and according to the proportion of prisoners, there would have been for one Englishman shot, three Frenchmen hung: honor and humanity

75. Moniteur, xxi., 173. (Justification of Joseph Lebon and “his somewhat harsh ways.”) “The Revolution is to be spoken of with respect, and revolutionary measures with due regard. Liberty is a virgin, to raise whose veil is a crime.”—And again: “The tree of Liberty grows when watered with the blood of tyrants.” 76. Moniteur, xx., 580, 582, 583, 587.—“Campagnes de la Revolution Fran- çaise dans les Pyreńeés Orientals,” by Fervel, ii., 36 and following pages.— General Dugommier, after the capture of Toulouse, spared the English general O’Harra, taken prisoner in spite of the orders of the Convention, and received the following letter from the Committee of Public Safety. “The Committee accepts your victory and your wound as compensations.” On the 24th of De- cember, Dugommier, that he may not be present at the Toulon massacres, asks to return to the Convention and is ordered off to the army of the eastern Pyrenees.—In 1797, there were thirty thousand French prisoners in England. The Governors / 1063 disappeared from the camps; the hostilities maintained by Christians became as exterminating as among negroes. Happily, French soldiers felt the nobleness of their profession; on the order being given to shoot the prisoners, a brave sergeant replied: “We will not shoot— send themto the Convention. If the representatives delight in killing prisoners—let them do it themselves, and eat them, too, savages as they are!” The sergeant, a rough sort of fellow, is not on a level with the Committee, or with Bare`re; and yet Bare`re did his best in a bill of indictment of twenty-seven pages, full of grand flourishes, every possible ritornello, glaring falsehood and silly inflation, explaining how “the britannic leopard” paid assassins to murder the representatives; how the London cabinet had armed little Cećile Renault “the new Corday,” against Robespierre; how the English- man, naturally barbarous, “does not give the lie to his origin”; how he descends fromthe Carthaginians and Phenicians, and formerly dealt in the skins of wild beasts and slaves; how his trading occupation is not changed; how Caesar, formerly, on landing in the country, found nothing but a ferocious tribe battling with wolves in the forest and threatening to burn every building which tried to encroach; and how it still is the same.” A consultation with a strolling operator who uses big words to recommend a deep amputation, a clumsy show-prospectus that does not deceive a poor sergeant, such is the exposition of motives by a government for the purpose of enforcing a decree that might have been drawn up by redskins; to horrible acts he adds debased language, and employs the inept to justify atrocities. VI About one hundred representatives sent by the Committee of Public Safety, sometimes singly and, again, in groups of two or three, go and succeed each other in the provinces, “with unlimited power,” to establish, enforce, or aggravate the revolutionary government, their proclamations at once declaring the nature of this government.77

77. Moniteur, xviii., 291. (Speech by Bare`re, session of Brumaire 8, year II.) At this rate, there are one hundred and forty deputies on mission to the armies 1064 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

“Brave and vigorous sansculottes!” writes a deputy on leaving a mission and announcing his successor,78 “You seemto have desired a good b of a representative, who has never swerved fromhis principles, that is to say, a regular Montagnard. I have fulfilled your wishes, and you will have the same thing in citizen Ingrand. Re- member, brave sans-culottes, that, with the patriot Ingrand, you can do everything, get anything, cancel whatever you please, imprison, bring to trial, transport and guillotine everybody and regenerate society. Don’t f him a minute’s patience! Let everybody tremble through him; let everything crumble, and order be at once restored!” The representative arrives at headquarters by post, and presents his credentials. All the authorities at once bow to the ground. In the evening, in his sabre and plume, he harangues the popular club, blowing into a flame the smouldering embers of Jacobinism. Then, according to his personal acquaintances, if he has any in the place, or according to the votes of the Committee of General Security, if he is a new-comer, he selects five or six of the “warmest sans- culottes” there, and, forming them into a revolutionary committee, installs them permanently at his side, sometimes in the same building, in a roomnext to his own, where, on lists or with verbal com-

and in the departments.—Before the institution of the Committee of Public Safety (April 7, 1793), there were one hundred and sixty representatives in the departments, sent there to hasten the levy of two hundred thousand men. (Mon- iteur, xvii., 99, speech by Cambon, July 11, 1793.)—The Committee gradually recalled most of these representatives and, on the 16th July, only sixty-three were on mission.—(Ibid., xvii., 152, speech by Gossuin, July 16.)—On the 9th of Nivose, the Committee designated fifty-eight representatives for settling up the revolutionary government in certain places and fixing the limits of their jurisdictions. (Archives Nationales, AF., II., 22.) Subsequently, several were recalled, and replaced by others.—The letters and orders of the representatives on mission are classed in the National Archives according to departments, in two series, one of which comprises missions previous to Thermidor 9, and the other missions after that date. 78. Thibaudeau, “Histoire du Terrorisme dans le department de la Vienne,” p. 4. “Paris, Brumaire 15, the sans-culotte Piorry, representative of the people to the sans-culottes composing the popular club of Poitiers.” The Governors / 1065 munications furnished to him, he works with a will and without stopping.79 First comes a purification of all the local authorities. They must always remember that “there can be no exaggeration in behalf of the people; he who is not imbued with this principle, who has not put it in practice, cannot remain on an advanced post;”80 consequently, at the popular club, in the department, in the district, in the municipality, all doubtful men are excluded, discharged, or incarcerated; if a few weak ones are retained provisionally, or by favor, they are berated and taught their duty very summarily: “They will strive, by a more energetic and assiduous patriotism, to atone for the evil committed by them in not doing all the good they could do.” Sometimes, through a sudden change of scene, the entire administrative staff is kicked out so as to give place to a no less complete staff, which the same kick brings up out of the ground. Con- sidering that “everything drags in Vaucluse, and that a frightful moderantisme paralyses the most revolutionary measures,” Maignet, in one order81 appoints the administrators and secretary of the de-

79. Archives Nationales, AF., II., 116. (Letter of Laplanche, Orleans, Sep- tember 10, 1793.—“Also proce`s-verbaux of the Orleans sections, September 7.) “I organised them,after selecting themfromthe popular club, into a revolutionary Committee. They worked under my own eye, their bureau being in an adjoining chamber....Irequired sure, local information, which I could not have had without collaborators of the country....The result is that I have arrested this night more than sixty aristocrats, strangers or ‘suspects.’”—De Martel, “E´tudes sur Fouche,” 84. Letter of Chaumette, who posted Fouche´ concerning the Nevers Jacobins. “Surrounded by royalists, federalists, and fanatics, representative Fouche´ had only 3 or 4 persecuted patriots to advise him.” 80. Archives Nationales, AF., II., 88. Speech by Rousselin, Frimaire 9.— Ibid., F 7, 4,421. Speech and orders issued by Rousselin, Brumaire 25.—Cf. Albert Babeau, “Histoire de Troyes pendant la Revolution,” vol. ii. Missions of Garnier de Rousselin and Boˆ. 81. Archives Nationales, AF., II., 145. (Order of Maignet, Avignon, Floreál 13, year II., and proclamation of Floreál 14.)—Ibid., AF., II., 111, Grenoble. Prairial 8, year II. Similar orders issued by Albitte and Laporte, for renewing all the authorities of Grenoble.—Ibid., AF., II., 135. Similar order of Ricord at Grasse, Pluviose 28, and throughout the Var.—Ibid., AF., II., 36. Brumaire, year II., circular of the Committee of Public Safety to the representatives on 1066 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION partment, the national agent, the administrators and council-general of the district, the administrators, council-general and national agent of Avignon, the president, public prosecutor and recorder of the criminal court, members of the Tribunal de Commerce, the collector of the district, the post-master, and the head of the squadron of gendarmerie. And the new functionaries will certainly go to work at once, each in his office. The summary process, which has brusquely swept away the first set of puppets, is going to brusquely install the second one. “Each citizen appointed to any of the above mentioned offices, shall betake himself immediately to his post, under penalty of being declared suspect,” on the simple notification of his appointment. Universal and passive obedience of governors, as well as of the governed! There are no more elected and independent functionaries; all the authorities, confirmed or created by the representative, are in his hands; there is not one among them who does not subsist or survive solely through his favor; there is not one of themwho acts otherwise than according to his approval or by his order. Directly, or through them, he makes requisitions, sequestrates, or confiscates as he sees fit, taxes, imprisons, transports, or decapitates as he sees fit, and, in his circumscription, he is the pacha. But he is a pacha with a chain around his neck, and at short tether. Fromand after December, 1793, he is directed “to conform to the orders of the Committee of Public Safety and report to it every ten days.”82 The circumscription in which he commands is rigorously “limited”; “he is reputed to be without power in the other departments,”83 while he is not suffered to grow old on his post. “In every magistrature the grandeur and extent of power is compensated by the shortness of its duration. Overprolonged missions would soon be considered as birthrights.”84 Therefore, at the end of two or three mission in the departments: “Before quitting your post, you are to effect the most complete purification of the constituted authorities and public functionaries.” 82. Decrees of Frimaire 6 and 14, year II. 83. Archives Nationales, AF., II., 22. Acts of the Committee of Public Safety, Nivose 9, year II. 84. Ibid., AF., II., 37. Letter to the Committee on the War, signed by Bare`re and Billaud-Varennes, Pluviose 23, year II. The Governors / 1067 months, often at the end of a month, the incumbent is recalled to Paris or despatched elsewhere, at short notice, on the day named, in a prompt, absolute, and sometimes threatening tone, not as a colleague one humors, but as a subordinate who is suddenly and arbitrarily revoked or displaced because he is deemed inadequate, or “used up.” For greater security, oftentimes a member of the Com- mittee, Couthon, Collot, Saint-Just, or some near relation of a member of the Committee, a Lebas or young Robespierre, goes personally to the spot to give the needed impulsion; sometimes, agents simply of the Committee, taken from outside the Convention, and without any personal standing, quite young men, Rousselin, Julien de la Droˆme, replace or watch the representative with powers equal to his. At the same time, from the top and from the centre, he is pushed on and directed: his local counsellors are chosen for him, and the directors of his conscience;85 they rate himsoundly on the choice of his agents or of his lodgings;86 they force dismissals on

85. Ibid., AF., II., 36. Letter of the Committee of Public Safety to Lecar- pentier, on mission in l’Orne, Brumaire 19, year II. “The administrative bodies of Alençon, the district excepted, are wholly gangrened; all are Feuillants, or infected with a no less pernicious spirit. . . . For the choice of subjects, and the incarceration of individuals, you can refer to the sans-culottes: the most nervous are Symaroli and Pre´val.—At Montagne, the administration must be wholly removed, as well as the collector of the district, and the post-master; . . . purify the popular club, expel nobles and limbs of the law, those that have been turned out of office, priests, muscadins, etc. . . . Dissolve two companies, one the grenadiers and the other the infantry who are very muscadin and too fond of processions....Reformthe staff and officers of the National Guard. To secure more prompt and surer execution of these measures of security you may refer to the present municipality, the Committee of Surveillance and the Cannoneers.” 86. Ibid., AF., II., 37. To Ricord, on mission at Marseilles, Pluviose 7, year II. He is rudely lectured: he softens, he went and lodged with N. Meˆme, a suspect; he is too favorable to the Marseilles people who, during the siege “made sacrifices to procure subsistances”; he blamed their arrest, etc.—Floreál 13, year II., to Bouret on mission in the Manche and at Calvados. “The Committee are under the impression that you are constantly deceived by an insidious secretary who, by the bad information he has given you, has often led you to give favorable terms to the aristocracy, etc.”—Ventose 6, year II., to Guimberteau, on mission near the army on the coasts of Cherbourg: “The Committee is astonished to find that the military commission established by you, undoubtedly 1068 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION him, appointments, arrests, executions; they spur him on in the path of terror and suffering. Around himare paid emissaries, 87 while others watch him gratis and constantly write to the Committees of Public Safety and General Security, often to denounce him, always to report on his conduct, to judge his measures and to provoke the measures which he does not take.88 Whatever he may have done or may do, he cannot turn his eyes toward Paris without seeing danger ahead, a mortal danger which, on the Committee, in the Convention, at the Jacobin Club, increases or will increase against him, like a tempest. Briez, who, in Valenci- ennes under siege, showed courage, and whomthe Convention had just applauded and added to the Committee of Public Safety, hears himself reproached for being still alive: “He who was at Valenci- ennes when the enemy took it will never reply to this question— are you dead?”89 He has nothing to do now but to declare himself incompetent, decline the honor mistakenly conferred on him by the Convention, and disappear. Dubois-Crance´ took Lyons, and, as pay for this immense service, he is stricken off the roll of the Jacobin Club; because he did not take it quick enough, he is accused of treachery; two days after the capitulation, the Committee of Public Safety withdraw his powers; three days after the capitulation, the for striking off the heads of conspirators, was the first to let themoff. Are you not acquainted with the men who compose it? For what have you chosen them? If you do not know them, how does it happen that you have summoned them for such duties?”—Ibid., and Ventose 23, order to Guimberteau to investigate the conduct of his secretary. 87. See especially in the “Archives des Affaires E´trange´re`s,” vols. 324 to 334, the correspondence of secret agents sent into the interior. 88. Archives Nationales, AF., II., 37, to Fromcastel on mission in Indre-et- Loire, Floreál 13, year II. “The Committee sends you a letter from the people’s club of Chinon, demanding the purging and organisation of all the constituted authorities of this district. The Committee requests you to proceed at once to carry out this important measure.” 89. Words of Robespierre, session of the Convention September 24, 1793.— On another representative, Merlin de Thionville, who likewise stood fire, Robespierre wrote as follows: “Merlin de Thionville, famous for surrendering Mayence, and more than suspected of having received his reward.” The Governors / 1069

Committee of Public Safety has him arrested and sent to Paris under escort.90 If such men after such services are thus treated, what is to become of the others? After the mission of young Julien, Carrier at Nantes, Ysabeau and Tallien at Bordeaux, feel their heads shake on their shoulders; after the mission of young Robespierre in the East and South, Barras, Fre´ron and Bernard de Saintes believe themselves lost.91 Fouche´, Rove`re, Javogue, and how many others, compromised by the faction of which they are, or were, He´bertists or Dan- tonists, are sure of perishing if their patrons of the Committee succumb; not sure of living if their patrons keep their place; not knowing whether their heads will not be exchanged for others; restricted to the narrowest, the most rigorous and most constant orthodoxy; guilty and condemned should their orthodoxy of today become the heterodoxy of tomorrow; all of them menaced, at first the hundred and eighty autocrats who, before the concentration of the revolutionary government, ruled for eight months uncontrollable in the provinces; next, and above all, the fifty hard-fisted Monta- gnards, unscrupulous fanatics or dissipated despots, who, at this moment, tread human flesh under foot and allot themselves power, the same as wild boars in a forest, or wallow in scandal, like swine in a mud-pool. There is no refuge for them, other than temporary, and not temporary refuge, otherwise than in zealous and tried obedience, such as the Committee demands proof of, that is to say, through rigor. “The Committees so wanted it,” says Maignet, later on, the incendiary of Be´douin; “The Committees did every thing....Circum- stances controlled me....Thepatriotic agents conjured me not to giveway....Ididnotfully carry out the most imperative orders.”92

90. Guillon, ii., 207.—“Fouche´,” by M. de Martel, 292. 91. Hamel, iii., 395, and following pages.—Buchez et Roux, xxx., 435. (Ses- sion of the Jacobin Club, Nivose 12, year II. Speech of Collot d’Herbois.) “Today I no longer recognise public opinion; had I reached Paris three days later, I should probably have been indicted.” 92. Marcelin Boudet, “Les Conventionnels d’Auvergne,” 438. (Unpublished memoir of Maignet.) 1070 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Similarly, the great exterminator of Nantes, Carrier, when urged to spare the rebels who surrendered of their own accord: “Do you want me to be guillotined? It is not in my power to save those people.”93 And another time: “I have my orders; I must observe them; I do not want to have my head cut off!” Under penalty of death, the representative on mission is a Terrorist, like his colleagues in the Convention and on the Committee of Public Safety, but with a much more serious disturbance of his nervous and his moral system; for he does not operate like them on paper, at a distance, against categories of abstract, anonymous, and vague beings; his work is not merely an effort of the intellect, but also of the senses and the imagination. If he belongs to the region, like Lecarpentier, Barras, Lebon, Javogue, Couthon, Andre´, Dumont, and many others, he is well acquainted with the families he proscribes; names to him are not merely so many letters strung together, but they recall personal souvenirs and evoke living forms. At all events, he is the spectator, artisan and beneficiary of his own dictatorship; the silver-plate and money he confiscates passes under his eye, through his hands; he sees the “suspects” he incarcerates march before him; he is in the court-roomon the rendering of the sentence of death; frequently, the guillotine he has supplied with heads works under his windows; he sleeps in the mansion of an emigre´; he makes requisitions for the furniture, linen, and wine belonging to the decapitated and the imprisoned,94 lies in their beds, drinks their wine and revels with plenty

93. Buchez et Roux, xxxiv., 165, 191. (Evidence of witnesses on the trial of Carrier.)—Paris, ii., 113, “Histoire de Joseph Lebon.” “The prisons,” says Le Bon, “overflowed at St. Pol. I was there and released two hundred persons. Well, in spite of my orders, several were put back by the Committee of Sur- veillance, authorised by Lebas, a friend of Darthe´. What could I do against Darthe´ supported by Saint-Just and Lebas? He would have denounced me.”— Ibid., 128, apropos of a certain Lefe`vre, “veteran of the Revolution,” arrested and brought before the revolutionary Tribunal by order of Lebon. “It was necessary to take the choice of condemning him, or of being denounced and persecuted myself, without saving him.”—Beaulieu, “Essai,” v., 233. “Iam afraid and I cause fear was the principle of all the revolutionary atrocities.” 94. Ludovic Sciout, “Histoire de la Constitution civile du Clerge´,” iv., 136. The Governors / 1071 of company at their expense, and in their place. In like manner, a bandit chief who neither kills nor robs with his own hands, has murder and robbery committed in his presence, by which he substantially profits, not by proxy, but personally, through the well- directed blows ordered by him. To this degree, and in such proximity to physical action, omnipotence is a mephitic atmosphere which no state of health can resist. Restored to the conditions which poisoned man in barbarous times or countries, he is again attacked by moral maladies from which he was thenceforth believed to be exempt; he retrogrades even to the strange corruptions of the Orient and the Middle Ages; forgotten leprosies, apparently extinct, with exotic pes- tilences to which civilised lands seemed closed, reappear in his soul with their issues and tumors. VII “It seems,” says a witness who was long acquainted with Maignet, “that all he did for these five or six years was simply the delirious phase of an illness, after which he recovered, and lived on as if nothing had happened.”95 And Maignet himself writes: “I was not made for these tempests.” That is true of all, and first of the coarser

(Orders of Pine´t and Cavaignac, Pluviose 22, and Ventose 2.)—Moniteur, xxiv., 469. (Session of Prairial 30, year III., denunciation of representative Laplanche at the bar of the house, by Boismartin.) On the 24th of Brumaire, year II., Laplanche and General Seepher installed themselves at St. Loˆ in the house of an old man of seventy, a M. Lemonnier then under arrest. “Scarcely had they entered the house when they demanded provisions of every kind, linen, clothes, furniture, jewelry, plate, vehicles and title-deeds—all disappeared.” Whilst the inhabitants of St. Loˆ were living on a few ounces of brown bread, “the best bread, the choicest wines, pillaged in the house of Lemonnier, were lavishly given in pans and kettles to General Seepher’s horses, also to those of representative Laplanche.” Lemonnier, set at liberty, could not return to his emptied dwelling then transformed into a storehouse. He lived at the inn, stripped of all his possessions, valued at sixty thousand livres, having saved fromhis effects only one silver table-service, which he had taken with himinto prison. 95. Marcelin Boudet, 446. (Notes of M. Ignace de Barante.) Also 440. (Un- published memoir of Maignet). 1072 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION natures; subordination would have restrained them; a dictatorship brings themout; the brutal instinct of the old soldier or of the faun breaks out in an eruption. Contemplate a Duquesnoy, a sort of bull- dog, always barking and biting when satiated more furiously than ever. Delegate to the army of the Moselle, and passing by Metz96 he summoned before him Altmayer, the public prosecutor, although he had sat down to dinner. The latter waits three hours and a half in the ante-chamber, is not admitted, returns, and, at length received, is greeted with a thundering exclamation: “Who are you?” “The public prosecutor,” he replies. “You look like a bishop—you were once a cure´ or monk—you can’t be a revolutionist. . . . I have come to Metz with unlimited powers. Public opinion here is not satisfactory. I amgoing to drill it. I amgoing to set folks straight here. I mean to shoot, here in Metz, as well as in Nancy, five or six hundred every fortnight.” The same at the house of General Bessie`res, commandant of the town; encountering there M. Cledat, an old officer, the second in command, he measures him from head to foot: “You look like a muscadin. Where did you come from? You must be a bad republican—you look as if you belonged to the ancient re´gime.” “My hair is gray,” he responds, “but I amnot the less a good

96. Archives Nationales, AF., II., 59. Extract from the minutes of the meetings of the People’s Club of Metz, and depositions made before the Committee of Surveillance of the Club, Floreál 12, year II., on the conduct of representative Duquesnoy, arrived at Metz the evening before at six o’clock.—There are thirty-two depositions, and among others those of M. Altmayer, Joly, and Cle´- dat. One of the witnesses states: “As to these matters, I regarded this citizen (Duquesnoy) as tipsy or drunk, or as a man beside himself.”—This is customary with Duquesnoy.—Cf. Paris, “His. de Joseph Lebon,” i., 273, 370.—“Ar- chives des Affaires E´trange´re`s,” vol. 329. Letter of Gadolle, September II, 1793. “I saw Duquesnoy, the deputy, dead drunk at Bergues, on Whit-Monday, at 11 o’clock in the evening.”—“Un Se´jour en France, 1792 to 1796, p. 136. “His naturally savage temper is excited to madness by the abuse of strong drink. General de assures us that he saw himseize the mayor of Avesnes, a respectable old man, by the hair on his presenting him with a petition relating to the town, and throw himdown with the air of a cannibal.” “He and his brother were dealers in hops at retail, at Saint Pol. He made this brother a general.” The Governors / 1073 republican: you may ask the General and the whole town.” “Be off! Go to the devil, and be quick about it, or I will have you arrested!” The same, in the street, where he lays hold of a man passing, on account of his looks; the justice of the peace, Joly, certifies to the civismof this person, and he “eyes” Joly: “You too, you are an aristocrat! I see it in your eyes! I never make a mistake.” Whereupon, tearing off the Judge’s badge, he sends himto prison. Meanwhile, a fire, soon extinguished, breaks out in the army bakehouse; officers, townspeople, laborers, peasants, and even children forma line (for passing water) and Duquesnoy appears to urge themon in his way: using his fists and his foot, he falls on whoever he meets, on an employee in the commissariat, on a convalescent officer, on two men in the line, and many others. He shouts to one of them, “You are a muscadin!” To another: “I see by your eyes that you are an aristocrat!” To another: “You are f beggar, an aristocrat, a rascal,” and he strikes himin the stomach;he seizes a fourth by his collar and throws himdown on the pavement. 97 In addition to this, all are imprisoned. The fire being extinguished, an indiscreet fellow, who stood by looking on, “recommends” the dispenser of blows “to wipe his forehead.” “You can’t see straight—who are you? Answer me, I amthe representative.” The other replies mildly:“Representative, nothing could be more respectable.” Duquesnoy gives the unlucky courtier a blow under the nose: “You are disputing—go to prison,” “which I did at once,” adds the docile subject. That same evening, “whereas, in the conflagration, none of the inhabitants in good circumstances offered their services in extinguishing the fire,98 and none

97. Alexandrine des Echerolles, “Une famille noble sous la Terreur,” 209. At Lyons, Marin, the commissioner, “a tall, powerful, robust man with stentorian lungs,” opens his court with a volley of “republican oaths.” . . . The crowd of solicitors melts away. One lady alone dared present her petition. “Who are you?” She gives her name. “What! You have the audacity to mention a traitor’s name in this place?” Get away! and, giving her a push, he put her outside the door with a kick. 98. Ibid. A mass of evidence proves, on the contrary, that people of every class gave their assistance, owing to which the fire was almost immediately extinguished. 1074 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION but sans-culottes came thereto, from the garrison as well as from the commune,” Duquesnoy orders “that a tax of forty thousand livres be imposed on the commune of Metz, levied on the fortunes of the rich and distributed among the poor, payable within the decade.”99 “Fais moi f . . . dedans tous ces b . . . la`,”100 “quatre j . . . f . . . a` raccourcir;”101 at Arras, as at Metz, the lout is ever the ruffian and the butcher. Others are either jolly fellows, or blackguards. A certain Andre´ Dumont, an old village attorney, now king of Picardie, or sultan, as occasion offers, “figures as a white negro,” sometimes jovial, but generally as a rude hardened cynic, treating female prisoners and petitioners as in a kermesse.102 One morning a lady enters his ante- room, and waits amidst about twenty sans-culottes, to solicit the release of her husband. Dumont appears in a morning-gown, seats himself and listens to the petitioner. “Sit down, citoyenne.” He takes her on his lap, thrusts his hand in her bosomand exclaims:“Who would suppose that the bust of a marchioness would feel so soft to

99. Ibid. The popular club unanimously attests these facts, and despatches six delegates to enter a protest at the Convention. Up to the 9th of Thermidor, no relief is granted, while the tax imposed by Duquesnoy is collected. On the 5th Fructidor, year II., the order of Duquesnoy is cancelled by the Committee of Public Safety, but the money is not paid back. 100. Paris, i., 370. (Words of Duquesnoy to Lebon.) 101. Carnot, “Me´moires,” i., 414. (Letter of Duquesnoy to the central bureau of representatives at Arras.) The import of these untranslatable profanities being sufficiently clear I let themstand as in the original.—TR. 102. “Un Se´jour en France,” 158, 171.—Manuscript journal of Mallet-Dupan (January, 1795).—Cf. his letters to the Convention, the jokes of jailors and sbirri, for instance.—(Moniteur, xviii., 214, Brumaire 1, year II.)—Lacretelle, “Dix Anneés d’ Epreuves,” 178. “He ordered that everybody should dance in his fief of Picardy. They danced even in prison. Whoever did not dance was “suspect.” He insisted on a rigid observance of the feˆtes in honor of Reason, and that everybody should visit the temple of the Goddess each decadi, which was the cathedral (at Noyon). Ladies, bourgeoises, seamstresses, and cooks, were required to formwhat was called the chain of Equality. We dragoons were forced to be performers in this strange ballet.” The Governors / 1075 one of the people’s representatives.” The sans-culottes shout with laughter. He sends the poor woman away and keeps her husband locked up. In the evening he may write to the Convention that he investigates things himself, and closely examines aristocrats. To maintain this revolutionary strain at this point requires a drop too much in one’s head, and most of them take precautions in this direction. At Lyons,103 “the representatives sent to ensure the people’s welfare, Albitte and Collot,” call upon the Committee of Seques- trations to deliver at their house two hundred bottles of the best wine to be found, and five hundred bottles more of Bordeaux red wine, first quality, for table use.” In three months, at the table of the representatives who devastate la Vendeé, nineteen hundred and seventy-four bottles of wine are emptied,104 taken fromthe houses of the emigre´s belonging to the town; for, “when one has helped to preserve a commune one has a right to drink to the Republic.” Representative Bourbotte presides at this bar; Rossignol touches his glass, an ex-jeweler and then a September massacreur, all his life a debauchee and brigand, and now a major-general; alongside of Ros- signol, stand his adjutants, Grammont, an old actor, and Hazard, a former priest; along with them is Vacheron, a good re´publiquain, who ravishes women and shoots them when they refuse to succumb;105 in addition to these are some “brilliant” young ladies, undoubtedly brought fromParis, “the prettiest of whomshare their nights between Rossignol and Bourbotte,” whilst the others serve

103. De Martel, “Fouche´,” 418. (Orders of Albitte and Collot, Nivose 13, year II.) 104. Camille Boursier, “Essai sur la Terreur en Anjou,” 225. Letter of Vach- eron, Frimaire 15, year II. “Re´publiquain, it is absolutely necessary, immediately, that you have sent or brought into the house of the representatives, a lot of red wine, of which the consumption is greater than ever. People have a right to drink to the Republic when they have helped to preserve the Commune you and yours live in. I hold you responsible for my demand.” Signed, le re´publiquain, Vacheron.” 105. Ibid., 210. Deposition of Madame Edin, apropos of Quesnoy, a prostitute, aged twenty-six, Brumaire 12, year III.; and of Rose, another prostitute. Similar depositions by Benaben and Scotty. 1076 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION their subordinates: the entire band, male and female, is installed in a Hotel de Fontenay, where they begin by breaking the seals, so as to confiscate “for their own benefit, furniture, jewelry, dresses, feminine trinkets, and even procelains.”106 Meanwhile, at Chantonney, representative Bourdon de l’Oise drinks with General Tunck, becomes “frantic” when tipsy, and has patriotic administrators seized in their beds at midnight, whom he had embraced the evening before. Nearly all of them, like the latter, have too bad wine, Carrier at Nantes, Petit-Jean at Thiers, Duquesnoy at Arras, Cusset at Thionville, Monestier at Tarbes. At Thionville, Cusset drinks like a “Lapithe” and, when drunk, gives the orders of a “vizier,” which orders are executed.107 At Tarbes, Monestier “after a heavy meal and much excited,” warmly harangues the court, examines the prisoner himself, M. de Lasalle, an old officer, whom he has condemned to death, and signs the order to have himguillotined at once; M. de Lasalle is guillotined that very evening, at midnight, by torchlight. The following morning Monestier says to the president of the court:

106. Dauban, “La Demagogie en 1793,” p. 369. (Extracts from the unpublished memoirs of Mercier de Rocher.)—Ibid., 370. “Bourdon de l’Oise had lived with Tuncq at Chantonney, where they kept busy emptying bottles of fine wine. Bourdon is an excellent patriot, a man of sensibility, but, in his fits of intoxication, he gives himself up to impracticable views.” “Let those rascally administrators,” he says, “be arrested!” Then, going to the window—he heard a runaway horse galloping in the street—“That’s another antirevolutionist! Let ’emall be arrested!”—Cf. “Souvenirs,” by General Pe´lleport, p. 21. At Per- pignan, he attended the feˆte of Reason. “The General in command of the post made an impudent speech, even to the most repulsive cynicism. Some prostitutes, well known to this wretch, filled one of the tribunes; they waved their handkerchiefs and shouted “Vive la Raison!” After listening to similar harangues by representatives Soubrang and Michaud, Pe´lleport, although half cured (of his wound) returns to camp: “I could not breathe freely in town, and did not think that I was safe until facing the enemy along with my comrades.” 107. Archives des Affaires E´trange´re`s, vol. 332; correspondence of secret agents, October, 1793. “Citizen Cusset, representative of the people, shows no dignity in his mission; he drinks like a Lapithe, and when intoxicated commits the arbitrary acts of a vizier.” For the style and orthography of Cusset, see one of his letters. (Dauban, “Paris en 1794,” p. 14.)—Berryat St. Prix, “La Justice Re´volutionnaire” (2d ed.), 339. The Governors / 1077

“Well, we gave poor Lasalle a famous fright last night, didn’t we?” “How a famous fright? He is executed!” Monestier is astonished— he did not remember having issued the order.108 With others, wine, besides sanguinary instincts, brings out the foulest instincts. At Nismes, Borie, in the uniform of a representative, along with Cour- bis, the mayor, Ge´ret, the justice and a number of prostitutes, dance the farandole around the guillotine. At Auch, one of the worst tyrants in the South, Dartigoyte, always heated with liquor “vomited every species of obscenity” in the faces of women that came to demand justice; “he compels, under penalty of imprisonment, mothers to take their daughters to the popular club,” to listen to his ﬁlthy preaching; one evening, at the theatre, probably after an orgy, he apostrophises all the women between the acts, lets loose upon them his smutty vocabulary, and, by way of demonstration, or as a practical conclusion, ends by stripping himself naked.109 This time, the genuine brute

108. Ibid., 371. (According to “Piece´s et Documents” published by M. Fajon.)—Moniteur, xxiv., 453. (Session of Floreál 24, year III.) Address of the Commune of St. Jean du Gard.—xxi., 528. (Session of Fructidor 2, year III.) Address of the Popular Club of Nismes. 109. Moniteur, xxiv., 602. (Session of Prairial 13, year III.) Report of Durand-Meillan: “This denunciation is only too well supported by documents. It is for the Convention to say whether it will hear themread. I have to state beforehand that it can hear nothing more repulsive nor better authenticated.”— De Martel, “Fouche´, 246. (Report of the constituted authorities of la Nie`vre on the missions of Collot d’Herbois, Laplanche, Fouche´, and Pointe, Prairial 19, year III.) Laplanche, a former Benedictine, is the most foul-mouthed.” In his speech to the people of Moulins-Engelbert, St. Pierre-le-Montier, and Nevers, Laplanche asked girls to surrender themselves and let modesty go. “Beget children,” he exclaims, “the Republic needs them. Continence is the virtue of fools.” Bibliotheque Nationale, Lb. 41, No. 1802. (Denunciation, by the six sections of the Dijon commune to the Convention, of Leonard Bourdon and Piochefer Bernard de Saintes, during their mission in Coˆte d’ Or.) Details on the orgies of Bernard with the municipality, and on the drunkenness and debaucheries of Bourdon with the riff-raff of the country; authentic documents proving the robberies and assassinations committed by Bernard. He pillaged the house of M. Micault, and, in four hours, had this person arrested, tried and guillotined; he attended the execution himself, and that evening, in the dead man’s house, danced and sung before his daughter with his acolytes. 1078 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION appears. The clothing thrown around himby centuries and with which civilisation had protected him, the last drapery of humanity, falls to the ground. Nothing remains but the primitive animal, the ferocious, lewd gorilla supposed to be tamed, but which still subsists indefinitely and which a dictatorship, joined to drunkenness, revives in an uglier guise than in remotest times. VIII If intoxication is needed to awaken the brute, a dictatorship suffices to arouse the madman. The mental equilibrium of most of these new sovereigns is disturbed; the distance between what the man once was and what he now is, is too great; formerly, a petty lawyer, village doctor, or schoolmaster, an unknown mover of a resolution in a local club, and only yesterday one voter in the Convention out of seven hundred and fifty; behold himnow, the arbiter, in one of the departments, of all fortunes and liberties, and master of five thousand lives. Like a pair of scales into which a disproportionate weight has been thrown, his reason totters on the side of pride. Some of them regard their competency unlimited, like their powers, and having just joined the army, claim the right of being appointed major- generals.110 “Declare officially,” writes Fabre to the Committee of Public Safety,111 “that, in future, generals shall be simply the lieu-

110. “Souvenirs,” by General Pe´lleport, p. 8. He, with his battalion, is inspected in the Place du Capitale, at Toulouse, by the representative on mission. “It seems as if I could see that actor. He tossed his hideous, plumed head and dragged along his sabre like a toy soldier, that he might appear brave. It made me feel sad.” 111. Fervel, “Campagnes des Français dans les Pyreńeés Orientals,” i., 169. (October, 1793.)—Ibid., 201, 206.—Cf. 188. Plan of Fabre for seizing Roses and Figuie`res, with eight thousand men, without provisions or transports. “For- tune is on the side of fools,” he said. Naturally the scheme fails. Collioure is lost, and disasters accumulate. As an offset to this the worthy general Dagobert is removed. Commandant Delatre and chief-of-staff Ramel are guillotined. In the face of the impracticable orders of the representatives the commandant of artillery commits suicide. On the devotion of the officers and enthusiasm of the troops. Ibid., 105, 106, 130, 131, 162. The Governors / 1079 tenants of the delegates to the Convention.” Awaiting the required declaration, they claim command and, in reality, exercise it. “I know of neither generals nor privates,” says Gaston, a former justice of the peace, to the officers; “as to the Minister, he is a dog on a skittle- ground; I am in command here and must be obeyed.” “What are generals good for?” adds his colleague Guiter; “the old women in our faubourgs know as much as they do. Plans, formal manoeuvres, tents, camps, redoubts? All this is of no use! The only war suitable to Frenchmen after this will be a rush with side arms.” To turn out of office, guillotine, disorganise, march blindly on, waste lives haphazard, force defeat, sometimes get killed themselves, is all they know, and they would lose all if the effects of their incapacity and arrogance were not redeemed by the devotion of the officers and the enthusiasmof the soldiers. The samespectacle is visible at Char- leroy where, through his absurd orders, Saint-Just does his best to compromise the army, leaving that place with the belief that he is a great man.112 There is the same spectacle in Alsace, where Lacoste, Baudot, Ruamps, Soubrany, Milhaud, Saint-Just, and Lebas, through their excessive rigor, do their best to break up the army and then boast of it. The revolutionary Tribunal is installed at headquarters, soldiers are urged to denounce their officers, the informer is promised money and secrecy, he and the accused are not allowed to confront each other, no investigation, no papers allowed, even to make exception to the verdict—a simple examination without any notes, the accused arrested at eight o’clock, condemned at nine o’clock, and shot at ten o’clock.113 Naturally, under such a system,

112. Sybel (Dosquet’s translation [French]), ii., 435; iii., 132, 140. (For details and authorities, cf. the Memoirs of Marshal Soult.) 113. Gouvion St. Cyr, “Me´moires sur les campagnes de 1792 a` la paix de Campio-Formio,” i., pp. 91 to 139.—Ibid., 229. “The effect of this was to lead men who had any means to keep aloof from any sort of promotion.”—Cf., ibid., ii., 131 (November, 1794), the same order of things still kept up. By order of the representatives the army encamps during the winter in sheds on the left bank of the Rhine, near Mayence, a useless proceeding and mere literary parade. “They would listen to no reason; a fine army and well-mounted artillery were to perish with cold and hunger, for no object whatever, in quarters that might 1080 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION no one wants to command; already, before Saint-Just’s arrival, Meu- nier had consented to act as major-general only ad interim; “every hour of the day” he demanded his removal; unable to secure this, he refused to issue any order; the representatives, to procure his successor, are obliged to descend down to a depot captain, Carlin, bold enough or stupid enough to allow himself to take a commission under their lead, which was a commission for the guillotine. If such is their presumption in military matters, what must it be in civil affairs! On this side there is no external check, no Spanish or Ger- man army capable of at once taking them in flagrante delicto, and of profiting by their ambitious incapacity and mischievous interference. Whatever the social instrumentality may be—judiciary, administration, credit, commerce, manufactures, agriculture—they can dislocate and mar it with impunity. They never fail to do this, and, moreover, in their despatches, they take credit to themselves for the ruin they cause. That, indeed, is their mission; otherwise, they would be regarded as bad Jacobins; they would soon become “suspects”; they rule only on condition of being infatuated and destructive; the overthrow of common-sense is with them an act of State grace, a necessity of the office, and, on this common ground of compulsory unreason, every species of physical delirium may be implanted. With those that we can follow closely, not only is their judgment perverted, but the entire nervous apparatus is affected; permanent overexcitement has begun, and a morbid restlessness. Consider Jo- seph Lebon, son of a sergeant-at-arms, subsequently, a teacher with the Oratoriens of Beaune, next, cure´ of Neuville-Vitasse, repudiated as an interloper by the e´lite of his parishioners, not respected, without house or furniture, and almost without a flock.114 Two years after this, finding himself sovereign of his province, his head is turned; much less would make it turn; it is only a twenty-eight- have been avoided.” The details are heart-rending. Never was military heroism so sacrificed to the folly of civilian commanders. 114. See Paris, “Histoire de Joseph Lebon,” i., ch. I, for biographical details and traits of character. The Governors / 1081 year-old head, not very solid, without any inside ballast,115 already disturbed by vanity, ambition, rancor, and apostasy, by the sudden and complete wheeling-about which put him at variance with his past educational habits and most cherished affections: it breaks down under the vastness and novelty of this greatness. In the costume of a representative, a Henry IV. hat, tricolor plume, waving scarf, and sabre dragging the ground, Lebon orders the bell to be rung and summons the villagers into the church, where, aloft in the pulpit in which he had formerly preached in a threadbare cassock, he displays his metamorphosis. “Who would believe that I should have returned here with unlimited powers!”116 And that, before his counterfeit majesty, each person would be humble, bowed down and silent! To a member of the municipality of Cambray who, questioned by him, looked straight at himand answered curtly, and who, to a query twice repeated in the same terms, dared to answer twice in the same terms, he says: “Shut up! You disrespect me, you do not behave properly to the national representative.” He immediately commits himto prison. 117 One evening, at the theatre, he enters a box in which the ladies, seated in front, keep their places. In a rage, he goes out, rushes on the stage and, brandishing his great sabre, vociferates and threatens the audience, taking immense strides across the boards and acting and looking so much like a wild beast that several of the ladies faint away: “Look there!” he shouts, “at those muscadines who do not condescend to move for a representative of twenty-five millions of men! Everybody used to make way for a prince—they will not budge for me, a representative, who am more than a king!”118

115. Ibid., i., 13. His mother became crazy and was put in an asylum. Her derangement, he says, was due to “her indignation at his vows and at his appointment to the curacy of Nouvelle-Vitasse.” 116. Ibid., i., 123. Speech by Lebon in the church of Beaurains. 117. Ibid., ii., 71, 72.—Cf. 85. “Citizen Chamonart, wine-dealer, standing at the entrance of his cellar, sees the representative pass, looks at himand does not salute him. Lebon steps up to him, arrests him, treats him as an “agent of Pitt and Cobourg.” . . . “They search him, take his pocket-book and lead him oﬀ to the Anglaises (a prison).” 118. Ibid., ii., 84. 1082 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

The word is spoken. But this king is frightened, and he is one who thinks of nothing but conspiracy;119 in the street, in open daylight, the people who are passing himare plotting against himeither by words or signs. Meeting in the main street of Arras a young girl and her mother talking Flemish, that seems to him “suspect.” “Where are you going?” he demands. “What’s that to you?” replies the child, who does not know him. The girl, the mother, and the father are sent to prison.120 On the ramparts, another young girl, accompanied by her mother, is taking the air, and reading a book. “Give me that book,” says the representative. The mother hands it to him; it is the “History of Clarissa Harlowe.” The young girl, extending her hand to receive back the book, adds, undoubtedly with a smile: “That is not ‘suspect.’” Lebon deals her a blow with his fist on her stomach which knocks her down; both women are searched and he personally leads themto the guard-room.The slightest expression, a gesture, puts him beside himself; any motion that he does not comprehend makes him start, as with an electric shock. Just arrived at Cambray, he is informed that a woman who had sold a bottle of wine below the maximum, had been released after a proce`s-verbal. On reaching the Hoˆtel-de-Ville, he shouts out: “Let everybody here pass into the Consistory!” The municipal officer on duty opens a door leading into it. Lebon, however, not knowing who he is, takes alarm. “He froths at the mouth,” says the municipal officer, “and cries out as if possessed by a demon. ‘Stop, stop, scoundrel, you are running off!’ He draws his sabre and seizes me by the collar; I am dragged and borne along by him and his men. ‘I have hold of him, I have hold of him!’ he exclaims, and, indeed, he did hold me with his teeth, legs, and arms, like a madman. At last, ‘Scoundrel, monster, b ,’ says he, ‘are you a marquis?’ ‘No,’ I replied, ‘I am a sans-culotte.’ ‘Ah, well! people, you hear what he says,’ he exclaims, ‘he says that he is a sans-culotte, and that is the way he greets a denunciation on

119. Moniteur, xxv., 201. (Session of Messidor 22, year III.) “When in the tribune (of the Convention) prison conspiracies were announced . . . my dreams were wholly of prison conspiracies.” 120. Ibid., 211. (Explanations given by Lebon to the Convention.)—Paris, ii., 350, 351. (Verdict of the jury.) The Governors / 1083 the maximum! I remove him. Let him be f in prison!’”121 It is certain that the King of Arras and Cambray is not far from a raging fever; with such symptoms an ordinary individual would be sent to an asylum. Not so vain, less fond of parading his royalty, but more savage and placed in Nantes amidst greater dangers, Carrier, under the pressure of more sombre ideas, is much more furious and constant in his madness. Sometimes his attacks reach hallucination. “I have seen him,” says a witness, “so carried away in the tribune, in the heat of his harangue when trying to overrule public opinion, as to cut off the tops of the candles with his sabre,” as if they were so many aristocrats’ heads.122 Another time, at table, after having declared that France could not feed its too numerous population, and that it was decided to cut down the excess, all nobles, magistrates, priests, merchants, etc., he becomes excited and exclaims, “Kill, kill!” as if he were already engaged in the work and ordering the operation.123 Even when fasting, and in an ordinary condition, he is scarcely more cooled down. When the administrators of the department come to consult with him,124 they gather around the door to see if he looks enraged, and is in a condition to hear them. He not only insults petitioners, but likewise the functionaries under him who make reports to him, or take his orders; his foul nature rises to his lips and overflows in the vilest terms: “Go to and be . I have no time.”125 They consider themselves lucky if they get off with a volley of obscene oaths, for he generally draws his sabre: “The first that mentions supplies, I will his head off.”126 And to the president of the military commission, who demands that verdicts be rendered before ordering executions: “You,

121. Paris, ii., 85. 122. Buchez et Roux, xxxiv., 181. (Depositions of Monneron, a merchant.). 123. Ibid., 184. (Deposition of Chaux.)—Cf. 200. (Depositions of Monne- ron and Villemain, merchants.). 124. Ibid., 204. (Deposition of Lamarie, administrator of the department.). 125. Ibid., 173. (Deposition of Erard, a copyist.)—168. (Deposition of Thomas, health officer.) “To all his questions, Carrier replied in the grossest language.” 126. Ibid., 203. (Deposition of Bonami, merchant.) 1084 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION you old rascal, you old , you want verdicts, do you! Go ahead! If the whole pen is not emptied in a couple of hours I will have you and your colleagues shot!” His gestures, his look have such a powerful effect upon the mind that the other, who is also a “bruiser,” dies of the shock a few days after.127 Not only does he draw his sabre, but he uses it; among the petitioners, a boatman, whom he is about to strike, runs off as fast as he can; he draws General Moulins into the recess of a window and gives hima cut. 128 People “tremble” on accosting him, and yet more in contradicting him. The envoy of the Committee of Public Safety, Julien de la Droˆme, on being brought before him, takes care to “stand some distance off, in a corner of the room,” wisely trying to avoid the first spring; wiser still, he replies to Carrier’s exclamations with the only available argument: “If you put me out of the way today, you yourself will be guillotined within a week!”129 On coming to a stand before a mad dog one must aim the knife straight at its throat; there is no other way to escape its tusks and slaver. Accordingly, with Carrier, as with a mad dog, the brain is mastered by the steady mechanical reverie, by persistent images of murder and death. He exclaims to President Tronjolly, apropos of the Vendeán children: “The guillotine, always the guillotine!”130 In relation to the drownings: “You judges must

127. Ibid., 156. (Deposition of Vaujois, public prosecutor to the military commission.) 128. Ibid., 169. (Deposition of Thomas.)—Berryat Saint-Prix, pp. 34, 35.— Buchez et Roux, 118. “He received the members of the popular club with blows, also the municipal officers with sabre thrusts, who came to demand supplies.” . . . “He draws his sabre (against the boatman) and strikes at him, which he avoids only by running away.” 129. Buchez et Roux, xxxiv., 196. (Deposition of Julien.) “Carrier said to me in a passion: ‘It is you, is it, you d beggar, who presumes to denounce me to the Committee of Public Safety. . . . As it is sometimes necessary for the public interests to get rid of certain folks quickly, I won’t take the trouble to send you to the guillotine, I’ll be your executioner myself!” 130. Ibid., 175. (Deposition of Tronjolly.) 295. (Depositions of Jean Lavigne, a shopkeeper; of Arnandan, civil commissioner; also of Corneret, merchant.) 179. (Deposition of Villemain).—Berryat Saint-Prix, 34. “Carrier, says the gendarme Desquer, who carried his letters, was a roaring lion rather than an officer The Governors / 1085 have verdicts; pitch them into the water, which is much more simple.” Addressing the popular club of Nantes, he says: “The rich, the merchants, are all monopolisers, all antirevolutionists; denounce themto me,and I will have all their heads under the national razor. Tell me who the fanatics are that shut their shops on Sunday and I will have themguillotined.” “When will the heads of those rascally merchants fall?” “I see beggars here in rags; you are as big fools at Ancenis as at Nantes. Don’t you know that the money, the wealth of these old merchants, belongs to you, and is not the river there?” “My brave b , my good sans-culottes your time is come! De- nounce themto me!The evidence of two good sans-culottes is all I want to make the heads of those old merchants tumble!” “We will make France a grave-yard rather than not regenerate it in our own way.”131 His steady howl ends in a cry of anguish: “We shall all be guillotined, one after the other!”132 Such is the mental state to which the office of representative on mission leads. Below Carrier, who is on the extreme verge, the others, less advanced, likewise turn pale at the lugubrious vision, which is the inevitable effect of their work and their mandate. Beyond every grave they dig, they catch a glimpse of the grave already dug for them. There is nothing left for the grave-digger but to dig mechanically day after day, and, in the meantime, make what he can out of his place; he can at least render himself insensible by having “a good time.” IX Most of themfollow this course, someinstinctively and through lassitude, and others because the display they make adds to their authority. “Dragged along in carriages with six horses, surrounded by guards, seated at sumptuous tables set for thirty persons, eating

of the people.” “He looked at once like a charlatan and a tiger,” says another witness. 131. Ibid., xxxiv., 204. (Deposition of Lamarie.) 132. Ibid., 183. (Deposition of Caux.) 1086 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION to the sound of music along with a cortege of actors, courtezans, and pretorians,”133 they impress the imagination with an idea of their omnipotence, and people bow all the lower because they make a grand show. At Troyes, on the arrival of young Rousselin, cannon are discharged as if for the entry of a prince. The entire population of Nevers is called upon to honor the birth of Fouche´’s child; the civil and military authorities pay their respects to him, and the Na- tional Guards are under arms.134 At Lyons, “The imposing display of Collot d’Herbois resembles that of the Grand Turk. It requires three successive applications to obtain an audience; nobody approaches nearer than a distance of fifteen feet; two sentinels with muskets stand on each side of him, with their eyes fixed on the petitioners.”135 Less menacing, but not less imposing, is the pomp which surrounds the representatives at Bordeaux; to approach them, requires “a pass fromthe captain of the guards,” 136 through several squads of sentinels. One of them, Ysabeau, who, after having guillotined to a considerable extent, has become almost tractable, allows adulation, and, like a Duc de Richelieu coming down from Ver- sailles, tries to play the popular potentate, with all the luxuries which the situation affords. At the theatres, in his presence, they give a ballet in which shepherds formwith garlands of flowers the words “Ysabeau, Liberty, Equality.” He allows his portrait to pass from hand to hand, and condescendingly smiles on the artist who inscribes these words at the bottomof an engraving of the day: “ An occurrence which tookplace under Ysabeau, representative of the people. ” “When he passes in the street people take off their hats to him, cheer him, and shout ‘Hurrah for Ysabeau! Hurrah for the saviour of Bordeaux, our friend and father!’ The children of aristocrats come and apostro- phise himin this way, even at the doors of his carriage; for he has

133. Mallet-Dupan, “Me´moires,” ii., 6. (Memorial of Feb. 1, 1794.) On An- dre´ Dumont, “Un Se´jour en France,” 158, 171.—On Merlin de Thionville, Michelet, vi., 97. 134. De Martel, “Fouche´,” 109. 135. Mallet-Dupan, ii., 46. 136. Buchez et Roux, xxxii., 413, 423. (Letter of Julien to Robespierre.) The Governors / 1087 a carriage, and several of them, with a coachman, horses, and the equipage of a former noble, gendarmes preceding him everywhere, even on excursions into the country,” where his new courtiers call him “great man,” and welcome him with “Asiatic magnificence.” There is good cheer at his table, “superb white bread,” called “representatives’ bread,” whilst the rustics of the neighborhood live on roots, and the inhabitants of Bordeaux can scarcely obtain over four ounces per diem of musty bread. There is the same feasting with the representatives at Lyons, in the midst of similar distress. In the reports made by Collot we find a list of bottles of brandy at four francs each, along with partridges, capons, turkeys, chickens, pike, and crawfish; also white bread, “equality bread,” the other kind, assigned to simple mortals, offending this august palate. Add to this the requisitions made by Albitte and Fouche´, seven hundred bottles of fine wine, in one lot, another of fifty pounds of coffee, one hundred and sixty ells of muslin, three dozen silk handkerchiefs for cravats, three dozen pairs of gloves, and four dozen pairs of stockings: they provide themselves with a good stock.137 Among so many

137. Archives Nationales, AF., II., 111. An order issued by Bourbotte, Tours, Messidor 5, year II., “requiring the district administration to furnish him personally, as well as for the citizens attached to his commission, forty bottles of red wine and thirty of white wine, to be taken fromthe cellars of emigre´s, or fromthose of persons condemnedto death; and, besides this, fifty bottles of common wine other than white or red.”—On the 2d of Messidor, ale is drank and there is a fresh order for fifty bottles of red wine, fifty of common wine, and two bottles of brandy.—De Martel, “Fouche´,” 419, 420.—Moniteur, xxiv., 604. (Session of Prairial 13, par iii.) “Dugue´ reads the list of charges brought against Mallarme´. He is accused . . . of having put in requisition whatever pleased himfor his table and for other wants, without paying for anything, not even for the post-horses and postillions that carried him.”—Ibid. 602. Report of Pere`s du Gers. “He accuses Dartigoyte . . . of having taken part with his secretaries in the auction of the furniture of Daspe, who had been condemned; of having kept the most valuable pieces for himself, and afterwards fixing their price; of having warned those who had charge of the sale that confinement awaited whoever should bid on the articles he destined for himself.”—La- planche, ex-Benedictine, said in his mission in Loiret, that “those who did not like the Revolution must pay those who make it.” 1088 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION perambulating satraps, the most audaciously sensual is, I believe, Tallien, the Septembriseur at Paris and guillotineur at Bordeaux, but still more rake and robber, caring mostly for his palate and stomach. Son of the cook of a grand seignor, he is doubtless swayed by family traditions: for his government is simply a larder where, like the head- butler in “Gil Blas,” he can eat and turn the rest into money. At this moment, his principal favorite is Teresa Cabarrus, a woman of society, or one of the demi-monde, whomhe took out of prison; he rides about the streets with her in an open carriage, “with a courier behind and a courier in front,” sometimes wearing the red cap and holding a pike in her hand,138 thus exhibiting his goddess to the people. And this is the sentiment which does him the most credit; for, when the crisis comes, the imminent peril of his mistress arouses his courage against Robespierre, and this pretty woman, who is good-natured, begs him, not for murders, but for pardons. Others, as gallant as he is, but with less taste, obtain recruits for their pleasures in a rude way, either as fast-livers on the wing, or because fear subjects the honor of women to their caprices, or because the public funds defray the expenses of their guard-roomhabits. At Blois, for this species of expenditure, Guimberteau discharges his obligations by drafts on the proceeds of the revolutionary tax.139 Carrier, at Nantes, appropriates to himself the house and garden of a private person for “his seraglio”; the reader may judge whether, on desiring to be a third party in the household, the husband would make objections; at other times, in the hotel Henry IV., “with his friends and prostitutes brought under requisition, he has an orgy”; he allows himself the same indulgence on the galiot, at the drownings; there at the end of a drunken frolic, he is regaled with merry songs, for example, “la gamelle”:140 he must be amused. Some, who

138. Buchez et Roux, xxxii., 426. (Extract fromthe Memoirs of Se ńart.)— Hamel, iii., 565. (Description of Teresa’s domicile by the Marquis de Paroy, a petitioner and eye-witness.) 139. Buchez et Roux, xxxiii., 12. (Extract fromthe Memoirs of Seńart.) “The certified copies of these drafts are on file with the Committee of General Se- curity.” 140. Report of Courtois, 360. (Letters of Julien to Robespierre, Pluviose 15 The Governors / 1089 are shrewd, think of the more substantial and look out for the future. Foremost among these is Tallien, the king of robbers, but prodigal, whose pockets, full of holes, are only filled to be at once emptied; Javogues, who makes the most of Montbrison; Rove`re, who, for eighty thousand francs in assignats, has an estate adjudged to him worth five hundred thousand francs in coin; Fouche´, who, in Nie`vre, begins to amass the twelve or fourteen millions which he secures later on;141 and so many others, who were either ruined or impoverished previous to the outbreak of the Revolution, and who are rich when it ends: Barras with his domain of Gros Bois; Andre´ Dumont, with the Hotel de Plouy, its magnificent furniture, and an estate worth four hundred thousand livres; Merlin de Thionville, with his country-houses, equipages, and domain of Mont-Vale´rien, and other domains; Salicetti, Rewbell, Rousselin, Chateauneuf- Randon, and the rest of the corrupt Directory cormorants. Without mentioning the taxes and confiscations of which they render no account, they have, for their hoard, the ransoms offered underhandedly by “suspects” and their families; what is more convenient?142 And all the more, because the Committee of General Security, even when informed, let things take their course: to prosecute Monta- gnards, would be “making the Revolution take a step backward.” and 16, year II.)—Buchez et Roux, xxxiv., 199, 200, 202, 203, 211. (Depositions of Villemain, Monneron, Legros, Robin.)—Berryat Saint-Prix, 35. (Depositions of Fourrier and of Louise Courant, sempstress.) 141. See, on Tallien, “Me´moires de Seńart.”—On Javogues, Moniteur, xxiv., 461, Floreál 24, III. Petition against Javogues, with several pages of signatures, especially those of the inhabitants of Montbrison: “In the report made by him to the Convention he puts down coin and assignats at seven hundred and seventy-four thousand six hundred and ninety-six francs, while the spoils of one person provided himwith five hundred thousand francs in cash.”—On Fouche´, De Martel, 252.—On Dumont, Mallet-Dupan, “Manuscript notes.” (January, 1795.)—On Rove`re, Michelet, vi., 256.—Carnot, ii., 87. (According to the Memoirs of the German Olsner, who was in Paris under the Directory): “The tone of Barras’ Salon was that of a respectable gambling house; the house of Rewbell resembled the waiting-room of an inn at which the mail-coach stops.” 142. Buchez et Roux, xxxii., 391, and xxxiii., 9. (Extracts fromthe Memoirs of Seńart.) 1090 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

One is bound to humor useful servants who have such hard work, like that of September; irregularities, as with these September people, must be overlooked; it is necessary to allow them a few perquisites and give themgratuities. 143 All this would not suffice to keep themat work if there were not an attraction of superior force. To the common run of civilised men, the office of Septembriseur is at first disagreeable; but, after a little practice, especially with a tyrannical nature, which, under cover of the theory, or under the pretext of public safety, can satiate its despotic instincts, all repugnance subsides. There is keen delight in the exercise of absolute power; one is glad, every hour, to assert one’s omnipotence and prove it by some act, the most conclusive of all acts being some act of destruction. The more complete, radical and prompt the destruction is, the more conscious one is of one’s strength. However great the obstacle, one is not disposed to recede or stand still; one breaks away all the barriers which men call good sense, humanity, justice, and the satisfaction of breaking them down is great. To crush and to subdue becomes voluptuous pleasure, to which pride gives keener relish, affording a grateful incense of the holocaust which the despot consumes on his own altar; at this daily sacrifice, he is both idol and priest, offering up victims to himself that he may be conscious of his divinity. Such is Saint-Just, all the more a despot because his title of representative on mission is supported by his rank on the Committee of Public Safety: to find natures strained to the same pitch as his, we must leave the modern world and go back to a Caligula, or to a caliph Hakemin Egypt in the tenth century.144 He also, like these two monsters, but with different formulae, regards himself as a God, or God’s vicegerent on earth,

143. Carnot, “Me´moires,” i. 416. Carnot, having shown to the Committee of Public Safety, proofs of the depredations committed on the army of the North, Saint-Just got angry and exclaimed: “It is only an enemy of the Republic that would accuse his colleagues of depredations, as if patriots hadn’t a right to everything!” 144. As to Caligula see Suetonius and Philo.—With respect to Hakem, see “L’Expose´ de la Religion des Druses,” by M. de Sacy. The Governors / 1091 invested with absolute power through Truth incarnated in him, the representative of a mysterious, limitless and supreme power, known as the People; to worthily represent this power, it is essential to have a soul of steel.145 Such is the soul of Saint-Just, and only that. All other sentiments merely serve to harden it; all the metallic agencies that compose it—sensuality, vanity, every vice, every species of ambition, all the frantic outbursts, and melancholy vaporings of his youth—are violently commingled and fused together in the revolutionary mould, so that his soul may take the form and rigidity of trenchant steel. Suppose this an animated blade, feeling and willing in conformity with its temper and structure; it would delight in being brandished, and would need to strike; such is the need of Saint-Just. Taciturn, impassible, keeping people at a distance, as imperious as if the entire will of the people and the majesty of transcendent reason resided in his person, he seems to have reduced his passions to the desire of dashing everything to atoms, and to creating dismay. It may be said of him that, like the conquering Tartars, he measures his self-attributed grandeur by what he fells; no other has so extensively swept away fortunes, liberties and lives; no other has so ter- rifically heightened the effect of his deeds by laconic speech and the suddenness of the stroke. He orders the arrest and close confinement of all former nobles, men and women, in the four departments, in twenty-four hours; he orders the bourgeoisie of Strasbourg to pay over nine millions in twenty-four hours; ten thousand persons in Strasbourg must give up their shoes in twenty-four hours; random and immediate discharges of musketry on the officers of the Rhine army—such are the measures.146 So much the worse for the innocent; there is no time to discern who they are; “a blind man hunting for

145. Saint-Just, speaking in the Convention, says: “What constitutes a republic is the utter destruction of whatever is opposed to it.” 146. Orders issued by Saint-Just and Lebas for the departments of Pas-de- Calais, Nord, la Somme et l’Aisne.—Cf. “Histoire de l’Alsace,” by Stroebel, and “Recueil de pie`ces authentiques pour servir a` l’histoire de la Re´volution a` Strasbourg,” 3 vols.—Archives Nationales AF., II., 135, orders issued Brumaire 10, year II., and list of the one hundred and ninety-three persons taxed. 1092 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION a pin in a dust-heap takes the whole heap.”147 And, whatever the order, even when it cannot be executed, so much the worse for him to whomit is given, for the captain who, directed by the representative to establish this or that battery in a certain time, works all night with all his forces, “with as many men as the place will hold.”148 The battery not being ready at the hour named, Saint-Just sends the captain to the guillotine. The sovereign having once given an order it cannot be counter-manded; to take back his words would be weakening himself;149 in the service of omnipotence, pride is insatiable, and, to mollify it, no barbaric act is too great. The same appetite is visible in Collot d’Herbois, who, no longer on the stage, plays before the town the melo-dramatic tyrant with all becoming ostentation. One morning, at Lyons, he directs the revolutionary Tribunal to arrest, examine and sentence a youthful “suspect” before the day is over. “Towards six o’clock,150 Collot being at table enjoying an orgy with prostitutes, buﬀoons, and executioners, eating and drinking to choice music, one of the judges of the Tribunal enters; after the usual formalities, he is led up to the Representative, and informs him that the young man had been arrested and examined, and the strictest enquiries made concerning him; he is found irreproachable and the Court decided to set himfree. Collot, without looking at the judge, raises his voice and says to him: ‘I ordered you to punish that young man and I want him out of the way before night. If the innocent are spared, too many of the guilty will escape. Go.’ The music and gaiety begin again, and in an hour the young man is shot.” And so with most of the other pachalics; if any head mentally

147. Buchez et Roux, xxxi., 32. (Saint-Just’s reply to Mayor Monet.)—De Sybel, ii., 447, 448. At the first interview Saint-Just said to Schneider: “Why use so much ceremony? You know the crimes of the aristocrats? In the twenty- four hours taken for one investigation you might have twenty-four condemned.” 148. “Journal de marche du sergent Fricasse,” p. 34. (Narrative by Marshal Soult.) 149. Cf. in the Bible, the story of Ahasuerus who, out of respect for his own majesty, cannot retract the order he has issued against the Jews, but he turns the difficulty by allowing themto defend themselves. 150. Mallet-Dupan, ii., 47. The Governors / 1093 condemned by the pacha escapes or does not fall soon enough, the latter is indignant at the delays and forms of justice, also against the judges and juries, often selected by himself. Javogues writes an insulting letter to the commission of Feurs which has dared acquit two former nobles. Laignelot, Lecarpentier, Michaud, Monestier, Lebon, break up, recompose, or replace the commissions of Fontenoy, St. Malo, and Perpignan, and the tribunals of Pau, Nismes, and Arras, whose judgments did not please them.151 Lebon, Bernard de Saintes, Dartigoyte, and Fouche´ rearrest prisoners on the same charge, solemnly acquitted by their own tribunals. Boˆ, Prieur de la Marne, and Lebon, send judges and juries to prison that do not always vote death.152 Barras and Fre´ron despatch, frombrigade to brigade, to the revolutionary Tribunal in Paris, the public prosecutor and president of the revolutionary Tribunal of Marseilles, for being indulgent to antirevolutionists, because, out of five hundred and twenty-eight prisoners, they guillotined only one hundred and sixty-two.153 To contradict the infallible Representative! That of itself is an offence. He owes it to himself to punish those who are not docile, to rearrest absolved delinquents, and to maintain cruelty with cruelty. When one has long imbibed a strong and disagreeable draught, not only does the palate get accustomed to the draught, but it often acquires a taste for it; it soon wants to have it stronger; finally, it swallows it pure, completely raw, with no admixture or condiment to disguise its repulsiveness. Such, to certain imaginations, is the spectacle of human gore; after getting accustomed to it they take delight in seeing it. Lequinio, Laignelot, and Lebon invite the exe-

151. Berryat Saint-Prix, “La Justice Re´volutionnaire,” xvii.—Marcelin Bou- det, “Les Conventionnels d’Auvergne,” 269.—Moniteur, Brumaire 27, year III., report by Cale`s. 152. Paris, “Histoire de Joseph Lebon,” i., 371; ii., 341, 344.—De Martel, “Fouche´,” 153.—Berryat Saint-Prix, 347, 348. 153. Berryat Saint-Prix, 390. Ibid., 404. (On Soubrie´, executioner at Mar- seilles, letter of Lazare Giraud, public prosecutor): “I put himin the dungeon for having shed tears on the scaffold, in executing the antirevolutionists we sent to be executed.” 1094 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION cutioner to dine with them;154 Monestier, with his cut-throats, is going himself in search of prisoners in the dungeons, so that he may accompanythemto the Tribunal and overwhelmthemwith charges, if they are disposed to defend themselves; after their condemnation, he assists in uniformat their execution. 155 Fouche´, lorgnette in hand, looks out of his window upon a butchery of two hundred and ten Lyonnese. Collot, Laporte, and Fouche´ feast together in a large company on shooting days, and, at each discharge, stand up and cheer lustily, waving their hats.156 At Toulon, Fre´ron, in person, orders and sees executed, the first grand massacre on the Champ de Mars.157 On the Place d’Arras, M. de Vielfort, already tied and stretched out on the plank, awaits the fall of the knife. Lebon appears on the balcony of the theatre, makes a sign to the executioner to stop, opens the newspaper, and, in a loud voice, reads off the recent successes of the French armies; then, turning to the condemned man, exclaims: “Go, wretch, and take the news of our victories to your brethren.”158 At Feurs, where the shootings take place at the house of M. du Rosier, in the great avenue of the park, his daughter, quite a young woman, advances in tears to Javogues, and asks for the release of her husband. “Oh, yes, my dear,” replies Javogues, “you shall have him home tomorrow.” In effect, the next day, her husband is shot, and buried in the avenue.159 It is evident that they get to liking the business. Like their September predecessors, they find amusement in murdering: people around them allude gaily to “the

154. Moniteur, xviii., 413. (Session of the Convention, letter of Lequinio and Laignelot, Rochefort, Brumaire 17, year II.) “We have appointed the patriot Anse guilloteneur and we have invited him, in dining with us, to come and assume his prescribed powers, and water them with a libation in honor of the Republic.”—Paris, ii., 72. 155. Marcelin Boudet, 270. (Testimony of Bardane`che de Bayonne.) 156. Guillon, “Histoire de la ville de Lyons pendant la Re´volution,” ii., 427, 431, 433. 157. “Me´moire du Citoyen Fre´ron,” (in the Barrie`re collection), p. 357. (Testimony of a survivor.) 158. Paris, ii., 32. 159. Delandine, “Tableaux des prisons de Lyons,” p. 14. The Governors / 1095 red theatre” and “the national razor.” An aristocrat is said to be “putting his head at the national window,” and “he has put his head through the cat-hole.”160 They themselves enjoy the style and humor of the occupation. “Tomorrow, at seven o’clock,” writes Hugues, “let the sacred guillotine be erected!” “The demoiselle guillotine,” writes Lecarlier, “keeps steadily agoing.”161 “The relatives and friends of emigre´s and of refractory priests,” writes Lebon, “monopolise the guillotine.162 . . . Day before yesterday, the sister of the former Comte de Bethune sneezed in the sack.” Carrier loudly proclaims “the pleasure he has derived” from seeing priests executed: “I never laughed in my life as I did at the faces they made in dying.”163 This is the extreme perversity of human nature, that of a Domitian who watches the features of the condemned, to see the effect of suffering, or, better still, that of the negro who holds his sides with laughter at the aspect of a man being impaled. And this delight of contemplating death throes, Carrier finds it in the sufferings of children. Notwithstanding the remonstrances of the revolutionary Tribunal and the entreaties of President Phelippes,164 he

160. Camille Boursier, “Essai sur la Terreur en Anjou,” 164. (Letter of Boniface, ex-Benedictine, president of the Revolutionary Committee, to Rep- resentative Richard, Brumaire 3, year II.) “We send you the said Henri Verdier, called de la Saurinie`re. . . . It will not be long before you will see that we make the guillotine a present....TheCommittee begs you to send him sacram sanc- tam guillotinam, and the republican minister of his worship. . . . Not an hour of the day passes that new members do not come to us whom we desire to initiate in its mysteries, (sic).” 161. Thibaudie`re, “Histoire du Terrorisme dans le de´partment de la Vienne,” 34, 48.—Berryat Saint-Prix, 239. 162. Archives Nationales F7, 4,435. (Letter of Lebon, Floreál 23, year II.) —Paris, i., 241. 163. Buchez et Roux, xxxiv., 184, 200. (Depositions of Chaux, Monne´ron and Villemain.) 164. Register of the revolutionary Tribunal of Nantes, copied by M. Chev- rier. (M. Chevrier has kindly sent me his manuscript copy.)—Berryat Saint- Prix, 94.—Archives Nationales, F7, 4,591. (Extract fromthe acts of the Legis- lative Committee, session of Floreál 3, year III. Restitution of the confiscated property of Alexander Long to his son.) Dartigoyte, at Auch, did what Carrier did at Nantes. “It follows fromthe above abstract duly signed that on the 27th 1096 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION signs on the 29th of Frimaire, year II., a positive order to guillotine without trial twenty-seven persons, of whomseven are women,and, among these, four sisters, Mesdemoiselles de la Metayrie, one of these twenty-eight years old, another twenty-seven, the third twenty-six, and the fourth seventeen. Two days before, notwithstanding the remonstrances of the same tribunal and the entreaties of the same president, he signed a positive order to guillotine twenty-six artisans and farm-hands, among them two boys of fourteen, and two of thirteen years of age. He was driven “in a cab” to the place of execution and he followed it up in detail. He could hear one of the children of thirteen, already bound to the board, but too small and having only the top of the head under the knife, ask the executioner, “Will it hurt me much?” What the triangular blade fell upon may be imagined! Carrier saw this with his own eyes, and whilst the executioner, horrified at himself, died a few days after in consequence of what he had done, Carrier put another in his place, began again and continued operations.

Germinal, year II., between eight and nine o’clock in the evening, Alexandre Long, Sr., was put to death on the public square of the commune of Auch by the executioner of criminal sentences, without any judgment having been rendered against the said Long.”—In many places an execution becomes a spectacle for the Jacobins of the town and a party of pleasure. For instance, at Arras, on the square devoted to executions, a gallery was erected for spectators with a roomfor the sale of refreshments, and, during the execution of M. de Montgon, the “Ca ira” is played on the bass drum. (Paris, ii., 158, and i., 159.) A certain facetious representative has rehearsals of the performance in his own house. “Lejeune, to feed his bloodthirsty imagination, had a small guillotine put up, on which he cut off the heads of all the poultry consumed at his table.... Often, in the middle of the repast, he had it brought in and set to work for the amusement of his guests.” (Moniteur, xxiv., 607, session of June 1, 1795, letter fromthe district of Besançon, and with the letter, the confirmatory document.) “This guillotine, says the reporter, is deposited with the Committee of Legis- lation.” 9 CHAPTER III =

The Rulers (continued)— I. The administrative body at Paris—Composition of the group out of which it was recruited—Deterioration of this group—Weed- ing-out of the Section Assemblies—Weeding-out of the popular clubs—Pressure of the government— II. Quality of the subaltern leaders—How they rule in the section assemblies—How they seize and hold office— III. A Minister of Foreign Affairs—A General in command—The Paris Commune—A Revolutionary Com- mittee— IV. The administrative staff in the provinces—Jacobinism less in the departmental towns than in Paris—Less in the country than in the towns—The Revolutionary Committees in the small communes—Municipal bodies lukewarm in the villages—Jacobins too numerous in bourgs and small towns—Unreliable or hampered as agents when belonging to the administrative bodies of large or moderate-sized towns—Local rulers recruited on the spot inadequate— V. Im- portation of a foreign staff—Paris Jacobins sent into the provinces—Jacobins of enthusiastic towns transported to moderate ones—The Jacobins of a chef-lieu spread through the district—Resistance of public opinion—Distribution and small number of really Jacobin agents— VI. Quality of the staff thus formed—Social state of the agents—Their unfitness and bad conduct—The administrators in Seine-et-Marne—Drunkenness and feastings—Committees and Municipalities in the Coˆte d’Or—Waste and extortions—Traffickers in favors at Bordeaux— Seal-breakers at Lyons—Monopolisers of national possessions—Sales of personal property—Embezzlements and Frauds—A proce`s-verbal in the office of the mayor of Strasbourg—Sales of real-estate—Commissioners on declarations at Toulouse—The administrative staff and clubs of buyers in Provence—The Rev- olutionary Committee of Nantes— VII. The Armed Force—National Guard and Gendarmerie—Its composition and operations—The Revolutionary Armies in Paris and in the departments—Quality of the recruits—Their employment— Their expeditions into the country towns—Their exploits in the vicinity of Paris

1097 1098 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION and Lyons—The company of Maratists, the American Hussars and the German Legion at Nantes—General character of the Revolutionary government and of the administrative staﬀ of the Reign of Terror.

TOPROVIDEthese local sovereigns with the subordinate lieutenants and agents which they require,we have the local Jacobin population, and we know how this is recruited1—outcasts, the infatuated and perverted of every class and degree, especially the lowest, envious and rancorous dependents, small shopkeepers in debt, strolling and dissipated work-men, coﬀee-house and bar-room idlers, vagrants, tramps, abject prostitutes—in short, every species of “antisocial vermin,” male and female,2 including a few honest crack-brains into which the fashionable theory had freely found its way; the rest, and by far the largest number, are veritable beasts of prey, speculating on the established order of things and adopting the revolutionary faith only because it provides food for their appetites. In Paris, they number ﬁve or six thousand, and, after Thermidor, there is about

1. “The Revolution,” ii., pp. 298–304, and p. 351. 2. Should the foregoing testimony be deemed insufficient, the following, by those foreigners who had good opportunities for judging, may be added: (Gou- verneur Morris, letter of December 3, 1794.) “The French are plunged into an abyss of poverty and slavery, a slavery all the more degrading because the men who have plunged them into it merit the utmost contempt.”—Meissner, “Voyage a`Paris” (at the end of 1795), p. 160. “The (revolutionary) army and the revolutionary committees were really associations organised by crime for committing every species of injustice, murder, rapine, and brigandage with impunity. The government had deprived all men of any talent or integrity of their places and given these to its creatures, that is to say, to the dregs of humanity.”—Baron Brinckmann, Charge´ d’Affaires from Sweden. (Letter of July 11, 1799.) “I do not believe that the different classes of society in France are more corrupt than elsewhere; but I trust that no people may ever be ruled by as imbecile and cruel scoundrels as those that have ruled France since the advent of its new state of freedom....The dregs of the people, stimulated from above by sudden and violent excitement, have everywhere brought to the surface the scum of immorality.” The Governors / 1099 the same number, the same appetites rallying them around the same dogma,3 levellers and terrorists, “some because they are poor, others because they have ceased working at their trade,” infuriate “against the porte-coche`re scoundrels, the rich holders of objects of prime necessity,” many “having taken a hand in the Revolution, and ready to do it again provided the rich rascals, monopolists, and merchants can all be killed,” all “frequenters of popular clubs who think themselves philosophers, although most of them are unable to read,” at the head of them the remnant of the most notorious political bandits, the famous post-master, Drouet, who, in the tribune at the Conven- tion, declared himself a “brigand,”4 Javogues, the robber of Mont- brison and the “Nero of Ain,”5 the sot Casset, formerly a silk-hand and afterwards the pacha of Thionville, Bertrand, the friend of Char- lier, the ex-mayor and executioner of Lyons, Darthe´, ex-secretary of Lebon and the executioner at Arras, Rossignol and nine other Septembriseurs of the Abbaye and the Carmelites, and, finally, the great apostle of despotic communism, Baboeuf, who, sentenced to twenty years in irons for the falsification of public contracts, and as needy as he is vicious, rambles about Paris airing his disappointed ambitions and empty pockets along with the swaggering crew who, if not striving to reach the throne by a new massacre,6 tramp through the streets slipshod, for lack of money “to redeem a pair of boots at the shoemakers,” or to sell some snuff-box, their last resource,

3. Fleury, “Baboeuf,” 139, 150.—Granier de Cassagnac, “Histoire du Di- rectoire,” ii., 24–170.—(Trial of Baboeuf, passim.) The above quotations are from documents seized in Baboeuf ’s house, also from affidavits made by witnesses, and especially by Captain Grizel. 4. Moniteur, session of September 5, 1793. “Since our virtue, our moderation, our philosophic ideas, are of no use to us, let us be brigands for the good of the people; let us be brigands!” 5. An expression of Couthon’s on Javogues. 6. Baboeuf, “Le Tribune du Peuple,” No. 40. Apologising for the men of September, he says that “they are simply priests, the sacrificers of a just im- molation for public security. If anything is to be regretted it is that a larger and more general Second of September did not sweep away all starvers and all despoilers.” 1100 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION for a morning dram.7 In this class we see the governing rabble fully and distinctly. Separated from its forced adherents and the official automatons who serve it as they would any other power, it stands out pure and unalloyed by any neutral afflux; we recognise here the permanent residue, the deep, settled slime of the social sewer. It is to this sink of vice and ignorance that the revolutionary government betakes itself for its staff-officers and its administrative bodies. Nowhere else could they be found. For the daily task imposed upon them, and which must be done by them, is robbery and murder; excepting the pure fanatics, who are few in number, only brutes and blackguards have the aptitudes and tastes for such business. In Paris, as in the provinces, it is from the clubs or popular associations in which they congregate, that they are sought for. Each section of Paris contains one of these clubs, in all forty-eight, rallied around the central club in the Rue St. Honore´, forty-eight district alliances of professional rioters and brawlers, the rebels and blackguards of the social army, all the men and women incapable of devoting themselves to a regular life and useful labor,8 especially those who, on the 31st of May and 2d of June, had aided the Commune and the “Mountain” in violating the Convention. They recognise each other by this sign that, “each would be hung in case of a counter- revolution,”9 laying it down “as an incontestable fact that, should a single aristocrat be spared, all of them would mount the scaffold.”10 They are naturally wary and they cling together: in their clique

7. Granier de Cassagnac, ii., 90. (Deposition of Grisel.) Rossignol says, “That snuﬀ-box is all I have to live on.” “Massard could not obtain a pair of boots belonging to him at the shoemaker’s, because he had no money.” 8. Archives Nationales, Cf. 3,1167. (Report of Robin, Nivose 9.) “The women always had a deliberative voice in the popular assemblies of the Pan- theon section,” and in all the other clubs they attended the meetings. 9. Moniteur, xix., 103. (Meeting of the Jacobin club, Dec. 28, 1793.) Dubois-Crance´ puts the following question to each member who passes the weeding-out vote: “What have you done that would get you hung in case of a counter-revolution?” 10. Ibid., xvii., 410. (Speech by Montaut, Jacobin club, Brumaire 21, year II.) The Governors / 1101

“every thing is done on the basis of good fellowship;”11 no one is admitted except on the condition of having proved his qualifications “on the 10th of August and 31st of May.”12 And, as they have made their way into the Commune and into the revolutionary committees behind victorious leaders, they are able, through the certificates of civism which these arbitrarily grant or refuse, to exclude, not only from political life but, again, from civil life, whoever is not of their coterie. “See,” writes one of Danton’s correspondents,13 “the sort of persons who easily obtain these certificates, the Ronsins, the Jour- dans, the Maillards, the Vincents, all bankrupts, keepers of gambling- hells, and cut-throats. Ask these individuals whether they have paid the patriotic contribution, whether they regularly pay the usual taxes, whether they give to the poor of their sections, to the volunteer soldiers, etc.; whether they mount guard or see it regularly done, whether they have made a loyal declaration for the forced loan. You will find that they have not....TheCommune issues certificates of civism to its satellites and refuses them to the best citizens.” The monopoly is obvious; they make no attempt to conceal it; six weeks later,14 it becomes official: “several revolutionary committees decide not to grant certificates of civism to citizens who are not members of a popular club.” And strict exclusion goes on increasing from month to month. Old certificates are cancelled and new ones imposed, which new certificates have new formalities added to them, a larger number of endorsers being required and certain kinds of guarantees being rejected; there is greater strictness in relation to

11. Dauban, “Paris in 1794,” 142. (Police report of Ventose 13, year II.) 12. Morellet, “Me´moires,” ii. 13. Dauban, 26, 35. (Note drawn up in January, 1794, probably by the physician Quevremont de Lamotte.)—Ibid., 82.—Cf. Morellet, ii., 434–470. (Details on the issue of certificates of civism, in September, 1793.) 14. Archives Nationales, F7, 3,1167. (Report by Latour-Lamontagne, Ven- tose 1, year II.) “It is giving these associations too much influence; it is destroying the jurisdiction of the general assemblies (of the section.) We find accordingly, that these are being deserted and that the cabalists and intriguers succeed in making popular clubs the centres of public business in order to control affairs more easily.” 1102 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION the requisite securities and qualifications; the candidate is put off until fuller information can be obtained about him; he is rejected at the slightest suspicion:15 he is only too fortunate if he is tolerated in the Republic as a passive subject, if he is content to be taxed and taxed when they please, and if he is not sent to join the “suspects” in prison; whoever does not belong to the band does not belong to the community. Amongst themselves and in their popular club it is worse, for “the eagerness to get any office leads to every one denouncing each other”;16 consequently, at the Jacobin club in the rue St. Honore´, and in the branch clubs of the quarter, there is constant weeding- out, and always in the same sense, until the faction is purged of all honest or passable alloy and only a minority remains, which has its own way at every balloting. One of them announces that, in his club, eighty doubtful members have already been got rid of; another that, in his club, one hundred are going to be excluded.17 On Ventose 23, in the “Bon-Conseil” club, most of the members examined are rejected: “they are so strict that a man who cannot show that he acted energetically in critical times, cannot form part of the assembly; he is set aside for a mere trifle.” On Ventose 13, in the same club, “out of twenty-six examined, seven only are admitted; one citizen, a tobacco dealer, aged sixty-eight, who has always performed his duty, is rejected for having called the president Monsieur, and

15. Dauban, ibid., 203. (Report by Bacon, Ventose 19.) “In the general assembly of the Maison Commune section all citizens of any rank in the companies have been weeded out. The slightest stain of incivism, the slightest negligence in the service, caused their rejection. Out of twenty-five who passed censorship—nineteen at least were rejected....Most of them are either shoemakers, cooks, carpenters, tailors, or eating-house keepers.” 16. Ibid., 141. (Report by Charmont, Ventose 12.)—Ibid, 140. “There is only one way, it is said at the Cafe´ des Grands Hommes, on the boulevard, to keep from being arrested, and that is to cabal for admission into the civil and revolutionary committees when there happens to be a vacancy. Before salaries were attached to these places nobody wanted them; since that, there are disputes as to who shall be appointed.” 17. Ibid., 307. (Report of Germinal 7.) The Governors / 1103 for having spoken in the tribune bareheaded; two members, after this, insisted on his being a Moderate, which is enough to keep him out.” Those who remain, consist of the most restless and most loquacious, the most eager for office, the self-mutilated club being thus reduced to a knot of charlatans and rogues. To these spontaneous eliminations through which the club dete- riorates, add the constant pressure through which the Committee of Public Safety frightens and degrades it. The lower the revolutionary government sinks, and the more it concentrates its power, the more servile and sanguinary do its agents and employees become. It strikes right and left as a warning; it imprisons or decapitates the turbulent among its own clients, the secondary demagogues who are impatient at not being principal demagogues, the bold who think of striking a fresh blow in the streets, Jacques Roux, Vincent, Momoro, He´bert, leaders of the Cordeliers club and of the Commune; after these, the indulgent who are disposed to exercise some discernment or moderation in terrorism, Camille Desmoulins, Danton and their adherents; and lastly, many others who are more or less doubtful, compromised or compromising, wearied or eccentric, from Maillard to Chaumette, from Antonelle to Chabot, from Westermann to Clootz. Each of the proscribed has a gang of followers, and suddenly the whole gang are obliged to be turncoats; those who are able to lead, flag, while those who can feel pity, become hardened. Henceforth, amongst the subaltern Jacobins, the roots of independence, humanity, and loyalty, hard to extirpate even in an ignoble and cruel nature, are eradicated even to the last fibre, the revolutionary staff, already so debased, becoming more and more degraded, until it is worthy of the office assigned to it. The confidants of He´bert, those who listen to Chaumette, the comrades of Westermann, the officers of Ronsin, the faithful readers of Camille, the admirers and devotees of Danton, all are bound to publicly repudiate their incarcerated friend or leader and approve of the decree which sends him to the scaffold, to applaud his calumniators, to overwhelm him on trial: this or that judge or juryman, who is one of Danton’s partisans, is obliged to stifle a defence of him, and, knowing him to be innocent, 1104 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION pronounce him guilty; one who had often dined with Desmoulins is not only to guillotine him, but, in addition to this, to guillotine his young widow. Moreover, in the revolutionary committees, at the Commune, in the offices of the Committee of General Safety, in the bureau of the Central Police, at the headquarters of the armed force, at the revolutionary Tribunal, the service to which they are restricted becomes daily more onerous and more repulsive. To denounce neighbors, to arrest colleagues, to go and seize innocent persons, known to be such, in their beds, to select in the prisons the thirty or forty unfortunates who form the daily food of the guillotine, to “amalgamate” them haphazard, to try them and condemn them in a lot, to escort octogenarian women and girls of sixteen to the scaffold, even under the knife-blade, to see heads dropping and bodies swinging, to contrive means for getting rid of a multitude of corpses, and for removing the too-visible stains of blood—of what species do the beings consist, who can accept such a task, and perform it day after day, with the prospect of doing it indefinitely? Fouquier- Tinville himself succumbs. One evening, on his way to the Com- mittee of Public Safety, “he feels unwell” on the Pont-Neuf and exclaims: “I think I see the ghosts of the dead following us, especially those of the patriots I have had guillotined!”18 And at another time: “I would rather plough the ground than be public prosecutor. If I could, I would resign.” The government, as the system becomes aggravated, is forced to descend lower still that it may find suitable instruments; it finds them now only in the lowest depths; in Ger- minal, to renew the Commune, in Floreál, to renew the ministries, in Prairial, to recompose the revolutionary Tribunal, month after month, purging and reconstituting the committees of each quarter19 of the city. In vain does Robespierre, writing and rewriting his secret

18. Wallon, “Histoire du Tribunal Revolutionaire,” iv., 129. 19. Archives Nationales, AF., II., 46. (Act of the Committee of Public Safety, Prairial 15.) “Citizens Pillon, Gouste and Ne´, members of the Revolu- tionary Committee of the Marat section, are removed. Their duties will be performed by citizens Martin, Majon, and Merel. Manville, rue de la Liberte´, No. 32, is appointed on the said Revolutionary Committee to complete it, composed only of eleven members.” And other similar acts. The Governors / 1105 lists, try to find men able to maintain the system; he always falls back on the same names, those of unknown persons, illiterate, about a hundred knaves or fools with four or five second-class despots or fanatics among them, as malevolent and as narrow as himself. The purifying crucible has been long and too often used; it has been overheated; what was sound, or nearly so, in the elements of the primitive fluid has been forcibly evaporated; the rest has fermented and become acid; nothing remains in the bottom of the vessel but the lees of stupidity and wickedness, their concentrated and corrosive dregs. II Such are the subordinate sovereigns20 who, for fourteen months in Paris, dispose of fortunes, liberties, and lives as they please. And first, in the section assemblies, which still maintain a semblance of popular sovereignty, they rule despotically and uncontested. “A dozen or fifteen men wearing a red cap,21 well-informed or not, claim the exclusive right of speaking and acting, and if any other citizen with honest motives happens to propose measures which he thinks proper, and which really are so, no attention is paid to these measures, or, if it is, it is only to show the members composing the assemblage of how little account they are. These measures are accordingly rejected, solely because they are not presented by one of the men in a red cap, or by somebody like themselves, initiated in the mysteries of the section.” “Sometimes,” says one of the leaders,22 “we find only ten of the club at the general assembly of the section;

20. Duverger, decree of Frimaire 14, year II. “The application of revolutionary laws and measures of general security and public safety is confided to the municipalities and revolutionary committees.” See, in chapter ii., the extent of the domain thus defined. It embraces nearly everything. It suffices to run through the registers of a few of the revolutionary committees, to verify this enormous power and see how they interfere in every detail of individual life. 21. Archives Nationales, F7, 3,1167. (Report, Nivose 1, year II., by Le- harival.) 22. Dauban, ibid., 307. (Report of March 29, 1794.) It here relates to the “Piques” Section, Place Vendome. 1106 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION but there are enough of us to intimidate the rest. Should any citizen of the section make a proposition we do not like, we rise and shout that he is an intriguer, or a signer (of former constitutional petitions). In this way we impose silence on those who are not in unison with the club.” The operation is all the easier inasmuch as since Septem- ber, 1793, the majority, composed of beasts of burden, mind the lash. “When something has to be effected that depends on intrigue or on private interest,23 the motion is always put by one of the members of the revolutionary committee of the section, or by one of those fanatical patriots who join in with the committee, and commonly act as its spies. Immediately the ignorant men, to whom Danton has allowed forty sous for each meeting, and who, since that time, flock to the assembly in crowds, where they never came before, welcome the proposition with loud applause, calling for a vote, and the act is passed unanimously, notwithstanding the contrary opinions of all well-informed and honest citizens. Should any one dare make an objection, he would run the risk of imprisonment as a ‘suspect,’24 after being treated as an aristocrat or federalist, or at least, refused a certificate of civism, if he had the misfortune to need one, did his subsistence depend on this, either as employee or pensioner.” In the Maison-Commune section, most of the auditory are masons, “excellent patriots,” says one of the clubbists of the quarter:25 “they always vote on our side; we make them do what we want.” Numbers of day-laborers, cab-drivers, cartmen and workmen of every class, thus earn their forty sous, and have no idea of other demands being made on them. On entering the hall, when the meeting opens, they

23. Dauban, 308. (Note found among Danton’s papers and probably written by the physician, Quevremont de Lamotte.) 24. Dauban, ibid., 125. (Report of Be´rard, Ventose 10.) In the words of a woman belonging to the Bonne-Novelle section: “My husband has been in prison four months. And what for? He was one of the first at the Bastille: he has always refused places so that the good sans-culottes might have them, and, if he has made enemies, it was because he was unwilling to see these filled by ignoramuses or new-comers, who, vociferating and apparently thirsting for blood, have created a barrier of partisans around them.” 25. Dauban, ibid., 307. (Report of March 29, 1794.) The Governors / 1107 write down their names, after which they go out “to take a drink,” without thinking themselves obliged to listen to the rigmarole of the orators; towards the end, they come back, make all the noise that is required of them with their lungs, feet and hands, and then go and “take back their card and get their money.”26 With paid applauders of this stamp, they soon get the better of any opponents, or, rather, all opposition is suppressed beforehand. “The best citizens keep silent” in the section assemblies, or “stay away”; these are simply “gambling-shops” where “the most absurd, the most unjust, the most impolitic of resolutions are passed at every moment.27 Moreover, citizens are ruined there by the unlimited sectional expenditure, which exceeds the usual taxation and the communal expenses, already very heavy. At one time, some carpenter or locksmith, member of the Revolutionary Committee, wants to construct, enlarge or decorate a hall, and it is necessary to agree with him. Again, a poor speech is made, full of exaggeration and political extravagance, of which three, four, five, and six thousand impressions are ordered to be printed. Then, to cap the climax, following the example of the Commune, no accounts are rendered, or, if this is done for form’s sake, no fault must be found with them, under penalty of suspicion, etc.” Proprietors and distributors of civism, the twelve leaders have only to agree amongst themselves to share the profits, each according to his appetite; henceforth, cupidity and vanity are free to sacrifice the common weal, under cover of the common interest. The

26. Ibid., 150. (Report of Ventose 14.)—Archives Nationales, F 7, 3,1167. (Reports of Nivose 9 and 25.) “A great many citizens are found in the sections who are called out after the meeting, to get forty sous. I notice that most of them are masons, and even a few coach drivers belonging to the nation, who can do without the nation’s indemnity, which merely serves them for drink to make them very noisy.” “The people complain, because the persons to whom the forty sous are given, to attend the section assemblies, do nothing all day, being able to work at different trades . . . and depending on these forty sous.” 27. Dauban, ibid., 312. (Note by Quevremont.)—Moniteur, xviii., 568. (Meeting of the Commune, Frimaire 11, year II.) “The Beaurepaire section advertises that wishing to put a stop to the cupidity of the wine-dealers of the arrondissement, it has put seals on all their cellars.” 1108 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION provender is enormous and the summons to it comes from above. “I am very glad,” says Henriot, in one of his orders of the day,28 “to announce to my brethren in arms that all the offices are at the disposal of the government. The actual government, which is revolutionary, whose intentions are pure, and which merely desires the happiness of all, . . . goes to garrets for virtuous men, . . . poor and genuine sans-culottes,” and it has the wherewithal to satisfy them— thirty-five thousand places of public employment in the capital alone:29 it is a rich mine; already, before the month of May, 1793, “the Jacobin club boasted of having placed nine thousand agents in the administration,”30 and since the 2d of June, “virtuous men, poor, genuine sans-culottes,” arrive in crowds from “their garrets,” dens and hired rooms, each to grab his share. Setting aside the old offices in the War, Navy, and Public-Works departments, in the Treasury and Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which they besiege, and where they install themselves by hundreds and rule, where they constantly denounce all the able employees who stay there, and make vacancies in order to fill them,31 there are twenty new administrative departments which they keep for themselves: commissioners of the first

28. Dauban, ibid., 345. (Order of the day by Henriot, Floreál 9.) 29. Mallet-Dupan, ii., 56. (March, 1794.) 30. Buchez et Roux, xxvii., 10. (Speech by Barbaroux, May 14, 1793.)— Report on the papers found in Robespierre’s apartment, by Courtois, 285. (Let- ter by Collot d’Herbois Frimaire 3, year II., demanding that Paris Jacobins be sent to him at Lyons.) “If I could have asked for our old ones I should have done . . . but they are necessary at Paris, almost all of them having been made mayors.” 31. Meissner, “Voyage a`Paris” (at the end of 1795), 160. “Persons who can neither read nor write obtain the places of accountants of more or less importance.”—Archives des Affaires E´trange´re`s, vol. 324. (Denunciations of Pio to the club, against his colleagues.) Dauban, ibid., 35. (Note by Quevremont, Jan., 1794.) “The honest man who knows how to work cannot get into the ministerial bureaux, especially those of the War and Navy departments, as well as those of Commerce and of the Departments, without having his feelings tried.— Offices are mostly filled by creatures of the Commune who very often have neither talent nor integrity. Again, the denumciations, always welcomed, however frivolous and baseless they may be, turn everything upside down.” The Governors / 1109 confiscation of national property, commissioners of national property arising from emigrants and the convicted, commissioners of conscripted carriage-horses, commissioners on clothing, commissioners on the collecting and manufacturing of saltpetre, commissioners on monopolies, civil-commissioners in each of the forty- eight sections, commissioners on propagandism in the departments, commissioners on subsistences, and many others; fifteen hundred places are counted in the single department of subsistence in Paris,32 and all are salaried. Here, already, are a number of desirable offices. Some are for the lowest rabble, two hundred, at twenty sous a day, paid to “stump-speakers,” employed to direct opinion in the Palais- Royal, also among the Tuileries groups, as well as in the tribunes of the Convention and of the Hoˆtel-de-Ville;33 two hundred more at four hundred francs per annum, to waiters in coffee-houses, gambling-saloons, and hotels, for watching foreigners and customers; hundreds of places at two, three, and five francs a day with meals, for the guardians of seals, and for garrisoning the domiciles of “suspects”; thousands, with premiums, pay, and full license, for brigands who, under Ronsin, compose the revolutionary army, and for the gunners, paid guard, and gendarmes of Henriot. The principal posts, however, are those which subject lives and liberties to the discretion of those who occupy them: for, through this more than regal power, they possess all other power, and such is that of the men composing the forty-eight revolutionary committees, the

32. Moniteur, xxiv., 397. (Speech of Dubois-Crance´ in the Convention Flo- reál 16, year III.)—Archives Nationales, F7, 3,1167. (Report by Rolin, Nivose 7, year II.) “The same complaints are heard against the civil Commissioners of the section, most of whom are unintelligent, not even knowing how to read.” 33. Archives des Affaires E´trange´re`s, vol. 1411. (August, 1793.) “Plan adopted” for the organisation of the Police, “excepting executive modifications.” In fact, some months later, the number of claqueurs, male and female, is much greater, and finally reaches a thousand. (Beaulieu, “Essais,” v., 110.)—The same plan comprehends fifteen agents at two thousand four hundred francs, “selected from the frequenters of the clubs,” to revise the daily morning lists; thirty at one thousand francs, for watching popular clubs, and ninety to twelve hundred francs for watching the section assemblies. 1110 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION bureaux of the Committee of General Security and of the Commune, and the staff-officers of the armed force. They are the prime-movers and active mainsprings of the system of Terror, all picked Jacobins and tested by repeated selection, all designated or approved by the Central Club, which claims for itself the monopoly of patriotism, and which, erected into a supreme council of the sect, issues no patent of orthodoxy except to its own instruments.34 They immediately assume the tone and arrogance of dictatorship. “Pride has reached the highest point”:35 “One who, yesterday, had nothing to do, and was amiable and honest, has become haughty and insolent because, deceived by appearances, his fellow-citizens have elected him commissioner, or given him some employment or other.” Henceforth, he demeans himself like an aga amongst infidels, and, in command, carries things with a high hand. On the 20th of Vende´miaire, year II., “in the middle of the night,” the committee of the Piques section summons M. Be´langer, the architect. He is notified that his house is wanted immediately for a new bastille. “But, said he, ‘I own no other, and it is occupied by several tenants; it is decorated with models of art, and is fit only for that purpose.’

34. Archives Nationales, F7, 4,436. (Letter of Bouchotte, Minister of War, Prairial 5, year II.) “The appointment of Ronsin, as well as of all his staﬀ, again excited public opinion. The Committee, to assure itself, sent the list to the Jacobin club, where they were accepted.”—Ibid., AF., II., 58. “Paris, Brumaire 11, year II., club of the Friends of Liberty and Equality, in session at the former Jacobin club, rue St. Honore´. List of the citizens who are to set out for Lyons and act as national commissioners. (Here follow their names.) All the citizens designated have undergone the inspection of the said club, at its meeting this day.” (Here follow the signatures of the President and three secretaries.)— “Journal des De´bats et Correspondence de la Socie´te´ des Jacobins, No. 545, 5th day of the 3d month of the year II.—In relation to the formation of a new Central club: “Terrasson is of opinion that this club may become liberticide, and demands a committee to examine into it and secure its extinction. The committee demanded by Terrasson is appointed.” It is evident that they hold on energetically to this monopoly.—Cf. Moniteur, xix., 637. (Ventose 13.) Mo- tion adopted in the Jacobin club, obliging the ministers to turn out of oﬃce any individual excluded from the club. 35. Dauban, ibid., 307. (Report of Germinal 9.) The Governors / 1111

‘Your house or a prison.’ ‘But I shall be obliged to indemnify my tenants.’ ‘Either your house or a prison; as to indemnities, we have vacant lodgings for your tenants, as well as for yourself, in La Force, or St. Pelagie.’ Twelve sentinels on the post start off at once and take possession of the premises; the owner is allowed six hours to move out and is forbidden, henceforth, to return; the bureaux, to which he appeals, interpret his obedience as ‘tacit adhesion,’ and, very soon, he himself is locked up.”36 Administrative tools that cut so sharply need the greatest care, and, from time to time, they are carefully oiled:37 on the 20th of July, 1793, two thousand francs are given to each of the forty-eight committees, and eight thousand francs to General Henriot, “for expenses in watching antirevolutionary manoeuvres”; on the 7th of August, fifty thousand francs “to indemnify the less successful members of the forty-eight committees”; three hundred thousand francs to Gen. Henriot “for thwarting conspiracies and securing the triumph of liberty”; fifty thousand francs to the mayor, “for detecting the plots of the malevolent”; on the 10th of September, forty thousand francs to the mayor, president and procureur-syndic of the department, “for measures of security”; on the 13th of September, three hundred thousand francs to the mayor “for preventing the attempts of the malevolent”; on the 15th of November, one hundred thousand francs to the popular clubs, “because these are essential to the propagation of sound principles.” Moreover, besides gratuities and a fixed salary, there are the gratifications and perquisites belonging to the office.38 Henriot ap-

36. Moniteur, xxii., 353. (Session of Brumaire 20, year III. Reclamation made by M. Be´langer at the bar of the Convention.) 37. Archives Nationales, AF., II., 40. (Acts passed by the Committee of Public Safety at the dates indicated.) Beaulieu, “Essais,” v., 200. (Ibid.) The registers of the Committee of Public Safety contain a number of similar gratuities paid to provincial clubs and patriots, for instance, AF., II. 58 (Brumaire 8), fifty thousand francs to Laplanche, and (Brumaire 9), fifty thousand francs to Couthon, “to maintain public spirit in Calvados, to revive public spirit in Lyons,” “to aid, as required, the less successful patriots who zealously devote their time to the service of their country.” 38. Dauban, ibid., 171 (report of Ventose 17), and 243 (report of Ventose 1112 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION points his comrades on the staff of paid spies and denunciators, and, naturally, they take advantage of their position to fill their pockets; under the pretext of incivism, they multiply domiciliary visits, make the master of the house ransom himself, or steal what suits them on the premises.39 In the Commune, and on the revolutionary committees, every extortion can be, and is, practiced. “I am acquainted,” says Quevremont, “with two citizens who have been put in prison, without being told why, and, at the end of three weeks or a month, let out—and do you know how? By paying, one of them, fifteen thousand livres, and the other, twenty-five thousand. . . . Gambron, at La Force, pays one thousand five hundred livres a month not to live amongst lice, and besides this, he had to pay a bribe of two thousand livres on entering. This happened to many others who, again, dared not speak of it, except in a whisper.”40 Woetothe imprudent who, never concerning themselves with public affairs, and relying on their innocence, discard the officious broker and fail to pay up at once! Brichard, the notary, having refused or tendered too late, the hundred thousand crowns demanded of him, is to put his head “at the red window.” And I omit ordinary rapine, the vast field open to extortion through innumerable inventories, sequestrations and adjudications, through the enormities of contractors, through

25), on the civil-committees and revolutionary committees, who order meat served to them before serving it to the sick, and who likewise serve the good friends of their wives.—Ibid., 146. (Report of Ventose 10.) . . . Archives Na- tionales, F7, 2,475. (Register of the deliberations of the Revolutionary Com- mittee of the Piques sections, Brumaire 27, year II.) “The Committee orders that the two-horse cab belonging to Lemarche be henceforth at the service of the section and of the Committee when measures of security are concerned.” In this register, and others of the same series, we clearly see the inside of a committee and its vast despotism. Style and orthography, with almost all, are of the same low order. 39. Archives des Affaires E´trange´re`s, vol. 1411. (Report of Aug. 21 and 22, 1793.) “General Henriot sent me several . . . who made use of the authority of the Committee of Public Safety and General Security, as well as of that which he delegated to me, to make domiciliary visits at the houses of individuals who were not assured patriots; but that did not warrant their receiving money and even abstracting it.” 40. Dauban, ibid., 36 and 48. (Case of the Notary, Brichard.) The Governors / 1113 hastily executed purchases and deliveries, through the waste of two or three millions given weekly by the government to the Commune for supplies for the capital, through the requisitions of grain which give fifteen hundred men of the revolutionary army an opportunity to clean out all the neighboring farms, as far as Corbeil and Meaux, and benefit by this after the fashion of the chauffeurs.41 Considering the parties, as above, who have the places, the anonymous robberies are not surprising. Beboeuf, the falsifier of public contracts, is secretary for subsistences to the Commune; Maillard, the Abbaye Septembriseur, receives eight thousand francs for his direction, in the forty-eight sections, of the ninety-six observers and leaders of public opinion; Chre´tien, whose smoking-shop serves as the rendezvous of rowdies, becomes a juryman at eighteen francs a day in the revolutionary Tribunal, and leads his section with uplifted sabre;42 De Sade, professor of crimes, is now the oracle of his quarter, and, in the name of the Piques section, he reads addresses to the Convention.

III Let us examine some of these ﬁgures closely: the nearer they are to the eye and foremost in position, the more the importance of the duty brings into light the unworthiness of the potentate. There is already one of them, whom we have seen in passing, Buchot, twice noticed by Robespierre under his own hand as “a man of probity, energetic, and capable of fulﬁlling the most important functions,”43 appointed by the Committee of Public Safety “Commissioner on

41. Cf. “The Revolution,” ii., 302, 303.—Mercier, “Paris pendant la Re´- volution,” i., 151.—Moniteur, xviii., 660. (Session of Frimaire 24, speech by Lecomtre in the Convention.)—On robberies and the bribes paid, see, among other documents, “Me´moires sur les Prisons,” i., 290. (Eighty thousand francs of bribes given to the head of the police force by Perisial, keeper of an eating- house, for the privilege of feeding prisoners in St. Lazare.) 42. Buchez et Roux, xxxv., 77. (Trial of Fouquier-Tinville.) Testimony of Robillard: “Another day, in the general assembly, he struck a citizen with his sabre.” 43. Buchez et Roux, xxxv., 407. (Lists in Robespierre’s handwriting.) 1114 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

External Relations,” that is to say, Minister of Foreign Aﬀairs, and kept in this important position for nearly six months. He is a schoolmaster from the Jura,44 recently disembarked from his small town and whose “ignorance, low habits, and stupidity surpass any thing that can be imagined. . . . The chief clerks have nothing to do with him; he neither sees nor asks for them. He is never found in his oﬃce, and when it is indispensable to ask for his signature on any legislative matter, the sole act to which he has reduced his functions, they are compelled to go and force it from him in the Cafe´ Hardy, where he usually passes his days.” It must be borne in mind that he is envious and spiteful, avenging himself for his incapacity on those whose competency makes him sensible of his incompetency; he denounces them as Moderates, and, at last, succeeds in having a warrant of arrest issued against his four chief clerks; on the morning of Thermidor 9, with a wicked leer, he himself carries the news to one of them, M. Miot. Unfortunately for him, after Thermidor, he is turned out and M. Miot is put in his place. With diplomatic politeness, the latter calls on his predecessor and “expresses to him the usual compliments.” Buchot, insensible to compliments, immediately

44. Miot de Melito, “Me´moires,” i., 46–51.—Buchot is not the only one of his species in the ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the archives of this ministry, vol. 324, may be found the sayings and doings of a certain Pio, an Italian refugee who slipped into the place, simulating poverty, and displaying patriotism, and who denounces his chief and colleagues.—The ex-notary Pigeot, condemned to twenty years in irons and put in the pillory, Frimaire 9, year III., will come to the surface; he is encountered under the Directory as introducer of ambassadors.—Concerning one of the envoys of the Directory to Switzerland, here is a note by Mallet-Dupan. (“Anecdotes manuscrites,” October, 1797.) “The Directorial ambassador, who has come to exact from the Swiss the expulsion of the body-guard, is named Mingot, of Belfort, a relation of Rewbell’s, former body-guard to M. le Comte d’Artois.—He came to Zurich with a prostitute, a seamstress of Zurich, established in Berne. He was living with her at the expense of the Zurich government. Having invited the family of this creature, that is to say a common horse-driver with his wife and some other persons, to dinner, they drank and committed such excesses that the driver’s wife, who was big with child, gave birth to it in the midst of the banquet. This creature gave Mingot a disease which has laid him up at Basle.” The Governors / 1115 thinks of the substantial, and the first thing he asks for is to keep provisionally his apartment in the ministry. On this being granted, he expresses his thanks and tells M. Miot that it was very well to appoint him, but “for myself, it is very disagreeable. I have been obliged to come to Paris and quit my post in the provinces, and now they leave me in the street.” Thereupon, with astounding impudence, he asks the man whom he wished to guillotine to give him a place as ministerial clerk. M. Miot tries to make him understand that for a former minister to descend so low would be improper. Buchot regards such delicacy as strange, and, seeing M. Miot’s embarrassment, he ends by saying: “If you don’t find me fit for a clerk, I shall be content with the place of a servant.” This estimate of himself shows his proper value. The other, whom we have also met before, and who is already known by his acts,45 general in Paris of the entire armed force, commander-in-chief of one hundred and ten thousand men, is that former servant or under-clerk of the procureur Formey, who, dismissed by his employer for robbery, shut up in Biceˆtre, by turns a spy and bully for a travelling show, barrier-clerk, and September butcher, purged the Convention on the 2d of June—in short, the famous Henriot, and now a common soldier and sot. In this latter capacity, spared on the trial of the He´bertists, he is kept as a tool, for the reason, doubtless, that he is narrow, coarse, and manageable, more compromised than anybody else, good for any job, without the slightest chance of becoming independent, unemployed in the army,46 having no prestige with true soldiers, a general for street

45. “The Revolution,” ii., 338, 348, 354. 46. Martel, “Types Re´volutionnaires,” 136–144.—The Minister of War appoints Henriot brigadier-general, July 3, 1793, and major-general on the 19th of September, and says in a postscript, “Please communicate to me the order of your services,” unknown in the ministry because they were of no account.— On the orgies at Choisy-sur-Seine, v. (Archives, W., 2, 500–501), see investigation of Thermidor 18 and 19, year II., made at Boisy-sur-Seine by Blache, agent of the Committee of General Security. Boulanger, brigadier-general, and Henriot’s first lieutenant, was an ex-companion jeweller. 1116 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION parade and an interloper and lower than the lowest of the mob; his mansion, his box at the Opera-Comique, his horses, his importance at festivals and reviews, and, above all, his orgies make him perfectly content. Every evening, in full uniform, escorted by his aides-decamp, he gallops to Choisy-sur-Seine, where, in the domicile of a flatterer named Fauvel, along with some of Robespierre’s confederates or the local demagogues, he revels. They toss off the wines of the Duc de Coigny, smash the glasses, plates and bottles, betake themselves to neighboring dance-rooms and kick up a row, bursting in doors, and breaking benches and chairs to pieces—in short, they have a good time. The next morning, having slept himself sober, he dictates his orders for the day, veritable masterpieces in which the silliness, imbecility, and credulity of a numskull, the sentimentality of the drunkard, the clap-trap of a mountebank, and the tirades of a cheap philosopher form an unique compound, at once sickening and irritating, like the fiery, pungent mixtures of low groggeries, which suit his audience better because they contain the biting, mawkish ingredients that compose the adulterated brandy of the Revolution. He is posted on foreign transactions, and knows what makes the famine: “A lot of bread has been lately found in the privies: the Pitts and Cobourgs and other rascals who want to en- slave justice and reason, and assassinate philosophy, must be called to account for this. Headquarters, etc.”47 He has theories on religions and preaches civic modesty to all dissenters: “The ministers and sectaries of every form of worship are requested not to practice any

47. Archives des Affaires E´trange´re`s, vol. 1411. Orders of the day by Hen- riot, September 16, Vende´miaire 29, year II., and Brumaire 19, year II. Many of these orders of the day are published in Dauban (“Paris en 1794”), p. 33. “Let our enemies pile up their property, build houses and palaces, let them have them, what do we care, we republicans, we do not want them! All we need to shelter us is a cabin, and as for wealth, simply the habits, the virtues and the love of our country. Headquarters, etc.”—P. 43: “Yesterday evening a fire broke out in the Grand Augustins. . . . Everybody worked at it and it was put out in a very short time. Under the ancient re´gime the fire would have lasted for days. Under the system of freemen the fire lasted only an hour. What a difference! . . . Headquarters, etc.” The Governors / 1117 further religious ceremonies outside their temples. Every good sectarian will see the propriety of observing this order. The interior of a temple is large enough for paying one’s homage to the Eternal, who requires no rites that are repulsive to every thinking man. The wise agree that a pure heart is the sublimest homage that Divinity can desire. Headquarters, etc.” He sighs for the universal idyllic state, and invokes the suppression of the armed force: “I beg my fellow-citizens, who are led to the criminal courts out of curiosity, to act as their own police; this is a task which every good citizen should fulfill wherever he happens to be. In a free country, justice should not be secured by pikes and bayonets, but through reason and philosophy. These must maintain a watchful eye over society; these must purify it and proscribe thieves and evil-doers. Each individual must bring his small philosophic portion with him and, with these small portions, compose a rational totality that will enure to the benefit and welfare of all. Oh, for the time when functionaries shall be rare, when the wicked shall be overthrown, when the law shall become the sole functionary in society! Headquarters, etc.” Every morning, he preaches in the same pontifical strain. Imagine the scene—Henriot’s levee at headquarters, and a writing table, with, perhaps, a bottle of brandy on it; on one side of the table, the rascal who, while buckling on his belt or drawing on his boots, softens his husky voice, and, with his nervous twitchings, flounders through his humanitarian homily; on the other side the mute, uneasy secretary, who may probably spell, but who dares not materially change the grotesque phraseology of his master. The Commune which employs the commanding-general is of about the same alloy, for, in the municipal sword, the blade and hilt, forged together in the Jacobin shop, are composed of the same base metal. Fifty-six, out of eighty-eight members, whose qualifications and occupations are known, are decidedly illiterate, or nearly so, their education being rudimentary, or none at all.48 Some of them

48. Wallon, “Histoire du Tribunal Re´volutionnaire de Paris,” v. 252, 420. (Names and qualifications of the members of the Commune of Paris, guillotined 1118 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION are petty clerks, counter-jumpers and common scribblers, one among them being a public writer; others are small shopkeepers, pastry-cooks, mercers, hosiers, fruit-sellers and wine-dealers; others, finally, are simple mechanics or even laborers, carpenters, joiners, cabinet-makers, locksmiths, and especially three tailors, four hair- dressers, two masons, two shoemakers, one cobbler, one gardener, one stone-cutter, one paver, one office-runner, and one domestic. Among the thirty-two who are instructed, one alone has any reputation, Paris, professor at the University and the assistant of Abbe´ Delille. Only one, Dumetz, an old engineer, steady, moderate, and attending to the supplies, seems a competent and useful workman. The rest, collected from amongst the mass of unknown demagogues, are six art-apprentices or bad painters, six business-agents or ex- lawyers, seven second- or third-rate merchants, one teacher, one surgeon, one unfrocked married priest, all of whom, under the political direction of Mayor Fleuriot-Lescot and Payen, the national agent, bring to the general council no administrative ability, but the faculty for verbal argumentation, along with the requisite amount of talk and scribbling indispensable to a deliberative assembly. And it is curious to see them in session. Toward the end of September, 1793,49 one of the veterans of liberal philosophy and political econ-

Thermidor 10 and 11.) The professions and qualifications of some of its members are given in Eymery’s Biographical Dictionary, in Morellet’s Memoirs and in Arnault’s Souvenirs.—Moniteur, xvi., 710. (Verdicts of the revolutionary Tribunal, Fructidor 15, year II.) Forty-three members of the civil or revolutionary committees, sectional commissioners, officers of the National Guard and of the cannoneers, signed the list of the Council-general of the Commune as present on the 9th of Thermidor and are put on trial as Robespierre’s adherents. But they promptly withdrew their signatures, all being acquitted except one. They are leaders in the Jacobin quarter and are of the same sort and condition as their brethren of the Hoˆtel-de-Ville. One only, an ex-collector of rentes, may have had an education; the rest are carpenters, floor-tilers, shoemakers, tailors, wine-dealers, eating-house keepers, cartmen, bakers, hair-dressers, and joiners. Among them we find one ex-stone-cutter, one ex-office runner, one ex-domestic, and two sons of Samson the executioner. 49. Morellet, “Me´moires,” i., 436–472. The Governors / 1119 omy, belonging to the French Academy and ruined by the Revo- lution, the old Abbe´ Morellet, needs a certificate of civism, to enable him to obtain payment of the small pension of one thousand francs, which the Constituent Assembly had voted him in recompense for his writings; the Commune, desiring information about this, selects three of its body to enquire into it. Morellet naturally takes the preliminary steps. He first writes “a very humble, very civic note,” to the president of the General Council, Lubin Jr., formerly an art- apprentice who had abandoned art for politics, and is now living with his father a butcher, in the rue St. Honore´; he calls on this authority, and passes through the stall, picking his way amongst the slaughter-house offal; admitted after some delay, he finds his judge in bed, before whom he pleads his cause. He then calls upon Bernard, an ex-priest, “built like an incendiary and ill-looking,” and respectfully bows to the lady of the house, “a tolerably young woman, but very ugly and very dirty.” Finally, he carries his ten or a dozen volumes to the most important of the three examiners, Vialard, “ex- ladies’ hair-dresser”; the latter is almost a colleague, “for,” says he, “I have always liked mechanicians, having presented to the Academy of Sciences a top which I invented myself.” Nobody, however, had seen the petitioner in the streets on the 10th of August, nor on the 2d of September, nor on the 31st of May; how can a certificate of civism be granted after such evidences of lukewarmness? Morellet, not disheartened, awaits the all-powerful hair-dresser at the Hoˆtel- de-Ville, and accosts him frequently as he passes along. He, “with greater haughtiness and distraction than the most unapproachable Minister of War would show to an infantry lieutenant,” scarcely listens to him and walks on; he goes in and takes his seat, and Morellet, much against his will, has to be present at ten or twelve of these meetings. What strange meetings, to which patriotic deputations, volunteers and amateurs come in turn to declaim and sing; where the president, Lubin, “decorated with his scarf,” shouts the Marseilles Hymn five or six times, “Ca Ira,” and other songs of several stanzas, set to tunes of the Comic Opera, and always “out of time, displaying the voice, airs, and songs of an exquisite Leander. 1120 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

. . . I really believe that, at the last meeting, he sung alone in this manner three quarters of an hour at diﬀerent times, the assembly repeating the last line of the verse.” “How odd!” exclaims a common woman alongside of Morellet, “how droll, passing all their time here, singing in that fashion! Is that what they come here for?” Not alone for that: after the circus-parade is over, the ordinary haranguers, and especially the hair-dresser, come and propose measures for murder “in infuriate language and with ﬁery gesticulation.” Such are the good speakers50 and men for show. The others, who remain silent, and hardly know to write, act and do the rough work. A certain Chalaudon, member of the Commune,51 is one of this order, president of the revolutionary committee of the section of “L’Homme arme´,” and probably an excellent man-hunter; for “the government committees assigned to him the duty of watching the right bank of the Seine, and, with extraordinary powers conferred on him, he rules from his back shop one half of Paris. Woe to those he has reason to complain of, those who have withdrawn from, or not given him, their custom! Sovereign of his quarter up to Thermidor 10, his denunciations are death-warrants. Some of the streets, especially that of Grand Chantier, he “depopulates.” And this Marais exterminator is a “cobbler,” a colleague in leather, as well as in the Commune,

50. On the ascendency of the talkers of this class see Dauban (“Paris en 1794,” pp. 118–143). Details on an all-powerful clothes-dealer in the Lombards Section. If we may believe the female citizens of the Assembly “he said everywhere that whoever was disagreeable to him should be turned out of the popular club.” (Ventose 13, year II.) 51. Arnault, “Souvenirs d’un Sexageńaire,” iii., 111. Details on another member of the Commune, Bergot, ex-employee at the Halle-aux-Cuirs and police administrator, may be found in “Me´moires des Prisons,” i., 232, 239, 246, 289, 290. Nobody treated the prisoners more brutally, who protested against the foul food served out to them, than he. “It is too good for b who are going to be guillotined.” . . . “He got drunk with the turnkeys and with the commissioners themselves. One day he staggered in walking, and spoke only in hiccoughs: he would go in in that condition. The house-guard refused to recognize him; he was arrested” and the concierge had to repeat her declarations to make the officer of the post “give up the hog.” The Governors / 1121 of Simon the shoemaker, the preceptor and murderer of the young Dauphin. Still lower down than this admirable municipal body, let us try to imagine, from at least one complete example, the forty-eight revolutionary committees who supply it with hands. There is one of them of which we know all the members, where the governing class, under full headway, can be studied to the life.52 This consists of the nomadic and interloping class which is revolutionary only through its appetites; no theory and no convictions animate it; during the first three years of the Revolution it pays no attention to, or cares for, public matters; if, since the 10th of August, and especially since the 2d of June, it takes any account of these, it is to get a living and gorge itself with plunder. Out of eighteen members, simultaneously or in succession, of the “Bonnet Rouge,” fourteen, before the 10th of August and especially since the 2d of June, are unknown in this quarter, and had taken no part in the Revolution. The most prominent among these are three painters, heraldic, carriage and miniature, evidently ruined and idle on account of the Revolution, a candle-dealer, a vinegar-dealer, a manufacturer of saltpetre, and a locksmith; while of these seven personages, four have additionally enhanced the dignity of their calling by vending tickets for small lotteries, acting as pawnbrokers or as keepers of a biribi 53 saloon. Seated along with these are two upper-class domestics, a hack-driver, an ex-gendarme dismissed from the corps, a cobbler on the street corner, a runner on errands who was once a carter’s boy, and another who, two months before this, was a scavenger’s apprentice, the latter penniless and in tatters before he became one of the Committee, and since that, well clad, lodged and furnished; finally, a former dealer in lottery-tickets, himself a counterfeiter by his own admission, and a jail-bird. Four others have been dismissed from their places for

52. “Me´moires sur les Prisons,” i., 211. (“Tableau Historique de St. La- zare.”) The narrator is put into prison in the rue de Se`vres in October, 1793.— II., 186. (“An historical account of the jail in the rue de Se`vres.”) The narrator was confined there during the last months of the Reign of Terror. 53. A game of chance. 1122 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION dishonesty or swindling, three are known drunkards, two are not even Frenchmen, while the ring-leader, the man of brains of this select company is, as usual, a seedy, used-up lawyer, the ex-notary Pigeot, and expelled from his professional body on account of bankruptcy. He is probably the author of the following speculation: After the month of September, 1793, the Committee, freely arresting whomsoever it pleased in the quarter, and even out of it, makes a haul of “three hundred heads of families” in four months, with whom it fills the old barracks it occupies in the rue de Se`vres. In this confined and unhealthy tenement, more than one hundred and twenty prisoners are huddled together, sometimes ten in one room, two in the same bed, and, for their keeping, they pay three hundred francs a day. As sixty-two francs of this charge are verified, there is of this sum (not counting other extortions or concessions which are not official), two hundred and thirty-eight francs profit daily for these honest contractors. Accordingly, they live freely and have “the most magnificent dinners” in their assembly chamber; the contribution of ten or twelve francs apiece is “nothing” for them. But, in this opulent St. Germain quarter, so many rich and noble men and women form a herd which must be conveniently stalled, so as to be the more easily milked. Consequently, toward the end of March, 1794, the Committee, to increase its business and fill up the pen, hires a large house on the corner of the boulevard possessing a court and a garden, where the high society of the quarter is assigned lodgings of two rooms each, at twelve francs a day, which gives one hundred and fifty thousand livres per annum, and, as the rent is twenty-four hundred francs, the Committee gain one hundred and forty-seven thousand six hundred livres by the operation; we must add to this twenty sorts of profit in money and other matters—taxes on the articles consumed and on supplies of every description, charges on the despatch and receipt of correspondence and other gratuities, such as ransoms and fees. A penned-up herd refuses nothing to its keepers,54 and this one less than any other; for if this herd

54. “Un Se´jour en France de 1792 a`1795,” 281. “We had an appointment The Governors / 1123 is plundered it is preserved, its keepers finding it too lucrative to send it to the slaughter-house. During the last six months of Terror, but two out of the one hundred and sixty boarders of the “Bonnet Rouge” Committee are withdrawn from the establishment and handed over to the guillotine. It is only on the 7th and 8th of Thermidor that the Committee of Public Safety, having undertaken to empty the prisons, breaks in upon the precious herd and disturbs the well-laid scheme, so admirably managed. It was only too well- managed, for it excited jealousy; three months after Thermidor, the “Bonnet Rouge” committee is denounced and condemned; ten are sentenced to twenty years in irons, with the pillory in addition, and, among others, the clever notary,55 amidst the jeerings and insults of in the afternoon with a person employed by the Committee on National Do- mains; he was to help my friend with her claims. This man was originally a valet to the Marquise’s brother; on the outbreak of the Revolution he set up a shop, failed, and became a rabid Jacobin, and, at last, member of a revolutionary committee. As such, he found a way . . . to intimidate his creditors and obtain two discharges of his indebtedness without taking the least trouble to pay his debts.” . . . “I know an old lady who was kept in prison three months for having demanded from one of these patriots three hundred livres which he owed her.” (June 3, 1795.) “I have generally noticed that the republicans are either of the kind I have just indicated, coffee-house waiters, jockeys, gamblers, bankrupts, and low scribblers, or manual laborers more earnest in their principles, more ignorant and more brutal, all spending what they have earned in vulgar indulgence.” 55. Schmidt, “Tableaux Historiques de la Re´volution Française,” ii., 248, 249. (Agent’s reports, Frimaire 8, year III.) “The prosecution of Carrier is approved by the public, likewise the condemnation of the former revolutionary committee called the “Bonnet-Rouge.” Ten of its members are condemned to twenty years in irons. The public is overjoyed.”—Ibid., (Frimaire 9), “The people rushed in crowds to the square of the old commune building to see the members of the former revolutionary committee of the Bonnet-Rouge sections, who remained seated on the bench until six o’clock, in the light of flambeaux. They had to put up with many reproaches and much humiliation.”—“Un Se´jour en France,” 286, (June 6, 1795). “I have just been interrupted by a loud noise and cries under my window; I heard the names Scipio and Solon distinctly pronounced in a jeering and insulting tone of voice. I sent Angelique to see what was the matter and she tells me that it is a crowd of children following a shoemaker of the neighborhood who was member of a revolutionary committee 1124 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION the crowd. And yet these are not the worst; their cupidity had mollified their ferocity. Others, less adroit in robbing, show greater cruelty in murdering. In any event, in the provinces as well as in Paris, in the revolutionary committees paid three francs a day for each member, the quality of one or the other of the officials is about the same. According to the pay-lists which Bare`re keeps, there are twenty-one thousand five hundred of these committees in France.56

IV Had the laws of March 21 and September 5, 1793, been strictly enforced, there would have been forty-five thousand of these revolutionary committees, instead of twenty-one thousand five hundred, composed of five hundred and forty thousand members and costing the public five hundred and ninety-one millions per annum.57 This would have made the regular administrative body, already twice as numerous and twice as costly as under the ancient re´gime, an extra corps expending, “simply in surveillance,” one hundred millions more than the entire taxation of the country, the greatness of which had excited the people against the ancient re´gime. Happily, the poisonous and monstrous mushroom obtains but one-half its growth; neither the Jacobin seed nor the bad atmosphere it required

. . . and had called himself Scipio Solon. As he had been caught in several efforts at stealing he could no longer leave his shop without being reviled for his robberies and hooted at under his Greek and Roman names.” 56. Bare`re, “Me´moires,” ii., 324. 57. Moniteur, xxii., 742. (Report by Cambon, Frimaire 6, year II.)—Ibid., 22.—Report by Lindet, September 20, 1794): “The land and navy forces, war and other services, deprive agricultural pursuits and other professions of more than one million five hundred thousand citizens. It would cost the Republic less to support six million men in all the communes.”—“Le Departement des Af- faires E´trange´re`s,” by Fr. Masson, 382. (According to “Paris a`la fin du dix- huitieme sie`cle,” by Pujoulx, year IX.): “At Paris alone there are more than thirty thousand (government) clerks; six thousand at the most do the necessary writing; the rest cut away quills, consume ink and blacken paper. In old times, there were too many clerks in the bureaux relatively to the work; now, there are three times as many, and there are some who think that there are not enough.” The Governors / 1125 to make it spread could be found anywhere. “The people of the provinces,” says a contemporary,58 “are not up to the level of the Revolution; it opposes old habits and customs and the resistance of inertia to innovations which it does not understand.” “The ploughman is an estimable man,” writes a missionary representative, “but he is generally a poor patriot.”59 In effect, there is on the one hand, less of human sediment in the departmental towns than in the great Parisian sink, and, on the other hand, the rural population, preserved from intellectual miasmas, better resists social epidemics than the urban population. Less infested with vicious adventurers, less fruitful in disordered intellects, the provinces supply a corps of inquisitors and terrorists with greater difficulty. And first, in the thousands of communes which have less than five hundred inhabitants,60 in many other villages of greater population, but scattered61 and purely agricultural, especially in those in

58. “Souvenirs de M. Hua,” a parliamentary advocate, p. 96. (A very accurate picture of the bourg Coucy-le-Chateau, in Aisne, from 1792 to 1794.)— “Archives des Affaires E´trange´re`s,” vol. 334. (Letter of the agents, Thionville, Ventose 24, year II.) The district of Thionville is very patriotic, submits to the maximum and requisitions, but not to the laws prohibiting outside worship and religious assemblies. “The apostles of Reason preached in vain to the people, telling them that, up to this time, they had been deceived and that now was the time to throw off the yoke of prejudice: ‘we are willing to believe that, thus far, we have been deceived, but who will guarantee us that you will not deceive us in your turn?’” 59. Lagros: “La Revolution telle qu’elle est.” (Unpublished correspondence of the Committee of Public Safety, i., 366. Letter of Prieur de la Marne.) “In general, the towns are patriotic; but the rural districts are a hundred leagues removed from the Revolution. . . . Great efforts will be necessary to bring them up to the level of the Revolution.” 60. According to the statistics of 1866 (published in 1869) a district of one thousand square kilometres contains on an average, thirty-three communes above five hundred souls, twenty-three from five hundred to one thousand, seventeen bourgs and small towns from one thousand to five thousand, and one average town, or very large one, about five thousand. Taking into account the changes that have taken place in seventy years, one may judge from these figures of the distribution of the population in 1793. This distribution explains why, instead of forty-five thousand revolutionary committees, there were only twenty-one thousand five hundred. 61. “Souvenirs des M. Hua,” 179. “This country (Coucy-le-Chateau) pro- 1126 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION which patois is spoken, there is a scarcity of suitable subjects for a revolutionary committee. People make use of their hands too much; hands with a tough skin do not write easily; nobody wants to take up a pen, especially to keep a register that may be preserved and some day or other prove compromising. It is already a difficult matter to recruit a municipal council, to find a mayor, the two additional municipal officers, and the national agent which the law requires; in the small communes, these are the only agents of the revolutionary government, and I fancy that, in most cases, their Jacobin fervor is moderate. Municipal officer, national agent or mayor, the real peasant of that day belongs to no party, neither royalist nor republican;62 he has too few ideas, too transient and too sluggish, to enable him to form a political opinion. All he comprehends of the Revolution is that which nettles him, or that which he sees every day around him, with his own eyes; to him ’93 and ’94 are and will remain “the time of bad paper (money) and great fright,” and nothing more.63 Patient in his habits, he submits to the new as he did to the ancient re´gime, bearing the load put on his shoulders, and stooping down for fear of a heavier one. He is often mayor or national agent in spite of himself; he has been obliged to take the place and would gladly throw the burden off. For, as times go, it is onerous; if he executes decrees and orders, he is certain to make enemies; if he does not execute them, he is sure to be imprisoned; he had better remain, or go back home “Gros-jean,” as he was before. But he has no choice; the appointment being once made tected by its bad roads and still more by its nullity, belonged to that small number in which the revolutionary turmoil was least felt.” 62. Among other documents of use in composing this tableau I must cite, as first in importance, the five files containing all the documents referring to the mission of the representative Albert, in Aisne and Marne. (Ventose and Germinal, year III.) Nowhere do we find more precise details of the sentiments of the peasant, of the common laborer and of the lower bourgeois from 1792 to 1795. (Archives Nationales, D. §§ 2 to 5.) 63. Dauban, “La Demagogie en 1793,” xii. (The expression of an old peasant, near St. Emilion, to M. Vatel engaged in collecting information on the last days of Pe´tion, Guadet and Buzot.) The Governors / 1127 and confirmed, he cannot decline, nor resign, under penalty of being a “suspect”; he must be the hammer in order not to become the anvil. Whether he is a wine-grower, miller, ploughman or stone- breaker, he must act accordingly in self-defence, unless to “petition for his removal,” when Terror begins to decide, on the ground that “he writes badly,” that “he knows nothing whatever about law and is unable to enforce it”; that “he has to support himself with his own hands”; that “he has a family to provide for, and is obliged to drive his own cart” or vehicle; in short, entreating that he “may be relieved of his charge.”64 These involuntary recruits are evidently nothing more than common laborers; if they drag along the revolutionary cart they do it like their horses, because they are pressed into the service. Above the small communes, in the large villages possessing a revolutionary committee, and also in certain bourgs, the horses in harness often pretend to draw and do not, for fear of crushing some one. At this epoch, a straggling village, especially when isolated, in an out-of-the-way place and on no highway, is a small world in itself, much more secluded than now-a-days, much less accessible to Parisian verbiage and outside pressure; local opinion here pre- ponderates; neighbors support each other; they would shrink from denouncing a worthy man whom they had known for twenty years;

64. Archives Nationales, D. § I., 5. (Petition of Claude Defert, miller, and national agent of Turgy.) Numbers of mayors, municipal officers, national agents, administrators and notables of districts and departments solicit successors, and Albert compels many of them to remain in office.—(Joint letter of the entire municipality of Landreville; letter of Charles, stone-cutter, mayor of Trannes; Claude Defert, miller, national agent of Turgy; of Elegny, meat-dealer; of a wine-grower; municipal official at Merrex, etc.) The latter writes: “The Republic is great and generous; it does not desire that its children should ruin themselves in attending to its affairs; on the contrary, its object is to give salaried (emolumentaires) places to those who have nothing to live on.”—Another, Ma- geure, appointed mayor of Bar-sur-Seine writes, Pluviose 29, year III.: “I learned yesterday that some persons of this community would like to procure for me the insidious gift of the mayoralty,” and he begs Albert to turn aside this cup. 1128 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION the moral sway of honest folks suffices for keeping down “blackguards.”65 If the mayor is republican, it is only in words, perhaps for self-protection, to protect his commune, and because one must howl along with the other wolves. Moreover, in other bourgs, and in the small towns, the fanatics and rascals are not sufficiently numerous to fill all the offices, and, in order to fill the vacancies, those who are not good Jacobins have been pushed forward or admitted into the new administrative corps, lukewarm, indifferent, timid, or needy men, who take the place as an asylum or ask for it as a means of subsistence. “Citizens,” one of the recruits, more or less under restraint, writes later on,66 “I was put on the Committee of Sur- veillance of Aignay by force, and installed by force.” Three or four madmen on it ruled, and if one held any discussion with them, “it was always threats. . . . Always trembling, always afraid, that is the way I passed eight months doing duty in that miserable place.” Finally, in medium-sized or large towns, the dead-lock produced by collective dismissals, the pell-mell of improvised appointments, and

65. “Souvenirs de M. Hua,” 178–205. “M. P , mayor of Cre´py-au-Mont, knew how to restrain some low fellows who would have been only too glad to revolutionise his village. . . . And yet he was a republican. . . . One day, speaking of the revolutionary system, he said: ‘They always say that it will not hold on; meanwhile, it sticks like lime.’” “A general assembly of the inhabitants of Coucy and its outskirts was held, in which everybody was obliged to undergo an examination, stating his name, residence, birth-place, present occupation, and what he had done during the Revolution.” Hua avoids telling that he had been a representative in the Legislative Assembly, a notorious fact in the neighborhood. “Not a voice was raised to compromise me.” Ibid., 183. (Reply of the Coucy Revolutionary Committee to that of Meaux.) 66. “Frochot,” by Louis Passy, 175. (Letter of Pajot, member of the Rev- olutionary Committee of Troyes, Vende´miaire, year III.)—Archives Nation- ales, F7, 4,421. (Register of the Revolutionary Committee of Troyes.) Brumaire 27, year II. Incarceration of various suspects, among others of “Lerouge, former lawyer, under suspicion of having constantly and obstinately refused revolutionary offices.” Also, a person named Corps, for “having refused the presidency of the district tribunal at the time of its organisation, under the pretext of consulting the Chambre des Comptes; also for being the friend of suspects, and for having accepted office only after the Revolution had assumed an imposing character.” The Governors / 1129 the sudden renewal of an entire set of officials, threw into the administration, willingly or not, a lot of pretended Jacobins who, at heart, are Girondists or Feuillantists, but who, having been over- oratorical, are assigned offices on account of their stump-speeches, and who thenceforth sit alongside of the worst Jacobins, in the worst employment. “Member of the Feurs Revolutionary Committee— those who make that objection to me,” says a Clermont advocate,67 “are persuaded that those only who secluded themselves, felt the Terror. They are not aware, perhaps, that nobody felt it more than those who were compelled to execute its decrees. Remember that the handwriting of Couthon which designated some citizen for an office also conveyed a threat, and in case of refusal, of being declared ‘suspect,’ a threat which promised in perspective the loss of liberty and the sequestration of property! Was I free, then, to refuse?” Once installed, the man must act, and many of those who do act let their repugnance be seen in spite of themselves: at best, they cannot be got to do more than mechanical service. “Before going to court,” says a judge at Cambray, “I swallowed a big glass of spirits to give me strength enough to preside.” He leaves his house with no other intention than to finish the job, and, the sentence once pronounced, to return home, shut himself up, and close his eyes and ears. “I had to pronounce judgment according to the jury’s declaration—what could I do?”68 Nothing, but remain blind and deaf: “I drank. I tried to ignore everything, even the names of the accused.” It is plain enough that, in the local official body, there are too many agents who are weak, not zealous, without any push, unreliable, or even

67. Marcelin Boudet, “Les Conventionnels d’Auvergne,” 161. (Justiﬁcation of Etienne Bonarme´, the last months of 1794.) 68. Paris, “Histoire de Joseph Lebon,” ii., 92. (Declaration by Gue´rard, lawyer, appointed judge at Cambrai, by the Cambrai Revolutionary Commit- tee.)—Ibid., 54. (Declaration by Lemerre, appointed juryman without his knowledge, in the Cambrai court.) “What was my surprise, I, who never was on a jury in my life! The summons was brought to me at a quarter to eleven (a` onze heur moin un car—specimen of the orthography) and I had to go at eleven without having time to say good-by to my family.” 1130 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION secretly hostile; these must be replaced by others who are energetic and reliable, and the latter must be taken wherever they can be found.69 This reservoir in each department or district is the Jacobin nursery of the principal town; from this, they are sent into the bourgs and communes of the conscription. The central Jacobin nursery for France is in Paris, from whence they are despatched to the towns and departments. V Consequently, swarms of Jacobin locusts from Paris constantly overspread the provinces, also from the local country-towns, the surrounding country. In this cloud of destructive insects, there are diverse ﬁgures and of diverse shapes: in the front rank, are the representatives on mission, who are to take command in the departments; in the second rank, “the political agents,” who, assigned the duty of watching the neighboring frontier, take upon themselves the additional duty of leading the popular club of the town they reside in, or of urging on its administrative body.70 Besides that, there issue from the Paris headquarters in the rue St. Honore´, select

69. Report by Courtois on the papers found in Robespierre’s domicile, 370. (Letter of Maignet to Payan, administrator of the department of Droˆme, Ger- minal 20, year II.) “You know the dearth of subjects here....Givemethe names of a dozen outspoken republicans....Ifyoucannot find them in this department (Vaucluse) hunt for them either in the Droˆme or the Ise`re, or in any other. I should like those adapted to a revolutionary Tribunal. I should even like, in case of necessity, to have some that are qualified to act as national agents.” 70. Archives des Affaires E´trange´re`s, vols. 322 to 334, and 1409 to 1411.— These agents reside in Nismes, Marseilles, Toulouse, Tarbes, Bordeaux, Auch, Rochefort, Brest, Bergues, Give`t, Metz, Thionville, Strasbourg, Colmar, Bel- fort, and Grenoble, and often betake themselves to towns in the vicinity. The fullest reports are those of Che´py, at Grenoble, whose correspondence is worthy of publication; although an ultra Jacobin, he was brought before the revolutionary Tribunal as a moderate, in Ventose, year II. Having survived (the Revolution) he became under the Empire a general Commissary of Police at Brest. Almost all of them are veritable Jacobins, absolutist at bottom, and they became excellent despotic tools. The Governors / 1131 sans-culottes, who, empowered by, or delegates from, the Committee of Public Safety, proceed to Lyons, Marseilles, Bordeaux, Tonnerre, Rochefort, and elsewhere, to act as missionaries among the too inert population, or form the committees of action and the tribunals of extermination that are recruited with difficulty on the spot.71 Some- times also, when a town is in bad repute, the popular club of a sounder-minded city sends its delegates there, to bring it into line; thus, four deputies of the Metz club arrive without notice in Belfort, catechise their brethren, associate with them the local Revolutionary Committee, and, suddenly, without consulting the municipality, or any other legal authority, draw up a list of “moderates, fanatics, and egoists,” on whom they impose an extraordinary tax of one hundred and thirty-six thousand six hundred and seventeen livres;72 in like manner, sixty delegates from the club of Coˆte d’Or, Haute-Marne, Vosges, Moselle, Saone-et-Loire and Mont-Terrible, all “tempered by the white heat of Peˆre Duchesne,” proceed to Strasbourg at the summons of the representatives, where, under the title of “propa- gandists,” they are to regenerate the town.73 At the same time, in

71. Buchez et Roux, xxx., 425.—Twenty-four commissioners, drawn by lot from the Jacobins of Paris, are associated with Collot d’Herbois. One of them, Marino, becomes president of the temporary Committee of Surveillance, at Lyons. Another, Parrien, is made president of the Revolutionary Committee.— Archives Nationales, AF., II., 59. (Deliberations in the Paris Jacobin Club, appointing three of their number to go to Tonnerre and request the Committee of Public Safety “to give them the necessary power, to use it as circumstances may require, for the best good of the Republic.” Frimaire 6, year II.)—Order of the Committee of Public Safety, allowing two thousand francs to the said parties for their travelling expenses.”—Archives des Affaires E´trange´re`s, vol. 333. The agents sent to Marseilles affix their signatures, “sans-culottes, of Paris,” and one of them, Brutus, becomes president of the Marseilles revolutionary Tribunal. 72. Archives Nationales, AF., II., 49. Papers relating to the revolutionary tax of Belfort, giving all the amounts and names. (Brumaire 30, year II.) Here is the formula: “Citizen X . . . (male or female) will pay in one hour the sum of , under penalty of being considered suspect and treated as such.” 73. “Recueil des Pie`ces Authentiques Concernant la Re´volution a`Stras- bourg,” i., 128, 187. (Expressions of the representative Baudot in a letter dated Brumaire 29, year II.) 1132 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION each department, the Jacobins of the principal town are found scattered along the highways, that they may inspect their domain and govern their subjects. Sometimes, it is the representative on mission, who, personally, along with twenty “hairy devils,” makes his round and shows off his peregrinating dictatorship; again, it is his secretary or delegate who, in his place and in his name, comes to a second- class town and draws up his documents.74 At another time, it is “a committee of investigation and propagandism” which, “chosen by the club and provided with full powers,” comes, in the name of the representatives, to work up for a month all the communes of the district.75 Again, finally, it is the revolutionary committee of the principal town, which, “declared central for the whole department,”76 delegates one or the other of its members to go outside the walls, and purge and recompose suspected municipalities. Thus does

74. Archives Nationales: the acts and letters of the representatives on mission are classed by departments.—On the delegates of the representatives on mission, I will cite but one text. (Archives des Affaires E´trange´re`s, vol. 333, letter of Garrigues, Auch, Pluviose 24, year II.) “A delegate of Dartigoyte goes to I’Isle and, in the popular club, wants the cure´ of the place to get rid of his priestly attributes. The man answers, so they tell me, that he would cheerfully abstain from his duties, but that, if, in addition to this, they used force he would appeal to the Convention, which had no idea of interfering with freedom of opinion. ‘Very well,’ replied Dartigoyte’s emissary, ‘I appeal to a gendarme,’ and he at once ordered his arrest.” 75. Lallier, “Une Commission D’eńqueˆte et de Propagande,” p. 7. (It is composed of twelve members, selected by the club of Nantes, who overrun the district of Ancenis, six thousand francs of fees being allowed it.)—Babeau, ii., 280. (Despatch of sixty commissioners, each at six francs a day by the Troyes administration, to ascertain the state of the supplies on hand, Prairial, year II.) 76. For example, at Bordeaux and at Troyes.—Archives Nationales F7, 4,421. Register of the Revolutionary Committee of Troyes, fol. 164. Two members of the Committee betake themselves to the commune of Lusigny, dismiss the mayor and justice, and appoint in the place of the latter “the former cure´ of the country, who, some time ago, abjured sacerdotal fanaticism.”—Archives des Affaires E´trange´re`s, vol. 332. (Letter of Desgranges, Bordeaux, Brumaire 15, year II.) The representatives have just instituted “a revolutionary committee of surveillance composed of twelve members, selected with the greatest circumspection. All the committees established in the department are obliged to correspond with it, and fulfill its requisitions.” The Governors / 1133

Jacobinism descend and spread itself, step by step, from the Parisian centre to the smallest and remotest commune: throughout the province, whatever its hue may be, positive or indistinct, the administration, imported into or imposed upon this, stamps it with its red stigma. But the stamp is only superficial; for the sans-culottes, naturally, are not disposed to confer offices on any but men of their own kidney, while in the provinces, especially in the rural districts, these men are rare. As one of the representatives says: there is a “dearth of subjects.” At Macon, Javogues tries in vain;77 he finds in the club only “disguised federalists”; the people, he says, “will not open their eyes: it seems to me that this blindness is due to the physique of the country, which is very rich.” Naturally, he storms and dismisses; but, even in the revolutionary committee, none but dubious candidates are presented to him for selection; he does not know how to manage in order to renew the local authorities. “They play into each others’ hands,” and he ends by threatening to transfer the public institutions of the town elsewhere, if they persist in proposing to him none but bad patriots. At Strasbourg,78 Couturier, and Dentzel, on mission, report that: “owing to an unexampled coalition among all the capable citizens, obstinately refusing to take the office of mayor, in order, by this course, to clog the wheels, and subject the representatives to repeated and indecent refusals,” he is compelled to appoint a young man, not of legal age, and a stranger in the department. At Marseilles, write the agents,79 “in spite of every effort

77. Archives Nationales, AF., II., 58. (Letter of Javogues to Collot d’Herbois, Brumaire 28, year II.) 78. “Recueil des Pie`ces Authentiques,” etc., i., 195. (Acts passed Jan. 21, 1793.) 79. Archives des Affaires E´trange´re`s, vol. 326. (Letters from Brutus, Sep- tember 24; from Topino-Lebrun, jr., September 25 and October 6, 1793.)— Vol. 330. (Letters from Brutus, Nivose 6, year II.) The character of the agent is often indicated orthographically. For example, vol. 334, letter from Galon- Boyer, Brumaire 18, year II. “The public spirit is (et for est) generally bad. Those who claim to be patriots know no restraint (frin for frein). The rest are lethargic (en le´targie) and federalism appears innate.” 1134 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION and our ardent desire to republicanise the Marseilles people, our pains and fatigues are nearly all fruitless....Publicspirit among owners of property, mechanics and journeymen is everywhere detestable....Thenumber of discontented seems to increase from day to day. All the communes in Var, and most of those in this department are against us....Itisaracetobedestroyed, a country to be colonised anew.” . . . “I repeat it, the only way to work out the Revolution in the federalised departments, and especially in this one, is to transport all the indigenous population who are able to bear arms, scatter them through the armies and put garrisons in their places, which, again, will have to be changed from time to time.” At the other extremity of the territory, in Alsace, “republican sentiments are still in the cradle; fanaticism is extreme and incredible; the spirit of the inhabitants in general is in no respect revolutionary. . . . Nothing but the revolutionary army and the venerated guillotine will cure them of their conceited aristocracy. The execution of the laws depends on striking off the heads of the guilty, for nearly all the rural municipalities are composed only of the rich, of clerks of former bailiffs, almost always devoted to the ancient re´gime.”80 And in the rest of France, the population, less refractory, is not more Jacobin; here where the people appear “humble and submissive” as in Lyons and Bordeaux, the inspectors report that it is wholly owing to terror;81 there, where opinion seems enthusiastic, as at Rochefort and Grenoble, they report that it is “artificial heat.”82 At Rochefort,

80. Archives des Affaires E´trange´re`s, vol. 1411. (Letter of Haupt, Brumaire 26, year II.)—Vol. 333. (Letter of Blessman and Hau¨ser, Pluviose 4, year II.) 81. Archives des Affaires E´trange´re`s, vol. 333. (Letter of Chartres and of Caillard, Commune Affranchie, Nivose 21.)—Vol. 331. (Letters of Desgranges, at Bordeaux, Brumaire 8 and Frimaire 3.) “The offerings in plate and coin multiply indefinitely; all goes right. The court-martial has condemned Dudon to death, son of the ex-procureur-geńe´ral in the former parliament at Bordeaux, Roullat, procureur-syndic of the department, Sallenave, merchant. These executions excite sympathy, but nobody murmurs.” 82. Ibid., vol. 333. (Letter of Cuny, sr., Nivose 20.) Vols. 331, 332. (Letters of Che´py, passim, and especially those dated Frimaire 11.)—Vol. 329. (Letter of Che´py, August 24, 1793.) “At Annecy, the women have cut down the liberty- The Governors / 1135 zeal is maintained only “by the presence of five or six Parisian Jacobins.” At Grenoble, Che´py, the political agent and president of the club, writes that “he is knocked up, worn out, and exhausted, in trying to keep up public spirit and maintain it on a level with events,” but he is “conscious that, if he should leave, all would crumble.” There are none other than Moderates at Brest, at Lille, at Dunkirk; if this or that department, the Nord, for instance, hastened to accept the Montagnard constitution, it is only a pretence: “an infinitely small portion of the population answered for the rest.”83 At Belfort, where “from one thousand to twelve hundred fathers of families alone are counted,” writes the agent,84 “one popular club of thirty or forty members, at the most, maintains and enforces the love of liberty.” In Arras, “out of three or four hundred members composing the popular club” the weeding-out of 1793 has spared but “sixty-three, one-tenth of whom are absent.”85 At Tou- louse, “out of about fourteen hundred members” who form the club, only three or four hundred remain after the weeding-out of 1793,86 pole and burnt the archives of the club and of the commune. At Chambe´ry, the people wanted to do the same thing.”—Ibid. (September 18, 1793.) “The inhabitants around Mont Blanc show neither spirit nor courage; the truth is, an antirevolutionary spirit animates all minds.”—Ibid. (Letter of August 8, 1793.) “Not only have the citizens of Grenoble, who were drawn by lot, not set out on the expedition to Lyons, but, even of those who have obeyed the laws, several have returned with their arms and baggage. No commune between St. Laurent and Lyons would march. The rural municipalities, badly tainted with the federal malady, ventured to give the troops very bad quarters, especially those who had been drafted.” 83. Ibid. (Letter of Cuny, jr., Brest, Brumaire 6.) “There are, in general, very few patriots at Brest; the inhabitants are nearly all moderates.”—(Letter of Gadolle, Dunkirk, July 26, 1793.)—(Letter of Simon, Metz, Nivose, year II.) “Yesterday, on the news of the capture of Toulon being announced in the theatre, . . . I noticed that only about one-third of the spectators gave way to patriotic enthusiasm; the other two-thirds remained cold, or put on a long face.” 84. Ibid. (Letter of Haupt, Belfort, September 1, 1793.) 85. Report by Courtois on the papers found in Robespierre’s domicile, p. 274. (Letter of Darthe´, Ventose 29, year II.) 86. “Tableau des Prisons de Toulouse,” by citizen Pescayre (published in year III.), p. 101. 1136 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

“mere machines, for the most part,” and “whom ten or a dozen intriguers lead as they please.” The same state of things exists elsewhere, a dozen or two determined Jacobins—twenty-two at Troyes, twenty-one at Grenoble, ten at Bordeaux, seven at Poitiers, as many at Dijon—constitute the active staﬀ of a large town:87 the whole number might sit around one table. The Jacobins, straining as they do to swell their numbers, only scatter their band; careful as they are in making their selections, they only limit their number. They remain what they always have been, a small feudality of brigands superposed on conquered France.88 If the terror they spread around multiplies their serfs, the horror they inspire diminishes their proselytes, while their minority remains insigniﬁcant because, for their collaborators, they can have only those just like themselves.

87. Archives Nationales, F7, 4,421. (Register of the Revolutionary Com- mittee, established at Troyes, Brumaire 11, year II.)—Albert Babeau, vol. ii., passim.—Archives des Aﬀaires E´trange´re`s, vol. 332, Che´py (letter, Brumaire 6, Grenoble). “The sections had appointed seven committees of surveillance. Al- though weeded out by the club, they nevertheless alarmed the sans-culottes. ... Representative Petit-Jean has issued an order, directing that there shall be but one committee at Grenoble composed of twenty-one members. This measure is excellent and ensures the triumph of sans-culotteism.”—Archives Nationales, F7, 4,434. (Letter of Pe´rrieu to Brissot, Bordeaux, March 9, 1793.) Before June 2, the national club “of Bordeaux, composed of Maratists, did not comprise more than eight or ten individuals at most.”—Moniteur, xxii., 133. (Speech by Thibeaudeau on the popular club of Poitiers, Vende´miaire 11, year III.)—Ibid. (Session of Brumaire 5, year III., letter of Cale`s, and session of Brumaire 17, year III., report by Cale`s.) “The popular club of Dijon made all neighboring administrative bodies, citizens and districts tremble. All were subject to its laws, and three or four men in it made them. This club and the municipality were one body.” “The Terror party does not exist here, or, if it does exist, it does not amount to much: out of twenty thousand inhabitants there are not six who can legitimately be suspected of belonging to it.” 88. Baroly, “Les Jacobins Demasque´s,” (iv. 8vo., of 8pp., year III). “The Jacobin club, with its four hundred active members at Paris, and the four thousand others in the provinces, not less devoted, represent the living force of the Revolution.” The Governors / 1137

VI Thus, on closely observing the final set of officials of the revolutionary government, in the provinces as well as at Paris, we find few besides the eminent in vice, dishonesty, and misconduct, or, at the very least, in stupidity and grossness. First, as is indicated by their name, they all must be, and nearly all are, sans-culottes, that is to say, men who live from day to day on their daily earnings, possessing no income from capital, confined to subordinate places, to petty trading, to manual services, lodged or encamped on the lowest steps of the social ladder, and therefore requiring pay to enable them to attend to public business;89 it is on this account that decrees and orders allow them wages of three, five, six, ten, and even eighteen francs a day. At Grenoble, the representatives form the municipal body and the revolutionary committee, along with two health- officers, three glovers, two farmers, one tobacco-merchant, one perfumer, one grocer, one belt-maker, one innkeeper, one joiner, one shoemaker, one mason, while the official order by which they are installed, appoints “Teyssie`re, licoriste,” national agent.90 At Troyes,91 among the men in authority we find a confectioner, a weaver, a journeyman-weaver, a hatter, a hosier, a grocer, a carpenter, a dancing-master, and a policeman, while the mayor, Gachez,

89. Archives Nationales, D. § I., 10. (Orders of representatives Delacroix, Louchet, and Legendre, Nivose 12, year II.) “On the petition of the Committee of Surveillance of Evreux, which sets forth that all its members are without means, and that it will be impossible for them to continue their duties since they are without resources for supporting their families,” the representatives allow three of them two hundred and seventy francs each, and a fourth one hundred and eighty francs, as a gratuity (outside of the three francs a day). 90. Ibid. AF., II., iii. (Order of Albitte and Laporte, Prairial 18, year II.) 91. Albert Babeau, ii., 154–157.—Moniteur, xxii., 425. (Session of Brumaire 13, year III. Speech by Cambon.) “A government was organised in which surveillance alone cost five hundred and ninety-one millions per annum. Every man who tilled the ground or worked in a shop, at once abandoned his pursuit for a place on the Revolutionary Committees . . . where he got five francs a day.” 1138 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION formerly a common soldier in the regiment of Vexin, was, when appointed, a school-teacher in the vicinity. At Toulouse,92 a man named Terrain, a pie-dealer, is installed as president of the administration; the revolutionary committee is presided over by Pio, a journeyman-barber; the inspiration, “the soul of the club,” is a concierge, that of the prison. The last and most significant trait is found at Rochefort,93 where the president of the popular club is the executioner. If such persons form the select body of officials in the large towns, what must they be in the small ones, in the bourgs and in the villages? “Everywhere they are of the meanest,”94 cartmen, sabot- (wooden shoe) makers, thatchers, stone-cutters, dealers in rabbit- skins, day laborers, idle mechanics, many without any pursuit, or mere vagabonds who had already participated in riots or jacqueries, loungers in the groggeries, having given up work and designated for a public career only by their irregular habits and incompetency to follow a private career. Even in the large towns, it is evident that discretionary power has fallen into the hands of nearly raw barbar-

92. “Tableau des Prisons de Toulouse,” by citizen Pescare, 162, 166, 435. 93. Berryat Saint-Prix, “La Justice Re´volutionaire,” (second edition) p. xix.—Ibid., xiv. At Rochefort there is on the revolutionary Tribunal a mason, a shoemaker, a calker, and a cook; at Bordeaux, on the military commission, an actor, a wine-clerk, a druggist, a baker, a journeyman-gilder, and later, a cooper and a leather-dresser. 94. I give this as I got it in my conversations with old peasants.—Archives Nationales, AF., II., 111. (Order of the Representative Ichon, Messidor 18, year II.) “The popular club of Chinon will be immediately regenerated. Citizens (I omit their names), the following showing their occupations: shoemaker, policeman, sabot-maker, cooper, carter, shoemaker, joiner, butcher, carpenter, and mason, will form the committee which is to do the weeding-out and choose successors among those that offer to become members of the club.”—Ibid., D., §1, 10. (Orders of the Representatives Delacroix, Louchet, and Legendre, on mission in the department of Seine-Infe´rieure for the purpose of removing, at Conchez, the entire administration, and for forming there a new revolutionary committee, with full powers, Frimaire 9, year II.) The members of the committee, the nature of which is indicated, are two coopers, one gardener, two carpenters, one merchant, a coach-driver, and a tailor. (One finds in the archives, in the correspondence of the representatives, plenty of orders appointing authorities of the same sort.) The Governors / 1139 ians; one has only to note in the old documents, at the Archives, the orthography and style of the committees empowered to grant or refuse civic cards, and draw up reports on the opinions and pursuits of prisoners. “His opinions appear insipid (Ces opignons paroisse insipide).95 . . . He is married (but) without children.” (Il est marie cent (sans) enfants). . . . Her profession is wife of Paillot-Montabert, her income is living on her income; these relations are with a woman we pay no attention to; we presume her opinions are like her husband’s.”96 The handwriting, unfortunately, cannot be represented here, being that of a child five years old.97 “As stupid as they are immoral,”98 says Representative Albert, of the Jacobins he finds in office at Troyes. Low, indeed, as their condition may be, their feeling and intelligence are yet lower because, in their professions or occupations, they are the refuse instead of the e´lite, and, especially on this account, they are turned out after Thermidor, some, it is true, as Terrorists, but the larger number as either dolts, scandalous or crazy, mere interlopers, or mere valets. At Rheims, the president of the district is99 “a former bailiff, on

95. Albert Babeau, ii., 296. 96. Sa profession est fame de Paillot-Montabert; son revenu est vivre de ses revenus; ces relation son d’une fame nous ny portons pas d’atantion; ces opignons nous les presumons semblable, a` ceux de son mary. 97. Archives Nationales, F7, 4,421. Order of the Committee of Surveillance of the third section of Troyes, refusing civic certificates to seventy-two persons, or sending them before the Central Committee as “marchands d’argant, aristocrate, douteux, mode´re, intrigant, egoiste fanatique. Fait et arete´ par nous, membre du commite´ le ans et jour susdit.”—“Me´moire des Commissaires de la 5e seiscion dite de la liberte´ nomme´ par le citoyen de Baris (Paris) pour faire les visite de l’argenteri che´ les citoyens de la liste fait par les citoyens Diot et Bailly et Jaquin savoir depence du 13 et 14 et 15 Frimaire pour leur nouriture du troyes jour monte a`24 fr. 98. Albert Babeau, ii., 154. 99. Archives Nationales, D., § 1, 5. (Mission of Representative Albert, in Aube and in Marne.)—These notes are made on the spot, with a thorough knowledge of the situation, by zealous republicans who are not without common-sense and of average honesty (chiefly in Pluviose and Ventose, year III).—Letter of Albert to the directories of the two departments.—Prairial 3, 1140 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION familiar terms with the spies of the Robespierre re´gime, acting in concert with them, but without being their accomplice, possessing none of the requisite qualities for administration”; another administrator is likewise “a former bailiff, without means, negligent in the highest degree and a confirmed drunkard”: alongside of these sit “a horse-dealer, without any means, better suited for jockeying than governing, moreover a drunkard; a dyer, lacking judgment, open to all sorts of influences, pushed ahead by the Jacobin faction, and having used power in the most arbitrary manner, rather, perhaps, through ignorance than through cruelty; a shoemaker, entirely un- instructed, knowing only how to sign his name,” and others of the same character. In the Tribunal, a judge is noted as “true in principle, but whom poverty and want of resources have driven to every excess, a turncoat according to circumstances in order to get a place, associated with the leaders in order to keep the place, and yet not without sensibility, having, perhaps, acted criminally merely to keep himself and his family alive.” In the municipal body, the majority is composed of an incompetent lot, some of them being journeymen- spinners or thread-twisters, and others second-hand dealers or shopkeepers, “incapable,” “without means,” with a few crack-brains among them: one, “his brain being crazed, absolutely of no account, anarchist and Jacobin”; another, “very dangerous through lack of judgment, a Jacobin, overexcited”; a third, “an instrument of tyranny, a man of blood capable of every vice, having assumed the name of Mutius Scaevola, of recognised depravity and unable to write.” Similarly, in the Aube districts, we find some of the heads feverish with the prevailing epidemic, for instance, at Nogent, the national agent, Delaporte, “who has the words ‘guillotine’ and ‘revolutionary tribunal’ always on his lips, and who declares that if he were the government he would imprison doctor, surgeon, and lawyer, who delights in finding people guilty and says that he is never content except when he gets three pounds’ weight of denunciations year II. “I am satisfied, during the course of my mission, of the necessity of reorganising the municipalities throughout both departments.” The Governors / 1141 a day.” But, apart from these madcaps, most of the administrators or judges are either people wholly unworthy of their offices, because they are “inept,” “too uneducated,” “good for nothing,” “too little familiar with administrative forms,” “too little accustomed to judicial action,” “without information,” “too busy with their own affairs,” “unable to read or write,” or, because “they have no delicacy,” are “violent,” “agitators,” “knaves,” “without public esteem,” and more or less dishonest and despised.100 A certain fellow from Paris, was, at first, at Troyes, a baker’s apprentice,101 and afterwards a dancing-master; he next figured at the Club, making headway, doubtless, through his Parisian chatter, until he stood first and soon became a member of the district. Appointed an officer in the sixth battalion of Aube, he behaved in such a manner in Vendeé that, on his return, “his brethren in arms” broke up the banner presented to him, “declaring him unworthy of such an honor, because he cowardly fled before the enemy.” Nevertheless, after a short plunge, he came again to the surface and, thanks to his civil compeers, was reinstated in his administrative functions; during the Terror, he was intimate with all the Terrorists, being one of the important men of Troyes. The mayor of the town, Gachez, an old soldier and ex- schoolmaster, is of the same stuff as this baker’s apprentice. He, likewise, was a Vendeán hero; only, he was unable to distinguish himself as much as he liked, for, after enlisting, he failed to march; having pocketed the bounty of three hundred livres, he discovered that he had infirmities and, getting himself invalided, he served the nation in a civil capacity. “His own partisans admit that he is a

100. Ibid. Orders of Albert, Ventose 5, and Pluviose 29, year III., reorganising the courts and administrations in the districts of Ervy, Arcis and Nogent- sur-Seine, with a tabular statement of the names of those removed and the reasons for so doing. 101. Petition of Jean Nicolas Antoine, former member of the Directory of the district of Troyes for twenty-eight months. (Ventose 9, year III.) Shut up in Troyes, he asks permission to go to Paris, “I have a small lot of goods which it is necessary for me to sell in Paris. It is my native town and I know more people there than anywhere else.”—Ibid. Information furnished on Antoine by the Conseil-ge´ne´ral of the Commune of Troyes. 1142 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION drunkard and that he has committed forgery.” Some months after Thermidor he is sentenced to eight years imprisonment and put in the pillory for this crime. Hence, “almost the entire commune is against him; the women in the streets jeer him, and the eight sections meet together to request his withdrawal.” But Representative Boˆ reports that he is every way entitled to remain, being a true Jacobin, an admirable terrorist and “the only sans-culotte mayor which the commune of Troyes has to be proud of.”102 It would be awarding too much honor to men of this stamp, to suppose that they had convictions or principles; they were governed by animosities and especially by their appetites,103 to satiate which they104 made the most of their oﬃces. At Troyes, “all provisions and

102. Archives Nationales, AF., II., 59. (Memorials dated Messidor 28, year II., by an emissary of the Committee of Public Safety, sent to Troyes, Prairial 29, to report on the situation of things and on the troubles in Troyes.)—Albert Babeau, ii., 203, 205 and 112, 122.—Cf. 179. “Gachez, intoxicated, about eleven o’clock at night, with several women as drunk as himself, compelled the keeper of the Temple of Reason to open the doors, threatening him with the guillotine.”—Ibid., 166. He addressed the sans-culottes in the popular club: “Now is the time to put yourselves in the place of the rich. Strike, and don’t put it off!”—Ibid., 165. “Forty-two thousand six hundred and thirty-three livres were placed in the hands of Gachez and the committee, as secret revolutionary service money....Between December 4 and 10 Gachez received twenty thousand livres, in three orders, for revolutionary expenses and provisional aid.” “The leaders of the party disposed of these sums without control and, it may be added, without scruple.” Gachez hands over only four thousand livres to the sectional poor-committee. On Nivose 12, there remains in the treasury of the poor fund only three thousand seven hundred and thirty-eight livres, twelve thousand having been diverted or squandered. 103. “Frochot,” by Louis Passy, 172. (Letter of Pajot, member of the revolutionary committee of Aignay-le-Duc.) “Denunciations occupied most of the time at our meetings, and it is there that one could see the hatreds and vengeance of the colleagues who ruled us.” 104. Archives Nationales, D., § 1, No. 4. The following is a sample among others of the impositions of the revolutionary committees. (Complaint of Mar- iotte, proprietor, former mayor of Chatillon-sur-Seine, Floreál 27, year II.) “On Brumaire 23, year II., I was stopped just as I was taking post at Mussy, travelling on business for the Republic, and provided with a commission and passport from the Minister of War....I was searched in the most shameful manner; The Governors / 1143 eatables are drawn upon to supply the table of the twenty-four” sans-culottes105 to whom Boˆ entrusted the duty of weeding-out the popular club; before the organisation of “this regenerating nucleus” the revolutionary committee, presided over by Rousselin, the civil commissioner, carried on its “feastings” in the Petit-Louvre tavern, “passing nights in tippling” and in the preparation of lists of suspects.106 In the neighboring provinces of Dijon, Beaune, Semur and Aignay-le-Duc, the heads of the municipality and of the club always meet in taverns and groggeries. At Dijon, we see “the ten or twelve Hercules of patriotism traversing the town, each with a chalice under his arm”:107 this is their drink-cup; each has to bring his own to the Montagnard inn; there, they imbibe copiously, frequently, and between two glasses of wine “declare who are outlaws.” At Aignay- le-Duc, a small town with only half a dozen patriots “the majority of whom can scarcely write, most of them poor, burdened with families, and living without doing anything, never quit the groggeries, where, night and day, they revel”; their chief, a financial ex- citizen Meńe´trier, member of the committee, used towards me the foulest language....Iwasconfined in a tavern; instead of two gendarmes which would have been quite sufficient to guard me, I had the whole brigade, who passed that night and the next day drinking, until, in wine and brandy the charge against me in the tavern amounted to sixty francs. And worse still, two members of the same committee passed a night guarding me and made me pay for it. Add to this, they said openly before me that I was a good pigeon to pluck. ... They gave me the escort of a state criminal of the highest importance, three national gendarmes, mounted, six National Guards, and even to the Comman- dant of the National Guard; citizen Mie`dan, member of the Revolutionary Com- mittee, put himself at the head of the cortege, ten men to conduct one! . . . I was obliged to pay my executioners, fifty francs to the commandant, and sixty to his men.” 105. Moniteur, xxi., 261. (Speech by an inhabitant of Troyes in the Jacobin Club, Paris, Messidor 26, year II.) 106. Albert Babeau, ii., 164. (Depositions of the tavern-keeper and of the commissioner, Garnier.) 107. “Frochot,” by Louis Passy, 170, 172. (Letter by Pajot and petition of the Aignay municipality, March 10, 1795.)—Bibliotheque Nationale, L., 41. No. 1802. (Denunciation by six sections of the commune of Dijon to the National Convention.) 1144 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION procureur, now “concierge, archivist, secretary, and president of the popular club,” holds municipal council in the bar-room. “On leaving, they put for female aristocrats,” while one of them declares “that if the half of Aignay were slaughtered the other half would be all the better for it.” There is nothing like drinking to excite ferocity to the highest pitch. At Strasbourg the sixty propagandist musta- chioed patriots lodged in the college in which they are settled fixtures, have a cook provided for them by the town, and they revel day and night “on the choice provisions put in requisition,” “on wines destined to the defenders of the country.”108 It is, undoubtedly, on issuing from these orgies that they proceed, sword in hand, to the popular club,109 vote and force others to vote “death to all prisoners confined in the Seminary to the number of seven hundred, of every age and of both sexes, without any preliminary trial.” For a man to become a good cut-throat, he must first get intoxicated;110 such was the course pursued in Paris by those who did the work in September: the revolutionary government being an organised, prolonged, and permanent Septembrisade, most of its agents are obliged to drink hard.111

108. “Recueil de Pie`ces Authentiques sur la Re´volution de Strasbourg,” i., 187, and letter of Burger, Thermidor 25, year II. 109. Archives Nationales, D., § 1, 6 (file 37).—Letter of the members of the Strasbourg Revolutionary Committee, Ventose 13, year III., indicating to the mayor and municipal officers of Chalons-sur-Marne certain Jacobins of the town as suitable members of the Propaganda at Strasbourg. 110. “Recueil de Pie`ces Authentiques Concernant la Re´volution a`Stras- bourg,” i., 71. Deposition of the recorder Weis on the circuit of the revolutionary Tribunal, composed of Schneider, Clavel, and Taffin. “The judges never left the table without having become intoxicated with everything of the finest, and, in this state, they resorted to the tribunal and condemned the accused to death.”—Free living and “extravagant expenditure” were common even “among the employees of the government.” “I encountered,” says Meissner, “government carters served with chickens, pastry and game, whilst at the traveller’s table there was simply an old leg of mutton and a few poor side-dishes.” (“Voyage en France,” toward the end of 1795, p. 371.) 111. Some of them, nevertheless, are not ugly, but merely sots. The following is a specimen. A certain Velu, a born vagabond, formerly in the hospital The Governors / 1145

For the same reasons when the opportunity, as well as the temptation, to steal, presents itself, they steal. At ﬁrst, during six months, and up to the decree assigning them pay, the revolutionary com-

and brought up there, then a shoemaker or a cobbler, afterwards teaching school in the Faubourg de Vienne, and at last a haranguer and proposer of tyrannicide motions, short, stout and as rubicund as his cap, is made President of the Popular club at Blois, then delegate for domiciliary visits, and, throughout the Reign of Terror, he is a principal personage in the town, district, and department. (Dufort de Cheverney, “Me´moires,” (MS.) March 21, 1793 and June, 1793.) In June, 1793, this Velu is ordered to visit the chateau de Cheverney, to verify the surrender of all feudal documents. He arrives unexpectedly, meets the steward, Bambinet, enters the mayor’s house, who keeps an inn, and drinks copiously, which gives Bambinet time to warn M. Dufort de Cheverney and have the suspicious registers concealed.—This done, “Velu is obliged to leave his bottle and march to the chateau.—He assumed haughtiness and aimed at familiarity; he would put his hand on his breast and, taking yours, address you: “Good- day, brother.”—He came there at nine o’clock in the morning, advanced, took my hand and said: “Good-day, brother, how are you?” “Very well, citizen, and how are you?” “You do not tutoyer—you are not up to the Revolution?” “We’ll see—will you step in the parlor?” “Yes, brother, I’ll follow you.”—We enter; he sees my wife who, I may say, has an imposing air. He boldly embraces her and, repeating his gesture on the breast, takes her hand and says: “Good-day, sister.” “Come,” I interpose, “let us take breakfast, and, if you please, you shall dine with me.” “Yes, but on one condition, that tu me tutoie.” “I will try, but I am not in the habit of it.” After warming up his intellect and heart with a bottle of wine, we get rid of him by sending him to inspect the archives-room, along with my son and Bambinet. It is amusing, for he can only read print.... Bambinet, and the procureur, read the titles aloud, and pass over the feudalisms. Velu does not notice this and always tells them to go on.—After an hour, tired out, he comes back: “All right,” he says, “now let me see your chateau, which is a fine one.” He had heard about a room where there were fantocini, in the attic. He goes up, opens some play-books, and, seeing on the lists of characters the name of King and Prince, he says to me: “You must scratch those out, and play only republican pieces.” The descent is by a back-stairs. On the way down he encounters a maid of my wife’s, who is very pretty; he stops and, regarding my son, says: “You must as a good Republican, sleep with that girl and marry her.” I look at him and reply: “Monsieur Velu, listen; we are well behaved here, and such language cannot be allowed. You must respect the young people in my house.” A little disconcerted, he tames down and is quite deferential to Madame de Cheverney.—“You have pen and ink on your table,” he says, “bring 1146 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION mittees “take their pay themselves”;112 they then add to their legal salary of three and five francs a day about what they please: for it is they who assess the extraordinary taxes, and often, as at Mont- brison, “without making any list or record of collections.” On Fri- maire 16, year II., the financial committee reports that “the collection and application of extraordinary taxes is unknown to the government; that it was impossible to supervise them, the National treasury having received no sums whatever arising from these taxes.”113 Two years after, four years after, the accounts of revolutionary taxation, of forced loans, and of pretended voluntary gifts, still form a bottomless pit; out of forty billions of accounts rendered to the National Treasury only twenty are found to be verified; the rest are irregular them here.” “What for,” I ask, “to take my inventory?” “No, but I must make a proce`s-verbal. You help me; it will be better for you, as you can fix it to suit you.” This was not badly done, to conceal his want of knowledge.—We go in to dinner. My servants waited on the table; I had not yielded to the system of a general table for all of us, which would not have pleased my servants any more than myself. Curiosity led them all to come in and see us dining together.—“Brother,” says Velu to me, “don’t these people eat with you?” (He saw the table set for only four persons.) I reply: “Brother, that would not be any more agreeable to them than to myself. Ask them.”—He ate little, drank like an ogre, and was talkative about his amours; getting excited, he was sufficiently venturesome in his stories and excited my wife, but he did not go far. Apropos of the Revolution, and the danger we incurred, he said innocently: “Don’t I run as much risk as anybody? It is my opinion that, in three months, I shall have my head off! But we must all take our chance!”—Now and then, he indulged in sans-culottisms. He seized the servant’s hand, who changed his plate: “Brother, I beg you to take my place, and let me wait on you in my turn!” He drank the cordials, and finally left, pleased with his reception.— Returning to the inn, he stays until nine o’clock at night and stuffs himself, but is not intoxicated. One bottle had no effect on him; he could empty a cask and show no signs of it. 112. Moniteur, xxii., 425. (Session of Brumaire 13, year III.) Cambon, in relation to the revolutionary committees, says: “I would observe to the Assem- bly that they were never paid.” A member replies: “They took their pay themselves.” (“Yes, yes.”—Applause.) 113. Moniteur, xxii., 711. (Report by Cambon, Frimaire 6, year III.)—Cam- bon stated, indeed, Frimaire 26, year II. (Moniteur, xviii., 680), concerning these taxes: “Not one word, not one sou has yet reached the Treasury; they want to override the Convention which made the Revolution.” The Governors / 1147 and worthless. Besides, in many cases, not only is the voucher worthless or not forthcoming, but, again, it is proved that the sums collected disappeared wholly or in part. At Villefranche, out of one hundred and thirty-eight thousand francs collected, the collector of the district deposited but forty-two thousand; at Baugency, out of more than five hundred thousand francs collected, there were only fifty thousand deposited; at la Reóle, out of at least five hundred thousand francs collected, there were but twenty-two thousand six hundred and fifty deposited. “The rest,” says the collector at Ville- franche, “were wasted by the Committee of Surveillance.” “The tax-collectors,” writes the national-agent at Orleans, “after having employed terror gave themselves up to orgies and are now building palaces.”114 As to the expenses which they prove, they almost always consist of “indemnities to members of revolutionary committees, to patriots, and to defray the cost of patriotic missions,” to maintaining and repairing the meeting-rooms of the popular clubs, to military expeditions, and to succoring the poor, so that three or four hundred millions in gold or silver, extorted before the end of 1793, hundreds of millions of assignats extorted in 1793 and 1794, in short, almost the entire product of the total extraordinary taxation115 was con-

114. Ibid., 720. “The balances reported, of which the largest portion is already paid into the vaults of the National Treasury, amount to twenty millions one hundred and sixty-six thousand three hundred and thirty livres.”—At Paris, Marseilles, and Bordeaux, in the large towns where tens of millions were raised in three-quarters of the districts, Cambon, three months after Thermidor, could not yet obtain, I will not say the returns, but a statement of the sums raised. The national agents either did not reply to him, or did it vaguely, or stated that in their districts there was neither civic donation nor revolutionary tax, and particularly at Marseilles, where a forced loan had been made of four millions.— Cf. De Martel, “Fouche´,” p. 245. (Memorial of the Central administration of Nie`vre, Prairial 10, year III.) “The account returned by the city of Nevers amounts to eighty thousand francs, the use of which has never been verified. . . . This tax, in part payment of the war subsidy, was simply a trap laid by the political actors in order to levy a contribution on honest, credulous citizens.”— Ibid., 217. On voluntary gifts and forced taxation cf. at Nantes, the use made of revolutionary taxes, brought out on the trial of the revolutionary committee. 115. Ludovic Sciout, iv., 19. Report of Representative Becker. (Journal des De´bats et Dećrets, p. 743, Prairial, year III.) He returns from a mission to 1148 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION sumed on the spot and by the sans-culottes. Seated at the public banqueting table they help themselves first, and help themselves copiously. A second windfall, equally gross. Enjoying the right to dispose arbitrarily of fortunes, liberties and lives, they can traffic in these, while no traffic can be more advantageous, both for buyers and sellers. Any man who is rich or well-off, in other words, every man who is likely to be taxed, imprisoned, or guillotined, gladly consents “to compound,” to redeem himself and those who belong to him. If he is prudent, he pays, before the tax, so as not to be overtaxed; he pays, after the tax, to obtain a diminution or delays; he pays to be admitted into the popular club. When danger draws near he pays to obtain or renew his certificate of civism, not to be declared “suspect,” not to be denounced as a conspirator. After being denounced, he pays to be allowed imprisonment at home rather than in the jail, to be allowed imprisonment in the jail rather than in the general prison, to be well treated if he gets into this, to have time to get together his proofs in evidence, to have his record (dossier) placed and kept at the bottom of the file among the clerk’s registers, to avoid being inscribed on the next batch of cases in the revolutionary Tribunal. There is not one of these favors that is not precious; consequently, ransoms without number are tendered, while the ras- cals116 who swarm on the revolutionary committees, need but open their hands to fill their pockets. They run very little risk, for they are held in check only by their own kind, or are not checked at all.

Landau and renders an account of the executions committed by the Jacobin agents in the Rhenish provinces. They levied taxes, sword in hand, and threatened the refractory with the guillotine at Strasbourg. The receipts which passed under the reporter’s eyes “presented the sum of three millions three hundred and forty-ﬁve thousand seven hundred and eighty-ﬁve livres, two deniers, whilst our colleague, Cambon, reports only one hundred and thirty-eight thousand paid in.” 116. Moniteur, xxii., 754. (Report of Gre´goire, Frimaire 24, year III.) “Ras- callery—this word recalls the old revolutionary committees, most of which formed the scum of society and which showed so many aptitudes for the double function of robber and persecutor.” The Governors / 1149

In any large town, two of them suﬃce for the issue of a warrant of arrest “save a reference to the Committee within twenty-four hours,” with the certainty that their colleagues will kindly return the favor.117 Moreover, the clever ones know how to protect themselves beforehand. For example, at Bordeaux, where one of these clandestine markets had been set up, M. Jean Davilliers, one of the partners in a large commercial house, is under arrest in his own house, guarded by four sans-culottes; on the 8th of Brumaire, he is taken aside and told “that he is in danger if he does not come forward and meet the indispensable requirements of the Revolution in its secret expenditures.” A prominent man, Lemoal, member of the

117. Archives Nationales, AF., II., 107. (Orders of Representatives Ysabeau and Tallien, Bordeaux, Brumaire 11 and 17, year II.)—Third order, promulgated by the same parties, Frimaire 2, year II., replacing this committee by another of twelve members and six deputies, each at two hundred francs a month. Fourth order, Pluviose 16, year II., dismissing the members of the foregoing committee, as exage´re´s and disobedient. It is because they regard their local royalty in quite a serious light.—Ibid., AF., II., 46. (“Extracts from the minutes of the meetings of the Revolutionary Committee of Bordeaux,” Prairial, year II.) This extract, consisting of eighteen pages, shows in detail the inside workings of a Revolutionary committee; the number of arrested goes on increasing; on the 27th of Prairial there are one thousand five hundred and twenty- four. The committee is essentially a police office; it delivers certificates of civism, issues warrants of arrest, corresponds with other committees, even very remote, at Limoge`s, and Clermont-Ferrand, delegates any of its members to investigate concerning this or that “suspect,” to affix seals, to make domiciliary visits. It receives and transmits denunciations, summons the denounced to appear before it, reads interrogations, writes to the Committee of Public Safety, etc. The following are samples of its warrants of arrest: “Citoyen He´ry, formerly a (man) milliner, makes a denunciation in this office against Citizen Tauray and wife, in accordance with which the Committee orders their arrest, and seals put on their papers.” “Muller, a riding-master, will be confined in the former Petit Seminaire, under suspicion of aristocracy, according to public opinion.” Another example, Archives Nationales, F7, 2,475. Register of the proce`s-verbaux of the Revolutionary Committee of the Piquos section, Paris, June 3, 1793. Warrant of arrest against Boucher, grocer, rue Neuve du Luxembourg, “suspect” of incivisme and “having cherished wicked and perfidious intentions against his wife.” Boucher, arrested, declares that, “what he said and did in his house, concerned nobody but himself.” On which he was led to prison. 1150 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION revolutionary committee and administrator of the district, had spoken of these requirements and thought that M. Davilliers should contribute the sum of one hundred and fifty thousand livres. Upon this, a knock at the door is heard; Lemoal enters and all present leave the room, while Lemoal merely asks: “Do you consent?” “But I cannot thus dispose of my partners’ property.” “Then you will go to prison.” At this threat the poor man yields and gives his note to Lemoal at twenty days, payable to bearer, for one hundred and fifty thousand livres, and, at the end of a fortnight, by dint of pushing his claims, obtains his freedom. Thereupon, Lemoal thinks the matter over, and deems it prudent to cover up his private extortion by a public one. Accordingly, he sends for M. Davilliers: “It is now essential for you to openly contribute one hundred and fifty thousand livres more for the necessities of the Republic. I will introduce you to the representatives to whom you should make the offer.” The chicken being officially plucked in this way, nobody would suppose that it had been first privately plucked, and, moreover, the inquisitive, if there were any, would be thrown off the scent by the confusion arising from two sums of equal amount. M. Davilliers begs to be allowed to consult his partners, and, as they are not in prison, they refuse. Lemoal, on his side, is anxious to receive the money for his note, while poor Davilliers, “struck with terror by nocturnal arrests,” and seeing that Lemoal is always on the top of the ladder, concludes to pay; at first, he gives him thirty thousand livres, and next, the charges, amounting in all to forty-one thousand livres, when, being at the end of his resources, he begs and entreats to have his note returned to him. Lemoal, on this, considering the chicken as entirely stripped, becomes mollified, and tears off in presence of his debtor “the signature in full of the note,” and, along with this, his own receipts for partial payments underneath. But he carefully preserves the note itself, for, thus mutilated, it will show, if necessary, that he had not received anything, and that, through patriotism, he had undoubtedly wished to force a contribution from a merchant, but, finding him insolvent, had humanely cancelled the written ob- The Governors / 1151 ligation.118 Such are the precautions taken in this business. Others, less shrewd, rob more openly, among others the mayor, the seven members of the military commission surnamed “the seven mortal sins,” and especially their president, Lacombe, who, by promising releases, extracts from eight or nine captives three hundred and fifty- nine thousand six hundred livres.119 Through these manoeuvres, writes a strict Jacobin,120 “Many of those who had been declared outlaws returned to Bordeaux by paying; of the number who thus redeemed their lives, some did not deserve to lose it, but, nevertheless, they were threatened with execution if they did not consent to everything. But material proofs of this are hard to obtain. These men now keep silent, for fear, through open denunciation, of sharing in the penalty of the traffickers in justice, and being unwilling to expose (anew) the life they have preserved.” In short, the plucked pigeon is mute, so as not to attract attention, as well as to avoid the knife; and all the more, because those who pluck him hold on to the knife and might, should he cry out, despatch him with the more celerity. Even if he makes no outcry, they sometimes despatch him so as to stifle in advance any possible outcry, which happened to the Duc du Chaˆtelet and others. There is but one mode of self- preservation121 and that is, “to pay one’s patrons by instalments, like

118. Archives Nationales, AF., II., 30 (No. 105). Examination of Jean Dav- illiers, and other ransomed parties. 119. Berryat Saint-Prix, 313. (Trial of Lacombe and his accomplices after Thermidor.) 120. Archives Nationales, AF., II., 46. (Letter of Julien to the Committee of Public Safety, Bordeaux, Messidor 12, year II.)—Moniteur, xxii., 713. (Report by Cambon, Frimaire 6, year III.) At Verins, citizens were imprisoned and then set at liberty “on consideration of a fee.”—Albert Babeau, ii., 164, 165, 206. (Report by Cambon, Frimaire 6, year II.) “Citoyenne (madame) Deguerrois, having come to procure the release of her husband, a public functionary demanded of her ten thousand livres, which he reduced to six thousand for doing what she desired....One document attests that Massey paid two thousand livres, and widow Delaporte six hundred livres, to get out of prison.” 121. Mallet-Dupan, “First letter to a Geneva merchant,” (March 1, 1796), pp. 33–35. “One of the wonders of the Reign of Terror is the slight attention 1152 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION nurses by the mouth, on a scale proportionate to the activity of the guillotine.” In any event, the pirates are not disturbed, for the trade in lives and liberties leaves no trace behind it, and is carried on with impunity for two years, from one end of France to the other, according to a tacit understanding between sellers and buyers. There is a third windfall, not less large, but carried on in more open sunshine and therefore still more enticing. Once the “suspect” is incarcerated, whatever he brings to prison along with him, whatever he leaves behind him at home, becomes plunder; for, with the given to the trafficking in life and death, characteristic of terrorism. We scarcely find a word on the countless bargains through which ‘suspect’ citizens bought themselves out of captivity, and imprisoned citizens bought off the guillotine. . . . Dungeons and executions were as much matters of trade as the purchase of cattle at a fair.” This traffic “was carried on in all the towns, bourgs and departments surrendered to the Convention and Revolutionary Committees.” “It has been established since the 10th of August.”—“I will only cite among a multitude of instances the unfortunate Duc du Chaˆtelet; never did anybody pay more for his execution!”—Wallon, “Histoire du Tribunal Re´volutionnaire de Paris,” vi., 88. Denunciation of Fouquier-Tinville, signed Saulnie. According to Saulnie he dined regularly twice a week at No. 6 rue Serpente, with one Demay, calling himself a lawyer and living with a woman named Martin. In this den of orgies, the freedom or death of those in prison was bargained for in money with impunity. One head alone, belonging to the house of Boufflers, escaping the scaffold through the intrigues of these vampires, was worth to them thirty thousand livres, of which one thousand were paid down and a bond given for the rest, payable on being set at liberty.—Mallet-Dupan, “Me´moires,” ii., 495. “Fouquier-Tinville received a pension of one thousand crowns a month from Mesdames de Boufflers; the ransom increased one quarter each month on account of the atrocity of the circumstances. This method saved these ladies, whilst those who paid a sum in gross lost their lives....ItwasDuVaucel, fermier-general, who saved the Princess of Tarente . . . for five hundred louis . . . after having saved two other ladies for three hundred louis, given to one of the Jacobin leaders.”—Morellet, “Me´moires,” ii., 32. The agent of Mesdames de Boufflers was Abbe´ Chevalier, who had formerly known Fouquier-Tinville in the office of a procureur an Parliament and who, renewing the acquaintance, came and drank with Fouquier. “He succeeded in having the papers of the ladies Boufflers, which were ready to be sent to the Tribunal, placed at the bottom of the file.” The Governors / 1153 incompleteness, haste and irregularity of papers,122 with the lack of surveillance and known connivance, the vultures, great and small, could freely use their beaks and talons. At Toulouse, as in Paris and elsewhere, commissioners take from prisoners every object of value and, accordingly, in many cases, all gold, silver, assignats, and jewelry, which, confiscated for the Treasury, stop half-way in the hands of those who make the seizure.123 At Poitiers, the seven scoundrels

122. “Tableau des Prisons de Toulouse,” 324. Coudert, of the Municipal Council, shoemaker, charged with the duty of taking silver-plate from the accused, did not know how, or was unwilling, to draw up any other than an irregular and valueless proce`s-verbal. On this, an accused party objected and refused to sign. “Take care, you,” exclaims Coudert in a rage, “with your cleverness, you are playing the stubborn. You are nothing but a fool! You are getting into a bad box! If you don’t sign, I’ll have you guillotined.” Frequently, there are no papers at all. (De Martel, “Fouche´,” p. 236. Memorial by the authorities of Allier, addressed to the Convention, document 9.) October 30, 1793. Order of the revolutionary committee enjoining nocturnal visits in all “suspect” houses in Moulins, to remove all gold, silver and copper. “Eleven parties are made up . . . each to visit eight or ten houses. Each band is headed by one of the committee, with one municipal officer, accompanied by locksmiths and a revolutionary guard. The dwellings of the accused and other private individuals are searched. They force secretaries and wardrobes of which they do not find the keys. They pillage the gold and silver coin. They carry off plate, jewels, copper utensils, and other effects, bed-clothes, clocks, vehicles, etc. No receipt is given. No statement is made of what is carried off. They rest content by at the end of the month, reporting, in a sort of proce`s- verbal, drawn up at a meeting of the committee, that, according to returns of the visits made, very little plate was found, and only a little money in gold and silver, all without any calculation or enumeration.”—“Souvenirs et Journal d’un Bourgeois d’Evreux,” p. 93. (February 25, 1795.) The meetings of the popular club “were largely devoted to reading the infamous doings and robberies of the revolutionary committee....Themembers who designated ‘suspects’ often arrested them themselves, and drew up a proce`s-verbal in which they omitted to state the jewels and gold they found.” 123. Ibid., 461. (Vende´miaire 24, year III. Visit of Representative Malarme´.) The former Duc de Narbonne-Lorra, aged eighty-four, says to Malarme´: “Citi- zen representative, excuse me if I keep my cap on; I lost my hair in that prison, without having been able to get permission to have a wig made; it is worse than being robbed on the road.” “Did they steal anything from you?” “They 1154 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION who form the ruling oligarchy, admit, after Thermidor, that they stole the effects of arrested parties.124 At Orange, “Citoyenne Riot,” wife of the public prosecutor, and “citoyennes Fernex and Ragot,” wives of two judges, come in person to the record-office to make selections from the spoils of the accused, taking for their wardrobe silver shoe-buckles, laces, and fine linen.125 But all that the accused, the imprisoned and fugitives can take with them, amounts to but little in comparison with what they leave at home, that is to say, under sequestration. All the religious or seignorial chateaux and mansions in France are in this plight, along with their furniture, and likewise most of the fine bourgeois mansions, together with a large stole one hundred and forty-five louis d’or and paid me with an acquittance for a tax for the sans-culottes, which is another robbery done to the citizens of this commune where I have neither home nor possessions.” “Who committed this robbery?” “It was Citizen Berger, of the municipal council.” “Was nothing else taken from you?” “They took a silver coffee-pot, two soap-cases and a silver shaving-dish.” “Who took those articles?” “It was Citizen Miot (a notable of the council).” Miot confesses to having kept these objects and not taken them to the Mint.—Ibid., 178. (Ventose 20, year II.) Prisoners all have their shoes taken, even those who had but one pair, a promise being made that they should have sabots in exchange, which they never got. Their cloaks also were taken with a promise to pay for them, which was never done.—“Souvenirs et Journal d’un Bourgeois d’Evreux,” p. 92. (February 25, 1795.) The sessions of the popular club were largely devoted to reading the infamies and robberies of the revolutionary committee. Its members, who designated the suspects, often arrested them themselves; they made levies and reports of these in which they omitted the gold and jewels found.” 124. Moniteur, xxii., 133. (Session of Vende´miaire 11, year III.) Report by Thibaudeau. “These seven individuals are reprobates who were dismissed by the people’s representatives for having stolen the effects of persons arrested. A document is on record in which they make a declaration that, not remembering the value of the effects embezzled, they agree to pay damages to the nation of twenty-two francs each.” 125. Berryat Saint-Prix, 447. Judge Ragot was formerly a joiner at Lyons, and Viot, the public prosecutor, a former deserter from the Penthie`vre regiment. “Other accused persons were despoiled. Little was left them other than their clothes, which were in a bad state. Nappier, the bailiff, was, later (Messidor, year III.), condemned to irons for having appropriated a part of the effects, jewels, and assignats belonging to persons under accusation.” The Governors / 1155 number of minor residences, well-furnished, and supplied through provincial economy; besides these, nearly every warehouse and store belonging to large manufacturers and leading commercial houses; all this forms colossal spoil, such as was never seen before, consisting of objects one likes to possess, gathered in vast lots, which lots are distributed by hundreds of thousands over the twenty-six thousand square miles of territory. There are no owners for this property but the nation, an indeterminate, imperceptible personage; no barrier other than so many seals exists between the spoils and the despoilers, that is to say, so many strips of paper held fast by two ill-applied and indistinct stamps. Bear in mind, too, that the guardians of the spoil are the sans-culottes who have made a conquest of it; that they are poor; that such a profusion of useful or precious objects makes them feel the bareness of their homes all the more; that their wives would dearly like to lay in a stock of furniture; moreover, has it not been held out to them from the beginning of the Revolution, that “forty-thousand mansions, palaces, and chateaux, two-thirds of the property of France, would be the reward of their valor”?126 At this very moment, does not the representative on mission authorise their greed? Are not Albitte and Collot d’Herbois at Lyons, Foucheát Nevers, Javogues at Montbrison, proclaiming that the possessions of antirevolutionists and a surplus of riches form “the patrimony of the sans-culottes”?127 Do they not read in the proclamations of Mo- nestier,128 that the peasants “before leaving home may survey and measure off the immense estates of their seigneurs, choose, for example, on their return, whatever they want to add to their farm . . . tacking on a bit of field or rabbit-warren belonging to the former count or marquis”? Why not take a portion of his furniture, any of

126. The words of Camille Desmoulins in “La France Libre” (August, 1782). 127. De Martel, “Fouche´,” 362.—Ibid., 132, 162, 179, 427, 443.—Lecarpen- tier, in La Manche, constantly stated: “Those who do not like the Revolution, must pay those who make it.” 128. Marcelin Boudet, 175. (Address of Monestier to the popular clubs of Puy-de-Dome, February 23, 1793.) 1156 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION his beds or clothes-presses? It is not surprising that, after this, the slip of paper which protects sequestrated furniture and confiscated merchandise should be ripped off by gross and greedy hands! When, after Thermidor, the master returns to his own roof it is generally to an empty house; in this or that habitation in the Morvan,129 the removal of the furniture is so complete that a bin turned upside down serves for a table and chairs, when the family sit down to their first meal. In the towns the embezzlements are often more brazenly carried out than in the country. At Valenciennes, the Jacobin chiefs of the municipality are known under the title of “seal-breakers and patriotic robbers.”130 At Lyons, the Maratists, who dub themselves “the friends of Chalier,” are, according to the Jacobins’ own admission, “brigands, thieves, and rascals.”131 They compose, to the number of three or four hundred, the thirty-two revolutionary committees; one hundred and fifty of the leading ones, “all administrators,” form the popular club; in this town of one hundred and twenty thousand souls they number, as they themselves state, three thousand, and they firmly rely on “sharing with each other the wealth of Lyons.” This huge cake belongs to them; they do not allow that strangers, Pari- sians, should have a slice,132 and they intend to eat the whole of it, at discretion, without control, even to the last crumb. As to their

129. Alexandrine des Echerolles, “Une famille noble sous la Terreur.” 130. Archives Nationales, AF., II., 65. (Letter of General Kermorvan to the president of the Committee of Public Safety, Valenciennes, Fructidor 12, year III.) 131. Report by Courtois, “Sur les papiers de Robespierre,” (Pieces justificatives, pp. 312–324), Letters of Reverchon, Germinal 29, Floreál 7 and 23, and by Laporte, Germinal 24, year II. 132. Ibid. Letter by Laporte: “I do not know what fatality induces patriots here not to tolerate their brethren whom they call strangers....They have declared to us that they would not suffer any of them to hold office.” The representatives dared arrest but two robbers and despoilers, who are now free and declaiming against them at Paris. “Countless grave and even atrocious circumstances are daily presented to us on which we hesitate to act, lest we should strike patriots, or those who call themselves such....Horrible depredations are committed.” The Governors / 1157 mode of operations, it consists in “selling justice, in trading on denunciations, in holding under sequestration at least four thousand households,” in putting seals everywhere on dwellings and warehouses, in not summoning interested parties who might watch their proceedings, in expelling women, children, and servants who might testify to their robberies, in not drawing up inventories, in installing themselves as “guardians at five francs a day,” themselves or their boon companions, and in “general squandering, in league with the administrators.” It is impossible to stay their hands or repress them, even for the representatives. “Take them in the act,133 and you must shut your eyes or they will all shout at the oppression of patriots; they do this systematically so that nobody may be followed up. . . . We passed an order forbidding any authority to remove seals without our consent, and, in spite of the prohibition, they broke into a storehouse under sequestration, . . . forced the locks and pillaged, under our own eyes, the very house we occupy. And who are these devastators? Two commissioners of the Committee who emptied the storehouse without our warrant, and even without having any power from the Committee.” It is a sack in due form, and day after day; it began on the 10th of October, 1793; it continued after, without interruption, and we have just seen that, on Floreál 28, year II., that is to say, April 26, 1794, after one hundred and twenty-three days, it is still maintained. The last haul and the richest of all. In spite of the subterfuges of its agents, the Republic, having stolen immensely, and although robbed in its turn, could still hold on to a great deal; and first, to

133. Ibid. Letter by Reverchon: “These fanatics all want the Republic simply for themselves.” . . . “They call themselves patriots only to cut the throats of their brethren and get rich.”—Guillon de Montleón, “Histoire de la Ville de Lyons Pendant la Re´volution,” iii., 166. (Report by Fouche´, April, 1794.) “In- nocent persons, acquitted by the terrible tribunal of the Revolutionary Com- mittee, were again consigned to the dungeons of criminals through the despotic orders of the thirty-two committees, because they were so unfortunate as to complain that, on returning home, they could not find the strictly necessary objects they had left there.” 1158 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION articles of furniture which could not be easily abstracted, to large lots of merchandise, also to the vast spoil of the palaces, chateaux, and churches; next, and above all, to real estate, fixtures, and buildings. Its necessities require it to put all this on the market, and whoever wants anything has only to come forward as a buyer, the last bidder becoming the legal owner and at a cheap rate. The wood cut down in one year very often pays for a whole forest.134 Some- times a chateau can be paid for by a sale of the iron-railings of the park, or the lead on the roof. Here are found chances for a good many bargains, and especially with objects of art. “The titles alone of the articles carried off, destroyed, or injured, would fill volumes.”135 On the one hand, the commissioners on inventories and adjudications, “having to turn a penny on the proceeds of sales,” throw on the market all they can, “avoiding reserving” objects of public utility and sending collections and libraries to auction with a view to get their percentages. On the other hand, nearly all these commissioners are brokers or second-hand dealers who alone know the value of rarities, and openly depreciate them in order to buy them in themselves, “and thus ensure for themselves exorbitant profits.” In certain cases the official guardians and purchasers who are on the look-out take the precaution to “disfigure” precious articles “so as to have them bought by their substitutes and accomplices”: for instance, they convert sets of books into odd volumes, and take machines to pieces; the tube and object-glass of a telescope are separated, which pieces the rogues who have bought them cheap know how to put together again.” Often, in spite of the seals, they take in advance “antiques, pieces of jewelry, medals, enamels, and en- graved stones”; nothing is easier, for “even in Paris in Thermidor,

134. Meissner, “Voyage en France dans les Derniers Mois de 1705,” p. 343. “A certain domain was handed over to one of their creatures by the revolutionary departments for almost nothing, less than the proceeds of the first cut of wood.”—Moniteur, xxiii., 397. (Speech by Bourdon de l’Oise, May 6, 1795.) “A certain farmer paid for his farm worth five thousand francs by the sale of one horse.” 135. Moniteur, xxii., 82. (Report by Gre´goire, Fructidor 14, year II.) Ibid., 775. (Report by Gre´goire, Frimaire 24, year III.) The Governors / 1159 year II., agents of the municipality use anything with which to make a stamp, buttons, and even large pennies, so that whoever has a sou can remove and restamp the seals as he pleases”; having been successful, “they screen their thefts by substituting cut pebbles and counterfeit stones for real ones.” Finally, at the auction sales, “fearing the honesty or competition of intelligent judges, they offer money (to these) to stay away from the sales; one case is cited of a bidder being knocked down.” In the meantime, at the club, they shout with all their might; this, with the protection of a member of the municipality or of the Revolutionary Committee, shelters them from all suspicion. As for the protector, he gets his share without coming out into the light. Accuse, if you dare, a republican functionary who secretly, or even openly, profits by these larcenies; he will show clean hands. Such is the incorruptible patriot, the only one of his species, whom the representatives discover at Strasbourg, and whom they appoint mayor at once. On the 10th of Vende´miaire, year III.,136 there is found “in his apartments” a superb and complete assortment of ecclesiastical objects, “forty-nine copes and chasubles, silk or satin, covered with gold or silver; fifty-four palles of the same description;” a quantity of “reliquaries, vases and spoons, censers, laces, silver and gold fringe, thirty-two pieces of silk,” etc. None of these fine things belong to him; they are the property of citizen Mouet, his father. This prudent parent, taking his word for it, “deposited them for safe keeping in his son’s house during the month of June, 1792 (old style)”; could a good son refuse his father such a slight favor? It is very certain that, in ’93 and ’94, during the young man’s municipal dictatorship, the elder did not pay the Stras- bourg Jew brokers too much, and that they did business in an off- hand way. By what right could a son and magistrate prevent his father, a free individual, from looking after “his own affairs” and buying according to trade principles, as cheap as he could? If such are the profits on the sale of personal property, what must

136. “Recueil de Pie`ces Authentiques sur la Re´volution a`Strasbourg,” ii. p. 1. (Proce`s-verbal, drawn up in the presence of the elder Mouet and signed by him.) 1160 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION they be on the sale of real estate? It is on this traffic that the fortunes of the clever terrorists are founded. It accounts for the “colossal wealth peaceably enjoyed,” after Thermidor, of the well-known “thieves” who, before Thermidor, were so many “little Robes- pierres,” each in his own canton, “the patriots” who, around Orleans, “built palaces,” who, “exclusives” at Valenciennes, “having wasted both public and private funds, possess the houses and property of emigrants, knocked down to them at a hundred times less than their value.”137 On this side, their outstretched fingers shamelessly clutch all they can get hold of; for the obligation of each arrested party to declare his name, quality and fortune, as it now is and was before the Revolution, gives local cupidity a known, sure, direct and palpable object. At Toulouse, says a prisoner,138 “the details and value of an object were taken down as if for a succession,” while the commissioners who drew up the statement, “our assassins, proceeded, beforehand and almost under our eyes, to take their share, disputing with each other on the choice and suitableness of each object, comparing the cost of adjudication with the means of lessening it, discussing the certain profits of selling again and of the transfer, and consuming in advance the pickings arising from sales and leases.” In Provence, where things are more advanced and corruption is greater than elsewhere, where the purport and aims of the Revo- lution were comprehended at the start, it is still worse. Nowhere did Jacobin rulers display their real character more openly, and nowhere, from 1789 to 1799, was this character so well maintained. At Toulon, the demagogues in the year V., as in the year II., are139 “former workmen and clerks in the Arsenal who had become ‘bosses’ by acting as informers and through terrorism, getting property for nothing, or at an insignificant price, and plotting sales of national

137. Moniteur, xxii., 775. (Report of Gre´goire, Frimaire 24, year III.)—Ibid., 711. (Report by Cambon, Frimaire 6, year III.)—Archives Nationales, AF., II., 65. (Letter of General Kermorvan, Valenciennes, Fructidor 12, year III.) 138. “Tableau des Prisons de Toulouse,” 184. (Visit of Ventose 27, year II.) 139. Archives Nationales, F7, 7,164. (Department of Var “Idee´geńe´rale et apprećiation auc de´tails sur chaque canton,” year V.) The Governors / 1161 possessions, petty traders from all quarters with stocks of goods acquired in all sorts of ways, through robberies, through purchases of stolen goods from servants and employees in the civil, war, and navy departments, and through abandoned or bought-up claims; in fine, from refugees from other communes who pass their days in coffee-houses and their nights in houses of ill-fame.” The leading officials at Draguignan, Brignolles, Vidauban, and Fre´jus, are of this sort. At Marseilles, after Thermidor, the intermittent returns to Ter- rorism always restore to office,140 the same justiciary and police gangs, “once useful mechanics, but tired of working, and whom the profession of paid clubbists, idle guardians,” and paid laborers “has totally demoralized,” scoundrels in league with each other and making money out of whatever they lay their hands on, like thieves at a fair, habitually living at the expense of the public, “bestowing the favors of the nation on those who share their principles, harboring and aiding many who are under the ban of the law and calling themselves model patriots, in fine, in the pay of gambling-hells and houses of prostitution.”141 In the rural districts, the old bands “con-

140. Ibid., F7, 7,171 (No. 7,915).—(Department of Bouches-du-Rhone, “Idee´geńe´rale,” year V.)—(Letters of Miollis, Commissioner of the Directory in the department, Ventose 14 and 16, year V. Letter of Gen. Willot to the Minister, Ventose 10, and of Gen. Merle to Gen. Willot, Ventose 17, year V.) “Several sections of anarchists travel from one commune to another exciting weak citizens to riots and getting them to take part in the horrors they are meditating.”—Ibid., F7, 7,164. Letter of Gen. Willot to the Minister, Arles, Pluviose 12, year V:, with supporting documents, and especially a letter of the director of the jury, on the violence committed by, and the reign of, the Jacobins in Arles.) Their party “is composed of the vilest mechanics and nearly all the sailors.” The municipality recruited amongst former terrorists, “has enforced for a year back the agrarian law, devastation of the forests, pillage of the wheat- crops, by bands of armed men under pretext of the right of gleaning, the robbery of animals at the plough as well as of the flocks,” etc. 141. Ibid., F7, 7,171. “These commissioners (of the quarter) notify the exclusives, and even swindlers, when warrants are out against them. . . . The same measures carried out in the primary assemblies on the 1st of Thermidor last, in the selection of municipal officers, have been successfully revived in the organisation of the National Guard—threats, insults, vociferations, assaults, compulsory ejection from meetings then governed by the amnestied, finally, the 1162 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION sisting of hordes of homeless brigands” who worked so well during the anarchy of the Constituent and Legislative assemblies, form anew during the anarchy of the Directory; they make their appearance in the vicinity of Apt “commencing with petty robberies and then, strong in the impunity and title of sans-culottes, break into farm-houses, rob and massacre the inmates, strip travelers, put to ransom all who happen to cross their path, force open and pillage houses in the commune of Gorges, stop women in the streets, tear off their rings and crosses,” and attack the hospital, sacking it from top to bottom, while the town and military officers, just like them, allow them to go on.142 Judge by this of their performances in the appointment of the latter to the principal offices. In effect, all, beginning with the places of battalion leaders and reaching to those of corporals, are exclusively filled by their partisans. The result is that the honest, to whom serving with men regarded by them with aversion is repugnant, employ substitutes instead of mounting guard themselves, the security of the town being in the hands of those who themselves ought to be watched.” 142. Archives Nationales, F7, 3,273. (Letter of Me´rard, former administrator and judge in 1790 and 1791, in years III., IV., and V., to the Minister, Apt, Pluviose 15, year III., with personal references and documentary evidence.) “I can no longer refrain at the sight of so many horrors....Thejustices of the peace and the director of the jury excuse themselves on the ground that no denunciations or witnesses are brought forward. Who would dare appear against men arrogating to themselves the title of superior patriots, foremost in every revolutionary crisis, and with friends in every commune and protectors in all high places? The favor they enjoyed was such that the commune of Gordes was free of any levy of conscripts and from all requisitions. People thus disposed, they said, to second civic and administrative views, could not be humored too much. . . . This discouraging state of things simply results from the weakness, inexperience, ignorance, apathy, and immorality of the public functionaries who, since the 18th of Fructidor, year V., swarm, with a few exceptions only, among the constituted authorities. Whatever is most foul and incompetent is in office, every good citizen being frightened to death.”—Ibid. (Letter of Montauban, director of the registry since 1793 to the Minister of the Interior, a compatriot, Avignon, Pluviose 7, year VII.) “Honest folks are constantly annoyed and put down by the authors and managers of the ‘Glacie`re’ . . . by the tools of the bloody tribunal of Orange and the incendiaries of Bedouin.” He enjoins secrecy on this letter, which, “if known to the Glacie`rists, or Orangeists, would cost him his life.” The Governors / 1163 time of Robespierre, when the vendors and administrators of the national possessions exercised undisputed control. Everywhere, at that time, in the departments of Var, Bouches-du-Rhone, and Vau- cluse, “a club of would-be patriots” had long prepared the way for their exactions. It had “paid appraisers” for depreciating whatever was put up for sale, and false names for concealing real purchasers; “a person not of their clique, was excluded from the auction-room; if he persisted in coming in they would, at one time, put him under contribution for the privilege of bidding,” and, at another time, make him promise not to bid above the price fixed by the league, while, to acquire the domain, they paid him a bonus. Consequently, “national property” was made way with “for almost nothing,” the sharpers who acquired it never being without a satisfactory warrant for this in their own eyes. Into whose hands could the property of antirevolutionists better fall than into those of patriots? According to Marat, the martyr apostle and canonised saint of the Revolution, what is the object of the Revolution but to give to the lowly the fortunes of the great?143 In all national sales everywhere, in guarding sequestrations, in all revolutionary ransoms, taxes, loans and seizures, the same excellent argument prevails; nowhere, in printed documents or in manuscripts, do I find any revolutionary committee which is at once terrorist and honest. Only, it is rare to find specific and individual details regarding all the members of the same committee. Here, however, is one case, where, owing to the lucky accident of an examination given in detail, one can observe in one nest, every variety of the species and of its appetites, the dozen or fifteen types of the Jacobin hornet, each abstracting what suits him from whatever he lights on, each indulging in his favorite sort of rapine. At Nantes, “Pinard, the great purveyor of the Committee,144 orders everything that each member needs for his daily use to be

143. Ibid., F7, 7,164. (Department of Var, year V., “Idee´Geńe´rale.”) “Na- tional character is gone; it is even demoralised: an office-holder who has not made his fortune quickly is regarded as a fool.” 144. Moniteur, xxii., 240. (Indictment of the fourteen members of the Rev- olutionary Committee of Nantes, and the summing-up of the examination, Ven- 1164 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION carried to his house.” “Gallou takes oil and brandy,” and especially “several barrels from citizen Bissonneau’s house.” “Durassier makes domiciliary visits and exacts contributions”; among others “he compels citizen Lemoine to pay twenty-five hundred livres, to save him from imprisonment.” “Naud affixes and removes seals in the houses of the incarcerated, makes nocturnal visits to the dwellings of the accused and takes what suits him.” “Grandmaison appropriates plate under sequestration, and Bachelier plate given as a present.” “Joly superintends executions and takes all he can find, plate, jewelry, precious objects.” “Bolognie´ forces the return of a bond of twenty thousand livres already paid to him.” “Perrochaux demands of citoyenne Ollemard-Dudan fifty thousand livres, to prevent her imprisonment,” and confiscates for his own benefit sixty thousand livres’ worth of tobacco, in the house of the widow Daigneau-Mallet, who, claiming it back, is led off by him to prison under the pretext of interceding for her. “Chaux frightens off by terrorism his competitors at auction sales, has all the small farms on the Baroissie`re de´miaire 23, year II.) When there is no special information concerning the other committees the verdict, on the whole, is nearly always as overwhelming.—Ibid. (Session of Vende´miaire 12, year III. Complaint of a deputation from Ferney.—Voltaire.) “The Gex district was, for over a year, a prey to five or six scoundrels who took refuge there. Under the mask of patriotism they succeeded in getting possession of all the offices. Vexations of every kind, robberies of private houses, squandering of public money, were committed by these monsters.” (The Ferney deputies brought with them the testimony of witnesses.)—Ibid., 290. (Letters of Representative Goupilleau, Beziers, Vende´miaire 28, year III. on the terrorists of Vaucluse.) “These carnivorous fellows, regretting the times when they could rob and massacre with impunity. . . . Who, six months ago, were starving, and who now live in the most scandalous opulence....Squanderers of the public funds, robbers of private fortunes.... Guilty of rapine, of forced contributions, of extortions,” etc.—Prudhomme, “Les Crimes de la Re´volution,” vi., 79. (On the Revolutionary Committee installed by Fouche´ at Nevers.) The local investigation shows that the eleven leaders were men of vile character, unfrocked and disreputable priests, lawyers and notaries driven out of their professional bodies, and even from the popular clubs, on account of their dishonesty, penniless actors, surgeons without patients, depraved, ruined, incapable men, and two jail-birds. The Governors / 1165 domain knocked down to him, and exclaims concerning a place which suits him, ‘I know how to get it! I’ll have the owner arrested. He’ll be very glad to let me have his ground to get out of prison.’” The collection is complete, and ranged around a table, it offers samples which, elsewhere in France, are found scattered about. VII The last manipulators of the system remain, the hands which seize, the armed force which takes bodily hold of men and things. The first who are employed for this purpose are the National Guard and the ordinary gendarmerie. Since 1790, these bodies are of course constantly weeded out until only fanatics and instruments are left;145 nevertheless, the weeding-out continues as the system develops itself. At Strasbourg,146 on Brumaire 14, the representatives have dismissed, arrested, and sent to Dijon the entire staff of the National Guard to serve as hostages until peace is secured; three days afterwards, considering that the cavalry of the town had been mounted and equipped at its own expense, they deem it aristocratic, bourgeois, and “suspect,” and seize the horses and put the officers in arrest. At Troyes, Rousselin, “National civil commissioner,” dismisses, for the same reason, and with not less despatch, the whole of the gendarmes at one stroke, except four, and “puts under requisition their horses, fully equipped, also their arms, so as to at once mount well-known and tried sans-culottes.” On principle, the poor sans-culottes, who are true at heart and in dress, alone have the right to bear arms, and should a bourgeois be on duty he must have only a pike, care being taken to take it away from him the moment he finishes his rounds.147 But, alongside of the usual armed force, there is still another,

145. Beaulieu, iii., 754.—Cf. “The Revolution,” vol. ii., ch. i., § 9. 146. “Recueil de Pie`ces Authentiques sur la Re´volution a`Strasbourg,” i., 21.—Archives Nationales D., I., § 6. (Orders by Rousselin, Frimaire 11, year II.) 147. “Un Se´jour en France de 1792 a`1795,” p. 409. 1166 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION much better selected and more eﬀective, the reserve gendarmerie, a special, and, at the same time, movable and resident body, that is to say, the “revolutionary army,” which, after September 5, 1793, the government had raised in Paris and in most of the large towns. That of Paris, comprising six thousand men, with twelve hundred cannoneers, sends detachments into the provinces—two thousand men to Lyons, and two hundred to Troyes;148 Ysabeau and Tallien have at Bordeaux a corps of three thousand men; Salicetti, Albitte, and Gasparin, one of two thousand men at Marseilles; Ysore´ and Du- quesnoy, one of one thousand men at Lille; Javogues, one of twelve hundred at Montbrison; others, less numerous, ranging from six hundred down to two hundred men, hold Moulins, Grenoble, Be- sanc¸on, Belfort, Bourg, Dijon, Strasbourg, Toulouse, Auch, and Nantes.149 When, on March 27, 1794, the Committee of Public Safety, threatened by He´bert, has them disbanded for being He´bertists, many of them are to remain at least as a nucleus, under various forms and names, either as kept by the local administration under the title of “paid guards,”150 or as disbanded soldiers, loitering about

148. I have not found a complete list of the towns and departments which had a revolutionary army. The correspondence of representatives on mission and published documents verify the presence of revolutionary armies in the towns mentioned. 149. De Martel, “Fouche´,” 338. (Text of the orders of the Commissioners of Public Safety.) The detachment sent to Lyons comprises twelve hundred fusileers, six hundred cannoneers, one hundred and fifty horses. Three hundred thousand livres are remitted as travelling expenses to the commissary, fifty thousand to Collot d’Herbois, and nineteen thousand two hundred to the Jac- obin civilians accompanying them. 150. Moniteur. (Session of Brumaire 17, year III.) Letter of Representative Cale`s to the Convention. “Under the pretext of guarding the prisons, the municipality (of Dijon) had a revolutionary army which I broke up two days ago, as it cost six thousand francs a month, and would not obey the commander of the armed force, and served as a support to intriguers. These soldiers, who were all workmen out of employment, do nothing but post themselves in the tribunes of the clubs, where they, with the women they bring along with them, applaud the leaders, and so threaten citizens who are disposed to combat them, and force these to keep their mouths shut.”—De Martel, “Fouche´,” 425. “Javogues, to elude a decree of the Convention (Frimaire 14) suppressing the The Governors / 1167 and doing nothing, getting themselves assigned posts of rank in the National Guard of their town on account of their exploits; in this way they keep themselves in service, which is indispensable, for it is through these that the re´gime is established and lasts. “The revolutionary army,”151 say the orders and decrees promulgated, “is intended to repress antirevolutionists, to execute, whenever it is found necessary, revolutionary laws and measures for public safety,” that is to say, “to guard those who are shut up, arrest ‘suspects,’ demolish chateaux, pull down belfries, ransack vestries for gold and silver objects, seize fine horses and carriages,” and especially “to seek for private stores and monopolies,” in short, to exercise manual constraint and strike every one on the spot with physical terror. We readily see what sort of soldiers the revolutionary army is composed of. Naturally, as it is recruited by voluntary enlistments, and all candidates have passed the purifying scrutiny of the clubs, it comprises none but ultra Jacobins. Naturally, the pay being forty sous a day, it comprises none but the very lowest class. Naturally, as the work is as loathsome as it is atrocious, it comprises but few others152 than those out of employment and reduced to an enlistment to get a living, “hairdressers without customers, lackeys without places, vag- revolutionary army in the departments, converted the twelve hundred men he had embodied in it in the Loire into paid soldiers.”—Ibid., 132. (Letter of Goulin, Bourg, Frimaire 23.) “Yesterday, at Bourg-Re´gerie´re´, I found Javogues with about four hundred men of the revolutionary army whom he had brought with him on the 20th instant.” 151. Buchez et Roux, xxix., 45.—Moniteur, xx., 67. (Report of Bare`re, Ger- minal 7.)—Sauzay, iv., 303. (Orders of Representative Bassal at Be´sançon.) 152. We see by Bare`re’s report (Germinal 7, year II.) that the revolutionary army of Paris, instead of being six thousand men, was only four thousand, which is creditable to Paris.—Mallet-Dupan, ii., 52. (Cf. “The Revolution,” ii., 353.)—Gouvion St. Cyr, i., 137. “In these times, the representatives had organised in Haut-Rhin what they called a revolutionary army, composed of deserters and all the vagabonds and scamps they could pick up who had belonged to the popular club; they dragged along after it what they called judges and a guillotine.”—“Hua, “Souvenirs d’un Avocat,” 196. 1168 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION abonds, wretches unable to earn a living by honest labor,” “shoulder-hitters” who have acquired the habit of bullying, knocking down, and keeping honest folks under their pikes, a gang of confirmed scoundrels making public brigandage a cloak for private brigandage, inhabitants of the slums glad to bring down their former superiors into the mud, and themselves take precedence and strut about in order to prove by their arrogance and self-display that they, in their turn, are princes. “Take a horse, the nation pays for it!”153 exclaim water-carriers and commissionaires to their comrades in the street, and who, “in a splendid procession,” of three carriages, each drawn by six horses, escorted by a body of sans-culottes on horseback, behind, in front, and each side the doors, are conducting Riouffe and two other “suspects” to prison. The commander of the squad who guards prisoners on the way to Paris, and who “starves them along the road to speculate on them,” is an ex-cook of Agen, having become a gendarme; he makes them travel forty leagues extra, “purposely to glorify himself,” and “let all Agen see that he has government money to spend, and that he can put citizens in irons.” Accordingly, in Agen, “he keeps constantly and needlessly inspecting the vehicle,” winking at the spectators, “more triumphant than if he had made a dozen Austrians prisoners and brought them along himself”; at last, to show the crowd in the street the importance of his capture, he summons two blacksmiths to come out and rivet, on the legs of each prisoner, a cross-bar cannon-ball weighing eighty pounds.154 The more display these sbirri make of their brutality, the greater they think themselves. At Belfort, a patriot of the club dies, and a civic interment takes place; a detachment of the

153. Riouffe, “Me´moires d’un de´teńu,” p. 31. 154. Ibid., 37. “These balls were brought out ostentatiously and shown to the people beforehand. The tying of our hands and passing three ropes around our waists did not seem to him sufficient. We kept these irons on the rest of the route, and they were so heavy that, if the carriage had tilted to one side, we should inevitably have had our legs broken. The gate-keepers of the Con- ciergerie of Paris, who had held their places nineteen years, were astonished at it.” The Governors / 1169 revolutionary army joins the procession; the men are armed with axes; on reaching the cemetery, the better to celebrate the funeral, “they cut down all the crosses (over the graves) and make a bonfire of them, while the carmagnole ends this ever memorable day.”155 Sometimes the scene, theatrical and played by the light of flambeaux, makes the actors think that they have performed an extraordinary and meritorious action, “that they have saved the country.” “This very night,” writes the agent at Bordeaux,156 “nearly three thousand men have been engaged in an important undertaking, with the members of the Revolutionary Committee and of the municipality at the head of it. They visited every wholesale dealer’s store in town and in the Faubourg des Chartrons, taking possession of their letter- books, sealing up their desks, arresting the merchants and putting them in the Seminiare. . . . Woe to the guilty!” If the prompt confinement of an entire class of individuals is a fine thing for a town, the seizure of a whole town itself is still more imposing. Leaving Marseilles with a small army,157 commanded by two sans-culottes, they surround Martigne and enter it as if it were a mill. The catch is superb; in this town of five thousand souls there are only seventeen patriots; the rest are Federalists or Moderates. Hence a general disarmament and domiciliary visits. The conquerors depart, carrying off every able-bodied boy, “five hundred lads subject to the conscription, and leave in the town a company of sans-culottes to enforce obedience.” It is certain that obedience will be maintained and that the garrison, joined to the seventeen patriots, will do as they like with their conquest. In effect, all, both bodies and goods, are at their disposal, and they consequently begin with the country round about, entering private houses to get at their stores, also the farmhouses to have the grain threshed, in order to verify the declarations of their owners

155. Archives des Affaires E´trange´re`s, vol. 331. (Letter of Haupt, Belfort, Frimaire 13, year II.) 156. Ibid. (Letter by Desgranges, Bordeaux, Frimaire 10.) 157. Ibid., vol. 332. (Letter of Thiberge, Marseilles, Frimaire 14.) “I surrounded the town with my small army.” 1170 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION and see if these are correct: if the grain is not threshed out at once it will be done summarily and confiscated, while the owner will be sentenced to twelve months in irons; if the declaration is not correct, he is condemned as a monopolist and punished with death. Armed with this order,158 each band takes the field and gathers together not only grain, but supplies of every description. “That of Grenoble, the agent writes,159 does wonderfully; in one little commune alone, four hundred measures of wheat, twelve hundred eggs, and six hundred pounds of butter had been found. All this was quickly on the way to Grenoble.” In the vicinity of Paris, the forerunners of the throng, provided “with pitchforks and bayonets, rush to the farms, take oxen out of their stalls, grab sheep and chickens, burn the barns, and sell their booty to speculators.”160 “Bacon, eggs, butter, and chickens—the peasants surrender whatever is demanded of them,

158. Ibid., 331. (Orders of Representative Bassal, Besançon, Frimaire 5.) “No citizen shall keep in his house more than four months’ supplies. . . . Every citizen with more than this will deposit the surplus in the granary ‘d’abondance’ provided for the purpose. . . . Immediately on receipt of the present order, the municipality will summon all citizens that can thresh and proceed immediately, without delay, to the threshing-ground, under penalty of being prosecuted as refractory to the law. . . . The revolutionary army is specially charged with the execution of the articles of this order, and the revolutionary tribunals, following this army with the enforcement of the penalties inflicted according to this order.”—Other documents show us that the revolutionary army, organised in the department of Doubs and in the five neighboring departments, comprises, in all, two thousand four hundred men. (Ibid., vol., 1411. Letter of Meyenfeld to Minister Desforges, Brumaire 27, year II.)—Archives Nationales, AF., II., 111. (Order of Couthon, Maignet, Chateauneuf, Randon, Laporte, and Albitte, Commune-Affranchie, Brumaire 9, year II., establishing in the ten surrounding departments a revolutionary army of one thousand men per department, for the conscription of grain. Each army is to be directed by commissioners, strangers to the department, and is to operate in other departments than in the one where it is raised.) 159. Archives des Affaires E´trange´re`s, 331. (Letter of Che´py, Frimaire 11.)— Writing one month before this (Brumaire 6), he says: “The farmers show themselves very hostile against the towns and the law of the maximum. Nothing can be done without a revolutionary army.” 160. Mercier, “Paris Pendant la Revolution,” i., 357. The Governors / 1171 and thenceforth have nothing that they can take to market. They curse the Republic which has brought war and famine on them, and nevertheless they do what they are told: on being addressed, ‘Citizen peasant, I require of you on peril of your head,’ . . . there is no longer any retreat.”161 Accordingly, they are only too glad to be let off so cheaply. On Brumaire 19, about seven o’clock in the evening, at Tigery, near Corbeil, twenty-five men “with sabres and pistols in their belts, most of them in the uniform of the National Guards and calling themselves the revolutionary army,” enter the house of Gib- bon, an old ploughman, seventy-one years of age, while fifty others guard all egress from it, so that the expedition may not be interfered with. Turlot, captain, and aid-de-camp to General Henriot, wants to know where the master of the house is. “In his bed,” is the reply. “Wake him up.” The old man rises. “Give up your arms.” His wife hands over a fowling-piece, the only arm on the premises. The band immediately falls on the poor man, “strikes him down, ties his hands, and puts a sack over his head,” and the same thing is done to his wife and to eight male and two female servants. “Now, give us the keys of your closets”; they want to be sure that there are no fleur- de-lys or other illegal articles. They search the old man’s pockets, take his keys, and, to despatch business, break into the chests and seize or carry off all the plate, “twenty-six table-dishes, three soup- ladles, three goblets, two snuff-boxes, forty counters, two watches, another gold watch and a gold cross.” “We will draw up a proce`s- verbal of all this at our leisure in Meaux. Now, where’s your silver? If you don’t say where it is, the guillotine is outside and I will be

161. Hua, 197. I do not find in any printed or manuscript document but one case of resistance, that of the brothers Chaperon, in the hamlet of Loges, near Sens, who declare that they have no wheat except for their own use, and who defend themselves by the use of a gun. The gendarmerie not being strong enough to overcome them, the tocsin is sounded and the National Guard of Sens and the neighborhood is summoned; bringing cannon, the affair ends with the burning of the house. The two brothers are killed. Previously, however, they had struck down the captain of the National Guard of Sens and killed or wounded nearly forty of their assailants. A surviving brother and a sister are guillotined. (June, 1794. Wallon, iv., 352.) 1172 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION your executioner.” The old man yields and merely requests to be untied. But it is better to keep him bound, “so as to make him ‘shell out.’” They carry him into the kitchen and “put his feet into a heated brazier.” He shouts with pain, and indicates another chest which they break open and then carry off what they find there, “seventy-two francs in coin and five or six thousand livres in assignats, which Gibbon had just received for the requisitions made on him for corn.” Next, they break open the cellar doors, set a cask of vinegar running, carry wine upstairs, eat the family meal, get drunk and, at last, clear out, leaving Gibbon with his feet burnt, and gar- roted, as well as the other eleven members of his household, quite certain that there will be no pursuit.162 In the towns, especially in federalist districts, however, these robberies are complicated with other assaults. At Lyons, whilst the regular troops are lodged in barracks, the revolutionary army is billeted on the householders, two thousand vile, sanguinary blackguards from Paris, and whom their general, Ronsin himself, calls “scoundrels and brigands,” alleging, in excuse for this, that “honest folks cannot be found for such business.” How they treat their host, his wife and his daughters may be imagined; contemporaries glide over these occurrences and, through decency or disgust, avoid giving details.163 Some simply use

162. Moniteur, xviii., 663. (Session of Frimaire 24, report by Lecointre.) “The communes of Thieux, Jully, and many others were victims to their brigandage.” “The stupor in the country is such that the poor sufferers dare not complain of these vexations because, they say, they are only too lucky to have escaped with their lives.”—This time, however, these public brigands made a mistake. Gibbon’s son happens to be Lecointre’s farmer. Moreover, it is only accidentally that he mentions the circumstance to his landlord; “he came to see him for another purpose.”—Cf. “The Revolution,” vol. ii., 302. (There is a similar scene in the house of one Ruelle, a farmer, in the Commune of Lisse.) 163. Cf., passim Alfred Lallier, “Le sans-culotte Goullin.”—Wallon. “His- toire du Tribunal Re´volutionnaire de Paris,” v., 368. (Deposition of Lacaille.)— In addition to this, the most extraordinary monsters are met with in other administrative bodies, for example, in Nantes, a Jean d’He´ron, tailor, who becomes inspector of military stores. “After the rout at Clisson, says the woman Laillet, he appeared in the popular club with a brigand’s ear attached to his hat by way of cockade. His pockets were full of ears, which he took delight in The Governors / 1173 brutal force; others get rid of a troublesome husband by the guillotine; in the most exceptional cases they bring their wenches along with them, while the housekeeper has to arouse herself at one o’clock at night and light a fire for the officer who comes in with the jolly company. And yet, there are others still worse, for the worst attract each other. We have seen the revolutionary committee at Nantes, also the representative on mission in the same city; nowhere did the revolutionary Sabbat rage so furiously, and nowhere was there such a traffic in human lives. With such band-leaders as Carrier and his tools on the Committee, one may be sure that the instrumentalists will be worthy. Accordingly, several members of the Committee themselves over- see executions and lend a hand in the massacres. One of these, Goullin, a creole from St. Domingo, sensual and nervous, accustomed to treating a negro as an animal and a Frenchman as a white negro, a Septembriseur on principle, chief instigator and director of the “drownings,” goes in person to empty the prison of Bouffay, and, ascertaining that deaths, the hospital and releases, had lessened the number of the imprisoned, adds, of his own authority, fifteen names, taken haphazard, to complete his list. Joly, a commissioner on the Committee, very expert in the art of garroting, ties the hands of prisoners together two and two and conducts them to the river.164 Grandmaison, another member of the Committee, a former dancing- master, convicted of two murders and pardoned before the Revo- lution, strikes down with his sabre the uplifted hands stretched out to him over the planks of the lighter.165 Pinard, another Committee- commissioner, ransoms, steals off into the country and himself kills, through preference, women and children.166 Naturally, the three making the women kiss. He exposed other things which he made them kiss and the woman Laillet adds certain details which I dare not transcribe.” (“Le patriote d’He´ron,” by L. de la Sicotie`re, pp. 9 and 10. Deposition of the woman Laillet, fish-dealer, also the testimony of Mellinet, vol. viii., p. 256.) 164. Wallon, v., 368. (Deposition of de Laillet.) 165. Ibid., v., 371. (Deposition of Tabouret.) 166. Ibid., v., 373. (Deposition of Mariotte.) 1174 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION bands which operate along with them, or under their orders, comprise only men of their species. In the first one, called the Marat company, each of the sixty members swears, on joining it, to adopt Marat’s principles and carry out Marat’s doctrine. Goullin,167 one of the founders, demands in relation to each member, “Isn’t there some one still more rascally? For we must have that sort to bring the aristocrats to reason!”168 After Frimaire 5 “the Maratists” boast of their arms being “tired out” with striking prisoners with the flat of their sabres to make them march to the Loire,169 and we see that, notwithstanding this fatigue, the business suited them, as their officers intrigued with Carrier to be detailed on the “drowning” service and because it was lucrative. The men and women sentenced to death, were first stripped of their clothes down to the shirt, and even the shift; it would be a pity to let valuable objects go to the bottom with their owners, and therefore the drowners divide these amongst themselves; a wardrobe in the house of the adjutant Richard is found full of jewelry and watches.170 This company of sixty must

167. Moniteur, xxii., 321. (Deposition of Philippe Troncjolly.)—Berryat Saint-Prix, “La Justice Re´volutionnaire,” 39. 168. Campardon, “Histoire du Tribunal Re´volutionnaire,” ii., 30. They have ten francs a day, and full powers conferred on them. (Orders of Carrier and Francastel, October 28, 1793.) “The representatives . . . confer collectively and individually, on each member of the revolutionary company, the right of surveillance over all ‘suspect’ citizens in Nantes, over strangers who come to or reside there, over monopolists of every sort. . . . The right to make domiciliary visits wherever they may deem it advisable. . . . The armed force will everywhere respond to the demands made upon it in the name of the company, or of any individual member composing it.”—Berryat Saint-Prix, p. 42.—Alfred Lallier, “Les Noyades de Nantes,” p. 20. (Deposition of Gauthier.) Ibid., p. 22. “D——,” exclaims Carrier, “I kept that execution for Lamberty. I’m sorry that it was done by others.” 169. Alfred Lallier, ibid., pp. 21 and 90.—Cf. Moniteur, xxii., 331. (Depo- sition of Victoire Abraham.) “The drowners made quite free with the women, even using them for their own purposes when pleased with them, which women, in token of their kindness, enjoyed the precious advantage of not being drowned.” 170. Campardon, ii., 8. (Deposition of Commeret.)—Berryat Saint-Prix, p. 42.—Ibid., p. 28. Other agents of Carrier, Fouquet, and Lamberty, were The Governors / 1175 have made handsome profits out of the four or five thousand drowned. The second band, called “the American Hussars,” and who operated in the outskirts, was composed of blacks and mulat- toes, numerous enough in this town of privateers. It is their business to shoot women, whom they first violate; “they are our slaves,” they say; “we have won them by the sweat of our brows.” “Those who have the misfortune to be saved by them, become in their hands idiotic in a couple of days; in any event they are rearrested shortly afterwards and shot. The last band, which is styled “The German Legion,” is formed out of German deserters and mercenaries who can scarcely speak French, or not at all, employed by the Military Commission to despatch the Vendeáns picked up along the highways, and who are usually shot in groups of twenty five. “I came,” says an eye-witness,171 “to a sort of gorge where there was a semi- circular quarry; there, I noticed the corpses of seventy-five women . . . naked and lying on their backs.” The victims of that day consisted of girls from sixteen to eighteen years of age. One of them says to her conductor, “I am sure you are taking us to die,” and the German replies in his broken jargon, probably with a coarse laugh, “No, it is for a change of air.” They are placed in a row in front of the bodies of the previous day and shot. Those who do not fall, see condemned specially, “for having saved from national vengeance Madame de Martilly and her maid....They shared the woman Martilly and the maid between them.” In connection with the “dainty taste” of Jacobins for silk dresses M. Berryat Saint-Prix cites the following answer of a Jacobin of 1851 to the judge d’ instruction of Rheims; on the objection being made to him that the Republic, as he understood it, could not last long, he replied: “Possibly, but say it lasts three months. That’s long enough to fill one’s pocket and belly and rumple silk dresses?” Another of the same species said in 1871: “We shall anyhow have a week’s use of it.” Observers of human nature will find analogous details in the history of the Sepoy rebellion in India against the English in 1803, also in the history of the Indians in the United States. The September massacres in Paris and the history of the combat of 1791 and 1792 have already provided us with the same characteristic documents. 171. Alfred Lallier, “Les Fusillades de Nantes,” p. 23. (Depositions of Pi- card, commander of the National Guards of the escort.—Cf. the depositions of Jean Jounet, paver, and of Henri Ferdinand, joiner.) 1176 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION the guns reloaded; these are again shot and the wounded despatched with the butt ends of the muskets. Some of the Germans then rifle the bodies, while others strip them and “place them on their backs.” To find workmen for this task, it is necessary to descend, not only to the lowest wretches in France but, again, to the brutes of a foreign race and tongue, and yet lower still, to an inferior race degraded by slavery and perverted by license. Such, from the top to the bottom of the ladder, at every stage of authority and obedience, is the ruling staff of the revolutionary government.172 Through its recruits and its work, through its morals and modes of proceeding, it evokes the almost forgotten image of its predecessors, for there is an image of it in the period from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century. At that time also, society was frequently overcome and ravaged by barbarians; dangerous nomads, malevolent outcasts, bandits turned into soldiers suddenly pounced down on an industrious and peaceful population. Such was the case in France with the “Routiers” and the “Tard-venus,” at Rome with the army of the Constable of Bourbon, in Flanders with the bands of the Duke of Alba and the Duke of Parma, in Westphalia and in Alsace, with Wallenstein’s veterans, and those of Bernard of Saxe- Weimar. They lived upon a town or province for six months, fifteen months, two years, until the town or province was exhausted, alone

172. Sauzay, “Histoire de la Persećution Re´volutionnaire dans le De´partement du Doubs,” vii., 687. (Letter of Gre´goire, December 24, 1796.) “An approximative calculation makes the number of the authors of so many crimes three hundred thousand, for in each commune there were about five or six of these ferocious brutes who, named Brutus, perfected the art of removing seals, drowning, and cutting throats. They consumed immense amounts in constructing ‘Mountains,’ in revellings, and in feˆtes every three months which, after the first parade, became parodies, represented by three or four actors in them, and with no audience. These consisted, finally, of a drum-beater and the musical officer; and the latter, ashamed of himself, often concealed his scarf in his pocket, on his way to the Temple of Reason....But these three hundred thousand brigands had two or three hundred directors, members of the National Con- vention, who cannot be called anything but scoundrels, since the language provides no other epithet so forcible.” The Governors / 1177 armed, master of the inhabitant, using and abusing things and persons according to their caprices. But they were declared bandits, calling themselves scorchers (ecorcheurs), riders and adventurers, and not pretenders to being humanitarian philosophers. Moreover, beyond an immediate and personal enjoyment, they demanded nothing; they employed brutal force only to satiate their greed, their cruelty, their lust. The latter add to private appetites a far greater devastation, the systematic and gratuitous ravages enforced upon them by the superficial theory with which they are imbued.

BOOK VIII

The Governed

9 CHAPTER I =

The Oppressed— I. Magnitude of revolutionary destructiveness—The four ways of effecting it—Expulsion from the country through forced emigration and legal banishment—Number of those expelled—Privation of liberty—Different sorts of imprisonment—Number and situation of those imprisoned—Murders after being tried, or without trial—Number of those guillotined or shot after trial—Indication of the number of other lives destroyed—Necessity of and plan for wider destruction—Spoliation—Its extent—Squandering—Utter losses—Ruin of individuals and the State—The Notables the most oppressed— II. The value of Notables in society—Various kinds and degrees of Notables in 1789—The great social staff—Men of the world—Their breeding—Their intellectual culture—Their humanity and philanthropy—Their moral temper—Practical men—Where recruited—Their qualifications—Their active benevolence—Scarcity of them and their worth to a community— III. The three classes of Notables—The Nobility— Its physical and moral preparation through feats of arms—The military spirit— High character—Conduct of officers in 1789–1792—Service for which these nobles were adapted— IV. The Clergy—Where recruited—Professionalinducements— Independence of ecclesiastics—Their substantial merits—Their theoretical and practical information—Their distribution over the territory—Utility of their office—Their conduct in 1790–1800—Their courage, their capacity for self- sacrifice— V. The Bourgeoisie—Where recruited—Difference between the functionary of the ancient re´gime and the modern functionary—Property in offices— Guilds—Independence and security of office-holders—Their limited ambition and contentedness—Fixed habits, seriousness and integrity—Ambition to secure esteem—Intellectual culture—Liberal ideas—Respectability and public zeal— Conduct of the bourgeoisie in 1789–1791— VI. The demi-notables—Where recruited—Village and trade syndics—Competency of their electors—Their interest in making good selections—Their capacity and integrity—The sorting

1181 1182 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION of men under the ancient re´gime—Conditions of a family’s maintenance and advancement—Hereditary and individual right of the Notable to his property and rank— VII. Principle of socialistic equality—All superiorities illegitimate— Bearing of this principle—Incivique benefits and enjoyments—How revolutionary laws reach the lower class—Whole populations affected in a mass—Propor- tion of the lowly in the proscription lists—How the revolutionary laws specially affect those who are prominent among the people— VIII. Their rigor increases according to the elevation of the class—The Notables properly so called attacked because of their being Notables—Orders of Taillefer, Milhaud, and Lefiot— The public atonement of Montargis— IX. Two characteristics of the upper class, wealth and education—Each of these is criminal—Measures against rich and well-to-do people—Affected in a mass and by categories—Measures against cultivated and polite people—Danger of culture and distinction—Proscription of “honest folks”— X. The Governors and the Governed—Prisoners in the rue de Se`vres and the “Croix-Rouge” revolutionary committee—The young Dauphin and Simon his preceptor—Judges, and those under their jurisdiction—Trenchard and Coffinhal, Lavoisier and Andre´ Cheńier.

THE OBJECT of the Jacobin, first of all, is the destruction of his adversaries, avowed or presumed, probable or possible. Four violent measures concur, together or in turn, to bring about the physical or social extermination of all Frenchmen who no longer belong to the sect or the party. The first operation consists in expelling them from the territory. Since 1789, they have been chased off through a forced emigration; handed over to jacqueries in the country, and to insurrections in the cities,1 defenceless and not allowed to defend themselves, three- fourths of them have left France, simply to escape popular brutalities against which neither the law nor the government afforded them any protection. According as the law and the administration, in becoming more Jacobin, became more hostile to them, so did they leave in greater crowds. After the 10th of August and 2d of Septem-

1. Cf. “The Revolution,” book i., ch. 3, and book iii., chs. 9 and 10. The Governed / 1183 ber, the ﬂight necessarily was more general; for, henceforth, if any one persisted in remaining after that date it was with the almost positive certainty that he would be consigned to a prison, to await a massacre or the guillotine. About the same time, the law added to the fugitive the banished, all unsworn priests, almost an entire class consisting of nearly forty thousand persons.2 It is calculated that, on issuing from the Reign of Terror, the total number of fugitives and banished amounted to one hundred and ﬁfty thousand;3 the list would have been still larger, had not the frontier been guarded by patrols and one had to cross it at the risk of one’s life; and yet, many do risk their lives in attempting to cross it, in disguise, wandering about at night, in mid-winter, exposed to gunshots, determined to escape cost what it will, into Switzerland, Italy, or Germany, and even into Hungary, in quest of security and the right of praying to God as one pleases.4 If any exiled or transported person ventures to

2. Gre´goire, “Me´moires,” ii., 172. “About eighteen thousand ecclesiastics are enumerated among the emigre´s of the first epoch. About eighteen thousand more took themselves off, or were sent off, after the 2d of September.” 3. Ibid., 26. “The chief of the emigre´ bureau in the police department (May 9, 1805) enumerates about two hundred thousand persons reached, or affected, by the laws concerning emigration.”—Lally-Tolendal, “De´fense des Emigre´s,” (2d part, p. 62 and passim). Several thousand persons inscribed as emigre´s did not leave France. The local administration recorded them on its lists either because they lived in another department, and could not obtain the numerous certificates exacted by the law in proof of residence, or because those who made up the lists treated these certificates with contempt. It was found convenient to manufacture an emigre´ in order to confiscate his possessions legally, and even to guillotine him, not less legally, as a returned emigre´.—Message of the Di- rectory to the “Five Hundred,” Ventose 3, year V.: “According to a rough estimate, obtained at the Ministry of Finances, the number enrolled on the general list of emigre´s amounts to over one hundred and twenty thousand; and, again, the lists from some of the departments have not come in.”—Lafayette, “Me´moires,” vol. ii., 181. (Letters to M. de Maubourg, Oct. 17, 1799 (note´) Oct. 19, 1800.) According to the report of the Minister of Police, the list of emigre´s, in nine vols., still embraced one hundred and forty-five thousand persons, notwithstanding that thirteen thousand were struck off by the Directory, and twelve hundred by the consular government. 4. Cf. Me´moires of Louvet, Dulaure, and Vaublanc.—Mallet-Dupan, “Me´- 1184 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION return, he is tracked like a wild beast, and, as soon as taken, he is guillotined.5 For example, M. de Choiseul, and other unfortunates, wrecked and cast ashore on the coast of Normandy, are not sufficiently protected by the law of nations. They are brought before a military commission; saved temporarily through public commiser- ation, they remain in prison until the First Consul intervenes between them and the homicidal law and consents, through favor, to transport them to the Dutch frontier. If they have taken up arms against the Republic they are cut off from humanity; a Pandour prisoner is treated as a man; an emigre´ made prisoner is treated like awolf—they shoot him on the spot. In some cases, even the pettiest legal formalities are dispensed with. “When I am lucky enough to catch ’em,” writes Gen. Vandamme, “I do not trouble the military commission to try them. They are already tried—my sabre and pistols do their business.”6 The second operation consists in depriving “suspects” of their liberty, of which deprivation there are several degrees; there are various ways of getting hold of people. Sometimes, the “suspect” is “adjourned,” that is to say, the order of arrest is simply suspended; he lives under a perpetual menace that is generally fulfilled; he never knows in the morning that he will not sleep in a prison that night. moires,” ii., 7. “Several, to whom I have spoken, literally made the tour of France in various disguises, without having been able to find an outlet; it was only after a series of romantic adventures that they finally succeeded in gaining the Swiss frontier, the only one at all accessible.”—Sauzay, v., 210, 220, 226, 276. (Emigration of fifty-four inhabitants of Charquemont, setting out for Hun- gary.) 5. Ibid., vols. iv., v., vi., vii. (On the banished priests remaining and still continuing their ministrations, and on those who returned to resume them.)— To obtain an idea of the situation of the emigre´s and their relations and friends, it is necessary to read the law of Sep. 15, 1794 (Brumaire 25, year III.), which renews and generalises previous laws; children of fourteen years and ten years are affected by it. It was with the greatest difficulty, even if one did not leave France, that a person could prove that he had not emigrated. 6. Moniteur, xviii., 215. (Letter of Brigadier-general Vandamme to the Con- vention, Ferney, Brumaire 1, year II.) The reading of this letter calls forth “reiterated applause.” The Governed / 1185

Sometimes, he is put on the limits of his commune. Sometimes, he is confined to his house with or without guards, and, in the former case, he is obliged to pay them. Again, finally, and which occurs most frequently, he is shut up in this or that common jail. In the single department of Doubs, twelve hundred men and women are “adjourned,” three hundred put on the limits of the commune, fifteen hundred confined to their houses, and twenty-two hundred imprisoned.7 In Paris, thirty-six such prisons and more than ninety-six lock-ups, or temporary jails, constantly filled by the revolutionary committees, do not suffice for the service,8 while it is estimated that, in France, not counting more than forty thousand provisional jails, twelve hundred prisons, full and running over, contain each more than two hundred inmates.9 At Paris, notwithstanding the daily void created by the guillotine, the number of the imprisoned on Floreál 9, year II., amounts to seven thousand eight hundred and forty; and, on Messidor 25 following, notwithstanding the large batches of fifty and sixty persons led in one day, and every day, to the scaffold, the number is still seven thousand five hundred and two.10 There are more than one thousand persons in the prisons of Arras, more than one thousand five hundred in those of Toulouse, more than three thousand in those of Strasbourg, and more than thirteen thousand in those of Nantes. In the two departments alone of Bouches-du- Rhone and Vaucluse, Representative Maignet, who is on the spot, reports from twelve thousand to fifteen thousand arrests.11 “A little

7. Sauzay, v., 196. (The total is five thousand two hundred. Some hundreds of names might be added, inasmuch as many of the village lists are wanting.) 8. Buchez et Roux, xxxiv., 434. (Trial of Fouquier-Tinville, deposition of Therriet-Grandpre´, one of the heads of the Commission on Civil Police and Judicial Administration, 51st witness.) 9. Report by Saladin, March 4, 1795. 10. Wallon, “La Terreur,” ii., 202. 11. Duchatelier, “Brest Pendant la Terreur,” p. 105.—Paris, “Histoire de Joseph Lebon,” ii., 370.—“Tableau des Prisons de Toulouse,” by Pescayre, p. 409.—“Recueil de Pie`ces Authentiques sur laRe´volution a` Strasbourg,” i., 65. (List of arrests after Prairial 7, year II.) “When the following arrests were made there were already over three thousand persons confined in Strasbourg.”— 1186 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION before Thermidor,” says Representative Beaulieu, “the number of incarcerated arose to nearly four hundred thousand, as is apparent on the lists and registers then before the Committee of General Security.”12 Among these poor creatures, there are children, and not alone in the prisons of Nantes where the revolutionary battures have collected the whole of the rural population; in the prisons of Arras, among twenty similar cases, I find a coal-dealer and his wife with their seven sons and daughters, from seventeen down to six years of age; a widow with her four children from nineteen down to twelve years of age; another noble widow with her nine children, from seventeen down to three years of age, and six children, without father or mother, from twenty-three down to nine years of age.13

Alfred Lallier, “Les Noyades de Nantes,” p. 90.—Berryat Saint-Prix, p. 436. (Letter of Maignet to Couthon, Avignon, Floreál 4, year II.) 12. Beaulieu, “Essais,” v., 283. At the end of December, 1793, Camille Des- moulins wrote: “Open the prison doors to those two hundred thousand citizens whom you call ‘suspects’!”—The number of prisoners largely increased during the seven following months. (“Le Vieux Cordelier,” No. iv., Frimaire 30, year II.)—Beaulieu does not state precisely what the Committee of General Security meant by the word de´teńu. Does it merely relate to those incarcerated? Or must all who were confined at their own houses be included?—We are able to verify his statement and determine the number, at least approximatively, by taking one department in which the rigor of the revolutionary system was average and where the lists handed in were complete. According to the census of 1791, Doubs contained two hundred and twenty-one thousand inhabitants; France had a population of twenty-six millions; and we have just seen the number of each category that were under confinement; the proportion for France gives two hundred and fifty-eight thousand persons incarcerated, and one hundred and seventy-five thousand confined to their houses, and one hundred and seventy- five thousand persons besides these on the limits in their communes, or ajour- neés, that is to say, six hundred and eight thousand persons deprived of their liberty. The first two categories from a total of four hundred and thirty-three thousand persons, sufficiently near Beaulieu’s figures. 13. Paris, “Histoire de Joseph Lebon, ii., 371, 372, 375, 377, 379, 380.—“Les Angoisses de la Mort,” by Poirier and Monjay of Dunkirk (second edition, year III.). “Their children and trusty agents still remained in prison; they were treated no better than ourselves. . . . We saw children coming in from all quarters, infants of five years, and, to withdraw them from paternal authority, they The Governed / 1187

These prisoners of State were treated, almost everywhere, worse than robbers and assassins under the ancient re´gime. They began by subjecting them to rapiotage, that is to say, stripping them naked or, at best, feeling their bodies under their shirts; women and young girls fainted away under this examination, formerly confined to convicts on entering the bagnio.14 Frequently, before consigning them to their dungeons or shutting them up in their cells, they would be left two or three nights pell-mell in alower hallon benches, or in the court on the pavement, “without beds or straw.” “The feelings are wounded in all directions, every point of sensibility, so to say, being played upon. They are deprived one after the other of their property, assignats, furniture, and food, of daylight and lamp-light, of the assistance which their wants and infirmities demand, of a knowledge of public events, of all communication, either immediate or written, with fathers, sons, and husbands.”15 They are obliged to pay for their lodgings, their keepers, and for what they eat; they are robbed at their very doors of the supplies they send for outside; they are compelled to eat at a mess-table; they are furnished with scant and nauseous food, “spoilt codfish, putrid herrings, and meat, rotten vegetables, all this accompanied with a mug of Seine water colored red with some drug or other.”16 They starve them, bully had sent to them from time to time, commissioners who used immoral language with them.” 14. “Me´moires sur les Prisons,” (Barrie`re et Berville collection), ii., 354, and appendix F. Ibid., ii., 2,262. “The women were the first to pass under rapiotage.” (Prisons of Arras and that of Plessis, at Paris.) 15. “Documents on Daunou,” by Taillandier. (Narrative by Daunou, who was imprisoned in turn in La Force, in the Madelonettes, in the English Ben- edictine establishment, in the Hotel des Fermes, and in Port-Libre.)—On prison management cf., for the provinces, “Tableaux des Prisons de Toulouse,” by Pescayre´; “Un Se´jour en France,” and “Les Horreurs des Prisons d’ Arras,” for Arras and Amiens; Alexandrines des Echerolles, “Une Famille noble sous la Terreur,” for Lyons; the trial of Carrier for Nantes; for Paris, “Histoire des Prisons” by Nougaret, 4 vols., and the “Me´moires sur les Prisons,” 2 vols. 16. Testimony of Representative Blanqui, imprisoned at La Force, and of Representative Beaulieu, imprisoned in the Luxembourg and at the Madelo- nettes.—Beaulieu, “Essais,” v., 290: “The Conciergerie was still full of wretches 1188 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION them, and vex them purposely as if they meant to exhaust their patience and drive them into a revolt, so as to get rid of them in a mass, or, at least, to justify the increasing rapid strokes of the guillotine. They are huddled together in tens, twenties, and thirties, in one room at La Force, “eight in a chamber, fourteen feet square,” where all the beds touch, and many overlap each other, where two out of the eight inmates are obliged to sleep on the floor, where vermin swarm, where the closed sky-lights, the standing tub, and the crowding together of bodies poisons the atmosphere. In many places, the proportion of the sick and dying is greater than in the hold of a slave-ship. “Of ninety individuals with whom I was shut up two months ago,” writes a prisoner at Strasbourg, “sixty-six were taken to the hospital in the space of eight days.”17 In the prisons of Nantes, three thousand out of thirteen thousand prisoners die of typhoid fever and of the rot in two months.18 Four hundred held for robbery and assassination, poverty-stricken and repulsive.—It was with these that counts, marquises, voluptuous financiers, elegant dandies, and more than one wretched philosopher, were shut up, pell-mell, in the foulest cells, waiting until the guillotine could make room in the chambers filled with camp- bedsteads. They were generally put with those on the straw, on entering, where they sometimes remained a fortnight. . . . It was necessary to drink brandy with these persons; in the evening, after having dropped their excrement near their straw, they went to sleep in their filth....I passed those three nights half- sitting, half-stretched out on a bench, one leg on the ground and leaning against the wall.”—Wallon, “La Terreur,” ii., 87. (Report of Grandpre´ on the Con- ciergerie, March 17, 1793. “Twenty-six men collected into one room, sleeping on twenty-one mattresses, breathing the foulest air and covered with half-rotten rags.” In another room forty-five men and ten straw-beds; in a third, thirty- nine poor creatures dying in nine bunks; in three other rooms, eighty miserable creatures on sixteen mattresses filled with vermin, and, as to the women, fifty- four having nine mattresses and standing up alternately.—The worst prisons in Paris were the Conciergerie, La Force, Le Plessis, and Biceˆtre.—“Tableau des Prisons de Toulouse,” p. 316. “Dying with hunger, we contended with the dogs for the bones intended for them, and we pounded them up to make soup with.” 17. “Recueil de Pie`ces, etc.,” i., p. 3. (Letter of Frederic Burger, Prairial 2, year II.) 18. Alfred Lallier, “Les Noyades de Nantes,” p. 90.—Campardon, “Histoire de Tribunal Re´volutionnaire de Paris” (trial of Carrier), ii., 55. (Deposition of The Governed / 1189 priests19 confined on a vessel between decks, in the roadstead of Aix, stowed on top of each other, wasted with hunger, eaten up by vermin, suffocated for lack of air, half-frozen, beaten, mocked at, and constantly threatened with death, suffer still more than negroes in a slavehold; for, through interest in his freight, the captain of the slaver tries to keep his human consignment in good health, whilst, through revolutionary fanaticism, the crew of the Aix vessel detests its cargo of “black-frocks” and would gladly send them to the bottom. Ac- cording to this system, which, up to Thermidor 9, grows worse and worse, imprisonment becomes atorture, oftentimes mortal,slower and more painful than the guillotine, and to such an extent that, to escape it, Champfort opens his veins and Condorcet swallows poison.20 The third expedient consists of murder, with or without trial. One hundred and seventy-eight tribunals, of which forty are am- bulatory, pronounce in every part of the territory sentences of death which are immediately executed on the spot.21 Between April 6, 1793, and Thermidor 9, year II., that of Paris has two thousand six hundred and twenty-five persons guillotined,22 while the provincial judges do as much work as the Paris judges. In the small town of the health-officer, Thomas.) “I saw perish in the revolutionary hospital (at Nantes) seventy-five prisoners in two days. None but rotten mattresses were found there, on each of which the epidemic had consumed more than fifty persons. At the Entrepot, I found a number of corpses scattered about here and there. I saw children, still breathing, drowned in tubs full of human excrement.” 19. Narrative of the sufferings of unsworn priests, transported in 1794, in the roadstead of Aix, passim. 20. “Histoire des Prisons,” i., 10. “Go and visit,” says a contemporary (at the Conciergerie), the dungeons called ‘the great Caesar,’ ‘Bombie´,’ ‘St. Vin- cent,’ ‘Bel Air,’ etc., and say whether death is not preferable to such an abode.” Some persons, indeed, the sooner to end the matter, wrote to the public prosecutor, accusing themselves, demanding a king and priests, and are at once guillotined, as they hoped to be.—Cf. the narrative of “La Translation des 132 a` Nantois Paris,” and Riouffe, “Me´moires,” on the sufferings of prisoners on their way to their last prison. 21. Berryat Saint-Prix, p. ix., passim. 22. Campardon, ii., 224. 1190 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Orange alone, they guillotine three hundred and thirty-one persons. In the single town of Arras they have two hundred and ninety-nine men and ninety-three women guillotined. At Nantes, the revolutionary tribunals and military committees have, on the average, one hundred persons a day guillotined, or shot, in all one thousand nine hundred and seventy-one. In the city of Lyons, the revolutionary committee admit one thousand six hundred and eighty-four executions, while Cadillot, one of Robespierre’s correspondents, advises him of six thousand.23 The statement of these murders is not complete, but seventeen thousand have been enumerated,24 “most of them effected without any formality, evidence or direct charge,” among others the murder of “more than one thousand two hundred women, several of whom were octogenarians and infirm”;25 particularly the murder of sixty women or young girls, condemned to death, say the warrants, for having attended the services of unsworn priests, or for having neglected the services of a sworn priest. “The accused, ranged in order, were condemned at sight. Hundreds of death- sentences took about a minute per head. Children of seven, five, and four years of age, were tried. A father was condemned for the son, and the son for the father. A dog was sentenced to death. A parrot was brought forward as a witness. Numbers of accused persons whose sentences could not be written out were executed.” At An- gers, the sentences of over four hundred men and three hundred and sixty women, executed for the purpose of relieving the prisons, were mentioned on the registers simply by the letters S or G (shot or

23. Berryat Saint-Prix, 445.—Paris, “Histoire de Joseph Lebon,” ii., 352.— Alfred Lallier, p. 90.—Buchez et Roux, xxxii., 394. 24. Berryat Saint-Prix, pp. 23, 24. 25. Berryat Saint-Prix, p. 458. “At Orange, Madame de Latour-Vidan, aged eighty and idiotic for many years, was executed with her son. It is stated that, on being led to the scaffold, she thought she was entering a carriage to pay visits and so told her son.”—Ibid., 471. After Thermidor, the judges of the Orange commission having been put on trial, the jury declared that “they refused to hear testimony for the defence and to allow the accused lawyers to defend them.” The Governed / 1191 guillotined).26 At Paris, as in the provinces, the slightest pretext27 served to constitute a crime. The daughter of the celebrated painter, Joseph Vernet,28 was guillotined for being a “receiver,” for having kept fifty pounds of candles in her house, distributed among the employees of LaMuette by the liquidators of the civil list. Young de Maille´,29 aged sixteen years, was guillotined as a conspirator, “for having thrown a rotten herring in the face of his jailor, who had served it to him to eat.” Madame de Puy-Verin was guillotined as “guilty” because she had not taken away from her deaf, blind, and senile husband a bag of card-counters, marked with the royal effigy. In default of any pretext,30 there was the supposition of a conspiracy; blank lists were given to paid emissaries, who undertook to search the various prisons and select the requisite number of heads; they wrote names down on them according to their fancy, and these provided the batches for the guillotine. “As for myself,” said the juryman Vilate, “I am never embarrassed. I am always convinced. In a revolution, all who appear before this tribunal ought to be condemned.” At Marseilles, the Brutus Commission,31 “sentencing

26. Camille Boursier, “La Terreur en Anjou,” p. 228. (Deposition of Widow Edin.) “La Persac, a nun ill and infirm, was ready to take the oath. Nicolas, Vacheron’s agent, assisted by several other persons, dragged her out of bed and put her on a cart; from ninety to ninety-four others were shot along with her.” 27. Berryat Saint-Prix, p. 161. The following are samples of these warrants: “S. (shot), Germinal 13, Widow Menard, seventy-two years old, an old aristocrat, liking nobody, habitually living by herself.”—Warrant of the Marseilles committee, Germinal 28, year II., condemning one Cousine´ri “for having continually strayed off as if to escape popular vengeance, to which he was liable on account of his conduct and for having detested the Revolution.”—Camille Boursier, p. 72, Floreál 15, year II., execution of “Ge´rard, guilty of having scorned to assist at the planting of a Liberty-pole, in the commune of Vouille, Sep., 1792, and inducing several municipal officers to join him in his insolent and liberticide contempt.” 28. Wallon, “Histoire du Tribunal Re´volutionnaire de Paris,” v., 145. 29. Ibid., v., 109. (Deposition of Madame de Maille´.)—V., 189. (Deposition of Lhullier.)—Cf. Campardon, in the same affairs. 30. Campardon, ii., 189, 189, 193, 197. (Depositions of Beaulieu, Duclos, Tirard, Ducray, etc.) 31. Berryat Saint-Prix, 395. (Letter of Representative Moyse Bayle.)—Ibid., 1192 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION without public prosecutor or jurymen, sent to the prisons for those it wished to put to death. After having demanded their names, professions, and wealth they were sent down to a cart standing at the door of the Palais de Justice; the judges then stepped out on the balcony and pronounced the death-sentence.” The same proceedings took place at Cambrai, Arras, Nantes, Le Mans, Bordeaux, Nismes, Lyons, Strasbourg, and elsewhere. Evidently, the judicial comedy is simply a parade; they make use of it as one of the respectable means, among others less respectable, to exterminate people whose opinions are not what they should be, or who belong to the proscribed classes;32 Samson, at Paris, and his colleagues in the provinces, the execution-platoons of Lyons and Nantes, are simply the collaborators of murderers properly so called, while legal massacres complete other massacres pure and simple. Of this latter description, the fusillades of Toulon come first, where the number of those who are shot largely surpasses one thousand;33 next the great drownings of Nantes, in which four thousand eight hundred men, women, and children perished,34 and other

216. (Words of Representative Lecarpentier at Saint-Malo.) “Why such delays? Of what use are these eternal examinations? What need is there of going so deep into this matter? The name, profession, and the upshot, and the trial is over.”—He publicly stated to the informers: “You don’t know what facts you require to denounce the Moderates? Well, a gesture, one single gesture, suffices.” 32. Letter of Payan to Roman Formosa, judge at Orange: “In the commissions charged with punishing the conspirators, no formalities should exist; the conscience of the judge is there as a substitute for these....Thecommissions must serve as political courts; they must remember that all the men who have not been on the side of the Revolution are against it, since they have done nothing for the country. . . . I say to all judges, in the name of the country, do not risk saving a guilty man.”—Robespierre made the same declaration in the Jacobin Club. Frimaire 19, year II.: “We judge, in politics, with the suspicions of an enlightened patriotism.” 33. “Me´moires de Fre´ron” and on Fre´ron (collection Barrie`re et Berville), p. 364. Letter of Fre´ron, Toulon, Nivose 16. “More than eight hundred Tou- lonese have already been shot.” 34. Lallier, p. 90. (The eleven distinct drownings ascertained by M. Lallier extend up to Pluviose 12, year II.) The Governed / 1193 drownings, in which the number of dead is not fixed;35 next, the innumerable slaughterings committed by the people between July 14, 1789, and August 10, 1792; the massacre of one thousand three hundred prisoners in Paris, in September, 1792; the long train of assassinations which, in July, August, and September, 1789, extends over the entire territory; finally, the despatch of the prisoners, either shot or sabred, without trial at Lyons and in the West. Even excepting those who had died fighting or who, taken with arms in their hands, were shot down or sabred on the spot, there were ten thousand persons slaughtered without trial in the province of Anjou alone:36 accordingly, the instructions of the Committee of Public Safety, also the written orders of Carrier and Francastel, direct generals to “bleed freely” the insurgent districts,37 and spare not a life: it is estimated that, in the eleven western departments, the dead of both sexes and of all ages exceeded four hundred thousand.38 Con- sidering the programme and principles of the Jacobin sect this is no great number; they might have killed a good many more. But time was wanting; during their short reign they did what they could with the instrument in their hands. Look at their machine, the gradual

35. Monitenur, xxii., 227. (Official documents read in the Convention, Ven- tose 21, year III.) These documents authenticate an ulterior drowning. Ventose 9, year II., by order of Lefe´vre, adjutant general, forty-one persons were drowned, among whom were two men seventy-eight years of age and blind, twelve women, twelve young girls, fifteen children, of which ten were between six and ten years old, and five at the breast. The drowning took place in the Bourgneuf bay.—Carrier says in the Convention (Moniteur, xxii., p. 578), in relation to the drowning of pregnant women: “At Laval, Angers, Saumur, Chaban-Gontier, everywhere the same things took place as at Nantes.” 36. Camille Boursier, p. 159. 37. Ibid., 203. Representative Francastel announces “the firm determination to purge, to bleed freely this Vendean question.” This same Francastel wrote to General Grignon: “Make those brigands tremble! Give them no quarter! The prisons in Vendeé are overflowing with prisoners! . . . The conversion of this country into a desert must be completed. Show no weakness and no mercy. . . . These are the views of the Convention....IswearthatVendeé shall be depopulated.” 38. Granier de Cassagnac, “His. du Directoire,” ii., 241.—(Letter of Gen- eral Hoche to the Minister of the Interior, Feb. 2, 1796.) “Only one out of five remains of the population of one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine.” 1194 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION construction of its parts, the successive stages of its operation from its starting up to Thermidor 9, and see how limited the period of its operation was. Organised March 30 and April 6, 1793, the revolutionary committees and the revolutionary Tribunal had but seventeen months in which to do their work. They did not drive ahead with all their might until after the fall of the Girondists, and especially after September, 1763, that is to say for a period of eleven months. Its loose wheels were not screwed up and the whole was not in running order under the impulse of the central motor until after December, 1793, that is to say during eight months. Perfected by the law of Prairial 22, it works for the past two months, faster and better than before, with an energy and rapidity that increase from week to week. At that date, and even before it, the theorists have taken the bearings of their destinies and accepted the conditions of their undertaking. Being sectarians, they have a faith, and as orthodoxy tolerates no heresy, and as the conversion of heretics is never sincere or durable, heresy can be suppressed only by suppressing heretics. “It is only the dead,” said Bare`re, Messidor 16, “who never return.” On the 2d and 3d of Thermidor,39 the Com- mittee of Public Safety sends to Fouquier-Tinville a list of four hundred and seventy-eight accused persons with orders “to bring the parties named to trial at once.” Baudot and Jean Bon St. Andre´, Carrier, Antonelle and Guffroy, had already estimated the lives to be taken at several millions and, according to Collot d’ Herbois, who had a lively imagination, “the political perspiration should go on freely, and not stop until from twelve to fifteen million French- men had been destroyed.”40

39. Campardon ii., 247, 249, 251, 261, 321. (Examination of Fouquier- Tinville, Cambon’s words.) 40. Article by Guffroy, in his journal Le Rougiff: “Down with the nobles, and so much the worse for the good ones, if there are any! Let the guillotine stand permanently throughout the Republic. Five millions of inhabitants are enough for France!”—Berryat Saint-Prix, 445. (Letter of Fauvety, Orange, Prairial 14, year II.) “We have but two confined in our arrondissement. What atrifle!”— Ibid., 447. (Letter of the Orange Committee to the Committee of The Governed / 1195

To make amends, in the fourth and last division of their work, that is to say, in spoliation, they went to the last extreme: they did all that could be done to ruin individuals, families, and the State; whatever could be taken, they took. The Constituent and Legislative Assemblies had, on their side, begun the business by abolishing tithes and all feudal rights without indemnity, and by conﬁscating all ecclesiastical property; the Jacobin operators continue and complete the job; we have seen by what decrees and with what hostility against collective and individual property, whether they attribute to the State the possession of all corporations whatever, even laic, such as colleges, schools, and scientiﬁc or literary societies, hospitals and communes, or whether they despoil individuals, indirectly through assignats and the maximum, or directly through the forced loan, revolutionary taxes,41 seizures of gold and silver coin, requisitions

Public Safety, Messidor 3.) As soon as the Committee gets fully agoing it is to try all the priests, rich merchants, and ex-nobles.”—(Letter of Juge, Messidor 2.) “Judging by appearances more than three thousand heads will fall in the department.”—Ibid., 311. At Bordeaux, a huge scaffold is put up, authorised by the Military Committee, with seven doors, two of which are large and like barn-doors, called a four-bladed guillotine, so as to work faster and do more. The warrant and orders for its construction bear date Thermidor 3 and 8, year II.—Berryat Saint-Prix, 285. Letter of Representative Blutel, on mission at Rochefort, after Thermidor: “A few men, sunk in debauchery and crime, dared proscribe (here) virtues, patriotism, because it was not associated with their sanguinary excitement; the tree of Liberty, they said, required for its roots ten feet of human gore.” 41. “Recueil de Pie`ces Authentiques, Concernant le Revolution a` Stras- bourg,” i., 174, 178. Examples of revolutionary taxes.—Orders of Representa- tives Milhaud, Ruamps, Guyadin, approving of the following contributions, Brumaire 20, year II. On 3 individuals of Stutzheim 150,000 livres. Љ 3 Љ Offenheim 30,000 Љ Љ 21 Љ Molsheim 367,000 Љ Љ 17 Љ Oberenheim 402,000 Љ Љ 84 Љ Rosheim 503,000 Љ Љ 10 Љ Mutzig 114,000 Љ Another order by Daum and Tisseraud, members of the Committee who 1196 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION of common useful utensils,42 sequestrations of prisoners’ property, confiscations of the possessions of emigrants and exiles and of those transported or condemned to death. No capital invested in real or personal property, no income in money or produce, whatever its source, whether leases, mortgages, private credits, pensions, agricultural, industrial, or commercial gains, the fruits of economy or labor, from the farmers’, the manufacturers’, and the merchant’s stores to the robes, coats, shirts and shoes, even to the beds and bed-rooms of private individuals—nothing escapes their rapacious grasp: in the country, they carry off even seed reserved for planting; at Strasbourg and in the Upper Rhine, all kitchen utensils; in Au- vergne and elsewhere, even the pots used by the cattle-tenders. Every object of value, even those not in public use, comes under temporarily replace the district administrators: “Whereas, it is owing to the county aristocrats that the Republic supports the war,” they approve of the following taxes: On the aristocrats of Geispolzheim 400,000 livres. ЉЉOberschoeffolsheim 200,000 Љ ЉЉDu¨ttlenheim 150,000 Љ ЉЉDuppigheim 100,000 Љ ЉЉAchenheim 100,000 Љ List of contributions raised in the rural communes of the district of Stras- bourg, according to an assessment made by Stamm, procureur pro tem. of the district, amounting to three millions one hundred and ninety-six thousand one hundred livres. 42. “Recueil des Pie`ces Authentiques, etc., i., 23. By order of the representatives under date of Brumaire 25, year II. “The municipality of Strasbourg stripped the whole commune of shoes in twenty-four hours, sending for them from house to house.”—Ibid., p. 32. Orders of Representatives Lemaire and Baudot, Frimaire 1, year II., declaring that kitchen-utensils, boilers, sauce-pans, stew-pans, kettles, and other copper and lead vessels, as well as copper and lead not worked-up, found at Strasbourg and in the departments, be levied on.”— Archives Nationales, AF., I., 92. (Orders of Taillefer, Brumaire 3, year II., Villefranche l’ Avergnon.) Formation of a committee of ten persons directed to make domiciliary visits, and authorised to take possession of all the iron, lead, steel, and copper found in the houses of “suspects,” all of which kitchen utensils, are to be turned into cannon.—Mallet-Dupan, “Me´moires,” i., 15. The Governed / 1197 requisition: for instance,43 the Revolutionary Committee of Bayonne seizes a lot of “dimities and muslins,” under the pretext of making “breeches for the country’s defenders.” On useful objects being taken it is not always certain that they will be utilised; between their seizure and putting them to service, robbery and waste intervene; at Strasbourg,44 on arequisition being threatenedby the representatives, the inhabitants strip themselves and, in a few days, bring to the municipality “six thousand eight hundred and seventy-nine coats, breeches and vests, four thousand seven hundred sixty-seven pairs of stockings, sixteen thousand nine hundred and twenty-one pairs of shoes, eight hundred and sixty-three pairs of boots, one thousand three hundred and fifty-one cloaks, twenty thousand five hundred and eighteen shirts, four thousand five hundred and twenty- four hats, five hundred and twenty-three pairs of gaiters, one hundred and forty-three skin vests, two thousand six hundred and seventy-three sheets, nine hundred blankets, besides twenty-nine quintals of lint, twenty-one quintals of old linen, and a large number of other articles.” But “most of these articles remain piled up in the storehouses, part of them rotten, or eaten by rats, the rest being abandoned to the first-comer....The end of spoliation was attained.” Utter loss to individuals and no gain, or the minimum of a gain, to the State.

43. Moniteur, xxv., 188. (Speech by Blutels, July 9, 1795.) 44. “Recueil du Pie`ces Authentiques,” etc., i., 24.—Gre´goire, reports on Vandalism, Fructidor 14, year II., and Brumaire 14, year III. (Moniteur, xxii., 86 and 751.)—Ibid., Letter of December 24, 1796: “Not millions, but billions have been destroyed.”—Ibid., “Me´moires,” i., 334: “It is incalculable, the loss of religious, scientific and literary objects. The district administrations of Blanc (Indre) notified me that to ensure the preservation of a library, they had the books put in casks.”—Four hundred thousand francs were expended in smashing statues of the Fathers of the Church, forming a circle around the dome of the Invalides.—A great many objects became worthless through a cessation of their use: for example, the cathedral of Meaux was put up at auction and found no purchaser at six hundred francs. The materials were valued at forty-five thousand francs, but labor (for taking it down) was too high. (Narrative by an inhabitant of Meaux.) 1198 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Such is the net result of the revolutionary government. After having laid its hand on three-fifths of the landed property of France; after having wrested from communities and individuals from ten to twelve billions of real and personal estate; after having increased, through assignats and territorial warrants, the public debt, which was not five billions in 1789, to more than fifty billions;45 no longer able to pay its employees; reduced to supporting its armies as well as itself by forced contributions on conquered territories, it ends in bankruptcy; it repudiates two-thirds of its debt, and its credit is so low that the remaining third which it has consolidated and guaranteed afresh, loses eighty-three per cent. the very next day. In its hands, the State has itself suffered as much as individuals. Of the latter, more than twelve hundred thousand have suffered in their persons: several millions, all who possessed anything, great or small, have suffered through their property.46 But, in this multitude of the oppressed, it is the notables who are chiefly aimed at and who, in their possessions as well as in their persons, have suffered the most. II On estimating the value of a forest you begin by dividing its vegetation into two classes; on the one hand the full-grown trees, the large or medium-sized oaks, beeches and aspens, and, on the other, the saplings and the undergrowth. In like manner, in estimating society, you divide the individuals composing it into two groups, one consisting of its notables of every kind and degree, and the

45 “Les Origines du Syste`me Financier Actuel,” by Eugene Sturm, p. 53, 79. 46. Meissner, “Voyage a` Paris,” (end of 1795), p. 65. “The class of those who may have really gained by the Revolution . . . is composed of brokers, army contractors, and their subordinates, a few government agents and fermiers, enriching themselves by their new acquisitions, and who are cool and shrewd enough to hide their grain, bury their gold and steadily refuse assignats.”— Ibid., 68, 70. “On the road, he asks to whom a fine chateau belongs, and they tell him with a significant look, ‘to a former low fellow.’—‘Oh, monsieur,’ said the landlady at Vesoul, ‘for one that the Revolution has made rich, you may be sure that it has made a thousand poor.’” The Governed / 1199 other, of the common run of men. If the forest is an old one and has not been too badly managed, nearly the whole of its secular growth is found in its clusters of full-grown trees; afew thousands of large trunks, with three or four hundred old or new staddles belonging to the reserve, contain more useful or precious timber than all the twenty or thirty millions of shrubs, bushes, and brambles put together. It is the same in a community which has existed for a long time under a tolerably strict system of justice and police; almost the entire gain of a secular civilisation is found concentrated in its notables, which, taking it all in all, was the state of French society in 1789.47 Let us first consider the most prominent personages. It is certain, that, among the aristocracy, the wealthiest and most conspicuous families had ceased to render services proportionate to the cost of their maintenance. Most of the seigniors and ladies of the Court, the worldly bishops, abbe´s, and parliamentarians of the drawing-room, knew but little more than how to solicit with address, make a graceful parade of themselves and spend lavishly. An ill-understood system of culture had diverted them from their natural avocations, and converted them into showy and agreeable specimens of vegetation, often hollow, blighted, sapless and overpruned, besides being very costly, overmanured and too freely watered; and the skilful garden- ing which shaped, grouped, and arranged them in artificial forms and bouquets, rendered their fruit abortive that flowers might be multiplied. But the flowers were exquisite, and even in a moralist’s eyes, such an efflorescence is of some account. On the side of civility, good-breeding and deportment, the manners and customs of high life had reached a degree of perfection, which never, in France or elsewhere, had been attained before, and which has never since been

47. The following descriptions and appreciations are the fruit of extensive investigation, scarcely one tenth of the facts and texts that have been of service being cited. I must refer the reader, accordingly, to the series of printed and written documents of which I have made mention in this and the three preceding volumes. 1200 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION revived;48 and of all the arts through which men have emancipated themselves from primitive coarseness, that which teaches them mutual consideration is, perhaps, the most precious. The observance of this, not alone in the drawing-room, but in the family, in business, in the street, with regard to relatives, inferiors, servants, and strangers, gives dignity, as well as a charm, to human intercourse. Deli- cate regard for what is proper becomes a habit, an instinct, a second nature, which nature, superimposed on the original nature, is the best, inasmuch as the internal code which governs each detail of action and speech, prescribes the standard of behavior and respect for oneself, as well as respect and refined behavior towards others. To this merit, add mental culture. Never was there an aristocracy so interested in general ideas and refinement of expression; it was even too much so; literary and philosophical preoccupations excluded all others of the positive and practical order; they talked, instead of acting. But, in this limited circle of speculative reason and of pure literary forms, it excelled; writings and how to write furnished the ordinary entertainment of polite society; every idea uttered by a thinker caused excitement in the drawing-room: the talent and style of authors were shaped by its taste;49 it was in the drawing- rooms that Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, d’Alembert, the En- cyclopedists, great and little, Beaumarchais, Bernardin de Saint- Pierre, Champfort, and Rivarol, involuntarily sought listeners and found them, not merely admirers and entertainers, but friends, protectors, patrons, benefactors, and followers. Under the teachings of the masters, the disciples had become philanthropists; moreover, the amenities of manners developed in all souls compassion and benevolence: “Nothing was more dreaded by opulent men than to be regarded as insensible.”50 They concerned themselves with children, with the poor, with the peasantry, setting their wits to work to afford

48. “The Ancient Re´gime,” book ii., ch. 2, § iv. 49. Ibid., book iv., chs. i., ii., iii. 50. Lacretelle, “Histoire de France au 18eme Siecle,” v., 2.—“The Ancient Re´gime,” pp. 163, 300. The Governed / 1201 them relief; their zeal was aroused against oppression, their pity was excited for every misfortune. Even those whose duties compelled them to be rigid tempered their rigidity with explanations or concessions. “Ten years before the Revolution,” says Roederer,51 “the criminal courts of France no longer bore their own likeness.... Their former spirit had become changed....Alltheyoung magistrates, and this I can bear witness to, for I was one myself, pronounced judgments more in accordance with the principles of Bec- caria, than according to law.” As to the men in authority, military administrators and commandants, it was impossible to be more patient, more careful of spilling blood; likewise, on the other hand, their qualities turned into defects, for, through excess of humanity, they were unable to maintain order, as is evident when facing the insurrections that took place between 1789 and 1792. Even with the force in their own hands, amidst gross insults and extreme dangers, they dreaded to make use of it; they could not bring themselves to repressing brutes, rascals, and maniacs: following the example of Louis XVI., they considered themselves as shepherds of the people, and let themselves be trampled upon rather than ﬁre upon their ﬂock. In reality, they had noble, and even generous and big hearts: in the bailiwick assemblies, in March, 1789, long before the night of August 4, they voluntarily surrendered every pecuniary privilege; under severe trials, their courage, heightened by polished manners, adds even to their heroism, elegance, tact, and gaiety. The most corrupt, a Duke of Orleans, the most frivolous and the most blase´, aDuc de Biron, meet death with stoical coolness and disdain.52 Delicate

51. Morellet, “Me´moires,” i., 166. (Letter by Roederer to Beccaria’s daughter, May 20, 1797.) 52. Mallet-Dupan, “Me´moires,” ii., 493. “While the Duke of Orleans was undergoing his examination he read a newspaper.”—Ibid., 497. “Nobody died with more firmness, spirit and dignity than the Duke of Orleans. He again became a royal prince. On being asked in the revolutionary Tribunal whether he had any defence to make, he replied, ‘Decide if I may die today rather than tomorrow.’” His request was granted.—The Duc de Biron refused to escape, considering that, in such a dilemma, it was not worth while. “He passed his time in bed, drinking Bordeaux wine. . . . Before the Tribunal, they asked his 1202 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION women who complain of a draught in their drawing-rooms, make no complaint of a straw mattress in a damp, gloomy dungeon, where they sleep in their clothes so that they may not wake up stiffened, and they come down into the court of the Conciergerie with their accustomed cheerfulness. Men and women, in prison, dress themselves as formerly, with the same care, that they may meet and talk together with the same grace and spirit, in a corridor with an iron grating within a step of the revolutionary Tribunal, and on the eve of the scaffold.53 This moral temper is evidently of the rarest; if it errs on either side it is on that of being over refined, bad for use, good for ornament. And yet, in the upper class there were associated with two or three thousand idlers amongst a frivolous aristocracy, as many serious men, who, to their drawing-room experience, added experience in business. Almost all who held office or had been in the service, name and he replied, ‘Cabbage, turnip, Biron, as you like, one is as good as the other.’ ‘How!’ exclaimed the judges, ‘you are insolent!’ ‘And you—you are prosy! Come to the point; you have only to say Guillotine, while I have nothing to say.’” Meanwhile they proceeded to interrogate him on his pretended treachery in Vendeé, etc. “‘You do not know what you are talking about! You ignoramuses know nothing about war! Stop your questions. I reported at the time to the Committee of Public Safety, which approved of my conduct. Now, it has changed and ordered you to take my life. Obey, and lose no more time.’ Biron asked pardon of God and the King. Never did he appear better than on the (executioner’s) cart.” 53. Morellet, ii., 31.—“Me´moires de laDuchesse de Tourzel,” “ de Mdlle. des Echerolles,” etc.—Beugnot, “Me´moires, i.,” 200–203. “The wittiest remarks, the most delicate allusions, the most brilliant repartees were exchanged on each side of the grating. The conversation was general, without any subject being dwelt on. There, misfortune was treated as if it were a bad child to be laughed at, and, in fact, they did openly make sport of Marat’s divinity, Robes- pierre’s sacerdoce, and the magistracy of Fouquier. They seemed to say to all these bloody menials: ‘You may slaughter us when you please, but you cannot hinder us from being agreeable.’” —Archives Nationales, F7, 3,1167. (Report by the watchman, Charmont, Nivose 29, year II.) “The people attending the executions are very much surprised at the firmness and courage they show (sic) on mounting the scaffold. They say that it looks (sic) like going to a wedding. People cannot get used to it, some declaring that it is supernatural.” The Governed / 1203 were of this number, either ambassadors, general officers, or former ministers, from Marshal de Broglie down to Machaut and Males- herbes; resident bishops, like Monseigneur de Durfort, at Besançon;54 vicars-general and canons who really governed their dioceses on the spot; prelates, like those in Provence, Languedoc, and Brittany, who, by right, had seats in the provincial “Etats”; agents and representatives of the clergy at Paris; heads of Orders and Congregations; the chief and lieutenant commandants of the seventeen military departments, intendants of each generalite´, head-clerks of each ministry, magistrates of each parliament, farmers-general, collectors- general, and, more particularly in each province, the dignitaries and local proprietors of the two first orders, and all leading manufacturers, merchants, ship-owners, bankers, and prominent bourgeois; in short, that e´lite of the nobles, clergy, and Third Estate, which, from 1778 to 1789, constituted the twenty-one provincial assemblies, and which certainly formed in France the great social staff. Not that they were superior politicians: for in those days there were none, scarcely a few hundred competent men, almost all of them being specialists. But, in these few men were summed up pretty much the entire political capacity, information, and good sense of France; outside of their heads the other twenty-six millions of brains contained but little else than dangerous and barren formulas; as they alone had commanded, negotiated, deliberated, and governed, they were the only ones who understood men and things tolerably well, and, con-

54. Sauzay, i., introduction.—De Tocqueville, “L’Ancien Re´gime et laRev- olution,” 166. “I have patiently read most of the reports and debates of the provincial ‘Etats,’ and especially those of Languedoc, where the clergy took much greater part than elsewhere in administrative details, as well as the proce`s- verbaux of the provincial assemblies between 1779 and 1787, and, entering on the study with the ideas of my time, I was surprised to find bishops and abbe´s, among whom were several as eminent for their piety as their learning, drawing up reports on roads and canals, treating such matters with perfect knowledge of the facts, discussing with the greatest ability and intelligence the best means for increasing agricultural products, for ensuring the well-being of the people and the property of industrial enterprises, oftentimes much better than the laymen who were interested with them in the same affairs.” 1204 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION sequently, the only ones who were not completely disqualified for their management. In the provincial Assemblies they were seen orig- inating and conducting the most important reforms; they had devoted themselves to these effectively and conscientiously, with as much equity and patriotism as intelligence and thoroughness; most of the heads and subheads of the leading public and private branches of the service, guided by philosophy and supported by current opinion for twenty years, had likewise given evidence of active benevolence.55 Nothing is more precious than men of this stamp, for they are the life and soul of their respective branches of service, and are not to be replaced in one lot, at a given moment, by persons of equal merit. In diplomacy, in the finances, in judicature, in administration, in extensive commerce and large manufacturing, a practical, governing capacity is not created in a day; affairs in all these are too vast and too complicated; there are too many diverse interests to take into account, too many near and remote contingencies to foresee; lacking a knowledge of technical details, it is difficult to grasp the whole; one tries to make short work of it, one shatters right and left and ends with the sword, obliged to fall back on systematic brutality to complete the work of audacious bungling. Except in war, where an apprenticeship is more quickly got through with than elsewhere, the good government of men and the management of capital requires ten years’ practice, besides ten years of preparatory education; add to this, against the temptations of power which are strong, a stability of character established through pro-

55. “The Ancient Re´gime,” p. 300.—“The Revolution,” vol. i., p. 116.— Buchez et Roux, i., 481. The list of notables convoked by the King in 1787 gives an approximate idea of this social staff. Besides the leading princes and seigniors we find, among one hundred and thirty-four members, twelve marshals of France, eight Councillors of State, five maitres de requetes, fourteen bishops and archbishops, twenty presidents and seventeen procureurs-geńe´raux of parliaments, or of royal councils, twenty-five mayors, pre´vots-de-marchands, capitouls and equerries of large towns, the deputies of the “Etats” of Burgundy, Artois, Brittany, and Languedoc, three ministers and two chief clerks.—The capacities were all there, on hand, for bringing about a great reform; but there was no firm, strong, controlling hand, that of a Richelieu or Frederic II. The Governed / 1205 fessional honor, and, if it so happens, by family traditions. After having directed financial matters for two years, Cambon is not yet aware that the functions of the fermiers-geńe´raux of indirect taxes differ from those of the receveurs-geńe´raux of direct taxes;56 accordingly, he includes, or allows to be included, the forty-eight receveurs in the decree which sends the sixty fermiers before the revolutionary Tribunal, that is to say, to the guillotine; and, in fact, all of them would have been sent there had not a man familiar with the business, Gaudin, Commissioner of the Treasury, heard the decree proclaimed in the street and run to explain to the Committee on Finances that “there was nothing in common” between the two groups of outlaws; that the fermiers were holders of leases on probable profits while the receveurs were paid functionaries at a fixed salary, and the crimes of the former, proved or not proved, were not imputable to the latter. Great astonishment on the part of these improvised financiers! “They make an outcry,” says Gaudin, “and assert that I am mistaken. I insist, and repeat what I have told the President, Cambon; I affirm on my honor and offer to furnish them the proof of it; finally, they are satisfied and the President says to one of the members, ‘Since that is so, go to the bureau of proce`s-verbaux and scratch out the term receveurs-geńe´raux from the decree passed this morning.’” Such are the gross blunders committed by interlopers, and even carried out, when not warned and restrained by veterans in the service. Cambon, accordingly, in spite of the Jacobins, retains in his bureaux all whom he can among veteran officials. If Carnot manages the war well, it is owing to his being himself an educated officer and to maintaining in their positions d’Arcon, d’Obenheim, de Grimoard, de Monta- lembert, and Marescot, all eminent men bequeathed to him by the ancient re´gime.57 Reduced, before the 9th of Thermidor, to perfect

56. “Me´moires de Gaudin,” duc de Gae¨te. 57. Mallet-Dupan, “Me´moires,” ii., 25, 24. “The War Committee is composed of engineer and staff-officers, of which the principal are Meussuer, Favart, St. Fief, d’Arcon, Lafitte-Clave´ and a few others. D’Arcon directed the raising of the siege of Dunkirk and that of Maubenge....These officers were selected with discernment; they planned and carried out the operations; aided by im- 1206 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION nullity, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is not again to become useful and active until the professional diplomats, Miot, Colchen, Otto, and Reinhart,58 resume their ascendency and influence. It is a professional diplomat, Barthe´lemy, who, after the 9th of Thermidor, really directs the foreign policy of the Convention, and brings about the peace of Basle.

III Three classes, the nobles, the clergy and the bourgeoisie, provided these e´lite superiorities, and, compared with the rest of the nation, they themselves formed an e´lite. Thirty thousand gentlemen, scattered through the provinces, had been brought up from infancy to the profession of arms; generally poor, they lived on their rural estates without luxuries, comforts or curiosity, in the society of wood-rangers and game-keepers, frugally and with rustic habits, in the open air, in such a way as to ensure robust constitutions. A child, at six years of age, mounted a horse; he followed the hounds, and hardened himself against inclemencies;59 afterwards, in the academies, he rendered his limbs supple by exercise and obtained that mense resources, in the shape of maps, plans, and reconnaissances preserved in the war department, they really operated according to the experience and intelligence of the great generals under the monarchy.” 58. Miot de Melito, “Me´moires,” i., 47.—Andre Michel, “Correspondance de Mallet-Dupan avec la Cour de Vienne,” i., 26. (January 3, 1795.) “The Convention feels so strongly the need of suitable aids to support the burden of its embarrassments as to now seek for them among pronounced royalists. For instance, it has just offered the direction of the royal treasury to M. Dufresne, former chief of the department under the reign of the late King, and retired since 1790. It is the same spirit and making a still more extraordinary selection, which leads them to appoint M. Gerard de Rayneval to the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, chief-clerk of correspondence since the ministry of the Duc de Choiseul until that of the Comte de Montmorin inclusive. He is a man of decided opinions and an equally decided character; in 1790 I saw him abandon the department through aversion to the maxims which the Revolution had forcibly introduced into it.” 59. Marshal Marmont, “Me´moires.” At nine years of age he rode on horseback and hunted daily with his father. The Governed / 1207 rugged health which is necessary for living under a tent and following a campaign. From early childhood, he was imbued with a military spirit; his father and uncles at table talked of nothing but their perils in war and feats of arms; his imagination took fire; he got accustomed to looking upon their pursuits as the only ones worthy of a man of rank and feeling, and he plunged ahead with a precociousness which we no longer comprehend. I have read many records of the service of gentlemen who were assassinated, guillotined, or emigre´s; they nearly always began their careers before the age of sixteen, often at fourteen, thirteen, and eleven.60 M. des Echerolles,61 captain in the Poitou regiment, had brought along with him into the

60. Among other manuscript documents, a letter of M. Symn de Carneville, March 11, 1781. (On the families of Carneville and Montmorin St. He´rem, in 1789.) The latter family remains in France; two of its members are massacred, two executed, a fifth “escaped the scaffold by forestalling the justice of the people”; the sixth, enlisted in the revolution armies, received a shot at nineteen years of age which made him blind. The other family emigrated, and its chiefs, the Count and Viscount Carneville commanded, one, a free company in the Austrian service, and the other, a regiment of hussars in Conde´’s army. Twelve officers of these two corps were brothers-in-law, nephews, first-cousins, and cousins of the two commanders, the first of whom entered the service at fifteen, and the second at eleven.—Cf. “Me´moires du Prince de Ligne.” At seven or eight years of age I had already witnessed the din of battle, I had been in a besieged town, and saw three sieges from a window. A little older, I was surrounded by soldiers; old retired officers belonging to various services, and living in the neighborhood, fed my passion.—Turenne said “I slept on a gun-carriage at the age of ten. My taste for war was so great as to lead me to enlist with a Captain of the ‘Royal Vaissiaux,’ in garrison two leagues off. If war had been declared I would have gone off and let nobody know it. I joined his company, determined not to owe my fortune to any but valorous actions.”—Cf. also “Me´moires du Marećhal de Saxe.” A soldier at twelve, in the Saxon legion, shouldering his musket, and marching with the rest, he completed each stage on foot from Saxony to Flanders, and before he was thirteen took part in the battle of Malplaquet. 61. Alexandrine des Echerolles, “Un Famille Noble sous la Terreur,” p. 25.—Cf. “Correspondance de Madelle de Fe´ring,” by Honore Bonhomme. The two sisters, one sixteen and the other thirteen, disguised as men, fought with their father in Dumouriez’ army.—See the sentiment of young nobles in the works of Berquin and Marmontel. (Les Rivaux d’Eux-meme.) 1208 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION army his only son, aged nine, and a dozen little cousins of the same age. Those children fought like old soldiers; one of them had his leg fractured by a ball; young des Echerolles received a sabre stroke which cut away his cheek from the ear to the upper lip, and he was wounded seven times; still young, he received the cross of St. Louis. To serve the State, seek conflict, and expose one’s life, seemed an obligation of their rank, a hereditary debt; out of nine or ten thousand officers who discharged this debt most of them cared only for this and looked for nothing beyond. With no fortune and without patrons, they had renounced promotion, fully aware that the higher ranks were reserved for the heirs of great families and the courtiers at Versailles. After serving fifteen or twenty years, they returned home with a captain’s commission and the cross of St. Louis, sometimes with asmallpension, contented with havingdone their duty and conscious of their own honor. On the approach of the Revo- lution, this old spirit, illumined by the new ideas, became an almost civic virtue:62 we have seen how they behaved between 1789 and 1792, their moderation, their forbearance, their sacrifice of self-love, their abnegation and their stoical impassibility, their dislike to strike, the coolness with which they persisted in receiving without returning blows, and in maintaining, if not public order, at least the last semblance of it. Patriots as much as soldiers, through birth, education and conviction, they formed a natural, special nursery, eminently worthy of preserving, inasmuch as it furnished society with ready-made instruments for defence, internally against rascals and brutes, and externally against the enemy. Less calm in disposition and more given to pleasure than the rural nobles of Prussia, under slacker discipline and in the midst of greater worldliness, but more genial, more courteous, and more liberal-minded, the twenty-six thousand noble families of France upheld in their sons the traditions and prejudices, the habits and aptitudes, those energies of body,

62. “The Revolution,” i., 158, 325. Ibid., the affair of M. de Bussy, 306; the affair of the eighty-two gentlemen of Caen, 316.—See in Rivarol (“Journal Politique Nationale”) details of the admirable conduct of the Body-guards at Versailles, Oct. 5 and 6, 1789. The Governed / 1209 heart, and mind63 through which the Prussian “junkers” were able to constitute the Prussian army, organise the German army, and make Germany the first power of Europe.

IV In like manner, in the Church, nearly all its officials, the whole of the lower and middle-class clergy, cure´s, vicars, canons, and collegiate chaplains, professors and directors of schools, colleges, and seminaries, more than sixty-five thousand ecclesiastics, formed a healthy, well-organised body, worthily fulfilling its duties. “I do not know,” says de Tocqueville,64 “if taking all in all and notwithstanding the vices of some of its members, there ever was in the world a more remarkable clergy than the Catholic clergy of France when the Revolution took them by surprise, more enlightened, more national, less intrenched behind their private virtues, better endowed with public virtues, and, at the same time, more strong in the faith. . . . I began the study of the old social system full of prejudices against them; I finish it full of respect for them.” And first, which is a great point, most of the incumbents in the town parishes, in the three hundred collegial churches, in the small canonicates of the cathedral chapters, belonged to better families than at the present day.65 Children were then more numerous, not merely among the peasants, but among the inferior nobles and the upper bourgeoisie;

63. The noble families under the ancient re´gime may be characterised as so many families of soldiers’ children. 64. “L’Ancien Re´gime et laRevolution,” by M. de Tocqueville, p. 169. My judgment, likewise based on the study of texts, and especially manuscript texts, coincides here as elsewhere with that of M. de Tocqueville. Biographies and local histories contain documents too numerous to be cited. 65. Sauzay, i., introduction, and Ludovic Sciout, “Histoire de la Constitution Civile du Clerge´,” i., introduction. (See in Sauzay, biographical details and the grades of the principal ecclesiastical dignitaries of the diocese Besançon.) The cathedral chapter, and that of the Madeleine, could be entered only through nobility or promotion; it was requisite for a graduate to have a noble for a father, or a doctor of divinity, and himself be a doctor of divinity or in canon law. Analogous titles, although lower down, were requisite for collegiate canons, and for chaplains or familiers. 1210 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION each family, accordingly, was glad to have one of its sons take orders, and no constraint was necessary to bring this about. The ecclesiastical profession then had attractions which it no longer possesses; it had none of the inconveniences incident to it at the present time. A priest was not exposed to democratic distrust and hostility; he was sure of a bow from the laborer in the street as well as from the peasant in the country; he was on an equal footing with the local bourgeoisie, almost one of the family, and among the first; he could count on passing his life in a permanent situation, honorably and serenely, in the midst of popular deference and enjoying the good will of the public. On the other hand, he was not bridled as in our day. A priest was not a functionary salaried by the State; like his private income, his pay, put aside in advance, furnished through special appropriations, through local taxes, out of a distinct treasury, could never be withheld on account of a pre´fet’s report, or through ministerial caprice, or be constantly menaced by budget difficulties and the ill-will of the civil powers. In relation to his ecclesiastical superiors he was respectful but independent. The bishop in his diocese was not what he has become since the Concordat, an absolute sovereign free to appoint and remove at will nine cure´s out of ten. In three vacancies out of four, and often in fourteen out of fifteen,66 it was not the bishop who made the appointment; the new incumbent was designated sometimes by the cathedral chapter or corporation; again, by a collegial church or corporation; again, by the metropolitan canon or by the abbe´ or prior, the patron of the place; again, by the seignior whose ancestors had founded or endowed the Church; in certain cases by the Pope, and, occasionally, by the King or commune. Powers were limited through this multiplicity and intercrossing of authorities. Moreover, the canon or cure´ being once appointed he possessed guarantees; he could not be arbitrarily dismissed; in most cases, his removal or suspension required a previous trial according to prescribed formalities, accompanied with an ex-

66. “The Revolution,” i., 233.—Cf. Emile Ollivier, “L’Eglise et l’Etat au Concile du Vatican,” i., 134, ii., 511. The Governed / 1211 amination, pleadings, and arguments before the officialite´ or ecclesiastical court. He was, in fact, permanently placed, and very generally his personal merit sufficed to keep him in his place. For, if the highest positions were bestowed according to birth and favor, the intermediate positions were reserved to correct habits and attainments. Many canons and vicars-general, and almost all the cure´s in the towns were doctors of divinity or of canon law, while ecclesiastical studies, very thorough, had occupied eight or nine years of their youth.67 Although the method was out of date, much was learned at the Sorbonne and St. Sulpice; at the very least, one became a good logician through prolonged and scientific intellectual gym- nastics. “My dear Abbe´,” said Turgot, smiling, to Morellet, “it is only you and I who have taken our degree who can reason closely.” Their theological drill, indeed, was about as valuable as our philosophical drill; if it expanded the mind less, it supplied this better with applicable conceptions; less exciting, it was more fruitful. In the Sorbonne of the nineteenth century, the studies consist of the speculative systems of a few isolated, divergent intellects who have exercised no authority over the multitude, while in the Sorbonne of the eighteenth century, the studies consisted of the creed, morality, discipline, history, and canons of a Church which had already existed seventeen centuries and which, comprising one hundred and fifty millions of souls, still sways one-half of the civilised world. To a theoretical education add practical education. A cure´, and with still more reason, a canon, an archdeacon, a bishop, was not a passing

67. Morellet, “Me´moires,” i., 8, 31. The Sorbonne, founded by Robert Sor- bon, Confessor to St. Louis, was an association resembling one of the Oxford or Cambridge colleges, that is to say, a corporation possessing a building, revenues, rules, regulations, and boarders; its object was to afford instruction in the theological sciences; its titular members, numbering about a hundred, were mostly bishops, vicars-general, canons, cure´s in Paris and in the principal towns. Men of distinction were prepared in it at the expense of the Church.—The examinations for the doctorate were the tentative, the mineure, the Sorbonique and the majeure. A talent for discussion and argument was particularly developed.—Cf. Ernest Renan, “Souvenirs d’Enfance et de Jeunesse,” p. 279 (on St. Sulpice and the study of Theology). 1212 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION stranger, endowed by the State, wearing a surplice, as little belonging to his age through his ministry as through his dress, and wholly confined to his spiritual functions: he managed the revenues of his dotation, he granted leases, made repairs, built, and interested himself in the probabilities of the crops, in the construction of a highway or canal, while his experiences in these matters were equal to those of any lay proprietor. Moreover, being one of a small proprietary corporation, that is to say, a chapter or local vestry, and one of a great proprietary corporation of the diocese and Church of France, he took part directly or indirectly in important temporal affairs, in assemblies, in deliberations, in collective expenditures, in the establishment of a local budget and of a general budget, and hence, in public and administrative matters, his competence was analogous and almost equal to that of a mayor, subdelegate, farmer-general or intendant. In addition to this he was liberal: never has the French clergy been more earnestly so, from the latest cure´s back to the first archbishops.68 Remark, in fine, the distribution of the clergy over the territory. There was a cure´ or vicar in the smallest of the forty thousand villages. In thousands of small, poor, remote communes, he was the only man who could readily read and write; none other than he in many of the larger rural communes,69 except the resident seignior and some man of the law or half-way schoolmaster, was at all learned.70 In effect, for a man who had finished his studies and

68. Cf. the files of the clergy in the States-General, and the reports of ecclesiastics in the provincial assemblies. 69. “The Revolution,” p. 72. 70. In some dioceses, notably that of Besançon, the rural parishes were served by distinguished men. (Sauzay, i., 16.) “It was not surprising to encounter a man of European reputation, like Bergier, so long cure´ of Flangebouche; an astronomer of great merit, like M. Mongin, cure´ of Grand ’combe des Bois, whose works occupy an honorable place in Lalande’s bibliography, all passing their lives in the midst of peasants. At Rochejean, a priest of great intelligence and fine feeling, M. Boillon, a distinguished naturalist, had converted his house into a museum of natural history as well as into an excellent school. . . . It was not rare to find priests belonging to the highest social circles, like MM. de Trevillers, of Trevillers, Balard de Bonnevaux of Bone´tage, de Mesmay of The Governed / 1213 knowing Latin, to consent, for six hundred francs or three hundred francs a year, to live isolated, and a celibate, almost in indigence, amongst rustics and the poor, he must be a priest; the quality of his office makes him resigned to the discomforts of his situation. A preacher of the Word, a professor of morality, a minister of Charity, a guide and dispenser of spiritual life, he taught a theory of the world, at once consoling and self-denying, which he enforced with a cult, and this cult was the only one adapted to his flock; manifestly, the French, especially those devoted to manual and hard labor, could not regard this world as ideal, except through his formulas; history, the supreme judge, had on this point rendered its verdict without appeal; no heresy, no schism, not the Reformation nor Jansenism, had prevailed against hereditary faith; through infinitely multiplied and deeply penetrating roots this faith suited national customs, temperament, and peculiar social imagination and sensibility. Possessing the heart, the intellect, and even the senses, through fixed, immemorial traditions and habits, it had become an unconscious, almost corporeal necessity, and the Catholic orthodox cure´, in communion with the Pope, was about as indispensable to the village as the public fountain; he also quenched thirst, the thirst of the soul; without him, the inhabitants could find no drinkable water. And, if we keep human weaknesses in mind, it may be said that nobleness of character in the clergy corresponded with nobleness of profession; in all points no one could dispute their capacity for self-sacrifice, for they willingly suffered for what they believed to be the truth. If, in 1790, a number of priests took the oath to the civil constitution of the clergy, it was with reservations, or because they deemed the oath licit; but, after the dismissal of the bishops and the Pope’s disapprobation, many of them withdrew it at the risk of their lives, so as not to fall into schism; they fell back into the ranks and gave themselves up

Mesmay, du Bouvot, at Osselle, cheerfully burying themselves in the depths of the country, some on their family estates, and, not content to share their income with their poor parishioners, but on dying, leaving them a large part of their fortunes.” 1214 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION voluntarily to the brutality of the crowd and the rigors of the law. Moreover, and from the start, notwithstanding threats and temptations, two-thirds of the clergy would not take the oath; in the highest ranks, among the mundane ecclesiastics whose scepticism and laxity were notorious, honor, in default of faith, maintained the same spirit; nearly the whole of them, great and small, had subordinated their interests, welfare and security to the maintenance of their dignity or to scruples of conscience. They had allowed themselves to be stripped of everything; they let themselves be exiled, imprisoned, tortured, and made martyrs of, like the Christians of the primitive church; through their invincible meekness, they were going, like the primitive Christians, to exhaust the rage of their executioners, wear out persecutions, transform opinion and compel the admission, even with those who survived in the eighteenth century, that they were true, deserving, and courageous men.

V Below the nobles and the clergy, a third class of notables, the bourgeoisie, almost entirely confined to the towns,71 bordered on the former classes through its upper circles, while its diverse groups, ranging from the parliamentarian to the rich merchant or manufacturer, comprised the remainder of those who were tolerably well- educated, say one hundred thousand families, recruited on the same conditions as the bourgeoisie of the present day: they were “bourgeois living nobly,” meaning by this, living on their incomes, large manufacturers and traders, engaged in liberal pursuits—lawyers, notaries, procureurs, physicians, architects, engineers, artists, professors, and especially the government officials; the latter, however, very numerous, differed from ours in two essential points. On the one hand, their office, as nowadays with the notaries’ e´tude, or a membership of the stock-board, was personal property. Their places, and many others, such as posts in the judiciary, in the finances, in

71. De Tocqueville, “L’Ancien Re´gime,” 134, 137. The Governed / 1215 bailiwicks, in the Pre´sidial, in the Election,72 in the salt-department, in the customs, in the Mint, in the department of forests and streams, in presidencies, in councils, as procureurs du roi in various civil, administrative, and criminal courts, holding places in the treasury, auditors and collectors of the various branches of the revenue—all of which oﬃces, and many others, had been alienated for more than a century by the State in return for speciﬁed sums of ready money; thenceforth, they fell into the hands of special purchasers; the title of each possessor was as good as that of a piece of real property, and he could legally sell his title, the same as he had bought it, at agiven price, on due advertisement! 73 On the other hand, the different groups of local functionaries in each town formed their own associations, similar to our notarial chambers, or those of our stock- brokers; these small associations had their own by-laws, meetings, and treasury, frequently a civil status and the right of pleading, often a political status and the right of electing to the municipal council;74 consequently, besides his personal interests, each member cherished

72. Terms signifying certain minor courts of law. 73. Albert Babeau, “La Ville sous l’Ancien Re´gime,” p. 26.—(Advertise- ments in the “Journal de Troyes,” 1784, 1789.) “For sale, the place of Councillor in the Salt-department at Se´zannes. Income from eight to nine hundred livres. Price ten thousand livres.”—“A person desires to purchase in this town (Troyes) an office in the Magistracy or Finances, at from twenty-five thousand to sixty thousand livres; cash paid down if required.” 74. De Tocqueville, “L’Ancien Re´gime,” p. 356. The municipal body of Angers comprised, among other members, two deputies of the pre´sidial, two of the Forest and Streams department, two of the Election, two of the Salt- department, two of the Customs, two of the Mint, two Council judges. The system of the ancient re´gime, universally, is the grouping together of all individuals in one body with a representative of all these bodies, especially those of the notables. The municipal body of Angers, consequently, comprises two deputies of the society of lawyers and procureurs, two of the notarial body, one of the University, one of the Chapter, a Syndic of the clerks, etc.—At Troyes (Albert Babeau, “Histoire de Troyes Pendant la Re´volution,” p. 23.) Among the notables of the municipality may be found one member of the clergy, two nobles, one officer of the bailiwick, one officer of the other jurisdictions, one physician, one or two bourgeois, one lawyer, one notary or procureur, four merchants and two members of the trade guild. 1216 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION the professional interests of his guild. Thus was his situation different from what it now is, and, through a natural reaction, his character, manners, and tastes were different. First, he was much more independent; he was not afraid of being discharged or transferred elsewhere, suddenly, unawares, on the strength of an intendant’s report, for political reasons, to make room for a deputy’s candidate or a minister’s tool. This would have cost too much: it would have required first of all a reimbursement of the sum paid for his office, and at a rate of purchase ten times, at least, the revenue of the office.75 Besides, in defending himself, in protesting against and forestalling his disgrace, he would have been supported by his entire professional guild, oftentimes by other similar bodies, and frequently by the whole town, filled with his relations, clients, and comrades. The entire hive protected the bee against the caprices of favoritism and the brutalities of despotism. At Paris, a certain procureur, supported by his colleagues, is known to have imposed on a noble who had insulted him, the most humiliating atonement.76 In fact, under the

75. Albert Babeau, “La Ville,” p. 26. (Cf. note on preceding page.) The “Returns” at Reteil, in 1746, is sold at one hundred and fifty thousand livres; it brings in from eleven thousand to fourteen thousand livres.—The purchaser, besides, has to pay to the State the “right of the gold mare´” (ataxon the transfer of property); in 1762, this right amounted to nine hundred and forty livres for the post of Councillor to the bailiwick of Troyes. D’Espremenil, councillor in the Paris Parliament, had paid fifty thousand livres for his place, besides ten thousand livres for the tax of the “gold marc.” 76. Emile Bos, “Les Avocats au Conseil du Roi,” p. 340. Master Peruot, procureur, was seated on the balcony of the Theátre Français when Count More- ton Chabrillant arrives and wants his place. The procureur resists and the Count calls the guard, who leads him off to prison. Master Peruot enters a complaint; there is a trial, intervention of the friends of M. de Chabrillant before the garde des sceaux, petitions of the nobles and resistance of the entire guild of advocates and procureurs. M. de Chabrillant, senior, offers Peruot forty thousand livres to withdraw his suit, which Peruot refuses to do. Finally, the Count de Chabrillant is condemned, with six thousand livres damages (which are given to the poor and to prisoners), as well as to the expense of printing two hundred impressions of the verdict.—Duport de Cheverney, “Me´moires” (unpublished), communicated by M. Robert de Creˆvecoeur: “Formerly a man paid fifty thousand livres for an office with only three hundred livres income; the consideration, however, The Governed / 1217 ancient re´gime, it was almost impossible for a functionary to be removed; hence, he could fulfill his duties securely and with dignity, without being obliged to keep daily watch of the capital, to go to Paris to see how the official wind blew, to look after all the influences in his favor, to nurse his relations with the government and live like a bird on a branch. In the second place, there was a limit to his ambition; he did not keep constantly thinking of mounting a step higher in the hierarchy; or how to pass from a small town to a large one and hold on to his title; this would have been a too troublesome and complicated matter; he would first have had to find a purchaser and then sell his place, and next find a seller and buy another at a higher price; a stock broker at Bordeaux, a notary at Lyons, is not an aspirant for the post of stock broker or notary at Paris. Nothing then bore any resemblance to the ambulant colony of the present day which, in obedience to orders from above, travels about governing each of our towns, strangers on the wing, with no personal standing, without local landed property, interests or means, encamped in some hired apartment, often in a furnished room, sometimes stopping at a hotel, eternal nomads awaiting a telegram, always prepared to pack up and leave for another place a hundred leagues off in consideration of a hundred crowns extra pay, and doing the same detached work over again. Their predecessor, belonging to the country, was a stable fixture and contented; he was not tormented by acravingfor promotion; he hadacareerwithin the bounds of his corporation and town; cherishing no wish or idea of leaving it, he accommodated himself to it; he became proud of his office and professional brethren, and rose above the egoism of the individual; his self-love was bent on maintaining every prerogative and interest belonging to his guild. Established for life in his native town, in the midst of old colleagues, numerous relatives, and youthful companions, he esteemed their good opinion. Exempt from vexatious or he enjoyed through it, and the certainty of remaining in it for life, compensated him for the sacrifice, while the longer he kept it, the greater was the influence of himself and children.” 1218 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION burdensome taxes, tolerably well off, owning at least his own office, he was above sordid preoccupations and common necessities. Used to old fashioned habits of simplicity, soberness, and economy, he was not tormented by a disproportion between his income and expenses, by the requirements of show and luxury, by the necessity of annually adding to his revenue. Thus guided and unembarrassed, the instincts of vanity and generosity, the essence of French character, took the ascendant; the councillor or comptroller, the King’s agent, regarded himself as a man above the common run, as a noble of the Third-Estate; he thought less of making money than of gaining esteem; his chief desire was to be honored and honorable; “he passed life comfortably and was looked up to, . . . in the discharge of his duty, . . . with no other ambition than to transmit to his children . . . along with their inheritance an unsullied reputation.”77

77. Albert Babeau, “La Ville,” p. 27;—“Histoire de Troyes,” p. 21.—This portrait is drawn according to recollections of childhood and family narrations. I happen to have known the details of two or three small provincial towns, one of about six thousand inhabitants where, before 1800, nearly all the notables, forty families, were relations; today all are scattered. The more one studies documents, the more does Montesquieu’s definition of the mainspring of society under the ancient re´gime seem profound and just, this mainspring consisting of honor. In the bourgeoisie who were confounded with the nobility, namely the Parliamentarians, their functions were nearly gratuitous; the magistrate received his pay in deference. (Moniteur, v., 520. Session of August 30, 1790, speech by d’Espremenil.) “Here is what it cost a Councillor; I take myself as an example. He paid fifty thousand livres for his place, and ten thousand more for the tax of the ‘marc d’or.’ He received three hundred and eighty-nine livres ten sous salary, from which three hundred and sixty-seven livres ‘capitation’ had to be deducted. The King allowed us forty-five livres for extra service of ‘La Tour- nelle.’ How about the fees? is asked. The (grande chambre) superior court, asserted to have received the largest amount, was composed of one hundred and eighty members; the fees amounted to two hundred and fifty thousand livres, which were not a burden on the nation, but on the litigants. M. Thouret, who practised in the Rouen parliament, will bear witness to this. I appeal to him to say conscientiously what sum a Councillor derived from his office—not five hundred livres....When ajudgment cost the litigantnine hundred livres the King’s portion was six hundred livres....Tosumup,theprofits of an office were seven livres ten sous.” The Governed / 1219

Among the other groups of the bourgeoisie the same corporate system, the same settled habits, the same security, the same frugality, the same institutions, the same customs,78 promoted the growth of nearly the same sentiments, while the intellectual culture of these men was not insignificant. Having leisure, they were given to reading; as they were not overwhelmed with newspapers they read books worth reading; I have found in old libraries in the provinces, in the houses of the descendants of a manufacturer or lawyer in a small town, complete editions of Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Buffon, and Condillac, with marks in each volume showing that the volume had been read by some one in the house before the close of the eighteenth century. Nowhere else, likewise, had all that was sound and liberal in the philosophy of the eighteenth century found such a welcome; it is from this class that the patriots of 1789 were recruited; it had furnished not only the majority of the Constituent Assembly, but again all the honest men who, from July, 1789 to the end of 1791 performed their administrative duties so disinterestedly, and with such devotion and zeal, amidst so many difficulties, dangers, and disappointments. Composed of Feuillants or Monarchists, possessing such types of men as Huez of Troyes or Dietrich of Strasbourg, and for representatives such leaders as Lafayette and Bailly, it comprised the superior intelligence and most substantial integrity of the Third-Estate. It is evident that, along with the nobles and clergy, the best fruits of history were gathered in it, and most

78. Albert Babeau, “La Ville,” ch. ii., and “Histoire de Troyes,” i., ch. 1. At Troyes, fifty merchants, notables, elected the judge-consul and two consuls; the merchants’ guild possessed its own hall and had its own meetings. At Paris, the drapers, mercers, grocers, furriers, hatters, and jewellers formed the six bodies of merchants. The merchants’ guild everywhere took precedence of other industrial communities and enjoyed special privileges. “The merchants,” says Loyseau, “hold rank (qualite´ d’honneur), being styled honorable men, honest persons and bourgeois of the towns, qualifications not attributed to husbandmen, nor to sergents, nor to artisans, nor to manual laborers.”—On paternal authority and domestic discipline in these old bourgeois families see the History of Beau- marchais and his father. (“Beaumarchais,” by M. de Lomeńie, vol 1.) 1220 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION of the mental and moral capital accumulated, not only by the century, but, again, by preceding centuries.

VI Like aﬁre kindled on aneminence in acold andobscure district, maintained amidst human barbarism on the summits at great cost, civilisation radiates only as its rays grow dim; its light and heat diminish just as its gleams reach remoter and deeper strata; nevertheless, both penetrate to a great distance and to a certain depth before wholly dying out. If, then, we would estimate their power in France at the close of the eighteenth century we must add to the notables the half-notables of society, namely, the men who, like the people, were devoted to manual labor, but who, among the people, kept at the head, say one hundred and ﬁfty thousand families, consisting of well-to-do farmers, small rural proprietors, shopkeepers, retailers, foremen and master-workmen, village syndics and guild syndics,79 those who were established and had some capital, owning

79. Albert Babeau, “Le Village sous I’ Ancien Re´gime,” p. 56, ch. iii and iv. (on the village syndics), and pp. 357 and 359. “The peasants had the right to deliberate on their own affairs directly and to elect their principal agents. They understood their own wants, what sacrifices to impose for school and church . . . for repairs of the town clock and the belfry. They appointed their own agents and generally elected the most capable.”—Ibid., “LaVille sous l’Ancien Re´gime,” p. 29. The artisans’ guilds numbered at Paris one hundred and twenty-four, at Amiens sixty-four, and at Troyes fifty, also Chalons-sur- Marne, at Angers twenty-seven. The edicts of 1776 reduced them to forty-four at Paris, and to twenty as the maximum for the principal towns within the jurisdiction of the Paris parliament.—“Each guild formed a city within a city. . . . Like the communes, it had its special laws, its selected chiefs, its assemblies, its own building or, at least, a chamber in common, its banner, coat-of-arms and colors.”—Ibid., “Histoire de Troyes Pendant la Re´volution,” i., 13, 329. Trade guilds and corporations bear the following titles, drawn up in 1789, from the files of complaints: apothecaries, jewellers and watch-makers, booksellers and printers, master-barbers, grocers, wax and candle-makers, bakers and tailors, master shoemakers, eating-house-keepers, inn-keepers and hatters, master- masons and plasterers in lime and cement, master-joiners, coopers and cabinet- makers, master-cutlers, armorers, and polishers; founders, braziers, and pin-makers; master-locksmiths, ironmongers, tinsmiths and other metal workers, vinegar-makers, master-shearers, master rope-makers, master-tanners,deal- The Governed / 1221 alot of ground andahouse, with abusiness or stock of tools, and a set of customers, that is to say, with something ahead and credit, not being obliged to live from hand to mouth, and therefore, beginning to be independent and more influential, in short, the overseers of the great social work-house, the sergeants and corporals of the social army. They, too, were not unworthy of their rank. In the village or trade community, the syndic, elected by his equals and neighbors, was not blindly nominated; all his electors in relation to him were competent; if peasants, they had seen him turning up the soil; if blacksmiths or joiners, they had seen him at work in his forge, or at the bench. And, as their direct, present, and obvious interests were concerned, they chose him for the best, not on the strength of a newspaper recommendation, in deference to a vague declamatory platform or sounding, empty phrases, but according to their personal experiences, and the thorough knowledge they had of him. The delegate sent by the village to the intendant and by the guild to the Hoˆtel-de-Ville, was its most capable, and most creditable man, one of those, probably, who, through his application, intelligence, honesty, and economy, had proved the most prosperous, some master-workman or farmer that had gained experience through long years of assiduity, familiar with details and precedents, of good judgment and repute, more interested than anybody else in supporting the interests of the community and with more leisure than others to attend to public affairs.80 This man, through the nature of things, imposed himself on the attention, confidence, and deference of his peers, and, because he was their natural representative, he was their legal representative. Upon the whole, if, in this old society, the pressure was unequally distributed, if the general equilibrium was unstable, if the upper parts ers and master-dyers and dressers; master saddle and harness-makers, charcoal- burners, carters, paper-makers and band-box-makers, cap-makers and associates in arts and trades.—In some towns one or two of these natural guilds kept up during the Revolution and still exist, as, for example, that of the butchers at Limoges. 80. F. Leplay, “Les Ouvriers Europeéns,” v., 456, 2d ed., (on workmen’s guilds), Charpentier, Paris. 1222 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION bore down too heavily on the lower ones, the sorting, at least, which goes on in every civilised State, constantly separating the wheat from the chaff, went on tolerably well; except at the centre and at the Court, where the winnowing machine had worked haphazard and, frequently, in an opposite sense for a century, the separation proceeded regularly, undoubtedly slower, but, perhaps, more equitably than in our contemporary democracy. The chance that a notable by right could become anotable de facto was then much greater: it was less difficult, and the inclination to found, maintain, and perpetuate a family or a work was much stronger; people oftener looked beyond mere self; the eyes naturally turned outside the narrow circle of one’s personality, looking backward as well as beyond this present life. The institution of an equal partition of property, the system of obligatory partition, the rule of partition in kind, with other prescriptions of the civil code, does not split up a heritage and ruin the home.81 Parental remissness and the cool self-possession of children had not yet weakened the principle of authority and abolished respect in the family. Useful and natural associations were not yet

81. F. Leplay, “Les Ouvriers Europeéns,” (2d ed.), iv., 377, and the mono- graphs of four families (Bordier of Lower Brittany, Brassier of Armagnac, Savonnier of Lower Provence, Paysan of Lavedan, ch. 7, 8 and 9).—Ibid., “L’Organization de la Famille,” p. 62, and the whole volume.—M. Leplay, in his exact, methodical and profound researches, has rendered a service of the highest order to political science and, consequently, to history. He has minutely observed and described the scattered fragments of the old organisation of society; his analysis and comparison of these fragments shows the thickness and extent of the stratum almost gone, to which they belonged. My own observations on the spot, in many provinces in France, as well as the recollections of my youth, agree with M. Leplay’s discoveries.—On the stable, honest, and prosperous families of small rural proprietors, Cf. ibid., p. 68 (Arthur Young’s observation in Beárn), and p. 75. Many of these families existed in 1789, more of them than at the present time, especially in Gascony, Languedoc, Auvergne, Dauphiny, Franche-Comte´, Alsace, and Normandy.—Ibid., “L’Organization du Travail,” pp. 499, 503, 508. (Effects of the “Code Civile” on the transmission of a manufactory and a business establishment in France, and on cultivation in Savoy; the number of suits in France produced by the system of forced partition of property.) The Governed / 1223 stifled in the germ nor arrested in their development by the systematic hostility of the law. The facility and cheapness of transportation, the promiscuousness of schools, the excitement of competition, the common rush for every office, the increasing irritation of every ambition and lust, had not immeasurably multiplied the class of irresponsible malcontents and mischievous nomads. In the political order of things, inaptitude, envy, brutality were not sovereign; universal suffrage did not exclude from power the men, born, bred, and qualified to exercise it; the innumerable public offices were not offered as a prey to charlatanism and to the intrigues of politicians. France was not then, as now-a-days, in a way to become a vast lodging-house managed by a chance overseer, condemned to periodical failures, peopled with anonymous inmates, indifferent to each other, without local attachments, with no corporate interests or affections, merely tenants and passing consumers, placed in the order of their numbers around a common mess-table where each thinks only of himself, gets served quickly, consumes what he can lay his hands on, and ends by finding out that, in a place of this sort, the best condition, the wisest course, is to put all one’s property into an annuity and live a bachelor. Formerly, among all classes and in all the provinces, there were a large number of families that had taken root on the spot, living there a hundred years and more. Not only among the nobles, but among the bourgeoisie and the Third-Estate, the heir of any enterprise was expected to continue his calling; as with the seignorial chateau and extensive domain, as with the bourgeois dwelling and patrimonial office, the humble rural domain, farm, shop, and factory, were transmitted intact from one generation to another.82 Great or small, the individual was not wholly interested in himself; his thoughts travelled forward to the future and back to the past, on the side of ancestors and on that of descendants, along the endless chain of which his own life was but a link; he possessed

82. F. Leplay, “L’Organization de la Famille,” p. 212. (History of the Me´- longafamilyfrom 1856 to 1869 by M. Cheysson.) Also p. 269. (On the difficulty of partitions among ascendants, by M. Claudio Jannet.) 1224 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION traditions, he felt bound to set examples. Under this twofold title, his domestic authority was uncontested;83 all who belonged to him followed his instructions without swerving and without resistance. When, by virtue of this home discipline, a family had maintained itself upright and respected on the same spot for a century, it could easily mount a degree; it could introduce one of its members into the upper class, pass from the plough or trade to petty offices, and from these to the higher ones and to parliamentary dignities, from the four thousand posts that ennoble to the legalised nobility, from the lately made nobles to the old nobility. Apart from the two or three thousand gilded drones living on the public honey at Versailles, apart from the court parasites and their valets, three or four hundred thousand notables and half-notables of France thus acquired and kept their offices, consideration and fortune; they were therefore their legitimate possessors. The peasant-proprietor and master-artisan had risen from father to son, at four o’clock in the morning, toiled all day and never drank. From father to son, the trader, notary, lawyer, and office-holder, had been careful, economical, skillful, and attentive to business, correct in their papers, precise in their accounts. From father to son, the gentleman had served bravely, the parliamentarian had judged equitably, on honor, with a salary less than the interest of the sum paid by him to acquire his rank or post. Each of these men received no more than his due; his possessions and his rank were the savings of his race, the price of social services rendered by the long file of deserving dead, all that his ancestors, his father and himself had created or preserved of any stable value; each piece of gold that remained in the hereditary purse represented the balance of a lifetime, the enduring labor of someone belonging to his line, while among these gold pieces, he himself had provided his share. For, personal services counted, even among the upper nobil-

83. Re´tif de laBretonne, “Vie de mon Peˆre,” (paternal authority in a peasant family in Burgundy). The reader, on this point, may test the souvenirs of his grand-parents. With reference to the bourgeoisie I have cited the family of Beau- marchais. Concerning the nobles, see the admirable letter by Buffon June 22, 1787 (correspondence of Buffon, two vols., published by M. Nadaud de Buffon), prescribing to his son how he ought to act on account of his wife’s behavior. The Governed / 1225 ity; and all the more among the lower class, in the Third-Estate, and among the people. Among the notables of every degree just described, most of them, in 1789, were certainly full-grown, many of them mature, a goodly number advanced in years, and some quite aged; consequently, in justification of his rank and emoluments, or of his gains and his fortune, each could allege fifteen, twenty, thirty, and forty years of labor and honorability in private or public situations, the grand-vicar of the diocese as well as the chief-clerk of the ministry, the intendant of the geńe´ralite´ as well as the president of the royal tribunal, the village cure´, the noble officer, the office- holder, the lawyer, the procureur, the large manufacturer, the wholesale dealer, as well as the well-to-do farmer, and the well-known handicraftsman. Thus, not only were they an e´lite corps, the most valuable portion of the nation, the best timber of the forest, but again, the wood of each branch belonged to that trunk; it grew there, and was the product of its own vegetation; it sprung out of the trunk wholly through the unceasing and spontaneous effort of the native sap, through time-honored and recent labor, and, on this account, it merited respect. Through a double onslaught, at once against each human branch and against the entire French forest, the Jacobin wood-choppers seek to clear the ground. Their theory results in this precept, that not one of the noble trees of this forest, not one valuable trunk from the finest oak to the tenderest sapling, should be left standing.

VII Not that the ravages which they make stop there! The principle extended far beyond that. The fundamental rule, according to Jac- obin maxims, is that every public or private advantage which any citizen enjoys not enjoyed by another citizen, is illegitimate. On Ventose 19, year II., Henriot, general in command, having surrounded the Palais Royal and made a sweep of “suspects,” renders an account of his expedition as follows:84 “One hundred and thirty muscadins have been arrested....These gentlemen are transferred

84. Moniteur, xix., 669. 1226 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION to the Petits-Peˆres. They are not sans-culottes, being well-fed and plump.” Henriot was right, for, to live well is incivique. Whoever lays in stores of provisions is criminal, even if he has gone a good ways for them, even if he has not overpaid the butcher of his quarter, even if he has not diminished by an ounce of meat the ration of his neighbor; on this being discovered, he is obliged to disgorge and be punished. “A citizen85 had a little pig brought to him from a place six leagues from Paris, and killed it at once. Three hours afterwards, the pig was seized by commissioners and distributed among the people, without the owner getting abit of it”; moreover, the said owner “was imprisoned.” He is a monopolist! To Jacobin people, to empty stomachs, there is no greater crime; this misdeed, to their imaginations, explains the arrest of He´bert, their favorite: “It is said at the Halle86 that he has monopolised one of St. Anthony’s friends87 together with apot of twenty-five pounds of Brittanybutter,” which is enough; they immediately and “unanimously consign Pe`re Du- chesne to the guillotine.” Of all privileges, accordingly, that of having asupply of food is the most offensive; “it is now necessary for one who has two dishes to give one of them to him who has none”;88 every man who manages to eat more than another is a robber; for, in the first place, he robs the community, the sole legitimate owner of aliments, and next, he robs, and personally, all who have less to eat than he has. The same rule applies to other things of which the possession is either agreeable or useful: in an equalising social system, that now established, every article of food possessed by one individual to the exclusion of others, is a dish abstracted from the common table and held by him to another’s detriment. On the strength of this, the theorists who govern agree with the reigning tatterdemalions. Who-

85. Dauban, “Paris en 1794,” p. 245. (Report by Bacon, Ventose 25, year II.) 86. Ibid. (Report by Perrie`re, Ventose 26.) 87. Ironical, slang for a hog. TR. 88. Ibid., 245. (Report by Bacon, speech of an orator to the general assembly of the section “Contrat-Social,” Ventose 25.) The Governed / 1227 ever has two good coats is an aristocrat, for there are many who have only one poor one.89 Whoever has good shoes is an aristocrat, for many wear wooden ones, and others go barefoot. Whoever owns and rents lodgings is an aristocrat, for others, his tenants, instead of receiving money, pay it out. The tenant who furnishes his own rooms is an aristocrat, for many lodge in boarding-houses and others sleep in the open air. Whoever possesses capital is an aristocrat, even the smallest amount in money or in kind, a ﬁeld, a roof over his head, half-a-dozen silver spoons given to him by his parents on his wedding-day, an old woollen stocking into which twenty or thirty crowns have been dropped one by one, all one’s savings, whatever has been laid by or economised, a petty assortment of eatables or merchandise, one’s crop for the year and stock of groceries, especially if, disliking to give them up and letting his dissatisfaction be seen, he, through revolutionary taxation and requisitions, through the maximum and the conﬁscation of the precious metals, is constrained to surrender his small savings gratis, or at half their value. Fundamentally, it is only those who have nothing of their own that are held to be patriots, those who live from day to

89. “Un Se´jour en France.” (Sep., 1792.) Letter of a Parisian: “It is not yet safe to walk the streets in decent clothes. I have been obliged to procure and put on pantaloons, jacket, colored cravate, and coarse linen, before attempting to go outdoors.”—Beaulieu, “Essais,” v., 281. “Our dandies let their moustaches grow long; while they rumpled their hair, dirtied their hands and donned nasty garments. Our philosophers and literary men wore big fur caps with long fox- tails dangling over their shoulders; some dragged great trailing sabres along the pavement—they were taken for Tartars. ...Inpublicassemblies, in the theatre boxes, nothing was seen in the front rows but monstrous red bonnets. All the gale´riens of all the convict prisons in Europe seem to have come and set the fashion in this superb city which had given it to all Europe.”—“Un Se´jour en France,” p. 43. (Amiens, September, 1792.) “Ladies in the street who are well- dressed or wear colors that the people regard as aristocratic are commonly insulted. I, myself, have been almost knocked down for wearing a straw hat trimmed with green ribbons.”—Nolhac, “Souvenirs de Trois Anneés de la Re´volution at Lyons,” p. 132. “It was announced that whoever had two coats was to fetch one of them to the Section, so as to clothe some good republican and ensure the reign of equality.” 1228 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION day,90 “the wretched,” the poor, vagabonds, and the famished; the humblest laborer, the least instructed, the most ill at his ease, is treated as criminal, as an enemy, solely because he is suspected of having some resources; in vain does he show his scarified or callous hands; he escapes neither spoliation, the prison, nor the guillotine. At Troyes, a poor shop-girl who had set up a small business on borrowed money, but who is ruined by a bankruptcy and completely so by the maximum, infirm, and consuming piecemeal the rest of her stock, is taxed five hundred livres.91 In the villages of Alsace, an order is issued to arrest the five, six, or seven richest persons in the Commune, even if there are no rich; consequently, they seize the least poor, simply because they are so; for instance, at Heiligenberg, six “farmers” one of whom is a day-laborer, “or journeyman,” “suspect,” says the register of the jail, “because he is comfortably off.”92 On this account nowhere are there so many “suspects” as

90. Buchez et Roux, xxvi., 455. (Speech by Robespierre, in the Jacobin Club, May 10, 1793.) “The rich cherish hopes for an antirevolution; it is only the wretched, only the people who can save the country.”—Ibid., xxx. (Report by Robespierre to the Convention, December 25, 1793.) “Virtue is the appanage of the unfortunate and the people’s patrimony.”—Archives Nationales, AF., II., 72. (Letter of the municipality of Montauban, Vende´miaire 23, year IV.) Many workmen in the manufactories have been perverted “by excited demagogues and club orators who have always held out to them equality of fortunes and presented the Revolution as the prey of the class they called sans-culottes. ... The law of the ‘maximum,’ at first tolerably well carried out, the humiliation of the rich, the confiscation of the immense possessions of the rich, seemed to be the realisation of these fine promises.” 91. Archives Nationales, F7, 4,421. Petition of Madeleine Patris.—Petition of Quetreut Cognie´r, weaver, “sans-culotte, and one of the first members of the Troyes national guard.” (Style and orthography of the most barbarous kind.) 92. Ibid., AF., II. 135. (Extract from the deliberations of the Revolutionary Committee of the commune of Strasbourg, list of prisoners and reasons for arresting them.) At Oberschaeffelsheim, two farmers “because they are two of the richest private persons in the commune.”—“Recueil de Pie`ces, etc.,” i. 225. (Declaration by Welcher, revolutionary commissioner). “I, the undersigned, declare that, on the orders of citizen Clauer, commissioner of the canton, I have surrendered at Strasbourg seven of the richest in Obershaeffelsheim without knowing why.” Four of the seven were guillotined. The Governed / 1229 among the people; the shop, the farm, and the work-room harbor more aristocrats than the rectory and the chateau. In effect, according to the Jacobins,93 “nearly all farmers are aristocrats”; “the merchants are all essentially antirevolutionary,”94 and especially all dealers in articles of prime necessity, wine-merchants, bakers and butchers; the latter especially are open “conspirators,” enemies “of the interior,” and “whose aristocracy is insupportable.” Such, already, among the lower class of people, are the many delinquents who are punished. But there are still more of them to punish, for, besides the crime of not being indigent, of possessing some property, of withholding articles necessary for existence, there is the crime of aristocracy, necessarily so called, namely, repugnance to, lack of zeal, or even indifference for the established re´gime, regret for the old one, relationship or intercourse with a condemned or imprisoned emigre´ of the upper class, services rendered to some outlaw, the resort to some priest; now, numbers of poor farmers, mechanics, domestics, and women servants, have committed this crime;95 and in many provinces

93. Buchez et Roux, xxvi., 341. (Speech by Chasles in the Convention, May 2, 1793.) 94. Moniteur, xviii., 452. (Speech by He´bert in the Jacobin Club, Brumaire 26.)—Schmidt, “Tableaux de la Re´volution Française,” 19. (Reports of Dutard, June 11.—Archives Nationales. F7, 3,1167. (Report of the Pourvoyeur, Nivose 6, year II.) “The people complain (se plain) that there are still some conspirators in the interior, such as butchers and bakers, but particularly the former, who are (son) an intolerable aristocracy. They (il) will sell no more meat, etc. It is frightful to see what they (il) give the people.” 95. “Recueil de Police,” etc., i., 69 and 91. At Strasbourg a number of women of the lower class are imprisoned as “aristocrats and fanatics,” with no other alleged motive. The following are their occupations: dressmaker, uphol- steress, housewife, midwife, baker, wives of coffee-house keepers, tailors, pot- ters, and chimney-sweeps.—Ibid., ii., 216. “Ursule Rath, servant to an emigre´, arrested for the purpose of knowing what her master had concealed. ...Marie Faber, on suspicion of having served in a priest’s house.”—Archives Nationales, AF., II., 135. (List of the occupations of the suspected women detained in the cabinets of the National college.) Most of them are imprisoned for being either mothers, sisters, wives, or daughters of emigre´s or exiled priests, and many are the wives of shopkeepers or mechanics. One, a professional nurse, is an “aris- 1230 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION and in many of the large cities nearly the whole of the laboring population commits it and persists in it; such is the case, according to Jacobin reports, in Alsace, Franche-Comte´, Provence, Vaucluse, Anjou, Poitou, Vendeé, Brittany, Picardie and Flanders, and in Mar- seilles, Bordeaux, and Lyons. In Lyons alone, writes Collot d’Herbois, “there are sixty thousand persons who never will become republicans. They should be disbanded and prudently distributed over the surface of the Republic.”96 Finally, add to the persons of the lower class, prosecuted on public grounds, those who are prosecuted on private grounds. Among peasants in the same village, workmen of the same trade and shopkeepers in the same quarter, there is always envy, enmities, and spites; those who are Jacobins become local pachas and are able to gratify local jealousies with impunity, which they never fail to do.97 Hence, on the lists of the guillotined, the incarcerated and of emigre´s, the men and women of inferior condition are in much tocrat and fanatic.” (Another list describes the men); a cooper as “aristocrat”; atripe-seller as“very incivique, never having shown any attachment to the Revolution”; a mason has never shown “patriotism,” a shoemaker is “aristocrat at all times, having accepted a porter’s place under the tyrant”; four foresters “do not entertain patriotic sentiments,” etc.—“Recueil de Pie`ces, etc.,” ii., 220. Citoyenne Genet, aged 75, and her daughter, aged 44, are accused of having sent, May 22, 1792, thirty-six francs in silver to the former’s son, an emigre´, and were guillotined.—Cf. Sauzay, vols. iii., iv. and v. (appendices), lists of emigre´s and prisoners in Doubs, where titles and professions, with motives for confining them, will be found.—At Paris, even (Archives Nationales, F7, 3,1167, report of Latour-Lamontagne, September 20, 1793), aversion to the government descends very low. “Three women (market-women) all agree on one point— the necessity of a new order of things. They complain of the authorities without exception. . . . If the King is not on their lips, it is much to be feared that he is already in their hearts. A woman in the Faubourg St. Antoine, said: If our husbands made the Revolution we shall know how to put it down if necessary.” 96. See above ch. v., § 4.—Archives Nationales, F7, 4,435, No. 10. (Letter of Collot d’Herbois to Couthon, Frimaire 11, year II.) 97. Archives des Affaires E´trange´re`s, vol. 331. (Letter of Bertrand, Nismes, Frimaire 3.) “We are sorry to see patriots here not very delicate in the way they cause arrests, in ascertaining who are criminal, and the precious class of mechanics is no exception.” The Governed / 1231 greater number, far greater than their companions of the superior and middle classes all put together. Out of twelve thousand condemned to death whose rank and professions have been ascertained, seven thousand five hundred and forty-five98 are peasants, cultivators, ploughmen, workmen of various sorts, innkeepers, wine-dealers, soldiers, and sailors, domestics, women, young girls, servants, and seamstresses. Out of one thousand nine hundred emigre´s from Doubs, nearly one thousand one hundred belong to the lower class. Towards the month of April, 1794, all the prisons in France overflow with farmers;99 in the Paris prisons alone, two months before Ther- midor 9, there are two thousand of them.100 Without mentioning the eleven western departments in which four or five hundred square leagues of territory are devastated and twenty towns and one thousand eight hundred villages destroyed,101 where the avowed purpose of the Jacobin policy is a systematic and total destruction of the country, man and beast, buildings, crops, and even trees, there are cantons and even provinces where the entire rural and working population is arrested or put to flight. In the Pyrenees, the old Basque populations “torn from their natal soil, crowded into the churches with no means of subsistence but that of charity,” in the middle of winter, so that sixteen hundred of those incarcerated die “mostly of cold and hunger”;102 atBe´douin, atown of two thousand souls, in which atree of liberty is cut down by some unknown persons, four hundred and thirty-three houses are demolished or burned, sixteen persons guillotined and forty-seven shot, while the rest of the inhabitants are driven out, reduced to living like vaga-

98. Berryat Saint-Prix, “La Justice Re´volutionnaire,” 1st ed., p. 229. 99. “Un Se´jour en France,” p. 186. “I notice that most of the arrests now made are farmers.” (In consequence of the requisitions for grain, and on account of the applications of the law of the maximum.) 100. “Bulletin du Tribunal Re´volutionnaire,” No. 431. (Testimony of Ton- tin, secretary of the court.) Twelve hundred of these poor creatures were set free after Thermidor 9. 101. Moniteur, session of June 29, 1797. (Report of Luminais.)—Danican, “Les Brigands De´masque´s,” p. 194. 102. Meillan, “Me´moires,” p. 166. 1232 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION bonds on the mountain, or in holes which they dig in the ground;103 in Alsace, fifty thousand farmers who, in the winter of 1793, take refuge with their wives and children on the other side of the Rhine.104 In short, the revolutionary operation is a complete prostration of people of all classes, the trunks as well as the saplings being felled, and often in such a way as to clear the ground entirely. In this general prostration, however, the notables of the people, making all due allowances, suffer more than the common run; the Jacobin wood-chopper manifestly selects out and fells with the greatest fury and persistency, the veterans of labor and economy, the large cultivators who from father to son and for many generations have possessed the same farm, the master-mechanics whose shops are well stocked and who have good customers, all respectable, well-patronised retailers, who owe nothing; the village-syndics and trades-syndics, all those showing more deeply and visibly than the rest of their class, the five or six blazes which warrant the stroke of the axe. They are better off, better provided with desirable comforts and conveniences, which is of itself an offence against equality. Hav-

103. Berryat Saint-Prix, “La Justice Re´volutionnaire,” p. 419.—Archives Nationales, AF., II., 145. (Orders issued by Representative Maignet, Floreál 14, 15 and 17, year II.) “The criminal court will try and execute the principal criminals; the rest of the inhabitants will abandon their houses in twenty-four hours, and take their furniture along with them. The town will then be burnt. All rebuilding or tillage of the soil is forbidden. The inhabitants will be apportioned among neighboring communes; nobody is allowed to leave the commune assigned to him under penalty of being treated as an emigre´. All must appear once in a decade at the municipality under penalty of being declared ‘suspect’ and imprisoned.” 104. “Recueil de Piece`s, etc.,” i., 52. (Carret de Beudot and La Coste, Plu- viose 6, year II.) “Whereas, it being impossible to find jurors within an extent of one hundred leagues, two-thirds of the inhabitants having emigrated.”— Moniteur, Aug. 28 and 29, 1797. (Report by Harmand de la Meuse.)—Ibid., xix., 714. (Session of Ventose 26, year II., speech by Baudot.) “Forty thousand persons of all ages and both sexes in the districts alone of Hagnenau and Wis- sembourg, fled from the French territory on the lines being retaken. The names are in our hands, their furniture in the depot at Saverne and their property is made over to the Republic.” The Governed / 1233 ing accumulated a small hoard, a few pieces of plate, sometimes a few crowns,105 astore of linen andclothes, astock of provisions or goods, they do not willingly submit to being plundered, which is the offence of egoism. Being egoists, it is presumed that they are hostile to the system of fraternity, at least indifferent to it, as well as lukewarm toward the Republic, that is to say, Moderates, which is the worst offence of all.106 Being the foremost of their class, they are haughty like the nobles or the bourgeois and regard themselves as superior to a poor man, to a vagabond, to a genuine sans-culotte, the fourth and most inexcusable of all offences. Moreover, from the fact of their superior condition, they have contracted familiarities and formed connections with the proscribed class; the farmer, the intendant, the overseer is often attached to his noble proprietor or patron;107 many of the farmers, shopkeepers, and mechanics belonging to old families are considered as affiliated with the bourgeoisie or the clergy,108 through ason or brother who hasrisen adegree in

105. Albert Babeau, “Histoire de Troyes,” ii., 160. “A gardener had carefully accumulated eight thousand two hundred and twenty-three livres in gold, the fruit of his savings; threatened with imprisonment, he was obliged to give them up.” 106. Archives Nationales, AF., II., 116. (Orders of Representative Paganel, Toulouse, Brumaire 12, year II.) “The day has arrived when apathy is an insult to patriotism, and indifference a crime. We no longer reply to the objections of avarice; we will force the rich to fulfil the duties of fraternity which they have abjured.”—Ibid. (Extract from the minutes of the meetings of the Central Com- mittee of Montauban, April 11, 1793, with the approval of the representative, Jean Bon St. Andre´.) “The moment has at length come when moderatism, royalism and pusillanimity, and all other traitorous or useless sects to the country, should disappear from the soil of Liberty.” All opinions opposed to those of sans-culotterie are blamable and merit punishment. 107. Archives Nationales, F7, 2,471. (Minutes of the Revolutionary Com- mittee of the Tuileries section, meeting of September 17, 1793.) List of seventy- four persons put under arrest and among them, M. de Noailles, with the following note opposite his name: “The entire family to be arrested, including their heir Guy, and Hervet, their old intendant, rue St. Honore´.” 108. Archives des Affaires E´trange´re`s, vol. 322. (Letters of Ladonay, Cha- lons, September 17 and 20, 1792.) “At Meaux, the brigands have cut the throats of fifteen prisoners, seven of whom are priests whose relations belong to the town 1234 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION trade, or by some industrial pursuit, or who, having completed his studies, has become a cure´ or lawyer, or else through some daughter, or well-married sister, or through one who has become a nun: now, this relation, ally, friend, or comrade of a “suspect” is himself a “suspect,” the last antirevolutionary and decisive barrier. Sober and well-behaved persons, having prospered or maintained themselves under the ancient re´gime, must naturally cherish respect for former institutions; they must involuntarily retain a deep feeling of veneration for the King, and especially for religion; they are devout Cath- olics, and therefore are chagrined to see the churches shut up, worship prohibited, and ecclesiastics persecuted, and would again be glad to go to Mass, honor Easter, and have an orthodox cure´ who could administer to them available sacraments, a baptism, an abso- lution, a marriage-rite, and veritable extreme unction.109 Under all these headings, they have made personal enemies of the rascals who hold office; on all these grounds, they are struck down; what was once meritorious with them is now disgraceful. Thus, the principal swath consists of the e´lite of the people, selected from amongst the people itself; it is against the “subordinate aristocracy,” those most capable of doing and conducting manual labor, the most creditable workmen, through their activity, frugality, and good habits, that the Revolution, in its rigor against the inferior class, rages with the greatest fury.

VIII For the same reason, as far as the notables, properly so-called, are concerned, it bears down still more heavily, not merely on the nobles because of ancient privileges, not merely on ecclesiastics on the score of being insubordinate Catholics, but on nobles, ecclesiastics, and bourgeois in their capacity of notables, that is to say, born and bred or its environs. Hence an immense number of malcontents.”—Sauzay, i., 97. “The country cure´s are generally recruited from among the rural bourgeoisie and the most respected farmers’ families.” 109. Sauzay, passim, especially vols. 3, 4, 5, and 6. The Governed / 1235 above others, and respected by the masses on account of their superior condition. In the eyes of the genuine Jacobin, the notables of the third class are no less criminal than the members of the two superior classes. “The bourgeois,110 the merchants, the large proprietors,” writes a popular club in the South, “all have the pretension of the old set (des ci-de´vants).” And the club complains of “the law not providing means for opening the eyes of the people with respect to these new tyrants.” It is horrible! The stand they take is an offence against equality and they are proud of it! And what is worse, this stand attracts public consideration! Consequently, “the club requests that the revolutionary Tribunal be empowered to consign this proud class to temporary confinement,” and then “the people would see the crime it had committed and recover from the sort of esteem in which they had held it.” Incorrigible and contemptuous heretics against the new creed, they are only too lucky to be treated somewhat like infidel Jews in the middle-ages. Accordingly, if they are tolerated, it is on the condition that they let themselves be pillaged at discretion, covered with opprobrium, and subdued through fear. At one time, with insulting irony, they are called upon to prove their dubious civism by forced donations. “Whereas,”111 says Represen-

110. Archives Nationales, F7, 4,437. Address of the popular club of Clav- isson (Gard.), Messidor 7, year II.—Rodolphe Reuss, “Se´ligman Alexandre, sur les Tribulations d’un Israelite Strasbourgeois Pendant la Terreur,” p. 37. Order issued by General Dieche to Coppin, in command of the “Se´minaire” prison. “Strive with the utmost zeal to suppress the cackle of aristocrats.” Such is the sum of the instructions to jail keepers. 111. Archives Nationales, AF., II., 88. (Edict issued by Representative Mil- haud, Narbonne, Ventose 9, year II.) Article ii. “The patriotic donation will be doubled if, in three days, all boats are not unloaded and all carts loaded as fast as they arrive.” Article iv. “The municipality is charged, on personal responsibility, to proportion the allotment on the richest citizens of Narbonne.” Article vii. “If this order is not executed within twenty-four hours, the municipality will designate to the commandant of the post the rich egoists who may have refused to furnish their contingent, etc.” Article viii. “The commandant is specially charged to report (the arrests of the refractory rich) to the representative of the people within twenty-four hours, he being responsible on his head for the punctual execution of the present order.”—Ibid., AF., II., 135. (Orders 1236 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION tative Milhaud, “all the citizens and citoyennes of Narbonne being in requisition for the discharge and transport of forage; whereas, this morning, the Representative, in person, having inspected the performance of this duty,” and having observed on the canal “none but sans-culottes and a few young citizens; whereas, not finding at their posts any muscadin and no muscadine; whereas, the persons, whose hands are no doubt too delicate, even temporarily, for the glorious work of robust sans-culottes, have, on the other hand, greater resources in their fortune, and, desiring to afford to the rich of Narbonne the precious advantage of being equally useful to the Republic,” hereby orders that “the richest citizens of Narbonne pay within twenty-four hours” a patriotic donation of one hundred thousand livres, one- half to be assigned to the military hospitals, and the other half, on the designation thereof by a “Committee of Charity, composed of three reliable revolutionary sans-culottes,” to be distributed among the poor of the Commune. Should any “rich egoist refuse to contribute his contingent he is to be immediately transferred to the jail at Perpignan.” Not to labor with one’s own hands, to be disqualified for work demanding physical strength, is of itself a democratic stain, and the man who is sullied by this draws down on himself, not alone an augmentation of pecuniary taxation, but frequently an augmentation of personal compulsory labor. At Villeneuve, Aveyron, and throughout the department of Cantal,112 Representative Taillefer and his delegate Deltheil, instruct the revolutionary committees to “place under military requisition and conscription all muscadins above the first class,” that is to say, all between twenty-five and forty years of age who are not reached by the law. “By muscadins is meant all citizens of that age not married, and exercising no useful profession,” in other words, those who live on their income. And, that none of of Saint-Just and Lebas, Strasbourg, Brumaire 10, year II.) The following is equally ironical; the rich of Strasbourg are represented as “soliciting a loan on opulent persons and severe measures” against refractory egoists. 112. Archives Nationales, AF., II., 92. Orders of Representative Taillefer, Villefranche, Aveyron, Brumaire 3, year II., and of his delegate, Deltheil, Bru- maire 11, year II. The Governed / 1237 the middle or upper class may escape, the edict subjects to special rigor, supplementary taxes, and arbitrary arrest, not alone property- holders and fund-holders, but again all persons designated under the following heads—aristocrats, Feuillants, moderates, Girondists, federalists, muscadins, the superstitious, fanatics, the abettors of royalism, of superstition and of federation, monopolists, jobbers, egoists, “suspects” of incivism, and, generally, all who are indifferent to the Revolution, of which local committees are to draw up the lists. Occasionally, in a town, some steps taken collectively, either a vote or petition, furnish a ready-made list;113 it suffices to read this to know who are notables, the most upright people of the place; henceforth, under the pretext of political repression, the levellers may give free play to their social rancor. At Montargis, nine days after the attempt of June 20, 1792,114 two hundred and twenty-eight notables sign an address in testimony of their respectful sympathy for the King; a year and nine months later, in consequence of a retroactive stroke, all are hit, and, with the more satisfaction, inasmuch as in their persons the most respected in the town fall beneath the blow, all whom flight and banishment had left there belonging to the noble, ecclesiastic, bourgeois, or popular aristocracy. Already, “on the purification of the constituted authorities of Montargis, the representative had withdrawn every signer from places of public

113. This is the case in Lyons, Bordeaux, Marseilles, and at Paris, as we see in the signatures of the petition of the eight thousand, or that of the twenty thousand, and for members of the Feuillants clubs, etc. 114. Archives Nationales, AF., II., 116. (Minutes of the public session of Ventose 20, year II., held at Montargis, in the Temple of Reason, by Benon, “national agent of the commune and special agent of the people’s representative.” Previous and subsequent orders, by Representative Lefert.) Eighty-six persons signed, subject to public penance, among them twenty-four wives or widows, which, with the four names sent to the Paris tribunal and the thirty- two imprisoned, makes one hundred and twenty-two. It is probable that the one hundred and six who are wanting to complete the list of two hundred and twenty-eight had emigrated, or been banished in the interval as unsworn priests.—Ibid., D.S., I., 10. (Orders by Delacroix, Bouchet, and Legendre, Conches, Frimaire 8 and 9, year II.) The incarceration of the municipal officers of Conches for an analogous petition and other marks of Feuillantism. 1238 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION trust and kept them out of all offices.” But this is not sufficient; the punishment must be more exemplary. Four of them, the ex-mayor, an ex-collector, a district administrator and a notable are sent to the revolutionary Tribunal in Paris, to be guillotined in deference to principles. Thirty-two former officers—chevaliers of St. Louis, mous- quetaires, nobles, priests, an ex-procureur-royal, an ex-treasurer of France, a former administrator of the department, and two ladies, one of them designated as “calling herself a former marchioness”— are confined, until peace is secured, in the jail at Montargis. Other former municipal officers and officers in the National Guard—men of the law, notaries and advocates, physicians, surgeons, former collectors, police commissioners, postmasters, merchants and manufacturers, men and women, married or widows, and widowers—are to make public apology and be summoned to the Temple of Reason to undergo there the humiliation of a public penance on the 20th of Ventose, at three o’clock in the afternoon. They all go, for the summons says, “whoever does not present himself on the day and hour named will be arrested and confined until peace is declared.” On reaching the church, purified by Jacobin adoration, “in the presence of the constituted authorities of the popular club and of the citizens convoked in general assembly,” they mount one by one into “a tribune raised three steps above the floor,” in such a way as to be in full sight. One by one the national agent, or the mayor, reprimands them in the following language: “You have been base enough to sign afawningaddressto Louis XVI., the most odious and the vilest of tyrants, an ogre of the human species guilty of every sort of crime and debauchery. You are hereby censured by the people. You are moreover warned that on committing the first act of incivisme, or manifesting any antirevolutionary conduct, the surveillance of the constituted authorities will be extended to you in the most energetic manner; the tribunals will show you less leniency and the guillotine will insure prompt and imposing justice.” Each, called by name, receives in turn the threatened admonition, and, descending from the tribune amidst hues and cries, all sign the proce`s- verbal. But compunction is often wanting, and some of them seem The Governed / 1239 to be not sufficiently penitent. Consequently, at the close of the ceremony, the National Agent calls the attention of the assembly to “the impudence manifested by certain aristocrats, so degraded that even national justice fails to make them blush”; and the Revolu- tionary Committee, “considering the indifference and derisive conduct of four women and three men, just manifested in this assembly; considering the necessity of punishing an inveterate aristocracy which seems to make sport of corrective acts that bear only (sic)on morals, in a most exemplary manner,” decides that the seven delinquents “shall be put under arrest, and confined in the jail of Ste. Marie.” The three who have shown indifference, are to be confined three months; the four who have shown derision, are to be confined until peace is restored. Besides this, the decree of the National Agent and the minutes of the meeting are to be printed and six thousand impressions struck off at the expense of the signers, “the richest and most ‘suspect’”—a former treasurer of France, a notary, a grocer, the wife of the former commandant of the gendarmerie, a widow and another woman—all, says the agent, “of very solid wealth and aristocracy.” “Bravo!” shouts the assembly, at this witticism; applause is given and it sings “the national hymn.” It is nine o’clock in the evening. This public penitence lasts six hours and the Jacobins of Montargis retire, proud of their work; having punished as a public affront, an old and legal manifestation of respect for the public magistrate; having sent either to the scaffold or to prison, and fined or disgraced the small local e´lite; having degraded to the level of prostitutes and felons under surveillance, reputable women and honorable men who are, by law, most esteemed under a normal system of government and who, under the revolutionary system are, by law, the least so.115

115. The real sentiments and purposes of the Jacobins are well shown at Strasbourg. (“Recueil de Pie`ces, etc.,” i., 77. Public meeting of the municipal body, and speech by Bierlyn, Prairial 25, year II.) “How can the insipid arrogance of these (Strasbourg) people be represented to you, their senseless attachment to the patrician families in their midst, the absurd feuillantism of some and the vile sycophancy of others? How is it, they say, that moneyless inter- 1240 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

IX Two advantages, fortune and education, each involving the other, cause a man to be ranked in the upper class; hence, one or the other, whether each by itself or both together, mark a man out for spoliation, imprisonment, and death. In vain may he have demonstrated his Jacobinism, and Jacobinism of the ultra sort. He´rault-Sećhelles, who voted for murdering the King, who belongs to the Committee of Public Safety, who, in the Upper-Rhine, has just carried out the worst revolutionary ordinances,116 but who has the misfortune to be rich and a man of the world, is led to the scaffold, and those devoted to the guillotine readily explain his condemnation: he is no patriot, how could he be, enjoying an income of two hundred thousand livres, and, moreover, is he not a general-advocate?117 One of these offences is sufficient. Alone and by itself, “opulence,” writes Saint- Just, “is a disgrace,” and, according to him, a man is opulent “who supports fewer children than he has thousands of livres income”; in lopers, scarcely ever heard of before, dare assume to have credit in a town of sensible inhabitants and honest families, from father to son, accustomed to governing and renowned for centuries?”—Ibid., 113. (Speech of the mayor Mouet, Floreál 21, year II.) “Moral purification (in Strasbourg) has become less difficult through the reduction of fortunes and the salutary terror excited among those covetous men. . . . Civilization has encountered mighty obstacles in this great number of well-to-do families who have nourished souvenirs of, and who regret the privileges enjoyed by, these families under the Emperors; they have formed a caste apart from the State; carefully preserving the gothic pictures of their ancestors they were united only amongst themselves. They are excluded from all public functions. Honest artisans, now taken from all pursuits, impel the revolutionary cart with a vigorous hand.” 116. Archives des Affairs E´trange´re`s, vol. 1411. (Instructions for the civil commissioners by He´rault, representative of the people, Colmar, Frimaire 2, year II.) He enumerates the diverse categories of persons who were to be arrested, which categories are so large and numerous as to include nine out of ten of the inhabitants. 117. Dauban, “Paris en 1794,” p. 264. (Report of Pourveyeur, Ventose 29.) “They remark (sic) that one is not (sic) a patriot with twenty-thousand livres (sic) income, and especially a former advocate-general.” The Governed / 1241 effect, among the persons confined as “rich and egoists” we find, according to the very declaration of the Revolutionary Committee, persons with incomes of only four thousand, three thousand seven hundred, one thousand five hundred, and even five hundred livres.118 Moreover, afortune or acompetence, inspires its possessor with antirevolutionary sentiments; consequently, he is for the moment an obstruction; “You are rich,” says Cambon, making use of a personification, “you cherish an opinion, which compels us to be on the defensive; pay then, so as to indemnify us and be thankful for our indulgence which, precautionary and until peace is declared, keeps you under bolt and bar.”119 “Rich, antirevolutionary, and vicious,” according to Robespierre,120 “these three traits depend on each other, and, therefore, the possession of the superfluous is an infallible sign of aristocracy, a visible mark of incivisme” and, as Fouche´ says, “a stamp of reprobation.” “The superfluous is an evident and unwarrantable violation of the people’s rights; every man who has more than his wants call for, cannot use, and therefore he must only abuse.”121 Whoever does not make over to the masses the excess of what is strictly necessary . . . places himself in the rank of ‘suspects.’ Rich egoists, you are the cause of our misfortunes!”122 “You dared to smile contemptuously on the appellation of sans- culottes;123 you have enjoyed much more than your brethren along-

118. De Martel, “Fouche´,” p. 226, 228. For instance, at Nevers, a man of sixty-two years of age, is confined “as rich, egoist, fanatic, doing nothing for the Revolution, aproprietor, andhavingfive hundred livres revenue.” 119. Buchez et Roux, xxvi., 177. (Speech by Cambon, April 27, 1793.) 120. “Who are our enemies? The vicious and the rich.”—“All the rich are vicious, in opposition to the Revolution.” (Notes made by Robespierre in June and July, 1793, and speech by him in the Jacobin Club, May 10, 1793.) 121. Guillon, ii., 355. (Instructions furnished by Collot d’Herbois and Fouche´, Brumaire 26, year II.) 122. De Martel, 117, 181. (Orders of Fouche´, Nevers, August 25 and October 8, 1793.) 123. Guillon.—Archives des Affaires E´trange´re`s, F. 1411. Reports by observers at Paris, Aug. 12 and 13, 1793. “The rich man is the sworn enemy of the Revolution.” 1242 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION side of you dying with hunger; you are not fit to associate with them, and since you have disdained to have them eat at your table, they cast you out eternally from their bosom and condemn you, in turn, to wear the shackles prepared for them by your indifference or your manoeuvres.” In other words, whoever has a good roof over his head, or wears good clothes, man or woman, idler or industrious, noble or commoner, is available for the prison or the guillotine, or, at the very least, he is a taxable and workable serf at pleasure; his capital and accumulations, if not spontaneously and immediately handed over, form a criminal basis and proof of conviction. The orders of arrest are generally issued against him on account of his wealth; in order to drain a town of these offenders one by one, all are penned together according to their resources; at Strasbourg,124 one hundred and ninety-three persons are taxed, each from six thousand to three hundred thousand livres, in all nine million livres, payable within twenty-four hours, by the leading men of each profession or trade, bankers, brokers, merchants, manufacturers, professors, pastors, lawyers, physicians, surgeons, publishers, printers, upholsterers, glass-dealers, rope-makers, master-masons, coffee- house and tavern keepers. And let there be no delay in responding to these orders within the prescribed time! Otherwise the delinquents will be placed in the stocks, on the scaffold, face to face with the guillotine. “One of the best citizens in the Commune, who had steadily manifested his attachment to the Revolution, being unable to realise a sum of two hundred and fifty thousand livres in one day,

124. Archives Nationales, AF., II., 135. (Orders of Saint-Just and Lebas, Strasbourg, Brumaire 10, year II., with the list of names of one hundred and ninety-three persons taxed, together with their respective amounts of taxation.)—Among others, “a widow Franck, banker, two hundred thousand livres.”—Ibid., AF., II., 49. (Documents relating to the revolutionary tax at Belfort.) “Vieillard, Moderate and egoist, ten thousand francs; Keller, rich egoist, seven thousand; as aristocrats, of whom the elder and younger brother are imprisoned, Barthe´le´my the younger ten thousand, Barthe´le´my senior, three thousand five hundred, Barthe´le´my junior seven thousand, citoyenne Barthe´le´my, mother, seven thousand, etc.” The Governed / 1243 was fastened in the pillory.”125 Sometimes the orders affected an entire class, not alone nobles or priests, but all the members of any bourgeois profession or even of any handicraft. At Strasbourg, a little later, “considering that the thirst for gold has always controlled the brewers of the Commune,” they are condemned to two hundred and fifty thousand livres fine, to be paid in three days under penalty of being declared rebels, with the confiscation of their possessions”; then, upon another similar consideration, the bakers and flour dealers are taxed three hundred thousand livres.126 In addition to this, writes Representative Milhaud, at Guyardin,127 “We have ordered the arrest of all bankers, stock-brokers and notaries. . . . All their wealth is confiscated; we estimate the sums under seal at two or three millions in coin, and fifteen or sixteen millions in assignats.” There is the same haul of the net at Paris. By order of Rhuillier, procureur of the department, “seals are placed in the offices of all the bankers, stock-brokers, silversmiths, etc.,” and they themselves are shut up in the Madelonettes; a few days after, that they may pay their drafts, they are let out as a favor, but on condition that they remain under arrest in their homes, at their own expense, under guard of two good sans-culottes.128 In like manner, at Nantes,129 Ly- ons, Marseilles, and Bordeaux, the prisons are filled and the guil-

125. “Recueil de Pie`ces, etc.,” i., 22. (Letter of the Strasbourg authorities.) De Martel, p. 288. (Letter of the authorities of Allier.) “Citizens Sainay, Balome, Heulard, and Lavaleisse were exposed on the scaffold in the most rigorous season for six hours (at Moulins) with this inscription—“bad citizen who has given nothing to the charity-box.” 126. “Recueil de Pie`ces, etc.,” i., 16. 127. Ibid., i., 159. (Orders of Brumaire 15, year II.) 128. Archives Nationales, F7, 2,475. (Minutes of the Revolutionary Com- mittee of the Piques section.) September 9, 1793, at 3 o’clock in the morning, the committee declares that, for its part, “it has arrested twenty-one persons of the category below stated.” October 8, it places two sans-culottes as guards in the houses of all those named below, in the quarter, even those who could not be arrested on account of absence. “It is time to take steps to make sure of all whose indifference (sic) and moderatism is ruining the country.” 129. Berryat Saint-Prix, pp. 36, 38. Carrier declares suspect “merchants and the rich.” 1244 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION lotine works according to the categories. At one time they are “all of the Grand Theátre,” or the principal merchants, “to the number of more than two hundred,” are incarcerated at Bordeaux in one night.130 At another time, Paris provides a haul of farmer-generals or parliamentarians. Carts leave Toulouse conveying its parliamentarians to Paris to undergo capital punishment. At Aix, writes an agent,131 “the guillotine is going to work on former lawyers; a few hundred heads legally taken off will do the greatest good.” And, as new crimes require new terms to designate them, they add to “incivisme” and “moderantisme,” the term “negociantisme,” all of which are easily stated and widespread crimes. “The rich and the merchants,” writes an observer,132 “are here, as elsewhere, born enemies of equality and amateurs of hideous federalism, the only aristocracy that remains to be crushed out.” Barras, with still greater precision, declares in the tribune that, “commerce is usurious, monarchical, and antirevolutionary.”133 Considered in itself, it may be defined as an appeal to bad instincts; it seems a corrupting, incivique, antifra- ternal institution, many Jacobins having proposed either to interdict it to private persons and attribute it wholly to the State, or suppress it along with the arts and manufactures which nourish it, in order that only a population of agriculturists and soldiers may be left in France.134

130. Moniteur, xviii., 641. (Letter of the representatives imprisoned at Bor- deaux, Frimaire 10, year II.) 131. Archives des Aﬀaires E´trange´re`s, vol. 329. (Letter of Brutus, October 3, 1793.) 132. Ibid., vol. 329. (Letter of Charles Duvivier, Lille, Vende´miaire 15, year II.) 133. Speech by Bare`re, Ventose 17, year II. 134. Archives des Aﬀaires E´trange´re`s, vol. 331. Letter by Darbault, political agent, Tarbes, Frimaire 11, year II. (Project for doing away with middle men in trade, brokers, and bankers.) “The profession of a banker is abolished. All holders of public funds are forbidden to sell them under a year and one day after the date of their purchase. No one must be at the same time wholesale and retail dealer, etc.” Projects of this sort are numerous. As to the establishment of a purely agricultural and military Republic, see the papers of Saint-Just, and the correspondence of the Lyons Terrorists. According to them the new France The Governed / 1245

The second advantage and the second crime of the notables is superiority of education. “In all respectable assemblages,” writes a Dutch traveler in 1795,135 “you may be sure that one-half of those present have been in prison.” Add the absent, the guillotined, the exiled, emigre´s, the transported, and note this, that, in the other favored half, those who did not quaff the prison cup had had a foretaste of it for, each expected daily to receive his warrant of arrest; “the worst thing under Robespierre, as several old gentlemen have told me, was that one never knew in the morning whether one would sleep in one’s own bed at night.” There was not a well-bred man who did not live in dread of this; examine the lists of “suspects,” of the arrested, of exiles, of those executed, in any town, district or department,136 and you will see immediately, through their quality and occupations, first, that three-quarters of the cultivated are inscribed on it, and next, that intellectual culture in itself is “suspect.” “They were equally criminal,”137 write the Strasbourg administrators, “whether rich or cultivated....The(Jacobin) municipality declared the University federalist; it proscribed public instruction and, consequently, the professors, regents, and heads of schools, with all instructors, public as well as private, even those provided with needs no silk-weavers. The definite formulas of the system are always found among the Babeuvists. “Let the arts perish, if it must be so, provided real Equality remains.” (Sylvain Marećhal, “Manife´ste des Egaux.”) 135. “Revue Historique,” November, 1878. (Letter of M. Falk, Paris, Oct. 19, 1795.) 136. “Etude sur l’histoire de Grenoble Pendant la Terreur,” by Paul Thi- bault. (List of notorious “suspects” and of ordinary “suspects” for each district in the Ise`re, April and May, 1793.)—Cf. the various lists of Doubs in Sauzay, and of Troyes, in Albert Babeau. 137. “Recueil de Pie`ces, etc.,” i., 19, and the second letter of Frederic Burger, Thermidor 25.—Archives Nationales, AF., II., 111. (Order of Representatives Merlincourt and Amar, Grenoble, April 27, 1793.) “The persons charged with the actual government of and instruction in the public establishments known in this town under the titles of, 1st, Orphelines; 2d, Pre´sentins; 3d, Capuchins; 4th, Le Propagation; 5th, Hospice for female servants . . . are put under arrest and are forbidden to take any part whatever in the functions relating to teaching, education, or instruction.” 1246 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION certificates of civisme, were arrested; . . . every Protestant minister and teacher in the Lower-Rhine department was incarcerated, with a threat of being transferred to the citadel at Besançon.” Fourcroy, in the Jacobin Club at Paris, excusing himself for being a savant, for giving lectures on chemistry, for not devoting his time to the rantings of the Convention and of the clubs, is obliged to declare that he is poor, that he lives by his work, that he supports “his father, a sans-culotte, and his sans-culotte sisters”; although a good republican, he barely escapes, and the same with others like him. “All educated men were persecuted,” he states a month after Ther- midor 9;138 “to have acquaintances, to be literary, sufficed for arrest, as an aristocrat. . . . Robespierre . . . with devilish ingenuity, abused, calumniated and overwhelmed with gall and bitterness all who were devoted to serious studies, all who professed extensive knowledge; . . . he felt that cultivated men would never bend the knee to him.... Instruction was paralysed; they wanted to burn the libraries.... Must I tell you that at the very door of your assembly errors in orthography are seen? Nobody learns how to read or write.” At Nantes, Carrier boasts of having “dispersed the literary chambers,” while in his enumeration of the evil-minded he adds “to the rich and merchants,” “all gens d’esprit.”139 Sometimes on the turnkey’s register we read that such a one was confined “for being clever and able to do mischief,” another for saying “good-day, gentlemen, to the municipal councillors.”140 Politeness, like other evidences of a good education, becomes a stigma; good-breeding seems not only a remnant of the ancient re´gime, but a revolt against new institutions; now, as the governing principle of these is, theoretically, abstract equality and, practically, the ascendency of the low class, there is an uprising against the established order of things when this consists in repudiating coarse companions, familiar oaths, and the indecent ex-

138. Moniteur, xxi., 645. (Session of the Convention, Fructidor 14, year II.) 139. Moniteur, xviii., 51. (Letter by Carrier, Brumaire 17, year II.)—Berryat Saint-Prix, pp. 36 and 38. 140. Ibid., 140. (The imprisoned at Brest.) The Governed / 1247 pressions of the common workman and the soldier. In sum, Jaco- binism, through its doctrines and deeds, its dungeons and executioners, proclaims to the nation over which it holds the rod:141 “Be rude, that you may become republican, return to barbarism that you may show the superiority of your genius; abandon the customs of civilised people that you may adopt those of galley slaves; mar your language with a view to improve it; use that of the populace under penalty of death. Spanish mendicants treat each other in a digniﬁed way; they show respect for humanity although in tatters. We, on the contrary, order you to assume our rags, our patois, our terms of intimacy. Don the carmagnole and tremble; become rustics and dolts, and prove your civism by the absence of all education.” Edu- cation,142 amiable qualities, gentle ways, a mild physiognomy, bodily graces, culture (literary), all natural endowments are henceforth “the inevitable causes of proscription.” One is self-condemned if one has not converted oneself into a sans-culotte and proletaire, in accordance with aﬀected modes, air, language, and dress. Hence, “through a hypocritical contest hitherto unknown men who were not vicious deemed it necessary to appear so.” And worse still, “one was even afraid to be oneself; one changed one’s name, one went in disguise, wearing a vulgar and tasteless attire; everybody shrunk from being what he was.” For, according to the Jacobin programme, all French- men must be recast in one uniform mould; they must be taken when small; all must be subject to the same enforced education, that of a mechanic, rustic, and soldier’s boy. Be warned, ye adults, by the guillotine, reform yourselves beforehand according to the prescribed pattern! No more costly, elegant or delicate crystal or gold vases! All are shattered or are still being shattered. Henceforth, only common ware is to be tolerated or ordered to be made, all alike in substance, shape, and color, manufactured by thousands at wholesale

141. Mallet-Dupan, “Correspondance Politique,” introduction, p. viii. (Hamburg, 1796.) 142. Portalis, “De la Re´vision des Jugements,” 1795. (Saint-Beuve, “Cau- series du Lundi,” v., 452.) 1248 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION and in public factories, for the common and plain uses of rural and military life; all original and superior forms are to be rejected. “The masters of the day,” writes Daunou,143 “deliberately aimed their sword thrusts at superior talent, at energetic characters; they mowed down as well as they could in so short a time,” the flower and hope of the nation. In this respect they were consistent; equality-socialism allows none but automatic citizens, mere tools in the hands of the State, all alike, of a rudimentary fashion and easily managed, without personal conscience, spontaneity, curiosity, or integrity; whoever has cultivated himself, whoever has thought for himself and exercised his own will and judgment rises above the level and shakes off the yoke; to obtain consideration, to be intelligent and honorable, to belong to the e´lite, is to be antirevolutionary. In the popular club of Bourg-en-Bresse, Representative Javogues declared that “the Re- public could be established only on the corpse of the last of the honest men.”144 X On one side, the e´lite of France, deprived of common rights, in exile, in prison, under pikes, and on the scaffold, almost every person of rank, fortune, family, and merit, those eminent for intelligence, culture, talent, and virtue; on the other side, those above all rights, possessing every office and omnipotent in the irresponsible dictatorship, in the despotic proconsulships, in the sovereignty of justice, a horde of the outcasts of all classes, the parvenus of fanaticism,

143. Granier du Cassagnac, “Histoire du Directoire,” i., 107. (Trial of Ba- boeuf, extracts from Buonarotti, programme des “Egaux.”) All literature in favor of Revelation must be prohibited: children are to be brought up in common; the child will no longer bear his father’s name; no Frenchman shall leave France; towns shall be demolished, chateaux torn down and books proscribed; all Frenchmen shall wear one special costume; armies shall be commanded by civil magistrates; the dead shall be prosecuted and obtain burial only according to the favorable decision of the court; no written document shall be published without the consent of the government, etc.”—Cf. “Les Me´ditations de Saint- Just.” 144. Guillon, ii., 174. The Governed / 1249 charlatanism, imbecility, and crime; often, through the coupling together of these personages, one sees the contrast between the governed and the governors in such strong relief that one almost regards it as calculated and arranged beforehand; the colors and brush of the painter, rather than words, are necessary to represent it. In the western section of Paris, in the prisons of the rue de Se`vres145 the prisoners consist of the most distinguished personages of the Quar- tier St. Germain, prelates, officers, grand-seigniors, and noble ladies—Monseigneur de Clermont-Tonnerre, Monseigneur de Crussol d’Amboise, Monseigneur de Hersaint, Monseigneur de St. Simon, bishop of Agde, the Comtesse de Narbonne-Pelet, the Duchesse de Choiseul, the Princesse de Chimay, the Comtesse de Raymond- Narbonne and her daughter, two years of age, in short, the flower of that refined society which Europe admired and imitated and which, in its exquisite perfection, equalled or surpassed all that Greece, Rome, and Italy had produced in brilliancy, polish, and amiability. Contrast with these the arbiters of their lives and deaths, the potentates of the same quarter who issue the warrants of arrest against them, who pen them in to speculate on them, and who revel at their expense and before their eyes: these consist of the members of the revolutionary committee of the Croix-Rouge, the eighteen convicted rogues and debauchees previously described,146 ex-cab- drivers, porters, cobblers, street-messengers, stevedores, bankrupts, counterfeiters, former or future jail-birds, all the police or hospital riff-raff. At the other end of Paris, in the east, in the tower of the Temple, separated from his sister and torn from his mother, still lives the Dauphin: no one in France merits any pity or respect. For, if there is a France, it is owing to the thirty-five military chiefs and crowned kings of which he is the last direct scion; without their thousand years of hereditary rule and preserving policy the intruders into the Tuileries who have just profaned their tombs at St. Denis

145. “Me´moires sur les Prisons,” i., 211, ii., 187.—Beaulieu, “Essais,” v., 320. “The prisons became the rendezvous of polite society.” 146. “The Revolution,” vol. 3, ch. 6, ante. 1250 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION and thrown their bones into a common ditch,147 would not be Frenchmen. At this moment, were suffrages free, the immense majority of the people, nineteen Frenchmen out of twenty, would recognise this innocent and precious child for their King, the heir of the race to which they owed their nationality and patrimony, a child of eight years, of rare precociousness, as intelligent as he is good, and of a gentle and winning expression. Look at the other figure alongside of him, his fist raised and with insults on his lips, with a hang-dog face, bloated with brandy, titular governor, official preceptor, and absolute master of this child, the cobbler Simon, malignant, foul-mouthed, mean in every way, forcing him to become intoxicated, starving him, preventing him from sleeping, thrashing him, and who, obeying orders, instinctively visits on him all his brutality and corruption that he may pervert, degrade, and deprave him.148 In the Palais de Justice, midway between the tower of the Temple and the prison in the rue de Se`vres, an almost similar contrast, transposing the merits and demerits, daily brings together in opposition the innocent with the vile; and there are days when the contrast, still more striking, seats criminals on the judges’ bench and judges on the bench of criminals. On the first and second of Floreál, the old representatives and trustees of liberty under the monarchy, twenty-five magistrates of the Paris and Toulouse parliaments, many of them being eminent intellects of the highest culture and noblest character, embracing the greatest historical names of the French magistracy—Etienne Pasquier, Lefe`vre d’Ormesson, Mole´de Champlatreux, De Lamoignon, de Malesherbes—are sent to the

147. Chateaubriand: “Geńie du Christianisme,” part 4, book ii., notes on the exhumations at St. Denis taken by a monk, an eye-witness. Destruction, August 6 and 8, 1793, of fifty-one monuments. Exhumation of bodies, October 12 and 25, 1793.—Camille Boursier, “Essai sur la Terreur en Anjou,” p. 223. (Testimony of Bordier-Langlois.) “I saw the head of our good Duke Reńe´, deposited in the chapel of St. Bernardin, in the Corde´liers at Angers, tossed like a ball by some laborers from one to the other.” 148. R. Chantelauze, “Louis XVII.” (according to unpublished documents). This book, free of declamation and composed according to the critical method, sets this question at rest. The Governed / 1251 guillotine149 by the judges and juries familiar to us, assassins or brutes who do not take the trouble, or who have not the capacity, to give proper color to their sentences. M. de Malesherbes exclaims, after reading his indictment, “If that were only common-sense!” In effect those who pronounce judgment are, by their own admission, “substantial jurymen, good sans-culottes, men of nature.” And such a nature! One of these, Trenchard, an Auvergnat carpenter, portrays himself to the life in the following note addressed to his wife before the trial comes on: “If you are not alone, and your companion can work, you may come, my dear, and see the twenty-four gentlemen condemned, all of them former presidents or councillors in the parliaments of Toulouse and Paris. I recommend you to bring something along with you (to eat), it will be three hours before we finish. I embrace you, my dear friend and wife.”150 In the same court, Lavoisier, the founder and organiser of chemistry, the great discov- erer, and condemned to death, asks for a reprieve of his sentence for a fortnight to complete an experiment, and the president, Cof- finhal, another Auvergnat, replies, “The Republic has no need of savants.”151 And it has no need of poets. The first poet of the epoch, Andre´ Cheńier, the delicate and superior artist who reopens antique sources of inspiration and starts the modern current, is guillotined; we possess the original manuscript indictment of his examination, a veritable master-piece of gibberish and barbarism, of which a full copy is necessary to convey an idea of its “turpitudes of sense and orthography.”152 The reader may there see, if he pleases, a man of

149. Wallon, “Histoire du Tribunal Re´volutionnaire,” iii., 285.—Campar- don, “His. du Tribunal Re´volutionnaire de Paris,” i., 306. Brochet, one of the jury, was formerly a lackey. 150. The above simply conveys the sense of the document, which is here given in the original: “Si tu n’e`st pas toute seulle et que le compagnion soit a travailier tu peus ma chaire amie venir voir juger 24 mesieurs tous si-deven president on conselier au parlement de Paris et de Toulouse. Je t’ ainvite a prendre quelque choge aven de venir parcheque nous naurons pas ﬁni de 3 hurres. Je tembrase ma chaire amie et epouge.” 151. Wallon, iii., 402. 152. Campardon, ii., 350.—Cf. “Causeries du Lundi,” ii., 164. Saint-Beuve’s 1252 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION genius delivered up to brutes, coarse, angry, despotic animals, who listen to nothing, who comprehend nothing, who do not even understand terms in common use, who stumble through their queries, and who, to ape intelligence, draggle their pens along in supreme stupidity. The overthrow is complete. France, subject to the revolutionary government, resembles a human being forced to walk with his head down and to think with his feet.

comment on the examination. “Andre´ Cheńier, natife de Constentinoble . . . son fre`re vice-consulte en Espagne. “Remark the questions on his health and correspondence and the cock-and-bull story about the ‘maison a` cotte´.’”—They ask him where his servant was on the 10th of August, 1792, and he replies that he could not tell. “A lui represente´ qualepoque de cette journeé que touts les bons citoyent ny gnoroit point leurs existence et quayant enttendue batte la geńe´rale cettait un motife de plus pour reconnoitre tous les bons citoyent et le motife au quelle il setait employeé pour sauveé laRepublique. A repondue quil avoit dite l’exacte ve´riteé. A lui demandeé quel etoit dite l’exacte veriteé—a repondue que cetoit toutes ce qui etoit cy dessue.” 9 CHAPTER II =

Subsistences— I. Complexity of the economical operation by which articles of prime necessity reach the consumer—Conditions of the operation—Available advances—Cases in which these are not available—Case of the holder of these being no longer disposed to make them— II. Economical effect of the Jacobin policy from 1789 to 1793—Attacks on property—Direct attacks—Jacqueries, effective confiscations and proclamation of the socialistic creed—Indirect attacks—Bad administration of the public funds—Transformation of taxation and insignificance of the returns—Increased expenditures—The War-budget and subsistences after 1793—Paper-money—Enormous issues of it—Credit of the assignats run down—Ruin of public creditors and of all private credit—Rate of interest during the Revolution—Stoppage of trade and industry—Bad management of the new land-owners—Decrease of productive labor—Only the small rural land-owner works advantageously—Why he refuses assignats—He is no longer obliged to sell his produce at once—Dearness of food—It reaches a market with difficulty and in small quantities—The towns buy at a high price and sell at a low one— Food becomes dearer and famine begins—Prices during the first six months of 1793— III. First and general cause of privations—The socialistic principle of the revolutionary government—Measures against large as well as small properties—Dispossession of all remaining corporations, enormous issues of paper- money, forced rates of its circulation, forced loans, requisitions of coin and plate, revolutionary taxes, suppression of special organs of labor on a large scale— Fresh measures against small proprietorship—The Maximum, requisitions for food and labor—Situation of the shopkeeper, cultivator and laborer—Effect of the measures on labor on a small scale—Stoppage of selling— IV. Famine— In the provinces—At Paris—People standing in lines under the Revolutionary government to obtain food—Its quality—Distress and chagrin— V. Revolution- ary remedies—Rigor against the refractory—Decrees and orders rendering the

1253 1254 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

State the only depositary and distributor of food—Efforts made to establish a conscription of labor—Discouragement of the Peasant—He refuses to cultivate— Decrees and orders compelling him to harvest—His stubbornness—Cultivators imprisoned by thousands—The Convention is obliged to set them at liberty— Fortunate circumstances which save France from extreme famine— VI. Relax- ation of the Revolutionary system after Thermidor—Repeal of the Maximum— New situation of the peasant—He begins cultivation again—Requisition of grain by the State—The cultivator indemnifies himself at the expense of private persons—Multiplication and increasing decline of assignats—The classes who have to bear the burden—Famine and misery during year III. and the first half of year IV.—In the country—In the small towns—In large towns and cities— VII. Famine and misery at Paris—Steps taken by the government to feed the capital—Monthly cost to the Treasury—Cold and hunger in the winter of 1794– 1795—Quality of the bread—Daily rations diminished—Suffering, especially of the populace—Excessive physical suffering, despair, suicides, and deaths from exhaustion in 1795—Government dinners and suppers—Number of lives lost through want and war—Socialism as applied, and its effects on comfort, well- being and mortality.

SUPPOSE a man forced to walk with his feet in the air and his head downward. By using extremely energetic measures he might, for a while, be made to maintain this unwholesome attitude, and certainly at the expense of a bruised or broken skull; it is very probable, moreover, that he would use his feet convulsively and kick terribly. But it is certain that if this course were persisted in, the man would experience intolerable pain and finally sink down; the blood would stop circulating and suffocation would ensue; the trunk and limbs would suffer as much as the head, and the feet would become numb and inert.Such is about thehistory of Franceunderits Jacobin pedagogues; their rigid theory and persistent brutality impose on the nation an attitude against nature; consequently she suffers, and each day suffers more and more; the paralysis increases; the functions get out of order and cease to act, while the last and principal one,1 the most urgent, namely, physical support and the daily nour-

1. On the other more complicated functions, such as the maintenance of The Governed / 1255 ishment of the living individual, is so badly accomplished, against so many obstacles, interruptions, uncertainties, and deficiencies, that the patient, reduced to extreme want, asks if tomorrow will not be worse than today, and whether his semistarvation will not end in complete starvation. Nothing, apparently, is simpler, and yet really more complex, than the physiological process by which, in the organised body, the proper restorative food flows regularly to the spot where it is needed, among the innumerably diverse and distant cells. In like manner, nothing is simpler at the first glance, and yet more complex, than the economical process by which, in the social organism, subsistences and other articles of prime necessity, flow of themselves to all points of the territory where they are needed and within reach of each consumer. It is owing to this that, in the social body as in the organised body, the terminal act presupposes many others anterior to and coo¨rdinate with it, a series of elaborations, a succession of metamorphoses, one elimination and transportation after another, mostly invisible and obscure, but all indispensable, and all of them carried out by infinitely delicate organs, so delicate that, under the slightest pressure, they get out of order, so dependent on each other that an injury to one affects the operations of the rest, and thus suppresses or perverts the final result to which, nearly or remotely, they all contribute. Consider, for a moment, these precious economical organs and their mode of operation. In any tolerably civilised community that has lasted for any length of time, they consist, first in rank, of those who possess wealth arising from the accumulation of old and recent savings, that is to say, those who possess any sort of security, large or small, in money, in notes, or in kind, whatever its form, whether roads, canals, harbors, public buildings, lighting, cleanliness, hygiene, superior secondary and primary education, hospitals, and other asylums, highway security, the suppression of robbery and kindred crimes, the destruction of wolves, etc., see Rocquain, “Etat de la France au 18 Brumaire,” and the “Statistiques des De´partements,” published by the pre´fets, from years IX. to XIII.—These branches of the service were almost entirely overthrown; the reader will see the practical results of their suppression in the documents referred to. 1256 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION in lands, buildings or factories, in canals, shipping or machinery, in cattle or tools, as well as in every species of merchandise or produce. And see what use they make of these: each person, reserving what he needs for daily consumption, devotes his available surplus to some enterprise, the capitalist his ready money, the real-estate owner his land and tenements, the farmer his cattle, seed, and farming implements, the manufacturer his mills and raw material, the common-carrier his vessels, vehicles, and horses, the trader his warehouses and stock of goods for the year, and the retailer his shop and supplies for a fortnight, to which everybody, the agriculturist, merchant, and manufacturer, necessarily adds his cash on hand, the deposits in his bank for paying the monthly salaries of his clerks, and at the end of the week, the wages of his workmen. Otherwise, it would beimpossibleto till thesoil, to build, to fabricate,to transport, to sell; however useful the work might be, it could not be perfected, or even begun, without a preliminary outlay in money or in kind; in every enterprise, the crop presupposes labor and seed- planting; if I want to dig a well I am obliged to hire a pick and the arms to wield it, or, in other terms, to make certain advances. But theseadvancesaremadeonly on two conditions: first, that hewho makes them is able to make them, that is to say, that heis thepos- sessor of an available surplus; and next, being the owner of this surplus, that he desires to makethem,with this proviso that hemay gain instead of losing by the operation. If I am wholly or partially ruined, if my tenants and farmers do not pay their rent,2 if my lands or goods do not bring half theirvaluein themarket,if thenet proceeds of my possessions are threatened with confiscation or pillage, not only have I fewer securities to dispose of, but, again, I become more and more uneasy about the future; over and above my immediate consumption I have to provide for a prospective con-

2. “St. John deCreˆvecoeur,” by Robert de Creˆvecoeur, p. 216. (Letter of Mdlle. de Gouves, July, 1800.) “We are negotiating for the payment of, at least, the arrearages since 1789 on the Arras property.” (M. de Gouves and his sisters had not emigrated, and yet they had had no income from their property for ten years.) The Governed / 1257 sumption; I add to my reserve stores especially of coin and provisions; I hold on to the remnant of my securities for myself and those who belong to me; they are no longer available and I can no longer make loans or enter upon my enterprise. And, on the other hand, if the loan or enterprise, instead of bringing me a profit, brings me loss; if the law is powerless or fails to do me justice and adds extra to ordinary risks; if my work once perfected is to become the prey of the government, of brigands, or of whoever pleases to seize it; if I am compelled to surrender my wares and merchandise at one-half their cost; if I cannot produce, put in store, transport, or sell except by renouncing all profit and with the certainty of not getting back my advances, I will no longer make loans or enter upon any undertaking whatever. Such is thedisposition and situation of peopleableto makeadvances in anarchical times, when the State falters and no longer performs its customary service, when property is no longer ade- quately protected by the public force, when jacqueries overspread the country and insurrections break out in the towns, when chateaux are sacked, archives burnt, shops broken into, provisions carried off and transportation is arrested, when rents and leases are no longer paid, when the courts dare no longer convict, when the constable no longer dares serve a warrant, when the gendarmerie holds back, when the police fails to act, when repeated amnesties shield robbers and incendiaries, when a revolution brings into local and central power dishonest and impoverished adventurers hostile to every one that possesses property of any kind. Such is the disposition and situation of all possessors of advances in socialistic times; when the usurping State, instead of protecting private property, destroys or seizes it; when it takes for itself the property of many of the great corporations; when it suppresses legally established credits without indemnity; when, by dint of expenditure and the burdens this creates, it becomes insolvent; when, through its paper-money and forced circulation, it annuls indebtedness in the hands of the creditor, and allows the debtor to go scot free; when it arbitrarily seizes current capital; when it makes forced loans and requisitions; when its tax on 1258 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION productions surpasses the cost of production and on merchandise the profit on its sale; when it constrains the manufacturer to manufacture at a loss and the merchant to sell at a loss; when its principles, judged by its acts, indicate a progression from partial to a universal confiscation. Through a certain affiliation, every phase of evil engenders the evil which follows, as may be said of a poison the effects of which spread or strike in, each function, affected by the derangement of one contiguous to it, becoming disturbed in its turn. The perils, mutilation, and suppression of property diminish available securities more and more, also the courage that risks them, that is to say, themodeof, and disposition to, makeadvances; through a lack of advances, useful enterprises languish, die out or are not undertaken; consequently, the production, supply, and sale of indispensable articles slacken, become interrupted, and cease altogether. There is less soap and sugar and fewer candles at the grocery, less wood and coal in the wood-yard, fewer oxen and sheep in the markets, less meat at the butcher’s, less grain and flour at the corn-exchange, and less bread at the bakeries. As articles of prime necessity are scarce they become dear; as people contend for them their dearness increases; the rich man ruins himself in the struggle to get hold of them, while the poor man never gets any, the first of all necessities becoming unattainable.

II Such is the misery existing in France at the moment of the completion of theJacobin conquest,and of which theJacobins arethe authors; for, for the past four years, they have waged systematic war against property. From below, they have provoked, excused and amnestied, or tolerated and authorised, all the popular attacks on property,3 countless insurrections, seven successive jacqueries, some of them so extensive as to cover eight or ten departments at the same time, the last one let loose on all France, that is to say, universal and lasting brigandage, the arbitrary rule of paupers, vagabonds,

3. Cf. “TheRevolution,” vol. i., 254–261, 311–352; vol. ii., 234–272. The Governed / 1259 and ruffians; every species of robbery, from a refusal to pay rents and leases to the sacking of chateaux and ordinary domiciles, even to the pillage of markets and granaries, free scope to mobs which, under a political pretext, tax and ransom the “suspects” of all classes at pleasure, not alone the noble and the rich but the peaceable farmer and well-to-do artisan, in short, reverting back to the state of nature, to the dominion of appetites and lusts, and to a savage, primitive life in the forests. Only a short time before, in the month of Feb- ruary, 1793, through Marat’s recommendation, and with the conniv- anceof theJacobin municipality, theParis riff-raff had brokeninto twelve hundred groceries and divided on the spot, either gratis or at the price it fixed, sugar, soap, brandy, and coffee. From above, they had undertaken, carried out, and multiplied the worst assaults on property, vast spoliations of every sort—the suppression of hundreds of millions of incomes and the confiscation of billions of capital; the abolition without indemnity of tithes and quitrents; the expropriation of the property of the clergy, of emigre´s, that of the order of Malta, that of the pious, charitable, and educational associations and endowments, even laic; seizures of plate, of the sacred vessels and precious ornaments of the churches. And, since they are in power, others still more vast; after August 10, their newspapers in Paris and their commissioners in the departments,4 preached “the agrarian law, the holding of all property in common, the levelling of fortunes, the right of each fraction of the sovereignty” to help itself by force to all food and investments at the expense of the owner, to hunt down the rich, proscribe “land-owners, leading merchants, financiers, and all men in possession of whatever is superfluous.” Rousseau’s dogma that “the fruit belongs to everybody and the soil to no one” is established at an early date as a maxim of State in the Convention, while in the deliberations of the sovereign assembly socialism, openly avowed, becomes ascendant, and, afterwards, supreme. According to Robespierre,5 “whatever is essential

4. Cf. “TheRevolution,” ii., 273–276. 5. Buchez et Roux, xxii., 178. (Speech by Robespierre in the Convention, 1260 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION to preserve life is common property to society at large; only the excess may be given up to individuals and surrendered to commercial enterprise.” With still greater solemnity, the pontiff of the sect, in the Declaration of Rights which, unanimously adopted by the all- powerful Jacobin club, is to serve as the corner-stone of the new institutions, pens the following formulae big with their consequences:6 “Society must provide for the support of all its members. The aid required by indigence is a debt of the rich to the poor. The right of property is limited,” and applies “only to that portion which the law guarantees. Every ownership, any trade, which bears prej- udicially on the existence of our fellow-creatures is necessarily illicit and immoral.” The sense of this is clear, and yet more: the Jacobin populace, having decided that the possession of, and trade in, groceries was prejudicial to its existence, the grocers’ monopoly is, therefore, immoral and illicit, and consequently, it pillages their shops. Undertheruleof thepopulaceand of the“Mountain,” the Convention applies the theory, seizes capital wherever it can be found, and notifies the poor, in its name, “that they will find in the pocket-books of the rich whatever they need to supply their wants.”7 Over and above these striking and direct attacks, an indirect and

December 2, 1792.)—Mallet-Dupan, “Me´moires,” i., 400. About the same date, “a deputation from the department of Gard expressly demands a sum of two hundred and fifty millions, as indemnity to the cultivator, for grain which it calls national property.” This fearful sum of two hundred and fifty millions, they add, is only a fictive advance, placing at its disposal real and purely national wealth, not belonging in full ownership to any distinct member of the social body any more than the pernicious metals minted as current coin.” 6. Buchez et Roux, xxvi., 95. (Declaration of Rights presented in the Jacobin Club, April 21, 1793.) 7. Decrees in every commune establishing a tax on the rich in order to render the price of bread proportionate to wages, also in each large city to raise an army of paid sans-culottes, that will keep aristocrats under their pikes, April 5–7.—Decree ordering the forced loan of a billion on the rich, May 20–25.— Buchez et Roux, xxv., 156. (Speech by Charles, March 27.—Gorsas, “Courrier des De´partments,” No. for May 15, 1793. (Speech by Simon in the club at Annecy.)—Speech by Guffroy at Chartres, and of Chalier and associates at Lyons, etc. The Governed / 1261 secret attack, but still more significant, slowly undermines the basis of all present and future property. State affairs are everybody’s affairs, and, when the State ruins itself, everybody is ruined along with it. For, it is the country’s greatest debtor and its greatest creditor, while there is no debtor so free of seizure and no creditor so absorbing, since, making the laws and possessing the force, it can, firstly, repudiate indebtedness and send away the fund-holder with empty hands, and next, increase taxation and empty the taxpayer’s pocket of his last penny. There is no greater menace to private fortunes than the bad administration of the public fortune. Now, under the pressure of Jacobin principles and of the Jacobin faction, the trustees of France have administered as if they purposely meant to ruin their ward; every known means for wasting a fortune have been brought into play by them. In the first place, they have deprived him of three-fourths of his income. To please the people and enforce the theory, the taxes on articles consumed, on salt, with the excise subsidies and the octroi duties on liquors, meat, tobacco, leather, and gunpowder, have been abolished, while the new imposts substituted for the old ones, slowly fixed, badly apportioned and raised with difficulty have brought in no returns; on the 1st of February, 1793,8 the Treasury had received on the real and personal taxation of 1791, but one hundred and fifty millions instead of three hundred millions; on the same taxes for 1792, instead of three hundred millions it had obtained nothing at all. At this date, and during the four years of the Revolution, the total arrears of taxation amounted to six hundred and thirty-two millions—a bad debt that can hardly be recovered, and, in fact, it is already reduced one-half, since, even if the debtor could and was disposed to pay, he would pay in assignats, which, at this time, were at a discount of fifty per cent. In the second place,

8. Report by Minister Clavie´res, February 1, 1793, p. 27.—Cf. Report of M. de Montesquiou, September, 9, 1791, p. 47. “During the first twenty-six months of the Revolution the taxes brought in three hundred and fifty-six millions less than they should naturally have done.”—There is the same deficit in the receipts of the towns, especially on account of the abolition of the octroi. Paris, under this head, loses ten millions per annum. 1262 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION the new managers had quadrupled the public expenditure.9 What with the equipment and excursions of the National Guards, federations, patriotic festivals, and parades, the writing, printing, and publication of innumerable documents, reimbursements for suppressed offices, the installation of new administrations, aid to the indigent and to its charity workshops, purchases of grain, indemnities to millers and bakers, it was under the necessity of providing for the cost of the universal demolition and reconstruction. Now, the State had, for the most part, defrayed all these expenses. At the end of April, 1793, it had already advanced to the city of Paris alone, one hundred and ten million francs, while the Commune, insolvent, kept constantly extorting fresh millions.10 By thesideof this gulf, the Jacobins had dug another, larger still, that of the war. For the first half of the year 1793 they threw into this pit first, one hundred and forty millions, then one hundred and sixty millions, and then one hundred and ninety million francs; in the second six months of 1793 the war and subsistences swallowed up three hundred million francs per month, and the more they threw into the two gulfs the deeper they became.11

9. Report by Cambon, Pluviose 3, year III. “The Revolution and the war have cost in four years five thousand three hundred and fifty millions above the ordinary expenses.” (Cambon, in his estimates, purposely exaggerates ordinary expenses of the monarchy. According to Necker’s budget, the expenditure in 1759 was fixed at five hundred and thirty-one millions and not, as Cambon states, seven hundred millions. This raises the expenses of the Revolution and of the war to seven thousand one hundred and twenty-one millions for the four and a half years, and hence to one thousand five hundred and eighty-one millions per annum, that is to say, to triple the ordinary expenses.) The expenses of the cities are therefore exaggerated like those of the State and for the same reasons. 10. Schmidt, “Pariser Zusta¨nde,” i. 93, 96. “During the first half of the year 1789 there were seventeen thousand men at twenty sous a day in the national workshops at Montmartre. In 1790, there were nineteen thousand. In 1791, thirty-onethousand costing sixty thousand francs a day. In 1790, theState expends seventy-five millions for maintaining the price of bread in Paris at eleven sous for four pounds.—Ibid., 113. During thefirst six months of 1793 the State pays the Paris bakers about seventy-five thousand francs a day to keep bread at three sous the pound. 11. Ibid., i., 139–144. The Governed / 1263

Naturally, when there is no collecting a revenue and expenses go on increasing, one is obliged to borrow on one’s resources, and piecemeal, as long as these last. Naturally, when ready money is not to be had on the market, one draws notes and tries to put them in circulation; one pays tradesmen with written promises in the future, and thus exhausts one’s credit. Such is paper-money and the assignats, the third and most efficient way for wasting a fortune and which theJacobins did not fail to makethemost of. UndertheConstituent Assembly, through a remnant of good sense and good faith, efforts were at first made to guarantee the fulfillment of written promises; the holders of assignats were almost secured by a first mortgage on the national possessions, which had been given to them coupled with an engagement not to raise more money on this guarantee, as well as not to issueany moreassignats. 12 But they did not keep faith. They rendered the security afforded by this mortgage inoperative and, as all chances of repayment disappeared, its value declined. Then, on the 27th of April, 1792, according to the report of Cambon, there begins an unlimited issue; according to the Jacobin financiers, nothing more is necessary to provide for the war than to turn the wheel and grind out promises to pay: in June, 1793, assignats to the amount of four billion three hundred and twenty millions have already been manufactured, and everybody sees that the mill must grind faster. This is why the guarantee, vainly increased, no longer suffices for the monstrous, disproportionate mortgage; it exceeds all limits, covers nothing, and sinks through its own weight. At Paris, the assignat of one hundred francs is worth in specie, in the month of June, 1791, eighty-five francs, in January, 1792, only sixty-six francs, in March, 1792, only fifty-three francs; rising in value at the end of the Legislative Assembly, owing to fresh confiscations, it falls back to fifty-five francs in January, 1793, to forty-seven francs in

12. Decree of September 27, 1790. “The circulation of assignats shall not extend beyond one billion two hundred millions. . . . Those which are paid in shall be destroyed and there shall be no other creation or emission of them, without a decree of the Corps Legislatif, always subject to this condition that they shall not exceed the value of the national possessions nor obtain a circulation aboveonebillion two hundredmillions. 1264 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

April, to forty francs in June, to thirty-three francs in July.13 Thus are the creditors of the State defrauded of a third, one-half, and two-thirds of their investment, and not alone the creditors of the State but every other creditor, since every debtor has the right to discharge his obligations by paying his debts in assignats. Enumer- ate, if possible, all who are defrauded of private claims, all money- lenders, and stock-holders who have invested in any private enterprise, either manufacturing or mercantile, those who have loaned money on contracts of longer or shorter date, all sellers of real- estate, with stipulations in their deeds for more or less remote payment, all land-owners who have leased their grounds or buildings for a term of years, all holders of annuities on private bond or on an estate, all manufacturers, merchants and farmers who have sold their wares, goods, and produce on time, all clerks on yearly salaries, and even all other employees, underlings, servants, and workmen receiving fixed salaries for a specified term. There is not one of these persons whosecapital, or incomepayablein assignats, is not at once crippled in proportion to the decline in value of assignats, so that not only the State falls into bankruptcy but likewise every creditor in France, legally bankrupt along with it through its fault. In such a situation how can any enterprise be commenced or maintained? Who dares take a risk, especially when disbursements are large and returns remote? Who dares lend on long credits? If loans arestill madetheyarenot for a yearbut for a month, while the interest which, before the Revolution was six, five, or even four per cent. per annum, is now “two per cent. a month on securities.” It soon runs up higher and, at Paris and Strasbourg we see it rising, as in India and the Barbary States, to four, five, six, and even seven per cent. a month.14 What holder of raw material, or of manufactured

13. Schmidt, ibid., i., 104, 138, 144. 14. Felix Rocquain, “L’Etat de la France au 18 Brumaire,” p. 240. (Report by Lacueé, year IX.)—Reports by pre´fets under the Consulate. (Reports of Laumont, pre´fet of the Lower-Rhine, year X.; of Colchen, pre´fet of the Moselle, year XI., etc.)—Schmidt, “Pariser Zusta¨nde,” iii., 205. (“The rate of interest during the Revolution was from four to five per cent. per month; in 1796 from The Governed / 1265 goods, would daremakeentrieson his books as usual and allow his customer the indispensable credit of three months? What large manufacturer would presume to make goods up, what wholesale merchant would careto makeshipments, what man of wealthor with a competence would build, drain, and construct dams and dykes, repair, or even maintain them with the positive certainty of delays in getting back only one-half his advances and with the increasing certainty of getting nothing? Large establishments fail from year to year in all directions; after the ruin of the nobles and the departure of wealthy foreigners, every craft dependent on luxurious tastes, thoseof Paris and Lyons, which arethestandard for Europe,all the manufactories of rich stuffs, and furniture, and other artistic, elegant, and fashionable articles; after the insurrection of the blacks in St. Domingo, and other troubles in the West Indies, the great colonial trade and remarkable prosperity of Nantes and Bordeaux, including all the industrial enterprises by which the production, transportation, and circulation of cotton, sugar, and coffee were affected;15 after the declaration of war with England, the shipping interest; after the declaration of war with all Europe, the commerce of the continent.16 six to eight per cent. per month, the lowest rate being two per cent. per month with security.”) 15. Arthur Young, “Voyage en France,” ii., 360. (Fr. translation.) “I regard Bordeaux as richer and more commercial than any city in England except London.” 16. Ibid., ii., 357. The statistics of exports in France in 1787 give three hundred and forty-nine millions, and imports three hundred and forty millions (leaving out Lorraine, Alsace, the three Evećhe´s, and the West Indies).—Ibid., 360. In 1786 the importations from the West Indies amounted to one hundred and seventy-four millions, of which St. Domingo furnished one hundred and thirty-one millions; the exports to the West Indies amounted to sixty-four millions, of which St. Domingo had forty-four millions. These exchanges were effected by five hundred and sixty-nine vessels carrying one hundered and sixty- two thousand tons, of which Bordeaux provided two hundred and forty-six vessels, carrying seventy-five thousand tons.—On the ruin of manufactures cf. thereportsof pre ´fets in the year X., with details from each department.— Arthur Young (ii., 444) states that the Revolution affected manufactures more seriously than any other branch of industry. 1266 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Failure after failure, an universal crash, utter cessation of extensively organised and productive labor: instead of productive industries, I see none now but destructive industries, those of the agricultural and commercial vermin, those of brokers and speculators who dismantle mansions and abbeys, and who demolish chateaux and churches so as to sell the materials as cheap as dirt, who bargain away national possessions, so as to make a profit on the transaction. Imagine the mischief a temporary owner, steeped in debt, needy and urged on by the maturity of his engagements, can and must do to an estate held under a precarious title and of suspicious acquirement, which he has no idea of keeping, and from which, meanwhile, he derives every possible benefit:17 not only does he put no spokes in the mill-wheel, no stones in the dyke, no tiles on the roof, but he buys no manure, exhausts the soil, devastates the forest, alienates the fields, and dismembers the entire farm, damaging the ground and the stock of tools and injuring the dwelling by selling its mirrors, lead and iron, and oftentimes the window-shutters and doors; he turns all into cash, no matter how, at the expense of the domain, which he leaves in a run-down condition, unfurnished, and for a long time unproductive. In like manner, the communal possessions, ravaged, pillaged, and then pieced out and divided off, are so many organisms which are sacrificed for the immediate relief of the village poor, but of course to the detriment of their future productiveness and an abundant yield.18 Alone, amongst these millions of men who

17. Reports of pre´fets. (Orme, year IX.) “The purchasers have speculated on the profits for the time being, and have exhausted their resources. Many of them have destroyed all the plantations, all the enclosures and even the fruit trees.”—Felix Rocquain, ibid., 116. (Report by Fourcroy on Brittany.) “The condition of rural structures everywhere demands considerable capital. But no advances, based on any lasting state of things, can be made.”—Ibid., 236. (Report of Lacueé on the departments around Paris.) “The doubtful owners of national possessions cultivate badly and let things largely go to ruin.” 18. Reports by pre´fets, years X. and XI. In general, the effect of the partition of communal possessions was disastrous, especially pasture and mountain grounds.—(Doubs.) “The partition of the communal property has contributed, in all the communes, rather to the complete ruin of the poor than to any The Governed / 1267 have stopped working, or work the wrong way, the petty cultivator labors to advantage; free of taxes, of tithes, and of feudal imposts, possessing a scrap of ground which he has obtained for almost nothing or without stretching his purse-strings, he works in good spirits;19 he is sure that henceforth his crop will no longer be eaten up by the levies of the seignior, of the dećimateur, and of theKing, that it will belongto him, that it will bewholly his, and that theworsethe famine in the towns, the dearer he will sell his produce. Hence, he has ploughed more vigorously than ever; he has even cleared waste ground; getting the soil gratis, or nearly so, and having to make but few advances, having no other use for his advances, consisting of seed, manure, the work of his cattle and of his own hands, he has planted, reaped, and raised grain with the greatest energy. Perhaps other articles of consumption will be scarce; it may be that, owing to the ruin of other branches of industry, it will be hard to get dry- goods, shoes, sugar, soap, oil, candles, wine, and brandy; it may happen that, owing to the bungling way in which agricultural transformations have been effected, all produce of the secondary order, meat, vegetables, butter, and eggs, may become scarce. In any event, French aliment par excellence is on hand, standing in thefieldor stored in sheafs in the barns; in 1792 and 1793, and even in 1794, there is enough grain in France to provide every French inhabitant with his daily bread.20 amelioration of their fate.”—(Loze´re.)“Thepartition of thecommunal property by the law of June 10, 1792, has proved very injurious to cultivation.” These partitions were numerous. (Moselle.) “Out of six hundred and eighty- six communes, one hundred and seven have divided per capitum, five hundred and seventy-nine by families, and one hundred and nineteen have remained intact.” 19. Ibid. (Moselle.) Births largely increase in 1792. “But this is an exceptional year. All kinds of abuses, paper-money, the nonpayment of taxes and claims, thepartition in thecommunes, thesalefor nothing of national possessions, has spread so much comfort among the people that the poorer classes, who are the most numerous, have had no dread of increasing their families, to which they hope some day to leave their fields and render them happy.” 20. Mallet-Dupan, “Me´moires,” ii., 29. (February 1, 1794.) “The late crop 1268 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

But that is not enough. In order that each Frenchman may obtain his bit of bread every day, it is still essential that grain should reach the markets in sufficient quantities, and that the bakers should every day have enough flour to make all the bread that is required; moreover, the bread offered for sale in the bakeries should not exceed thepricewhich themajority of consumers can afford to pay. Now, in fact, through a forced result of the new system, neither of these conditions is fulfilled. In the first place, wheat, and hence bread, is too dear. Even at the old rate, these would still be too dear for the innumerable empty or half-empty purses, after so many attacks on property, industry, and trade, now that so many hundreds of workmen and employees are out of work, now that so many land- owners and bourgeois receive no rents, now that incomes, profits, wages, and salaries have diminished by hundreds of thousands. But wheat, and, consequently, bread, has not remained at old rates. In- stead of a sack of wheat being worth in Paris fifty francs in February, 1793, it is worth sixty-fivefrancs; in May, 1793, onehundredfrancs and then one hundred and fifty; and hence bread, in Paris, early in 1793, instead of being three sous the pound, costs six sous, in many of the southern departments seven and eight sous, and in other places ten and twelve sous.21 Thereasonis, that, sinceAugust 10, 1792, after the King’s fall and the wrenching away of the ancient keystone of the arch which still kept the loosened stones of the social edifice in place, the frightened peasant would no longer part with his produce; he determined not to take assignats, not to let his grain go for in France was generally good, and, in some provinces, it was above the average. . . . I have seen the statements of two returns made from twenty-seven departments; they declare an excess of fifteen, twenty, thirty, and thirty-five thousand bushels of grain. There is no real dearth.” 21. Schmidt, ibid., i., 110, and following pages.—Buchez et Roux, xx., 416. (Speeches of Lequinio, November 27, 1792.)—Moniteur, xvii., 2. (Letter by Clement, Puy-de-Dome, June 15, 1793.) “For the past fifteen days bread has been worth sixteen and eighteen sous the pound. There is the most frightful distress in our mountains. The government distributes one-eighth of a bushel to each person, everybody being obliged to wait two days to take his turn. One woman was smothered and several were wounded.” The Governed / 1269 anything but ringing coin. To exchange good wheat for bad, dirty paper rags seemed to him a trick, and justly so, for, on going to town every month he found that the dealers gave him less mer- chandisefor theserags. A hoarder, and so distrustful, hemust have good, old fashioned crowns, of the old stamp, so as to lay them away in a jar or old woollen stocking; give him specie or he will keep his grain. For he is not, as formerly, obliged to part with it as soon as it is cut, to pay taxes and rent; the bailiff and sheriff are no longer there to distrain him; in these times of disorder and dema- gogism, under impotent or partial authorities, neither the public nor the private creditor has the power to compel payment, while the spurs which formerly impelled the farmer to seek the nearest market are blunted or broken. He therefore stays away, and he has excellent reasons for so doing. Vagabonds and the needy stand by the roadside and at the entrances of the towns to stop and pillage the loaded carts; in the markets and on the open square, women cut open bags of grain with their scissors and empty them, or the municipality, forced to do it by the crowd, fixes the price at a reduced rate.22 Thelarger a town is the greater the difficulty in supplying its market; for its subsistences are drawn from a distance; each department, each canton, each village keeps its own grain for itself by means of legal requisitions or by brutal force; it is impossible for wholesale dealers in grain to makebargains; theyarestyledmonopolists, and themob, breaking into their storehouses, hangs them out of preference.23 As

22. Cf. “La Revolution,” i., 208; ii., 294, 205, 230.—Buchez et Roux, xx., 431. (Report of Lecointe-Puyraveau, Nov. 30, 1792.) (Mobs of four, five, and six thousand men in the departments of Eure-et-Loire, Eure, Orme, Calvados, Indre-et-Loire, Loiret, and Sarthe cut down the prices of produce. The three delegates of the Convention disposed to interfere have their lives saved only on condition of announcing the rate dictated to them.—Ibid., 409. (Letter of Roland, Nov. 27, 1792.)—xxi., 198. (Another letter by Roland, Dec. 6, 1792.) “All convoys are stopped at Lissy, la Ferte´, Milan, la Ferte´-sous-Jouarre. . . . Carts loaded with wheat going to Paris have been forced to go back near Lonjumeau and near Meaux.” 23. Archives Nationales, F7, 3,265. (Letter of David, cultivator, and administrator of the department of Seine-Infe´rieure, Oct. 11, 1792; letter of the 1270 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION the government, accordingly, has proclaimed their speculations “crimes,” it is going to interdict their trade and substitute itself for them.24 But this substitution only increases the penury still more; in vain do the towns force collections, tax their rich men, raise money on loan, and burden themselves beyond their resources;25 they only make the matter worse. When the municipality of Paris expends twelvethousand francs a day for thesaleof flour at a low pricein the markets, it keeps away the flour-dealers, who cannot deliver flour at such low figures; the result is that there is not flour enough in the market for the six hundred thousand mouths in Paris; when it expends seventy-five thousand francs daily to indemnify the bakers, it attracts the outside population, which rushes into Paris to get bread cheap, and for the seven hundred thousand mouths of Paris and the suburbs combined, the bakers have not an adequate supply. Whoever comes late finds the shop empty; consequently, everybody tries to get there earlier and earlier, at dawn, before daybreak, and then five or six hours before daybreak. In February, 1793, long lines of people special committee of Rouen, Oct. 22; letter of the delegates of the executive power, Oct. 20, etc.) “Reports from all quarters state that the farmers who drive to market are considered and treated in their parishes as aristocrats. . . . Each department keeps to itself: they mutually repel each other.” 24. Buchez et Roux, xx., 409. (Letter of Roland, Nov. 27, 1792.) “The circulation of grain has for a long time encountered the greatest obstacles; scarcely a citizen now dares to do that business.”—Ibid., 417. (Speech by Le- quinio.) “The monopoly of wheat by land-owners and farmers is almost universal. Fright is the cause of it. . . . And where does this fear come from? From the general agitation, and threats, with the bad treatment in many places of the farmers, land-owners, and traffickers in wheat known as bladiers.”—Decrees of Sep. 16, 1792, and May 4, 1793. 25. Buchez et Roux, xix. (Report by Cambon, Sep. 22, 1792.) “The taxes no longer reach the public treasury, because they are used for purchasing grain in thedepartments.” Ibid., xix., 29. (Speech by Cambon, Oct. 12, 1792.) “You can bear witness in your departments to the sacrifices which well-to-do people have been obliged to make in helping the poor class. In many of the towns extra taxes have been laid for the purchase of grain and for a thousand other helpful measures.” The Governed / 1271 are already waiting at the bakers’ door, these lines growing longer and longer in April, while in June they are enormously long.26 Nat- urally, for lack of bread, people fall back on other aliments, which also grow dearer; add to this the various contrivances and effects of Jacobin politics which still further increase the dearness of food of all sorts, and also of every other necessary article: for instance, the extremely bad condition of the roads, which renders transportation slowerand morecostly; theprohibition of theexportof coin and hence the obtaining of food from abroad; the decree which obliges each industrial or commercial association, at present or to come, to “pay annually into the national treasury one-quarter of the amount of its dividends”; the revolt in Vendeé, which deprives Paris of six hundred oxen a week; the feeding of the armies, which takes one- half of thecattlebrought to thePoissy market;shutting off thesea and the continent, which ruins manufacturers and extensive commercial operations; the insurrections in Bordeaux, Marseilles, and the South, which still further raise the price of groceries, sugar, soap, oil, candles, wine, and brandy.27 Early in 1793, a pound of beef in France is worth on the average, instead of six sous twenty sous; in May, at Paris, brandy which, six months before, cost thirty-five sous, costs ninety-four sous; in July, a pound of veal, instead of five sous, costs twenty-two sous. Sugar, from twenty sous, advances to four francs ten sous; a candle costs seven sous. France, pushed on by the Jacobins, approaches the depths of misery, entering the first circle of its Inferno; other circles follow down deeper and deeper, narrower still and yet more sombre; under Jacobin impulsion is she to descend to the lowest?

26. Buchez et Roux, xx., 409. (Letter of Roland, Nov. 29, 1792.)—xxi., 199. (Deliberations of the provisional executive council, Sep. 3, 1792.)—Dauban, “La Demagogie en 1793,” p. 64. (Diary kept by Beaulieu.)—Ibid., 150.) 27. Schmidt, i., 110–130.—Decrees against the export of coin or ingots, Sep. 5 and 15, 1792.—Decree on stocks or bonds payable to bearer, Aug. 14, 1792. 1272 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

III It is evident that when nutrition in the social organism goes on slowly and is interrupted in some places, it is owing to the derangement of one of the inmost fibres of the economical machine. It is evident that this fibre consists of the sentiment by which man holds on to his property, fears to risk it, refuses to depreciate it, and tries to increase it. It is evident that, in man as he actually is, as now fashioned, this intense, tenacious sentiment, always on the alert and active, is the magazine of inward energy which provides for three- fourths, almost the whole, of that sustained effort, that extreme cautiousness, that determined perseverance which leads the individual to undergo privation, to contrive and to exert himself, to turn to profitableaccount thelabor of his hands, brain, and capital, and to produce, save, and create for himself and for others various resources and comforts.28 Thus far, this sentiment has been only partially affected, and the injury has been confined to the well-to-do and wealthy class; hence, only one-half of his useful energy has been destroyed, and the services of the well-to-do and wealthy class have been only specially dispensed with; but little else than the labor of the capitalist, proprietor, and man of enterprise has been suppressed, that far-reaching, combined, comprehensive labor, the products of which consist of objects of luxury and comfort, abundant supplies always on hand, and the ready and spontaneous distribution of indispensable commodities. There remains to crush out what is left of this laborious and nutritive fibre; the remnant of useful energy has to be destroyed down to its extirpation among the people; there

28. It is probable that disinterested motives, pure love for one’s neighbor, for humanity, for country, do not form a hundredth part of the total energy that produces human activity. It must not be forgotten that the actions of men are alloyed with motives of a lower order, such as love of fame, the desire of self-admiration and of self-approval, fear of punishment and hope of reward beyond the grave, all of these being interested motives, and without which disinterested motives would be inoperative excepting in two or three souls among ten thousand. The Governed / 1273 must be a suppression, as far as possible, of all manual, rude labor on a small scale, and of its rudimentary fruits; the discouragement of the insignificant shopkeeper, mechanic and ploughman must be effected; the corner-grocer must be prevented from selling his sugar and candles, and the cobbler from mending shoes: the miller must think of giving up his mill and thewagonerof abandoning his cart; the farmer must be convinced that the best thing he can do is to get rid of his horses, eat his pork himself,29 let his oxen famish and leave his crops to rot on theground. TheJacobins areto do all this, for it is the inevitable result of the theory that they have proclaimed and which they apply. According to this theory the stern, strong, deep-seated instinct through which the individual stubbornly holds on to what he has, to what he makes for himself and for those that belong to him, is just the unwholesome fibre that must be rooted out or paralysedat any cost; its truenameis “egoism, incivism,” and its operations consist of outrages on the community, which is the sole legitimate proprietor of property and products, and, yet more, of all persons and services. Body and soul, all belongs to the State, nothing to individuals, and, if need be, the State has the right to takenot only lands and capital, but, again, to claim and tax at whatever rate it pleases all corn and cattle, all vehicles and the animals that draw them, all candles and sugar; it has the right to

29. Archives Nationales, D., 55, I., file 2. (Letter by Joffroy, national agent in the district of Bar-sur-Aube, Germinal 5, year III.) “Most of the farmers, to escape the requisition, have sold their horses and replaced them with oxen.”— Memoirs (in ms.) of M. Dufort de Cheverney (communicated by M. Robert de Creˆvecoeur). In June, 1793, “the requisitions fall like hail, every week, on wheat, hay, straw, oats, etc.,” all at prices fixed by the contractors, who make deductions, postpone and pay with difficulty. Then come requisitions for hogs. “This was depriving all the country folks of what they lived on.” As the requisitions called for live hogs, there was a hog St. Bartholomew. Everybody killed his pig and salted it down.” (Environs of Blois.) In relation to refusing to gather in crops, see further on.—Dauban, “Paris in 1794,” p. 229. (Ventose 24, general orders by Henriot.) “Citizen Guillon being on duty outside the walls, saw with sorrow that citizens were cutting their wheat to feed rabbits with.” 1274 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION appropriate to itself and tax at whatever rate it pleases, the labor of shoemaker, tailor, miller, wagoner, ploughman, reaper, and thrasher. The seizure of men and things is universal, and the new sovereigns do their best at it; for, in practice, necessity urges them on; insurrection thunders at their door; their supporters, all crackbrains with empty stomachs, the poor and the idle, and the Parisian populace, listen to no reason and blindly insist on things haphazard; they are bound to satisfy their patrons at once, to issue one on top of the other all the decrees they call for, even when impracticable and mischievous; to starve the provinces so as to feed the city, to starve the former tomorrow so as to feed the latter today. Subject to the clamors and menaces of the street they despatch things rapidly; they cease to care for the future, the present being all that concerns them; they take and take forcibly; they uphold violence by brutality, they support robbery with murder; they expropriate persons by categories and appropriate objects by categories, and after the rich they despoil the poor. During fourteen months the revolutionary government thus keeps both hands at work, one hand completing the confiscation of property, large and medium, and the other proceeding to the entire abolition of property on a small scale. Against large or medium properties it suffices to extend and aggravate the decrees already passed. The spoliation of the last of existing corporations must be effected: the government confiscates the possessions of hospitals, communes, and all scientific or literary associations.30 There is the spoliation of State credits and all other credits: it issues in fourteen months five billions one million of assignats, often one billion four hundred millions and two billions at a time, under one decree, and thus condemns itself to complete

30. Decree of Messidor 23, year II., on the consolidation with the national domain of the assets and liabilities of hospitals and other charitable institutions. (See reports of pre´fets on the effect of this law, on the ruin of the hospitals, on the misery of the sick, of foundlings, and the infirm, from years IX. to XIII.)— Decrees of August 8 and 12, 1793, and July 24, 1794, on academies and literary societies.—Decree of August 24, 1793, § 29, on the assets and liabilities of communes. The Governed / 1275 futurebankruptcy; it calls in theonebillion fivehundredmillion of assignats bearing the royal stamp (a` face royale) and thus arbitrarily converts and reduces the public debt on the Grand Ledger, which is already, in fact, a partial and declared bankruptcy. Six months imprisonment for whoever refuses to accept assignats at par, twenty years in irons if the offence is repeated and the guillotine if there is an incivique intention or act, which suffices for all other creditors.31 Thespoliation of individuals, a forcedloan of a billion on therich, requisitions for coin against assignats at par, seizures of plate and jewels in private houses, revolutionary taxes so numerous as not only to exhaust the capital, but likewise the credit, of the person taxed,32 and theresumptionby theStateof thepublic domain pledged to private individuals for the past three centuries: how many years of labor are requisite to bring together again so much available capital, to reconstruct in France and to refill the private reservoirs in which all the accumulated savings will flow out, like a power- giving mill-stream, on the great wheel of general enterprise? Take into account, moreover, the enterprises which are directly destroyed, root and branch, by revolutionary executions, enforced against the manufacturers and traders of Lyons, Marseilles, and Bordeaux, proscribed in a mass,33 guillotined, imprisoned, or put to flight, their

31. Schmidt, i., 144. (Two billions September 27, 1793; one billion four hundred millions June 19, 1794.)—Decree of August 24, September 13, 1793, on the conversion of title-deeds and the formation of the Grand Ledger.— Decrees of July 31, August 30 and September 5, on calling in the assignats a` face royale.—Decrees of August 1 and September 5, 1793, on the refusal to accept assignats at par. 32. Archives Nationales, F7, 4,421. (Documents on the revolutionary taxes organised at Troyes, Brumaire 11, year II.) Three hundred and seventy-three persons are taxed, especially manufacturers, merchants, and land-owners; the minimum of thetax is onehundredfrancs, themaximum fifty thousand francs, the total being one million seven hundred and sixty-two thousand seven hundred francs. Seventy-six petitions attached to the papers show exactly the situation of things in relation to trade, manufactures, and property, the state of fortunes and credit of the upper and lower bourgeois class. 33. Mallet-Dupan, “Me´moires,” ii., 17. “I have seen the thirty-second list of emigre´s at Marseilles, merely of those whose possessions have been confis- 1276 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION factories stopped, their storehouses put under sequestration, with their stocks of brandy, soap, silk, muslins, leather, paper, serges, cloth, canvas, cordage, and the rest; the same at Nantes under Car- rier, at Strasbourg under Saint-Just, and everywhere else.34 “Com- merce is annihilated,” writes a Swiss merchant,35 from Paris, and the government, one would say, tries systematically to render it impossible. On the 27th of June, 1793, the Convention closes the Bourse; on the 15th of April, 1794, it suppresses “financial associations” and “prohibits all bankers, merchants and other persons from organising any establishment of the said character under any pretext or title whatsoever.” On the 8th of September, 1793, the Commune places seals “in all the counting-houses of bankers, stock-brokers, agents and silver-dealers,”36 and locks up their owners; as a favor, considering that they are obliged to pay the drafts drawn on them, they are let out, but provisionally, and on condition that they remain under arrest at home, “under the guard of two good citizens,” at their own expense. Such is the case in Paris and in other cities, not cated and sold; there are twelve thousand of them, and the lists were not finished.”—Reports of pre´fets. (Var by Fanchet, year IX.) “The emigration of 1793 throws upon Leghorn and the whole Italian coast a very large number of Marseilles and Toulon traders. These men, generally industrious, have established (there) more than one hundred and sixty soap factories and opened a market for the oil of this region. This event may be likened to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.”—Cf. the reports on the departments of the Rhone, Aude, Lot, and Garonne, Lower Pyrenees, Orme, etc. 34. Archives des Affaires E´trange´re`s, vol. 332. (Letter of De´sgranges, Bor- deaux, Brumaire 12, year II.) “Nobody here talks about trade any more than if it had never existed.” 35. Dr. Jaı¨n, “Choix de documents et lettres priveés trouveés dans des papiers de famille,” p. 144. (Letter of Ge´deón Jaı¨n, banker at Paris, November 18, 1793.) “Business carried on with difficulty and at a great risk occasion frequent and serious losses, credit and resources being almost nothing.” 36. Archives Nationales, F7, 2,475. (Letters of Thullier, procureur-syndic of the Paris department, September 7 and 10, 1793.—Report by a member of the Piques section, September 8 and 10, 1793.—Cf. the petitions of traders and lawyers imprisoned at Troyes, Strasbourg, Bordeaux, etc.—Archives Nation- ales, AF., II., 271. Letter of Francastel: “At least three thousand monopolist aristocrats have been arrested at Nantes . . . and this is not the last purification.” The Governed / 1277 alone with prominent merchants, but likewise with notaries and lawyers, with whom funds are on deposit and who manage estates; a sans-culotte with his pike stands in their cabinet whilst they write, and he accompanies them in the street when they call on their clients. Imaginethestateof a notary’s officeor a counting-room undera system of this sort! The master of it winds up his business as soon as he can, no matter how, makes no new engagements, and does as little as possible. Still more inactive than he, his colleagues, condemned to an indefinite listlessness, under lock and key in the common prison, no longer attend to their business. There is a general, total paralysis of those natural organs which, in economic life, produce, elaborate, receive, store, preserve, exchange, and transmit in gross masses; and which, on the reverse side, hamper, throttle, or consume all the lesser subordinate organs to which the superior ones no longer provide outlets, intermediary agencies or aliment. It is now the turn of the lowly. Whatever their sufferings may be they are to do their work as in healthy epochs, and they must do it perforce. The Convention, pursuing its accustomed rigid logical course with its usual shortsightedness, lays on them its violent and inept hands; they are trodden down, trampled upon and mauled for the purpose of curing them. Farmers are forbidden to sell their produce except in the markets, and obliged to bring to these a quota of so many sacks per week, and accompanied with military raids which compel them to furnish their quotas.37 Shopkeepers are ordered “to expose for sale, daily and publicly, all goods and provisions of prime necessity” that they have on hand, while a maximum price

37. Decrees of May 4, 15, 19, 20 and 23, and of August 30, 1793.—Decrees of July 26, August 15, September 11, 1793, and February 24, 1794.—Camille Boursier, “Essai sur la Terreur en Anjou,” p. 254. (Letter of Buissart to his friend Maximilian Robespierre, Arras, Pluviose 14, year II.) “We are dying with starvation in the midst of abundance; I think that the mercantile aristocracy ought to be killed out like the nobles and priests. The communes, under the favor of a storehouse of food and goods must alone be allowed to trade. This idea, well carried out, can be realised; then, the benefits of trade will turn to theadvantageof theRepublic, that is to say, to theadvantageof buyerand seller.” 1278 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION is established, above which no one shall sell “bread, flour and grain, vegetables and fruits, wine, vinegar, cider, beer and brandy, fresh meat, salt meat, pork, cattle, dried, salted, smoked or pickled fish, butter, honey, sugar, sweet-oil, lamp-oil, candles, firewood, charcoal and other coal, salt, soap, soda, potash, leather, iron, steel, castings, lead, brass, hemp, linen, woollens, canvas and woven stuffs, sabots, shoes and tobacco.” Whoever keeps on hand more than he consumes is a monopolist and commits a capital crime; the penalty, very severe, is imprisonment or the pillory, for whoever sells above the established price:38 such are the simple and direct expedients of the rev-

38. Archives Nationales, AF., II., 49. (Documents on the levy of revolutionary taxes, Belfort, Brumaire 30, year II.) “Verneur, sr., taxed at ten thousand livres, for having withheld goods deposited with him by his sister, in order to savethemfrom thecoming taxation.” Campardon, i., 292. (Judgmentsof the revolutionary commission at Strasbourg.)—“The head-clerk in Hecht’s apothecary shop is accused of selling two ounces of rhubarb and manna at fifty-four sous; Hecht, the proprietor, is condemned to a fine of fifteen thousand livres. Madeleine Meyer, at Rosheim, a retailer, is accused of selling a candle for ten sous and is condemned to a fine of one thousand livres, payable in three days. Braun, butcher and bar-keeper, accused of having sold a glass of wine for twenty sous, is condemned to a fine of forty thousand francs, to be imprisoned until this is paid, and to exposureinthepillory beforehisown housefor four hours, with this inscription: debaser of the national currency.”—“Recueil de Pieces, etc., at Strasbourg,” (supplement, pp. 21, 30, 64). “Marie Ursule Schnellen and Marie Schultzmann, servant, accused of monopolising milk. The former is sentenced to thepillory for oneday undera placard, monopoliser of milk, and to hold in one hand the money and, in the other, the milk-pot; the other, a servant with citizen Benner . . . he, the said Benner, is sentenced to a fine of three hundred livres, payable in three days.” “Dorothy Franz, convicted of having sold two heads of salad at twenty sous, and of thus having depreciated the value of assignats, is sentenced to a fine of three thousand livres, imprisonment for six weeks and exposure in the pillory for two hours.”—Ibid., i., 18. “A grocer, accused of having sold sugar-candy at lower than the rate, although not comprised in the list, is sentenced to one hundred thousand livres fine and imprisonment until peace is declared.”—Orders by Saint-Just and Lebas, Nivose 3, year II. “The criminal court of the department of the Lower-Rhine is ordered to destroy the house of any one convicted of having made sales below the rates fixed by the maximum,” consequently, the house of one Schauer, a furrier, is torn down, Nivose7. The Governed / 1279 olutionary government, and such is the character of its inventive faculty, likethat of thesavagewho hewsdown a treeto getat its fruit. For, after the first application of the maximum the shopkeeper is no longer able to carry on business; his customers, attracted by the sudden depreciation in price of his wares, flock to his shop and empty it in a few days;39 having sold his goods for half what they cost him,40 he has got back only one-half of his advances; therefore, he can only one-half renew his assortment, less than a half, since he has not paid his bills, and his credit is declining, the representatives on mission having taken all his coin, plate, and assignats. Hence, during the following month, buyers find on his unfurnished counters nothing but scraps and refuse. In like manner, after the proclamation of the maximum,41 the peasant refuses to bring his produce to market, while the revolutionary army is not everywhere on hand to take it from him by

39. Archives des Affaires E´trange´re`s, vol. 322. (Letter by Haupt, Belfort, Brumaire 3, year II.) “On my arrival here, I found the law of the maximum promulgated and in operation . . . (but) the necessary steps have not been taken to prevent a new monopoly by the rustics, who have flocked in to the shops of the dealers, carried off all their goods and created a factitious dearth.” 40. Archives Nationales, F7, 4,421. (Petitions of merchants and shopkeepers at Troyes in relation to the revolutionary tax, especially of hatters, linen, cotton and woollen manufacturers, weavers, and grocers. There is generally a loss of one-half, and sometimes of three-fourths of the purchase money.) 41. Archives des Affaires E´trange´re`s, vol. 330. (Letter of Brutus, Marseilles, Nivose6, yearII.) “Sincethe maximum everything is wanting at Marseilles.”— Ibid. (Letter by Soligny and Gosse, Thionville, Nivose 5, year II.) “No peasant is willing to bring anything to market....Theygooffsixleagues to get a better price and thus the communes which they once supplied are famishing....Ac- cording as they are paid in specie or assignats the difference often amounts to two hundred per cent., and nearly always to one hundred per cent.”—“Un Se´jour en France,” pp. 188–189.—Archives Nationales, D., § I., file 2. (Letter of Representative Albert, Germinal 19, year II., and of Joffroy, national agent, district of Bar-sur-l Aube, Germinal 5, year III. “The municipalities have always got themselves exempted from the requisitions, which all fall on the farmers and proprietors unable to satisfy them....Theallotment among the tax-payers is madewith themost revolting inequality ....Partiality through connections of relatives and of friendship.” 1280 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION force: he leaves his crop unthrashed as long as he can, and complains of not finding the men to thrash it. If necessary, he hides it or feeds it out to his animals. He often barters it away for wood, for a side of bacon or in payment for a day’s work. At night, he carts it off six leagues to a neighboring district, where the local maximum is fixed at a higher rate. He knows who, in his own vicinity, still has specie in his pocket and he underhandedly supplies him with his stores. He especially conceals his superabundance and, as formerly, plays the sufferer. He is on good terms with the village authorities, with the mayor and national agent who are as interested as he is in evading the law, and, on a bribe being necessary, he gives it. At last, he allows himself to be sued, and his property attached; he goes to prison and tires the authorities out with his obstinacy. Hence, from week to week, less flour and grain and fewer cattle come to market, while meat becomes scarcer at the butcher’s, and bread at the baker’s. Having thus paralysed the lesser organs of supply and demand the Jacobins now have only to paralyse labor itself, the skilled hands, theactiveand vigorous arms. To do this, it sufficesto substitutefor the independent private workshop, the compulsory national workshop, piece-work for work by the day, the attentive, energetic workman who minds his business and expects to earn money, for the littleness and laxity of the workman picked up here and there, poorly paid and paid even when he botches and strolls about. This is what the Jacobins do by forcibly commanding the services of all sorts of laborers,42 “all who help handle, transport and retail produce and articles of prime necessity,” “country people who usually get in the

42. Decrees of September 29, 1793 (articles 8 and 9); of May 4 and 20, and June 26, 1794.—Archives Nationales, AF., II., 68–72. (Orders of the Committee of Public Safety, Prairial 26, year II.) “The horses and wagons of coal peddlers, the drivers accustomed to taking to Paris by law a portion of the supply of coal used in baking in the department of Seine-et-Marne, are drafted until the 1st of Brumairenext,for thetransportation of coal to Paris. During this timethey cannot be drafted for any other service.” (A good many orders in relation to subsistences and articles of prime necessity may be found in these files, mostly in the handwriting of Robert Lindet.) The Governed / 1281 crops,” and, more particularly, thrashers, reapers, carters, raftsmen, and also shoemakers, tailors, blacksmiths, and the rest. At every point of thesocial organism, thesameprincipleis appliedwith the same result. Substitute everywhere an external, artificial, and mechanical constraint for theinward, natural, and animating stimulant, and you get nothing but an universal atrophy; deprive people of the fruits of their labor, and yet more, force them to produce by fear, confiscate their time, their painstaking efforts and their persons, reduce them to the condition of fellahs, create in them the sentiments of fellahs, and you will have nothing but the labor and productions of fellahs, that is to say, a minimum of labor and production, and hence, insufficient supplies for sustaining a very dense population, which, multiplied through a superior and more productive civilisation, will not long subsist under a barbarous, inferior, and unpro- ductivere´gime. When this systematic and complete expropriation terminates we see the final result of the system, no longer a dearth, but famine, famine on a large scale, and the destruction of lives by millions. Among theJacobins, 43 some of the maddest who are clear- sighted, on account of their fury, Guffroy, Antonelle, Jean Bon St.- Andre´, Collot d’Herbois, foresee the consequences and accept them along with the principle; others, who avoid seeing it, are only the more determined in the application of it, while all together work with all their might to aggravate the misery of which the lamentable spectacle is so vainly exposed under their eyes.

IV Collot d’Herbois wrote from Lyons on November 6, 1793: “There is not two days’ supply of provisions here.” On the following day: “The present population of Lyons is one hundred and thirty thousand souls at least, and there is not suﬃcient subsistence for three

43. Cf. “The Revolution,” ii., 69.—Dauban, “Paris en 1794.” (Report by Pouvoyeur, March 15, 1794.) “A report has been long circulated that all the aged were to be slaughtered; there is not a place where this falsehood is not uttered.” 1282 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION days.” Again the day after: “Our situation in relation to food is deplorable.” Then, the next day: “Famine is beginning.”44 Near by, in the Montbrison district, in February, 1794, “there is no food or provisions left for the people”; all has been taken by requisition and carried off, even seed for planting, so that the fields lie fallow.45 At Marseilles, “since the maximum, everything is lacking; even the fishermen no longer go out (on the sea) so that there is no supply of fish to liveon.” 46 At Cahors, in spite of multiplied requisitions, the Directory of Lot and Representative Taillefer47 statethat “theinhabitants, for more than eight days, are reduced wholly to maslin bread composed of one-fifth of wheat and the rest of barley, barley- malt, and millet.” At Nismes,48 to makethegrain supply last, which is giving out, the bakers and all private persons are ordered not to bolt meal, but to leave the bran in it and knead and bake the “dough such as it is.” At Grenoble,49 “the bakers have stopped baking; the country people no longer bring wheat in; the dealers hide away their goods, or put them in the hands of neighborly officials, or send them off.” “It goes from bad to worse,” write the agents of Huningue;50 “one might say even, that they would give this or that article to their cattle rather than sell it in conformity with the tax.” The inhabitants of towns are everywhere put on rations, and so small a

44. Archives Nationales, F7, 4,435, file 10, letters of Collot d’Herbois, Bru- maire 17 and 19, year II.—De Martel, “Fouche´,” 340, 341. Letters of Collot d’Herbois, November 7 and 9, 1793. 45. DeMartel, ibid., 462. (Proclamation by Javogues, Pluviose 13, year II.) 46. Archives des Affaires E´trange´re`s, vol. 330. (Letter of Brutus, political agent, Nivose 6.) 47. Archives Nationales, AF., II., 116. (Orders of Taillefer and Marat- Valette, and Deliberations of the Directory of Lot, Brumaire 20, year II.) 48. Archives des Affaires E´trange´re`s, vol. 331. (Letter of the agent Bertrand, Frimaire3.) 49. Ibid., vol. 1332. (Letter of the agent Che´py, Brumaire2.) 50. Ibid., vol. 1411. (Letter of Blessmann and Hauser, Brumaire 30.)—Ibid. (Letter of Haupt, Belfort, Brumaire 29.) “I believe that Marat’s advice should be followed here and a hundred scaffolds be erected; there are not guillotines enough to cut off the heads of the monopolists. I shall do what I can to have the pleasure of seeing one of these d b play hot cockles.” The Governed / 1283 ration as to scarcely keep them from dying with hunger. “Since my arrival in Tarbes,” writes another agent,51 “every person is limited to half a pound of bread a day, composed one-third of wheat and two-thirds of corn meal.” The next day after the feˆte in honor of the tyrant’s death there was absolutely none at all. “A half-pound of bread is also allowed at Evreux,52 “and even this is obtained with a good deal of trouble, many being obliged to go into the country and get it from the farmers with coin.” And even “they have got very little bread, flour or wheat, for they have been obliged to bring what they had to Evreux for the armies and for Paris.” It is worse at Rouen and at Bordeaux: at Rouen, in Brumaire, the inhabitants have only one-quarter of a pound per head per diem of bread; at Bordeaux, “for the past three months,” says the agent,53 “the people sleep at the doors of the bakeries, to pay high for bread which they often do not get....There hasbeennobaking done today, and tomorrow only half a loaf will be given to each person. This bread is made of oats and beans....On days that there is none, beans, chestnuts, and rice are distributed in very small quantities,” four ounces of bread, five of rice or chestnuts. “I, who tell you this, have already eaten eight or ten meals without bread; I would gladly do without it if I could get potatoes in place of it, but these, too, cannot be had.” Five months later, fasting still continues, and it lasts until after the reign of Terror, not alone in the town, but throughout thedepartment.“In thedistrict of Cadillac,” says Tallien,54 “absolute dearth prevails; the citizens of the rural districts contend with each other for the grass in the fields; I have eaten

51. Ibid., vol. 333. (Letter of Garrigues, Pluviose 16.) 52. “Souvenirs et Journal d’un Bourgeois d’Evreux,” pp. 83–85. (June and July 1794.)—Ibid., at Nantes.—Dauban, “Paris en 1794,” p. 194, March 4. 53. Archives des Affaires E´trange´re`s, vols. 331 and 332. (Letters of De´s- granges, Frimaire 3 and 8 and 10.) “Many of the peasants have eaten no bread for a fortnight. Most of them no longer work.” Buchez et Roux, xviii., 346. (Session of the Convention, Brumaire 14, speech by Legendre.) 54. Moniteur, xix., 671. (Speech by Tallien, March 12, 1794.) Buchez et Roux, xxxii., 423. (Letter of Jullien, June 15, 1794.) 1284 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION bread made of dog-grass.” Haggard and worn out, the peasant, with his pallid wife and children, resorts to the marsh to dig roots, while there is scarcely enough strength in his arms to hold the plough. Thesamespectacleis visiblein placeswhich producebut littlegrain, or where the granaries have been emptied by the revolutionary drafts. “In many of the Indre districts,” writes the representative on missions,55 “food is wanting absolutely. Even in some of the communes, many of the inhabitants are reduced to a frightful state of want, feeding on acorns, bran and other unhealthy food....The districts of Chaˆtre and Argenton, especially, will be reduced to starvation unless they are promptly relieved....Thecultivation of the ground is abandoned; most of the persons in the jurisdiction wander about the neighboring departments in search of food.” And it is doubtful whether they find it. In the department of Cher, “the butchers can no longer slaughter; the dealers’ stores are all empty.” In Allier, “the slaughter-houses and markets are deserted, every species of vegetable and aliment having disappeared; the inns are closed.” In oneof theLoze `redistricts, composedof fivecantons, of which one produces an extra quantity of rye, the people live on requisitions imposed on Gard and the Upper Loire; the extortions of the representatives in these two departments “were distributed among the municipalities, and by these to the most indigent: many entire families, many of the poor and even of the rich, suffered for want of bread during six or eight days, and this frequently.56 Nevertheless they do not riot; they merely supplicate and stretch forth their hands “with tears in their eyes.” Such is the diet and submission of the

55. Archives Nationales, AF., II., 111. (Letters of Michaud, Chateauroux, Pluviose18 and 19, yearII.) 56. Dauban, “Paris en 1794,” 410, 492, 498. (Letters from the national agent of the district of Sancoins, Thermidor 9, year II.; from the Directory of Allier, Thermidor 9; from the national agent of the district of Villefort, Thermidor 9.)—Gouverneur Morris, April 10, 1794, says in a letter to Washington that the famine in many places is extremely severe. Men really die of starvation who have the means to buy bread if they could only get it. The Governed / 1285 stomach in the provinces. Paris is less patient. For this reason, all the rest is sacrificed to it,57 not merely the public funds, the Treasury from which it gets one or two millions per week,58 but wholedistricts are starved for its benefit, six departments providing grain, twenty- six departments providing pork,59 at therateof the maximum, through requisitions, through the prospect of imprisonment and of the scaffold in case of refusal or concealment, under the predatory bayonets of the revolutionary army. The capital, above all, has to be fed. Let us see, under this system of partiality, how people live in Paris and what they feed on. “Frightful crowds” at the doors of the bakeries, then at the doors of the butchers and grocers, then at the markets for butter, eggs, fish, and vegetables, and then on the quay for wine, firewood, and charcoal—such is the steady refrain of the police reports.60 And this lasts uninterruptedly during the fourteen months of revolutionary government: long lines of people waiting in turn for bread, meat,

57. Volney, “Voyage en Orient,” ii., 344. “When Constantinople lacks food twenty provinces are starved for its supply.” 58. Archives Nationales, AF., II., 46, 68. (Decree of Committee of Public Safety.) The Treasury pays over to the city of Paris for subsistence, on Aug. 1, 1793, two millions, August 14, three, and 27, one million; September 8, 16, and 13, one million each, and so on. One million each on Frimaire 10 and 17, two each on the 22d and 26th: Nivose 17, two and 26, two; Pluviose 5, two and 20, one; Ventose 7, one and 24, two; Germinal 7, two and 15, two. Between August 7, 1793 and Germinal 19, year II., the Treasury paid over to Paris, thirty-onemillions. 59. Ibid., AF., II., 68. Decrees of Brumaire 14, Nivose 7 and Germinal 22 on the departments assigned to the supply of Paris.—Buchez et Roux, xxviii., 489. (Speech by Danton in Jacobin club, Aug. 28, 1793.) “I constantly asserted that it was necessary to give all to the mayor of Paris if he exacted it to feed its inhabitants. . . . Let us sacrifice one hundred and ten millions and save Paris and through it, theRepublic.” 60. Archives des Affaires E´trange´re`s, vols. 1410 and 1411. Reports of June 20 and 21, 1793, July 21, 22, 28, 29 and 31, and every day of the months of August and September, 1793. Schmidt, “Tableaux de la Re´volution Française,” vol. II., passim.—Dauban, “Paris in 1794” (especially throughout Ventose, year II.)—Archives Nationales, F7, 3,1167. (Reports for Nivose, year II.) 1286 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION oil, soap, and candles, “queues for milk, for butter, for wood, for charcoal, queues everywhere!”61 “There was one queue beginning at the door of a grocery in the Petit-Carreau stretching half-way up therueMontorgueil.” 62 These queues form at three o’clock in the morning, oneo’clock, and at midnight, increasingfrom hour to hour. Picture to yourself, reader, the file of wretched men and women sleeping on the pavement when the weather is fine63 and when not fine, standing up on stiff tottering legs; above all in winter, “the rain pouring on their backs,” and their feet in the snow, for so many weary hours in dark, foul, dimly lighted streets strewed with garbage; for, for want of oil, one-half of the the street lamps are extinguished, and for lack of money, there is no repavement, no more sweeping, the offal being piled up against the walls.64 The crowd draggles along through it, likewise, nasty, tattered and torn, people with shoes full of holes, because the shoemakers do no more work for their customers, and in dirty shirts, because no more soap can be had to wash with, while, morally as well as physically, all these forlorn beings elbowing each other render themselves still fouler. Promiscuousness, contact, weariness, waiting, and darkness afford free play to the grosser instincts; especially in summer, natural bestiality and Parisian mischievousness have full play.65 “Lewd

61. Dauban, “Paris en 1794,” 138. (Report of Ventose 2.) 62. Mercier, “Paris Pendant la Re´volution,” i., 355. 63. Archives des Affaires E´trange´re`s, 1411. (Reports of August 1 and 2, 1763.) “At one o’clock in the morning, we were surprised to find men and women lying along the sides of the houses patiently waiting for the shops to open.”—Dauban, 231. (Report of Ventose 24.) To obtain the lights of a hog, at the slaughter-house near the Jardin des Plantes, at the rate of three francs ten sous, instead of thirty sous as formerly, women “were lying on the ground with little baskets by their side and waiting four and five hours.” 64. Archives Nationales, F7, 3,1167. (Reports of Nivose 9 and 28.) “The streets of Paris are always abominable; they are certainly afraid to use those brooms.” Dauban, 120. (Ventose9.)“TherueSt. Anneis blockedup with manure. In that part of it near the Rue Louvois, heaps of this stretch along the walls for thepast fortnight.” 65. Archives des Affaires E´trange´re`s, vol. 1411. (Reports of August 9, The Governed / 1287 women” pursue their calling standing in the row; it is an interlude for them; “their provoking expressions, their immoderate laughter,” is heard some distance off and they find it a convenient place: two stepsaside,on theflank of therow, are“half-opendoors and dark alleys” which invite a confab; many of these women who have brought their mattresses “sleep there and commit untold abominations.” What an example for the wives and daughters of steady workmen, for honest servants who hear and see! “Men stop at each row and choose their dulcinea, while others, less shameless, pounce on the women like bulls and kiss them one after the other.” Are not these the fraternal kisses of patriotic Jacobins? Do not Mayor Pache’s wife and daughter go to the clubs and kiss drunken sans- culottes? And what says the guard? It has enough to do to restrain another blind and deaf animal instinct, aroused as it is by suffering, anticipation, and deception. On approaching each butcher’s stall before it opens “the porters, bending under the weight of a side of beef, quicken their steps so as not to be assailed by the crowd which presses against them, seeming to devour the raw meat with their eyes.” They force a passage, enter the shop in the rear, and it seems as if the time for distributing the meat had come; the gendarmes, spurring their horses to a gallop, scatter the groups that are too dense; “rascals, in pay of the Com- mune,” range the women in files, two and two, “shivering” in the cold morning air of December and January, awaiting their turn. Beforehand, however, the butcher, according to law, sets aside the portion for the hospitals, for pregnant women and others who are confined, for nurses, and besides, notwithstanding the law, he sets aside another portion for the revolutionary committee of the section, for the assistant commissioner and superintendent, for the pachas

1793.)—Mercier, i., 353.—Dauban, 530. (Reports of Fructidor 27, year II.) “There are always great gatherings at the coal depots. They begin at midnight, one, two o’clock in the morning. Many of the habitue´s takeadvantageof the obscurity and commit all sorts of indecencies.” 1288 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION and semipachas of the quarter, and finally for his rich customers who pay him extra.66 To this end, “porters with broad shoulders form an impenetrable rampart in front of the shop and carry away whole oxen”; after this is over, the women find the shop stripped, while many, “after wasting their time for four mortal hours,” go away empty handed. With this prospect before them the daily assemblages get to be uneasy and the waves rise; nobody, except those at the head of the row, is sure of his pittance; those that are behind regard enviously and with suppressed anger the person ahead of them. First come outcries, then jeerings, and then scuffling; the women rival themenin struggling and in profanity, 67 and they hustle each other. The line suddenly breaks; each rushes to get ahead of the other; the foremost place belongs to the most robust and the most brutal, and to secure it they have to trample down their neighbors. There are fisticuffs every day.68 When an assemblage remains quiet the spectators take notice of it. In general “they fight,69 snatch bread out of each other’s hands; those who cannot get any forcing whoever gets a loaf weighing four pounds to share it in small pieces.

66. Schmidt, “Tableaux de la Re´volution Franc¸aise,” ii., 155. (Reports of Ventose 25.)—Dauban, 188. (Reports of Ventose 19.)—Ibid., 69. (Reports of Ventose 2.) Ibid., 126. (Reports of Ventose 10.)—Archives Nationales, F7, 3,1167. (Reports of Nivose 28, year II.) The women “denounce the butchers and pork-sellers who pay no attention to the maximum law, giving only the poorest meat to the poor.”—Ibid. (Reports of Nivose 6.) “It is frightful to see what thebutchers givethepeople.” 67. Mercier, ibid., 363. “The women struggled with all their might against the men and contracted the habit of swearing. The last on the row knew how to worm themselves up to the head of it.”—Buchez et Roux, xxviii., 364. (“Journal de la Montague,” July 28, 1793.) “One citizen was killed on Sunday, July 21, oneof theGravilliers (club) in trying to hold on to a six-pound loaf of bread which he had just secured for himself and family. Another had a cut on his arm thesameday in theRueFroid-Manteau.A pregnantwoman was wounded and her child died in her womb.” 68. Dauban, 256. (Reports of Ventose 27.) Market of Faubourg St. Antoine. “On nesef pas decoups depoing depuisdeuxon trois jours.” 69. Archives des Aﬀaires E´trange´re`s, vol. 1410. (Reports of August 6 and 7, 1793.) The Governed / 1289

The women yell frightfully....Children sent by their parents are beaten,” while the weak are pitched into the gutter. “In distributing the meanest portions of food70 it is force which decides,” the strength of loins and arms; “a number of women this morning came near losing their lives in trying to get four ounces of butter.” More sensitive and more violent than men, “they do not, or will not, listen to reason,71 they pounce down like harpies” on the market-wagons; they thrash the drivers, strew the vegetables and butter on the ground, tumble over each other and are suffocated through the impetuosity of the assault; some, “trampled upon, almost crushed, are carried off half-dead.” Everybody for himself. Empty stomachs feel that, to get anything, it is important to get ahead, not to await for the distribution, the unloading, or even the arrival of the supplies. “A boat laden with wine having been signalled, the crowd rushed on board to pillageit and theboat sunk,” probably along with a good many of its invaders.72 Other gatherings at the barriers stop the peasants’ wagons and take their produce before they reach the markets. Outside the barriers, children and women throw stones at the milkmen, forcing them to get down from their carts and distribute milk on the spot. Still further out, one or two leagues off on the highways, gangs from Paris go at night to intercept and seize the supplies intended for Paris. “This morning,” says a watchman, “all the Faubourg St. Antoine scattered itself along the Vincennes road and pillaged whatever was on the way to the city; some paid, while others carried off without paying....The unfortunatepeasants

70. Dauban, 144. (Reports of Ventose 19.) 71. Dauban, 199. (Reports of Ventose 19.)—Dauban, “La Demagogie en 1793,” p. 470. “Scarcely had the peasants arrived when harpies in women’s clothes attacked them and carried off their goods. . . . Yesterday, a peasant was beaten for wanting to sell his food at the maximum rate.” (October 19, 1793.)— Dauban, “Paris en 1794,” 144, 173, 199. (Reports of Ventose 13, 17 and 19.)— Archives des Affaires E´trange´re`s, vol. 1410. (Reports of June 26 and 27, 1793.) Wagons and boats are pillaged for candles and soap. 72. Dauban, 45. (Reports of Pluviose 17.)—222. (Reports of Ventose 23.)— 160. (Reports of Ventose 15.)—340. (Reports of Germinal 28.)—87. (Reports of Ventose 5.) 1290 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION swore that they would not fetch anything more,” the dearth thus increasing through the efforts to escape it. In vain the government makes its requisitions for Paris as if in a state of siege, and fixes the quantity of grain on paper which each department, district, canton, and commune, must send to the capital. Naturally, each department, district, canton, and commune strives to retain its own supplies, for charity begins at home.73 Especially in a village, the mayor and members of a municipality, themselves cultivators, are lukewarm when the commune is to be starved for the benefit of the capital; they declare a less return of grain than there really is; they allege reasons and pretexts; they mystify or suborn the commissioner on subsistences, who is a stranger, incompetent and needy; they make him drink and eat, and, now and then, fill his pocket-book; he slips over the accounts, he gives the village receipts on furnishing three-quarters or a half of the demand, often in spoilt or mixedgrain or poor flour, whilethosewho haveno rusty wheat get it of their neighbors; instead of parting with a hundred quintals they part with fifty, while the quantity of grain in the Paris markets is not only insufficient, but the grain blackens or sprouts and the flour grows musty. In vain the government makes clerks and depositaries of butchers and grocers, allowing them five or ten per cent. profit on retail sales of the food it supplies them with at wholesale, and thus creates in Paris, at the expense of all France, an artificial decline. Naturally, the bread74 which, thanks to theState,

73. Archives Nationales, AF., II., 116. (Order of Paganel, Castres, Pluviose 6 and 7, year II. “The steps taken to obtain returns of food have not fulfilled the object. . . . The statements made are either false or inexact.”) Cf., for details, the correspondence of the other representatives on mission.—Dauban, “Paris en 1794,” 190. (Speech by Fouquier-Tinville in the Convention, Ventose 19.) “The mayor of Pont St. Maxence has dared to say that ‘when Paris sends us sugar we will then see about letting her have our eggs and butter.’” 74. Archives des Affaires E´trange´re`s, vol. 1411. (Reports of August 7 and 8, 1793.) “Seven thousand five hundred pounds of bread, about to be taken out, have been stopped at the barriers.”—Dauban, 45. (Orders of the day, Pluviose 17.) Lamps are set up at all the posts, “especially at la Gre`veand Passy, so as to light up the river and see that no eatables pass outside.”—Mercier, i., 355.— The Governed / 1291 costs three sous in Paris, is furtively carried out of Paris into the suburbs, where six sous are obtained for it; there is the same furtive leakage for other food furnished by the State on the same conditions to other dealers; the tax is a burden which forces them to go outside their shops; food finds its level like water, not alone outside of Paris, but in Paris itself. Naturally, “the grocers peddle their goods” secretly, “sugar, candles, soap, butter, dried vegetables, meat-pies, and the rest,” amongst private houses, in which these articles are bought at any price. Naturally, the butcher keeps his large pieces of beef and choice morsels for the large eating-houses, and for rich customers who pay him whatever profit he asks. Naturally, whoever is in authority, or has the power, uses it to supply himself first, largely, and in preference; we have seen the levies of the revolutionary committees, superintendents and agents; as soon as rations are allotted to all mouths, each potentate will have several rations delivered for his mouth alone; in the meantime75 thepatriots who guard the barriers appropriate all provisions that arrive, and the next morning, should any scolding appear in the orders of the day, it is but slight. Such arethetwo resultsof thesystem:not only is thefood which is supplied to Paris scant and poor, but the regular consumers of it, thosewho taketheirturn to getit, obtain but a small portion, and

Dauban, 181. (Reports of Ventose 18.)—210. (Reports of Ventose 21.)—190. Speech by Fouquier, Ventose 19.) “The butchers in Paris who cannot sell above the maximum carry the meat they buy to the Se`vres butchers and sell it at any price they please.”—257. (Reports of Ventose 27.) “You see, about ten o’clock in the evening, aristocrats and other egoists coming to the dealers who supply Egalite´’s mansion (the Duke of Orleans) and buy chickens and turkeys which they carefully conceal under their overcoats.” 75. Dauban, 255. (Orders of the day by Henriot, Ventose 27.) “I have to request my brethren in arms not to take any rations whatever. This little deprivation will silence the malevolent who seek every opportunity to humble us.”—Ibid., 359. “On Floreál 29, between five and six o’clock in the morning, a patrol of about fifteen men of the Bonnet-Rouge section, commanded by a sort of commissary, stop subsistences on the Orleans road and take them to their section.” 1292 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION that theworst. 76 A certain inspector, on going to the corn-market for a sample of flour, writes “that it cannot be called flour;77 it is ground bran,” and not a nutritive substance; the bakers are forced to takeit, themarketscontaining for themost part no othersupply than this flour.” Again, three weeks later, “Food is still very scarce and poor in quality. The bread is disagreeable to the taste and produces maladies with which many citizens are suffering, like dysen- tery and other inflammatory ailments.” The same report, three months later in Nivose: “Complaints are constantly made of the poor quality of flour, which, it is said, makes a good many people ill; it causes severe pain in the intestines, accompanied with a slow fever.” In Ventose, “the scarcity of every article is extremely great,”78 especially of meat. Some women in the Place Maubert, pass six hours in a linewaiting for it, and do not getthequarterof a pound; in many stalls there is none at all, not “an ounce” being obtainableto makebroth for thesick. Workmendo not getit in their shops and do without their soup; they live on “bread and salted herrings.” A great many people groan over “not having eaten bread for a fortnight”; women say that “they have not had a dish of meat and vegetables (pot-au-feu) for a month.” Meanwhile “vegetables are astonishingly scarce and excessively dear . . . two sous for a miserable carrot, and as much for two small leeks”; out of two thousand women who wait at the central market for a distribution of beans, only six hundred receive any; potatoes increase in price in one week from two to three francs a bushel, and oatmeal and ground

76. Dauban, 341. (Letter of the Commissioner on Subsistences, Germinal 23.) “The supplies are stolen under the people’s eyes, or what they get is of inferior quality.” The commissioner is surprised to find that, having provided so much, so little reaches the consumers. 77. Archives des Affaires E´trange´re`s, vol. 1411. (Reports of August 11–12 and 31, and Sept. 1, 1793.)—Archives Nationales, F7, 3,1167. (Reports of Nivose 7 and 12, year II.) 78. Dauban, “Paris en 1794,” 60, 68, 69, 71, 82, 93, 216, 231.—Schmidt, “Tableaux de Paris,” 187, 190.—Archives Nationales, F7, 3,1167. (Report of Leharivel, Nivose 7.)—The gunsmiths employed by the government likewise state that they have for a long time had nothing to eat but bread and cheese. The Governed / 1293 peas triple in price. “The grocers have no more brown sugar, even for the sick,” and sell candles and soap only by the half-pound. A fortnight later candles are wholly wanting in certain quarters, except in the section storehouse, which is almost empty, each person being allowed only one; a good many households go to rest at sundown for lack of lights and do not cook any dinner for lack of coal. Eggs, especially, are “honored as invisible divinities,” while the absent butter “is a god.”79 “If this lasts,” say theworkmen,“weshall have to cut each other’s throats, since there is nothing left to live on.”80 “Sick women,81 children in their cradles, lie outstretched in the sun, in the very heart of Paris, in rue Vivienne, on the Pont-Royal, and remain there “late in the night, demanding alms of the passers-by.” “One is constantly stopped by beggars of both sexes, most of them healthy and strong,” begging, they say, for lack of work. Without counting the feeble and the infirm who are unable to stand in a line, whosesufferingsarevisible,who gradually wasteaway and die without a murmur at home, “one encounters in the streets and markets” only famished and eager visages, “an immense crowd of citizens running and dashing against each other,” crying out and weeping, “everywhere presenting an image of despair.”82

V If this penury exists, say the Jacobins, it is owing to the decrees against monopoly, and sales above the maximum not being executed according to the letter of the law; the egoism of the cultivator and the cupidity of dealers are not restrained by fear; delinquents escape too frequently from the legal penalty. Let us enforce this penalty rigorously; let us augment the punishment against them and their instruments; let us screw up the machine and give them a new

79. Dauban, 231. (Report of Perrie´re, Ventose 24.) “Butter of which they makea god.” 80. Ibid., 68. (Report of Ventose 2.) 81. Archives Nationales, F7, 3,1167, (Report of Nivose 28.)—Dauban, 144. (Report of Nivose 14.) 82. Dauban, 81. (Report of Latour-Lamontagne, Ventose 4.) 1294 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION wrench. A new estimate and verification of the food-supply takes place, domiciliary perquisitions, seizures of special stores regarded as too ample,83 limited rations for each consumer, a common and obligatory mess-table for all prisoners, brown, e´galite´ bread, mostly of bran, for every mouth that can chew, prohibition of the making of any other kind, confiscation of bolters and sieves,84 the“individual,” personal responsibility of every administrator who allows the people he rules to resist or escape furnishing the supplies demanded, the sequestration of his property, imprisonment, fines, the pillory, and the guillotine to hurry up requisitions, or stop free trading— every terrifying engine is driven to the utmost against the farmers and cultivators of thesoil. After April, 1794,85 crowds of this class are seen filling the prisons to overflowing; the Revolution has struck them also. They stroll about in thecourt-yard, and wanderthrough thecorridors with a sad, stupified expression, no longer comprehending the way things aregoing on in theworld. In vain areeffortsmadeto explainto them that “their crops are national property and that they are simply

83. “Souvenirs et Journal d’un Bourgeois d’Evreux,” 83. “Friday, June 15, 1794, a proclamation is made that all who have any provisions in their houses, wheat, barley, rye, flour and even bread, must declare them within twenty-four hours under penalty of being regarded as an enemy of the country and declared ‘suspect,’ put under arrest and tried by the courts.”—Schmidt, “Tableaux de la Re´volution Française,” ii., 214. A seizure is made at Passy of two pigs and forty pounds of butter, six bushels of beans, etc., in the domicile of citizen Lucet who had laid in supplies for sixteen persons of his own household. 84. Archives Nationales, AF., II., 68. Orders of the Committee of Public Safety, Pluviose 23, referring to the law of Brumaire 25, forbidding the extrac- tion of more than fifteen pounds of bran from a quintal of flour. Order directing the removal of bolters from bakeries and mills; he who keeps or conceals these on his property “shall be treated as ‘suspect’ and put under arrest until peace is declared.”—Berryat Saint-Prix, 357, 362. At Toulouse, three persons are condemned to death for monopoly. At Montpelier, a baker, two dealers and a merchant are guillotined for having invoiced, concealed and kept “a certain quantity of gingerbread cakes intended solely for consumption by antirevolutionists.” 85. “Un Se´jour en France” (April 22, 1794). The Governed / 1295 its depositaries”;86 never had this new principle entered into, nor will it enter, their rude brains; always, through habit and instinct, will they work against it. Let them be spared the temptation. Let us relieve them from, and, in fact, take their crops; let the State in Francebecomethesoledepositary and distributor of grain; letit solely buy and sell grain at a fixed rate. Consequently, at Paris,87 the Committee of Public Safety first puts “in requisition all the oats that can be found in the Republic; every holder of oats is required to deposit his stock on hand within eight days, in the storehouse indicated by the district administration” at the maximum price; otherwise he is “‘suspect’ and must be punished as such.” In the meantime, through still more comprehensive orders issued in the provinces, Paganel in the department of Tarn, and Dartigoyte in those of Gers and the Upper-Garonne,88 enjoin each commune to establish public granaries. “All citizens are ordered to bring in whatever produce they possess in grain, flour, wheat, maslin, rye, barley, oats, millet, buckwheat” at the maximum rate; nobody shall keep on hand morethan onemonth’s supply, fifty pounds of flour or wheat for each person; in this way, the State, which holds in its hands the keys of the storehouses, may “carry out the salutary equalisation of subsistences” between department and department, district and district, commune and commune, individual and individual. A store- keeper will look after each of these well-filled granaries; the mu-

86. Ludovic Sciout, iv., 236. (Proclamation of the representatives on mission in Finisterre.) “Magistrates of the people tell all farmers and owners of land that their crops belong to the nation and that they are simply its depositaries.”— Archives Nationales, AF., II., 92. (Orders by Boˆ, representative in Cautal, Pluviose 8.) “Whereas, as all citizens in a Republic form one family . . . all those who refuse to assist their brethren and neighbors under the specious pretext that they have not sufficient supplies must be regarded as ‘suspect’ citizens.” 87. Archives Nationales, AF., II., 68. (Orders of the Committee of Public Safety, Prairial 28.) The maximum price is fourteen francs the quintal; after Messidor 30, it is not to be more than eleven francs. 88. Ibid., AF., II., 116 and 106, orders of Paganel, Castres, Pluviose 6 and 7. Orders of Dartigoyte, Floreál 23, 25, and 29. 1296 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION nicipality will itself deliver rations and, moreover, “take suitable steps to see that beans and vegetables, as they mature, be economi- cally distributed under its supervision,” at so much per head, and always at therateof the maximum. Otherwise, dismissal, imprisonment and prosecution “in the extraordinary criminal tribunal.” This being accomplished, and the fruits of labor duly allotted, there remains only the allotment of labor itself. To effect this, Maignet,89 in Vaucluse, and in the Bouches-du-Rhone, prescribes for each municipality the immediate formation of two lists, one of day-laborers and the other of proprietors; “all proprietors in need of a cultivator by theday,” areto appearand ask for oneat themunicipality, which will assign theapplicant as many as hewants, “in orderon thelist,” with a card for himself and numbers for the designated parties. The laborer who does not enter his name on the list, or who exacts more than the maximum wages, is to be sentenced to the pillory with two years in irons. The same sentence with the addition of a fine of three hundred livres, is for every proprietor who employs any laborer not on thelist or who pays morethan the maximum rate of wages. After this, nothing more is necessary, in practice, than to draw up and keep in sight the new registries of names and figures made by the members of thirty thousand municipal boards, who cannot keep accounts and who scarcely know how to read and write; build a vast public granary, or put in requisition three or four barns in each commune, in which half dried and mixed grain may rot; pay two hundred thousand incorruptible storekeepers and measurers who will not divert anything from the depots for their friends or themselves; add to the thirty-five thousand employees of the Committee on Subsistences,90 five hundred thousand municipal scribes disposed to quit their trades or ploughs for the purpose of making daily distributions gratuitously; but more precisely, to maintain four or

89. Ibid., AF., II., 147. (Orders of Maignet, Avignon, Prairial 2.) 90. Moniteur, xxiii., 397. (Speech by Dubois-Crance´, May 5, 1795.) “The Committee on Commerce (and Supplies) had thirty-ﬁve thousand employees in its service.” The Governed / 1297

five millions of perfect gendarmes, one in each family, living with it, to help along the purchases, sales, and transactions of each day and to verify at night the contents of the locker—in short, to set one-half of the French people as spies on the other half. These are theconditions which securetheproduction and distribution of food, and which sufficefor theinstitution throughout Franceof a conscription of labor and thecaptivity of grain. Unfortunately, the peasant does not understand this theory, but he understands business; he makes close calculations, and the positive, patent, vulgar facts on which he reasons lead to other conclusions.91 “In Messidor last they took all my last years’ oats, at fourteen francs in assignats, and, in Thermidor, they are going to take all this year’s oats, at eleven francs in assignats. At this rate I shall not sow at all. Besides, I do not need any for myself, as they have taken my horsesfor thearmy-wagons. To raiseryeand wheat,as much of it as formerly, is also working at a loss; I will raise no more than thelittleI want for myself, and again, I supposethat this will be put in requisition, even my supplies for the year! I had rather let my fields lie fallow. Just see now, they are taking all the live threemonths’ pigs! Luckily, I killed mine beforehand and it is now in the pork-barrel. But they are going to claim all salt provisions like the rest. The new grabbers are worse than the old ones. Six months

91. Archives Nationales, AF., II., 68. (Orders of the Committee of Public Safety, Prairial 28.)—Decree of Messidor 8, year II. “All kinds of grain and the hay of the present crop are required by the government.”—A new estimate is made, each farmer being obliged to state the amount of his crop; verification, confiscation in case of inaccurate declarations, and orders to thrash out the sheaves.—Dauban, 490. (Letter of the national agent of Villefort, Thermidor 19.) Calculations and the reasoning of farmers with a view to avoid sowing and planting: “Not so much on account of the lack of hands as not to ruin oneself by sowing and raising an expensive crop which, they say, affords them small returns when they sell their grain at so low a price.”—Archives Nationales, AF., II., 106. (Letter of the national agent in Gers and Haute-Garonne, Floreál 25.) “They say here, that as soon as the crop is gathered, all the grain will be taken away, without leaving anything to live on. It is stated that all salt provisions are going to be taken and the agriculturists reduced to the horrors of a famine.” 1298 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION more, and we shall all die of hunger. It is better to cross one’s arms at once and go to prison; there, at least, we shall be fed and not have to work.” In effect, they allow themselves to be imprisoned, thebestof thesmall cultivators and proprietors by thousands, and Lindet,92 at the head of the Commission on Subsistences, speaks with dismay of the ground being no longer tilled, of cattle in France being no more abundant than the year before, and of nothing to be had to cut this year. For a strange thing has happened, unheard of in Europe, almost incredible to any one familiar with the French peasant and his love of work. This field which he has ploughed, manured, harrowed, and reaped with his own hands, its precious crop, the crop that belongs to him and on which he has feasted his eyes for seven months, now that it is ripe,hewill not takethetroubleto gatherit; it would be bothering himself for some one else; as the crop that he sees there is for the government, let the government defray the final cost of getting it in; let it do the harvesting, the reaping, the putting it in sheaves, the carting, and the thrashing in the barn. Thereupon, the representatives on mission exclaim, each shouting in a louder or lower key, according to his character. “Many of the cultivators,” writes Dartigoyte,93 “affect a supreme indifference for this splendid

92. Moniteur, xxii., 21. (Speech by Lindet, September 7, 1794.) “We have long feared that the ground would not be tilled, that the meadows would be covered with cattle while the proprietors and farmers were kept in prison.” Archives Nationales, D., § 1, No. I. (Letter from the district of Bar-sur-Seine, Ventose 14, year III.) “The maximum causes the concealment of grain. The quit-claims ruined the consumers and rendered them desperate. How many wretches, indeed, have been arrested, attacked, confiscated, fined, and ruined for having gone off fifteen or twenty leagues to get grain with which to feed their wives and children?” 93. AF., II., 106. (Circular by Dartigoyte, Floreál 25.) “You must apply this rule, that is, make the municipal officers responsible for the noncultivation of the soil.” “If any citizen allows himself a different kind of bread, other than that which all the cultivators and laborers in the commune use, I shall have him brought beforethecourtsconjointly with themunicipality as beingthefirst culprit guilty of having tolerated it....Reduce, if necessary, three-fourths of The Governed / 1299 crop. One must have seen it, as I have, to believe how great the neglect of the wheat is in certain parts, how it is smothered by the grass....Draft, if the case requires it, a certain number of inhabitants in this or that commune to work in another one. . . . Every man who refuses to work, except on the ‘decade’ day, must be punished as an ill-disposed citizen, as a royalist.” “Generous friends of nature,” writes Ferry,94 “introduce amongst you, perpetuate around you, the habit of working in common, and begin with the present crop. Do not spare either indolent women or indolent men, those social parasites, many of whom you doubtless have in your midst. What! allow lazy men and lazy women where we are! Where should we find a Republican police? . . . Immediately on the reception of this present order the municipal officers of each commune will con- vokeall citoyennes in the Temple of the Eternal and urge them, in the name of the law, to devote themselves to the labors of harvesting. Those women who fail in this patriotic duty, shall be excluded from the assemblies, from the national festivals, while all good citoyennes are requested to repel them from their homes. All good citizens are requested to give to this rural festivity that sentimental character which befits it.” And the programme is carried out, now in idyllic shapeand now undercompulsion. Around Avignon, 95 thecom- manding officer, the battalions of volunteers, and patriotic ladies, “the wives and daughters of patriots,” inscribe themselves as harvesters. Around Arles, “the municipality drafts all the inhabitants; patrols are sent into the country to compel all who are engaged on other work to leave it and do the harvesting.” The Convention, on its side, orders96 the release, “provisionally, of all ploughmen, day- laborers, reapers, and professional artisans and brewers, in the coun- the bread allowed to nonlaboring citizens because muscadins and muscadines have resources and, besides, lead an idle life.” 94. AF., II., 111. (Letters of Ferry, Bourges, Messidor 23, to his “brethren in thepopular club,” and “to the citoyennes (women) of Indre-et-Cher.”) 95. Moniteur, xxi., 171. (Letter from Avignon, Messidor 9, and letter of the Jacobins of Arles.) 96. Moniteur, xxi., 184. (Decree of Messidor 21.) 1300 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION try and in the market-towns and communes, the population of which is not over twelve hundred inhabitants, and who are confined as ‘suspects.’” In other terms, physical necessity has imposed silence on the inept theory; above all things, the crop must be harvested, and indispensable arms be restored to the field of labor. The governors of France are compelled to put on the brake, if only for an instant, at thelast moment,at sight of theyawning abyss, of approaching and actual famine; France was then gliding into it, and, if not engulphed, it is simply a miracle. Four fortunate circumstances, at the last hour, concur to keep her suspended on the hither brink of the precipice. The winter chances to beexceptionallymild. 97 The vegetables which make up for the absence of bread and meat provide food for April and May, while the remarkably fine harvest, almost spontaneous, is three weeks in advance. Another, and the second piece of good fortune, consists in thegreat convoy from Ame rica, one hundred and sixteen vessels loaded with grain, which reached Brest on the 8th of June, 1794, in spite of English cruisers, thanks to the sacrifice of the fleet that protected it and which, eight days previously, had succumbed in its behalf. Thethird strokeof fortuneis theentry of a victorious army into the enemies’ country and feeding itself through foreign requisitions, in Belgium,in thePalatinateand on thefrontierprovinces of Italy and Spain. Finally, most fortunate of all, Robespierre, Saint- Just, and Couthon, theParis communeand thetheoristJacobins, are guillotined on the 23rd of July, and with them falls despotic socialism; henceforth, the Jacobin edifice crumbles, owing to great crevices in its walls. The maximum, in fact, is no longer maintained, while the Convention, at the end of December, 1794, legally abol-

97. Gouverneur Morris. (Correspondence with Washington. Letters of March 27 and April 10, 1794.) He says that there is no record of such an early spring. Rye has headed out and clover is in flower. It is astonishing to see apricots in April as large as pigeons’ eggs. In the south, where the dearth is most severe, he has good reason to believe that the ground is supplying the inhabitants with food. A frost likethat of theyearbeforeinthemonth of May (1793) would help the famine more than all the armies and fleets in Europe. The Governed / 1301 ishes it; the farmers now sell as they please and at two prices, according as they are paid in assignats or coin; their hope, confidence, and courage are restored; in October and November, 1794, they voluntarily do their own ploughing and planting, and still more gladly will they gather in their own crops in July, 1795. Nevertheless, we can judge by the discouragement into which they had been plunged by four months of the system, the utter prostration into which they would have fallen had the system lasted an indefinite time. It is very probable that cultivation at the end of one or two years would have proved unproductive or have ceased altogether. Already, subject to every sort of exhortation and threat, the peasant had remained inert, apparently deaf and insensible, like an overloaded beast of burden which, so often struck, grows obstinate or sinks down and refuses to move. It is evident that he would have never stirred again could Saint-Just, holding him by the throat, have bound him hand and foot, as hehad doneat Strasbourg, in the multiplied knots of his Spartan Utopia; we should have seen what labor and the stagnation it produces comes to, when managed through State manoeuvres by administrative mannikins and humanitarian automatons. This experiment had been tried in China, in the eleventh century, and according to principles, long and regularly, by a well-manipulated and omnipotent State, on the most industrious and soberest people in the world, and men died in myriads like flies. If the French, at the end of 1794 and during the following years did not die like flies, it was because the Jacobin system was relaxed too soon.

VI But, if the Jacobin system, in spite of its surviving founders, gradually relaxes after Thermidor; if the main ligature tied around the man’s neck,brokejust as theman was strangling, theothers that still bind him hold him tight, except as they are loosened in places; and, as it is, some of the straps, terribly stiffened, sink deeper and deeper into his flesh. In the first place, the requisitions continue: 1302 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION there is no other way of provisioning the armies and the cities; the gendarme is always on the road, compelling each village to contribute its portion of grain, and at the legal rate. The refractory are subject to keepers, confiscations, fines, and imprisonment; they are confined and kept in the district lock-ups “at their own expense,” men and women, twenty-two on Pluviose 17, year III., in the district of Bar-sur-Aube; forty-five, Germinal 7, in the district of Troyes; forty-five, the same day, in the district of Nogent-sur-Seine, and twenty others, eight days later, in the same district, in the commune of Trainealone. 98 Thecondition of thecultivator is certainlynot an

98. Archives Nationales, AF., II., 73. (Letter by the Directory of Calvados, Prairial 26, year III.) “We have not a grain of wheat in store, and the prisons are full of cultivators.”—Archives Nationales, D., § 1, file No. 3. (Warrants of arrest issued by Representative Albert, Pluviose 19, year III., Germinal 7 and 16.)—On the details of the difficulties and annoyances attending the requisitions, cf. this file and the five preceding or following files. (Letter of the National agent, district of Nogent-sur-Seine, Germinal 13.) “I have had summoned before the district court a great many cultivators and proprietors who are in arrears in furnishing the requisitions made on them by their respective municipalities. . . . A large majority declared that they were unable to furnish in full even if their seed were taken. The court ordered the confiscation of the said grain with a fine equal to the value of the quantity demanded of those called upon....It is now my duty to execute the sentence. But, I must observe to you, that if you do not reduce the fine, many of them will be reduced to despair. Hence I await your answer so that I may act accordingly.”—(Another letter from the same agent, Germinal 9.) “It is impossible to supply the market of Villarceaux; seven communes under requisition prevented it through the district of Sozannes which constantly keeps an armed force there to carry grain away as soon as thrashed.”—It is interesting to remark the inquisitorial sentimentality of the official agents and the low stage of culture. (Proce`s-verbal of theMagincourt municipality, Ventose 7.) Of course I am obliged to correct the spelling so as to render it intelligible. “The said Croiset, gendarme, went with the national agent into the houses of citizens in arrears, of whom, amongst those in arrears, nobody refused but Jean Mauchin, whom we could not keep from talking against him, seeing that he is wholly egoist and only wants for himself. He declared to us that, if, the day before his harvesting he had any left, he would share it with the citizens that needed it....Alas, yes, how could one refrain from shutting up such an egoist who wants only for himself to the detriment of his fellow- citizens? A proof of the truth is that he feeds in his house three dogs, at least The Governed / 1303 easy one, while public authority, aided by the public force, extorts from him all it can at a rate of its own; moreover, it will soon exact from him one-half of his contributions in kind, and, it must be noted, that at this time, the direct contributions alone absorb twelve and thirteen sous on the franc of the revenue. Nevertheless, under this condition, which is that of laborers in a Mussulman country, the French peasant, like the Syrian or Tunisian peasant, can keep himself alive; for, through the abolition of the maximum, privatetransactions are now free, and, to indemnify himself on this side, he sells to private individuals and even to towns,99 by agreement, on understood terms, and as dear as he pleases; all the dearer because through the legal requisitions the towns are half empty, and there are fewer sacks of grain for a larger number of purchasers; hence his losses by thegovernmentaremorethan madeup by his gains on private parties; he gains in the end, and that is why he persists in farming. The weight, however, of which he relieves himself falls upon the overburdened buyer, and this weight, already excessive, goes on increasing, through another effect of the revolutionary institution, until it becomes ten-fold and even a hundred-fold. The only money, in fact, which private individuals possess melts away in their hands, and, so to say, destroys itself. When the guillotine stops working, the assignat, losing its official value, falls to its real value. In August, 1794, the loss on it is sixty-six per cent., in October, seventy-two per cent., in December, seventy-eight per cent., in January, 1795, eighty-one per cent., and after that date the constant issues of enor- one hundred and fifty chickens and even pigeons, which uses up a lot of grain, enough to hinder the satisfaction of all the requisitions. He might do without dogs, as his court is enclosed; he might likewise content himself with thirty chickens and then be able to satisfy the requisitions.” This document is signed “Bertrand, agen.” Mauchin, on the strength of it, is incarcerated at Troyes “at his own expense.” 99. Ibid. Letter from the district of Bar-sur-Seine, Ventose 14, year III. Sincetheabolition of the maximum, “theinhabitants travelthirty and forty leagues to purchase wheat.”—(Letter from the municipality of Troyes, Ventose 15.) “According to the price of grain, which we keep on buying, by agreement, bread will cost fifteen sous (the pound) next decade.” 1304 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION mous amounts, five hundred millions, then a billion, a billion and a half, and, finally, two billions a month, hastens its depreciation.100 The greater the depreciation of the assignats the greater the amount the government is obliged to issue to provide for its expenses, and the more it issues the more it causes their depreciation, so that the decline which increases the issue increases the depreciation, until, finally, theassignat comesdown to nothing. On March 11, 1795, the louis d’or brings two hundred and five francs in assignats, May 11, four hundred francs, June 12, one thousand francs, in the month of October, one thousand seven hundred francs, November 13, two thousand eight hundred and fifty francs, November 21, three thousand francs, and six months later, nineteen thousand francs. Ac- cordingly, an assignat of one hundred francs is worth in June, 1795, four francs, in August three francs, in November fifteen sous, in December ten sous, and then five sous. Naturally, all provisions rise proportionately in price. A pound of bread in Paris, January 2, 1796, costs fifty francs, a pound of meat sixty francs, a pound of candles one hundred and eighty francs, a bushel of potatoes two hundred francs, a bottle of wine one hundred francs. The reader may imagine, if he can, the distress of people with small incomes, pensioners and employees, mechanics and artisans in the towns out of work,101 in

100. Schmidt, “Parisir Zustande,” 145–220. The reopening of the Bourse, April 25, 1795; ibid., 322, ii., 105.—“Memoirs of Theobald Wolf,” vol. i., p. 200 (February 3, 1796). At Havre, the louis d’or is then worth five thousand francs, and the ecu of six francs in proportion. At Paris (February 12), the louis d’ or is worth six thousand five hundred: a dinner for two persons at the Palais Royal costs one thousand five hundred francs.—Mayer (“Frankreich in 1796.”) He gives a dinner for ten persons which costs three hundred thousand francs in assignats. At this ratea cab ridecosts onethousand francs, and by thehour six thousand francs. 101. “Correspondance de Mallet-Dupan avec la cour de Vienne,” i., 253 (July 18, 1795). “It is not thesamenow as in theearlydays of theRevolution, which then bore heavily only on certain classes of society; now, everybody feels the scourge, hourly, in every department of civil life. Goods and provisions advance daily (in price) in much greater proportion than the decline in assignats. . . . Paris is really a city of furnishing shops. . . . The immense competition for these objects raises all goods twenty-five per cent. a week. . . . It is the same The Governed / 1305 brief, all who have nothing but a small package of assignats to live on, and who havenothing to do, whoseindispensablewants arenot directly supplied by the labor of their own hands in producing wine, candles, meat, potatoes, and bread. Immediately after the abolition of the maximum,102 thecry of hunger increases. From month to month its accents become more painful and vehement in proportion to the increased dearness of provisions, especially in the summer of 1795, as the harvesting draws near, when the granaries, filled by the crop of 1794, are getting empty. And these hungering cries go up by millions: for a good many of the departments in France do not produce sufficient grain for homeconsumption, this beingthecasein fertilewheatdepart- ments, and likewise in certain districts; cries also go up from the large and small towns, while in each village numbers of peasants fast because they have no land to provide them with food, or because they lack strength, health, employment, and wages. “For a fortnight past,” writes a municipal body in Seine-et-Marne,103 “at least two with provisions. A sack of wheat weighing three quintals is now worth nine thousand francs, a pound of beef thirty-six francs, a pair of shoes one hundred francs. It is impossible for artisans to raise their wages proportionately with such a large and rapid increase.”—Cf. “Diary of Lord Malmesbury,” iii., 290 (October 27, 1796). After 1795, the gains of the peasants, land-owners, and producers are very large; from 1792 to 1796 they accumulate and hide away most of the current coin. They were courageous enough and smart enough to protect their hoard against the violence of the revolutionary government; “hence, at the time of the depreciation of assignats, they bought land extraordinarily cheap.” In 1796 they cultivate and produce largely. 102. Archives Nationales, AF., II., 72. (Letter of the administrators of the district of Montpelier to the Convention, Messidor 26, year II.) “Your decree of Nivose 4 last, suppressed the maximum, which step, provoked by justice and the maximum, did not have the effect you anticipated.” The dearth ceases, but there is a prodigious increase in prices, the farmer selling his wheat at from four hundred and seventy to six hundred and seventy francs the quintal. 103. Archives Nationales, AF., II., 71. (Deliberations of the commune of Champs, canton of Lagny, Prairial 22, year III. Letter of the procureur-syndic of Meaux, Messidor 3. Letter of the municipality of Rozoy, Seine-et-Marne, Messidor 4.)—Ibid., AF., II., 74. (Letter of the municipality of Eme´rainville, endorsed by the Directory of Meaux, Messidor 14.) “The commune can procure 1306 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION hundred citizens in our commune are without bread, grain, and flour; they have had no other food than bran and vegetables. We see with sorrow children deprived of nourishment, their nurses without milk, unableto sucklethem;old menfalling down through inanition, and young men in the fields too weak to stand up to their work.” And other communes in the district “are about in the same condition.” The same spectacle is visible throughout the Ile-de-France, Nor- mandy, and in Picardy. Around Dieppe, in the country,104 entire communes support themselves on herbs and bran. “Citizen representatives,” write the administrators, “we can no longer maintain ourselves. Our fellow-citizens reproach us with having despoiled them of their grain in favor of the large communes.” “All means of subsistence are exhausted,” writes the district of Louviers,105 “we are reduced here for a month past to eating bran bread and boiled herbs, and even this rude food is getting scarce. Bear in mind that we have seventy-one thousand people to govern, at this very time subject to all the horrors of famine, a large number of them having already perished, some with hunger and others with diseases engen- dered by the poor food they live on.” In the Caen district,106 “the unripe peas, horse-peas, beans, and green barley and rye are attacked”; mothers and children go after these in the fields in default only oat-bread for its inhabitants, and, again, they have to go a long way to get this. This food, of so poor a quality, far from strengthening the citizen accustomed to agricultural labor, disheartens him and makes him ill, the result beingthat thehay cannot begot in in good timefor lack of hands.”—At Champs, “thecrop of hay is readyfor mowing, but, for want of food, the laborers cannot do the work.” 104. Ibid., AF., II., 73. (Letter from the Directory of the district of Dieppe, Prairial 22.) 105. Ibid. (Letter of the administrators of the district of Louviers, Prairial 26.) 106. Ibid. (Letter of the procureur-syndic of the Caen district, Caen, Messidor 23.—Letter of Representative Porcher to the Committee of Public Safety, Mes- sidor 26.—Letter of the same, Prairial 24. “The condition of this department seemed to me frightful....Theprivations of the department with respect to subsistence cannot be over-stated to you; the evil is at its height.” The Governed / 1307 of other food; “other vegetables in the gardens are already consumed; furniture, the comforts of the well-to-do class, have become the prey of the farming egoist; having nothing more to sell they consequently have nothing with which to obtain a morsel of bread.” “It is impossible,” writes the representative on mission, “to wait for the crop without further aid. As long as bran lasted the people ate that; none can now be found and despair is at its height. I have not seen the sun since I came. The harvest will be a month behind. What shall we do? What will become of us?” “In Picardy,” writes the Beauvais district, “the great majority of people in the rural communes overrun the woods” to find mushrooms, berries, and wild fruits.107 “They think themselves lucky,” says the Bapaume district, “if they can get a share of the food of animals.” “In many communes,” the district of Vervier reports, “the inhabitants are reduced to living on herbage.” “Many families, entire communes,” reports the Laon commissary, “have been without bread two or three months andliveonbranorherbs....Mothers of families, children, old men, pregnant women, come to the (members of the) Directory for bread and often faint in their arms.” And yet, great as the famine is in the country it is worse in the towns; and theproof of it is that thestarving peopleflock into the country to find whatever they can to live on, no matter how, and, generally speaking, in vain. “Three-quarters of our fellow-citizens,” writes the Rozoy municipality,108 “are forced to quit work and overrun the country here and there, among the farmers, to obtain bread

107. Archives Nationales, AF., II., 74. (Letter of the Beauvais administrators, Prairial 15.—Letter of the Bapaume administrator, Prairial 24.—Letter of the Vervier administrator, Messidor 7.—Letter of the commissary sent by the district of Laon, Messidor.)—Cf., ibid., letter from the Abbeville district, Prair- ial 11. “The quintal of wheat is sold at one thousand assignats, or rather, the farmers will not take assignats any more, grain not to be had for anything but coin, and, as most people have none to give they are hard-hearted enough to demand of one his clothes, and of another his furniture, etc.” 108. Ibid., AF., II., 71. (Letter of the Rozoy municipality. Seine-et-Marne, Messidor 4, year III.) A bushel of wheat in the vicinity of Rozoy brings three hundred francs. 1308 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION for specie, and with more entreaty than the poorest wretches; for the most part, they return with tears in their eyes at not being able to find, not merely a bushel of wheat, but a pound of bread.” “Yes- terday,” writes the Montreuil-sur-Mer municipality,109 “morethan two hundred of our citizens set out to beg in the country,” and, when they get nothing, they steal. “Bands of brigands110 spread through the country and pillage all dwellings anywise remote.... Grain, flour, bread, cattle, poultry, stuffs, etc., all come in play; our terrified shepherds are no longer willing to sleep in their sheep-pens and areleaving us.” Themost timid dig carrots at night or, during the day, gather dandelions; but their town stomachs cannot digest this aliment. “Lately,” writes the procureur-syndic of St. Germain,111 “thecorpseof a fatherof a family, found in thefieldswith his mouth still filled with the grass he had striven to chew, exasperates and arouses the spirit of the poor creatures awaiting a similar fate.” How, then, do people in the towns live? In small towns or scattered villages, each municipality, using what gendarmes it has, makes

109. Ibid., AF., II., 74. (Letter of the Montreuil-sur-Mer municipality, Prair- ial 29.) 110. Ibid. (Letter of the Vervins administrators, Prairial 11, Letter of the commune of La Chapelle-sur-Somme, Prairial 24.) 111. Ibid., AF., II., 70 (Letter of the procureur-syndic of thedistrict of St. Germain, Thermidor 10.) This file, which depicts the situation of the communes around Paris, is specially heartrending and terrible. Among other instances of the misery of workmen the following petition of the men employed on the Marly water-works may be given, Messidor 28. “The workmen and employees on the machine at Marly beg leave to present to you the wretched state to which they are reduced by the dearness of provisions. Their moderate wages, which at the most have reached only five livres twelve sous, and again, for four months past, having received but two francs sixteen sous, no longer provide them with half-a-pound of bread, since it costs fifteen and sixteen francs per pound. We poor people have not been wanting in courage nor patience, hoping that times would mend. We have been reduced to selling most of our effects and to eating bread made of bran of which a sample is herewith sent, and which distresses us very much (nous incommode beaucoup); most of us are ill and those who are not so are in a very feeble state.”—Schmidt, “Tableaux de Paris,” Thermidor 9. “Peasants on the market square complain bitterly of being robbed in the fields and on the road, and even of having their sacks (of grain) plundered.” The Governed / 1309 legal requisitions in its vicinity, and sometimes the commune obtains from the government a charitable gift of wheat, oats, rice, or assignats. But the quantity of grain it receives is so small, one asks how it is that, after two months, six months, or a year of such a system, one-halfof its inhabitants arenot in thegrave-yard. I supposethat many of them live on what they raise in their gardens, or on their small farms; others are helped by their relations, neighbors, and companions; in any event, it is clear that the human machine is very resistant, and a few mouthfuls suffice to keep it going a long time. At Ervy,112 in Aube, “not a grain of wheat has been brought in the last two market-days.” “Tomorrow,113 Prairial 25, in Bapaume, the chief town of the district, there will be only two bushels of flour left (for food of any sort).” “At Boulogne-sur-Mer, for the past ten days, there has been distributed to each person only three pounds of bad barley, or maslin, without knowing whether we can again distribute this miserable ration next decade.” Out of sixteen hundred inhabitants in Brionne, “twelve hundred and sixty114 are reduced to the small portion of wheat they receive at the market, and which, unfortunately, for too long a time, has been reduced from eight to three ounces of wheat for each person, every eight days.” For three months past, in Seine-et-Marne,115 in “thecommuneof Meaux,that

112. Archives Nationales, D., § 1, file 2. (Letter of the Ervy municipality, Floreál 17, year III.) “The indifference of the egoist farmers in the country is at its height; they pay no respect whatever to the laws, killing the poor by refusing to sell, or unwilling to sell their grain at a price they can pay.”—(It would be necessary to copy the whole of this file to show the alimentary state of thedepartments.) 113. Ibid., AF., II., 74. (Letter of the district administrators of Bapaume, Prairial 24.—Letter of the municipality of Boulogne-sur-Mer, Prairial 24.) 114. Ibid., AF., II., 73. (Letter of the municipality of Brionne, district of Bernay, Prairial 7.) The farmers do not bring in their wheat because they sell it elsewhere at the rate of fifteen hundred and two thousand francs the sack of three hundred and thirty pounds. 115. Ibid., AF., II., 71. (Letter of the procureur-syndic of thedistrict of Meaux, Messidor 2.) “Their fate is shared by many of the rural communes” and the whole district has been reduced to this dearth “to increase the resources of Paris and thearmies.” 1310 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION of Laferte´, Lagny, Daumartin, and other principal towns of the canton, they have had only half-a-pound per head, for each day, of bad bread.” In Seine-et-Oise, “citizens of the neighborhood of Paris and even of Versailles116 state that they are reduced to four ounces of bread.” At St. Denis,117 with a population of six thousand, “a large part of the inhabitants, worn out with suffering, betake themselves to the charity depots. Workmen, especially, cannot do their work for lack of food. A good many women, mothers and nurses, have been found in their houses unconscious, without any sign of life in them, and many have died with their infants at their breasts.” Even in a larger and less forsaken town, St. Germain,118 themisery surpasses all that one can imagine. “Half-a-pound of flour for each inhabitant,” not daily, but at long intervals; “bread at fifteen and sixteen francs the pound and all other provisions at the same rate; a people which is sinking, losing hope and perishing. Yesterday, for thefeˆteof the9th of Thermidor, not a sign of rejoicing;on the contrary, symptoms of general and profound depression, tottering spectres in the streets, mournful shrieks of ravaging hunger or shouts of rage, almost every one, driven to the last extremity of misery, welcoming death as a boon.” Such is the aspect of these huge artificial agglomerations, where the soil, made sterile by habitation, bears only stones, and where

116. Schmidt, “Tableaux de Paris.” (Reports of the Police, Pluviose 6, year III.)—Ibid., Germinal 16. “A letter from the department of Drome states that they are dying of hunger there, bread selling at three francs the pound.” 117. Archives Nationales, AF., II., 70. (Deliberations of the Council-general of Franciade, Thermidor 9, year III.) 118. Ibid. (Letter of the procureur-syndic of the district of St. Germain, Ther- midor 10.)—Delećluze, “Souvenirs de Soixante Anneés,” p. 10. (The Delećluze family live in Mendon in 1794 and for most of 1795. M. Delećluze, senior, and his son go to Meaux and obtain of a farmer a bag of good flour weighing three hundred and twenty-five pounds for about ten louis d’or and fetch it home, taking the greatest pains to keep it concealed. Both father and son “after having covered the precious sack with hay and straw in the bottom of the cart, follow it on foot at some distance as the peasant drives along.” Madame Delećluze kneads the bread herself and bakes it. The Governed / 1311 twenty, thirty, fifty, and a hundred thousand suffering stomachs have to obtain from ten, twenty, and thirty leagues off their first and last mouthful of food. Within these close pens long lines of human sheep huddle together every day bleating and trembling around almost empty troughs, and only through extraordinary efforts do the shepherds daily succeed in providing them with a little nourishment. The central government, strenuously appealed to, enlarges or defines the circle of their requisitions; it authorises them to borrow, to tax themselves; it lends or gives to them millions of assignats;119 frequently,

119. Archives Nationales, AF., II., 74. The following shows some of the municipal expenditures. (Deliberations of the commune of Annecy, Thermidor 8, year III.) “Amount received by the commune from the government, one million two hundred thousand francs. Fraternal subscriptions, four hundred thousand francs. Forced loan, two million four hundred thousand francs. Amount arising from grain granted by the government, but not paid for, four hundred thousand francs.” (Letter from the municipality of Lille, Fructidor 7.) “Thedeficit,at thetimewetook hold of thegovernment,which, owing to the difference between the price of grain bought and the price obtained for bread distributed among the necessitous, had amounted to two million two hundred seventy thousand and twenty-three francs, so increased in Thermidor as to amount to eight million three hundred twelve thousand and nine hundred fifty- six francs.” Consequently, the towns ruin themselves with indebtedness to an incredible extent.—Archives Nationales, AF., II., 72. (Letter of the municipality of Tours, Vende´miaire 19, year IV.) Tours has not sufficient money with which to buy oil for its street-lamps and which are no longer lit at night. A decree is passed to enable the agent for subsistences at Paris to supply its commissaries with twenty quintals of oil which, for three hundred and forty lamps, keeps one hundred agoing up to Germinal 1. The same at Toulouse. (Report of Destrene, Moniteur, June 24, 1798.) On November 26, 1794, Bordeaux is unable to pay seventy-two francs for thirty barrels of water to wash the guillotine. (Granier de Cassagnac, i., 13. Extract from the archives of Bordeaux.) Bordeaux is authorised to sell one thousand casks of wine which had formerly been taken on requisition by the government, the town to pay for them at the rate at which the Republic bought them and to sell them as dear as possible in the way of regular trade. The proceeds are to be employed in providing subsistence for its inhabitants. (Archives Nationales, AF., II., 72, orders of Vende´miaire4, year IV.)—As to aid furnished by the assignats granted to towns and departments cf. the same files; four hundred thousand francs to Poitiers, Pluviose 18, four millions to Lyons, Pluviose 17, three millions a month to Nantes, after Ther- 1312 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION in cases of extreme want, it allows them to take so much grain or rice from its storehouses, for a week’s supply. But, in truth, this sort of lifeis not living, it is only not dying. For onehalf, and more than onehalf of theinhabitants simply subsist on rations of bread obtained by long waiting for it at the end of a string of people and delivered at a reduced price. What rations and what bread! “It seems,” says the municipality of Troyes, “that120 thecountry has anathematised the towns. Formerly, the finest grain was brought to market; the farmer kept the inferior quality and consumed it at home. Now it is the reverse, and this is carried still further, for, not only do we receive no wheat whatever, but the farmers give us sprouted barley and rye, which they reserve for our commune; the farmer who has none arranges with those who have, so as to buy it and deliver it in town, and sell his good wheat elsewhere. Half a pound per day and per head, in Pluviose, to the thirteen thousand or fourteen thousand indigent in Troyes; then a quarter of a pound, and, finally, two ounces with a little rice and some dried vegetables, “which feeble resource is going to fail us.”121 Half a pound in Plu- viose, to the twenty thousand needy in Amiens, which ration is only nominal, for “it often happens that each individual gets only four ounces, while the distribution has repeatedly failed three days in midor 14, ten millions to the department of He´rault in Frimaireand Pluviose, etc. 120. Archives Nationales, II., § 1, file 2. (Deliberations of the Commune of Troyes, Ventose 15, year III.)—“Un Se´jour en France.” (Amiens, May 9, 1795.) “As we had obtained a few six franc crowns and were able to get a small supply ofwheat....Mr.D and the servants eat bread made of three-fourths bran and one-fourth flour. . . . When we bake it we carefully close the doors, paying no attention to the door-bell, and allow no visitor to come in until every trace of theoperation is gone ....The distribution now consists of a mixtureof sprouted wheat, peas, rye, etc., which scarcely resembles bread.” (April 12.) “The distribution of bread (then) was a quarter of a pound a day. Many of those who in other respects were well-off, got nothing at all.” 121. Ibid. (Letters of the municipality of Troyes, Ventose 15, year III., and Germinal 6.) Letter of the three deputies, sent by the municipality to Paris, Pluviose, year III. (no date.) The Governed / 1313 succession,” and this continues; six months later, Fructidor 7, Am- iens has but sixty-nine quintals of flour in its market storehouse, “an insufficient quantity for distribution this very day; tomorrow, it will beimpossibleto makeany distribution at all, and theday after tomorrow the needy population of this commune will be brought down to absolute famine.” “Complete desperation!” There are already “many suicides.”122 At other times, rage predominates and thereareriots. At Evreux, 123 Germinal 21, a riot breaks out, owing to the delivery of only two pounds of flour per head and per week, and because three days before, only a pound and a half was delivered. There is a riot at Deippe,124 Prairial 14 and 15, because “the people are reduced here to three or four ounces of bread.” There is another at Vervins, Prairial 9, because the municipality which obtains bread at a cost of seven and eight francs a pound, raises the price from twenty-five to fifty sous. At Lille, an insurrection breaks out Messidor 4, because the municipality, paying nine francs for bread, can give it to the poor only for about twenty and thirty sous. Lyons, in Nivose, remains without bread “for five full days.”125 At Chartres, Thermidor 15,126 thedistribution of breadfor a month is only eight ounces a day, and there is not enough to keep this up

122. “Un Se´jour en France” (Amiens, Jan. 30, 1795.) Archives Nationales, AF., II., 74. (Deliberation of the Commune of Amiens, Thermidor 8, and Fructidor 7, year III.) 123. “Souvenirs et Journal d’un Bourgeois d’Evreux,” p. 97. (The women stop carts loaded with wheat, keep them all night, stone and wound Represen- tativeBersuse `s, and succeed in getting, each, eight pounds of wheat.) 124. Archives Nationales, AF., II., 73. (Letter of the municipality of Dieppe, Prairial 22.)—AF., II., 74. (Letter of the municipality of Vervins, Messidor 7. Letter of the municipality of Lille, Fructidor 7.) 125. “Correspondence de Mallet-Dupan avec la Cour de Vienne,” i., 90. Ibid., 131. One month later a quintal of flour at Lyons is worth two hundred francs and a pound of bread forty-five sous. 126. Archives Nationales, AF., II., 13. (Letter of the deputies extraordinary of the three administrative bodies of Chartres, Thermidor 15: “In the name of this commune dying of hunger.”)—“The inhabitants of Chartres have not even been allowed to receive their rents in grain; all has been poured into the government storehouses.” 1314 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION until the 20th of Thermidor. On the fifteenth of Fructidor, La Ro- chelle writes that “its public distributions, reduced to seven or eight ounces of bread, are on the point of failing entirely.” For four months, at Painboeuf, theration is but thequarterof a pound of bread.127 And the same at Nantes, which has eighty-two thousand inhabitants and swarms with the wretched; “the distribution never exceeded four ounces a day,” and that only for the past year. The sameat Rouen,which contains sixty thousand inhabitants; and, in addition, within the past fortnight the distribution has failed three times; in other reports, those who are well-off suffer more than the indigent because they take no part in the communal distribution, “all resources for obtaining food being, so to say, interdicted to them.” Five ounces of bread per diem for four months is the allow- anceto theforty thousand inhabitants of Caenand its district. 128 A great many in the town, as well as in the country, live on bran and wild herbs.” At the end of Prairial, “there is not a bushel of grain in the town storehouses, while the requisitions, enforced in the most rigorous and imposing style, produce nothing or next to nothing.” Misery augments from week to week: “it is impossible to form any idea of it; the people of Caen live on brown bread and the blood of cattle....Everycountenance bears traces of the famine....Faces areof livid hue ....Itisimpossibleto await thenewcrop, until the end of Fructidor.” Such are the exclamations everywhere. The object now, indeed, is to cross the narrowest and most terrible defile; a fortnight moreof absolutefasting and hundredsof thousands of

127. Ibid. (Petition of the commune of La Rochelle, Fructidor 25, that of Painboeuf, Fructidor 9, that of the municipality of Nantes, Thermidor 14, that of Rouen, Fructidor 1.)—Ibid., AF., II., 72. (Letter of the commune of Bayonne, Fructidor 1.) “Penury of subsistences for more than two years....Themu- nicipality, the past six months, is under the cruel necessity of reducing its subjects to half-a-pound of corn-bread per day . . . at the rate of twenty-five sous the pound, although the pound costs over five francs.” After the suppression of the maximum it loses about twenty-five thousand francs per day. 128. Ibid. (Letter of Representative Porcher, Caen, Prairial 24, Messidor 3 and 26. Letter of the municipality of Caen, Messidor 3.) The Governed / 1315 lives would be sacrificed.129 At this moment the government half opens the doors of its storehouses; it lends a few sacks of flour on condition of repayment—for example, at Cherbourg a few hundreds of quintals of oats; by means of oat bread, the poor can subsist until the coming harvest. But above all, it doubles its guard and shows its bayonets. At Nancy, a traveller sees130 “morethan threethousand persons soliciting in vain for a few pounds of flour.” They are dispersed with the butt-ends of muskets. Thus are the peasantry taught patriotism and the townspeople patience. Physical constraint exercised on all in the name of all; this is the only procedure which an arbitrary socialism can resort to for the distribution of food and to disciplinestarvation. VII All that an absolute government can do for supplying the capital with food is undertaken and carried out by this one, for here is its seat, and one more degree of dearth in Paris would overthrow it. Each week, on reading the daily reports of its agents,131 it finds itself on the verge of explosion; twice, in Germinal and Prairial, a popular outbreak does overthrow it for a few hours, and, if it maintains itself, it is on the condition of either giving the needy a piece of bread or the hope of getting it. Consequently, military posts are

129. Ibid. AF., II., 71. (Letter of the municipality of Auxerre, Messidor 19.) “We have kept alive thus far through all sorts of expedients as if by miracle. It has required incalculable efforts, great expenditure, and really supernatural means to accomplish it. But there is still one month between this and the end of Thermidor. How are we going to live! Our people, the majority of whom are farmers and artisans, are rationed at half-a-pound a day for each person and this will last but ten or twelve days at most.” 130. Meissner, “Voyage a` Paris,” 339. “There was not a morsel of bread in our inn. I went myself to five or six bakeries and pastry shops and found them all stripped.”Hefinds in thelast oneabout a dozenof small Savoy biscuits for which he pays fifteen francs.—See, for the military proceedings of the government in relation to bread, the orders of the Committee of Public Safety, most of them by the hand of Lindet, AF., II., 68–74. 131. Schmidt, “Tableaux de Paris,” vols. ii. and iii., passim. 1316 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION established around Paris, eighteen leagues off, on all the highways— permanent patrols in correspondence with each other to urge on the wagoners and draft relays of horses on the spot; escorts despatched from Paris to meet convoys;132 requisitions of “all carts and all horses whatever to effect transportation in preference to any other work or service”; all communes traversed by a highway are ordered to put rubbish and litter on the bad spots and spread dirt the whole way, so that the horses may drag their loads in spite of the slippery road; the national agents are ordered to draft the necessary number of men to break the ice around the water-mills;133 a requisition is made for “all the barley throughout the length and breadth of the Repub- lic”; this must be utilised by means of “the amalgam134 for making bread,” while the brewers are forbidden to use barley in the manufacture of beer; the starchmakers are forbidden to convert potatoes into starch, with penalty of death against all offenders “as destroyers of alimentary produce”; the breweries and starch-factories135 areto be closed until further notice. Paris must have grain, no matter of what kind, no matter how, and at any cost, not merely in the fol-

132. Archives Nationales, AF., II., 68. (Orders of Ventose 20, year III.; Germinal 19 and 20; Messidor 8, etc.) 133. Ibid. Orders of Nivose 5 and 22. 134. Meal composed of every species of grain and bran. 135. Ibid. Orders of Pluviose 19, Ventose 5, Floreál 4 and 24. (The fourteen brewers which the Republic keeps agoing for itself at Dunkirk are excepted.)— The proceedings are the same in relation to other necessary articles—returns demanded of nuts, rape-seed, and other seeds or fruits producing oil, also the hoofs of cattle and sheep, with requisitions for every other article entering into themanufactureof oil, and orders to keepoil-mills agoing. “All administrative bodies will see that the butchers remove the fat from their meat before offering it for sale, that they do not themselves make candles out of it, and that they do not sell it to soap-factories, etc.”—(Orders of Vende´miaire28, yearIII.) “The executive committee will collect eight hundred yoke of oxen and distribute them among the dealers in hay in order to transport wood and coal from the woods and collieries to the yards. They will distribute proportionately eight hundred sets of wheels and harness. The wagoners will be paid and guarded the same as military convoys, and drafted as required. To feed the oxen, the district administrators will take by preemption the necessary fields and pasturages, etc.” (Orders of Pluviose 10, year III.) The Governed / 1317 lowing week, but tomorrow, this very day, because hunger chews and swallows everything, and it will not wait. Once the grain is obtained, a price must be fixed which people can pay. Now, the difference between the selling and cost price is enormous; it keeps on increasing as the assignat declines and it is the government which pays this. “You furnish bread at three sous,” said Dubois-Crance´, Floreál 16,136 “and it costs you four francs. Paris consumes eight thousand quintals of meal daily, which expenditure alone amounts to one billion two hundred millions per annum.” Seven months later, when a bag of flour brings thirteen thousand francs, the same expenditure reaches five hundred and forty-six millions per month. Un- der the ancient re´gime, Paris, although overgrown, continued to be an useful organism; if it absorbed much, it elaborated more; its productiveness compensated for what it consumed, and, every year, instead of exhausting the public treasury it poured seventy-seven millions into it. Thenewre ´gime has converted it into a monstrous canker in the very heart of France, a devouring parasite which, through its six hundred thousand leeches, drains its surroundings for a distance of forty leagues, consumes one-half the annual revenue of the State, and yet still remains emaciated in spite of the sacrifices made by the treasury it depletes and the exhaustion of the provinces which supply it with food. Always the same alimentary system, the same long lines of people waiting at, and before, dawn in every quarter of Paris, in the dark, for a long time, and often to no purpose, subject to the brutalities of thestrong and theoutragesof thelicentious!On the9th of Thermidor, the daily trot of the multitude in quest of food has lasted uninterruptedly for seventeen months, accompanied with outrages of the worst kind because there is less terror and less submissiveness,

136. Moniteur, xxiv., 397.—Schmidt, “Tableaux de Paris.” (Reports of Fri- maire 16, year IV.) “Citizens in the departments wonder how it is that Paris costs them five hundred and forty six millions per month merely for bread when they are starving. This isolation of Paris, for which all the benefits of the Revolution are exclusively reserved, has the worst effect on the public mind.”— Meissner, 345. 1318 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION with more obstinacy because provisions at free sale are dearer, with greater privation because the ration distributed is smaller, and with more sombre despair because each household, having consumed its stores, has nothing of its own to make up for the insufficiencies of public charity. To cap theclimax, thewinterof 1794–1795 is so cold137 that the Seine freezes and people cross the Loire on foot; rafts no longer arrive and, to obtain fire-wood, it is necessary “to cut down trees at Boulogne, Vincennes, Verrie`res, St. Cloud, Meu- don and two other forests in the vicinity.” Fuel costs “four hundred francs per cord of wood, forty sous for a bushel of charcoal, twenty sous for a small basket. The necessitous are seen in the streets sawing the wood of their bedsteads to cook with and to keep from freezing.” On the resumption of transportation by water amongst the cakes of ice“rafts aresold as fast as theraftsmencan haul thewood out of the water, the people being obliged to pass three nights at the landing to get it, each in turn according to his number.” There are “two thousand persons at least, Pluviose 3, at the Louviers landing,” each with his card allowing him four sticks at fifteen sous each. Naturally, there is pulling, hauling, tumult, and a rush; “the dealers take to flight for fear, and the inspectors come near being murdered”; they get away along with the police commissioner and “the public helps itself.” Likewise, the following day, there is “an abominable pillage;” the gendarmes and soldiers placed there to maintain order, “make a rush for thewood and carry it away thesameas thecrowd.” Bear in mind that on this day the thermometer is sixteen degrees below zero, that one hundred, two hundred other lines of people likewise stand waiting at the doors of bakers and butchers, enduring the same cold, and that they have already endured it and will yet endure it a month and more. Words are wanting to describe the sufferings of these long lines of motionless beings, during the night, at daybreak,

137. Mercier, “Paris Pendant la Re´volution,” i., 355–357.—Schmidt, “Pari- ser Zustande,” i., 224. (The Seine is frozen over on November 23 and January 23, the thermometer standing at sixteen degrees (Centigrade) below zero.)— Schmidt, “TableauxdeParis.” (Reportsof thePolice,Pluviose2, 3, and 4.) The Governed / 1319 standing therefiveor six hours, with theblast driving through their rags and their feet freezing. Ventose is beginning, and the ration of bread is reduced to a pound and a half;138 Ventose ends, and the ration of bread, kept at a pound and a half for the three hundred and twenty-four laborers, falls to one pound; in fact, a great many get none at all, many only a half and a quarter of a pound. Germinal follows and theCommitteeofPublic Safety, finding that its maga- zines are giving out, limits all rations to a quarter of a pound. There- upon, on the 12th of Germinal, an insurrection of workmen and women breaks out; the Convention is invaded and liberated by military force, Paris is declared in a state of siege and the government, again in the saddle, tightens the reins. Thenceforth, the ration of meat served out every four or five days, is a quarter of a pound; bread averages every day, sometimes five, sometimes six, and sometimes seven ounces, at long intervals eight ounces, often three, two, and one ounce and a half, or even none at all; while this bread, black and “making mischief,” becomes more and more worthless and detestable.139 People who are well-off live on potatoes, but only for them, for, in the middle of Germinal, these cost fifteen francs the bushel and, towards the end, twenty francs; towards the end of Messidor, forty-fivefrancs; in thefirst month of theDirectory, one hundred and eighty francs, and then two hundred and eighty-four

138. Schmidt, “Pariser Zustande,” i., 228, and following pages. (February 25, the distribution of bread is reduced to one and one-half pounds per person; March 17, to one and one-half pounds for workmen and one pound for others. Final reduction to one-quarter of a pound, March 31.)—Ibid., 251, for ulterior rates.—Dufort de Cheverney, (MS. Me´moires, August, 1795.) M. de Cheverney takes up his quarters at the old Louvre with his friend Sedaine. “I had assisted them with food all I could: they owned to me that, without this, they would have died of starvation notwithstanding their means.” 139. Schmidt, “Tableaux de Paris.” (Reports of Germinal 15 and 27, and Messidor 28, year III., Brumaire 14 and Frimaire 23, year IV.)—Ibid. (Germinal 15, year III.) Butter is at eight francs the pound, eggs seven francs for four ounces.—Ibid. (Messidor 19), bread is at sixteen francs the pound (Messidor 28), butter at fourteen francs the pound (Brumaire 29), flour at fourteen thousand francs the bag of three hundred and twenty-five pounds. 1320 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION francs, whilst other produce goes up at the same rates. After the abolition of the maximum theevilsprings not from a lack of provisions, but from their dearness. The shops are well-supplied. Who- ever comes with a full purse gets what he wants.140 Thosewho were once wealthy, all proprietors and large fundholders, may have a meal on handing over their bundles of assignats, on withdrawing their last louis from its hiding-place, on selling their jewelry, clocks, furniture, and clothes; but every tradesman and broker, the lucky, all experienced robbers who spend four hundred, one thousand, three thousand, then five thousand francs for their dinner, revel in the great eating establishments on fine wines and exquisite cheer; the burden of the scarcity is transferred to other shoulders. At present, the class which suffers, and which suffers beyond all bounds of patience, is that of employees and people with small incomes,141 the

140. Ibid. (Report of Germinal 12, year III.) “The eating houses and pastry- cooks are better supplied than ever.”—“Me´moires (manuscript) of M. de Chev- erney.” “My sister-in-law, with more than forty thousand livres income, registered in the ‘Grand Ledger,’ was reduced to cultivating her garden, assisted by her two chambermaids. M. de Richebourg, formerly intendant-general of the Post-Office, had to sell at one time a clock and at another time a wardrobe to live on. ‘My friends,’ he said to us one day, ‘I have been obliged to put my clock in the pot.’”—Schmidt. (Report of Frimaire 17, year IV.) “A frequenter of theStock-Exchangesellsa louis at fivethousand francs. Hedinesfor one thousand francs and loudly exclaims: ‘I have dined at four francs ten sous. They are really superb, these assignats! I couldn’t have dined so well formerly at twelve francs.’” 141. Schmidt. (Reports of Frimaire 9, year IV.) “The reports depict to us the sad condition of those who, with small incomes and having sold their clothes, are selling their furniture, being, so to say, at their last piece; and, soon without anything, are reduced to the last extremity by committing suicide.”—Ibid., Frimaire2, “The rentier is ruined, not being able to buy food. Employees are all in the same situation.”—Naturally, the condition of employees and rentiers grows worse with the depreciation of assignats. Here are house-keeping accounts at the end of 1795. (Letter of Beaumarchais’ sister Julie to his wife, December, 1794. “Beaumarchais et son temps,” by De Lomeńie, p. 486.) “When you gave me those four thousand francs (assignats), my dear friend, my heart went pit-a-pat. I thought that I should go crazy with such a fortune. I put them in my pocket at once and talked about other things so as to get the idea out of my mind. On returning to the house, get some wood and provisions as quick The Governed / 1321 crowd of workmen, the city plebeians, the low Parisian populace which lives from day to day, which is Jacobin at heart, which made the Revolution in order to better itself, which finds itself worse off, which gets up one insurrection more on the 1st of Prairial, which as possible before prices go higher! Dupont (the old domestic) started off and did his best. But the scales fell from my eyes on seeing the cost of food for a month—four thousand two hundred and seventy-five francs! 1 load of wood 1460 francs 9 pounds of candles, from 8 to 100 francs per pound 900 4 pounds of sugar, at 100 francs per pound 400 3 measures of grain, at 40 francs 120 7 pounds oil, at 100 francs 700 12 wicks, at 5 francs 60 1 1 ⁄2 bushels potatoes, at 200 francs per bushel 300 1 month’s washing 215 1 pound ground powder 70 2 ounces pomatum (formerly 3 sous, now 25 francs) 50 4,275 francs There remains the month’s supply of butter and eggs, as you know, 200 francs, meat 25 or 30 francs, and other articles in proportion 567 There was no bread for two days. . . . I have bought only four pounds thelast two days, at 45 francs 180 5,022 francs. “When I think of this royal outlay, as you call it, which makes me spend from eighteen thousand to twenty thousand francs for nothing, I wish the devil had thesystem ....Tenthousand francs which I have scattered about the past fortnight, alarm and troublemeso much that I do not know how to calculate my income in this way. In three days the difference (in the value of assignats) has sent wood up from four thousand two hundred to six thousand five hundred francs, and extras in proportion, so that, as I wrote you, a load piled up and put away costs me seven thousand one hundred francs. Every week now, the pot-au-feu and other meats for ragouts, without any butter, eggs, and other details, cost from seven to eight hundred francs. Washing also goes up so fast that eight thousand francs do not suffice. All this puts me out of humor, while in all this expenditure I declare on my honor ( je jure par la sainte ve´rite´ de mon coeur) that for two years I have indulged no fancy of my own or spent anything except on household expenses. Nevertheless, I have urgent need of some things for which I should require piles of assignats.”—We see by Beaumarchais’ cor- 1322 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION forcibly enters the Tuileries yelling “Bread and the Constitution of ’93,” which installs itself as sovereign in the Convention, which murders the Representative Fe´raud, which decrees a return to Ter- ror, but which, put down by theNational Guard, disarmed,and forced back into lasting obedience, has only to submit to the consequences of its outrages, the socialism it has instituted and the economical system it has organised. Owing to the workmen of Paris having been usurpers and tyrants they are now beggars. Owing to the ruin brought on proprietors and capitalists by them, individuals can no longer employ them. Owing to theruin theyhavebrought on theTreasury, theStatecan provide them with only the semblance of charity, and hence, while all are compelled to go hungry, a great many die, and many commit suicide. Germinal 6, “Section of the Observatory,”142 at thedistribution, “forty-one persons had been without bread; several pregnant women desired immediate confinement so as to destroy their infants; others asked for knives to stab themselves.” Germinal 8, “a large number of persons who had passed the night at the doors of the bakeries were obliged to leave without getting any bread.” Germinal 24, “the police commissioner of the Arsenal section states that many become ill for lack of food, and that he buries quite a number. . . . Thesameday, hehas heardof fiveor six citizens, who, finding themselves without bread, and unable to get other food, throw themselves into the Seine.” Germinal 27, “the women say that they feel so furious and are in such despair on account of hunger and want that they must inevitably commit some act of violence. . . . In the respondence that one of his friends travels around in the environs of Paris to find bread. “It is said here (he writes from Soizy, June 5, 1795) that flour may be had at Briare. If this were so I would bargain with a reliable man there to carry it to you by water-carriage between Briare and Paris. . . . In the mean time I do not despair of finding a loaf.”—Letter of a friend of Beaumarchais: “This letter costs you at least one hundred francs, including paper, pen, ink, and lamp-oil. For economy’s sakeI writeit in your house.” 142. Cf. Schmidt, “Tableaux de Paris,” vols. ii. and iii. (Reports of the Police, at the dates designated.) The Governed / 1323 section of ‘Les Amis de la Patrie,’ one-half have no bread. . . . Three persons tumbled down through weakness on the Boulevard du Tem- ple.” Floreál 2, “most of theworkmenin the‘Re ´publique’ section areleaving Paris on account of thescarcity of bread.”Flore ál 5, “eighteen out of twenty-four inspectors state that patience is exhausted and that things are coming to an end.” Floreál 14, “the distribution is always unsatisfactory on account of thefour-ounce ration; two thirds of thecitizensdo without it. Onewoman, on seeing the excitement of her husband and her four children who had been without bread for two days, trailed through the gutter tearing her hair and striking her head; she then got up in a state of fury and attempted to drown herself.” Floreál 20, “all exclaim that they cannot live on three ounces of bread, and, again, of such bad quality. Mothers and pregnant women fall down with weakness.” Floreál 21, “the inspectors state that they encounter many persons in the streets who have fallen through feebleness and inanition.” Floreál 23, “a citoyenne who had no bread for her child tied it to her side and jumped into the river. Yesterday, an individual named Mottez, in despair through want, cut his throat.” Floreál 25, “several persons, deprived of any means of existence, gave up in complete discouragement, and fell down with weakness and exhaustion. . . . In the ‘Gravilliers’ section, two men were found dead with inanition. . . . The peace officers report the decease of several citizens; one cut his throat, while another was found dead in his bed.” Floreál 28, “numbers of people sink down for lack of something to eat; yesterday, a man was found dead and others exhausted through want.” Prairial 24, “Inspector Laignier states that the indigent are compelled to seek nourishment in the piles of garbage on the corners.” Messidor I,143 “the said Picard fell through weakness at ten o’clock in the morning in theruedela Loi, and was only brought to at seveno’clock in the evening; he was carried to the hospital on a hand-barrow.” Mes- sidor 11, “There is a report that the number of people trying to drown themselves is so great that the nets at St. Cloud scarcely

143. Dauban, “Paris en 1794,” pp. 562, 568, 572. 1324 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION suﬃce to drag them out of the water.” Messidor 19, “A man was found on the corner of a street just dead with hunger.” Messidor 27, “At four o’clock in the afternoon, Place Maubert, a man named Marcelin, employed in the Jardin des Plantes, fell down through starvation and died while assistance was being given to him.” On the previous evening, the anniversary of the taking of the Bastille, a laborer on the Pont-au-Change, says: “I have eaten nothing all day”; another replies: “I have not been home because I have nothing to giveto my wifeand children,dying with hunger.” About the same date, a friend of Mallet-Dupan writes to him “that he is daily witness to people amongst the lower classes dying of inanition in the streets; others, and principally women, have nothing but garbage to live on, scraps of refuse vegetables and the blood running out of the slaughter houses. Laborers, generally, work on short time on account of their lack of strength and of their exhaustion for want of food.”144 Thus ends the rule of the Convention. Well has it looked out for the interests of the poor! According to the reports of its own inspectors, “famished stomachs on all sides cry vengeance, beat to arms and sound thetocsin of alarm. 145 . . . Thosewho haveto dwell daily on the sacriﬁces they make to keep themselves alive declare that there is no hope except in death.” Are they going to be relieved by the new government which the Convention imposes on them with thunders of artillery and in which it perpetuates itself?146 Brumaire28, “Most of theworkmenin the ‘Temple’ and ‘Gravilliers’ sections have done no work for want of bread.” Brumaire 24, “Citizens of all classes refuse to mount guard because they have nothing to eat.” Brumaire 25, “In the ‘Gravilliers’ section the women say that they have sold all that they possessed, while others, in the ‘Faubourg-Antoine’ section, declare that it would be better to be shot down.” Brumaire 30, “A woman beside

144. Mallet-Dupan, “Correspondance avec la cour de Vionne,” i., 254. (July 18, 1795.) 145 Schmidt, ibid. (Report of Fructidor 3, year III.) 146. Schmidt, ibid., vols. ii, and iii. (Reports of the police at the dates designated.) The Governed / 1325 herself came and asked a baker to kill her children as she had nothing to give them to eat.” Frimaire 1, 2, 3, and 4, “In many of the sections bread is given out only in the evening, in others at one o’clock in the morning, and of very poor quality. . . . Several sections yesterday had no bread.” Frimaire 7, the inspectors declare that “the hospitals soon will not be vast enough to hold the sick and the wretched.” Frimaire 14, “At the central market a woman nursing her child sunk down with inanition.” A few days before this, “a man fell down from weakness, on his way to Bourg l’Abbe´.” “All our reports,” say the district administrators, “resound with shrieks of despair.” People are infatuated; “it seems to us that a crazy spirit prevails universally—we often encounter people in the street who, although alone, gesticulate and talk to themselves aloud.” “How many times,” writes a Swiss traveller,147 who lived in Paris during the latter half of 1795, “how often have I chanced to encounter men sinking through starvation, scarcely able to stand up against a post, or else down on the ground and unable to get up for want of strength!” A journalist states that he saw “within ten minutes, along the street, seven poor creatures fall on account of hunger, a child die on its mother’s breast which was dry of milk, and a woman struggling with a dog near a sewer to get a bone away from him.”148 Meissner never leaves his hotel without ﬁlling his pockets with pieces of the national bread. “This bread,” he says, “which the poor would formerly have despised, I found accepted with the liveliest gratitude, and by well-educated persons”; the lady who contended with the

147. Meissner, “Voyage a` Paris,” 132. Ibid., 104. “Bread is made with coarse, sticky black flour, because they put in potatoes, beans, Indian corn and millet, and moreover it is badly baked.”—Granier de Cassagnac, “Histoire du Direc- toire,” i., 51. (Letter of M. Andot to the author.) “There were three-quarter pound days, one-half pound, and one-quarter pound days and many at two ounces. I was a child of twelve and used to go and wait four hours in the morning in a line,ruedel’AncienneCome ´die. There was a fourth part of bran in the bread, which was very tender and very soft . . . and it contained one- fourth overplus of water. I brought back eight ounces of bread a day for the four persons in our household.” 148. Dauban, 386. 1326 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION dog for the bone was “a former nun, without either parents or friends and everywhere repulsed.” “I still hear with a shudder,” says Meissner, “the weak, melancholy voice of a well-dressed woman who stoppedmein theruedu Bac, to tellmein accentsindicative both of shame and despair: ‘Ah, Sir, do help me! I am not an outcast. I havesometalent—you may haveseensomeof my works in the salon. I havehad nothing to eatfor two days and I am crazy for want of food.’” Again, in June, 1796, the inspectors state that despair and despondency have reached the highest point, only one cry being heard—misery! . . . Our reports all teem with groans and complaints....Pallor and suffering are stamped on all faces....Each day presents a sadder and more melancholy aspect.” And repeatedly,149 they sum up their scattered observations in a general statement: “A mournful silence, the deepest distress on every countenance; the most intense hatred of the government in general developed in all conversations; contempt for all existing authority; an insolent luxuriousness, insulting to the wretchedness of the poor rentiers who expire with hunger in their garrets, no longer possessing the courage to crawl to the Treasury and get the wherewithal to prolong their misery for a few days; the worthy father of a family daily decidingwhat articleof furniturehewill sellto makeup for what is lacking in his wages that he may buy a half-pound of bread; every sort of provision increasing in price sixty times an hour; the smallest business dependent on the fall of assignats; intriguers of all parties overthrowing each other only to get offices; the intoxicated soldier boasting of the services he has rendered and is to render, and abandoning himself shamelessly to every sort of debauchery; commercial houses transformed into dens of thieves; rascals become traders and traders become rascals; the most sordid cupidity and a mortal egoism—such is the picture presented by Paris.”150

149. Schmidt, ibid. (Reports of Brumaire 24, and Frimaire 13, year IV.) 150. This state of misery is prolonged far beyond this epoch in Paris and the provinces. Cf. Schmidt, “Tableaux de Paris,” vol. iii.—Felix Rocquain, “L’Etat dela Franceau 18eBrumaire,”p. 156. (Reportby Fourcroy, Nivose5, year IX.) Convoys of grain fail to reach Brest because the English are masters The Governed / 1327

One group is wanting in this picture, that of the governors who preside over this wretchedness, which group remains in the background; one might say that it was so designed and composed by some great artist, a lover of contrasts, an inexorable logician, whose invisible hand traces human character unvaryingly, and whose mournful irony unfailingly depicts side by side, in strong relief, the grotesqueness of folly and the seriousness of death. How many perished on account of this misery? Probably more than a million persons.151 Try to takein at a glancetheextraordinary spectacle at sea, while the roads on land are impassable. “We are assured that the people of Brest have long been on half-rations and perhaps on quarter-rations.” 151. It is difficult to arrive at even approximative figures, but the following statements will render the idea clear. 1. Wherever I have compared the mortality of the Revolution with that of the ancient re´gimeI havefound theformer greater than the latter, even in those parts of France not devastated by the civil war; and the increase of this mortality is enormous, especially in years II. and III.—At Rheims, the average mortality from 1780 to 1789 is one thousand three hundred and fifty, which, for a population of thirty-two thousand five hundred and ninety-seven (1790), gives forty-one deaths per annum to every thousand inhabitants. In the year II., on thirty thousand seven hundred and three inhabitants there are one thousand eight hundred and fifty-six deaths, and in year III., one thousand eight hundred and thirty-six, which gives for each of the two years sixty-four deaths to every thousand persons; the increase is twenty-three deaths a year, that is to say more than one-half above the ordinary rate. (Sta- tistics communicated by M. Jadart, archiviste at Rheims.)—At Limoges, the yearly average of mortality previous to 1789 was eight hundred and twenty- fiveto twentythousand inhabitants, or at therateof forty-oneto a thousand. From January 1, 1792, to September 22, 1794, there are three thousand four hundred forty-nine deaths, that is to say, a yearly average of sixty-three deaths to one thousand inhabitants, that is to say, twenty-two extra per annum, while the mortality bears mostly on the poor, for out of two thousand and seventy- three persons who die between January 17, 1793, and September 22, 1794, over one-half, eleven hundred, die in the hospital.—(Louis Guibert, “Ancien registre des paroisses de Limoges,” pp. 40, 45, 47.)—At Poitiers, in year IX., the population is eighteen thousand two hundred and twenty-three, and the average mortality of the past ten years was seven hundred and twenty-four per annum. But in year II., there are two thousand and ninety-four deaths, and in year III. two thousand and thirty-two, largely in the hospitals; thus, even on comparing theaveragemortality of thetenyears of theRevolution with themortality of 1328 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION presented on twenty-six thousand square leagues of territory, the immensemultitudeofthestarving in town and country, thelong lines of women for three years waiting for bread in all the cities, this or that town of twenty-three thousand souls in which one-third of thepopulation diesin thehospitals in threemonths, thecrowds years II. and III., it has almost trebled the average rate.—The same applies to Loudens, where the average death-rate being one hundred and fifty-one, in year II., it rises to four hundred and twenty-five. Instead of the triple for Chatel- lerault, it is double, where, the average rate being two hundred and sixty-two, the death-rate rises to four hundred and eighty-two, principally in the military hospitals. (“Statistique de la Vienne,” by Cochan, pre´fet, year X.)—At Niort, population eleven thousand, the annual mortality of the ten years preceding 1793 averaged four hundred and twenty-three, or thirty-eight per thousand. In year II., there are one thousand eight hundred and seventy-two, or one hundred and seventy per thousand inhabitants, the number being more than quadrupled. In year III., there are eleven hundred and twenty-two deaths, or one hundred and two per thousand inhabitants, which is almost the triple. (“Statistique des Deux-Se`vres,” by Dupin, pre´fet, 2d memorial Thermidor, year IX.)—At Stras- bourg (“Recueil des Pie`ces Authentiques,” etc., vol. i., p. 32. Declaration of the Municipality); “twice as many died last year (year II.) as during any of the preceding years.”—According to these figures and the details we have read, the annual mortality during years II. and III. and most of year IV., may be estimated as having increased one-half extra. Now, previous to 1789, according to Moheau and Necker (Peuchet, “Statistique e´le´mentaire de la France,” 1805, p. 239), the yearly mortality in France was one person to every thirty, that is to say, eight hundred sixty-six thousand six hundred and sixty-six deaths to a population of twenty-six millions. One-half in addition to this for two and a half years gives, consequently, one million and eighty thousand deaths. 2. During the whole of the Directory episode, privation lasted and the rate of mortality rose very high, especially for sick children, the infirm and the aged, because the Convention had confiscated the possessions of the hospitals and public charity was almost null. For example, at Lyons, “The Asylums having been deprived of sisters of charity during years II., III., and IV., and most of year V., the children gathered into them could neither be fed nor suckled and the number that perished was frightful.” (“Statistique du Rhone,” by Vernier, pre´fet, year X.)—In Necker’s time, there were about eight hundred asylums, hospitals, and charitable institutions, with one hundred thousand or one hundred and ten thousand inmates. (Peuchet, ibid., 256.) For lack of careand food they die in myriads, especially foundlings, the number of which increases enormously: in 1790, the figures do not exceed twenty-three thousand; in year The Governed / 1329 of paupers at the poor-houses, the file of poor wretches entering and the file of coffins going out, the asylums deprived of their property, overcrowded with the sick, unable to feed the multitude of foundlings pining away in their cradles the very first week, their little faces in wrinkles like those of old men, the malady of want aggravating all other maladies, the long suffering of a persistent vitality amidst pain and which refuses to succumb, the final death-rattle in a garret or in a ditch—and contrast with this the small, powerful, triumphant group of Jacobins which, knowing where to make a good stand, is determined to stay there at any cost. About ten o’clock in

IX., the number surpasses sixty-two thousand (Peuchet, 260): “It is a ‘perfect deluge,’” say the reports; in the department of Aisne, there are one thousand and ninety-seven instead of four hundred; in that of Lot-et-Garonne, fifteen hundred (Statistiques des pre´fets de l’Aisne, Gers, Lot-et-Garonne), and they are born only to die; in that of Eure, after a few months, it is six out of seven; at Lyons, seven hundred and ninety-two out of eight hundred and twenty (Sta- tistiquedesPre ´fets du Rhone et de l’Eure). At Marseilles, it is six hundred out of six hundred and eighteen; at Toulon, one hundred and one out of one hundred and four; in the average, nineteen out of twenty. (Rocquain, “Etat de Franceau 18eBrumaire,”p. 33. Reportof Franc ¸ois de Nantes.) At Troyes, out of one hundred and sixty-four brought in in year IV., one hundred and thirty- four die; out of one hundred and forty-seven received in year VII., one hundred and thirty-six die. (Albert Babeau, ii., 452.) At Paris, in year IV., out of three thousand one hundred and twenty-two infants received two thousand nine hundred and seven perish. (Moniteur, year V., No. 231.)—The sick perish the same. “At Toulon, only seven pounds of meat are given each day to eighty patients; I saw in theCivil Asylum,” says François deNantes, “a woman who had just undergone a surgical operation to whom they gave for a restorative a dozen beans on a wooden platter.” (Ibid., 16, 31, and passim, especially for Bordeaux, Caen, Alençon, St. Loˆ, etc.)—As to beggars, these are innumerable: in year IX., it is estimated that there are three or four thousand by department, at least three hundred thousand in France. “In the four Brittany departments one can truly say that a third of the population live at the expense of the other two- thirds, either by stealing from them or through compelling assistance.” (Roc- quain, preface, lxi., and “Report by Barbe´-Marbois,” p. 93.) 3. In year IX., the Conseils-generaux are called upon to ascertain whether the departments have increased or diminished in population since 1789. (“An- alysedesproce`s-verbaux des Conseils-Generaux de l’an XI.”) Out of fifty-eight which reply, thirty-seven state that the population with them has diminished; 1330 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION themorning, 152 Cambace´re`s, president of the Committee of Public Safety, is seen entering its hall in the Pavillon de l’Egalite´. That large, cautious and shrewd personage who, later on, is to become archchancellor of the Empire and famous for his epicurean inventions and other peculiar tastes revived from antiquity, is the man. Scarcely seated, he orders an ample pot-au-feu to beplacedon the chimney hearth and, on the table, “fine wine and fine white bread; three articles,” says a guest, “not to be found elsewhere in all Paris.” Between twelve and two o’clock, his colleagues enter the room in turn, takea plateof soup and a sliceof meat,swallow somewine, and then proceed, each to his bureau, to receive his coterie, giving this onean officeand compellinganotherto pay up, looking all the time after his own special interests; at this moment, especially, towards the close of the Convention, there are no public interests, all interests being private and personal. In the mean time, the deputy in charge of subsistences, Roux de la Haute Marne, an unfrocked Benedictine, formerly a terrorist in the provinces, subsequently the prote´ge´ and employee of Fouche´, with whom heis to beassociated in the police department, keeps the throng of women in check which daily resorts to the Tuileries to beg for bread. He is well adapted for this duty, being tall, chubby, ornamental, and with vigorous twelve, that it has increased; nine, that it remains stationary. Of the twenty-two others, thirteen attribute the maintenance or increase of population, at least for the most part, to the multiplication of early marriages in order to avoid conscription and to the large number of natural children.—Consequently, the average rate of population is kept up not through preserving life, but through the substitution of new lives for the old ones that are sacrificed. Bordeaux, nevertheless, lost one-tenth of its population, Angers one-eighth, Pau one-seventh, Chambe´ry one-fourth, Rennes one-third; in the departments where the war was carried on, Argenton-le-Chateau lost two-thirds of its population, Bressuire fell from three thousand to six hundred and thirty inhabitants; Lyons, after the siege, fell from a population of one hundred and forty thousand to eighty thousand. (“Analysedesproce `s-verbaux des Conseils-Generaux” and “Statistiques des Pre´fets.”) 152. Lareveille`re-Lepeaux, “Me´moires,” i., 248. (He belongs to the Com- mittee and is an eye-witness.) The Governed / 1331 lungs. Hehas takenhis officein theright place,in theattic of the palace, at the top of long, narrow and steep stairs, so that the line of women stretching up between the two walls, piled one above the other, necessarily becomes immovable. With the exception of the two or three at the front, no one has her hands free to grab the haranguerby thethroat and closetheoratorical stop-cock. Hecan spout his tirades accordingly with impunity, and for an indefinite time. On one occasion, his sonorous jabber rattles away uninter- ruptedlyfrom thetop to thebottom of thestaircase,from nine o’clock in the morning to five o’clock in the afternoon. Under such a voluble shower, his hearers become weary and end by going home. About nine or ten o’clock in the evening, the Committee of Public Safety reassembles, but not to discuss business. Danton and Lar- evellie`re preach in vain; each is too egoistic and too worn-out; they let the rein slacken on Cambace´re`s. As to him, he would rather keep quiet and drag the cart no longer; but there are two things necessary which hemust providefor on pain of death.“It will not do,” says hein plaintivetones, “to keepon printing theassignats at night which wewant for thenextday. If that lasts, ma foi, werun therisk of being strung up at a lantern. . . . Go and find Hourier-Eloi, as he has charge of the finances, and tell him that we entreat him to keep us a-going for a fortnight or eighteen days longer, when the executive Directory will come in and do what it pleases.” “But food— shall wehaveenoughfor tomorrow?” “Aha, I don’t know—I’ll send for our colleague Roux, who will post us on that point.” Roux enters, the official spokesman, the fat, jovial tamer of the popular dog. “Well, Roux, how do we stand about supplying Paris with food?” “The supply, citizen President, is just as abundant as ever, two ounces per head—at least for most of the sections.” “Go to the devil with your abundant supply! You’ll have our heads off!” All remain silent, for this possible deńouement sets them to thinking. Then, one of them exclaims: “President, are there any refreshments provided for us? After working so hard for so many days we need something to strengthen us!” “Why, yes; there is a good calf ’s- tongue, a large turbot, a large piece of pie and some other things.” 1332 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

They cheer up, begin to eat and drink champagne, and indulge in drolleries. About eleven or twelve o’clock the members of other Committees come in; signatures are aﬃxed to their various decrees, on trust, without reading them over. They, in their turn, sit down at the table and the conclave of sovereign bellies digests without giving itself further trouble about the millions of stomachs that are empty. BOOK IX

The End of the Revolutionary Government

9 CHAPTER I =

I. The Convention after Thermidor 9—Reaction against the Terrorists—Aversion to the Constitutionalists—The danger they run if they lose power— II. Decrees for the reelection of the Two-thirds—Small number of Voters—Manoeuvres for preventing electors from voting on the decrees—Frauds in the returns of votes— Maintenance of the decrees by force—Recruiting of Roughs—The military employed—The 13th of Vende´miaire— III. The Directory chosen among the regicides—It selects agents of its own species—Leading Jacobins are deprived of their civic rights—The Terrorists are set free and restored to their civic rights— Example at Blois of these releases and of the new administrative staﬀ— IV. Resistance of public opinion—Elections, year IV., at Paris and in the provinces—The Directory threatened by ultra Jacobins—Forced amelioration of the Jacobin administration— V. Elections of year V.—Character and sentiments of the elected—The new majority in the Corps Le´gislatif—Its principles and programme—Danger and anxiety of the Jacobin minority—Indecision, division, scruples, and weakness of the moderate party—Decision, want of scruples, force, and modes of procedure of the Jacobin faction—The 18th of Fructidor— VI. Dictatorship of the Directory—Its new prerogatives—Purgation of the Corps Le´gislatif—Puriﬁcation of the administrative and judicial authorities—Military commissions in the provinces—Suppression of newspapers—The right of voting reserved to Jacobins alone—Despotism of the Directory—Revival of Terror— Transportation substituted for the guillotine—Treatment of the transported on the way, in Guyanna, and on the islands of Rhe´ and Ole´ron—Restoration of Jacobin feudalism— VII. Application and aggravation of the laws of the reign of Terror—Measures taken to impose civic religion—Arrest, transportation, and execution of Priests—Ostracism proposed against the entire anti-Jacobin class— The nobles or the ennobled, not e´migre´s, are declared foreigners—Decrees against e´migre´s of every class—Other steps taken against remaining proprie-

1335 1336 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION tors—Bankruptcy, forced loan, hostages— VIII. Propagandism and foreign conquests—Proximity and advantages of peace—Motives of the Fructidoreans for breaking off peace negotiations with England, and for abandoning the invasion of foreign countries—How they found new republics—How governed—Estimate of foreign rapine—Number of French lives sacrificed in the war— IX. National antipathy to the established order of things—Paralysis of the State—Intestinal discords of the Jacobin party—Coupd’e´tat of Floreál 22, year VI.—Coup d’e´tat of Prairial 30, year VII.—Impossibility of establishing a practicable government—Plans of Barras and Sieýe`s— X. Antisocial character of the sect and the faction—Contrast between civil and military France—Elements of reorganisation in institutions, habits, and in military sentiments—Character of the re´gime instituted on the 18th of Brumaire, year VIII.

NEVERTHELESS they too, these glutted sovereigns, are anxious, and seriously so, and we have just seen in what direction; their object is to keepin oﬃce, that they may preserve their lives, and henceforth this is their sole concern. A good Jacobin, upto the 9th of Ther- midor, could, by shutting his eyes, still believe in his creed;1 after the 9th of Thermidor, unless born blind, like Soubrany, Romme, and Goujon, a fanatic whose intellectual organs are as rigid as the limbs of a fakir, nobody in the Convention can longer believe in the Contrat-Social, in a despotic equalising socialism, in the merits of Terror, in the divine right of the pure. For, to escape the guillotine of the pure, the purest had to be guillotined, Saint-Just, Couthon, and Robespierre, the high-priest of the sect: that very day the Mon- tagnards, in giving up their doctor, abandoned their principles, and there is no longer any principle or man to which the Convention could rally; in eﬀect, before guillotining Robespierre and his asso-

1. Gaudin, Duc de Gae¨te, “Me´moires,” i., 28. Gaudin, commissioner of the Treasury, meets the president of the revolutionary committee of his quarter, an excellent Jacobin, who says to him: “Eh, well, what’s all this? Robespierre proscribed! Is it possible? What is wanted—everything was going on so well!” (It is true that fifty or sixty heads fell daily.) “I replied, ‘Just so, there are some folks that are never satisfied.’” The End of the Revolutionary Government / 1337 ciates as orthodox, it guillotined the Girondists, He´bert, and Danton, as heretics. Now, “the existence of popular idols and of head charlatans is irrevocably ended.”2 Ever the same conventional symbol before the empty sanctuary in the blood-stained temple, and ever the same loud-intoned anthem; but faith is gone, and only the acolytes remain to drone out the revolutionary litany, old train-bearers and swingers of incense, the subaltern butchers who, through a sudden stroke, have become pontiffs; in short, the valets of the church who have donned the mitres and croziers of their masters after having assassinated them. From month to month, under the pressure of public opinion, they detach themselves from the worshipat which they have officiated, for, however blunted or perverted their consciences, they cannot avoid admitting that Jacobinism, as they have practised it, was the religion of robbery and murder. Previous to Thermidor an official phraseology3 drowned with its doctrinal roar the living truth, while each Conventional sacristan or beadle, confined to his own chapel, saw clearly only the human sacrifices in which he himself had taken part. After Thermidor, the friends and kindred of the dead, the oppressed, make their voices heard, and he is forced to see collectively and in detail all the crimes to which, nearly or remotely, he has contributed either through his assent or through his vote, the same as in Mexico, the priest of Huichilobos walks about in the midst of the six hundred thousand skulls amassed in the vaults of his temple. Blow after blow, during the whole of year III., the truth unintermittingly declares itself through the freedom of the press and the great public discussions. First, comes an account of the funereal journey of one hundred and thirty-two Nantese, dragged from

2. Mallet-Dupan, “Me´moires,” ii., 16. (Letter of January 8, 1795.)—Ibid., “Correspondance avec la cour de Vienne,” i., 23, 25, 32, 34, (January 8, 1795, on the four parties composing the Convention). 3. Marshal Marmont: “Me´moires,” i., 120. (Report of General Dugommier on the capture of Toulon.) “That memorable day avenged the general will of a partial and gangrened will, the delirium of which caused the greatest misfortunes.” 1338 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Nantes to Paris,4 and the solemn acquittal, received with transports, of the ninety-four who survive. After this, come the trials of the most prominent terrorists, that of Carrier and the Revolutionary Committee of Nantes, that of Fouquier-Tinville and the old revolutionary Tribunal of Paris, that of Joseph Lebon,5 and, during thirty or forty consecutive sessions, hundreds of minute, veriﬁed depositions ending in the most complete and satisfactory testimony. In the mean time, revelations multiply at the tribune of the Convention; these consist of the letters of the new representatives on mission and the denunciations of the towns against their overthrown tyrants; against Maignet, Dartigoyte, Piochefer-Bernard, Levasseur, Cras- sous, Javogues, Lequinio, Leﬁot, Piorry, Pinet, Monestier, Fouche´, Laplanche, Lecarpentier, and many others; add to these the reports of commissions charged with examining into the conduct of old dictators, Collot d’Herbois, Billaud-Varennes, Bare`re, Amar, Vou- land, Vadier and David; the reports of the representatives charged with investigating certain details of the abolished system, that of Gre´goire on revolutionary vandalism, that of Cambon on revolutionary taxes, that of Courtois on Robespierre’s papers. All these rays combine in a terrible illumination which imposes itself even on the eyes that turn away from it; it is now but too plain that France, for fourteen months, has been devastated by a gang of bandits; all that can be said in favor of the least perverted and the least vile is that they were born so, or had become crazy.6 The growing majority

4. Memorial of the ninety-four survivors Thermidor 30, year II., acquitted Fructidor 28. 5. Carrier indicted Brumaire 21, year III. Decree of arrest passed by four hundred and ninety-eight out of five hundred votes, Frimaire 3; execution Fri- maire 26. Fouquier-Tinville indicted Frimaire 28; execution Floreál 28, there being four hundred and nineteen witnesses heard. Joseph Lebon indicted Mes- sidor 1, year III. Trial adjourned to the Somme court, Messidor 29; execution Vende´miaire 24, year IV. 6. Cf. chapters 4, 5 and 6 of the present volume. Numbers of printed documents of this epoch show what these local sovereigns were. The principal ones in the department of Ain were “Anselm, who had placed Marat’s head in his shop. Duclos, a joiner, living before the 31st of May on his earnings; he became The End of the Revolutionary Government / 1339 of the Convention cannot evade this testimony and the Montagnards excite its horror; and all the more, because it bears them a grudge; the seventy-three put in confinement and the sixteen proscribed who have resumed their seats, with the four hundred mutes who have so long sat under the knife, remember the oppression to which they have been subject, and they turn first against the vilest wretches, and then against the members of the old committees. The “Moun- tain,” upon this, as usual with it, launches forth its customary supporters in the riots of Germinal and Prairial, the greedy populace, the Jacobin rabble, and proclaims anew the reign of Terror; the Convention again sees the knife over its head. Saved by young men, by the National Guard, it becomes courageous through fear, and, in its turn, it terrorises the terrorists; the Faubourg St. Antoine is disarmed, ten thousand Jacobins are arrested,7 and more than sixty after that a gentleman living on his rents, owning national domains, sheep, horses and pocket-books filled with assignats. Laimant, a tailor, in debt, furnishing his apartment suddenly with all the luxuriousness of the ancient re´gime, such as beds at one hundred pistoles, etc. Alban, mayor, placing seals everywhere, was a blacksmith and father of a family which he supported by his labor; all at once he stops working, and passes from a state of dependence to one of splendor; he has diamonds and earrings, always wearing new clothes, fine linen shirts, muslin cravates, silk stockings, etc.; on removing the seals in the houses of those imprisoned and guillotined, little or nothing was found in them. Alban was denounced and incarcerated for having obliged a woman of Macon to give him four hundred francs on promising to interest himself in her husband. Such are the Ain patriots. Rollet, another, had so frightened the rural districts that the people ran away on his approach; on one occasion he had two of them harnessed to his carriage and drove them along for some time in this manner. . . . Another, Charcot (of Virieu), before the Revolution, was a highway assassin, and was banished for three years for an act of this description.” (Biblio- theque Nationale. Lb. 41, No. 1318. “The truth in reply to calumnious charges against the department of Ain.” Letter of Roux, Vende´miaire, year III.) 7. Decree of Germinal 12 for the transportation of Collot, Bare`re, Billaud- Varennes and Vadier. Eight Montagnards are put under arrest.—Decree of Ger- minal 14: the same against nine other Montagnards.—Decree of Germinal 29: the same against Maribon-Moutant.—Decree of Prairial 6: twenty-nine Mon- tagnards are indicted.—Decree of Prairial 8, putting six Montagnards under arrest.—Decree of Prairial 9: the same against nine members of former com- 1340 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Montagnards are decreed under indictment; Collot, Billaud, Bare`re, and Vadier are to be transported; nine other members of former committees are to be imprisoned; the last of the veritable fanatics, Romme, Goujon, Soubrany, Duquesnoy, Bourbotte, and Duroy are condemned to death; immediately after the sentence five of them stab themselves on the stairs of the tribunal; two of the wounded who survive are borne, along with the sixth, to the scaffold and guillotined; two Montagnards of the same stamp, Rhul and Maure, kill themselves before their sentence. Henceforth the purged Con- vention regards itself as pure; its final rigor has expiated its former baseness, the guilty blood which it spills washing away the stains of the innocent blood it had shed before. Unfortunately, in condemning the terrorists, it pronounced its own condemnation; for it has authorised and sanctioned all their crimes. On its benches, in its committees, often in the president’s chair, at the head of the ruling coterie, still figure the members of the revolutionary government, many of the avowed terrorists like Bourdon de l’Oise, Bentabolle, Delmas, and Rewbell; presidents of the September commune like Marie Cheńier; those who carried out “the 31st of May,” like Legendre and Merlin de Douai, author of the decree which created six hundred thousand suspects in France; provincial executioners of the most brutal and most ferocious sort, the greatest and most cynical robbers like Andre´ Dumont, Fre´ron, Tallien, and Barras. Under Robespierre, the four hundred mutes “du ventre” were the reporters, the voters, the claqueurs, and the agents of the worst decrees against religion, property, and persons. The foundations of Terror were all laid by the seventy-three in confinement before they were imprisoned, and by the sixteen who were proscribed before their proscription. Excepting ten or a dozen who stayed away, the Convention, in a mass, pronounced judgment against the King and declared him guilty; more than one-half of the Convention, the Girondists at the head of them, voted his death. mittees.—Decrees of Prairial 10 to Thermidor 22, condemning six Montagnards to death, one to transportation and twenty to arrest. The End of the Revolutionary Government / 1341

The hall does not contain fifty honorable men in whom character sustains conscience, and who had a right to carry their heads erect.8 In no law they passed, good or bad, did the other seven hundred have in view the interests of their constituents; in all their laws, good or bad, they solely regarded their own interests. So long as the attacks of the “Mountain” and of the rabble affected the public only, they lauded them, decreed them, and had them executed; if they finally rebelled against the “Mountain,” and against the rabble, it was at the last moment, and solely to save their lives. Before, as after the 9th of Thermidor, before, as after the 1st of Prairial, the mainsprings of the conduct of these pusillanimous oppressors or involuntary liberators were baseness and egoism. Hence, “the contempt and horror universally poured out against them; only Jacobins could be still more odious!”9 If further support is given to these faithless mandatories, it is because they are soon to be put out. On the premature report that the Convention is going to break up, people accost each other in the street, exclaiming, “We are rid of these brigands, they are going at last....Peoplecaperanddance about as if they could not repress their joy; they talk of nothing but the boy (Louis XVIII. confined in the Temple), and the new elections. Everybody agrees on excluding the present deputies.... There is less discussion on the crimes which each has committed than on the insignificance of the entire assemblage, while the epithets of vicious, used up, and corrupt have almost wholly given way to thieves and scoundrels.”10 Even in Paris, during the closing months of their rule, they hardly dare appear in public: “in the dirtiest and

8. Barbe´-Marbois, “Me´moires,” preface, p. viii. “Except about ﬁfty men who are honest and intelligent, history presents no sovereign assembly containing so much vice, abjectness and ignorance.”—Buchez et Roux, xxxvii., 7. (Speech by Legendre, Thermidor 17, year III.) “It is stated in print that, at most, there are but twenty pure men in this Assembly.”—Ibid., 27. Order of the Lepelletier section, Vende´miaire 10, year IV. “It is certain that we owe the dearth and all its accompanying evils to the incapacity and brigandage of the present government.” 9. Mallet-Dupan, “Correspondance,” etc., i., 211. (May 27, 1795.) 10. “Un Se´jour en France,” 267, 271. (Amiens, March 13, April 12, 1795.) 1342 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION most careless costume which the tricolor scarf and gold fringe makes more apparent, they try to escape notice in the crowd11 and, in spite of their modesty, do not always avoid insult and still less the mal- edictions of those who pass them.” In the provinces, at home, it would be worse for them; their lives would be in danger; in any event, they would be dragged through the gutter, and this they know. Save about “twenty of them,” all who are not to succeed in entering the new Corps Legislatif, will intrigue for oﬃces in Paris and become “state messengers, employees in bureaux, and ushers to ministers”; in default of other places they would accept those of “hall-sweeps.” Any refuge for them is good against the reprobation of the public, which is already rising and submerging them under its tide.

II There is no other refuge for them except in supreme power, and no other means for maintaining this but in the excesses of despotism, dishonesty, mendacity, and violence. In the Constitution they manufacture, they desire to remain the sovereigns of France and they decree12 at once that, willingly or not, France must select two-thirds of its new representatives from amongst them, and, that she may make a good selection, it is prudent to impose the selection upon her. There is a show, indeed, of consulting her in the special decrees which deprive her of two-thirds of her elective rights but, as in 1792 and in 1793, it is so contrived that she consents, or seems to consent, to this arrangement.13 In the ﬁrst place, they relied on the majority

11. Meissner, “Voyage a` Paris,” 123, 351. (The author arrives in Paris, Sep- tember 22, 1795.) 12. Decrees of Fructidor 5 and 13, year III. 13. Mallet-Dupan (“Correspondance avec la cour de Vienne,” i, 292, August 30, 1795).—Moniteur, xxv., 518, 551. (Session of Fructidor 3.) The first idea of the Commission of Eleven was to have the Convention itself choose the two- thirds. “Its opponents took advantage of the public outcry and broke off this plan . . . of the Girondist cabal.” Louvet, Fructidor 3, mounted three times into the tribune to support this project, still more scandalous than the other. “Eh, what electoral assembly could be better than yours! You all know each other The End of the Revolutionary Government / 1343 of electors abstaining from a response. Experience indeed, had shown that, for a long time, the masses were disgusted with the plebiscite farces; moreover, terror has stifled in individuals all sentiment of a common interest;14 each cares for himself alone. Since Thermidor, electors and mayors in the boroughs and in the rural districts are found with a good deal of difficulty, even electors of the second degree; people saw that it was useless and even dangerous to perform the duties of a citizen; they would have nothing to do with public functions. A foreigner writes,15 after traversing France from Bourg-en-Bresse to Paris: “Ninety times out of a hundred that I have asked the question, ‘Citizen, what was done in the primary meeting of your canton?’ the answer would be: ‘Me, citizen, what have I to do with it? I’ faith, they had hard work to agree!’Or,‘What’s the use? There were not many there! Honest folks stayed at home.’” In effect, out of at least six million electors convoked, five millions do not come near the ballot-box, there being no embarrassment in this matter as they do not vote.16 In the second place, precautions have been taken to prevent those who come to vote on the Constitution from entertaining the idea of voting on the decrees. No article of the Constitution, nor in the decrees, calls upon them to do so; slight inducement is held out to them to come, in a vague style, through an oratorical interrogation, or in a tardy address.17 In addition to this, on the printed blanks sent well.” Louvet adds this significant expression: “The armies also will vote the new Constitution. I have no fears of its fate.” 14. Moniteur, xxii, 22. (Report of Lindet, 4th sans-culottide, year II.) “Each man confines himself to his family and calculates his resources.” 15. Meissner, 58. 16. Decree of Fructidor 5. “All Frenchmen who voted at the last primary assemblies will be admitted to vote on the acceptance of the Constitution.”— Archives Nationales, A. II. B. 638. (General recapitulation of the vote on the Constitution of the year III, and on the decrees of Fructidor 5 and 13 printed by order of the Convention Vende´miaire, year IV.) Number of voters on the Constitutional bill, one million one hundred and seven thousand three hundred and sixty-eight. 17. Moniteur, xxv., 637. (Address to Frenchmen by Lareveille`re-Lepeaux, in the name of the Commission of Eleven, affixed to the decree of Fructidor 13.) 1344 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION to them from Paris, they find but three columns, one for the number of votes accepting the Constitution, another for the number rejecting it, and the third for “written observations” in case there are any. There are no special columns for marking the number of votes accepting or rejecting the decrees. Thereupon, many illiterate or ill- informed electors might think that they were convoked to vote solely on the Constitution and not at all on the decrees, which is just what happened, and especially in the remote departments, and in the rural assemblies. Moreover, many assemblies, nearer Paris and in the towns, comprehend that if the Convention consults them it is only for form’s sake; to give a negative answer is useless and perilous; it is better to keepsilent; as soon as the decrees are mentioned they very prudently “unanimously” demand the order of the day.18 Hence out of five primary assemblies on the average which vote for or against the Constitution, there is only one which votes for or against the decrees.19 Such is the mode of getting at the voice of the nation. Apparently, it is induced to speak; practically, its silence is ensured.

“Let all opposition to the legitimacy of this measure cease! The only legitimate measure is that which saves the country! Besides, if the majority of the primary assemblies of France approve of it, who dares say that the people would have renounced its sovereignty in thus expressing its will!”—Cf. Sauzay, vii., 653 to 667, on the details and circumstances of the elections in one of the departments. 18. Archives Nationales, A. II. B., 688. (Proce`s-verbaux of the primary meetings of Seine-Infe´rieare, Dieppe, “Liberte´” section, session of Fructidor 20.) The Constitution is unanimously accepted by forty-four voters, on a call of names. Then, “before proceeding to the nomination of electors the law was read, concerning the mode of electing the two-thirds of the National Conven- tion. The President having asked if any one wished to speak on this law the order of the day was immediately called for on all sides.” The electors are appointed forthwith and the assembly adjourns.—The clerk, who has to draw upthe minutes, writes on the margin “forty-four voters unanimously accept the Constitution as well as the decrees of Fructidor 5 and 13,” which is false. It is clear that the scribe had been instructed to enlarge the number of votes accepting the decrees, which suggests doubts on the truth of the total furnished by the Convention. 19. Ibid., A. II. B., 638 (General recapitulation). I have taken the number of primary assemblies in the twenty-two ﬁrst departments on the alphabetical list, that is to say, one-quarter of the territory, which warrants a conclusion, The End of the Revolutionary Government / 1345

The last and most ingenious expedient of all: when a primary assembly speaks too loudly it is taken for granted that it kept silent. In Paris, where the electors are more clear-sighted and more decided than in the provinces, in eighteen well-known departments, and probably in many others, the electors who voted on the decrees almost all voted against them; in many cases, even their minutes state that the negative vote was “unanimous,” but the minutes fail to state the exact number of the noes. On this, in the total of noes hostile to the decrees, these noes are not counted.20 Through this proportionately, on the whole country. In these twenty-two departments, one thousand five hundred and seventy assemblies vote on the Constitution and only three hundred and twenty-eight on the decrees. The figures are herewith given: in the Coˆtes-du-Nord, eighty-four primary assemblies; only one votes in favor of the decrees. Bouches du Rhone, ninety primary assemblies; four vote on the decrees, two for and two against. Aude, eighty-three primary assemblies; four vote on the decrees, three for and one against. Arie´ge, fifty-nine primary assemblies; two vote on the decrees. Basses-Alpes, forty-eight primary assemblies; two vote on the decrees. Maritime Alps, twenty-three primary assemblies; not one votes on the decrees. 20. Ibid. (Proce`s-verbaux of the primary assemblies of the department of the Seine, Popincourt section, Vende´miaire), 91. This section, on learning that its vote against the decrees “was put down as a cipher in the general count of votes,” protested and declared that “when the vote was taken at the meeting of Fructidor 22, it was composed of eight hundred and forty-five citizens representing two thousand five hundred and ninety-four votes.” Nevertheless, in the general recapitulation of Vende´miaire its vote counts for nothing.—The same remark for the “Fide´lite´” section. Its minutes state that the decrees are rejected “unanimously,” and that it is composed of one thousand three hundred citizens; its vote, likewise, goes for nothing. The totals given by the recapitulation are as follows: Voters on the Constitution, one million one hundred and seven thousand three hundred and sixty-eight; for, one million fifty-seven thousand three hundred and ninety; against, forty-nine thousand nine hundred and seventy-eight.—Voters on the Decrees, three hundred and fourteen thousand three hundred and eighty-two; for, two hundred and five thousand four hundred and ninety-eight; against, one hundred and eight thousand seven hundred and ninety-four.—Mallet-Dupan (i., 313) estimates the number of electors, at Paris, who rejected the decrees, at eighty thousand. Fie´veé, “Correspondance avec Bonaparte,” introduction, p. 126.—(A few days before Vende´miaire 13, Fie´veé, in the name of the Theatre-Français section, came, with two other commis- 1346 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION trickery, the Convention, in Paris alone, reduced the number of negatives by fifty thousand and the same in the provinces, after the fashion of a dishonest steward who, obliged to hand in an account, falsifies the figures by substituting subtractions for additions. Such is the way, in relation to the decrees, in which, out of the three hundred thousand votes which it accepts, it is able to announce two hundred thousand yeas and one hundred thousand noes and thus proclaim that its master, the sovereign people, after giving it a general acquittance, a discharge in full, invests it anew with its confidence and expressly continues its mandate. It now remains to keep by force this power usurped by fraud. Immediately after the suppression of the Jacobin riots the Conven- tion, menaced on the right, turns over to the left; it requires allies, persons of executive ability; it takes them wherever it can find them, from the faction which decimated it before Thermidor and which, since Thermidor, it decimates. Consequently, its executive committee suspends all proceedings begun against the principal Monta- gnards; a number of terrorists, former presidents of the sections, “the matadors of the quarter,” arrested after Prairial 1, are set free at the end of a month. They have good arms, are accustomed to vigorous striking without giving warning, especially when honest folks are to be knocked down or ripped open. The stronger public opinion is against the government the more does the government rely on men with bludgeons and pikes, on the strikers “turned out of the primary assemblies,” on the heroes of September 2 and May 31, dangerous nomads, inmates of Biceˆtre, paid assassins out of employment, and roughs of the Quinze-Vingts and Faubourg St. An- sioners, to verify the returns announced by the Convention.) “We divided the returns into three parts; each commissioner undertook to check off one of these parts, pen in hand, and the conscientious result of our labor was to show that, although the Convention had voting done in a mass by all the regiments then in France, individually, the majority, incontestably was against its project. Thus, while trying to have the election law passed under the Constitution, both measures were rejected.” The End of the Revolutionary Government / 1347 toine.21 Finally on the 11th of Vende´miaire, it gathers together fifteen or eighteen hundred of them and arms them in battalions.22 Such brigands are they, Menon, “major-general of the army of the interior and commandant of the armed force of Paris,” comes the next day with several of his staff-officers and tells the Committee of Five that he “will not have such bandits in his army nor under his orders. I will not march with a lot of rascals and assassins organised in battalions” under the name of “patriots of ’89.” The true patriots, indeed, of ’89 are on the other side, the constitutionalists of 1791, sincere liberals, “forty thousand proprietors and merchants,” the e´lite and mass of the Parisian population,23 “the majority of men really interested in public matters,” and at this moment, the common welfare is all that concerns them. Republic or royalty is merely a secondary thought, an idea in the back-ground; nobody dreams of restoring the ancient re´gime; but very few are preoccupied with the restoration of a limited monarchy.24 “On asking those most in ear-

21. Schmidt, “Tableaux de Paris pendant la Revolution.” (Reports of Mes- sidor 1 and 24, year III.) “Good citizens are alarmed at the numerous pardons granted to the members of the revolutionary committees.” “The release of numerous terrorists is generally turned to account.”—Mallet-Dupan, “Corres- pondance,” etc., i., 259, 261, 321. “The vilest terrorists have been set free; a part of them confined in the chaˆteau of Ham have been allowed to escape; they are summoned from all parts of the kingdom; they even send for them abroad, in Germany, in Belgium, in Savoy, in Geneva. On reaching Paris they are given leaders and organised. September 11 and 12 they began to meet publicly in groups and to use threats. I have proof of emissaries being engaged in recruiting them in the places I have mentioned and in paying their expenses to the capital.” (Letter of September 26, 1795.) 22. Buchez et Roux, xxxvii., 36, 49. (Reports of Merlin de Douai and Barras on the 13th of Vende´miaire.)—Thibaudeau, “Histoire de la Convention et du Directoire,” i., 209.—Fabre de l’Aude, “Histoire secrete du Directoire,” i., p. 10. “The Convention opened the prison doors to fifteen or eighteen hundred Jacobin lunatics, Seides of the former members of the Committee of Public Safety.”—Mallet-Dupan (ibid., i., 332, 337, 361) estimates the numbers of terrorists enrolled at three thousand. 23. Barbe´-Marbois, “Me´moires,” i., p. ix.—Meissner, p. 246. 24. Mallet-Dupan, ibid., i., 282. (Letter of August 16, 1795.) “At Paris, the 1348 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION nest what government they would like in place of the Convention, they reply ‘We want that no longer, we want nothing belonging to it; we want the Republic and honest people for our rulers.’”25 That is all; their uprisal is not a political insurrection against the form of the government, but a moral insurrection against the criminals in office. Hence, on seeing the Convention arm their old executioners against them, “the tigers” of the Reign of Terror, admitted malefactors, they cannot contain themselves.26 “That day,” says a foreigner, who visited many public places in Paris, “I saw everywhere the deepest despair, the greatest expression of rage and fury.... Without that unfortunate order the insurrection would probably not have broken out.” If they take uparms it is because they are brought back under the pikes of the Septembriseurs, and under Robespierre’s axe. But they are only national guards; most of them have no guns;27 they are in want of gunpowder, those who have any having only five or six charges; “the great majority do not think of fighting”; they imagine that “their presence is merely needed to enforce a petition”; they have no artillery, no positive leader; it is simply excitement, precipitation, disorder, and mistaken manoeuvres.28 On patriots of 1789 have got the upper hand. The regicides have the greatest horror of this class because they regard it as a hundred times more dangerous than pronounced aristocrats.” Ibid., 316.—Meissner, p. 229. “The sectionists want neither a republic nor monarchy but simply intelligent and honest men for the places in the new Convention.” 25. Lavalette, “Me´moires,” i., 162, 170. 26. Meissner, p. 236.—Any number of details show the features and characters of the male and female Jacobins here referred to. For example, Carnot (“Me´moires,” i., 581), says in his narrative of the foregoing riot (Prairial, i., year III.), “A creature with a horrible face put himself astride my bench and kept constantly repeating: “Today is the day we’ll make you passer le gout de pain? and furies posted in the tribunes, made signs of the guillotine.” 27. Meissner, p. 238.—Fie´veé, p. 127, and following pages. 28. Mallet-Dupan, i., 333, and following pages. (Letter of October 24, 1795.) “Barras does not repeat the mistake made by the Court on the 10th of April, and shut himself upin the chaˆteau and the Tuileries; he posts troops and artillery in all the avenues. . . . Fre´ron and two other representatives, supplied with coin The End of the Revolutionary Government / 1349 the contrary, on the side of the Convention, with Henriot’s old bullies, there are eight or nine thousand regular troops, and Bona- parte; his cannon, which rake the rue St. Honore´ and the Quai Voltaire, mow down five or six hundred sectionists; the rest disperse, and henceforth the check-mated Parisians are not to take uptheir guns against the Jacobin faction whatever it does.

III Supreme authority is once more in the hands of the revolutionary coterie. In conformity with its decrees of Fructidor, it first obliges electors to take two-thirds of their new representatives from the Convention, and as, notwithstanding its decrees, the electoral assemblies have not reelected a sufficient number of the Conventionalists, it nominates itself the one hundred and four which are wanting, from a list prepared by its Committee of Public Safety; in this way, in the council of the Five Hundred, as in the Council of the Ancients, it secures a certain majority in both houses of the Corps Legislatif. In the executive branch, in the Directory, it assures itself of unanimity; for the Five Hundred, adroitly preparing the lists, impose their candidates on the Ancients, the five names being selected beforehand, Barras, Lareveille`re-Lepeaux, Rewbell, Letourneur and Sie´- ye`s, and then, on Sieýe`s refusing, Carnot, all of them regicides and, under this terrible title, bound at the risk of their heads, to maintain and assignats collected in the Faubourg St. Antoine, four or five hundred bandits which joined the terrorists; these formed the pretended battalions of the loyal section which had been pompously announced to the Convention. No section, excepting the “Quinze-Vingts,” sent its battalion, this section having separated at the outset from the other forty-seven sections....Thegardens and court of the Tuileries resembled a feasting camp, where the Committees caused distributions of wine and all sorts of provisions; many of their defenders were intoxicated; the troops of the line were kept faithful with money and drink.”— After Vende´miaire 13, the Convention brings further reinforcements of regular troops into Paris to keep the city under, amounting to eight or nine thousand men. 1350 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION the regicide faction in power. Naturally the Directory chooses its agents from amongst those like itself,29 ministers and the employees of their departments, ambassadors and consuls, officers of all ranks, collectors of taxes direct and indirect, administrators of the national domains, commissioners of civil and criminal courts, and the commissioners of the departmental and municipal administrations. Again, having the right to suspend and dismiss all elected administrative bodies, it exercises this right; if the local authorities of any town, canton, or department seem to be anti-Jacobin, it sets them aside and, either on its own authority, or with the assent of the Corps Legislatif, replaces them with Jacobins on the spot.30 In other respects, the Convention has done its best to relieve its clients of their principal adversaries and most popular rivals; the night before its dissolution, it excluded from every “legislative, municipal, administrative, and judicial function,”31 even that of juryman, not only the individuals who, rightly or wrongly, had been put on a list of e´migre´s and not yet stricken off, but likewise their fathers, sons and grandsons, brothers and brothers-in-law, their connections of the same degree, uncles and nephews, probably two or three hundred thousand Frenchmen, nearly the whole of the e´lite of the nation, and to this it adds the rest of this e´lite, all the honest and energetic who, in the late primary or electoral assemblies have “provoked or signed” any manifestation against its despotism; if still in office they are to resign within twenty-four hours, or be sent into perpetual exile. Through this legal incapacity of the anti-Jacobins, the field is free to the Jacobins; in many places, for lack of candidates that please them, most of the electors stay away from the polls; besides this, the terrorists resort to their old system, that is to say to brutal

29. Constitution of year III., Articles vi. and vii. 30. Albert Babeau, “Histoire de Troyes,” ii., 367 and following pages. Sau- zay, “His. de la Perse´cution Re´volutionnaire dans le Doubs,” viii., ch. 52 and 54.—Law of Pluviose 4, year IV., authorising the executive Directory to appoint the members who, up to Thermidor 1, year IV., shall compose the municipal bodies of Bordeaux, Lyons, Marseilles and Paris. 31. Decree of Brumaire 3, year IV. The End of the Revolutionary Government / 1351 violence.32 On again obtaining the support of the government they have raised their heads and are now the titular favorites. The Con- vention has restored to them the civic rights of which they had deprived their adversaries: “every decree of indictment or arrest” rendered against them, “every warrant executed or not, all proceedings and suits” begun, every sentence bearing on their revolutionary acts, is cancelled.33 The most “atrocious” Montagnards, the most sanguinary and foul proconsuls, Dartigoyte and Piochefer-Bernard, Darthe´, Lebon’s secretary, Rossignol the great September massacrer, the presidents of former revolutionary committees, “patriotic robbers, seal-breakers” and garroters, brazenly promenade the streets

32. Archives Nationales, AF., II., 65. (Letter of Gen. Kermorvan, to the Com. of Public Safety, Valenciennes, Fructidor 22, year III.) At Valenciennes, during the elections, “the leaders of the sections used their fists in driving out of the primary assemblies all the worthy men possessing the necessary qualities for election....I knew that the “seal-breakers” (brise-scelle´s) were the promoters of these turbulent parties, the patriotic robbers, the men who have wasted public and private fortunes belonging to the commune, and who are revelling in the houses and on the estates of the e´migre´s which they have had awarded to them at a hundred times below their value....Allofthem are appointed electors....They have paid . . . and still pay agitators to intimidate honest folks by terror, in order to keep what they have seized, awaiting an opportunity to get more. . . . When the elections were over they sent daring men, undoubtedly paid, to insult people as they passed, calling them royalist chouans.” (He mentions the despatch of supporting affidavits.)—Mercier, “Le Nouveau Paris,” ii., 315. “Peaceable people in Paris refuse to go to the polls,” so as to “avoid being struck and knocked down.”—Sauzay, viii., 9. At Besançon, Nov. 6, 1795, out of five thousand three hundred and nine registered voters, only one thousand three hundred and twenty-four vote and the elected are terrorists.—Archives Nationales, F7, 7,090. (Documents on the Jacobin insurrection of Nivose 4 and 5, year IV., at Arles): “The exclusives, or amnestied, regarded the Constitution only as a means of arriving at a new state of anarchy by getting possession of all the offices....Shouts and cries of Vive Marat! and Robespierre to the Pan- theon! were often repeated. The principal band was composed of genuine Ter- rorists, of the men who under Robespierre’s reign bore the guillotine about in triumph, imitating its cruel performances on every corner with a manikin expressly made for the occasion.” “Domiciliary visits, rummaging everywhere, stealing jewelry, money, clothes, etc.” 33. Decree of Brumaire 4, year IV. 1352 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION of Paris.34 Bare`re himself, who, condemned to transportation, universally execrated as he traverses France, and who, everywhere on his journey, at Orleans, Tours, Poitiers, Niort, comes near being torn to pieces by the people, Bare`re is not sent off to Guienne; he is allowed to escape, to conceal himself and live tranquilly at Bor- deaux. Furthermore, Conventionalists of the worst species, like Mo- nestier and Foussedoire return to their natal department to govern it as government commissioners. Consider the effect of these releases and of these appointments in a town which, like Blois, has seen the assassins at work, and which, for two months, follows their trial.35 Seven of them, members of the Revolutionary Committee, commanders of the armed force, members of the district or department, national agents in Indre-et-Loire, charged with conducting or receiving a column of eight hundred laborers, peasant women, priests and “suspects,” cause nearly six hundred of them to be shot, sabred, drowned, or knocked down on the road, not in self-defence or to prevent escape, for these poor creatures tied two and two marched along like sheepwithout a murmur, but to set a good revolutionary example, so as to keep the people in proper subjection by terror and enable them to line their pockets.36

34. Mallet-Dupan, ii., 363.—Schmidt (Police report of Brumaire 26 and 27). 35. Dufort de Cheverney (manuscript memoirs communicated by Robert de Creˆvecoeur).—Report of the public prosecutor, dated Thermidor 13, year III., according to documents handed in on Messidor 16, by the foreman of the jury of indictment and by the juges de paix of Chinon, Saumur, Tours, Amboise, Blois, Beaugency, etc., relating to the charges made by the administrators of the department of Loire-et-Cher, dated Frimaire 30, year II., concerning the fusillades at Blois, Frimaire 19, year II. 36. The line of this march from Saumur to Montsoreau could be traced by the blood along the road; the leaders shot those who faltered with fatigue.— On reaching Blois, Frimaire 18, He´zine says, before the town-hall, “Tomorrow morning they shall be straightened out and we’ll show the Ble´sois how the thing is managed.” The following day, He´zine and Gidouin, taking a walk with Lepetit, commander of the escort, in the court of the inn, say to him: “You’ll shoot some of them for us. You must give the people an example by shooting some of those rascally priests.” Lepetit orders out four peasants and placing them himself on the river bank, gives the command to ﬁre and to throw them The End of the Revolutionary Government / 1353

A minute investigation has unfolded before the judges, jury, and public of Blois a long series of authentic facts and proofs, with eight days of pleading and the most complete and glaring evidence; the sentence is about to be pronounced. Suddenly, two weeks before Vende´miaire 13, a decree annuls the proceedings, which have already cost over six hundred thousand livres, and orders a new trial in another form. Next, after Vende´miaire 13, a representative arrives at Blois and his first care is to set the massacrers free. About thirty knaves ruled the town during the Reign of Terror, all strangers, save four or five, “all more or less befouled with crime”; at first, the principal slaughterers—He´zine, Gidouin, and their accomplices of the neighboring districts, Simon, and Bonneau the ex-mayor of Blois, Be´zard, a former soldier, convicted of peculation and of robbing cellars which he had put under sequestration, Berger, an ex- monk, and then dragoon who, with pistol in hand, forced the superior of his old convent to give up the funds of the community, Giot, formerly a chief-butler of Monsieur (the King’s brother), next, a judge in the September massacres and then a quartermaster in the Pyrenees army and a pillager in Spain, then secretary to the Melun tribunal of which he stole the cash, along with other nomads and outlaws of the same stamp, most of them sots and roysterers, one an ex-schoolmaster, another an ex-ladies hair-dresser, another an ex- chair-bearer; all of them a vile lot, chosen by the government for its agents, and, under new titles, resuming their old positions. At the head of the armed force is Gen. Bonnard, who is accompanied by a prostitute and who passes his time in orgies, pilfering wherever he can, and so shameless in his thievery as to be condemned, six months later, to three months in irons;37 on arriving at Blois, he in. He´zine and Gidouin shout Vive la Nation! Gidouin then says to Lepetit: “You don’t mean to stopwith those four peasants?won’t you give us a few cure´s?” Five priests are shot.—At Beaugency, there is a fresh fusillade. The leaders take the best part of the spoil. Among other objects, Lepetit has a coffer sent into his chamber and takes the effects it contains and sells a bed and mattress beside. 37. Ibid., (March, 1796). “Meanwhile, the young men who were recruited, hid themselves: Bonnard made them pay, and still made them set out. Baillon, 1354 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION organises “a paid guard, composed of all the most abject Jacobins.” Elsewhere, as here,38 it is the full staff of the Reign of Terror, the petty potentates dethroned after Thermidor, the political Bohemians restored to their functions; and, it seems, after Vende´miaire 13, that the Jacobin band had made the conquest of France a second time.

IV Not yet, however, for, if it has recovered its authority, it has not yet recovered the dictatorship. In vain do Barras and Tallien, Dubois- Crance´, Merlin de Douai, and Marie Cheńier, Delmas, Louvet, Sieýe`s, and their rotten, headlong crew, the habitue´s of power, the despotic, unscrupulous theorists, try to postpone indefinitely the opening of the Corps Legislatif, to annul the elections, to purge the Convention, to ree¨stablish for their own advantage that total concentration of powers which, under the title of revolutionary government, has converted France into a pachalic in the hands of the old Committee of Public Safety:39 the Convention has become alarmed for itself; at the last moment the plot is exposed, the blow frustrated;40 the Consti- tution, decreed, is put in operation, the system of the law has re- quartermaster in the war, told me that he had paid Bonnard nine hundred thousand livres in assignats in twelve days, and one million four hundred thousand in twenty days; there were thirty-five thousand livres in the memoir for pens, penknives, ink, and paper.” 38. Mallet-Dupan, “Correspondance, etc.,” i., 383. (Letter of Dec. 13, 1795.) “The Directory keeps on filling the offices with Terrorists. The government agents in the departments arbitrarily set aside the constituted authorities and replace them with Jacobins.” 39. Thibaudeau, “Histoire de la Convention,” i., 243. “Tallien, Barras, Che´- nier and Louvet talked of nothing but of annulling the elections. . . . Nothing was heard at the bar and in the tribunals but the most revolutionary propositions. The “Mountain” showed incredible audacity. The public tribunes were filled with confederates who applauded furiously. . . . Tallien and Barras ruled and shared the dictatorshipbetween them. . . . Since the 13th of Vende´miaire, the deliberations of the Convention are carried on in a camp; the exterior, the tribunes, the hall itself are invested by soldiers and terrorists.”—Mallet-Dupan, “Correspondence, etc.,” i., 248. (Letter of Oct. 31, 1795.) 40. Thibaudeau, ibid., i., 246, et seq.—Moniteur. (Session of Brumaire 1.) Speech by Thibaudeau. The End of the Revolutionary Government / 1355 placed the system of arbitrariness. The Jacobin invasion, through that alone, is checked and then arrested; the nation is in a condition to defend itself and does defend itself; it gradually regains lost ground, even at the centre. At Paris, the electoral body,41 which is obliged to take two-thirds of its deputies from the Convention, takes none of the regicide deputation representing Paris; all who are chosen, Lanjuinais, Larivie`re, Fermon, Saladin, Boissy d’Anglas, wished to save the King, and nearly all were proscribed after the 31st May. The departments show the same spirit. The members of the Con- vention for whom the provinces show a decided preference are the most prominent of the anti-Jacobins: Thibaudeau is reelected by thirty-two electoral colleges, Pelet de la Loze´re by seventy-one, Boissy d’Anglas by seventy-two, Lanjuinais by seventy-three. As to the two hundred and fifty of the new third, these are liberals of 1789 or moderates of 1791,42 most of them honorable men and many of them well-informed and of real merit, jurisconsults, officers, administrators, members of the Constitutional Assembly or Feuillants in the Legislative Assembly, Mathieu Dumas, Vaublanc, Dupont de Nemours, Simeón, Barbe´-Marbois and Tronçon-Ducoudray. The capital, especially, chose Dambray, former general-advocate to the Paris parliament, and Pastoret, former minister of Louis XVI.; Ver- sailles sends the two celebrated lawyers who defended the King before the Convention, Tronchet and De Se´ze. Now, previous to the 13th Vende´miaire, two hundred members of the Convention had

41. Mallet-Dupan, ibid., i., 328. (Letter Oct. 4, 1795.) “Nearly all the electors nominated at Paris are former administrators, distinguished and sensible writers, persons recommendable through their position, fortune, and intelligence. They are the royalists of 1789, that is to say about in the sense of the constitution of 1791, essentially changed fundamentally. M. d’Ormesson, former comptroller- general of the Treasury, the Marquis of Gontant, M. de Vandeuil, former maitre de requeˆtes, M. Garnier, former conseiller an Chaˆtelet of Paris and others of the same order, all electors. It is another world; in one month we have gone back five years.”—Ibid., 343, 350, 359, 373. 42. Barbe´-Marbois, “Journal d’un De´porte´,” preface, p. xiv. “Outside of five or six men who might be regarded as ‘suspects’ of royalism the most animated were only really irritated against the despotic conduct and depredations of the directors and not against the republican system.” 1356 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION already heartily sided with the Parisian electors43 against the terrorists. This makes a strong opposition minority in the Corps Legislatif marching along protected by the Constitution; behind it and behind them march the e´lite and the plurality of Frenchmen awaiting something better. The Directory is obliged to act cautiously with this large group, so well supported by public opinion, and, accordingly, not to govern a` la Turk; to respect, if not the spirit, at least the letter of the law, and not to exercise a too barefaced influence on local elections. Hence most of the local elections remain free; in spite of the decree excluding every relation of an e´migre´ and every notorious opponent of the government from present and future offices, in spite of fear, lassitude, and disgust, in spite of the small number of votes, the rarity of candidates and the frequent refusal of the elected to serve,44 the nation substantially exercises its privilege of electing its administrators and judges according to its preferences. Conse- quently, the very large majority of new administrators in the departments, cantons, and municipalities, and the very large majority of new civil and criminal judges and justices of the peace are, like the new third of the Convention, highly esteemed or estimable men, untainted with excesses, still preserving their hopes of 1789, but preserved from the outset against, or soon cured of, the revolution-

43. Mallet-Dupan, ibid., i., 369. (Letter of Nov. 22, 1795.) “Never would the resistance of the sections have shown itself so unanimously and so perse- veringly without the promptings of the two hundred monarchist members of the Convention and the aid they promised. They had engaged to enter the tribune and support the cause of Paris, to carry the majority and, in case they did not succeed in revoking the decree respecting the two-thirds, to withdraw from the Convention and come and take their seats with the sections; the pusillanimity of these two hundred members caused the failure of these promises. . . . I guarantee the authenticity of this statement.” 44. “Souvenirs et Journal d’un Bourgeois d’Evreux,” pp. 103, 106. “The Constitution has been adopted by a very small number of citizens, for, in the section of the Nord only one hundred and fifty voters at most are found amongst twelve hundred or fifteen hundred estimated.” (September 6, 1795.)—On Tues- day, November 10, “the section assemblies of Evreux completed their nominations of juge de paix and of its assessors and five municipal officers. It took time, because there were a great many who declined.” The End of the Revolutionary Government / 1357 ary fever. Every decree of spoliation or persecution loses some of its force in their hands. Supported by the steady and manifest will of their present constituents, we see them resisting the commissioners of the Directory, at least protesting against their exactions and brutality, gaining time in favor of the proscribed, dulling the point of, or turning aside, the Jacobin sword. Again, on the other hand, the government which holds this sword dare not, like the Committee of Public Safety, thrust it in upto the hilt; if wielded as before it might slipfrom its grasp;the furious in its own campare ready to wrest it away and turn the blade against it. It must defend itself against the reviving clubs, against Baboeuf and his accomplices, against the desperadoes who, through a nocturnal attempt, try to stir up the Grenelle camp: in Paris, there are four or five thousand now ready to undertake a “civic St. Barthol- omew,” with the old Conventionists who could not get themselves elected, at their head—Drouet, Amar, Vadier, Ricord, Laignelot, Chaudieu, Huguet, Cusset, Javogues; alongside of them, the friends of Chalier, Robespierre’s and Marat’s followers, and the disciples of Saint-Just, Bertrand de Lyon, Buonarotti, Antonelle, Rossignol and Baboeuf; behind them, the bandits of the street, those “who gutted houses during the Revolution,” peculators or Septembriseurs out of employment, in short, the relics of the terrorist gang or of the revolutionary army. Their plan, in accordance with their precedents, character, and principles, consists not only in despatching “the rascals who keepcoaches, the moneyed men and monopolisers,” all the deputies and functionaries who do not resign at the first summons, but again, and especially, in killing “the General of the Interior, his staff, the seven ministers and the five ‘cocked-hats’ (panache´s) of the Luxembourg,” that is to say, the five Directors themselves. Such allies are troublesome. Undoubtedly, the government, which considers them as its forlorn hope, and that it may have need of them in a crisis, spares them as much as possible;45 it allows Drouet to

45. Thibaudeau, “Me´moires sur le Convention et le Directoire,” ii., 58.— Mallet-Dupan, (“Correspondence, etc.,” ii., 281.) Dufort de Cheverney (“Me´- 1358 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION escape, and lets the trial of the Babouvists drag along, only two of them being guillotined, Baboeuf and Darthe´; most of the others are acquitted or escape. Nevertheless, for its own salvation, it is led to separate from the ﬁercest Jacobins and draw near to peaceable citizens. Through this internal discord of the ruling faction, honest people hold on the oﬃces they occupy on the elections of the year IV.; no decree comes to deprive them of their legal arms, while, in the Corps Legislatif, as in the administrations and the tribunals, they count on carrying new positions in the elections of the year V.

V “It was a long time,” writes a small trader of Evreux, “since so many people were seen at the elections.46 . . . The eight electors for the town obtained at the first ballot the absolute majority of suffrages. . . . Everybody went to the polls so as to prevent the nomination of any elector among the terrorists, who had declared that their reign was going to return.” In the environs of Blois, a rural proprietor, the most circumspect and most peaceable of men, notes in his journal47 that “now is the time to take a personal interest. . . . Every sound-thinking man has promised not to refuse any office tendered to him so as to keepout the Jacobins ....Itisreasonably hoped that the largest number of the electors will not be terrorists and that the majority of the Corps Legislatif being all right, the minority of the furious, who have only one more year of office, will give way (in 1798) to men of probity not steeped in crime....In the country, the Jacobins have tried in vain: people of means who employed a portion of the voters, obtained their suffrages, every proprietor wishing to have order....TheModerates have agreed moires” in manuscript). He is at Vendoˆme and attends the trial out of curiosity. “Germain, cheerful and witty, makes fun of the jurymen: they are really stupid, said he, not to see conspiracy when there was as complete a one as ever existed. . . . Besides, I conspired and always shall.” 46. “Souvenir et Journal d’un Bourgeois d’Evreux,” p. 118 (March 24, 1797). 47. Dufort de Cheverney, “Me´moires,” (March, 1797). The End of the Revolutionary Government / 1359 to vote for no matter what candidate, provided he is not a Jacobin. . . . Out of two hundred and thirty electors for the department, one hundred and fifty are honest and upright people. . . . They adhered to the last Constitution as to their sole palladium, only a very few of them dreaming of reestablishing the ancient re´gime.” Their object is plain enough; they are for the Constitution against the Revolution, for limited power against discretionary power, for property against robbery, for upright men against thieves. “Would you prevent, say the administrative authorities of Aube,48 a return to the disastrous laws of the maximum, of monopolies, to the resurrection of paper- money? . . . Would you, as the price of a blameless life, be once more humiliated, robbed, imprisoned, tortured by the vilest, most repulsive, and most shameless of tyrants? You have only one recourse: do not fail to go to your primary assemblies and remain there.” The electors, warned by their late personal and bloody souvenirs, rush to the polls in crowds and vote according to their consciences, although the government through the oaths it imposes, its official candidatures, its special commissioners, its intimidation and its money, bears down with all its weight on the resolutions they have taken; although the Jacobins at Nevers, Macon, and elsewhere, have forcibly expelled officers legally elected from their bureaux, and stained the hall with their blood,49 “out of eighty-four departments sixty-six elected a plurality of electors from among the anti-

48. Albert Babeau, ii., 408, et seq. (Address of the administrators of Aube for the elections of year V.)—Ibid., 414. (Speech by Herlinson, Librarian of the Ecole Centrale at Troyes, Thermidor 10, year V. in the large hall of the Hoˆtel- de-Ville, before the commissioners of the Directory, and received with unbounded applause.) “The patriots consisted of fools, madmen and knaves, the first in their illusions, the second in their dreams and the third in their acts. . . . Everywhere you would see two or three executioners, a dozen satellites, of whom one-half trembled for their lives, and about a hundred witnesses, most of them in spite of themselves, against thousands of victims. . . . Vengeance is not necessary; never was special vengeance of any benefit to the public. Let them rest in their slough, let them live as objects of contempt and horror.”— Cf. Sauzay, viii., p. 659 et seq. 49. Thibaudeau, ii., 152, 153.—Mallet-Dupan, ii., 262. 1360 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION republicans, eight being neither good nor bad, while only ten remained loyal to the Jacobins.”50 Appointed by such electors, we can divine what the new Third will be. “Of the two hundred and fifty Conventionalists excluded by fate scarcely five or six have been reelected; there are but eight departments in which the Jacobins have had any success.” Immediately after the arrival of the new representatives, the roll of the Corps Legislatif having been checked off, it is found that “the Government has seventy out of two hundred and fifty voices among the Ancients, and two hundred out of five hundred among the Council of the Young,” and soon less than two hundred, one hundred and thirty51 at most, who will certainly be excluded at the coming renewal of the chambers by more and more anti-Jacobin elections. One year more, as the rulers themselves admit, and not one Conventionalist, not one pure Jacobin, will sit in the Corps Legislatif and, therefore, according to the revolutionists, the counter-revolution will be effected in the year VI. This means that the Revolution is to end in the year VI., and that the pacific reign of law will be substituted for the brutal reign of force. In fact, the great majority of the representatives and almost the entire French nation have no other end in view: they wish to rid themselves of the social and civil re´gime to which they have been subject since the 10th of August, 1792, and which, relaxed after Thermidor 9, but renewed by the 13th of Vende´miaire, has lasted upto the presenttime, through the enforcement of its most odious laws and the maintenance of its most disreputable agents. This is all. Not twenty avowed or decided royalists could be found in the two Councils;52 there are scarcely more than five or six—Imbert- Colome`s, Pichegru, Willot, Delarne—who may be in correspondence with Louis XVIII. and disposed to raise the white flag. For the other five hundred, the restoration of the legitimate King, or the

50. Mallet-Dupan, ii., 265, 268, 278. 51. Thibaudeau, ii., 244, 248. 52. Carnot, “Me´moires,” ii., 108. “Not fifteen leaders.”—Lacretelle, “Dix Anneés d’Epreuves,” p. 308. “Twenty or thirty men devoted to monarchical opinions, but who did not dare state them openly.” The End of the Revolutionary Government / 1361 establishment of any royalty whatever, is only in the background; they regard it only at a distance, as a possible accompaniment and remote consequence of their present undertaking. In any event, they would accept only “the mitigated monarchy,”53 that which the Lib- erals of 1788 hoped for, that which Mounier demanded after the days of October 5 and 6, that advocated by Barnave after the return from Varennes, that which Malouet, Gouverneur Morris, Mallet-Dupan and all good observers and wise councillors of France, always recommended. None of them propose to proclaim divine right and return to aristocratic feudalism; each proposes to abrogate revolutionary right and destroy Jacobin feudalism. The principle condemned by them is that which sustains the theory of anarchy and despotism, the application of the Contrat-Social,54 a dictatorshipes- tablished by coups d’e´tat, carried on arbitrarily and supported by terror, the systematic and dogmatic persistence of assaults on persons, property and consciences, the usurpation of a vicious, fanatical minority which has devastated France for five years and, under the pretext of everywhere setting up the rights of man, purposely maintaining a war to propagate its system abroad. That which they are really averse to is the Directory and its clique, Barras with his court of gorged contractors and kept women, Rewbell with his family of extortioners, stamp of a parvenu and ways of a tavern keeper, Larevellie`re-Lepaux with his hunchback vanity, philosophic pretensions, sectarian intolerance, and silly airs of a pedantic dupe. What they demand in the tribune,55 is the purification of the administration,

53. Mallet-Dupan, ii., 267, 278, 331. 54. Mallet-Dupan, ii., 265. “Not only have they discarded (at Paris) the Republicans, but even those among the old Constituents, known or denounced for having taken too important a part in the first revolution....Menhavebeen chosen who aspired to a modified and not perverted monarchy. The suffrages have equally set aside the sectarian royalists of the ancient re´gime and violent antirevolutionists.” 55. Mallet-Dupan, ii., 298. “The deputies never attack a revolutionary law, but they are mistrusted of some design of destroying the results of the Revo- lution, and every time they speak of regulating the Republic they are accused of ill-will to the Republic.” 1362 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION the suppression of jobbery, and an end to persecution; according as they are more or less excited or circumspect they demand legal sentences or simply the removal of Jacobins in office, the immediate and entire suppression or partial and careful reform of the laws against priests and worship, against e´migre´s and the nobles.56 Nobody has any idea of innovation with respect to the distribution of public powers, or to the way of appointing central or local authorities. “I swear on my honor,” writes Mathieu Dumas, “that it has always been my intention to maintain the Republican Constitution, persuaded as I am that, with a temperate and equitable administration, it might give repose to France, make liberty known and cherished, and repair in time the evils of the Revolution; I swear that no proposals, direct or indirect, have ever been made to me to serve, either by my actions, speech or silence, or cause to prevail in any near or remote manner, any other interest than that of the Republic and the Constitution.” “Among the deputies,” says Camille Jordan, “several might prefer royalty; but they did not conspire, regarding the Con- stitution as a deposit entrusted to their honor....They kept their most cherished plans subordinate to the national will; they comprehended that royalty could not be reestablished without blows and through the development of this bill.” “Between ourselves,” says again Barbe´-Marbois, “there were disagreements as to the way of getting along with the Directory, but none at all as to the maintenance of the Constitution.”57 Almost upto the last moment they confined themselves strictly to their legal rights, and when, towards the end, they were disposed to set these aside, it was simply to

56. Thibaudeau, ii., 171.—Carnot, ii., 106.—The programme of Barthe´le´my is contained in this simple phrase: “I would render the Republic administrative.” On the foreign policy, his ideas, so temperate, pacific and really French, are received with derision by the other Directors. (Andre´ Lebon, “Angleterre et l’Emigration Française,” p. 335.) 57. Mathieu Dumas, “Souvenirs,” iii., 153.—Camille Jordan. (Letter to his constituents on the Revolution, Fructidor 18, p. 26.) “The Constitution, the Constitution alone, is the rallying word at Clichy.”—Barbe´-Marbois, “Souve- nirs d’un De´porte´,” i., page 12 and preface. “The largest number wanted to disregard the future and forget the past.” The End of the Revolutionary Government / 1363 defend themselves against the uplifted sabre above their heads.58 It is incontestable that their leaders are “the most estimable and the ablest men in the Republic,”59 the only representatives of free suffrage, mature opinions, and long experience, the only ones at least in whose hands the Republic, restored to order and justice, would have any chance of becoming viable, in fact, the only liberals. And this is the reason why the merely nominal Republicans were bound to crush them. In effect, under a government which disavows attacks on persons and on public or private property, not only is the Jacobin theory impossible, but Jacobin wrongs are condemned. Now, the Jacobins, even if they have abjured their principles, remember their acts. They become alarmed on the arrival of the first Third, in October, 1795: “The Conventionalists,” writes one of the new deputies,60 “look upon us as men who will one day give them up to justice.” After the entry of the second Third, in May, 1797, their fright increased;

58. Mallet-Dupan, ii., 336. “Eighty of the deputies who were menaced have slept elsewhere since the 30th of August, keeping together in one domicile for fear of being carried off at night.”—Mathieu Dumas, iii., 10. “I could no longer occupy my house in Paris, rue Fosses-du-Temple, without risking an attack from the sbirri of the Directory, who proclaimed in the clubs that the people must be avenged in (our) houses.”—Mallet-Dupan, ii., 343. “This pretended conspiracy imputed to the councils by the triumvirs, is a romance similar to those of Robespierre.”—Ibid., 346. “There has been no conspiracy, properly so-called, of the Corps Legislatif against the Directory.”—Only, “every constitution in France kills the Revolution if it is not destroyed in time for the Revolutionary leaders. And this, because four-fifths of France being detached from the Revolution, the elections will put into the legislative and administrative offices men who were opposed to the Revolution.” 59. Lord Malmesbury, “Diaries,” ii., 544. (September 9, 1797.) The words of Mr. Colchen. “He went on to say that all the persons arrested are the most estimable and most able men in the Republic. It is for this reason and not from any principles of royalism (for such principles do not belong to them) that they are sentenced to transportation. They would have supported the Constitution, but in doing that they would have circumscribed the authority of the executive power and have taken from the Directory the means of acquiring and exercising undue authority.” 60. Barbe´-Marbois, “Journal d’un De´porte´,” preface, p. xvi. 1364 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION the regicides, especially, feel that “their safety depends only on an exclusive and absolute dominion.”61 One day, Treilhard, one of their notables, alone with Mathieu Dumas, says to this old Feuillant and friend of Lafayette, of well known loyalty and moderation: “You are very honest and very able men, and I believe that you really desire to maintain the government as it is, because neither for you nor for us is there any sure way of substituting another for it. But we Conventionalists cannot allow you to go on; whether you mean it or not, you are gradually leading us to our certain ruin; there is nothing in common between us.” “What guarantee do you then require?” “But one. After that, we’ll do all you want—we’ll let you relax the springs—give us this guarantee and we’ll follow you blindly!” “Well, what do you mean by that?” “Enter the tribune and declare that if you had been a member of the Convention, you would have voted the death of Louis XVI. as we did!” “You demand an impossibility. You would not do this in our place. You sacrifice France to vain terrors.” “No, the risk is not equal; our heads are at stake!” Perhaps their heads, but certainly their power, places, fortunes, comforts, and pleasures, all that in their eyes makes it worth while to live. Every morning, seventy Paris newspapers and as many local gazettes in the large towns of the provinces expose, with supporting documents, details and figures, not merely their former crimes, but, again, their actual corruption, their sudden opulence founded on prevarication and rapine, their bribes and peculations—one, rewarded with a sumptuously furnished mansion by a company of grateful contractors; another, son of a bailiwick attorney and a would-be Carthusian, now possessor of ecclesiastical property, restored by him at a great outlay for hunting-grounds; another also monopolises the finest land in Seine-et-Oise; another, the improvised owner of four chaˆteaux; another, who has feathered his nest with fifteen or eighteen millions,62 with their loose or arbitrary ways of

61. Mathieu Dumas, iii., 84, 86. 62. De Goncourt, “La Socie´te´ Française pendant le Directoire,” 298, 386. Cf. the The´, the Grondeur, the Censeur des journaux, Paris, and innumerable The End of the Revolutionary Government / 1365 doing things, their habits as hoarders or spendthrifts, their display and effrontery, their dissipations, their courtiers, and their prostitutes. How can they renounce all this? And all the more because this is all they have. These jaded consciences are wholly indifferent to abstract principles, to popular sovereignty, to the common weal, to public security; the thin and brittle coating of sonorous phrases under which they formerly tried to hide the selfishness and perversity of their lusts, scales off and falls to the ground. They themselves confess that it is not the Republic for which they are concerned, but for themselves above everything else, and for themselves alone; so much the worse for it if its interest is opposed to their interest; as Sieýe`s will soon express it, the object is not to save the Revolution but the revolutionists. Thus disabused, unscrupulous, knowing that they are staking their all, and resolute, like their brethren of August 10, September 2, and May 31, like the Committee of Public Safety, they are determined to win, no matter at what cost or by what means, the same as their brethren of August 10, September 2, and May 31. For this time again, the Moderates cannot comprehend a declaration of war, and that it is war to the knife. They do not agree amongst themselves; they want to gain time, they hesitate and take refuge in constitutional forms—they do not act. The strong measures which the eighty decided and clear-sighted deputies propose, are weakened or suspended by the precautions of the three hundred others, short- sighted, unreliable, or timid.63 They dare not even avail themselves pamphlets.—In the provinces, the Anti-Terrorist, at Toulouse; the 9 Thermidore, at Besançon, the Annales Troyennes at Troyes, etc. 63. Mallet-Dupan, ii., 309, 316, 323, 324, 329, 333, 339, 347. “To defend themselves constitutionally, whilst the Directory attacks revolutionarily, is to condemn themselves to inevitable perdition.” “Had it a hundred times more ability the Corps Legislatif without boldness is a lightning flash without thunder.” “With greater resources than Louis XVI. had in 1792, the Corps Legislatif acts like this prince and will share his fate, unless it returns war for war, unless it declares that the first generals who dare send out the deliberations of their armies are traitors to the State.” “It is owing to the temporising of the legislative councils, to the fatal postponement of the attack on the Luxembourg in the middle of August, on which Pichegru, Villot, General Miranda, and all the 1366 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION of their legal arms, annul the military division of the interior, suppress Augereau’s commission, and break the sword presented at their throats by the three conspiring Directors. In the Directory, they have only passive or neutral allies, Barthe´le´my, who had rather be assassinated than murder, Carnot, the servant of his legal pass-word, fearing to risk his Republic, and, moreover, calling to mind that he had voted for the King’s death. Among the “Five Hundred” and the “Ancients,” Thibaudeau and Tronçon-Ducoudray, the two leaders “du ventre,” arrest the arms of Pichegru and other energetic men, prevent them from striking, allow them only to ward off the blow, and always too late. Three days after the 10th of Fructidor, when, as everybody knew and saw, the final blow was to be struck, the eighty deputies, who change their quarters so as not to be seized in their beds, cannot yet make uptheir minds to take the offensive. On that day, an eye-witness64 came to Mathieu Dumas and told him that, the evening before, in Barras’ house, they discussed the slaughter or transportation to Cayenne of about forty members of the two Councils, and that the second measure was adopted; on which a commandant of the National Guard, having led Dumas at night into the Tuileries garden, showed him his men concealed behind the trees, armed and ready to march at the first signal; he is to possess himself at once of the Luxembourg (palace)65 which is badly clairvoyant deputies insisted on, . . . it is owing to foolishly insisting on confining themselves to constitutional defences, . . . it is owing to the necessity which the eighty firm and energetic deputies found of conciliating three hundred others who could not agree on the end as well as the means, which brought about the catastrophe of the Councils.” 64. Carnot, “Me´moires,” ii., 161. “The evil having reached its last stage, it was necessary to have a 10th of June instead of a 31st of May.”—Mallet-Dupan, ii., 333, 334. The plan for cancelling the military division of the Interior under Augereau’s command was to be carried out between the 15th and 20th of August. If the triumvirate should resist, Pichegru and Villot were to march on the Luxembourg. Carnot refused to accept the project “unless he might name the three new Directors.”—De la Rue, “Histoire du 18 Fructidor.” Carnot said to the Moderates who asked him to act with them: “Even if I had a pardon in my pocket, amply confirmed by the royal mouth, I should have no confidence.” 65. Occupied by the members of the Directory. The End of the Revolutionary Government / 1367 guarded, and put an end to Barras and Rewbell on the spot: in war one kills so as not to be killed, and, when the enemy takes aim, you have the right to fire without waiting. “Only,” says the commandant, “promise me that you will state in the tribune that you ordered this attack, and give me your word of honor.”66 Mathieu Dumas refuses, simply because he is a man of honor. “You were a fool,” Napoleon afterwards said to him in this connection, “you know nothing about revolutions.” In effect, honor, loyalty, horror of blood, respect for the law, such are the weak points of the party. The opposite sentiments form the strong points of the other party. On the side of the triumvirs nobody knows twinges of conscience, neither Barras, a condottiere open to the highest bidder, and who understands the value of blows, nor Rewbell, a sort of bull, who, becoming excited, sees red, nor Merlin de Douai, the terrible legist, lay inquisitor, and executioner in private.67 As usual with the Jaco- bins, these men have unsheathed the sword and brandished it. In contempt of the constitution, they provoked discussions in the army and let the Corps Legislatif see that, if it did not yield, it would be put out at the point of the bayonet. They let loose against it, “as in the good old times,”68 their executive riff-raff, and line the avenues and tribunes with “their bandits of both sexes.” They collect together their gangs of roughs, five or six thousand terrorists from Paris and the departments, and two thousand officers awaiting orders or on half-pay. In default of Hoche, whose unconstitutional approach was reported and then prevented, they have Augereau, arrived expressly from Italy, and who states publicly, “I am sent for

66. Mathieu Dumas, “Me´moires,” iii., 113. 67. Mallet-Dupan, ii., 327. “Barras is the only one who plays squarely and who, taking the risk, wants Jacobinism to triumph par fas et nefas.”—Ibid., 339. “The triumvirs hesitated upto Friday; Barras, the most furious of the three, and master of Augereau, decided his two colleagues.”—Ibid., 351. “Barras and Rewbell, by dint of exciting the imagination of that poor little philosophiser Larevellie`re, succeeded in converting him.”—Thibaudeau, ii., 272. “It was Bar- ras who bore off the honors of dictatorshipthat night. . . . Larevellie`re shut himself upin his house as in an impenetrable sanctuary. Rewbell, at this moment, his head somewhat affected, was watched in his apartment.” 68. Mallet-Dupan, ii., 304, 305, 331.—Carnot, ii., 117. 1368 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION to kill the royalists.” It is impossible to find a more narrow-minded and greater military bully; Rewbell, himself, on seeing him, could not helpbut exclaim: “What a sturdy brigand!” On the 18th of Fructidor this official swordsman, with eight or ten thousand troops, surrounds and invades the Tuileries; the representatives are arrested in their committee-rooms or domiciles, or pursued, tracked, and hunted down, while the rest of their opponents, notables, officers, heads of bureaux, journalists, former ministers and directors, Bar- the´le´my and Carnot, are treated in the same way. Barbe´-Marbois, on demanding by virtue of what law they were arrested,69 is told, “by the law of the sabre,” while Sotin, Minister of the Police, adds with a smile, “You may be sure that after what I have taken on myself, it matters little whether one is more or less compromised.” Thus purged, the two Councils complete their purgation; they cancel, in forty-nine departments, the election of their colleagues; through this decree and transportation, through forced and voluntary resignations, two hundred and fourteen representatives are withdrawn from the Corps Legislatif, while one hundred and eighty others, through fear or disgust, cease to attend its meetings.70 Noth- ing remains of the two Councils, except, as in the English Parliament under Cromwell, a “rump,” which rump does business under drawn swords. In the Council of the Ancients, which, on the 18th of Fruc- tidor, discussed at midnight71 the decree of transportation, “groups of grenadiers, with a haggard look, in brusque language, with threatening gestures” and fixed bayonets, surround the amphitheatre, and, mingled with the soldiers and civil cut-throats, shout out their orders. Such are the supporters of the scandalous stories got up by the Directory; voters who need this sort of argument to make them believe in the grand conspiracy which it denounces, to associate Barthe´le´my, Carnot, Simeón, Barbe´-Marbois, Boissy d’Anglas, Ma- thieu Dumas, Pastoret, Tronçon-Ducoudray as accomplices with a

69. Barbe´-Marbois, “Journal d’un De´porte´,” pp. 34 and 35. 70. Mallet-Dupan, ii., 343. 71. Barbe´-Marbois, ibid., p. 46. The End of the Revolutionary Government / 1369 knot of subordinate intriguers, contemptible “monkeys” (marmo- sets), dolts or spies, whose papers have been in the hands of the police for six months, and whom it forces to speak under lock and key.72 All are enveloped in the same net, all are confounded together under the same title, all are condemned en masse without evidence or formality. “Proofs!” exclaims an orator, “none are necessary against the royalist faction. I have my own convictions.”73 “For- malities!” exclaims another, “the enemies of the country cannot invoke formalities which they would have despised had they triumphed.” “The people are there,” says a third, pointing to a dozen ill-looking men who are present; “the whole people ought to prevail against a few individuals!” “Hurry up!” shouts a soldier, who wants the discussion ended, “patriots, march, double-quick!” The debate, nevertheless, drags along, and the Government, growing impatient, is obliged to intervene with a message: “The people,” says the message, “want to know what has become of the Republic, what you have done with it. . . . The conspirators have men who know something, even among yourselves.” That is understood, and besides, the representatives comprehend that if they do not transport, they themselves will be transported. Therefore, “about fourteen or fifteen stand upfor the decree, while seven are against it; the rest remain motionless”: it is thus that the decree to save the Constitution is freely and legally passed. Four years before this a similar decree had passed to expel the Girondists, just in the same way, with this exception that, at that time, the Mountain made use of the populace, while now the army is employed; but save the difference in the figurants, the performance is simply a repetition of the same drama that was played on the 2d of June, and is now again played on the 18th of Fructidor.74

72. Mallet-Dupan, ii., 228, 342. “The use the triumvirs intended to make of D’Entraigues’ portfolio was known two months ago.”—Cf. Thibaudeau, ii., 279, on the vagueness, scanty proof and gross falsity of the charges made by the Directory. 73. Barbe´-Marbois, ibid., p. 46. 74. Lord Malmesbury, “Diary,” iii., 559 (Sep. 17, 1797). At Lille, after the 1370 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

VI Thus is the system of 1793 revived, the concentration of all public powers in the hands of an oligarchy, a dictatorship exercised by about a hundred men grouped around five or six leaders. More independent, more despotic and less provisional than any Committee of Public Safety, the Directory has arrogated to itself the legal right of placing a commune in a state of siege, of introducing troops within the constitutional circle75 in such a way that it may, at its discretion, violate Paris and the Corps Legislatif. In this body, mutilated by it and watched by its hireling assassins,76 sit the passive mutes who feel themselves “morally proscribed and half-transported,”77 who abandon debate, and vote with its stipendiaries and valets;78 in fact, as formerly with the Convention, the two Councils have become chambers “of registry” of legislative mechanism charged with the duty of countersigning its orders. Its sway over the subordinate authorities is still more absolute. In forty-nine departments, specially designated by decree, all the administrators of departments, cantons and municipalities, all mayors, civil and criminal judges, all justices of the peace, all elected by popular suffrage, news of the coup d’e´tat, “it was a curious circumstance to see the horror that prevailed everywhere lest the system of Terror should be revived. People looked as if some exterminating spirit were approaching. The actors in the theatre partook of the sensation. The Director called Paris, said to Ross, on his paying him: ‘Nous allons actuellement eˆtre vandalise´s.’” 75. Decrees of Fructidor 18 and 19, year V., Article 39. 76. Thibaudeau, ii., 277. “I went to the meeting of Fructidor 20, the avenues of the Odeón were besieged with those subaltern agents of revolution who always show themselves after commotion, like vultures after battles. They insulted and threatened the vanquished and lauded the victors.” 77. Ibid., ii. 309. 78. Ibid., ii., 277. “As soon as I entered the hall several deputies came with tears in their eyes to claspme in their arms. The Assembly all had a lugubrious air, the same as the dimly lighted theatre in which they met; terror was depicted on all countenances; only a few members spoke and took part in the debates. The majority was impassible, seeming to be there only to assist at a funeral spectacle, its own.” The End of the Revolutionary Government / 1371 are dismissed en masse,79 while the cleaning out in the rest of France is almost as sweeping. We can judge by one example: in the department of Doubs, which is not put down among those to be weeded out, five hundred and thirty administrators or municipal magistrates are turned out in 1797, and, in addition, forty-nine others in 1798; the Directory puts its creatures in their places: suddenly, the departmental, cantonal, municipal, and judicial system, which was American, becomes Napoleonic; the local agents, instead of being delegates of the people, are government delegates. Note, especially, the most threatening of all usurpations, the way in which this government takes justice into its hands and attributes to itself the right of life and death over persons: not only does it break up common criminal courts and reorganise them as it pleases, not only does it renew and select among the purest Jacobins judges of the court of appeals, but again, in each military division, it institutes a special and expeditious court without appeal, composed of docile officers, subofficers, and soldiers, which is to condemn and execute within twenty-four hours, under pretext of emigration or priesthood, every man who is obnoxious to the ruling factions. As to the twenty- five millions of subjects it has just acquired, there is no refuge: even the right of complaint is interdicted. Forty-two opposition or “suspect” journals are silenced at one stroke, their stock plundered, or their presses broken up; three months after this, sixteen more take their turn, and, in a year, eleven others; the proprietors, editors, publishers and contributors, among whom are La Harpe, Fontanes, Fie`veé, Michaud and Lacretelle, a large body of honorable or prominent writers, the four or five hundred men who compose the staff of the profession, all condemned without trial to transportation,80 or to imprisonment, are arrested, take flight, conceal themselves, or

79. Decree of Fructidor 1, articles 4 and 5, 16 and 17, 28, 29 and 30, 35, and decree of Fructidor 22.—Sauzay, ix., 103. Three hundred communes of the department are thus purged after Fructidor.—Ibid., 537, the same weeding-out of jurymen. 80. Lacretelle, “Dix ans d’Epreuves,” p. 310. 1372 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION keepsilent. The only voice now heard in France is the speaking- trumpet of the government. Naturally, the faculty of voting is as restricted as the faculty of writing, while the victors of Fructidor, who possess the right to speak, monopolise the right of electing. The government, on the ﬁrst day, renewed the decree which the expiring Convention had rendered against allies or relations of e´migre´s; in addition to this, it excluded all relations or allies of the members of the primary assemblies, and forbade the primary assemblies to choose any of these for electors. Henceforth, all upright or even peaceful citizens consider themselves as warned and stay at home; voting is the act of a sovereign, and therefore a privilege of the new sovereigns, which is the view of it entertained by both sovereigns and subjects:81 “a republican minority operating legally must prevail against a majority in- ﬂuenced by royalism.”82 They are to see the government on election days, launching forth “in each department its commission agents, and controlling votes by threats and all sorts of promises and se-

81. “Journal d’un Bourgeois d’Evreux,” 143. (March 20, 1799.) “The next day the primary assemblies began; very few attended them; nobody seemed disposed to go out of his way to elect men whom they did not like.”—Dufort de Cheverney, “Me´moires,” March, 1799. “Persons who are not dupes think it of very little consequence whether they vote or not. The elections are already made or indicated by the Directory. The mass of the people show utter indifference.” (March 24.) “In this town of twenty thousand souls (Blois) the primary assemblies are composed of the dregs of the people; but a very few honest people attend them; ‘suspects,’ the relations of e´migre´s and priests, all expelled, leave the field free to intriguers. Not one proprietor is summoned. The terrorists rule in three out of the four sections. . . . The Babouvists always employ the same tactics; they recruit voters in the streets who sell their sovereignty five or six times over for a bottle of wine.” (April 12, according to an intelligent man coming from Paris.) “Generally, in Paris, nobody attends the primary assemblies, the largest not returning two hundred voters.”—Sauzay, ix., ch. 83. (Notes on the election at Besançon, 1798, by an eye-witness.) “Jacobins were elected by most frightful brigandage, supported by the garrison to which wine had been distributed, their election being made at the point of the bayonet and under blows with sticks and swords. A good many Catholics were wounded.” 82. Albert Babeau, ii., 444. (Declaration of the patriotic and secessionist minority of the canton of Riquy at the elections of the year VI.) The End of the Revolutionary Government / 1373 ductions,83 arresting the electors and presidents of the primary assemblies,” even pouncing on refractory Jacobins, invalidating the returns of a majority when not satisfactory to them, and rendering the choice of a minority valid, if it suited them, in short, constituting itself the chief elector of all local and central authorities. Finally, all institutions, laws, public and private rights, are down, and the nation, body and soul, again becomes, as under Robespierre, the property of its rulers, with this sole difference, that the kings of Terror, post- poning their constitution, openly proclaim their omnipotence, whilst the others hypocritically rule under a constitution which they have themselves destroyed, and reign by virtue of a title which interdicts royalty to them. They, too, maintain themselves by Terror; only, like so many Tartuffes, they are not disposed to act openly as executioners. The Directory, heir to the Convention, affects to repudiate its inheritance: “Woe,” says Boulay de la Meurthe, “to whoever would reestablish scaffolds.” There is to be no guillotine; its purveyors have been too strongly denounced; they stand too near the red stream and view with too great nervous horror those who fed it. It is better to employ death at a distance, lingering and spontaneous, with no effusion of human blood, “dry,” less repulsive than the other sort, but more painful and not less certain; this shall be imprisonment on the marshes of Rochefort, and, better still, transportation to the feverish coasts of Guyanna: there is no distinction between the mode used by the Convention and that of the Directory, except the distinction between to kill and to cause death.84 Moreover, every brutality that can be employed to repress the indignation of the proscribed

83. Mercure Britannique, No. for August 25, 1799. (Report read, July 15 and August 5, before the Five Hundred on the conduct of the Directors Rewbell, Larevellie`re-Lepaux, Merlin de Douai and Treilhard, and summary of the nine articles of indictment.)—Ibid., 3d article. “They have violated our constitution by usurping legislative powers through acts which prescribe that a certain law shall be executed, in all that is not modified to the present act, and by passing acts which modify or render the present laws illusory.” 84. Fie´veé, “Correspondance avec Buonaparte,” i., 147. 1374 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION by fear is exhausted on the way. The first convoy which bears away, with thirteen others, Barthe´le´my, who negotiated the treaty of Basle, Pichegru, the conqueror of Holland, Lafond-Lade´bat, president of the Council of the Five Hundred, Barbe´-Marbois, president of the Council of the Ancients, was at first provided with carriages;85 an order of the Directory substitutes for these the prison van, an iron car with one door bolted and padlocked, and, overhead, openings through which the rain poured in streams, and with common boards for seats; this lumbering machine without springs rolls along at a fast trot along the ruts in the road, each jolt sending the condemned inmates against the hard oak sides and roof; one of these, on reaching Blois, “shows his black-and-blue elbows.” The man selected to command this escort is the vilest and most brutal reprobate in the army, Dutertre, a coppersmith foreman before the Revolution, next an officer and sentenced to be put in irons for stealing in the La Vendeé war, and such a natural robber that he again robs his men of their pay on the road; he is evidently qualified for his work. On stopping at Blois, “he passes the night in an orgy with his brothers and friends,” fellow-thieves and murderers as above described, cursing Madame Barbe´-Marbois who comes to take leave of her husband, dismissing on the spot the commandant of the gendarmerie who supports her in a swoon, and, noticing the respect and attentions which all the inhabitants, even the functionaries, show to the prisoners, he cries out, “Well, what grimaces for people that will perhaps be dead in three or four days!” On the vessel which transports them, and still in sight of Rochelle, a boat is observed rowing vigorously to overtake them and they hear a shout of “I am Lafond-Lade´bat’s son! Allow me to embrace my father!” A speaking-trumpet from the vessel replies: “Keep away or you’ll be fired on!” Their cabins, on the voyage, are mephitic; they are not allowed to be on deck more than four at a time, one hour in the morning and an hour in the evening; the sailors and soldiers are forbidden to speak to them;

85. Barbe´-Marbois, i., 64, 91, 96, 133; ii., 18, 25, 83.—Dufort de Cheverney, “Me´moires.” (September 14, 1797.)—Sauzay, ix., chapters 81 and 84. The End of the Revolutionary Government / 1375 their food consists of a sailor’s ration, and this is spoilt; toward the end of the voyage they are starved. In Guyanna they are allowed one candle to a mess, and no table-linen; they lack water, or it is not drinkable; out of sixteen taken to Sinnamary only two survive. Those who are transported the following year, priests, monks, deputies, journalists, and artisans accused of emigration, fare worse; on all the roads leading to Rochefort, sorrowful crowds are seen on carts or tramping along in files, on foot, the same as former chains of convicts. “An old man of eighty-two, Monsieur Dulaurent of Quimper, thus traverses four departments,” in irons which strangle him. Following upon this, the poor creatures, between the decks of the “Dećade” and “Bayonnaise,” crammed in, suffocated through lack of air and by the torrid heat, badly treated and robbed, die of hunger or asphyxia, while Guyanna completes the work of the voyage: out of one hundred and ninety-three conveyed on board the “Dećade,” but thirty-nine remain at the end of twenty-two months, and of the one hundred and twenty brought by the “Bayonnaise,” only one is left. Meanwhile, in France, in the casemates of the islands of Rhe´ and Ole´ron, over twelve hundred priests become stifled or rot away, while, on all sides, the military commissioners in the departments shoot down vigorously. At Paris, and in its environs, at Marseilles, Lyons, Bordeaux, Rennes, and in most of the large towns, sudden arrests and clandestine abductions go on multiplying.86 “No- body, on retiring to rest, is sure of awaking in freedom the next morning. . . . From Bayonne to Brussels, there is but one sentiment, that of unbounded consternation. No one dares either to speak to, encounter, look at or helpone another. Everybody keepsaloof, trembles and hides away.” In fine, through this third offensive reaction, the Jacobin Conquest is completed, and the conquering band, the new feudalism, becomes a fixed installation. “All who pass here,” writes a Tours inhabitant, “state that there is no difference in the

86. Sauzay, vols. ix. and x.—Mallet-Dupan, ii., 375, 379, 382.—Schmidt, “Tableau de Paris Pendant la Revolution,” iii., 290. (Report by the administrators of the Seine department.) 1376 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION country between these times and Robespierre’s.87 . . . It is certain that the soil is not tenable, and that the people are continually threatened with exactions as in a conquered country....Proprietors are crushed down with impositions to such an extent that they cannot meet their daily expenses, nor pay the cost of cultivation. In some of my old parishes the imposition takes about thirteen out of twenty sous of an income. . . . The interest on money amounts to four per cent. a month....Tours,apreytotheterrorists who devour the department and hold all the offices, is in the most deplorable state; every family at all well-off, every merchant, every trader, is leaving it.” The veteran pillagers and murderers, the squireens (hobereaux), of the Reign of Terror, again appear and resume their fiefs. At Toulouse, it is Barrau, a shoemaker, famous upto 1792 for his fury under Robespierre, and Desbarreaux, another madman of 1793, formerly an actor playing the parts of valet, compelled in 1795 to demand pardon of the audience on his knees on the stage, and, not obtaining it, driven out of the house, and now filling the office of cashier in the theatre and posing as department administrator. At Blois, we find the ignoble or atrocious characters with whom we are familiar, the assassins and robbers He´zine, Giot, Venaille, Be´zard, Berger, and Gidouin.88 Immediately after Fructidor, they stirred up their usual supporters against the first convoy of the transported, “the idlers, the rabble of the harbor, and the dregs of the people,” who overwhelmed them with insults. On this new demonstration of patriotism the government restores to them their administrative or judicial “satrapies,” and, odious as they are, they are endured and obeyed, with the mute and mournful obedience of despair. “The soul sinks89 on daily perusing the executions of conscripts and e´mi-

87. Dufort de Cheverney, “Me´moires,” August, 1798, October, 1797 and 1799, passim. 88. Archives Nationales, F7, 3,219. (Letter of M. Alquier to the First Consul, Pluviose 18, year III.) “I wanted to see the central administration; I found the ideas and language of 1793.” 89. Dufort de Cheverney, “Me´moires,” (February 26, March 31 and Sep- tember 6, 1797). “That poor theoristic imbecile, Larevellie`re-Lepaux, who, join- The End of the Revolutionary Government / 1377 gre´s, and on seeing those condemned to transportation constantly passing by. . . . All who displease the government are set down on these lists of the dead, people asserted to be e´migre´s, this or that cure´ who is notoriously known not to have left the department.” It is impossible for honest people to vote at the primary assemblies; consequently, “the elections are frightful. Brothers and friends loudly proclaim that no more nobles, priests, proprietors, merchants, or justices are wanted; everything to be given upto pillage.” Let France perish rather than their domination. “The wretches have announced that they will not give uptheir placeswithout overthrowing all, destroying palaces, and setting Paris on ﬁre.” It is natural that with pure Jacobins pure Jacobinism should reappear, socialistic and anti-Christian equality, the programme of the funereal year; in short, the rigid, plain, exterminating ideas which the sect gathers together, like daggers encrusted with gore, from the cast-oﬀ robes of Robespierre, Billaud-Varennes, and Collot d’Herbois.90

VII First of all comes the fixed and favorite idea of a senile philosophism, meaning by this a regular plan devised for the founding of a lay ing Barras and Rewbell against Barthe´le´my and Carnot, made the 18th of Fruc- tidor, and shut himself in his room so as not to witness it, himself avows the quality of his staff.” (“Me´moires,” ii., 164.) “The 18th of Fructidor necessitated numerous changes on the part of the Directory. Instead of putting republicans, but above all, honest, wise, and enlightened men in the place of the functionaries and employees dismissed or revoked, the selections dictated by the new Councils fell for the most part on anarchists and men of blood and robbery.” 90. Lacretelle, “Dix ans d’Epreuves,” p. 317. A few days after Fructidor, Robert, an old Jacobin, exclaimed with great joy on the road to Brie-Comte´, “All the royalists are going to be driven out or guillotined!” The series F7 in the Archives Nationales, contains hundreds of files filled with reports “on the state of the public mind,” in each department, town or canton between the years III. and VIII. I have given several months to their examination and, for lack of space, cannot copy any extracts. The real history of the last five years of the Revolution may be found in these files. Mallet-Dupan gives a correct impression of it in his “Correspondence avec la cour de Vienne,” also in the “Mercure Britannique.” 1378 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION religion, and imposing on twenty-six millions of Frenchmen the observances and dogmas of the theory, and, consequently, the extirpation of Christianity, its forms of worship and its clergy. The inquisitors who hold office multiply, with extraordinary persistence and minuteness, proscriptions and vigorous measures for the forcible conversion of the nation with a view to substitute for the tender emotions nourished by the customs of eighteen centuries, the improvised rites of a logical abstraction mechanically elaborated in the closet. Never did the dull imagination of a third-rate litterateur and classic poetaster, never did the grotesque solemnity of a pedant fond of his phrases, never did the irritating hardness of the narrow and stubborn devotee display with greater sentimental bombast more administrative officiousness than in the decrees of the Corps Leg- islatif,91 in the acts passed by the Directory and in the instructions issued by the ministers Sotin, Letourneur, Lambrechts, Duval, and François de Neufchateau. War on Sunday, on the old calendar and on fasting, obligatory rest on the dećadi under penalty of fine and imprisonment,92 obligatory feˆtes on the anniversaries of January 21 and Fructidor 18, obligatory participation of all functionaries with their families in the new cult, obligatory attendance of public and private instructors with their pupils of both sexes at civic ceremonies, an obligatory liturgy with catechisms and programmes sent from Paris, rules for scenic display and for singings, readings, postures, acclamations, and imprecations; one might shrug his shoulders at these prescriptions of cuistres and these parades of puppets, if, behind the apostles who compose moral allegories, we did not detect the

91. Sauzay, x., chaps. 80 and 90.—Ludovic Sciout, iv., ch. 17. (See especially in Sauzay, x., pp. 170 and 281, the instructions given by Duval, December 16, 1796, and the circulars of François de Neufchateau from November 20, 1798, down to June 18, 1798, each of these pieces being a masterpiece in its way.) 92. “Journal d’un Bourgeois d’Evreux,” p. 134. “June 7, 1798.” “The day following the dećade, the gardeners, who as usual came to show themselves off on the main street, were fined six livres for having treated with contempt and broken the dećade.” January 21, 1799. “Those who were caught working on the dećade, were fined three livres for the first offence; if they were caught more than once the fine was doubled and it was even followed by imprisonment.” The End of the Revolutionary Government / 1379 persecutor who imprisons, tortures and murders. By the decree of Fructidor 19, not only were all the laws of the Reign of Terror against unsworn priests, their harborers and their followers, enforced again, but the Directory arrogated to itself the right of transporting, “through individual acts passed for cause,” every ecclesiastic “who disturbed the public peace,” that is to say who exercised his ministry and preached his faith;93 and, moreover, the right of shooting down, within twenty-four hours, every priest who, banished by the laws of 1792 and 1793, has remained in or returned to France. Almost all the ecclesiastics, even those who are sworn, are comprised within the first category; the administration enumerates three hundred and sixty-six in the department of Doubs alone,94 and five hundred and fifty-six in that of He´rault. Thousands of ecclesiastics are comprised in the second category; the administration enumerates over eight hundred who, returned from the frontier of Spain alone, still wander about the southern departments. On the strength of this the moralists in office proclaim a hunt for the black game in certain places, an universal destruction without exception or reprieve; for instance, in Belgium, recently incorporated with France, the whole of the regular and secular clergy is proscribed en masse and tracked for transportation; five hundred and sixty ecclesiastics in Ourbe and the forests, five hundred and thirty-nine in Escaut, eight hundred and eighty-three in Jemmapes, eight hundred and eighty-four in Sambre- et-Meuse, nine hundred and twenty-five in Lys, nine hundred and fifty-seven in Deux-Ne`thes, one thousand and forty-three in Meuse- Infe´rieure, one thousand four hundred and sixty-nine in Dyle, in all six thousand five hundred and sixty-six, without counting the miss-

93. Ludovic Sciout, iv., 160. Examples of “individual motives” alleged to justify the sentence of transportation. One has refused to baptise an infant whose parents were only married civilly. Another has “declared to his audience that the Catholic marriage was the best.” Another “has fanaticised.” Another “has preached pernicious doctrines contrary to the constitution.” Another “may, by his presence, incite disturbances,” etc. Among the condemned we find septua- genarians, known priests and even married priests.—Ibid., 634, 637. 94. Sauzay, ix., 715. (List of names.) 1380 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION ing names.95 A number of them escape abroad or hide away; but the rest are caught, and quite enough of them to load and fill the carts constantly. “Not a day passes,” says an inhabitant of Blois,96 “that from seven to twenty and more are not lodged at the Carmelites.” The next day they set out for the casemates of Rhe´ and Ole´ron, or for the Sinnamary marshes, where it is known what becomes of them: after a few months, three-fourths of them lie in the cemetery. In the interior, from time to time, some are shot for the sake of example—seven at Besançon, one at Lyons, three in the Bouches- du-Rhone, while the opponents of fanaticism, the official philanthropists, the enlightened deists of Fructidor, use all these disguised or declared murders as a basis on which to rear the cult of Reason. It remains now to consolidate the worshipof Reason with the reign of Equality, which is the second article in the Jacobin credo; the object now is to mow down all the heads which rise above the common level, and, this time, to mow them down, not one by one, but in large classes. Saint-Just himself had only covertly proposed so extensive and so sweeping an operation; Sieýe`s, Merlin de Douai, Rewbell, Chazal, Cheńier, and Boulay de la Meurthe, more openly and decidedly insist on a radical amputation. According to them,97 it is necessary “to regulate this ostracism,” by transporting “all those whose prejudices, pretensions, even existence, in a word, are incompatible with republican government”; that is to say, not alone priests, but likewise nobles and the ennobled, all parliamentarians, those who are well-off and distinguished among the bourgeoisie and former notables, about two hundred thousand property-holders, men and

95. Ludovic Sciout, iv., 656. 96. Dufort de Cheverney, “Me´moires,” September 7, 1798. Ibid., February 26, 1799. “In Belgium priests are lodged in the Carmelites (convent).” Septem- ber 9, 1799. “Two more carts are sent full of priests for the islands of Rhe´ and Ole´ron.” 97. Thibaudeau, ii., 318, 321.—Mallet-Dupan, ii., 357, 368. The plan went farther: “All children of emigrants,” or of those falsely accused of being such, “left in France, shall be taken from their relatives and confided to republican tutors, and the republic shall administer their property.” The End of the Revolutionary Government / 1381 women; in short, all who still remained among those oppressed and ruined by the Revolution. Forced back by the ex-noble Barras and by the public outcry “of merchants and workmen themselves,” banishment is replaced by civic degradation. Henceforth,98 every noble or ennobled person, even if he has not left the territory, even if he has constantly and punctually obeyed revolutionary laws, even if he be not related to, or allied with, any e´migre´, finds himself deprived of his quality as a Frenchman; the fact alone of his being ennobled or noble before 1789, obliged him to be naturalised according to legal forms and conditions. As to the one hundred and fifty thousand gentlemen, artisans, and farmers who have emigrated or who have been accused of emigration, if they have returned to, or remain in France, they are to leave Paris and all communes above twenty thousand souls within twenty-four hours, and France in fifteen days; otherwise, they are to be arrested, brought before the military commissions and shot on the spot;99 in fact, in many places, at Paris, Besançon and Lyons, they are shot. Thereupon, a large number of pretended emigrants, who had never left France,100 nor even their province, nor even their commune, and whose names have been put on the lists simply to strip them of their property, find that they are

98. Decree of Frimaire 9, year VI. (Exceptions in favor of the actual members of the Directory, ministers, military men on duty, and the members of the diverse National Assemblies, except those who in the Constituent Assembly protested against the abolition of nobility.) One of the speakers, a future Count of the Empire, proposed that every noble claiming his inscription on the civic registers should sign the following declaration: “As man and as republican, I equally detest the insolent superstition which pretends to distinctions of birth, and the cowardly and shameful superstition which believes in and maintains it.” 99. Decree of Fructidor 19, year II. 100. Lally-Tollendal, “De´fense des Emigre´s” (Paris, 1797, 2d part, 49, 62, 74. Report of Portalis to the Council of Five Hundred, Feb. 18, 1796). “Regard that innumerable class of unfortunates who have never left the republican soil.”—Speech by Dubreuil, Aug. 26, 1796. “The supplementary list in the department of Avignon bears one thousand and four or one thousand and ﬁve names. And yet I can attest to you that there are not six names on this enormous list justly put down as veritable emigrants.” 1382 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION no longer protected either by the constancy or the notoriety of their residence. The new law is no sooner read than they see the executive troops advancing; the natal soil is too warm for them and they speedily emigrate.101 On the other hand, once the name is down on the list, rightly or wrongly, it is never removed; the government purposely refuses to strike it oﬀ, while two decrees are applied which render its removal impossible;102 each name maintained on the list of spoliation and death relieves the Revolution of a probable adversary, and places one more domain at its disposal. The Directory renews and aggravates the measures of the Con- vention against the remainder of the property-holders: there is no longer a disguised but a declared bankruptcy; three hundred and eighty-six thousand fund-holders and pensioners are deprived of two-thirds of their revenue and of their capital;103 a forced loan of

101. Ludovic Sciout, iv., 619. (Report of the Yonne administration, Frimaire, year VI.) “The gendarmerie went to the houses, in Sens as well as Auxerre, of several of the citizens inscribed on the lists of e´migre´s who were known never to have left their commune since the Revolution began. As they have not been found it is probable that they have withdrawn into Switzerland, or that they are soliciting you to have their names stricken off.” 102. Decrees of Vende´miaire 20 and Frimaire 9, year VI.—Decree of Mes- sidor 10. 103. Dufort de Cheverney, “Me´moires.” (Before the Revolution he enjoyed an income of fifty thousand livres, of which only five thousand remain.) “Ma- dame Amelot likewise reduced, rents her hotel for a living. Through the same delicacy as our own she did not avail herself of the facility offered to her of indemnifying her creditors with assignats.” Another lady, likewise ruined, seeks a place in some country house in order that herself and son may live.”— “Statistique de la Moselle,” by Colchen, pre´fet, year VI. “A great many people with incomes have perished through want and through payment of interest in paper-money and the reduction of Treasury bonds.”—Dufort de Cheverney, ibid., March, 1799. “The former noblesse and even citizens who are at all well- off need not depend on any amelioration....They must expect a complete rescission of bodies and goods....Pecuniary resources are diminishing more and more. . . . Impositions are starving the country.”—Mallet-Dupan,“Mercure Britannique,” January 25, 1799. “Thousands of invalides with wooden legs garrison the houses of the tax-payers who do not pay according to the humor of the collectors. The proportion of impositions as now laid in relation to those of the ancient re´gime in the towns generally is as eighty-eight to thirty-two.” The End of the Revolutionary Government / 1383 one hundred millions is levied progressively, and wholly on “the well-off class”; finally, there is the law of hostages, this being atrocious, conceived in the spirit of September, 1792, suggested by the famous motions of Collot d’Herbois against those in confinement, and of Billaud-Varennes against the youth, Louis XVII., but extended, elaborated and drawn upwith cool legal acumen, and enforced and applied with the foresight of an administrator. Remark that, without counting the Belgian departments, where an extensive insurrection is under way and spreading, more than one-half of the territory falls under the operation of this law; for, out of the eighty- six departments of France,104 properly so-called, forty-five are at this moment, according to the terms of the decree,105 “notoriously in a case of civil disturbance”; in effect, in these departments, according to official reports, armed mobs of conscripts are resisting the authorities charged with recruiting them; bands of two hundred, three hundred, and eight hundred men overrun the country; troops of brigands force open the prisons, assassinate the gendarmes and set their inmates free; the tax-collectors are robbed, killed, or maimed, municipal officers slain, proprietors ransomed, estates devastated, and diligences stopped on the highways.” Now, in all these cases, in all the departments, cantons, or communes, three classes of persons, at first the relations and allies of the e´migre´s, next the former nobles and ennobled, and finally the “fathers, mothers, grandfathers, and grandmothers of persons who, without being ex-nobles or relations of e´migre´s,” nevertheless form a part of the bands or mobs, are declared “personally and civilly responsible” for the violent acts committed. Even when these acts are only “imminent,” the administration of the department must, in its report, give a list of all the men and women who are responsible; these are to be taken as “hostages,” and kept in confinement at their own expense in the local jail, and, if they escape, they must be put on the same footing as

104. De Tocqueville, “Oeuvres comple`tes,” v., 65. (Extracts from secret reports on the state of the Republic, September 26, 1799.) 105. Decree of Messidor 24, year VI. 1384 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION e´migre´s, that is to say punished with death; if any damage is sustained, they are to pay costs; if any murder is committed or abduc- tion effected, four amongst them must be transported. Observe, moreover, that the local authorities are obliged, under severe penalties, to execute the law at once: that, at this date, they are ultra Jacobin; that, to inscribe on the list of hostages, not a noble or a bourgeois, but an honest peasant or respectable artisan, it suffices for these local sovereigns to designate his son or grandson, either absent, fugitive or dead, as “notoriously” insurgent or refractory; the fortunes, liberties, and lives of every individual in easy circumstances being thus legally surrendered to the despotism, cupidity, and hostility of the levellers in office. Contemporaries estimate that two hundred thousand persons were affected by this law;106 the Di- rectory, during the three months of its existence which yet remain to it, enforces it in seventeen departments; thousands of women and old men are arrested, put in confinement, and ruined, while several are sent off to Cayenne—and this is called respect for the rights of man.

VIII According to the system which the Fructidoreans establish in France, we can judge of the system which they impose abroad—always the same contrast between the name and the thing, the same phrases covering the same misdeeds, and, under proclamations of liberty the institution of brigandage. Undoubtedly, in any invaded province which thus passes from an old to a new despotism, fine words clev- erly spoken produce at first the intended effect; but, in a few weeks or months, the ransomed, enlisted, and forcibly “Frenchified” inhabitants, discover that the revolutionary right is much more oppressive, more harassing and more rapacious than divine right. It is the right of the strongest. The reigning Jacobins know no other, abroad as well as at home, and, in the use they make of it, they are not restrained like ordinary statesmen, by a thorough com-

106. De Barante, “Histoire du Directoire,” iii., 456. The End of the Revolutionary Government / 1385 prehension of the interests of the State, by experience and tradition, by far-sightedness, by an estimate of present and future strength. Being a sect, they subordinate France to their dogmas, and, with the narrow views, pride and arrogance of the sectary, they profess the same intolerance, the same need of domination and his instincts for propagandism and invasion. This belligerent and tyrannic spirit they had already displayed under the Legislative Assembly, and they are intoxicated with it under the Convention. After Thermidor,107 and after Vende´miaire, they remained the same; they became rigid against “the faction of old boundaries,” and against any moderate policy; at first, against the pacific minority, then against the pacific majority, against the entreaties of all France, against their own military director, “the organiser of victory” Carnot, who, as a good

107. A. Sorel, “Revue Historique,” No. 1, for March and May, 1882. “Les Frontieres Constitutionelles en 1795.” The treaties concluded in 1795 with Tus- cany, Prussia, and Spain show that peace was easy and that the recognition of the Republic was effected even before the Republican government was organised. . . . That France, whether monarchical or republican, had a certain limit which French power was not to overstep, because this was not in proportion to the real strength of France, nor with the distribution of force among the other European governments. “On this capital point the Convention erred; it erred knowingly, through a long-meditated calculation, which calculation, however, was false, and France paid dearly for its consequences.”—Mallet-Dupan, ii., 288, Aug. 23, 1795. “The monarchists and many of the deputies in the Convention sacrificed all the conquests to hasten on and obtain peace. But the fanatical Girondists and Sieýe`s’ committee persisted in the tension system. They were governed by three motives: 1, the design of extending their doctrine along their territory; 2, the desire of successively federalising the States of Europe with the French Republic; and 3, that of prolonging a partial war which also prolongs extraordinary powers and revolutionary resources.”—Carnot, “Me´- moires,” i., 476. (Report to the Committee of Public Safety, Messidor 28, year II.) “It seems much wiser to restrict our plans of aggrandisement to what is purely necessary in order to obtain the maximum security of our country.”— Ibid., ii., 132, 134, and 136. (Letters to Bonaparte, Oct. 28, 1796, and Jan. 1, 1797.) “It would be imprudent to fan the revolutionary flame in Italy too strongly. . . . They desired to have you work out the Revolution in Piedmont, Milan, Rome, and Naples; I thought it better to treat with these countries, draw subsidies from them, and make use of their own organisation to keepthem under control.” 1386 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Frenchman, is not desirous of gratuitously increasing the embarrassments of France nor of taking more than France could usefully and surely keep. If, before Fructidor, his three Jacobin colleagues, Rewbell, Barras, and Larevellie`re, broke with him, it was owing not merely to inside matters, but also to outside matters, as he opposed their boundless violent purposes. They were furious on learning the preliminary treaty of Leoben, so advantageous to France; they insulted Carnot, who had eﬀected it;108 when Barthe´le´my, the ablest and most deserving diplomatist in France, became their colleague, his recommendations, so sensible and so well-warranted, obtained from them no other welcome than derision.109 They already desire, and obstinately, to get possession of Switzerland, lay hands on Ham- burg, “humble England,” and “persevere in the unlucky system of the Committee of Public Safety,” that is to say, in the policy of war, conquest and propagandism. Now that the 18th Fructidor is accomplished, Barthe´le´my transported, and Carnot in ﬂight, this policy is going to be displayed. Never had peace been so near at hand;110 they almost had it in their grasp; at the conference at Lille it was only necessary to take complete hold of it. England, the last and most tenacious of her enemies, was disarming; not only did she accept the aggrandisement of France, the acquisition of Belgium and the left bank of the Rhine, the avowed as well as the disguised annexations, the great Republic as patron and the smaller ones as clients, Holland, Genoa, and the

108. Carnot, ibid., ii. 147. “Barras, addressing me like a madman, said, ‘Yes, it is to you we owe that infamous treaty of Leoben!’” 109. Andre´ Lebon, “L’Angleterre et l’Emigration Franc¸aise,” p. 235. (Letter of Wickam, June 27, 1797, words of Barthe´le´my to M. d’Aubigny.) 110. Lord Malmesbury, “Diary,” iii., 541. (September 9, 1797.) “The violent revolution which has taken place at Paris has overset all our hopes and defeated all our reasonings. I consider it the most unlucky event that could have happened.” Ibid., 593. (Letter from Canning, September 29, 1797.) “We were in a hair’s breadth of it (peace). Nothing but that cursed revolution at Paris and the sanguinary, insolent, implacable and ignorant arrogance of the triumvirate could have prevented us. Had the moderate party triumphed all would have been well, not for us only but for France, for Europe and for all the world.” The End of the Revolutionary Government / 1387

Cis-Alpine country, but, again, she restored all her own conquests, all the French colonies, all the Dutch colonies, except the Cape of Good Hope,111 and all the Spanish colonies except Trinidad. All that amour-propre could demand was obtained, and they obtained more than could be prudently expected; there was not a competent and patriotic statesman in France who would not have signed the treaty with the greatest satisfaction. But the motives which, before Fruc- tidor, animated Carnot and Barthe´le´my, the motives which, after Fructidor, animated Colchen and Maret, do not animate the Fruc- tidoreans. France is of but little consequence to them; they are concerned only for their faction, for power, and for their own persons. Larevellie`re, president of the Directory, through vain-glory, “wanted to have his name go with the general peace”; but he is controlled by Barras, who needs war in order to fish in troubled waters,112 and especially by Rewbell, a true Jacobin in temperament and intellect, “ignorant and vain, with the most vulgar prejudices of an uneducated and illiterate man,” one of those coarse, violent, narrow sectarians anchored on a fixed idea and whose “principles consist in revolutionising everything with cannon-balls without examining wherefore.”113 There is no need of knowing the wherefore; the animal instinct of self-preservation suffices to impel the Jacobins onward, and, for a long time, their clear-sighted men, among them Sieýe`s, their thinker and oracle, have told them that “if they make peace they are lost.”114 To exercise their violence within they require

111. Carnot, ii., 152. “Do you suppose, replied Rewbell, that I want the Cape and Trinquemale restored for Holland? The first point is to take them, and to do that Holland must furnish the money and the vessels. After that I will make them see that these colonies belong to us.” 112. Lord Malmesbury, “Diary,” iii., 526. (Letter from Paris, Fructidor 17, year V.)—Ibid., 483. (Conversation of Mr. Ellis with Mr. Pain.) 113. Ibid., iii., 519, 544. (The words of Maret and Colchen.)—“Rewbell,” says Carnot, “seems to be perfectly convinced that probity and civism are two absolutely incompatible things.” 114. Mallet-Dupan, ii., 49. Words of Sieýe`s, March 27, 1797. Ibid, i., 258, 407; ii., 4, 49, 350, 361, 386. This is so true that this prevision actuates the concessions of the English ambassador. (Lord Malmesbury, “Diary,” iii., 519. 1388 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION peril without; lacking the pretext of public safety they cannot prolong their usurpation, their dictatorship, their despotism, their inquisition, their proscriptions, their exactions. Suppose that peace is effected, will it be possible for the government, hated and despised as it is, to maintain and elect its minions against public clamor at the coming elections? Will so many retired generals consent to live on half-pay, indolent and obedient? Will Hoche, so ardent and so absolute, will Bonaparte, who already meditates his coup-d’e´tat,115 be willing to stand sentry for four petty lawyers or litterateurs without any titles and for Barras, a street-general, who never saw a regular battle? Moreover on this skeleton of France, desiccated by five years of spoliation, how can the armed swarm be fed even provisionally, the swarm, which, for two years past, subsists only through devouring neighboring nations? Afterwards, how disband four hundred thousand hungry officers and soldiers? And how, with an empty Treasury, supply the millions which, by a solemn decree, under the title of a national recompense, have once more just been promised to them.116 Nothing but a prolonged war, or designedly begun again, a war indefinitely and systematically extended, a war supported by conquest and pillage can give armies food, keep generals busy, the

Letter to Canning. August 29, 1797.) “I am the more anxious for peace because, in addition to all the commonplace reasons, I am convinced that peace will palsy this country most completely, that all the violent means they have employed for war will return upon them like an humour driven in and overset entirely their weak and baseless constitution. This consequence of peace is so much more to be pressed, as the very best conditions we could offer in the treaty.” 115. Mathieu Dumas, iii., 256—Miot de Melito, i., 163, 191. (Conversations with Bonaparte June and September, 1797.) 116. Mallet-Dupan, “Mercure Britannique,” No. for November 10, 1798. How support gigantic and exacting crimes on its own soil? How can it flatter itself that it will extract from an impoverished people, without manufactures, trade or credit, nearly a billion of direct and indirect subsidies? How renew that immense fund of confiscations on which the French republic has lived for the past eight years? By conquering every year a new nation and devastating its treasuries, its character, its monts-de-pie´te´, its owners of property. The Re- public, for ten years past, would have laid down its arms had it been reduced to its own capital. The End of the Revolutionary Government / 1389 nation resigned, the maintenance of power of the ruling faction, and secure to the Directors their places, their profits, their dinners and their mistresses. And this is why they, at first, break with England through repeated exactions, and then with Austria and the Emperor, through premeditated attacks, and again with Switzerland, Pied- mont, Tuscany, Naples, Malta, Russia, and even the Porte.117 At length, the veils fall and the character of the sect stands out nakedly. Defence of the country, deliverance of the people, all its grand phrases disappear in the realm of empty words. It reveals itself just as it is, an association of pirates on a cruise, who after ravaging their own coast, go further off and capture bodies and goods, men and things. Having eaten France, the Parisian band undertakes to eat all Europe, “leaf by leaf, like the head of an artichoke.”118 Why recount the tragic comedy they play at home and which they repeat abroad? The piece abroad is the same as that played in Paris for the past eight years,119 an absurd, hasty translation in Flem- ish, Dutch, German, and Italian, a local adaptation, just as it happens, with variations, elisions, and abbreviations, but always with the same ending, a shower of blows with gun and sword on all property-owners, communities, and individuals, compelling the surrender of their purses and valuables of every description, and which they gave up, even to remaining without a sou or even a shirt. As a rule, the nearest general, or resident titulary in every small state which has to be turned to account, stirs upmalcontents against the established authorities, never lacking under the ancient re´gime, es-

117. Mallet-Dupan, “Mercure Britannique,” Nos. for November 25, and De- cember 25, 1798, and passim. 118. Ibid., No. for January 25, 1799. “The French Republic is eating Europe leaf by leaf like the head of an artichoke.” It revolutionises nations that it may despoil them, and it despoils them that it may subsist.” 119. Letter of Mallet-Dupan to a deputy on a declaration of war against Venice and on the Revolution effected at Genoa. (The “Quotidienne,” Nos. 410, 413, 414, 421.)—Ibid., “Essai Historique sur la destruction de le Signe et de le Liberte´ Historique.” (Nos. 1, 2, and 3 of the “Mercure Britannique.”)— Carnot, ii., 153. (Words of Carnot in relation to the Swiss proceedings of the Directory.) “It is the fable of the Wolf and the Lamb.” 1390 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION pecially all social outcasts, adventurers, coffee-house ranters and young hot-heads, in short the Jacobins of the country; these, to the French representative, are henceforth the people of the country, if only a knot of the vilest sort. The legal authorities are forbidden to repress them, or punish them; they are inviolable. Employing threats or main force, he interferes in their support, or to sanction their assaults; he breaks up, or obliges them to break up, the vital organ of society; here, royalty or aristocracy, there, the senate and the magistracy, everywhere the old hierarchy, all cantonal, provincial, and municipal statutes and secular federation or constitutions. He then inaugurates on this cleared ground the government of Reason, that is to say, some artificial imitation of the French constitution; he himself, to this end, appoints the new magistrates. If he allows them to be elected, it is by his clients and under his bayonets; this constitutes a subject republic under the name of an ally, and which commissioners despatched from Paris manage to the beat of the drum. The revolutionary re´gime with anti-Christian despoiling and levelling laws, is despotically applied. The 18th of Fructidor is carried out over and over again; the constitution is revised according to the last Parisian pattern, while the Corps Legislatif and Directory are repeatedly purged in military fashion;120 only valets are tolerated at the head of it: its army is added to the French army; twenty thousand Swiss are drafted in Switzerland and made to fight against the Swiss and the friends of Switzerland; Belgium, incorporated with France, is subjected to the conscription; national and religious sentiment is made the fulcrum of oppression and injury even to the provocation of mobs,121 religious and national, five or six rural and

120. Overhauling of the Constitution, or purgation of the authorities in Holland by Delacroix. January 22, 1798, in Cisalpine by Berthier, February, 1798, by Trouve, August, 1798, by Brune, September, 1798, in Switzerland by Rapinat, June, 1798, etc. 121. Mallet-Dupan (“Mercure Britannique,” numbers for November 26, De- cember 25, 1798, March 10 and July 10, 1799). Details and documents relating to popular insurrections in Belgium, Switzerland, Suabia, Modena, the Roman States, Piedmont, and Upper Italy.—Letter of an officer in the French army The End of the Revolutionary Government / 1391 lasting Vendeés in Belgium, Switzerland, Piedmont, Venetia, Lom- bardy, the Roman States and Naples, while fire, pillaging and shooting are employed to repress them. Any description of this would be feeble; statements in figures are necessary and I can give but two. One of them is the list of robberies committed abroad,122 and this comprises only the rapine executed according to order; it omits dated at Turin and printed at Paris. “Wherever the civil commissioners pass the people rise in insurrection, and, although I have come near being a victim of these insurrections four times, I cannot blame the poor creatures; even the straw of their beds is taken. Most of Piedmont, as I wrote, has risen against the French robbers, as they call us. Will you be surprised when I tell you that, since the pretended revolution of this country, three or four months ago, we have devoured ten millions of coin, fifteen millions of paper money, with the diamonds, furniture, etc., of the Crown? The people judge us according to our actions and regard us with horror and execrations.” 122. Mallet-Dupan, Ibid., number for January, 1799. (List according to articles, with details, figures and dates.)—Ibid., No. for May 25, 1799: details of the sack of Rome according to the “Journal” of M. Duppa, an eye witness.— Ibid., Nos. for February 10 and 25, 1799: details of spoliation in Switzerland, Lombardy, Lucca, and Piedmont.—The following figures show the robberies committed by individuals: In Switzerland, “the Directorial commissary,Rapinat, the major-general, Schawembourg and the ordinance commissary, Rouhie`re, each carried away a million tournois.” “Rouhie`re, besides this, levied 20 per cent. on each contract he issued, which was worth to him three hundred and fifty thousand livres. His first secretary Toussaint, stole in Berne alone, one hundred and fifty thousand livres. The secretary of Rapinat, Amberg, retired with three hundred thousand livres.” General Lorge carried off one hundred and fifty thousand livres in specie, besides a lot of gold medals taken from the Hoˆtel-de-Ville at Berne; his two brigadier-generals, Rampon and Pijon, each appropriated two hundred and sixteen thousand livres. “Gen. Duheur, encamped in Brisgav, sent daily to the three villages at once the bills of fare for his meals and ordered requisitions for them; he demanded of one, articles in kind and, simultaneously, specie of another. He was content with one hundred florins a day, which he took in provisions and then in money.”—“Massena, on entering Milan at eleven o’clock in the evening, had carried off in four hours, without giving any inventory or receipt, all the cash-boxes of the convents, hospitals and monts-de-pie´te´, which were enormously rich, taking also, among others, the casket of diamonds belonging to Prince Belgioso. That night was worth to Massena one million two hundred thousand livres.” (Mallet-Dupan, “Mercure Britannique,” February 10, 1799, and “Journal,” MS., March, 1797.) 1392 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION private plunderings without any orders by officers, generals, soldiers, and commissaries; these are enormous, but cannot be estimated. The only approximative total which can be arrived at, is the authentic list of robberies which the Jacobin corsair, authorised by letters of marque, had already committed in December, 1798, outside of France, on public or on private parties; exactions in coin imposed in Belgium, Holland, Germany and Italy, amounting to six hundred and fifty-five millions; seizure and removal of gold and silver objects, plate, jewels, works of art, and other precious objects, three hundred and five millions; requisitions of provisions, three hundred and sixty- one millions; confiscations of the real and personal property of deposed sovereigns, that of the regular and secular clergy, that of corporations and associations even laic, of absent or fugitive proprietors, seven hundred millions; in all, in three years two billion livres. If we closely examine this monstrous sum, we find, as in the coffers of an Algerian pirate, a booty which up to this time, belligerent Christians, commanders of regular armies, would have shrunk from taking, and on which the Jacobin chiefs incontinently and preferably lay hands; the plate and furniture of churches in the Neth- erlands, in Lie`ge, and in the Electoral sections of the Lower Rhine, twenty-five millions; the plate and furniture of churches in Lom- bardy, in the three Legations, in the State of Venice, in Modena, and the States of the Church, sixty-five millions; diamonds, plate, gold crosses and other depots of the Monts-de-pie´te´ at Milan, Bologna, Ravenna, Modena, Venice and Rome, fifty-six millions; furniture and works of art at Milan and in other towns, five millions; furniture and works of art in the Venetian towns and palaces of Brenta, six million five hundred thousand; the spoils of Rome sacked, as formerly by the mercenaries of the Duc de Bourbon, collections of

On the sentiments of the Italians, cf. the letter of Lieutenant Dupin, Prairial 27, year VIII.; (G. Sand, “Histoire de ma Vie,” ii., 251) one account of the battle of Marengo, lost upto two o’clock in the afternoon; “I already saw that the Po, and the Tessin were to be crossed, a country to traverse of which every inhabitant is our enemy.” The End of the Revolutionary Government / 1393 antiques, pictures, bronzes, statues, the treasures of the Vatican and of palaces, jewels, even the pastoral ring of the Pope, which the Directorial commissary himself wrests from the Pope’s finger, forty- three millions, and all this without counting analogous articles, and especially direct assessments levied on this or that individual as rich or a proprietor,123 veritable ransoms, similar to those demanded by the bandits of Calabria and Greece, extorted from any traveller they surprise on the highway. Naturally operations of this kind cannot be carried on without instruments of constraint; the Parisian manipulators must have military automatons, “sabre hilts” in sufficient numbers. Now, through constant slashing, a good many hilts break, and the broken ones must be replaced; in October, 1798, two hundred thousand new ones are required, while the young men drafted for the purpose fail to answer the summons and fly, and even resist with arms, especially in Belgium,124 by maintaining a revolt for many

123. Mallet-Dupan, ibid., number for January 10, 1791. “December 31, 1796. Marquis Litta had already paid assessments amounting to five hundred thousand livres milanais. Marquis T., four hundred and twenty thousand, Count G., nine hundred thousand, and other proprietors in proportion.” Ransom of the “De- curioni of Milan, and other hostages sent into France, one million five hundred thousand livres.” This is in conformity with the Jacobin theory. In the old instructions of Carnot, we read the following sentence: “Assessments must be laid exclusively on the rich; the people must see that we are only liberators. . . . Enter as benefactors of the people, and at the same time as the scourge of the great, the rich and enemies of the French name.” (Carnot, i., 433.) 124. Ludovic Sciout, iv., 776. (Reports of the year VII., Archives Nationales, F7, 7,701 and 7,718). “Out of one thousand four hundred men composing the first auxiliary battalion of conscripts, one thousand and eighty-seven cowardly deserted their flag (Haute-Loire), and out of nine hundred recently recruited at Puy, to form the nucleus of the second battalion, eight hundred again have imitated their example.”—Dufort de Cheverney, “Me`moires,” September, 1799. “We learned that out of four hundred conscripts confined in the (Blois) chaˆteau, who were to set out that night, one hundred had disappeared.”—October 12, 1799. “The conscripts are in the chaˆteau to the number of five hundred or six hundred. They say that they will not desert until out of the department and on the road, so as not to compromise their families.”—October 14, “Two hundred have deserted, leaving about three hundred.”—Archives Nationales, F7, 3,267. (Reports every ten days on refractory conscripts or deserters arrested by the 1394 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION months, with this motto: “Better die here than elsewhere.”125 To compel their return, they are hunted down and brought to the depot with their hands tied; if they hide away, soldiers are stationed in their parents’ houses; if the conscript or drafted man has sought refuge in a foreign country, even in an allied country as in Spain, he is officially inscribed on the list of e´migre´s, and therefore, in case of return, shot within twenty-four hours; meanwhile, his property is sequestrated and likewise that of “his father, mother, and grand- parents.”126 “Formerly,” says a contemporary, “reason and philosophy thundered against the rigors of punishment inflicted on deserters; but, since French reason has perfected Liberty it is no longer the small class of regular soldiers whose evasion is punished with death, but an entire generation. An extreme penalty no longer suffices for these legislative philanthropists: they add confiscation, they despoil parents for the misdemeanors of their children, and render even women responsible for a military and personal offence.” Such is the admirable calculation of the Directory—that, if it loses a soldier it gains a patrimony, and if the patrimony fails, it recovers the soldier: in any event, it fills its coffers and its ranks, while the faction, well-supplied with men, may continue turning all Europe to account, wasting, in the operation, as many French lives as it pleases; requiring more than one hundred thousand men per annum, which, including those which the Convention has squandered, makes nearly nine hundred thousand in eight years.127 At this moment the military police, year VIII. Department of Seine-et-Oise.) In this department alone, there are sixty-six arrests in Vende´miaire, one hundred and thirty-six in Brumaire, fifty-six in Frimaire and eighty-six in Pluviose. 125. Mallet-Dupan, No. for January 25, 1799. (Letter from Belgium.) “The revolt today is the United Provinces against the Duke of Alba. Never have the Belgians since PhilipII. displayed similar motives for resistance and vengeance.” 126. Decrees of Fructidor 19, year VI. and Vende´miaire 27, year VII.— (Mallet-Dupan, No. for November 25, 1798.) 127. M. Leónce de Lavergne (“Economie rurale de la France since 1789,” p. 38) estimates at a million the number of men sacrificed in the wars between 1792 and 1800.—Mallet-Dupan. (No. for December 10, 1798.)—Ibid. (No. for The End of the Revolutionary Government / 1395

ﬁve Directors and their minions are completing the mowing down of the virile, adult strength of the nation,128 and we know through what motives and for what object. I do not believe that any civilised nation was ever sacriﬁced in the same way, for such a purpose and

March 20, 1799.) “Dumas stated, in the Corps Legislatif, that the National Guard had renewed the battalions of the defenders of the country three times. . . . The fact of the shameful administration of the hospitals is proved through the admissions of generals, commissaries and deputies, the soldiers dying for want of food and medicine. If we add to this the prodigality of lives by the leaders of the armies we can readily comprehend this triple renewal in the space of seven years.”—(“Histoire du Village de Croissy, Seine-et-Oise pendant la Re´volution,” by Campenon.) A village of four hundred and fifty inhabitants in 1789 furnished (1792 and 1793) fifty soldiers.—Meissner, “Voyage a` Paris,” p. 338, latter end of 1795): La Vendeé was a bottomless pit, like Spain and Russia afterwards. A good republican, who had to supply the Vendeé army with provisions for fifteen months, assured me that out of two hundred thousand men whom he had seen precipitated into this gulf there were not ten thousand that came of it.”—The following figures (“Statistiques des Pre´fets” years IX. and X.) are exact. Eight departments (Doubs, Ain, Eure, Meurthe, Aisne, Aude, Droˆme, Moselle) furnish the total number of their volunteers, recruits and conscripts, amounting to one hundred and ninety-one thousand three hundred and forty-three. These three departments (Arthur Young, “Voyage en France,” ii., 31) had, in 1790, a population of two million four hundred and forty-six thousand souls; the proportion indicates that out of twenty-six million French- men a little more than two millions went with the armies.—On the other hand, five departments (Doubs, Eure, Meurthe, Aisne, Moselle) gave, not only the number of their soldiers, one hundred and thirty-one thousand three hundred and twenty-two, but likewise that of their dead, fifty-six thousand nine hundred and seventy-six, that is to say, four hundred and thirty-five out of every thousand men furnished. This proportion shows eight hundred and seventy thousand dead out of two million soldiers. 128. The statistics of the prefects and reports of council-generals of the year IX. all agree in the statements of the notable diminution of the masculine adult population.—Lord Malmesbury had already made the same observation in 1796. (“Diary,” October 21 and 23, 1796, from Calais to Paris.) “Children and women were working in the fields. Men evidently reduced in number. . . . Carts often drawn by women and most of them by old people or boys. It is plain that the male population has diminished; for the women we saw on the road surpassed the number of men in the proportion of four to one.” Wherever the number of the population is filled up it is through the infantile and feminine increase. 1396 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION by such rulers: the crippled remnant of a faction and sect, some hundreds of preachers no longer believing in their creed, usurpers as despised as they are detested, second-rate parvenus raised their heads not through their capacity or merit, but through the blind upheavals of a revolution, swimming on the surface for lack of weight, and, like foul scum, borne along to the crest of the wave— such are the wretches who strangle France under the pretence of setting her free, who bleed her under the pretence of making her strong, who conquer populations under the pretence of emancipating them, who despoil people under the pretence of regenerating them, and who, from Brest to Lucerne, from Amsterdam to Naples, slay and rob wholesale, systematically, to strengthen the incoherent dictatorshipof their brutality, folly and corruption. IX Once again has triumphant Jacobinism shown its antisocial nature, its capacity for destruction, its impotence to reconstruct. The nation, vanquished and discouraged, no longer resists, but, if it submits it is as to a pestilence, while its transportations, its administrative purifications, its decrees placing towns in a state of siege, its daily violence, only exasperate the mute antipathy. “Everything has been done,” says an honest Jacobin,129 “to alienate the immense majority of citizens from the Revolution and the Republic, even those who had contributed to the downfall of the monarchy....Instead of seeing the friends of the Revolution increase as we have advanced on the revolutionary path . . . we see our ranks thinning out and the early defenders of liberty deserting our cause.” It is impossible for the Jacobins to rally France and reconcile her to their ways and dogmas, and on this point their own agents leave no illusion. “Here,”

Nearly all the prefects and council-generals state that precocious marriages have multiplied to excess through conscription.—Dufort de Cheverney, “Me´moires,” September 1, 1800. “The conscription having spared the married, all the young men married at the age of sixteen. The number of children in the commune is double and triple what it was formerly.” 129. Sauzay, x., 471. (Speech by Representative Biot, Aug. 29, 1799.) The End of the Revolutionary Government / 1397 writes the Troyes agent,130 “public spirit not only needs to be revived, but it needs to be re-created. Scarcely one-fifth of the citizens side with the government, and this fifth is hated and despised by the majority....Who attend upon and celebrate the national feˆtes? Public functionaries whom the law summons to them, and many of these feˆtes often dispense with them. It is the same public spirit which does not allow honest folks to take part in them and in the addresses made at them, and which keeps the women away who ought to be their principal ornament....The same public spirit looks only with indifference and contempt on the republican, heroic actions given on the stage, and welcomes with transport all that bears any allusion to royalty and the ancient re´gime. The parvenus themselves of the Revolution, the generals, the deputies, dislike Jac- obin institutions;131 they place their children in the chapel schools and send them to the confessional, while the deputies who, in ’92 and ’93, showed the most animosity to priests, do not consider their daughter well-brought upunless she has made her first communion.” The little are still more hostile than the great. “A fact unfortunately too true,” writes the commissary of a rural canton,132 “is that the people en masse seem not to want any of our institutions....Itis considered well-bred, even among country folks, to show disdain for everything characteristic of republican usages....Our rich farmers, who have profited most by the Revolution, are the bitterest enemies of its forms: any citizen who depended on them for the slightest favor and thought it well to address them as citizen, would be turned out of their houses. Citizen is an insult, and patriot a still

130. Albert Babeau, ii., 466. (Letter of Milany, July 1, 1798, and report by Pout, Messidor, year VI.) 131. Schmidt, iii., 374. (Reports on the situation of the department of the Seine, Ventose, year VII.)—Dufort de Cheverney, “Me´moires,” October 22, 1799. “The column of militia sets out today; there are no more than thirty persons in it, and these again are all paid or not paid clerks, attache´s of the Republic, all these belonging to the department, to the director of domains, in fine, all the bureaux.” 132. Schmidt, iii., 313. (Report of Guyel, Commissary of the Directory in the canton of Pierrefitte, Seine, Germinal, year VI.) 1398 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION greater one; for this term signifies Jacobin, partisan, murderer, rob- ber133 and, as they were then styled, “man-eaters.” What is worse is that a falsification of the word has brought discredit on the thing.” Nobody, say the reports, troubles himself about the general interest;134 nobody will serve as national guard or mayor. “Public spirit has fallen into such a lethargic slumber as to make one fear its complete collapse. Our successes or our failures excite neither uneasiness nor pleasure.135 It seems, on reading the accounts of battles, as if it were the history of another people. The changes that take place within our borders no longer excite any emotion; one asks out of curiosity, one is answered without any interest, one learns with indifference.” “The pleasures of Paris136 are not disturbed a moment by any of the crises which succeed each other, nor by those which are feared. Never were the theatres and public entertainments more frequented. At the ‘Tivoli,’ it is said that it is going to be worse than ever; the country (patrie) is called la patraque, and dancing goes on.” This is intelligible; how can one interest one’s self in the public weal when there is none, when the common patrimony of all has become the private property of a band, when this band is devouring or wasting all in the interior and outside the frontier, where it is playing pitch and toss? The Jacobins, through their final victory, have dried patriotism up, that is to say, the deep inward spring which

133. M. de Lafayette, “Me´moires,” ii., 162. (Letter of July 22, 1799.) “The other day, at the mass in St. Roch, a man by the side of our dear Grammont, said fervently: “My God, have mercy on us, exterminate the nation!” This, indeed, simply meant: “My God, deliver us from the Convention system!” 134. Schmidt, 298, 352, 377, 451, etc. (Ventose, Frimaire and Fructidor, year VII.) 135. Ibid., iii. (Reports of Prairial, year III., department of the Seine.) 136. M. de Lafayette, “Me´moires,” ii., 164. (Letter of July 14, 1799.)—De Tocqueville, “Oeuvres comple`tes,” v., 270. (Testimony of a contemporary.)— Sauzay, x., 470, 471. (Speeches by Briot and de Chasseriaux.) “I cannot understand the frightful state of torpor into which minds have fallen; people have come to believing nothing, to feeling nothing, to doing nothing. . . . The great nation which had overcome all and created everything around her, seems to exist only in the armies and in a few generous souls.” The End of the Revolutionary Government / 1399 supplies the substance, the vitality and the force of the State. In vain do they multiply rigorous decrees and imperious prescriptions; each energetic blow is half deadened against the general and mute resistance of voluntary inertia and of insurmountable disgust; they do not obtain from their subjects any of that mechanical obedience, that degree of passive coo¨peration, without which the law remains a dead letter.137 Their Republic, so young, “is attacked by that nameless malady which commonly attacks only old governments, a species of senile consumption to which one can give no other definition than that of the difficulty of living; nobody strives to overthrow it, although it seems to have lost the power of standing erect.”138 Not only does their domination paralyse instead of animating the State, but, with their own hands, they undermine the order they themselves have established; whether legal or extra-legal, it makes no difference: although they reign, no constitution, made and re- made, no government, not even that of their chief, can subsist. Once masters of France, they quarrel over it amongst themselves, each claiming for himself the whole of the prey. Those who are in office want to stay there; those who are out want to get in. Thus is formed

137. Lord Malmesbury’s “Diary,” (November 5, 1796). “At Randonneau’s, who published all the acts and laws....Very talkative, but clever....Ten thousand laws published since 1789, but only seventy enforced.”—Ludovic Sciout, iv., 770. (Reports of year VII.) In Puy de Dome: “Out of two hundred and eighty-six communes there are two hundred in which the agents have committed every species of forgery on the registers of the Etat-Civil, and in the copying of its acts, to clear individuals of military service. Here, young men of twenty and twenty-five are married to women of seventy-two and eighty years of age, and even to those who have long been dead; then, an extract from the death register clears a man who is alive and well.” “Forged contracts are presented to avoid military service, young soldiers are married to women of eighty; one woman, thanks to a series of forgeries, is found married to eight or ten conscripts.” (Letter of an officer of the Gendarmerie to Roanne, Ventose 9, year VIII.) 138. Words of De Tocqueville.—“Le Duc de Broglie,” by M. Guizot, p. 16. (Words of the Duc de Broglie.) “Those who were not living at this time could form no idea of the profound discouragement into which France had fallen in the interval between Fructidor 18 and Brumaire 18.” 1400 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION two factions, while each repeats against the other the coup d’e´tat which both have together carried out against the nation. According to the ruling coterie, its adversaries are simply “anarchists,” former Septembriseurs, Robespierre’s confederates, the accomplices of Ba- boeuf, eternal conspirators. Now, as in the year VI., the five agents still keepthe sabre-hilt firm in their grasp,and they can oblige the Corps Legislatif to vote as they please; on the 22d of Floreál, the government cancels, in whole or in part, in forty-five departments, the new elections, not alone those of representatives, but again those of judges, public prosecutors, and the grand-jurymen; then, it dismisses the terrorist administrations in the departments and towns.139 According to the governing coterie, the Directory and its agents are false patriots, usurpers, oppressors, contemners of the law, dilapi- dators, and stupid politicians; as all this is true, and as the Directory, in the year VIII., used upthrough its twenty-one months of omnipotence, out of credit on account of its reverses, despised by its generals, hated by the beaten and unpaid army, dares no longer and can no longer raise the sabre, the ultra Jacobins resume the offensive, have themselves elected through their kith and kin, reconquer the majority in the Corps Legislatif, and, in their turn, purge the Directory on the 30 of Prairial. Treilhard, Merlin de Douai, and Larevellie`re-Lepaux are driven out; narrow fanatics replace them, Gohier, Moulins, and Roger Ducos; terrorist spirits install themselves in the Ministries, Robert Lindet in the Treasury, Foucheín the Police; after that, in the departments, they give office to, or restore “the exclusives,” that is to say, the resolute scoundrels who have proved their capacity.140 The Jacobins reopen their club under

139. Buchez et Roux, xxxviii., 480. (Message of the Directory, Floreál 13, year IV., and report of Bailleul, Floreál 18.) “When an election of deputies presented a bad result to us we thought it our duty to propose setting it aside. . . . It will be said that your project is a veritable proscription.” “Not more so than the 19 of Fructidor.”—Cf. for dismissals in the provinces, Sauzay, v., ch. 86.—Albert Babeau, ii., 486. During the four years the Directory lasted the municipal council of Troyes was renewed seven times, in whole or in part. 140. Buchez et Roux, xxxix., 61. (Session of Prairial 30, year VII.)—Sauzay, The End of the Revolutionary Government / 1401 its old name in the hall of the Mane`ge; two directors and one hundred and fifty members of the Corps Legislatif fraternise with “all that the dregs of the people provide that is vilest and most disgusting.” Eulogies are here pronounced on Robespierre and on Baboeuf himself; they demand the levy en masse and the disarming of “suspects.” Jourdan exclaims in a toast, “Here’s to the resurrection of pikes! May they in the people’s hands crush out all its enemies!” In the Council of the Five Hundred, the same Jourdan proposes in the tribune to declare the “country in danger,” while the gang of shouting politicians, the bull-dogs of the streets and tribunes, gather around the hesitating representatives and howl and threaten as in 1793. Is it, then, the re´gime of 1793 which is about to be set upin France? Not even that one. Immediately after the victory, the victors of Prairial 30 separated and formed two camps of enemies, watching each other with arms in hand, intrenched and making sorties on each other; on one side are the simple bandits and the lowest of the populace, the tail (queue) of Marat, incorrigible monomaniacs, head- strong, conceited spirits proud of their crimes and disposed to repeat them rather than admit their guilt, the dogmatic simpletons who go ahead with their eyes shut and who have forgotten everything and learnt nothing; on the other side, men still possessing common sense, and who have profited somewhat by experience, who know what a x., ch. 87.—Leóuzon-Leduc, “Correspondence Diplomatique avec la cour de Suede,” p. 293. (Letters of July 1, 7, 11, 19; August 4; September 23, 1799.) “The purification of functionaries, so much talked about now, has absolutely no other end in view but the removal of the partisans of one faction in order to substitute those of another faction without any regard to moral character. . . . It is this choice of persons without probity, justice or any principles of honesty whatever for the most important offices which makes one tremble, and especially, at this moment, all who are really attached to their country.” “The opening of the clubs must, in every relation, be deemed a disastrous circumstance. . . . All classes of society are panic-stricken at the faintest probability of the reestablishment of a republican government copied after that of 1793.... The party of political incendiaries in France is the only one which carries out such designs energetically and directly.” 1402 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION government of clubs and pikes leads to, who fear for themselves and are unwilling to begin again, stepby step,the mad course on which at each stage, they have come near perishing; on one side two members of the Directory, the minority of the Ancients, the majority of the Five Hundred, and the vilest of the Parisian rabble; on the other, the majority of the Ancients, the minority of the Five Hundred, and three members of the Directory, the latter supported by their executive staff.141 Which of the two troops will crush the other? No- body knows; for most of them are ready to pass from one to the other campaccording as the chances for succeeding become more or less great, and, from day to day, any defection amongst the Five Hundred, amongst the Ancients, or in the Directory, foreseen or not, may change a minority into a majority. Where will the majority be tomorrow? From which side is the next coup d’ e´tat to come? Who will make it? Will it be the ultra Jacobins, and, through another 9th of Thermidor, will they declare the mitigated Jacobins “outlaws”? Will it be the mitigated Jacobins, and, through another 18th of Fructidor, will they put the ultras under lock and key? If one or the other of these blows is struck, will it succeed? And if it succeeds will a stable government be at last established? Sieýe`s well knows that it will not; he is far seeing in his acts, although chimerical in his theories. In power himself, titular Director, counsellor and guardian of the intelligent republic against the stupid republic, he well knows that all of them, so long as they are republicans of both bands, take a road without an issue.142 Barras is of the same opinion,

141. Leóuzon-Leduc, ibid., 328, 329. (Despatches of September 19 and 23.)—Mallet-Dupan, “Mercure Britannique.” (No. for October 25, 1799. Letter from Paris, September 15. Exposition of the situation and tableau of the parties.) “I will add that the war waged with success by the Directory against the Jac- obins (for, although the Directory is itself a Jacobin production, it wants no more of its masters), that this war, I say, has rallied people somewhat to the government without having converted anyone to the Revolution or really frightened the Jacobins who will pay them back if they have time to do it.” 142. Gohier, “Me´moires,” conversation with Sieýe`s on his entry into the Directory. “Here we are,” says Sieýe`s to him, “members of a government The End of the Revolutionary Government / 1403 and taking time by the forelock, turns around and promises Louis XVIII. his coo¨peration in restoring the legitimate monarchy; in exchange he receives letters patent granting him full pardon, exemption from all future prosecution and a promise of twelve millions. Sieýe`s, more sagacious, seeks force where it exists, in the army; he prepares Joubert, sounds Moreau, thinks of Jourdan, of Bernadotte and of Macdonald, before surrendering himself to Bonaparte; “he requires a sword.” Boulay de la Meurthe, comparing in a pamphlet the English revolution with the French revolution, announces and brings on the establishment of a military protectorate. “The Con- stitution of the year III. will not work,” said Baudin, one of the Five Hundred, to Cornet, one of the Ancients, “only I do not see when to find the executive arm.” The Jacobin republic still lives, and its servants, its doctors, already speak aloud of its interment the same as strangers and heirs in the room of a dying man who has become unconscious, like Tiberius when sinking in his palace at Misene.143 If the expiring man does not go fast enough some one will help him. The old monster, borne down with crimes and rotten with vices, rattles in his throat on his purple cushions; his eyes are closed, his pulse is feeble, and he gasps for breath. Here and there, around his bed, stand groups of those who minister to his debauches at Capri and his murders at Rome, his minions and executioners who publicly take part in the new reign; the old one is finished; one need no longer be circumspect and mute before a corpse. Suddenly the dying man opens his eyes, speaks and asks for food. The military tribune, “the executive arm,” boldly clears the apartment; he throws a pile of bedclothes over the old man’s head and quickens the last sigh. Such is the final blow; an hour later and breathing stops. which, as we cannot conceal from ourselves, is threatened with a coming fall. But when the ice melts skilful pilots can escape in the breaking up. A falling government does not always imperil those at the head of it.” 143. Tacitus, “Annales,” book vi., § 50. “Macro, intrepidus, opprimi senem injectu multae vestis discedique a limine.” 1404 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

X If the Jacobin Republic dies, it is not merely on account of decrep- itude, nor because of its murders, but, and above all, because it is not born viable: at the outset it harbored within itself a principle of dissolution, an innate mortal poison, not alone for others but for itself. That which maintains a political society is the mutual respect of its members, especially the respect of the governed for its rulers and of the rulers for the governed, and, therefore, habits of mutual trust and confidence; on the part of the governed, a well-grounded certainty that the rulers will not attack private rights, and, on the part of the rulers, a well-founded certainty that the governed will not attack public powers; both inwardly recognising that these rights, more or less broad or restricted, are inviolable; that these powers, more or less ample or limited, are legitimate; in fine, each being convinced that, in case of conflict, the trial will be conducted according to forms which law or custom provide; that pending the discussion, the strongest will not abuse his strength, and that, when the discussion is over, the successful party will not wholly sacrifice the loser. Only on this condition can there be concord between governors and the governed, the concurrence of all in the common work, internal tranquillity, and, accordingly, stability, security, well- being, and force. Without this deep and persistent disposition of minds and hearts, the bond of union among men is wanting. It constitutes the brightest of social sentiments; it may be said that this is the soul of which the State is the body. Now, in the Jacobin State, this soul has perished; it has not died out through unforeseen accidents, but through a forced result of the system, through a practical effect of the speculative theory, which, converting each man into an absolute sovereign, sets every man warring against other men, and which, under the pretence of regenerating the human species, lets loose, authorises and consecrates the worst instincts of human nature, all the lusts of license, tyranny and domination. In the name of the ideal people whom it declares sovereign, and which has no existence, the Jacobins have violently usurped all public powers, The End of the Revolutionary Government / 1405 brutally abolished all private rights, regarding the actual living people as a beast of burden, and yet worse, as an automation, subjecting their human automation to the cruellest restraints in order to mechanically maintain it in the antinormal, rigid posture, which, according to principles, they inflict upon it. Thenceforth, all ties are sundered between them and the nation; to prey upon, bleed and starve this nation, to reconquer it after it had escaped them, to repeatedly enchain and gag it—all this they could well do; but to reconcile it to their government, never! Between them, and for the same reason, through another consequence of the same theory, and another effect of the same lusts, no bond between them would hold. Each faction inside of the party, having forged its ideal people according to its own logical process and necessities, exercised the orthodox privilege of claiming the monopoly of sovereignty;144 to secure the benefits of omnipotence, it has combated its rivals with falsified, annulled, or constrained elections, with plots and mendacity, with ambushes and sudden assaults, with the pikes of the rabble and with the bayonets of soldiers; it has then massacred, guillotined, shot, and transported the vanquished as tyrants, traitors, or rebels, and the survivors do not forget this. They have learnt what their so called eternal constitutions amount to; they know how to estimate their proclamations and oaths, their respect for law, their justice,

144. Mallet-Dupan, “Mercure Britannique.” (Nos. for December 25, 1798 and December 10, 1799.) “From the very beginning of the Revolution, there never was, in the uproar of patriotic protestations, amidst so many popular effusions of devotion to the popular cause and to Liberty in the different parties, but one fundamental conception, that of grasping power after having instituted it, of using every means of strengthening themselves, and of excluding the largest number from it, in order to centre themselves in a privileged committee. As soon as they had hurried through the articles of their constitution and seized the reins of government, the dominant party conjured the nation to trust to it, notwithstanding that the farce of their reasoning would not bring about obedience. . . . Power and money and money and power, all projects for guaranteeing their own heads and disposing of those of their competitors, end in that. From the agitators of 1789 to the tyrants of 1798, from Mirabeau to Barras, each labors only to forcibly open the gates of riches and authority and to close them behind them.” 1406 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION their humanity; they understand them and know that they are all so many fraternal Cains,145 all more or less debased, dangerous, soiled and depraved by their work; distrust with such men is irremediable. They can still turn out manifests, decrees and cabals, and get up revolutions, but they can no longer agree amongst themselves and heartily defer to the justified ascendency and recognised authority of any one or more among their own body. After ten years of mutual assault there is not one among the three thousand legislators who have sat in the sovereign assemblies that can count on the deference and loyalty of a hundred Frenchmen. The social body is disintegrated; amongst the millions of disconnected atoms not a nucleus of spontaneous cohesion and stable coo¨rdination remains. It is impossible for civil France to reconstruct itself; as impossible as it would be to build a Notre Dame of Paris, or a St. Peter’s of Rome out of the slime of the streets or the dust of the highways. With military France it is otherwise. Here, men have made trial of each other, and are devoted to each other, subordinates to their leaders, and all to one great work. The sentiments are strong and healthy which bind human wills with one fasces of mutual sympathy, trust, esteem, and admiration, and all these superabound, while the free companionship which still subsists between inferior and superior,146 that gay unrestrained familiarity so dear to the French, draws the knot still closer. In this world unsullied by political defilements and ennobled by habits of abnegation,147 there is all that constitutes

145. Mallet-Dupan, ibid., No. for April 10, 1799. On the Jacobins. “The sources of their enmities, the prime motive of their fury, their coup-d’e´tat lay in their constant mistrust of each other. . . . Systematic, immoral factionists, cruel through necessity and treacherous through prudence, will always attribute perverse intentions. Carnot admits that there were not ten men in the Convention that were conscious of probity.” 146. See in this respect “Histoire de ma Vie,” by George Sand, volumes 2, 3, and 4, the correspondence of her father enlisted as a volunteer in 1798 and a lieutenant at Marengo.—Cf. Marshal Marmont, “Me´moires,” i., 186, 282, 296, 304. “Our ambition, at this moment, was wholly secondary; we were occupied solely with our duties or pleasures. The most cordial and frankest union prevailed amongst us all.” 147. “Journal de Marche du sergent Fracasse.”—“Les Cahiers du Capitaine The End of the Revolutionary Government / 1407 an organised and visible society, a hierarchy, not external and ve- neered, but moral and deep-seated, with uncontested titles, recognised superiorities, an accepted subordination, rights and duties stamped on all consciences, in brief, what has always been wanting in revolutionary institutions, the discipline of sentiments and emotions. Give to these men a countersign and they do not discuss; provided it is legal, or seems so, they act accordingly, not merely against strangers, but against Frenchmen: thus, already on the 13th Vende´miaire they mowed down the Parisians, and on the the 18th of Fructidor they purged the Corps Legislatif. Let a famous general appear, and provided he respects formalities, they will follow him and once more repeat the operation. One does appear, one who for three years has thought of nothing else, but who on this occasion will repeat the operation only for his own advantage; he is the most illustrious of all, and precisely the conductor or promoter of the two previous ones, the very same who personally brought about the 13th of Vende´miaire, and likewise, at the hands of his lieutenant, Auger- eau, the 18th of Fructidor. Let him be authorised by the semblance of a decree, let him be appointed major-general of the armed force by a minority of one of the Councils, and the army will march behind him. Let him issue the usual proclamations, let him summon “his comrades” to save the Republic and clear the hall of the Five Hundred; his grenadiers will enter with ﬁxed bayonets and even laugh at the sight of the deputies, dressed as for the opera, scram- bling oﬀ precipitately out of the windows.148 Let him manage the transitions, let him avoid the ill-sounding name of dictator, let him assume a modest and yet classic revolutionary Roman title, let him along with two others be simple consuls; the soldiers, who have neither time nor leisure to be publicists and who are only skin-deep

Coignet.”—Correspondence of Maurice Dupin in “Histoire de ma Vie,” by George Sand. 148. “Les Cahiers du Capitaine Coignet,” p. 76. “And then we saw the big gentlemen getting out of the windows. Mantles, caps and feathers lay on the floor and the grenadiers ripped off the lace.” Ibid., 78, Narration by the grenadier Chome: “The pigeons all flew out of the window and we had the hall to ourselves.” 1408 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION republicans, will ask nothing more; they regard their system as a very good one for the French people, the despotic system without which there can be no army, that which places the absolute command in the hands of one individual. Let him put down other Jacobins, let him revoke their late decrees on hostages and the forced loan, let him restore safety and security to persons, property, and consciences; let him bring back order, economy, and efficiency to the administrations; let him provide for public services, hospitals, roads and schools, the whole of civil France will welcome its liberator, protector, and restorer.149 In his own words, the system he brings

149. Dufort de Cheverney, “Me´moires,” September 1, 1800. “Bonaparte, being fortunately placed at the head of the government, advanced the Revo- lution more than fifty years; the cupof crimes was full and overflowing. He cut off the seven hundred and fifty heads of the hydra, concentrated power in his own hands, and prevented the primary assemblies from sending us another third of fresh scoundrels in the place of those about to take themselves off. . . . Since I stopped writing things are so changed as to make revolutionary events appear as if they had transpired more than twenty years ago. . . . The people are no longer tormented on account of the decade, which is no longer observed except by the authorities. . . . One can travel about the country without a passport. . . . Subordination is established among the troops; all the conscripts are coming back....Thegovernment knows no party; a royalist is placed along with a determined republican, each being, so to say, neutralised by the other. The First Consul, more a King than Louis XIV., has called the ablest men to his councils without caring what they were.”—Anne Plumptre, “A Narrative of Three Years’ Residence in France from 1802 to 1805,” i., 326, 329. “The class denom- inated the people is most certainly, taking it in the aggregate, favorably disposed to Bonaparte. Any tale of distress from the Revolution was among this class always ended with this, ‘but now, we are quiet, thanks to God and to Bona- parte.’”—Mallet-Dupan, with his accustomed perspicacity (“Mercure Britain- nique,” Nos. for November 25 and December 10, 1799), at once comprehended the character and harmony of this last revolution. “The possible domination of the Jacobins chilled all ages and most conditions . . . Is that nothing, to be preserved, even for one year, against the ravages of a faction, under whose empire nobody can sleep tranquilly, and find that faction driven from all places of authority just at a time when everybody feared its second outburst, with its torches, its assassins, its taxers, and its agrarian laws, over the whole French territory? . . . That Revolution, of an entirely new species, appeared to us as fundamental as that of 1789.” The End of the Revolutionary Government / 1409 is that of “the alliance of Philosophy with the Sword,” philosophy meaning, as it was then understood, the application of abstract principles to politics, the logical construction of a State according to general and simple notices with a social plan, uniform, and rectilinear. Now as we have seen,150 two of these plans square with this theory, one anarchical and the other despotic; naturally, the master adopts the latter, and, like a practical man, he builds according to that theory a substantial edifice, with sand and lime, habitable and well-suited to its purposes. All the masses of the great work—civil code, university, Concordat, prefectoral and centralised administration—all the details of its arrangement and distribution of places, tend to one general effect, which is the omnipotence of the State, the omnipresence of the government, the abolition of local and private initiative, the suppression of voluntary free association, the gradual dispersion of small spontaneous groupings, the preventive interdiction of prolonged hereditary works, the extinction of sentiments by which the individual lives beyond himself in the past or in the future. Never were finer barracks constructed, more symmetrical and more decorative in aspect, more satisfactory to superficial views, more acceptable to vulgar good sense, more suited to narrow egoism, better kept and cleaner, better adapted to the discipline of the average and low elements of human nature, and better adapted to etiolating or perverting the superior elements of human nature. In this philosophical barracks we have lived for eighty years.

150. The Ancient Re´gime, p. 144.

9 INDEX = Roman-numeral page numbers are in Volume I.

Abbaye (prison), 670, public sessions, 608–11 Albitte, M., 1075, 1087, 672n, 674, 675, 676, revolutionary govern- 1155, 1166 681, 683, 684, 685, ment, 1100, 1103, Alby, 457 781 1108–10, 1137–44 Alembert, M. d’, 1200 abbeys. See monasteries adoption, 926 Alençon, 81, 863 Ache`res, 711 Affry, M. d’, 692 Alespeé, M. d’, 709 active citizens, 235–36, 246, Agde, 19–20 Allier, 1284 249, 416n Agen, 332, 1168 Alquier, M., 384 arms, 540 Ageńois, 333, 334 Alsace elections, 473–74 agrarian law, 328, 933, 1259 arrests of rich, 1228 eligibility, 544 agriculture. See crops; attacks on nobles, 86–87 in Paris, 610 farmers criminals, 72 time spent on politics, Aignay, 1128 estates, 524, 529 238–43, 467, 474 Aignayle-Duc, 1143–44 farmers, 1232 See also electors Aiguillon, M. d’, 333 federations, 254 administration Aisne, 214, 296, 300, 716 forests, 327 in ancient re´gime, 1203– Aix, 282–86 monasteries destroyed, 6, 1214–18 elections, 488 92 in conquered territories, emigration from, 286 opposition to Jacobins, 1384–85 executions, 1244 1134, 1230 conscription, 906–7 Jacobin clubs, 282, 283, refusal to pay taxes, councils, 225–26 449, 452–53, 481 81–82 daily operations, 467–68 Marseilles troops sent to, representatives on in departments, 1128–30 276–77, 284, 285, 545, mission, 1079 disobedience in, 516 547–49 revolution, 64 elective offices, 221, 236, military forces in, 276– support of nonjuring 237, 241, 738 77 priests, 213 employees, 966 monarchist club, 282–84 unrest before financial mismanage- National Guard, 284, Revolution, 12, 18 ment, 1261–64 285 Altmayer, M., 1072 former royal officials, parliament, 25 Amar, Jean-Baptiste, 886, 1205–6 taxes, 21 887, 895, 1053, 1338, hierarchy, 224–28, 893 unrest before 1357 Jacobin officials, 737–39 Revolution, 29–30 Ambert, M. d’, 273 nobles in, 1203 Aix, Archbishop of, 197 Ambly, Chevalier d’, 92 number of officials, 238 Alais, 395, 404–5 Amboise, M. de Crussol d’, powers, 223–29 Albert, M., 1139 1249

1411 1412 / INDEX

Ame´court, M. d’, 53 daily life in Paris, 762 National Guard, 279–80 American Hussars, 1175 destruction of, 247–48 prisons, 1185, 1186 Amiens, 13, 330, 1312–13 excluded from representatives on anarchy, 61–62, 97, 249, government, 173–74 mission, 1076, 1082, 534, 644–45, 1257–58 executions, 694 1093, 1094 ancient re´gime idle, 171 Robespierre’s life in, administration, 1203–6, new members, 168, 169 1013 1214–18 in public service, 169–72 Artois, 213, 475 bourgeoisie, 1214–19 reforms, 160, 168 Artois, Comte d’, 348 clergy, 188–89, 1209–13 responses to jacqueries, bread price reductions, Court, 1199, 1224 346–48 13 executions, 912n rumors about, 123, 282 Declaration of Pilnitz, half-notables, 1220–21, seen as enemy of people, 524 1224 83–92, 182–88, 520, emigration, 57, 101 municipal governments, 789 invasion plans, 357 1215–16, 1220 superior qualities, 171– seen as enemy of people, notables, 171–72, 1223, 72 38, 53 1225 threats to, 516 stables, 106 opposition to restoring, See also clergy; nobles; Assemblies 836 notables weak majorities, 472 privileges, 160 Arles See also Constituent reforms needed, 160–62, elections, 552, 553 Assembly; Legislative 168–69 food prices, 21 Assembly; National structure of society, harvest workers, 1299 Assembly 1221–25 hunting associations, 395 assignats taxes, 8, 9, 11 Jacobins, 703 depreciation, 325, 494, See also nobles jacqueries, 404, 405 922–23, 1263–64, Andre´, M., 1070 Marseilles National 1303–4 Angers, 15, 296, 299, 304, 1190–91 Guards in, 404, 405, issuance, 202, 1263, Anglas, Boissy d’, 826, 513, 550, 551, 552–55, 1274–75, 1304, 1331 1355, 1368 568n refusal of, 1268–69 Angouleˆme, 13, 69 municipal government, associations Anjou, 254, 317, 1193, 1230 551–52 abolition of, 200 Annonciades of Saint- National Guard, 552 political clubs, 480–82 Amour, 194 nobles, 347–48 See also popular clubs Antonelle, M. d’, 551, 552, Arles, Archbishop of, 40 Aubagne, 25, 549 553, 565, 1103, 1194, Armonville, 746, 1041 Aube, 1140–41, 1309, 1359 1281 arms Aubignon, 561 Apt, 556, 729n, 1162 disarmament of Aubigny, 304–5 Arcis-sur-Aube, 269, 328 population, 892 Auch, 214, 270, 570, 571, Arcon, M. d’, 835, 1050, distribution to Jacobins, 724, 1077–78, 1166 1205 821 Auch, Martin d’, 41 Arde`che, 399, 475 in Paris, 96 Aude, 312 Argenson, M. de Flotte d’, pikes, 540–41, 581–82 Audouin, M., 667, 691, 731 regulations, 801 781–82 Argenteau, Mercy d’, 27 seized from chateaus, Augereau, M., 1367–68, Argenton, 1284 359 1407 aristocrats army. See military; Aujean, 335–36 acceptance of revolutionary army Aulard, A., xiv Revolution, 350 Arnay-le-Duc, 229, 269 Aunis, 270 attacks on, 84–85, 92, Arras Aupt, 21, 22 183–87, 920 executions, 1190, 1192 Auray, 295, 331 clothing, 1227 Jacobins, 570, 608n, 701, Aurillac, 399–400 common people charged 1017, 1135 Austria, 397, 524, 525, 530, with being, 1229–30 military forces in, 384 1389 Index / 1413

Autichamp, M., 357 supplies for Paris, 99 Barry (executioner), 731 Autun, 278, 312, 722 in Third Estate, 40–41 Bar-sur-Aube, 67, 269, Auvergne on unrest in Paris, 48 1302 attacks on nobles, 86, Bailly (shoemaker), 355, Barthe´lemy, M., 1206, 88, 89 356 1366, 1368, 1374, 1386 criminals, 69 Baˆle, 87 Basle, peace of, 1206, 1374 emigration, 187 bandits. See criminals Basques, 1231 military forces, 384 bankers, 1276 Bas-Rhin, 214, 269, 390, property conﬁscated or Bapaume, 1017, 1307, 1309 399, 475 destroyed, 92, 1196 Bar, M. de, 333 Bastia, 268, 378 refusal to pay taxes, 93 Barbantane, 488n Bastille, 3, 49–53, 97 unrest, 12 Barbaroux, M. Bathilly, Madame de, 92 Auxerre, 722 death, 889 Baubot, M., 784 Auxon, 329–30 decrees against, 885, 886 Baudin, M., 1403 Aveyron, 696–700, 1236– as deputy, 750 Baudot, M., 442, 470, 911, 37 insurrection plans, 614– 1024, 1079, 1194 Avignon 15n Baugency, 1147 brigands in, 558–66 Marat and, 643 Baume, 203, 561 emigration from, 405–6 in Paris, 548, 607 Baux, 396 Glacie`re massacre, 405, in Provence, 725, 729 Baye`re, 362 514–15, 522, 564, 726 vote for King’s death, Bayeux, 369n, 513, 572 harvest workers, 1299 793 Bayeux, M., 712–13 Jacobins, 559, 703, 726 wife, 753 Bayle, Pierre, 614–15n jacqueries, 404, 417, writings, 436–37 Bayonnaise (ship), 1375 514–15, 551 Barbe´-Marbois, M., 1355, Bayonne, 1197 municipal government, 1362, 1368, 1374 Bazie`re, M., 506 562–63, 565n Barbe´-Marbois, Madame, Bazire, M., 656, 785–86, National Guard, 566, 1374 890, 1037, 1055 726 Barentin, M. de, 38 opposition to Jacobins, Bare`re, Bertrand, 927, 1124 Beaucaire, M. de, 488 870 character, 1060–62 Beauclerc, Madame de, 400 persecution of Catholics, Committee of Public Beaufremont, Princesse de, 399 Safety, 894, 1052–53 87 revolutionary govern- on executions, 1194 Beaujolais, 86, 92 ment, 1066 investigation of, 1338 Beaulieu, 195, 360 reporting of bills, 1057, Beaulieu, M., 832–33, 1186 Baboeuf, Gracchus, 773n, 1062 Beaumanoir, 337 933, 1099, 1113, 1357, survival, 1352 Beaumarchais, Pierre- 1358 transportation, 1340, Augustin Caron de, Bachelier, M., 1164 1352 639, 1200 Bagat, chateau of, 340 Barjols, 23–24 Beaumont, 27 Bagnols, 13 Barnave, Antoine-Pierre, Beaumont, Louis de, 370– Baignes, 80 154, 461n, 477n, 478, 71 Bailly, Jean Sylvain 480, 692, 1361 Beaune, 384, 721, 1143 in Constituent Barras, M. de, 21, 92 Beause, 299–300 Assembly, 128, 1219 Barras, Paul, Vicomte de, Beausset, 694–96 criticism of, 415, 418, 439, 1089, 1244, 1340, Beausset, Chevalier de, 989, 990 1349, 1354, 1366, 1381 274, 378 election as mayor of in Convention, 784 Beauvais, 1307 Paris, 54 Directory, 1361, 1386, Beauvais, Bishop of, 40 Jacobins and, 454, 480 1387, 1402–3 Beauvoir, M. de, 85 lack of authority, 95, 96, plot against, 1367 Be´card, M., 645n, 684 97 as representative on Becquet, M., 503 lack of jobs, 101 mission, 1070 Be´douin, 1231 mobs and, 57 Barrau, M., 1376 beggars, 5, 1293 protection of nobles, 372 Barre`re, M., 442, 792, 827 Be´langer, M., 1110–11 1414 / INDEX

Belfort, 86, 269, 514, 1131, Beuvres, 332 Bonaparte. See Napoleon 1135, 1166, 1168–69 Be´zard, M., 1353, 1376 Bonaparte Belgium, 1230, 1300, 1383, Bezenval, Baron de, 12, 53, Bonnard, General, 1353 1390, 1391, 1392, 96, 99 Bonneau, M., 1353 1393–94 Be´ziers, 318 Bordeaux Bellud, M. de, 373–74 Biceˆtre, 683, 684 economy, 1265 Belmont, Abbe´, 292 Billaud-Varennes, M., 691 executions, 1192 Belzance, Major de, 79 Committee of Public extortion of rich, 1149– Belzunce, Major, 106, 378 Safety, 835, 894, 977, 51 Benedictines, 15, 192 1004, 1052, 1056 food shortages, 876, Bentabolle, M., 784, 1340 in Convention, 687, 1045 1283 Be`quelin (Petit-Gueux), Danton and, 667 Jacobins, 449, 452–53, 305 investigation of, 1338 482, 773n, 1131, 1134, Berger, M., 1353, 1376 motion against Dauphin, 1136 Bergerac, 341 1383 merchants, 1275–76 Bergoeing, M., 886 Paris Commune, 668–69 municipal officers, 266 Berlier, M., 793 on regeneration of man, murders, 710 Bernadotte, M., 1403 910 National Guard, 290, Bernard, M., 889, 1037, on revolutionary 872–73 1119 government, 893 opposition to Jacobins, Bernardines, 203–4 on Robespierre, 1019 863–64, 869, 872–73, Bernardins, 4–5, 88 September massacres, 1230 Bernay, 12 670 parliament, 334, 335 Berquin, M., 135 transportation, 1340 political clubs, 482 Berri, 296, 298 Biron, Duc de, 1201 replacement of Bertheás, M., 315 Biron, General, 386 nonjuring priests, 212 Berthier, M., 38, 53, 55, 56, Birotteau, M., 886, 889 representatives on 103, 107 mission, 1069, 1086– birth rates, 1267n Bertin, M., 550, 555, 565 87 Bertrand, M., 1099 Bithaine, chateau of, 87 revolt against Jacobins, Besançon, 357 Blanc, Louis, xxii 834, 877–78, 879–80 Church property Blaser (sergeant), 628–29 revolution, 63 confiscated, 202–3 Blois, 1374 revolutionary army in, elections, 240, 447, 740, elections, 1358 1166, 1169 743, 851 food prices, 311 revolutionary executions, 1381 Jacobins, 1376 committee, 1169 festival of Federation, military forces in, 384, rich residents, 1243–44 258 513 support of Republic, Jacobins, 464–65, 572 priests, 1380 873, 874–75 municipal officers, 232 representatives on Bordier, M., 74–75 National Guard, 75–76 mission, 1088 Borie, M., 1077 nuns, 204 revolutionary Bost, 14 opposition to Jacobins, committee, 1352–53 Bouche, M., 42 863 Blondel, 692 Boucher-Rene´, M., 591 priests, 212, 1380 Bo, M., 442 Bouches-du-Rhoˆne revolution, 63–64 Boˆ, M., 1093, 1142, 1143 arrests, 1185 revolutionary army in, Boileau, M., 886 conquest by Marseilles, 1166 Bois-au-Voyer, 332 270, 547–49, 550–51, unrest, 29–30, 75–76 Boisboissel, M. de, 214 552–58 Besançon, Archbishop of, Bois-d’Aisy, 354, 482–83 Directory, 270, 548, 207–8 Bois-d’Aisy, M. de, 354, 549–51, 554, 565 Besselard, Marquis de, 16 482–83 electors, 744, 745 Bessie`res, General, 1072 Bois de Boulogne, 325 government, 727–29 Besso, 337 Boisjelin, M. de, 197 Jacobins, 572 Beugnot, M., 503 Bois-Roche, chateau of, 335 jacqueries, 404, 406 Beurnonville, M., 739n, 791 Bolognie´, M., 1164 people of, 542–44 Index / 1415

priests, 1380 white, 1087 papers, 667 sales of confiscated See also food Robespierre and, 1022 property, 1163 bread prices speeches, 576n Bouchotte, M., 797 government subsidies, view of war, 529, 539n Bouille´, M. de, 348 57, 100, 782 Britain. See England Boula, M., 667, 671 in Paris, 98, 108, 580, Brittany Boulogne-sur-Mer, 280, 782, 1290–91, 1304 cannons, 71 1309 protests, 117 emigration, 187 Bourbon, Duc de, 38, 101 before Revolution, 5, 11, federations, 254 Bourbon-Lancy, 298–99 12–13, 20, 21 food supplies, 295 Bourbon-l’Archambault, after Revolution, 67 grain shortages, 68 298–99 riots, 12–13 insurrection, 216 Bourbonnais, 296, 298 in south, 312 jacqueries, 331–32, 334, Bourbotte, M., 784, 1075, Brest 336–38 1340 attacks on neighboring military forces in, 266– Bourdon, Leónard, 442, towns, 606–7 67, 379 667, 786, 812, 1040 attacks on officers, 375, opposition to Jacobins, Bourdon de l’Oise, 1040, 488 863, 1230 1045, 1076, 1340 cannons, 71 revolution, 63 Bourdonnaie, M. de la, 338 food supplies, 295 unrest, 12 Bourg, 1166 Jacobins, 569–70 Broglie, Marshal de, 53, 57, Bourg-en-Bresse, 1248 military forces in, 268 386 bourgeoisie municipal government, Brovaz, chateau of, 693 in ancient re´gime, 1214– 228–29 Brunache, M., 489 19 mutiny, 383, 386n Brunel, M., 886 education, 1219 opposition to Jacobins, Brun-Lafond, M., 468n executions, 694 863, 1135 feudal rights held, 174– Brunoy, 302, 306 Breteuil, M. de, 53 75 Brunswick, Duke of, 635, government officials, Brichard, M., 1112 636, 638–39, 650, 836, 1214–18 Brie, 299–300 997 involvement in public Brie-Comte-Robert, 306 Brutus Commission, 1191– affairs, 232–33 Brienne, Lomeńie de, 8, 30 92 Jacobins, 440–41 Brienne, M. de, 212 Bruye`res-le-Chatel, 303 measures against, 922 Brie`re, M., 583 Buchot, M., 443, 1113–15 opportunities, 836 Briez, M., 1068 Buffon, M., 1219 opposition to Jacobins, brigands. See criminals Bunel, M., 366–67 532–33 Brignolles, 21, 22, 24, 1161 Burgundy, 12, 67, 86, 185– property destroyed, 91 Brionne, 1309 86, 294, 482–83, 487 seen as enemy of people, Brisac, M. de, 713–14 Burke, Edmund, xvii–xviii, 1235 Brissac, Duc de, 349 xxiii, 141 supporters of counter- Brissac, M. de, 85, 684 Bussy, M. de, 353–58 revolution, 348–49 Brissot, Jacques Buzot, M., 802 taxes, 1243 career, 106, 442 character, 505–6n See also merchants; rich character, 105, 493–94 death, 889 Bourges, 1017 charges against King, decree of condemnation, Bourgougnon, 700 602 886 Bourguie`re, M., 699 on constitution, 530 as deputy, 478n, 750, Bournazel, M. de, 333 Danton and, 664 787, 826, 990 Bourse, 1276 decree of accusation, 885 home, 875 Bouxvillers, 514 denunciation of, 810 writings, 436–37 Bray-sur-Seine, 12–13, 26 as deputy, 502, 504, 519– bread 20, 750, 826, 828 Cabarrus, Teresa, 1088 equality, 943, 1294 foreign relations, 526– Cabrerets, 403 shortages, 15, 99–100, 27, 528 Cabris, canal of, 693 757, 1270–71, 1282–84 journals, 428 Cadillac, 1283–84 1416 / INDEX

Cadillot, M., 1190 Cambrai, 316, 1192 authority of Pope, 914 Caen Cambray, 715, 1081, 1082– charitable work, 4–5, famine, 1306–7 83, 1129 194 food supplies, 295, 1314 Cambre´sis, 16 churches closed or Jacobin club, 457, 572 Camoıˆn, M., 550, 556 destroyed, 333, 370– jacqueries, 515 Campan, Madame, 70, 630 71, 918 military forces in, 269, canals, 295, 312, 693, 709 debate on constitutional 378 Canet, chateau of, 693 role, 151 municipal government, Cantal, 399–400, 725, dioceses, 209 365 1236–37 dissolution of orders, murders, 712–13 Cantal, bishop of, 789 199, 914 National Guard, 269, Capuchins, 203 enemies, 204–5 367, 368, 867–68 Caraman, M. de, 25n faith in, 206–7 nobles, 365–69 Carcassonne, 709 measures against, 914–19 opposition to Jacobins, Carion, M., 263–64 property confiscated, 863–64, 867–68, 875 Carle, M., 632 195–97, 199–200, persecution of Catholics, Carlin, Captain, 1080 202–4, 229, 519, 655, 393–94 Carmelites (prison), 684 914, 1159 revolt against Jacobins, Carnot, Lazare property destroyed by 834 Committee of Public mobs, 87–88, 92 revolution, 63 Safety, 835, 894, 977, reforms, 190–91 salt prices, 81 1048–49, 1051, 1054, state control, 199, 204– unrest, 12, 79 1056, 1062 6, 208–10 vote on constitution of denunciation, 1368 suitability to French, 1793, 851 Directory, 1349, 1366 1213 Cahier, M., 389n engineers, 1050 tithes, 180, 201–2 Cahors, 332, 373 honesty, 794 See also clergy; food shortages, 1282 Robespierre and, 1008 monasteries; nuns Jacobins, 570–71 staff, 1205 Catholics jacqueries, 488 vote for King’s death, conflicts with National Guard, 374, 791n Protestants, 288–93 481 war, 1049, 1385–86 excluded from elections, nobles, 370 Carpentras, 395, 561 746 persecution of nonjuring Carra, M., 641, 886, 1000 fanatics, 392, 393–96, priests, 214 Carrier, Jean-Baptiste 401, 406, 918 Caillard, M., 269 in Convention, 784, insurrection in western Calais, 494 1046 France, 747 calendar, revolutionary, executions, 1193, 1194 in Paris, 757–58 918n, 937–38 executions ordered by, persecution of, 916, 918 Calvados, 270, 712, 850, 1095–96 refusal to take civic 871 at Nantes, 1069, 1070, oath, 475 Cambace´re`s, M., 792, 1330, 1076, 1083–85, 1088, supporters of nonjuring 1331 1246, 1276 priests, 186, 369, 390, Cambon, Pierre Joseph, political beliefs, 471, 911 392, 398–403, 916 794–95 revolutionary army and, Cauderan, 710 assignats issued, 1263 1174 Caumartin, M. de, 75 committee on finances, trial, 1338 Caumont, 561 494–95, 1049–50, Carthusians, 370, 398 Caux, 16 1262n Casset, M., 1099 Cavaillon, 561 in Convention, 1045 Castel, 339 Cayol (flower-girl), 549, death, 889 Castelnau, 373 680 ignorance, 1205 Castelnaudary, 296 Cazale`s, M. de, 151 report on taxes, 1338 Castelsarrasin, 402 Cergy, 27 on rich, 1241 Castres, 693n, 709 certificates of civism, 800, Robespierre and, 1008 Castries, M. de, 373 801–2, 809, 939, view of Commune, 659 Catholic Church 1101–2, 1119 Index / 1417

Cerutti, M., 31 Chatel, M., 98, 103 Church. See Catholic Cette, 13 Chaˆtelet, M. du, 35, 38, 43 Church Cevennes, 4 Chaˆtelet (prison), 682, 684 civil constitution of clergy Ceyrat, M., 671 Chatellenot, chateau of, effects, 207–10 Chabot, M., 442, 506, 784, 359 establishment, 204–6 1037, 1055, 1103 Chaˆtillon-en-Bayait, 296 oath to, 151, 210–14, Chabrillant, Count de, Chaˆtre, 1284 211–12 1216n Chaudenay, chateau of, 359 purpose, 216 Chabrol, abbe´, 710–11 Chaudieu, M., 1357 See also nonjuring Chalaudon, M., 1120 Chaumette, M., 691, 774, priests Chale`ze, 475n 1002 civil religion, 918–19, 936– Chaˆlier, M., 435n, 442, 703, arrest, 1103 38, 943, 1031–33, 878, 938 career, 443 1377–78 Chalonge, 337 denunciation of, 806 civil service. See Chalons, 357 Paris Commune, 667, administration Chaˆlons-sur-Marne, 721 781, 782, 831 Clairac, 709 Chambon, M., 886 Robespierre and, 1027 Claix, 326 Chambord, 326 Chaumont, 305 Clarac, Comte de, 339–40 Champagne, 12, 28, 80–81, Chauny, 316 Clarac, M. de, 388 82–83, 185, 254, 406 Chausavoir, 337 Clavie`re, M., 822, 823, Champ de Mars, 625n Chaussy, 711 828–29, 889, 1022 Champfort, M., 459, 1189, Chaux, M., 1164–65 Clavie`res, M., 577, 633, 1200 Chazal, M., 1380 666 Champier, 91 Chazelai, 361 Cledat, M., 1072–73 Champion, M., 790 Chemin, Charles, 645n clergy Champlatreux, Mole´ de, Chenay, 337 in ancient re´gime, 188– 1250–51 Chenevie`res, 27 89, 1209–13 Champs-Elyseés, 762 Cheńier, Andre´, 459, 533– appointments, 209–10 Chanlaire, M., 721 Chantenay, 14 34, 855, 1251–52 attacks on, 90 Chantilly, 326, 781 Cheńier, Marie, 667, 668, authority, 207–8 Chantonney, 1076 671, 1340, 1354, 1380 in Constituent Assem- Chapelier, M., 154 Che´py, M., 1135 bly, 137, 143–44 Chaponay, M. de, 360–62 Cher, 304–5, 1284 constitutional, 199, 208, Charcon (cure´), 487n Cherbourg, 73, 1315 213, 390–91, 395, 401, Charleroy, 1079 Chevreuse, 6 475n, 916–17, 1213 Charles, M., 984 Cheynard, M., 814 education, 1211 Charleville, 715 Chiappe, M., 817 elections, 236, 241 Charlier, M., 723 children emigration, 216 Charlot, M., 681 behavior, 936n excluded from Chartres, 16, 447, 1313 clothing, 941 government, 230, 239, Chartres, Duc de, 459 executions, 1096, 1190 354 Chasles, M., 442 imprisoned, 1186 hostility to, 198 Chasset, M., 886 See also education imprisoned, 1380 Chateau de la Fin, 299 Chimay, Princesse de, 1249 incomes, 188 Chateau-Gontier, 299 Choiseul, 82–83 killed, 312, 670, 678, Chateauneuf, 337 Choiseul, Duchesse de, 684, 688, 1095, 1380 Chaˆteauneuf-Randon, M., 1249 marriages, 210n, 501, 439, 1089 Choiseul, M. de, 1184 519, 916 Chaˆteau-Renard, 555–56 Cholat, M., 51 privileges renounced, 33 chateaus Choudieu, Pierre-Rene´, public service, 1203–6 destruction of, 87, 91– 508, 658–59 reforms needed, 189 92, 332, 333, 335, Chre´tien, M., 1113 representation in States- 338–40, 356, 400, 403, Christianity, 949, 951 General, 10, 32, 83 405, 693, 707 See also Catholic status, 1210 sales, 1158 Church; Protestants suspicions of, 85 1418 / INDEX clergy (continued) individual interests, 965– responsibilities of threats against, 123 68 members, 1050–51 transportation of, 1379– monopolists, 929, 931– revolutionary army units 80 32, 1226, 1260, 1278 disbanded, 1166 in villages, 1212 obstacles to, 304 Terror, 862 See also aristocrats; civil private enterprise, 966– weeding out of Jacobins, constitution of clergy; 68 1103 nonjuring priests regulation of, 931–33 See also representatives Clermont, 572, 863 seen as on mission Clermont, Bishop of, 211 antirevolutionary, Committee of Supervision, Clermont-Tonnerre, Abbe´ 1244 800–805 de, 90 state-run enterprises, arrests of opponents, Clermont-Tonnerre, M. de, 966–68 685, 823–24 152, 479, 480, 632, See also merchants; establishment, 798–99 647, 1249 subsistences guns, 821 Clootz, Anacharsis, 135, commissioners, 852–57, members, 670 436, 442, 501, 1002, 858–59, 860–62, 865, opponents, 807–8 1037, 1103 870 September massacres, Clotaire, 645n Commission on 666, 685n clothing, 905n, 943, 1041, Subsistences, 1298 taxes, 803–4 1197, 1227, 1247 Committee of General Committee on Searches, Clugnac, 324 Security, 1064 461–63 Cochin, A., xxv, xxvi arrests, 853 common weal (la chose Coffinhal, M., 895, 1251 election, 1038 publique), 166–67 Colchen, M., 1206 examination of Commune. See Paris Collinet, M., 400 Girondists, 888 Commune Collot d’Herbois, Jean members, 894n, 895, community. See society Marie, 647, 1383 1053 Compie`gne, 717–18 acting career, 442 Committee of Public power, 892 Comtat, 558 Safety, 894, 977, representatives on Conciergerie, 682, 684 1044–45, 1052, 1067 mission and, 1089–90 Conde´, M. de, 655 in Convention, 687, staff, 1110 Conde´, Prince de, 38, 57, 1038n Committee of 187, 357 on executions, 1194 Investigation, 155–56 Condillac, M., 1219 investigation of, 1338 Committee of Public Condorcet, Marquis de at Lyons, 1075, 1086, Safety on Assembly’s power, 1087, 1092, 1094, arrests, 896, 1051n 575 1155, 1230, 1281–82 decrees, 1050, 1051n character, 495 Paris Commune, 668 despotism, 977–78 charges against King, September massacres, election, 889n, 1038 602 671 establishment, 798 on colonies, 515 transportation of, 1340 executions, 835, 1193 constitution drafted by, view of war, 526 fears, 1053–54 755, 777 colonies food supplies, 1295, 1319 on constitutions, 751 imports from, 580, 1265 goals, 1053 death, 889, 1189 insurrections, 417, 515, judges selected by, 895 decree of accusation, 886 1265 leaders, 1051–53 as deputy, 504, 750 officers murdered in, 378 meals, 1330, 1331–32 intellectual method, 429 Comeau-Creánce´, M. de, meetings, 1054–55, 1060, as Jacobin, 439 359 1331 journals, 428 Commarin, chateau of, 359 members, 835, 893–94, on Robespierre, 1018n commerce 1047–49 view of King, 577 destruction of, 1275–77 power, 892, 894, 896–98 wife, 753 grain trade halted, 296, reporters of bills, 1057– Conflans-Saint-Honorine, 298, 304, 309–10 63 27 Index / 1419 conscience, 951–52, 954–55, powers of Assembly and galleries, 770, 786–88, 961 King, 218–23, 225, 791, 826, 828, 1109 conservatives 248–49, 575 guards, 750 in Convention, 786, 829, proposals, 173 guilt of, 1046, 1340–42 885 shortcomings, 244–45 influence of Contrat- in Corps Legislatif, 1355 violations, 512–17 Social,42 emigration, 761 See also Declaration of Jacobin dominance, 816– excluded from elections, Rights of Man 18, 829, 885–86, 1339 741–43, 744–45 constitution of 1793, 845– Marat on, 990 journalists, 457 48 petitions to, 821–23 journals, 742 commissioners, 852–57, power, 737, 820 in Legislative Assembly, 858–59, 860–62, 865, pressures on, 791–96 503, 535, 590, 603, 870 public parades, 1041–44 617–18, 619 festival, 857–59 public view of, 759–60 in National Assembly, Girondist support, 755 relationship with 151–52, 479 Jacobin goals, 865 Committee of Public opposition to postponement, 860–62, Safety, 894–95, 1053 Convention, 759 890 release of farmers, 1299– See also monarchists ratification, 848–52, 870– 1300 Constant, B., xxvii 71 riots over food, 1319 Constituent Assembly constitution of 1795, 1342– See also revolutionary abolition of feudal 44, 1354–55, 1362 government rights, 133, 181–82 constitutions Convention deputies, 747– accomplishments, 247, American, 140, 244, 245, 50, 1037–40 934 751 class origins, 442 amnesty for attackers of difficulty of writing, executed, 1037, 1055–57 priests, 215 127–28 Jacobins, 687–88, 737, assignats, 1263 English, xvi, 145, 751 748, 780, 783–86 condemnation of Jacobin, 775–76 emigrants, 387–88 purposes, 167 of Left, 783–84, 1346 debates, 143, 147 consuls, 1407–9 majority, 760, 808–11, deputies, 129, 136–38, Conti, Prince de, 27, 38, 818, 822, 826–29, 830 478, 492–93, 748, 57, 101 of Plain, 750, 792, 1039, 1219 Contrat-Social (Rousseau) 1045 equality principle, 172– application of, 163–64, of Right, 786, 829, 885 73 176 survivors, 749n errors, xxiii–xxiv, 218, enacted by common threats against, 789, 247–49, 466–67 people, 23 790–91, 811–16 galleries, 128–29 individual and society, See also Girondists; influence of Contrat- 433 Montagnards Social,42 influence, 37, 42, 105, Corbeil, 306, 307 inheritances, 182–83 197, 499, 846, 984 Corday, Charlotte, 833, 875 lack of leadership, 130 Convention Cordeliers Club, 106, 113, Marat on, 990 attack of Commune, 788, 790, 1001–2, 1103 moderates, 478 824–29 Corneille, M., 522 parties, 143–48, 153 constitution of 1793, Cornet, M., 1403 presidents, 512 848, 849, 859–60 Coroller, M., 478n sessions, 128–32, 133–36 decrees, 796–99, 818, corporations, 189–90, 191– tolerance of mob 822–23, 997, 1037 92, 197–99, 200, 904 violence, 148–49 dissolution postponed, See also monasteries constitution of 1791 860 Corps Legislatif, 1349, 1354 administration, 223–29 elections, 687–88, 690, elections, 1355–56 elected officials, 226 727–28 Jacobin control of, electors, 235–36 executions, 1044–45 1368–69 Jacobin view of, 422 food prices, 1300–1301 members, 1355–57, popular views of, 341 foreign relations, 1206 1360–63 1420/ I NDEX

Corps Legislatif (continued) criminals in Convention, 687, 784, relations with Directory, bands of, 332–33, 1162 827, 894n 1356, 1366, 1367–68, disturbances before at Cordeliers Club, 113 1370, 1400 Revolution, 16–18, as deputy syndic, 474 weakness, 1365–66 28, 35, 702 on education, 939n Corre`ze, 342, 343, 399, fear of, 68–71, 77, 267 education of, 441n 402–3, 491 Jacobins, 641–42, 645, execution, 1000n, 1027, Cosne, 26 770 1037, 1039, 1044, Coˆte d’Or, 448 in Paris, 772–73 1055, 1103 Coˆte Saint-Andre´, 91 after Revolution, 68–71, finances, 106 Coˆtes-du-Nord, 390, 475, 72–75, 83, 302–3 foreign relations, 997 851 rumors about bands of, Girondists and, 997–98 Coucy, 716 267 insurrection plans, 814, Couhey, M., 885 September massacres, 816–17 Council of the Ancients, 672–73 language used, 436 leadership of Commune, 1349, 1360, 1366, 1368 See also jacqueries Cromwell, Oliver, 972, 622, 640–41, 659n, See also Corps Legislatif 974, 976–77 662–67 Council of the Five crops letter on release of Hundred, 1349, 1366, destroyed by hail, 27, 66 officers, 724 1401 harvests, 4, 27, 66, 299– manners, 753 See also Corps Legislatif 300, 1267, 1301 on merchants, 880–81 counterrevolution, 282, harvest workers, 1299 as Minister of Justice, 348–49, 357, 612–13 unharvested, 1279–80, 633, 662, 684, 691 See also aristocrats 1298–1300 on Paris, 580 Courbis, M., 1077 See also grain partisans, 1103–4 Court, 1199, 1224 Crosne, M. de, 47, 57 payments for attendance Courtivron, Comte de, 90 Crosnie`re, Bourbon de la, at section assemblies, Courtois, M., 1338 134–35 1106 courts Cuirette-Verrie`res, M., 583 political leadership, 134, military, 1371 culture, fragility of, xxviii– 506, 584–85, 996–97, powerlessness, 327 xxix 999–1006 See also judges; Cumont, Marquis de, 335 popularity, 1000 revolutionary tribunal Cureau, M., 85–86 revolutionary tribunal, Coustard, M., 886, 889 Cusset, M., 1076, 1357 896 Coutance, 457 Cussy, M., 886, 889 Robespierre and, 1007, Couthon, Georges, 691 Custine, General, 386 1023, 1027 Committee of Public Cuvier, M., 376n speeches, 415 Safety, 835, 894, 977, as spy, 640n 1033, 1044–45, 1052, Daigneau-Mallet, M., 1164 Terror, 861–62 Damas, M. de, 354 1067, 1129 view of Revolution, Dambray, M., 1355 1001–2 as deputy, 506, 817, 828 Damiens (soldier), 681 view of war, 526, 797n execution, 1300, 1336 Dammartin, M. de, 278, wife, 998 as representative on 568n Darthe´, M., 1099, 1351, mission, 1070 Dampierre, chateau of, 712 1358 on revolutionary dams, destruction of, 28, Dartigoyte, M., 1077–78, government, 893 343, 344 1093, 1295, 1298–99, view of war, 526 Danton, Georges, 995–1006 1338, 1351 Couturier, M., 1133 career, 998–99 Daumartin, 1310 Crance´, Dubois de, 379n character, xxiv–xxv, Daunou, M., 791, 1248 Crassous, M., 1338 995–96, 998, 999, Dauphin. See Louis XVII Creánce´, chateau of, 359 1001, 1004–5 Dauphiny Cre´mieu, 89 Committee of Public attacks on nobles, 86, Creuse, 324, 340, 343 Safety, 816, 1002–6, 88, 89 Creux, Jean, 641 1331 attacks on nuns, 90–91 Index / 1421

federations, 254 90, 691–93, 700–702, Deux-Se`vres, 390, 475, 747 food supplies, 294 870, 897–98 Deuzy, M., 616 forests, 326 opposition to Jacobins, Deve´rite´, M., 886 nobles, 351–52 862–65, 866, 868–70, Dieppe, 1306, 1313 property destroyed, 91, 873, 1383 Dijon, 1165 92 powerlessness of attacks on nobles, 90 Davencourt, 330 governments, 270, convents, 215 Daverhoult, M., 509, 523 368 Jacobins, 1136, 1143 David, Jacques-Louis secession attempts, 727– jacqueries, 721 Committee of General 29 National Guard, 91 Security, 895, 1053 support of Republic, opposition to Jacobins, in Convention, 687, 784, 873–75 863 1040 tax revenues, 325 revolutionary army in, festivals, 857, 1031 See also representatives 1166 Friends of the on mission Dinan, 331, 337 Constitution, 459 deputies. See Convention diplomats. See Ministry of investigation of, 1338 deputies; Legislative Foreign Affairs monument to Assembly deputies; Directory constitution, 862 National Assembly coups, 1400 sketch of Queen, 1047n deputies dictatorship, 1370–74, Davilliers, Jean, 1149–50 Desault, M., 657 1396–97, 1400 Dax, 488–89 Desbarreaux, M., 1376 dismissal of adminis- Debaux, M., 730 Desbois, M., 616 trators, 1370–71 Debry, Jean, 656 Descrots-d’Estreé, Marshal, enemies, 1366–67 Dećade (ship), 1375 493n government of Decises, 299 Desfieux, M., 804 conquered territories, Declaration of Pilnitz, 524 Desforges, M., 667 1384–85, 1389–94 Desidery, captain, 731 Declaration of Rights of Jacobin dominance, Desmoulins, Camille, 105– Man, 109, 117, 143, 7, 1002 1349, 1367 243–44, 842 in Convention, 687 limits on power, 1357–58 Dedeley, M., 711 execution, 1037, 1103, measures against rich, Deffieux, M., 797 1104 1382–83 Delaporte, M., 1140–41 insurrection plans, 614– members, 1349, 1361, Delarne, M., 1360 15n 1400–1401 Delaunay, M., 1037 journals, 156, 428, 442 opposition to, 1361, Delessart, M., 526, 576n, law practice, 474n 1397–98, 1399–1400, 714 on military, 44 1402 Delmas, M., 618, 1340, pamphlets by, 31 powers, 1350 1354 on Revolution, 432n relations with Corps Deltheil, M., 1236–37 September massacres, Legislatif, 1356, 1366, democracy 665 1367–68, 1370, 1400 isolation of individuals, speeches, 37, 45, 113, 415 war, 1384–89, 1394–96 xxviii view of jacqueries, 417 divorce laws, 499, 634, 935 limits on state power, writings, 39 Dobsen, M., 811, 819, 820 957 despotism Dodieu, M., 723 minorities in, 959–60 in European history, Doisy, M., 16 relationship of individual 971–74, 977 Doˆle, 720 to community, 955–57 of Jacobins, 419, 877, Donjon, 298 See also elections 974–76, 977–78 Dordogne, 340–41, 399, Dentzel, M., 1133 Despretz-Montpezat, M., 402, 917n departments 84–85 Douai administration, 1128–30 Desrues, Madame, 680 food supplies, 305 elections, 237, 473–74 Deux-Mers, canal of, 312, Jacobins, 691 establishment, 198 709 jacqueries, 417 Jacobin power in, 689– Deux-Ne`thes, 1379 military forces in, 377n 1422 / INDEX

Douai (continued) Dumont, M., 141, 143, elections municipal government, 145–46 abstentions, 240, 447–48, 280, 377n Dumouriez, Charles, 888 474–76, 487–88, 490, persecution of nonjuring Dunkirk, 383, 494, 1135 700, 743, 761, 848–49, priests, 393 Dupaty, M., 335 865, 1343 resistance to taxes, 316 Duperret, M., 786, 886 candidates, 476–77, 478– Douai, Merlin de, 147–48, Duplay, M., 443, 1017 79 1340, 1354, 1367, Dupont, M., 151 conservatives excluded 1380, 1400 Dupont de Nemours, from, 741–43, 744–45 Doubs Pierre-Samuel, 657, constitutional provisions, Catholics, 390, 475 1355 235–36, 416–17, 847 elections, 239, 448, 475 Duport, M., 154, 461, 478, on constitution of 1793, nuns, 204 664, 667 848–52 officials, 1371 Duprat, MM., 522, 559, on constitution of 1795, priests, 212, 1379 562, 563–64, 565, 886 1342–44 suspects, 1185 Dupuy-Montbrun, Marshal, of Convention, 687–88, Doumer, M., 57 493n 690, 727–28 Dourdan, 302, 306 Duquesnoy, M., 784, 1072– of Corps Legislatif, Draguignan, 254, 1161 74, 1076, 1166, 1340 1355–56 Droˆme, 572, 726 Durand-Maillane, M., 741, democratic, 955–57 Drouet, M., 443, 746, 1099, 791–92 frequency, 447 1357–58 Durassier, M., 1164 Jacobin control of, 457, Dubois (lieutenant of Duroi, M., 886 765 police), 30 Duroy, M., 1340 number of offices, 473–74 Dubois-Crance´, M., 1068– Dussaulx, M., 48, 826 restrictions on voting, 69, 1317, 1354 Dutertre, M., 1374 1372–73 Ducastel, M., 507 Duval, François, 497n in 1789, 236–38, 446 Duchatel, M., 885 Duval, M., 1378 in 1790, 482–83 Duchesne, Aunty, 701 Dyle, 1379 Duche´zeau, M., 889 in 1791, 473–74, 484, Ducos, M., 504, 601, 885 487–91 Echerolles, M. des, 1207–8 in 1792, 491, 700 Ducos, Roger, 1400 economy in 1795, 1341, 1342–46, Dufour, M., 691 in anarchy, 1257–58 Dugommier, General, disruption of, 1264–67 1349 1062n interest rates, 1264 of States-General, 31, 32 Dulaure, M., 1038 international trade, 580, violence during, 488 Dulaurent, M., 1375 1265 winners, 425, 474–76, Dumas, M., 895 operation of, 1255–58 491 Dumas, Mathieu suppression of labor, of year V, 1358–60 in Corps Legislatif, 1355, 1272–74, 1280–81 electors 1368 See also assignats; civic oath, 475 as deputy, 503, 509 commerce; food classes, 416n Jacobins and, 1364, prices; property eligibility, 238–39, 246, 1366–67 education 416–17, 740 military rank, 493n Catholic schools, 194, equality, 277 in Montauban, 290 203 intimidation of, 482–84, support of constitution, Jacobin view of, 908, 487–91 1362 1245–46, 1247–48 Jacobins, 465, 744–47, threats against, 618 national, 938–42 1377 Dumerbion, M., 730 of notables, 1240, 1245– number of, 237 Dumetz, M., 1118 46 payments to, 740–41 Dumolard, M., 503, 508, property confiscations, Elie, M., 50, 51 616 904 e´lite. See aristocrats; Dumont, Andre´, 1070, universities, 191, 192, nobles; notables 1074–75, 1089, 1340 1211, 1245 Elizabeth, Madame (sister Dumont, Etienne, 504n Elboeuf, 12 of Louis XVI), 594 Index / 1423 emigrants in education, 939 family clergy, 216, 407–9, 720, of fortunes, 926, 942–43 adoption, 926 915, 1183 Jacobin programme, Jacobin programme, conservatives, 761 638, 919–26, 930, 935–36 gathered on frontier, 1225–29, 1232–34, legal changes, 935–36 523–24, 529, 989 1380 paternal authority, 935 from lower class, 1231 Jacobin view, 522 See also children; measures against, 387– popular views of, 9–10, marriages 89, 797–98 19, 20–21, 277–78, 341 famine nobles, 57, 187, 487 Eragny, 27 as cause of Revolution, number of, 1183 Erneé, 14 4, 5–6, 11, 35 property confiscated, Ernest (commander), 276, conditions after 229, 388, 402, 517–18, 284 Revolution, 66–68, 575, 633, 655, 797–98, Ervy, 1309 100 903, 923 Escaut, 1379 deaths, 1327–29 punishments for rela- Escayrac, M. d’, 339 in departments, 1281–84, tionships with, 1229 Espagnac, abbey of, 340 1305–15 return of, 349–50, 1183– Espre´meńil, M. d’, 38, 40, fear of, 294–97 84, 1381–82 53, 119, 613 in Paris, 1322–26 taxes, 387–88 E´tampes, 16, 280–81, 300– prevention, 1300–1301 war against France, 187, 301, 302, 304, 306, revolts during, 7 188, 350, 397, 536, 307–8 before Revolution, 4, 537–38 Etienne, M., 453–55 5–6, 11, 14, 27, 35 emigration Etoile, 254 Fanchet, M., 442 accusations of, 1381–82 Eure-et-Loir, 379 Fardeau, M., 719 causes, 386–87, 405–6, European rulers farmers, 1220–21 1182 despotism, 971–74, 977 crops kept from decree, 185–86 reactions to Revolution, markets, 1279–80 effects on employment, 524–25 emigrants, 1232 100–101 See also war gains from Revolution, Encyclopedists, xix, 1200 Eveˆche´ club, 788, 812, 819 1267, 1397 England Evreux, 12, 863, 875, 1283, imprisoned, 1231, 1294– abolition of slavery, 175 1313, 1358 95, 1298, 1302 constitution, xvi, 145, Excideuil, 341 refusal to plant, 1297– 751 executions 99, 1301 Cromwell’s rule, 972, in ancient re´gime, 912n regulations, 1277 974, 976–77 of Girondists, 889, 1055– seen as enemy of people, liberty, xv–xvi 57 311, 1229 occupation of Toulon, of Louis XVI, 759, 919– suspicions of, 931 883 20 See also crops; grain Parliament, 128–29 mass, 1192–93 Fauchet, M., 826, 886 peace negotiations, of Montagnards, 1300, Fauvel, M., 1116 1386–87, 1389 1336–37 federalism, 934–35, 1244 prisoners of war, 1062– number of, 1189–91 federations 63 pretexts, 851, 1191, 1244 festival of, 228, 255, reforms, 162–63, 201 of returned emigrants, 256–57, 355, 360, 449, relations with France, 1381 613 494 without trials, 1191–92, formation, 254–55, 381 revolutions, xvi 1193 purpose, 446 siege of Toulon, 876 See also guillotines universal, 255 enrage´s, 145–48 Fe´raud, M., 1322 Entraigues, M. d’, 31, 70 Fabre, M., 1078–79 fermiers-geńe´raux, 1205 Epinal, 254 Fabre d’Eglantine, Fermon, M., 886, 1355 equality Philippe, 667, 687, Fernex, Madame, 1154 application of principle, 1000n, 1037 Ferreól, M., 88 172–73, 197 Falaise, 80 Ferrie`res, M. de, 57–58, 132 1424 / INDEX

Ferry, M., 1299 Fontange, M. de, 338–39 in Convention, 784 festivals Fontenay, 307 denunciation of, 1338 of civil religion, 938, Fontenoy, 1093 as head of Police, 1400 943 food as representative on of constitution, 857–59 efforts to ensure mission, 1069, 1086, of federation, 228, 255, supplies, 294–97, 300, 1087, 1089, 1093, 256–57, 355, 360, 449, 305–7, 1294–95 1094, 1155 613 government storehouses, on rich, 1241 of Supreme Being, 1031– 1315 Roux and, 1330 33 markets, 309, 1301 Fouge`res, 14 feudal dues, 162, 179 meals of Committee of Fougerolle, 90 abolition of, 337, 350, Public Safety, 1330, Foulon, M., 38, 53, 55–56, 919 1331–32 107 refusal to pay, 338, 340– meat, 1287–88 Fouquier-Tinville, M., 797, 41, 342 queues for, 1285–86 895, 1104, 1194, 1338 feudal rights, 174–75 rationing, 1282–83, 1291, Fourcroy, M., 984, 989, feudal rights, abolition of, 1294, 1312, 1314 1246 920 requisitions, 1290, 1295, Fournier (the American), by Constituent 1301–3, 1316 443, 645, 687, 832 Assembly, 133, 181– taxes, 20 assault on Tuileries, 625 82 uncertainty of supplies, character, 583 effects, 179–80 299, 301–2, 304–9, crimes, 642 by Legislative Assembly, 311–12 as deputy, 790 518 See also bread; famine; indictment, 797 popular reactions, 179 grain; subsistences insurrection plans, 614– process, 175–80 food prices 15n without compensation, increases, 1267, 1268–69, murders, 684, 714 1271, 1304–5, 1319–20 in Orleans, 660n, 691, 176 maximum set by 782 Feuillants populace, 296–97, Foussedoire, M., 1352 club, 618 298, 299, 308, 311 Francastel, M., 1193 deputies, 478, 503, 692, maximum set by state, France 1219 929, 1277–80, 1300– birth rates, 1267n suppression of, 506, 688, 1301, 1303, 1320 mortality rates, 1327– 745, 789 in Paris, 757, 1271, 29n withdrawal from Jacobin 1292–93, 1317–19 population, 165, 1329– clubs, 450, 488–89 riots over, 296, 299, 306 30n Feurs, 1093, 1094, 1129 food shortages See also French Fie`veé, M., 1371 in departments, 1280, government Figeac, 340, 403–4, 570 1281–84, 1305–15 Franche-Comte´, 64 Figon, M., 731 in Paris, 757, 1287–93 attacks on monasteries, Figuie`res, 572 before Revolution, 5–6 88 Filassier, M., 499 unrest related to, 26–27, attacks on nobles, 86– Finiste`re, 390, 475, 747, 310–11, 1313, 1315, 87, 92, 185 867 1319 convents, 195 Fiquelmont, M. de, 407 See also famine elections, 746 Flagose, chateau of, 693 Forbin-Janson, M. de, 23 federations, 254 Flanders, 1230 foreigners, 28, 101, 138–41 insurrections, 216 Flers, General de, 386 forests, 27, 82, 325–28 monasteries, 88, 203 Flesselles, M. de, 53 Forges, 301n opposition to Jacobins, Fleuriot-Lescot, M., 896, Formey, M., 1115 1230 1118 Fort Louis, 399 property destroyed, 91– Fonfre`de, M., 817, 885 Fosse´s, M. des, 716 92 Fontaine, Pierre, 488n Fouche´, Joseph refusal to pay taxes, 93 Fontainebleau, 6, 328, 330 Bare`re and, 1062 support of nonjuring Fontanes, M., 1371 career, 442 priests, 213 Index / 1425

François (baker), 279 Friends of a Monarchical Gilliers, M. de, 351, 352 Frederick II, Emperor, 972, Constitution, 479–80 Giot, M., 1353, 1376 974 Friends of the Constitu- Girardin, M., 503, 616 Fre´jus, 1161 tion, 458–60 Girondists French government See also Jacobins in Convention, 750–55 bankruptcies, 202, 1198 Friends of the French Danton and, 664, 1005 chaos, 261–62 Constitution, 488–89 in departments, 865–70 collapse of central Froment, M., 291, 348–49 destruction of party, authority, 271, 305, 885–90 310–11, 515–16 Gachez, M., 1137–38, 1141– efforts to end disorder, collapse of royal, 62–65, 42 752–53 68, 82–83, 95, 262–63 Galaisie`re, M. de la, 38 executions, 889, 1055–57 expenses, 160, 202, 319, Gallou, M., 1164 imprisonment of 1262 Gambron, M., 1112 seventy-three, 887– Jacobin control, 833–35 Ganney, M., 896 88, 1037 intolerance of religion, public debt, 1263 Garantot, M. de, 73 Garat, M., 442, 764, 797, 758 revenue decline, 81, 318, involvement in violence, 319–22, 380, 494, 1261 1021, 1022 Gard, 395, 399, 404, 482, 584–85 strength, 467–68 572, 725, 863 leaders, 504 use of resources, 160 Gardien, M., 886 members, 873 weakness, 466–67, 842– Gardonnenque, 288 military power provided 43 Gasparin, M., 1166 to Jacobins, 604–8 See also administration; Gaston, M., 1079 moderation, 754–55 Assemblies; constitu- Gaudin, M., 1205 opposition to Commune, tion; ministers; revo- Gauthier, M., 718–19, 781 754 lutionary government; gendarmerie opposition to Jacobins, taxes conflicts with Jacobins, 755–56, 777 French Guards, 35, 40, 43– 570–71 political beliefs, 751, 752 44, 46, 50, 51, 103, elections, 226, 738 public view of, 757 110, 114 Henriot’s command of, reluctance to execute French language, 231 1109 King, 754 French Revolution Jacobins, 1165 resignations, 826 beginning of, 45–53 weakness, 343 Robespierre and, 1021– causes, xx–xxi, 3–7, 8– Geneva, 295 22, 1023, 1027, 1028– 11, 35–36 Gensonne´, M. 29 effects, xx in Convention, 828 similarities to inevitability, xxvii–xxviii decree of accusation, 886 Montagnards, xxiv leaders, 105–8 as deputy, 504, 750, 826 speeches, 428 property transferred, Robespierre and, 1021– support of war, 526, 344–45 22, 1023 539–41 supporters, 866–67 French spirit, xvi–xvii, view of war, 528–29 gentry, 137, 172, 179–80 threats against, 814 xviii–xx See also nobles trials, 888 Fre´ron, Louis, 691, 1002 Geoffroy, M., 895 Twelve, 828–29 in Convention, 687 Ge´ray, M., 659 Twenty-Two, 808–10, crimes, 1340 Ge´ret, M., 1077 811, 826, 827, 828–29, journals, 156, 428, 442, German Legion, 1175–76 887, 888 453, 454 Germany, 524, 529, 1392 view of King, 599, 601–4 language used, 436 See also Prussia weakening power, 614, at Marseilles, 881 Gers, 270, 399, 1295 792, 793, 795–96, as representative on Geslin, sieur,15 826–29, 865 mission, 1069, 1094 Gex, 295 Gisors, 714 speeches, 415 Gibbon, M., 1171–72 Gobel, bishop, 439 at Toulon, 883 Gidouin, M., 1353, 1376 Gohier, M., 1400 Fre´teau, M., 145, 384 Gilibert, M., 746 Gonchon, M., 766 1426 / INDEX

Gonesse, 306 Grenoble Guyanna, transportation to, Gonor, M., 583 elections, 447 1373–75, 1380 Gordes, 556 food shortages, 1282 Guyardin, 1243 Gorguereau, M., 503 Jacobins, 1135, 1136 Guyot, M., 78 Gorsas, M., 790, 824, 886, National Guard, 91 889 opposition to Jacobins, Haiti, 378 Gouchon, M., 443, 638 863–64 Ham, 80, 316 Goujon, M., 1336, 1340 political clubs, 481–82 Harcourt, 295 Goullin, M., 1173, 1174 revolutionary army in, Hassenfratz, M., 667 Gouls, 556 1166, 1170 Haute-Garonne, 399, 400– Gourdon, 338–39 revolutionary 401, 1295 Gourdon, chateau of, 403 government, 1134, Haute-Marne, 305 Gouy d’Arcy, M. de, 717– 1137 Hazard, M., 1075 18 unrest before He´bert, Jacques-Rene´, 645, government Revolution, 29 833, 1002 limited powers, 846–47 Grimoard, M. de, 1205 arrest, 811, 816, 818, need for, 60–61 Grosbois, chateau of, 359 1103, 1226 parliamentary, 153, 162 Guadet, Marguerite Elie career, 443 powers, 217–18 arrest, 831 crimes, 642 separation of powers, charges against King, journal, 814, 823, 831 219–20 602 Paris Commune, 667, See also constitutions; death, 889 668, 781 French government; decree of condemnation, revolutionary army and, popular sovereignty 886 1166 Goyon, M. de, 331 denunciation of, 810 Robespierre on, 1023, grain as deputy, 504, 750, 826, 1027 American, 1300 828 September massacres, convoys stopped, 14, on ministers, 601 670 271, 295, 299, 304–5 markets, 1268, 1269 as National Guard trial of Girondists, 888 prices, 296, 298, 304, oﬃcer, 588 He´bray, M., 338–39 305–7, 308 regency proposed by, Heiligenberg, 1228 robberies of, 26–27, 713 612 Henriot, M., 645 shortages, 14, 15, 67–68, Robespierre on, 1023 aides, 772 308 speeches, 498 arrests of notables, state control, 1295–97 trial, 888 1225–26 trade halted, 296, 298, Guebwiller, 87–88 career, 443, 642 304, 309–10 Gue´rard, M., 637–38 command of See also bread; food Guﬀroy, M., 784, 1024, gendarmerie, 1109 Grammont, M., 1075 1053, 1194, 1281 command of military, Granchier de Riom, M., Guiche, Duchess de, 57 821, 822, 823, 824–25, 371n Guillin, Madame, 362–63, 833, 1108 Grandmaison, M., 1164, 364, 388 command of National 1173 Guillin-Dumoutet, M. de, Guard, 765 Granet, M., 272, 273 362–64, 487 crimes, 642 Grangeneuve, M., 508, 826, guillotines, 648, 854, 1095 demotion, 1115–17 886, 889 See also executions; expenses, 1111–12 Granier, M., 629 Terror festival of Supreme Granville, 12, 98–99n Guimberteau, M., 1088 Being, 1031 Grapin, M., 674 Guinaumont, M. de, 358– Girondists and, 826, 827 Grasse, chateau of, 693 59n insurrection plans, 814 Gre´goire, Abbe´, 123, 442, Guingamp, 331 Paris Commune, 667, 460, 469, 478n, 1044n, Guiramand, M. de, 282–83, 668 1338 285 speech to prostitutes, grenadiers of the Filles St. Guiter, M., 1079 770 Thomas, 607–8, 628 guns. See arms Henry IV, King, 716 Index / 1427

He´rault, 395, 399, 572, 745, interests of, 963–65 popularity of Robes- 1379 isolation in democracy, pierre, 1017, 1018 He´rault-Sećhelles, Marie xxviii relations among, 453, Jean liberty, 963–65, 969–70 572 career, 439 rebellion against relationship with on constitution, 845 authority, 277–81 National Assembly, in Convention, 817, 827, relationship to State, 458, 460–61 1038n, 1055 165–66, 197–98, 200– tyranny, 457 execution, 1037, 1055, 201, 433, 958–60, withdrawal of 1240 964–65, 970–71 moderates, 450 as president of Assem- See also society, Jacobins bly, 619n, 858 relationship to acceptance by French, view of war, 528 individuals 871–73 He´ricy, M. d’, 367, 368 Indre, 271, 1284 arrests, 1339–40 Herman, M., 1034 inequality, social class origins, 439–41, Hermann, M., 895 elimination of, 919–26 443–44 Heron, M., 614–15n See also equality; conquest of country, Hersaint, M. de, 1249 poverty; rich 566–73, 833–35 Hervilly, M. d’, 268, 629 Infantado, Duchesse de l’, control of elections, 457, Hesse, Charles de, 439 101 765 He´zine, M., 1353, 1376 Ingrand, M., 1064 control of Paris, 637–39, Hoche, M., 1367, 1388 inheritance law, 182–83, 647–52 Holland, 1392 925–26, 935 Convention deputies, honor, 951–55, 961 Invalides, 44, 49 748, 780, 783–86 hospitals, 194, 200, 903 Irish college, 513 crimes of leaders, 641– 42, 702–3, 782–83, hostages, law of, 1383–84 Ise`re, 18, 726 843, 1364–65 Houdainville, 718–19 Isnard, M. despotism, 419, 877, Hourier-Eloi, M., 1331 as deputy, 750, 826, 990 974–76, 977–78 Hua, M., 509, 510–11, 637– on ministers, 601 destruction of enemies, 38 as president of 1182, 1225, 1234, 1248 Huchet, General, 1051n Convention, 816 education, 441n, 444 Huez, M., 77 on priests, 519 electoral victories, 474– Huguenin, M., 584, 588–89, on rich, 532 76, 491, 700, 741–43 621, 642, 667, 691, speeches, 435n, 498, executions of, 1037, 1000 504n, 520–21, 577 1340, 1352 Hugues, M., 1095 view of war, 528 factions, 1401–2 Huguet, M., 1357 Isore´, M., 905 funding, 463–64 Hulin, M., 51 Issoudun, 314–15 goals, 541, 909–12, 974 Humie`res, M. d’, 400 Issy, 28 inconsistency of actions Huningue, M., 1282 Issy-l’Eveˆque, 263–64 and beliefs, 844–45 hunting, 82–83 Italy, 1389, 1391, 1392–93 influence, 460–61 hunting associations, 395– insurrection plans, 614– 96 Jacobin clubs 15, 814–17 Hure´, M., 500–501 activities, 457–58 intellectual method, Hye`res, 24 delegates sent to other 428–31, 441–43 cities and towns, 1131, lack of education, 645n, Ile-Adam, 27 1132–33 1117, 1139, 1140, 1246 Ile-de-France, 12, 68, 1306 increasing number, 449, language used, 436–37 Ile-et-Vilaine, 399, 867 450–51 leaders, 639–43, 651, Imbert-Colome`s, M., 1360 meetings, 451–52, 491 766, 774, 894, 976, individuals members, 645–46, 672, 978 independence, 429 767–69 in Legislative Assembly, indirect interests, 965–68 in Paris, 414n, 452–53, 504–6 interest in events, 278, 788, 1100–1103, 1108, means justified by ends, 761–65, 809 1110, 1246, 1400–1401 438, 471 1428 / INDEX

Jacobins (continued) weakness in depart- journals in military, 381–82 ments, 1124–30, 1133– conservative, 742 military power, 604–8 36 Jacobin, 428, 451, 480, murders of opponents, weeding out, 1102–5, 661 694–95 1135 revolutionary, 104, 105 in National Assembly, See also Girondists; suppression of, 742, 824, 150, 474, 477–78 Montagnards; revolu- 1371–72 nobles, 439–40 tionary government Jouy, 26 number of, 464–66, 765– jacqueries, 83–94, 329–44, Juchereau, M., 715 66 358–64, 409, 491, judges, 737 opponents, 458, 479–82, 693–94, 696n, 1182 elected, 236, 241 488–89, 503–4, 531– Jacobin direction, 571 executions, 1250–51 36, 597–98, 647–50, Jacobin view of, 417, nobles, 1201, 1203 692, 806 920 nomination of, 222 organization, 426 against nonjuring priests Juillenas, chateau of, 353 political doctrines, 430– and Catholics, 395– Julien, Jean, 651–52 31, 432–35, 452, 468– 96, 398–403 Julien de la Droˆme, 442, 72 around Paris, 514–15 1067, 1084 political environment, participants, 702 Julien de Toulouse, 1055 422 before Revolution, 22 Jura, 390, 475, 863 political involvement, in towns, 364–69 448–49 Jagot, M., 1053 Kaunitz (prime minister of popular sovereignty Jaille, M. de la, 520, 606 Austria), 525 doctrine, 414–17, 418– Jalais, 404–5 Kellermann, M., 380 19, 426–27, 430, 433– Jale`s, 288, 349 Kersaint, M., 889 34, 580, 691–92, 846 Jansenists, 204, 207 Kerve´legan, M., 791, 886 power, 608–11, 614, Jarente, M. de, 212 686–88, 773–77, 800, Jassaud, M., 730, 731, 878 King 829–34, 843–44, 850 Jaucourt, M., 503, 692 constitutional powers, on press freedom, 453– Javogues, M., 1099, 1357 218–23, 225, 248–49 57 in Convention, 784 relationship with principles of, xxv–xxvii denunciation of, 1338 Assembly, 218–21, psychology, 426 on honesty, 1248 222, 249 returns to power, 1349– as representative on veto power, 219, 575 52, 1354–55, 1375–77 mission, 1069, 1070, war powers, 220n, 222 rise of, 413, 421–26, 444, 1089, 1093, 1094, See also individual kings 449–51 1133, 1155, 1166 King’s Guards, 121 self-importance, 419, Jeﬀerson, Thomas, 139, 431, 432, 434, 435–38, 141, 244n La Bellie`re, 337 505–6 Jemmapes, 1379 labor. See workers sent to departments, Jesuits, 190 Lacaille, M., 637 1130–31, 1134–35 Jews, 87, 210, 918 Laclos, M., 463–64 supporters, 975–76 Joly, M., 1073, 1164, 1173 Lacombe, M., 1151 tolerance of violence, Jordan, Camille, 1362 Lacombe, Rose, 443, 770, 417–18, 647–50 Joubert, M., 1403 861 unrealistic ideas, 427–28 Jourdain, M., 74–75, 443, Lacoste, 556 view of jacqueries, 417 522 Lacoste, M., 1079 view of King, 455, 574, Jourdan, M., 560, 562, 564, Lacretelle, M., 508, 1371 577–78 565–66, 744, 1401, Lacroix, M., 666, 816, 860, view of Revolution, 1403 1037, 1055 775–76 “Journal des Amis de la Lafayette, Marquis de view of war, 526–27, Constitution,” 428 acquittal, 615 528–31, 541 journalists aides, 613 violence incited by, 417, arrested, 657, 659, 824, assassination attempt, 462, 476–77, 480, 566, 1371–72 625n 788–91 killed, 457, 619 command of National Index / 1429

Guard, 54, 103n, 119– food supplies, 66, 294 895, 1070, 1080–83, 20, 121 harsh winter, 4 1093–94, 1095, 1338 criticism of, 989, 990 jacqueries, 332, 333, Lebrun, M., 666, 822, 823, Jacobins and, 418, 579, 339–40 828–29, 889, 1022 597–98, 637n, 648 religious conflicts, 288– Lecarlier, M., 1095 Jefferson and, 139 89 Lecarpentier, M., 1070, military command, 692 unrest, 12, 13, 14 1093, 1338 mobs and, 55, 56, 57 Languedoc canal, 295 Leclerc, M., 588, 833 name, 180 Lanjuinais, M., 750, 827, Lecointe-Puyraiveaux, M., opponents, 599 886, 1355 508 protection of royal Lannion, 295 Lecointre, M., 506, 1033 family, 121, 122 Laon, 300, 301, 304, 309, Lećuyer, M., 559, 562–63 supporters, 509, 511, 1307 Lefe`vre, M. de, 53 604, 657, 757, 1219 Laplace, M., 984, 989 Lefiot, M., 1338 war, 406 Laplanche, M., 1338 Legendre, M., 1340 Laferte´, 1310 Laporte, M., 1094 career, 443 La Fle`che, 85 La Reóle, 1147 command of National Lafond-Lade´bat, M., 511n, Larevellie`re-Lepaux, M., Guard, 582–83 1374 1331, 1349, 1361, 1386, in Convention, 687, 784, Laforet, M., 814 1387, 1400 812, 827, 1039, 1040 Lagny, 1310 La Rivie`re, 337 insurrection plans, 816 Lagrange, M., 1004–5n Larivie`re, M., 498, 509, on priests, 519n Laharpe, M., 459 886, 1355 at Tuileries, 592, 593 La Harpe, M., 1371 La Rochelle, 1314 Legislative Assembly Laignelot, M., 1093–94, La Rochette, chateau of, constitutional rela- 1357 403 tionship with King, Lakanal, M., 442 Larramet, 327 218–21, 222, 249 Laleu, General, 681 Lartigue-Langa, M., 709 declaration of war, 526, Lally-Tollendal, M., 92, Lasalle, M. de, 1076–77 124, 134 La Seyne, 22 529–30 Lamarque, M., 520, 522 Lasource, M., 498, 601, decrees, 200, 519 Lamballe, 331 817, 886 emigration and, 188 Lamballe, Madame de, 680, La Souterraine, 340 galleries, 502, 507–8, 681, 771 Lasserre, 402 510, 589–90, 603, 617 Lamballe, Princesse de, 657 Latierce, M., 336 influence of Contrat- Lambert, M., 318n Launay, M. de, 52–53, 54, Social,42 Lambesc, Prince de, 45, 378 Jacobin dominance, 517 53, 57 Laure`de, M., 489 Jacobin tactics, 509–11 Lambrechts, M., 1378 Laurette, MM., 461 King’s arrival, 627–28 Lameth, Count Theodore Lauthenas, M., 826 measures against de, 997n Lauzerte, 403 emigrants, 387, 388, Lameth, M. de, 333, 384 Lavalette, M. de, 536–37n 517–18, 575 Lameth, MM., 154, 461n, Lavicomterie, M., 895 measures against 478, 692 Lavicourterie, M., 687 nonjuring priests, 392, Lamoignon, M. de, 30, Lavoisier, Antoine, 657, 518–19, 575 1250–51 984, 989, 1251 nobles released, 368 Landes, 399 law of Prairial 22, 1033–34, Paris Commune and, Langeron, M. de, 75 1040, 1045, 1194 658–60, 666 Langoirac, M. de, 710 lawyers, 103, 104, 137, 232, parties, 503–4 Langres, Bishop of, 111, 242 persecution of nonjuring 124 Lazowski, M., 583, 614– priests, 215 Languedoc 15n, 625, 642, 645, power, 574–75 attacks on nobles, 92 684, 782, 797 relations with Louis economic conditions, Lebas, M., 784, 895, 1067, XVI, 525–26, 574–75, 66–67 1079 577–78, 599–600, 602, federations, 254 Lebon, Joseph, 442, 784, 627–28 1430/ I NDEX

Legislative Assembly Lidon, M., 886, 889 executions ordered by, (continued) Lieutaud, M., 544, 546 912n relations with ministers, Lille, 268, 305, 316, 514, expectations of, 124 575–77, 601 1135, 1166, 1313 festival of Federation, sessions, 500–503, 506–8 Limoges, 271, 447, 710–11, 257 speeches, 397, 497–99 851, 863 feˆte,97 subject to mob rule, 619, Limours, 306, 308 flight to Varennes, 358, 631–34 Limousin, 187, 332, 333, 436, 484, 485 view of rents, 182 336 guards, 623–24, 626 vote for dethronement Limoux, 20 held in Luxembourg of King, 602–4, 612, Linard, Joseph, 339 Palace, 631–32 614 Lindet, Robert, 875–76, household expenses, 202 Legislative Assembly 894, 1048–49, 1051n, lack of respect for, 515, deputies, 492–96 1298, 1400 574 of center, 503–4, 506–11, Linguet, M., 38 laws vetoed by, 575 617–18, 619, 741–42 Lisieux, M., 691 letters to emigrants, 525 class origins, 442 Listenay, Madame de, 92 loyalty of officers, 384 elected to Convention, Livarot, commander, 268 opponents, 585 748 local governments. See pacific intentions, 578 Jacobins, 504–6, 508 municipal govern- public support, 534–35 of Left, 506, 590 ments reaction to taking of of Right, 503, 535, 590, Loire-et-Cher, 310–11 Bastille, 3, 54, 57 603, 617–18, 619 Loire-Infe´rieure, 475, 747 reforms proposed, 42, violence against, 509, Loire river, 296, 1318 160 590, 615–17 Loiret, 711–12 regency proposed to, Legrand, M., 48 Lombardy, 1391, 1392 612 Lemaille, M., 730, 731, 878 Lons-le-Saulnier, 863 relations with Assembly, Le Mans, 85–86, 1192 Lorient, 279, 863 223 Lemoal, M., 1149–50 Lemoine, M., 1164 Lorraine, 5, 28, 81 relations with Jacobins, Leoben, treaty of, 1386 Lory, M. de, 711 600, 601–4 Leopold, emperor, 524, Lostanges, Madame de, relations with 525, 529, 758n 404n Legislative Assembly, Lepelletier, M., 888 Lot, 214, 399, 403, 1282 525–26, 574–75, 577– Lequinio, M., 1093–94, 1338 Louchet, M., 442 78, 599–600, 602, Le´rat, M., 32 Louison, Madeleine 627–28 Leroux, M., 626 Chabry, 115 requests for aid from Leroy-Dix-Aout, 896, 944 Louis-Philippe, King, 663n Europe, 525 Lesage, M., 886 Louis XIV, King, 7, 187– responses to unrest, 25 Lessart, M. de, 684 88, 972, 974 rumors about, 626 Letourneur, M., 1349, 1378 Louis XV, King, 7 servants, 31, 678 Levaillant, M., 368 Louis XVI, King States-General convoked Levasseur, M., 442, 784, acceptance of by, 10, 19, 30 822, 886, 1338 constitution, 535, 593 supporters, 597 Lhuillier, M., 667, 765, acceptance of Declara- support of nonjuring 806, 856 tion of Rights, 117 priests, 392 liberty arrest, 626–27, 628n, 832 threats against, 613 in England, xv–xvi brought from Versailles trial, 748, 754, 791 individual, 963–65 to Paris, 112, 122–23 troops in Marseilles, 272, Jacobin view, 432–33 caution, 539 274–75 pamphlets on, 37 as constitutional Tuileries invaded by protection of, 964–65, monarch, 162 people, 591–95 969–70 death sentence, 791, 793, at Versailles, 82, 120–21 in social contract, 176 797 vote for dethronement, See also press freedom; declaration of war, 526 602–4 religious freedom execution, 759, 919–20 weaknesses, 124 Index / 1431

Louis XVII (Dauphin), elections, 746 representatives on 1249–50, 1383 executions, 882, 1094, mission, 1133 brought from Versailles 1190, 1192, 1193, 1381 Maˆconnais, 86, 92, 353–54 to Paris, 112, 122–23 federations, 254, 257 Maignet, M., 1065–66, education, 222, 599, 632, food shortages, 1281–82, 1069, 1071, 1185, 1250 1313 1296, 1338 festival of Federation, Jacobin clubs, 452–53, Maillard, Stanislas, 645, 257 457 687, 819 supporters, 1341, 1360, Jacobins, 449, 691n, 703, arrest, 1103 1403 723–24, 809n, 813n, assault on Tuileries, 625 in Tuileries, 591 1131, 1134 commissioners and, 853 Loustalot, M., 96, 105, 106, jacqueries, 360, 746 crimes, 642 111, 113, 415, 428, 436 Maratists, 1156–57 march to Versailles, 116 Louvain, M., 790 merchants, 1275–76 men of, 771–72, 853 Louvel, M., 789 mob rule, 312–13 section observers, 1113 Louvet, M., 442, 505n, 750, municipal oﬃcers, 266 September massacres, 793, 886, 1354 National Guard, 91, 879 670, 674, 781 Louviers, 12, 67, 1306 nonjuring priests, 720 Maille´, M. de, 1191 lower class opposition to Jacobins, Maine, 14, 85 emigrants, 1231 863, 869–70, 1230 Maine-et-Loire, 747 Jacobins, 440, 767–69, opposition to taxes, 18– Mainvielle, MM., 522, 559, 770–71 19, 316 562, 563, 564, 565, 886 in Paris, 516 persecution of Catholics Malesherbes, M. de, 1250– prosecution of, 1231–32 and nonjuring priests, 51 view of rights, 9–10, 214, 394–95 Malestroit, 337 20–21, 30, 245–47, priests, 1380 Mallet-Dupan, M., 124, 341 128–29, 141, 388, 433, See also peasants; prison massacre, 723–24 455–57, 513, 538, 835, workers representatives on Loys, M., 552 mission, 1068–69, 1324, 1361 Loze`re 1086, 1087, 1092, 1094 Malouet, M., 41, 42, 57, Catholics, 390, 475 revolt against Jacobins, 123, 137, 141, 152, deputies, 747 766, 834, 878, 879, 262, 433, 464, 479, elected oﬃcials, 476 882–83, 884 480, 496, 685, 990, food shortages, 1284 revolutionary army in, 1361 insurrection, 873, 877 1166, 1172–73 Malta, 1389 nonjuring priests, 212 revolutionary govern- Mamers, 85 Loze`re, Pelet de la, 1355 ment, 1075, 1190 Mandart, M., 454 Lubin, Jr., 1119 rich residents, 1243–44 Mandat, M. de, 622–23 Lubin, M., 1119–20 support of Republic, Mandrin, M., 998 Luc, 21 873–75 manners, 753, 1246–47 Lucenay, 361 taxes, 804n Manosque, 22 Luckner, General, 256, threat of invasion, 876 Mantes, 100 269, 384 Lys, 1379 Manuel, M. Lunel, 401n career, 442 Lure, abbey of, 90 Macdonald, M., 1403 character, 639–40 Lure, chateau of, 87 Maˆcon in Convention, 687 Luxembourg Palace, 631– elections, 851, 852 criticism of, 597 32 Jacobins, 1133, 1359 death, 889 Luxeuil, 88, 89, 90 jacqueries, 357–58 leadership, 584–85 Lydon, M., 817 municipal government, as syndic-attorney, 474, Lyonnais, 254, 294, 487 270 600, 622n, 659, 667, Lyons, 357 National Guard, 355, 668 acceptance of constitu- 357, 358 Marat, Jean-Paul, 981–94 tion, 849–50 opposition to Jacobins, arrests of deputies, 667 buildings destroyed, 884 863 assassination, 888 1432 / INDEX

Marat, Jean-Paul (cont.) festival of Federation, rich residents, 1243–44 character, xxiv–xxv, 105, 257 support of Republic, 106, 437, 442, 981–83, impressions of, 594n 873, 874–75 984, 985–90 lack of respect for, 577 taxes, 21 as Commune editor, 662 rumors about, 70 Martigne, 1169 comparison to Robes- threats against, 119 Martin (mayor of pierre, 1019–22, in Tuileries, 591 Marseilles), 271 1024–26, 1027–28, at Versailles, 121 Martin (notary), 335 1030 marriages Massigny, 354 in Convention, 687, 784, Jacobin view of, 908 Massy, M. de, 374–75 828 laws, 499 Maubeuge, 73–74 Danton and, 1000, 1002 property rights, 935 Maure, M., 1340 denunciation of See also divorce laws Maury, Abbe´, 38, 40, 53, government, 107–8 Marseilles 119, 123, 151, 508 enemies, 750, 787 armed forces in Paris, maximum, 929, 1277–80, family, 982 607–8, 633, 688 1300–1301, 1303, 1320 followers, 766, 810 Brutus Commission, Mayenne, 399, 867 goals, 1163 1191–92 maypoles, 333, 334–35, 338, government programme, conquest of department, 342 661 270, 547–49, 550–51, Mazie`res, M., 700 homicidal mania, 990–94 552–58 Mazuyer, M., 889 insurrection plans, 816– executions, 881 Meaux, 719, 720, 745–46, 17 food shortages, 1282 1309–10 journals, 156, 428, 451, guard, 25 Meillan, M., 817, 886 453–55, 490–91, 661– insurrections, 272 Meissner, M., 1325–26 62, 988 Jacobin clubs, 275, 449, Melun, 514 language used, 436 457, 1017 Memmay, M. de, 87 leadership, 506, 774 Jacobins, 487–88, 544– Mende, 347 opponents, 806 45, 547, 703, 735, Mende, M., 564, 565 in Paris Commune, 670 1131, 1133–34 Mennecy, 306 political beliefs, 991–94 jacqueries, 404, 513 Menon, General, 1347 power, 643, 830, 833 merchants, 1275–76 merchants relics, 938 military forces in, 284, grain, 294–95 scientiﬁc work, 983–85, 378 seen as enemy of people, 987–88 military opposed by 1229, 1232, 1235 September massacres, municipality, 272, suppression of, 1275–76 671 273–77 suspicions of, 931 speeches, 113, 415 supporters, 583, 668 municipal government, See also bourgeoisie; tolerance of mob 271–77, 545–47, 550, commerce violence, 417–18 1161 Me´ricourt, The´roigne de, trial, 805 municipal oﬃcers, 266 110, 115, 118, 443, violence incited by, 790, murders, 727 625, 1002 1259 National Guard, 272, Merlin, M., 176, 506 writings, 982–85 273–75, 276–77, 284, Mesdames (aunts of Louis Maratists, 1156–57, 1174 285, 348, 544, 555–58 XVI), 229, 269 Marcelin, M., 1324 opposition to Jacobins, Metayrie, Mesdemoiselles Marck, Comte de la, 112, 834, 863–64, 880–81, de la, 1096 124 885n, 1133–34, 1230 Metz, 63, 210, 269, 407, Marcus Aurelius, xxviii people of, 543n 1072–74, 1131 Marescot, M., 1205 politics, 544–47 Meudon, 26 Marie-Antoinette, Queen representatives on Meunier, General, 1080 acceptance of constitu- mission, 1093 Meurthe, Boulay de la, tion, 535n revolutionary army in, 1373, 1380, 1403 brought from Versailles 1166, 1169 Meuse-Infe´rieure, 1379 to Paris, 112, 122–23 revolutionary tribunal, Me´zie`res, 715 execution, 1047n 1093 Me´zie`res, M., 615–16 Index / 1433

Michaud, M., 1093, 1371 deaths, 268, 378, 488 in Constituent Migron, 335–36 election of, 226–27, 706 Assembly, 129, 130, Milhaud, M., 1079, 1236, emigration, 187 133 1243 executions, 726, 1238 on danger to royal military merits, 184, 375–78, family, 124 army disbanded, 604 1201, 1208–9 Marat on, 992 attempts to suppress nobles, 375–78, 384–85, on marriage of priests, riots, 34–35 386, 1050, 1201, 1203, 210n commanders, 692, 1079– 1207–9 name, 180 80, 1407 persecution of, 184, 520, on property, 903n conflicts with Jacobins, 724 support of veto, 112 570–71 professional, 835 Mirabeau, Marquis de, 373 of conquered territories, public distrust, 378 Mirabeau, Vicomte de, 1390, 1393–94 reluctance to use force, 151–52, 372 conscription, 704, 802, 1201 Miran, M. de, 274, 276 806, 906, 1383 soldiers’ attitudes Mire, Comtesse de la, 330 courts, 1371 toward, 380, 381, Mirecourt, 514 defense function, 968 383–84, 385–86, 706 Molans, chateau of, 87 deserters, 102–3, 115, suspicions of, 383–84 Mole´, M., 96 379, 521 Milton, John, 58–59 Molie`re, 1031 disobedience in, 43–44 Minister of Finance, 225 Mollevault, M., 886 expedition to Vendeé, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Molleville, Bertrand de, 802–3, 806, 824–25, 526, 576n 535n 864, 1141 Minister of Interior, 155, Momoro, M., 667, 671, financial problems, 380 225 691, 1103 food for, 380, 1271, Minister of Justice, 225, monarchists 1300, 1388 618, 633, 662, 684, attacks on, 607–8 hostility to, 39, 306 691 clubs, 282–84, 479–80 insurrections, 379–83, Minister of War, 381, 382, in Councils, 1360, 1362 384 738, 739n, 782, 790, deputies, 1219 Jacobins in, 381–82 797 enemies, 789 King and, 221, 222 ministers fear, 484 relations with National arrests, 633, 823, 828–29 insurrections, 747 Guard, 377–78 Jacobins, 577 in Nismes, 290–91 representatives on nomination of, 218–19, number of, 534–35 mission and, 1078–80 222–23 proposals, 1361 revolutionary tribunal, powerlessness, 270–71 See also Vendeé, 1079 powers, 225 insurrection rumors about, 612–14 relationship with monarchy social adhesion, 1406–7 Assembly, 154, 157– abolition of, 469, 748 soldiers, 378–79 58, 220, 575–77, 601 See also King subject to municipal in revolutionary monasteries authorities, 267–69, government, 1113–15 abuses in ancient 377 in Tuileries, 594 re´gime, 188–89 supporters of Revolu- See also administration destruction of, 87–88, tion, 44, 46, 50 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 92, 332, 340 volunteers, 636–37, 703– 1114n, 1206 poverty, 203 8, 759, 824–25, 835– Mint band, 551–52, 553, 554 property of, 195–97, 289 37 Miot de Melito, Andre´- reforms, 190–91 See also National Guard; François, 1114–15, robberies from, 15, 16, revolutionary army; 1206 97 and specific units Mirabeau, Comte de, 117 virtues, 192 military officers on associations, 198 Monbazon, 323 attacks on, 375 character, 995 Monestier, M., 1076–77, conduct during Revo- Committee on Mines, 1093, 1094, 1155, 1338, lution, 1208 141 1352 1434 / INDEX

Monet, M., 442 Montluçon, 299 in ancient re´gime, 1215– Monge, M., 666, 984, 989 Montmartre, Abbey of, 97 16, 1220 Monneuse, M., 670 Montmeyan, M. de, 24 attitudes of citizens, monopolists, 929, 931–32, Montmorency, Madame de, 277–81 1226, 1260, 1278 97 authority, 233–34, 249, Montagnards Montmorency, M. de, 180 263, 269–71 actions against Montmorin, Luce de, 649 citizen involvement, insurrection, 875–79 Montpellier 444–48 arrests, 896, 1339–40 elections, 489–90 collapse of, 79–80 conflict with Girondists, emigration from, 490 corruption, 1160 826–29, 873, 886 hunting associations, 395 dismissed by Directory, in Convention, 816–17, Jacobin club, 449, 489– 1370–71 1039 90 efforts to ensure food executions, 1300, 1336– military forces in, 268 supplies, 294–97, 311 37 National Guard, 293, elected officials, 65–66, similarities to 489 226, 233–34, 235, 241, Girondists, xxiv nuns, 215 335 speeches, 428 opposition to Jacobins, elections, 236–37, 446, trials, 1338, 1346 863, 864 473 victory, 829 persecution of nonjuring extortion of rich, 1148– violence in Convention, priests, 215, 216 52, 1164 786, 827 Montperreux, M. de, 181 interpretations of laws, Montalembert, M. de, 1050, Montreuil-sur-Mer, 305, 232 1205 1308 Jacobin control of, 897– Montargis, 327, 330, 1237– Montrieux, convent of, 693 98 39 Montrosier, M. de, 719 Jacobin dictatorships, Montaroux, chateau of, 693 Moore (Englishman), 635– 690 Montauban, 210, 289–90, 36 mob control of, 73–74, 332, 333 Moraneé, 360–61 Montausier, Marquise de, Morbihan, 390, 475, 747 79, 95–96, 98–99 259 Moreau, M., 1403 nobles excluded from, Montbarrey, Prince de, 54 Morellet, Abbe´, 1119–20, 230 Montbrion, M., 729n 1211 officials, 264–66 Montbrison, 296, 330, 851, Morris, Gouverneur, 130– powerlessness, 284–85, 1089, 1146, 1155, 1166 31, 132–33, 138, 139, 298, 300–301, 302–3, Montchorel, M. de, 351 140–41, 143–44, 145, 305, 306–7 Montculot, chateau of, 359 1361 powers, 227–29 Montcuq, 340 Mortagne, 484–86 property confiscated, 229 Montdoubleau, 311 Mortain, 12 refusal to collect taxes, Montdragon, 14 mortality, increased, 1327– 79 Monte´limart, 254, 726 29n replacement of ancient Montereau, 5–6 Moselle, 399 re´gime, 263–66 Montesquieu, Baron de, Mouchet, M., 591 revolutionary, 1063–66, 1200, 1219 Mouet, M., 1159 1098–1102, 1126–27, Montesquiou, General de, Moulins, 1166 1137–38 386, 1022 Moulins, General, 1084 revolutionary Montesson, M. de, 85, 86 Moulins, M., 1400 committees, 898 Montferrat, M. de, 22 Mounier, M., 111, 117, 118, taxes, 21, 228, 230, 231, Montignac, 341 123, 124, 141, 146, 323–24 Montigny, 269 173, 433, 459, 1361 threats against officers, Montjustin, Baron de, 92 Mountain. See Montagnards 715 Montjustin, Comte de, 92 Mucidan, 341 tolerance of mob Montlhe´ry, 12, 26–27, 306– municipal governments violence, 343 7, 308, 309 activities of officials, unqualified officials, Montlosier, M. de, 129, 229–30 230–32 372–73, 508 administrators, 232–33 violence against, 281–82 Index / 1435 municipalities National Assembly majority, 477–78 markets, 1269 abolition of titles, 180– of Right, 151–52, 479 National Guards, 70–71, 81 threats against, 123–24, 221, 230, 234 attempts to stop 151–53 property, 328–29, 522 property destruction, National Guard of Paris Murat, M. de, 88 93 in Assembly, 589 Murbach, abbey of, 87–88 brought from Versailles attempts to suppress to Paris, 122–23 riots, 97 name changes, 943–44 civil constitution of celebration of tax Nancy, 382, 417, 1315 clergy, 204–6 abolition, 319 Nangis, 6, 26 Declaration of Rights, Commune and, 622 Nantes 243–44 Convention and, 824–25 drownings, 1192 decrees on forests, 326 insurrection, 587, 588 economy, 1265 dominated by mob, 57– Jacobins, 764, 781–82 executions, 1190, 1192 58 King and, 515, 623–24, food supplies, 295, 1314 duties abolished, 80 626 jacqueries, 331 Ecclesiastical leaders, 582–84, 622 merchants, 1276 Committee, 193 murders prevented, 57 military forces in, 268 establishment, 41, 146 mutiny, 119–20 municipal officers, 266 food supplies, 309, 310 nobles, 605 National Guard, 864 galleries, 149–51, 152, officers, 781 opposition to Jacobins, 608, 651 parades, 650 863, 864, 1070 infringements of popular power, 581–82 prisons, 1185, 1186, 1188 sovereignty, 415–16 relations with Jacobins, representatives on leaders, 109 579 mission, 1069, 1076, legislation, 157 National Guards 1083–85, 1088, 1246 limitations, 154–55 actions against nonjuring military orders, 269, revolutionary army in, priests, 393 270, 274, 384 1166 opposition to, 283 arms, 70–71, 184, 711 revolutionary commit- pressures on, 109–12, attempts to stop tee, 1163–65, 1173, 117, 149–53, 462n property destruction, 1338 relationship with Jacobin 93, 352 rich residents, 1243–44 clubs, 458, 460–61 efforts to ensure food rumors, 267 relations with ministers, supplies, 298, 308, 311 siege of, 401n, 877 154, 157–58, 220 election of officers, 77, unrest before reports on military, 381, 227, 233–34, 237, 474, Revolution, 13, 15, 18 382 737–38, 765 Nantes, François de, 497n, reports on property federations, 254–55 498, 520, 522 destruction, 91 financing, 230 Nantua, 295 responses to jacqueries, formation, 48 Naples, 1389, 1391 334 formation in towns and Napoleon Bonaparte single chamber, 173, 219 villages, 70, 236 Bare`re and, 1062 taxes, 315, 316, 317, 318– insurrections, 75–76 command of military, 19 Jacobins, 1165 1407 tithes and ground-rents, nobles in, 484–86 coup d’etat, 1388, 1403 330 nonjuring priests and, Dumas and, 1367 in Versailles, 116–18 408, 409 events witnessed by, weakness, 690–91 officers, 347, 484–86 590n, 624–25 National Assembly participation in rioters fired on, 1349 deputies jacqueries, 335, 337, rule of, xxviii, 427n, assaults on, 152 338, 339, 342, 360, 1407–9 clergy, 151 361, 362–63, 373–74, Narbonne, 295, 1236 emigration, 124 399–400, 404 Narbonne-Pelet, Comtesse Jacobins, 150, 474, 477– power, 235 de, 1249 78 priests killed, 710 1436 / INDEX

National Guards (cont.) municipal officers, 232 in 1789, 1199–1201 protection of aristocrats, opposition to Jacobins, support of rights of 91 863 man, 146 relations with army, persecution of nonjuring suspicions of, 85, 86, 377–78 priests, 216 156–57, 351–52, 353, robberies, 303 religions of inhabitants, 356–57, 358, 365, 367– subject to municipal 210 69, 371–73, 485, 652, authorities, 221, 234, religious conflicts, 290– 717 266–69 93 taxes, 186 suppression of jac- representatives on transportation of, 1380– queries, 334 mission, 1077, 1093 81 weakness, 300–301 revolt against Jacobins, treatment of natural man, 912–14 834, 877–78 sympathetic, 343–44, Naud, M., 1164 taxes, 726 360–62, 717–18 navy, 383, 386n, 488, 738 Nivernais, 12, 296, 298 upbringing, 1206–7 See also military Nivie`re-Chol, M., 746 writers, 1200 Necker, Jacques nobles See also aristocrats; Constituent Assembly abolition of titles, 135, chateaus; emigrants; and, 132 180–81, 518, 919 feudal rights; gentry criticism of, 990 associations, 366, 367–69 Nogent, 1140–41 dismissal, 45 attacks on, 40, 98 Nogent-sur-Seine, 851, emigration, 101 in Constituent 1302 government finances, Assembly, 137, 138, nonjuring priests 202, 989, 1262n 143–44, 717 attitudes, 389–90 popular support, 39, 45 effects of abolition of emigration of, 407–9, provincial assemblies, 8 feudal dues, 350 720, 915, 1183 recalled, 54, 71 e´lite, 1202–6 executions, 601n retention in Arcis-sur- excluded from elections, influence, 397–98 Aube, 269 354 salt prices, 81 excluded from govern- killed, 709, 710–11, 719, salt-tax deficit, 318 ment, 230, 239 722 speeches, 134 executions, 1201, 1250– mass support, 213 supporters, 832 51 measures against, 392, on unrest, 31 inheritance law, 182–83, 518–19, 575, 1379 Nemours, 330 925–26 motives, 1213–14 Ne´rac, 709 Jacobins, 439–40 number of, 212, 1214 Neubourg, abbey of, 87 liberals, 484, 717 persecution of, 211, 213, Neufchateau, François de, military officers, 375–78, 214–16, 279–80, 358– 1378 384–85, 386, 1050, 59, 391, 392–93, 394, Neuville, 27 1201, 1203, 1207–9 395–96, 398, 399, Nevers, 15, 1086, 1155, 1359 in National Guard, 484– 400–401, 407–9, 486, Newton, Isaac, 983 86 552, 575, 701 Nice, 282 persecution in towns, persecution of Nicolas, M., 583 364–69, 370–71 supporters, 186, 369, Nie`vre, 1089 persecution of, 358–64, 392, 398–403, 916 Niort, 296 374–75, 400, 401–2 prisoners, 915, 1188–89 Niossel, M. de, 400 prisoners, 1202, 1249 property confiscated, Nismes in provinces, 1206 389, 392, 903 executions, 1192 public service, 1203–6 replacement of, 212–13 food shortages, 1282 representation in States- transportation of, 633– hunting associations, General, 32, 83 34, 915, 1375 395, 396 responses to jacqueries, Normandy insurrections, 216 353–58, 366 attacks on nobles, 92 Jacobins, 449, 702 seen as enemy of people, emigration, 187 jacqueries, 404–5 38, 53, 57, 89, 284, famine, 1306 military forces in, 513 372, 375 food supplies, 294, 295 Index / 1437

opposition to Jacobins, Obenheim, M. d’, 1050, Palais-Royal 863, 867 1205 corpses of nobles, 56 poverty, 5 octrois. See taxes crowds, 36–39, 42, 49, revolution, 63 officers 109, 515, 790 unrest, 12, 80 of gendarmerie, 738 enemies lists, 38, 41, 53– notables National Guard, 77, 227, 56 in ancient re´gime, 171– 233–34, 237, 347, 474, Jacobins, 455 72, 1223, 1225 737–38, 765 power of crowds, 108, compulsory labor, 1236– See also military officers 111 37 Oison, 711 rumors about nobles, education, 1240, 1245–46 Ole´ron, island of, 1375, 373 elimination of, 1248 1380 soldiers, 43, 44, 103 excluded from govern- Ollemard-Dudan, Madame, stump-speakers, 1109 ment, 239 1164 Palloy, M., 637 executions, 1244, 1250– Orange, 1154, 1190 pamphlets, revolutionary, 52 Orchies, 316 31, 37, 105, 428 half-, 1220–21, 1224 Orleánais, 12, 254 Panis, M., 645 imprisoned, 1238, 1239, Orleans Committee of General 1249 festival of Federation, Security, 895, 1053 petitions signed, 1237–39 259 Committee of Super- public service, 484 grain stolen, 26 vision, 668, 685n retirement to private Jacobins, 457, 660n in Convention, 687, 1045 life, 239, 477 military forces in, 271, crimes, 641 seen as enemy of people, 380 criticism of, 597 1232, 1234–35 National Guard, 782 Marat and, 988 transportation of, 1380– taxes, 1147 Paris Commune, 667 81 Orleans, Duke of, 114, 440, September massacres, value to society, 1198–99 463–64, 582, 783, 832, 670 See also aristocrats; 1201 nobles; rich Ormesson, Lefe`vre d’, Paris Notre Dame, cathedral of, 1250–51 Bastille, 3, 49–53, 97 1043 Ormesson, M. d’, 746 camp around, 578, 579, Noue, M. de la, 377n Ornans, 203 769, 782 Noves, 745 Orne, 399, 712, 745 churches, 215, 655 Noyon, 316, 717 Osmond, M., 351, 352 daily life in, 634–36, 762 nuns Osselin, M., 687, 1037, district committees, 95, convents, 192–95, 394 1055 96–97 number of, 195 Otto, M., 1206 dominance of national persecution of, 90–91, Ottoman Empire, 973, 974 government, 580, 779, 215, 394, 486, 916 Ourbe, 1379 820–21 poverty, 203–4 duties, 46, 80, 97, 319 property of convents, Pache, M. elections, 237, 447, 448, 195–97 Convention and, 796 743, 746, 761, 765 schools, 194, 203 denunciation of, 811 festival of Federation, thefts from, 23 family, 1287 255, 256–57, 258–59 insurrection plans, 824 government, 95–98, 415 oaths manners, 753 insurrections, 584–85, civic, 475, 476 as Minister of War, 782, 788–91, 1321–22, to civil constitution of 797 1348–49 clergy, 151, 210–14, Paris Commune, 667, Jacobins, 808–10 211–12 781, 782, 831 living conditions, 1286– military, 187, 384 Paganel, M., 1295 87 refusal to take, 915 Paillasse, M., 1046 mob rule, 98–99, 108, taken by nobles, 355 Painboeuf, 301, 1314 111–12 See also nonjuring Paine, Thomas, 750–51n, number of Jacobins, 465, priests 779 765–66, 1098–99 1438 / INDEX

Paris (continued) establishment, 611–12, See also farmers; people of, 579–81, 756– 619–23 jacqueries 59, 761–65, 806–8, executions, 653 Peinier, 22–23 809 expenses, 782, 798 Penthie`vre, 379 persecution of nonjuring fall of, 1300 Perigord, 332, 333, 371 priests, 215 members, 642, 653–54, Perigueux, 332, 341, 399 population increases, 667–70, 746, 1117–21 Peronne, 80 28–29, 102–3, 516 opposition to, 766–67 Perpignan, 481, 571, 1093 prisons, 1185, 1249 petitions to Convention, Perrochaux, M., 1164 resistance to taxes, 317, 821–23 Perron, M., 353, 355–56, 327 power, 686–87 597 revolutionary commit- prisoners, 687 Peruot, Master, 1216n tee, 819–21 protests against, 658–59, Peter the Great, 972–73, rumors of counter- 806 974, 977 revolution, 612–13 relations with Assembly, Pe´tion, M. suspicions of nobles, 649, 655–56, 658–60, arrest, 831 371–73 690 theatres, 855, 1398 on bourgeoisie, 532 rule of, 653–56 death, 889 unemployment, 29, staﬀ, 1110 101–2 decree of condemnation, Terror, 653, 687 886 violence in, 513, 515–16 violence incited by, vote on constitution of demand for King’s 789–90 dethronement, 602–3 1793, 851 Paris Guard, 34–35 See also National Guard as deputy, 478n, 817, parish assemblies, 8, 9, 826 of Paris; section 10–11 assemblies of Paris enemies, 791 Party, M. de, 606 leadership, 584–85, 774 Paris, Archbishop of, 4, 40, Pascal, M., 272, 273 119 as mayor of Paris, 474, Pascalis, M., 283–84, 285 Paris, M., 1118 506, 600, 611, 612, Paris, subsistences for Pas-de-Calais, 296, 305, 618, 623, 639, 666 398 bakers, 294 municipal oﬃcers, 591 Pasquier, Etienne, 1250–51 bread shortages, 99–100, opponents, 597 Passeret, M., 40 757, 1270–71 as president of costs, 1317 Passy, 103 Pastoret, M., 1355, 1368 Convention, 750 famine, 1322–26 return of King from food shortages, 5, 6, 757, patriotism, 835–36, 837, 1398–99 Varennes, 436 1331 Robespierre and, 1021 food supplies, 1285–86, Patrix, General, 560 Patry, M., 375 September massacres 1287–93, 1315–20 and, 675 groceries, 1259 Pau, 483–84, 1093 Payan, M., 895 speeches, 415 problems in provision at Tuileries, 595, 647 of, 99–100 Payen, M., 1118 from surrounding peasants Petit-Jean, 1076 departments, 299–304, assignats refused by, Petit-Mamain, 771 1285, 1290 1268–69 Peyronenc, Madame de, Paris Commune insurrections, 216 400 arrests, 714 land purchased by, 397 Phalsbourg, 384 attack on Convention, refusal to pay rents, 337, Phelippes, President, 1095 824–29 338, 342 Philip II, King, 972, 973– bankruptcy, 1262 rejection of law 74 commerce suppressed, abolishing feudal Philippe, M., 637 1276 rights, 179 Philippeaux, M., 1037 corruption, 1112–13 support of war, 536–39 Philippe-Egalite´. See Council, 632, 746, 780– taxes, 161–62 Orleans, Duke of 81, 820, 1119–20 travelers arrested by, 312 Picardy, 12, 16, 81, 1074– elections, 746 will of, 336 75, 1230, 1306, 1307 Index / 1439

Pichegru, M., 1360, 1366, in constitution of 1793, desire of possession, 313 1374 846, 847–48 destroyed by mobs, 91, Piedmont, 876, 1389, 1391 flaws, 1404–5 716 Pigeot, M., 1122 Jacobin doctrine, 414– indirect attacks on, Pignan, 404n 17, 418–19, 426–27, 1260–64 pikes, 540–41, 581–82 430, 433–34, 580, Jacobin view of, 902–5, Pinard, M., 1163–64, 1173 691–92 925, 933 Pinet, M., 1338 Marat on, 991 lack of protection, 329– Pio, M., 1138 Porentruy, 90 33, 343 Piochefer-Bernard, M., Port-au-Prince, 378 lack of respect for 1338, 1351 Porte, 1389 private, 341–42, 387 Pioline, 561 Possel, M. de, 731 in marriages, 935 Piorry, M., 1338 poverty national, 325–28, 397, Pitt, William, 141, 837 beggars, 5, 1293 925, 1195–98, 1273– Pius VI, Pope, 1393 efforts to eliminate, 926– 74, 1373 Plain, 750, 792, 1039, 1045 30, 991, 1259–60 sequestrations, 1154–56, Planche, M., 336 in Paris, 580 1157, 1164, 1276 Planter, M., 294–95 before Revolution, 4–5 suppression of, 1258–59, Ploe¨rmel, 18, 331, 332 Pre´feln, Goupil de, 745 1260, 1274 Plombie`res, 90 Presle, 27 See also chateaus Poissy, 99 press freedom, 453–57, 657, property confiscations, Poitiers, 1136, 1153–54 742, 824 1195–98 Poitou, 12, 84–85, 187, 356, prices. See food prices of antirevolutionists, 882 1230 priests. See clergy; of Church, 195–97, 199– Poland, 525 nonjuring priests 200, 202–4, 229, 519, Poleymieux, chateau of, Prieur de la Coˆte d’Or, 655, 914, 1159 362–64 894, 1048–49, 1050 in conquered territories, Polignac, Countess de, 57 Prieur de la Marne, 1093 1392, 1394 Polignac, Duchess de, 57 prisoners of war, 1062–63 Polignac, Madame de, 38 prisons of corporations, 200 Polignac, M. de, 39 extortion of prisoners, distribution to poor, political clubs, 480–82 1122, 1148–49, 1187, 927–28 See also Jacobin clubs 1243 of emigrants, 229, 388, politics farmers held, 1231, 402, 517–18, 575, 633, aristocrats involved in, 1294–95, 1298, 1302 655, 797–98, 903, 923 169–72 incitements to attack, of executed and trans- citizen involvement, 661–62, 665 ported, 903, 923–24 238–43, 422–26, 444– massacre in Lyons, 723– gold and silver, 904, 48, 467 24 924–25, 1153 French view of, 141–43 nobles in, 1202 motives, 1274 as profession, 241–43 number of prisoners, of nonjuring priests, 389, Pont-Andemer, 12 1185–86 392, 903 Pontard, F. (bishop of rumors of plots, 652, 665 of prisoners, 1152–54 Dordogne), 917n treatment of prisoners, of rich, 882, 1243, 1382– Pontarlier, 203–4, 452 1187–89 83 Pont-Audemer, 408 See also September sales, 633, 1157–61, 1163 Pontivy, 254, 331 massacres Protestants Pontoise, 27 privileges, abolition of, 37, clergy, 1246 Pont-Saint-Maxence, 26 133, 160, 172–73, conflicts with Catholics, Popes, 914, 1393 1225–29 288–93 popular clubs property denominations, 949–50 formation, 243, 444 communal, 328–29, 522, in France, 210 interpretations of 905 persecution of, 187–88, constitution, 245–47 deeds and contracts 288, 918, 972 popular sovereignty burnt, 24, 331–32, Provence, 4, 12, 20, 254, in army, 705–6 333, 344 725, 1230 1440/ I NDEX

Provincial Assemblies, 8–9, Remiremont, 87, 88 1103, 1108–10, 1137– 160–61, 172, 1203–4 Renault, Cećile, 1063 44 Prudhomme, M., 594n, Rennes, 29, 63, 331, 571, authority, 976 665, 824 863 bankruptcy, 1198 Prussia, 397, 406, 525, 530, Repaire, chateau of, 339 centralized power, 893 997, 1389 representatives on mission, corruption, 1112–13, Puritans, 432 1130, 1132 1163–65 Pusy, Bureau de, 613 actions, 1070–71 denunciations of, 1338– Puy, abbe´ du, 710 army and, 1078–80 41 Puy-de-Doˆme, 572, 869 costumes, 1081 expenses, 1111, 1147 Puy-en-Velay, 65–66 crimes, 1089–90 fall of, 1360–64, 1404–6 Puy-Verin, Madame de, denunciations of, 1338 formation, 890–93 1191 excesses, 1072–78 local, 1063–66, 1098– Pyrenees, 1231 executions ordered by, 1102, 1126–27, 1137– 1092–96 38 Quatreme`re, M., 507 fear, 1069–70, 1082 machinery of executions, Quercy, 332, 333, 339 as hostages, 863–64 1194 Quevremont, M., 1112 madness, 1078–79, ministers, 1113–15 Quilleboeuf, 407, 408 1080–85 operations, 1048–49, oversight of, 1052, 1254–55 Rabaut-Saint-Etienne, M., 1066–70, 1068–69 taxes, 1146–48 145, 750, 886, 889, power, 1063–66, 1090– weakness in depart- 1022 91 ments, 1124–30 Rabaut-Saint-Etienne, property confiscations, See also Committee of MM., 289 1155 Public Safety Raffet, commandant, 817 vices, 1075–78, 1085–88 revolutionary tribunal, 797, Ragot, Madame, 1154 reservoirs, 343 892 Re´tif de la Bretonne, executions, 1189, 1194 Rambouillet, 26, 328 Nicolas, 433n, 446n, Girondists summoned, Ramond, M., 503, 692 579 886 Raphel, M., 522, 566 Re´veillon, M., 32–33 judges, 895–96, 1038 Raucourd, M., 508 revolutionary army, 892 jurymen, 1113, 1251 Raymond-Narbonne, actions, 1168–76 law of Prairial 22, 1033– Comtesse de, 1249 detachments sent to 34, 1040, 1045, 1194 Raynal, M., 148 provinces, 1166 Marat’s trial, 805 reason, xviii–xix, 937 purpose, 1167 sessions, 854 Rebecqui, M. soldiers, 831–32, 929, trial of judges, 1338 in Arles, 550, 554, 555 1109, 1167–68, 1172– revolutions in Avignon, 565 73 goals, 344–45 death, 889 revolutionary committees See also French imprisonment, 272, 273 corruption, 1163–65 Revolution insurrection plans, 614– in departments, 1127, Rewbell, M., 1340, 1368 15n 1129, 1131, 1132, 1133, in Convention, 784 in Paris, 607 1137, 1138, 1143, Directory, 1349, 1361, receveurs-geńe´raux, 1205 1145–48 1386, 1387 Redon, 331, 332 executions, 1194 plot against, 1367 Regnault-Beauceron, M., lack of in rural areas, as representative on 616 1125–26 mission, 1089 Re´gusse, chateau of, 693 lack of restraint, 1148–49 on transportation, 1380 Reinhart, M., 1206 number of, 1124 Rhe´, island of, 1375, 1380 religions. See Catholic in Paris, 1109, 1110–11, Rheims, 702, 719, 745–46, Church; civil religion; 1121–24, 1249 851, 1139–40 Jews; Protestants thefts, 1156–57 Rhuillier, M., 1243 religious conflicts, 288–93 trials, 1352–53 Rhul, M., 1340 religious freedom, 914, revolutionary government Riard, M., 878 949–50, 972 administration, 1100, Ribe´rac, 341 Index / 1441 rich character, 437, 1006–7, 1009–10, 1022–23, emigration, 100–101 1009, 1014–16, 1018n, 1025 enmity of poor, 805 1028, 1031 popularity, 1006–7n, extortion of, 1148–52, clothing, 1041 1017–19 1164, 1235–36 Committee of Public on popular sovereignty, investments, 1255 Safety, 835, 894, 977, 659 Jacobin view of, 921–26 1004, 1019, 1030, on property, 905n measures to prevent 1033–35, 1044–45, as prosecuting attorney, wealth accumulation, 1051n, 1056 474 925–26 comparison to Marat, on rich, 804, 922, 1241 prisoners, 942, 1242, 1019–22, 1024–26, on social changes, 942 1243 1027–28, 1030 speeches, xxiv–xxv, 415, property confiscated, in Constituent 428, 857, 860, 1010– 882, 1243, 1382–83 Assembly, 1013, 12, 1014–15, 1016, reluctance to use force, 1016–17, 1026 1026–28, 1032–33 625–26 on constitution, 921n view of jacqueries, 417 seen as enemy of people, in Convention, 687, view of society, 1008 1240–44, 1259 783–84, 791–92, 1019, view of war, 526 suspicions of, 1228–29 1026, 1039–40 writings, 755, 1010–12 taxes, 522–23, 804, criticism of Treasury, young, 1067, 1069 1242–43 1049–50n Rochambeau, General, 384 transportation of, 1380– Declaration of Rights, Rochefort, 514, 1131, 1134– 81 414n 35, 1138 violence against, 71–79 as deputy, 478n Rochefoucauld, M. de la, wealth gained in dethronement of King, 714 Revolution, 1198n, 920n Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, 1266, 1364–65, 1397 on education, 939, 1246 Duc de la, 3 See also bourgeoisie; enemies, 789, 1022–24, Rochejacquelein, M. de la, nobles; notables 1027, 1033–35 Richard, adjutant, 1174 execution, 1300, 1336 376n Richard (cure´), 390–91n executions ordered by, Rochemaure, M. de, 731 Richon, M., 886 1034 Rochetailler, M. de, 378 Ricord, M., 1357 festival of Supreme Roederer, M., 451, 626, Riez, 23 Being, 1031–33 628n, 692, 1201 Rifaudie`re, M. de la, 259n followers, 667, 668, Roland, Jean Marie, 633, Right. See conservatives 770n, 774, 1104–5 675, 789 rights friends, 828 arrest, 823 American views of, 139 goals, 910–11 commissioners, 312, 409, Jacobin view of, 430, hypocrisy, 1030–31 691 432–33, 911, 984 ignorance, 1007–8 Convention and, 750, political, 847 insurrection plans, 814, 990 popular views of, 9–10, 815, 816–17 correspondence with 20–21, 30, 245–47, language used, 436 local authorities, 732– 341 leadership, 506, 669, 35 See also Declaration of 1009, 1052, 1245 Danton and, 666 Rights of Man; feudal legal career, 1012–13 death, 889 rights lodgings, 753, 1017 as deputy, 750 Rioms, M. de, 268 on marriage of priests, fall of, 797 Riot, Madame, 1154 210n house, 667 Riouffe, M., 1168 in National Assembly, political beliefs, 469 Rivarol, M., 1200 1013–15 relations with King, 577, Roanne, 722, 724 pamphlets, 428 578 Robert, M., 687 papers, 1338 report on emigration, Robespierre, Maximilien, on patriots, 437–38n 761 612 on people of Paris, 581 reports of violence in appearance, 1026–28 political views, 417n, departments, 708–32 1442 / INDEX

Roland, Jean Marie (cont.) influence, xix, xxii–xxiii, Saint-Denis, 27, 100, 196, Santerre and, 670–71 247, 253, 429, 446, 1310 writings, 436–37, 505–6n 1013 Saint-Didier, 14 Roland, Jeanne on liberty, 912 St. Domingo, 515, 580, arrest, 823 nobles and, 1200 1265 character, 504n on religion, 937 St. Donau, 851 execution, 889 socialism, 1259–60 Sainte-Chapelle club, 657, letters to King and works, 1219 668, 688, 789 Pope, 527–28 See also Contrat-Social Ste. Colombe, 483 reports of violence in Rousselin, M., 442, 1067, Sainte-Leónard, 14 departments, 708–9, 1086, 1089, 1143, 1165 Sainte-Marguerite, Vicar 723, 724–25 Roussillon, 294 of, 501 salon, 753 Roux, Jacques, 498, 833, Sainte-Maure, M. de, 354 writings, 436–37, 505–6n 1103 Saintes, 335 Romans, 351, 352 Roux de la Haute Marne, Saintes, Bernard de, 1069, Roman States, 1391 1330–31 1093 Romilly, M., 129, 141 Rove`re, M., 559, 1069, Saint-Etienne, 296, 315–16, Romme, M., 442, 784, 1089 330 1336, 1340 Royal Chasseurs, 352 Saint-Etienne, Rabtau, 31 Ronsin, M., 442, 831–32n, Royal Croats, 35, 56, 103 Saint-Etienne-en-Forez, 833, 1103, 1109, 1172 royal family 315 Roqueferrie`re, 402 arrests, 229, 269 Saint-Eustache, church of, Roquette, Morellet de la, brought from Versailles 215 284, 285 to Paris, 122–23 St. Fargeau, Lepelletier de, Rosel, M. du, 367 emigration, 57 439, 940 Rosier, M., 363 household expenses, 202 Saint Firmin, 684 Rosier, M. du, 1094 in Paris, 124 Saint-Gal, chateau of, 403 Rossignol, M., 1000, 1099, seen as enemy of people, Saint-George-des-Agouts, 1351 38 chateau of, 335 crimes, 623, 642 at Versailles, 121 Saint-Georges, M. de, 77, as National Guard Royal Grenadiers, 297 78 officer, 583–84 royalists. See monarchists Saint-Ge´ran, 296 Paris Commune, 667, Royer, Abbe´, 478n Saint-Germain, 196, 326, 668 Rozoy, 1307–8 1308, 1310 as representative on Ruamps, M., 1079 Saint-Germaine-en-Laye, mission, 1075 Ruhl, M., 895 99 September massacres, Rulhie`res, M. de, 680 Saint-Hippolyte, 404–5 670 Rully, Colonel de, 268, 378 St. Huruge, 110–11, 584, Rotonde, M., 583 Russia, 972–73, 974, 977, 589, 590 Rouen 1389 Saint-Jean-d’Angely, 336 criminals, 17 Saint-Jean-du-Gard, 255–56 elections, 448, 851 Sade, Marquis de, 642–43, Saint-Jean-Lorne, 401 food supplies, 100, 301, 729n, 1113 Saint-Just, Louis-Antoine, 1283, 1314 Saffrey, M. de, 367 442, 470 Jacobins, 449–50, 733 Saige, M., 872, 879–80 character, 437, 1091 municipal officers, 266 Saint-Afrique, 696–700 Committee of Public nonjuring priests in, 407, Saint-Amand, 297, 299, 315 Safety, 835, 894, 977, 720 Saint-Andeól, 256 1052, 1056, 1067 Parliament, 5, 12 St. Andre´, Jean Bon, 784, crimes, 784–85, 1058 revolution, 63, 109 894, 1024, 1048–49, dethronement of King, riots, 74–75, 625n, 713 1194, 1281 920n Rouergue, 332 Saint-Basile, chateau of, on education, 941 Roule, M., 685 403 execution, 1300, 1336 Roulhier, M., 886 Saint-Calais, 311 goals, 911, 1380 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques Saint-Charles, M., 724 language used, 436 on education, 940 Saint-Claude, 295 pamphlets, 428 Index / 1443

political beliefs, 471 Santerre, M. reactions to, 685–86, 766 on poor, 927 brewery, 582, 586 reports of, 665, 666 postponement of command of National Septmoncel, 295 constitution, 890–91 Guard, 582, 588, 589, Sergent, M., 645, 650 on property, 933 590, 607, 622, 624, artistic career, 442 reporting of bills, 1057– 633, 667, 668, 790, in Convention, 687 60 806 criticism of, 597 as representative on insurrection plans, 614– Paris Commune, 667 mission, 1079, 1090– 15n September massacres, 92, 1276, 1301 opponents, 597 670 on revolutionary Queen and, 594n thefts, 641 government, 893 September massacres, at Tuileries, 591 on rich, 921–22, 1240 670–71 Serreau, M., 98 speeches, 428, 784n at Tuileries, 591–92, 595 Servan, M., 351–52, 577, Saint-León, 214 Saoˆne-et-Loire, 270 578, 633, 663n, 666, Saint-Loˆ, 12 Sarrelouis, 269 1022 St. Malo, 337, 1093 Sarrians, 561 Servian, 745 Saint-Maximin, 23 Sarrus, 700 Se´ze, M. de, 1355 Shakespeare, William, 1031 Saintonge, 80 Sarville, M. de, 376n Saule, M., 150, 775 Sicard, Abbe´, 673 Saint-Piere-le-Moutier, Sieye`s, Emmanuel, 461, 298–99 Sauzay, M. de, 315 Secondigny, 84–85 795, 1365 Saint-Pierre, Bernardin de, character, 531, 995 1200 section assemblies of Paris Jacobins, 609–11, 780, in Constituent St. Pierre de Lyon, Abbess Assembly, 145 of, 90–91 808, 819, 897, 1105–7 lack of opposition, Directory and, 1349, Saint-Prix, M., 588 1354, 1402, 1403 Saint-Re´mi-Honore´, 303 1106–7 opponents of Jacobins, on King’s veto, 219 St. Saturnin, 556 806 pamphlets by, 31 Saint-Sauge, 296 payments for attendance, political beliefs, 531 Saint-Sauveur, Abbey of, 1106–7 survival, 1039, 1045–46 332 power, 760 on transportation, 1380 St. Simon, M. de, 1249 section committees (Paris), vote for King’s death, Saint-Thomas de Cosnac, 685 792 335 Sedan, 269 on war, 1387 Saint-Tual, 337 Sedie`res, M. de, 342 Simeón, M., 1355, 1368 Saint-Victour, M. de, 343– Se´gur, M. de, 277, 793 Simon, M., 1353 44 Simon (cobbler), 443, 667, seigneurial dues. See feudal 1037, 1121, 1250 Saladin, M., 1355 dues Salerne, chateau of, 693 Simoneau, M., 281, 581n Seignobos, Ch., xiv Sisteron, Bishop of, 22 Salicetti, M., 1089, 1166 Seignon, 745 Salis, M., 100 social contract, 163–64, Seilhac, chateau of, 403 253–54, 430, 902, 911 Salle, M. de la, 98, 826 Seine-et-Marne, 744, 1305– Salles, M. de, 48, 886, 889 See also Contrat-Social 6, 1309–10 (Rousseau) Salon, 553 Seine-et-Oise, 1310 socialism, 1259–60 Salpe´trie`re, 682, 683, 684 Seine-Infe´rieure, 305 society salt Seine river, 1318 of ancient re´gime, 1221– prices, 81 Se´mur, 354, 483, 1143 25 taxes, 317–18 Senis, M., 731 in antiquity, 947–49 Salviat, chateau of, 339 Senneville, M. de, 352 changes in, 942–44 Sambre-et-Meuse, 1379 Sens, 6, 26 Jacobin view, 947, 1247– Samson, M., 1192 September massacres, 670– 48 Sancy, chateau of, 87 84, 688, 781–82, 1028 modern, 949–52, 953–55 sans-culottes, 637, 943, 1041, Danton’s involvement, regeneration of man, 1137, 1155–56, 1165 1005 909–12, 944–45 See also Jacobins number of deaths, 684 status reversals, 265, 425 1444 / INDEX society, relationship to expectations of, 21, 132, attempts to suppress individuals 162 riots, 35 economic support, 1260 Friends of the Consti- food convoys escorted Jacobin view, 429, 902 tution, 459 by, 100 in modern societies, nobles, 83 killed, 647–48, 678 953–55 powers, 160 in Marseilles, 547 subordination of indi- See also Third Estate prisoners, 632, 661 vidual to community, Strasbourg supplies, 380 433, 902–3, 906–9, clothing requisition, at Tuileries, 628–30 911, 930–34, 944, 948, 1197 Switzerland, 1389, 1390, 955–57 executions, 1192 1391 Soissons, 417, 612 federations, 256 Sylvestre, M., 702, 730, soldiers. See military; Jacobins, 465, 572, 1131, 731, 878 National Guards 1144, 1239–40n Soleure, 269 merchants, 1276 Taillefer, M., 1236–37, Sollier, 23 military forces in, 380– 1282 Sombreuil, M. de, 39, 44 81, 382, 384 Taine, Hippolyte Adolphe Sommie`res, 404–5 municipal government, Histoire de la litte´rature Sorbonne, 1211 1133, 1159 anglaise, xv, xvii Sotin, M., 1368, 1378 National Guard, 1165 purpose of book, xi–xii Soubrany, M., 1079, 1336, nonjuring priests in, 214 scientific viewpoint, xi, 1340 prisons, 1185, 1188 xiii, xxi, xxv Souillac, 403 property confiscations, Talaru, M. de, 28 Soulavie, M., 637 1196 Talleyrand, M. de, 212 Spendeler, Lieutenant- religions of inhabitants, Tallien, Jean, 1354 colonel, 726 210 at Bordeaux, 872–73, 1069, 1088, 1089, 1166 State representatives on absolutism, 948 in Convention, 784, mission, 1091, 1133, authority, 960–63 1040 economic dominance, 1165, 1301 crimes, 1340 933 revolution, 63 on famine, 1283–84 functions, 968–69 revolutionary army in, Paris Commune, 621, goals, 961–62 1166 667 Jacobin view, xxvii rich residents, 1242, Talma, M., 459 limited powers, 957, 1243, 1245 Tarascon, 396, 726 960, 962–63, 964–65 riots, 71–72, 76n Tarbes, 1076–77, 1283 origins of modern, 957– taxes, 1242, 1243 Target, M., 31 58 subsistences Tarn, 693n, 1295 protection of individual control of system, 1277– taxes liberty, 964–65, 969– 80, 1293–95 abolition of, 21, 161–62, 70 officials, 1330–31 319, 836, 1261 regeneration of man, provision of, 1255, 1258, in ancient re´gime, 8, 909–12, 944–45 1268–71, 1301–3 9, 11 relationship to salt, 81, 317–18 arrears, 1261 individuals, 165–66, See also food; Paris, collection of, 230, 231, 197–98, 200–201, 433, subsistences for 316–17, 1205 958–60, 964–65, 970– Suleau, M., 457, 619, 632 direct, 81, 319, 320, 321, 71 Sundgau, 87 1205 separation from religion, Sureau, M., 57 duties abolished, 46, 76, 949–50 suspects 80 See also government deprivation of liberty, on emigrants, 387–88 States-General 1184–85 exemptions abolished, chambers, 172–73 disarmament, 800–801 81–82, 160 clergy, 83 Sweden, 997 on flour, 20 convocation, 10, 19, 30 Swiss Guards, 103, 521–22 Girondist view of, 754 elections, 31, 32 in Aix, 284, 285, 549 indirect, 320, 1205 Index / 1445

of Jacobin governments, popular support, 31, 34 revolutionary army in, 725–26 representation, 10, 19, 1166 municipal, 228, 230, 231 32, 84 revolutionary govern- new system, 322–25 Thorillon, M., 454 ment, 1138 on nobles, 186 Thouret, M., 109, 154, 512 sales of confiscated opposition to, 18–20, 21, Thourets, M. de Sacqui property, 1160 22, 25, 281, 314–17, des, 731 Tour, Vidaud de la, 38 320, 323–24 Thunelie`res, 328n Touraine, 12, 68, 254, 281, in Paris, 803–4 Thuriot, M., 506, 510, 296, 299, 314 patriotic contribution, 659n, 1040 Tour-d’Aignes, Baron de 321–22 Tiberius, 1403 la, 93n progressive, 924 Tigery, 1171–72 Tourdelon, 337 reductions, 161–62 Tissot, M., 562 Tour-du-Pin, Marquis de refusal to pay, 79–82, tithes la, 91 93, 316, 318n abolition of, 180, 201–2, Tournal, M., 559, 564, 565 revolutionary, 924, 350 Tournefeuille, 327 1146–48, 1195, 1275, refusal to pay, 330, 335– Tournon, chateau of, 693 1376 36, 340 Tournus, 14 on rich, 522–23, 804, Tocqueville, Alexis de, Tours, 236, 259, 318, 323– 1242–43 xvii, xx–xxi, 1209 24, 1375–76 salt, 317–18 Toisy, chateau of, 359 Tour St. Bernard, 682, 684 violent protests, 314–19 Tonnerre, 330, 1131 Tourzel, Madame de, 657 teachers, 939, 1245–46 Torne´, M., 508, 602 Tourzel, Mademoiselle de, Terrain, M., 1138 Tortes, 305 657 Terror Toulon Toussaint, Girard, 908n beginning of, xxiii, 57 buildings destroyed, 884 Traine, 1302 of Commune, 653, 687 English occupation, 883 transportation Danton on, 861–62 food supplies, 295 of clergy, 633–34, 915, instruments, 797 Jacobins, 488, 695–96, law of Prairial 22, 1033– 702, 730–32, 1160–61 1375, 1379–80 34, 1040, 1045, 1194 mass executions, 1192 to Guyanna, 1373–75, renewal of, 1373, 1375– military forces in, 268 1380 77 representatives on of Jacobins, 1340 See also executions; mission, 1094 justification, 1380–81 revolutionary revolt against Jacobins, of rich, 1380–81 tribunal; September 834, 877–78, 883–84 Trappists, 192 massacres siege of, 876 Treasury Theátrins, church of, 215 support of Republic, employees, 1049–50, The´roigne. See Me´ricourt, 874–75 1205 The´roigne de taxes, 21–22 expenses, 782 Thibaudeau, M., 1355, 1366 violence, 513 tax collections, 316–17, Thibaut, bishop, 789 Toulouse 321, 325, 1146–47, Thierry (son of Clovis), executions, 1244 1261 645n forests, 327 Treilhard, M., 135, 1364, Thierry (valet), 612 Jacobins, 465–66, 571, 1400 Thiers, 14–15, 1076 702, 773–74n, 1135– Tremblay, 27 Thil, chateau of, 353 36, 1138, 1376 Tre´moille, M. de la, 38 Thionville, 269, 1076, jacqueries, 402 Trenchard, M., 1251 1125n opposition to Jacobins, Trinchard, M., 443 Thionville, Merlin de, 656– 863 Trois-Eveˆche´s, 81 57, 1089 persecution of Catholics, Tronchet, M., 1355 Third Estate 399, 513 Tronçon-Ducoudray, M., declaration of National prisons, 340, 1153, 1185 1355, 1366, 1368 Assembly, 41 religious conflicts, 290 Tronjolly, President, 1084 dominated by mob, revolt against Jacobins, Troyes 40–42 877–78 bread prices, 5, 67 1446 / INDEX

Troyes (continued) Supreme Court, 245 Vaudemont, Prince de, 57 elections, 236–37, 743, universities, 191, 192, 1211, Vaudeuil, M. de, 711 851 1245 Vauvilliers, chateau of, 90 farmers, 1302 unrest Ve´laux, 556 festival of Federation, anticipation of reforms, Velu, M., 1144–46n 228 20–21 Venaille, M., 1376 food shortages, 68, 1312 over food prices and Vendeé gendarmes, 1165 shortages, 26–27, 296, armed expedition to, Jacobins, 436, 465, 738, 299, 306, 310–11, 802–3, 806, 824–25, 1136, 1139 1313, 1315, 1319 864, 1141 municipal government, responses to, 24–25 Catholics, 213, 390, 475 228, 1137–38, 1139, in 1789, 11–15, 18–25, elections, 747 1141–43 26–28, 29–31, 33–39 executions, 1175–76 National Guard, 77 See also jacqueries insurrection, 216, 834, nonjuring priests, 719, Upper Dauphiny, 88 864, 869, 873, 877, 720 Ursuline nuns, 23, 203 1230, 1271 opposition to Jacobins, Use`s, 17 representatives on 1397 Ussel, 344 mission, 1075–76 representatives on Uze`s, 288–89, 395, 401n, Vendoˆme, 311 mission, 1086 404–5 Venice, 1391, 1392 returning emigrants, Verdier, M., 709 349–50 Vacheron, M., 1075 Vergniaud, Pierre, 529 revolutionary army in, Vadier, M., 895, 1045, 1053, charges against King, 1166 1338, 1340, 1357 602 revolutionary commit- Vagogne, Achard de, 367 in Convention, 793, 822, tee, 449n Valady, M., 886, 889 828 riots, 76–79 Valaze´, M., 886, 889 decree of accusation, 886 taxes, 1228 Valence, 268, 356, 357, 378 denunciation of, 810 Truchon, M., 667 Valenciennes, 1068, 1156 as deputy, 504, 588, 750, Truelle, 77 Valleé, M., 886 826, 990 Tuileries Vandamme, General, 1184 on ministers, 601 assaults on, 590–95, Vandreuil, M. de, 38 regency proposed by, 624–25, 630–31, 647– Vannes, 295, 377n 612 48 Vannod, M., 181 Robespierre on, 1023 Assembly room, 1037 Var, 730–32, 851, 1134, speeches, 498, 577 speeches in gardens, 515, 1163 threats against, 811 1109 Varaise, 335–36 trial, 888 troops defending, 628–30 Varenne, Mathon de la, Vernet, Joseph, 1191 See also Convention 676 Verneuil, 309 Tulle, 332, 342, 343, 374– Varennes, 358, 436, 484 Vernier, M., 885 75, 402–3, 488 Varlet, M., 614, 641, 645, Vernon, 294–95, 870 Tullins, 726 790, 811, 813–14, 820 Versailles Tunck, General, 1076 Vasse´, M. de, 85 crime in, 303 Turgot, M., 1211 Vaublanc, M., 503, 507, executions, 98 Turlot, captain, 1171 508, 509, 616, 1355 food shortages, 1310 Tuscany, 1389 Vaucluse hunting in royal park, 82 arrests, 1185 marches to, 110–11, 112– Uberbru¨nn, chateau of, 87 jacqueries, 404, 406, 726 19, 464 unemployment, 5, 7, 27, opposition to Jacobins, murders in, 713–14 29, 100–102, 757 1230 National Guard, 120–21, United States persecution of Catholics, 782 Congress, 779 395, 399 violence against nobles, Constitution, 140, 244, representatives on 40 245, 751 mission, 1065–66 Verson, 393–94 duties of citizens, 238 sales of confiscated Vert-Galant, 27 politicians, 170, 242 property, 1163 Vert-le-Petit, 307 Index / 1447

Vervier, 1307 Volney, M., 145 number of deaths, 1193 Vervins, 1313 Voltaire, xix, xxii, 1200, See also Vendeé Ve´soul, 86 1219 West Indies. See colonies Ve´teau, M., 281 Vosges, 254 Willot, M., 1360 Vialard, M., 1119 Vouland, M., 1053, 1338 Wimpfen, M., 867–68 Vidal, captain, 694–95 Voute, 254 wine, duties on, 314–15, Vidauban, 1161 319 Vielfort, M. de, 1094 war Wittgenstein, M. de, 554 Viennois, 86, 92 with Austria and women Vigeé, M., 886 Prussia, 397, 406, in Assembly galleries, Viguer, M., 597 1389 651, 770, 788 Vilate, M., 1191 conquered territories, drafted as harvesters, Villedeuil, M. de, 38 1384–85, 1389–94 1299 Villefranche, 361, 1147 declaration of, 526, 529– Jacobins, 443, 767, 770, Villefranche, chateau of, 30 832 337–38 defense of France, 835– Jacobin view of, 908 Villejuif, 28 37 killed in September Villeneuve, 1236–37 deputies supporting, 494 massacres, 680 Villeneuve-le-Roi, 6 direction of, 1049 march to Versailles, 112, Villeneuve-St.-Georges, economic disruption, 114–19, 464 483 1265, 1271 marriageable age, 499 Ville-Parisis, 27 emigrant participation, popularity of Robes- 187, 188, 350, 397, Villepinte, 27 pierre with, 1017–18 Ville´rs-le-Sec, 303 536, 537–38 prisoners, 683 Villette, Charles, 788 English prisoners, 1062– Villiers, 353–54, 355 63 prostitutes, 110, 115, 118, Villiers, chateau of, 357 expenses, 1262 770, 1286–87 Vincennes, 325 invasion, 406–7, 650 riots over food, 12 Vincent, M., 443, 833, 1103 invasion threat, 397, workers violence 537–38, 876 agricultural, 1296, 1299– during elections, 488 Jacobin view of, 526–27, 1300 incited by Jacobins, 417, 528–31, 541 antirevolutionists, 1229– 462, 476–77, 480, 566, mobilization, 540–41 30 788–91 in modern societies, 950 compulsory labor, 1280– increase across country- number of deaths, 1394– 81 side, 303 95 conscription, 906–7 reports from depart- peace prospects, 1386–87 executions, 1104, 1230–31 ments, 708–32 popular support, 536–39 of Paris, 580 tolerated by Jacobins, treaties, 1206, 1374, suppression of labor, 417–18, 647–50 1385–86 1272–74, 1280–81 See also jacqueries; See also military wages, 1296 unrest War Department, 738, 782, writers, 1200, 1251–52 Vire, 868 797, 1205 Virieu, M. de, 123 Washington, George, 141 Young, Arthur, 5, 11, 36– Viroflay, 26 Weber, M., 676–77 37, 70, 128, 139–40, Visitant nuns, 204 Westermann, M., 614–15n, 141, 161 Vitre´, 14 623, 641, 691, 832, Ysabeau, M., 1069, 1086– Vitteaux, M. de, 354, 483 1000, 1103 87, 1166 Vivarais, 4, 254 western France Ysore´, M., 1166 Voisin, M. de, 268, 378 destruction of, 1231 Yvignac, 337 The typeface in which this book has been set is Monotype Fournier, a digitized version of the 1925 hot-metal release. It was based on Pierre Simon Fournier’s “St. Augustin Ordinaire,” cut in Paris in the 1740s. Fournier, one of the great innovators in the history of typography, devised a system of measurements, or points, to relate the size of type bodies to each other. His work built upon that of a committee established in 1692 by King Louis XIV to create a new series of types for the exclusive use of the Imprimerie Royale. This committee, supervised by the Academie des Sci- ences, moved to “rationalize” type. The transitional nature of the Romain du Roi, and later, Fournier, was, according to Stanley Morison, its own revolution: it marked the move away from humanistic, calligraphic traditions of typography to a more mechanized, disciplined art of engraving and punchcutting. This book is printed on paper that is acid-free and meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48-1992. A Book design by Barbara E. Williams, Durham, North Carolina. Typography by Impressions Book and Journal Services, Inc., Madison, Wisconsin. Printed and bound by Edwards Brothers, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 0-

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

HIPPOLYTE TAINE

Translated by John Durand

VOLUME II

LIBERTY FUND Indianapolis This book is published by Liberty Fund, Inc., a foundation established to encourage study ofthe ideal ofa society offree and responsible individuals.

᭧ 2002 Liberty Fund, Inc. All rights reserved. The French Revolution is a translation of La Re´volution, which is the second part ofTaine’s Origines de la France contemporaine. Printed in the United States ofAmerica 02 03 04 05 06 C 54321 02 03 04 05 06 P 54321

Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Taine, Hippolyte, 1828–1893. [Origines de la France contemporaine. English. Selections] The French Revolution / Hippolyte Taine; translated by John Durand. p. cm. “The French Revolution is a translation ofLa Re´volution, which is the second part ofTaine’s Origines de la France contemporaine”—T.p. verso. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-86597-126-9 (alk. paper) ISBN 0-86597-127-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. France—History—Revolution, 1789–1799. I. Title. DC148.T35 2002 944.04—dc21 2002016023

Liberty Fund, Inc. 8335 Allison Pointe Trail, Suite 300 Indianapolis, Indiana 46250-1684 9 CONTENTS =

Preface / xiii

BOOK FOURTH. The Jacobin Conquest Chapter I / 413 Rise of the New Political Organ— I. Principle of the revolutionary party— Its applications— II. Formation of the Jacobin—The common human elements of his character—Self-conceit and dogmatism are sensitive and rebellious inevery community—How kept downinall well-founded societies—Their development in the new order of things—Effect of milieu on imaginations and ambitions—The stimulants of Utopianism, abuses of speech, and derangement of ideas—Changes in office; interests played upon and perverted feeling— III. Psychology of the Jacobin—His intellectual method—Tyranny of formulae and suppression of facts—Mental balance disturbed—Signs of this in the revolutionary language—Scope and expressionof the Jacobinintellect—Inwhat respect his method is mischievous—How it is successful—Illusions produced by it— IV. What the theory promises—How it flatters wounded self-esteem—The ruling passion of the Jacobin—Apparent both in style and conduct—He alone is virtuous inhis ownestimation,while his adversaries are vile—They must accordingly be put out of the way—Perfection of this character—Common sense and moral sense both perverted.

Chapter II / 439 I. Formationof the Party—Its recruits—These are rare inthe upper class and amongst the masses—They are numerous in the low bourgeois class and in the upper stratum of the people—The position and education which enroll a man in the party— II. Spontaneous associations after July 14, 1789—How these dissolve—Withdrawal of people of sense and occupation—Number of those absent at elections—Birth and multiplication of vi / Contents

Jacobin societies—Their influence over their adherents—Their manoeuvres and despotism— III. How they view the liberty of the press—Their political doings— IV. Their rallying-points—Origin and composition of the Paris Jacobinclub—It affiliates with provincialclubs—Its Leaders— The Fanatics—The Intriguers—Their object—Their means— V. Small number of Jacobins—Sources of their power—They form a league—They have faith—Their unscrupulousness—The power of the party vested in the group which best fulfills these conditions.

Chapter III / 473 The Jacobins in Power—The elections of 1791—Proportion of places gained by them— I. Their siege operations—Means used by them to discourage the majority of electors and conservative candidates—Frequency of elections—Effect of the oath— II. Annoyances and dangers of public offices—The Constituents excluded from the Legislative body— III. The friends of order deprived of the right of free assemblage—Violent treatment of their clubs in Paris and the provinces—Legal prevention of conservative associations— IV. Turmoil at the elections of 1790—Elections in 1791—Effect of the King’s flight—Domiciliary visits—Mortagne during the electoral period— V. Intimidation and withdrawal of the Conserva- tives—Popular outbreaks in Burgundy, Lyonnais, Provence, and the large cities—Electoral proceedings of the Jacobins; examples at Aix, Dax, and Montpellier—Agitators go unpunished—Denunciations by name—Ma- noeuvres with the peasantry—General tactics of the Jacobins.

Chapter IV / 492 I. Compositionof the Legislative Assembly—Social rankof the Deputies. Their inexperience, incompetence, and prejudices— II. Degree and quality of their intelligence and culture— III. Aspect of their sessions—Scenes and display at the club—Co-operation of spectators— IV. Parties—The “Right”—The “Centre”—The “Left”—Opinions and sentiments of the Girondists—Their allies of the extreme “Left”— V. Their means of action—Dispersion of the Feuillants club—Pressure of the tribunes on the Assembly—Street mobs— VI. Parliamentary manoeuvres—Abuses of urgency—Vote on the principle—Call by name—Intimidation of the “Centre”—Opponents inactive—The majority ﬁnally disposed of. Contents / vii

Chapter V / 512 Policy of the Assembly— I. State of France at the end of 1791—Power- lessness of the Law— II. The Assembly hostile to the oppressed and favoring oppressors—Decrees against the nobles and clergy—Amnesty for deserters, convicts, and bandits—Anarchical and levelling maxims— III. War—Dispositionof foreignpowers—The King’s dislikes—Provo- cations of the Girondists—Date and causes of the rupture— IV. Secret motives of the leaders—Their control compromised by peace—Discontent of the rich and cultivated class—Formation and increase of the party of order—The King and this party reconciled— V. Eﬀect of the war on the commonalty—Its alarm and its rage—The second revolutionary outburst and its characteristics—Alliance of the Girondists with the populace—The red cap and pikes—Universal substitution of government by force for government by law.

Chapter VI / 542 The Departments— I. Provence in 1792—Early supremacy of the Jacobins in Marseilles—Composition of the party—The club and the municipality—Expulsion of the Ernest regiment— II. The expedition to Aix—The regiment disarms—The Directory driven out—Pressure on the new Di- rectory— III. The Constitutionalists of Arles—The Marseilles expedition against Arles—Excesses committed by them in the town and its vicinity— Invasion of Apt, the club and its volunteers— IV. The Jacobins of Avi- gnon—How they obtain recruits—Their robberies in the Comtat—The Avignon municipality in ﬂight or in prison—Murder of Le´cuyer and the Glacie`re massacre—Entry of the murderers, supported by their Marseilles allies—Jacobindictatorship inVaucluse andthe Bouches-du-Rho ˆne— V. Other departments—Uniform process of the Jacobin conquest—Pre- conceived formation of a Jacobin State.

Chapter VII / 574 Paris— I. Pressure of the Assembly on the King—His veto rendered void or eluded—His ministers insulted and driven away—The usurpations of his Girondist ministry—He removes them—Insurrectionary preparations— II. The floating and poor population of Paris—Disposition of the workmen—Effect of poverty and want of work—Effect of Jacobin preaching—The revolutionary army—Character of its reviews—Its first re- viii / Contents

view—Its actual eﬀective force— III. Its leaders—Their committee— How they created excitement— IV. The 20th of June—The programme— The muster—The processionbefore the Assembly—Irruptionintothe chaˆteau—The King in the presence of the people.

Chapter VIII / 596 I. Indignation of the Constitutionalists—Cause of their weakness—The Girondists renew the attack—Their double plan— II. Pressure on the King—Pe´tion and Manuel brought to the Hoˆtel-de-Ville—The Ministry obliged to resign—Jacobin agitation against the King—Pressure on the Assembly—Petition of the Paris Commune—Threats of the petitioners and of the galleries—Session of August 8th—Girondist strategy foiled in two ways— III. The Girondists work for the benefit of the Jacobins— The armed force sent away or disorganized—The Federates summoned— Brest and Marseilles send men—Public sessions of administrative bodies—Permanence of administrative bodies and of the sections—Effect of these two measures—The central bureau of the Hoˆtel-de-Ville—Origin and formation of the revolutionary Commune— IV. Vain attempts of the Girondists to put it down—Jacobin alarm, their enthusiasm, and their programme— V. Evening of August 8—Session of August 9—Morning of August 10—The Assembly purged— VI. Nights of August 9 and 10— The sections—Commissioners of the sections at the Hoˆtel-de-Ville—The revolutionary Commune is substituted for the legal Commune— VII. Au- gust 10—The King’s forces—Resistance abandoned—The King in the National Assembly—Conflict at the palace and discharge of the Swiss Guard—The palace evacuated by the King’s order—The massacres—The enslaved Assembly and its decrees— VIII. State of Paris in the interregnum—The mass of the population—Subaltern Jacobins—The Jacobin leaders.

Chapter IX / 644 I. Mob Rule in Times of Anarchy—Case of anarchy recently and suddenly brought on—The band that succeeds the fallen government and its administrative tools— II. Progress of the homicidal idea in the mass of the party—The morning after August 10—The tribunal of August 17—The funereal feˆte of August 27—The prisonplot— III. Rise of the homicidal idea among the leaders—Their situation—The powers they usurp—Their Contents /ix

spoliations—The risks they run—Terror their salvation— IV. Date of the determination of this—The actors and their parts—Marat—Danton—The Commune—Its co-operators—Harmony of dispositions and readiness of operation— V. Common workmen—Their numbers—Their condition— Their sentiments—Eﬀect of murder on the murderers—Their degradation—Their insensibility— VI. Eﬀect of the massacre on the public— General dejection and the dissolution of society—The ascendency of the Jacobins assured in Paris—The men of September upheld in the Commune and elected to the Convention.

Chapter X / 689 The Departments—The epidemic and contagious character of the revolutionary disease— I. Its essential principle is the Jacobin dogma of the sovereignty of the people—The new right is oﬃcially proclaimed—Public statement of the new re´gime—Its object, its opponents, its methods—Its extension from Paris to the provinces— II. In several departments it establishes itself in advance—An instance of this in the Var— III. Each Jacobin band a dictator in its own neighborhood—Saint-Afrique during the interregnum— IV. Ordinary practices of the Jacobin dictatorship— The stationary companies of the clubs—Their personnel—Their leaders— V. The companies of traveling volunteers—Quality of the recruits—Elec- tion of oﬃcers—Robberies and murders— VI. A tour of France in the cabinet of the Minister of the Interior—From Carcassonne to Bordeaux— Bordeaux to Caen—The north and the east—Chaˆlons-sur-Marne to Lyons—The Comtat and Provence—The tone and the responses of the Jacobin administration—The programme of the party.

Chapter XI / 736 I. The Second Stage of the Jacobin Conquest—The importance and multitude of vacant oﬃces— II. The elections—The young and the poor invited to the ballot-box—Danger of the Conservatives if candidates— Their chiefs absent themselves—Proportion of absentees at the primary assemblies— III. Composition and tone of the secondary assemblies— Exclusion of “Feuillant” electors—Pressure on other electors—Persons elected by the Conservatives obliged to resign—Elections by the Catholics cancelled—Secessionofthe Jacobinminorities—Theelectionof their men made valid—Public opinion not in accord with oﬃcial selections— x/Contents

IV. Composition of the National Convention—Number of Montagnards at the start—Opinions and sentiments of the deputies of the Plain—The Gironde—Ascendency of the Girondists in the Convention—Their intellectual character—Their principles—The plan of their Constitution— Their fanaticism—Their sincerity, culture and tastes—How they diﬀer from pure Jacobins—How they comprehend popular sovereignty—Their stipulations with regard to the initiative of individuals and of groups— Weakness of philosophic thought and of parliamentary authority in times of anarchy— V. Opinion in Paris—The majority of the population constitutional—The new re´gime unpopular—Scarcity and dearness of food— Catholic customs obstructed—Universal and increasing discontent—Aver- sion or indiﬀerence to the Girondists—Political resignation of the majority—Moderncustoms incompatible with pure democracy—Menof property and income, manufacturers and tradesmen, keep aloof—Dissensions, timidity and feebleness of the Conservatives—The Jacobins alone form the sovereignpeople— VI. Compositionof the party—Its numbers and quality decline—The Underlings—Idle and dissipated workmen—The suburban rabble—Bandits and blackguards—Prostitutes—The September actors— VII. The ruling representative man—His mental character and compass—The political ideas of M. Saule.

Chapter XII / 778 Precarious Situation of a Central Government Within the Precincts of a Local Jurisdiction— I. Jacobin advantages—Their sway in the section assemblies—Maintenance, re-election and completion of the Commune— Its new chiefs, Chaumette, He´bert and Pache—The National Guard recast—Jacobins elected officers and subofficers—The paid band of roughs—Private and public funds of the party— II. Its parliamentary recruits—Their characters and minds—Saint-Just—Violence of the minority in the Convention—Pressure of the galleries—Menaces of the streets— III. Defectionamongthe majority—Effect of physical fear— Effect of moral cowardice—Effect of political necessity—Internal weakness of the Girondists—Accomplices in principle of the Montagnards— IV. Principal decrees of the Girondist majority—Arms and means of attack surrendered by it to its adversaries— V. Committees of Supervision after March 28, 1793—The re´gime of August and September, 1792, revived—Disarmament—Certificates of civism—Forced enlistments— Contents /xi

Forced loans—Use made of the sums raised—Vain resistance of the Convention—Marat, indicted, is acquitted—Vain resistance of the population—Manifestations by young men repressed—Violence and victory of the Jacobins in the assemblies of the sections— VI. Jacobin tactics to constrain the Convention—Petition of April 15 against the Girondists— Means employed to obtain signatures—The Convention declares the petition calumnious—The commission of Twelve and arrest of He´bert— Plans for massacres—Intervention of the Mountain leaders— VII. The 27th day of May—The central revolutionary committee—The municipal body displaced and then restored—Henriot, commanding general—The 31st of May—Measures of the Commune—The 2d of June—Arrest of the Twelve and of the Twenty-two— VIII. Character of the new governors— Why France accepted them.

9 PREFACE =

N THIS volume, as in those preceding it and in those to come, Ithere will be found only the history of Public Powers. Other historians will write that of diplomacy, of war, of the finances, of the Church: my subject is a limited one. To my great regret, however, this new part fills an entire volume; and the last part, on the revolutionary government, will be as long. I have again to regret the dissatisfaction which I foresee this work will cause to many of my countrymen. My excuse is that almost all of them, more fortunate than myself, have political principles which serve them in forming their judgments of the past. I had none; if, indeed, I had any motive in undertaking this work, it was to seek for political principles. Thus far I have attained to scarcely more than one; and this is so simple that it will seem puerile, and that I hardly dare enunciate it. Nevertheless I have adhered to it, and in what the reader is about to peruse my judgments are all derived from that; its truth is the measure of theirs. It consists wholly in this observation: that human society, especially a modern society, is a vast and complicated thing. Hence the difficulty in knowing and comprehending it. For the same reason it is not easy to handle the subject well. It follows that a cultivated mind is much better able to do this than an uncultivated mind, and a man specially qualified than one who is not. From these two last truths flow many other consequences, which, if the reader deigns to reflect on them, he will have no trouble in defining.

xiii

BOOK FOURTH

The Jacobin Conquest

9 CHAPTER I =

Rise of the new political organ— I. Principle of the revolutionary party—Its applications— II. Formation of the Jacobin—The common human elements of his character—Self-conceit anddogmatismare sensitive andrebellious in every community—How kept down in all well-founded societies—Their development in the new order of things—Effect of milieu on imaginations andambitions— The stimulants of Utopianism, abuses of speech, and derangement of ideas— Changes in office; interests playedupon andpervertedfeeling— III. Psychology of the Jacobin—His intellectual method—Tyranny of formulae and suppression of facts—Mental balance disturbed—Signs of this in the revolutionary language—Scope andexpression of the Jacobin intellect—In what respect his method is mischievous—How it is successful—Illusions produced by it— IV. What the theory promises—How it flatters wounded self-esteem—The ruling passion of the Jacobin—Apparent both in style andconduct—Healone is virtuous in his own estimation, while his adversaries are vile—They must accordingly be put out of the way—Perfection of this character—Common sense andmoral sense both perverted.

IN THIS society, in a state ofdissolution, in which the passions of the people are the sole eﬃcient force, that party rules which knows best how to ﬂatter these and turn them to account. Alongside ofa legal government, therefore, which can neither repress nor gratify these passions, arises an illegal government which sanctions, excites, and directs them. While the former totters and falls to pieces, the latter strengthens itselfand completes its organization, until, becoming legal in its turn, it takes the other’s place.

413 414 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

I We find a theory at the outset, in justification ofthese popular outbreaks and assaults, which is neither improvised, added to, nor superficial, but firmly fixed in the public mind, fed by long anterior philosophical discussion; a sort ofenduring, long-lived root out of which the new constitutional tree has arisen, namely, the dogma of popular sovereignty. Literally interpreted, it means that the government is merely an inferior clerk or domestic.1 We, the people, have established the government; and ever since, as well as before its organization, we are its masters. Between us and it “no contract” that is undefined, or at least lasting—“none which cannot be done away with by mutual consent or through the unfaithfulness of one ofthe two parties.” Whatever it may be, or provide for, we are nowise bound by it; it depends wholly on us; we remain free to “modify, restrict, and resume as we please the power of which we have made it the depository.” By virtue ofa primitive, inalienable right the commonwealth belongs to us and to us only; ifwe put this into the hands ofthe government it is as when kings delegate authority for the time being to a minister, and which he is always tempted to abuse; it is our business to watch him, warn him, check him, curb him, and, ifnecessary, displace him. We must especially guard ourselves against the craft and manoeuvres by which, under the pretext ofpreserving public tranquillity, he would tie our hands. A law, superior to any he can make, forbids him to interfere with our sovereignty; and he does interfere with it when he undertakes to forestall, obstruct, or impede its exercise. The Assembly, even the Constituent, usurps when it treats the people like a royal drone (roi faineánt), when it subjects them to laws which they have not ratified,

1. Cf. “The Ancient Re´gime,” p. 242. Citations from the “Contrat So- cial.”—Buchez et Roux, “Histoire Parlementaire,” XXVI. 96. Declaration of rights read by Robespierre in the Jacobin club, April 21, 1793, and adopted by the club as its own. “The people is sovereign, the government is its work and its property, and public functionaries are its clerks. The people can displace its mandatories and change its government when it pleases.” The Jacobin Conquest / 415 and when it deprives them ofaction except through their representatives. The people themselves must act directly, must assemble together and deliberate on public affairs; they must control and censure the acts ofthose they elect; they must influence these with their resolutions, correct their mistakes with their good sense, atone for their weakness by their energy, stand at the helm alongside ofthem, and even employ force and throw them overboard, so that the ship may be saved, which, in their hands, is drifting on a rock. Such, in fact, is the doctrine of the popular party. This doctrine is carried into effect July 14 and October 5 and 6, 1789. Loustalot, Camille Desmoulins, Fre´ron, Danton, Marat, Pe´tion, Robespierre proclaim it untiringly in the political clubs, in the newspapers, and in the Assembly. The government, according to them, whether local or central, encroaches everywhere. Why, after having overthrown one despotism, should we set up another? No longer subject to the privileged aristocracy, we are subject to “the aristocracy ofour representatives.”2 Already at Paris “the body ofcitizens is nothing, while the municipality is everything”; it encroaches on our imprescriptible rights in refusing to let a district revoke at will the five members elected to represent it at the Hoˆtel-de-Ville; in passing ordinances without obtaining the sanction ofelectors; in preventing citizens from assembling where they please; in interrupting the outdoor meetings ofthe clubs in the Palais Royal; “Patriots are driven away by the patrol.” Mayor Bailly, “who keeps liveried servants, who gives himselfa salary of110,000 livres,” who distributes captains’ commissions, who forces pedlars to wear metallic badges, and who compels newspapers to have signatures to their articles is not only a tyrant, but a peculator and robber, and “guilty of le`se-nation.” Worse usurpations are committed by the National Assembly. To swear fidelity to the constitution, as this body has just done, to

2. Buchez et Roux, 324. (An article by Loustalot, Sept. 8, 1789). Ibid. 331. Motion ofthe District ofCorde ´liers, presided over by Danton.—Ibid. 239. Denunciation ofthe municipality by Marat.—V. 128, VI. 24–41 (March, 1790). The majority ofthe districts demand the permanent authority ofthe districts, that is to say, ofthe sovereign political assemblies. 416 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION impose its work on us, to make us take a similar oath, without taking our superior rights into account and without reserving a special ratification ofit to us 3 is “overlooking our sovereignty,” “sporting with the nation’s majesty,” and “substituting the will oftwelve hundred individuals for that of the people”: “Our representatives have failed to treat us with respect.” This is not the first time, and it is not to be the last. Often do they exceed their mandate; they disarm, mutilate, and gag their legitimate sovereign; they pass decrees against the people in the people’s name; such is their martial law, specially devised for “suppressing the uprising ofcitizens”—that is to say, the only resource left to us against conspirators, monopolists, and traitors. Such is their decree against publishing any kind ofjoint placard or petition, a decree “null and void,” and “constituting a most flagrant attack on the nation’s rights.”4 Especially is the electoral law one ofthese, a law which, requiring a small qualification tax for electors and a larger one for les e´ligibles,5 “consecrates the aristocracy ofwealth.” The poor, who are excluded by the decree, must regard it as a nullity; they must register themselves as they please and vote without scruple, because natural law has precedence over written law; it would be simply “fair reprisals” if, at the end of the session, the millions ofcitizens lately deprived oftheir vote unjustly, should seize the

3. Buchez et Roux. IV. 458. Meeting ofFeb. 24, 1790, an article by Lous- talot.—III. 202. Speech by Robespierre, meeting ofOct. 21, 1789. Ibid. 219. Resolution ofthe district ofSt. Martin declaring that martial law shall not be enforced. Ibid. 222. Article by Loustalot. 4. Buchez et Roux, X. 124, an article by Marat.—X. 1–22, speech by Robes- pierre at the meeting ofMay 9, 1791.—III. 247, an article by Loustalot. III. 217, speech by Robespierre, meeting ofOct. 22, 1789. Ibid. 431, article by Loustalot and Desmoulins, Nov., 1789.—VI. 336, articles by Loustalot and Marat, July, 1790. 5. The Constituent Assembly created two classes ofelectors; one, the mass ofvoters, consisting ofthose who paid a small qualification tax, the value ofa day’s labor, and who were called active citizens, and the other, chosen by this class, ofthose who elected deputies to the National Assembly, their qualification tax being the value ofa half-poundofsilver.—T R. The Jacobin Conquest / 417 usurping majority by the throat and tell them: “You cut us off from society in your chamber, because you are the strongest there; we, in our turn, cut you off from out-door society, because we are strongest in the street. You have killed us civilly—we kill you physically.” Accordingly, from this point of view, all riots are legitimate. Robespierre in the tribune6 excuses jacqueries, refuses to call castle- burners brigands, and justifies the insurgents ofSoissons, Nancy, Avignon, and the colonies. Desmoulins, alluding to two men hung at Douai, states that it was done by the people and soldiers combined, and declares that “henceforth—I have no hesitation in saying it—they have legitimated the insurrection”; they were guilty, and it was well to hang them.7 Not only do the party leaders excuse assassinations, but they provoke them. Desmoulins, “attorney-general ofthe Lantern, 8 insists on each ofthe eighty-three departments being threatened with at least one lantern descent”; while Marat, in the name ofprinciple, constantly sounds the tocsin in his journal: “When public safety is in peril, the people must take power out of the hands ofthose to whom it is entrusted ....Putthat Austrian woman and her brother-in-law in prison....Seize the ministers and their clerks and put them in irons....Makesure ofthe mayor and his lieutenants; keep the general in sight, and arrest his staff.... The heir to the throne has no right to a dinner while you want bread. Organise bodies ofarmed men. March to the National As- sembly and demand food at once, supplied to you out of the national possessions....Demand that the nation’s poor have a future secured to them out ofthe national contribution. Ifyou are refusedjoin the

6. Ernest Hamel, “Histoire de Robespierre,” passim, (I. 436). Robespierre proposed to confer political rights on the blacks.—Buchez et Roux, IX. 264 (March, 1791). 7. Buchez et Roux, V. 146 (March, 1790); VI. 436 (July 26, 1790); VIII. 247 (Dec., 1790); X. 224 (June, 1791). 8. This soubriquet is bestowed on Desmoulins on account ofhis advocacy ofstreet executions, the victims ofrevolutionary passion being oftenhung at the nearest lanterne, or street lamp, at that time in Paris suspended across the street by ropes or chains.—TR. 418 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION army, take the land, as well as gold which the rascals who want to force you to come to terms by hunger have buried and share it amongst you. Off with the heads ofthe ministers and their underlings, fornow is the time; that ofLafayette and ofevery rascal on his staff, and ofevery unpatriotic battalion officer, including Bailly and those municipal reactionists—all the traitors in the National Assembly!” Marat, indeed, still passes for a furious ranter among people ofsome intelligence. But forall that, this is the sum and substance ofhis theory: It installs in the political edifice, over the heads ofdelegated, regular, and legal powers an anonymous, imbecile, and terrific power whose decisions are absolute, whose projects are constantly adopted, and whose intervention is sanguinary. This power is that ofthe populace, ofa ferocious, suspicious sultan, who, appointing his viziers, keeps his hands free to direct them, and his scimiter ready sharpened to cut off their heads.

II That a speculator in his closet should have concocted such a theory is comprehensible; paper will take all that is put upon it, while abstract beings, the hollow simulacres and philosophic puppets he creates, are adapted to every sort ofcombination.—That a lunatic in his cell should adopt and preach this theory is also comprehensible; he is beset with phantoms and lives outside the actual world, and, moreover, in this ever-agitated democracy he is the eternal denun- ciator and instigator ofevery riot and murder that takes place; he it is who under the name of“the people’s friend”becomes the arbiter oflives and the veritable sovereign.—That a people borne down with taxes, wretched and starving, schooled by declaimers and sophists, should have welcomed this theory and acted under it is again comprehensible; extreme suffering renders all weapons available, and where there is oppression, that doctrine is true which serves to throw oppression off. But that public men, legislators and statesmen, with, at last, ministers and heads ofthe government, should have made this theory their own; that they should have more fondly clung The Jacobin Conquest / 419 to it as it became more destructive; that, daily for three years they should have seen social order crumbling away piecemeal under its blows and not have recognised it as the instrument ofsuch vast ruin that, in the light ofthe most disastrous experience, instead ofre- garding it as a curse they should have glorified it as a boon; that many ofthem—an entire party, almost all ofthe Assembly—should have venerated it as a religious dogma and carried it to extremes with the enthusiasm and rigor offaith;that, driven by it into a narrow strait, ever getting narrower and narrower, they should have continued to crush each other at every step; that, finally, on reaching the visionary temple oftheir so-called liberty, they should have found themselves in a slaughter-house, and, within its precincts, should have become in turn butcher and brute; that, through their maxims ofuniversal, typical liberty they should have inaugurated a despotism worthy ofDahomey, a tribunal like that ofthe Inquisition, and raised human hecatombs like those ofancient Mexico; that, amidst their prisons and scaffolds they should persist in believing in the righteousness oftheir cause, in their own humanity, in their virtue, and, on their fall, have regarded themselves as martyrs—is certainly strange; such intellectual aberration, such excessive self- conceit are rarely encountered, and a concurrence ofcircumstances, the like ofwhich has never been seen in the world but once, was necessary to produce it. Exaggerated self-conceit and dogmatism, however, are not rare in the human species. These two roots ofthe Jacobin intellect exist in all countries, underground and indestructible. Everywhere they are kept from sprouting by the established order of things; everywhere are they striving to upheave old historic foundations which press them down. Now, as formerly, students live in garrets, bohemians in lodgings, physicians without patients and lawyers without clients in lonely offices, so many Brissots, Dantons, Marats, Robes- pierres, and St. Justs in embryo; only, for lack of air and sunshine, they never come to maturity. At twenty, on entering society, a young man’s judgment and self-esteem are extremely sensitive.—Let the society in which he is comprised be what it will, it is for him a 420 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION scandal to right reason: it was not organized by a legislative philosopher according to a sound principle, but is the work ofone generation after another, according to manifold and changing necessities. It is not a product oflogic, but ofhistory, and the new-fledged thinker shrugs his shoulders as he looks up and sees what the ancient tenement is, the foundations of which are arbitrary, its architecture confused, and its many repairs plainly visible.—In the second place, whatever degree ofperfectionpreceding institutions, laws, and customs have reached, these have not received his assent; others, his predecessors, have chosen for him, he being subjected beforehand to moral, political, and social forms which pleased them. Whether they please him or not is ofno consequence. Like a horse trotting along between the thills ofa wagon in the harness that happens to have been put on his back, he has to make the best ofit. Besides, whatever its organization, as it is essentially a hierarchy, he is nearly always subaltern in it, and must ever remain so, either soldier, corporal or sergeant. Even under the most liberal system, that in which the highest grades are accessible to all, for every five or six men who take the lead or command others, one hundred thousand must follow or be commanded, which makes it vain to tell every conscript that he carries a marshal’s baton in his sack, when, nine hundred and ninety-nine times out ofa thousand, he discovers too late, on rummaging his sack, that the baton is not there.—It is not surprising that he is tempted to kick against social barriers within which, willingly or not, he is enrolled, and which predestine him to subordination. It is not surprising that on emerging from traditional influences he should accept a theory which subjects these arrangements to his arbitrament and gives him authority over his superiors. And all the more because there is no doctrine more simple and better adapted to his inexperience; it is the only one he can comprehend and manage off-hand. Hence it is that young men on leaving college, especially those who have their way to make in the world, are more or less Jacobin,—it is a distemper which belongs to growth.9—In well

9. Gustave Flaubert. “Tout notaire a reˆve´ des sultanes” (“Madame Bo- The Jacobin Conquest / 421 organised communities this distemper is beneficial, and is soon cured. The public edifice being substantial and carefully guarded, malcontents soon discover that they have not enough strength to pull it down, and that on contending with its guardians they gain nothing but blows. After some grumbling, they too enter at one or the other ofits doors, find a place forthemselves, and enjoy its advantages or become reconciled to their lot. Finally, either through imitation, or habit, or calculation, they willingly form part of that garrison which, in protecting public interests, protects their own private interests as well. Generally, after ten years have gone by, the young man has obtained his rank in the file, where he advances step by step in his own compartment, which he no longer thinks of tearing to pieces, and under the eye ofa policeman whom he no longer thinks ofcondemning. He even sometimes thinks that policeman and compartment are ofuse to him; considering the millions ofindividuals who are trying to mount the social ladder, each striving to get ahead ofthe other, he succeeds in comprehending this— that the worst ofcalamities would be a lack ofbarriers and of guardians. Here the worm-eaten barriers have cracked all at once, their easy- going, timid, incapable guardians having allowed things to take their course. Society, accordingly, disintegrated and a pell-mell, is turned into a turbulent, shouting crowd, each pushing and being pushed, all alike overexcited and congratulating each other on having finally obtained elbow-room, and all demanding that the new barriers shall be as fragile and the new guardians as feeble, as defenceless, and as inert as possible. This is what has been done. As a natural consequence, those who were foremost in the ranks have been turned back; many have been struck down in the fray, while in this permanent state ofdisorder, which goes under the name ofdefinitive order, red heels and pumps continue to be trod on by hob-nailed shoes and sabots.—A free field is now open to the dogmatist and vary”). “Fre´de´ric trouvait que le bonheur me´rite´ par l’excellence de son aˆne tardait a´ venir” (“L’Education Sentimentale”). 422 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION the intemperate egotist. There are no more venerable institutions to overawe, nor physical force to keep them in restraint. On the contrary, the new constitution, through its theoretical declarations and the practical application ofthese, invites them to display themselves.—For, on the one hand, this constitution as law declares that it is founded on pure reason, beginning with a long string of abstract dogmas from which its positive prescriptions are assumed to be rigorously deduced; this is submitting all laws to the shallow comments ofreasoners who will both interpret and break them according to principle.—On the other hand, practically, it hands over all government powers to the elections and confers on the clubs the control ofthe authorities; this is offering a premium to the presumption of the ambitious who put themselves forward because they think themselves capable, and who defame their rulers purposely to displace them.—Every administrative system is a milieu which serves to develop some species ofthe human plant and blight others. This is the best one for the propagation and rapid increase of the coffee-house politician, the club haranguer, the stump-speaker, the street-rioter, the committee dictator—in short, the revolutionist and the tyrant Phantasy and presumption in this political hot-bed assume monstrous proportions, and, in a few months, brains that are now only ardent become ofa white heat. Let us trace the effect ofthis excessive, unhealthy temperature on imaginations and ambitions. The old tenement is down; the foundations ofthe new one are not yet laid; society has to be made over again from top to bottom. All well-meaning people are invited to come and help, and, as one plain principle suffices in drawing a plan, the first comer may succeed. Henceforth political fancies swarm in the district meetings, in the clubs, in the newspapers, in pamphlets, and in every head-long, venturesome brain. “There is not a merchant’s clerk shaped by reading the ‘Nouvelle He´loise,’10 not a pedagogue that has translated ten pages ofLivy, not an artist that has looked through Rollin, not a paragraphist that is converted into a

10. Mallet-Dupan, “Correspondance politique.” 1796. The Jacobin Conquest / 423 political authority by committing to memory the logogriphs ofthe ‘Contrat Social,’ who does not manufacture a constitution....As nothing presents less ofan obstacle than the perfectingofthe imaginary, all perturbed spirits flock to, and become excited, in this ideal realm. Beginning with curiosity, all end in transports. Ordinary people rush to the enterprise the same as a miser to an incantation scene which promises to bring him treasure, and, thus childishly attracted, each hopes to find at once, what has never been seen under even the most liberal governments, immutable perfection, universal brotherhood, the power ofacquiring what one lacks, and a lifecomposed wholly ofenjoyment.” One ofthese enjoyments, and a keen one, is this species ofspecu- lation. One soars in space. By means ofeight or ten ready-made phrases, derived from the six-penny catechisms circulated by thousands in the country and in the suburbs ofthe towns and cities, 11 a village attorney, a customs clerk, a check-taker ofa theatre, the sergeant ofa soldier’s mess becomes a legislator and philosopher; he criticises Malouet, Mirabeau, the Ministry, the King, the Assem- bly, the Church, foreign Cabinets, France, and all Europe. Conse- quently, on these important subjects, which always seemed forever forbidden to him, he offers resolutions, reads addresses, makes harangues, obtains applause, and congratulates himselfon having ar- gued so well and with such big words. To hold forth on questions that are not understood is now an occupation, a matter ofpride and profit. “More is uttered in one day,” says an eye-witness,12 “in one section ofParis than in one year in all the Swiss political assemblies put together. An Englishman would give six weeks ofstudy to what we dispose ofin a quarter ofan hour.” Everywhere, in the town

11. “Entretiens du Pe`re Girard,” by Collot d’Herbois. “Les Etrennes du Peuple,” by Barre`re. “La Constitution Française pour les Habitans des Cam- pagnes,” etc. Later, “L’Alphabet des Sans-Culottes,” “Le Nouveau Catećhisme Re´publicain,” “Les Commandements de la Patrie et de la Re´publique” (in verse), etc. 12. Mercure de France, an article by Mallet-Dupan, April 7, 1792. (Summing up ofthe year 1791.) 424 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION halls, in popular meetings, in the sectional assemblies, in the wine shops, on the public promenades, on street corners vanity erects a tribune to verbosity. “Contemplate the incalculable activity ofsuch a machine in a loquacious nation where the passion for being something dominates all other affections, where vanity has more phases than there are stars in the firmament, where reputations already cost no more than the trouble ofinsisting on their being deserved, where society is divided between mediocrities and their trumpeters who laud them as divinities; where so few people are content with their lot, where the corner grocer is prouder ofhis epaulette than the Grand Conde´ ofhis Marshal’s baton, where agitation without object or resources is perpetual, where, from the floor-scrubber to the dramatist, from the academician to the simpleton who gets muddled over the evening newspaper, from the witty courtier down to his philosophic lackey, each one revises Montesquieu with the self- sufficiency ofa child which, because it is learning to read, deems itselfwise; where self-esteem,in disputation, cavilling and sophis- tication, destroys all sensible conversation; where no one utters a word but to teach, never imagining that to learn one must keep quiet; where the triumphs ofa fewlunatics entice every crackbrain from his den; where, with two nonsensical ideas put together out of a book that is not understood, a man assumes to have principles; where swindlers talk about morality, women ofeasy virtue about civism, and the most infamous of beings about the dignity of the species; where the discharged valet ofa grand seignor calls himself Brutus!”—In reality, he is Brutus in his own eyes. Let the time come and he will be so in earnest, especially against his late master; all he has to do is to give him a thrust with his pike. Until he acts out the part he spouts it, and grows excited over his own tirades; his common sense gives way to the bombastic jargon ofthe revolution and to declamation, which completes the Utopian performance and eases his brain ofits last modicum ofballast. It is not merely ideas which the new re´gime has disturbed, but it has also disordered sentiments. “Authority is transferred from the Chaˆteau ofVersailles and the courtier’s antechamber, with no inter- The Jacobin Conquest / 425 mediary or counterpoise, to the proletariat and its flatterers.”13 The whole ofthe staff ofthe old government is brusquely set aside, while a general election has brusquely installed another in its place, offices not being given to capacity, seniority, and experience, but to self- sufficiency, intrigue, and exaggeration. Not only are legal rights reduced to a common level, but natural grades are transposed; the social ladder, overthrown, is set up again bottom upwards; the first effect ofthe promised regeneration is “to substitute in the administration of public affairs pettifoggers for magistrates, ordinary citizens for cabinet ministers, ex-commoners for ex-nobles, rustics for soldiers, soldiers for captains, captains for generals, cure´s for bishops, vicars for cure´s, monks for vicars, brokers for financiers, em- pirics for administrators, journalists for political economists, rheto- ricians for legislators, and the poor for the rich.”—Every species of covetousness is stimulated by this spectacle. The profusion of offices and the anticipation ofvacancies “has excited the thirst forcom- mand, stimulated self-esteem, and inflamed the hopes of the most inept. A rude and grim presumption renders the fool and the ig- noramus unconscious oftheir insignificance. They have deemed themselves capable ofanything, because the law granted public functions merely to capacity. There has dawned upon each an ambitious perspective; the soldier thinks only ofdisplacing his captain, the captain ofbecoming a general, the clerk ofsupplanting the chiefof his department, the new-fledged attorney ofdonning the purple, the cure´ ofbeing ordained a bishop, the veriest scribbler ofseating himselfon the legislative bench. Offices and professionsvacated by the appointment ofso many upstarts afford in their turn a vast field for the ambition of the lower classes.”—Thus, step by step, owing to the reversal ofsocial positions, is brought about a general intellectual fever. “France is transformed into a gaming-table, where, alongside ofthe discontented citizen offering his stakes, sits, bold, blustering, and with fermenting brain, the pretentious subaltern rattling his dice-box. . . . At the sight ofa public functionary emerging

13. Mercure de France, see the numbers ofDec. 30, 1791, and April 7, 1791. 426 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION from nothing, where is the bootblack whose soul does not bound with emulation?”—He has merely to push himselfand elbow his way to secure a ticket “in this immense lottery ofpopular luck, of preferment without merit, of success without talent, of apotheoses without virtues, ofan inﬁnity ofplaces distributed by the people wholesale, and enjoyed by the people in detail.” Political charlatans ﬂock thither from every quarter, those taking the lead who, being most in earnest, believe in the virtue oftheir nostrum, and need power to impose its recipe on the community; all being saviors, all places belong to them, and especially the highest. They lay siege to these conscientiously and philanthropically; ifnecessary, they will take them by assault, hold them through force, and, forcibly or otherwise, administer their panacea to the human species.

III Such are our Jacobins, born out ofsocial decomposition like mushrooms out ofcompost. Let us consider their inner organization, for they have one as formerly the Puritans; we have only to follow their dogma down to its depths, as with a sounding-line, to reach the psychological stratum in which the normal balance offacultyand sentiment is overthrown. When a statesman, who is not wholly unworthy ofthat great name, finds an abstract principle in his way, as, for instance, that of popular sovereignty, he accepts it, ifhe accepts it at all, according to his conception ofits practical bearings. He begins, accordingly, by imagining it applied and in operation. From personal recollections and such information as he can obtain, he forms an idea of some village or town, some community ofmoderate size in the north, in the south, or in the centre ofthe country, forwhich he has to make laws. He then imagines its inhabitants acting according to his principle, that is to say, voting, mounting guard, levying taxes, and administering their own affairs. Familiar with ten or a dozen groups ofthis sort, which he regards as examples, he concludes by analogy as to others and the rest on the territory. Evidently it is a The Jacobin Conquest / 427 difficult and uncertain process; to be exact, or nearly so, requires rare powers ofobservation, and, at each step, a great deal oftact, for a nice calculation has to be made on given quantities imperfectly ascertainedandimperfectly noted! 14 Any political leader who does this successfully, does it through the ripest experience associated with genius. And even then he keeps his hand on the check-rein in pushing his innovation or reform; he is almost always tentative; he applies his law only in part, gradually and provisionally; he wishes to ascertain its effect; he is always ready to stay its operation, amend it, or modify it, according to the good or ill results of experiment; the state ofthe human material he has to deal with is never clear to his mind, even when superior, until after many and repeated grop- ings.—Now the Jacobin pursues just the opposite course. His principle is an axiom ofpolitical geometry, which always carries its own proofalong with it; for, like the axioms ofcommon geometry, it is formed out of the combination of a few simple ideas, and its evidence imposes itselfat once on all minds capable ofembracing in one conception the two terms ofwhich it is the aggregate expression. Man in general, the rights ofman, social contract, liberty, equality, reason, nature, the people, tyrants, are all elementary conceptions; whether precise or not, they fill the brain ofthe new sectary; oftentimes these terms are merely vague, sounding words, but that makes no difference; as soon as they meet in his brain an axiom springs out ofthem that can be instantly and absolutely applied on every occasion and at all hazards. Men as they really are do not concern him. He does not observe them; he does not require to observe them; with closed eyes he imposes a pattern ofhis own on the human substance manipulated by him; the idea never enters his head of

14. Fox, before deciding on any measure, consulted a Mr. H , one of the most uninfluential, and even narrow-minded, members ofthe House of Commons. Some astonishment being expressed at this, he replied that he regarded Mr. H as a perfect type of the faculties and prejudices of a country gentleman, and he used him as a thermometer. Napoleon likewise stated that before framing an important law, he imagined to himself the impression it would make on the mind ofa burly peasant. 428 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION forming any previous conception of this complex, multiform, swaying material—contemporary peasants, artisans, townspeople, cure´s and nobles, behind their ploughs, in their homes, in their shops, in their parsonages, in their mansions, with their inveterate beliefs, persistent inclinations, and powerful wills. Nothing of this enters into or lodges in his mind; all its avenues are stopped by the abstract principle which flourishes there and fills it completely. Should actual experience through the eye or ear plant some unwelcome truth forcibly in his mind, it cannot subsist there; however obstreperous and telling it may be, the abstract principle drives it out; ifneed be it will distort and strangle it, on the ground ofits being a calumny, as it gives the lie to the principle which is true in itselfand indisputable. Manifestly, a mind ofthis stamp is not sound; ofthe two faculties which should pull together harmoniously, one is undeveloped and the other overdeveloped; facts are wanting to turn the scale against the weight offormulae. Too heavy on one side and too light on the other, the Jacobin mind turns violently over on that side to which it leans, and such is its incurable infirmity. Consider, indeed, the authentic monuments ofJacobin thought, the “Journal des Amis de la Constitution,” the gazettes ofLoustalot, Desmoulins, Brissot, Condorcet, Fre´ron and Marat, Robespierre’s and St. Just’s pamphlets and speeches, the debates in the Legislative Assembly and in the Convention, the harangues, addresses and reports ofthe Girondists and Montagnards, in brief,the fortyvolumes ofextracts compiled by Buchez and Roux. Never has so much been said to so little purpose; all the truth that is uttered is drowned in the monotony and inflation ofempty verbiage and vociferous bombast. One experience in this direction is sufficient. The historian who resorts to this mass of rubbish for accurate information finds none ofany account; in vain will he read kilometers ofit: scarcely will he encounter one fact, one instructive detail, one document which brings before his eyes a distinct physiognomy, which shows him the real sentiments ofa villager or ofa gentleman, which vividly portrays the interior ofa hoˆtel-de-ville, ofa soldier’s barracks, ofa municipal council chamber, or the character ofan insurrection. To The Jacobin Conquest / 429 define fifteen or twenty types and situations which sum up the history ofthe period, we have been obliged, and shall be, to seek them elsewhere—in the correspondence oflocal administrators, in affidavits on criminal records, in the secret police15 reports, and in the narratives offoreigners, 16 who, prepared for it by a different education, look behind words for things, and see France beyond the “Contrat Social.” This teeming France, this grand tragedy which twenty-six millions ofplayers are performing on a stage oftwenty- six thousand square leagues, is lost to the Jacobin; his literature, as well as his brain, contain only unsubstantial generalizations like those above cited, rolling out in a mere play ofideas, sometimes in concise terms when the writer happens to be a professional reasoner like Condorcet, but most frequently in a tangled, knotty style full ofloose and disconnected meshes when the spokesman happens to be an improvised politician or a philosophic tyro like the ordinary deputies ofthe Assembly and the haranguers ofthe clubs. It is a pedantic scholasticism set forth with fanatical rant. Its entire vocabulary consists ofabout a hundred words, while all ideas are reduced to one, that ofman in himself;society, in their conception ofit, consists ofso many human units, all alike equal and independent, contracting together for the first time; none could be briefer, for, to arrive at it, man had to be reduced to a minimum. Never were political intellects so dried up, and so wilfully; for it is the attempt to systematise and to simplify which causes their impoverishment. In that respect they follow the method of the century, keeping in the track ofJean-Jacques Rousseau: their mental mould is the classic mould, which mould, already contracted with the late philosophers, is yet more so with them hardened and toughened to excess. The best representatives ofthe type are Condorect, 17 among the Giron-

15. “Tableaux de la Re´volution Française,” by Schmidt (especially the reports by Dubard, 3 vols). 16. “Correspondence ofGouverneur Morris,” “Memoirs ofMallet-Dupan,” “Moore’s Journal,” “Un Se´jour en France” from 1792 to 1795. 17. See, in “Progre`s de l’esprit humaine,” the superiority awarded to the republican constitution of1793. (Book ix.) “The principles out ofwhich the 430 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION dists, and Robespierre, among the Montagnards, both mere dogmatists and pure logicians, the latter the most remarkable and with a perfection of intellectual sterility never surpassed.—In the formation ofdurable laws, that is to say, in the adaptation ofsocial machinery to characters, conditions, and circumstances, such a mind ofall others is certainly the most impotent and the most mischievous, for it is organically short-sighted; and, again, its code of axioms, interposed between it and surrounding objects, shuts off its horizon; beyond its own coterie and club it distinguishes nothing, while in the vagueness and confusion of the distance it sets up the empty idols ofits own Utopia.—But when power has to be taken by assault, and a dictatorship arbitrarily exercised, the mechanical rigidity of such a mind is serviceable rather than detrimental. Unlike that of the statesman, it has no drawback, no embarrassment arising from the necessity ofmaking investigations, ofrespecting precedents, of looking into statistics, of calculating and tracing beforehand in different directions the near and remote consequences of its work as this affects the interests, habits, and passions ofdiverse classes. All this is superannuated and superfluous; the Jacobin comprehends legitimate government and good laws instantaneously; his rectilinear process is the shortest and most efficient both for destruction and construction. For, ifcalm reflection is required to get at what suits twenty-six millions ofliving Frenchmen, a mere glance suffices for him to know what is requisite for the human abstractions of the theory;—indeed, according to the theory, men are all shaped to one pattern, nothing being left to them but an elementary will; thus defined, the philosophic automaton demands liberty, equality and popular sovereignty, the maintenance ofthe rights ofman and adhesion to the “Contrat Social.” This suffices: henceforth the will of the people is known, and known beforehand; a consultation among citizens previous to action is not essential; there is no obligation to constitution and laws ofFrance have been combined are purer, more exact, and deeper than those which governed the Americans: they have more completely escaped the influence ofevery sort ofprejudice, etc.” The Jacobin Conquest / 431 await their votes. In any event, a ratification by the people is sure; and should this not be forthcoming it is owing to their ignorance, disdain, or malice, in which case their response deserves to be considered as null; the best thing to do, consequently, through precaution and to protect the people from what is bad for them, is to dictate to them what is good for them.—In all this, the Jacobin acts in good faith; for the men in whose behalf he claims rights are not flesh- and-blood Frenchmen, as we see them in the streets and in the fields, but men in general, as they ought to be on leaving the hands of Nature, or after the teachings of Reason. As to the former, there is no need ofbeing scrupulous because they are infatuatedwith prejudices and their opinions are mere drivelling; as for the latter, it is just the opposite: full of respect for the vainglorious images of his own theory, ofspectres begotten by his own intellectual contrivance, the Jacobin always will bow down to responses that he himselfhas provided, for, the beings that he has created are more real in his eyes than living ones and it is their suffrage on which he counts. Accordingly, viewing things in the worst light, he has nothing against him but the momentary antipathy ofa purblind generation. To offset this, he enjoys the approbation ofhumanity, self-obtained; that ofa posterity which his acts have regenerated; that ofmen who, thanks to him, are again become what they should never have ceased to be. Hence, far from looking upon himself as an usurper or a tyrant, he considers himselfthe natural mandatory ofa veritable people, the authorised executor ofthe common will. Marching along in the procession formed for him by this imaginary crowd, sustained by millions ofmetaphysical wills created by himselfin his own image, he has their unanimous assent, and, like a chorus oftrium- phant shouts, he will fill the outward world with the inward echo ofhis own voice.

IV In every doctrine which wins men over to it, the sophistry it contains is less potent than the promises it makes; its power over them is 432 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION greater through their sensibility than through their intelligence; for, ifthe heart is oftenthe dupe ofthe head, the latter is much more frequently the dupe of the former. We do not accept a system because we deem it a true one, but because the truth we find in it suits us. Political or religious fanaticism, any theological or philosophical channel in which truth flows, always has its source in some ardent longing, some secret passion, some accumulation ofintense, painful desire to which a theory affords an outlet; in the Jacobin, as well as in the Puritan, there is a fountain-head of this description. What feeds this source with the Puritan is the anxieties of a disturbed conscience which, forming for itself some idea of perfect justice, becomes rigid and multiplies the commandments it believes that God has promulgated; on being constrained to disobey these it rebels, and, to impose them on others, it becomes tyrannical even to despotism. The first effort ofthe Puritan, however, wholly internal, is self-control; before becoming political he becomes moral. With the Jacobin, on the contrary, the first precept is not moral, but political; it is not his duties which he exaggerates but his rights, while his doctrine, instead ofbeing a prick to his conscience, flatters his pride.18 Vast and insatiate as human pride may be, it is satisfied this time, for never before has it had so much to feed upon. In the programme ofthe sect do not seek forthe limited prerogatives growing out ofself-respectwhich the proud-spirited man claims for himself, such as civil rights accompanied with those political liberties that serve as sentinels and guardians ofthese rights— security for life and property, the stability of the law, the integrity ofcourts, equality ofcitizens beforethe law and under taxation, the

18. Camille Desmoulins, the enfant terrible ofthe Revolution, confessesthis, as well as other truths. After citing the Revolutions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, “which derived their virtue from and had their roots in conscience, which were sustained by fanaticism and the hopes of another world,” he thus concludes: “Our Revolution, purely political, is wholly rooted in egotism, in everybody’s amour propre, in the combinations ofwhich is found the common interest.” (“Brissot de´voile´,” by Camille Desmoulins. Buchez et Roux, XIII 207, January, 1792.) The Jacobin Conquest / 433 abolition ofprivileges and arbitrary proceedings, the election of representatives and the administration ofpublic funds;in short, the precious guarantees which render each citizen an inviolable sovereign on his limited domain, which protect his person and property against all species ofpublic or private oppression and exaction, which maintain him calm and erect before competitors as well as adversaries, upright and respectful in the presence of magistrates and in the presence ofthe government. A Malouet, a Mounier, a Mallet-Dupan, partisans ofthe English Constitution and Parliament, may be content with such triﬂing gifts, but the theory holds them all cheap, and, ifneed be, will trample them in the dust. Indepen- dence and security for the private citizen is not what it promises, not the right to vote every two years, not a moderate exercise of inﬂuence, not an indirect, limited and intermittent control ofthe commonwealth, but political dominion in the full andcomplete possession of France andthe French people. There is no doubt on this point. In Rousseau’s own words, the “Contrat Social” prescribes “the complete alienation to the community ofeach associate and all his rights,” every individual surrendering himselfwholly, “just as he may actually be, he himselfand all his powers ofwhich his possessions form a part,” so that the State, not only the recognised owner ofproperty, but ofminds and bodies as well, may forcibly and legitimately impose on every member ofit such education, form ofworship, religious faith,opinions, and sympathies as it deems best.19 Now, each man, solely because he is a man, is by right a

19. Rousseau’s idea ofthe omnipotence ofthe State is also that ofLouis XIV. and Napoleon. It is curious to see the development ofthe same idea in the mind ofa contemporary bourgeois, like Re´tifde la Bretonne, halfliterary and halfone ofthe people. (“Nuits de Paris,” XV e nuit, 377, on the September Massacres.) “No, I do not pity those fanatical priests; they have done the country too much mischief. Whatever a society, or a majority of it, desires, that is right. He who opposes this, who calls down war and vengeance on the nation, is a monster. Order is always found in the agreement of the majority. The minority is always guilty, I repeat it, even if it is morally right. Nothing but common sense is needed to see that truth.” Ibid. (On the execution ofLouis XVI.), p. 447. “Had the nation the right to condemn and execute him? No thinking person 434 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION member ofthis despotic sovereignty. Whatever, accordingly, my condition may be, my incompetency, my ignorance, my insignificance in the career in which I have plodded along, I have full control over the fortunes, lives, and consciences of twenty-six millions of French people, being accordingly Czar and Pope, according to my share ofauthority. But ifI adhere strictly to this doctrine, I am yet more so than my quota warrants. This royal prerogative with which I am endowed is only conferred on those who, like myself, sign the Social Contract in full; others, merely because they reject some clause of it, incur a forfeiture;no one must enjoy the advantages ofa pact ofwhich some ofthe conditions are repudiated. Again, as this pact is based on natural right and is obligatory, he who rejects it or withdraws from it, becomes by that act a miscreant, a public wrong-doer and an enemy ofthe people. There were once crimes ofroyal le `se- majesty; now there are crimes ofpopular le`se-majesty; which crimes are committed when by deed, word, or thought, any portion whatever ofthe more than royal authority belonging to the people is denied or contested. The dogma through which popular sovereignty is proclaimed thus actually ends in a dictatorship ofthe few, and a proscription ofthe many. Outside ofthe sect you are outside ofthe law. We, five or six thousand Jacobins ofParis, are the legitimate monarch, the infallible Pontiff, and woe betide the refractory and the lukewarm, all government agents, all private persons, the clergy, the nobles, the rich, merchants, traders, the indifferent among all classes, who, steadily opposing or yielding uncertain adhesion, dare to throw doubt on our unquestionable right! One by one all these consequences are to come into light, and it can ask such a question. The nation is everything in itself; its power is that which the whole human kind would have ifbut one nation, one single government governed the globe. Who would dare then dispute the power ofhumanity? It was the indisputable power that a nation has, to condemn even an innocent man, felt by the ancient Greeks, which led them to exile Aristides and put Phocion to death. ‘Oh truth, unrecognised by our contemporaries, what evil has arisen through forgetting it!’” The Jacobin Conquest / 435 is evident that, let the logical machinery by which they unfold themselves be what it may, no ordinary person, unless ofconsummate vanity, will fully adopt them. He must have an exalted opinion of himselfto consider himselfsovereign otherwise than by his vote, to conduct public business with no more misgivings than his private business, to directly and forcibly interfere with this, to set himself up, he and his clique, as guides, censors and rulers ofhis government, to persuade himselfthat, with his mediocre education and average intellect, with his few scraps of Latin and such information as is obtained in reading-rooms, coffee-houses, and newspapers, with no other experience than that ofa club, or a municipal council, he could discourse wisely and well on the vast, complex questions which superior men, specially devoted to them, hesitate to take up. At first this presumption existed in him only in germ, and, in ordinary times, it would have remained, for lack of nourishment, as dry-rot or creeping mould. But the heart knows not what strange seeds it contains! Any ofthese, feeble and seemingly inoffensive, needs only air and sunshine to become a noxious excrescence and a colossal plant. Whether third or fourth rate attorney, counsellor, surgeon, journalist, cure´, artist, or author, the Jacobin is like the low hind that has just found,in one corner ofhis hut, a lot ofold parchments which entitle him to the throne. What a contrast between the meanness ofhis calling and the importance with which the theory invests him! With what rapture he accepts a dogma that raises him so high in his own estimation! Diligently conning the Declaration ofRights, the Constitution, all the official documents that confer on him such glorious prerogatives, charging his imagination with them, he immediately assumes a tone befitting his new position.20

20. Moniteur, XI. 46. Speech by Isnard in the Assembly, Jan. 5, 1792. “The people are now conscious oftheir dignity. They know, according to the Con- stitution, that every Frenchman’s motto is: Live free, the equal of all, and one ofthe common sovereignty.”—Guillon de Montle´on, I. 445. Speech by Chalier, in the Lyons Central Club, March 21, 1793. “Know that you are kings, and more than kings. Do you not feel sovereignty circulating in your veins?” 436 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Nothing surpasses the haughtiness and arrogance ofthis tone. It declares itselfat the outset in the harangues ofthe clubs and in the petitions to the Constituent Assembly. Loustalot, Fre´ron, Danton, Marat, Robespierre, St. Just, always employ dictatorial language, that ofthe sect, and which ﬁnally becomes the jargon oftheir meanest valets. Good-breeding or toleration, anything that denotes regard or respect for others, ﬁnd no place in their utterances nor in their acts; an usurping, tyrannical conceit creates for itself a language in its own image, and we see not only the foremost actors, but their commonest supernumeraries, enthroned on their grandiloquent platform. Each in his own eyes is Roman, savior, hero, and great man. “I stood in the tribune ofthe palace,” writes Anacharsis Clootz, 21 “at the head ofthe foreigners, acting as ambassador ofthe human species, while the ministers ofthe tyrants regarded me with a jealous and disconcerted air.” A schoolmaster at Troyes, on the opening of the club in that town, advises the women “to teach their children, as soon as they can utter a word, that they are free and have equal rights with the mightiest potentates ofthe universe.” 22 Pe´tion’s account ofthe journey in the king’s carriage, on the return from Varennes, must be read to see how far self-importance and the impertinence ofa blackguard can be carried. 23 In their memoirs and even down to their epitaphs, Barbaroux, Buzot, Pe´tion, Roland, and Madame Roland24 give themselves cer-

21. Moniteur, V. 136. (Celebration ofthe Federation, July 14, 1790.) 22. Albert Babeau, “Histoire de Troyes pendant la Re´volution,” I. 436 (April 10, 1790). 23. Mortimer-Ternaux, “Histoire de la Terreur,” I. 353. (Pe´tion’s own narrative ofthis journey.) This pert blockhead cannot even spell: he writes aselle for aisselle, etc. He is convinced that Madame Elizabeth, the king’s sister, wants to seduce him, and that she makes advances to him: “Ifwe had been alone, I believe that she would have fallen into my arms, and let the impulses of nature have their way.” He makes a display ofvirtue, however, and becomes only the more supercilious as he talks with the king, the young dauphin, and the ladies he is fetching back. 24. The “Me´moires de Madame Roland” is a masterpiece ofthat conceit supposed to be so carefully concealed as not to be visible and never off its stilts. “I am beautiful, I am affectionate, I am sensitive, I inspire love, I reciprocate, I remain virtuous, my mind is superior, and my courage indomitable. I am The Jacobin Conquest / 437 tificates ofvirtue, and would pass forPlutarch’s characters, ifwe could take their word for it. This infatuation is always on the increase, from the Girondists to the Montagnards. St. Just, at the age oftwenty-four, and merely a private individual, is already consumed with suppressed ambition. Marat says: “I believe that I have exhausted every combination ofthe human intellect in relation to morality, philosophy and political science.” Robespierre, from the beginning to the end ofthe Revolution, is always, in his own eyes, Robespierre the unique, the one pure man, the infallible and the impeccable; no man ever burnt to himselfthe incense ofhis own praise so constantly and so directly.—Self-conceit thus drains the cup oftheory to the bottom, however distastefulits dregs and however fatal its poison to those who even defy its nausea for the sake ofswallowing it. Since it is virtue, no one may reject its dictates without committing a crime. Thus construed, the theory divides Frenchmen into two groups—one consisting ofaristocrats, fanatics, egoists, the corrupt, bad citizens in short, and the other patriots, philosophers, and the virtuous—that is to say, those belonging to the sect.25 Thanks to this solution ofit, the vast moral and social philosopher, statesman, and writer, worthy ofthe highest success,” is constantly in her mind, and always perceptible in her phraseology. Real modesty never shows itself. On the contrary, many indecorous things are said and done by her from bravado, and to set herself above her sex. Cf. the “Memoirs of Mrs. Hutchinson,” which present a great contrast. Madame Roland wrote: “I see no part in society which suits me but that ofProvidence.”—The same presumption shines out in others, with less refined pretentions. The following letter, found among the papers ofthe iron wardrobe, is addressed to the king by the deputy Rouyer. “I have compared, examined, and foreseen everything. All I ask, to carry out my noble purposes, is that direction offorceswhich the law confers on you. I am aware ofand brave the danger; weakness defers to this, while genius overcomes it. I have turned my attention to all the courts ofEurope, and am sure that I can force peace on them.”—Robert, an obscure pamphleteer, asks Dumouriez to make him ambassador to Constantinople, while Louvet, the author of“Faublas,” declares in his memoirs that liberty perished in 1792, because he was not appointed Minister ofJustice. 25. Moniteur, p. 189. Speech by Collot d’Herbois, on the mitraillades at Lyons. “We, too, possess sensibility! The Jacobins have every virtue; they are compassionate, humane, generous. These virtues, however, are cherished for 438 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION world with which they deal finds its definition, expression, and representation in a ready-made antithesis.—It is quite clear now what the object ofgovernment is: the wicked must submit to the good, or, which is briefer, the wicked must be suppressed. To this end let us employ confiscation, imprisonment, exile, drowning and the guillotine. All means are justifiable and meritorious with traitors; now that the Jacobin has made his slaughterings canonical, he slays through philanthropy. Thus is this character rounded off like that ofthe theologian who would become an inquisitor. Extraordinary contrasts meet in its formation—a lunatic that is logical, and a monster that pretends to have a conscience. Under the pressure ofhis faithand egotism, he has developed two deformities, one of the head and the other of the heart; his common sense is gone, and his moral sense is utterly perverted. In fixing his mind on abstract formulas, he is no longer able to see men as they are; through self-admiration he finally comes to viewing his adversaries, and even his rivals, as miscreants deserving ofdeath. On this downhill road nothing stops him, for, in qualifying things inversely to their true meaning, he has violated within himselfthe precious conceptions which bring us back to truth and justice. No light reaches eyes which regard blindness as clear- sightedness; no remorse affects a soul which erects barbarism into patriotism, and which sanctions murder with duty.

patriots, who are their brethren, but never for aristocrats.”—Meillan, “Me´- moires,” 4. “Robespierre was one day eulogising a man named Desfieux, well known for his lack of integrity, and whom he finally sacrificed. ‘I said to him, your man Desfieux is known to be a thief.’ ‘No matter,’ he replied, ‘he is a good patriot.’ ‘But he is a fraudulent bankrupt.’ ‘He is a good patriot.’ ‘He is a robber.’ ‘He is a good patriot’—which three words were all I could get out ofhim.” 9 CHAPTER II =

I. Formation of the party—Its recruits—These are rare in the upper class and amongst the masses—They are numerous in the low bourgeois class and in the upper stratum of the people—The position and education which enroll a man in the party— II. Spontaneous associations after July 14, 1789—How these dissolve—Withdrawal of people of sense and occupation—Number of those absent at elections—Birth and multiplication of Jacobin societies—Their influence over their adherents—Their manoeuvres and despotism— III. How they view the liberty of the press—Their political doings— IV. Their rallying-points—Origin and composition of the Paris Jocobin club—It affiliates with provincial clubs— Its Leaders—The Fanatics—The Intriguers—Their object—Their means— V. Small number of Jacobins—Sources of their power—They form a league— They have faith—Their unscrupulousness—The power of the party vested in the group which best fulfills these conditions.

CHARACTERS of this sort are found in all classes of society; no situation or position in life protects one from wild Utopias or frantic ambition. We find among the Jacobins a Barras and a Chaˆteauneuf- Randon, two nobles of the oldest families, Condorcet, a marquis, mathematician, philosopher and member of two renowned academies, Gobel, bishop of Lydda and suffragan to the bishop of Baˆle, He´rault de Sećhelles, a prote´ge´ of the Queen’s and attorney-general to the Paris parliament, Lepelletier de St. Fargeau, chief-justice and one of the richest land-owners in France, Charles de Hesse, major- general, born in a royal family, and, last of all, a prince of the blood

439 440 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION and fourth personage in the realm, the Duke of Orleans.—But, with the exception of these rare deserters, neither the hereditary aristocracy nor the upper magistracy, nor the highest of the middle class, none of the land-owners who live on their estates, or the leaders of industrial and commercial enterprises, no one belonging to the administration, none of those, in general, who are or deserve to be considered social authorities, furnish the party with recruits; all have too much at stake in the political edifice, shattered as it is, to wish its entire demolition; their political experience, brief as it is, enables them to see at once that a habitable house is not built by merely tracing a plan of it on paper according to the theorems of school geometry.—On the other hand, the theory in the lower class, among the mass of rustics and the populace, unless transformed into a shib- boleth, finds no listeners. Me´tayers, farmers, and small cultivators looking after their own plots of ground, peasants and craftsmen who work too hard to think and whose minds never range beyond a village horizon, busy only with that which brings them in their daily bread, find abstract doctrines unintelligible; should the dogmas of the newcatechism arrest their attention the same thing happens as with the old one, they do not understand them; that mental faculty by which an abstraction is reached is not yet formed in them. On being taken to a political club they fall asleep; they opon their eyes only when some one announces that tithes and feudal privileges are to be restored; they can be depended on for nothing more than a broil and a jacquerie; later on, when their grain comes to be taxed or is taken, they prove as refractory under the republic as under the monarchy. The adepts in this theory come from other quarters, from the two extremes of the lower stratum of the middle class and the upper stratum of the lowclass. Again, in these twocontiguous groups, which merge into each other, those must be left out who, absorbed in their daily occupations or professions, have no time or thought to give to public matters, who have reached a fair position in the social hierarchy and are not disposed to run risks, almost all of them well-established, steady-going, mature, married folks who have The Jacobin Conquest / 441 sown their wild oats and whom some experience in life has rendered distrustful of themselves and of theories. Overweening conceit is average in average human nature at all times, and with most men speculative ideas obtain but a loose, transient and feeble hold. More- over, in this society which, for many centuries consists of people accustomed to being ruled, the hereditary spirit is bourgeois, that is to say, used to discipline, fond of order, peaceable and even timid. There remains a minority, a very small one,1 innovating and restless, consisting, on the one hand, of people who are discontented with their calling or profession, because they are of secondary or subaltern rank in it,2 debutants not fully employed and aspirants for careers not yet entered upon; and, on the other hand, of men of unstable character, all who are uprooted by the immense upheaval of things; in the Church, through the suppression of convents and through schism; in the judiciary, in the administration, in the financial departments, in the army, and in various private and public careers, through the reorganisation of institutions, through the novelty of fresh resources and occupations, and through the disturbance caused by the changed relationships of patrons and clients. Many who, in ordinary times, would otherwise remain quiet, become in this way nomadic and extravagant in politics. Among the foremost of these are found those who, through a classical education, can take

1. See the figures further on. 2. Mallet-Dupan, II. 491. Danton, in 1793, said one day to one of his former brethren, an advocate to the Council: “The old re´gime made a great mistake. It brought me up on a scholarship in Plessis College. I was brought up with nobles, who were my comrades, and with whom I lived on familiar terms. On completing my studies, I had nothing; I was poor, and tried to get a place. The Paris bar was unapproachable, and it required an effort to be accepted. I could not get into the army, without either rank or a patron. There was no opening for me in the Church. I could purchase no employment, for I hadn’t a cent. My old companions turned their backs on me. I remained without a situation, and only after many long years did I succeed in buying the post of advocate in the Royal Council. The Revolution came, when I, and all like me, threw themselves into it. The ancient re´gime forced us to do so, by providing a good education for us, without providing an opening for our talents.” This applies to Robes- pierre, C. Desmoulins, Brissot, Vergniaud, and others. 442 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION in an abstract proposition and deduce its consequences, but who, for lack of special preparation for it, and confined to the narrowcircle of local affairs, are incapable of forming accurate conceptions of a vast, complex social organisation, and of the conditions which enable it to subsist. Their talent lies in making a speech, in dashing off an editorial, in composing a pamphlet, and in drawing up reports in more or less pompous and dogmatic style, and, if we accept the kind, a fewof them whoare gifted become eloquent, but that is all. Those who take leading parts, lawyers, notaries, bailiffs and former petty provincial judges and attorneys, are of this class, two-thirds of the members of the Legislative Assembly and of the Convention, surgeons and doctors in small towns, like Bo, Levasseur, and Baudot, second and third-rate literary characters, like Barre`re, Louvet, Garat, Manuel, and Ronsin, college professors like Louchet and Romme, school-masters like Leonard Bourdon, journalists like Bris- sot, Desmoulins and Fre´ron, actors like Collot d’Herbois, artists like Sergent, Oratoriens like Fouche´, capuchins like Chabot, more or less secularised priests like Lebon, Chasles, Lakanal, and Gre´goire, students scarcely out of school like St. Just, Monet of Strasbourg, Rousselin of St. Albin, and Julien of the Droˆme—in short, badly- cultivated minds sown with poor seed, and in which the theory had only to fall to kill out every good seed and thrive like nettles. Add to these the charlatans and others who live by their wits, the visionary and morbid of all sorts, from Fanchet and Klootz to Chaˆlier or Marat, the whole of that needy, chattering, irresponsible crowd, ever swarming about large cities ventilating its shallow conceits and abortive pretensions. Farther in the background appear those whose scanty education qualifies them to half understand an abstract principle and imperfectly deduce its consequences, but whose roughly- polished instinct atones for the feebleness of a coarse argumentation; through cupidity, envy and rancor, they divine a rich pasture-ground behind the theory, and Jacobin dogmas become dearer to them, because the imagination sees untold treasures beyond the mists in which they are shrouded. They can listen to a club harangue without falling asleep, applaud its tirades in the right place, offer a resolution The Jacobin Conquest / 443 in a public garden, shout in the tribunes, pen affidavits for arrests, compose orders-of-the-day for the national guard, and lend their lungs, arms, and sabres to whoever bids for them. But here their capacity ends. In this group merchants’ and notaries’ clerks abound, like He´bert and Henriot, Vincent, and Chaumette, butchers like Le- gendre, postmasters like Drouet, boss-joiners like Duplay, school- teachers like that Buchot who becomes a minister, and many others of the same sort, accustomed to jotting down ideas, with vague notions of orthography and who are apt in speech-making,3 foremen, sub-officers, former mendicant monks, pedlars, tavern-keepers, retailers, market-porters,4 and city-journeymen from Gouchon, the orator of the faubourg St. Antoine, down to Simon, the cobbler of the Temple, from Trinchard, the juryman of the Revolutionary Tri- bunal, down to grocers, tailors, shoemakers, tapsters, waiters, barbers, and other shopkeepers or artisans who do their work at home, and who are yet to do the work of the September massacres. Add to these the foul remnants of every popular insurrection and dictatorship, beasts of prey like Jourdain of Avignon, and Fournier the American, women like The´roigne, Rose Lacombe, and the tricoteuses of the Convention who have unsexed themselves, the amnestied bandits and other gallows-birds who, for lack of a police, have a wide range, street-strollers and vagabonds, rebels against labor and discipline, the whole of that class in the centre of civilisation which preserves the instincts of savages, and asserts the sovereignty of the people to glut a natural appetite for license, laziness, and ferocity.

3. Dauban, “La Demagogie a` Paris en 1793,” and “Paris in 1794.” Read General Henriot’s orders of the day in these two works. Compardon, “Histoire du Tribunal Re´volutionnaire de Paris,” a letter by Trinchard, I. 306 (which is here given in the original, on account of the orthography): “Si tu nest pas toute seulle et que le compagnion soit a travalier tu peus ma chaire amie venir voir juger 24 mesieurs tous si devent pre´sident ou conselier au parlement de Paris et de Toulouse. Je t’ainvite a prendre quelque choge aven de venir parcheque nous naurons pas ﬁni de 3 heures. et embrase ma chaire amie et epouge.” Ibid., II, 350, examination of Andre´ Chenier.—Wallon, “Hist. du Trib. Re´v.”, I, 316 Letter by Simon. “Je te coitte le bonjour mois est mon est pousse.” 4. “Forts de la Halle.” They assumed the title of “Les forts pour la patrie.” 444 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Thus is the party recruited through an enlisting process that gleans its subjects from every station in life, but which reaps them down in great swaths, and gathers them together in the two groups to which dogmatism and presumption naturally belong. Here, education has brought man to the threshold, and even to the heart of general ideas; consequently, he feels hampered within the narrow bounds of his profession or occupation, and aspires to something beyond. But as his education has remained superﬁcial or rudimentary, consequently, outside of his narrowcircle he feels out of his place. He has a perception or obtains a glimpse of political ideas and, therefore, assumes that he has capacity. But his perception of them is conﬁned to a formula, or he sees them dimly through a cloud; hence his incapacity, and the reason why his mental lacunae as well as his attainments both contribute to make him a Jacobin.

II Men thus disposed cannot fail to drawnear each other, to understand each other, and combine together; for, in the principle of popular sovereignty, they have a common dogma, and, in the conquest of political supremacy, a common aim. Through a common aim they form a faction, and through a common dogma they constitute a sect, the league between them being more easily effected because they are a faction and sect at the same time.—At first, their association is not distinguishable in the multitude of other associations. Political societies spring up on all sides after the taking of the Bastille. Some kind of organisation had to be substituted for the deposed or tottering government, in order to provide for urgent public needs, to secure protection against ruffians, to obtain supplies of provisions, and to guard against the probable machinations of the court. Com- mittees installed themselves in the Hoˆtels-de-Ville, while volunteers formed bodies of militia: hundreds of local governments, almost independent, arose in the place of the central government, almost destroyed.5 For six months everybody attended to matters of com-

5. Cf. “The Revolution,” page 60. The Jacobin Conquest / 445 mon interest, each individual getting to be a public personage and bearing his quota of the government load—a heavy load at all times, but heavier in times of anarchy; this, at least, is the opinion of the greatest number, but not the opinion of some of them. Consequently, a division arises amongst those who had assumed this load, and two groups are formed, one huge, inert and disintegrating, and the other small, compact and energetic, each taking one of two ways which diverge from each other, and which keep on diverging more and more. On the one hand are the ordinary, sensible people, those who are busy, and who are, to some extent, not overconscientious, and not overconceited. The power in their hands is assumed by them because they find it prostrate, lying abandoned in the street; they hold it provisionally only, for they knewbeforehand, or soon discover, that they are not qualified for the post, it being one of those which, to be properly filled, needs some preparation and fitness for it. A man does not become legislator or administrator in one day, any more than he suddenly becomes a physician or surgeon. If an accident obliges me to act in the latter capacity, I yield, but against my will, and I do no more than is necessary to save my patients from hurting themselves; my fear of their dying under the operation is very great, and, as soon as some other person can be got to take my place, I go home.6 I should be glad, like everybody else, to have my vote in the selection of this person, and, among the candidates, I should designate, to the best of my ability, one who seemed to me the ablest and most conscientious. Once selected, however, and installed, I should not attempt to dictate to him; his cabinet is private, and I have no right to run there constantly and cross-question him, as if he were a child or under suspicion. It does not become me to tell him what to do; he probably knows more about the case than I do; in any event, to keep a steady hand, he must not be threatened, and, to keep a clear head, he must not be disturbed.—Nor must I be

6. Cf. on this point the admissions of the honest Bailly (“Me´moires,” passim). 446 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION disturbed; my office and books, my shop, my customers must be attended to as well. Everybody has to mind his own business, and whoever would attend to his own and another’s too, spoils both. This way of thinking prevails with most healthy minds towards the beginning of the year 1790, all whose heads are not turned by insane ambition and the mania for theorising, especially after six months of practical experience and knowing the dangers, miscal- culations, and vexations to which one is exposed in trying to lead an eager, overexcited population.—Just at this time, December, 1789, municipal lawbecomes established throughout the country; all the mayors and municipal officers are elected almost immediately, and in the following months, all administrators of districts and departments. The interregnum has at length come to an end. Legal authorities nowexist, withlegitimate and clearly-determined functions. Reasonable, honest people gladly turn power over to those to whom it belongs, and certainly do not dream of resuming it. All associations for temporary purposes are at once disbanded for lack of an object, and if others are formed, it is for the purpose of defending established institutions. This is the object of the Federation, and, for six months, people embrace each other and exchange oaths of fidelity. After this, July 14, 1790, they retire into private life, and I have no doubt that, from this date, the political ambition of a large plurality of the French people is satisfied, for, although Rousseau’s denunciations of the social hierarchy are still cited by them, they, at bottom, desire but little more than the suppression of administrative brutality and state favoritism.7 All this is obtained, and plenty of other things besides; the august title of sovereign, the deference of the public authorities, the salutations of all who wield a pen or make a speech, and, still better, actual sovereignty in the appointment to

7. Re´tif de la Bretonne: “Nuits de Paris,” IIe`me nuit, p. 36. “I lived in Paris twenty-five years as free as air. All could enjoy as much freedom as myself in two ways—by living uprightly, and by not writing pamphlets against the ministry. All else was permitted, my freedom never being interfered with. It is only since the Revolution that a scoundrel could succeed in having me arrested twice.” The Jacobin Conquest / 447 office of all local and national administrators; not only do the people elect their deputies, but every species of functionary of every degree, those of commune, district, and department, officers in the national guard, civil and criminal magistrates, bishops and cure´s. Again, to ensure the responsibility of the elected to their electors, the term of office fixed by lawis a short one, 8 the electoral machine which summons the sovereign to exercise his sovereignty being set agoing about every four months. This was a good deal, and too much, as the sovereign himself soon discovers. Voting so frequently becomes unendurable; so many prerogatives end in getting to be drudgery. Early in 1790, and after this date, the majority forego the privilege of voting and the number of absentees becomes enormous. At Chartres, in May, 1790,9 1,447 out of 1,551 voters do not attend preliminary meetings. At Besançon, in January, 1790, on the election of mayor and municipal officers, 2,141 out of 3,200 registered electors are recorded as absent from the polls, and 2,900 in the following month of November.10 At Grenoble, in August and November of this year, out of 2,500 registered voters, more than 2,000 are noted as absent.11 At Limoges, out of about the same number, there are only 150 voters. At Paris, out of 81,400 electors, in August, 1790, 67,200 do not vote, and, three months later, the number of absentees is 71,408.12 Thus for

8. Cf. “The Revolution,” Vol. I. p. 264. 9. Moniteur, IV. 495. (Letter from Chartres, May 27, 1790.) 10. Sauzay, I. 147, 195, 218, 711. 11. Mercure de France, numbers of August 7, 14, 26, and Dec. 18, 1790. 12. Ibid., number of November 26, 1790. Pe´tion is elected mayor of Paris by 6,728 out of 10,632 voters. “Only 7,000 voters are found at the election of the electors who elect deputies to the legislature. Primary and municipal meetings are deserted in the same proportion.”—Moniteur, X. 529 (Number of Dec. 4, 1791). Manuel is elected Attorney of the Commune by 3,770 out of 5,311 voters.—Ibid. XI. 378. At the election of municipal officers for Paris, Feb. 10 and 11, 1792, only 3,787 voters present themselves; Dussault, who obtains the most votes, has 2,588; Sergent receives 1,648.—Buchez et Roux, XI. 238 (session of Aug. 12, 1791). Speech by Chapelier; “Archives Nationales,” F. 6 (carton), 21. Primary meeting of June 13, 1791, canton of Be`ze (Coˆte d’Or). Out of 460 active citizens, 157 are present, and, on the final ballot, 58.—Ibid., 448 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION every elector that votes, there are four, six, eight, ten, and even sixteen that abstain from voting.—In the election of deputies, the case is the same. At the primary meetings of 1791, in Paris, out of 81,200 registered names more than 74,000 fail to respond. In the Doubs, three out of four voters stay away. In one of the cantons of the Coˆte d’Or, at the close of the polls, only one-eighth of the electors remain at the counting of the votes, while in the secondary meetings the desertion is not less. At Paris, out of 946 electors chosen only 200 are found to give their suffrage; at Rouen, out of 700 there are but 160, and on the last day of the ballot, only 60. In short, “in all departments,” says an orator in the tribune, “scarcely one out of five electors of the second degree discharges his duty.” In this manner the majority hands in its resignation. Through inertia, want of forethought, lassitude, aversion to the electoral hubbub, lack of political preferences, or dislike of all the political candidates, it shirks the task which the constitution imposes on it. Its object is not to take up the burden of a collateral task in addition— a weightier task, namely, that of devoted labor to a new league. Men who cannot find time once in three months to drop a ballot in the box, will not come three times a week to attend the meetings of a club. Far from meddling with the government, they abdicate, and as they refuse to elect it, they will not undertake to control it. It is just the opposite with the upstarts and dogmatists who regard their royal privileges seriously. They not only vote at the elections, but they mean to keep in their own hands the authority they delegate. In their eyes every magistrate is one of their creatures, and remains accountable to them, for, in point of law, the people may not part with their sovereignty, while, as a fact, power has proved

F. 3,235 (January, 1792). Lozerre: “1,000 citizens, at most, out of 25,000, voted in the primary meetings. At Saint-Che`ly, capital of the district, a fewarmed ruﬃans succeed in forming the primary meeting and in substituting their own election for that of eight parishes, whose frightened citizens withdrew from it....AtLangogne, chief town of the canton and district, out of more than 400 active citizens, 22 or 23 at most—just what one would suppose them to be when their presence drove away the rest—alone formed the meeting.” The Jacobin Conquest / 449 so sweet that they are not disposed to part with it.13 During the six months preceding the regular elections, they have come to know, comprehend, and test each other; they have held conventicles; a mutual understanding is arrived at, and henceforth, as other associations disappear like scanty vegetation, theirs14 rise vigorously on the abandoned soil. A club is established at Marseilles before the end of 1789; each large town has one within the ﬁrst six months of 1790, Aix in February, Montpellier in March, Nismes in April, Lyons in May, and Bordeaux in June.15 But their greatest increase takes place after the Federation festival. Just when local gatherings merge into that of the whole country, the sectaries keep aloof, and form leagues of their own. At Rouen, July 14, 1790, two surgeons, a printer, a chaplain at the Conciergerie, a widowed Jewess, and four women or children living in the house—eight persons in all, pure and not to be confounded with the mass16—bind themselves together, and form a distinct association. Their patriotism is of superior quality, and they take a special viewof the social compact; 17 in swearing fealty to the constitution they reserve to themselves the

13. This power, with its gratifications, is thus shown, Beugnot, I. 140, 147. “On the publication of the decrees of August 4, the committee of overseers of Montigny, reinforced by all the patriots of the country, came down like a torrent on the barony of Choiseul, and exterminated all the hares and partridges.... They fished out the ponds....AtMandre we happen to be in the front room of the inn, with a dozen peasants gathered around a table decked with tumblers and bottles, amongst which we noticed an inkstand, pens, and something resembling a register. ‘I don’t knowwhatthey are about,’ said the landlady, but there they are, from morning till night, drinking, swearing, and storming away at everybody, and they say that they are a committee.’” 14. Albert Babeau, I. 206, 242.—The first meeting of the revolutionary committee of Troyes, in the cemetery of St. Jules, August, 1789. This committee becomes the only authority in the town, after the assassination of the mayor, Huez (Sept. 10, 1790). 15. “The French Revolution,” Vol. I. pp. 235, 242, 251.—Buchez et Roux, VI. 179.—Guillon de Montleón, “Histoire de la Ville de Lyon pendant la Re´- volution,” I. 87.—Guadet, “Les Girondins.” 16. Michelet, “Histoire de la Re´volution,” II. 47. 17. The rules of the Paris club state that members must “labor to establish and strengthen the constitution, according to the spirit of the club.” 450 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Rights of Man, and they mean to maintain not only the reforms already eﬀected, but to complete the Revolution just begun.—Dur- ing the Federation they have welcomed and indoctrinated their fellows who, on quitting the capital or large cities, become bearers of instructions to the small towns and hamlets; they are told what the object of a club is, and howto form one, and, everywhere,popular associations arise on the same plan, for the same purpose, and bearing the same name. A month later, sixty of these associations are in operation; three months later, one hundred; in March, 1791, two hundred and twenty-nine, and in August, 1791, nearly four hundred.18 After this date a sudden increase takes place, owing to two simultaneous impulses, which scatter their seeds broadcast over the entire territory.—On the one hand, at the end of July, 1791, all moderate men, the friends of lawand order, whostill hold the clubs in check, all constitutionalists, or Feuillants, withdraw from them and leave them to the ultraism or triviality of the motionnaires;19 the political tone immediately falls to that of the tavern and guard- house, so that wherever one or the other of these is found, there is a political club. On the other hand, a convocation of the electoral body is held at the same date for the election of a newNational Assembly, and for the renewal of local governments; the prey being in sight, hunting-parties are everywhere formed to capture it. In two months,20 six hundred newclubs spring up; by the end of September they amount to one thousand, and in June, 1792, to twelve hundred—as many as there are towns and walled boroughs. On the fall of the throne, and at the panic caused by the Prussian invasion,

18. Mercure de France, Aug. 11, 1790.—“Journal de la Socie´te´ des Amis de la Constitution,” Nov. 21, 1790.—Ibid., March, 1791.—Ibid., Aug. 14, 1791 (speech by Roederer).—Buchez et Roux, XI. 481. 19. So called from certain individuals seizing every opportunity at political meetings to make motions and offer resolutions.—TR. 20. Michelet, II. 407.—Moniteur, XII 347 (May 11, 1792), article by Marie Cheńier, according to whom 800 Jacobin clubs exist at this date.—Ibid., XII. 753 (speech by M. Delfaux, session of June 25, 1792).—Roederer, preface to his translation of Hobbes. The Jacobin Conquest / 451 during a period of anarchy which equalled that of July, 1789, there were, according to Roederer, almost as many clubs as there were communes, 26,000, one for every village containing five or six hot- headed, boisterous fellows, or roughs, (tape-durs), with a copyist able to pen a petition. After November, 1790,21 “every street in every town and hamlet,” says a journal of large circulation, “must have a club of its own. Let some honest mechanic invite his neighbors to his house, where, with a light at the common expense, he may read aloud the decrees of the National Assembly, on which he and his neighbors may comment. Before the meeting closes, in order to enliven the company, which may feel a little gloomy on account of Marat’s articles, let him read the patriotic, amusing imprecations of Peˆre Duchesne.”22— The advice is followed. At these meetings are read aloud pamphlets, newspapers, and catechisms despatched from Paris, the “Gazette Villageoise,” the “Journal du Soir,” the “Journal de la Montagne,” “Peˆre Duchesne,” the “Re´volutions de Paris,” and “Laclos’ Gazette.” Revolutionary songs are sung, and if a good speaker happens to be present, a former oratorien, lawyer, or pedagogue, he empties his declamatory budget by expatiating on the Greeks and Romans and proclaiming the regeneration of the human species. Another, appealing to women, wants to see “the declaration of the Rights of Man suspended on the walls of their bedrooms as their principal ornament, and, should war break out, these virtuous patriots, marching at the head of our armies like newbacchantes withdishevelled locks, brandishing the thyrsus.” Shouts of applause greet this sentiment. The minds of the listeners, swept away by this gale of declamation, become overheated and ignite through mutual contact; like half-consumed embers that would die out if let alone, they kindle

21. “Les Re´volutions de Paris,” by Prudhomme, number 173. 22. Constant, “Histoire d’un Club Jacobin en province,” passim (Fontain- bleau Club, founded May 5, 1791).—Albert Babeau, I. 434 and following pages (foundation of the Troyes Club, Oct. 1790). Sauzay, I. 206 and following pages (foundation of the Besançon Club, Aug. 28, 1790). Ibid., 214 (foundation of the Pontarlier Club, March, 1791). 452 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION into a blaze when gathered together in a heap.—Their convictions, at the same time, gain strength. There is nothing like a coterie to make these take root. In politics, as in religion, faith generating the church, the latter, in its turn, nourishes faith; in the club, as in the conventicle, each derives authority from the common unanimity, every word and action of the whole tending to prove each in the right. And all the more because a dogma which remains uncontested, ends in seeming incontestable; as the Jacobin lives in a narrowcircle, carefully guarded, no contrary opinions find their way to him. The public, in his eyes, seems two hundred persons; their opinion weighs on him without any counterpoise, and, outside of their belief, which is his also, every other belief is absurd and even culpable. Moreover, he discovers through this constant system of preaching, which is nothing but flattery, that he is patriotic, intelligent, virtuous, of which he can have no doubt, because, before being admitted into the club, his civic virtues have been verified and he carries a printed certificate of them in his pocket.—Accordingly, he is one of an e´lite corps, a corps which, enjoying a monopoly of patriotism, holds itself aloof, talks loud, and is distinguished from ordinary citizens by its tone and way of conducting things. The club of Pontarlier, from the first,23 prohibits its members from using the common forms of politeness. “Members are to abstain from saluting their fellow- citizens by removing the hat, and are to avoid the phrase, ‘I have the honor to be,’ and others of like import, in addressing persons.” A proper idea of one’s importance is indispensable. “Does not the famous tribune of the Jacobins in Paris inspire traitors and impostors with fear? And do not anti-Revolutionists return to dust on beholding it?” True enough, and in the provinces as well as at the capital, for, scarcely is a club organised when it sets to work on the population generally. In many of the large cities, in Paris, Lyons, Aix and Bor- deaux, there are two clubs in partnership,24 one, more or less re-

23. Sauzay, I. 214 (April 2, 1791). 24. “Journal des Amis de la Constitution,” I. 534 (Letter of the “Cafe´ Na- The Jacobin Conquest / 453 spectable and parliamentary, “composed partly of the members of the diﬀerent branches of the administration and specially devoted to purposes of general utility,” and the other, practical and active, made up of bar-room politicians and club-haranguers, who indoctrinate workmen, market-gardeners and the rest of the lower bourgeois class. The latter is a branch of the former, and, in urgent cases, supplies it with rioters. “We are placed amongst the people,” says one of these subaltern clubs, “we read to them the decrees, and, through lectures and counsel, we warn them against the publications and intrigues of the aristocrats. We ferret out and track plotters and their machinations. We welcome and advise all complainants; we enforce their demands, when just; ﬁnally, we, in some way, attend to all details.” Thanks to these vulgar auxiliaries, but whose lungs and arms are strong, the party soon becomes dominant; it has force and uses it, and, denying that its adversaries have any rights, it re- establishes privileges of every kind for its own advantage.

III Let us consider its mode of procedure in one instance and upon a limited ﬁeld, the freedom of the press. In December, 1790,25 M. Etienne, an engineer, whom Marat and Fre´ron had denounced as a spy in their periodicals, brought a suit against them in the police court. The numbers containing the libel were seized, the printers summoned to appear, and M. Etienne claimed a public retraction or 25,000 francs damages with costs. At this the two journalists, considering themselves infallible as well as exempt from arrest, are indignant. “It is of the utmost importance,” writes Marat, “that the informer should not be liable to prosecution as he is accountable only to the public for what he says and does for the public good.” M. Etienne (surnamed Languedoc), therefore, is a traitor: “Monsieur tional” Club of Bordeaux, Jan. 29, 1791). Guillon de Montle´on, I. 88.—“The French Revolution,” vol. I. 128, 242. 25. Euge`ne Hatin, “Histoire politique et litte´raire de la presse,” IV. 210 (with Marat’s text in “l’Ami du peuple,” and Fre´ron’s in “l’Orateur du peuple”). 454 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Languedoc, I advise you to keep your mouth shut; if I can have you hung I will.” M. Etienne, nevertheless, persists and obtains a first decision in his favor. Fire and flame are at once belched forth by Marat and Fre´ron: “Master Thorillon,” exclaims Fre´ron to the commissary of police, “you shall be punished and held up to the people as an example!” This infamous decision, of course, had to be annulled. “Citizens,” writes Marat, “go in a body to the Hoˆtel-de-Ville and do not allowone of the guards to enter the court-room.”—On the day of the trial, and in the most condescending spirit, but two grenadiers are let in. These, however, are too many and shouts from the Jacobin crowd arise: “Turn ’em out! We rule here,” upon which the two grenadiers withdraw. Fre´ron avers triumphantly, by way of compensation, that he had counted in the court-room “sixty of the victors at the Bastille led by the brave Santerre, who intended to interfere in the trial.” The interference, indeed, does take place and first with the plaintiff. M. Etienne is assailed at the entrance of the court-room and nearly knocked down, being so maltreated as to be obliged to take refuge in the guard-room; he is spit upon, and they “move to cut off his ears.” His friends receive “hundreds of kicks,” while he runs away, and the case is postponed. It is called up again several times, but the judges are nowto be compelled. A certain Mandart in the audience, author of a pamphlet on “Popular Sover- eignty,” springs to his feet and, addressing Bailly, mayor of Paris, and president of the tribunal, challenges the court. As usual Bailly yields, attempting to cover up his weakness with an honorable pretext: “Although a judge can be challenged only by the parties to a suit, the appeal of one citizen is sufficient for me and I leave the bench.” The other judges, who are likewise insulted and menaced, yield also, and, through a sophism which admirably illustrates the times, they discover in the oppression to which the plaintiff is subject a legal device by which they can give a fair color to their denial of justice. M. Etienne having signified to them that neither he nor his counsel could attend in court, because their lives were in danger, the court decides that M. Etienne, “failing to appear in person, or by counsel, is non-suited.” Victorious shouts at once proceed from the two journalists, while their articles on the case disseminated The Jacobin Conquest / 455 throughout France relieve jurisprudence of the trammels of decisions. Any Jacobin after this may denounce, insult, and calumniate whomsoever he pleases with impunity, sheltered as he is from the action of courts, and held superior to the law. Let us see, on the other hand, what liberty they allow their adversaries. A fortnight before this, Mallet-Dupan, a writer of great ability, who, in the best periodical of the day, discusses questions week after week free of all personalities, the most independent, straight-forward, and honorable of men, the most eloquent and judicious advocate of public order and true liberty, is waited upon by a deputation from the Palais-Royal,26 consisting of about a dozen well-dressed individuals, civil enough and not too ill-disposed, but quite satisfied that they have a right to interfere; the conversation which ensues shows to what extent the current political creed had turned peoples’ heads. “One of the party, addressing me, informed me that he and his associates were deputies of the Palais-Royal clubs, and that they had called to notify me that I would do well to change my principles and stop attacking the constitution, otherwise extreme violence would be brought to bear on me. I replied that I recognised no authority but the lawand that of the courts; the lawis your master and mine, and no respect is shown to the constitution by assailing the freedom of the press.” “The spokesman responded that the constitution was the common will. ‘As law is the rule of might, you are subject to the government of the strongest and you ought to submit to that. We notify you of the will of the nation and that is the law.’” Mallet-Dupan stated to them that he was not in favor of the ancient re´gime, but that he did approve of royal authority. “Oh,” exclaimed all together, “we should be sorry not to have a king. We respect the King and maintain his authority. But you are forbidden to oppose the dominant opinion and the liberty which is decreed by the National Assembly.”

26. Mercure de France, Nov. 27, 1790. 456 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Mallet-Dupan, apparently, knows more about this than they do, for he is a Swiss by birth, and has lived under a republic for twenty years. But this does not concern them. They persist all the same, ﬁve or six talking at once, misconstruing the sense of the words they use, and each contradicting the other in points of detail, but all agreeing to impose silence on him: “You should not run counter to the popular will, for in doing this you preach civil war, bring the assembly’s decrees into contempt, and irritate the nation.” Evidently they constitute the nation; at all events they represent it. Through this self-investiture they are at once magistrates, censors, and police, while the scolded journalist is only too glad, in his case, to have them stop at injunctions. Three days before this he is advised that a body of rioters in his neighborhood “threatened to treat his house like that of M. de Ca- stries,” in which everything had been smashed and thrown out the windows. At another time, apropos of the suspensive or absolute veto, “four savage fellows came to his domicile to warn him, showing him their pistols, that if he dared write in behalf of M. Mounier he should answer for it with his life.” Thus, from the outset, “just as the nation begins to enjoy the inestimable right of free thought and free speech, factional tyrants lose no time in depriving citizens of these, proclaiming to all that would maintain the integrity of their consciences: Tremble, die, or believe as we do!” After this, to impose silence on those who express what is oﬀensive, the populace, the club, the section, decree and execute, each on its own authority,27 searches, arrests, assaults, and, at length, assassinations. During the

27. Mercure de France, Sept. 3, 1791 (article by Mallet-Dupan). “On the strength of a denunciation, the authors of which I knew, the Luxembourg section on the 21st of June, the day of the king’s departure, sent commissaries and a military detachment to my domicile. There was no judicial verdict, no legal order, either of police-court, or justice of the peace, no examination whatever preceding this mission....Theemploye´s of the section overhauled my papers, books and letters, transcribing some of the latter, and carried away copies and the originals, putting seals on the rest, which were left in charge of two fusileers.” The Jacobin Conquest / 457 month of June, 1792, “three decrees of arrest and fifteen denunciations, two acts of affixing seals, four civic invasions of his premises, and the confiscation of whatever belonged to him in France” is the experience of Mallet-Dupan. He passes four years “without knowing with any certainty on going to bed whether he should get out of it in the morning alive and free.” Later on, if he escapes the guillotine and the lantern, it is owing to exile. On the 10th of August, Suleau, a conservative journalist, is massacred in the street.—This shows howthe party regards the freedom of the press. Other liberties may be judged of by its encroachments on this domain. Law, in its eyes, is null when it proves an obstacle, and when it affords protection to adversaries; consequently there is no excess which it does not sanction for itself, and no right which it does not refuse to others. There is no escape from the tyranny of the clubs. “That of Mar- seilles has forced the city officials to resign;28 it has summoned the municipal body to appear before it; it has ignored the authority of the department, and has insulted the administrators of the law. Mem- bers of the Orleans club have kept the national Supreme Court under supervision, and taken part in its proceedings. Those of the Caen club have insulted the magistrates, and seized and burnt the records of the proceedings commenced against the destroyers of the statue of Louis XIV. At Alby they have forcibly abstracted from the record- office the papers relating to an assassin’s trial, and burnt them.” The club at Coutance gives the deputies of its district to understand that “no reflections must be cast on the laws of the people.” That of Lyons stops an artillery train, under the pretext that the ministry in office does not enjoy the nation’s confidence.—Thus does the club everywhere reign, or prepare to reign. On the one hand, at the elections, it sets aside or supports candidates; it alone votes, or, at least, controls the voting; in short, the club is the elective power, and practically, if not legally, enjoys the privileges of a political aristocracy. On the other hand, it assumes to be a spontaneous police-

28. Mercure de France, Aug. 27, 1791 (report by Duport-Dutertre, Minister of Justice).—Ibid., Cf. numbers of Sept. 8, 1790, and March 12, 1791. 458 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION board; it prepares and circulates the lists which designate the ill- disposed, suspected, and lukewarm; it lodges information against nobles whose sons have emigrated; against unsworn priests who still reside in their former parishes, and against nuns, “whose conduct is unconstitutional”; it prompts, directs, and rebukes local authorities; it is itself a supplemental, superior, and usurping authority. All at once, sensible men realise its character, and protest against it. “A body thus organised,” says a petition,29 “exists solely for arming one citizen against another. . . . Discussions take place there, and denunciations are made under the seal of inviolable secrecy. . . . Honest citizens, surrendered to the most atrocious calumny, are destroyed without an opportunity of defending themselves. It is a veritable Inquisition. It is the centre of seditious publications, a school of cabals and intrigue. If the citizens have to blush at the selection of unworthy candidates, they are all due to this class of associations. . . . Composed of the excited and the incendiary, of those who aim to rule the State,” the club everywhere tends “to a mastery of the popular intelligence, to thwarting the municipalities, to an intrusion of itself between these and the people,” to an usurpation of legal forms and a “colossus of despotism.” Vain complaints! The National Assembly, ever in alarm on its own account, shields the popular club and accords it its favor or indulgence. A journal of the party had recommended “the people to form themselves into small platoons.” These platoons, one by one, are growing. Each borough now has a local oligarchy, a drilled and governing band. The formation of an army out of these scattered bands, simply requires a staﬀ and a central rallying-point. The central point and the staﬀ are both a long time ready in Paris, in the association of the “Friends of the Constitution.”

29. Sauzay, I. 208. (Petition of the oﬃcers of the National Guard of Besan- c¸on, and observations of the municipal body, Sept. 15, 1790.—Petition of 500 national guards, Dec. 15, 1790).—Observations of the district directory, which directory, having authorised the club, avows that “three-quarters” of the national guard and a portion of other citizens “are quite hostile to it.”—Similar petitions at Dax, Chalons-sur-Saoˆne, etc., against the local club. The Jacobin Conquest / 459

IV No association in France, indeed, dates farther back, and has an equal prestige. It was born before the Revolution, April 30, 1789.30 At the assembly of the States-General in Brittany, the deputies from Quimper, Hennebon, and Pontivy sawhowimportant it wasto vote in concert, and they had scarcely reached Versailles when, in common with others, they hired a hall, and, along with Mounier, secretary of the States-General of Dauphiny, and other deputies from the provinces, at once organised a union which was destined to last. Up to the 6th of October, none but deputies were comprised in it; after that date, on removing to Paris, in the library of the Jacobins, a convent in the Rue St. Honore´, many well-known eminent men were admitted, such as Condorcet, and then Laharpe, Che´nier, Champfort, David, and Talma, among the most prominent, with other authors and artists, the whole amounting to about a thousand notable personages.—No assemblage could be more imposing—two or three hundred deputies are on its benches, while its rules and by- laws seem specially designed to gather a superior body of men. Candidates for admission were proposed by ten members and afterwards voted on by ballot. To be present at one of its meetings required a card of admission. On one occasion, a member of the committee of two, appointed to verify these cards, happens to be the young Duc de Chartres. There is a committee on administration and a president. Discussions took place with parliamentary formalities, and, according to its statutes, the questions considered there were those under debate in the National Assembly.31 In a lower hall, at certain hours, workmen received instruction and the constitution

30. “Lettres” (manuscript) of M. Roulle´, deputy from Pontivy, to his constituents (May 1, 1789). 31. A rule of the association says: “The object of the association is to discuss questions beforehand which are to be decided by the National Assembly, . . . and to correspond with associations of the same character which may be formed in the kingdom.” 460 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION was explained to them. Seen from afar, no society seems worthier of directing public opinion; near by, the case is different. In the departments, however, where distance lends enchantment, and where old customs prevail implanted by centralisation, it is accepted as a guide because its seat is at the capital. Its statutes, its regulations, its spirit, are all imitated; it becomes the alma mater of other associations and they its adopted daughters. It publishes, accordingly, a list of all clubs conspicuously in its journal, together with their denunciations; it insists on their demands; henceforth, every Jacobin in the remotest borough feels the support and endorsement, not only of his local club, but again of the great club whose numerous offshoots overspread the territory and thus extend its all-powerful protection to the least of its adherents. In return for this protection, each associated club obeys the word of command given at Paris, and, to and fro, from the centre to the extremities, a constant correspondence maintains the established harmony. A vast political machine is thus set agoing, a machine with thousands of arms, all working at once under one impulsion, and the lever which gives the motion is in the hands of a fewmaster spirits in the Rue St. Honore´. No machine could be more effective; never was one seen so well contrived for manufacturing artificial, violent public opinion, for making this appear to be national, spontaneous sentiment, for conferring the rights of the silent majority on a vociferous minority, for forcing the surrender of the government. “Our tactics were very simple,” says Gre´goire.32 “It was understood that one of us should take advantage of the first favorable opportunity to propose some measure in the National Assembly that was sure to be applauded by a small minority and cried down by the majority. But that made no difference. The proposer demanded, which was granted, that the measure should be referred to a committee in which its opponents hoped to see it buried. Then the Paris Jacobins took hold of it. A circular was issued, after which an article on the measure was printed in their journal and discussed in three or four hundred clubs that

32. “Me´moires,” I. 387. The Jacobin Conquest / 461 were leagued together. Three weeks after this the Assembly was flooded with petitions from every quarter, demanding a decree of which the first proposal had been rejected, and which it now passed by a great majority because a discussion of it had ripened public opinion.” In other words, the Assembly must go ahead or it will be driven along, in which process the worst expedients are the best. Those who conduct the club, whether fanatics or intriguers, are fully agreed on this point. At the head of the former class is Duport, once a counsellor in the parliament, who, after 1788, knew how to turn riots to account. The first revolutionary conventicles were held in his house. He wants to plough deep, and his devices for burying the ploughshare are such that Sieýes, a radical, if there ever was one, dubbed it a “cavernous policy.”33 Duport, on the 28th of July, 1789, is the organiser of the Committee on Searches, by which all favorably disposed informers or spies form in his hands a supervisory police, which fast becomes a police of provocation. He finds recruits in the lower hall of the Jacobin club, where workmen come to be catechised every morning, while his two lieutenants, the brothers Laurette, have only to drawon the same source for a zealous staff in a choice selection of their instruments. “Ten reliable men receive orders there daily;34 each of these in turn gives his orders to ten more, belonging to different battalions in Paris. In this way each battalion and section receives the same insurrectionary orders, the same denunciations of the constituted authorities, of the mayor of Paris, of the president of the department, and of the commander of the National Guard,” while all are secret. It is a work of darkness. Its own chiefs call it

33. Malouet, II. 248. “I sawCounsellor Duport, whowasa fanatic, and not a bad man, with two or three others like him, exclaim: ‘Terror! Terror! What a pity that it has become necessary!’” 34. Lafayette, “Me´moires” (in relation to Messieurs de Lameth and their friends). According to a squib of the day: “What Duport thinks, Barnave says and Lameth does.”—This trio was named the Triumvirate. Mirabeau, a government man, and a man to whom brutal disorder was repugnant, called it the Triumgueusat, or trinity of shabby fellows. 462 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

“the Sabbat.” They enlist ruffians along with fanatics. “They start a report that, on a certain day, there will be great commotion with assassinations and pillage, preceded by the payment of money distributed from hand to hand by subaltern officers among those that can be relied on, and that these bands are to assemble, as advertised, within a radius of thirty or forty leagues.”35—One day, to provoke a riot, “half a dozen men, who have arranged the thing, form a small group, in which one of them holds forth vehemently; at once a crowd of about sixty others gathers around them, whereupon they with- drawand betake themselves to other places,” to form fresh groups and make their excitement pass for popular irritation.—Another day, “about forty fanatics, with powerful lungs, and four or five hundred

35. Moniteur, V. 212, 583. (Report and speech of Dupont de Nemours, sessions of July 31 and September 7, 1790.)—Vagabonds and ruffians begin to play their parts in Paris on the 27th of April, 1789 (the Re´veillon affair).—Already on the 30th of July, 1789, Rivarol wrote: “Woe to whoever stirs up the lees of a nation! There is no century of light for the populace!”—In the Discours pre´liminaire of his future dictionary, he refers to his articles of this period: “There may be seen the precautions I took to prevent Europe from attributing to the French nation the horrors committed by the crowd of ruffians which the Revolution and the gold of a great personage had attracted to the capital.”—“Letter of a deputy of his constituents,” published by Duprez, Paris, in the beginning of 1790 (cited by M. de Se´gur, in the Revue de France, September 1, 1880). It relates to the manoeuvres for forcing a vote in favor of confiscating clerical property. “Throughout All-Saints’ day (November 1, 1789), drums were beaten to call together the band known here as the Coadjutors of the Revolution. On the morning of November 2, when the deputies resorted to the Assembly, they found the cathedral square and all the avenues to the archbishop’s palace, where the sessions were held, filled with an innumerable crowd of people. This army was composed of from 20,000 to 25,000 men, of which the greater number had no shoes or stockings; woollen caps and rags formed their uniform and they had clubs for guns. They overwhelmed the ecclesiastical deputies with insults, as they passed on their way, and vociferated that they would massacre without mercy all who would not vote for stripping the clergy....Near 300 deputies who were opposed to the motion did not dare attend the Assembly....The rush of ruffians in the vicinity of the hall, their comments and threats, excited fears of this atrocious project being carried out. All who did not feel courageous enough to immolate themselves, avoided going to the Assembly.” (The decree was adopted by 378 votes, against 346.) The Jacobin Conquest / 463 paid men,” scatter themselves around the Tuileries, “yelling furiously,” and, gathering under the windows of the Assembly, “move resolutions to assassinate.” “Your officers,” says a deputy, “whom you ordered to suppress this tumult, heard reiterated threats of bringing you the heads of those they wished to proscribe.” That very evening, in the Palais-Royal, “I heard a subordinate leader of this factious band boast of having enjoined your officers to take this answer back, adding that there was time enough yet for all good citizens to followhis advice.”—The watchwordof these agitators is, are you true? and the response is, a true man. Their pay is twelve francs a day, and when in action they make engagements on the spot at that rate. “From several depositions taken by officers of the Na- tional Guard and at the mayoralty,” it is ascertained that twelve francs a day were tendered to “honest people to join in with those you may have heard shouting, and some of them actually had the twelve francs put into their hands.”—The money comes from the coffers of the Duke of Orleans, and they are freely drawn upon; at his death, with a property amounting to 114,000,000 francs, his debts amount to 74,000,000.36 Being one of the faction, he contributes to its expenses, and, being the most opulent man in the kingdom, he contributes proportionately to his wealth. Not because he is a party leader, for he is too effeminate, too enervated; but “his petty council,”37 and especially one of his private secretaries, Laclos, cher- ishes great designs for him, their object being to make him lieutenant- general of the kingdom, afterwards regent, and even king,38 so that they may rule in his name and “share the profits.”—In the mean

36. Cf. “The Ancient Re´gime,” p. 51. 37. Malouet, I. 247, 248.—“Correspondence (manuscript) of M. de Stae¨l,” Swedish Ambassador, with his court, copied from the archives at Stockholm by M. Leóuzu-Le-Duc (letter of April 21, 1791). “M. Laclos, secret agent of this wretched prince, a clever man and subtle intriguer.” April 24: “His agents are more to be feared than himself. Through his bad conduct, he is more of an injury to his party than a benefit.” 38. Especially after the king’s flight to Varennes, and at the time of the affair in the Champ de Mars. The petition of the Jacobins was drawn up by Laclos and Brissot. 464 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION time they turn his whims to the best account, particularly Laclos, who is a kind of subordinate Machiavelli, capable of anything, profound, depraved, and long indulging his fondness for monstrous combinations; nobody ever so coolly delighted in indescribable com- pounds of human wickedness and debauchery. In politics, as in romance, his department is “Les Liaisons Dangereuses.” Formerly he manoeuvred as an amateur with prostitutes and ruffians in the fashionable world; now he manoeuvres in earnest with the prostitutes and ruffians of the sidewalks. On the 5th of October, 1789, he is seen, “dressed in a brown coat,”39 foremost among the women starting for Versailles, while his hand40 is visible “in the Re´veillon affair, also in the burning of barriers and chaˆteaux,” and in the widespread panic which aroused all France against imaginary bandits. His operations, says Malouet, “were all paid for by the Duke of Orleans”; he entered into them “for his own account, and the Jacobins for theirs.”—At this time their alliance is plain to everybody. On the 21st of November, 1790, Laclos becomes secretary of the club, chief of the department of correspondence, titular editor of its journal, and the invisible, active, and permanent director of all its enterprises. Whether actual demagogues or prompted by ambition, whether paid agents or earnest revolutionists, each group works on its own account, both in concert, both in the same direction, and both devoted to the same undertaking, which is the conquest of power by every possible means.

V At ﬁrst sight their success seems doubtful, for they are in a minority, and a very small one. At Besanc¸on, in November, 1791, the revolutionists of every shade of opinion and degree, whether Girondists

39. Investigations at the Chatelet, testimony of Count d’Absac de Ternay. 40. Malouet I. 247, 248. This evidence is conclusive. “Apart from what I sawmyself,” says Malouet, “M. de Montmorin and M. Delessart communicated to me all the police reports of 1789 and 1790.” The Jacobin Conquest / 465 or Montagnards, consist of about 500 or 600 out of 3,000 electors, and, in November, 1792, of not more than the same number out of 6,000 and 7,000.41 At Paris, in November, 1791, there are 6,700 out of more than 81,000 on the rolls; in October, 1792, there are less than 14,000 out of 160,000.42 At Troyes, in 1792, there are found only 400 or 500 out of 7,000 electors, and at Strasbourg the same number out of 8,000 electors.43 Accordingly only about one-tenth of the electoral population are revolutionists, and if we leave out the Girondists and the semi-conservatives, the number is reduced by one-half. Towards the end of 1792, at Besanc¸on, scarcely more than 300 pure Jacobins are found in a population of from 25,000 to 30,000, while at Paris, out of 700,000 inhabitants only 5,000 are Jacobins. It is certain that in the capital, where the most excitement prevails, and where more of them are found than elsewhere, never, even in a crisis and when vagabonds are paid and bandits recruited, are there more than 10,000.44 In a large town like Toulouse a representative

41. Sauzay, 11. 79 (municipal election, Nov. 15, 1791).—III. 221 (mayoralty election, November, 1792). The half-way moderates had 237 votes, and the sans-culottes, 310. 42. Mercure de France, Nov. 26, 1791 (Pe´tion was elected mayor, Nov. 17, by 6,728 votes out of 10,682 voters).—Mortimer-Ternaux, V. 95. (Oct. 4, 1792, Pe´tion was elected mayor by 13,746 votes out of 14,137 voters. He declines.— Oct. 21, d’Ormessan, a moderate, who declines to stand, has, nevertheless, 4,910 votes. His competitor, Lhuillier, a pure Jacobin, obtains only 4,896.) 43. Albert Babeau, II. 15. (The 32,000 inhabitants of Troyes indicate about 7,000 electors. In December, 1792, Jacquet is elected mayor by 400 votes out of 555 voters. A striking coincidence is found in there being 400 members of the Troyes club at this time.)—Carnot, “Me´moires,” I. 181. “Dr. Bollmann, who passed through Strasbourg in 1792, relates that, out of 8,000 qualified citizens, only 400 voters presented themselves.” 44. Mortimer-Ternaux, VI. 21. In February, 1793, Pache is elected mayor of Paris by 11,881 votes.—Journal de Paris, number 185. Henriot, July 2, 1793, is elected commander-in-chief of the Paris national guard, by 9,084, against 6,095 votes given for his competitor, Raffet. The national guard comprises at this time 110,000 registered members, besides 10,000 gendarmes and federates. Many of Henriot’s partisans, again, voted twice. (Cf. on the elections and the number of Jacobins at Paris, chapters xi. and xii. of this volume.) 466 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION of the people on missionary service wins over only about 400 persons.45 Counting fifty or so in each small town, twenty in each large borough, and five or six in each village, we find, on an average, but one Jacobin to fifteen electors and National Guards, while, taking the whole of France, all the Jacobins put together do not amount to 300,000.46—This is a small number for the enslavement of six millions of able-bodied men, and for installing in a country of twenty- six millions inhabitants a more absolute despotism than that of an Asiatic sovereign. Force, however, is not measured by numbers; they form a band in the midst of a crowd and, in this disorganised, inert crowd, a band that is determined to push its way like an iron wedge splitting a log. The only defense a nation has against inward usurpation as well as invasion from without is its government. Government is the indispensable instrument of common action. Let it fail or falter and the great majority, otherwise employed, undecided what to do and lukewarm, disintegrates and falls to pieces. Of the two governments around which the nation might have rallied, the first one, after July 14, 1789, lies prostrate on the ground where it slowly crumbles away; its phantom which rises up is still more odious; the latter not only brings with it the same senseless abuses and intolerable burdens, but, in addition to these, a yelping pack of claimants and recriminators; after 1790 it appears on the frontier more arbitrary than ever at the head of a coming invasion of angry e´migre´s and grasping foreigners.—The other government, that just constructed by the Constit- uent Assembly, it is so badly put together that the majority cannot

45. Michelet, VI. 95. “Almost all (the missionary representatives) were supported by only the smallest minority. Baudot, for instance, at Toulouse, in 1793, had but 400 men for him.” 46. For example, “Archives Nationales,” F1 6, carton 3. Petition of the inhabitants of Arnay-le-Duc to the king (April, 1792), very insulting, employing the most familiar language; about fifty signatures.—Sauzay, III. ch. xxxv. and xxxiv. (details of local elections).—Ibid., VII. 687 (letter of Gre´goire, Dec. 24, 1796).—Malouet, II. 531 (letter by Malouet, July 22, 1779). Malouet and Gre´- goire agree on the number 300,000. Marie Cheńier (Moniteur, XII. 695, April 20, 1792) carries it up to 400,000. The Jacobin Conquest / 467 use it. It is not adapted to its hand; no political instrument at once so ponderous and so powerless was ever seen. An enormous effort is needed to set it agoing; every citizen is obliged to give to it about two days labor per week.47 Thus laboriously started and but half in motion, it poorly meets the various tasks imposed upon it—the collection of taxes, public order in the streets, the circulation of supplies, and security for consciences, lives and property. Toppled over by its own action, another rises out of it, illegal and serviceable, which takes its place and stands. In a great centralised state whoever possesses the head possesses the body. By virtue of being led, the French have contracted the habit of letting themselves be led.48 People in the provinces involuntarily turn their eyes to the capital, and, on a crisis occurring, run out to stop the mail-carrier to knowwhatgovernment they are under. Into whatever hands this central government happens to have fallen, the majority accepts or submits to it.—Because, in the first place, most of the isolated groups which would like to overthrow it dare not engage in the struggle—it seems too strong; through inveterate routine they imagine behind it that great, distant France which, under its impulsion, will crush them with its mass.49 In the second place, should a fewisolated groups undertake to overthrowit, they are not in a condition to keep up the struggle—it is too strong. They are, indeed, not yet organised while it is fully so, owing to the docile set of officials inherited from the government overthrown. Under monarchy or republic the government clerk comes to his office regularly every morning to despatch the orders transmitted to him.50

47. Cf. “The French Revolution,” Vol. I. book ii. ch. iii. 48. Cf. “The Ancient Re´gime,” p. 352. 49. “Me´moires de Madame de Sapinaud,” p. 18. Reply of M. de Sapinaud to the peasants of La Vende´e, who wished him to act as their general: “My friends, it is the earthen pot against the iron pot. What could we do? One department against eighty-two—we should be smashed!” 50. Malouet, II. 241. “I knewa clerk in one of the bureaus, who, during these sad days (September, 1792), never missed going, as usual, to copy and add up his registers. Ministerial correspondence with the armies and the provinces followed its regular course in regular form. The Paris police looked after 468 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Under monarchy or republic the policeman daily makes his round to arrest those against whom he has a warrant. So long as instructions come from above in the hierarchical order of things, they are obeyed. From one end of the territory to the other, therefore, the machine, with its hundred thousand arms, works efficaciously in the hands of those who have seized the lever at the central point. Res- olution, audacity, rude energy, are all that are needed to make the lever act, and none of these are wanting in the Jacobin. First, he has faith, and faith at all times “moves mountains.” Take any ordinary party recruit, an attorney, a second-rate lawyer, a shopkeeper, an artisan, and conceive, if you can, the extraordinary effect of this doctrine on a mind so poorly prepared for it, so narrow, so out of proportion with the gigantic conception which has mastered it. Formed for routine and the limited views of one in his position, he is suddenly carried away by a complete system of philosophy, a theory of nature and of man, a theory of society and of religion, a theory of universal history,51 conclusions about the past, the present, supplies and kept its eye on sharpers, while blood ran in the streets.”—Cf. on this mechanical need and inveterate habit of receiving orders from the central authority, Mallet-Dupan, “Me´moires,” 490. “Dumouriez’ soldiers said to him: ‘F——, papa general, get the Convention to order us to march on Paris and you’ll see how we will make mince-meat of those b in the Assembly!’” 51. Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 55. Letter by Brun-Lafond, a grenadier in the national guard, July 14, 1793, to a friend in the provinces, in justification of the 31st of May. The whole of this letter requires to be read. In it are found the ordinary ideas of a Jacobin in relation to history. “Can we lose sight of this, that it is ever the people of Paris which, through its murmurings and righteous insurrections against the oppressive system of many of our kings, has forced them to entertain milder sentiments regarding the relief of the French people, and principally of the tiller of the soil?...Without the energy of Paris, Paris and France would now be inhabited solely by slaves, while this beautiful soil would present an aspect as wild and deserted as that of the Turkish empire or that of Germany,” which has led us “to confer still greater lustre on this Rev- olution, by re-establishing on earth the ancient Athenian and other Grecian republics in all their purity. Distinctions among the early people of the earth did not exist; early family ties bound people together who had no ancient founders or origin; they had no other laws in their republics but those which, so to say, inspired them with those sentiments of fraternity experienced by them in the cradle of primitive populations.” The Jacobin Conquest / 469 and the future of humanity, axioms of absolute right, a system of perfect and final truth, the whole concentrated in a few rigid formulae as, for example: “Religion is superstition, monarchy is usurpation, priests are impostors, aristocrats are vampires, and kings are so many tyrants and monsters.” These ideas flood a mind of this stamp like a vast torrent precipitating itself into a narrowgorge; they upset it, and, no longer under self-direction, they sweep it away. The man is beside himself. A plain bourgeois, a common laborer is not transformed with impunity into an apostle or liberator of the human species.—For, it is not his country that he would save, but the entire race. Roland, just before the 10th of August, exclaims “with tears in his eyes, should liberty die in France, she is lost to the rest of the world forever! The hopes of philosophers will perish! the whole earth will succumb to the cruellest tyranny!”52—Gre´goire, on the meeting of the Convention, obtained a decree abolishing royalty, and seemed overcome with the thought of the immense benefit he had conferred on the human race. “I must confess,” said he, “that for days I could neither eat nor sleep for excess of joy!” One day a Jacobin in the tribune declared: “We shall be a nation of gods!”—Fancies like these bring on lunacy, or, at all events, they create disease. “Some men are in a fever all day long,” said a companion of St. Just; “I had it for twelve years.”53 Later on, “when advanced in life and trying to analyse their experiences, they cannot comprehend it.” Another states that, in his case, on a “crisis occur-

52. Barbaroux, “Me´moires” (Ed. Dauban), 336.—Gre´goire, “Me´moires,” I. 410. 53. “La Re´volution Française,” by Quinet (extracts from the inedited “Me´- moires” of Baudot), II. 209, 211, 421, 620.—Guillon de Montleón I. 445 (speech by Chalier, in the Lyons Central Club, March 23, 1793). “They say that the sans-culottes will go on spilling their blood. This is only the talk of aristocrats. Can a sans-culotte be reached in that quarter? Is he not invulnerable, like the gods whom he replaces on this earth?”—Speech by David, in the Convention, on Barra and Viala. “Under so fine a government woman will bring forth without pain.”—Mercier, “Le Nouveau Paris,” I. 13. “I heard (an orator) exclaim in one of the sections, to which I bear witness: ‘Yes, I would take my own head by the hair, cut it off, and, presenting it to the despot, I would say to him: Tyrant, behold the act of a free man!’” 470 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION ring, there was only a hair’s breadth between reason and madness.” “When St. Just and myself,” says Baudot, “discharged the batteries at Wissenbourg, we were most liberally thanked for it. Well, there was no merit in that; we knew perfectly well that the shot could not reach us and do us harm.”—Man, in this exalted state, is unconscious of obstacles, and, according to circumstances, rises above or falls below himself, freely spilling his own blood as well as the blood of others, heroic as a soldier and atrocious as a civilian; he is not to be resisted in either direction for his strength increases a hundredfold through his fury, and, on his tearing wildly through the streets, people get out of his way as on the approach of a mad bull. If they do not jump aside of their own accord, he will run at them, for he is unscrupulous as well as furious.—In every political struggle certain kinds of actions are prohibited; at all events, if the majority is sensible and wishes to act fairly, it repudiates them for itself. It will not violate any particular law, for, if one law is broken, this tends to the breaking of others. It is opposed to overthrowing an established government because every interregnum is a return to barbarism. It is opposed to the element of popular insurrection because, in such a resort, public power is surrendered to the irrationality of brutal passion. It is opposed to a conversion of the government into a machine for confiscation and murder because it deems the natural function of government to be the protection of life and property.—The majority, accordingly, in confronting the Jacobin, who allows himself all this, is like a man deprived of his arms in close conflict with one in full panoply.54 The Jacobin, through principle, holds lawin contempt, for the only lawwhichhe accepts is the arbitrament of the people. He has no hesitation in proceeding against the government because, in his eyes, the gov-

54. Lafayette, “Me´moires,” I. 467 (on the Jacobins of August 10, 1792). “This sect, the destruction of which was desired by nineteen-twentieths of France.”—Durand-Maillan, 49. The aversion to the Jacobins after June 20, 1792, was general. “The communes of France, everywhere wearied and dissatisfied with popular clubs, would gladly have got rid of them, that they might no longer be under their control.” The Jacobin Conquest / 471 ernment is a clerk which the people always has a right to remove. He welcomes insurrection because, through it, the people recover their inalienable sovereignty. A dictatorship suits him because by this means the people recover their sovereignty with no limitations.—Moreover, as with casuists, “the end justifies the means.”55 “Let the colonies perish,” exclaims a Jacobin in the Constituent Assembly, “rather than sacrifice a principle.” “When the day comes,” says St. Just, “which satisfies me that I cannot endow the French with mild, vigorous, and rational ways, inflexible against tyranny and injustice, that day I will stab myself,” and in the mean time, he uses the guillotine against others. “We will convert France into a graveyard,” exclaimed Carrier, “rather than not regenerate it our own way!”56 To place themselves at the helm of the government,

55. The words of Leclerc, a deputy of the Lyons committee in the Jacobin Club at Paris. May 12, 1793. “Popular machiavelianism must be established.... Everything impure must disappear off the French soil....Ishall doubtless be regarded as a brigand, but there is one way to get ahead of calumny, and that is, to exterminate the calumniators.” 56. Buchez et Roux, XXXIV. 204 (testimony of François Lameyrie). “Col- lection of authentic documents for the History of the Revolution at Strasbourg,” II. 210 (speech by Baudot, Frimaire 19, year II., in the Jacobin Club at Stras- bourg). “Egoists, the heedless, the enemies of liberty, the enemies of all nature should not be regarded as her children. Are not all who oppose the public good, or who do not share it, in the same case? Let us, then, utterly destroy them . . . Were they a million, would not one sacrifice the twenty-fourth part of one’s self to get rid of a gangrene which might infect the rest of the body?...”For these reasons, the orator thinks that every man who is not wholly devoted to the Republic must be put to death. He states that the Republic should at one blowcause the instant disappearance of every friend to kings and feudalism.— Beaulieu, “Essai,” V. 200. M. d’Antonelle thought, “like most of the revolutionary clubs, that, to constitute a republic, an approximate equality of property should be established; and to do this, a third of the population should be suppressed.”—“This was the general idea among the fanatics of the Revolu- tion.”—Larevellie`re-Le´paux, “Me´moires,” I. 150 “Jean Bon St. Andre´ . . . suggested that for the solid foundation of the Republic in France, the population should be reduced one-half.” He is violently interrupted by Larevellie`re-Le´- paux, but continues and insists on this.—Guffroy, deputy of the Pas-de-Calais, proposed in his journal a still larger amputation; he wanted to reduce France to five millions of inhabitants. 472 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION they are ready to scuttle the ship and sink it. From the first, they let loose on society street riots and jacqueries in the rural districts, prostitutes and ruffians, the foul and the savage. Throughout the struggle they profit by the coarsest and most destructive passions, by the blindness, credulity, and rage of an infatuated crowd, by dearth, by the fear of bandits, by rumors of conspiracy, by threats of invasion. At last, attaining to power through a general upheaval, they hold on to it through terror and executions.—Straining will to the utmost, with no curb to check it, steadfastly believing in its own right and with utter contempt for the rights of others, with fanatical energy and the expedients of scoundrels, a minority employing such forces may easily overcome a majority. So true is it that, with faction itself, victory is always on the side of the few whose faith is greatest and who are the least unscrupulous. Four times between 1789 and 1794, political gamesters take their seats at a table whereon the stakes consist of supreme power, and four times in succession the “Impar- tiaux,” the “Feuillants,” the “Girondists,” and the “Dantonists,” form the majority and lose the game. Four times in succession the majority has no desire to break customary rules, or, at the very least, to infringe on any rule universally accepted, to wholly disregard the teachings of experience, the letter of the law, the precepts of humanity, the suggestions of pity. The minority, on the contrary, is determined beforehand to win at all hazards; its opinion is the right one, and if rules are opposed to that, so much the worse for the rules. At the decisive moment, it claps a pistol to its adversary’s head, turns the table upside down, and decamps with the stakes. 9 CHAPTER III =

The Jacobins in power—The elections of 1791—Proportion of places gained by them— I. Their siege operations—Means used by them to discourage the majority of electors and conservative candidates—Frequency of elections—Effect of the oath— II. Annoyances and dangers of public offices—The Constituents excluded from the Legislative body— III. The friends of order deprived of the right of free assemblage—Violent treatment of their clubs in Paris and the provinces— Legal prevention of conservative associations— IV. Turmoil at the elections of 1790—Elections in 1791—Effect of the King’s flight—Domiciliary visits—Mor- tagne during the electoral period— V. Intimidation and withdrawal of the Con- servatives—Popular outbreaks in Burgundy, Lyonnais, Provence, and the large cities—Electoral proceedings of the Jacobins; examples at Aix, Dax, and Mont- pellier—Agitators go unpunished—Denunciations by name—Manoeuvres with the peasantry—General tactics of the Jacobins.

IN JUNE, 1791, and during the five following months, the class of active citizens1 are convoked to elect their elective representatives, which, as we know, according to the law, are of every kind and degree; in the first place, there are 40,000 electors of the second degree and 745 deputies; next, one-half of the administrators of 83 departments, one-half of the administrators of 544 districts, one-half of the administrators of 41,000 communes, and finally, in each municipality, the mayor and syndic-attorney; in each department, the

1. Law of May 28, 29, 1791 (according to oﬃcialstatements, the totalof active citizens amounted to 4,288,360).—Laws of July 23, Sept. 12, Sept. 29, 1791.—Buchez et Roux, XII. 310.

473 474 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION president of the criminalcourt and the prosecuting-attorney, and, throughout France, oﬃcers of the NationalGuard; in short, almost the entire body of the agents and depositaries of legal authority. The garrison of the public citadel is to be renewed, which is the second and even the third time since 1789.—At each time the Jacobins have crept into the place, in small bands, but this time they enter in large bodies. Pe´tion becomes mayor of Paris, Manuel, syndic-attorney, and Danton the deputy of Manuel; Robespierre is elected prosecuting- attorney in criminalcases. The very ﬁrst week, 2 136 new deputies enter their names on the club’s register. In the Assembly the party numbers about 250 members. On passing all the posts of the fortress in review, we may estimate the besiegers as occupying one-third of them, and perhaps more. Their siege for two years has been carried on with unerring instinct, the extraordinary spectacle presenting itself of an entire nation legally overcome by a troop of factionists.

I First of all, they clear the ground, and through the decrees forced out of the Constituent Assembly, they keep most of the majority away from the polls.—On the one hand, under the pretext of better ensuring popular sovereignty, the elections are so multiplied, and held so near together, as to demand of each active citizen one-sixth of his time; such an exaction is very great for hard-working people who have a trade or any occupation,3 which is the case with the great mass; at all events, with the useful and healthy portion of the

2. Buchez et Roux, XII. 33.—Mortimer-Ternaux, “Histoire de la Terreur,” II. 205, 348.—Sauzay, II. ch. xviii.—Albert Babeau, I. ch. xx. 3. The following letter, by Camille Desmoulins (April 3, 1792), shows at once the time consumed by public affairs, the sort of attraction they had, and the kind of men which they diverted from their business. “I have gone back to my old profession of the law, to which I give nearly all the time which my municipal or electoral functions, and the Jacobins (club), allow me—that is to say, very little. It is very disagreeable to me to come down to pleading bourgeois cases after having managed interests of such importance, and the affairs of the government, in the face of all Europe.” The Jacobin Conquest / 475 population. Accordingly, as we have seen, it stays away from the polls, leaving the field open to idlers or fanatics. On the other hand, by virtue of the constitution, the civic oath, which includes the ecclesiastical oath, is imposed on all electors, for, if any one takes the former and reserves the latter, his vote is thrown out; in November, in the Doubs, the municipalelectionsof thirty- three communes are invalidated solely on this pretext.4 Not only forty thousand ecclesiastics are thus rendered unsworn (insermente´s), but again, all scrupulous Catholics lose the sight of suffrage, these being by far the most numerous in Artois, Doubs and the Jura, in the Lower and Upper Rhine district,5 in the two Se´vres and la Ven- deé, in the Lower Loire, Morbihan, Finisterre and Coˆtes du Nord, in Loze`re and Arde`che, without mentioning the southern departments.6 Thus, aided by the law which they have rendered imprac-

4. Sauzay, II. 83–89 and 123. A resolution of the inhabitants of Chale`ze, who, headed by their municipal officers, declare themselves unanimously “non- conformists,” and demand “the right of using a temple for the exercise of their religious opinions, belonging to them and built with their contributions.” On the strength of this, the municipalofficers of Chale `ze are soundly rated by the district administration, which thus states what principles are: “Liberty, indefinite for the private individual, must be restricted for the public man whose opinions must conform to the law; otherwise, . . . he must renounce all public functions.” 5. Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,253 (letter of the department directory, April 7, 1792). “On the 25th of January, in our report to the NationalAssembly, we stated the almost general opposition which the execution of the laws relating to the clergy has found in this department . . . nine-tenths, at least, of the Catholics refusing to recognise the sworn priests. The teachers, influenced by their old cure´s or vicars, are willing to take the civic oath, but they refuse to recognise their legitimate pastors and attend their services. We are, therefore, obliged to remove them, and to look out for others to replace them. The citizens of a large number of the communes, persisting in trusting these, will lend no assistance whatever to the election of the new ones; the result is, that we are obliged, in selecting these people, to refer the matter to persons whom we scarcely know, and who are scarcely better known to the directories of the district. As they are elected against the will of the citizens, they do not gain their confidence, and draw their salaries from the commune treasury, without any advantage to public instruction.” 6. Mercure de France, Sept. 3, 1791. “The right of attending primary meetings is that of every citizen who pays a tax of three livres; owing to the violence 476 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION ticable, the Jacobins, on the one hand, are rid of all sensible voters in advance, counting by millions; and, on the other, aided by a law which they have rendered intolerant, they are rid of the Catholic vote which counts by hundreds of thousands. On entering the electoral lists, consequently, thanks to this double exclusion, they find themselves confronted by only the smallest numbers of electors. II Operations must now be commenced against these, and a first expedient consists in depriving them of their candidates. The obligation of taking the oath has already partly provided for this; in Loze`re all the officials send in their resignations rather than take the oath;7 here are men who will not be candidates at the coming elections, for nobody covets a place which he had to abandon; in general, the suppression of all party candidatures is effected in no other way than by making the post of a magistrate distasteful.—On this principle the Jacobins have labored successfully by promoting and taking the lead in innumerable riots against the King, the officials and the clerks, against nobles, ecclesiastics, corn-dealers and land-owners, against every species of public authority whatever its origin. Every- where the authorities are constrained to tolerate or excuse murders, pillage and incendiarism, or, at the very least, insurrections and disobedience. For two years a mayor runs the risk of being hung on proclaiming martial law; a captain is not sure of his men on marching to protect a tax levy; a judge on the bench is threatened if he condemns the marauders who devastate the nationalforests. The magistrate, whose duty it is to see that the law is respected, is constantly obliged to strain the law, or allow it to be strained; if refractory, a summary blow dealt by the local Jacobins forces his legal authority to which opinions are subject, more than one-half of the French are compelled to stay away from these reunions, which are abandoned to persons who have the least interest in maintaining public order and in securing stable laws, with the least property, and who pay the fewest taxes.” 7. “The French Revolution,” Vol. I. p. 182 and following pages. The Jacobin Conquest / 477 to yield to their illegal dictation, so that he has to resign himself to being either their accomplice or their puppet. Such a roˆle is intolerable to a man of feeling or conscience. Hence, in 1790 and 1791, nearly all the prominent and reputable men who, in 1789, had seats in the Hoˆtels-de-Villes, or held command in the National Guard, all country-gentlemen, chevaliers of St. Louis, old parliamentarians, the upper bourgeoisie and large landed-proprietors, retire into private life and renounce public functions which are no longer tenable. Instead of offering themselves to public suffrage they avoid it, and the party of order, far from electing the magistracy, no longer even finds candidates for it. Through an excess of precaution, its naturalleaders have been legally disqualified, the principal offices, especially those of deputy and minister, being interdicted beforehand to the influentialmen in whom we find the little common sense gained by the French people during the past two years.—In the month of June, 1791, even after the irreconcilables had parted company with the “Right,” there still remained in the Assembly about 700 members who, adhering to the constitution but determined to repress disorder, would have formed a sensible legislature had they been re-elected. All of these, except a very small group of revolutionists, had learned something by experience, and, in the last days of their session, two serious events, the king’s flight and the riot in the Champ de Mars, had made them acquainted with the defects of their machine. With this executive instrument in their hands for three months, they see that it is racked, that things are tottering, and that they themselves are being run over by fanatics and the populace. They accordingly attempt to put on a drag, and severaleven think of retracing their steps. 8 They cut loose from the Jacobins; of the three or four hundred deputies on the club

8. “Correspondence of M. de Stae¨l” (manuscript), Swedish ambassador, with his court, Sept. 4, 1791. “The change in the way of thinking of the democrats is extraordinary; they now seem convinced that it is impossible to make the Constitution work. Barnave, to my own knowledge, has declared that the influence of assemblies in the future should be limited to a council of notables, and that all power should be in the government.” 478 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION list in the Rue St. Honore´9 but seven remain; the rest form at the Feuillants a distinct opposition club, and at their head are the first founders, Duport, the two Lameths, Barnave, the authors of the constitution, all the fathers of the new re´gime. In the last decree of the Constituent Assembly they loudly condemn the usurpations of popular associations, and not only interdict to these all meddling in administrative or political matters, but likewise any collective petition or deputation.10—Here may the friends of order find candidates whose chances are good, for, during two years and more, each in his own district is the most conspicuous, the best accredited, and the most influential man there; he stands well with his electors on account of the popularity of the constitution he has made, and it is very probable that his name would rally to it a majority of votes.— The Jacobins, however, have foreseen this danger. Four months previous to this,11 with the aid of the Court, which never missed an opportunity to ruin itself and everything else,12 they made the most of the rancors of the “Right” and the lassitude of the Assembly; fagged and disgusted, in a fit of mistaken disinterestedness, the As- sembly, through impulse and taken by surprise, passes an act declaring all its members ineligible for election to the following Assembly, which is tantamount to the displacement in advance of the staff of honest men. III If the latter, in spite of so many drawbacks, attempt a struggle, they are arrested at the very first step. For, to enter upon an electoral

9. Ibid., Letter of July 17, 1791. “All the members of the Assembly, with the exception of three or four, have passed a resolution to separate from the Jacobins; they number about 300.”—The seven deputies who remain at the Jacobin Club, are Robespierre, Pe´tion, Gre´goire, Buzot, Coroller, and Abbe´ Royer. 10. Decree of Sept. 29, 30, 1791, with report and instructions of the Com- mittee on the Constitution. 11. Decree of May 17, 1791.—Malouet, XII. 161. “There was nothing left to us but to make one great mistake, which we did not failto do.” 12. A few months after this, on the election of a mayor for Paris, the court voted against Lafayette, and for Pe´tion. The Jacobin Conquest / 479 campaign, requires preliminary meetings for conference and to understand each other, while the faculty of forming an association, which the law grants them as a right, is actually withheld from them by their adversaries. As a beginning, the Jacobins hooted at and “stoned” the members of the “Right”13 holding their meetings in the Salon français of the Rue Royale, and, according to the prevailing rule, the police tribunal, “considering that this assemblage is a cause of disturbance, that it produces gatherings in the street, that only violent means can be employed to protect it,” orders its dissolution.—Towards the month of August, 1790, a second club is organised, and, this time, composed of the wisest and most liberal men. Malouet and Count Clermont-Tonnerre are at the head of it. It takes the name of “Friends of a MonarchicalConstitution,” and is desirous of restoring public order by maintaining the reforms which have been reached. All formalities on its part have been complied with. There are already about 800 members in Paris. Subscriptions flow into its treasury. The provinces send in numerous adhesions, and, what is worse than all, bread is distributed by them at a reduced price, by which the people, probably, will be conciliated. Here is a centre of opinion and influence, analogous to that of the Jacobin club, which the Jacobins cannot tolerate.14 M. de Clermont-Tonnerre having leased the summer Vauxhall, a captain in the National Guard notifies the proprietor of it that if he rents it, the patriots of the Palais-Royal will march to it in a body, and close it; fearing that the building will be damaged, he cancels the lease, while the municipality, which fears skirmishes, orders a suspension of the meetings. The club makes a complaint and follows it up, while the letter of

13. M. de Montlosier, “Me´moires,” II. 309. “As far as concerns myself, truth compels me to say, that I was struck on the head by three carrots and two cabbages only.”—Archives of the prefecture of police (decisions of the police court, May 15, 1790). Moniteur, V. 427. “The prompt attendance of the members at the hour of meeting, in spite of the hootings and murmurings of the crowd, seemed to convince the people that this was yet another conspiracy against liberty.” 14. Malouet, II. 50.—Mercure de France, Jan. 7, Feb. 5, and April9, 1791 (letter of a member of the Monarchical Club). 480 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION the law is so plain that an official authorisation of the club is finally granted. Thereupon the Jacobin newspapers and stump-speakers let loose their fury against a future rival that threatens to dispute their empire. On the 23d of January, 1791, Barnave, in the NationalAs- sembly, employing metaphorical language apt to be used as a death- shout, accuses the members of the new club “of giving the people bread that carries poison with it.” Four days after this, M. Clermont- Tonnerre’s dwelling is assailed by an armed throng. Malouet, on leaving it, is almost dragged from his carriage, and the crowd around him cry out, “There goes the b who denounced the people!”— At length, its founders, who, out of consideration for the municipality, have waited two months, hire another hall in the Rue des Petites-Ecuries, and on the 28th of March begin their sessions. “On reaching it,” writes one of them, “we found a mob composed of drunkards, screaming boys, ragged women, soldiers exciting them on, and especially those frightful hounds, armed with stout, knotty cudgels, two feet long, which are excellent skull-crackers.”15 The thing was made up beforehand. At first there were only three or four hundred of them, and, ten minutes after, five or six hundred; in a quarter of an hour, there are perhaps four thousand flocking in from all sides; in short, the usual make-up of an insurrection. “The people of the quarter certified that they did not recognise one of the faces.” Jokes, insults, cuffings, clubbings, and sabre-cuts—the members of the club “who agreed to come unarmed” being dispersed, while several are knocked down, dragged by the hair, and a dozen or fifteen more are wounded. To justify the attack, white cockades are shown, which, it is pretended, were found in their pockets. Mayor Bailly arrives only when it is all over, and, as a measure of “public order,” the municipalauthorities have the clubof Constitutional Monarchists closed for good. Owing to these outrages by the faction, with the connivance of

15. Ferrie`res, II. 222. “The Jacobin Club sent five or six hundred trusty men, armed with clubs,” besides “about a hundred national guards, and some of the Palais-Royal prostitutes.” The Jacobin Conquest / 481 the authorities, other similar clubs are suppressed in the same way. There are a good many of them, and in the principaltowns— “Friends of Peace,” “Friends of the Country,” “Friends of the King, of Peace, and of Religion,” “Defenders of Religion, Persons, and Property.” Magistrates and officers, the most cultivated and polished people, are generally members; in short, the e´lite of the place. For- merly, meetings took place for conversation and debate, and, being long-established, the club naturally passes over from literature to politics.—The watch-word against all these provincial clubs is given from the Rue St. Honore´.16 “They are centres of conspiracy, and must be looked after” forthwith, and be at once trodden out.—At one time, as at Cahors,17 a squad of the NationalGuard, on its return from an expedition against the neighboring gentry, and to finish its task, breaks in on the club, “throws its furniture out of the windows, and demolishes the house.”—At another time, as at Perpignan, the excited populace surrounds the club, dancing a fandango, and yell out, to the lantern! The club-house is sacked, while eighty of its members, covered with bruises, are shut up in the citadelfor their safety.18 At another time, as at Aix, the Jacobin club insults its adversaries on their own premises and provokes a scuffle, whereupon the municipality causes the doors of the assailed club to be walled up and issues warrants of arrest against its members.—Always punishment awaits them for whatever violence they have to submit to. Their mere existence seems an offence. At Grenoble, they scarcely assemble before they are dispersed. The fact is, they are suspected of “incivism”; their intentions may not be right; in any event, they

16. “Journaldes Amis de laConstitution.” Letter of the Cafe´ National Club at Bordeaux, Jan. 20, 1791.—Letters of the “Friends of the Constitution,” at Brives and Cambray, Jan. 19, 1791. 17. “The French Revolution,” I. pp. 243, 324. 18. Mercure de France, Dec. 18, 1790, Jan. 17, June 8, and July 14, 1791.— Moniteur, VI. 697.—“Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,193. Letter from the Direc- tory of the department of Aveyron, April20, 1792. Narrative of events after the end of 1790.—May 22, 1791, the club of “The Friends of Order and Peace” is burnt by the Jacobins, the ﬁre lasting all night and a part of the next day. (Oﬃcialreport of the Directory of Milhau,May 22, 1791). 482 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION cause a division of the place into two camps, and that is enough.— In the department of Gard, their clubs are all broken up, by order of the department, because “they are centres of malevolence.” At Bordeaux, the municipality, considering that “alarming reports are current of priests and privileged persons returning to town,” prohibits all reunions, except that of the Jacobin club.—Thus, “under a system of liberty of the most exalted kind, in the presence of that famous Declaration of the Rights of Man which legitimates whatever is not unlawful,” and which postulates equality as the principle of the French constitution, whoever is not a Jacobin is excluded from common rights. An intolerant club sets itself up as a holy church, and proscribes others which have not received from it “orthodox baptism, civic inspiration, and the gift of tongues.” To her alone belongs the right of assemblage, and the right of making proselytes. Conservative, thoughtfulmen in alltowns throughout the kingdom are forbidden to form electoral committees, to possess a tribune, a fund, subscribers and adherents, to cast the weight of their names and common strength into the scale of public opinion, to gather around their permanent nucleus the scattered multitude of sensible people, who would like to escape from the Revolution without falling back into the ancient re´gime. Let them whisper amongst themselves in corners, and they may still be tolerated, but woe to them if they would leave their lonely retreat to act in concert, to canvass voters, and support a candidate. Up to the day of voting they must remain in the presence of their combined, active, and obstreperous adversaries, scattered, inert, and mute.

IV Will they at least be able to vote freely on that day? They are not sure of it, and, judging by occurrences during the past year, it is doubtful.—In the month of April, 1790, at Bois d’Aisy, in Burgundy, M. de Bois d’Aisy, a deputy, who had returned from Paris to deposit his vote,19 was publicly menaced; he was given to understand that

19. “The French Revolution,” I. p. 256, 307. The Jacobin Conquest / 483 nobles and priests must take no part in the elections, while many were heard to say, in his hearing, that in order to prevent this it would be well to hang him. Not far off, at Ste. Colombe, M. de Viteaux was driven out of the electoral assembly, and then put to death after three hours of torture. The same thing occurred at Se- mur; two gentlemen were knocked down with clubs and stones, another saved himself with difficulty, and a cure´ died after being stabbed six times.—This is a warning for ecclesiastics and for gentlemen; they will do well to abstain from voting, and the same good advice may be given to dealers in grain, to land-owners, and every other suspected person. For this is the day on which the people recover their sovereignty; the violent believe that they have the right to do exactly what suits them, nothing being more natural than to exclude candidates in advance who are distrusted, or electors who do not vote as they ought to.—At Villeneuve-St.-Georges, near Paris,20 a barrister, a man of austere and energetic character, is about to be elected judge by the district electors; the populace, however, mistrust a judge likely to condemn marauders, and forty or fifty vagabonds collect together under the windows and cry out: “We don’t want him elected.” The cure´ of Crosne, president of the electoral assembly, informs them in vain that the assembled electors represent 90 communes, nearly 100,000 inhabitants, and that “40 persons should not prevail against 100,000.” Shouts redouble and the electors renounce their candidate.—At Pau, patriots among the militia21 forcibly release one of their imprisoned leaders, circulate a list for proscriptions, attack a poll-teller with their fists and afterwards with sabres, untilthe proscribed hide themselves away; on the following day “nobody is disposed to attend the electoral assem-

20. Mercure de France, Dec. 14, 1790 (letter from Villeneuve-St.-Georges, Nov. 29). 21. “Archives Nationales,” II. 1,453. Correspondence of M. Bercheny. Letter from Pau, Feb. 7, 1790. “No one has any idea of the actualstate of things, in this once delightful town. People are cutting each other’s throats. Four duels have taken place within 48 hours, and ten or a dozen good citizens have been obliged to hide themselves for three days past.” 484 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION bly.”—Things are much worse in 1791. In the month of June, just at the time of the opening of the primary meetings, the king has fled to Varennes, the Revolution seems compromised, civil war and a foreign war loom up on the horizon like two spectres; the National Guard had everywhere taken up arms, and the Jacobins were making the most of the universalpanic for their own advantage. To dispute their votes is no longer the question; it is not well to be seen now; among so many turbulent gatherings a popular execution is soon over. The best thing now for royalists, constitutionalists, conservatives and moderates of every kind, for the friends of law and of order, is to stay at home—too happy if they may be allowed to remain there, to which the armed commonalty assents only on the condition of making them frequent visits. Consider their situation during the whole of the electoral period, in a tranquildistrict, and judge of the rest of France by this corner of it. At Mortagne,22 a small town of 6,000 souls, the laudable spirit of 1789 still existed up to the journey to Varennes. Among the forty or fifty families of nobles were a good many liberals. Here, as elsewhere among the gentry, the clergy and the middle class, the philosophic education of the eighteenth century had revived the initiative spirit of old provincial times, while the entire upper class had zealously and gratuitously undertaken public duties which it alone could well perform. District presidents, mayors, and municipal officers, were all chosen from among ecclesiastics and the nobles; the three principalofficers of the NationalGuard were chevaliers of St. Louis, while other grades were filled by the leading people of the community. Thus had the free elections placed authority in the hands of the socially superior, the new order of things resting on the legitimate hierarchy of conditions, educations, and capacities.—For six months, however, the club, formed out of “a dozen hot-headed, turbulent fellows, under the presidency and in the hands of a certain Rattier, formerly a cook,” worked upon the populace and the rural

22. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,249. Memorialon the actualcondition of the town and district of Mortagne, department of Orne (November, 1791). The Jacobin Conquest / 485 districts. Immediately on the receipt of the news of the King’s flight, the Jacobins “give out that nobles and priests had supplied him with money for his departure, to bring about a counter-revolution.” One family had given such an amount, and another so much; there was no doubt about it; the precise figures are given, and given for each family according to its known resources.—Forthwith, “the principal clubbists, associated with the suspicious portion of the National Guard,” spread through the streets in squads, and enter the houses of the nobles and of other suspected persons; all the arms, “guns, pistols, swords, hunting-knives, and sword-canes,” are carried off. Every hole and corner is ransacked; they make the inmates open, or they force open, secretaries and clothes-presses in search of ammunition, the search extending “even to the ladies’ toilette-tables”; by way of precaution “they break sticks of pomatum in two, presuming that musket-balls are concealed in them, and they take away hair-powder under the pretext that it is either colored or masked gunpowder.” Then, without disbanding, the troop betakes itself to the environs and into the country, where it operates with the same celerity in the chaˆteaux, so that “in one day all honest citizens, those with the most property and furniture to protect, are left without arms at the mercy of the first robber that comes along.” All reputed aristocrats are disarmed. Those are reputed aristocrats who “disapprove of the enthusiasm of the day, or who do not attend the club, or who harbor any unsworn ecclesiastic,” and, first of all, “the officers of the NationalGuard who are nobles, beginning with the commander and his entire staff.”—The latter allow their swords to be taken without resistance, and with a forbearance and patriotic spirit of which their brethren everywhere furnish an example, “they are obliging enough to remain at their posts so as not to disorganise the army, hoping that this frenzy will soon come to an end,” con- tenting themselves with making their complaint to the department.—But in vain the department orders their arms to be restored to them. The clubbists refuse to give them up so long as the king refuses to accept the Constitution; meanwhile they do not hesitate to say that “at the very first gun on the frontier, they will cut the 486 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION throats of all the nobles and unsworn priests.”—After the royal oath to the Constitution is taken, the department again insists, but no attention is paid to it. On the contrary, the NationalGuard, dragging cannons along with them, purposely station themselves before the mansions of the unarmed gentry; the ladies of their families are followed in the streets by urchins who sing ça ira in their faces, and, in the finalrefrain, they mention them by name and promise them the lantern; “not one of them could invite a dozen of his friends to supper without incurring the risk of an ebullition.”—On the strength of this, the old chiefs of the National Guard resign, and the Jacobins turn the opportunity to account. In contempt of the law the whole body of officers is renewed, and, as peaceable folks dare not deposit their votes, the new staff “is composed of infuriated men, taken for the most part, from the lowest class.” With this purged militia the club expels nuns, drives off unsworn priests, organises expeditions in the neighborhood, and goes so far as to purify suspected municipalities.23—So many acts of violence committed in town and country, render town and country uninhabitable, and for the e´lite of the proprietors, or for well-bred persons, there is no longer any asylum but Paris. After the first disarmament seven or eight families take refuge there, and a dozen or fifteen more join them after a threat of having their throats cut; after the religious persecution, unsworn ecclesiastics, the rest of the nobles, and countless other townspeople, “even with little means,” betake themselves there in a mass. There, at least, one is lost in the crowd; one is protected by an incognito against the outrages of the commonalty; one can live there as a private individual. In the provinces even civil rights do not exist; how could any one there exercise political rights?

23. On the 15th of August, 1791, the mother-superior of the Hotel-Dieu hospital is forcibly carried oﬀ and placed in a tavern, half a league from the town, while the rest of the nuns are driven out and replaced by eight young girls. Among other motives that require notice is the hostility of two apothecaries belonging to the club; in the Hotel-Dieu the nuns, keeping a pharmacy, by which they defrayed expenses through the sale of drugs, brought themselves into competition with the two apothecaries. The Jacobin Conquest / 487

“All honest citizens are kept away from the primary meetings by threats or maltreatment. . . . The battle-ﬁeld remains with those who pay forty-ﬁve sous of taxes, more than one-half of them being registered on the poor list.”—See how the elections are decided beforehand! The old cook is the one who authorises or creates candidatures, and on the election of the department deputies at the county town, the electors elected are veritably, like himself, Jacobins.24

V Such is the pressure under which voting takes place in France during the summer and fall of 1791. Domiciliary visits and disarmament everywhere force nobles and ecclesiastics, landed proprietors and people of culture, to abandon their homes, to seek refuge in the large towns and to emigrate,25 or, at least, conﬁne themselves strictly to private life, to abstain from all propagandism, from every can- didature, and from all voting. It would be madness to be seen in so many cantons where perquisitions terminate in a jacquerie; in Bur- gundy and the Lyonnais, where castles are sacked, where aged gentlemen are mauled and left for dead, where M. de Guillin has just been assassinated and cut to pieces; at Marseilles, where conservative party leaders are imprisoned, where a regiment of Swiss guards under arms scarcely suﬃces to enforce the verdict of the court which

24. Cf. “Archives Nationales,” DXXIX. 13. Letter of the municipal officers and notables of Champneuil, to the administrators of Seine-et-Oise, concerning elections, June 17, 1791.—Similar letters, from various other parishes, among them that of Charcon, June 16: They “have the honor to inform you that, at the time of the preceding primary meetings, they were exposed to the greatest danger; that the cure´ of Charcon, their pastor, was repeatedly stabbed with a bayonet, the marks of which he will carry to his grave. The mayor, and several other inhabitants of Charcon, escaped the same perilwith difficulty.”— Ibid., letters from the administrators of Hautes-Alpes to the National Assembly (September, 1791), on the disturbances in the electoral assembly of Gap, August 29, 1791. 25. “The French Revolution,” pp. 159, 160, 310, 323, 324.—Lauvergne, “Histoire du de´partement du Var,” 104 (August 23). 488 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION sets them at liberty, where, if any indiscreet person opposes Jacobin resolutions his mouth is closed by being notified that he will be buried alive; at Toulon, where the Jacobins shoot down all conservatives and the regular troops, where M. de Beaucaire, captain in the navy, is killed by a shot in the back, where the club, supported by the needy, by sailors, by navvies, and “vagabond pedlars,” maintains a dictatorship by right of conquest; at Brest, at Tulle, at Cahors, where at this very moment gentlemen and officers are massacred in the street. It is not surprising that honest people turn away from the ballot-box as from a centre of cut-throats.—Nevertheless, let them come if they like; it will be easy to get rid of them. At Aix, the assessor whose duty it is to read the electors’ names is informed that “the names should be called out by an unsullied mouth, that, being an aristocrat and fanatical, he could neither speak nor vote,” and, without further ceremony, they put him out of the room.26 The process is an admirable one for converting a minority into a majority and yet here is another, still more effectual.—At Dax, the Feuillants, taking the title of “Friends of the French Constitution,” separate from the Jacobins,27 and, moreover, insist on excluding from the

26. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,198, deposition of Ve´rand Jeard, an elector at Arles, Sept. 8, 1791.—Ibid., F7, 3,195. Letter of the administrators of the Tarascon district, Dec. 8, 1791. Two parties confront each other at the municipal elections of Barbantane, one headed by the Abbe´ Chabaud, brother of one of the Avignon brigands, composed of three or four townsmen, and of “the most impoverished in the country,” and the other, three times as numerous, comprising all the land-owners, the substantial me´tayers and artisans, and all “who are most interested in a good administration.” The question is, whether the Abbe´ Chabaud is to be mayor. The elections took place Dec. 5, 1791. Here is the oﬃcialreport of the acting mayor: “We, Pierre Fontaine, mayor, addressed the rioters, to induce them to keep the peace. At this very moment, the said Claude Gontier, alias Baoque, struck us with his ﬁst on the left eye, which bruised us considerably, and on account of which we are almost blind, and, conjointly with others, jumped upon us, threw us down, and dragged us by the hair, continuing to strike us, from in front of the church door, till we came in front of the door of the town hall.” 27. Ibid., F7, 3,229. Letters of M. de Laure`de, June 18, 1791; from the directory of the department, June 8, July 31, and Sept. 22, 1791; from the mu- The Jacobin Conquest / 489

NationalGuard “foreigners without property or position,” the passive citizens who are admitted into it in spite of the law, who usurp the right of voting and who “daily affront tranquil inhabitants.” Consequently, on election day, in the church where the primary meeting is held, two of the Feuillants, Laure`de, formerly collector of the vingtie`mes, and Brunache, a glazier, propose to exclude an intruder, a servant on wages. The Jacobins at once rush forward. Laure`de is pressed back on the holy-water basin and wounded on the head; on trying to escape he is seized by the hair, thrown down, pierced in the arm with a bayonet, put in prison, and Brunache along with him. Eight days afterwards, at the second meeting none are present but Jacobins; naturally, “they are all elected” and form the new municipality, which, notwithstanding the orders of the department, not only refuses to liberate the two prisoners, but consigns them to a dungeon.—At Montpellier, the delay in the operation is greater, but it is only the more complete. The votes are deposited, the ballot-boxes closed and sealed up and the conservatives obtain a majority. Thereupon the Jacobin club, with the band of “iron- clubs,” calling itself the Executive power, betake themselves in force to the sectional meetings, burn one of the ballottings, use firearms and kill two men. To restore order the municipality stations each company of the NationalGuard at its captain’s door, and the moderates among them naturally obey orders, but the violent party do not. They overrun the town, numbering about 2,000 inhabitants, enter the houses, kill three men in the street or in their domiciles, and force the administrative body to suspend its electoral assemblies. In addition to this they require the disarmament “of the aristocrats,” and this not being done soon enough, they kill an artisan who is walking in the street with his mother, cut off his head, bear it aloft in triumph, and suspend it in front of his dwelling. The authorities, nicipality, July 15, 1791. The municipality “leaves the release of the prisoners in suspense,” for six months, because, it says, the people is disposed to “insur- rectionise against their discharge.”—Letters of many of the nationalguard, stating that the factions form only a part of it. 490 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION thus persuaded, accordingly decree a disarmament, and the victors parade the streets in a body. Either on account of their jollity, or as a precaution, they fire at the windows of suspected houses as they pass along and happen to kill an additional man and woman. During the three following days six hundred families emigrate, while the authorities report that everything is going on well, and that order is restored; “the elections,” they say, “are now proceeding in the quietest manner on account of the ill-intentioned voluntarily keeping away from them, a large number having left the town.”28 A void is created around the ballot-box and this is called the unanimity of voters. The effect of such executions is great and not many of them are requisite; a few suffice when successfuland when they go unpunished, which is always the case. Henceforth all that the Jacobins have to do is to threaten; people no longer resist them for they know that it costs too much to face them down; they do not care to attend electoral meetings and there meet insult and danger; they acknowledge defeat at the start. Have not the Jacobins irresistible arguments, without taking blows into account? At Paris,29 Marat in three successive numbers of his paper has just denounced by name “the rascals and thieves” who canvass for electoral nominations, not the nobles and priests but ordinary citizens, lawyers, architects, physicians, jewellers, stationers, printers, upholsterers and other mechanics, each name being given in full with the professions, addresses and one of the following qualifications, “hypocrite (tartufe), immoral, dishonest, bankrupt, informer, usurer, cheat,” not to mention

28. Mercure de France, Dec. 10, 1791, letter from Montpellier, dated Nov. 17, 1791.—“Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,223. Extracts from letters, on the incidents of Oct. 9 and 12, 1791. Petition by Messrs. The´ri and Devon, Nov. 17, 1791. Letter addressed by them to the Minister, Oct. 25. Letters of M. Dupin, syndicalattorney of the department, to the Minister, Nov. 14 and 15, and Dec. 26, 1791 (with officialreports).—Among those assassinated on the 14th and 15th of November, we find a jeweller, an attorney, a carpenter, and a dyer. “This painfulscene,” writes the syndic attorney, “has restored quiet to the town.” 29. Buchez et Roux, X. 223 (L’Ami du Peuple, June 17, 19, 21, 1791). The Jacobin Conquest / 491 others that I cannot transcribe. It must be noted that this slanderous list may become a proscriptive list, and that in every town and village in France similar lists are constantly drawn up and circulated by the local club, which enables us to judge whether the struggle between it and its adversaries is a fair one.—As to ruralelectors, it has suitable means for persuading them, especially in the innumerable cantons ravaged or threatened by the jacqueries, or, for example, in Corre`ze, where “the whole department is overspread with insurrections and devastations, and where nobody talks of anything but of hanging the officers who serve papers.”30 Throughout the electoral operations the sittings of the club are permanent; “its electors are incessantly summoned to its meetings”; at each of these “the main question is the destruction of fishponds and rentals, their principal speakers summing it all up by saying that none ought to be paid.” The majority of electors, composed of rustics, are found to be sensitive to eloquence of this kind; all its candidates are obliged to express themselves against fishponds and rentals; its deputies and the public prosecuting-attorney are nominated on this profession of faith; in other words, to be elected, the Jacobins promise to greedy tenants the incomes and property of their owners.—We already see in the proceedings by which they secure one-third of the offices in 1791 the germ of the proceedings by which they will secure the whole of them in 1792; in this first electoral campaign their acts indicate not merely their maxims and policy but, again, the condition, education, spirit and character of the men whom they place in power locally as well as at the capital.

30. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,204, letter by M. Melon Pradon, royal commissary at Tulle, Sept. 8, 1791. 9 CHAPTER IV =

I. Composition of the Legislative Assembly—Social rank of the Deputies. Their inexperience, incompetence, and prejudices— II. Degree and quality of their intelligence and culture— III. Aspect of their sessions—Scenes and display at the club—Co-operation of spectators— IV. Parties—The “Right”—The “Cen- tre”—The “Left”—Opinions and sentiments of the Girondists—Their allies of the extreme “Left”— V. Their means of action—Dispersion of the Feuillants club—Pressure of the tribunes on the Assembly—Street mobs— VI. Parliamen- tary manoeuvres—Abuses of urgency—Vote on the principle—Call by name— Intimidation of the “Centre”—Opponents inactive—The majority ﬁnally disposed of.

IFITBEtrue that a nation should be represented by its superior men, France was singularly represented during the Revolution. From one Assembly to another we see the level steadily declining; especially is the fall very great from the Constituent to the Legis- lative Assembly. The actors entitled to perform withdraw just as they begin to understand their parts; and yet more, they have excluded themselves from the theatre, while the stage is surrendered to their substitutes. “The preceding Assembly,” writes an ambassador,1 “contained men of great talent, large fortune, and honorable name, a combination which had an imposing eﬀect on the people,

1. “Correspondence (manuscript) of Baron de Stae¨l,” with his court, Oct. 6, 1791.

492 The Jacobin Conquest / 493 although violently opposed to personal distinctions. The actual As- sembly is but little more than a council of lawyers, got together from every town and village in France.” Out of 745 deputies, indeed, “400 lawyers belong, for the most part, to the dregs of the profession”; there are about twenty constitutional priests, “as many poets and literary men of but little reputation, almost all without any patrimony,” the greater number being less than thirty years old, sixty being less than twenty-six, while nearly all of them are outgrowths of the clubs and the popular assemblies.2 There is not one noble or prelate belonging to the ancient re´gime, no great landed proprietor,3 no head of the service, no eminent specialist in diplomacy, in finance, in administrative force, or in military art. But three general officers are found there, and these are of the lowest rank,4 one of them having held his appointment but three months, and the other two being wholly unknown.—At the head of the diplomaticcommittee stands Brissot, a perambulating journalist, lately a rover about En- gland and the United States, and supposed to be competent in the affairs of both worlds; in reality he is one of those presuming, thread-

2. “Souvenirs” (manuscript) of M. X——. Dumouriez, “Me´moires,” III. ch. v. “The Jacobin Club, everywhere extending its numerous ramifications, availed itself of the provincial clubs to obtain control of the elections. Every crackbrain, every seditious scribbler, all the agitators were elected....Very few enlightened or prudent men, and still fewer of the nobles, were chosen.”— Moniteur, XII. 199 (meeting of April 23, 1792). Speech of M. Lecointe- Puyravaux. “We need not dissimulate; indeed, we are proud to say, that this legislature is composed of persons who are not rich.” 3. Mathieu Dumas, “Me´moires,” I. 521. “The excitement in the electoral assemblages was very great; the aristocrats and large land-owners abstained from coming there.”—“Correspondance de Mirabeau et du Comte de la Mark,” III. 246, Oct. 10, 1791. “Nineteen-twentieths of this legislature have no other turn-out than galoshes and umbrellas. It has been estimated, that all these deputies put together do not possess 300,000 livres solid income. The generality of those who compose this Assembly have received no education whatever.” 4. They rank as Marećhaux de camp, a grade corresponding to that of brigadier-general. They are Dupuy-Montbrun (deceased in March, 1792), Descrots-d’Estreé, a weak and worn old man whom his children forced into the Legislative Assembly, and, lastly, Mathieu Dumas, a conservative, and the only prominent one. 494 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION bare, talkative fellows, who, living in a garret, lecture foreign cabinets and reconstruct all Europe; things, to them, seem as easily combined as phrases; one day,5 to entice the English into an alliance with France, Brissot proposes to place two towns, Dunkirk and Calais, in their hands as security; another day, he proposes “to make a descent on Spain, and, at the same time, to send a fleet to conquer Mexico.”—The principal personage in the committee on finances is Cambon, a merchant in Montpellier, a good book-keeper, who, at a later period, is to simplify all writings and regulate the Grand Livre of the public debt, which means public bankruptcy. Meanwhile, he hastens this on with all his might by encouraging the Assembly to undertake the ruinous and terrible war, that is to last for twenty- three years; according to him, “there is more money than is needed for it.”6 In truth, the guarantee of assignats is used up; the taxes do not come in; they live only on the paper money they issue, the assignats lose forty per centum, and the ascertained deficit for 1792 is four hundred millions;7 but this revolutionary financier relies upon

5. “Correspondance du Baron de Stae¨l,” Jan. 19, 1792.—Gouverneur Morris (II. 162, Feb. 4, 1792) writes to Washington that M. de Warville, on the diplomatic committee, proposed to cede Dunkirk and Calais to England, as a pledge of fidelity by France, in any engagement which she might enter into. You can judge, by this, of the wisdom and virtue of the faction to which he belongs.—Buchez et Roux, XXX, 89 (defence of Brissot, Jan. 5, 1793). “Brissot, like all noisy, reckless, ambitious men, started in full blast with the strangest paradoxes. In 1780, in his ‘Recherches philosophiques sur le droit de proprie´te´,’ he wrote as follows: ‘If 40 crowns suffice to maintain existence, the possession of 200,000 crowns is plainly unjust and a robbery....Exclusive ownership is a veritable crime against nature....Thepunishment of robbery in our institutions is an act of virtue which nature herself commands.’” 6. Moniteur, speech by Cambon, sittings of Feb. 2 and April 20, 1792. 7. Ibid., (sitting of April 3). Speech by M. Cailhasson. The property belonging to the nation, sold and to be sold, is valued at 2,195 millions, while the assignats already issued amount to 2,100 millions. Cf. Mercure de France, Dec. 17, 1791, p. 201; Jan. 28, 1792, p. 215; May 19, 1792, p. 205.—Dumouriez, “Me´moires,” III. 296, and 339, 340, 344, 346.—“Cambon, a raving lunatic, without education, humane principle, or integrity (public) a meddler, an igno- ramus, and very giddy. He tells me that one resource remained to him, which is, to seize all the coin in Belgium, all the plate belonging to the churches, and The Jacobin Conquest / 495 the confiscations which he instigates in France, and which are to be set agoing in Belgium; here lies all his invention, a systematicrob- bery on a grand scale within and without the kingdom. As to the legislators and manufacturers of constitutions, we have Condorcet, a cold-blooded fanatic and systematic leveller, satisfied that a mathematical method suits the social sciences fed on abstractions, blinded by formulae, and the most chimerical of perverted intellects. Never was a man versed in books more ignorant of mankind; never did a lover of scientific precision better succeed in changing the character of facts. It was he who, two days before the 20th of June, amidst the most brutal publicexcitement,admired “the calmness” and rationality of the multitude; “considering the way people interpret events, it might be supposed that they had given some hours of each day to the study of analysis.”Itishewho,two days after the 20th of June, extolled the red cap in which the head of Louis XVI. had been muffled. “That crown is as good as any other. Marcus Aurelius would not have despised it.”8—Such is the discernment and practical judgment of the leaders; from these one all the cash deposits . . . that, on ruining the Belgians, on reducing them to the same state of suffering as the French, they would necessarily share their fate with them; that they would then be admitted members of the Republic, with the prospect of always making headway, through the same line of policy; that the decree of Dec. 15, 1792, admirably favored this and, because it tended to a complete disorganisation, and that the luckiest thing that could happen to France was to disorganise all its neighbors and reduce them to the same state of anarchy.” (This conversation between Cambon and Dumouriez occurs in the middle of January, 1793.)—Moniteur, XIV. 758 (sitting of Dec. 15, 1792). Report by Cambon. 8. Chronique de Paris, Sept. 4, 1792. “What a sad and terrible situation! that in which the character of a people, naturally amiable and generous, is constrained to take such vengeance!”—Cf. the very acute article, by St. Beuve, on Con- dorcet, in “Causeries du Lundi,” III. 245.—Hua (a colleague of Condorcet, in the Legislative Assembly), “Me´moires,” 89. “Condorcet, in his journal, regularly falsified things, with an audacity which is unparalleled. The opinions of the ‘Right’ were so mutilated and travestied the next day in his journal, that we, who had uttered them, could scarcely recognise them. On complaining of this to him and on charging him with perfidy, the philosopher only smiled.” 496 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION can form an opinion of the flock, consisting of novices arriving from the provinces and bringing with them the principles and prejudices of the newspaper. So remote from the centre, having no knowledge of general affairs or of their unity, they are two years behind their brethren of the Constituent Assembly. Most of them, says Malouet,9 “without having decided against a monarchy, had decided against the court, the aristocracy, and the clergy, ever imagining conspiracies and believing that defence consisted solely in attack. There were still many men of talent among them, but with no experience; they even lacked that which we had obtained. Our patriot deputies were, in great part, convinced of their errors; these were not so, they were ready to take a fresh start.” Moreover, they have their own political bent, for nearly all of them are upstarts of the new re´gime. We find in their ranks 264 department administrators, 109 district administrators, 125 justices and prosecuting-attorneys, 68 mayors and town officers, besides about twenty officers of the National Guard, constitutional bishops and cure´s, the whole amounting to 566 of the elected functionaries, who, for the past twenty months, have carried on the government under the direction of their electors. We have seen how this was done and under what conditions, with what com- pliances and with what complicity, with what deference to clamorous opinion, with what docility in the presence of rioters, with what submission to the orders of the populace, with what a deluge of sentimental phrases and commonplace abstractions. Sent to Paris as deputies, through the choice or toleration of the clubs, they bear along with them their politics and their rhetoric; the result is an assemblage of narrow, perverted, hasty, inflated and feeble minds; at each daily session, twenty word-mills turn to no purpose, the greatest of public powers at once becoming a manufactory of nonsense, a school of extravagancies, and a theatre for declamation.

9. Malouet, II. 115.—Dumouriez, III. ch. v. “They were elected to represent the nation, to defend, they say, its interests against a perﬁdious court.” The Jacobin Conquest / 497

II Is it possible that serious men could have listened to and sat through this rigmarole? “I am a ploughman,”10 says one deputy, “I now dare boast of the antique nobility of my plough. A yoke of oxen once constituted the pure, incorruptible conveyancers before whom my worthy ancestors executed their contracts, the authenticity of which, far better recorded on the soil than on flimsy parchment, is protected from any species of revolution whatever.” Is it conceivable that the reporter of a law, that is about to exile or imprison forty thousand priests, should employ in an argument such silly bombast as the following?11 “I have seen in the rural districts the hymeneal torch diffusing only pale and sombre rays, or, transformed into the flambeaux of furies, the hideous skeleton of superstition seated even on the nuptial couch, placed between nature and the wedded, and arresting, etc....OhRome, art thou satisfied? Art thou then like Sat- urn, to whom fresh holocausts were daily imperative?...Depart,

10. Moniteur, X. 223 (session of Oct. 26, 1791). Speech by M. François Duval. Grandiloquence is the order of the day at the very first meeting. On the 1st of October, 1791, twelve old men, marching in procession, go out to fetch the constitutional act. “M. Camus, keeper of the records, with a composed air and downcast eyes, enters with measured steps,” bearing in both hands the sacred document which he holds against his breast, while the deputies stand up and bare their heads. “People of France,” says an orator, “citizens of Paris, all generous Frenchmen, and you, our fellow-citizens—virtuous, intelligent women, bringing your gentle influence into the sanctuary of the law—behold the guarantee of peace which the legislature presents to you!” We seem to be witnessing the last act of an opera. 11. Ibid., XII. 230 (sessions of April 26 and May 5). Report and speech by François de Nantes. The whole speech, a comic budget throughout, should be read: “Tell me, pontiff of Rome, what your sentiments will be when you welcome your worthy and faithful co-operators?...Ibehold your sacred hands, ready to launch those pontifical thunderbolts, which, etc....Letthebrasier of Scaevola be brought in, and, with our outstretched palms above the burning coals, we will show that there is no species of torture, no torment which can excite a frown on the brow of him whom the love of country exalts above humanity!” Suppose that, just at this moment, a lighted candle had been placed under his hand! 498 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION ye creators of discord! The soil of liberty is weary of bearing you. Would ye breathe the atmosphere of the Aventine mount? The national ship is already prepared for you. I hear on the shore the impatient cries of the crew; I see the breezes of liberty swelling its sails. Like Telemachus, ye will go forth on the waters to seek your father; but never will you have to dread the Sicilian rocks, nor the seductions of a Eucharis.” Vulgar conceits, rhetorical personifica- tions, and the invective of maniacs is the prevailing tone. The same defect characterises the best discourses, namely, an over-excited brain, a passion for high-sounding terms, the constant use of stilts and an incapacity for seeing things as they are and of so describing them. Men of talent, Isnard, Guadet, Vergniaud himself, are carried away by hollow sonorous phrases like a ship with too much canvas for its ballast. Their minds are stimulated by souvenirs of their school lessons, the modern world revealing itself to them only through their Latin reminiscences.—François de Nantes is exasperated at the pope “who holds in servitude the posterity of Cato and of Scaevola.” Isnard proposes to follow the example of the Roman senate which, to allay discord at home, got up an outside war; between old Rome and France, indeed, there is a striking resemblance.—Roux insists that the Emperor (of Austria) should give satisfaction before the 1st of March; “in a case like this the Roman people would have fixed the term of delay—why shouldn’t the French people fix one....ThecircleofPopilius” should be drawn around those petty, hesitating German princes. When money is needed to establish camps around Paris and the large towns, La- source proposes to alienate the national forests and is amazed at any objection to the measure. “Caesar’s soldiers,” he exclaims, “believing that an ancient forest in Gaul was sacred, dared not lay the axe to it; are we to participate in this superstitious respect?”12—Add to this collegiate lore the philosophic dregs deposited in all minds by the great sophist then in vogue. Larivie`re reads in the tribune13 that

12. Moniteur, XI. 179 (session of Jan. 20, 1792).—Ibid. 216 (session of Jan. 24).—XII. 426 (May 9). 13. Ibid., XII. 479 (session of May 24).—XIII. 71 (session of July 7, speech The Jacobin Conquest / 499 page of the “Contrat Social,” where Rousseau declares that the sovereign may banish members “of an unsocial religion,” and punish with death “one who, having publicly recognised the dogmas of civil religion, acts as if he did not believe in them.” On which, another hissing parrot, M. Filassier, exclaims, “I put J. J. Rousseau’s proposition into the form of a motion and demand a vote on it.”—In like manner it is proposed to grant very young girls the right of marrying in spite of their parents by stating, according to the “Nou- velle He´loise” “that a girl thirteen or fourteen years old begins to sigh for an union which nature dictates, that she struggles between passion and duty, that, if she triumphs she is a martyr, that nature is rarely imposed upon, that it may happen that a young person prefers the tranquil disgrace of defeat to a wearisome struggle of eight years.”—Divorce is inaugurated to “preserve in matrimony that happy quietude which renders the sentiments livelier.”14 Hence- forth this is to be no longer a chain but “the acquittance of an agreeable debt which every citizen owes to his country....Divorce is the tutelary divinity of Hymen.”15 Obscenities and mythological veilings, a background of classic pedantry, the vague and narrow notions of ordinary instruction, no exact and substantial information, the empty flowing commonplaces of the amplifier spinning out maxims from his revolutionary manual in long tirades, in short, superficial culture and verbal argumentation form the vulgar and dangerous ingredients out of which the intelligence of the new legislators is formed.16 by Lasource).—Cf. XIV. 301 (session of July 31) a quotation from Voltaire brought in for the suppression of the convents. 14. Moniteur. Speech by Aubert Dubayer, session of Aug. 30. 15. Speech by Chaumette, procureur of the Commune, to the newly married (Mortimer-Ternaux, IV. 408). 16. The class to which they belonged has been portrayed, to the life, by M. Royer-Collard (Ste. Beuve, “Nouveaux Lundis,” IV. 263). “A young lawyer at Paris, at first received in a few houses on the Ile St. Louis, he soon withdrew from this inferior world of attorneys and limbs of the law, whose tone oppressed him. The very thought of the impression this gallant and intensely vulgar mediocrity made upon him, still inspired disgust. He much preferred to talk with longshoremen, if need be, than with these scented limbs of the law.” 500 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

III From this we can imagine what their sessions were. “More incoherent and especially more passionate than those of the Constituent Assembly”17 they present the same characteristics, but largely exaggerated. Argument is much weaker, invective more violent, and dogmatism more intemperate. Inﬂexibility degenerates into insolence, prejudice into fanaticism, and near-sightedness into blindness. Disorder becomes a tumult and constant din an uproar. “Figure to yourself,” says an attendant eye-witness, “a collegiate chamber with hundreds of pupils quarrelling and every instant on the point of seizing each other by the hair. Their dress worse than neglected, their furious actions, and transitions from cries to hootings . . . is a sight not to be depicted and to which nothing can be compared.” It lacks nothing for making it a club of the lowest species. Here, in advance, we contemplate the ways of the future revolutionary inquisition; they welcome burlesque denunciations; they enter into petty police investigations; they weigh the tittle-tattle of porters and the gossip of servant-girls; they devote an all-night session to the secrets of a drunkard.18 They enter on their oﬃcial report and with-

17. Etienne Dumont, “Me´moires,” 40.—Mercure de France, Nov. 19, 1791; Feb. 11 and March 3, 1792 (articles by Mallet-Dupan). 18. Moniteur, Dec. 17 (examination at the bar of the house of Rauch, a pretended kidnapper, whom they are obliged to send off acquitted). Rauch tells them: “I have no money, and cannot find a bed at less than 6 sous, because I defile it.”—Moniteur, XII. 574 (session of June 4), report by Chabot. “A peddler, belonging to Mortagne, says that a domesticcomingfrom Coblentz told him that there was a troop about to carry off the king and poison him, so as to throw the odium of it on the National Assembly.” Bernassais de Poitiers writes: “A brave citizen told me last evening: ‘I have been to see a servant-girl, living with a noble. She assured me that her master was going to-night to Paris, to join the 30,000, who, in about a month, meant to cut the throats of the National Assembly and set fire to every corner of Paris!’”—M. Ge´rard, a saddler at Amiens, writes to us that “Louis XVI. is to be aided in his flight by 5,000 relays, and that afterwards they are going to fire red-hot bullets on the National Assembly.” The Jacobin Conquest / 501 out any disapproval, the petition of M. Hure´, “living at Pont-sur- Yonne, who, over his own signature, offers one hundred francs and his arm to become a tyrannicide.” Repeated and multiplied hurrahs and applause with the felicitations of the president is the sanction of scandalous or ridiculous private misconduct seeking to display itself under the cover of public authority. Anacharsis Clootz, “a Mascarille officially stamped,” who proposes a general war and who hawks about maps of Europe cut up in advance into departments beginning with Savoy, Belgium and Holland “and thus onward to the Polar Sea,” is thanked and given a seat on the benches of the Assembly.19 Compliments are bestowed on the Vicar of Sainte-Marguerite and his wife is given a seat in the Assembly and who, introducing “his new family,” thunders against clerical celibacy.20 Mobs of men and women are permitted to traverse the hall shouting political cries. Every sort of indecent, childish and seditious parade is admitted to the bar of the house.21 To-day it consists of “citoyennes of Paris,”

19. Mercure de France, Nov. 5, 1791 (session of Oct. 25).—Ibid., Dec. 23.— Moniteur, XII. 192 (session of April 21, 1792).—XII. 447 (address to the French, by Clootz): “God brought order out of primitive chaos; the French will bring order out of feudal chaos. God is mighty, and manifested his will; we are mighty, and we will manifest our will....Themore extensive the seat of war the sooner, and more fortunately, will the suit of plebeians against the nobles be decided.... We require enemies...Savoy,Tuscany,andquickly, quickly!” 20. Cf. Moniteur, XI. 192 (sitting of Jan. 22, 1792). “M. Burnet, chaplain of the national guard, presents himself at the bar of the house with an English woman, named Lydia Kirkham, and three small children, one of which is in her arms. M. Burnet announces that she is his wife and that the child in her arms is the fruit of their affection. After referring to the force of natural sentiments which he could not resist, the petitioner thus continues: ‘One day, I met one of those sacred questioners. Unfortunate man, said he, of what are you guilty? Of this child, sir; and I have married this woman, who is a Protestant, and her religion has nothing to do with mine....Death or my wife! Such is the cry that nature now, and always will, inspire me with.’”—Ibid., XII. 369. 21. The grotesque is often that of a farce. “M. Piorry, in the name of poor, but virtuous citizens, tenders two pairs of buckles, with this motto: ‘They have served to hold my tirants (shoe-straps) on my feet; they will serve to reduce under them, with the imprint and character of truth, all tyrants leagued against 502 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION desirous of being drilled in military exercises and of having for their commandants “former French guardsmen”; to-morrow children come and express their patriotism with “touching simplicity,” regretting that “their trembling feet do not permit them to march, no, fly against the tyrants”; next to these come convicts of the Chaˆteau- Vieux escorted by a vociferous crowd; at another time the artillerymen of Paris, a thousand in number, with drums beating; delegates from the provinces, the faubourgs and the clubs come constantly, with their furious harangues, and imperious remonstrances, their exactions, their threats and their summonses.—In the intervals of this louder racket a continuous hubbub is heard in the clatter of the tribunes;22 at each session “the representatives are chaffed by the spectators; the nation in the gallery is judge of the nation on the floor”; it interferes in the debates, silences the speakers, insults the president and orders the reporter of a bill to quit the tribune. One interruption, or a simple murmur, is not all; there are twenty, thirty, fifty in an hour, clamourings, stamping, yells and personal abuse. After countless useless entreaties, after repeated calls to order, “received with hootings,” after a dozen “regulations that are made, revised, countermanded and posted up” as if better to prove the impotence of the law, of the authorities and of the Assembly itself, the usurpations of these intruders keep on increasing. They have shouted for ten months “Down with the civil list! Down with the ministerials! Down with those curs! Silence, slaves!” On the 26th of July, Brissot himself is to appear lukewarm and be struck on the face with two plums. “Three or four hundred individuals without either property, title, or means of subsistence . . . have become the auxiliaries, petitioners and umpires of the legislature,” their paid

the constitution’ (Moniteur, XII. 457, session of May 21).”—Ibid., XIII. 249 (session of July 25). “A young citoyenne offers to combat, in person, against the enemies of her country”; and the president, with a gallant air, replies: “Made rather to soothe, than to combat tyrants, you offer, etc.” 22. Moniteur, XI. 576 (session of March 6); XII. 237, 314, 368 (sessions of April 27, May 5, and May 14). The Jacobin Conquest / 503 violence completely destroying whatever is still left of the Assem- bly’s reason.23 IV In an assembly thus composed and surrounded, it is easy to foresee on which side the balance will turn.—Through the meshes of the electoral net which the Jacobins have spread over the whole country, about one hundred well-meaning individuals of the common run, tolerably sensible and sufficiently resolute, Mathieu Dumas, Dumo- lard, Becquet, Gorguereau, Vaublanc, Beugnot, Girardin, Ramond, Jaucourt, were able to pass and form the party of the “Right.”24 They resist to as great an extent as possible, and seem to have obtained a majority.—For, of the four hundred deputies who have their seats in the centre, one hundred and sixty-four are inscribed on the rolls with them at the Feuillants club, while the rest, under the title of “Independents,” pretend to be of no party;25 besides, the whole of these four hundred, through monarchical traditions, respect the King; timid and sensible, violence is repugnant to them; they distrust the Jacobins, dread what is unknown, desire to be loyal to the Constitution and to live in peace. Nevertheless the pompous dogmas of the revolutionary catechism still have their prestige with them; they cannot comprehend how the Constitution which they like produces the anarchy which they detest; they are “foolish enough to bemoan the effects while swearing to maintain their causes; totally deficient in spirit, in union and in boldness,” they float backwards and forwards between contradictory desires, while

23. Mercure de France. Sept. 19, 1791, Feb. 11, and March 3, 1792.—Buchez et Roux, XVI. 185 (session of July 26, 1792). 24. “Me´moires de Mallet-Dupan,” 1433 (tableau of the three parties, with special information). 25. Buchez et Roux, XII. 348 (letter by the deputy Che´ron, president of the Feuillants Club). The deputies of the Legislative Assembly, registered at the Feuillants Club, number 264, besides a large number of deputies in the Con- stituent Assembly.—According to Mallet-Dupan the so-called Independents number 250. 504 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION their predisposition to order merely awaits the steady impulsion of a vigorous will to turn it in the opposite direction.—On such docile material the “Left” can work effectively. It comprises, indeed, but one hundred and thirty-six registered Jacobins and about a hundred others who, in almost all cases, vote with the party;26 rigidity of opinion, however, more than compensates for lack of numbers. In the front row are Guadet, Brissot, Gensonne´, Vergniaud, Ducos, and Condorcet, the future chiefs of the Girondists, all of them lawyers or writers captivated by deductive politics, absolute in their convictions and proud of their faith. According to them principles are true and must be applied without reservation;27 whoever would stop half-way is wanting in courage or intelligence. As for themselves their minds are made up to push through. With the self- confidence of youth and of theorists they draw their own conclusions and hug themselves with their strong belief in them. “These gentlemen,” says a keen observer,28 “professed great disdain for their predecessors, the Constituents, treating them as short-sighted and prejudiced people incapable of profiting by circumstances.” “To the observations of wisdom, and disinterested wisdom,29 they replied

26. These figures are verified by decisive ballottings (Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 205, 248). 27. Moniteur, XII. 393 (session of May 15, speech by Isnard): “The Con- stituent Assembly only half dared do what it had the power to do. It has left in the field of liberty, even around the very roots of the young constitutional tree, the old roots of despotism and of the aristocracy....Ithasbound us to the trunk of the constitutional tree, like powerless victims given up to the rage of their enemies.”—Etienne Dumont saw truly the educational defects peculiar to the party. He says, apropos of Madame Roland: “I found in her too much of that distrustful despotism which belongs to ignorance of the world....What her intellectual development lacked was a greater knowledge of the world and intercourse with men of superior judgment to her own. Roland himself had little intellectual breadth, while all those who frequented her house never rose above the prejudices of the vulgar.” 28. “Souvenirs” (manuscript) of M. X——. 29. Madame de Stae¨l, “Conside´rations sur la Re´volution Française.” 3d part, ch. iii. Madame de Stae¨l conversed with them and judges them according to the shrewd perceptions of a woman of the world. The Jacobin Conquest / 505 with a scornful smile, indicative of the aridity proceeding from self- conceit. One exhausted himself in reminding them of events and in deducing causes from these; one passed in turn from theory to experience and from experience to theory to show them their identity and, when they condescended to reply it was to deny the best authenticated facts and contest the plainest observations by opposing to these a few trite maxims although eloquently expressed. Each regarded the other as if they alone were worthy of being heard, each encouraging the other with the idea that all resistance to their way of looking at things was pusillanimity.” In their own eyes they alone are capable and they alone are patriotic. Because they have read Rousseau and Mably, because their tongue is united and their pen flowing, because they know how to handle the formulae of books and reason out an abstract proposition, they fancy that they are statesmen.30 Because they have read Plutarch and “Le Jeune Ana- charsis,” because they aim to construct a perfect society out of metaphysical conceptions, because they are in a ferment about the coming millenium, they imagine themselves so many exalted spirits. They have no doubt whatever on these two points even after everything has fallen in through their blunders, even after their obliging hands are sullied by the foul grasp of robbers whom they were the first to instigate, and by that of executioners of which they are partners in complicity.31 To this extent is self-conceit the worst of sophists. Con-

30. Louvet, “Me´moires,” 32. “I belonged to the bold philosophers who, before the end of 1791, lamented the fate of a great nation, compelled to stop half-way in the career of freedom,” and, on page 38—“A minister of justice was needed. The four ministers (Roland, Servane, etc.) “cast their eyes on me....Duranthon was preferred to me. This was the first mistake of the republican party. It paid dear for it. That mistake cost my country a good deal of blood and many tears.” Later on, he thinks that he has the qualifications for ambassador to Constantinople. 31. Buzot, “Me´moires” (Ed. Dauban), pp. 31, 39. “Born with a proud and independent spirit which never bowed at any one’s command, how could I accept the idea of a man being held sacred? With my heart and head possessed by the great beings of the ancient republics, who are the greatest honor to the human species, I practiced their maxims from my earliest years, and nourished 506 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION vinced of their superior enlightenment and of the purity of their sentiments, they put forth the theory that the government should be in their hands. Consequently they lay hold of it in the Legislative body in ways that are going to turn against them in the Convention. They accept for allies the worst demagogues of the extreme “Left,” Chabot, Couthon, Merlin, Bazie`re, Thuriot, Lecointre, and outside of it, Danton, Robespierre, Marat himself, all the levellers and destroyers whom they think of use to them, but of whom they themselves are the instruments. The motions they make must pass at any cost and, to ensure this, they let loose against their adversaries the low, yelping populace which others, still more factious, will tomorrow let loose on them. V Thus, for the second time, the pretended zealots for liberty attain power by boldly employing force.—They begin by suppressing the meetings of the Feuillants club. The customary riot is instigated against these, whereupon ensue tumult, violent outcries and scuffles; mayor Pe´tion complains of his position “between opinion and law,” and lets things take their course; finally, the Feuillants are obliged to evacuate their place of meeting.—Inside the Assembly they are myself on a study of their virtues....Thepretended necessity of a monarchy . . . could not amalgamate, in my mind, with the grand and noble conceptions formed by me, of the dignity of the human species. Hope deceived me, it is true, but my error was too glorious to allow me to repent of it.”—Self-admiration is likewise the mental substratum of Madame Roland, Roland, Pe´tion, Barba- roux, Louvet, etc., (see their writings). Mallet-Dupan well says: “On reading the memoirs of Madame Roland, one detects the actress, rehearsing for the stage.”—Roland is an administrative puppet and would-be orator, whose wife pulls the strings. There is an odd, dull streak in him, peculiarly his own. For example, in 1787 (Guillon de Montleón, “Histoire de la Ville de Lyon, pendant la Re´volution,” I. 58), he proposes to utilise the dead, by converting them into oil and phosphoric acid. In 1788, he proposes to the Villefranche Academy to inquire “whether it would not be to the publicadvantage to institute tribunals for trying the dead?” in imitation of the Egyptians. In his report of Jan. 5, 1792, he gives a plan for establishing publicfestivals, “in imitation of the Spartans,” and takes for a motto, Non omnis moriar. (Baron de Girardot, “Roland et Ma- dame Roland,” 183, 185.) The Jacobin Conquest / 507 abandoned to the insolence of the galleries. In vain do they get exasperated and protest. Ducastel, referring to the decree of the Constituent Assembly, which forbids any manifestation of approbation or disapprobation, is greeted with murmurs. He insists on the decree being read at the opening of each session, and “the murmurs begin again.”32 “Is it not scandalous,” says Vaublanc, “that the nation’s representatives speaking from the tribune are subject to hootings like those bestowed upon an actor on the stage!” whereupon the galleries give him three rounds more. “Will posterity believe,” says Quatreme`re, “that acts concerning the honor, the lives, and the fortunes of citizens should be subject, like games in the arena, to the applause and hisses of the spectators!” “Come to the point!” shout the galleries. “If ever,” resumes Quatreme`re, “the most important of judicial acts (an act of capital indictment) can be exposed to this scandalous prostitution of applause and menaces....”“The murmurs break out afresh.”—Every time that a sanguinary or incendiary measure is to be carried, the most furious and prolonged clamor stops the utterance of its opponents: “Down with the speaker! Send the reporter of that bill to the Abbaye! Down! Down!” Some- times only about twenty of the deputies will applaud or hoot with the galleries, and then it is the entire Assembly which is insulted. Fists are thrust in the president’s face. All that now remains is “to call down the galleries on the floor to pass decrees,” which proposition is ironically made by one of the “Right.”33 Great, however, as this usurpation may be, the minority, in order

32. Moniteur, XI. 61 (session of Jan. 7, 1792).—Ibid., 204 (Jan. 25); 281 (Feb. 1); 310 (Feb. 4); 318 (Feb. 6); 343 (Feb. 9); 487 (Feb. 26).—XII. 22 (April 2). Reports of all the sessions must be read to appreciate the force of the pressure. See, especially, the sessions of April 9 and 16, May 15 and 29, June 8, 9, 15, 24, and 25, July 1, 2, 5, 9, 11, 17, 18, and 21, and, after this date, all the sessions.—Lacretelle, “Dix Ans d’Epreuves,” p. 78–81. “The Legislative As- sembly served under the Jacobin Club while keeping up a counterfeit air of independence. The progress which fear had made in the French character was very great, at a time when everything was pitched in the haughtiest key.... The majority, as far as intentions go, was for the conservatives; the actual majority was for the republicans.” 33. Moniteur, XIII. 212, session of July 22. 508 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION to suppress the majority, accommodate themselves to it, the Jacobins in the chamber making common cause with the Jacobins in the galleries. The disturbers should not be put out; “it would be excluding from our deliberations,” says Grangeneuve, “that which belongs essentially to the people.” On one of the deputies demanding measures to enforce silence, “Torne´ demands that the proposition be referred to the Portugal inquisition.” Choudieu “declares that it can only emanate from deputies who forget that respect which is due to the people, their sovereign judge.”34 “The action of the galleries,” says Lecointe-Puyraiveaux, “is an outburst of patriotism.” Finally, this same Choudieu, twisting and turning all rights about with incomparable audacity, wishes to confer legislative privileges on the audience, and demands a decree against the deputies who, guilty of popular le`se-majeste´, presume to complain of those who insult them.—Another piece of oppressive machinery, still more energetic, operates outside on the approaches to the Assembly. Like their predecessors of the Constituent Assembly, the members of the “Right” “cannot leave the building without encountering the threats and imprecations of enraged crowds. Cries of ‘to the lantern!’ greet the ears of Dumolard, Vaublanc, Raucourd, and Lacretelle as often as those of the Abbe´ Maury and Montlosier.”35 After having apos- trophised the president, Mathieu Dumas, they insult his wife who has been recognised in a reserved gallery.36 In the Tuileries, crowds are always standing there listening to the brawlers who denounce suspected deputies by name, and woe to any among them who takes that path on his way to the chamber! A broadside of insults greets him as he passes along. If the deputy happens to be a farmer, they exclaim: “Look at that queer old aristocrat—an old peasant dog that

34. Moniteur, XII. 22, session of April 2.—Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 95.— Moniteur, XIII. 222, session of July 22. 35. Lacretelle, “Dix Ans d’Epreuves,” 80. 36. Mathieu Dumas, “Me´moires,” II. 88 (Feb. 23).—Hua, “Me´moires d’un Avocat au Parliament de Paris,” 106, 121, 134, 154. Moniteur, XIII. 212 (session of July 21), speech by M. . “The avenues to this building are daily beset with a horde of people who insult the representatives of the nation.” The Jacobin Conquest / 509 used to watch cows!” One day Hua, on going up the steps of the Tuileries terrace, is seized by the hair by an old vixen who bids him “Bow your head to your sovereigns, the people, you of a deputy!” On the 20th of June one of the patriots, who is crossing the Assembly room, whispers in his ear, “You scamp of a deputy, you’ll never die but by my hand!” Another time, having defended the juge-de-paix Larivie`re, there awaits him at the door, in the middle of the night “a set of blackguards, who crowd around him and thrust their fists and cudgels in his face”; happily, his friends Dumas and Daverhoult, two military officers, foreseeing the danger, present their pistols and set him free “although with some difficulty.”—As the 10th of August draws near there is more open aggression. Vau- blanc, for having defended Lafayette, just misses being cut to pieces three times on leaving the Assembly; sixty of the deputies are treated in the same fashion, being struck, covered with mud, and threatened with death if they dare go back.37—With such allies a minority is very strong. Thanks to its two agencies of constraint it will detach the votes it needs from the majority and, either through terror or craft, secure the passage of all the decrees it needs. VI Sometimes it succeeds surreptitiously by rushing them through. As “there is no order of the day circulated beforehand, and, in any event, none which anybody is obliged to adhere to,”38 the Assembly is captured by surprise. “The first knave amongst the ‘Left,’ (which expression, says Hua, I do not strike out, because there were many among those gentlemen), brought up a ready-made resolution, prepared the evening before by a clique. We were not prepared for it and demanded that it should be referred to a committee. Instead of

37. De Vaublanc, “Me´moires,” 344.—Moniteur, XIII. 368 (letters and speeches of deputies, session of Aug. 9). 38. Hua, 115.—Ibid., 90. 3 out of 4 deputies of Seine-et-Oise were Jacobins. “We met once a week to talk over the affairs of the department. We were obliged to drive out the vagabonds who, even at the table, talked of nothing but killing.” 510 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION doing this, however, the resolution was declared urgent, and, whether we would or not, discussion had to take place forthwith.”39—“There were other tactics equally perfidious, which Thu- riot, especially, made use of. This great rogue got up and proposed, not the draft of a law, but what he called a principle; for instance, a decree should be passed confiscating the property of the e´migre´s, . . . or that unsworn priests should be subject to special oversight.... In reply, he was told that in his principle was found the essence of the law, the whole law; let debate go on and the question be referred to a committee to make a report on it.—Not at all—the matter is urgent; the committee may fix the articles as it pleases; they are worthless if the principle is not common sense.” Through this expeditious method discussion is stifled. The Jacobins purposely prevent the Assembly from giving the matter any consideration. They count on its bewilderment. In the name of reason, they discard reason as far as they can, and hasten a vote because their decrees do not support examination.—At other times, and especially on grand occasions, they compel a vote. In general, votes are taken sitting or standing, and, for the four hundred deputies of the “Cen- tre,” subject to the scolding of the exasperated galleries, it is a tolerably hard trial. “Part of them do not arise, or they rise with the ‘Left’”;40 if the “Right” happens to have a majority, “this is contested in bad faith and a call of the house is demanded.” Now, “the calls of the house, through an intolerable abuse, are always published, the Jacobins declaring that it is well for the people to know their friends from their enemies.” The meaning of this is that the list of the opposition will soon answer as a list of the proscribed, on which the timid are not disposed to inscribe themselves; the result is an immediate defection in the heavy battalion of the “Centre”; “this is a positive fact,” says Hua, “of which we were all witnesses; we

39. Moniteur, XII. 702. For example, on the 19th of June, 1792, on a motion unexpectedly proposed by Condorcet, that the departments be authorised to burn all titles (to nobility) found in the various depots.—Adopted at once, and unanimously. 40. Hua, 114. The Jacobin Conquest / 511 always lost a hundred votes on the call of the house.”—Towards the end they give up, and protest no more, except by staying away; on the 14th of June, on the whole system of feudal credit being abolished without indemnity, “no part of the house was occupied except the extreme left; the rest of it was empty”; out of 497 deputies present, 200 left the room.41 Encouraged for a moment by the appearance of some possible protection, they twice exonerate General Lafayette, behind whom they see an army,42 and brave the despots of the Assembly, the clubs, and the streets. But, for lack of a military chief and vantage ground, the visible majority is twice obliged to yield, to keep silent, and ﬂy or retreat under the dictation of the victorious faction, which has strained and forced the legislative machine until it has become disjointed and broken down.

41. Moniteur, XII. 664.—Mercure de France, June 23, 1792. 42. Hua, 141.—Mathieu Dumas, II. 399. “It is remarkable that Lafond- Lade´bat, one of our trustiest friends, was elected president on the 23d of July, 1792. This shows that the majority of the Assembly was still sound; but it was only brought about by a secret vote in the choice of candidates. The same men who obeyed their consciences, through a sentiment of justice and of propriety, could not face the danger which surrounded them in the threats of the factions when they were called upon to vote by rising or sitting.” 9 CHAPTER V =

Policy of the Assembly— I. State of France at the end of 1791—Powerlessness of the Law— II. The Assembly hostile to the oppressed and favoring oppressors— Decrees against the nobles and clergy—Amnesty for deserters,convicts,and bandits—Anarchical and levelling maxims— III. War—Disposition of foreign powers—The King’s dislikes—Provocations of the Girondists—Date and causes of the rupture— IV. Secret motives of the leaders—Their control compromised by peace—Discontent of the rich and cultivated class—Formation and increase of the party of order—The King and this party reconciled— V. Eﬀect of the war on the commonalty—Its alarm and its rage—The second revolutionary outburst and its characteristics—Alliance of the Girondists with the populace—The red cap and pikes—Universal substitution of government by force for government by law.

IFTHEdeputies who, on the 1st of October, 1791, so solemnly and enthusiastically swore to the Constitution, had been willing to open their eyes, they would have seen this Constitution constantly violated, both in its letter and spirit, over the entire territory. As usual, and through the vanity of authorship, M. Thouret, the last president of the Constituent Assembly, had, in his ﬁnal report, hidden disagreeable truth underneath pompous and delusive phrases; but it was only necessary to look over the monthly record to see whether, as guaranteed by him, “the decrees were faithfully executed in all parts of the empire.”—“Where is this faithful execution to be

512 The Jacobin Conquest / 513 found?” inquires Mallet-Dupan.1 “Is it at Toulon, in the midst of the dead and wounded, shot in the very face of the amazed municipality and Directory? Is it at Marseilles, where two private individuals are knocked down and massacred as aristocrats,” under the pretext “that they sold to children poisoned sugar-plums with which to begin a counter-revolution?” Is it at Arles, “against which 4,000 men from Marseilles, despatched by the club, are at this moment marching?” Is it at Bayeux, “where the sieur Fauchet against whom a warrant for arrest is out, besides being under the ban of political disability, has just been elected deputy to the Legislative Assembly?” Is it at Blois, “where the commandant, doomed to death for having tried to execute these decrees, is forced to send away a loyal regiment and submit to licentious troops?” Is it at Nismes, “where the Dau- phiny regiment, on leaving the town by the Minister’s orders, is ordered by the people” and the club “to disobey the Minister and remain?” Is it in those regiments whose officers, with pistols at their breasts, are obliged to leave and give place to amateurs? Is it at Toulouse, “where, at the end of August, the administrative authorities order all unsworn priests to leave the town in three days, and withdraw to a distance of four leagues?” Is it in the outskirts of Toulouse, “where, on the 28th of August, a municipal officer is hung at a street-lamp after an affray with guns?” Is it at Paris, where, on the 25th of September, the Irish college, vainly protected by an international treaty, has just been assailed by the populace; where Catholics, listening to the orthodox mass, are driven out and dragged to the authorised mass in the vicinity; where one woman is torn from the confessional, and another flogged with all their might?2

1. Mercure de France, Sept. 24, 1791.—Cf. Report of M. Alquier (session of Sept. 23). 2. Mercure de France, Oct. 15, 1792 (the treaty with England was dated Sept. 26, 1786).—Ibid., Letter of M. Walsh, superior of the Irish college, to the municipality of Paris. Those who use the whips, come out of a neighboring grog-shop. The commissary of police, who arrives with the National Guard, “addresses the people, and promises them satisfaction,” requiring M. Walsh to 514 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

These troubles, it is said, are transient; on the Constitution being proclaimed, order will return of itself. Very well, the Constitution is voted, accepted by the King, proclaimed, and entrusted to the Legislative Assembly. Let the Legislative Assembly consider what is done in the first few weeks. In the eight departments that surround Paris, there are riots on every market-day; farms are invaded and the cultivators of the soil are ransomed by bands of vagabonds; the mayor of Melun is riddled with balls and dragged out from the hands of the populace streaming with blood.3 At Belfort, a riot for the purpose of retaining a convoy of coin, and the commissioner of the Upper-Rhine in danger of death; at Bouxvillers, owners of property attacked by poor National Guards, and by the soldiers of Salm-Salm, houses broken into and cellars pillaged; at Mirecourt, a mob of women beating drums, and, for three days, holding the Hoˆtel-de- Ville in a state of siege.—One day Rochefort is in a state of insurrection, and the workmen of the harbor compel the municipality to unfurl the red flag.4 On the following day, it is Lille, the people of which, “unwilling to exchange its money and assignats for paper- rags, called billets de confiance, gather into mobs and threaten, while a whole garrison is necessary to prevent an explosion.” On the 16th of October, it is Avignon in the power of bandits, with the abomi- dismiss all who are in the chapel, without waiting for the end of the mass. M. Walsh refers to the law and to treaties. The commissary replies that he knows nothing about treaties, while the commandant of the national guard says to those who are leaving the chapel, “In the name of Justice, I order you to follow me to the church of Saint Etienne, where I give you up to the people.” 3. “The French Revolution,” Vol. I. pp. 261, 263.—“Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,185 and 3,186 (numerous documents on the rural disturbances in Aisne).— Mercure de France, Nov. 5 and 26, Dec. 10, 1791.—Moniteur, X. 426 (Nov. 22, 1791). 4. Moniteur, X. 449, Nov. 23, 1791. (Official report of the crew of the Em- buscade, dated Sept. 30). The captain, M. d’Orleáns, stationed at the Windward Islands, is obliged to return to Rochefort and is detained there on board his ship: “Considering the uncertainty of his mission, and the fear of being ordered to use the same hostilities against brethren for which he is already denounced in every club in the kingdom, the crew has forced the captain to return to France.” The Jacobin Conquest / 515 nable butchery of the Glacie`re. On the 5th of November, at Caen, there are eighty-two gentlemen, townsmen and artisans, knocked down and dragged to prison, for having offered their services to the municipality as special constables. On the 14th of November, at Montpellier, the roughs triumph; eight men and women are killed in the streets or in their houses, and all conservatives are disarmed or put to flight. By the end of October, it is a gigantic column of smoke and flame shooting upward suddenly from week to week and spreading everywhere, growing, on the other side of the Atlantic, into civil war in St. Domingo, where wild beasts are let loose against their keepers; 50,000 blacks take the field, and, at the outset, 1,000 whites are assassinated, 15,000 negroes slain, 200 sugar-mills destroyed and damage done to the amount of 600,000,000; “a colony of itself alone worth ten provinces, is almost annihilated.”5 At Paris, Condorcet is busy writing in his journal that “this news is not reliable, there being no object in it but to create a French empire beyond the seas for the King, where there will be masters and slaves.” A corporal of the Paris National Guard, on his own authority, orders the King to remain indoors, fearing that he may escape, and forbids a sentinel to let him go out after nine o’clock in the evening;6 at the Tuileries, stump-speakers in the open air denounce aristocrats and priests; at the Palais-Royal, there is a pandemonium of public lust and incendiary speeches.7 There are centres of riot in all quarters, “as many robberies as there are quarter-hours, and no robbers punished; no police; overcrowded courts; more delinquents than there are prisons to hold them; nearly all the private mansions closed; the annual consumption in the faubourg St. Ger- main alone diminished by 250,000,000; 20,000 thieves, with branded

5. Mercure de France, Dec. 17, address of the colonists to the king. 6. Moniteur, XIII. 200. Report of Sautereau, July 20, on the affair of Cor- poral Lebreton (Nov. 11, 1791). 7. Saint Huruge is first tenor. Justine makes her appearance in the Palais- Royal about the middle of 1791. They exhibit two pretended savages there, who, before a paying audience, revive the customs of Otaheite. (“Souvenirs” of M. X——.) 516 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION backs, idling away time in houses of bad repute, at the theatres, in the Palais-Royal, at the National Assembly, and in the coffee-houses; thousands of beggars infesting the streets, cross-ways, and public squares; everywhere an image of the deepest and least affecting poverty, because it is accompanied with insolence; swarms of the tattered vendors of all sorts of paper-money, issued by anybody that chose to put it in circulation, cut up into bits, sold, given, and coming back in rags, fouler than the miserable creatures who deal in it.”8 Out of 700,000 inhabitants there are 100,000 of the poor, of which 60,000 have flocked in from the departments;9 among them are 30,000 needy mechanics belonging to the national workshops, discharged and sent home in the preceding month of June, but who, returning three months later, are again swallowed up in the great sink of vagabondage, hurling their floating mass against the crazy edifice of public authority and furnishing the forces of sedition.— At Paris, and in the provinces, disobedience exists throughout the hierarchy. Directories countermand ministerial orders. Here, municipalities brave the commands of their Directory; there, communities order around their mayor with a drawn sword. Elsewhere, soldiers and sailors put their officers under arrest. The accused insult the judge on the bench and force him to cancel his verdict; mobs tax or plunder wheat in the market; National Guards prevent its distribution, or seize it in the storehouses. There is no security for property, lives, or consciences. The majority of Frenchmen are deprived of their right to worship in their own faith, and of voting at the elections. There is no safety, day or night, for the e´lite of the nation, for ecclesiastics and the gentry, for army and navy officers, for rich merchants and large landed proprietors; no protection in the

8. Mercure de France, Nov. 5, 1791.—Buchez et Roux, XII. 338. Report by Pe´tion, mayor, Dec. 9, 1791. “Every branch of the police is in a state of complete neglect. The streets are dirty, and full of rubbish; robbery, and crimes of every kind, are increasing in a frightful degree.” “Correspondence de M. de Stae¨l” (manuscript), Jan. 22, 1792. “As the police is almost worthless, freedom from punishment, added to poverty, brings on disorder.” 9. Moniteur, XI. 517 (session of Feb. 29, 1792). Speeches by Lace´pede and Mulot. The Jacobin Conquest / 517 courts, no income from public funds; denunciations abound, expul- sions, banishments to the interior, attacks on private houses; there is no right of free assemblage, even to enforce the law under the orders of legal authorities.10 Opposed to this, and in contrast with it, is the privilege and immunity of a sect formed into a political corporation, “which extends its filiations over the whole kingdom, and even abroad; which has its own treasury, its committees, and its by-laws; which rules the government, which judges justice,”11 and which, from the capital to the hamlet, usurps or directs the administration. Liberty, equality, and the majesty of the law exist nowhere, except in words. Of the three thousand decrees given birth to by the Constituent Assembly, the most lauded, those the best set off by a philosophic baptism, form a mass of stillborn abortions of which France is the burying-ground. That which really subsists underneath the false appearances of right, proclaimed and sworn to over and over again, is, on the one hand, an oppression of the upper and cultivated classes, from which all the rights of man are withdrawn, and, on the other hand, the tyranny of the fanatical and brutal rabble which assumes to itself all the rights of sovereignty. II Against this overthrow and this disgrace the honest men of the Assembly protest in vain. Led by and forced to do what the Jacobins pleased, it revises the law only to overwhelm the oppressed and to sanction their oppressors.—Without making any distinction between armed assemblages at Coblentz, which it had a right to punish, and fugitives, three times as numerous, old men, women and children, so many indifferent and inoffensive people, not merely nobles but plebians,12 who left the soil only to escape popular outrages, it

10. Lacretelle, “Dix ans d’Epreuves.” “I know no more dismal and discouraging aspect than the interval between the departure of the National As- sembly, on the 10th of August consummated by that of September 2.” 11. Mercure de France, Sept. 3, 1791, article by Mallet-Dupan. 12. Moniteur, XI. 317 (session of Feb. 6, 1792). Speech by M. Cahier, a minister. “Many of the emigrants belong to the class formerly called the Third- 518 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION conﬁscates the property of all emigrants and orders this to be sold.13 Through the new restriction of the passport, those who remain are tied to their domiciles, their power of going and coming, even in the interior, being subject to the decision of each Jacobin municipality.14 It completes their ruin by depriving them without indemnity of all income from their real estate, of all the seignorial rights which the Constituent Assembly had declared to be legitimate.15 It abolishes, as far as it can, their history and their past, by burning in the public de´poˆts their genealogical titles.16 To all unsworn ecclesiastics, to two-thirds of the French clergy, it withholds bread, the small pension allowed them for food, which is the ransom of their conﬁs- cated possessions;17 it declares them “suspected of revolt against the law and of bad intentions against the country”; it subjects them to special oversight; it authorises their expulsion without trial by local rulers in case of disturbances; it decrees that in such cases they shall

Estate. No reason for emigrating, on their part, can be supposed but that of religious anxieties.” 13. Decree of Nov. 9, 1791. The first decree seems to be aimed only at the armed gatherings on the frontier. We see, however, by the debates, that it affects all emigrants. The decrees of Feb. 9and March 30, 1792,bear upon all, without exception.—“Correspondence de Mirabeau et du Comte de la Marck,” III. 264 (letter by M. Pellenc, Nov. 12, 1791). “The decree (against the emigrants) was prepared in committee; it was expected that the emigrants would return, but there was fear of them. It was feared that the nobles, associated with the unsworn priests in the rural districts, might add strength to a troublesome resistance. The decree,as it was passed,seemed to be the most suitable for keeping the emigrants beyond the frontiers.” 14. Decree of Feb. 1, 1792.—Moniteur, XI. 412 (session of Feb. 17). Speech by Goupilleau. “Since the decree of the National Assembly on passports, emigrations have redoubled.” People evidently escaped from France as from a prison. 15. Decrees of June 18 and August 25. 16. Decree of June 19.—Moniteur, XIII. 331. “In execution of the law . . . there will be burnt, on Tuesday, August 7, on the Place Vendoˆme, at 2 o’clock: 1st, 600, more or less, of files of papers, forming the last of genealogical collections, titles and proofs of nobility; 2d, about 200 files, forming part of a work composed of 263 volumes, on the Order of the Holy Ghost.” 17. Decree of Nov. 29, 1791. (This decree is not in Duvergier’s collection.)—Moniteur, XII. 59, 247 (sessions of April 5 and 28, 1792). The Jacobin Conquest / 519 be sentenced to transportation.18 It suppresses “all secular congregations of men and women ecclesiastic or laic, even those wholly devoted to hospital service and the relief of the sick,” even those which give primary instruction and whose abolition “will take away from 600,000 children the means of learning to read and write.”19 It lays injuctions on their dress; it places episcopal palaces in the market for sale, also the buildings still occupied by monks and nuns.20 It welcomes with rounds of applause a married priest who introduces his wife to the Assembly.—Not only is the Assembly destructive but it is insulting; the authors of each decree passed by it add to its thunderbolt the rattling hail of their own abuse and slander. “Chil- dren,” says a deputy, “have the poison of aristocracy and fanaticism injected into them by the congregations.”21 “Purge the rural districts of the vermin which is devouring them!”—“Everybody knows,” says Isnard, “that the priest is as cowardly as he is vindictive.... Let these pestiferous fellows be sent back to Roman and Italian lazarettos....What religion is that which, in its nature, is unsocial and rebellious in principle?”—Whether unsworn, whether emigrants actually or in feeling, “large proprietors, rich merchants, false conservatives,”22 all are outspoken conspirators or concealed enemies. All public disasters are imputed to them. “The cause of the troubles,” says Brissot,23 “which lay waste the colonies, is the infernal vanity of the whites who have three times violated an engage-

18. At the Jacobin Club, Legendre proposes a much more expeditious measure for getting rid of the priests. “At Brest, he says, boats are found which are called Marie-Salopes, so constructed that, on being loaded with dirt, they go out of the harbor themselves. Let us have a similar arrangement for priests; but, instead of sending them out of the harbor, let us send them out to sea, and, if necessary, let them go down.” (“Journal de Amis de la Constitution,” number 194, May 15, 1792.) 19. Moniteur, XII. 560 (decree of June 3). 20. Decrees of July 19and Aug. 4, completed by those of Aug. 16 and 19. 21. Moniteur, XII. 59, 61 (session of April 3); X. 374 (session of Nov. 13); XI. 230 (session of April 26).—The last sentence quoted was uttered by Fran- çois de Nantes. 22. Moniteur, XI. 43 (session of Jan. 5, speech by Isnard). 23. Moniteur, XI. 356 (session of Feb. 10). 520 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION ment which they have three times sworn to maintain.” Scarcity of work and short crops are accounted for through their cunning malevolence. “A large number of rich men,” says François de Nantes,24 “allow their property to run down and their fields to lie fallow, so as to enjoy seeing the suffering of the people.” France is divided into two parties, on the one hand, the aristocracy to which is attributed every vice, and, on the other hand, the people on whom is conferred every virtue. “The defence of liberty,” says Lamarque,25 “is basely abandoned every day by the rich and by the former nobility, who put on the mask of patriotism only to cheat us. It is not in this class, but only in that of citizens who are disdainfully called the people, that we find pure beings, those ardent souls really worthy of liberty.”—One step more and everything will be permitted to the virtuous against the wicked; if misfortune befalls the aristocrats so much the worse for them. Those officers who are stoned, M. de la Jaille and others, “wouldn’t they do better not to deserve being sacrificed to popular fury?”26 Isnard exclaims in the tribune, “it is

24. Moniteur, XI. 230 (session of April 26). 25. Moniteur (session of June 22). 26. The words of Brissot (Patriote Français), number 887.—Letter addressed Jan. 5 to the club of Brest, by Messrs. Cavalier and Malassis, deputies to the National Assembly. “As to the matter of the sieur Lajaille, although we take an interest in him, that arrant aristocrat deserves what he got....Weshall have no rest until all these traitors, these perjurers, whom we have spared so long, shall be exterminated” (Mercure de France, Feb. 4).—This Jaille affair is one of the most instructive, and the best supported by documents (Mercure de France, Dec. 10 and 17).—“Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,215, official report of the district administrators, and of the municipal officers of Brest, Nov. 27, 1791.—Letter by M. de Marigny, commissary in the navy, at Brest, Nov. 28.—Letters by M. de la Jaille, etc.—M. de la Jaille, sent to Brest to take command of the Dugay- Trouin, arrives there Nov. 27. While at dinner, twenty persons enter the room, and announce to him, “in the name of many others,” that his presence in Brest is causing trouble, that he must leave, and that “he will not be allowed to take command of a vessel.” He replies, that he will leave the town, as soon as he has finished his dinner. Another deputation follows, more numerous than the first one, and insists on his leaving at once; and they act as his escort. He submits, is conducted to the city gates; and there the escort leaves him. A mob attacks him, and “his body is covered with contusions.” He is rescued, with The Jacobin Conquest / 521 the long-continued immunity enjoyed by criminals which has rendered the people executioners. Yes, an angry people, like an angry God, is only too often the terrible supplement of silent laws.”27— In other words crimes are justified and assassinations still provoked against those who have been assassinated for the past two years. By a forced conclusion, if the victims are criminals, their executioners are honest, and the Assembly, which rigorously proceeds against the former, reserves all its indulgence for the latter. It reinstates the numberless deserters who abandoned their flags previous to the 1st of January, 1789;28 it allows them three sous per league mileage, and brings them back to their homes or to their regiments to become, along with their brethren whose desertion is more recent, either leaders or recruits for the mobs. It releases from the galleys the forty Swiss guards of Chateauroux whom their own cantons desired to have kept there; it permits these “martyrs to Liberty” to promenade the streets of Paris in a triumphal car;29 it admits them to the bar of the house, and, taking a formal vote on it, extends to great difficulty, by six brave fellows, of whom one is a pork-dealer, sent to bleed him on the spot. “This insurrection is due to an extra meeting of ‘The Friends of the Constitution,’ held the evening before in the theatre, to which the public were invited.” M. de la Jaille, it must be stated, is not a proud aristocrat, but a sensible man, in the style of Florian’s and Berquin’s heroes. But just pounded to a jelly, he writes to the president of the “Friends of the Constitution,” that, “could he have flown into the bosom of the club, he would have gladly done so, to convey to it his grateful feelings. He had accepted his command only at the solicitation of the Americans in Paris, and of the six commissioners recently arrived from St. Domingo.”—Mercure de France, April 14, article by Mallet- Dupan. “I have asked in vain for the vengeance of the law against the assassins of M. de la Jaille. The names of the authors of this assault in full daylight, to which thousands can bear witness, are known to everybody in Brest. Proceed- ings have been ordered and begun, but the execution of the orders is suspended. More potent than the law, the motionnaires, protectors of assassins, frighten or paralyse its ministrants.” 27. Mercure de France, Nov. 12 (session of Oct. 51, 1792). 28. Decree of Feb. 8, and others like it, on the details, as, for instance, that of Feb. 7. 29. April 9, at the Jacobin Club, Vergniaud, the president, welcomes and compliments the convicts of Chateau-vieux. 522 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION them the honors of the session.30 Finally, as if it were their special business to let loose on the public the most ferocious and foulest of the rabble, it amnesties Jourdan, Mainvielle, Duprat, and Raphel, fugitive convicts, jail-birds, the condottieri of all lands assuming the title of “the brave brigands of Avignon,” and who, for eighteen months, have pillaged and plundered the Comtat; it stops the trial, almost over, of the Glacie`re butchers; it tolerates the return of these as victors,31 and their installation by their own act in the places of the fugitive magistrates, allowing Avignon to be treated as a conquered city, and, henceforth, to become their prey and their booty. This is a willful restoration of the vermin to the social body, and, in this feverish body, nothing is overlooked that will increase the fever. The most anarchical and deleterious maxims emanate, like miasma, from the Assembly benches. The reduction of things to an absolute level is adopted as a principle; “equality of rights,” says Lamarque,32 “is to be maintained only by tending steadily to an equality of fortunes”; this theory is practically applied on all sides since the proletariat is pillaging all who own property.—“Let the communal possessions be partitioned among the citizens of the surrounding villages,” says François de Nantes, “in an inverse ratio to their fortunes, and let him who has the least inheritance take the largest share in the divisions.”33 Conceive the effect of this motion read at evening to peasants who are at this very moment claiming their seignior’s forest for their commune. M. Corneille prohibits any tax to be levied for the public treasury on the wages of manual labor, because nature, and not society, gives us the “right to live.”34 On the other hand, he confers on the public treasury the right of taking the whole of an income, because it is society, and not nature, which institutes public funds; hence, according to him, the poor majority

30. Mortimer-Ternaux, book I. vol. I. (especially the session of April 15). 31. Moniteur, XII. 335.—Decree of March 20 (the triumphal entry of Jour- dan and his associates belongs to the next month). 32. Moniteur, XII. 730 (session of June 23). 33. Moniteur, VII. 230 (session of April 12). 34. Moniteur, XII. 6 (session of March 31). The Jacobin Conquest / 523 must be relieved of all taxation, and all taxes must fall on the rich minority. The system is well-timed and the argument apt for convincing indigent or straitened tax-payers, namely, the refractory majority, that its taxes are just, and that it should not refuse to be taxed.—“Under the reign of liberty,” says President Daverhoult,35 “the people have the right to insist not merely on subsistence, but again on plenty and happiness.” Accordingly, being in a state of poverty they have been betrayed.—“Elevated to the height achieved by the French people,” says another president, “it looks down upon the tempests under its feet.”36 The tempest is at hand and bursts over its head. War, like a black cloud, rises above the horizon, overspreads the sky, thunders and wraps France ﬁlled with explosive materials in a circle of lightning, and it is the Assembly which, through the greatest of its mistakes, draws down the bolt on the nation’s head. III It might have been turned aside with a little prudence. Two principal grievances were alleged, one by France and the other by the Em- pire.—On the one hand, and very justly, France complained of the gathering of e´migre´s, which the Emperor and Electors tolerated against it on the frontier. In the ﬁrst place, however, a few thousands of gentlemen, without troops or stores, and nearly without money,37

35. Moniteur, 123 (session of Jan. 14). 36. Mercure de France, Dec. 23 (session of Dec. 23), p. 98. 37. Moniteur, X. 178 (session of Oct. 20, 1791). Information supplied by the deputies of the Upper and Lower Rhine departments.—M. Koch says: “An army of e´migre´s never existed, unless it be a petty gathering, which took place at Ettenheim, a few leagues from Strasbourg.... (This troop) encamped in tents, but only because it lacked barracks and houses.”—M.——, deputy of the Lower Rhine, says: “This army at Ettenheim is composed of about five or six hundred poorly-clad, half-paid men, deserters of all nations, sleeping in tents, for lack of other shelter, and armed with clubs, for lack of fire-arms, and deserting every day, because money is getting scarce. The second army, at Worms, under the command of a Conde´, is composed of three hundred gentlemen, and as many valets and grooms. I have to add, that the letters which 524 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION need not excite much fear, and, besides this, long before the decisive hour came these troops were dispersed, at once by the Emperor in his own dominions, and, fifteen days afterwards, by the Elector of Tre`ves in his electorate.38—On the other hand, according to treaties, the German princes, who owned estates in Alsace, made claims for the feudal rights abolished on their French possessions and the Diet forbade them to accept the offered indemnity. But, as far as the Diet is concerned, nothing was easier nor more customary than to let negotiations drag along, there being no risk or inconvenience attending the suit as, during the delay, the claimants remained empty- handed.—If, now, behind the ostensible motives, the real intentions are sought for, it is certain that, up to January, 1792, the intentions of Austria were pacific. The grants made to the Comte d’Artois, in the Declaration of Pilnitz, were merely a court-sprinkling of holy- water, the semblance of an illusory promise and subject to a Euro- pean concert of action, that is to say, annulled beforehand by an reach me from Strasbourg, containing extracts of advices from Frankfort, Mu- nich, Ratisbon, and Vienna, announce the most pacific intentions on the part of the different courts, since receiving the notification of the king’s submission.” The number of armed emigrants increases, but always remains very small (Moniteur, X. 678, letter of M. Delatouche, an eye-witness, Dec. 10). “I suppose that the number of emigrants scattered around on the territories of the grand- duke of Baden, the bishop of Spires, the electorates, etc., amounts to scarcely 4,000 men.” 38. Moniteur, X. 418 (session of Nov. 15, 1791). Report by the minister Delessart. In August, the emperor issued orders against enlistments, and to send out of the country all Frenchmen under suspicion; also, in October, to send away the French who formed too numerous a body at Ath and at Tournay.— Buchez et Roux, XII. 395, demands of the king, Dec. 14.—Ibid., XIII. 15, 16, 19, 52, complete satisfaction given by the Elector of Tre`ves, Jan. 1, 1792, communicated to the Assembly Jan. 6; publication of the elector’s orders in the electorate, Jan. 3. The French envoy reports that they are fully executed, which news, with the documents, are communicated to the Assembly, on the 8th, 16, and 19th of January.—“Correspondance de Mirabeau et M. de la Marck,” III. 287. Letter of M. de Mercy-Argenteau, Jan. 9, 1792. “The emperor has promised aid to the elector, under the express stipulation that he should begin by yielding to the demands of the French, as otherwise no assistance would be given to him in case of attack.” The Jacobin Conquest / 525 indefinite postponement, while this pretended league of sovereigns is at once “placed by the politicians in the class of august come- dies.”39 Far from taking up arms against new France in the name of old France, the emperor Leopold and his prime minister Kaunitz, were glad to see the constitution completed and accepted by the King; it “got them out of trouble,”40 and Prussia likewise. In all state management political interest is the great mainspring and both powers needed all their forces in another direction, in Poland, one for retarding, and the other for accelerating its divisions, and both, when the partition took place, to get enough for themselves and prevent Russia from getting too much.—The sovereigns of Prussia and Aus- tria, accordingly, did not yet entertain any idea of delivering Louis XVI, nor of conducting the e´migre´s back, nor of conquering French provinces, and if anything was to be expected from them on account of personal ill-will, there was no fear of their armed intervention.— On the side of France it is not the King who urges a rupture; he knows too well what mortal danger there is to him and his in the chances of war. Secretly as well as publicly, in writing to the e´migre´s, his wishes are to bring them back or to restrain them. In his private correspondence he asks of the European powers not physical but moral aid, the external support of a congress which will permit moderate men, the partisans of order, all owners of property, to raise their heads and rally around the throne and the laws against anarchy. In his ministerial correspondence every precaution is taken not to apply the match or let it be applied to gunpowder. At the critical moment of the discussion41 he entreats the deputies, through M.

39. Mallet-Dupan, “Me´moires,” I. 254 (February, 1792).—“Correspondance de Mirabeau et du Comte de la Marck,” III. 232 (note of M. de Bacourt). On the very day and at the moment of signing the treaty at Pilnitz, at eleven o’clock in the evening, the Emperor Leopold wrote to his prime minister, M. de Kaunitz, to this eﬀect: “The agreement he had just signed does not really bind him to anything. The declarations it contains, extorted by the Count d’Artois, have no value whatever.” He ends by assuring him that “neither himself nor his government is in any way bound by this instrument.” 40. Words of M. de Kaunitz, Sept. 4, 1791 (“Recueil,” by Vivenot, I. 242). 41. Moniteur, XI. 142 (session of Jan. 17).—Speech by M. Delessart.— 526 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Delessart, his Minister of Foreign Affairs, to weigh their words and especially not to send forth a challenge on a “fixed term of delay.” He resists to the very last as far as his passive will lets him. On being compelled to declare war he requires beforehand the advice of all his ministers, over their signatures, and, only at the last extremity, utters the fatal words “with tears in his eyes,” dragged on by the Assembly which has just cited M. Delessart before the supreme court at Orleans, under a capital charge, and which qualifies all caution as treachery. It is the Assembly then which launches the disabled ship on the roaring abysses of an unknown sea, without a rudder and leaking at every seam; it alone slips the cable which held it in port and which the foreign powers neither dared nor desired to sever. Here, again, the Girondists are the leaders and hold the axe; since the last of October they have grasped it and struck repeated blows.42—As an exception, the extreme Jacobins, Couthon, Collot d’Herbois, Dan- ton, Robespierre, do not side with them. Robespierre, who at first proposed to confine the Emperor “within the circle of Popilius,”43 fears the placing of too great power in the King’s hands, and, growing mistrustful, preaches distrust.—But the great mass of the party, led by clamorous public opinion, impels on the timid marching in front. Of the many things of which knowledge is necessary to conduct successfully such a complex and delicate affair, they know nothing; they are ignorant about cabinets, courts, populations, treaties, precedents, timely forms and requisite style. Their guide and counsellor in foreign relations is Brissot whose pre-eminence is based on

Decree of accusation against him March 10.—Declaration of war, April 20.— On the real intentions of the King, Cf. Malouet, “Me´moires,” II. 199–209; Lafayette, “Me´moires,” I. 441 (note 3); Bertrand de Molleville, “Me´moires,” VI. 22; Gouverneur Morris, II. 242, letter of Oct. 23, 1792. 42. Moniteur, X. 172 (session of Oct. 20, 1791). Speech by Brissot.—Lafa- yette, I. 441. “It is the Girondists who, at this time, want war at all hazards.”— Malouet, II. 209. “As Brissot has since boasted, it was the republican party which wanted war, and which provoked it by insulting all the powers.” 43. Buchez et Roux, XII. 402 (session of the Jacobin Club, Nov. 28, 1791). The Jacobin Conquest / 527 their ignorance and who, exalted into a statesman, becomes for a few months the most conspicuous figure in Europe.44 To whatever extent a European calamity may be attributed to any one man, this one is to be attributed to him. It is this wretch, born in a pastry- cook’s shop, brought up in an attorney’s office, formerly a police agent at 150 francs per month, once in league with scandal-mongers and black-mailers,45 a penny-a-liner, busybody, and intermeddler, who, with the half-information of a nomad, scraps of newspaper ideas and reading-room lore,46 added to his scribblings as a writer and his club declamation, directs the destinies of France and starts a war in Europe which is to destroy six millions of lives. From the garret in which his wife washes his shirts, he enjoys the snubbing of potentates and, on the 20th of October, in the tribune,47 he begins by insulting thirty foreign sovereigns. This keen, intense enjoyment on which the new fanaticism daily feeds itself, Madame Roland herself delights in, with evident complacency, in the two famous letters in which, with a supercilious tone, she first instructs the King

44. Gustave III., King of Sweden, assassinated by Ankerstrom, says: “I should like to know what Brissot will say.” 45. On Brissot’s antecedents, Cf. Edmond Bire´, “La Le´gende des Giron- dins.” Personally, Brissot was honest, and remained poor. But he had passed through a good deal of filth, and bore the marks of it. He had lent himself to the diffusion of an obscene book, “Le Diable dans un beńitier,” and, in 1783, having received 13,355 francs to found a Lyceum in London, not only did not found it, but was unable to return the money. 46. Moniteur, XI. 147. Speech by Brissot, Jan. 17. Examples from whom he borrows authority, Charles XII., Louis XIV., Admiral Blake, Frederic II., etc. 47. Moniteur, X. 174. “This Venetian government, which is nothing but a farce....Those petty German princes, whose insolence in the last century despotism crushed out....Geneva, that atom of a republic....That bishop of Lie`ge, whose yoke bows down a people that ought to be free....Idisdain to speak of other princes....That King of Sweden, who has only twenty-five millions income, and who spends two-thirds of it in poor pay for an army of generals and a small number of discontented soldiers....Astothat princess (Catherine II.), whose dislike of the French constitution is well known, and who is about as good looking as Elizabeth, she cannot expect greater success than Elizabeth in the Dutch revolution.” (Brissot, in this last passage, tries to appear at once witty and well read.) 528 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION and next the Pope.48 Brissot, at bottom, regards himself as a Louis XIV, and expressly invites the Jacobins to imitate the haughty ways of the Great Monarch.49—To the mismanagement of the interloper, and the sensitiveness of the upstart, must be added the rigidity of the sectary. The Jacobins, in the name of abstract right, deny historic right; they impose from above, and by force, that truth of which they are the apostles, and allow themselves every provocation which they prohibit to others. “Europe must know,” exclaims Isnard,50 “that ten millions of Frenchmen, armed with the sword, with the pen, with reason, with eloquence, might, if provoked, change the face of the world and make tyrants tremble on their thrones of clay.” “Wherever a throne exists,” says He´rault de Sećhelles, “there is an enemy.”51 “Honest capitulation between tyranny and liberty,” says Brissot, “is impossible. Your Constitution is an eternal anathema against absolute monarchs....Itplaces them on trial, it pronounces judgment on them; it seems to say to each—tomorrow thou shalt pass away or shalt be king only through the people. War is now a national benefit, and not to have war is the only calamity to be dreaded.”52—“Tell the king,” says Gensonne´, “that war is necessary, that public opinion demands it, that the safety of the empire makes

48. Letter of Roland to the king, June 10, 1792, and letter of the executive council to the pope, Nov. 25, 1792. Letter of Madame Roland to Brissot, Jan. 7, 1791. “Brieﬂy, adieu. Cato’s wife need not gratify herself by complimenting Brutus.” 49. Buchez et Roux, XII. 410 (meeting of the Jacobin Club, Dec. 10, 1791). “A Louis XIV. declares war against Spain, because his ambassador had been insulted by the Spanish ambassador. And we, who are free, we give a moment’s hesitation to it!” 50. Moniteur, X, 503 (session of Nov. 29). The Assembly orders this speech to be printed and distributed in the departments. 51. Moniteur, X. 762 (session of Dec. 28). 52. Moniteur, XI. 147, 149(session of Jan. 17); X. 759(session of Dec. 28).— Already, on the 16th of December, he had declared at the Jacobin Club: “A people that has conquered its freedom, after ten centuries of slavery, needs war. War is essential to it for its consolidation.” (Buchez et Roux, XII. 410).—On the 17th of January, in the tribune, he again repeats: “I have only one fear, and that is, that we may not have war.” The Jacobin Conquest / 529 italaw.”53—“The state we are in,” concludes Vergniaud, “is a veritable state of destruction that may lead us to disgrace and death. To arms! to arms! Citizens, freemen, defend your liberty, conﬁrm the hopes of that of the human race....Lose not the advantage of your position. Attack now that there is every sign of complete success....Themanes of past generations seem to me crowding into this temple to conjure you, in the name of the evils which slavery has compelled them to endure, to preserve future generations from similar evils, the generations whose destinies are in your hands! Let this prayer be granted! Be for the future a new Providence! Ally yourselves with eternal justice!”54—There is no longer any room for serious discussion with those Marseilles orators. Brissot, in response to the claim made by the Emperor in behalf of the princes’ property in Alsatia, replies that “the sovereignty of the people is not bound by the treaties of tyrants.”55 As to the gatherings of the e´migre´s, the Emperor having yielded on this point, he will yield on the others.56 Let him formally renounce all combinations against France. “I want war on the 10th of February,” says Brissot, “if we do not receive advices of this renunciation.” No explanations are to be listened to; we want satisfaction; “to require satisfaction is to put the Emperor at our mercy.”57 The Assembly, so eager to start the quarrel,

53. Moniteur, XI. 119(session of Jan. 13). Speech by Gensonne´, in the name of the diplomatic committee, of which he is the reporter. 54. Moniteur, XI. 158 (session of Jan. 18). The Assembly orders the printing of this speech. 55. Moniteur, X. 760 (session of Dec. 28). 56. Moniteur, XI. 149(session of Jan. 17). Speech by Brissot. 57. Moniteur, XI. 178 (session of Jan. 20). Fauchet proposes the following decree: “All partial treaties actually existent are declared void. The National Assembly substitutes in their place alliances with the English, the Anglo- American, the Helvetic, Polish, and Dutch nations, as long as they remain free....When other nations want our alliance, they have only to conquer their freedom to have it. Meanwhile, this will not prevent us from having relations with them, as with good-natured savages....Letusoccupy the towns in the neighborhood which bring our adversaries too near us....Mayence, Coblentz, and Worms are sufficient.”—Ibid., p. 215 (session of Jan. 25). One of the members, supporting himself with the authority of Ge´lon, King of Syracuse, 530 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION usurps the King’s right to take the first step and formally declares war, fixing the date.58—The die is now cast. “They want war,” says the Emperor, “and they shall have it.” Austria immediately forms an alliance with Prussia, threatened, like herself, with revolutionary propaganda.59 By sounding the tocsin the Jacobins, masters of the Assembly, have succeeded in bringing about that “monstrous alliance,” and, from day to day, this tocsin sounds the louder. One year more, thanks to this policy, and France will have all Europe for an enemy and for an only friend, the Regency of Algiers, whose internal system of government is about the same as her own.

IV Behind their carmagnoles60 we can detect a design which they will avow later on.—“We were always opposed by the Constitution,” Brissot is to say, “and nothing but war could put the Constitution down.”61 Diplomatic wrongs, consequently, of which they make pa- proposes an additional article: “We declare that we will not lay down our arms until we shall have established the freedom of all peoples.” These stupidities show the mental condition of the Jacobin party. 58. The decree is passed Jan. 25. The alliance between Prussia and Austria takes place Feb. 7 (De Bourgoing, “Histoire diplomatique de l’Europe pendant la Re´volution Française,” I. 457). 59. Albert Sorel, “La Mission du Comte de Se´gur a` Berlin” (published in the Temps, Oct. 15, 1878). Despatch of M. de Se´gur to M. Delessart, Feb. 24, 1792. “Count Schulemburg repeated to me that they had no desire whatever to meddle with our constitution. But, said he with singular animation, we must guard against gangrene. Prussia is, perhaps, the country which should fear it least; nevertheless, however remote a gangrened member may be, it is better to cut it off than risk one’s life. How can you expect to secure tranquillity, when thousands of writers every day . . . mayors, office-holders, insult kings, and publish that the Christian religion has always supported despotism, and that we shall be free only by destroying it, and that all princes must be exterminated because they are all tyrants?” 60. A popular jig of these revolutionary times, danced in the streets and on the public squares.—TR. 61. Buchez et Roux, XXV. 203 (session of April 3, 1793). Speech by Bris- sot.—Ibid., XX. 127. “A tous les Re´publicains de France, par Brissot,” Oct. 24, 1792. “In declaring war, I had in view the abolition of royalty.” He refers, The Jacobin Conquest / 531 rade, are simply pretexts; if they urge war it is for the purpose of overthrowing the legal order of things which annoys them; their real object is the conquest of power, a second internal revolution, the application of their system and a final state of equality.—Concealed behind them is the most politic and absolute of theorists, a man “whose great art is the attainment of his ends without showing himself, the preparation of others for far-sighted views of which they have no suspicion, and that of speaking but little in public and acting in secret.”62 This man is Sie`yes, “the leader of everything without seeming to lead anything.” Equally as infatuated as Rous- seau with his own speculations, but as unscrupulous and as clear- sighted as Machiavelli in the selection of practical means, he was, is, and will be, in decisive moments, the consulting counsel of radical democracy. “His pride tolerates no superiority. He causes nobility to be abolished because he is not a noble; because he does not possess all he will destroy all. His fundamental doctrine for the consolidation of the Revolution is, that it is indispensable to change religion and to change the dynasty.”—Now, had peace been maintained all this was impossible; moreover the ascendency of the party was compromised. Entire classes that had adhered to the party when it launched insurrection against the privileged, broke loose from it now that insurrection was directed against them; among thoughtful men and among those with property, most were disgusted with anarchy, and likewise disgusted with the abettors of it. Many administrators, magistrates and functionaries recently elected, loudly complained of their authority being subject to that of the populace. Many cultivators, manufacturers and merchants have become silently exasperated at the fruits of their labor and economy being surrendered at discretion to robbers and the indigent. It was hard for the flour-dealers of in this connection, to his speech of Dec. 30, 1791, where he says, “I fear only one thing, and that is, that we may be betrayed. We need treachery, for strong doses of poison still exist in the heart of France, and heavy eruptions are necessary to get clear of it.” 62. Mallet-Dupan, “Me´moires,” I. 260 (April, 1792), and I. 439 (July, 1792). 532 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Etampes not to dare send away their wheat, to be obliged to supply their customers at night, to tremble in their own houses, and know that if they went out-doors they risked their lives.63 It was hard for wholesale grocers in Paris to see their warehouses invaded, their windows smashed, their bags of coffee and boxes of sugar valued at a low price, parcelled out and carried away by old hags or taken gratis by scamps who ran off and sold them at the other end of the street.64 It was hard in all places for the families of the old bourgeoisie, for the formerly prominent men in each town and village, for the eminent in each art, profession or trade, for reputable and well-to- do people, in short, for the majority of men who had a good roof over their heads and a good coat on their backs, to undergo the illegal domination of a crowd led by a few hundreds or dozens of stump-speakers and fire-brands.—Already, in the beginning of 1792, this dissatisfaction was so great as to be denounced in the tribune and in the press. Isnard65 railed against “that multitude of large property-holders, those opulent merchants, those haughty, wealthy personages who, advantageously placed in the social amphitheatre, are unwilling to have their seats changed.” “The bourgeoisie,” wrote Pe´tion,66 “that numerous class free of any anxiety, is separating itself from the people; it considers itself above them, . . . they are the sole object of its distrust. It is everywhere haunted by the one idea that the revolution is a war between those who have and those who have not.”—It abstains, indeed, from the elections, it keeps away from patriotic clubs, it demands the restoration of order and the reign of

63. “The French Revolution,” I. 262 and following pages. 64. Buchez et Roux, XIII. 92–99 (January, 1792); 225 (February).—Coraı¨, “Lettres ine´dites,” 33. (One of these days, out of curiosity, he walked along as far as the Rue des Lombards.) “Witness of such crying injustice, and indignant at not being able to seize any of the thieves that were running along the street, loaded with sugar and coffee to sell again, I suddenly felt a feverish chill over all my body.” (The letter is not dated. The editor conjectures that the year was 1791. I rather think that it was 1792.) 65. Moniteur, XI. 45 and 46 (session of Jan. 5). The whole of Isnard’s speech should be read. 66. Buchez et Roux, XIII. 177. Letter by Pe´tion, Feb. 10. The Jacobin Conquest / 533 law; it rallies to itself “the multitude of conservative, timid people, for whom tranquillity is the prime necessity,” and especially, which is still more serious, it charges the disturbances upon their veritable authors. With suppressed indignation and a mass of undisputed evidence, Andre´ Cheńier, a man of feeling, starts up in the midst of the silent crowd and openly tears off the mask from the Jacobins.67 He brings into full light the daily sophism by which a mob, “some hundreds of idlers gathered in a garden or at a theatre, are impu- dently called the people.” He portrays “those three or four thousand usurpers of national sovereignty whom their orators and writers daily intoxicate with grosser incense than any adulation offered to the worst of despots”; those assemblies where “an infinitely small number of Frenchmen appears large, because they are united and yell”; that Paris club from which honest, industrious, intelligent people had withdrawn one by one to give place to intriguers in debt, to persons of tarnished reputations, to the hypocrites of patriotism, to the lovers of uproar, to abortive talents, to corrupted intellects, to outcasts of every kind and degree who, unable to manage their

67. Buchez et Roux, XIII. 252. Letter of Andre´ Cheńier, in the Journal de Paris, Feb. 26.—Schmidt, “Tableaux de la Re´volution Française,” I. 76. Reply of the Directory of the Department of the Seine to a circular by Roland, June 12, 1792. The contrast between the two classes is here clearly defined. “We have not resorted to those assemblages of men, most of them foreigners, for the opinion of the people, among the enemies of labor and repose standing by themselves and having no part in common interests, already inclined to vice through idleness, and who prefer the risks of disorder to the honorable resources of indigence. This class of men, always large in large cities, is that whose noisy harangues fill the streets, squares, and public gardens of the capital, that which excites seditious gatherings, that which constantly fosters anarchy and contempt for the laws—that, in fine, whose clamor, far from indicating public opinion, indicates the extreme effort made to prevent the expression of public opinion....Wehavestudied the opinion of the people of Paris among those useful and laborious men warmly attached to the State at all points of their existence through every object of their affection, among owners of property, tillers of the soil, tradesmen, and laborers....Aninviolable attachment . . . to the constitution, and mainly to national sovereignty, to political equality and constitutional monarchy, which are its most important characteristics, is their almost unanimous sentiment.” 534 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION own business, indemnify themselves by managing that of the public. He shows around the central workshop twelve hundred branches of insurrection, twelve hundred affiliated clubs which, “holding each other’s hands, form a sort of electric chain around all France,” and giving it a shock at every touch from head-quarters; their confederation installed and enthroned not merely as a State within the State but as a State that is sovereign in a vassal State; administrative bodies summoned to their bar, judicial verdicts set aside through their intervention, private individuals searched, assessed and condemned through their verdicts; a steady, systematic defense of insubordination and revolt; “commerce and industry styled criminal under the name of monopoly”; property unsettled and every rich man rendered suspicious, “talent and integrity silenced”; in short, a public conspiracy against society in the very name of society, “while the sacred symbol of liberty is made use of to seal” the exemption from punishment of a few tyrants. An outspoken protest of this kind embodied what most French- men muttered to themselves, and from month to month, graver excesses excited greater censure. “Anarchy exists68 to a degree scarcely to be paralleled, and such is the horror and apprehension which licentious associations have universally inspired, there is some reason to believe that the great mass of the French population would consider even despotism a blessing, if accompanied with security to persons and property, such as is experienced under the worst governments in Europe.”—Another observer, not less competent,69 says: “It is plain to my eyes that when Louis XVI. finally succumbed, he had more partisans in France than the year previous, at the time of his flight to Varennes.”—The truth of this, indeed, was frequently verified at the end of 1791 and beginning of 1792, by various investigations.70 “Eighteen thousand officers of every grade, elected by

68. Gouverneur Morris, letter of June 20, 1792. 69. “Souvenirs” (manuscript) of M. X——. 70. Malouet, II. 203. “Every report that came in from the provinces announced (to the King and Queen) a perceptible amelioration of public opinion, which was becoming more and more perverted. That which reached them was The Jacobin Conquest / 535 the constitutionalists, seventy-one department administrations out of eighty-two, most of the tribunals,71 all traders and manufacturers, every chief and a large portion of the National Guard of Paris,” in short, the e´lite of the nation, and among citizens generally, the great majority who lived from day to day were for him, and for the “Right” of the Assembly against the “Left.” If internal trouble had not been complicated by external difficulties, there would have been a change in opinion, and this the King expected. In accepting the Constitution, he thought that its defects would be revealed in practical operation and that they would lead to a reform. In the mean time he scrupulously observed the Constitution, and, through interest as well as conscience, kept his oath to the letter. “The most faithful execution of the Constitution,” said he to one of his ministers, “is the surest way to make the nation see the changes that ought to be made in it.”72—In other words, he counted on experience, and it is very probable that if there had been nothing to interfere with experience, his calculations would have turned out correct. The nation would have finally determined between the defenders of order and the instigators of disorder; it would have decided for the magistrates against the clubs, for the police against rioters, for the King against the populace. In one or two years more it would have learned that a restoration of the executive power was indispensable for securing the execution of the laws; that the chief of police, with his hands tied, could not do his duty; that it was uninfluenced, whilst the opinions of clubs,taverns,and street-corners gained enormous power, the time being at hand when there was to be no other power.” The figures given above are by Mallet-Dupan, “Me´moires,” II. 120. 71. Moniteur, XII. 776 (session of June 28). Speech by M. Lamarque, in a district court: “The incivisme of the district courts in general is well known.” 72. Bertrand de Molleville, “Me´moires,” VI. 22.—After having received the above instructions from the King, Bertrand calls on the Queen, who makes the same remark: “Do you not think that fidelity to one’s oath is the only plan to pursue?” “Yes, madame, certainly.” “Very well; rest assured that we shall not waver. Come, M. Bertrand, take courage! I hope that with firmness, patience, and what comes of that, all is not yet lost.” 536 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION undoubtedly wise to give him his orders, but that if he was to be of any use against knaves and fools, his hands should first be set free. V Just the contrary with war; the aspect of things changes, and the alternative is the other way. It is no longer a choice between order and disorder, but between the new and the old re´gime, for, behind foreign opponents on the frontier, there stand the e´migre´s. The commotion is terrible, especially amongst the lower classes which mainly bore the whole weight of the old edifice; among the millions who live by the sweat of their brow, artisans, small farmers, me´tayers, day-laborers and soldiers, also the smugglers of salt and other articles, poachers, vagabonds, beggars and half-beggars, who, taxed, plundered, and harshly treated for centuries, have to endure, from father to son, poverty, oppression and disdain. They know through their own experience the difference between their late and their present condition. They have only to fall back on personal knowledge to revive in their imaginations the enormous royal, ecclesiastical, and seignorial taxes, the direct tax of eighty-one per cent., the bailiffs in charge, the seizures and the husbandry service, the inquests of excisemen and game-keepers, the ravages of wild birds and of pigeons, the extortions of the collector and his clerk, the delay and partiality in obtaining justice, the rashness and brutality of the police, the kicks and cuffs of the constabulary, the swarms of wretches like heaps of dirt and filth, the promiscuousness, the over-crowding, the filth and the starvation of places of confinement.73 They have simply

73. M. de Lavalette, “Me´moires,” I. 100.—Lavalette, in the beginning of September, 1792, enlists as a volunteer and sets out, along with two friends, carrying his knapsack on his back, dressed in a jacket and wearing an undress cap. The following shows the sentiments of the peasantry: In a village of sabot- makers, near Vermanton (in the vicinity of Autun), “two days before our arrival a bishop and two vicars, who were escaping in a carriage, were stopped by them. They rummaged the vehicle and found some hundreds of francs, and, to avoid returning these, they thought it best to massacre their unfortunate owners. This sort of occupation seeming more lucrative to these good people than any The Jacobin Conquest / 537 to open their eyes to see their immense deliverance; all direct or indirect taxes for the past two years legally abolished or practically suppressed, beer at two sous a pot, wine at six sous a pint, pigeons in their meat-safes, game on their turn-spits, the wood of the national forests in their garrets, the gendarmerie timid, the police absent, in many places the crops all theirs, the owner not daring to claim his share, the judge avoiding condemning them, the constable refusing to serve papers on them, privileges restored in their favor, the public authorities cringing to mobs and yielding to their exactions, remaining quiet or unarmed in the face of their misdeeds, their outrages excused or tolerated, their superior good sense and deep feeling lauded in thousands of harangues, the jacket and the blouse considered as symbols of patriotism, and supremacy in the State claimed for the sans-culottes in the name of their merits and their virtues.—And now the overthrow of all this is announced to them, a league against them of foreign kings, the emigrants in arms, an invasion imminent, the Croats and Pandours in the field, hordes of mercenaries and barbarians crowding down on them again to put other, they stood on the watch for all wayfarers.” The three volunteers are stopped by a little hump-backed official and conducted to the municipality, a sort of market, where their passports are read and their knapsacks are about to be examined. “We were lost, when d’Aubonnes, who was very tall, jumped on the table . . . and began with a volley of imprecations and market slang which took his hearers by surprise. Soon raising his style, he launched out in patriotic terms, liberty, sovereignty of the people, with such vehemence and in so loud a voice, as to suddenly effect a great change and bring down thunders of applause. But the crazy fellow did not stop there. Ordering Leclerc de la Ronde imperiously to mount on the table, he addressed the assemblage: ‘You shall see whether we are not Paris republicans. Now, sir, say your republican catechism— “What is God? what are the People? and what is a King?”’ His friend, with an air of contrition and in a nasal tone of voice, twisting himself about like a harlequin, replies: ‘God is matter, the People are the poor, and the King is a lion, a tiger, an elephant who tears to pieces, devours, and crushes the people down.’”—“They could no longer restrain themselves. The shouts, cries, and enthusiasm were unbounded. They embraced the actors, hugged them, and bore them away. Each strove to carry us home with him, and we had to drink all round.” 538 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION them in chains.—From the workshop to the cottage there rolls along a formidable outburst of anger, accompanied with national songs, denouncing the plots of tyrants and summoning the people to arms.74 This is the second wave of the Revolution, ever increasing and roaring, less grand than the former one, since it bears along with it but little more than the lower class, but higher and much more destructive. Not only, indeed, is the mass now launched forth of the most brutal sort, but a fresh sentiment animates it, the force of which is incalculable, that of plebeian pride, that of the subject and poor man, who, suddenly erect after ages of debasement, relishes, far beyond his hopes and unstintedly, the delights of equality, independence, and dominion. “Fifteen millions of white negroes,” says Mallet- Dupan,75 worse fed, more miserable than those of St. Domingo, rebellious like them and emancipated from all authority through rebellion, accustomed like them, through thirty months of license, to ruling over all that is left of their former masters, proud like them of the restoration of their caste and exulting in their horny hands— one may imagine their transports of rage on hearing the trumpet- blast which awakens them, showing them on the horizon the returning planters, bringing with them new whips and heavier manacles?—Nothing is more distrustful than such a sentiment in such breasts—quickly alarmed, ready to strike, ready for any act of violence, blindly credulous, headlong and easily impelled, not merely against real enemies on the outside, but at first against imaginary enemies on the inside,76 the King, the ministers, the gentry, priests,

74. The song of “Veillons au salut de l’Empire” belongs to the end of 1791. The “Marseillaise” was composed in April, 1792. 75. Mercure de France, Nov. 23, 1791. 76. Philippe de Se´gur, “Me´moires,” I. (at Fresnes, a village situated about seven leagues from Paris, a few days after Sept. 2, 1792). “A band of these demagogues pursued a large farmer of this place, suspected of royalism and denounced as a monopoliser because he was rich. These madmen had seized him, and, without any other form of trial, were about to put an end to him, when my father ran up to them. He addressed them, and so successfully as to change their rage into a no less exaggerated enthusiasm for humanity. Animated The Jacobin Conquest / 539 parliamentarians, orthodox catholics, all administrators and magistrates who were imprudent enough to appeal to the law, all manufacturers, merchants, and owners of property who condemn disorder, the wealthy whose egotism keeps them at home, those who are well-off, well-bred and well-dressed, all that are under suspicion because they have lost by the new re´gime, or because they have not adopted its ways.—Such is the colossal brute which the Girondists introduce into the political arena.77 For six months they shake red flags before its eyes, goad it on, work it up into a rage and drive it forward by decrees and proclamations against their adversaries and against its keepers, against the nobles and the clergy, against inside aristocrats in complicity with those of Coblentz, against “the Aus- trian committee” the accomplice of Austria, against the King, whose caution they transform into treachery, against the whole government to which they impute the anarchy they excite, and the war of which they are the instigators. Thus over-excited and topsy-turvy, nothing is now wanting to the plebeian class but arms and a rallying-point. The Girondists furnish both. Through a striking coincidence, one which shows that the plan was concerted,78 they set three political engines agoing at by their new transports, they obliged the poor farmer, still pale and trembling, and whom they were just going to hang on its branches, to drink and dance along with them around the tree of liberty.” 77. Lacretelle, “Dix ans d’Epreuves,” 78. “The Girondists wanted to fashion a Roman people out of the dregs of Romulus, and, what is worse, out of the brigands of the 5th of October.” 78. Lafayette, I. 442. “The Girondists sought in the war an opportunity for attacking, with advantage, the constitutionalists of 1791 and their institutions.”—Brissot (Address to my constituents). “We sought in the war an opportunity to set traps for the king, to expose his bad faith and his relationship with the emigrant princes.”—Moniteur (session of April 3, 1793). Speech by Brissot: “I had told the Jacobins what my opinion was, and had proved to them that war was the sole means of unveiling the perfidy of Louis XVI. The event has justified my opinion.”—Buchez et Roux, VIII. 216, 217, 60. The decree of the Legislative Assembly is dated Jan. 25, the first money voted by a club for the making of pikes is on Jan. 21, and the first article by Brissot, on the red cap, is on Feb. 6. 540 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION one stroke. Just at the moment when, through their usual rodo- montade, they rendered war inevitable, they put on the livery of the people and arm the poor. At the end of January, 1792, almost in the same week, their ultimatum to Austria was announced by fixing the date of delay, by adopting the red woollen cap and beginning the manufacture of pikes.—It is evident that pikes are of no use in the open field against cannon and a regular army; accordingly they are intended for use in the interior and in towns. Let the national-guard who can pay for his uniform, and the active citizen whose three francs of direct tax gives him a privilege, own their guns; the long-shoreman, the market-porter, the lodger, the passive citizen, whose poverty excludes them from voting must have their pikes, and, in these insurrectionary times, a ballot is not worth a good pike wielded by brawny arms.—The magistrate in his robes may now issue any summons he pleases, but it will be rammed down his throat, and, lest he should be in doubt of this he is made to know it beforehand. “The Revolution began with pikes and pikes will finish it.”79 “Ah,” say the frequenters of the Tuileries gardens, “if the good patriots of the Champ de Mars only had pikes like these the blue-coats (Lafayette’s guards) would not have had such a good chance!”—“They are to be borne everywhere, wherever there are enemies of the people, to the Chaˆteau, if any can be found there!” They will override the veto and secure the passage of the proper decrees in the National Assembly. The faubourg St. Antoine tenders those it has for this purpose, and, to mark the use made of them, it complains because “efforts are made to substitute the aristocracy of wealth for the power of birth.” It demands “severe measures against the rascally hypocrites who, with the Constitution in their hands, slaughter the people.” It declares that “kings, ministers and a civil

79. Buchez et Roux, XIII. 217 (proposal of a woman, member of the club of l’Eveˆche´, Jan. 31, 1792).—Articles in the Gazette Universelle, Feb. 11, and in the Patriote Français, Feb. 13.—Moniteur, XI. 576 (session of March 6).— Buchez et Roux, XV. (session of June 10). Petition of 8,000 national guards in Paris: “This faction which stirs up popular vengeance . . . which seeks to put in opposition the cap of labor and the military casque, pikes and guns, the rustic’s dress and a uniform.” The Jacobin Conquest / 541 list will pass away, but that the rights of man, national sovereignty and pikes will not pass away,” and, by order of the president, the National Assembly thanks the petitioners “for the advice their zeal prompts them to give.” Between the leaders of the Assembly and the populace armed with pikes, the party is arraigned against the rich, against Consti- tutionalists, against the government, and henceforth, the Jacobin extremists march side by side with the Girondists, both reconciled for the attack except in so far as to differ from each other after the victory. “The object of the Girondists80 is not a republic in name, but an actual republic through a reduction of the civil list to five millions, through the curtailment of most of the royal prerogatives, through a change of dynasty of which the new head would be a sort of honorary president of the republic to which they would assign an executive council appointed by the Assembly, that is to say, by themselves.” As to the Jacobin extremists we find no principle with them but “that of a rigorous, absolute application of the Rights of Man. With the aid of such a charter they aim at changing the laws and public officers every six months, at extending their levelling process to every constituted authority, to all legal pre-eminence and to property. The only re´gime they long for is the democracy of a contentious rabble . . . The vilest instruments, professional agitators, brigands, fanatics, every sort of wretch, the hardened and armed poverty-stricken, who, in wild disorder” march to the attack of property and to “universal pillagings”—in short, barbarians of town and country “who form their ordinary army and never leave it inactive one single day.”—Under their universal, concerted and growing usurpation the substance of power melts wholly away in the hands of the legal authorities; little by little, these are reduced to vain counterfeits, while from one end of France to the other, long before the final collapse, the faction, in the provinces as well as at Paris, substitutes, under the cry of public danger, the government of might for the government of law.

80. Mallet-Dupan, “Me´moires,” II. 429(note of July, 1792).— Mercure de France, March 10, 1792, article by Mallet-Dupan. 9 CHAPTER VI =

The Departments— I. Provence in 1792—Early supremacy of the Jacobins in Marseilles—Composition of the party—The club and the municipality—Ex- pulsion of the Ernest regiment— II. The expedition to Aix—The regiment disarms—The Directory driven out—Pressure on the new Directory— III. The Constitutionalists of Arles—The Marseilles expedition against Arles—Excesses committed by them in the town and its vicinity—Invasion of Apt, the club and its volunteers— IV. The Jacobins of Avignon—How they obtain recruits—Their robberies in the Comtat—The Avignon municipality in ﬂight or in prison— Murder of Le´cuyer and the Glacie`re massacre—Entry of the murderers, supported by their Marseilles allies—Jacobin dictatorship in Vaucluse and the Bouches-du- Rhoˆne— V. Other departments—Uniform process of the Jacobin conquest— Preconceived formation of a Jacobin State.

IFWEwould see the ﬁrst complete planting ofthe revolutionary tree, we must observe it in the department ofthe Bouches-du-Rhoˆne; nowhere was it so precocious, nowhere were local circumstances and native temperament so well adapted to hastening its growth.— “A torrid sky, climatic extremes, an arid soil, rocks, . . . wasting rivers, torrents either dry or bursting their banks,” blinding dust, nerves irritated by steady northern blasts or by the intermittent gusts ofthe sirocco; a sensual race, choleric and impetuous, with no intellectual or moral ballast, in which the mixture ofCelt and Latin has destroyed the humane suavity ofthe Celt and the serious earnestness ofthe Roman; “complete, powerful,rugged, and restless

542 The Jacobin Conquest / 543 men,”1 and yet gay, spontaneous, eloquent, dupes oftheir own bombast, suddenly carried away by a flow ofwords and superficial enthusiasm; their principal city numbering 120,000 souls, in which commercial and maritime risks foster innovating and adventurous spirits; in which the sight ofsuddenly-acquired fortunesexpended on sensual enjoyments constantly undermines all stability ofchar- acter; in which politics, like speculation, is a lottery offering its prizes to audacity; besides all this, a free port and a rendezvous for nomadic interlopers, vagabonds, persons without fixed callings,2 the lawless, bullies, and blackguards, who, like uprooted, decaying seaweed, drift from coast to coast the entire circle of the Mediterranean sea; a veritable sink filled with the dregs oftwenty corrupt and semi- barbarous civilisations, where the froth of crime cast forth from the prisons ofGenoa, Piedmont, Sicily, indeed, ofall Italy, ofSpain, of

1. De Lomeńie, “Les Mirabeaus,” I. 11 (letter ofthe Marquis de Mirabeau). 2. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 7,171, No. 7,915. Report on the situation in Marseilles, by Miollis, commissioner ofthe Directory in the department, year V. Nivoˆse 15. “A good many strangers from France and Italy are attracted there by the lust ofgain, a love ofpleasure, the want ofwork, a desire to escape from the effects of ill conduct....Individuals ofboth sexes and ofevery age, with no ties ofcountry or kindred, with no profession,no opinions, pressed by daily necessities that are multiplied by debauched habits, seeking to indulge these without much application, the means for this being formerly found in the many manual operations ofcommerce, astray during the Revolution and, subsequently, through fear of the dominant party, accustomed unfortunately at that time to receiving pay for taking part in political strife, and now reduced to living on almost gratuitous distributions offood,to dealing in small wares, to the menial occupations which chance rarely presents—in short, to swindling. Such is what the observer finds in that portion ofthe population ofMarseilles most in sight; eager to profit by whatever occurs, easily won over, active through its necessities, flocking everywhere, and appearing very numerous....Thepatriot Escalon had twenty rations a day; Fe´ri, the journalist, had six, etc....Civil officers and district commissioners still belong, for the most part, to that class ofmen which the Revolution had accustomed to live without work, to making those who shared their principles the beneficiaries ofthe nation’s favors, and finally, to receiving contributions from gambling hells and brothels. These commissioners give notice to exclusives, and even blacklegs, when warrants against them are to be enforced.” 544 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION the Archipelago, and ofBarbary, accumulates and ferments; 3 no wonder that, in such a time, the reign ofthe populace should be established there sooner than elsewhere.4—After many an explosion, this reign is inaugurated August 17, 1790, by the removal ofM. Lieutaud, a sort ofbourgeois, moderate Lafayette, who commands the National Guard. Around him rally a majority ofthe population, all men “honest or not, who have anything to lose.” After he is driven out, then proscribed, then imprisoned, they resign themselves, and Marseilles belongs to the low class, consisting of40,000 needy adventurers ofwhich the club is the leader. The better to ensure their empire, the municipality, one month after the expulsion of M. Lieutaud, declared every citizen “active” who had any trade or profession;5 the consequence is that vagabonds attend the meetings ofthe sections in contempt ofconstitutional law. As an offset to this, property-owners and commercial men withdrew from them, which was wise on their part, for the usual demagogical machinery is set in motion without delay. “Each section-assembly is composed ofa dozen factiousspirits, members ofthe club, who drive out honest people by displaying cudgels and bayonets. The proceedings are arranged beforehand at the club, in concert with the municipality, and woe to him who refuses to adopt them at the meeting! They go so far as to threaten citizens who wish to make any remarks with instant burial in the cellars under the churches.”6 The argument proved irresistible: “the worthiest and most numerous

3. Blanc-Gilly, “Re´veil d’alarme d’un de´pute´ de Marseilles” (cited in the “Memoirs” ofBarbaroux, 40, 41). Blanc-Gilly must have been acquainted with these characters, inasmuch as he made use ofthem in the August riot, 1789, and for which he was indicted.—Cf. Fabre, “Histoire de Marseilles,” II. 422. 4. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,197. Correspondence ofMessrs. Debourge, Gay, and Laffite, commissioners sent to Provence to restore order in accordance with an act ofthe National Assembly. Letter ofMay 10, 1791, and passim. 5. Mayor Martin, says Juste, was a sort ofPe´tion, weak and vain.—Bar- baroux, clerk ofthe municipality, is the principal opponent ofM. Lieutaud.— The municipal decree referred to is dated Sept. 10, 1790. 6. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,197. Letters ofthree commissioners, April 13, 17, 18, and May 10, 1791. The Jacobin Conquest / 545 class is so frightened and so timid” that not one of the oppressed dare attend these meetings, unless protected by public force. “More than 80,000 inhabitants do not sleep tranquilly,” while political rights generally are vested in “five or six hundred individuals,” legally disqualified. Behind them marches the armed rabble, “the horde of brigands without a country,”7 always ready for plundering, murder, and hanging. In front of them march the local authorities, who, elected through their influence, carry on the administration under their guidance. Patrons and clients, members ofthe club and its satellites, they form a league which plays the part of a sovereign State, scarcely recognising, even in words, the authority ofthe central government.8 The decree by which the National Assembly gives full power to the Commissioners to re-establish order is denounced as ple´beícide; these conscientious and cautious moderators are qualified as “dictators”; they are denounced in circular letters to all the municipalities ofthe department, and to all Jacobin clubs throughout the kingdom;9 the club is somewhat disposed to go to Aix to cut off their heads and send them in a trunk to the president ofthe National Assembly, with a threat that the same penalty awaits himselfand all the deputies ifthey do not revoke their recent decrees; a fewdays after this, four sections draw up an act before a notary, stating the measures they had taken towards sending an army of6,000 men from Marseilles to Aix, to get rid of the three intruders. The com-

7. Blanc-Gilly, “Re´veil d’Alarme.” Ibid., “Every time that the national guard marched outside the city walls, the horde ofhomeless brigands never failed to close up in their rear and carry devastation wherever they went.” 8. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,197. Correspondence ofthe three commissioners, letter ofMay 10, 1791. “The municipality ofMarseilles obeys only the decrees it pleases, and, for eighteen months, has not paid a cent into the city treasury.”—Proclamation ofApril 13.—Letters ofApril 13 and 18. 9. “Archives Nationales,” letter ofthe municipal officers ofMarseilles to the minister, June 11, 1791.—They demand the recall ofthe three commissioners, one oftheir arguments being as follows: “In China, every mandarin against whom public opinion is excited is dismissed from his place; he is regarded as an ignorant instructor, who is incapable ofgaining the love ofchildren fortheir parent.” 546 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION missioners dare not enter Marseilles, where “gibbets are ready for them, and a price set on their heads.” It is as much as they can do to rescue from the faction M. Lieutaud and his friends, who, accused of le`se-nation, confined without a shadow ofproof,treated like mad dogs, put in chains,10 shut up in privies and holes, and obliged to drink their own urine for lack of water, impelled by despair to the brink ofsuicide, barely escape murder a dozen times in the court- room and in prison.11 Against the decree ofthe National Assembly ordering their release, the municipality makes reclamations, con- trives delays, resists, and finally stirs up its usual instruments. Just as the prisoners are about to be released a crowd of“armed persons without uniform or officer,” constantly increased “by vagabonds and foreigners,” gathers on the heights overlooking the Palais de Justice, and makes ready to fire on M. Lieutaud. Summoned to proclaim martial law, the municipality refuses, declaring that “the general detestation ofthe accused is too manifest”;it demands the return of

10. “Archives Nationales,” letter ofthe commissioners, May 25, 1791. “It is evident, on recording the proceedings at Aix and Marseilles, that only the accusers and the judges were guilty.”—Petition ofthe prisoners, Feb. 1. “The municipality, in despair ofour innocence, and not knowing how to justifyits conduct, is trying to buy up witnesses. They say openly that it is better to sacrifice one innocent man than disgrace a whole body. Such are the speeches ofthe sieur Rebecqui, leading man, and ofMadame Elliou, wifeofa municipal officer, in the house ofthe sieur Rousset.” 11. Letter ofM. Lieutaud to the commissioners, May 11 and 18, 1791. “IfI have not fallen under the assassin’s dagger, I owe my preservation to your strict orders and to the good behavior ofthe national guard and the regular troops .... At the hearing ofthe case to-day, the prosecutor on the part ofthe commune ventured to threaten the court with popular opinion and its avenging fury.... The people, stirred up against us, and brought there, shouted, ‘Let us seize Lieutaud and take him there by force, and if he will not go up the steps, we will cut his head off!’ The hall leading to the court-room and the stairways were filled with barefooted vagabonds.”—Letter of Cabrol, commander of the national guard, and ofthe municipal officers to the commissioners, May 21. “That picket-guard offiftymen on the great square, is it not rather the cause ofa riot than the means ofpreventing one? A requisition to send fournational guards inside the prison, to remain there day and night, is it not insulting citizen soldiers, whose function it is to see that the laws are maintained, and not to do jail duty?” The Jacobin Conquest / 547 the Swiss regiment to its barracks, and that the prisoners remain where they are; the only thing which it grants them is a secret permission to escape, as ifthey were guilty; they, accordingly, steal away clandestinely and in disguise.12—The Swiss regiment, however, which prevents the magistrates from violating the law, must pay for its insolence, and, as it is incorruptible, they conclude to drive it out ofthe town. For fourmonths the municipality multiplies against it every kind ofannoyance, 13 and, on the 16th ofOctober, 1791, the Jacobins provoke a row in the theatre against its officers. The same night, outside the theatre, four of these are assailed by armed bands; the post to which they retreat is nearly taken by assault; they are led to a prison for safety, and there they still remain five days afterwards, “although their innocence is admitted.” Mean- while, to ensure “public tranquillity,” the municipality has required the commander ofthe post to immediately replace the Swiss Guard with National Guards on all the military posts; the latter yields to force, while the useless regiment, insulted and threatened, has nothing to do but to pack off.14 This being done, the new municipality, still more Jacobin than the old one,15 separates Marseilles from France, erects the city into a marauding republican government, gets up expeditions, levies contributions, forms alliances, and undertakes an armed conquest ofthe department.

II The ﬁrst thing is to lay its hand on the capital, Aix, where the Swiss regiment is stationed in garrison and where the superior authorities are installed. This operation is the more necessary inasmuch as the

12. Letter ofM. d’Olivier, lieutenant-colonel ofthe Ernest regiment, May 28.—Extracts from the papers of the secretary to the municipality, May 28 (Barbaroux is the clerk).—Letter ofthe commissioners, May 29. 13. Letter ofthe commissioners, June 29. 14. Letter ofM. Laroque-Dourdan, naval commander at Marseilles, Oct. 18, 1791 (in relation to the departure ofthe Swiss regiment). “All property-owners tremble at this change.” 15. The elections are held on the 13th ofNovember, 1791. Martin, the former mayor, showed timidity, and Mouraille was elected in his place. 548 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Directory ofthe department loudly commends the loyalty ofthe Swiss Guard and takes occasion to remind the Marseilles municipality ofthe respect due to the law. Such a remonstrance is an insult, and the municipality, in a haughty tone, calls upon the Directory to avow or disavow its letter; “ifyou did not write it, it is a foulreport which it is our duty to examine into, and ifyou did, it is a declaration ofwar made by you against Marseilles.” 16 The Directory, in polite terms and with great circumspection, aﬃrms both its right and its utterance, and remarks that “the pro-rata list oftaxes ofMarseilles for 1791 is not yet reported”; that the municipality is much more concerned with saving the State than with paying its contribution and, in short, it maintains its censure.—Ifit will not bend it must break, and on the 4th ofFebruary, 1792, the municipality sends Barbaroux, its secretary, to Paris, that he may palliate the outrages for which they are preparing. During the night of the 25–26, the drums beat the general alarm, and three or four thousand men gather and march to Aix with six pieces ofcannon. As a precaution they pretend to have no leaders, no captains or lieutenants or even corporals; to quote them, all are equal, all volunteers, each being summoned by the other; in this fashion, as all are responsible, no one is.17 They reach Aix at eleven o’clock in the forenoon, ﬁnd a gate open through the connivance ofthose in league with them among

16. Letter (printed) ofthe Directory to the Minister ofWar, Jan. 4, 1792.— Letter ofthe municipality ofMarseilles to the Directory, Jan. 4, and the Direc- tory’s reply.—Barbaroux, “Me´moires,” 19.—Here we see the part played by Barbaroux at Marseilles. Guadet played a similar part at Bordeaux. This early political period is essential for a comprehension of the Girondists. 17. F7, 3,195. Official report ofthe municipality ofAix (on the events of Feb. 26). March 1.—Letter ofM. Villardy, president ofthe directory, dated Avignon, March 10. (He barely escaped assassination at Aix.)—Ibid., F7, 3,196. Report ofthe district administrators ofArles, Feb. 28 (according to private letters from Aix and Marseilles).—Barbaroux, “Me´moires” (collection ofBer- ville and Barrie`re), 106. (Narrative ofM. de Watteville, major in the Ernest regiment. Ibid., 108 (Memorial ofM. de Barbantane, commanding general). These two documents show the liberalism, want ofvigor, and the usual indecision ofthe superior authorities, especially the military authorities.— Mercure de France, March 24, 1792 (letters from Aix). The Jacobin Conquest / 549 the populace ofthe town and its suburbs, and summon the municipality to surrender the sentinels. In the mean time their emissaries have announced in the neighboring villages that the town was menaced by the Swiss regiment; consequently four hundred men from Aubagne arrive in haste, while from hour to hour the National Guards from the surrounding villages likewise rush in. The streets are full of armed men; shouts arise and the tumult increases; the municipal body, in the universal panic, loses its wits. This body is afraid of a nocturnal fight “between troops of the line, citizens, National Guards and armed strangers, no one being able to recognise one another or know who is an enemy.” It sends back a detachment ofthree hundred and fiftySwiss Guards, which the Di- rectory had ordered to its support, and consigns the regiment to its quarters.—At this the Directory takes to flight. Military sentinels of all kinds are disarmed while the Marseilles throng, turning its advantages to account, announces to the municipality at two o’clock in the morning that, “allow it or not” it is going to attack the barracks immediately; in fact, cannon are planted, a few shots are fired, a sentinel killed, and the hemmed-in regiment is compelled to evacuate the town, the men without their guns and the officers without their swords. Their arms are stolen, the people seize the suspected, the lantern is hauled down and the noose is made ready. Cayol, the flower-girl, is hung. The municipality, with great difficulty, saves one man who is already lifted by the rope two feet from the ground, and obtains for three others “a temporary refuge” in prison. Henceforth there is no authority at the department head-quarters, or rather it has changed hands. Another Directory, more pliable, is installed in the place ofthe fugitive Directory. Ofthe thirty-six administrators who form the Council only twelve are present at the election. Ofthe nine elected only six consent to sit, while oftenonly three are found at its sessions, which three, to recruit their colleagues, are obliged to pay them.18 Hence, notwithstanding their

18. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,196. Despatches ofthe new Directory to 550 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION position is the best in the department, they are worse treated and more unfortunate than their servants outside. The delegates of the club, with the municipal officers ofMarseilles seated alongside of them, oblige them either to keep silent, or to utter what they dictate to them.19 “Our arms are tied,” writes one ofthem, “we are wholly under the yoke” ofthese intruders. “We have twice in succession seen more than three hundred men, many ofthem with guns and pistols, enter the hall and threaten us with death ifwe refusedthem what they asked. We have seen infuriate motionnaires, nearly all belonging to Avignon, mount the desks ofthe Directory, harangue their comrades and excite them to rioting and crime.” “You must decide between life or death,” they exclaimed to us, “you have only a quarter ofan hour to choose.” “National guards have offered their sabres through the windows, left open on account of the extreme heat, to those around us and made signs to them to cut our throats.”—Thus fashioned, reduced and drilled, the Directory is simply an instrument in the hands ofthe Marseilles demagogues. Camoı¨n, Bertin and Rebecqui, the worst agitators and usurpers, rule there without control. Rebecqui and Bertin, appointed delegates in connection with matters in Arles, have themselves empowered to call for defensive troops; they immediately demand them for attack, the Minister, March 24 and April 4, 1792. “Since the departure ofthe Directory, our administrative assembly is composed ofonly six members, notwithstanding our repeated summons to every member ofthe Council ....Only three members ofthe Council consent to act with us; the reason is a lack ofpecuniary means.” The new Directory, consequently, passes a resolution to indemnify members ofthe Council. This, indeed, is contrary to a royal proclamation of Jan. 15; but “this proclamation was wrested from the King, on account of his firm faith. You must be aware that, in a free nation, the influence of a citizen on his government must not be estimated by his fortune; such a principle is false, and destructive of equality of rights. We trust that the King will consent to revoke his proclamation.” 19. Letters ofBorelly, vice-president ofthe Directory, to the Minister, April 10, 17, and 30, 1792.—Letter from another administrator, March 10. “They absolutely want us to march against Arles, and to force us to give the order.”— Ibid., F7, 3,195. Letters from Aix, March 13 and 16, addressed to M. Verdet. The Jacobin Conquest / 551 to which the Directory vainly remonstrates; they declare to it that “not being under its inspection, it has no authority over them; being independent ofit, they have no orders to receive from it nor to render to it any account oftheir conduct.” So much the worse for the Directory on attempting to revoke their powers. Bertin informs its vice-president that, ifit dares do this he will cut off his head. They reply to the Minister’s observations with the utmost insolence.20 They glory in the boldness ofthe stroke and prepare another, their march on Aix being only the first halt in the long-meditated campaign which involves the possession ofArles. III No city, indeed, is more odious to them.—For two years, led or pushed on by its mayor, M. d’Antonelle, it has marched along with them or been dragged along in their wake. D’Antonelle, an ultra- revolutionist, repeatedly visited and personally encouraged the bandits ofAvignon. To supply them with cannon and ammunition he stripped the Tour St. Louis ofits artillery, at the risk ofabandoning the mouths ofthe Rhone to the Barbary corsairs. 21 In concert with his allies ofthe Comtat, the Marseilles club, and his tools taken from the neighboring boroughs, he rules in Arles “by terror,” while three hundred men recruited in the vicinity ofthe Mint, mechanics or sailors with strong arms and hard hands, serve him as satellites. On the 6th ofJune 1791, they drive away, on their own authority, the

20. Letter ofthe administrators ofthe department Council to the Minister, March 10. “The Council ofthe administration is surprised, sir, at the false impressions given you ofthe city ofMarseilles; it should be regarded as the patriotic buckler ofthe department ....Ifthepeople ofParis did not wait for orders to destroy the Bastille and begin the Revolution, can you wonder that in this fiery climate the impatience ofgood citizens should make them anticipate legal orders, or that they cannot comply with the slow forms of justice when their personal safety and the safety of the country is in peril?” 21. F7, 3,197. Despatches ofthe three commissioners, passim, and especially those ofMay 11, June 10 and 19, 1791 (on affairs in Arles). “The property- owners were a long time subject to oppression. A few of the factions maintained a reign ofterror over honest folks, who trembled in secret.” 552 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION unsworn priests, who had taken refuge in the town.22—At this, however, the “property-owners and honest folks,” much more numerous and for a long time highly indignant, raise their heads; twelve hundred ofthem, assembled in the church ofSaint-Honorat, “swore to maintain the constitution and public tranquillity,”23 and betook themselves to the club, where, in conformity with its by-laws, they force their way in en masse, as national guards and active citizens. At the same time, acting in concert with the municipality, they reorganise the National Guard and form fresh companies, the effect of which is to put an end to the Mint band, thus depriving the faction of all its strength. Thenceforth, without violence or illegal acts, the majority ofthe club, as well as ofthe National Guard, consists of constitutional monarchists, the elections ofNovember, 1791, giving to the partisans oforder nearly all the administrative offices ofthe commune and ofthe district. M. Loys, a physician and a man of energy, is elected mayor in the place ofM. d’Antonelle; he is known as able to suppress a riot, “holding martial law in one hand, and his sabre in the other.”—This is more than can be endured. “To atone for the disgrace of having founded it,” Marseilles has now to bring Arles under subjection.24 In this land ofancient cities political hostility is tinctured with old municipal animosities, similar to those of Thebes against Plataea, ofRome against Veii, ofFlorence against Pisa. The Guelphs ofMarseilles brooded over the one idea ofcrush-

22. Despatch ofthe commissioners, June 19: “One ofthe Mint gang causes notes to be publicly distributed (addressed to the unsworn) in these words: ‘If you do not “skedaddle” (using a parallel Americanism—TR.), you will have to deal with the Mint Company.’” 23. F7, 3,198. Narration (printed) ofwhat occurred at Arles, June 9 and 10, 1791.—Despatch ofM. Ripert, royal commissioner, Aug. 5, 1791.—F 7, 3,197. Despatch ofthe three commissioners, June 19. “Since then, many ofthe farm laborers have taken the same oath. This class ofcitizens is that which most eagerly desires a return to order.”—Other despatches from the same, Oct. 24 and 29, and Dec. 14, 1791. Cf. “The French Revolution,” I. 301, 302. 24. F7, 3,196. Despatch ofthe members ofthe Directory ofArles and the municipal officers to the Minister, March 3, 1792 (with a printed diatribe ofthe Marseilles municipality). The Jacobin Conquest / 553 ing the Ghibellins ofArles.—Already, in the electoral assembly of November, 1791, M. d’Antonelle, the president, had invited the communes ofthe department to take up arms against this anti-jacobin city;25 six hundred Marseilles volunteers set out on the instant, install themselves at Salon, seize the syndic-attorney ofthe inimical district, and refuse to give him up, this being an advance-guard of 4,000 men promised by the forty or fifty clubs of the party.26 To arrest their operations requires the orders ofthe three commissioners, resolutions passed by the Directory still intact, royal proclamations, a decree ofthe Constituent Assembly, the firmness ofthe still loyal troops and the firmer stand taken by the Arlesians who, putting down an insurrection ofthe Mint band, had repaired their ramparts, cut away their bridges and mounted guard with their guns loaded.27 But it is only a postponement. Now that the commissioners have gone, and the king’s authority a phantom, now that the last loyal regiment is disarmed, the terrified Directory recast and obeying like a servant, with the Legislative Assembly allowing everywhere the oppression ofthe Constitutionalists by the Jacobins, a freshJacobin expedition may be started against the Constitutionalists with impunity, and ac-

25. F7, 3,198. Despatches ofthe procureur-syndic ofthe department to the Minister, Aix, Sept. 14, 15, 20, and 23, 1791. The electoral assembly declared itselfpermanent, the constitutional authorities being fetteredand unrecognised.—Despatch ofthe members ofthe military bureau and correspondence with the Minister, Arles, Sept. 17, 1791. 26. Despatch ofthe commandant ofthe Marseilles detachment to the Di- rectory ofthe department, Sept. 22, 1791: “I feelthat our proceedings are not exactly legal, but I thought it prudent to acquiesce in the general desire ofthe battalion.” 27. Official report ofthe municipal officers ofArles on the insurrection of the Mint band, Sept. 2, 1791.—Despatch ofRipert, royal commissioner, Oct. 2 and 8.—Letter ofM. d’Antonelle, to the Friends ofthe Constitution, Sept. 22. “I cannot believe in the counter-orders with which we are threatened. Such a decision in the present crisis would be too inhuman and dangerous. Our co- workers, who have had the courage to devote themselves to the new law, would be deprived oftheir bread and shelter ....Theking’s proclamation has all the appearance ofhaving been hastily prepared, and every sign ofhaving been secured unawares.” 554 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION cordingly, on the 23d ofMarch, 1792, the Marseilles army of4,500 men sets out on its march with nineteen pieces ofcannon. In vain the commissioners ofthe neighboring departments, sent by the Minister, represent to them that Arles submits, that she has laid down her arms, and that the town is now garrisoned with troops ofthe line—the Marseilles army requires the withdrawal ofthis garrison.—In vain the garrison departs. Rebecqui and his acolytes reply that “nothing will divert them from their enterprise; they cannot defer to anybody’s decision but their own in relation to any precaution tending to ensure the safety of the southern departments.”—In vain the Minister renews his injunctions and counter- orders. The Directory replies with a flagrant falsehood, stating that it is ignorant ofthe affair and refusesto give the government any assistance.—In vain M. de Wittgenstein, commander-in-chiefin the south, offers his services to the Directory to repel the invaders. The Directory forbids him to take his troops into the territory of the department.28—Meanwhile, on the 29th ofMarch, the Marseilles army effects a breach with its cannon in the walls ofdefenceless Arles; its fortifications are demolished and a tax of 1,400,000 francs is levied on the owners ofproperty. In contempt ofthe National Assembly’s decree the Mint band, the longshoremen, the whole of the vilest class again take up their arms and tyrannise over the disarmed population. Although “the King’s commissioner and most ofthe judges have fled, jury examinations are instituted against absentees,” the juries consisting ofthe members ofthe Mint band. 29

28. De Dammartin (an eye-witness), II. 60–70.—“Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,196.—Despatch ofthe two delegated commissioners to the Minister, Nismes, March 25, 1792.—Letter ofM. Wittgenstein to the Directory ofthe Bouches-du-Rhoˆne, April 4, 1792.—Reply and act passed by the Directory, April 5.—Report ofBertin and Rebecqui to the administrators ofthe department, April 3.—Moniteur, XII. 379. Report ofthe Minister ofthe Interior to the National Assembly, April 4. 29. Moniteur, XII. 80, 81 (session ofMay 16). Petition ofM. Fossin, deputy from Arles.—“Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,196. Petition ofthe Arlesians to the Minister, June 28.—Despatches ofM. Lombard, provisional royal commis- The Jacobin Conquest / 555

The conquerors imprison, smite and slaughter as they please. Count- less peaceable individuals are struck down and mauled, dragged to prison and many ofthem are mortally wounded; one old soldier, eighty years ofage, forthree months on the retired list in his country home, dies after twenty days’ confinement in a dungeon, from a blow received in the stomach by a gun-stock; women are flogged; “all citizens that are at all interested in the execution ofthe laws,” nearly four thousand families, have emigrated; their houses in town and in the country are pillaged, while in the surrounding boroughs, along the road leading from Arles to Marseilles, the villains forming the kernel ofthe Marseilles army, rove about and gorge themselves as in a vanquished country.30 They eat and drink voraciously, break into clothes-presses, carry off linen and food, steal horses and valuables, break furniture to pieces, tear up books, and burn papers.31 All this is the just punishment ofaristocrats. Moreover, it is no more than right that patriots should be indemnified for their toil, and a few blows too many are not out ofplace in securing the rule ofthe right party.—For example, on the false report of order being disturbed at Chaˆteau- Renard, Bertin and Rebecqui send off a detachment ofmen, while the municipal body in uniform, followed by the National Guard, with music and flags, comes forth to meet and salute it. Without uttering a word ofwarning, the Marseilles troop fallsupon the sioner, Arles, July 6 and 10. “Neither persons nor property have been respected for three months by those who wear the mask of patriotism.” 30. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,196. Letter ofM. Borelly, vice-president of the Directory, to the Minister, Aix, April 30, 1792. “The course pursued by the sieurs Bertin and Rebecqui is the cause ofall the disorders committed in these unhappy districts....Their sole object is to levy contributions, as they did at Arles, to enrich themselves and render the Comtat-Venaisson desolate.” 31. “Archives Nationales,” deposition ofone ofthe keepers ofthe sieur Coye, a proprietor at Mouriez-les-Baux, April 4.—Petition ofPeyre, notary at Maussane, April 7.—Statement by Manson, a resident ofMouriez-les-Baux, March 27.—Petition ofAndrieu, March 30.—Letter ofthe municipality of Maussane, April 4: “They watch for a favorable opportunity to devastate property and especially country villas.” 556 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION corte´ge, strikes down the flags, disarms the National Guard, tears the epaulettes off the officers’ shoulders, drags the mayor to the ground by his scarf, pursues the counsellors, sword in hand, puts the mayor and syndic-attorney in arrest, and, during the night, sacks four dwellings, the whole under the direction of three Jacobins of the place under indictment for recent crimes or misdemeanors. Henceforth at Chaˆteau-Renard they will look twice before subjecting patriots to indictment.32 —At Ve´laux “the country house ofthe late seignior is sacked, and everything is carried away, even to the tiles and window-glass.” A troop oftwo hundred men “over-run the village, levy contributions, and put all citizens who are well-off under bonds for considerable sums.” Camoı¨n, the Marseilles chief, one ofthe new department administrators, who is in the neighborhood, lays his hand on everything that is fit to be taken, and, a few days after this, 30,000 francs are found in his carpet-bag.—These examples, under this natural inspiration, are followed by others, and the commotion spreads. In every borough or petty town the club profits by these acts to satiate its ambition, its greed, and its hatred. That ofApt appeals to its neighbors, whereupon 1,500 National Guards ofGordes, St. Saturnin, Gouls and Lacoste, with a thousand women and children supplied with clubs and scythes, arrive one morning before the town. On being asked by whose orders they come in this fashion, they reply, “by the orders which their patriotism has given them.” “The fanatics,” or partisans of the sworn priests, “are the cause oftheir journey”; the result is, “they want lodgings at the expense ofthe fanaticsonly,” which involves forthe latter and for the town three days’ sojourn, at a cost of 20,000 francs.33 They begin by breaking everything in the church ofthe

32. Claim ofthe national guard presented to the district administrators of Tarascon by the national guard ofChaˆteau-Renard, April 6.—Petition ofJuliat d’Eyguie`res, district administrator ofTarascon, April 2 (in relation to a requisition of30,000 francs by Camoı ¨n on the commune ofEyguie`res).—Letter of M. Borelly, April 30. “Bertin and Rebecqui have openly protected the infamous Camoı¨n, and have set him free.”—Moniteur, XII. 408. Petition ofM. Fossin, deputy from Arles. 33. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,195. Despatch ofM. Me´rard, royal com- The Jacobin Conquest / 557

Rećollets, and wall up its doors. They then expel unsworn ecclesiastics from the town, and disarm their partisans. The club of Apt, which is the sole authority, remains in session three days: “the municipal bodies in the vicinity appear before it, apologise for themselves, protest their civism, and ask as a favor that no detachment be sent to their places. Individuals are sent for to be interrogated”; several are proscribed, among whom are administrators, members ofthe court, and the syndic-attorney. A number ofcitizens have fled—the town is purged, while the same purging is pursued in numbers ofplaces in and out ofthe district. 34 It is, indeed, attractive business. It empties the purses ofthe ill-disposed, and fills the stomachs ofpatriots; it is agreeable to be well entertained, and especially at the expense ofone’s adversaries; the Jacobin is quite content to save the country through a round offeastings. Moreover, he has the satisfaction of playing king among his neighbors, and not only do they feed him for doing them this service, but, again, they pay him for it.35—All this is enlivening, and the expedition, which is a missioner at the district court ofApt, Apt, March 15, 1792 (with official report ofthe Apt municipality and debates ofthe district, March 13).—Letter ofM. Guillebert, syndic-attorney ofthe district, March 5. (He has fled.)—Despatches ofthe district Directory, March 23 and 28. “It must not be supposed fora moment that either the court or the juge-de-paix will take the least notice of this circumstance. One step in this direction would, in a week, bring 10,000 men on our hands.” 34. Letter ofthe district Directory ofApt, March 28. “On the 26th ofMarch 600 armed men, belonging to the communes ofApt, Viens, Rustrel, etc., betook themselves to St.-Martin-de-Castillon and, under the pretence ofrestoring order, taxed the inhabitants, lodging and feeding themselves at their charge.”— The expeditions extend even to the neighboring departments, one ofthem, March 23, going to Sault, near Forcalquier, in the Upper-Alps. 35. F7, 3,195. On the demand ofa number ofpetitioning soldiers who went to Arles on the 22d ofMarch, 1792, the department administration passes an act (September, 1793) granting them each forty-five francs indemnity. There are 1,916 ofthem, which makes 86,200 francs “assessed on the goods and property ofindividuals forthe authors, abettors, and those guilty ofthe disturbances occasioned by the party ofChiffonists in the commune ofArles.” The municipality ofArles designates fifty-oneindividuals, who pay the 86,200 livres, plus 2,785 francs exchange, and 300 francs for the cost of sojourn and delays.— Petition ofthe ransomed, Nov. 21, 1792. 558 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

“sabbat,” ends in a carnival. Ofthe two Marseilles divisions, one, led back to Aix, sets down to “a grand patriotic feast,” and then dances fandangoes, of which “the principal one is led off by the mayor and commandant”;36 the other makes its entry into Avignon the same day, with still greater pomp and jollity. IV Such another nest ofbrigands does not exist in all France. It is not owing to a more savage jacquerie here, produced by a greater degree ofmisery; on the contrary, the Comtat, beforethe Revolution, was a land flowing with milk and honey. There was no taxation by the Pope; the taxes were very light, and were expended on the spot. “For one or two sols, one here could have meat, bread, and wine.”37 But, under the mild and corrupt administration ofthe Italian legates, the country had become “the safe asylum of all the rogues in France, Italy, and Genoa, who by means ofa trifling sum paid to the Pope’s agents, obtained protection and immunity.” Smugglers and receivers abounded here in order to break through the lines ofthe French customs. “Bands ofrobbers and assassins were formed, which the vigorous measures ofthe parliaments ofAix and Grenoble could not wholly extirpate. Idlers, libertines, professional gamblers,”38

36. F7, 3,165. Official report ofthe Directory on the events which occurred in Aix, April 27, 28, and 29, 1792. 37. Michelet, “Histoire de la Re´volution Française,” III. 56 (according to the narratives ofaged peasants).— Mercure de France, April 30, 1791 (letter from an inhabitant ofthe Comtat).—All public dues put together ( octrois and interest on the debt) did not go beyond 800,000 francs for 126,684 inhabitants. On the contrary, united with France, it would pay 3,793,000 francs.—Andre´, “Histoire de la Re´volution Avignonaise,” I. 61.—The Comtat possessed representative institutions, an armed general assembly, composed ofthree bishops, the elected representative ofthe nobility, and thirteen consuls ofthe leading towns.— Mercure de France, Oct. 15, 1791 (letter from a Comtadin).—There were no bodies ofmilitia in the Comtat; the privileges ofnobles were oflittle account. Nobody had the exclusive right to hunt or fish, while people without property could own guns and hunt anywhere. 38. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,273. Letter ofM. Pelet de la Loze`re, prefect ofVaucluse, to the Minister, year VIII. Germinal 30.— Ibid., DXXIV. 3. Letter The Jacobin Conquest / 559 kept-sigisbe´s, intriguers, parasites, and adventurers, elbow men with branded shoulders, the veterans ofvice and crime, “the scapegraces ofthe Toulon and Marseilles galleys.” Ferocity here is hidden in debauchery, like a serpent hidden in its own slime, the opportunity being only needed to transform this haunt of licentiousness into a den ofcut-throats. The Jacobin leaders, Tournal, Rove`re, the two Duprats, the two Mainvielles, and Lećuyer, readily obtain recruits in this sink.—At first, aided by the rabble ofthe town and ofits purlieus, peasants hating the octroi, vagabonds opposed to order ofany kind, porters and watermen armed with scythes, turnspits and clubs, they excite seven or eight riots, drive off the legate, force the Councils to resign, hang the chiefs of the National Guard and of the conservative party,39 and take possession ofthe municipal offices.—Afterthis their band increases to the dimensions ofan army, which, with license forits countersign and pillage for its pay, is the same as that of Tilly and Wallenstein, “a veritable roving Sodom, at which the ancient city would have stood aghast.” Out of3,000 men, only 200 belong in ofM. Mulot, one ofthe mediating commissioners, to the Minister, Oct. 10, 1791. “What a country you have sent me to! It is the land ofduplicity. Italianism has struck its roots deep here, and I fear that they are very lively.” 39. The details ofthese occurrences may be foundin Andre ´ and in Soulier, “Histoire de la Re´volution Avignonaise.” The murder oftheir seven principal opponents, gentlemen, priests, and artisans, took place June 11, 1790.—“Ar- chives Nationales,” DXXIV. 3. The starting-point ofthe riots is the hostility ofthe Jansenist Camus, deputy to the Constituent Assembly. Several letters, beginning with April, 1790, may be found in this file, addressed to him from the leading Jacobins ofAvignon, Mainvielle, Raphel, Richard, and the rest, and among others the following (July, 1790): “Do not abandon your work, we entreat you. You, sir, were the first to inspire us with a desire to be free and to demand our right to unite with a generous nation, from which we have been severed by fraud.”—As to the political means and enticements, these are always the same. Cf., for instance, this letter of a prote´ge´, in Avignon, ofCamus, addressed to him July 13, 1791: “I have just obtained from the commune the use ofa room inside the Palace, where I can carry on my tavern business .... My fortune is based on your kindness....What a distance between you and myself!” 560 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Avignon; the rest are composed ofFrench deserters, smugglers, fugitives from justice, vagrant foreigners, marauders and malefactors, who, scenting a prey, come from afar, and even from Paris;40 along with them march the women belonging to them, still more foul and sanguinary. In order to make it perfectly plain that with them murder and robbery are the order ofthe day, they massacred their first general, Patrix, guilty ofhaving released a prisoner, and elected in his place an old highway tramp named Jourdan, condemned to death by the court at Valence, but who had escaped on the eve ofhis execution, and who bore the nickname of Coupe-teˆte, because he is said to have cut off the heads at Versailles oftwo ofthe King’s guards.41—Under such a commander the troop increases until it forms a body of five or six thousand men, which stops people in the streets and forcibly enrolls them; they are called Mandrins,42 which is severe for Mandrin, because their war is not merely on public

40. “Archives Nationales,” DXXIV. 3. Report on the events ofOct. 10, 1791.—Ibid., F7, 3,197. Letter ofthe three commissioners to the municipality ofAvignon, April 21, and to the Minister, May 14, 1791. “The deputies of Orange certify that there were at least 500 French deserters in the Avignon army.”—In the same reports, May 21 and June 8: “It is not to be admitted that enrolled brigands should establish in a small territory, surrounded by France on all sides, the most dangerous school ofbrigandage that ever disgraced or preyed upon the human species.”—Letter ofM. Villardy, president ofthe Di- rectory ofthe Bouches-du-Rhoˆne May 21. “More than two millions ofthe national property is exposed to pillage and total destruction by the new Man- drins who devastate this unfortunate country.”—Letter of Me´gle´, recruiting sergeant ofthe La Mark regiment, arrested along with two ofhis comrades. “The corps ofMandrins which arrested us set us at liberty....Wewere arrested because we refused to join them, and on our refusal we were daily threatened with the gallows.” 41. Mortimer-Ternaux, I. 379 (note on Jourdan, by Faure, deputy).—Bar- baroux, “Me´moires” (Ed. Dauban), 392. “After the death of Patrix a general had to be elected. Nobody wanted the place in an army that had just shown so great a lack ofdiscipline. Jourdan arose and declared that he was ready to accept the position. No reply was made. He nominated himself, and asked the soldiers ifthey wanted him forgeneral. One drunkard is agreeable to others; they applauded him, and he was thus proclaimed.” 42. After a famous brigand in Dauphiny, named Mandrin.—TR. The Jacobin Conquest / 561 persons and property, as his was, but on the possessions, the proprieties, and the lives ofprivate individuals. One detachment alone, at one time, extorts in Cavaillon 25,000 francs, in Baume 12,000, in Aubignon 15,000, in Pioline 4,800, while Caumont is taxed 2,000 francs a week. At Sarrians, where the mayor gives them the keys, they pillage houses from top to bottom, carry off their plunder in carts, set fire, violate and slay with all the refinements oftorture of so many Hurons. An old lady ofeighty, and a paralytic, is shot at arms length, and left weltering in her blood in the midst of the flames. A child five years ofage is cut in two, its mother decapitated, and its sister mutilated; they cut off the ears ofthe cure´, set them on his brow like a cockade, and then cut his throat, along with that ofa pig, and tear out the two hearts and dance around them. 43 After this, for fifty days around Carpentras, to which they lay siege in vain, the unprovoked, cruel instincts ofthe chauffeurs manifested at a later date, the anthropophagous desires which sometimes reappear in convicts, and the perverted and over-strained sensuality found in maniacs, have full play. On beholding the monster it has nourished, Avignon, in alarm, utters cries ofdistress. 44 But the brute, which feels its strength, turns

43. Cf. Andre´, passim, and Soulier, passim.—Mercure de France, June 4, 1791.—“Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,197. Letter ofMadame de Gabrielli, March 14, 1791. (Her house is pillaged Jan. 10, and she and her maid escape by the roof.)—Report of the municipal officers of Tarascon, May 22. “The troop which has entered the district pillages everything it can lay its hands on.”—Letter of the syndic-attorney ofOrange, May 22. “Last Wednesday, a little girl ten years ofage, on her way from Cha ˆteauneufto Courtheson, was violated by one of them, and the poor child is almost dead.”—Despatch ofthe three commissioners to the Minister, May 21. “It is now fully proved by men who are perfectly reliable that the pretended patriots, said to have acted so gloriously at Sarrians, are cannibals equally execrated both at Avignon and Carpentras.” 44. “Archives Nationales,” letter ofthe Directory ofthe Bouches-du-Rhoˆne, May 21, 1791.—Deliberations ofthe Avignon municipality, associated with the notables and the military committee, May 15: “The enormous expense attending the pay and food for the detachments . . . forced contributions....What is most revolting is, that those who are charged with the duty arbitrarily tax the inhabitants, according as they are deemed bad or good patriots....The 562 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION against its former abettors, shows its teeth, and exacts its daily food. Ruined or not, Avignon must furnish its quota. “In the electoral assembly, Mainvielle the younger, elected elector, although he is only twenty-two, draws two pistols from his belt and struts around with a threatening air.”45 Duprat, the president, the better to master his colleagues, proposes to them to leave Avignon and go to Sorgues, which they refuse to do; upon this he orders cannon to be brought, promises to pay those who will accompany him, drags along the timid, and denounces the rest before an upper national court, of which he himselfhas designated the members. Twenty ofthe electors thus denounced are condemned and proscribed; Duprat threatens to enter by force and have them executed on the spot, and, under his leadership, the army ofMandrins advances against Avignon.—Its progress is arrested, and, for two months, restrained by the two mediating commissioners for France; they reduce its numbers, and it is on the point ofbeing disbanded, when the brute again boldly seizes its prey, about to make its escape. On the 21st ofAugust, Jourdan, with his herd ofmiscreants, obtains possession ofthe palace. The municipal body is driven out, the mayor escapes in disguise, Tissot, the secretary, is cut down, four municipal officers and forty other persons are thrown into prison, while a number ofhouses belonging to the fugitives and to priests are pillaged, and thus supply the bandits with their first financial returns.46—Then begins the great fiscal operation which is going to fill their pockets. Five men of straw, chosen by Duprat and his associates, compose, with Lećuyer municipality, the military committee, and the club ofthe Friends ofthe Con- stitution dared to make a protest: the proscription against them is their recompense for their attachment to the French constitution.” 45. Letter ofM. Boulet, formerly physician in the French military hospitals and member ofthe electoral assembly, May 21. 46. “Archives Nationales,” DXXIV. 16–23, No. 3. Narrative ofwhat took place yesterday, August 21, in the town ofAvignon.—Letters by the mayor, Richard, and two others, Aug. 21.—Letter to the president ofthe National Assembly, Aug. 22 (with five signatures, in the name of200 familiesthat had taken refuge in the Ile de la Bartelasse). The Jacobin Conquest / 563 as secretary, a provisional municipal body, which, taxing the town 300,000 francs and suppressing the convents, offers the spoils of the churches for sale. The bells are taken down, and the hammers of the workmen engaged in breaking them to pieces are heard all day long. A strong-box full of plate, diamonds, and gold crosses, left with the director ofthe Mont-de-Pie´te´, on deposit, is taken and carried off to the commune; a report is spread that the valuables pawned by the poor had been stolen by the municipality, and that those “robbers had already sent away eighteen trunks full of them.” Upon this the women, exasperated at the bare walls ofthe churches, together with the laborers in want ofwork or bread, all the common class, become furious, assemble of their own accord in the church ofthe Cordeliers, summon Lećuyer to appear before them, drag him from the pulpit and massacre him.47 This time there seems to be an end ofthe brigand party, forthe entire town, the populace and the better class, are against them, while the peasants in the country shoot them down wherever they come across them.—Terror, however, supplies the place ofnumbers, and, with the 350 bravos still left to them, the extreme Jacobins undertake to overcome a city of30,000 souls. Mainvielle the elder, dragging along two cannon, arrives with a patrol, fires at a venture into the already semi-abandoned church, and kills two men. Duprat

47. “Archives Nationales,” DXXIV. 3.—Letter ofM. Laverne, forM. Ca- nonge, keeper ofthe Mont-de-Pie´te´. (The electoral assembly ofVaucluse and the juge-de-paix had forbidden him to give this box into any other hands.)— Letters ofM. Mulot, mediating commissioner, Gentilly les Sorgues, Oct. 14, 15, 16, 1791.—Letter ofM. Laverne, mayor, and the municipal officers, Avignon, Jan. 6, 1792.—Statement ofevents occurring at Avignon, Oct. 16, 17, and 18 (without a signature, but written at once on the spot).—Official report ofthe provisional administrators ofAvignon, Oct. 16.—Certified copy ofthe notice found posted in Avignon in different places this day, Oct. 16 (probably written by one ofthe women ofthe lower class, and showing what the popular feeling was).—A letter written to M. Mulot, Oct. 13, already contains this phrase: “Finally, however little the delay in stopping their robberies and pillagings, misery and the miserable will still remain.”—Testimony ofJoseph Sauton, a chasseur in the paid guard ofAvignon, Oct. 17 (an eye-witness ofwhat passed at the Cordeliers). 564 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION assembles about thirty ofthe townspeople, imprisoned by him on the 31st ofAugust, and, in addition to these, about fortymechanics belonging to the Catholic brotherhoods, porters, bakers, coopers, and day-laborers, two peasants, a beggar, a few women seized haphazard and on vague denunciations, one ofthem, “because she spoke ill ofMadame Mainvielle.” Jourdan supplies the executioners; the apothecary Mende, brother-in-law ofDuprat, plies them with liquor, while a clerk ofTournal, the newsman, bids them “kill all, so that there shall be no witnesses left.” Whereupon, at the reiterated orders ofMainvielle, Tournal, Duprat, and Jourdan, with accompaniments ofindescribable lubricity, 48 the massacre develops itselfon the 16th ofOctober and following days, during sixty-six hours, the victims being a couple ofpriests, three children, an old man of eighty, thirteen women, two ofwhom are pregnant, in all, sixty-one persons, butchered, felled to the ground, and then cast on top of each other into the Glacie`re hole, a mother on the body ofher infant, a son on the body ofhis father, the hole being filled up with stones and covered over with quicklime on account ofthe odor. 49 In the mean time about a hundred more, killed in the streets, are pitched into the Sorgues canal; five hundred families take to flight. The scattered bandits return in a body, while the assassins who are at the head ofthem, enthroned by murder, organise forthe benefit oftheir new band a legal system ofbrigandage, against which nobody defends himself.50

48. Andre´, II. 62. Deposition ofla Ratapiole.—Death ofthe girl Ayme and ofMesdames Niel and Crouzet.—De Dammartin, II. 2. 49. “Archives Nationales,” Ibid., report on the events ofOct. 16. “Two sworn priests were killed, which proves that a counter-revolution had nothing to do with it....Sixofthemunicipal officers were assassinated. They had been elected according to the terms ofthe decree; they were the fruit ofthe popular will at the outbreak ofthe Revolution; they were accordingly patriots.”— Buchez et Roux, XII. 420.—Official report ofthe commune ofAvignon, on the events ofOct. 16. 50. “Archives Nationales,” DXXIV. 3. Despatches ofthe civil commissioners deputed by France (Messrs. Beauregard, Lecesne, and Champion) to the Minister, Jan. 8, 1792. (A long and admirable letter, in which the difference The Jacobin Conquest / 565

These are the friends of the Jacobins of Arles and Marseilles, the men ofgood-standing beforewhom M. d’Antonelle appears and makes a speech in the cathedral at Avignon.51 These are the pure patriots, who, with their hands in the till and their feet in gore, caught in the act by a French army, the mask torn off through a scrupulous investigation, universally condemned by the emancipated electors, also by the deliberate verdict ofthe new mediating commissioners,52 are comprehended in the amnesty proclaimed by the Legislative Assembly a month before their last crime.—The sovereigns ofthe Bouches-du-Rhoˆne, however, do not regard the release oftheir friendsand allies as a favor; something more than pardon and forgetfulness must be awarded to the murderers of the Glacie`re. On the 29th ofApril, 1792, Rebecqui and Bertin, the vanquishers ofArles, enter Avignon 53 along with a corte´ge, at the head of which are from thirty to forty of the principal murderers whom the Legislative Assembly itselfhad ordered to be recommitted to prison, Duprat, Mainvielle, Tournal, Mende, then Jourdan in the uniform of a commanding general crowned with laurel and seated between the two parties is exhibited, supported by facts, in refutation of the calumnies ofDuprat. The oppressed party is composed not ofroyalists, but of constitutionalists.) 51. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,177. Despatches ofthe three commissioners, April 27, May 4, 18, and 21. 52. Three hundred and thirty-five witnesses testified during the trial.—De Dammartin, I. 266. Entry ofthe French army into Avignon, Nov. 16, 1791. “All who were rich, except a very small number, had taken flight or perished. The best houses were all empty or closed.”—Elections for a new municipality were held Nov. 26, 1791. Out of2,287 active citizens, Mayor Levieux de Laverne obtains 2,227 votes, while the municipal officer lowest on the list, has 1,800. All are constitutionalists and conservatives. 53. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,196. Official report ofAugier and Fabre, administrators ofthe Bouches-du-Rhoˆne, Avignon, May 11, 1792.—Moniteur, XII. 313. Report ofthe Minister ofJustice, May 5.—XII. 324. Petition offorty inhabitants ofAvignon, May 7.—XII. 334. Official report ofPinet, commissioner ofthe Droˆme, sent to Avignon.—XII. 354 Report ofM. Chassaignac and other papers, May 10.—XI. 741 Letter ofthe civil commissioners, also of the Avignon municipality, March 23. 566 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION on a white horse, and lastly, the dames Duprat, Mainvielle and Tour- nal, in dashing style, standing on a sort oftriumphal chariot; during the procession the cry is heard, “The Glacie`re will be full this time!”—On their approach the public functionaries fly; twelve hundred persons abandon the town. Forthwith each terrorist, under the protection ofthe Marseilles bayonets, resumes his office, like a man at the head ofhis household. Raphel, the former judge, along with his clerk, both with warrants ofarrest against them, publicly officiate, while the relatives ofthe poor victims slain on the 16th of October, and the witnesses that appeared on the trial, are threatened in the streets; one ofthem is killed, and Jourdan, king ofthe department for an entire year, begins over again on a grand scale, at the head ofthe National Guard, and afterwardsofthe police body, the same performance which, on a small scale, he pursued under the ancient re´gime, when, with a dozen “armed and mounted” brigands, he traversed the highways, forced open lonely houses at night, and, in one chaˆteau alone, stole 24,000 francs.

V Thus is the Jacobin conquest eﬀected. Up to the 17th ofApril, 1792, through acts ofviolence almost equal to those we have just described, it spreads over more than twenty departments and, through less aggravated ones, over the other sixty.54 The composition ofthe

54. “The French Revolution,” Vol. I. pp. 344–352, on the sixth jacquerie, everywhere managed by the Jacobins. Two or three traits show its spirit and course ofaction. (“Archives Nationales,” F 7, 3,202. Letter ofthe Directory of the district ofAurillac, March 27, 1792, with official reports.) “On the 20th of March, about forty brigands, calling themselves patriots and friends of the constitution, force honest and worthy but very poor citizens in nine or ten of the houses ofCapelle-Viscamp to give them money, generally five francs each person, and sometimes ten, twenty, and forty francs.” Others tear down or pillage the chaˆteaux ofRouesque, Rode, Marcole`s, and Vitrac and drag the municipal officers along with them. “We, the mayor and municipal officers of the parish ofVitrac, held a meeting yesterday, March 22, following the example ofour neighboring parishes on the occasion ofthe demolition ofthe cha ˆteaux. We marched at the head ofour national guard and that ofSalvetat to the said The Jacobin Conquest / 567 parties is the same everywhere. On one side are the irresponsible of all conditions, “dissipators who, having consumed their own patrimony, cannot tolerate that ofanother, men without property to whom disorder is a door open to wealth and public office, the envious, the ungrateful whose obligations to their benefactors a day ofrevolution cancels, the hot-headed, all those enthusiastic innovators who preach reason with a dagger in their hand, the indigent, the brutal and the wretched ofthe lower class who, possessed by one leading anarchical idea, one example ofimmunity, with the law dumb and the sword in the scabbard, are stimulated to dare all things.” On the other side are the steady-going, peaceable class, minding their own business, commonplace in mind and sensibilities, “enervated by the habits arising from security and from constant contentment, surprised at any unforeseen disturbance and trying to find out what the matter is, separated from each other by diversity ofinterests, opposing only tact and caution to persevering audacity in defiance oflegitimate means, unable either to make up their mind or to remain inactive, perplexed over sacrifices just at the time when the enemy is going to render it impossible to make any in the future, in a word, bringing effeminacy and egoism to bear against the passions in their greatest freedom, against fierce poverty and hardened chaˆteau. We began by hoisting the national flag and to demolish....Thena- tional guard ofBoisset, eating and drinking without stint, entered the chaˆteau and behaved in the most brutal manner; for whatever they found in their way, whether clocks, mirrors, doors, clothes-presses, and finally documents, all were made way with. They even sent off forty of the men to a patriotic village in the vicinity. They forced the inmates of every house to give them money, and those who refused were threatened with death.” Besides this the national guard ofBoisset carried off the furniture ofthe cha ˆteau.—There is something burlesque in the conflicts ofthe municipalities with the Jacobin expeditions (letter ofthe municipal officers ofCottines to the Directory ofSt. Louis, March 26). “We are very glad to inform you that there is a crowd in our parish, amongst which are many belonging to neighboring parishes: and that they have visited the house of sieur Tossy and a sum ofmoney ofwhich we do not know the amount is demanded, and that they will not leave without that sum so that they can have something to live on, these people being assembled solely to maintain the constitution and give greater ećlat to the law.” 568 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION immorality.”55—The issue ofthe conflict is everywhere the same. In each town or canton an aggressive squad ofunscrupulous fanatics and resolute adventurers imposes its rule over a sheep-like majority which, accustomed to the regularity ofan old civilization, dares neither disturb order for the sake of putting an end to disorder, or get together a mob to put down another mob.—Everywhere the Jacobin principle is the same. “Your system,” says one ofthe department Directories to them,56 “is to act imperturbably on all occasions, even after a constitution is established, and the limitations to power are fixed, as ifthe empire would always be in a state of insurrection, as ifyou were clothed with a dictatorship essential for the city’s salvation, as ifyou were clothed with fullpower in the name ofpublic safety.”—Everywhere are Jacobin tactics the same. At the outset they assume to have a monopoly ofpatriotism and, through the brutal destruction ofother clubs, they are the only visible organ ofpublic opinion. The voice oftheir coterie, accordingly, seems to be the voice ofthe people; their control is established on that ofthe legal authories; they have taken the lead through

55. Mercure de France, numbers for Jan. 1 and 14, 1792 (articles by Mallet- Dupan).—“Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,185, 3,186. Letter ofthe president of the district ofLaon (Aisne) to the Minister, Feb. 8, 1792: “With respect to the nobles and priests, any mention ofthem as trying to sow discord among us is to desire to be frightened. All they ask is tranquillity and the regular payment oftheir pensions.”—De Dammartin, II. 63 (on the evacuation ofArles, April, 1792). On the illegal approach ofthe Marseilles army, M. de Dammartin, military commander, orders the Arlesians to rise in a body. Nobody comes forward. Wives hide away their husbands’ guns in the night. Only one hundred volunteers are found to act with the regular troops. 56. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,224. Speech ofM. St. Amans, vice- president ofthe Directory ofLot-et-Garonne, to the mayor ofTonneins, April 20; letter ofthe syndic-attorney-general to M. Roland, minister, April 22: “Ac- cording to the principles ofthe mayor ofTonneins, all resistance to him is aristocratic, his doctrine being that all property-owners are aristocrats. You can readily perceive, sir, that he is not one ofthem.”—Dubois, formerly a Bene- dictine and now a Protestant minister.—Act ofthe Directory against the municipality ofTonneins, April 13. The latter appeals to the Legislative Assembly. The mayor and one ofthe municipal counsellors appear in its name (May 19) at the bar ofthe Assembly. The Jacobin Conquest / 569 persistent and irresistible encroachments; their usurpation is consecrated by exemption from punishment. “Among all the agents, good or bad, constituted or not constituted, that alone governs which is inviolable. Now, the club, for a long time, has been too much accustomed to domineering, to annoying, to persecuting, to wreaking vengeance, for any local administration to regard it in any other light than as inviolable.”57 It accordingly governs and its indirect influence is promptly transformed into direct authority.—Voting alone, or almost alone, in the primary meetings, which are deserted or under constraint, the Jac- obins easily choose the municipal body and the officers ofthe Na- tional Guard.58 After this, through the mayor, who is their tool or their accomplice, they have the legal right to launch or arrest the entire armed force and they avail themselves of it.—Two obstacles still stand in their way. On the one hand, however conciliatory or timid the Directory ofthe district or department may be, elected as it is by electors ofthe second degree, it usually contains a fair proportion of well-informed men, comfortably off, interested in keeping order, and less inclined than the municipality to put up with gross violations ofthe law. Consequently they denounce it to the National Assembly as an unpatriotic and anti-revolutionary centre of“bourgeoise aristocracy.” Sometimes, as at Brest, 59 they shame-

57. “Archives Nationales,” F7 3,198. Letter ofM. Debourges, one ofthe three commissioners sent by the National Assembly and the king, Nov. 2, 1791 (apropos ofthe Marseilles club). “This club has quite recently obtained from the Directory ofthe department, on the most contemptible allegation, an order requiring ofM. de Coincy, lieutenant-general at Toulon, to send the admirable Ernest regiment out ofMarseilles, and M. de Coincy has yielded.” 58. For instance (Guillon de Montleón, “Me´moires pour servir a` l’histoire de Lyon,” I. 109), the general in command ofthe national guard ofthis large town in 1792 is Juillard, a poor silk-weaver ofthe faubourgofthe Grande Co ˆte, a former soldier. 59. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,215, affair ofPlabennec (very curious, showing the tyrannical spirit ofthe Jacobins and the good disposition at bottom ofthe Catholic peasantry).—The commune ofBrest despatches against that of Plabennec 400 men, with two cannon and commissioners chosen by the club.— Innumerable documents, among them: Petition of150 active citizens ofBrest, 570 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION fully disobey orders which are perfectly legal and proper, often repeated and strictly formal; afterward, still more shamefully, they demand ofthe Minister if,“placed in the cruel alternative ofgiving offence to the hierarchy ofpowers, or ofleaving the commonwealth in danger, they ought to hesitate.” Sometimes, as at Arras, they impose themselves illegally on the Directory in session and browbeat it so insolently as to make it a point ofhonor with the latter to solicit its own suspension.60 Sometimes, as at Figeac, they summon an administrator to their bar, keep him standing three-quarters of an hour, seize his papers and oblige him, for fear of something worse, to leave the town.61 Sometimes, as at Auch, they invade the Directory’s chambers, seize the administrators by the throat, pound them with their fists and clubs, drag the president by the hair, and, after a good deal of trouble, grant him his life.62—On the other hand, the gendarmerie and the troops brought for the suppression ofriots, are always in the way ofthose who stir up the rioters. Consequently, they expel, corrupt and, especially, purify the gendarmerie together with the troops. At Cahors they drive out a brigadier ofthe gendarmerie, “alleging that he keeps company with none

May 16, 1791. Deliberations ofthe council-general and commune ofBrest, May 17. Letter ofthe Directory ofthe district, May 17 (very eloquent). Deliberations ofthe municipality ofPlabennec, May 20. Letter ofthe municipality ofBrest to the Minister, May 21. Deliberations ofthe department Directory, June 13. 60. Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 376 (session ofthe Directory ofthe Pas-du- Calais, July 4, 1792). The petition, signed by 127 inhabitants ofArras, is presented to the Directory by Robespierre the younger and Geoffroy. The administrators are treated as impostors, conspirators, etc., while the president, listening to these refinements, says to his colleagues: “Gentlemen, let us sit down; we can attend to insults sitting as well as standing.” 61. “Archives Nationales,” F7 3,223. Letter ofM. Vale´ry, syndic-attorney ofthe department, April 4, 1792. 62. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,220. Extract from the deliberations of the department Directory and letter to the king, Jan. 28, 1792.—Letter ofM. La- fiteau, president ofthe Directory, Jan. 30. (The mob is composed offrom five to six hundred persons. The president is wounded on the forehead by a sword- cut and obliged to leave the town.) Feb. 20, following this, a deputy of the department denounces the Directory as unpatriotic. The Jacobin Conquest / 571 but aristocrats.”63 At Toulouse, without mentioning the lieutenant- colonel, whose life they threaten by anonymous letters and oblige to leave the town, they transfer the whole corps to another district under the pretence that “its principles are adverse to the Constitu- tion.”64 At Auch, and at Rennes, through the insubordination which they provoke among the men, they extort resignations from their officers. At Perpignan, by means ofa riot which they foment,they seize, beat and drag to prison, the commandant and staff whom they accuse “ofwanting to bombard the town with five pounds ofpow- der.”65—Meanwhile, through the jacquerie, which they let loose from the Dordogne to Aveyron, from Cantal to the Pyrenees and the Var, under the pretence ofpunishing the relatives of e´migre´s and the abettors ofunsworn priests, they create an army oftheir own made up ofrobbers and the needy who, in anticipation ofthe exploits of the coming revolutionary army, freely kill, burn, pillage, ransom and prey at large on the defenceless flock of proprietors of every class and degree.66

63. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,223. Letter ofM. de Riolle, colonel ofthe gendarmerie, Jan. 19, 1792.—“One hundred members ofthe club Friends of Liberty” come and request the brigadier’s discharge. On the following day, after a meeting ofthe same club, “fourhundred persons betake themselves to the barracks to send off or exterminate the brigadier.” 64. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,219. Letter ofM. Sainfal,Toulouse, March 4, 1792.—Letter ofthe department Directory, March 14. 65. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,229. Letter ofM. de Narbonne, minister, to his colleague M. Cahier, Feb. 3, 1792.—“The municipality ofAuch has persuaded the under-officers and soldiers ofthe 1st battalion that their chiefs were making preparation to withdraw.”—The same with the municipality and club ofthe Navarreins. “All the officers except three have been obliged to leave and send in their resignations.”—F7, 3,225. The same to the same, March 8.— The municipality ofRennes orders, the arrest ofCol. de Savignac, and four other officers. Mercure de France, Feb. 18, 1792. De Dammartin, I. 230; II. 70 (affairs ofLandau, Lanterbourg, and Avignon). 66. “The French Revolution,” I. 344 and following pages. Many other facts could be added to those cited in this volume.—“Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,219. Letter ofM. Neil, administrator ofHaute-Garonne, Feb. 27, 1792. “The constitutional priests and the club ofthe canton ofMontestruc suggested to the inhabitants that all the abettors ofunsworn priests and ofaristocrats should be 572 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

In this operation each club has its neighbors for allies, offering to them or receiving from them offers of men and money. That of Caen tenders its assistance to the Bayeux association for hunting out unsworn priests, and to help the patriots ofthe place “to rid themselves ofthe tyranny oftheir administrators.” 67 That ofBesançon declares the three administrative bodies ofStrasbourg “unworthy of the confidence with which they have been honored,” and openly enters into a league with all the clubs ofthe Upper and Lower Rhine, to set free a Jacobin arrested as a fomenter of insurrections.68 Those ofthe Puy-de-Doˆme and neighboring departments depute to and establish at Clermont a central club ofdirection and propagandism. 69 Those ofthe Bouches-du-Rhoˆne treat with the commissioners of the departments ofDroˆme, Gard, and He´rault, to watch the Spanish frontier, and send delegates oftheir own to see to the state ofthe fortifications of Figuie`res.70—There is no recourse to the criminal put to ransom and laid under contribution.”—Cf.7, 3,193, (Aveyron), F7, 3,271 (Tarn), etc. 67. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,200. Letter ofthe syndic-attorney ofBa- yeux, May 14, 1792, and letter ofthe Bayeux Directory, May 21. “The clubs should be schools ofpatriotism; they have become the terror ofit. Ifthis scandalous struggle against the law and legitimate authority does not soon cease liberty, a constitution, and safeguards for the French people will no longer exist.” 68. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,253. Letters ofthe Directory ofthe Bas- Rhin, April 26, 1792, and ofDietrich, Mayor ofStrasbourg, May 8. (The Stras- bourg club had publicly invited the citizens to take up arms, “to vigorously pursue priests and administrators.”)—Letter ofthe Besançon club to M. Die- trich, May 3. “Ifthe Constitution depended on the patriotism or the perfidy of a few magistrates in one department, like that of the Bas-Rhin, for instance, we might pay you some attention, and all the freemen of the empire would then stoop to crush you.”—Therefore the Jacobin clubs of the Upper and Lower Rhine send three deputies to the Paris club. 69. Moniteur, XII. 558, May 19, 1792. “Letter addressed through patriotic journalists to all clubs ofthe Friends ofthe Constitution by the patriotic central society, formed at Clermont-Ferrand.” (There is the same centralisation between Lyons and Bordeaux.) 70. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,198. Report ofCommissioners Bertin and Rebecqui, April 3, 1792.—Cf. Dumouriez, book II. ch. v. The club at Nantes wants to send commissioners to inspect the foundries of the Ile d’Indrette. The Jacobin Conquest / 573 tribunals. In forty departments, these are not yet installed; in the forty-three others, they are cowed, silent, or lack money and men to enforce their decisions.71 Such is the foundation of the Jacobin State, a confederation of twelve hundred oligarchies, which manoeuvre their proletariat clients in obedience to the word ofcommand despatched from Paris. It is a complete, organized, active State, with its central government, its armed force, its official journal, its regular correspondence, its declared policy, its established authority, and its representative and local agents; the latter are actual administrators alongside ofadmin- istrations which are abolished, or athwart administrations which are brought under subjection.—In vain do the latest ministers, good clerks and honest men, try to fulfill their duties; their injunctions and remonstrances are only so much waste paper.72 They resign in despair, declaring that, “in this overthrow ofall order ,...inthe present weakness ofthe public forces, and in the degradation ofthe constituted authorities,...itisimpossible for them to maintain the life and energy of the vast body, the members of which are paralysed.”—When the roots ofa tree are laid bare, it is easy to cut it down; now that the Jacobins have severed them, a push on the trunk suffices to bring the tree to the ground.

71. Moniteur, X. 420. Report ofM. Cahier, Minister ofthe Interior, Feb. 18, 1792. “In all the departments freedom of worship has been more or less violated....Those who hold power are cited before the tribunals of the people as their enemies.”—On the radical and increasing powerlessness ofthe King and his ministers, Cf. Moniteur, XI. 11 (Dec. 31, 1791), letter ofthe Minister of Finances.—XII. 200 (April 23, 1792), report ofthe Minister ofthe Interior.— XIII. 53 (July 4, 1792), letter ofthe Minister ofJustice. 72. Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 369. Letter ofthe Directory ofthe Basses- Pyre´ne´es, June 25, 1792.—“Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,200. Letter ofthe Di- rectory ofCalvados to the Minister ofthe Interior, Aug. 3. “We are not agents ofthe king or his ministers.”— Moniteur, XIII. 103. Declaration ofM. de Joly, minister, in the name ofhis colleagues (session ofJuly 10, 1792). 9 CHAPTER VII =

Paris— I. Pressure of the Assembly on the King—His veto rendered void or eluded—His ministers insulted and driven away—The usurpations of his Gi- rondist ministry—He removes them—Insurrectionary preparations— II. The floating and poor population of Paris—Disposition of the workmen—Effect of poverty and want of work—Effect of Jacobin preaching—The revolutionary army—Character of its reviews—Its first review—Its actual effective force— III. Its leaders—Their committee—How they created excitement— IV. The 20th of June—The programme—The muster—The procession before the Assem- bly—Irruption into the chaˆteau—The King in the presence of the people.

PREVIOUS to this the tree was so shaken as to be already tottering at its base.—Reduced as the King’s prerogative is, the Jacobins still continue to contest it, depriving him of even its shadow. At the opening session they refuse to him the titles of Sire and Majesty; to them he is not, in the sense of the constitution, a hereditary representative of the French people, but “a high functionary,” that is to say, a mere employee, fortunate enough to sit in an equally good chair alongside of the president of the Assembly, whom they style “president of the nation.”1 The Assembly, in their eyes, is sole sov-

1. Moniteur, X. 39 and following pages (sessions of Oct. 5 and 6, 1791). Speeches by Chabot, Couthon, Lequinio, and Vergniaud.—Mercure de France, Oct. 15. Speech by Robespierre, May 17, 1790. “The king is not the nation’s representative, but its clerk.”—Cf. Ernest Hamel, “Vie de Robespierre.”

574 The Jacobin Conquest / 575 ereign, “while the other powers,” says Condorcet, “can act legitimately only when specially authorised by a positive law; the Assem- bly may do anything that is not formally prohibited to it by the law,”2 in other words, interpret the constitution, then change it, take it to pieces, and do away with it. Consequently, in defiance of the constitution, it takes upon itself the initiation of war, and, on rare occasions, on the King using his veto, it sets this aside, or allows it to be set aside.3 In vain he rejects, as he has a legal right to do, the decrees which sanction the persecution of unsworn ecclesiastics, which confiscate the property of the e´migre´s, and which establish a camp around Paris. At the suggestion of the Jacobin deputies,4 the unsworn ecclesiastics are put on the limits, expelled, or imprisoned by the municipalities and Directories; the estates and mansions of the e´migre´s and of their relatives are abandoned without resistance to the jacqueries; the camp around Paris is replaced by the summoning of the Federates to Paris. In short, the monarch’s sanction is eluded or dispensed with.—As to his ministers, “they are merely clerks of the Legislative Body decked with a royal leash.”5 In full session they are maltreated, reviled, grossly insulted, not merely as lackeys of bad character, but as confirmed malefactors. They are

2. Moniteur, XIII. 97 (session of July 6, 1792). 3. Buchez et Roux, XIII. 61, Jan. 28, 1792. The King in his usually mild way calls the attention of the Assembly to the usurpation it is committing. “The form adopted by you is open to important observations. I shall not extend these to-day; the gravity of the situation demands that I concern myself much more with maintaining harmonious sentiments than with continually discussing my rights.” 4. Sauzay, II. 99. Letter of the deputy Vernerey to the Directory of Doubs: “The Directory of the department may always act with the greatest severity against the seditious, and, apart from the article relating to their pension, follow the track marked out in the decree. If the executive desires to impede the operations of the Directory . . . the latter has its recourse in the National As- sembly, which in all probability will afford it a shelter against ministerial attacks.”—Moniteur, XII. 202 (session of April 23). Report of Roland, Minister of the Interior. Already at this date forty-two departments had expelled unsworn ecclesiastics or put them on the limits. 5. Mercure de France, Feb. 25. 576 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION interrogated at the bar of the house, forbidden to leave Paris before their accounts are examined; their papers are overhauled; their most guarded expressions and most meritorious acts are held to be criminal; denunciations against them are provoked; their subordinates are incited to rebel against them;6 committees to watch them and calumniate them are appointed; the perspective of a scaffold is placed before them in every relation, acts or threats of accusation being passed against them, as well as against their agents, on the shallowest pretexts, accompanied with such miserable quibbling,7 and such an evident falsification of facts and texts that the Assembly, forced by the evidence, twice reverses its hasty decision, and declares those

6. Moniteur, X. 440 (session of Nov. 22, 1791). A letter of M. Southon, Director of the Mint at Paris, is read, “complaining of an arbitrary order, that of the Minister of the Interior, to report himself at Pau on the 25th of this month, under penalty of dismissal.” Isnard supports the charge: “M. Southon,” he says, “is here at work on a very circumstantial denunciation of the Minister of the Interior. [Applause from the galleries.] If citizens who are zealous enough to make war on abuses are sent back to their departments we shall never have denunciations.” [The applause is renewed.]—Ibid., X. 504 (session of Nov. 29). Speech by Isnard: “Our ministers must know that we are not fully satisfied with the conduct of each of them [repeated applause]; that henceforth they must simply choose between public gratitude and the vengeance of the law, and that our understanding of the word responsibility is death.” [The applause is renewed.]—The Assembly orders this speech to be printed and sent into the departments.—Cf. XII. 73, 138, etc. 7. Moniteur, XI. 603. (Session of March 10. Speech by Brissot, to secure a decree of accusation against M. Delessart, Minister of Foreign Affairs.) M. Delessart is a “perfidious man,” for having stated in a despatch that “the Con- stitution, with the great majority of the nation, has become a sort of religion which is embraced with the greatest enthusiasm.” Brissot denounces these two expressions as inadequate and anti-patriotic.—Ibid., XII. 438 (session of May 20). Speech by Guadet: “Larivie`re, the juge-de-paix, has convicted himself of the basest and most atrocious of passions, in having desired to usurp the power which the Constitution has placed in the hands of the National Assembly.”—I do not believe that Laubardemont himself could have composed anything equal to these two speeches.—Cf. XII. 462 (session of May 23). Speech by Brissot and one by Gonsonne´ on the Austrian committee. The feebleness and absurdity of their argument is incredible. The Jacobin Conquest / 577 innocent whom it had condemned the evening before.8 Nothing is of any avail, neither their strict fulfillment of the law, their submission to the committees of the Assembly, nor their humble attitude before the Assembly itself; “they are careful now to treat it politely and avoid the galleys.”9—But this does not suffice. They must become Jacobins; otherwise the high court of Orleans will be for them as for M. Delessart, the ante-room to the bagnio and the guillotine. “Terror and dismay,” says Vergniaud, pointing with his finger to the Tuileries, “have often issued in the name of despotism in ancient times from that famous palace; let them to-day go back to it in the name of law.”10 Even with a Jacobin Minister, terror and dismay are permanent. Roland, Clavie`res, and Servan not only do not shield the King, but they give him up, and, under their patronage and with their connivance, he is more victimised, more harassed, and more vilified than ever before. Their partisans in the Assembly take turns in tra- ducing him, while Isnard proposes against him a most insolent address.11 Shouts of death are uttered in front of his palace. An abbe´ or soldier is unmercifully beaten and dragged into the Tuileries basin. One of the gunners of the Guard reviles the queen like a fishwoman, and exclaims to her, “How glad I should be to clap your head on the end of my bayonet!”12—The King is supposed to be broken down under this double pressure of the Legislative Body and the street; they rely on his accustomed docility, or, at least, on his radical inertia; they think that they have converted him into what Condorcet once demanded, a signature machine.13 Consequently,

8. Affairs of the Minister Duport-Dutertre and of the Ambassador to Vi- enna, M. de Noailles. 9. Mercure de France, March 10, 1792. 10. Moniteur, XI. 607 (session of March 10). 11. Moniteur, XII. 396 (session of May 15). Isnard’s address is the ground- plan of Roland’s famous letter.—Cf. passim, the sessions of the Assembly during the Girondist ministry, especially those of May 19 and 20, June 5, etc. 12. Dumouriez, “Me´moires,” book iii. ch. vi. 13. “Letter of a young mechanician,” proposing to make a constitutional 578 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION without notifying him, just as if the throne were vacant, Servan, on his own authority, proposes to the Assembly the camp around Paris. Roland, for his part, reads to him at a full meeting of the council an arrogant, pedagogical remonstrance, scrutinising his sentiments, informing him of his duties, calling upon him to accept the new “religion,” to sanction the decree against unsworn ecclesiastics, that is to say, to condemn to beggary, imprisonment, and transportation 70,000 priests and nuns guilty of orthodoxy, and authorise the camp around Paris, which means, to put his throne, his person, and his family at the mercy of 20,000 madmen, chosen by the clubs and other assemblages expressly to do him harm;14 in short, to discard at once his conscience and his common sense.—Strange enough, the royal will this time remains staunch. The King not only refuses to do this, but he dismisses his ministers. So much the worse for him, for sign he must, cost what it will; if he insists on remaining athwart their path, they will march over him.—Not because he is dangerous, and thinks of abandoning his legal immobility. Up to the 10th of August, through a dread of action, and not to kindle a civil war, he rejects all plans leading to an open rupture. Up to the very last day he resigns himself, even when his personal safety and that of his family is at stake, to constitutional law and public common sense. Before dismissing Roland and Servan, he desires to furnish some striking proof of his pacific intentions by sanctioning the dissolution of his guard and disarming himself not only for attack but for defence; henceforth he sits at home and awaits the insurrection with which he is daily menaced; he resigns himself to everything, except drawing his sword; his attitude is that of a Christian in the amphitheatre.15 king, which, “by means of a spring, would receive from the hands of the president of the Assembly a list of ministers designated by the majority” (1791). 14. Moniteur, XI. 426 (session of May 19). Speech by Lasource: “Could not things be so arranged as to have a considerable force near enough to the capital to terrify and keep inactive the factions, the intriguers, the traitors who are plotting perfidious plans in its bosom, coincident with the manoeuvres of outside enemies?” 15. Mallet-Dupan, “Me´moires,” I. 303. Letter of Malouet, June 29. “The The Jacobin Conquest / 579

The proposition of a camp around Paris, however, draws out a protest from 8,000 Paris National Guards. Lafayette denounces to the Assembly the usurpations of the Jacobins; the faction sees that its reign is threatened by this uprousal and the union of the friends of order. A blow must be struck. This has been in preparation for a month past, and to renew the days of October 5th and 6th, the materials are not lacking. II Paris always has its interloping, floating population. A hundred thousand of the needy, one-third of these from the departments, “beggars by race,” those whom Re´tif de la Bretonne had already seen pass his door, Rue de Bie`vre, on the 13th of July, 1789, on their way to join their fellows on the faubourg St. Antoine,16 along with them “those frightful raftsmen,” pilots and dock-hands, born and brought up in the forests of the Nie`vre and the Yonne, actual savages accustomed to wielding the pick and the axe, behaving like cannibals when the opportunity offers,17 and who will be found foremost in the ranks when the September days come; alongside of these stride their female companions “barge-women who, soured by toil, see nothing, like animals, but the place and the time,” and who, three king is calm and perfectly resigned. On the 19th he wrote to his confessor: ‘Come, sir; never have I had so much need of your consolations. I am done with men; I must now turn my eyes to heaven. Sad events are announced for to-morrow. I shall have courage.’”—“Letters de Coraı¨ au Proposalle de Smyrne” (translated by M. de Queux de Ste. Hilaire, p. 145, May 1:) “The court is in peril every moment. Do not be surprised if I write you some day that this unhappy king and his wife are assassinated.” 16. Re´tif de la Bretonne, “Nuits de Paris,” Vol. XVI. (analysed by Lacroix in “Bibliothe`que de Re´tif de la Bretonne”).—Re´tif is the man in Paris who lived the most in the streets and had the most intercourse with the low class. 17. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,276. Letter from the Directory of Clamecy, March 27, and official report of the civil commissioners, March 31, 1792, on the riot of the raftsmen. Tracu, their captain, armed with a cudgel ten feet long, compelled quiet people to march along with him, threatening to knock them down; he tried to get the head of Peynier, the clerk of the Paris dealers in wood. “I shall have a good supper to-night,” he exclaimed; “for the head of that b Peynier is a fat one, and I’ll stick it in my pot!” 580 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION months earlier, pillaged the grocer-shops.18 All this “is a formidable crowd which, every time that it stirs, seems to declare that the last day of the rich and the well-to-do has come and that our turn comes to-morrow when we shall all sleep on down.”—Still more alarming is the attitude of the steady workmen, especially in the faubourgs. Bread is not so dear as on the 5th of October, but there is greater impoverishment. The production of articles of luxury is at a stand- still for three years, while the artisan out of employment has consumed his small savings. Since the ruin of St. Domingo and the pillaging of grocers’ shops colonial products are dear; the carpenter, the mason, the locksmith, the market-porter, no longer has his early cup of coffee,19 while they grumble every morning at the thought of their patriotism being rewarded by an increase of privations. But more than all this they are now Jacobins, and after nearly three years of preaching, the dogma of popular sovereignty has taken deep root in their unoccupied brains. “In these groups,” writes a police commissioner, “the Constitution is held to be useless and the people alone are the law. The citizens of Paris on the public square think themselves the people, populus, what we call the universality of citizens.”20—It is of no use to tell them that, alongside of Paris, there is a France. Danton has shown them that the capital “is composed of citizens belonging one way or another to the eighty-three departments; that it has a better chance than any other place to appreciate ministerial conduct; that it is the first sentinel of the nation,” which makes them confident of being right.21—It is of no use to tell them that there are better-informed and more competent au-

18. Letters of Coraı¨, p. 126. “This pillaging has lasted three days, Jan. 22, 23, and 24, and we expect from hour to hour similar riots still more terrible.” 19. Mercier (“Tableau de Paris”) had already noticed before the Revolution this habit of the Parisian workman, especially among the lowest class of workmen. 20. Mortimer-Ternaux, I. 346 (letter of June 21, 1792). 21. Buchez et Roux, VIII. 25 (session of the National Assembly, Nov. 10, 1790). Petition presented by Danton in the name of the forty-eight sections of Paris. The Jacobin Conquest / 581 thorities than themselves. Robespierre assures them that “in the matter of genius and civism the people are infallible, whilst every one else is subject to mistakes,”22 and here they are sure of their capacity.—In their own eyes they are the legitimate, competent authorities for all France, and, during three years, the sole theme their courtiers of the press, tribune, and club, vie with each other in repeating to them, is the expression of the Ducde Villeroy to Louis XIV. when a child: “Look my master, behold this great kingdom! It is all for you, it belongs to you, you are its master!”—Undoubt- edly, to swallow and digest such gross irony people must be half- fools or half-brutes; but it is just their capacity for self-deception which separates them from the sensible or passive crowd and forms them into a band whose ascendency is irresistible. Alone convinced of a street mob being sovereign under the same title that the nation is sovereign in its assemblies, they alone form street mobs, and they ﬁnd themselves kings because by virtue of their self-suﬃciency and lack of reason they believe in their royalty. Such is the new power which, in the early months of the year 1792, starts up alongside of the legal powers. It is not foreseen by the Constitution; nevertheless it exists and declares itself; it is visible and its recruits can be counted. On the 29th of April, with the Assembly consenting, and contrary to law, three battalions from the faubourg St. Antoine, about 1500 men,23 march in three columns into the chamber, one of which is composed of fusileers and the other two of pikemen, “their pikes being from eight to ten feet long,” of formidable aspect and of all sorts, “pikes with laurel leaves, pikes with clover leaves, pikes a` carlet, pikes with turn-spits, pikes with

22. Buchez et Roux, XIV. 268 (May, 1792). Article by Robespierre against the feˆte decreed in honor of Simonneau, Mayor of Etampes, assassinated in a riot: “Simonneau was guilty before he became a victim.” 23. Moniteur, XII. 254.—According to the royal almanac of 1792 the Paris national guard comprises 32,000 men, divided into sixty battalions, to which must be added the battalions of pikemen, spontaneously organised and composed, especially of the non-active citizens.— Cf. in “Les Re´volutions de Paris,” Prudhomme’s journal, the engravings which represent this sort of procession. 582 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION hearts, pikes with serpents’ tongues, pikes with forks, pikes with daggers, pikes with three prongs, pikes with battle-axes, pikes with claws, pikes with sickles, lance-pikes covered with iron prongs.” On the other side of the Seine three battalions from the faubourg St. Marcel are composed and armed in the same fashion. This constitutes a kernel of 3,000 combatants and there are perhaps 3,000 more in other quarters of Paris. Add to these in each of the sixty battalions of the National Guard the gunners, almost all of them blacksmiths, locksmiths and horse-shoers, also the majority of the gendarmes, old soldiers discharged for insubordination and naturally inclined to rioting, in all an army of about 9,000 men, not counting the usual accompaniment of vagabonds and mere bandits; ignorant and eager, but men who do their work, well armed, formed into companies, ready to march and ready to strike. Alongside of the talking authorities we have the veritable force that acts, for it is the only one which does act. As formerly, the pretorian guard of the Caesars in Rome, or the Turkish guards of the Caliphs of Bagdad, it is henceforth mistress of the capital, and through the capital, of the State. III As the troops are so are their leaders. Bulls must have drovers to conduct them, one degree superior to the brute but only one degree, dressed, talking and acting in accordance with the occupation, without dislikes or scruples, naturally or willfully hardened, fertile in jockeyings and in the expedients of the slaughter-house, themselves belonging to the people or pretending to belong to them. Santerre is a brewer of the faubourg St. Antoine, commander of the battalion of “Enfants Trouve´s,” tall, stout and ostentatious, with stentorian lungs, shaking the hand of everybody he meets in the street, and when at home treating everybody to a drink paid for by the Duke of Orleans.24 Legendre is an excitable butcher, who even in the

24. Mortimer-Ternaux, I. 389. (Santerre declares that the beer made in his brewery in 1789, 1790, and 1791 was not sold, but given to the people; consequently, he has 49,603 francs credited to him on the claim for unpaid duties on this beer.) The Jacobin Conquest / 583

Convention maintains his butchering traits. There are three or four foreign adventurers, adapted to all slaying operations, using the sabre or the bayonet without warning people to get out of the way. Rotonde, the first one, is an Italian, a teacher of English and professional rioter, who, convicted of murder and robbery, is to end his days in Piedmont on the gallows. The second, Lazowski, is a Pole, a former dandy, a conceited fop, who, with Sclave facility, becomes the barest of naked sans-culottes; formerly enjoying a sinecure, then suddenly turned out in the street, and shouting in the clubs against his protectors whom he sees put down; he is elected captain of the gunners of the battalion St. Marcel, and is to be one of the September slaughterers. His drawing-room temperament, however, is not rigorous enough for the part he plays in the streets, and at the end of a year he is to die, consumed by a fever and by brandy. The third is another chief slaughterer at the September massacres. Fournier, known as the American, a former planter, who has brought with him from St. Domingo a contempt for human life; “with his livid and sinister countenance, his moustache, his triple belt of pistols, his coarse language, his oaths, he looks like a pirate.”25 By their side we encounter a little hump-backed lawyer named Cuirette-Verrie`res, an everlasting talker, who, on the 6th of October, 1789, paraded the city on a large white horse and afterwards pleaded for Marat, which two qualifications with his Punch figure, fully establish him in the popular imagination; his boisterous crew, moreover, who hold nocturnal meetings at Santerre’s, needed a penman and he probably furnished them with their style.—This conventicle comprises other trusty persons still more subordinate, “Brie`re, wine-dealer, Nicolas, a sapper in the ‘Enfants Trouve´s’ battalion, Gonor, claiming to be one of the victors of the Bastille,”26 Rossignol, an old soldier and

25. Madame Roland, “Me´moires,” II. 38. 26. Buchez et Roux, XV. 122. Declaration of Lareynie, a volunteer soldier in the Ile St. Louis battalion.—To those which he names I add Huguenin, because on the 20th of June it was his duty to read the petition of the rioters; also St. Huruge, because he led the mob with Santerre.—About Rossignol, Cf. Dauban, “La Demagogie a` Paris,” 369 (according to the manuscript memoirs of Mercier du Rocher). He reaches Fontenay Aug. 21, 1793, with the represen- 584 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION afterward a journeyman-jeweller, who, after presiding at the massacres of La Force, is to become an improvised general and display his incapacity, debauchery, and thievery throughout La Vendeé. “There are yet more of them,” Huguenin undoubtedly, a ruined ex- lawyer, afterwards carbineer, then a deserter, next a barrier-clerk, now serving as “straw-bail” for the faubourg St. Honore´ and finally president of the September commune; there was also, doubtless, St. Huruge alias Pe`re Adam, the great growler of the Palais-Royal, a marquis fallen into the gutter, drinking with and dressing like a common porter, always flourishing an enormous club and followed by the riffraff.27—These are all the leaders. The Jacobins of the municipality and of the Assembly confine their support of the enterprise to conniving at it and to giving it their encouragement.28 It is better for the insurrection to seem spontaneous. Through cautiousness or shyness the Girondists, Pe´tion, Manuel and Danton tative Bourbotte, Momoro, commissary-general, three adjutants, Moulins, Ha- sard, the ex-priest, Grammont, an ex-actor, and several prostitutes. “The prettiest shared her bed with Bourbotte and Rossignol.” They lodge in a mansion to which seals are affixed. “The seals were broken, and jewelry, dresses, and female apparel were confiscated for the benefit of the general and his followers. There was nothing, even down to the crockery, which did not become the booty of these self-styled republicans.” 27. Mathon de la Varenne, “Histoire particulie`re des e´veńements qui ont eu lieu en juin, juillet, aouˆt, et septembre, 1792,” p. 23. (He knew St. Huruge personally.) St. Huruge had married an actress at Lyons in 1778. On returning to Paris he learned through the police that his wife was a trollop, and he treated her accordingly. Enraged, she looked up St. Huruge’s past career, and found two charges against him, one for the robbery and assassination of an alien merchant, and the other for infanticide; she obtained his incarceration by a lettre-de-cachet. He was shut up in Charenton from Jan. 14, 1781, to December, 1784, when he was transferred to another prison and afterwards exiled to his estates, from which he fled to England. He returned to France on the outbreak of the Revolution. 28. With respect to connivance, Cf. Mortimer-Ternaux, I. 132 and the following pages.—Mallet-Dupan, “Me´moires,” I. 300. Letter of the Abbe´ de Pradt, June 21, 1792. “The insurrection had been announced for several days....The evening before, 150 deputies, so many Jacobins, had dined at their great table in the Champs Elyseés, and distributed presents of wine and food.” The Jacobin Conquest / 585 himself, keep in the background—there is no reason for their coming forward.—The rest, affiliated with the people and lost in the crowd, are better qualified to render the romance pleasing to their flock. This romance, adapted to its intellectual limits, form and activity, is both simple and sombre, such as children like, or rather a melodrama taken from an alien stage in which the good appear on one side, and the wicked on the other with an ogre or tyrant in the centre, some infamous traitor who is sure to be unmasked at the end of the piece and punished according to his deserts, the whole in grandiloquent terms and, as a finale, winding up with a grand chorus. In the raw brain of an over-excited workman politics find their way only in the shape of rough-hewn, highly-colored imagery, such as is furnished by the Marseillaise, the Carmagnole, and the Ça ira. The requisite motto is adapted to his use; through this misshapen magnifying glass the most gracious figure appears under a diabolical aspect. Louis XVI. is represented there “as a monster using his power and treasure to oppose the regeneration of the French. A new Charles IX., he desires to bring on France death and desolation. Begone, cruel man, your crimes must end! Damiens was less guilty than thou art! He was punished with the most horrible torture for having tried to rid France of a monster, while you, attempting twenty-five millions times more, are allowed full immunity!29 Let us

29. Moniteur, XII. 642 (session of June 12, 1792, narrative of M. Delfaux, deputy).—The execution of Damiens was witnessed by Parisians still living, while “Charles IX.,” by Marie Che´nier, was at this time the most popular tragedy.—“The French people,” says M. Ferrie`res (I. 35), “went away from its representation eager for vengeance and tormented with a thirst for blood. At the end of the fourth act a lugubrious bell announces the moment of the massacre, and the audience, drawing in its breath sighing and groaning, furiously exclaims silence! silence! as if fearing that the sound of this death-knell had not stirred the heart to its very depths.”—“Re´volutions de Paris,” number for June 23, 1792. “The speakers, under full sail, distributed their parts amongst themselves,” one against the staﬀs, another against priests, another against judges, department, and the ministers, and especially the king. “Some there are, and we agree in this with the sieur Delfaux, who pass the measure and advise murder through gestures, eyes, and speech.” 586 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION trample under our feet this simulacre of royalty! Tremble, tyrants, Scaevolas are still amongst you!” All this is uttered, declaimed or rather shouted, publicly, in full daylight, under the King’s windows, by haranguers mounted on chairs, while similar provocations daily emanate from the committee installed in Santerre’s establishment, now in the shape of placards posted in the faubourgs, now in that of petitions circulated in the clubs and sections, now through motions which are gotten up “among the groups in the Tuileries, in the Palais-Royal, in the Place de Gre`ve and especially on the Place de la Bastille.” After the 2d of June the leaders founded a new club in the church of the “Enfants Trouve´s” that they might have their special laboratory and thus do their work on the spot.30 Like Plato’s demagogues, they understand their business. They have discovered the cries best calculated to set the popular animal in a tremor, what gives him umbrage, what charm attracts him, what road it is necessary he should follow. Once drawn in and under way, he will march blindly on, borne along by his own involuntary inspiration and crushing with his mass all that he encounters on his path. IV The charm is well selected and well presented. It consists in celebrating the anniversary of the oath of the Tennis-court. A tree of Liberty will be planted on the terrace of the Feuillants and “petitions relating to circumstances” will be presented in the Assembly and then to the King. As a precaution, and to impose on the ill-disposed, the petitioners provide themselves with arms and line the approaches.31

30. Mortimer-Ternaux, I. 133.—There is the same calculation and the same work-shop in the faubourg St. Marcel (report of Saint-Prix, commandant of the Val-de-Graˆce battalion). “Minds remained tranquil until a club was opened at the Porte St. Marcel; now they are all excited and divided. This club, which is in correspondence with that of Santerre, urges citizens to go armed to-morrow (June 20) to the National Assembly and to the king’s palace, notwithstanding the acts of the constituted authorities.” 31. Mortimer-Ternaux, I. 136. This programme is ﬁrst presented to the The Jacobin Conquest / 587

A popular procession is an attractive thing, and there are so many workmen who do not know what to do with themselves! And, again, it is so pleasant to appear in a patrioticopera while many, and especially women and children, want very much to see Monsieur and Madame Veto. People are invited in from the neighboring purlieus.32 The prowlers and ragamuffins of the open country must certainly join the party, while the numerous body of Parisian loafers, the loungers that join every spectacle can be relied on, and the inquisitive who, even in our time, gather by hundreds along the quays, following a dog that has chanced to tumble into the river. All this forms a heedless troop willing to follow a leader of any kind.—At five o’clock in the morning on the 20th of June gatherings are already formed in the faubourgs St. Antoine and St. Marcel, consisting of National Guards, pikemen, cannoneers with their cannon, persons armed with sabres or clubs, and women and children. A notice, indeed, just posted on the walls, prohibits any assemblage, and the municipal officers appear in their scarfs and command or entreat the crowd not to break the law.33 But, in the popular brain, ideas are as tenacious as they are short-lived. People count on a civic procession and get up early in the morning to attend to it; the cannon are dragged out, the tree is put on wheels and all is ready for the ceremony; everybody takes a holiday and none are disposed to go back into the house. Besides, their intentions are all right. They know the law as well as the city officials; they are “armed council-general of the commune by Lazowski and nine others (June 16). The council-general rejects it and refers to the law. “The petitioners, on learning this decision, loudly declare that it shall not prevent them from assembling in arms” (Buchez et Roux, XV. 120, official report by M. Borie).—The bibliography of documents relating to the 20th of June is given by Mortimer-Ternaux, I. 397 and following pages. The principal documents are found in Mortimer- Ternaux, in “L’Histoire Parlementaire” of Buchez et Roux, and in the Revue Re´trospective. 32. “Correspondance de Mirabeau et M. de la Marck,” III. 319. Letter of the Count de Montmorin, June 21, 1792. “The Paris bandits not being sufficient, they have invited in those of the neighboring villages.” 33. Reports of the municipal officers Perron (7 o’clock in the morning), Sergent (8 o’clock), Mouchet, Guiard, and Thomas (9 o’clock). 588 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION solely to have it observed and respected.” Finally, other armed petitioners have already filed along before the National Assembly, and, as one is as good as another, “the law being equal for all,” others must be admitted as well. In any event they, too, will ask permission of the National Assembly and they go expressly. This is the last and the best argument of all, and to prove to the city officials that they have no desire to engage in a riot, they beg them to join the procession and march along with them. Meanwhile, time passes. In a crowd irritated by delay, the most impatient, the rudest, those most inclined to commit violence, always lead the rest.—At the head-quarters of the Val-de-Graˆce34 the pikemen seize the cannon and drag them along; the National Guards let things take their course; Saint-Prix and Leclerc, the officers in command, threatened with death, have nothing to do but to yield with a protest.—There is the same state of things in the Montreuil section; the resistance of four out of six of the battalion officers merely served to give full power to the instigator of the insurrection, and henceforth Santerre becomes the sole leader of the assemblage. About half-past eleven he leaves his brewery, and, followed by cannon, the flag, and the truck which bears the poplar tree, he places himself at the head of the procession “consisting of about fifteen hundred persons including the bystanders.”35 Like a ball of snow, however, the troop grows as it marches along until, on reaching the National Assembly, Santerre has behind him from seven to eight thousand persons.36 Guadet and Vergniaud move that the petitioners be introduced; their spokesman, Huguenin, in a bombastic and

34. Report of Saint-Prix, commandant of the Val-de-Graˆce battalion (10 o’clock in the morning).—Report of Alexandre, commanding the St. Marcel battalion. “The whole battalion was by no means ready to march.”—Official report of the Montreuil section. Bonneau, the commander, concludes to march only under protest and to avoid spilling blood. 35. Deposition of Lareynie, a volunteer soldier of the Ile St. Louis battalion. 36. Deposition of M. Witinghof, lieutenant-general.—“Correspondence of Mirabeau and M. de la Marck.” Letter of M. de Montmorin, June 21. “At two o’clock the gathering amounted to 8,000 or 10,000 persons.” The Jacobin Conquest / 589 threatening address, denounces the ministry, the King, the accused at Orleans, the deputies of the “Right,” demands “blood,” and informs the Assembly that the people “on its feet” is ready to do itself justice.37 Then, with drums beating and bands playing, the multitude for more than an hour defiles through the chamber under the eyes of Santerre and Saint-Huruge. Here and there a few files of the National Guard pass mingled with the crowd and lost in “the moving forest of pikes”; all the rest is pure populace, “hideous faces,”38 says a deputy, on which poverty and misconduct have left their marks, ragged fellows “without coats,” in their shirt-sleeves, armed in all sorts of ways, with augurs and shoe-knives fastened on sticks, one with a saw on a pole ten feet long, women and children, some of them brandishing sabres,39 amidst all an old pair of breeches borne on a pike with this motto, Vivent les Sans Culottes! and, on a pitchfork, the heart of a calf with this inscription, Coeur d’aristocrate, both significant emblems of grim humor and such as naturally arise in the minds of butchers or of a libeller for a political carnival.—This, indeed, it is, for many have been drinking and are intoxicated.40 A parade is not enough, they must likewise amuse themselves. In traversing the chamber they sing Ça ira and dance in the intervals. They at the same time make a profession of civism by shouting Vive les patriotes! A bas le Veto! They fraternise, as they pass along, with

37. Moniteur, XII. 717. “What a misfortune for the freemen who have transferred their powers to you, to find themselves reduced to the cruel necessity of dipping their hands in the blood of conspirators!” etc.—The character of the leaders is apparent in their style. The shallow scribe who drew up the address did not even know the meaning of words. “The people so wills it, and its head is of more account than that of crowned despots. That head is the genealogical tree of the nation, and before that robust head the feeble bulrush must bend!”He has already recited the fable of “The Oak and the Bulrush,” and he knows the names of Demosthenes, Cicero, and Catiline. It seems to be the composition of a poor scholar turned author, at a penny a page. 38. Hua, “Me´moires,” 134. 39. Moniteur, XII. 718. 40. “Chronique des cinquante jours,” by Roederer, syndic-attorney of the department. 590 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION the “true blue” deputies of the “Left”; they jeer those of the “Right” and shake their fists at them; one of these, known by his tall stature, is told that his business will be settled for him the first opportunity.41 Thus do they display their co-laborers to the Assembly, all ready, and ready for anything, even against the Assembly.—And yet, with the exception of an iron-railing burst in by the crowd and an irruption on the terrace of the “Feuillants,” no act of violence was committed. The Paris populace, except when wrought up into a state of frenzy, is rather voluble and cockney than ferocious; besides, thus far, no one had offered any resistance. It has a surfeit of shouts and parade; many of them yawn with ennui and fatigue;42 at four o’clock they have stood on their legs for ten or twelve hours. The human stream issuing from the Assembly and emptying itself into the Car- rousel remains there stagnant and seems ready to return to its ordinary channels.—This is what the leaders have no idea of. Santerre, on arriving with St. Huruge, cries out to his men, “Why didn’t you enter the chaˆteau? You must go in—that is what we came here for.”43 A lieutenant of the Val-de-Graˆce cannoneers shouts: “We have forced open the Carrousel, we must force open the chaˆteau too! This is the first time the Val-de-Graˆce cannoneers march—they are not j f ! Come, follow me, my men, on to the enemy!”44

41. Hua, 134.—Bourrienne, “Me´moires,” I. 49. (He was with Bonaparte in a restaurant, rue St. Honore´, near the Palais-Royal.) “On going out we saw a troop coming from the direction of the market, which Bonaparte estimated at from 5,000 to 6,000 men, all in rags and armed in the oddest manner, yelling and shouting the grossest provocations, and turning towards the Tuileries. It was certainly the vilest and most abject lot that could be found in the faubourgs. ‘Let us follow that rabble,’ said Bonaparte to me.” They ascend the terrace on the river bank. “I could not easily describe the surprise and indignation which these scenes excited in him. He could not comprehend such weakness and forbearance. ‘Che coglione!’ he exclaimed in a loud tone. ‘How could they let those rascals in? Four or ﬁve hundred of them ought to have been swept oﬀ with cannon, and the rest would have kept on running!’” 42. “Chronique des cinquante jours,” by Roederer.—Deposition of La- reynie. 43. Deposition of Lareynie. 44. Report of Saint-Prix. The Jacobin Conquest / 591

Meanwhile, outside the gate, some of the municipal officers selected by Pe´tion amongst the most revolutionary, overcome resistance by their speeches and injunctions. “After all,” says one of them, named Mouchet, “the right of petition is sacred.”—“Open the gate!” shout Sergent and Boucher-Rene´, “nobody has a right to shut it. Every citizen has a right to go through it!”45 A gunner raises the latch, the gate opens and the court fills in the twinkling of an eye;46 the crowd rushes under the archway and up the grand stairway with such impetuosity that a cannon borne along by hand reaches the third room on the first story before it stops. The doors crack under the blows of axes and, in the large hall of the Oeil de Boeuf, the multitude find themselves face to face with the King. In such circumstances the representatives of public authority, the directories, the municipalities, the military chiefs, and, on the 6th of October, the King himself, have all thus far yielded; they have either yielded or perished. Santerre, certain of the issue, preferred to take no part in this affair; he prudently reserves himself, steals away, and lets the crowd push him into the council chamber, where the Queen, the young Dauphin, and the ladies have taken refuge.47 There, with

45. Report by Mouchet.—Deposition of Lareynie. (The interference of Ser- gent and Boucher-Rene´ is contested, but Roederer thinks it very probable.) 46. M. Pinon, in command of the 5th legion, and M. Vannot, commanding a battalion, tried to shut the iron gate of the archway, but are driven back and told: “You want thousands to perish, do you, to save one man?” This significant expression is heard over and over again during the Revolution, and it explains the success of the insurrections.—Alexandre, in command of the St. Marcel battalion, says in his report: “Why make a resistance of no public utility, one which may even compromise it a great deal more?” . . . 47. Deposition of Lareynie. The attitude of Santerre is here clearly defined. At the foot of the staircase in the court he is stopped by a group of citizens, who threaten “to make him responsible for any harm done,” and tell him: “You alone are the author of this unconstitutional assemblage; it is you alone who have led away these worthy people. You are a rascal!”—“The tone of these honest citizens in addressing the sieur Santerre made him turn pale. But, encouraged by a glance from the sieur Legendre, he resorted to a hypocritical subterfuge, and addressing the troop, he said: ‘Gentlemen, draw up a report, officially stating that I refuse to enter the king’s apartments.’ The only answer 592 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION his tall, corpulent figure, he formed a sort of shield to forestall useless and compromising injuries. In the mean time, in the Oeil de Boeuf, he lets things take their course; everything will be done in his absence that ought to be done, and in this he seems to have calculated justly.—On one side, in a window recess, sits the King on a bench, almost alone, while in front of him, as a guard, are four or five of the National Guards; on the other side, in the apartments, is an immense crowd, hourly increasing according as the rumor of the irruption spreads in the vicinity, fifteen or twenty thousand persons, a prodigious accumulation, a pell-mell traversed by eddies, a howling sea of bodies crushing each other, and of which the simple flux and reflux would flatten against the walls obstacles ten times as strong, an uproar sufficient to shatter the window panes, “frightful yells,” curses and imprecations, “Down with M. Veto!” “Let Veto go to the devil!” “Take back the patriot ministers!” “He shall sign; we won’t go away till he does!”48—Foremost among them all, Le- gendre, more resolute than Santerre, declares himself the spokesman and trustee of the powers of the sovereign people: “Sir,” says he to the King, who, he sees, makes a gesture of surprise, “yes, Sir, listen to us; you are made to listen to what we say! You are a traitor! You have always deceived us; you deceive us now! But look out, the measure is full; the people are tired of being played upon!”—“Sire, Sire,” exclaims another fanatic, “I ask you in the name of the hundred thousand beings around us to recall the patriot ministers. . . . I demand the sanction of the decree against the priests and the the crowd made, accustomed to divining what Santerre meant, was to hustle the group of honest citizens out of the way.” 48. Depositions of four of the national guard, Lecrosnier, Gosse´, Bidault, and Guiboult.—Reports of Acloque and de Lachesnaye, commanding officers of the legion.—“Chronique des cinquante jours,” by Roederer.—Ibid., p. 65: “I have to state that, during the Convention, the butcher Legendre declared to Boissy d’Anglas, from whom I had it, that the plan was to kill the king.”— Prudhomme, “Crimes de la Re´volution,” III. 43. “The king was to be assassinated. We heard citizens all in rags say that it was a pity; he looks like a good sort of a b——.” The Jacobin Conquest / 593 twenty thousand men. Either the sanction or you shall die!”—But little is wanting for the threat to be carried out. The first comers are on hand, “presenting pikes,” among them “a brigand,” with a rusty sword-blade on the end of a pole, “very sharp,” and who points this at the King. Afterwards the attempt at assassination is many times renewed, obstinately, by three or four madmen determined to kill, and who make signs of so doing, one, a shabby, ragged fellow, who keeps up his excitement with “the foulest propositions,” the second one, “a so-called conqueror of the Bastille,” formerly porte- teˆte for Foulon and Berthier, and since driven out of the battalion, the third, a market-porter, who, “for more than an hour,” armed with a sabre, makes a terrible effort to make his way to the king.49— Nothing is done. The king remains impassible under every threat. He takes the hand of a grenadier who wishes to encourage him, and, placing it on his breast, bids him, “See if that is the beating of a heart agitated by fear.”50 To Legendre and the zealots who call upon him to sanction, he replies without the least excitement: “I have never departed from the Constitution. . . . I will do what the Con- stitution requires me to do. . . . It is you who break the law.”—And, for nearly three hours, remaining standing, blockaded on his bench,51 he persists in this without showing a sign of weakness or of anger. This cool deportment at last produces an effect, the impression it makes on the spectators not being at all that which they anticipated. It is very clear that the personage before them is not the monster which has been depicted to them, a sombre, imperious tyrant, the

49. Madame Campan, “Me´moires,” II. 212. “M. Vannot, commander of the battalion, had turned aside a weapon aimed at the king. One of the grenadiers of the Filles St. Thomas warded off a blow with a sword, aimed in the same direction with the same intention.” 50. Declaration of Lachesnaye, in command of the legion.—Moniteur, XII. 719 (evening session of June 20). Speech of M. Alos, an eye-witness. (The king does this twice, using about the same words, the first time immediately on the irruption of the crowd, and the second time probably after Vergniaud’s harangue.) 51. The engraving in the “Re´volutions de Paris” represents him seated, and separated from the crowd by an empty space, which is a party falsehood. 594 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION savage, cunning Charles IX. they had hissed on the stage. They see a man somewhat stout, with placid, benevolent features, whom they would take, without his blue sash, for an ordinary, peaceable bourgeois.52 His ministers, near by, three or four men in black coats, gentlemen and respectable employees, are just what they seem to be. In another window recess stands his sister, Madame Elizabeth, with her sweet and innocent face. This pretended tyrant is a man like other men; he speaks gently, he says that the law is on his side, and nobody says the contrary; perhaps he is less wrong than he is thought to be. If he would only become a patriot!—A woman in the room brandishes a sword with a cockade on its point; the King makes a sign and the sword is handed to him, which he raises and, hurrahing with the crowd, cries out: Vive la Nation! That is already one good sign. A red cap is shaken in the air at the end of a pole. Some one offers it to him and he puts it on his head; applause bursts forth, and shouts of Vive la Nation! Vive la Liberte! and even Vive le Roi! From this time forth the greatest danger is over. But it is not that the besiegers abandon the siege. “He did d well,” they exclaim, “to put the cap on, and if he hadn’t we would have seen what would come of it. And d if he does not sanction the decree against the priests, and do it right off, we will come back every day. In this way we shall tire him out and make him afraid of us.”—But the day wears on. The heat is over-powering, the fatigue extreme, the King

52. The queen produces the same impression. Prudhomme, in his journal, calls her “the Austrian panther,” which word well expresses the idea of her in the faubourgs. A prostitute stops before her and bestows on her a volley of curses. The reply of the queen is: “Have I ever done you any wrong?” “No; but it is you who do so much harm to the nation.” “You have been deceived,” replies the queen. “I married the King of France. I am the mother of the dauphin. I am a French woman. I shall never again see my own country. I shall never be either happy or miserable anywhere but in France. When you loved me I was happy then.” The prostitute burst into tears. “Ah, madame, forgive me! I did not know you. I see that you have been very good.” Santerre, however, wishing to put an end to this emotion, cries out: “The girl is drunk!”—(Madame Campan, II. 214.—Report by Mandat, an officer of the legion.) The Jacobin Conquest / 595 less deserted and better protected. Five or six of the deputies, three of the municipal officers, a few officers of the National Guard, have succeeded in making their way to him. Pe´tion himself, mounted on a sofa, harangues the people with his accustomed flattery.53 At the same time Santerre, aware of the opportunity being lost, assumes the attitude of a liberator, and shouts in his rough voice: “I answer for the royal family. Let me see to it.” A line of National Guards forms in front of the King, when, slowly and with difficulty, urged by the mayor, the crowd melts away, and, by eight o’clock in the evening, it is gone.

53. Mortimer-Ternaux, I. 213. “Citizens, you have just legally made known your will to the hereditary representative of the nation; you have done this with the dignity, with the majesty of a free people! There is no doubt that your demands will be reiterated by the eighty-three departments, while the king cannot refrain from acquiescing in the manifest will of the people....Retire now,...andifyouremain any longer, do not give occasion to anything which may incriminate your worthy intentions.” 

9 CHAPTER VIII =

I. Indignation of the Constitutionalists—Cause of their weakness—The Girond- ists renew the attack—Their double plan— II. Pressure on the King—Pe´tion and Manuel brought to the Hoˆtel-de-Ville—The Ministry obliged to resign— Jacobin agitation against the King—Pressure on the Assembly—Petition of the Paris Commune—Threats of the petitioners and of the galleries—Session of August 8th—Girondist strategy foiled in two ways— III. The Girondists work for the benefit of the Jacobins—The armed force sent away or disorganized— The Federates summoned—Brest and Marseilles send men—Public sessions of administrative bodies—Permanence of administrative bodies and of the sections—Effect of these two measures—The central bureau of the Hoˆtel-de-Ville— Origin and formation of the revolutionary Commune— IV. Vain attempts of the Girondists to put it down—Jacobin alarm, their enthusiasm, and their programme— V. Evening of August 8—Session of August 9—Morning of August 10—The Assembly purged— VI. Nights of August 9 and 10—The sections— Commissioners of the sections at the Hoˆtel-de-Ville—The revolutionary Com- mune is substituted for the legal Commune— VII. August 10—The King’s forces—Resistance abandoned—The King in the National Assembly—Conflict at the palace and discharge of the Swiss Guard—The palace evacuated by the King’s order—The massacres—The enslaved Assembly and its decrees— VIII. State of Paris in the interregnum—The mass of the population—Subaltern Jacobins—The Jacobin leaders.

THE BLOW having missed its mark it must be repeated. This is the more urgent, inasmuch as the faction has thrown oﬀ the mask and

596 The Jacobin Conquest / 597

“honest people”1 on all sides become indignant at seeing the Con- stitution subject to the arbitrament of the lowest class. Nearly all the higher administrative bodies, seventy-five of the department directories,2 give in their adhesion to Lafayette’s letter, or respond by supporting the proclamation, so noble and so moderate, in which the King, recounting the violence done to him, maintains his legal rights with mournful, inflexible gentleness. Many of the towns, large and small, thank him for his firmness, the addresses being signed by “the notables of the place,”3 chevaliers of St. Louis, former officials, judges and district-administrators, physicians, notaries, lawyers, re- corders, post-masters, manufacturers, merchants, people who are settled down, in short the most prominent and the most respected men. At Paris, a similar petition, drawn up by two former Constit- uents, contains 247 pages of signatures attested by 99 notaries.4 Even in the council-general of the commune a majority is in favor of publicly censuring the mayor Pe´tion, the syndic-attorney Manuel, and the police administrators Panis, Sergent, Viguer, and Perron.5 On the evening of June 20th, the department council orders an investigation; it follows this up; it urges it on; it proves by authentic documents the willful inaction, the hypocritical connivance, the double-dealing of the syndic-attorney and the mayor;6 it suspends both from their functions, and cites them before the courts as well as Santerre and his accomplices. Lafayette, finally, adding to the

1. An expression of Lafayette’s in his address to the Assembly. 2. Lafayette, “Me´moires,” I. 452.—Malouet (II. 213) states that there were seventy. 3. Cf., for example, “Archives Nationales,” A.F. II. 116. Petition of 228 notables of Montargis. 4. Petition of the 20,000, so-called, presented by Messrs. Guillaume and Dupont de Nemours.—Cf. Mortimer-Ternaux, I. 278.—According to Buchez et Roux, the petition contains only 7,411 names. 5. Mortimer-Ternaux, I. 277. 6. Moniteur, XIII. 89. The act (July 7) is drawn up with admirable precision and force. On comparing it with the vague, turgid exaggerations of their adversaries, it seems to measure the intellectual distance between the two parties. 598 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION weight of his opinion the influence of his presence, appears at the bar of the National Assembly and demands “effectual” measures against the usurpations of the Jacobin sect, insisting that the instigators of the riot of the 20th of June be punished “as guilty of le`se- nation.” As a last and still more significant symptom, his proceedings are approved of in the Assembly by a majority of more than one hundred votes.7 All this must and will be crushed out. For on the side of the Constitutionalists, whatever they may be, whether King, deputies, ministers, generals, administrators, notables or national-guards, volition evaporates in words; and the reason is, they are civilised beings, long accustomed to the ways of a regular community, interested from father to son in keeping the law, disturbed at incurring responsibility, agitated by a multiplicity of ideas, unable to comprehend that, in the state of nature to which France has reverted, but one idea is of any account, that of the man who, in accepting a declared war, meets the offensive with the offensive, loads his gun, descends into the street and contends with the savage destroyers of human society. Nobody comes to the support of Lafayette, who alone has the courage to take the lead; about one hundred men muster at the rendezvous named by him in the Champs-Elyseés. They agree to march to the Jacobin club the following day and close it, provided the number is increased to three hundred; only thirty make their appearance. Lafayette can do no more than leave Paris and write a letter containing another protest. Protestations, appeals to the Constitution, to the law, to publicinterest, to commonsense, well-reasoned deductions—never, on this side, amount to more than so many words spoken or in print; in the coming conflict words will be of no use.—Imagine a quarrel between two men, one ably pre-

7. 339 against 224.—Roederer (“Chronique des cinquante jours,” p. 79). “A strong current of opinion by a majority of the inhabitants of Paris sets in in favor of the king.”—“C. Desmoulins,” by Jules Claretie, 191. The words of C. Desmoulins: “That class of petty traders and shopkeepers, who are more afraid of the revolutionists than of so many Uhlans.” The Jacobin Conquest / 599 senting his case and the other indulging in little more than invective; the latter, having encountered a big bull-dog on his road, has caressed him, enticed him, and led him along with him as an auxiliary. To the bull-dog, clever argumentation is only so much unmeaning sound; with his eager eyes fixed on his temporary master he awaits only his signal to spring on the adversaries he points out. On the 20th of June he has almost strangled one of them, and covered him with his slaver. On the 21st,8 he is ready to spring again. He continues to growl for fifty days, at first sullenly and then with terrific energy. On the 25th of June, July 14 and 27, August 3 and 5, he again makes a spring and is kept back only with great difficulty.9 Already on one occasion, July 29th, his fangs are wet with human gore.10—At each turn of the parliamentary debate the defenceless Constitutionalist beholds those open jaws before him; it is not surprising that he throws to this dog, or allows to be thrown to him, all the decrees contended for by the Girondists as a bone for him to gnaw on.—Sure of their strength the Girondists renew the attack, and the plan of their campaign seems to be skillfully prepared. They are quite willing to retain the King on his throne, but on the condition that he shall be a mere puppet; that he shall recall the patriot ministers, allow them to appoint the Dauphin’s tutor, and that La- fayette shall be removed;11 otherwise the Assembly will pass the act of dethronement and possess themselves of the executive power. Such is the dilemma opening two ways in which they have placed the Assembly and the King. If the King, driven into a corner, does not pass out by the first door, the Assembly, equally nonplussed,

8. Mortimer-Ternaux, I. 236. Letter of Roederer to the president of the National Assembly, June 25. “Mr. President, I have the honor to inform the Assembly that an armed mob is now marching towards the Chaˆteau.” 9. Mortimer-Ternaux, I. 245, 246.—II. 81, 131, 148, 170. 10. The murder of M. Duhamel, sub-lieutenant of the national guard. 11. Letter of Vergniaud and Guadet to the painter Boze (in the “Me´moires de Dumouriez”).—Roederer, “Chronique des cinquante jours,” 295.—Ber- trand de Molleville, “Me´moires,” III. 29. 600 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION will pass out through the second, and in either case, as the all- powerful ministers of the submissive King or as executive delegates of the submissive Assembly, they will become the masters of France. II They accordingly begin by attacking the King, and try to make him yield through fear.—They remove the suspension pronounced against Pe´tion and Manuel, and restore them both to their places in the Hoˆtel-de-Ville. Henceforth the latter will rule in Paris without restriction or oversight; for the Directory of the department has resigned, and no superior authority exists to prevent them from calling upon or giving orders as they please to the armed forces; they are exempt from all subordination, as well as from all control. Behold the King of France in good hands, in those of the men who, on the 20th of June, refused to muzzle the popular brute, declaring that it had done well, that it had right on its side, and that it may begin again. According to them, the palace of the monarch belongs to the public; people may enter it as they would a coﬀee-house; in any event, as the municipality is occupied with other matters, it cannot be expected to keep people out. “Is there nothing else to guard in Paris but the Tuileries and the King?”12—Another ma-

12. Moniteur, XIII. 155 (session of July 16).—Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 69. “Favored by you,” says Manuel, “all citizens are entitled to visit the first functionary of the nation....Theprince’s dwelling should be open, like a church. Fear of the people is an insult to the people. If Louis XVI. possessed the soul of a Marcus Aurelius, he would have descended into his gardens and tried to afford consolation to a hundred thousand beings, on account of the lingering delays of the Revolution....Neverwere fewer robbers in the Tuileries than on that day, for the courtiers had fled....Theredcapwasanhonor to Louis XVI.’s head, and ought to be his crown.” At this solemn moment the frater- nisation of the king with the people took place, and “the next day the same king betrayed, calumniated, and disgraced the people!” Manuel’s rigmarole surpasses all that can be imagined. “After this there arises in the panellings of the Louvre, at the confluence of the civil list, another channel, which leads through the shades below to Pe´tion’s dungeon....Thedepartment, in dealing a blow at the municipality, explains how, at the banquet of the Law, it represents the Law in the form of a crocodile, etc.” The Jacobin Conquest / 601 noeuvre consists in rendering the King’s instruments powerless. Honorable and inoffensive as the new ministers may be, they never appear in the Assembly without being hooted at in the tribunes. Isnard, pointing with his finger to the principal one, exclaims: “That is a traitor!”13 Every popular outburst is imputed to them as a crime, while Guadet declares that, “as royal counsellors, they are answerable for any disturbances” that the double veto might produce.14 Not only does the faction declare them guilty of the violence provoked by itself, but, again, it demands their lives for the murders which it commits. “France must know,” says Vergniaud, “that hereafter ministers are to answer with their heads for any disorders of which religion is the pretext.” “The blood just split at Bordeaux,” says Ducos, “may be laid at the door of the executive power.”15 Lasource proposes to “punish with death,” not alone the minister who is not prompt in ordering the execution of a decree, but, again, the clerks who do not fulfill the minister’s instructions. Always death on every occasion, and for every one who is not of the sect! Under this constant terror, the ministers resign in a body, and the King is required at once to appoint others in their places; meanwhile, to increase the danger of their position, the Assembly decrees that hereafter they shall “be answerable for each other.” It is evident that they are aiming at the King over his minister’s shoulders, while the Girondists leave nothing unturned to render government to him impossible. The King, again, signs this new decree; he declines to protest; to the persecution he is forced to undergo he opposes nothing but silence, sometimes a simple, frank, good-hearted expression,16 some kindly, touching plaint, which seems like a suppressed

13. Moniteur, XIII. 93 (session of July 9);—27 (session of July 2). 14. Moniteur, XII. 751 (session of June 24); XIII. 33 (session of July 3). 15. Moniteur, XIII. 224 (session of July 23). Two unsworn priests had just been massacred at Bordeaux and their heads carried through the streets on pikes. Ducos adds: “Since the executive power has put its veto on laws repressing fanaticism, popular executions begin to be repeated. If the courts do not render justice, etc.”—Ibid., XIII. 301 (session of July 31). 16. Moniteur, XIII. 72 (session of July 7). The king’s speech to the Assembly 602 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION moan.17 But dogmaticobstinacyand impatient ambition are wilfully dumb to the most sorrowful accents! His sincerity passes for a new falsehood. Vergniaud, Brissot, Torne´, Condorcet, in the tribune, charge him with treachery, demand from the Assembly the right of suspending him,18 and give the signal to their Jacobin auxiliaries.— At the invitation of the parent club, the provincial branches bestir themselves, while all other instruments of agitation belonging to the revolutionary machine are likewise put in motion,—gatherings on the public squares, homicidal announcements on the walls, incendiary resolutions in the clubs, shoutings in the tribunes, insulting addresses and seditious deputations at the bar of the National As- sembly.19 After the working of this system for a month, the Girond- ists regard the King as subdued, and, on the 26th of July, Guadet, and then Brissot, in the tribune, make their last advances to him, and issue the final summons.20 A profound delusion! He refuses, the same as on the 20th of June: “Girondist ministers, Never!” Since he bars one of the two doors, they will pass out at the other, and, if the Girondists cannot rule through him, they will rule without him. Pe´tion, in the name of the Commune, appears personally and after the Lamourette kiss. “I confess to you, M. le President, that I was very anxious for the deputation to arrive, that I might hasten to the Assembly.” 17. Moniteur, XIII. 323 (session of Aug. 3). The declaration read in the king’s name must be weighed sentence by sentence; it sums up his conduct with perfect exactness and thus ends: “What are personal dangers to a king, from whom they would take the love of his people? That is what affects me most. The day will come, perhaps, when the people will know how much I prize its welfare, how much this has always been my concern and my first need. What sorrows would disappear at the slightest sign of its return!” 18. Moniteur, XIII. 33, 56 bis, 85, 97 (sessions of July 3, 5, 6, and 9). 19. Moniteur, XIII. 26, 170, 273 (sessions of July 12, 17, 28).—Mortimer- Ternaux, II. 122 (session of July 23). Addresses of the municipal council of Marseilles, of the federates, of the Angers petitioners, of the Charente volunteers, etc. “A hereditary monarchy is opposed to the Rights of Man. Pass the act of dethronement and France is saved....Bebrave,lettheswordofthelaw fall on a perjured functionary and conspirator! Lafayette is the most contemptible, the guiltiest,...themost infamous of the assassins of the people,” etc. 20. Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 126.—Bertrand de Molleville, III. 294. The Jacobin Conquest / 603 proposes a new plan, demanding the dethronement. “This important measure once passed,”21 he says, “the confidence of the nation in the actual dynasty being very doubtful, we demand that a body of ministers, jointly responsible, appointed by the National Assembly, but, as the constitutional law provides, outside of itself, elected by the open vote of freemen, be provisionally entrusted with the executive power.” Through this open vote the suffrage will be easily controlled. This is but one more decree extorted, like so many others, the majority for a long time having been subject to the same pressure as the King. “If you refuse to respond to our wishes,” as a placard of the 23d of June had already informed them, “our hands are lifted, and we shall strike all traitors wherever they can be found, even amongst yourselves.”22 “Court favorites,” says a petition of August 6, “have seats in your midst. Let their inviolability perish if the national will must always tamely submit to that pestiferous power!”—In the Assembly the yells from the galleries are frightful; the voices of those who speak against dethronement are overpow- ered; so great are the hootings, the speakers are driven out of the tribune.23 Sometimes the “Right” abandons the discussion and leaves the chamber. The insolence of the galleries goes so far that frequently almost the entire Assembly murmurs while they applaud; the majority, in short, loudly expresses anger at its slavishness.24— Let it be careful! In the tribunes and at the approaches to the edifice, stand the Federates, men who have a tight grip. They will force it to vote the decisive measure, the accusation of Lafayette, the decree under which the armed champion of the King and the Constitution

21. Moniteur XIII. 325 (session of Aug. 3). 22. Moniteur, XII. 738; XII. 340. 23. Moniteur, XIII. 170, 171, 187, 208, 335 (sessions of July 17, 18, and 23, and Aug. 5). 24. Moniteur, XIII. 187 (session of July 18). “The galleries applaud. The Assembly murmurs.”—208 (July 21). “Murmurings, shouts, and cries of Down with the speaker! from the galleries. The president calls the house to order ﬁve times, but always fruitlessly.”—224 (July 23). “The galleries applaud; long- continued murmurs are heard in the Assembly.” 604 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION must fall. The Girondists, to make sure of it, exact a call of the house; in this way the names are announced and printed, thus des- ignating to the populace the opponents of the measure, so that none of them are sure of getting to their homes safe and sound.—Lafa- yette, however, a liberal, a democrat, and a royalist, as devoted to the Revolution as to the Law, is just the man, who, through his limited mental grasp, his disconnected political conceptions, and the nobleness of his contradictory sentiments, best represents the present opinion of the Assembly, as well as that of France.25 Moreover, his popularity, his courage, and his army are the last refuge. The majority feels that in giving him up they themselves are given up, and, by a vote of 400 to 224, it acquits him.—On this side, again, the strategy of the Girondists is found erroneous. Power slips away from them the second time. Neither the King nor the Assembly have consented to restore it to them, while they can no longer leave it suspended in the air, or defer it until a better opportunity, and keep their Jacobin acolytes waiting. The feeble leash restraining the revolutionary dog breaks in their hands; the dog is free and in the street. III Never was better work done for another. Every measure relied on by them for getting power back, serves only to place it in the hands of the populace.—On the one hand, through a series of legislative acts and municipal ordinances, they have set aside or disbanded the army, alone capable of repressing or intimidating it. On the 29th of May they dismissed the king’s guard. On the 15th of July they

25. Buzot, “Me´moires” (Ed. Dauban, 83 and 84). “The majority of the French people yearned for royalty and the constitution of 1790....Itwasat Paris particularly that this desire governed the general plan, the discussion of it being the least feared in special conversations and in private society. There were only a few noble-minded, superior men that were worthy of being republicans....Therest desired the constitution of 1791, and spoke of the republicans only as one speaks of very honest maniacs.” The Jacobin Conquest / 605 ordered away from Paris all the regular troops. On the 16th of July,26 they select “for the formation of a body of infantry-gendarmerie, the former French-guardsmen who served in the Revolution about the epoch of the 1st day of June, 1789, the officers, under-officers, gunners, and soldiers who gathered around the flag of liberty after the 12th of July of that year,” that is to say, a body of recognised insurgents and deserters. On the 6th of July, in all towns of 50,000 souls and over, they strike down the National Guard by discharging its staff, “an aristocratic corporation,” says a petition,27 “a sort of modern feudality composed of traitors, who seem to have formed a plan for directing public opinion as they please.” Early in August,28 they strike into the heart of the National Guard by suppressing special companies, grenadiers, and chasseurs, recruited amongst well-to-do-people, the genuine e´lite, stripped of its uniform, reduced to equality, lost in the mass, and now, moreover, finding its ranks degraded by a mixture of interlopers, federates, and men armed with pikes. Finally, to complete the pell-mell, they order that the palace guard be hereafter composed daily of citizens taken from the sixty battalions,29 so that the chiefs may no longer know their men nor the men their chiefs; so that no one may place confidence in his chief, in his subordinate, in his neighbor, or in himself; so that all the stones of the human dike may be loosened beforehand, and the barrier crumble at the first onslaught.—On the other hand, they have taken care to provide the insurrection with a fighting army and an advanced guard. By another series of legislative acts and munic-

26. Duvergier, “Collection des lois et dećrets,” May 29, 1792; July 15, 16, and 18; July 6–20. 27. Moniteur, XIII. 25 (session of July 1). Petition of 150 active citizens of the Bonne-Nouvelle section. 28. Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 194. Buchez et Roux, XVI. 253. The decree of dismissal was not passed until the 12th of August, but after the 31st of July the municipality demanded it and during the following days several Jacobin grenadiers go to the National Assembly, stamp on their felt cap, and put on the red cap. 29. Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 192 (municipal action of Aug. 5). 606 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION ipal ordinances, they authorise the assemblage of the Federates at Paris; they allow them pay and military lodgings;30 they allow them to organise under a central committee sitting at the Jacobin club, and to take their instructions from that club. Of these new-comers, two-thirds, genuine soldiers and true patriots, set out for the camp at Soissons and for the frontier; one-third of them, however, remain at Paris,31 perhaps 2,000, the rioters and politicians, who, feasted, entertained, indoctrinated, and each lodged with a Jacobin, become more Jacobin than their hosts, and incorporate themselves with the revolutionary battalions, so as to serve the good cause with their guns.32—Two bands, later arrivals, remain separate, and are only the more formidable; both are despatched by the towns on the sea- coast in which, four months before this, “twenty-one capital acts of insurrection had occurred, all unpunished, and several under sentence of the maritime jury.”33 One of these bands, numbering 300 men, comes from Brest, where the municipality, as infatuated as those of Marseilles and Avignon, engages, like those of Marseilles and Avignon, in armed expeditions against its neighbors; where popular murder is tolerated; where M. de la Jaille is nearly killed; where the head of M. de Patry is borne on a pike; where veteran rioters compose the crews of the fleet; where “workmen, under the pay of the State, clerks, masters, under-officers, converted into motionnaires, agitators, political stump-orators, and critics of the administration,”

30. Decree of July 2. 31. Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 129.—Buchez et Roux, XV. 458. According to the report of the Minister of War, read the 30th of July, at the evening session, 5,314 department federates left Paris between July 14 and 30. Pe´tion wrote that the levy of federates then in Paris amounted to 2,960, “of which 2,032 were getting ready to go to the camp at Soissons.”—A comparison of these figures leads to the approximate number that I have adopted. 32. Buchez et Roux, XVI. 120, 133 (session of the Jacobins, Aug. 6). The federates “resolved to watch the Chaˆteau, each taking a place in the battalions respectively of the sections in which they lodge, and many incorporated themselves with the battalions of the faubourg St. Antoine.” 33. Mercure de France, April 14, 1792.—“The Revolution,” I. p. 332. The Jacobin Conquest / 607 ask only to have work for their hands to do on a more conspicuous stage. The other troop, summoned from Marseilles by the Girond- ists, Rebecqui and Barbaroux,34 comprises 516 men, intrepid, ferocious adventurers, from every quarter, either Marseilles or abroad, Savoyards, Italians, Spaniards, driven out of their country,” almost all of the vilest class, or gaining a livelihood by infamous pursuits, “the bravos and demons of evil haunts,” used to blood, quick to strike, good cut-throats, picked men out of the bands that had marched on Aix, Arles, and Avignon, the froth of that froth which, for three years, in the Comtat and in the Bouches-du-Rhoˆne, boiled over the useless barriers of the law.—The very day they reach Paris they show what they can do.35 Welcomed with great pomp by the Jacobins and by Santerre, they are conducted, for a purpose, to the Champs-Elyseés, into a drinking-place, near the restaurant in which the grenadiers of the Filles St. Thomas, bankers, brokers, leading men well-known for their attachment to a monarchical constitution, were dining in a body, as announced several days in advance. The populace, which had formed a convoy for the Marseilles battalion, gathers before the restaurant, shouts, throws mud, and then lets fly a volley of stones; the grenadiers draw their sabres. Forthwith a shout is heard just in front of them, a` nous les Marseillais! upon which the gang jump out of the windows with true southern agility, clamber across the ditches, fall upon the grenadiers with their

34. Barbaroux, “Me´moires,” 37–40.—Laurent-Lautard, “Marseilles depuis 1789 jusqu’ a` 1815,” I. 134. “The mayor, Mourdeille,” who had recruited them, “was perhaps very glad to get rid of them.”—On the composition of this group and on the previous roˆle of Rebecqui, see chapter vi. 35. Buchez et Roux, XVI. 197 and following pages.—Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 148 (the grenadiers numbered only 166).—Moniteur, XIII. 310 (session of Aug. 1). Address of the grenadiers: “They swore on their honor that they did not draw their swords until after being threatened for a quarter of an hour, then insulted and humiliated, until forced to defend their lives against a troop of brigands armed with pistols, and some of them with carbines.”—“The reading of this memorial is often interrupted by hootings from the galleries, in spite of the president’s orders.”—Hootings again, when they file out of the chamber. 608 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION swords, kill one and wound fifteen.—No de´but could be more brilliant. The party at last possesses men of action;36 and they must be kept within reach! Men who do such good work, and so expedi- tiously, must be well posted near the Tuileries. The mayor, consequently, on the night of the 8th of August, without informing the commanding general, solely on his own authority, orders them to leave their barracks in the Rue Blanche and take up their quarters, with their arms and cannon, in the barracks belonging to the Cor- deliers.37 Such is the military force in the hands of the Jacobin masses; nothing remains but to place the civil power in their hands also, and, as the first gift of this kind was made to them by the Girondists, they will not fail to make them the second one.—On the 1st of July, they decree that the sessions of administrative bodies should thenceforth be public; this is submitting municipalities, district, and department councils, as well as the National Assembly itself, to the clamour, the outrages, the menaces, the rule of their audiences, which, in these bodies as in the National Assembly, will always be Jacobin.38 On the 11th of July, on declaring the country in dan-

36. The lack of men of action greatly embarrassed the Jacobin party. (“Cor- respondence de Mirabeau et du Comte de la Marck,” II. 326.) Letter of M. de Montmorin, July 13, 1792 on the disposition of the people of Paris, wearied and worn out “to excess.” “They will take no side, either for or against the king. They no longer stir for any purpose. Riots are wholly factitious. So true is this, they are obliged to bring men from the South to get them up. Nearly the whole of those who forced the gates of the Tuileries, or rather, who got inside of them on the 20th of June, were foreigners or lookers-on, got together at the sight of such a lot of pikes and red caps, etc. The cowards ran at the slightest indication of presenting arms, which was done by a portion of the national guard on the arrival of a deputation from the National Assembly, their leaders being obliged to encourage them by telling them that they were not to be fired at.” 37. Buchez et Roux, XVI. 447. “Chronique des cinquante jours,” by Roe- derer. 38. Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 378.—127 Jacobins of Arras, led by Geoffroy and young Robespierre, declare to the Directory that they mean to come to its meetings and follow its deliberations. “It is time that the master should keep his eye on his agents.” The Directory, therefore, resigns (July 4, 1792).—Ibid., The Jacobin Conquest / 609 ger,39 they render the sessions permanent, first of the administrative bodies, and next of the forty-eight sections of Paris, which is a surrender of the administrative bodies and the forty-eight sections of Paris to the Jacobin minority, which minority, through its zeal and being ever present, knows how to convert itself into a majority.—Let us trace the consequences of this, and see the winnowing which is thus effected by the double decree. Those who attend these meetings day and night are not the steady, occupied class. In the first place, they are too busy in their own counting-rooms, shops, and factories to lose so much time. In the next place, they are too sensible, too docile, and too honest to go and lord it over their magistrates in the Hoˆtel-de-Ville, or regard themselves in their various sections as the sovereign people. Moreover, they are disgusted with all this bawling. Lastly, the streets of Paris, especially at night, are not safe; owing to so much outdoor politics, there is a great increase of caning and of knocking down. Accordingly, for a long time, they do not attend at the clubs, nor are they seen in the galleries of the National Assembly; nor will they be seen again at the sessions of the municipality, nor at the meetings of the sections.—Nothing, on the other hand, is more attractive to the idle tipplers of the cafe´s, to bar-room oracles, loungers, and talkers, living in furnished rooms,40 to the parasites and refractory of the social army, to all who are out of the traces and unable to get back again, who want to tear things to pieces, and, for lack of a private career, establish one for themselves in public. Permanent sessions, even at night, are

462 (report of Leroux, municipal officer). The Paris municipal council, on the night of August 9–10 deliberates under threats of death and the furious shouts of the galleries. 39. Duvergier’s “Collection of Laws and Decrees,” July 4, 5–8, 11–12, 25– 28.—Buchez et Roux, XVI. 250. The section of the Theatre Français (of which Danton is president and Chaumette and Momoro secretaries) thus interpret the declaration of the country being in danger. “After a declaration of the country being in danger by the representatives of the people, it is natural that the people itself should take back its sovereign oversight.” 40. Schmidt, “Tableaux de la Re´volution,” I. 99–100. Report to Roland, Oct. 29, 1792. 610 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION not too long either for them, or for lazy Federates, for disordered intellects, and for the small troop of genuine fanatics. Here they are either performers or claqueurs, an uproar not being offensive to them, because they create it. They relieve each other, so as to be always on hand in sufficient number, or they make up for a deficiency by usurpations and brutality. The section of the Theáˆtre-Français, for instance, in contempt of the law, removes the distinction between active and passive citizens, by granting to all residents in its circumscription the right to be present at its meetings and the right to vote. Other sections41 admit to their sittings all well-disposed spectators, all women, children, and nomads, all agitators, and the agitated, who, as at the National Assembly, applaud or hoot at the word of command. In the sections not disposed to be at the mercy of an anonymous public, the same herd of frantic characters make a racket at the doors, and insult the electors who pass through them.—Thanks to this itinerant throng of co-operating intruders, the Jacobin extremists rule the sections the same as the Assembly; in the sections, as in the Assembly, they drive away or silence the moderates, and when the hall becomes half empty or dumb, their motion is passed. Hawked about in the vicinity, the motion is even carried off; in a few days it makes the tour of Paris, and returns to the Assembly as an au- thenticand unanimous expression of popular will. 42

41. Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 199.—Buchez et Roux, XVI. 230.—Moniteur, XIII. 336 (session of Aug. 5). Speech by Collot d’Herbois. 42. Moniteur, XI. 20, session of Feb. 4. At this meeting Gorguereau, reporter of the committee on legislation, had already stated that “The authors of these multiplied addresses seem to command rather than demand....Itiseverthe same sections or the same individuals who deceive you in bringing to you their own false testimony for that of the capital.”—“Down with the reporter! from the galleries.”—Ibid., XIII. 93, session of July 11. M. Gastelier: “Addresses in the name of the people are constantly read to you, which are not even the voice of one section. We have seen the same individual coming three times a week to demand something in the name of sovereignty.” [Shouts of down! down! in the galleries.]—Ibid., 208, session of July 21. M. Dumolard: “You must distinguish between the people of Paris and these subaltern intriguers . . . these habitual oracles of the cafe´s and public squares, whose equivocal existence has for a long time occupied the attention and claimed the supervision of the police.” [Down The Jacobin Conquest / 611

At present, to ensure the execution of this counterfeit will, it requires a central committee, and through a masterpiece of delusion, Pe´tion, the Girondist mayor, is the one who undertakes to lodge, sanction, and organise the committee. On the 17th day of July,43 he establishes in the offices belonging to the Commune, “a central bureau of correspondence between the sections.” To this a duly elected commissioner is to bring the acts passed by his section each day, and carry away the corresponding acts of the remaining forty-seven sections. Naturally, these elected commissioners will hold meetings of their own, appointing a president and secretary, and making official reports of their proceedings in the same form as a veritable municipal council. As they are elected to-day, and with a special mandate, it is natural that they should consider themselves more legitimate than a municipal council elected four or five months before them, and with a very uncertain mandate. Installed in the Hoˆtel- de-Ville, only two steps from the municipal council, it is natural for them to attempt to take its place; to substitute themselves for it, they have only to cross over to the other side of a corridor.

IV Thus, hatched by the Girondists, does the terrible Commune of Paris come into being, that of August 10th, September 2d, and May 31st. Scarcely does the viper leave its nest before it begins to hiss. A fortnight before the 10th of August44 it begins to uncoil, and the with the speaker! murmurs and hootings in the galleries.]—Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 398. Protestation of the arsenal section, read by Lavoisier (the chemist): “The caprice of a knot of citizens (thus) becomes the desire of an immense population.” 43. Buchez et Roux, XVI. 251.—Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 239 and 243. The central bureau is ﬁrst opened in “the building of the Saint-Esprit, in the second story, near the passage communicating with the common dwelling.” Afterwards the commissioners of the sections occupy another room in the Hoˆtel-de-Ville, nearly joining the throne-room, where the municipal council is holding its sessions. During the night of August 9–10 both councils sit four hours simultaneously within a few steps of each other. 44. Robespierre, “Seventh letter to his constituents,” says: “The sections 612 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION wise statesmen who have so diligently sheltered and fed it, stand aghast at its hideous, ﬂattened head. Accordingly, they back away from it up to the last hour, and strive to prevent it from biting them. Pe´tion himself visits Robespierre on the 7th of August, in order to represent to him the perils of an insurrection, and to allow the As- sembly time enough to discuss the question of dethronement. The same day Verginaud and Guadet propose to the King, through the medium of Thierry, his valet-de-chambre, that, until peace is assured, the government be carried on under a regency. Pe´tion, on the night of August 9–10, issues a pressing circular to the sections, urging them to remain tranquil.45 But it is too late. Fifty days of excitement and alarm have worked up the aberrations of morbid imaginations into a delirium.—On the second of August, a crowd of men and women rush to the bar of the Assembly, exclaiming, “Vengeance! Vengeance! our brethren are being poisoned!”46 The fact as ascertained is this: at Soissons, where the bread of the soldiery was prepared in a church, some fragments of broken glass were found in the oven, on the strength of which a rumor was started that 170 volunteers had died, and that 700 were lying in the hospital. A ferocious instinct creates adversaries in its own image, and sanctions projects against them of its own invention.—The committee of Jacobin leaders states positively that the Court is about to attack, and, accordingly, has devised “not merely signs of this, but the most unmistakable proof.”47 “It is the Trojan

. . . have been busy for more than a fortnight getting ready for the last Revo- lution.” 45. Robespierre, “Seventh letter to his constituents.”—Malouet, II. 233, 234.—Roederer, “Chronique des cinquante jours.” 46. Moniteur, XIII. 318, 319. The petition is drawn up apparently by people who are beside themselves. “If we did not rely on you, I would not answer for the excesses to which our despair would carry us! We would bring on ourselves all the horrors of civil war, provided we could, on dying, drag along with us some of our cowardly assassins!”—The representatives, it must be noted, talk in the same vein. Lasource exclaims: “The members here, like yourselves, call for vengeance!” Thuriot declares that “It is an atrocious crime!” 47. Buchez et Roux, XIX. 93, session of Sept. 23, 1792. Speech by Panis: The Jacobin Conquest / 613 horse,” exclaimed Panis. “We are lost if we do not succeed in dis- emboweling it....Thebomb is to burst on the night of August 9– 10....Fifteen thousand aristocrats stand ready to slaughter all patriots.” Patriots, consequently, attribute to themselves the right to slaughter aristocrats.—Late in June, in the Minimes section, “a French guardsman had already determined to kill the King,” if the King persisted in his veto; the president of the section having desired the expulsion of the regicide, the latter was retained and the president was expelled.48 On the 14th of July, the day of the Federation festival, another predecessor of Louvel and Fieschi, provided with a cutlass, had introduced himself into the battalion on duty at the palace, for the same purpose; during the ceremony the crowd was furious, and, for a moment, the King owed his life to the ﬁrmness of his escort. On the 27th of July, in the garden of the Tuileries, d’Espre´me´nil, the old Constituent, beaten, slashed, and his clothes torn, pursued like a stag across the Palais Royal, falls bleeding on a mattress at the gates of the Treasury.49 On the 29th of July, whilst one of Lafayette’s aids, M. Bureau de Pusy, is at the bar of the house, “they try to have a motion passed in the Palais Royal to parade his head on the end of a pike.”50—To such an extent are rage

“Many worthy citizens would like to have judicial proof; but political proofs satisfy us.”—Towards the end of July the Minister of the Interior had invited Pe´tion to send two municipal officers to examine the Tuileries; but this the council refused to do, so as to keep up the excitement. 48. Mallet-Dupan, “Me´moires,” 303. Letter of Malouet, June 29.—Bertrand de Molleville, “Me´moires,” II. 301.—Hua, 148.—Weber, II. 208.—Madame Campan, “Me´moires,” II. 188. Already, at the end of 1791, the king was told that he was liable to be poisoned by the pastry-cook of the palace, a Jacobin. For three or four months the bread and pastry he ate were secretly purchased in other places. On the 14th of July, 1792, his attendants, on account of the threats against his life, put a breastplate on him under his coat. 49. Moniteur, VIII. 271, 278. A deputy, excusing his assailants, pretends that d’Espre´meńil urged the people to enter the Tuileries garden. It is scarcely necessary to state that during the Constituent Assembly d’Espre´meńil was one of the most conspicuous members of the extreme “Right.”—Duc de Gae¨te, “Me´- moires,” I. 18. 50. Lafayette, “Me´moires,” I. 465. 614 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION and fear carried, the brutal and the excited can wait no longer. On the 4th of August,51 the Mauconseil section declares “to the Assem- bly, to the municipality, and to all the citizens of Paris, that it no longer recognises Louis XVI. as King of the French”; its president, the foreman of a tailor’s shop, and its secretary, employed in the leather market, support their manifesto with three lines of a tragedy floating vaguely in their minds,52 and name the Boulevard Madeleine St. Honore´ as a rendezvous on the following Sunday for all well- disposed persons. On the 6th of August, Varlet, a post-office clerk, makes known to the Assembly, in the name of the petitioners of the Champ de Mars, the programme of the faction: the dethronement of the King, the indictment, arrest, and speedy condemnation of Lafayette, the immediate convoking of the primary assemblies, universal suffrage, the discharge of all staff officers, the renewal of the departmental directories, the recall of all ambassadors, the suppression of diplomacy, and a return to the state of nature. The Girondists may now interpose delay, negotiate, beat about and argue as much as they please; their hesitation has no other effect than to consign them into the background, as being lukewarm and timid. Thanks to them, the faction now has its deliberative assemblies, its executive powers, its central seat of government, its enlarged, tried, and ready army, and, forcibly or otherwise, its programme will be carried out.

V The ﬁrst point to gain is to constrain the Assembly to depose the King. Several times already,53 on the 26th of July and August 4,

51. Moniteur, XIII. 327.—Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 176. 52. Moniteur, XIII. 340.—The style of these petitions is highly instructive. We see in them the state of mind and degree of education of the petitioners: at one time a half-educated writer attempting to reason in the vein of the Contrat Social; at another, a schoolboy spouting the tirades of Raynal; and again, the corner letter-writer putting together the periods forming his stock in trade. 53. Carra, “Prećis historique sur l’origine et les ve´ritables auteurs de l’insurrection du 10 Aouˆt.”—Barbaroux, “Me´moires,” 49. The executive direc- The Jacobin Conquest / 615 secret conventicles had been held, in which obscure individuals decided the fate of France, and gave the signal for insurrection.— Restrained with great difficulty, they consented “to have patience until August 9, at 11 o’clock in the evening.”54 On that day the discussion of the dethronement is to take place in the Assembly, and calculations are made on a favorable vote under such a positive threat; its reluctance must yield to the certainty of an armed investment.—On the 8th of August, however, the Assembly refuses, by a majority of two-thirds, to indict the great enemy, Lafayette. The double amputation, therefore, so essential for publicsafety, must be begun with this majority. The moment the acquittal is announced, the galleries, usually so vociferous, maintain “gloomy silence.”55 The word of command for them is to keep themselves in reserve for the streets. One by one the deputies who voted for Lafayette are designated to the mob at the doors, and a shout goes up, “The rascals, the knaves, the traitors living on the civil list! Hang them! Kill them! Put an end to them!” Mud, mortar, plaster, stones are thrown at them, and they are severely pummelled. M. Me´zie`res, in the Rue du Dauphin, is seized tory, appointed by the central committee of the confederates, held its first meeting in a wine-shop, the Soleil d’or, on the square of the Bastille; the second at the Cadran bleu, on the boulevard; the third in Antoine’s room, who then lodged in the same house with Robespierre. Camille Desmoulins was present at this latter meeting. Santerre, Westermann, Fournier the American, and Lazowski were the principal members of this Directory. Another insurrectionary plan was drawn up on the 30th of July in a wine-shop at Charenton by Barbaroux, Rebecqui, Pierre Bayle, Heron, and Fournier the American.—Cf. J. Claretie, “Camille Desmoulins,” p. 192. Desmoulins wrote, a little before the 10th of August: “If the National Assembly thinks that it cannot save the country, let it declare then, that, according to the Constitution, and like the Romans, it hands this over to each citizen. Let the tocsin be rung forthwith, the whole nation assembled, and every man, as at Rome, be invested with the power of putting to death all well-known conspirators!” 54. Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 182. Decision of the Quinze-Vingt Section, Aug. 4.—Buchez et Roux, XVI. 402–410. History of the Quinze-Vingt Section. 55. Moniteur, XIII. 367, session of Aug. 8.—Ibid., 369 and following pages. Session of Aug. 9. Letters and speeches of maltreated deputies. 616 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION by the throat, and a woman strikes at him, which he parries. In the Rue St. Honore´, a number of men in red caps surround M. Regnault- Beauceron, and decide to “string him up at the lantern”; a man in his jacket had already grabbed him from behind and raised him up, when the grenadiers of Sainte-Opportune arrive in time to set him free. In the Rue St. Louis, M. Deuzy, repeatedly struck on the back with stones, has a sabre twice raised over his head. In the Passage des Feuillants, M. Desbois is pummelled, and a “snuff-box, his pocket-book, and cane” are stolen from him. In the lobbies of the Assembly, M. Girardin is on the point of being assassinated.56 Eight deputies besides these are pursued, and take refuge in the guard- room of the Palais Royal. A Federate enters along with them, and “there, his eyes sparkling with rage and thumping on the table like a madman,” he exclaims to M. Dumolard, who is the best known: “If you are unlucky enough to put your feet in the Assembly again, I’ll cut off your head with my sword!” As to the principal defender of Lafayette, M. Vaublanc, he is assailed three times, but he is wary enough not to return home; a number of infuriates, however, invest his house, yelling out that “eighty citizens are to perish by their hands, and he one of the first”; a dozen of the gang ascend to his apartments, rummage them in every corner, make another effort to find him in the adjoining houses, and, not being able to secure him, try to find his family; he is notified that, if he returns to his house, he will be massacred.—In the evening, on the Feuillants terrace,

56. Moniteur, 371. Speech of M. Girardin: “I am confident that most of those who insulated me were foreigners.”—Ibid., 370. Letter of M. Frouvie`res: “Many of the citizens, coming out of their shops, exclaimed: How can they insult the deputies in this way? Run away! run off!”—M. Jolivet, that evening attending a meeting of the Jacobin Club, states “that the Jacobin tribunes were far from sharing in this frenzy.” He heard “one individual in these tribunes exclaim, on the proposal to put the dwellings of the deputies on the list, that it was outrageous.”—Countless other details show the small number and character of the factions.—Ibid., 374. Speech of Aubert-Dubacet: “I saw men dressed in the coats of the national guard, with countenances betraying everything that is most vile in wickedness.” There are “a great many evil-disposed persons among the federates.” The Jacobin Conquest / 617 other deputies are subjected to the same outrages; the gendarmerie tries in vain to protect them, while the “commandant of the National Guard, on leaving his post, is attacked and cut down.”57—Mean- while, some of the Jacobins in the lobbies “doom the majority of the Assembly to destruction”; one orator declares that “the people have a right to form lists of proscription,” and the club accordingly decides on printing and publishing the names of all the deputies who acquitted Lafayette.—Never was physical constraint displayed and applied with such open shamelessness. On the following day, August 9, armed men gather around the approaches to the Assembly, and sabres are seen even in the corridors.58 The galleries, more imperious than ever, cheer, and break out in ironicshouts of triumph and approval every time the attacks of the previous evening are denounced in the tribune. The president calls the offenders to order more than twenty times, but his voice and his bell are drowned in the uproar. It is impossible to express an opinion. Most of the representatives who were maltreated the evening before, write that they will not return, while others, who are present, declare that they will not vote again “if they cannot be secure of freedom of conscience of their deliberations.” At this utterance, which expresses the secret sentiment of “nearly the whole of the Assembly,”59 “all the members of the ‘Right,’ and many of

57. Moniteur, XIII. 170 (letter of M. de Joly, Minister of Justice).—Ibid., 371, declaration of M. Jollivet.—Buchez et Roux, XVI. 370 (session of the Jacobin Club, Aug. 8, at evening). Speech by Goupilleau. 58. Moniteur, XIII. 370.—Cf. Ibid., the letter of M. Chapron.—Ibid., 372. Speech by M. A. Vaublanc.—Moore, “Journal during a Residence in France,” I. 25 (Aug. 10). The impudence of the people in the galleries was intolerable. There was “a loud and universal peal of laughter from all the galleries” on the reading of a letter, in which a deputy wrote that he was threatened with decapitation.—“Fifty members were vociferating at once; the most boisterous night I ever was witness to in the House of Commons was calmness itself alongside of this.” 59. Moniteur, Ibid., p. 371.—Lafayette, I. 467. “On the 9th of August, as can be seen in the unmutilated editions of the Logographe, the Assembly, almost to a man, arose and declared that it was not free.” Ibid., 478. “On the 9th of 618 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION the ‘Left,’ arise simultaneously and exclaim: ‘Yes, yes; we will debate no longer unless we are free!’”—As usual, however, the majority gives way the moment effective measures are to be adopted; its heart sinks, as it always has done, on being called upon to act in self- defence, while these official declarations, one on top of the other, in hiding from it the gravity of the danger, sink it deeper in its own timidity. At this same session the syndic-attorney of the department reports that the mob is ready, that 900 armed men had just entered Paris, that the tocsin would be rung at midnight, and that the municipality tolerates or favors the insurrection. At this same session, the Minister of Justice gives notice that “the laws are powerless,” and that the government is no longer responsible. At this same session, Pe´tion, the mayor, almost avowing his complicity, appears at the bar of the house, and declares positively that he will have nothing to do with the public forces, because “it would be arming one body of citizens against another.”60—Every support is evidently knocked away. Feeling that it is abandoned, the Assembly gives up, and, as a last expedient, and with a degree of weakness or simplicity which admirably depicts the legislators of the epoch, it adopts a philosophic address to the people, “instructing it what to do in the exercise of its sovereignty.” How this is done, it may see the next morning. At 7 o’clock, a Jacobin deputy stops in a cab before the door of the Feuillants club; a crowd gathers around him, and he gives his name, Delmas. The crowd understood it as Dumas, a notorious Constitutionalist, and, in a rage, drag him out of the vehicle and knock him down; had not other deputies run up and given assurances that he was the patriot Delmas, of Toulouse, instead of “the traitor, Mathieu Du- mas,” he was a lost man.61 Dumas makes no effort to enter. He finds on the Place Vendoˆme a second and not less instructive warning.

August the Assembly had passed a decree declaring that it was not free. This decree was torn up on the 10th. But it is no less true that it was passed.” 60. Moniteur, XIII. 370, 374, 375. Speech by Roederer, letter of M. de Joly, and speech by Pe´tion. 61. Mathieu Dumas, “Me´moires,” II. 461. The Jacobin Conquest / 619

Some wretches, followed by the usual rabble, carry about a number of heads on pikes, those probably of the journalist Suleau, and three others, massacred a quarter of an hour before; “boys quite young, mere children, play with these heads by tossing them in the air, and catching them on the ends of their sticks.”—There is no doubt but that the deputies of the “Right,” and even of the “Centre,” would do well to go home and stay there. In fact, they are no longer seen in the Assembly.62 In the afternoon, out of the 630 members still present the evening before, 346 do not answer the call, while about thirty others had either withdrawn before this or sent in their resignations.63 The purging is complete, like that to which Cromwell, in 1648, subjected the Long Parliament. Henceforth the Legislative body, reduced to 224 Jacobins or Girondists, with 60 frightened or tractable neutrals, will obey the orders of the street without any diﬃculty. A change has come over the spirit of the body as well as over its composition; it is nothing more now than a servile instrument in the hands of the seditious, who have mutilated it, and who, masters of it through a ﬁrst misdeed, are going to use it to legalise other crimes. VI During the night of the 9th and 10th of August their government is organised for action, its organisation, as its forth coming action will be, being due to violence and fraud.—In vain have they wrought

62. “Chronique des cinquante jours,” by Roederer.—Mortimer-Ternaux,II. 260.—Buchez et Roux, XVI. 458.—Towards half-past seven in the morning there were only from sixty to eighty members present. (Testimony of two of the Ministers who leave the Assembly.) 63. Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 205. At the ballot of July 12, not counting members on leave of absence or delegated elsewhere, and the dead not replaced, there were already twenty-seven not answering the call, while after that date three others resigned.—Buchez et Roux, XVII. 340 (session of Sept. 2, 1792). He´rault de Sećhelles is elected president by 248 out of 257 voters.—Hua, 164 (after Aug. 10). “We attended the meetings of the House simply to show that we had not given them up. We took no part in the discussions, and on the vote being taken, standing or sitting, we remained in our seats. This was the only protest we could make.” 620 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION up and wearied the sections for the past fortnight; they are not yet submissive, only six out of forty-eight at the present hour, eleven o’clock at night, being found sufficiently excited or purged to send their commissioners forthwith, with full power, to the Hoˆtel-de- Ville. The others will follow, but the majority rests inert or refractory.64—It is necessary, therefore, to deceive or force this majority, and, to this end, darkness, the late hour, disorder, dread of the coming day, and the uncertainty of what to do, are precious auxiliaries. In many of the sections,65 the meetings are already adjourned or deserted; only a few members of the permanent bureau remain in the room, with a few men, perhaps asleep, on the nearly empty benches. An emissary arrives from the insurgent sections, along with a company of trusty fellows belonging to the quarter, and cries out, Save the country! The sleepers open their eyes, stretch themselves, raise their hands, and elect whoever is designated, oftentimes strangers and other unknown individuals, who will be disowned the coming day at a full meeting of the section. There is no official report drawn up, no ballotting, the course pursued being the most prompt. At the Arsenal section, six electors present choose three among their own number to represent 1,400 active citizens. Elsewhere, a throng of harridans, vagabonds, and others who “make night hideous,” invade the premises, drive out the friends of order, and carry all the nominations made.66 Other sections consent to elect, but without giving full power. Several make express reservations, stipulating that their delegates shall act in concert with the legal municipality, distrusting the future committee, and declaring in advance that they will not obey it. A few elect their commissioners only to obtain

64. Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 229, 233, 417 and following pages. M. Mortimer- Ternaux is the first to expose, with documents to support him and critical discussion, the formation of the revolutionary commune.—The six sections referred to are the Lombards, Gravilliers, Mauconseil, Gobelins, Theátre- Français, and Faubourg Poissonnie`re. 65. For instance, the Enfants Rouges, Louvre, Observatoire, Fontaine- Grenelle, Faubourg St. Denis, and Thermes de Julien. 66. For example, at the sections of Montreuil, Popincourt, and Roi de Sicile. The Jacobin Conquest / 621 information, and, at the same time, to show that they intend earnestly to stop all rioting.67 Finally, at least twenty sections abstain from or disapprove of the proceedings and send no delegates.—It makes but little difference—they can be dispensed with. At three o’clock in the morning, 19 sections, and, at seven o’clock, 24 or 25,68 are represented one way or another at the Hoˆtel-de-Ville, and this representation forms a central committee. At all events, there is nothing to prevent seventy or eighty subordinate intriguers and desperadoes, who have slipped in or pushed through, from calling themselves authorised delegates and ministers plenipotentiary of the entire Paris population,69 and of going to work at once. Scarcely are they installed under the presidency of Huguenin, with Tallien for a secretary, when they issue a summons for “twenty-five armed men from each section,” five hundred vigorous fellows, to act as guards and serve as an executive force.—Against a band of this description the municipal council, in session in the opposite chamber, is feeble enough. Moreover, the most moderate and firmest of its members, sent away on purpose, are on missions to the Assembly, at the palace, and in different quarters of Paris, while its galleries are crammed with villainous looking men, posted there to create an uproar, its deliberations being carried on under menaces of death.—Hence, as the night wears on, between the two assemblages, one legal and the other illegal, in session at the same time, facing each other like the two sides of a scale, the equilibrium disappears. Lassitude, fear,

67. For example, Ponceau, Invalides, Sainte-Genevie`ve. 68. Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 240. 69. Mortimer-Ternaux, 446 (list of the commissioners who took their seats before 9 o’clock in the morning). “Le Tableau geńe´ral des Commissaires des 48 sections qui ont compose´ le conseil geńe´ral de la Commune de Paris, le 10 Aouˆt, 1792,” it must be noted, was not published until three or four months later, with all the essential falsifications. It may be found in Buchez et Roux, XVI. 450.—“Relation de l’abbe´ Sicard.” “At that time a lot of scoundrels, after the general meeting of the sections was over, passed acts in the name of the whole assemblage and had them executed, utterly unknown to those who had done this, or by those who were the unfortunate victims of these proceedings” (supported by documents). 622 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION discouragement, desertion, increase on one side, while numbers, audacity, force, and usurpation increase on the other. At length, the latter wrests from the former all the acts it needs to start the insurrection and render defence impossible. About six o’clock in the morning the intruding committee, in the name of the people, ends the matter by suspending the legitimate council, which it then expels, and takes possession of its chairs. The first act of the new sovereigns indicates at once what they mean to do. M. de Mandat, in command of the National Guard, summoned to the Hoˆtel-de-Ville, had come to explain to the council what disposition he had made of his troops, and what orders he had issued. They seize him, interrogate him in their turn,70 depose him, appoint Santerre in his place, and, to derive all the benefit they can from his capture, they order him to withdraw one-half of his men stationed around the palace. Fully aware of what he was exposed to in this den of thieves, he nobly refuses; forthwith they consign him to prison, and send him to the Abbaye “for his greater safety.” At these significant words from Danton,71 he is murdered at the door

70. Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 270, 273. (The official report of Mandat’s examination contains five false statements, either through omission or substitution.) 71. Claretie, “Camille Desmoulins,” p. 467 (notes of Topino-Lebrun on Danton’s trial). Danton, in the pleadings, says: “I left at 1 o’clock in the morning. I was at the revolutionary commune and pronounced sentence of death on Mandet, who had orders to fire on the people.” Danton in the same place says: “I had planned the 10th of August.” It is very certain that from 1 to 7 o’clock in the morning (when Mandat was killed) he was the principal leader of the insurrectional commune. Nobody was so potent, so overbearing, so well endowed physically for the control of such a conventicle as Danton. Besides, among the new-comers he was the best known and with the most influence through his position as deputy of the syndic-attorney. Hence his prestige after the victory and appointment as Minister of Justice. His hierarchical superior, the syndic-attorney Manuel, who was there also and signed his name, showed himself undoubtedly the pitiful fellow he was, an affected, crazy, ridiculous loud- talker. For this reason he was allowed to remain syndic-attorney as a tool and servant.—Beaulieu, “Essais sur la Re´volution Française,” III. 454. “Rossignol boasted of having committed this assassination himself.” The Jacobin Conquest / 623 as he leaves by Rossignol, one of Danton’s accolytes, with a pistol- shot at arm’s length.—After tragedy comes comedy. At the urgent request of Pe´tion, who is unwilling to be called out against the rioters,72 they send him a guard of 400 men, thus confining him in his own house, and, apparently, in spite of himself. With treachery as a shelter on one side, and assassination on the other, the insurrection may now go on in full security before the big hypocrite (tartufe) who solemnly complains of his voluntary captivity, and before the corpse, with shattered brow, lying on the steps of the Hoˆtel-de-Ville. On the right bank of the river, the battalions of the faubourg Saint-Antoine, and, on the left, those of the faubourg Saint-Marcel, the Bretons, and the Marseilles band, march forth as freely as if going to parade. Measures of defence are disconcerted by the murder of the commanding general, and by the mayor’s duplicity; there is no resistance on guarded spots, at the arcade Saint-Jean, the passages of the bridges, along the quays, and in the court of the Louvre. An advance guard of the populace, women, children, and men, armed with shoe-knives, cudgels, and pikes, spread over the abandoned Carrousel, and, towards eight o’clock, the advance column, led by Westermann, debouches in front of the palace.

VII If the King had been willing to ﬁght, he might still have defended himself, saved himself, and even been victorious.—In the Tuileries, 950 of the Swiss Guard and 200 gentlemen stood ready to die for him to the last man. Around the Tuileries, two or three thousand National Guard, the e´lite of the Parisian population, had just cheered

72. “Pie`ces inte´ressantes pour l’histoire,” by Pe´tion, 1793. “I desired the insurrection, but I trembled for fear that it might not succeed. My position was a critical one. I had to do my duty as a citizen without sacrificing that of a magistrate; externals had to be preserved, without derogating from forms. The plan was to confine me in my own house; but they forgot or delayed to carry this out. Who do you think repeatedly sent to urge the execution of this measure? Myself; yes, myself!” 624 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION him as he passed:73 “Hurrah for the King! Hurrah for Louis XVI.! He is our King and we want no other; we want him only! Down with the rioters! Down with the Jacobins! We will defend him unto death! Let him put himself at our head! Hurrah for the Nation, the Law, the Constitution, and the King, which are all one!” If the cannoneers were silent, and seemed ill-disposed,74 it was simply necessary to disarm them suddenly, and hand over their pieces to loyal men. Four thousand guns and eleven pieces of artillery, protected by the walls of the courts and by the thick masonry of the palace, were certainly sufficient against the nine or ten thousand Jacobins in Paris, most of them pikemen, badly led by improvised or refractory battalion officers, and, still worse, commanded by their new general, Santerre, who, always cautious, kept himself aloof in the Hoˆtel-de-Ville, out of harm’s way.75 The only staunch men in the Carrousel were the eight hundred men from Brest and Marseilles; the rest consisted of a rabble like that of July 14, October 5, and June 20;76 the palace, says Napoleon Bonaparte, was attacked by the

73. Napoleon, at this moment, was at the Carrousel, in the house of Bour- rienne’s brother. “I could see conveniently,” he says, “all that took place during theday....Theking had at least as many troops in his defence as the Con- vention since had on the 13th Vende´maire, while the enemies of the latter were much more formidable and better disciplined. The greater part of the national guard showed that they favored the king; this justice must be done to it.” 74. Official report of Leroux. On the side of the garden, along the terrace by the river, and then on the return were “a few shouts of Vive le roi! many for Vive la nation! Vivent les sans-culottes! Down with the king! Down with the veto! Down with the old porker! etc.—But I can certify that these insults were all uttered between the Pont-Tournant and the parterre, and by about a dozen men, among which were five or six cannoneers following the king, the same as flies follow an animal they are bent on tormenting.” 75. Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 223, 273.—Letter of Bonnaud, chief of the Sainte-Marguerite battalion: “I cannot avoid marching at their head under any pretext....Neverwill I violate the Constitution unless I am forced to.”—The Gravilliers section and that of the Faubourg Poissonnie`re cashiered their officers and elected others. 76. Mortimer-Ternaux, IV. 342. Speech of Fabre d’Eglantine at the Jacobin Club, Nov. 5, 1792. “Let it be loudly proclaimed that these are the same men The Jacobin Conquest / 625 vilest canaille, professional rioters, Maillard’s band, and the bands of Lazowski, Fournier, and The´roigne, by all the assassins, indeed, of the previous night and day, and of the following day, which species of combatants, as was proved by the event, would have scattered at the first discharge of a cannon.—But, with the governing as with the governed, all notion of the State was lost, the former through humanity become a duty, and the latter through insubordination erected into a right. At the close of the eighteenth century, in the upper as well as in the middle class, there was a horror of blood;77 refined social ways, coupled with an idyllic imagination, had softened the militant disposition. Everywhere the magistrates had forgotten that the maintenance of society and of civilisation is a benefit of infinitely greater importance than the lives of a parcel of maniacs and malefactors; that the prime object of government, as well as of a police, is the preservation of order by force; that a who captured the Tuileries, broke into the Abbaye prisons, those of Orleans and those of Versailles.” 77. In this respect the riot of the Champ-de-Mars (July 17, 1791), the only one that was suppressed, is very instructive: “As the militia would not as usual ground their arms on receiving the word of command from the mob, this last began, according to custom, to pelt them with stones. To be disappointed in their amusement, to be paraded through the streets under a scorching sun, and then stand like holiday-turkeys to be knocked down with brick-bats was a little more than they had patience to bear: so that, without waiting for orders, they fired and killed a dozen or two of the ragged regiment. The rest ran off like lusty fellows. If the militia had waited for orders they might, I fancy, have been all knocked down before they received any....Lafayette was very near being killed in the morning; but the pistol snapped at his breast. The assassin was immediately secured, but he ordered him to be discharged” (Gouverneur Mor- ris, letter of July 20, 1791). Likewise, on the 29th of August, 1792, at Rouen, the national guard, defending the Hoˆtel-de-Ville, is pelted with stones more than an hour, while many are wounded. The magistrates make every concession and try every expedient, the mayor reading the riot act five or six times. Finally the national guard, forced into it, exclaim: “If you do not allow us to repel force with force we shall leave.” They fire and four persons are killed and two wounded, and the crowd breaks up. (“Archives Nationales,” F7, 2,265, official report of the Rouen municipality, Aug. 29: addresses of the municipality, Aug. 28; letter of the lieutenant-colonel of the gendarmerie, Aug. 30, etc.) 626 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION gendarme is not a philanthropist; that, if attacked on his post, he must use his sword, and that, in sheathing it for fear of wounding his aggressors, he fails to do his duty. This time again, in the court of the Carrousel, the magistrates on the spot, finding that “their responsibility is insupportable,” concern themselves only with how to “avoid the effusion of blood”; it is with regret, and this they state to the troops, “in faltering tones,” that they proclaim martial law.78 They “forbid them to attack,” merely “authorising them to repel force with force”; in other words, they order them to support the first fire: “you are not to fire until you are fired upon.”—Still better, they go from company to company, “openly declaring that opposition to such a large and well-armed assemblage would be folly, and that it would be a very great misfortune to attempt it.”—“I repeat to you,” said Leroux, “that a defence seems to me madness.”—Such is the way in which, for more than an hour, they encourage the National Guard. “All I ask,” says Leroux again, “is that you wait a little longer. I hope that we shall induce the King to yield to the National Assembly.”—Always the same tactics,—surrender the general and the fortress rather than fire on the mob. To this end they return to the King, with Roederer at their head, and renew their efforts: “Sire,” says Roederer, “time presses, and we ask you to consent to accompany us.”—For a few moments, the last and most solemn of the monarchy, the King hesitates.79 His good sense, probably, enabled him to see that a retreat was abdication; but his phlegmatic understanding is at first unable to clearly define its consequences; moreover, his optimism had never compassed the vastness of popular imbecility, nor sounded the depths of human wickedness; he cannot imagine calumny transforming his dislike of shedding blood into a disposition to shed blood.80

78. Oﬃcial report of Leroux.—“Chronique des cinquante jours,” by Roe- derer.—“De´tails particuliers sur la journe´e du 10 Aouˆt,” by a bourgeois of Paris, an eye-witness (1822). 79. Barbaroux, “Me´moires,” 69. “Everything betokened victory for the court if the king had not left his post....Ifhehadshownhimself, if he had mounted on horseback the battalions of Paris would have declared for him.” 80. “Re´volution de Paris,” number for Aug. 11, 1792. “The 10th of August, The Jacobin Conquest / 627

Besides, he is bound by his past, by his habit of always yielding; by his determination, declared and maintained for the past three years, never to cause civil war; by his obstinate humanitarianism, and especially by his religious equanimity. The animal instinct of resistance has been systematically extinguished in him, the flash of anger in all of us which starts up under unjust and brutal aggressions; the Chris- tian has supplanted the King; he is no longer aware that duty obliges him to be a man of the sword, that, in his surrender, he surrenders the State, and that to yield like a lamb is to lead all honest people, along with himself, into the shambles. “Let us go,” said he, raising his right hand, “we will give, since it is necessary, one more proof of our self-sacrifice.”81 Accompanied by his family and Ministers, he sets out between two lines of National Guards and the Swiss Guard,82 and reaches the Assembly, which sends a deputation to meet him; entering the chamber he says: “I come here to prevent a great crime.”—No pretext, indeed, for a conflict now exists. An assault on the insurgent side is useless, since the monarch, with all belonging to him and his government, have left the palace. On the other side,

1792, is still more horrible than the 24th of August, 1572, and Louis XVI. a greater monster than Charles IX.” “Thousands of torches were found in cellars, apparently placed there to burn down Paris at a signal from this modern Nero.” In the number for Aug. 18: “The place for Louis Nero and for Medicis Antoi- nette is not in the towers of the Temple; their heads should have fallen from the guillotine on the night of the 10th of August.” (Special details of a plan of the king to massacre all patriot deputies, and intimidate Paris with a grand pillaging and by keeping the guillotine constantly at work.) “That crowned ogre and his Austrian panther.” 81. Narrative of the Minister Joly (written four days after the event). The king departs about half-past eight.—Cf. Madame Campan, “Me´moires,” and Moniteur, XIII. 378. 82. “Re´volution de Paris,” number for Aug. 18. On his way a sans-culotte steps out in front of the rows and tries to prevent the king from proceeding. The officer of the guard argues with him, upon which he extends his hand to the king, exclaiming: “Shake that hand, f of an honest man! But I have no idea of your wife going to the Assembly with you. That is not wanted there!” “Louis XVI.,” says Prudhomme, “kept on his way without being at all struck with this noble impulse.” I regard this as a masterpiece of Jacobin interpretation. 628 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION the garrison will not begin the fight; diminished by 150 Swiss and nearly all the grenadiers of the Filles St. Thomas, who served as the King’s escort to the Assembly, it is reduced to a few gentlemen, 750 Swiss, and about a hundred National Guards; the others, on learning that the King is going, consider their services at an end and disperse.83—All seems to be over in the sacrifice of royalty. Louis XVI. imagines that the Assembly, at the worst, will suspend him from his functions, and that he will return to the Tuileries as a private individual. On leaving the palace, indeed, he orders his valet to keep up the service until he himself returns from the National Assembly.84 He did not count on the exigencies, delusions and disorders of an insurrection.—Threatened by the Jacobin cannoneers remaining with their artillery in the inside courts, the gate-keepers open the gates. The insurgents rush in, fraternise with the cannoneers, reach the vestibule, ascend the grand staircase, and summon the Swiss to surrender.85—These show no hostile spirit; many of them, as a mark of good humor, throw packets of cartridges out of the windows; some even go so far as to let themselves be embraced and led away. The regiment, however, faithful to its orders, will not yield to force.86 “We are Swiss,” replies the sergeant, Blaser; “the Swiss do

83. Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 311, 325. The king, at the foot of the staircase, had asked Roederer: “What will become of the persons remaining above?” “Sire,” he replies, “they seem to be in plain dress. Those who have swords have merely to take them off, follow you, and leave by the garden.” A certain number of gentlemen, indeed, do so, and thus depart, while others escape by the opposite side through the gallery of the Louvre. 84. Mathon de la Varenne, “Histoire particulie`re,” etc., 108. (Testimony of the valet-de-chambre Lorimier de Chamilly, with whom Mathon was imprisoned in the prison of La Force.) 85. De Lavalette, “Me´moires,” I. 81. “We there found the grand staircase barred by a sort of beam placed across it, and defended by several Swiss officers, who were civilly disputing its passage with about fifty mad fellows, whose odd dress very much resembled that of the brigands in our melodramas. They were intoxicated, while their coarse language and queer imprecations indicated the town of Marseilles, which had belched them forth.” 86. Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 314, 317, 487 (examination of M. de Diesbach). “Their orders were not to fire until the word was given, and not before the national guard had set the example.” The Jacobin Conquest / 629 not part with their arms but with their lives. We think that we do not merit such an insult. If the regiment is no longer wanted, let it be legally discharged. But we will not leave our post, nor will we let our arms be taken from us.” The two bodies of troops remain facing each other on the staircase for three-quarters of an hour, almost intermingled, one silent and the other excited, turbulent, and active, with all the ardor and lack of discipline peculiar to a popular gathering, each insurgent striving apart, and in his own way, to corrupt, intimidate, or constrain the Swiss Guards. Granier, of Mar- seilles, at the head of the staircase, holds two of them at arms’ length, trying in a friendly manner to draw them down.87 At the foot of the staircase the crowd is shouting and threatening; lightermen, armed with boat-hooks, harpoon the sentinels by their shoulder-straps, and pull down four or five, like so many fishes, amid shouts of laughter.—Just at this moment a pistol goes off, nobody being able to tell which party fired it.88 The Swiss, firing from above, clean out the vestibule and the courts, rush down into the square and seize the cannon; the insurgents scatter and fly out of range. The bravest, nevertheless, rally behind the entrances of the houses on the Car- rousel, throw cartridges into the courts of the small buildings and set them on fire. During another half-hour, under the dense smoke of the first discharge and of the burning buildings, both sides fire haphazard, while the Swiss, far from giving way, have scarcely lost a few men, when a messenger from the King arrives, M. d’Hervilly, who orders in his name the firing to cease, and the men to return to their barracks. Slowly and regularly they form in line and retire along the broad alley of the garden. At the sight of these foreigners, however, in red coats, who had just fired on Frenchmen, the guns of the battalion stationed on the terraces go off of their own accord, and the Swiss column divides in two. One body of 250 men turns to the right,

87. Buchez et Roux, XVI. 443, narrated by Pe´tion.—Peltier, “Histoire du 10 Aouˆt.” 88. M. de Nicolaı¨ was there the next day, Aug. 11. “The federates fired first, which was followed by a sharp volley from the chaˆteau windows” (Le Comte de Fersen et la Cour de France, II. 347). 630 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION reaches the Assembly, lays down its arms at the King’s order, and allows itself to be shut up in the Feuillants church. The others are annihilated on crossing the garden, or cut down on the Place Louis XV. by the mounted gendarmerie. No quarter is given. The warfare is that of a mob, not civilised war, but primitive war, that of barbarians. In the abandoned palace into which the insurgents entered five minutes after the departure of the garrison,89 they kill the wounded, the two Swiss surgeons attending to them,90 the Swiss who had not fired a gun, and who, in the balcony on the side of the garden, “cast off their cartridge-boxes, sabres, coats, and hats, and shout: ‘Friends, we are with you, we are Frenchmen, we belong to the nation!’”91 They kill the Swiss, armed or unarmed, who remain at their posts in the apartments. They kill the Swiss gate-keepers in their boxes. They kill everybody in the kitchens, from the head cook down to the pot boys.92 The women barely escape. Madame Cam- pan, on her knees, seized by the back, sees an uplifted sabre about to fall on her, when a voice from the foot of the staircase calls out: “What are you doing there? The women are not to be killed!” “Get up, you hussy, the nation forgives you!”—To make up for this the nation helps itself and indulges itself to its heart’s content in the palace which now belongs to it. Some honest persons do, indeed, carry money and valuables to the National Assembly, but others

89. Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 491. The abandonment of the Tuileries is proved by the small loss of the assailants. (List of the wounded belonging to the Mar- seilles corps and of the killed and wounded of the Brest corps, drawn up Oct. 16, 1792.—Statement of the aid granted to wounded Parisians, to widows, to orphans, and to the aged, October, 1792, and then 1794.)—The total amounts to 74 dead and 54 severely wounded. The two corps in the hottest of the fight were the Marseilles band, which lost 22 dead and 14 wounded, and the Bretons, who lost 2 dead and 5 wounded. The sections that suffered the most were the Quinze-Vingts (4 dead and 4 wounded), the Faubourg-Montmartre (3 dead), the Lombards (4 wounded), and the Gravilliers (3 wounded).—Out of twenty- one sections reported, seven declare that they did not lose a man.—The Swiss regiment, on the contrary, lost 760 men and 26 officers. 90. Napoleon’s narrative. 91. Pe´tion’s account. 92. Prudhomme’s “Re´volution de Paris,” XIII. 236 and 237.—Barbaroux, 73.—Madame Campan, II. 250. The Jacobin Conquest / 631 pillage and destroy all that they can.93 They shatter mirrors, break furniture to pieces, and throw clocks out of the window; they shout the Marseilles hymn, which one of the National Guards accompanies on a harpsichord,94 and descend to the cellars, where they gorge themselves. “For more than a fortnight,” says an eye-witness,95 “one walked on fragments of bottles.” In the garden, especially, “it might be said that they had tried to pave the walks with broken glass.”— Porters are seen seated on the throne in the coronation robes; a trollop occupies the Queen’s bed; it is a carnival in which base and cruel instincts, with the curb taken off, find plenty of good forage and abundant litter. Runaways come back after the victory and stab the dead with their pikes. Prostitutes, “well-dressed,” cut capers with naked corpses.96 And, as the destroyers enjoy their work, they are not disposed to be disturbed in it. In the courts of the Carrousel, where nine hundred toises of building are burning, the firemen try four times to extinguish the fire; “they are shot at, and threatened with being pitched into the flames,”97 while petitioners appear at the bar of the Assembly, and announce in a threatening tone that the Tuileries are blazing, and shall blaze until the dethronement becomes alaw. The poor Assembly, become Girondist through its late mutilation, strives in vain to arrest the downhill course of things, and maintain, as it has just sworn to do, “the constituted authorities”;98 it strives, at least, to put Louis XVI. in the Luxembourg palace, to appoint a

93. Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 258.—Moore, I. 59. Some of the robbers are killed. Moore saw one of them thrown down the grand staircase. 94. Michelet, III. 289. 95. Mercier, “Le Nouveau Paris,” II. 108—“The Comte de Fersen et la Cour de France,” II. 348. (Letter of Sainte-Foix, Aug. 11). “The cellars were broken open and more than 10,000 bottles of wine, of which I saw the fragments in the court, so intoxicated the people that I made haste to put an end to an investigation imprudently begun amidst 2,000 sots with naked swords, handled by them very carelessly.” 96. Napoleon’s narrative.—Memoirs of Barbaroux. 97. Moniteur, XIII. 387. Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 340. 98. Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 303. Words of the president Vergniaud on receiving Louis XVI.—Ibid., 342, 340, 350. 632 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION tutor for the Dauphin, to keep the ministers temporarily in office, and to save all prisoners, and those who walk the streets. Equally captive, and nearly as prostrate as the King himself, the Assembly merely serves as a recording office for the popular will, that very morning furnishing evidence of the value which the armed commonalty attaches to its decrees. That morning murders were committed at its door, in contempt of its safe conduct; at eight o’clock Suleau and three others, wrested from their guards, are cut down under its windows. In the afternoon, from sixty to eighty of the unarmed Swiss still remaining in the church of the Feuillants are taken out to be sent to the Hoˆtel-de-Ville, and massacred on the way at the Place de Gre`ve. Another detachment, conducted to the section of the Roule, is likewise disposed of in the same way.99 Carle, at the head of the gendarmerie, is called out of the Assembly and assassinated on the Place Vendoˆme, and his head is carried about on a pike. The founder of the old monarchical club, M. de Clermont- Tonnerre, withdrawn from publiclife for two years past, and quietly passing along the streets, is recognised, dragged through the gutter and cut to pieces.—After such warnings the Assembly can only obey, and, as usual, conceal its submission beneath sounding words. If the dictatorial committee, self-imposed at the Hoˆtel-de-Ville, still condescends to keep it alive, it is owing to a new investiture,100 and by declaring to it that it must not meddle with its doings now or in the future. Let it confine itself to its function, that of rendering decrees made by the faction. Accordingly, like fruit falling from a tree vigorously shaken, these decrees rattle down, one after another, into the hands that await them:101 the suspension of the King, the

99. Mortimer-Ternaux, 356, 357. 100. Mortimer-Ternaux, 337. Speech of Huguenin, president of the Com- mune, at the bar of the National Assembly: “The people by whom we are sent to you have instructed us to declare to you that they invest you anew with its confidence; but they at the same time instruct us to declare to you that, as judge of the extraordinary measures to which they have been driven by necessity and resistance to oppression, they know no other authority than the French people, your sovereign and ours, assembled in its primary meetings.” 101. Duvergier, “Collection des lois et dećrets” (between Aug. 10 and Sept. 20). The Jacobin Conquest / 633 convoking of a national convention, electors and the eligible exempted from all property qualifications, an indemnity for displaced electors, the term of Assemblies left to the decision of the electors,102 the removal and arrest of the late ministers, the re-appointment of Servan, Clavie`res and Roland, Danton as Minister of Justice, the recognition of the usurping Commune, Santerre confirmed in his new rank, the municipalities empowered to look after general safety, the arrest of suspicious persons confided to all well-disposed citizens,103 domiciliary visits prescribed for the discovery of arms and ammunition,104 all the justices of Paris to be re-elected by those within their jurisdiction, all officers of the gendarmerie subject to re-election by their soldiers,105 thirty sous per diem for the Marseilles troops from the day of their arrival, a court-martial against the Swiss, a tribunal for the despatch of justice against the vanquished of August 10, and a quantity of other decrees of a still more important bearing;—the suspension of the commissioners appointed to enforce the execution of the law in civil and criminal courts,106 the release of all persons accused or condemned for military insubordination, for press offences and pillaging of grain,107 the partition of communal possessions,108 the confiscation and sale of property belonging to e´migre´s,109 the relegation of their fathers, mothers, wives and children into the interior, the banishment or transportation of

102. Duvergier, “Collection des lois et de´crets,” Aug. 11–12. “The National Assembly considering that it has not the right to subject sovereignty in the formation of a national Convention to imperative regulations,...invites citizens to conform to the following rules.” 103. August 11 (article 8). 104. Aug. 10–12 and Aug. 28. 105. Ibid., Aug. 10, Aug. 13.—Cf. Moniteur, XIII. 399 (session of Aug. 12). 106. Ibid., Aug. 18. 107. Aug. 23 and Sept. 3. After the 11th of August the Assembly passes a decree releasing Saint-Huruge and annulling the warrant against Antoine. 108. Ibid., Aug. 14. 109. Ibid., Aug. 14. Decree for dividing the property of the e´migre´s into lots of from two to four arpents, in order to “multiply small proprietors.”—Ibid., Sept. 2. Other decrees against the e´migre´s and their relations, Aug. 15, 23, 30, and Sept. 5 and 9. 634 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION unsworn ecclesiastics,110 the establishment of easy divorce at two months’ notice and on the demand of one of the parties,111 in short, every measure tending to disturb property, break up the family, persecute conscience, suspend the law, pervert justice, rehabilitate crime, and hand over the magistracy, public oﬃces, the choice of the future omnipotent Assembly, in brief, the entire commonwealth, to an autocratic, violent minority, which, daring all things, obtains the dictatorship and dares all to keep it.

VIII Let us stop a moment to contemplate this great city and its new kings.—From afar, Paris seems a club of 700,000 fanatics, vociferating and deliberating on the publicsquares; near by, it is nothing of the sort. The slime, on rising from the bottom, has become the surface, and given its color to the stream; but the human stream flows in its ordinary channel, and, under this turbid exterior, remains about the same as it was before. It is a city of people like ourselves, governed, busy, and fond of amusement. To the great majority, even in revolutionary times, private life, too complex and absorbing, leaves but an insignificant corner for public affairs. Through routine and through necessity, manufacturing, display of wares, selling, purchasing, keeping accounts, trades, and professions, go on in the usual way. The clerk goes to his office, the workman to his shop, the artisan to his loft, the merchant to his warehouse, the student to his cabinet, and the functionary to his duty;112 they are devoted, first of all, to their pursuits, to their daily bread, to the discharge of their obligations, to their own advancement, to their families, and to their pleasures; to provide for these things the day is not too long. Politics diverts them aside only for so many quarter-hours, and then rather out of curiosity, like a play one applauds or hisses in his seat without

110. Ibid., Aug. 26. Other decrees against the persons or property of ecclesiastics, Aug. 17, 18, 19, and Sept. 9 and 19. 111. Ibid., Sept. 20. 112. Malouet, II. 241. The Jacobin Conquest / 635 stepping upon the stage.—“The declaration that the country is in danger,” says many eye-witnesses,113 “has made no change in the physiognomy of Paris. There are the same amusements, the same gossip....Thetheatres are full as usual. The wine-shops and places of diversion overflow with the people, National Guards, and soldiers....Thefashionable world enjoys its pleasure-parties.”—The day after the decree, the effect of the ceremony, so skilfully managed, is very slight. “The National Guard in the procession,” writes a patrioticjournalist, 114 “first shows indifference and even ennui”; it is overtasked with watchings and patrol duty; it probably thinks that in parading for the nation, one finds no time to work for one’s self. A few days after this the manifesto of the Duke of Brunswick “produces no sensation whatever. People laugh at it. Only the newspapers and their readers are familiar with it....Themass know nothing about it. Nobody fears the coalition nor foreign troops.”115— On the 10th of August, outside the theatre of the combat, all is tranquil in Paris. People walk about and chat in the streets as usual.”116—On the 19th of August, Moore, the Englishman,117 sees,

113. Mercure de France, July 21, 1792. 114. “Re´volutions de Paris,” XIII. 137. 115. Mallet-Dupan, “Me´moires,” I. 322. Letters to Mallet-Dupan, Aug. 4 and following days. 116. Buchez et Roux, XVI. 446. Pe´tion’s narrative.—Arnault, “Souvenirs d’un sexageńaire,” I. 342. (An eye-witness on the 10th of August.) “The massacre extended but little beyond the Carrousel, and did not cross the Seine. Everywhere else I found a population as quiet as if nothing had happened. Inside the city the people scarcely manifested any surprise; dancing went on in the publicgardens. In the Marais, where I lived then, there was only a suspicion of the occurrence, the same as at St. Germain; it was said that something was going on in Paris, and the evening newspaper was impatiently looked for to know what it was.” 117. Moore, I. 122.—The same thing is observable at other crises in the Revolution. On the 6th of October, 1789 (Sainte-Beuve, “Causeries du Lundi,” XII. 461), Seńac de Meilhan at an evening reception hears the following conversations: “‘Did you see the king pass?’ asks one. ‘No, I was at the theatre.’ ‘Did Mole´ play?’—‘As for myself, I was obliged to stay in the Tuileries; there was no way of getting out before 9 o’clock.’ ‘You saw the king pass then?’ ‘I could not see very well; it was dark.’—Another says: ‘It must have taken six 636 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION with astonishment, the heedless crowd filling the Champs-Elyseés, the various diversions, the air of a feˆte, the countless small shops in which refreshments are sold accompanied with songs and music, and the quantities of pantomimes and marionettes. “Are these people as happy as they seem to be?” he asks of a Frenchman along with him. “They are as jolly as gods!” “Do you think the Duke of Brunswick is ever in their heads?” “Monsieur, you may be sure of this, that the Duke of Brunswick is the last man they think of.” Such is the unconcern and lukewarmness of the gross, egoistic mass, otherwise busy, and always passive under any government whatever it may be, a veritable flock of sheep, allowing government to do as it pleases, provided it does not hinder it from browsing and capering as it chooses.—As to the men of sensibility who love their country, they are still less troublesome, for they are gone or going, often at the rate of a thousand and even two thousand a day, ten thousand in the last week of July,118 fifteen thousand in the first two weeks of September,119 in all perhaps forty thousand volunteers fur- hours for him to come from Versailles.’—Others coolly add a few details.— To continue: ‘Will you take a hand at whist?’ ‘I will play after supper, which is just ready.’ Cannon are heard, and then a few whisperings, and a transient moment of depression. ‘The king is leaving the Hoˆtel-de-Ville. They must be very tired.’ Supper is taken and there are snatches of conversation. They play trente et quarante, and while walking about watching the game and their cards they do some talking: ‘What a horrid affair!’ while some speak together briefly and in a low tone of voice. The clock strikes two and they all leave or go to bed.—These people seem to you insensible. Very well; there is not one of them who would not accept death at the king’s feet.”—On the 23rd of June, 1791, at the news of the king’s arrest at Varennes, “the Bois de Boulogne and the Champs-Elyseés were filled with people talking in a frivolous way about the most serious matters, while young men are seen pronouncing sentences of death in their frolics with courtesans.” (Mercure de France, July 9, 1791. It begins with a little piece entitled De´pit d’un Amant.)—See ch. xi. for the sentiment of the population in May and June, 1793. 118. Moniteur, XIII. 290 (July 29) and 278 (July 30). 119. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 145. Letter of Santerre to the Minister of the Interior, Sept. 16, 1792, with the daily list of all the men that have left Paris between the 3d and 15th of September, the total amounting to 18,635, of which 15,504 are volunteers. Other letters from the same, indicating subsequent de- The Jacobin Conquest / 637 nished by the capital alone, and who, with their fellows proportionate in number supplied by the departments, are the salvation of France. Through this departure of the worthy, and this passivity of the flock, Paris belongs to the fanatics among the populace. “These are the sans-culottes,” wrote the patrioticPalloy, “the debauchees and rabble of Paris, and I glory in belonging to that class which has put down the so-called honest folks.”120 “Three thousand workmen,” says the Girondist Soulavie, later, “made the Revolution of the 10th of August, against the kingdom of the Feuillants, the majority of the capital and against the Legislative Assembly.”121 Workmen, day laborers, and petty shop-keepers, without counting women, common vagabonds and regular bandits, form, indeed, one-twentieth of the adult male population of the city, about 9,000 spread over all sections of Paris, the only ones to vote and act in the midst of universal stupor and indifference.—We find in the Rue de Seine, for example, seven of them, Lacaille, keeper of a roasting-shop; Philippe, “a cattle-breeder, who leads around she-asses for consumptives,” now president of the section, and soon to become one of the Abbaye butchers; Gue´rard, “a Rouen waterman who has abandoned the navigation of the Seine on a large scale and keeps a skiff, in which he ferries people over the river from the Pont du Louvre to the Quai Mazarin,” and four other characters of the same stamp. Energy, however, on this side supplies the place of education and of numbers. One day, Gue´rard, on passing M. Hua, the deputy, tells him in the partures: Sept. 17, 1,071 men; none the following days until Sept. 21, 243; 22d, 150; up to the 26th, 813; on Oct. 1, 113; 2d and 3d, 1,088; 4th, 1,620; 16th, 196, etc.—I believe that amongst those who leave, some are passing through Paris, coming from the provinces; this prevents an exact calculation of the number of Parisian volunteers. M. de Lavalette, himself a volunteer, says 60,000; but he furnishes no proofs of this. 120. Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 362. 121. Soulavie, “Vie priveé du Marećhal duc de Richelieu,” IX. 384.—“One can scarcely comprehend,” says Lafayette (“Me´moires,” I. 454), “how the Jac- obin minority and a gang of pretended Marseilles men could render themselves masters of Paris, whilst almost the whole of the 40,000 citizens forming the national guard desired the Constitution.” 638 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION way of a warning, “You big rascal, you were lucky to have other people with you. If you had been alone, I would have capsized my boat, and had the pleasure of drowning a blasted aristocrat!” These are the “matadors of the quarter.”122—Their ignorance gives them no concern; on the contrary, they take pride in coarseness and vul- garity. One of the ordinary speechmakers of the faubourg Saint- Antoine, Gouchon, a designer for calicos, comes to the bar of the Assembly, “in the name of the men of July 14 and August 10,” to glorify the political reign of brutal incapacity; according to him, it is more enlightened than that of the cultivated:123 “those great gen- iuses who bear the fine title of Constitutionalists are forced to do justice to men who never studied the art of governing elsewhere than in the book of nature....Consulting customs and not principles, these clever folks have been long occupied with the political balance of things; we have found it without looking for it in the heart of man. Obtain a government which will place the poor above their feeble resources and the rich below their means, and the balance will be perfect.” This is intelligible, and all that follows. Their avowed end is a complete levelling, not alone of political rights, but, again, and especially, of conditions and fortunes; they promise themselves “absolute equality, real equality,” and, still better, “the magistracy and all government powers.”124 France belongs to them, if they are bold enough to seize hold of it.—And, on the other hand, should they miss their prey, they feel themselves lost, for the Bruns- wick manifesto, which had made no impression on the public, remains deeply impressed in their minds. They apply its threats to themselves, while their imagination, as usual, has converted it into a positive plot:125 the inhabitants of Paris are to be led out on the plain of St. Denis, and there decimated; previous to this, the most

122. Hua, 169. 123. Moniteur, XIII. 437 (session of Aug. 16, the applause reiterated and the speech ordered to be printed). 124. Roederer, “Oeuvres Comple`tes,” VIII. 477. “The club orators displayed France to the proletariat as a sure prey if they would seize hold of it.” 125. “Moore’s Journal,” I. 303–309. The Jacobin Conquest / 639 notorious patriots will be selected, and then broken on the wheel, as well as forty or fifty market-women. Already, on the 11th of August, a rumor is current that 800 men of the late royal guards are ready to make a descent on Paris;126 that very day the dwelling of Beaumarchais is ransacked for seven hours; the walls are pierced, the privies sounded, and the garden dug down to the rock. The same search is repeated in the adjoining house. The women are especially “enraged at not finding anything,”127 and wish to renew the attempt, swearing that they will discover where things are hidden in ten minutes. The “coinage of the brain” is evidently too much for these unballasted minds; the head swims at this chance-formed royalty; a lofty self-conceit and extravagant desires coupled with deep-seated, silent fear form in them that morbid, mischievous compound, which, in democracy as well as in a monarchy, fashions a Nero.128 More infatuated, more despotic, more alarmed, their leaders have no scruples to restrain them, for the most noted among them are men of tarnished reputations, and just those who hurry along others or act by themselves. Of the three chiefs of the old municipality, Pe´tion, the mayor, really deposed, but verbally respected, is set aside and viewed in the same light as a piece of old furniture. As to the other two, who remain active and in office, Manuel,129 the syndic-

126. “Archives Nationales,” 474, 426. Section of Gravilliers, letter of Charles Chemin, commissary, to Santerre, and deposition of Hingray, of the national gendarmerie, Aug. 11. 127. Beaumarchais, “Oeuvres comple`tes,” letter of Aug. 12, 1792.—This very interesting letter shows how mobs are composed at this epoch. A small gang of regular brigands and thieves plot together some enterprise, to which is added a frightened, infatuated crowd, which may become ferocious, but which remains honest. 128. The words of Hobbes applied by Roederer to the democracy of 1792: “In democratia tot possent esse Nerones quot sunt oratores qui populo adulan- tur; simul et plures sunt in democratia, et quotidie novi suboriuntur.” 129. Lucas de Montigny, “Me´moires de Mirabeau,” II. 231 and following pages.—The preface affixed by Manuel to his edition (of Mirabeau’s letters) is a masterpiece of nonsense and impertinence.—Peltier, “Histoire du 10 Aouˆt,” II. 205.—Manuel “came out of a little shop at Montargis and hawked about 640 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION attorney, son of a porter, a loud-talking, talentless bohemian, stole the private correspondence of Mirabeau from a public depository, falsified it, and sold it for his own benefit. Danton,130 Manuel’s deputy, faithless in two ways, receives the King’s money to prevent the obscene tracts in the upper stories of Paris. He got hold of Mirabeau’s letters in the drawers of the publicdepartment and sold them for 2,000 crowns” (testimony of Boquillon, juge-de-paix). 130. Lafayette, “Me´moires,” I. 467, 471. “The queen had 50,000 crowns put into Danton’s hands a short time before these terrible days.”—“The court had Danton under pay for two years, employing him as a spy on the Jacobins.”— “Correspondence de Mirabeau et du Comte de la Marck,” III. 82. (Letter from Mirabeau, March 10, 1791.) “Danton received yesterday 30,000 livres.”—Other testimony, Bertrand de Molleville, I. 354; II. 288. Brissot, IV. 193. Miot de Melito, “Me´moires,” I. 40, 42. Miot was present at the conversations which took place between Danton, Legendre, etc., at the table of Desforges, Minister of Foreign Affairs. “Danton made no concealment of his love of pleasure and money, and laughed at all conscientious and delicate scruples.”—“Legendre could not say enough in praise of Danton in speaking of his talents as a public man; but he loudly censured his habits and expensive tastes, and never joined him in any of his odious speculations.”—The opposite thesis has been maintained by Robinet and Bougeart in their articles on Danton. The discussion would require too much space. The important points are as follows: 1. Danton, a barrister in the royal council in March, 1787, loses about 10,000 francs on the sale of his place. 2. In his marriage-contract, dated June, 1787, he admits 12,000 francs patrimony in lands and houses, while his wife brings him only 20,000 francs dowry. 3. From 1787 to 1791 he could not earn much, being in constant attendance at the Cordeliers club and devoted to politics; Lacretelle saw him in the riots of 1788. 4. He left at his death about 85,000 francs in national property bought in 1791. 5. Besides, he probably held property and valuables under third parties, who kept them after his death. (De Martel, “Types Re´volutionnaires,” 2d part, p. 139. Investigations of Blache at Choisy-sur-Seine, where a certain Fauvel seems to have been Danton’s assumed name.)—See on this question, “Avocats aux conseils du Roi,” by Emil Bos, pp. 513–520. According to accounts proved by M. Bos, it follows that Danton, at the end of 1791, was in debt to the amount of 53,000 francs; this is the hole stopped by the court. On the other side, Danton before the Revolution signs himself Danton even in authentic writing, which is an usurpation of nobility and at that time subject to the penalty of the galleys.—The double-faced infidelity in question must have been frequent, for their leaders were anything else but sensitive. On the 7th of August Madame Elizabeth tells M. de Montmorin that the insurrection would not take place; that Pe´tion and Santerre were concerned in it, and that they had received The Jacobin Conquest / 641 riot, and makes use of it to urge it on.—Varlet, “that extraordinary speech-maker, led such a foul and prodigal life as to bring his mother in sorrow to the grave; afterwards he spent what was left, and soon had nothing.”131 Others were not only false to their honor but to common honesty. Carra, with a seat in the secret Directory of the Federates, and who drew up the plan of the insurrection, had been condemned by the Maˆcon tribunals to two years’ imprisonment for theft and burglary.132 Westermann, who led the attacking column, had stolen a silver dish, with a coat of arms on it, of Jean Creux, keeper of a restaurant, Rue des Poules, and was twice sent away from Paris for swindling.133 Panis, chief of the Committee of Su- pervision,134 was turned out of the Treasury Department, where his uncle was a sub-cashier, in 1774, for robbery. His colleague, Sergent, appropriates to himself “three gold watches, an agate ring, and other jewels,” left with him on deposit.135 “Breaking seals, false charges, breaches of trust,” embezzlements, are familiar transactions. In their

750,000 francs to prevent it and bring over the Marseilles troop to the king’s side (Malouet, II. 223).—There is no doubt that Santerre, in using the king’s money against the king, thought he was acting patriotically. Money is at the bottom of every riot, to pay for drink and to stimulate subordinate agents. 131. Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 92. Letter of Gadol to Roland, October, 1792, according to a narrative by one of the teachers in the college d’Harcourt, in which Varlet was placed. 132. Buchez et Roux, XIII. 254. 133. “C. Desmoulins,” by Claretie, 238 (in 1786 and in 1775). “The inquest still exists; unfortunately it is convincing.”—Westermann was accused of these acts in December, 1792, by the section of the Lombards, “proofs in hand”— Gouverneur Morris, so well informed, writes to Washington, Jan. 10, 1793: The retreat of the King of Prussia “was worth to Westermann about 10,000 pounds....Thecouncil . . . exerted against him a prosecution for old affairs of no higher rank than petty larceny.” 134. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 4,434 (papers of the committee of general safety). Note on Panis, with full details and references to the occurrence. 135. “Re´volutions de Paris,” No. 177 (session of the council-general at the Hoˆtel-de-Ville, Nov. 8, 1792, report of the committee of surveillance). “Sergent admits, except as to one of the watches, that he intended to pay for the said object the price they would have brought. It was noticed, as he said this, that he had on his finger the agate ring that was claimed.” 642 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION hands piles of silver plate and 1,100,000 francs in gold are to disappear.136 Among the members of the new Commune, Huguenin, the president, a clerk at the barriers, is a shameless peculator.137 Rossignol, a journeyman jeweller, implicated in an assassination, is at this moment subject to judicial prosecution.138 He´bert, a journal- istic mine of filth, formerly check-taker in a theatre, is turned away from the Varie´te´s for larceny.139 Among men of action, Fournier, the American, Lazowski, and Maillard are not only murderers, but likewise robbers,140 while, by their side, arises the future general of the Paris National Guard, Henriot, at first a domesticin the family of an attorney who turned him off for theft, then a tax-clerk, again turned adrift for theft, and, finally, a police spy, and still incarcerated in the Biceˆtre prison for another theft, and, at last, a battalion officer, and one of the September executioners.141—The monster maniacs emerge from their dens at the same time with the rogues and bandits. De Sades,142 who lived the life of “Justine” before he wrote it, and

136. Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 638; III. 500 and following pages; IV. 132.— Cf. II. 451. 137. Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 456. 138. Buchez et Roux, XVI. 138, 140 (testimony of Mathon de la Varenne, who was engaged in the case). 139. “Dictionnaire biographique,” by Eymery (Leipsic, 1807), article HE- BERT. 140. Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 484, 601. Cf. Letter of the representative Ca- vaignac, Ibid., 399. 141. “Dictionnaire biographique,” article HENRIOT.—The lives of many of these subordinate leaders are well done. Cf. “Stanislas Maillard,” by Al. Sorel; “Le Patriote Palloy,” by V. Fournel. 142. Granier de Cassagnac, “Histoire des Girondins,” 409.—“Archives Na- tionales,” F7, 3,196. Letters of de Sades on the sacking of his house near Apt, with supporting documents and proofs of his civism; among others a petition drawn up by him in the name of the Piques section and read at the Convention year II. brumaire 25: “Legislators, the reign of philosophy has come to annihilate that of imposture....Theworship of a Jewish slave of the Romans is not adapted to the descendants of Scaevola. The general prosperity which is certain to proceed from individual happiness will spread to the farthest regions of the universe, and everywhere the dreaded hydra of ultramontane superstition, hunted down through the combined lights of reason and virtue, no longer The Jacobin Conquest / 643 whom the Revolution delivered from the Bastille, is secretary of the section of the Place Vendoˆme. Marat, the homicidal monomaniac, constitutes himself, after the 23d of August, head journalist at the Hoˆtel-de-Ville, political councillor and confessor of the new Com- mune, while his favorite plan, which he has preached for three years, is now reduced to a wholesale butchery, without either words or delay. “Give me,” said he to Barbaroux,143 “two hundred Neapoli- tans armed with daggers, and with only a handkerchief on their left arms for a buckler, and I will overrun France and ensure the Rev- olution.” According to him it is necessary to put 260,000 men out of the way “on humane grounds,” for, unless this is done, there is no safety for the rest. “The National Assembly may still save France; let it decree that all aristocrats shall wear a blue ribbon, and the moment that three of them are seen in company, let them be hung.”—Another way would be “to lay in wait in dark streets and at corners for the royalists and Feuillants, and cut their throats. Should ten patriots chance to be killed among a hundred men, what does it matter? It is only ninety for ten, which prevents mistakes. Fall upon those who own carriages, employ valets, wear silk coats, or go to the theatres. You may be sure that they are aristocrats.”— The Jacobin commonalty have certainly found the staﬀ that suits them. Both can comprehend each other without diﬃculty. In order that this spontaneous massacre may become an administrative measure, the Neros of the gutter have but to await the word of command from the Neros of the Hoˆtel-de-Ville.

ﬁnding a refuge in the hateful haunts of an expiring aristocracy, will perish at her side in despair at ﬁnally beholding on this earth the triumph of philosophy!” 143. Barbaroux, “Me´moires,” 57, 59. The latter months of the legislative assembly. 9 CHAPTER IX =

I. Mob rule in times of anarchy—Case of anarchy recently and suddenly brought on—The band that succeeds the fallen government and its administrative tools— II. Progress of the homicidal idea in the mass of the party—The morning after August 10—The tribunal of August 17—The funereal feˆte of August 27—The prison plot— III. Rise of the homicidal idea among the leaders—Their situation—The powers they usurp—Their spoliations—The risks they run—Terror their salvation— IV. Date of the determination of this—The actors and their parts—Marat—Danton—The Commune—Its co-operators—Harmony of dispositions and readiness of operation— V. Common workmen—Their numbers— Their condition—Their sentiments—Eﬀect of murder on the murderers—Their degradation—Their insensibility— VI. Eﬀect of the massacre on the public— General dejection and the dissolution of society—The ascendency of the Jacobins assured in Paris—The men of September upheld in the Commune and elected to the Convention.

THE WORST feature of anarchy is not so much the absence of the overthrown government as the rise of new governments of an inferior grade. Every fallen State produces bands which conquer and which are sovereign; it was so in Gaul on the fall of the Roman empire, also under the latest of Charlemagne’s successors; the same state of things exists now in Roumelia and in Mexico. Adventurers, malefactors, men in bad repute, social outcasts, men overwhelmed with debts and lost to honor, vagabonds, deserters, dissolute troopers—born enemies of work, of subordination, and of the law—form

644 The Jacobin Conquest / 645 leagues for breaking down the worm-eaten barriers which still surround the sheep-like masses; and as they are unscrupulous, they slaughter on all occasions. On this foundation their authority rests; each in turn reigns in its own canton, and their government, in keeping with its brutal masters, consists in robbery and murder; nothing else can be looked for from barbarians and brigands. But never are they so dangerous as when, in a great State recently fallen, a sudden revolution places the central power in their hands; for they then regard themselves as the legitimate inheritors of the shattered government, and, under this title, they undertake to manage the commonwealth. Now in times of anarchy the ruling power does not proceed from above, but from below; and the chiefs, therefore, who would remain such, are obliged to follow the blind impulsion of their ﬂock.1 Hence the important and dominant personage, the one whose ideas prevail, the veritable successor of Richelieu and of Louis XIV., is here the subordinate Jacobin, the pillar of the club, the maker of motions, the street rioter, Panis, Sergent, He´bert, Var- let, Henriot, Maillard, Fournier, Lazowski, or, still lower in the scale, the Marseilles “rough,” the faubourg cannoneer, the drinking market-porter who elaborates his political conceptions in the interval between his hiccoughs.2—For information he has the rumors cir-

1. Thierry, son of Clovis, unwilling to take part in an expedition of his brothers into Burgundy, was told by his men: “If thou art unwilling to march into Burgundy with thy brothers, we will leave thee and follow them in thy place.”—Clotaire, another of his sons, disposed to make peace with the Saxons, “the angry Francs rush upon him, revile him, and threaten to kill him if he declines to accompany them. Upon which he puts himself at their head.” 2. Social condition and degree of culture are often indicated orthographically.—Granier de Cassagnac, II. 480. Bećard, commanding the expedition which brought back the prisoners from Orleans, signs himself: “Bećard, commandant congointement aveque M. Fournier generalle.”—“Archives Nation- ales,” F7, 4,426. Letter of Chemin, commissioner of the Gravilliers section, to Santerre, Aug. 11, 1792. “Mois Charles Chemin commissaire . . . fait part a` Monsieur Santaire geńe´rale de la troupe parisiene que le nomme´ Hingray cavi- liers de la gendarmeris nationalle . . . ma dećlare´s qu’ille sestes trouve´s aux jourduis 11 aoux avec une home attache´s a` la cours aux Equris; quille lui aves dis quiere 800 home a peupres des sidevant garde du roy e´tes tous pre`s a fondre 646 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION culating in the streets which assign a traitor to each domicile, and for other acquisitions the club bombast, through which he becomes the leader of the great machine. This machine so vast, so complex, such a complete whole of entangled services ramifying in innumerable offices, with so much apparatus of special import, so delicate as to require constant adaptation to changing circumstances, diplomacy, finances, justice, army administration—all this transcends his limited comprehension; a bottle cannot be made to contain the bulk of a hogshead.3 In his narrow brain, perverted and turned topsy-turvy by the disproportionate notions put into it, only one idea suited to his gross instincts and aptitudes finds a place there, and that is the desire to kill his enemies; and these are also the State’s enemies, however open or concealed, present or future, probable or even possible. He carries this savagery and bewilderment into politics, and hence the evil arising from his usurpation. Simply a brigand, he would have murdered only to rob, and his murders would have been restricted. As representing the State, he undertakes wholesale massacres, of which he has the means ready at hand.—For he has not yet had time enough to take apart the old administrative implements; at all events the minor wheels, gendarmes, jailers, employees, book-keepers, and accountants, are always in their places and under control. There can be no resistance on the part of those arrested; accustomed to the protection of the laws and to peaceable ways and times, they have never relied on defending themselves nor ever could imagine that any one could be so summarily slain. As to the mass, rendered incapable of any effort of its own by ancient centralisation, it remains inert and passive and lets things go their own way.— Hence, during many long, successive days, without being hurried sure Paris pour donaire du sećour a naux re´belle et a signer avec moi la pre- sente.” 3. On the 19th of March, 1871, I met in the Rue de Varennes a man with two guns on his shoulder who had taken part in the pillage of the Ecole d’Etat- major and was on his way home. I said to him: “But this is civil war, and you will let the Prussians in Paris.” “I’d rather have the Prussians than Thiers. Thiers is the inside Prussian!” The Jacobin Conquest / 647 or impeded, with official papers quite correct and accounts in perfect order, a massacre can be carried out with the same impunity and as methodically as cleaning the streets or clubbing stray dogs.

II Let us trace the progress of the homicidal idea in the mass of the party. It lies at the very bottom of the revolutionary creed. Collot d’Herbois, two months after this, aptly says in the Jacobin tribune: “The second of September is the great article in the credo of our freedom.”4 It is peculiar to the Jacobin to consider himself as a legitimate sovereign, and to treat his adversaries not as belligerents, but as criminals. They are guilty of le`se-nation; they are outlaws, fit to be killed at all times and places, and deserve extinction, even when no longer able or in a condition to do any harm.—Conse- quently, on the 10th of August the Swiss Guards, who do not fire a gun and who surrender, the wounded lying on the ground, their surgeons, the palace domestics, are killed; and, worse still, persons like M. de Clermont-Tonnerre who pass quietly along the street. All this is now called in official phraseology the justice of the people.— On the 11th the Swiss Guards, collected in the Feuillants building, come near being massacred; the populace on the outside of it demand their heads;5 “it conceives the project of visiting all the prisons in Paris to take out the prisoners and administer prompt justice on them.”—On the 12th in the markets6 “divers groups of the low class call Pe´tion a scoundrel,” because “he saved the Swiss in the Palais Bourbon”; accordingly, “he and the Swiss must be hung to-day.”— In these minds turned topsy-turvy the actual, palpable truth gives way to its opposite; “the attack was not begun by them; the order to sound the tocsin came from the palace; it is the palace which was besieging the nation, and not the nation which was besieging the

4. Moniteur, Nov 14, 1792. 5. Buchez et Roux, XVII. 31. 6. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 4,426. Letter of the police administrators, Aug. 11. Declaration of Delaunay, Aug. 12. 648 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION palace.”7 The vanquished “are the assassins of the people,” caught in the act; and on the 14th of August the Federates demand a court- martial “to avenge the death of their comrades.”8 And even a court- martial will not answer: “It is not sufficient to mete out punishment for crimes committed on the 10th of August, but the vengeance of the people must be extended to all conspirators”; to that “Lafayette, who probably was not in Paris, but who may have been there”; to all the ministers, generals, judges, and other officials guilty of maintaining legal order wherever it had been maintained, and of not having recognised the Jacobin government before it came into being. Let them be brought before, not the ordinary courts, which are not to be trusted because they belong to the defunct re´gime, but before a specially organised tribunal, a sort of “chambre ardente,”9 elected by the sections, that is to say, by a Jacobin minority. These improvised judges must give judgment on conviction, without appeal; there must be no preliminary examinations, no interval of time between arrest and execution, no dilatory and protective formalities. And above all, the Assembly must be expeditious in passing the decree; “otherwise,” it is informed by a delegate from the Com- mune, “the tocsin will be rung at midnight and the general alarm sounded; for the people are tired of waiting to be avenged. Look out lest they do themselves justice!”10—A moment more, new threats and at a shorter date. “If the juries are not ready to act in two or three hours . . . great misfortunes will overtake Paris.” In vain the new tribunal, instantly installed, hastens its work and guillotines three innocent persons in five days; it does not move fast enough. On the 23d of August one of the sections declares to the

7. Buchez et Roux, XVII. 59 (session of Aug. 12). Speech by Leprieur at the bar of the house. 8. Buchez et Roux, XVII. 47.—Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 31. Speech by Robespierre at the bar of the Assembly in the name of the commune, Aug. 15. 9. Brissot, in his report on Robespierre’s petition.—The names of the principal judges elected show its character: Fouquier-Tinville, Osselin, Cof- ﬁnhal. 10. Buchez et Roux, XVII. 91 (Aug. 17). The Jacobin Conquest / 649

Commune in furious language that the people themselves, “wearied and indignant” with so many delays, mean to force open the prisons and massacre the inmates.11—Not only do they harass the judges, but they force the accused into their presence. A deputation from the Commune and the Federates summons the Assembly “to transfer the criminals at Orleans to Paris to undergo the penalty of their heinous crimes,” “otherwise,” says the orator, “we will not answer for the vengeance of the people.”12 And in a still more imperative manner: “You have heard and you know that insurrection is a sacred duty,” a sacred duty towards and against all: against the Assembly if it refuses, and against the tribunal if it acquits. They dash at their prey athwart all legislative and judicial formalities, like a kite across the web of a spider, while nothing diverts them from their ﬁxed conceptions. On the acquittal of M. Luce de Montmorin13 the brutal audience, mistaking him for his cousin the former minister of Louis XVI., break out in murmurings. The president tries to enforce silence, which increases the uproar, and M. de Montmorin is in danger. On this the president, discovering a side issue, announces that one of the jurors is related to the accused, and that in such a case a new jury must be impanelled and a new trial take place; that the matter will be enquired into, and meanwhile the prisoner will be returned to the Conciergerie. Thereupon he takes M. de Montmorin by the arm and leads him out of the court-room, amidst the yells of the audience and not little peril to himself; in the outside court one of the National Guards without strikes at him with a sabre, and the following day the court is obliged to authorise eight delegates from the audience to go and see with their own eyes that M. de Montmorin is safe under lock and key. At the moment of his acquittal a tragic exclamation is heard: “You discharge him to-day and in two weeks he will cut our throats!” Fear is evidently an adjunct of hatred. The Jacobin rabble is vaguely

11. Stated by Pe´tion in his speech (Moniteur, Nov. 10, 1792). 12. Buchez et Roux, XVII. 116 (session of Aug. 23). 13. Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 461.—Moore, I. 273 (Aug. 31). 650 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION conscious of its inferior numbers, of its usurpation, of its danger, which increases in proportion as Brunswick draws near. It feels itself encamped over a mine, and if the mine should explode!—Since its adversaries are scoundrels they are capable of a sudden blow, of a plot, of a massacre; never itself having done anything else, it conceives no other idea; and, through an inevitable transposition of thought, it imputes to them the murderous intentions obscurely wrought out in the dark recesses of its own disturbed brain.—On the 27th of August, after the funeral procession gotten up by Sergent expressly to excite popular resentment, its suspicions, at once direct and pointed, begin to take the form of certainty. Ten “commemo- rative” banners,14 each borne by a volunteer on horseback, have paraded before all eyes the long list of massacres “by the court and its agents”; the massacre at Nancy, the massacre at Nismes, the massacre at Montauban, the massacre at Avignon, the massacre at La Chapelle, the massacre at Carpentras, the massacre of the Champ de Mars, etc. Hesitation, in the face of such processions, is out of the question; henceforth, to women in the galleries, to the frequenters of the clubs, and to pikemen in the suburbs it is proved beyond any doubt that aristocrats are old offenders. And on the other side there is another sign equally alarming. “This lugubrious ceremony, which ought to inspire by turns both reflection and indignation,...didnotgenerally produce that effect.” The National Guard in uniform, who came “apparently to compensate themselves for not appearing on the day of action,” did not comport themselves with civic propriety, but, on the contrary, put on “an air of dissipation and even of noisy gaiety”; they come out of curiosity, like so many Parisian cockneys, and are much more numerous than the sans-culottes with their pikes.15 The latter can count themselves and plainly see that they are in a minority, and a

14. Buchez et Roux, XVII. 267 (article by Prudhomme in the “Re´volutions de Paris”). 15. “Les Re´volutions de Paris,” Ibid., “A number of sans-culottes were there with their pikes; but these were largely outnumbered by the multitude of uniforms of the various battalions.” Moore, Aug, 31: “At present the inhabitants of the The Jacobin Conquest / 651 very small one, and that their rage finds no echo; none but supernumeraries and the contrivers of the feˆte are there to hasten sentences and call for death-penalties. A foreigner, a good observer, who questions the shop-keepers of whom he makes purchases, the tradesmen he knows, and the company he finds in the coffee-houses, writes that he never had “seen any symptom of a sanguinary disposition except in the galleries of the National Assembly and at the Jacobin Club.” Now the galleries are full of paid “applauders,” especially “females, who are more noisy and to be had cheaper than males”; at the Jacobin Club are “the leaders, who dread what may be divulged against them or who have private hatreds to gratify”;16 thus the only infuriates are the leaders and the populace of the suburbs.—Lost in the crowd of this vast city, in the face of a Na- tional Guard still armed and three times their own number, confronting an indifferent or discontented bourgeoisie, the patriots are alarmed. In this state of anxiety a feverish imagination, exasperated by delays, involuntarily gives birth to fancies passionately accepted as truths, while an incident now occurs which suffices to complete the story, the germ of which has grown in their minds without their knowing it. On the 1st of September a poor waggoner, Jean Julien,17 condemned to chains for twelve years with exposure in the pillory, becomes furious after a couple of hours of this latter penalty, probably on account of the jeers of the by-standers; with the usual coarseness of people of his stamp he vents his impotent rage by ridding himself of his clothes and exposing his person, and naturally uses insulting language to the people who look at him: “Hurrah for the King! Hurrah for the Queen! Hurrah for Lafayette! Let the nation go to the devil!” It is also natural that he should be nearly cut to faubourgs Saint-Antoine and Saint-Marceau are all that is felt of the sovereign people in Paris.” 16. Moore, Aug. 26. 17. Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 471. Indictment against Jean-Julien.—In referring to M. Mortimer-Ternaux we do so because, like a true critic, he cites authentic and frequently unedited documents. 652 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION pieces. He is at once led away to the Conciergerie, where he is at once condemned, and guillotined as soon as possible, for being a promoter of sedition in connection with the conspiracy of August the 10th.—The conspiracy, accordingly, is still in existence. It is so declared by the tribunal, which makes no declaration without evidence. Jean Julien has certainly confessed; now what has he revealed?—On the following day, like a crop of poisonous mushrooms, the growth of a single night, the story obtains general credence. “Jean Julien has declared that all the prisons in Paris thought as he did, that there would soon be fine times, that the prisoners were armed, and that as soon as the volunteers cleared out they would be let loose on all Paris.”18 The streets are full of anxious countenances. “One says that Verdun had been betrayed like Longwy. Others shook their heads and said it was the traitors within Paris and not the declared enemies on the frontier that were to be feared.”19 On the following day the story grows: “There are royalist officers and soldiers hidden away in Paris and in the outskirts. They are going to open the prisons, arm the prisoners, set the King and his family free, put the patriots in Paris to death, also the wives and children of those in the army....Itisnatural for men to secure their wives and children when they are going to be separated from them, and to use the most efficient means of preventing their being opposed to the assassin’s dagger.”20 The popular conflagration is lighted, and all that remains for those who kindled the flame is to mark out the path for it.

18. Re´tif de la Bretonne, “Les Nuits de Paris,” 11th night, p. 372. 19. Moore, Sept. 2. 20. Moore, Sept. 3.—Buchez et Roux, XVI. 159 (narrative by Tallien).— Official report of the Paris Commune, Sept. 4 (in the collection of Barrie`re and Berville, the volume entitled “Me´moires sur les journeés de Septembre”). The commune adopts and expands the fable, probably invented by it. Prudhomme well says that the story of the prison plot, so scandalously circulated during the Reign of Terror, appears for the first time on the 2d of September. The same report was spread through the rural districts. At Gennevilliers, a peasant, while lamenting the massacres, said to Malouet: “It is, too, a terrible thing for the aristocrats to want to kill all the people by blowing up the city” (Malouet, II. 244). The Jacobin Conquest / 653

III It is a long time that they have fanned the flame. Already, on the 11th of August, the new Commune had announced, in a proclamation,21 that “the guilty should perish on the scaffold,” while its threatening deputations force the National Assembly into the immediate institution of a bloody tribunal. Carried into power by brutal force, it must perish if it does not maintain itself, and this can be done only through terror.—Consider for one moment, indeed, this singular situation. Installed in the Hoˆtel-de-Ville by a bold nocturnal enterprise, about one hundred unknown individuals, delegated by a party which thinks or asserts itself to be the peoples’ delegates, have overthrown one of the two great powers of the State, mangled and enslaved the other, and now rule in a capital of 700,000 souls, by the grace of eight or ten thousand fanatics and cut-throats. Never did change so sudden take men from so low a point and raise them so high! The basest of newspaper scribblers, penny-a-liners out of the gutters, bar-room oracles, unfrocked monks and priests, the refuse of the literary guild, of the bar, and of the clergy, carpenters, turners, grocers, locksmiths, shoemakers, common laborers, many with no profession at all,22 strolling politicians and public brawlers, who, like the sellers of counterfeit wares, have speculated for the past three years on popular credulity; among them a number of men in bad repute, of doubtful honesty or of proven dishonesty, having led shiftless lives in their youth and still besmirched with old slime, put outside the pale of useful labor by their vices, driven out of inferior stations even into prohibited occupations, bruised by the perilous leap, with consciences distorted like the muscles of a tight- rope dancer, and who, were it not for the Revolution, would still grovel in their native filth, awaiting Biceˆtre or the bagnios to which they were destined—can one imagine their growing intoxication as they drink deep draughts from the bottomless cup of absolute

21. Official reports of the commune, Aug. 11. 22. Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 446. List of the section commissioners sitting at the Hoˆtel-de-Ville, Aug. 10, before 9 o’clock in the morning. 654 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION power?—For it is absolute power which they demand and which they exercise.23 Raised by a special delegation above the regular authorities, they put up with these only as subordinates, and tolerate none among them who may become their rivals. Consequently, they reduce the Legislative body simply to the function of editor and herald of their decrees; they have forced the new department electors to “abjure their title,” to confine themselves to tax assessments, while they lay their ignorant hands daily on every other service, on the finances, the army, supplies, the administration, justice, at the risk of breaking the administrative wheels or of interrupting their action. One day they summon the Minister of War before them, or, for lack of one, his chief clerk; another day they keep the whole body of officials in his department in arrest for two hours, under the pretext of finding a suspected printer.24 At one time they affix seals on the funds devoted to extraordinary expenses; at another time they do away with the commission on supplies; at another they meddle with the course of justice, either to aggravate proceedings or to impede the execution of sentences rendered.25 There is no

23. Official reports of the commune, Aug. 21. “Considering that, to ensure public safety and liberty, the council-general of the commune required all the power delegated to it by the people, at the time it was compelled to resume the exercise of its rights,” sends a deputation to the National Assembly to insist that “the new department be converted, pure and simple, into a tax- commissioners’ office.”—Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 25. Speech of Robespierre in the name of the commune: “After the people have saved the country, after decreeing a National Convention to replace you, what remains for you to do but to gratify their wishes?...Thepeople, forced to see to its own salvation, has provided for this through its delegates....Itisessential that those chosen by itself for its magistrates should enjoy the plenary powers befitting the sovereign.” 24. Official reports of the commune, Aug. 10.—Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 155. Letter of the Minister Servan, Aug. 30.—Ibid., 149.—Ibid., 148. The commission on supplies having been broken up by the commune, Roland, the Minister of the Interior, begs the Assembly to act promptly, for “he will no longer be responsible for the supplies of Paris.” 25. Official reports of the commune, Aug. 21. A resolution requiring that, on trials for le`se-nation, those who appear for the defendants should be provided with a certificate of their integrity, issued by their assembled section, and that the interviews between them and the accused be public.—Ibid., Aug. 17, a The Jacobin Conquest / 655 principle, no law, no regulation, no verdict, no public man or establishment that is not subject to the risk of their arbitrament.—And, as they have laid hands on power, they do the same with money. Not only do they extort from the Assembly 850,000 francs a month, with arrears from the 1st of January, 1792, more than six millions in all, to defray the expenses of their military police, which means to pay their bands,26 but again, “invested with the municipal scarf,” they seize, “in the public edifices belonging to the nation, all furniture, and whatever is of most value.” “In one building alone, they carry off to the value of 100,000 crowns.”27 Elsewhere, in the hands of the treasurer of the civil list, they appropriate to themselves a box of jewels, other precious objects, and 340,000 francs.28 Their commissioners bring in from Chantilly three three-horse vehicles “loaded with the spoils of M. de Conde´,” and they undertake “removing the contents of the houses of the e´migre´s.”29 They confiscate in the churches of Paris “the crucifixes, music-stands, bells, railings, and every object in bronze or of iron, chandeliers, cups, vases, reliquaries, statues, every article of plate,” as well “on the altars as in the sacristies,”30 and we can imagine the enormous booty obtained; to cart away the silver plate belonging to the single church of Madeleine-de-la-ville required a vehicle drawn by four horses.— resolution to suspend the execution of the two assassins of mayor Simonneau, condemned to death by the tribunal of Seine-et-Oise. 26. Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 11. Decree of Aug. 11. 27. Prudhomme, “Re´volutions de Paris” (number for Sept. 22). Report by Roland to the National Assembly (Sept. 16, at 9 o’clock in the morning). 28. Madame Roland, “Me´moires,” II. 414 (Ed. Barrie`re et Berville). Report by Roland. Oct. 29. The seizure in question took place Aug. 27. 29. “Me´moires sur les journeés de Septembre” (Ed. Barrie`re et Berville, pp. 307–322). List of sums paid by the treasurer of the commune.—See, on the prolongation of this plundering, Roland’s report, Oct. 29, of money, plate, and assignats taken from the Senlis Hospital (Sept. 13), the Hotel de Coigny emptied, and sale of furniture in the Hotel d’Egmont, etc. 30. Official reports of the commune, Aug. 17 and 20.—List of sums paid by the treasurer of the commune, p. 391.—On the 28th of August a “St. Roch” in silver is brought to the bar of the National Assembly. 656 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Now they use all this money, so freely seized, as freely as they do power itself. One fills his pockets in the Tuileries without the slightest concern; another, in the Garde-Meuble, rummages secretaries, and carries off a wardrobe with its contents.31 We have already seen that in the depositories of the Commune “most of the seals are broken,” that enormous sums in plate, in jewels, in gold and silver coin have disappeared. Future inquests and accounts will charge on the Committee of Supervision, “abstractions, dilapidations, and embezzlements,” in short, “a mass of violations and breaches of trust.”—When one is king, one easily mistakes the money-drawer of the State for the drawer in which one keeps one’s own money. Unfortunately, this full possession of public power and of the public funds holds only by a slender thread. Let the evicted and outraged majority dare, as subsequently at Lyons, Marseilles, and Toulon, to return to the section assemblies and revoke the false mandate which they have arrogated to themselves through fraud and force, and, on the instant, they again become, through the sovereign will of the people, and by virtue of their own creed, what they really are, usurpers, extortioners, and robbers; there is no middle course for them between a dictatorship and the galleys.— The mind, before such an alternative, unless extraordinarily well- balanced, loses its equilibrium; they have no difficulty in deluding themselves with the idea that the State is menaced in their persons, and, in postulating the rule, that all is allowable for them, even massacre. Has not Bazire stated in the tribune that, against the enemies of the nation, “all means are fair and justifiable?” Has not another deputy, Jean Debry, proposed the formation of a body of 1,200 volunteers, who “will sacrifice themselves,” as formerly the assassins of the Old Man of the Mountain, in “attacking tyrants, hand to hand, individually,” as well as generals?32 Have we not seen Merlin de Thionville insisting that “the wives and children of the

31. Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 150, 161, 511.—Report by Roland, Oct. 29, p. 414. 32. Moniteur, XIII. 514, 542 (sessions of Aug. 23 and 26). The Jacobin Conquest / 657 e´migre´s should be kept as hostages,” and declared responsible, or, in other words, ready for slaughter if their relatives continue their attacks?33 This is all that can be done, for other measures have not proved sufficient.—In vain has the Commune decreed the arrest of journalists belonging to the opposite party, and distributed their presses amongst patriotic printers.34 In vain has it declared the members of the Sainte-Chapelle club, the National Guards who have sworn al- legiance to Lafayette, the signers of the petition of 8,000, and of that of 20,000, disqualified for any service whatever.35 In vain has it multiplied domiciliary visits, even to the residence and carriages of the Venetian ambassador. In vain, through insulting and repeated examinations, does it keep at its bar, under the hootings and death- cries of its tribunes, the most honorable and most illustrious men, Lavoisier, Dupont de Nemours, the eminent surgeon Desault, the most harmless and most refined ladies, Madame de Tourzel, Made- moiselle de Tourzel, and the Princesse de Lamballe.36 In vain, after a profusion of arrests during twenty days, it envelopes all Paris in one cast of its net for a nocturnal search:37 the barriers closed and

33. Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 99 (sessions of Aug. 15 and 23). “Proce`s-verbaux de la Commune,” Aug. 18, a resolution to obtain a law authorising the commune “to collect together the wives and children of the e´migre´s in places of security, and to make use of the former convents for this purpose.” 34. “Proce`s-verbaux de la Commune,” Aug. 12.—Ibid., Aug. 18. Not being able to find M. Geoffroy, the journalist, the commune “passes a resolution that seals be affixed to Madame Geoffroy’s domicile and that she be placed in arrest until her husband appears to release her.” 35. “Proce`s-verbaux de la Commune,” Aug. 17 and 18. Another resolution, again demanding of the National Assembly a list of the signers for publication. 36. “Proce`s-verbaux de la Commune,” Aug. 18, 19, 20.—On the 20th of August the commune summons before it and examines the Venetian Ambassador. “A citizen claims to be heard against the ambassador, and states that several carriages went out of Paris in his name. The name of this citizen is Chevalier, a horse-shoer’s assistant....TheCouncil decrees that honorable mention be made of the affidavits brought forward in the accusation.” On the tone of these examinations read Weber (“Me´moires,” II. 245), who narrates his own. 37. Buchez et Roux, XVII. 215. Narration by Peltier.—In spite of the orders of the National Assembly the affair is repeated on the following day, and it lasts 658 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION doubly guarded, sentinels on the quays and boats stationed on the Seine to prevent escape by water, the city divided beforehand into circumscriptions, and for each section, a list of suspected persons, the circulation of vehicles stopped, every citizen ordered to stay at home, the silence of death after six o’clock in the evening, and then, in each street, a patrol of sixty pikemen, seven hundred squads of sans-culottes, all working at the same time, and with their usual brutality, doors burst in with pieces of timber, wardrobes picked by locksmiths, walls sounded by masons, cellars searched even to dig- ging in the ground, papers seized, arms confiscated, three thousand persons arrested and led off,38 priests, old men, the infirm, the sick, and from ten in the evening to five o’clock in the morning, the same as in a city taken by assault, the screams of women rudely treated, the cries of prisoners compelled to march, the oaths of the guards, cursing and drinking at each grog-shop; never was there such an universal, methodical execution, so well calculated to suppress all inclination for resistance in the silence of general stupefaction. And yet, at this very moment, there are those who act in good faith in the sections and in the Assembly, and who rebel at being under such masters. A deputation from the Lombards section, and another from the Corn-market, come to the Assembly and protest against the Commune’s usurpations.39 Choudieu, the Montagnard, from the 19th to the 31st of August, in the evening.—Moore, Aug. 31. The stupid, sheep-like vanity of the bourgeois enlisted as a gendarme for the sans- culottes is here well depicted. The keeper of the Hoˆtel Meurice, where Moore and Lord Lauderdale put up, was on guard and on the chase the night before: “He talked a good deal of the fatigue he had undergone, and hinted a little of the dangers to which he had been exposed in the course of this severe duty. Being asked if he had been successful in his search after suspected persons— ‘Yes, my lord, infinitely; our battalion arrested four priests.’ He could not have looked more lofty if he had taken the Duke of Brunswick.” 38. According to Roederer, the number arrested amounted to from 5,000 to 6,000 persons. 39. Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 147, 148, Aug. 28 and 29.—Ibid., 176. Other sections complain of the Commune with some bitterness.—Buchez et Roux, XVII. 358.—“Proce`s-verbaux de la Commune,” Sept. 1. “The section of the The Jacobin Conquest / 659 denounces its glaring prevarications. Cambon, a stern financier, will no longer consent to have his accounts tampered with by thieving tricksters.40 The Assembly at last seems to have recovered itself. It extends its protection to Ge´ray, the journalist, against whom the new pachas had issued a warrant; it summons to its own bar the signers of the warrant, and orders them to confine themselves in future to the exact limits of the law which they transgress. Better still, it dissolves the interloping Council, and substitutes for it ninety- six delegates, to be elected by the sections in twenty-four hours. And, even still better, it orders an account to be rendered within two days of the objects it has seized, and the return of all gold or silver articles to the Treasury. Quashed, and summoned to disgorge their booty, the autocrats of the Hoˆtel-de-Ville come in vain to the Assembly in force on the following day41 to extort from it a repeal of its decrees; the Assembly, in spite of their threats and those of their satellites, maintains its ground.—So much the worse for the stubborn; if they are not disposed to regard the flash of the sabre, they will feel its sharp edge and point. The Commune, on the motion of Manuel, decides that, so long as public danger continues, they will stay where they are; it adopts an address by Robespierre to “restore sovereign power to the people,” which means to fill the streets with armed bands;42 it collects together its brigands by giving them the ownership of all that they stole on the 10th of August.43

Temple sends a deputation which declares that by virtue of a decree of the National Assembly it withdraws its powers entrusted to the commissioners elected by it to the council-general.” 40. Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 154 (session of Aug. 30). 41. Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 171 (session of Aug. 31).—Ibid., 208.—On the following day, Sept. 1, at the instigation of Danton, Thuriot obtains from the National Assembly an ambiguous decree which seems to allow the members of the commune to keep their places, provisionally at least, at the Hoˆtel-de-Ville. 42. “Proce`s-verbaux de la Commune,” Sept. 1. 43. “Proce`s-verbaux de la Commune,” Sept. 1. “It is resolved that whatever eﬀects fell into the hands of the citizens who fought for liberty and equality on the 10th of August shall remain in their possession; M. Tallien, secretary-general, is therefore authorised to return a gold watch to M. Lecomte, a gendarme.” 660 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

The session, prolonged into the night, does not terminate until one o’clock in the morning. Sunday has come and there is no time to lose, for, in a few hours, the sections, by virtue of the decree of the National Assembly, and following the example of the Temple section the evening before, may revoke the pretended representatives at the Hoˆtel-de-Ville. To remain at the Hoˆtel-de-Ville, and to be elected to the convention, demands on the part of the leaders some striking action, and this they require that very day.—That day is the second of September.

IV Since the 23d of August their resolution is taken.44 They have arranged in their minds a plan of the massacre, and each one, little by little, spontaneously, according to his aptitudes, takes the part that suits him or is assigned to him.

44. Four circumstances, simultaneous and in full agreement with each other, indicate this date: 1. On the 23d of August the council-general resolves “that a tribune shall be arranged in the chamber for a journalist (M. Marat), whose duty it shall be to conduct a journal giving the acts passed and what goes on in the commune” (“Proce`s-verbaux de la Commune,” Aug. 23).— 2. On the same day, “on the motion of a member with a view to separate the prisoners of le´se-nation from those of the nurse’s hospital and others of the same stamp in the diﬀerent prisons, the council has adopted this measure” (Granier de Cassagnac, II. 100).— 3. The same day the commune applauds the deputies of a section, which “in warm terms” denounce before it the tardiness of justice and declare to it that the people will “immolate” the prisoners in their prisons (Moniteur, Nov. 10, 1793, Narrative of Pe´tion).— 4. The same day it sends a deputation to the Assembly to order a transfer of the Orleans prisoners to Paris (Buchez et Roux, XVII. 116). The next day, in spite of the prohibitions of the Assembly, it sends Fournier and his band to Orleans (Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 364), and each knows beforehand that Fournier is commissioned to kill him on the way. (Balleydier, “Histoire politique et militaire du peuple de Lyon,” I. 79. Letter of Laussel, dated at Paris, Aug. 28:) “Our volunteers are at Orleans for the past two or three days to bring the anti-revolutionary prisoners here, who are treated too well there.” On the day of Fournier’s departure (Aug. 24) Moore observes in the Palais Royal and at the Tuileries “a greater number than usual of itinerant haranguers of the populace, hired for the purpose of inspiring the people with a horror of monarchy.” The Jacobin Conquest / 661

Marat, foremost among them all, is the proposer and preacher of the operation, which, for him, is a perfectly natural one. It is an abridgment of his political system: a dictator or tribune, with full power to slay, and with no other power but that; a good master executioner, responsible, and “tied hand and foot”; this is his programme for a government since July the 14th, 1789, and he does not blush at it: “so much the worse for those who are not on a level with it!”45 He appreciated the character of the Revolution from the first, not through genius, but sympathetically, he himself being equally as one-sided and monstrous; crazy with suspicion and beset with a homicidal mania for the past three years, reduced to one idea through mental impoverishment, that of murder, having lost the faculty for even the lowest order of reasoning, the poorest of journalists, save for pikemen and Billingsgate market-women, so monotonous in his constant paroxysms that the regular reading of his journal is like listening to hoarse cries from the cells of a madhouse.46 From the 19th of August he excites people to attack the prisons. “The wisest and best course to pursue,” he says, “is to go armed to the Abbaye, drag out the traitors, especially the Swiss officers and their accomplices, and put them to the sword. What folly it is to give them a trial! That is already done. You have massacred the soldiers, why should you spare the officers, ten times guiltier?”— Also, two days later, his brain teeming with an executioner’s fancies, insisting that “the soldiers deserved a thousand deaths. As to the

45. Moniteur, Sept. 25, 1792, speech by Marat in the Convention. 46. See his two journals, “L’Ami du peuple” and the “Journal de la Re´public Française,” especially for July and October, 1792.—The number for August 16 is headed: “Development of the vile plot of the court to destroy all patriots with fire and sword.”—That of August 19: “The infamous conscript Fathers of the Circus, betraying the people and trying to delay the conviction of traitors until Mottie´ arrives, is marching with his army on Paris to destroy all patriots!”—That of Aug. 21: “The gangrene´s of the Assembly, the perfidious accomplices of Mottie´ arranging for flight....Theconscript Fathers, the assassins of patriots at Nancy in the Champ de Mars and in the Tuileries,” etc.—All this was yelled out daily every morning by those who hawked these journals through the streets. 662 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION officers, they should be drawn and quartered, like Louis Capet and his tools of the Mane`ge.”47 —On the strength of this the Commune adopts him as its official editor, assigns him a tribune in its assembly room, entrusts him to report its acts, and soon puts him on its supervisory or executive committee. A fanatic of this stamp, however, is good for nothing but as a mouthpiece or instigator; he may, at best, figure in the end among the subordinate managers.—The chief of the enterprise,48 Danton, is of another species, and of another stature, a veritable leader of men. Through his past career and actual position, through his popular cynicism, ways and language, through his capacity for taking the initiative and for command, through his excessive corporeal and intellectual vigor, through his physical ascendency due to his ardent, absorbing will, he is well calculated for his terrible office.—He alone of the Commune has become Minister, and there is no one but him to screen municipal outrages with the patronage or inertia of the central authority.—He alone of the Commune and of the ministry is able to push things on and harmonise action in the pell-mell of the revolutionary chaos, and now, in the councils of the ministry, as formerly at the Hoˆtel-de-Ville, he governs. In the constant uproar of incoherent discussions,49 athwart “propositions ex abrupto, shouts, imprecations, the going and coming of questioning petitioners,” he is seen mastering his new colleagues with his “stentorian voice, his gestures of an athlete, his fearful threats,” taking upon himself their duties, dictating to them what and whom he chooses, “fetching in commissions already drawn up,” taking charge of everything, “mak-

47. L’Ami du Peuple, Aug. 19 and 21. 48. “Lettres autographs de Madame Roland,” published by Madame Bancal des Issarts, Sept. 9. “Danton leads all; Robespierre is his puppet; Marat holds his torch and dagger.” 49. Madame Roland, “Me´moires,” II. 19 (note by Roland).—Ibid., 21, 23, 24. Monge says: “Danton wants to have it so; if I refuse he will denounce me to the Commune and at the Cordeliers, and have me hung.” Fournier’s commission to Orleans was all in order, Roland probably having signed it unawares, like those of the commissioners sent into the departments by the executive council (Cf. Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 368.) The Jacobin Conquest / 663 ing propositions, arrests, and proclamations, issuing brevets,” and drawing millions out of the public treasury, casting a sop to his dogs in the Cordeliers and the Commune, “to one 20,000 francs, and to another 10,000,” “for the Revolution, and on account of their patriotism,”—such is a summary report of his doings. Thus gorged, the pack of hungry “brawlers” and grasping intriguers, the whole serviceable force of the sections and of the clubs, is in his hands. One is strong in times of anarchy at the head of such a herd. Indeed, during the months of August and September, Danton was king, and, later on, he may well say of the 2d of September, as he did of the 10th of August, “I did it!”50

50. The person who gives me the following had it from the king, Louis Philippe, then an officer in Kellerman’s corps: On the evening of the battle of Valmy the young officer is sent to Paris to carry the news. On his arrival (Sept. 22 or 23, 1792) he learns that he is removed from his post and appointed governor of Strasbourg. He goes to Servan’s house, Minister of War, and at first they refuse to let him in. Servan is unwell and in bed, with the ministers in his room. The young man states that he comes from the army and is the bearer of despatches. He is admitted, and finds, indeed, Servan in bed with various personages around him, and he announces the victory.—They question him and he gives the details.—He then complains of having been displaced, and, stating that he is too young to command with any authority at Strasbourg, requests to be reinstated with the army in the field. “Impossible,” replies Servan; “your place is given to another.” Thereupon one of the personages present, with a peculiar visage and a rough voice, takes him aside and says to him: “Servan is a fool! Come and see me to-morrow and I will arrange the matter.” “Who are you?” “I am Danton, the Minister of Justice.”—The next day he calls on Danton, who tells him: “It is all right; you shall have your post back—not under Kellerman, however, but under Dumou- riez; are you content?” The young man, delighted, thanks him. Danton resumes: “Let me give you one piece of advice before you go: You have talent and will succeed. But get rid of one fault—you talk too much. You have been in Paris twenty-four hours, and already you have repeatedly criticised the affair of Sep- tember. I know this; I have been informed of it.” “But that was a massacre; how can one help calling it horrible?” “I did it,” replies Danton. “The Parisians are all so many j f . A river of blood had to flow between them and the e´migre´s. You are too young to understand these matters. Return to the army; it is the only place nowadays for a young man like you and of your rank. You have a future before you; but mind this—keep your mouth shut!” 664 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Not that he is naturally vindictive or sanguinary: on the contrary, with a butcher’s temperament, he has a man’s heart, and, at the risk of compromising himself, against the wills of Marat and Robespierre, he will, by-and-by, save his political adversaries, Duport, Brissot, and the Girondists, the old party of the “Right.”51 Not that he is blinded by fear, enmities, or the theory; furious as a clubbist, he has the clear-sightedness of the politician; he is not the dupe of the sonorous phrases he utters, he knows the value of the rogues he employs;52 he has no illusions about men or things, about other people or about himself; if he slays, it is with a full consciousness of what he is doing, of his party, of the situation, of the revolution, while the crude expressions which, in the tones of his bull’s voice, he ﬂings out as he passes along, are but a vivid statement of the precise truth: “We are the rabble! We spring from the gutters!” With the ordinary feeling of humanity, “we should soon get back into them. We can only rule through fear!”53 “The Parisians are so many ; a river of blood must ﬂow between them and the e´migre´s.”54 “The tocsin about to be rung is not a signal of alarm, but a charge on the enemies of the country....What is necessary to overcome them? Boldness, boldness, always boldness!55 I have

51. Hua, 167. Narrative by his guest, the physician Lambry, an intimate friend of Danton, ultra-fanatical and member of a committee in which the question came up whether the members of the “Right” should likewise be put out of the way. “Danton had energetically repelled this sanguinary proposal. ‘Everybody knows,’ he said, ‘that I do not shrink from a criminal act when necessary; but I disdain to commit a useless one.’” 52. Mortimer-Ternaux, IV. 437. Danton exclaims, in relation to the “effervescent” commissioners sent by him into the department: “Eh! d n it, do you suppose that we would send you young ladies?” 53. Philippe de Se´gur, “Me´moires,” I. 12. Danton, in a conversation with his father, a few weeks after the 2d of September. 54. See above, narrative of the king, Louis Philippe. 55. Buchez et Roux, XVII. 347. The words of Danton in the National As- sembly, Sept. 2, a little before two o’clock, just as the tocsin and cannon gave the signal of alarm agreed upon. Already on the 31st of August, Tallien, his faithful ally, had told the National Assembly: “We have arrested the priests who make so much trouble. They are in confinement in a certain domicile, and in a few days the soil of liberty will be purged of their presence.” The Jacobin Conquest / 665 brought my mother here, seventy years of age; I have sent for my children, and they came last night. Before the Prussians enter Paris, I want my family to die with me. Let twenty thousand torches be applied, and Paris instantly reduced to ashes!”56 “We must maintain ourselves in Paris at all hazards. Republicans are in an extreme minority, and, for fighting, we can rely only on them. The rest of France is devoted to royalty. The royalists must be terrified!”57—It is he who, on the 28th of August, obtains from the Assembly the great domiciliary visit, by which the Commune fills the prisons. It is he who, on the 2d of September, to paralyse the resistance of honest people, causes the penalty of death to be decreed against whoever, “directly or indirectly shall, in any manner whatsoever, refuse to execute, or who shall interfere with the orders issued, or with the measures of the executive power.” It is he who, on that day, informs the journalist Prudhomme of the pretended prison plot, and who, the second day after, sends his secretary, Camille Des- moulins, to falsify the report of the massacres.58 It is he who, on the

56. Meillan, “Me´moires,” 325 (Ed. Barrie`re et Berville). Speech by Fabre d’Eglantine at the Jacobin Club, sent around among the aﬃliated clubs, May 1, 1793. 57. Robinet, “Proce`s des Dantonistes,” 39, 45 (words of Danton in the committee on general defense).—Madame Roland, “Me´moires,” II. 30. On the 2d of September Grandpre´, ordered to report to the Minister of the Interior on the state of the prisons, waits for Danton as he leaves the council and tells him his fears. “Danton, irritated by the description, exclaims in his bellowing way, suiting the word to the action. ‘J the prisoners! Let them take care of themselves!’ and he proceeded on in an angry mood. This took place in the second ante-room, in the presence of twenty persons.”—Arnault, II. 101. About the time of the September massacres “Danton, in the presence of one of my friends, replied to some one that urged him to use his authority in stopping the spilling of blood: ‘Isn’t it time for the people to take their revenge?’” 58. Prudhomme, “Crimes de la Re´volution,” IV. 90. On the 2d of Septem- ber, at the alarm given by the tocsin and cannon, Prudhomme calls on Danton at his house for information. Danton repeats the story which has been gotten up, and adds: “The people, who are now aroused and know what to do, want to administer justice themselves on the worthless scamps now in prison.” Ca- mille Desmoulins enters. “Look here,” says Danton, “Prudhomme has come to ask what is going to be done?” “Didn’t you tell him that the innocent would not be confounded with the guilty? All those that are demanded by their sections 666 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

3d of September, at the office of the Minister of Justice, before the battalion officers and the heads of the service, before Lacroix, president of the Assembly, and Pe´tion, mayor of Paris, before Clavie`res, Servan, Monge, Lebrun, and the entire Executive Council, except Roland, reduces at one stroke the head men of the government to the position of passive accomplices, replying to a man of feeling, who rises to stay the slaughter, “Sit down—it was necessary!”59 It is he who, the same day, despatches the circular, countersigned by him, by which the Committee of Supervision announces the massacre, and invites “their brethren of the departments” to follow the example of Paris.60 It is he who, on the 10th of September, “not as Minister of Justice, but as Minister of the People,” is to congratulate and thank the slaughterers of Versailles.61—After the 10th of August, will be given up.” On the 4th, Desmoulins calls at the office of the journal and says to the editors: “Well, everything has gone off in the most perfect order. The people even set free a good many aristocrats against whom there was no direct proof....Itrustthat you will state all this exactly, because the Journal des Re´volutions is the compass of public opinion.” 59. Prudhomme, “Crimes de la Re´volution,” 123. According to the statements of Theophile Mandar, vice-president of a section, witness and actor in the scene; he authorises Prudhomme to mention his name.—Afterwards, in the next room, Mandar proposes to Pe´tion and Robespierre to attend the Assembly the next day and protest against the massacre; if necessary, the Assembly may appoint a director for one day. “Take care not to do that,” replied Robespierre; “Brissot would be the dictator.”—Pe´tion says nothing. “The ministers were all agreed to let the massacres continue.” 60. Madame Roland, II. 37.—“Angers et le de´partment de Maine-et-Loire de 1787 a` 1830,” by Blordier Langlois. Appended to the circular was a printed address bearing the title of Comte rendu au peuple souverain, “countersigned by the Minister of Justice and with the Minister’s seal on the package,” and addressed to the Jacobin Clubs of the departments, that they, too, might preach massacre. 61. Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 398, 391. Warned by Alquier, president of the criminal court of Versailles, of the danger to which the Orleans prisoners were exposed, Danton replied: “What is that to you? That affair does not concern you. Mind your own business, and do not meddle with things outside of it!” “But, Monsieur, the law says that prisoners must be protected.” “What do you care? Some among them are great criminals, and nobody knows yet how the The Jacobin Conquest / 667 through Billaud-Varennes, his former secretary, Fabre d’Eglantine, his secretary as Keeper of the Seals, Tallien, secretary of the Com- mune, and his most trusty henchman, he is present at all deliberations in the Hoˆtel-de-Ville, and, at the last hour, is careful to put on the Committee of Supervision one of his own men, the head clerk, Desforges.62—Not only was the mowing-machine constructed under his own eye, and with his assent, but, again, at the moment of starting it, he holds the handle, so as to guide the blade. It is well that he does; if he did not sometimes put on the brake, it would go to pieces through its own action. Introduced into the Committee as professor of political blood-letting, Marat, stubbornly following out a fixed idea, cuts down deep, much below the designated line; warrants of arrest were already out against thirty deputies, Brissot’s papers were rummaged, Roland’s house was surrounded, while Duport, seized in a neighboring department, is brought to the shambles. The latter is saved with the utmost difficulty; many a blow is necessary before he can be wrested from the maniac who had seized him. With a surgeon like Marat, and apprentices like the four or five hundred leaders of the Commune and of the sections, it is not essential to guide the knife, for a large amputation is certain beforehand. Their names alone tell the story— in the Commune, Manuel, the syndic-attorney; He´bert and Billaud- Varennes, his two deputies; Huguenin, Lhuillier, Marie Cheńier, Au- douin, Leónard Bourdon, Boula and Truchon, presidents in succession; in the Commune and the sections, Panis, Sergent, Tallien, Rossignol, Chaumette, Fabre d’Eglantine, Pache, Hassenfratz, the cobbler Simon, and the printer Momoro; in the National Guard, Santerre, commanding-general, Henriot, brigadier-general, and, under them, the herd of demagogues belonging to the district, the supernumeraries of Danton, He´bert, or Robespierre, and who are afterwards guillotined with their file-leaders, in brief, the flower of people will regard them and how far their indignation will carry them.” Alquier wished to pursue the matter, but Danton turned his back on him. 62. Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 217. 668 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION the future terrorists.63—They are taking the first step in blood, each in the attitude and under impulses peculiar to himself, Cheńier denounced as a member of the Sainte-Chapelle club, and with the more exaggeration because he is suspected;64 Manuel, a poor little excitable fellow, dazed, dragged along, and afterwards shuddering at the sight of his own work; Santerre, a fine circumspect figure-head, who, on the 2d of September, under pretence of watching the baggage, climbs on the seat of a berlin standing on the street, where he remains a couple of hours, to get rid of doing his duty as commanding- general;65 Panis, president of the Committee of Supervision, a good subordinate, his born disciple and train-bearer, an admirer of Robespierre’s whom he proposes for the dictatorship, as well as of Marat, whom he extols as a prophet;66 Henriot, He´bert, and Rossi- gnol, simple malefactors in uniform or in their scarfs; Collot d’Herbois, a stage poetaster, whose theatrical imagination delights in a combination of melodramatic horrors;67 Billaud-Varennes, a for-

63. Madame Roland, “Lettres autographes, etc.,” Sept. 5, 1792. “We are here under the knives of Marat and Robespierre. These fellows are striving to excite the people and turn them against the National Assembly and the Council. They have organised a Star Chamber and they have a small army under pay, aided by what they found or stole in the palace and elsewhere, or by supplies purchased by Danton, who is underhandedly the chieftain of this horde.”— Dusaulx, “Me´moires,” 441. “On the following day (Sept. 3) I went to see one of the personages of most influence at this epoch. ‘You know,’ said I to him, ‘what is going on?’ ‘Very well; but keep quiet; it will soon be over. A little more blood is still necessary.’ I saw others who explained themselves much more definitely.”—Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 445. 64. “Proce`s-verbaux de la Commune,” Aug. 17.—Buchez et Roux, XII. 206. Account of the feˆte of Aug. 27; a denunciation against Cheńier, “who is now called simply Cheńier the chaplain.”—Weber, II. 274, 275. 65. Madame de Stae¨l, “Conside´rations sur la Re´volution Française,” 3d part, ch. x. 66. Prudhomme, “Les Re´volutions de Paris” (number for Sept. 22). At one of the last sessions of the commune “M. Panis spoke of Marat as of a prophet, another Simeon Stylites. ‘Marat,’ said he, ‘remained six weeks sitting on one thigh in a dungeon.’”—Barbaroux, 64. 67. Weber, II. 348. Collot dwells at length, “in cool-blooded gaiety,” on the murder of Madame de Lamballe and on the abominations to which her corpse The Jacobin Conquest / 669 mer oratorien, bilious and sombre, as cool before a murder as an inquisitor at an auto da fe´; finally, the wily Robespierre, pushing others without committing himself, never signing his name, giving no orders, haranguing a great deal, always advising, showing himself everywhere, getting ready to reign, and suddenly, at the last moment, pouncing like a cat on his prey, and trying to slaughter his rivals, the Girondists.68 Up to this time, in slaughtering or having it done, it was always as insurrectionists in the street; now, it is in places of imprisonment, as magistrates and functionaries, according to the registers of a lock- up, after proofs of identity and on snap judgments, by paid executioners, in the name of public security, methodically, and in cool blood, almost with the same regularity as subsequently under “the revolutionary government.” September, indeed, is the beginning of it, the abridgment of it and the type; they will not do otherwise or better in the best days of the guillotine. Only, as they are as yet poorly supplied with tools, they are obliged to use pikes instead of the guillotine, and, as diffidence is not yet entirely gone, the chiefs conceal themselves behind manoeuvrings. Nevertheless, we can track them, take them in the act, and we possess their autographs; they planned, commanded, and conducted the operation. On the 30th of August, the Commune decided that the sections should try accused persons, and, on the 2d of September, five trusty sections was subjected. “He added, with a sigh of regret, that if he had been consulted he would have had the head of Madame de Lamballe served in a covered dish for the queen’s supper.” 68. On the part played by Robespierre and his presence constantly at the Commune, see Granier de Cassagnac, II. 55.—Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 205. Speech by Robespierre at the commune, Sept 1. “No one dares name the traitors. Well, I give their names for the safety of the people: I denounce the liberticide Brissot, the Girondist factionists, the rascally commission of the Twenty-One in the National Assembly; I denounce them for having sold France to Bruns- wick, and for having taken in advance the reward for their dastardly act.” On the 2d of September he repeats his denunciation, and consequently on that day warrants are issued by the committee of supervision against thirty deputies and against Brissot and Roland (Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 216, 247). 670 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION reply to it by resolving that the accused shall be murdered.69 The same day, September 2, Marat takes his place on the Committee of Supervision. The same day, September 2, Panis and Sergent sign the commissions of “their comrades,” Maillard and associates, for the Abbaye, and “order them to judge,” that is to say, kill the prisoners.70 The same and the following days, at La Force, three members of the Commune, He´bert, Monneuse, and Rossignol, preside in turn over the assassin court.71 The same day, a commissary of the Com- mittee of Supervision comes and demands a dozen men of the Sans- Culottes section to help massacre the priests of Saint Firmin.72 The same day, a commissary of the Commune visits the different prisons during the slaughterings, and finds that “things are going on well in all of them.”73 The same day, at five o’clock in the afternoon, Billaud-Varennes, deputy-attorney for the Commune, “in his well- known puce-colored coat and black perruque,” walking over the corpses, says to the Abbaye butchers: “Fellow-citizens, you are im- molating your enemies, you are performing your duty!” That night he returns, highly commends them, and ratifies his promise of the wages “agreed upon”; on the following day at noon, he again returns, congratulates them more warmly, allows each one twenty francs, and urges them to keep on.74—In the mean time, Santerre, summoned to the staff-office by Roland, hypocritically deplores his

69. “Proce`s-verbaux de la Commune,” Aug. 30.—Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 217 (resolutions of the sections Poissonnie`re and Luxembourg).—Granier de Cassagnac, II. 104 (adhesion of the sections Mauconseil, Louvre, and Quinze- Vingt). 70. Granier de Cassagnac, II. 156. 71. Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 265.—Granier de Cassagnac, XII. 402. (The other five judges were also members of the commune.) 72. Granier de Cassagnac, II. 313. Register of the General Assembly of the sans-culottes section, Sept. 2. “Me´moires sur les journeés de Septembre,” 151 (declaration of Jourdan). 73. “Me´moires sur les journeés de Septembre,” narrative of Abbe´ Sicard, III. 74. Buchez et Roux, XVIII. 109, 178. (“La ve´rite´ tout entie`re,” by Me´heé, Jr.)—Narrative of Abbe´ Sicard, 132, 134. The Jacobin Conquest / 671 voluntary inability, and persists in not giving the orders, without which the National Guard cannot stir a step.75 At the sections, the presidents, Cheńier, Ceyrat, Boula, Momoro, Collot d’Herbois, send away or fetch their victims under pikes. At the Commune, the council-general votes 12,000 francs, to be taken from the dead, to defray the expenses of the operation.76 In the Committee of Super- vision, Marat sends off despatches to spread murder through the departments.—It is evident that the leaders and their subordinates are unanimous, each at his post and in the service he performs; through the spontaneous cooperation of the whole party, the command from above meets the impulse from below;77 both unite in a common murderous disposition, the work being done with the more precision in proportion to its being easily done.—Jailers have received orders to open the prison doors, and give themselves no concern. Through an excess of precaution, the knives and forks of the prisoners have been taken away from them.78 One by one, on

75. Granier de Cassagnac, II. 92, 93.—On the presence and complicity of Santerre. Ibid. 89–99. 76. Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 277 and 299 (Sept. 3).—Granier de Cassagnac, II. 257. A commissary of the section of the Quatre-Nations states in his report that “the section authorised them to pay expenses out of the affair.”—Decla- ration of Jourdan, 151.—Lavalette, “Me´moires,” I. 91. The initiative of the commune is further proved by the following detail: “Towards five o’clock (Sept. 2) city officials on horseback, carrying a flag, rode through the streets crying: ‘To arms! to arms!’ They added: ‘The enemy is coming; you are all lost; the city will be burnt and given up to pillage. Have no fear of the traitors and conspirators behind your backs. They are in the hands of the patriots, and before you leave the thunderbolts of national justice will fall on them!”—Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 105. Letter of Chevalier Saint-Dizier, member of the first committee of supervision, Sept. 10. “Marat, Duplain, Fre´ron, etc., generally do no more in their supervision of things than wreak private vengeance....Marat states openly that 40,000 heads must still be knocked off to ensure the success of the Revolution.” 77. Buchez et Roux, XVIII. 146. “Ma Re´surrection,” by Mathon de la Va- renne. “The evening before half-intoxicated women said publicly on the Feuil- lants terrace: ‘To-morrow is the day when their souls will be turned inside out in the prisons.” 78. “Me´moires sur les journeés de Septembre. Mon agonie,” by Journiac de 672 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION their names being called, they will march out like oxen in a slaughter-house, while about twenty butchers to each prison, from to two to three hundred in all,79 will suffice to do the work.

V Two classes of men furnish recruits, and here we have to admire the effect of the revolutionary creed on crude intellects.—First, there are the Federates of the South, lusty fellows, former soldiers or old bandits, deserters, bohemians, and bullies of all lands and from every source, who, after finishing their work at Marseilles and Avignon, have come to Paris to begin over again. “Triple nom de Dieu!” exclaims one of them, “I didn’t come a hundred and eighty leagues to stop with a hundred and eighty heads on the end of my pike!”80 Accordingly, they form in themselves a special, permanent, resident body, allowing no one to divert them from their adopted occupation. “They turn a deaf ear to the excitements of spurious patriotism”;81 they are not going to be sent off to the frontier. Their post is at the capital; they have sworn “to defend liberty”; neither before nor after September could they be got out of it. When, at last, after having drawn on every treasury for their pay, and under every pretext, they consent to leave Paris, it is only that they may return to Marseilles; their operations are limited to the interior, and to political adversaries. But their zeal in this direction is only the greater; it is their

Saint-Meárd.—Madame de la Fausse-Landry, 72. The 29th of August she obtained permission to join her uncle in prison: “M. Sergent and others told me that I was acting imprudently; that the prisons were not safe.” 79. Granier de Cassagnac, II. 27. According to Roch Marcandier their number “did not exceed 300.” According to Louvet there were “200, and perhaps not that number.” According to Brissot, the massacres were committed by about “a hundred unknown brigands.”—Pe´tion, at La Force (ibid., 75), on September 6, finds about a dozen executioners. According to Madame Roland (II. 35), “there were not fifteen at the Abbaye.” Lavalette the first day finds only about fifty at the La Force prison. 80. Mathon de la Varenne, ibid., 137. 81. Buchez et Roux, XVII. 183 (session of the Jacobin Club, Aug. 27), speech by a federate from Tarn.—Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 126. The Jacobin Conquest / 673 band which, first of all, takes the twenty-four priests from the mayoralty, and, on the way, begins the massacre with their own hands.82—After these come the infuriates of the Paris commonalty, many of them clerks or shopmen, most of them artisans, and others belonging to every trade, locksmiths, masons, butchers, cartmen, tailors, shoemakers, waggoners, especially boat-loaders, dock-hands, and market-porters, and, above all, journeymen and apprentices of all kinds, in short, men accustomed to hand-labor, and who occupy the lowest grade in the scale of professions.83 Among these we find beasts of prey, murderers by instinct, or simple robbers.84 Others who, like one of the disciples of Abbe´ Sicard, whom he loves and venerates, confess that they never stirred except under constraint.85 Others are simple machines, who let themselves be driven; for instance, a corner “commissionaire,” a good sort of man, but who, dragged along, plied with liquor, and then made crazy, kills twenty priests for his share, and dies at the end of the month, still drinking, unable to sleep, frothing at the mouth and trembling in every limb.86

82. Sicard, 80.—Me´heé, 187.—Weber, II. 279.—Cf., in Journiac de Saint- Meárd, his conversation with a Provençal.—Re´tif de la Bretonne, “Les Nuits de Paris,” 375. “About 2 o’clock in the morning (Sept. 3) I heard a troop of cannibals passing under my window, none of whom appeared to have the Pa- risian accent; they were all foreign.” 83. Granier de Cassagnac, II. 164, 502.—Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 530— Maillard’s assessors at the Abbaye were a watchmaker living in the Rue Chil- debert, a fruit-dealer in the Rue Mazarine, a keeper of a public house in the Rue du Four-Saint-Germain, a journeyman hatter in the Rue Sainte-Marguerite, and two others whose occupation is not mentioned.—On the composition of the tribunal at La Force, Cf. Journiac de Saint-Meárd, 120, and Weber, II. 261. 84. Granier de Cassagnac, II. 507 (on Damiens), 513 (on L’empereur).— Meillan, 388 (on Laforet and his wife, old-clothes dealers on the Quai du Louvre, who on the 31st of May prepare for a second blow, and calculate this time on having for their share the pillaging of fifty houses). 85. Sicard, 98. 86. De Ferrie`res (Ed. Berville et Barrie`re), III. 486.—Re´tif de la Bretonne, 381. At the end of the Rue des Ballets a prisoner had just been killed, while the next one slipped through the railing and escaped. “A man not belonging to the butchers, but one of those thoughtless machines of which there are so many, interposed his pike and stopped him....Thepoor fellow was arrested by his 674 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Others, finally, who, coming with good intentions, are seized with vertigo in contact with the bloody whirl, and, through a sudden stroke of revolutionary grace, are converted to the religion of slaughter; a certain Grapin, deputed by his section to save two prisoners, seats himself alongside of Maillard, joins him in his decisions during sixty-three hours, and demands a certificate from him.87 The majority, however, entertain the same opinions as the cook, who, after taking the Bastille, finding himself on the spot and having cut off M. de Launay’s head, regards it as a “patriotic” action, and deems himself worthy of a “medal for having destroyed a monster.” These people are not common malefactors, but well-disposed persons living in the vicinity, who, seeing a public service established in their neighborhood,88 issue from their domiciles to give it a lift; their dose of probity is about the same as we find nowadays among people of the same condition in life. At the outset, especially, no one dreams of filling his pockets. At the Abbaye, they come honorably and place on the table in the room of the civil committee the purses and jewels of the dead.89 If they appropriate anything to themselves, it is shoes to cover their naked feet, and then only after asking permission. As to pay, all rough work deserves it, and, moreover, between them and their enticers, pursuers and massacred. The pikeman coolly said to us: ‘I didn’t know they wanted to kill him.’” 87. Granier de Cassagnac, II. 511. 88. The judges and slaughterers at the Abbaye, discovered in the trial of the year IV., almost all lived in the neighborhood, in the rues Dauphine, de Nevers, Gueńe´gaud, de Bussy, Childebert, Taranne, de l’Egouˆt, du Vieux Co- lombier, de l’Echaude´-Saint-Benoit, du Four-Saint-Germain, etc. 89. Sicard, 86, 87, 101.—Jourdan, 123. “The president of the committee of supervision replied to me that these were very honest persons; that on the previous evening or the evening before that, one of them, in a shirt and sabots, presented himself before their committee all covered with blood, bringing with him in his hat twenty-five louis in gold, which he had found on the person of a man he had killed.”—Another instance of probity may be found in the “Proce`s-verbaux du conseil-geńe´ral de la Commune de Versailles,” 367, 371.— On the following day, Sept. 3, robberies commence and go on increasing. The Jacobin Conquest / 675 their compensation is understood. With nothing but their own hands to rely on, they cannot give their time gratis,90 and, as the work is hard, it ought to count for two days. They require six francs a day, besides their meals and wine as much as they want. One keeper of a cook-shop alone furnished the men at the Abbaye with 346 pints:91 with uninterrupted work that lasts all day and all night, and which is like that of sewer-cleaners and miners, nothing else will keep their spirits up.—Food and wages must be paid for by the nation; the work is done for the nation, and, naturally, on interposing formalities, they get out of temper and betake themselves to Roland, to the city treasurer, to the section committees, to the Committee of Supervision,92 murmuring, threatening, and showing their bloody pikes. That is the evidence of having done their work well. They boast of it to Pe´tion, impress upon him how “just and attentive” they were,93 their discernment, the time given to the work, so many days and so many hours; they ask only for what is “due to them”; when the treasurer, on paying them, demands their names, they give them without the slightest hesitation. Those who escort a prisoner let off, masons, hair-dressers, federates, require no recompense but “something to drink”; “we do not carry on this business for money,” they say; “here is your friend; he promised us a glass of brandy, which we will take and then go back to our work.”94—Outside of their business they possess the expansive sympathy and ready sen-

90. Me´heé, 179. “‘Would you believe that I have earned only twenty-four francs?’ said a baker’s boy armed with a club. ‘I killed more than forty for my share.’” 91. Granier de Cassagnac, II. 153.—Cf. Ibid., 202–209, details on the meals of the workmen and on the more delicate repast of Maillard and his assistants. 92. Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 175–176.—Granier de Cassagnac, II. 84.— Jourdan, 222.—Me´heé, 179. “At midnight they came back swearing, cursing, and foaming with rage, threatening to cut the throats of the committee in a body if they were not instantly paid.” 93. Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 320. Speech by Pe´tion on the charges preferred against Robespierre. 94. Mathon de la Varenne, 156.—Journiac de Saint-Meárd, 129.—Moore, 267. 676 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION sibility of the Parisian workman. At the Abbaye, a federate,95 on learning that the prisoners had been kept without water for twenty- six hours, wanted to “exterminate” the turnkey for his negligence, and would have done it if “the prisoners themselves had not pleaded for him.” On the acquittal of a prisoner, the guards and the butchers, everybody, embraces him with transports; Weber is greeted again and again for more than a hundred yards; they cheer to excess. Each wants to escort the prisoner; the cab of Mathon de la Varenne is invaded; “they perch themselves on the driver’s seat, at the doors, on top, and behind.”96—Some of them display extraordinary phases of feeling. Two of the butchers, still covered with blood, who lead the chevalier de Bertrand home, insist on going up stairs with him to witness the joy of his family; after their terrible task they need the relaxation of tender emotion. On entering, they wait discreetly in the drawing-room until the ladies are prepared for the meeting; the happiness of which they are witnesses melts them; they remain some time, refuse money tendered to them and leave, with many acknowledgments.97—Still more extraordinary are the vestiges of innate politeness. A market-porter, desirous of embracing a discharged prisoner, first asks his permission. Old “hags,” who had just clapped their hands at the slaughterings, stop the guards “violently” as they hurry Weber along, in white silk stockings, across pools of blood: “Heigh, guard, look out, you are making Monsieur walk in

95. Journiac de Saint-Meárd, 115. 96. Weber, II. 265.—Journiac de Saint-Meárd, 129.—Mathon de la Varenne, 155. 97. Moore, 267.—Cf. Malouet, II. 240. Malouet, on the evening of Sept. 1, was at his sister-in-law’s; there is a domiciliary visit at midnight; she faints on hearing the patrol mount the stairs. “I begged them not to enter the drawing- room, so as not to disturb the poor sufferer. The sight of a woman in a swoon and pleasing in appearance affected them, and they at once withdrew, leaving me alone with her.”—Beaulieu, “Essais,” I. 108. (A propos of two of the Abbaye butchers he meets in the house of Journiac de Saint-Meárd, and who chat with him in giving him a safe-conduct.) “What struck me was to detect generous sentiments through their ferocity, those of men determined to protect any one whose cause they adopted.” The Jacobin Conquest / 677 the gutter!”98 In short, they display the permanent qualities of their race and class; they seem to be neither above nor below the average of their brethren. Most of them, probably, would never have done anything very monstrous had a rigid police, like that which maintains order in ordinary times, kept them in their shops or at home in their lodgings or in their tap-rooms. But, in their own eyes, they are so many kings; “sovereignty is committed to their hands,”99 their powers are unlimited; whoever doubts this is a traitor, and is properly punished; he must be put out of the way; while, for royal councillors, they take maniacs and knaves, who, through monomania or calculation, preach that doctrine, just the same as a negro king surrounded by white slave- dealers, who urge him into raids, and by black sorcerers, who prompt him to massacre. How could such a man with such guides, and in such an office, be retarded by the formalities of justice, or by the distinctions of equity? Equity and justice are the elaborate products of civilisation, while he is merely a political savage. In vain are the innocent recommended to his mercy! “Look here, citizen,100 do you, too, want to set us to sleep? Suppose that those cursed Prussian and Austrian beggars were in Paris, would they pick out the guilty? Wouldn’t they strike right and left, the same as the Swiss did on the 10th of August? Very well, I can’t make speeches, but I don’t set anybody to sleep. I say, I am the father of a family—I have a wife and five children that I mean to leave here for the section to look after, while I go and fight the enemy. But I have no idea that while I am gone these villains here in prison, and other villains who would come and let them out, should cut the throats of my wife and children. I have three boys who I hope will some day be more useful

98. Weber, II. 264, 348. 99. Sicard, 101. Billaud-Varennes, addressing the slaughterers.—Ibid., 75. “Greater power,” replied a member of the committee of supervision, “what are you thinking of? To give you greater power would be limiting those you have already. Have you forgotten that you are sovereigns? that the sovereignty of the people is confided to you, and that you are now in full exercise of it?” 100. Me´heé, 171. 678 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION to their country than those rascals you want to save. Anyhow, all that can be done is to let ’em out and give them arms, and we will fight ’em on an equal footing. Whether I die here or on the frontiers, scoundrels would kill me all the same, and I will sell my life dearly. But, whether it is done by me or by some one else, the prison shall be cleaned out of those cursed beggars, there, now!” At this a general cry is heard: “He’s right! No mercy! Let us go in!” All that the crowd assent to is an improvised tribunal, the reading of the jailer’s register, and prompt judgment; condemnation and slaughter must follow, according to the famous Commune, which simplifies things.—There is another simplification still more formidable, which is the condemnation and slaughter by categories. Any title suffices, Swiss, priest, officer, or servant of the King, “the moths of the civil list”; wherever a lot of priests or Swiss are found, it is not worth while to have a trial, as they can be killed in a heap.—Reduced to this, the operation is adapted to the operators; the arms of the new sovereign are as strong as his mind is weak, and, through an inevitable adaptation, he degrades his work to the level of his faculties. His work, in its turn, degrades and perverts him. No man, and especially a man of the people, rendered pacific by an old civilisation, can, with impunity, become at one stroke both sovereign and executioner. In vain does he work himself up against the condemned and heap insult on them to augment his fury;101 he is dimly conscious of committing a great crime, and his soul, like that of Macbeth, “is full of scorpions.” Through a terrible self-shrinking, he hardens himself against the inborn, hereditary impulses of humanity; these resist while he becomes exasperated, and, to stifle them, there is no other way but to “sup on horrors,”102 by adding murder to murder. For murder, especially as he practices it, that is to say, with a naked sword on defenceless people, introduces into his animal and moral

101. Sicard, 81. At the beginning the Marseilles men themselves were averse to striking the disarmed, and exclaimed to the crowd: “Here, take our swords and pikes and kill the monsters!” 102. Macbeth. The Jacobin Conquest / 679 machine two extraordinary and disproportionate emotions which unsettle it, on the one hand, a sensation of omnipotence exercised uncontrolled, unimpeded, without danger, on human life, on throbbing flesh,103 and, on the other hand, an interest in bloody and diversified death, accompanied with an ever new series of contortions and exclamations;104 formerly, in the Roman circus, one could not tear one’s self away from it; the spectacle once seen, the spectator always returned to see it again. Just at this time each prison court is a circus, and what makes it worse is that the spectators are likewise actors.—Thus, for them, two fiery liquids mingle together in one draught. To moral intoxication is added physical intoxication, wine in profusion, bumpers at every pause, revelry over corpses; and we see rising out of this unnatural creature the demon of Dante, at once brutal and refined, not merely a destroyer, but, again, an executioner, contriver and calculator of suffering, and radiant and joyous over the evil it accomplishes. They are joyous. They dance around each new corpse, and sing the carmagnole;105 they arouse the people of the quarter “to amuse them,” and that they may have their share of “the fine feˆte.”106 Benches are arranged for “gentlemen” and others for “ladies”: the latter, with greater curiosity, are additionally anxious to contemplate

103. Observe children drowning a dog or killing a snake. Tenacity of life irritates them, as if it were a rebellion against their despotism, the effect of which is to render them only the more violent against their victim. 104. One may recall to mind the effect of bull-fights, also the irresistible fascination which St. Augustin experienced on first hearing the death-cry of a gladiator in the amphitheatre. 105. Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 131. Trial of the September actors; the judge’s summing up. “The third and forty-sixth witnesses stated that they saw Mon- neuse (member of the commune) go to and come from La Force, express his delight at those sad events that had just occurred, acting very immorally in relation thereto, adding that there was violin playing in his presence, and that his colleague danced.”—Sicard, 88. 106. Sicard, 91, 87. So called by a wine-dealer, who wants the custom of the murderers.—Granier de Cassagnac, II. 197–200. The original bills for wine, straw, and lights are presented. 680 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION at their ease “the aristocrats” already slain; consequently, lights are required, and one is placed on the breast of each corpse. Meanwhile, slaughter continues, and is carried to perfection. A butcher at the Abbaye107 complains that “the aristocrats die too quick, and that those only who strike first have the pleasure of it”; henceforth they are to be struck with the backs of the swords only, and made to run between two rows of their butchers, like soldiers formerly running a gauntlet. If there happens to be a person well- known, it is agreed to take more care in prolonging the torment. At La Force, the Federates who come for M. de Rulhie`res swear “with frightful imprecations that they will cut off the first man’s head who gives him a thrust with a pike”; the first thing is to strip him naked, and then, for half an hour, with the flat of their sabres, they cut and slash him until he drips with blood and is “skinned to his entrails.”— All the unfettered instincts that live in the lowest depths of the heart start from the human abyss at once, not alone the heinous instincts with their fangs,108 but likewise the foulest with their slaver, both becoming more furious against women whose noble or infamous repute makes them conspicuous; on Madame de Lamballe, the Queen’s friend; on Madame Desrues, widow of the famous poisoner; on the flower-girl of the Palais-Royal, who, two years before, had mutilated her lover, a French guardsman, in a fit of jealousy. Ferocity here is associated with lubricity to add profanation to torture, while life is attacked through outrages on modesty. In Madame de Lam- balle, killed too quickly, the libidinous butchers could outrage only a corpse, but for the widow,109 and especially the flower-girl, they revive, like so many Neros, the fire-circle of the Iroquois.110 From

107. Sicard, 91.—Mathon de la Varenne, 150. 108. Mathon de la Varenne, 154. A man of the suburbs said to him (Mathon is an advocate): “All right, Monsieur Fine-skin; I shall treat myself to a glass of your blood!” 109. Re´tif de la Bretonne, “Les Nuits de Paris,” 9th night, p. 388. “She screamed horribly, whilst the brigands amused themselves with their disgraceful acts. Her body even after death was not exempt. These people had heard that she had been beautiful.” 110. Prudhomme, “Les Re´volutions de Paris,” number for Sept. 8, 1792. “The people subjected the flower-girl of the Palais-Royal to the law of retali- The Jacobin Conquest / 681 the Iroquois to the cannibal, the interval is narrow, and some of them spring across it. At the Abbaye, an old soldier named Damiens, buries his sabre in the side of the adjutant-general Laleu, thrusts his hand into the opening, tears out the heart “and puts it to his mouth as if to eat it”; “the blood,” says an eye-witness, “trickled from his mouth and formed a sort of moustache for him.”111 At La Force, Madame de Lamballe is cut to pieces. I cannot transcribe what Char- lot, the hair-dresser, did with her head. I merely state that another wretch, in the Rue Saint-Antoine, bore off her heart and “ate it.”112 They kill and they drink, and drink and kill again. Weariness comes and stupor begins. One of them, a wheelwright’s apprentice, has despatched sixteen for his share; another “has labored so hard at this merchandise as to leave the blade of his sabre sticking in it”; “I was more tired,” says a Federate, “with two hours pulling limbs to pieces, right and left, than any mason any two days plastering a wall.”113 The first excitement is gone, and now they strike automatically.114 Some of them fall asleep stretched out on benches. Others, huddled together, sleep off the fumes of their wine, removed on one side. The exhalation from the carnage is so strong that the president of the civil committee faints in his chair,115 while the odor of the ation.”—Granier de Cassagnac, II. 329. According to the bulletin of the revolutionary tribunal, number for Sept. 3.—Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 291. Depo- sition of the concierge of the Conciergerie.—Buchez et Roux, XVII. 198. “Histoire des hommes de proie,” by Roch Marcandier. 111. Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 257. Trial of the September murderers; deposition of Roussel. Ibid., 628. 112. Deposition of the woman Millet, ibid., 63.—Weber, II. 350.—Roch Marcandier, 197, 198.—Re´tif de la Bretonne, 381. 113. Mathon de la Varenne, 150.—Granier de Cassagnac, 515, 508. Trial of the September murderers, cases of Sainte-Foye, Debe`che.—Ibid., 507, 513 (cases of Corlet, Crapier, Ledoux). 114. On this mechanical and murderous action Cf. Dusaulx, “Me´moires,” 440. He addresses the bystanders in favor of the prisoners, and, affected by his words, they hold out their hands to him. “But before this the executioners had struck me on the cheeks with the points of their pikes, from which hung pieces of flesh. Others wanted to cut off my head, which would have been done if two gendarmes had not kept them back.” 115. Jourdan, 219. 682 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION drinking-bout is equal to that of the charnel-house. A heavy, dull state of torpor gradually overcomes their clouded brains, the last glimmerings of reason dying out one by one, like the smoky lights on the already cold breasts of the corpses lying around them. Through the stupor spreading over the faces of butchers and cannibals, we see appearing that of the idiot. It is the revolutionary idiot, in which all conceptions, save two, have vanished, two fixed, rudimentary, and mechanical ideas, one destruction and the other that of public safety. With no others in his empty head, these blend together through an irresistible attraction, and the effect proceeding from their contact may be imagined. “Is there anything else to do?” asks one of these butchers in the deserted court. “If that is all,” reply a couple of women at the gate, “you must start something more,”116 and, naturally, this is done. As the prisons are to be cleaned out, it is as well to clean them all out, and do it at once. After the Swiss, priests, the aristocrats, and the “white-skin gentlemen,” there remain convicts and those confined through the ordinary channels of justice, robbers, assassins, and those sentenced to the galleys in the Conciergerie, in the Chaˆ- telet, and in the Tour St. Bernard, with branded women, vagabonds, old beggars, and boys confined in Biceˆtre and the Salpe´trie`re. They are good for nothing, cost something to feed,117 and, probably, cherish evil designs. At the Salpe´trie`re, for example, the wife of Desrues, the poisoner, is, assuredly, like himself, “cunning, wicked, and capable of anything”; she must be furious at being in prison; if she could, she would set fire to Paris; she must have said so; she did say it118—one more sweep of the broom.—This time, as the job is more foul, the broom is wielded by fouler hands; among those who seize

116. Me´heé, 179. 117. Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 558. The same idea is found among the federates and Parisians composing the company of the Egalite´, which brought the Orleans prisoners to Versailles and then murdered them. They explain their conduct by saying that they “hoped to put an end to the excessive expenditure to which the French empire was subject through the prolonged detention of conspirators.” 118. Re´tif de la Bretonne, 388. The Jacobin Conquest / 683 the handle are the frequenters of jails. The butchers at the Abbaye, especially towards the close, had already committed thefts;119 here, at the Chaˆtelet and the Conciergerie, they carry away “everything which seems to them suitable,” even to the clothes of the dead, prison sheets and coverlids, even the small savings of the jailers, and, besides this, they enlist their cronies in the service. “Out of 36 prisoners set free, many were assassins and robbers, associated with them by the butchers. There were also 75 women, confined in part for larceny, who promised to faithfully serve their liberators.” Later on, indeed, these are to become, at the Jacobin and Cordeliers clubs, the tricoteuses who fill their tribunes.120— At the Salpe´trie`re, “all the bullies of Paris, former spies,... libertines, the rascals of France and all Europe, prepare beforehand for the operation,” and rape alternates with massacre.121—Thus far, at least, slaughter has been seasoned with robbery, and the grossness of eating and drinking; at Biceˆtre, however, it is crude butchery, the carnivorous instinct alone satisfying itself. Among other prisoners are 43 youths of the lowest class, from 17 to 19 years of age, placed there for correction by their parents, or by those to whom they are bound;122 one need only look at them to see that they are genuine Parisian scamps, the apprentices of vice and misery, the future recruits for the reigning band, and these the band falls on, beating them to death with clubs. At this age life is tenacious, and, no life being harder to take, it requires extra efforts to despatch them. “In that corner,” said a jailer, “they made a mountain of their bodies. The next day, when they were to be buried, the sight was enough to break one’s heart. One of them looked as if he were sleeping like one of God’s angels, but the rest were horribly mutilated.”123—Here, man has sunk below himself,

119. Me´he´e, 177. 120. Prudhomme, “Les Crimes de la Re´volution,” III. 272. 121. Re´tif de la Bretonne, 388. There were two sorts of women at the Sal- pe´trie`re, those who were branded and young girls brought up in the prison. Hence the two alternatives. 122. Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 295. See list of names, ages, and occupations. 123. Barthe´lemy Maurice, “Histoire politique and anecdotique des prisons de la Seine,” 329. 684 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION down into the lowest strata of the animal kingdom, lower than the wolf, for wolves do not strangle their young.

VI There are six days and five nights of uninterrupted butchery,124 171 murders at the Abbaye, 169 at La Force, 223 at the Chaˆtelet, 328 at the Conciergerie, 73 at the Tour-Saint-Bernard, 120 at the Carmel- ites, 79 at Saint Firmin, 170 at Biceˆtre, 35 at the Salpe´trie`re; among the dead, 250 priests, 3 bishops or archbishops, general officers, magistrates, one former minister, one royal princess, belonging to the best names in France, and, on the other side, one negro, several low class women, young scapegraces, convicts, and poor old men. What man now, little or big, does not feel himself under the knife?—And all the more because the band has grown larger. Fournier, Lazowski, and Bećard, the chiefs of robbers and assassins, return from Orleans with fifteen hundred cut-throats.125 On the way they kill M. de Bris- sac, M. de Lessart, and 42 others accused of le`se-nation, whom they wrested from their judges’ hands, and then, by way of surplus, “following the example of Paris,” twenty-one prisoners taken from the Versailles prisons. At Paris the Minister of Justice thanks them, the Commune congratulates them, and the sections feast them and embrace them.126—Can anybody doubt that they were ready to begin again? Can a step be taken in or out of Paris without being subject

124. Granier de Cassagnac, II. 421. Official report of the commissary of police Auzolle. According to the declaration of the gate-keeper at La Force the massacre was prolonged up to the 7th of September.—Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 548. 125. Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 399, 592, 602–606.—“Proce`s-verbal des 8, 9, 10 Septembre, extrait des registres de la municipalite´ de Versailles.” (In the “Me´moires sur les journeés de Septembre”), p. 358 and following pages.— Granier de Cassagnac, II. 483. Bonnet’s exploit at Orleans, pointed out to Fournier, Sept. I. Fournier replies: “D——, I am not to be ordered. When the heads of the cursed beggars are cut off the trial may come off!” 126. Roch Marcandier, 210. Speech by Lazowski to the section of Finiste`re, faubourg Saint-Marceau. Lazowski had, in addition, set free the assassins of the mayor of Etampes, and laid their manacles on the bureau table. The Jacobin Conquest / 685 to their oppression or encountering their despotism? On leaving the city, sentinels of their species are posted at the barriers, while the section committees on the inside are in permanent authority. Ma- louet, led before that of Roule,127 sees before him a pandemonium of fanatics, at least a hundred individuals in the same room, the suspected, those denouncing them, co-laborers, attendants, a long, green table in the centre, covered with swords and daggers, with the committee around it, “twenty patriots with their shirt-sleeves rolled up, some holding pistols and others pens,” signing warrants of arrest, “quarreling with and threatening each other, all talking at once, and shouting, Traitor! Conspirator! Off to prison with him! Guillotine him! and behind these, a crowd of spectators, pell-mell, yelling, and gesticulating” like wild beasts pressed against each other in the same cage, showing their teeth and trying to spring at each other. “One of the most excited, brandishing his sabre in order to strike an an- tagonist, stopped on seeing me, and exclaimed, ‘There’s Malouet!’ The other, however, less occupied with me than with his enemy, took advantage of the opportunity, and with a blow of his club, knocked him down.” Malouet is just saved, and that is all, such escapes in Paris being mere matters of chance.—If one remains in the city, one is beset with funereal imagery;—the hurrying step of squads of men in each street, leading the suspected to prison or before the committee; around each prison the crowds that have come “to see the disasters”; in the court of the Abbaye the cry of the auctioneer selling the clothes of the dead; the rumbling of carts on the pavement bearing away 1,300 corpses; the songs of the women mounted aloft, beating time on the naked bodies.128 Is there a man

127. Malouet, II. 243 (Sept. 2).—Moniteur, XIII. 48 (session of Sept. 27, 1792). We see in the speech of Panis that analogous scenes took place in the committee of supervision. “Imagine our situation. We were surrounded by citizens irritated against the treachery of the court. We were told: ‘Here is an aristocrat who is going to fly; you must stop him, or you yourselves are traitors!’ Pistols were pointed at us and we found ourselves obliged to sign warrants, not so much for our own safety as for that of the persons denounced.” 128. Granier de Cassagnac, II. 258.—Prudhomme, “Les Crimes de la Re´- 686 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION who, after one of these encounters, does not see himself in imagination before the green table of the section committee, after this, in prison with sabres over his head, and then in the cart in the midst of the bloody pile? Courage falters before a vision like this. All the journals approve, palliate, or keep silent; nobody dares offer resistance. Property as well as lives belong to whoever wants to take them. At the barriers, at the markets, on the boulevard of the Temple, thieves, decked with the tricolor ribbon, stop people as they pass along, seize whatever they carry, and, under the pretext that jewels should be deposited on the altars of Patriotism, take purses, watches, rings, and other articles, so rudely that women who are not quick enough, have the lobes of their ears torn in unhooking their earrings.129 Others, installed in the cellars of the Tuileries, sell the nation’s wine and oil for their own profit. Others, again, given their liberty eight days before by the people, scent out a bigger job by finding their way into the Garde-meuble and stealing diamonds to the value of thirty millions.130 Like a man struck on the head with a mallet, Paris, felled to the ground, lets things go; the authors of the massacre have fully attained their ends. The faction has fast hold of power, and will maintain its hold. Neither in the Legislative Assembly nor in the Con- vention will the aims of the Girondists be successful against its tenacious usurpation. It has proved by a striking example that it is volution,” III. 272.—Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 631.—De Ferrie`re, III. 391.— (The expression quoted was recorded by Re´tif de la Bretonne.) 129. Moniteur, XIII. 688, 698 (numbers for Sept. 15 and 16). Ibid., Letter of Roland, 701; of Pe´tion, 711.—Buchez et Roux, XVIII. 33, 34.—Prud- homme’s journal contains an engraving of this subject (Sept. 14).—“An En- glishman admitted to the bar of the house denounces to the National Assembly a robbery committed in a house occupied by him at Chaillot by two bailiffs and their satellites. The robbery consisted of twelve louis, five guineas, five thousand pounds in assignats, and several other objects.” The courts before which he appeared did not dare take up his case (Buchez et Roux, XVII. p. 1, Sept. 18). 130. Buchez et Roux, XVII. 461.—Prudhomme, “Les Re´volution de Paris,” number for Sept. 22, 1792. The Jacobin Conquest / 687 capable of anything, and boasts of it; it is still armed, it stands there ever prepared and anonymous on its murderous basis, with its speedy modes of operation, its own group of fanatical agents and bravos, with Maillard and Fournier, with its cannon and its pikes. All that does not live within it lives only through its favor from day to day, through its good will. Everybody knows that. The Assembly no longer thinks of dislodging people who meet decrees of expulsion with massacre; it is no longer a question of auditing their accounts, or of keeping them within the confines of the law. Their dictatorship is not to be disputed, and their purifications continue. From four to five hundred new prisoners, arrested within eleven days, by order of the municipality, by the sections, and by this or that individual Jacobin, are crowded into cells still dripping with blood, and the report is spread that, on the 20th of September, the prisons will be emptied by a second massacre.131—Let the Convention, if it pleases, pompously install itself as sovereign, and grind out decrees—it makes no difference; regular or irregular, the government still marches on in the hands of those who hold the sword. The Jacobins, through sudden terror, have maintained their illegal authority; through a prolongation of terror they are going to establish their legal authority. A forced suffrage is going to put them in office at the Hoˆtel-de-Ville, in the tribunals, in the National Guard, in the sections, and in the various administrations, while they have already elected to the Convention, Marat, Danton, Fabre d’Eglantine, Ca- mille Desmoulins, Manuel, Billaud-Varennes, Panis, Sergent, Collot d’Herbois, Robespierre, Legendre, Osselin, Fre´ron, David, Robert, Lavicourterie, in brief, the instigators, conductors and accomplices of the massacre.132 Nothing that could force or falsify votes was

131. Moniteur, XIII. 711 (session of Sept. 16). Letter of Roland to the Na- tional Assembly.—Buchez et Roux, XVIII. 42.—Moniteur, XIII. 731 (session of Sept. 17). Speech by Pe´tion: “Yesterday there was some talk of again visiting the prisons, and particularly the Conciergerie.” 132. “Archives Nationales,” II. 58 to 76. Official reports of the Paris electoral assembly.—Robespierre is elected the twelfth (Sept. 5), then Danton and Collot d’Herbois (Sept. 6), then Manuel and Billaud-Varennes (Sept. 7), next C. 688 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION overlooked. In the first place the presence of the people is imposed on the electoral assembly, and, to this end, it is transferred to the large hall of the Jacobin club, under the pressure of the Jacobin galleries. As a second precaution, every opponent is excluded from voting, every constitutionalist, every former member of the monarchical club, of the Feuillants, and of the Sainte-Chapelle club, every signer of the petition of the 20,000, or of that of the 8,000, and, on the sections protesting against this, their protest is thrown out on the ground of its being the fruit of “an intrigue.” Finally, at each ballotting, each elector’s vote is called out, which ensures the right vote beforehand, the warnings he has received being very explicit. On the 2d of September, during the first meeting of the electoral body, held at the bishop’s palace, the Marseilles troop, 500 yards off, came and took the twenty-four priests from the mayoralty, and, on the way, hacked them to pieces on the Pont-Neuf. Throughout the evening and all night the agents of the municipality carried on their work at the Abbaye, at the Carmelites, and at La Force, and, on the 3d of September, on the electoral assembly transferring itself to the Jacobin club, it passed over the Pont-au-Change between two rows of corpses, which the slaughterers had brought there from the Chaˆ- telet and the Conciergerie.

Desmoulins (Sept. 8), Marat (Sept. 9), etc.—Mortimer-Ternaux, IV. 35 (act passed by the commune at the instigation of Robespierre for the regulation of electoral operations).—Louvet, “Me´moires.” Louvet, in the electoral assembly asks to be heard on the candidacy of Marat, but is unsuccessful. “On going out I was surrounded by those men with big clubs and sabres by whom the future dictator was always attended, Robespierre’s body-guard. They threatened me and told me in very concise terms: ‘Before long you shall have your turn.’ This is the freedom of that assembly in which one declared his vote under a dagger pointed at him.” 9 CHAPTER X =

The departments—The epidemic and contagious character of the revolutionary disease— I. Its essential principle is the Jacobin dogma of the sovereignty of the people—The new right is oﬃcially proclaimed—Public statement of the new re´gime—Its object, its opponents, its methods—Its extension from Paris to the provinces— II. In several departments it establishes itself in advance—An instance of this in the Var— III. Each Jacobin band a dictator in its own neighborhood—Saint-Afrique during the interregnum— IV. Ordinary practices of the Jacobin dictatorship—The stationary companies of the clubs—Their personnel— Their leaders— V. The companies of traveling volunteers—Quality of the recruits—Election of oﬃcers—Robberies and murders— VI. Atour of France in the cabinet of the Minister of the Interior—From Carcassonne to Bordeaux— Bordeaux to Caen—The north and the east—Chaˆlons-sur-Marne to Lyons— The Comtat and Provence—The tone and the responses of the Jacobin administration—The programme of the party.

INTHEdepartments, it is by hundreds that we enumerate days like the 20th of June, August 10, September 2. The body has its epidemic, its contagious diseases; the mind has the same; the revolutionary malady is one of them. It appears throughout the country at the same time; each infected point infects others. In each city, in each borough the club is a centre of inﬂammation which disorganises the sound parts; and the example of each disorganised centre spreads afar like a miasm.1 Everywhere the same fever, delirium, and con-

1. Guillon de Montle´on, I. 122. Letter of Laussel, dated Paris, 28th of Au- gust, 1792, to the Jacobins of Lyons: “Tell me how many heads have been cut oﬀ at home. It would be infamous to let our enemies escape.”

689 690 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION vulsions markthe presence of the same virus. That virus is the Jacobin dogma. By virtue of the Jacobin dogma, theft, usurpation, murder, take on the guise of political philosophy, and the gravest crimes against persons, against public or private property, become legitimate; for they are the acts of the legitimate supreme power, the power that has the public welfare in its keeping.

I That each Jacobin band should be invested with the local dictatorship in its own canton is, according to the Jacobins, a natural right. It becomes the written law from the day that the National Assembly declares the country in danger. “From that date,” says their most widely read journal,2 and by the mere fact of that declaration, “the people of France are assembled and insurgent. They have repos- sessed themselves of the sovereign power.” Their magistrates, their deputies, all constituted authorities, return to nothingness, their essential state. And you, temporary and revocable representatives, “you are nothing but presiding officers for the people; you have nothing to do but to collect their votes, and to announce the result when these shall have been cast with due solemnity.”—Nor is this the theory of the Jacobins only; it is also the official theory. The National Assembly approves of the insurrection, recognises the Commune, keeps in the background, abdicates as far as possible, and only remains provisionally in office in order that the place may not be left vacant. It abstains from exercising power, even to provide its own successors; it merely “invites” the French people to organise a national convention; it confesses that it has “no right to put the exercise of sovereign power under binding rules”; it does no more than “indicate to citizens” the rules for the elections “to which it invites them to conform.”3 Meanwhile it is subject to the will of the sovereign people, then so-called; it dares not resist their crimes; it

2. “Les Re´volutions de Paris,” by Prudhomme, Vol. XIII. pp. 59–63 (14th of July, 1792). 3. Decrees of the 10th and 11th of August, 1792. The Jacobin Conquest / 691 interferes with assassins only by entreaties.—Much more; it authorises them, either by ministerial signature or counter-signature, to begin their workelsewhere. Roland has signed Fournier’s commission to Orleans; Danton has sent the circular of Marat over all France. To reconstruct the departments the council of ministers sends the most infuriated members of the Commune and the party, Chaumette, Fre´ron, Westermann, Auduoin, Huguenin, Momoro, Couthon, Billaud-Varennes,4 and others still more tainted and brutal, who preach the purest Jacobin doctrine. “They announce openly5 that laws no longer exist; that since the people are sovereign, every one is master; that each fraction of the nation can take such measures as suit it, in the name of the country’s safety; that they have the right to tax corn, to seize it in the laborer’s ﬁelds, to cut oﬀ the heads of the farmers who refuse to bring their grain to market.” At Lisieux, agrarian law is preached by Dufour and Momoro. At Douai, other declaimers from Paris say to the popular club, “Prepare scaffolds; let the walls of the city bristle with gallows, and hang upon them every man who does not accept our opinions.” Nothing is more logical, more in conformity with their principles. The journals, deducing consequences from these, expound to the people the use they ought to make of their reconquered sovereignty.6 “Under the present circumstances, community of goods is the law; everything

4. Prudhomme, number of the 15th of September, p. 483.—Mortimer- Ternaux, IV. 430. 5. Mortimer-Ternaux, IV. 11. Fauchet’s report, Nov. 6, 1792, IV. 91, 142. Discourse of M. Fockedey, administrator of the department of the north, and of M. Bailly, deputy of Seine-et-Marne. 6. Prudhomme, number of Sept. 1, 1792, pp. 375, 381, 385; number of Sept. 22, pp. 528–530.—Cf. Guillon de Montleón, I. 144. Here are some of the principles announced by the Jacobin leaders of Lyons, Chaˆlier, Laussel, Cusset, Rouillot, etc. “The time has come when this prophecy must be fulfilled: The rich shall be put in the place of the poor, and the poor in the place of the rich.”—“If a half of their property be left them the rich will still be happy.”— “If the laboring people of Lyons are destitute of workand of bread, they can profit by these calamities in helping themselves to wealth in the quarter where they find it.”—“No one who is near a sackof wheat can die of hunger. Do you wish the word that will buy all that you want? Slay!—or perish!” 692 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION belongs to everybody.” Besides, “an equalising of fortunes must be brought about, a levelling, which shall abolish the vicious principle of the preponderance of the rich over the poor.” This reform is all the more pressing because “the people, the real sovereign people, have nearly as many enemies as there are proprietors, large merchants, financiers, and wealthy men. In a time of revolution, we must regard all men who have more than enough as the enemies, secret or avowed, of popular government.” Therefore, “let the people of each commune, before they quit their homes” for the army, “put all those who are suspected of not loving liberty in a secure place, and under the safe-keeping of the law; let them be kept shut up until the war be ended; let them be guarded with pikes,” and let each one of their guardians receive thirty sous per day. As for the partisans of the fallen government, the members of the Paris directory, “with Roederer and Blondel at their head,” as for the general officers, “with Lafayette and d’Affry at their head,” as for “the inspecting deputies of the Constituent Assembly, with Barnave and Lameth at their head,” as for the Feuillant deputies of the Legislative Assembly, “with Ramond and Jaucourt at their head,”7 as for “all those who consented to soil their hands with the profits of the civil list,” as for “the 40,000 hired assassins who were gathered at the palace on the night of August 9–10, they are furious monsters, who ought to be strangled to the last one. People! you have risen to your feet; stand firm until not one of these conspirators remains alive. Your humanity requires you for once to show yourselves inexorable. Strike terror to the wicked. The proscriptions which we impose on you as a duty, are the sacred wrath of your country.” There is no mistaking this; it is a tocsin sounding against all the powers that be, against all social superiority, against administrations, tribunals, military authority, against priests and nobles, proprietors, capitalists, the leaders of business and industry; it is sounding, in short, against the whole e´lite of France, whether of old or recent origin. The Jacobins of Paris, by their journals, their examples, their missionaries, give

7. Prudhomme, number for the 28th of August, 1792, pp. 284–287. The Jacobin Conquest / 693 the signal; and in the provinces their kindred spirits, imbued with the same principles, only wait the summons to hurl themselves forward. II In many departments8 they have forestalled the summons. In the Var, for example, pillages and proscriptions have begun with the month of May. According to custom, they ﬁrst seize upon the castles and the monasteries, although these have become national property, at one time alleging as a reason for this that the administration “is too slow in carrying out sentence against the e´migre´s,” and again, that “the chaˆteau, standing on an eminence, weighs upon the inhabitants.”9 There is scarcely a village in France that does not contain two-score wretches who are always ready to line their pockets, which is just the number of thieves who thoroughly sacked the chaˆteau of Montaroux, carrying oﬀ “furniture, produce, clothing, even the jugs and bottles in the cellar.” There are the same doings by the same band at the chaˆteau of Tournon; the chaˆteau of Salerne is burned, that of Flagose is pulled down; the canal of Cabris is destroyed; then the convent of Montrieux, the chaˆteaux of Grasse, of Canet, of Re´gusse, of Brovaz, and many others, all devastated, and the devastations are made “daily.”—It is impossible to suppress

8. Cf. “The French Revolution,” I. 346. In ten of the departments the seventh jacquerie continues the sixth without a break. Among other examples, this letter from the administrators of Tarn, June 18, 1792, may be read (“Ar- chives Nationales,” F7, 3,271). “Numerous bands overran both the city (Castres) and the country. They forcibly entered the houses of the citizens, broke the furniture to pieces, and pillaged everything that fell into their hands. Girls and women underwent shameful treatment. Commissioners sent by the district and the municipality to advocate peace were insulted and menaced. The pillage was renewed; the home of the citizen was violated.” The administrators add: “In many places the progress made by the constitution was indicated by the speedy and numerous emigrations of its enemies.” 9. “Archives Nationales,” F7 3,272. Letter of the administrators of the Var, May 27, 1792.—Letter of the minister, Duranthon, May 28.—Letter of the commission composing the directory, Oct. 31. 694 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION this country brigandage. The reigning dogma, weakening authority in the magistrates’ hands, and the clubs, “which cover the department,” have diffused the fermentation of anarchy everywhere. “Ad- ministrators, judges, municipal officers, all who are invested with any authority, and who have the courage to use it in forcing respect for law, are one by one denounced by public opinion as enemies of the constitution and of liberty; because, people say, they talk of nothing but the law, as if they did not know that the will of the people makes the law, and that we are the people.”10 This is the real principle; here, as at Paris, it instantly begets its consequences. “In many of these clubs nothing is discussed but the plundering of estates and cutting off the heads of aristocrats. And who are designated by this infamous title? In the cities, the great traders and rich proprietors; in the country, those whom we call the bourgeois; everywhere, all peaceable citizens, the friends of order, who wish to enjoy, under the shadow of the protecting law, the blessings of the Constitution. Such was the rage of their denunciations that in one of these clubs a good and brave peasant was denounced as an aristocrat; the whole of his aristocracy consisting in his having said to those who plundered the chaˆteau of their seigneur, already mentioned, that they would not enjoy in peace the fruits of their crime.”—Here is the Jacobin programme of Paris in advance, namely, the division of the French into two classes, the spoliation of one, the despotism of the other; the destruction of the well-to-do, orderly and honest under the dictation of those who are not so. Here, as in Paris, the programme is carried out step by step. At Beausset, near Toulon, a man named Vidal, captain of the National Guard, “twice set at liberty by virtue of two consecutive amnes-

10. “Archives Nationales,” Letter of the administrators of Var, May 27.— This saying is the summary of the revolutionary spirit; it recurs constantly.— Cf. the Duc de Montpensier, “Me´moires,” p. 11. At Aix one of his guards said to the sans-culottes who were breaking into the room where he was kept: “Cit- izens, by what order do you enter here? and why have you forced the guard at the door?” One of them answered: “By order of the people. Don’t you know that the people is sovereign?” The Jacobin Conquest / 695 ties,”11 punishes not resistance merely, but even murmurs, with death. Two old men, one of them a notary, the other a turner, having complained of him to the public prosecutor, the general alarm is beaten, a gathering of armed men is formed in the street, and the complainants are clubbed, riddled with balls, and their bodies thrown into a pit. Many of their friends are wounded, others take to flight; seven houses are sacked, and the municipality, “either overawed or in complicity,” makes no interference until all is over. There is no way of pursuing the guilty ones; the foreman of the jury, who goes, escorted by a thousand men, to hold an inquest, can get no testimony. The municipal officers feign to have heard nothing, neither the general alarm nor the guns fired under their windows. The other witnesses say not a word; but they declare, sotto voce, the reason for their silence. If they should testify, “they would be sure of being killed as soon as the troops should have gone away.” The foreman of the jury is himself menaced; after remaining three-quarters of an hour, he finds it prudent to leave the city.—After this the clubs of Beausset and of the neighborhood, gaining hardihood from the impotence of the law, breakout into incendiary propositions: “It is announced that after the troops retreat, nineteen houses more will be sacked; it is proposed to behead all aristocrats, that is to say, all the land-owners in the country.” Many have fled, but their flight does not satisfy the clubs. Vidal orders those of Beausset who took refuge in Toulon to return at once; otherwise their houses will be demolished, and that very day, in fact, by way of warning, several houses in Beausset, among them that of a notary, are either pulled down or pillaged from top to bottom; all the riff-raff of the town are at work, “half-drunken men and women,” and, as their object is to rob and drink, they would like to begin again in the principal town of the canton.—The club, accordingly, has declared that “Tou- lon would soon see a new St. Bartholomew”; it has allies there, and

11. “Archives Nationales,” Letter of the public prosecutor, May 23.—Letters of the administrators of the department, May 22 and 27 (on the events of the 13th of May at Beausset). 696 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION arrangements are made; each club in the small towns of the vicinity will furnish men, while all will march under the leadership of the Toulon club. At Toulon, as at Beausset, the municipality will let things take their course, while the proceedings complained of by the public prosecutor and the district and department administrators will be applied to them. They may send reports to Paris, and denounce patriots to the National Assembly and the King, if they choose; the club will reply to their scribbling with acts. Their turn is coming. Lanterns and sabres are also found at Toulon, and the faction murders them because they have lodged complaints against the murderers. III We can conjecture what it will do during the interregnum by what it dared to do when the government still stood on its feet. Facts, then, as always, furnish the best picture, and, to obtain a knowledge of the new sovereign, we must ﬁrst observe him on a limited stage. On the reception of the news of the 10th of August, the Jacobins of Saint-Afrique, a small town of the Aveyron,12 likewise undertook

12. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,193 and 3,194. Previous details may be found in these files. This department is one of those in which the seventh jacquerie is merely a prolongation of the sixth.—Cf. F7, 3,193. Letter of the royal commissioner at Milhau, May 5, 1791. “The situation is getting worse; the administrative bodies continue powerless and without resources. Most of their members are still unable to enter upon their duties; while the factions, who still rule, multiply their excesses in every direction. Another house in the country, near the town, has been burnt; another broken into, with a destruction of the furniture and a part of the dinner-service, and doors and windows broken open and smashed; several houses visited, under the pretence of arms or powder being concealed in them; all of this found with private persons and dealers not of the factious party carried off; tumultuous shouts, nocturnal assemblages, plots for pillage or burning; disturbances caused by the sale of grain, searches under this pretext in private granaries, forced prices at current reductions; forty louis taken from a lady retired into the country, found in her trunk, which was broken into, and which, they say, should have been in assignats. The police and municipal officers, witnesses of these outrages, are sometimes forced to sanction them with their presence: they neither dare suppress them nor punish the well- The Jacobin Conquest / 697 to save the country, and, to this end, like their fellows in other boroughs of the district, they organised themselves into an “Exec- utive Power.” This institution is of an old date, especially in the South; it had flourished for eighteen months from Lyons to Mont- pellier, from Agen to Nismes; but after the interregnum, its condition is still more flourishing; it consists of a secret society, the object of which is to carry out practically the motions and instructions of the club.13 Ordinarily, they workat night, wearing masksor slouched hats, with long hair falling over the face. A list of their names, each with a number opposite to it, is kept at the meeting-place of the society. A triangular club, decked with a red ribbon, serves them both as weapon and badge; with this club, each member “may go anywhere,” and do what seems good to him. At Saint-Afrique they number about eighty, among whom must be counted the rascals forming the seventh company of Tarn, staying in the town; their enrollment in the band is effected by constantly “preaching pillage to them,” and by assuring them that the contents of the chaˆteaux in the vicinity belong to them.14—Not that the chaˆteaux excite any fear; most of them are empty; neither in Saint-Afrique nor in the environs do the men of the ancient re´gime form a party; for many months orthodox priests and the nobles have had to fly, and now the well-to-do people are escaping. The population, however, is Catholic; many of the shop-keepers, artisans, and farmers are discontented, and the object now is to make these laggards keep step.— In the first place, they order women of every condition, work-girls and servants, to attend mass performed by the sworn cure´, for, if they do not, they will be made acquainted with the cudgel.—In the known authors of them. Such is a brief statement of the disorders committed in less than eight days.”—In relation specially to Saint-Afrique. Cf. F7, 3,194, the letter, among others, of the department administrator, March 29, 1792. 13. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,193. Extract from the registers of the clerk of the juge-de-paix of Saint-Afrique, and report by the department commissioners, Nov. 10, 1792, with the testimony of the witnesses, forming a document of 115 pages. 14. Deposition of Alexis Bro, a volunteer, and three others. 698 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION second place, all the suspected are disarmed; they enter their houses during the night in force, unexpectedly, and, besides their gun, carry off their provisions and money. A certain grocer who persists in his lukewarmness is visited a second time; seven or eight men, one evening, breakopen his door with a stickof timber; he takesrefuge on his roof, dares not descend until the following day at dawn, and finds that everything in his store has been either stolen or broken to pieces.15 In the third place, there is “punishment of the ill- disposed.” At nine o’clock in the evening a squad knocks at the door of a distrusted shoemaker; it is opened by his apprentice; six of the ruffians enter, and one of them, showing a paper, says to the poor fellow: “I come on the part of the Executive Power, by which you are condemned to a bastinadoing.” “What for?” “If you have not done anything wrong, you are thinking about it,”16 and so they beat him in the presence of his family, and many others like him are seized and unmercifully beaten on their own premises.—As to the expenses of the operation, these must be defrayed by the malevolent. These, therefore, are taxed according to their occupations; this or that tanner or dealer in cattle has to pay 36 francs; another, a hatter, 72 francs; otherwise “they will be attended to that very night at nine o’clock.” Nobody is exempt, if he is not one of the band. Poor old men who have nothing but a five-franc assignat are compelled to give that; they take from the wife of “a ground-digger,” whose savings consist of seven sous and a half, the whole of this, exclaiming, “that is good for three mugs of wine.”17 When money is not to be had, they take goods in kind; they make short work of cellars, bee-hives, clothes-presses, and poultry-yards; they eat, drink, and break, giving themselves up to it heartily, not only in the town, but in the neighboring villages. One detachment goes to Brusque, and

15. Deposition of Pons, a merchant. After this devastation he is obliged to address a petition to the executive power, asking permission to remain in the town. 16. Deposition of Capdenet, a shoemaker. 17. Depositions of Marguerite Galzeng, wife of Guibal a miller, Pierre Canac, and others. The Jacobin Conquest / 699 proceeds so vigorously that the mayor and syndic-attorney scamper off across the fields, and dare not return for a couple of days.18 At Versol, the dwelling of the sworn cure´, and at Lapeyre, that of the sworn vicar, are both sacked; the money is stolen and the casks are emptied. In the house of the cure´ of Douyre, “furniture, clothes, cabinets, and window-sashes are destroyed”; they feast on his wine and the contents of his cupboard, throw away what they could not consume, then go in search of the cure´ and his brother, a former Carthusian, shouting that “their heads must be cut off, and sausage- meat made of the rest of their bodies!” Some of them, a little shrewder than the others, light on a prize; for example, a certain Bourguie`re, a trooper of the line, seized a vineyard belonging to an old lady, the widow of a physician and former mayor;19 he gathered in its crop, “publicly in open day,” for his own benefit, and warns the proprietress that he will kill her if she makes a complaint against him, and, as she probably does complain of him, he obliges her, in the name of the Executive Power, to pay him fifty crowns damages.—As to the roughs in common, their reward, besides their carousings, is perfect license. In all houses invaded at eleven o’clock in the evening, whilst the father flies, or the husband screams under the cudgel, one of the villains stations himself at the entrance with a drawn sabre in his hands, and the wife or daughter remains at the mercy of the others; they seize her by the neckand maintain their hold.20 In vain does she scream for help. “Nobody in Saint-Afrique dares go outdoors at night”; nobody comes, and, the following day, the juge-de-paix dares not receive the complaint, because “he is afraid himself.”—Accordingly, on the 23d of September, the municipal officers and the town-clerk, who made their rounds, were nearly beaten to death with clubs and stones; on the 10th of October

18. Depositions of Martin, syndic-attorney of the commune of Brusque; Aussel, cure´ of Versol; Martial Aussel, vicar of Lapeyre, and others. 19. Deposition of Anne Tourtoulon. 20. Depositions of Jeanne Tuffon, of Marianne Terral, of Marguerite Thomas, of Martin, syndic-attorney of the commune of Brusque, of Virot, of Brassier, and others. The details do not warrant quotation. 700 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION another municipal officer was left for dead; a fortnight before this, a lieutenant of volunteers, M. Mazie`res, “trying to do his duty, was assassinated in his bed by his own men.” Naturally, nobody dares whisper a word, and, after two months of this order of things, it may be presumed that at the municipal elections of the 21st of Oc- tober, the electors will be docile. In any event, as a precaution, their notification eight days before, according to law, is dispensed with; as extra precaution, they are informed that if they do not vote for the Executive Power, they will have to do with the triangular cudgel.21 In consequence of this, most of them stay away; in a town of over 600 active citizens, 40 votes give a majority; Bourgougnon and Sarrus, the two chiefs of the Executive Power, are elected, one mayor, and the other syndic-attorney, and henceforth the authority they seized by force is conferred on them by the law.

IV Such is about the type of government which starts up in every commune of France after the 10th of August; the club reigns, but the form and processes of its dictatorship are diﬀerent, according to circumstances.—Sometimes it operates directly through the executive band led by it, or through the rioting populace which it launches forth. Again, it operates indirectly through the electoral assembly, of which it controls the election, or through the municipality, which is its accomplice. If the administrations are Jacobin, it governs through them. If they are passive, it governs alongside of them. If they are refractory, it purges them,22 or breaks them up,23 and, to put them down, it resorts not only to blows, but even to murder24 and massacre.25 Between massacre and threats, all middle-courses

21. Depositions of Moursol, wool-carder; Louis Grand, district-administrator, and others. 22. For example, at Limoges, Aug. 16.—Cf. Louis Guibert, “le Parti Gi- rondin dans la Haute-Vienne,” p. 14. 23. Paris, “Histoire de Joseph Lebon,” I. 60. Restoration of the Arras municipality. Joseph Lebon is proclaimed mayor Sept. 16. 24. For example, at Caen and at Carcassonne. 25. For example, at Toulon. The Jacobin Conquest / 701 meet, the revolutionary seal being everywhere impressed with inequalities of relief. In many places, threats suffice. In regions where the temperament of the people is cool, and where there is no resistance, it is useless to resort to affrays. Of what use is slaughter in a town like Arras, for instance, where, on the day of the civic oath, the president of the department, a prudent millionaire, stalks through the streets arm in arm with Aunty Duchesne, who sells cookies down in a cellar, where, on election days, the townspeople, through cowardice, elect the club candidates under the pretence that “rascals and beggars” must be sent off to Paris to purge the town of them!26 It would be labor lost to strike people who cringe and crouch so well.27 The faction is content to markthem as mangy curs, to put them in pens, hold them with leashes, and to annoy them.28 It posts at the entrance of the guard-room a list of inhabitants related to an e´migre´; it makes domiciliary visits; it draws up a fancied list of the suspected, on which list all that are rich are found inscribed. It insults and disarms them; it confines them to the town; it forbids them to go outside of it even on foot; it orders them to present themselves daily before its committee of public safety; it condemns them to pay their taxes for a year in twenty-four hours; it breaks the seals of their letters; it confiscates, demolishes, and sells their family tombs in the cemeter- ies. This is all in order, as well as the religious persecution, the irruption into private chapels where mass is said, blows with gun- stocks and the fist bestowed on the officiating priest, the obligation of orthodox parents to have their children baptised by the schismatic cure´, the expulsion of nuns, and the pursuit, imprisonment and transportation of unsworn ecclesiastics. But if the domination of the club is not always a bloody one, its judgments are always those of an armed man, who, putting his gun to his shoulder, aims at the wayfarers whom he has stopped on the

26. “Un se´jour en France,” 19, 29. 27. Ibid., p. 38: “M. de M——, who had served for thirty years, gave up his arms to a boy, who treated him with the greatest insolence.” 28. Paris, ibid., p. 55 and the following pages.—Albert Babeau, “Histoire de Troyes,” I. 503, 575.—Sauzay, III. ch. i. 702 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION road; generally they kneel down, tender their purses, and the shot is not fired. But the gun is cocked, nevertheless, and, to be certain of this, we have only to lookat the shrivelled hand grasping the trigger. We are reminded of those swarms of banditti which infested the country under the ancient re´gime;29 the double-girdle of smugglers and receivers embraced within twelve hundred leagues of internal excise-duties, the poachers abounding on the four hundred leagues of guarded captainries, the deserters so numerous that in eight years they amounted to sixty thousand, the mendicants with which the prisons overflowed, the thousands of thieves and vagabonds thronging the highways, all that police-game which the Rev- olution let loose and armed, and which, in its turn, from game, became the hunters of game. For three years these strong-armed rovers have served as the kernel of local jacqueries; at the present time they form the staff of the universal jacquerie. At Nismes,30 the head of the Executive Power is a “dancing-master.” The two leading demagogues of Toulouse are a shoemaker, and an actor who plays valets.31 At Toulon,32 the club, more absolute than any Asiatic despot, is recruited from among the indigent, sailors, harbor-hands, soldiers, “stray peddlers,” while its president, Sylvestre, sent away from Paris, is a criminal of the lowest degree. At Rheims,33 the principal leader is an unfrocked priest, married to a nun, aided by a baker, who, an old soldier, came near being hung. Elsewhere,34 it is some deserter

29. “The Ancient Re´gime,” 381, 391, 392. 30. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,217. Letter of Castanet, an old gendarme, Aug. 21 1792. 31. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,219. Letter of M. Alquier to the first consul, Pluvioˆse 18, an VIII. 32. Lauvergne, “Histoire du Var,” p. 104. 33. Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 325, 327. 34. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,271. Letter of the Minister of Justice, with official reports of the municipality of Rabastens. “The juge-de-paix of Rabastens was insulted in his place by putting an end to the proceedings commenced against an old deserter at the head of the municipality, and tried for robbery. They threatened to stab the judge if he recommenced the trial. Numerous mobs of vagabonds overrun the country, pillaging and putting to ransom all owners The Jacobin Conquest / 703 tried for robbery; here, a cookor innkeeper, and there, a former lackey. The oracle of Lyons is an ex-commercial traveler, an emu- lator of Marat, named Chaˆlier, whose murderous delirium is complicated with morbid mysticism. The acolytes of Chaˆlier are a barber, a hair-dresser, an old-clothes dealer, a mustard and vinegar manufacturer, a cloth-dresser, a silk-worker, a gauze-maker, while the time is near when authority is to fall into still meaner hands, those of “the dregs of the female population,” who, aided by “a few bullies,” elect “female commissaries,” tax food, and for three days pillage the warehouses.35 Avignon has for its masters the Glacie`re bandits. Arles is under the yoke of its porters and bargemen. Mar- seilles belongs to “a band of wretches spawned out of houses of debauchery, who recognise neither laws nor magistrates, and ruling the city through terror.”36—It is not surprising that such men, invested with such power, use it in conformity with their nature, and that the interregnum, which is their reign, spreads over France a circle of devastations, robberies, and murders. V Usually, the stationary band of clubbists has an auxiliary band of the same species which roves about. I mean the volunteers, who inspire more fear and do more harm, because they march in a body and are armed.37 Like their brethren in the ordinary walks of life, many of them are town and country vagabonds; most of them, living of property....Thepeople has been led off by a municipal officer, a constitutional cure´, and a brother of sieur Tournal, one of the authors of the evils which have desolated the Comtat” (March 5, 1792). 35. Guillon de Montleón, I. 84, 109, 139, 155, 158, 464.—Ibid., p. 441, details concerning Chaˆlier by his companion Chassagnon.—“Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,255. Letter by Laussel, Sept. 22, 1792. 36. Barbaroux, “Me´moires,” 85. Barbaroux is an eye-witness, for he has just returned to Marseilles and is about to preside over the electoral assembly of the Bouches-du-Rhoˆne. 37. C. Rousset, “Les Volontaires,” p. 67.—In his report of June 27, 1792, Albert Dubayet estimates the number of volunteers at 84,000. 704 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION from hand to mouth, have been attracted by the pay of fifteen sous a day; they have become soldiers for lackof workand bread. 38 Each commune, moreover, having been called upon for its army contingent, “they have picked up whatever could be found in the towns, all the scamps hanging around street-corners, men with no pursuit, and, in the country, wretches and vagabonds of every description; nearly all have been forced to march by money or drawing lots,” and it is probable that the various administrations thought that “in this way they would purge France.”39 To the wretched “bought by the communes,” add others of the same stamp, procured by the rich as substitutes for their sons.40 Thus do they pickover the social dunghill and obtain at a discount the natural and predestined inmates of houses of correction, poor-houses and hospitals, with an utter disregard of quality, even physical, “the halt, the maimed and the blind,” the deformed and the defective, “some too old, and others too young and too feeble to support the fatigues of war, others so small as to stand a foot lower than their guns,” a large number of boys of sixteen, fourteen, and thirteen; in short, the reprobate of great cities as we now see him, stunted, puny, and naturally insolent and insurgent.41 “One-third of them are found unfit for service” on

38. C. Rousset, “Les Volontaires,” 101. Letter of Kellermann, Aug. 23, 1792.—“Un se´jour en France,” I. 347 and following pages.—“Archives Na- tionales,” F7, 3,214. Letter of an inhabitant of Nogent-le-Rotrou (Eure). “Out of 8,000 inhabitants one-half require assistance; and two-thirds of these are in a sad state, having scarcely straw enough to sleep on” (Dec. 3, 1792). 39. C. Rousset, “Les Volontaires,” 106 (Letter of General Biron, Aug. 23, 1792).—226, Letter of Vezu, major, July 24, 1793. 40. C. Rousset, “Les Volontaires,” 144 (Letter of a district administrator of Moulins to General Custines, Jan. 27, 1793).—“Un se´jour en France,” p. 27: “I am sorry to see that most of the volunteers about to join the army are old men or very young boys.”—C. Rousset, ibid., 74, 108, 226 (Letter of Biron, Nov. 7, 1792); 105 (Letter of the commander of Fort Louis, Aug. 7); 127 (Letter of Captain Motme´). One-third of the 2d battalion of Haute-Saoˆne is composed of children 13 and 14 years old. 41. Moniteur, XIII. 742 (Sept. 21). Marshal Lu¨ckner and his aids-de-camp just miss being killed by Parisian volunteers.—“Archives Nationales,” B B, 16, 703. Letter by Labarrie`re, aid-de-camp of General Flers, Antwerp, March 19, The Jacobin Conquest / 705 reaching the frontier.42—But, before reaching the frontier, they act like “pirates” on the road.—The others, with sounder bodies and better hearts, become, under the discipline of constant danger, good soldiers at the end of a year. In the mean time, however, they make no less havoc, for, if they are less disposed to robbery, they are more fanatical. Nothing is more delicate than the military organisation, owing to the fact that it represents force, and man is always tempted to abuse force; for any free company of soldiers to remain inoﬀen- sive in a civil community, it must be restrained by the strongest curbs, which curbs, either within or without, were wholly wanting with the volunteers of 1792.43 Artisans, peasants, the petty bourgeois class, youthful enthusiasts stimulated by the prevailing doctrine, they are still much more Jac- obin than patriotic; the dogma of popular sovereignty, like a heady wine, has turned their inexperienced brains; they are fully persuaded that, “destined to contend with the enemies of the republic, is an

1793. On the desertion en masse of gendarmes from Dumouriez’s army, who return to Paris. 42. Cf. “L’armeé et la garde nationale,” by Baron Poisson, III. 475. “On hostilities being declared (April, 1792), the contingent of volunteers was fixed at 200,000 men. This second attempt resulted in nothing but confused and disorderly levies. Owing to the lackof the firmness of the volunteer troops it was impossible to continue the war in Belgium, which allowed the enemy to cross the frontier.” Gouverneur Morris, so well informed, had already written, under date of Dec. 27, 1791: “The national guards, who have turned out as volunteers, are in many instances that corrupted scum of overgrown population of which large cities purge themselves, and which, without constitutions to support the fatigues . . . of war, have every vice and every disease which can render them the scourge of their friends and the scoff of their foes.”—Buchez et Roux, XXVI. 177. Plan of the administrators of He´rault, presented to the Convention April 27, 1793. “The composition of the enlistment should not be concealed. Most of those of which it is made up are not volunteers; they are not citizens of all classes of society, who, submitting to draft on the ballot, have willingly made up their minds to go and defend the Republic. The larger part of the recruits are substitutes who, through the attraction of a large sum, have concluded to leave their homes.” 43. C. Rousset, 47. Letter of the directory of Somme, Feb. 26, 1792. 706 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION honor which permits them to exact and to dare all things.”44 The least among them believes himself superior to the law, “as formerly a Conde´,” and he becomes king on a small scale, self-constituted, an autocratic justiciary and avenger of wrongs, a supporter of patriots and the scourge of aristocrats, the disposer of lives and property, and, without delay or formality, taking it upon himself to complete the Revolution on the spot in every town he passes through.—He is not to be hindered in all this by his officers.45 “Hav- ing created his chiefs, they are of no more account to him than any of a man’s creations usually are”; far from being obeyed, they are not even respected, “and that comes from resorting to analogies without considering military talent or moral superiority.”46 Through the natural effects of the system of election, all grades of rank have fallen upon demagogues and blusterers. “The intriguers, loud- talkers, and especially great drinkers, have prevailed against the capable.”47 Besides, to retain his popularity, the new officer will go to a groggery and drinkwith his men, 48 and he must show himself more Jacobin than they are, from which it follows that, not content with tolerating their excesses, he provokes them.—Hence, after March, 1792, and even before,49 we see the volunteers behaving in

44. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,270. Deliberations of the council-general of the commune of Roye, Oct. 8, 1792 (in relation to the violence committed by two divisions of Parisian gendarmerie during their passage, Oct. 7 and 8). 45. Moore, I. 338 (Sept. 8, 1792). 46. C. Rousset, 189 (Letter of the Minister of War, dated at Dunkirk, April 29, 1793)—“Archives Nationales,” B B, 16, 703. (Parisian national guard staff major-general, order of the day, letter of citizen Fe´rat, commanding at Ostend, to the Minister of War, March 19, 1793): “Since we have had the gendarmes with us at Ostend there is nothing but disturbance every day. They attackthe offices and volunteers, take the liberty of pulling off epaulettes and talk only of cutting and slashing, and declare that they recognise no superior, being equals with everybody, and that they will do as they please. They threaten and run after with sabres and pistols in their hands, all to whom I give orders to arrest them.” 47. C. Rousset, 20 (Letter of General Wimpfen, Dec. 30, 1791).—“Sou- venirs” of General Pelleport, pp. 7 and 8. 48. C. Rousset, 45 (Report of General Wimpfen, Jan. 20, 1792).—103, Let- ter of General Biron, Aug. 23, 1792. 49. C. Rousset, 47, 48.—“Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,249. Official report of The Jacobin Conquest / 707

France as in a conquered country. Sometimes they make domiciliary visits, and breakeverything to pieces in the house they visit. Again, they force the re-baptism of infants by the complying cure´s, and fire on the orthodox father. Here, of their own accord, they make arrests; there, they join in with mutineers and stop grain-boats; elsewhere, they force a municipality to tax bread; farther on, they burn or sack chaˆteaux, and, if a mayor happens to inform them that the chaˆteau now belongs to the nation and not to an e´migre´, they reply with “thrusts,” and threaten to cut his throat.50—As the 10th of August draws near, the phantom of authority, which still occasionally imposed on them, completely vanishes, and “it costs them nothing to massacre” whoever displeases them.51 Exasperated by the perils they the municipality of Saint-Maxence, Jan. 21, 1792.—F7, 3,275. Official report of the municipality of Chaˆtellerault, Dec. 27, 1791.—F7, 3,285 and 3,286.—F7, 3,213. Letter of Servan, Minister of War, to Roland, June 12, 1792: “I frequently receive, as well as yourself and the Minister of Justice, complaints against the national volunteers. They commit the most reprehensible offences daily in places where they are quartered, and through which they pass on their way to their destination.”—Ibid., Letter of Duranthon, Minister of Justice, May 5: “These occurrences are repeated, under more or less aggravating circumstances, in all the departments.” 50. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,193. Official report of the commissaries of the department of Aveyron, April 4, 1792. “Among the pillagers and incendiaries of the chaˆteaux of Privesac, Vaureilles, Pećhins, and other threatened mansions, were a number of recruits who had already taken the road to Rhodez to join their respective regiments.” Nothing remains of the chaˆteau of Privesac but a heap of ruins. The houses in the village “are filled to overflowing with pillaged articles, and the inhabitants have divided the owners’ animals amongst themselves.”—Comte de Seilhac, “Sce`nes et portraits de la Re´volution dans le Bas-Limousin,” p. 305. Pillage of the chaˆteaux of St. Jeál and Seilhac, April 12, 1792, by the 3d battalion of la Corre`ze, commanded by Bellegarde, a former domestic in the chaˆteau. 51. “Archives Nationales” F7, 3,270. Deliberation of the council-general of the commune of Roye, Oct. 8, 1792 (passage of two divisions of Parisian gendarmes). “The inhabitants and municipal officers were by turns the sport of their insolence and brutality, constantly threatened in case of refusal with having their heads cut off, and seeing the said gendarmes, especially the cannoneers, with naked sabres in their hands, always threatening. The citizen mayor especially was treated most outrageously by the said cannoneers . . . forcing him to dance on the Place d’armes, to which they resorted with violins and where they 708 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION are about to encounter on the frontier, they begin war in the interior; provisionally, and as a precaution, they slaughter probable aristocrats on the way, and treat the officers, nobles and priests they meet on the road worse than their club allies. For, on the one hand, being merely on the march, they are much safer from punishment than local murderers; in a week, lost in the army, they will not be sought for in camp, and they may slay with perfect security. On the other hand, as strangers and newcomers, incapable of discriminating persons the same as people on the spot, on account of name, dress, and qualifications, on coffee-house rumors, on appearances, however venerable and harmless a man may be, they kill him, not because they know him, but because they do not know him. VI Let us enter the cabinet of Roland, Minister of the Interior, a fortnight after the opening of the Convention, and suppose him contemplating, some evening, a foreshortened picture of the state of the country administered by him. His clerks have placed the correspondence of the past few weeks on his table, arranged in proper order; his replies are noted in brief on the margin; he has a map of France before him, and, placing his finger on the southern section, he moves it along the great highway across the country. At every stage he recurs to the paper file of letters, and passing innumerable reports of violence, he merely gives his attention to the great revolutionary exploits.52 Madame Roland, I imagine, works with her husband, and the couple, sitting together alone under the lamp, ponder over the remained until midnight, rudely pushing and hauling him about, treating him as an aristocrat, clapping the red cap on his head, with constant threats of cutting it off and that of every aristocrat in the town, a threat they swore to carry out the next day, openly stating, especially two or three amongst them, that they had massacred the Paris prisoners on the 2d of September, and that it cost them nothing to massacre.” 52. Summaries, in the order of their date or locality, and similar to those about to be placed before the reader, sometimes occur in these files. I pursue the same course as the clerk, in conformity with Roland’s methodical habits. The Jacobin Conquest / 709 doings of the ferocious brute which they have set free in the provinces the same as in Paris. Their eyes go first to the southern extremity of France. There,53 on the canal of the Deux-Mers, at Carcassonne, the populace has seized three boats loaded with grain, exacted food, then a diminution of the price of bread, then guns and cannons from the magazine, and, lastly, the heads of the administrators; an inspector-general has been wounded by an axe, and the syndic-attorney of the department, M. Verdier, massacred.—The Minister follows with his eye the road from Carcassonne to Bordeaux, and on the right and on the left he finds traces of blood. At Castres,54 a report is spread that a dealer in grain was trying to raise the price, whereupon a mob congregates, and, to save the dealer, he is placed in the guard-house; the volunteers, however, force open the guard-house, and throw the man out of the first-story window; they then finish him with “blows with clubs and weights,” drag his body along the street and cast it into the river.—The evening before, at Clairac,55 M. Lartigue-Langa, an unsworn priest, pursued through the street by a troop of men and women, determined to strip off his cassockand ride him on an ass, found refuge, with great difficulty, in his country-house; they go there for him, however, fetch him backto the public promenade, and there kill him. A number of brave fellows who interfered were charged with incivisme, and severely handled. Repression is impossible; the department writes to the Minister that “at this time it would be impolitic to follow the matter up.” Roland knows that by experience. The letters in his hands show him that there, as in Paris, murder engenders murder; M. d’Alespeé, a gentleman, has just been assassinated at Ne´rac; “all reputable citizens formed around him a rampart with their bodies,” but the rabble prevailed, and the murderers, “through their obscurity,” escaped.—The Minister’s finger

53. Aug 17, 1792 (Moniteur, XIII. 383, report of M. Emmery). 54. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,271. Letter of the administrators of Tarn, July 21. 55. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,234. Report of the municipal officers of Clairac, July 20.—(Letter of the syndic-attorney of Lot-et-Garonne, Sept. 16.) 710 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION stops at Bordeaux. There the federation festivities are marked with a triple assassination.56 In order to let this dangerous moment pass by, M. de Langoirac, vicar-general of the archbishopric, had retired half a league off, in the village of Cauderan, to the residence of an octogenarian priest, who, like himself, had never meddled with public matters. On the 15th of July the National Guards of the village, excited by the speeches of the previous night, take them both out of the house, and, by way of an extra, a third priest belonging in the neighborhood. There is nothing to lay to their charge; neither the municipal officers, nor the justices before whom they are brought, can avoid declaring them innocent. As a last recourse, they are conducted to Bordeaux, before the Directory of the department. But it is getting dark, and the riotous crowd becoming impatient, makes an attack on them. The octogenarian “is so pounded as to make it impossible for him to revive”; the abbe´ du Puy is knocked down and dragged along by a rope attached to his feet; M. de Lan- goirac’s head is cut off, carried about on a pike, taken to his house and presented to the servant, who is told that “her master will not come home to supper.” The torment of the priests has lasted from five o’clockin the morning to seven o’clockin the evening, and the municipal authorities were duly advised; but they cannot put themselves out of the way to give succor; they are too seriously occupied in erecting a liberty-pole. Route from Bordeaux to Caen.—The Minister’s finger turns to the north, and stops at Limoges. The day following the federation has been here celebrated the same as at Bordeaux.57 An unsworn priest, the abbe´ Chabrol, assailed by a gang of men and women, is first conducted to the guard-house and then to the dwelling of the juge-de-paix; for his protection a warrant of arrest is gotten out, and he is kept under guard, in sight, by four chasseurs, in one of the rooms. But the populace are not satisfied with this. In vain do the

56. Mercure de France, number for July 28 (letters from Bordeaux). 57. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,275. Letter of the administrators of Haute- Vienne, July 28 (with official reports). The Jacobin Conquest / 711 municipal officers appeal to it, in vain do the gendarmes interpose themselves between it and the prisoner; it rushes in upon them and disperses them. Meanwhile, volleys of stones smash in the windows, and the entrance door yields to the blows of axes; about thirty of the villains scale the windows, and pass the priest down like a bale of goods. A few yards off, “struckdown with clubs and other instruments,” he draws his last breath, his head “crushed” by twenty mortal wounds.—Farther up, towards Orleans, Roland reads the following despatches, taken from the file for Loiret:58 “Anarchy is at its height,” writes one of the districts to the Directory of the department; “there is no longer recognition of any authority; the administrators of the district and of the municipalities are insulted, and are powerless to enforce respect....Threats of slaughter, of destroying houses and giving them up to pillage prevail; plans are made to tear down all the chaˆteaux. The municipal authorities of Ache`res, along with many of the inhabitants, have gone to Oison and Chaussy, where everything is smashed, broken up and carried off. On the 16th of September six armed men went to the house of M. de Vaudeuil and obliged him to return the sum of 300 francs, for penalties pretended to have been paid by them. We have been notified that M. Dedeley will be visited at Ache`res for the same purpose to-day. M. de Lory has been similarly threatened....Fi- nally, all those people there say that they want no more local administrations or tribunals, that the law is in their own hands, and they will execute it. In this extremity we have decided on the only safe course, which is to silently accept all the outrages inflicted upon us. We have not called upon you for protection, for we are well aware of the embarrassment you labor under.”—The best part of the National Guard, indeed, having been disarmed at the county- town, there is no longer an armed force to put riots down. Conse- quently, at this same date,59 the populace, increased by the afflux of

58. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,223. Letter of the directory of the district of Neuville to the department-administrators, Sept. 18. 59. “Archives Nationales,” report of the administrators of the department 712 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

“strangers” and ordinary nomads, hang a corn-inspector, plant his head on the end of a pike, drag his body through the streets, sack five houses and burn the furniture of a municipal officer in front of his own door. Thereupon, the obedient municipality sets the arrested rioters free, and lowers the price of bread one-sixth. Above the Loire, the despatches of Orne and Calvados complete the picture. “Our district,” writes a lieutenant of the gendarmerie,60 “is a prey to brigandage....About thirty rascals have just sacked the chaˆteau of Dampierre. Calls for men are constantly made upon us,” which we cannot satisfy, “because the call is general on all sides.” The details are curious, and here, notwithstanding the Minister’s familiarity with popular misdeeds, he cannot avoid noting one extortion of a new species. “The inhabitants of the villages61 collect together, betake themselves to different chaˆteaux, seize the wives and children of their proprietors, and keep them as bail for promises of re- embursement which they force the latter to sign, not merely for feudal taxes, but, again, for expenses to which this taxation may have given rise,” first under the actual proprietor and then under his predecessors; in the mean time they install themselves on the premises, demand payments for their time, devastate the buildings on the place, and sell the furniture.—All this is accompanied with the usual slaughterings. A letter of the Directory of the department of Orne advises the Minister62 that “a former noble has been killed (homicide´) in the canton of Sepf, an ex-cure´ in the town of Belleˆme, an unsworn priest in the canton of Putanges, an ex-capuchin in the territory of Alençon.” The same day, at Caen, the syndic-attorney and council-general of the commune of Orleans, Sept. 16 and 17. (The disarmament had been effected through the decrees of Aug. 26 and Sept. 2.) 60. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,249. Letter of the lieutenant of the gendarmerie of Dampierre, Sept. 23 (with official report dated Sept. 19). 61. “Archives Nationales,” draft of a letter by Roland, Oct. 4, and others of the same kind.—Letter of the municipal officers of Ray, Sept. 24.—Letter of M. Desdouits, proprietor, Sept. 30.—Letter of the permanent council of Aigle, Oct. 1, etc. 62. “Archives Nationales,” Letter of the administrators of the Orne department, Sept. 7. The Jacobin Conquest / 713 of Calvados, M. Bayeux, a man of sterling merit, imprisoned by the local Jacobins, has just been shot down in the street and bayonetted, while the National Assembly was passing a decree proclaiming his innocence and ordering him to be set at liberty.63 Route of the East.—At Rouen, in front of the Hoˆtel-de-Ville, the National Guard, stoned for more than an hour, finally fire a volley and kill four men; throughout the department violence is committed in relation to grain, while wheat is taxed and carried off by force;64 but Roland is obliged to restrict himself; he can note only political disturbances. Besides, he is obliged to move on fast, for murders abound along the whole course; between the effervescence of the army and that of the capital,65 each department in the vicinity of Paris or near the frontier furnishes its quota of murders. They take place at Gisors, in the Eure, at Chantilly, and at Clermont in the Oise, at Saint-Amand in the Pas-de-Calais, at Cambray in the Nord, at Retel and Charleville in the Ardennes, at Rheims and at Chaˆlons in the Marne, at Troyes in the Aube, at Meaux in Seine-et-Marne, and at Versailles in Seine-et-Oise.66—Roland, I imagine, does not open this file, and for a good reason; he knows too well how M. de

63. Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 337 (Sept. 6). 64. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,265. Letter of the lieutenant-general of the gendarmerie, Aug. 30.—Oﬃcial report of the Rouen municipality on the riot of Aug. 29.—Letters of the department-administrators, Sept. 18 and Oct. 11.— Letter of the same, Oct. 13, etc.—Letter of David, cultivator and department- administrator, Oct. 11. 65. Albert Babeau, “Letters of a deputy of the municipality of Troyes to the army of Dumouriez,” p. 8.—(Sainte-Menehould, Sept. 7, 1792): “Our troops burn with a desire to meet the enemy. The massacre reported to have taken place in Paris does not discourage them; on the contrary, they are glad to know that suspected persons in the interior are got rid of.” 66. Moore, I. 338 (Sept. 4). At Clermont, the murder of a ﬁsh-dealer, killed for insulting the Breton volunteers.—401 (Sept. 7), the son of the post-master at Saint-Amand is killed on suspicion of communicating with the enemy.— “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,249. Letter of the district-administrators of Senlis, Oct. 31 (Aug. 15). At Chantilly, M. Pigeau is assassinated in the midst of 1,200 persons.—C. Rousset, p. 84 (Sept. 21), Lieutenant-colonel Imonnier is assassinated at Chaˆlons-sur-Marne.—Mortimer-Ternaux, IV. 172. Four Prussian deserters are murdered at Rethel, Oct. 5, by the Parisian volunteers. 714 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Brissac and M. Delessart, and the other sixty-three persons perished at Versailles; it was he who signed Fournier’s commission, the head murderer. At this very moment he is forced to correspond with this villain, to send him certificates of “zeal and patriotism,” and to assign him, over and above his robberies, 30,000 francs to defray the expenses of the operation.67—But some among the despatches he cannot overlook, if he desires to know to what his authority is reduced, in what contempt all authority is held, how the civil or military populace exercises its power, with what promptitude it disposes of the most illustrious and most useful lives, especially those who have been, or are now, in command, the Minister perhaps saying to himself that his turn will come next. A philanthropist from his youth up, a liberal on entering the Constituent Assembly, elected president of the Paris department, one of the most persistent, most generous, and most respected patriots from first to last,—who better deserved to be spared than M. de la Rochefoucauld? Arrested at Gisors68 by order of the Paris Com- mune, he left the inn, escorted by the Parisian commissary, surrounded by the municipal council, twelve gendarmes and one hundred National Guards; behind him walked his mother, eighty years of age, his wife following in a carriage; there could be no fear of an escape. But, for a suspected person, death is more certain than a prison; three hundred volunteers of the Orne and the Sarthe departments, on their way through Gisors, collect and cry out: “We must have his head—nothing shall stop us!” A stone hits M. de la Rochefoucauld on the temple; he falters, his escort is broken up, and they finish him with clubs and sabres, while the municipal council “have barely time to drive off the carriage containing the ladies.”—Accordingly, national justice, in the hands of the volunteers, has its sudden outbursts, its excesses, its reactions, the effect of which

67. Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 378, 594 and following pages. 68. Lacretelle, “Dix anneés d’e´preuves,” p. 58. Description of Liancourt.— “Archives Nationales,” letter of the department-administrators of the Eure, Sept. 11 (with official report of the Gisors municipality, Sept. 4).—Mortimer- Ternaux, III. 550. The Jacobin Conquest / 715 it is not advisable to wait for. For example, at Cambray,69 a division of foot-gendarmerie had just left the town, and it occurs to them that they had forgotten “to purge the prison”; it retraces its steps, seizes the keeper, takes him to the Hoˆtel-de-Ville, examines the prison register, sets at liberty those whose crimes seem to it excusable, and provides them with passports; on the other hand, it massacres a former royal procureur, on whom addresses are found tainted with “aristocratic principles,” an unpopular lieutenant-colonel, and a suspected captain.—However slight or ill-founded a suspicion, so much the worse for the officer on whom it falls! At Charleville,70 two loads of arms having passed through one gate instead of another, to avoid a bad road, M. Juchereau, inspector of the manufacture of arms and commander of the place, is declared a traitor by the volunteers and the populace, torn from the hands of the municipal officers, clubbed to the ground, stamped on, and stabbed; his head, fixed to a pike, is paraded through Charleville, then into Me´zie`res, where it is thrown into the river running between the two towns. The body remains, and this the municipality orders to be interred; but it is not worthy of burial; the murderers obtain possession of it, and cast it into the water that it may join the head. In the mean time the lives of the municipal officers hang by a single thread. One of these is seized by the throat; another is knocked out of his chair and threatened with the lantern, a gun is aimed at him and he is beaten and kicked; subsequently a plot is devised “to cut off their heads and plunder their houses.”

69. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 4,394. Letter of Roland to the convention, Oct. 31 (with a copy of the documents sent by the department of the Nord on the events of Oct. 10 and 11). 70. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,191. Oﬃcial report of the municipality of Charleville, Sept. 4, and letter, Sept. 6.—Moniteur, XIII. 742, number for Sept. 21, 1792 (Letter of Sept. 17, on the Parisian volunteers of Marshal Lu¨ckner’s army). “The Parisian volunteers again threatened to have several heads last evening, among others those of the marshal and his aids. He had threatened to return some deserters to their regiments. At this the men exclaimed that the ancient re´gime no longer existed, that brothers should not be treated in that way, and that the general should be arrested. Several of them had already seized the horse’s bridle.” 716 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

The disposers of lives, indeed, are also the disposers of property. Roland has only to turn over the leaves of two or three reports to see how patriotism furnishes a cloakfor brutal license and greed. At Coucy, in the department of Aisne,71 the peasantry of seventeen parishes, assembled for the purpose of furnishing their military quota, rush with a loud clamor to two houses, the property of M. des Fosse´s, a former deputy to the Constituent Assembly, and the two finest in the town; one of them had been occupied by Henry IV. Some of the municipal officers who try to interfere are nearly cut to pieces, and the entire municipal body takes to flight. M. des Fosse´s, with his two daughters, succeed in hiding themselves in an obscure corner in the vicinity, and afterwards in a small tenement offered to them by a humane gardener, and finally, after great difficulty, they reach Soissons. Of his two houses, “nothing remains but the walls. Windows, casings, doors, and wainscottings, all are shattered”; twenty thousand francs of assignats in a portfolio are destroyed or carried off; the title-deeds of the property are not to be found, and the damage is estimated at 200,000 francs. The pillage lasted from seven o’clockin the morning to seven o’clockin the evening, and, as is always the case, ended in a jollification; the plunderers, entering the cellars, drank“two hogsheads of wine and two casks of brandy; thirty or forty remained dead drunk, and were taken away with considerable difficulty.” There is no prosecution, no investigation; the new mayor, who, one month after, makes up his mind to denounce the act, begs the Minister not to give his name, for, he says, “the agitators in the council-general of the Commune threaten, with fearful consequences, whoever is discovered to have written to you.”72—Such is the ever-present threatening under

71. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,185. Documents relating to the case of M. des Fosse´s. (The pillaging takes place Sept. 4.) 72. Letter of Goulard, mayor of Coucy, Oct. 4.—Letter of Osselin, notary, Nov. 7. “Threats of setting fire to M. de Fosse´s’ two remaining farm-houses are made.”—Letter of M. de Fosse´s, Jan. 28, 1793. He states that he has entered no complaint, and if anybody has done so for him he is much displeased. “A suit might place me in the greatest danger, from my knowledge of the state of The Jacobin Conquest / 717 which the gentry live, even when venerable in the service of freedom; Roland, foremost in his files, finds heartrending letters addressed directly to him, as a last recourse. Early in 1789, M. de Gouy d’Arcy73 was the first to put his pen to paper in behalf of popular rights. A deputy of the noblesse to the Constituent Assembly, he is the first to rally to the Third-Estate; when the liberal minority of the noblesse came and tooktheir seats in the hall of the Communes, he had already been there eight days, and, for thirty months, he “invariably seated himself on the side of the ‘Left.’” Senior major- general, and ordered by the Legislative Assembly to suppress the outbreakof the 6,000 insurgents at Noyon, “he kept his rigorous orders in his pocket for ten days”; he endured their insults; he risked his life “to save those of his misguided fellow-citizens, and he had the good fortune not to spill a drop of blood.” Exhausted by so much labor and effort, almost dying, ordered into the country by his physicians, “he devoted his income to the relief of poverty”; he planted on his own domain the first liberty tree that was erected; he furnished the volunteers with clothes and arms; “instead of a fifth, he yielded up a third of his revenue under the forced system of taxation.” His children live with him on the property, which has been in the family four hundred years, and the peasantry call him “their father.” No one could lead a more tranquil or, indeed, a more meritorious existence. But, being a noble, he is suspected, and a delegate from the Paris Commune denounces him at Compie`gne as having in his house two cannon and five hundred and fifty muskets. There is at once a domiciliary visit. Eight hundred men, infantry and cavalry, appear before the chaˆteau d’Arcy in battle array. He meets them at the door and tenders them the keys. After a search the public mind in Coucy, and of what the guilty have done and will do to affect the minds of the people in the seventeen communes concerned in the devastation.” 73. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,249. Letter of M. de Gouy to Roland, Sept. 21. (An admirable letter, which, if copied entire, would show the character of the gentleman of 1789. It is full of feeling as well as of illusions, and somewhat formal in style.) The first attackwas made Sept. 4 and the second on the 13th. 718 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION of six hours, they find twelve fowling pieces and thirteen rusty pistols, which he has already declared. His disappointed visitors grumble, break, eat and drink to the extent of 2,000 crowns damage.74 Nevertheless, urged by their leaders, they finally retire. But M. de Gouy has 60,000 francs in rentals, which would be so much gain to the nation if he would emigrate; this must be effected, by expelling him, and, moreover, during his expulsion, they may fill their pockets. For eight days this matter is discussed in the Compie`gne club, in the groggeries, in the barracks, and, on the ninth day, 150 volunteers issue from the town, declaring that they are going to kill M. de Gouy and all who belong to him. Informed of this, he departs with his family, leaving the doors of his house wide open. There is a general pillage for five hours; the mob drinkthe costly wines, steal the plate, demand horses to carry their booty away, and promise to return soon and take the owner’s head.—In effect, on the following morning at four o’clock, there is a new invasion, a new pillage, and, this time, the last one; the servants escape under a fire of musketry, and M. de Gouy, at the request of the villagers, whose vineyards are devastated, is obliged to quit that part of the country.75—There is no need to go through the whole file. At Houdainville, at the house of M. de Saint-Maurice, at Nointel, on the estate of the Duc de Bourbon, at Chantilly, on the estate of the Prince de Conde´, at the house of M. de Fitz-James, and elsewhere, a certain Gauthier, “commandant of the Paris detachment of Searchers, and charged with the powers of the Committee of Supervision,” makes his patriotic circuit, and Roland knows beforehand of what that consists,

74. Most of the domiciliary visits end in similar depredations. For example, (“Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,265, letter of the administrators of Seine- Infe´rieure, Sept. 18, 1792). Visit to the chaˆteau de Catteville, Sept. 7, by the national guard of the neighborhood. “The national guard get drunk, break the furniture to pieces, and fire repeated volleys at the windows and mirrors: the chaˆteau is a complete ruin.” The municipal officers on attempting to interfere are nearly killed. 75. The letter ends with the following: “No, never will I abandon the French soil!” He is guillotined at Paris, Thermidor 5, year II., as an accomplice in the pretended prison-plot. The Jacobin Conquest / 719 namely, a dragonnade in regular form on the domains of all nobles, absent or present.76 Favorite game is still found in the clergy, more vigorously hunted than the nobles; Roland, charged with the duty of maintaining public order, asks himself how the lives of inoffensive priests, which the law recommends to him, can be protected.—At Troyes, at the house of M. Fardeau, an old non-conformist cure´, an altar decked with its sacred vessels is discovered, and M. Fardeau, arrested, refuses to take the civic oath. Torn from his prison, and ordered to shout “Vive la Nation!” he again refuses. On this, a volunteer, borrowing an axe from a baker, chops off his head, and this head, washed in the river, is borne to the Hoˆtel-de-Ville.77—At Meaux, a brigade of Parisian gendarmerie murders seven priests, and, as an extra, six ordinary malefactors in confinement.78 At Rheims, the Parisian volunteers first make way with the post-master and his clerk, both under suspicion because the smell of burnt paper had issued from their chimney, and, next, M. de Montrosier, an old retired officer, which is the opening of the hunt. Afterwards they fall upon two ecclesiastics with pikes and sabres, whom their game-beaters have brought in from the country, then on the former cure´ of Saint-Jean, and on that of Rilly; their corpses are cut up, paraded through the streets in portions, and burnt in a bonfire; one of the wounded priests, the abbe´ Alexandre, is thrown in still alive.79—Roland recognises the men of September,

76. “Archives Nationales,” Letter of the Oise administrators, Sept. 12 and 15.—Letter of the syndic-attorney of the department, Sept. 23.—Letter of the administrators, Sept. 20 (on Chantilly). “The vast treasures of this domain are being plundered.” In the forest of Hez and in the parkbelonging to M. de Fitz- James, now national property, “the finest trees are sold on the spot, cut down, and carried off.”—F7, 3,268, Letter of the overseer of the national domains at Rambouillet, Oct. 31. Woods devastated “at a loss of more than 100,000 crowns since August 10.”—“The agitators who preach liberty to citizens in the rural districts are the very ones who excite the disorders with which the country is menaced. They provoke the demand for a partition of property, with all the accompanying threats.” 77. Albert Babeau, I. 504 (Aug. 20). 78. Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 322 (Sept. 4). 79. Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 325.—“Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,239. Official report of the municipality of Rheims, Sept. 6. 720 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION who, exposing their still bloody pikes, came to his domicile to demand their wages; wherever the band passes it announces, “in the name of the people,” its “plenary power to spread the example of the capital.” Now, as 40,000 unsworn priests are condemned by the decree of August 26 to leave their departments in a weekand France in a fortnight—shall they be allowed to depart? Eight thousand of them at Rouen, in obedience to the decree, charter transports, which the riotous population of both sides of the Seine prevent from leaving. Roland sees in his despatches that in Rouen, as elsewhere, they crowd the municipalities for their passports,80 but that these are often refused; better still, at Troyes, at Meaux, at Lyons, at Doˆle, and in many other towns, the same thing is done as at Paris; they are confined in particular houses or in prisons, at least, provisionally, “for fear that they may congregate under the German eagle”; so that, made rebellious and declared traitors in spite of themselves, they may still remain in their pens subject to the knife. As the exportation of specie is prohibited, those who have procured the necessary coin are robbed of it on the frontier, while others, who fly at all hazards, tracked like wild boars, or run down like hares, escape like the bishop of Barral, athwart bayonets, or like the abbe´ Guillon, athwart sabres, when they are not struckdown, likethe abbe´ Pescheur, by the blows of a gun-stock.81

80. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 4,394. Correspondence of the ministers in 1792 and 1793. Lists presented by Roland to the convention, on the part of various districts and departments, containing the names of priests demanding passports to go abroad, those who have gone without passports, and of infirm or aged priests in the department asylums. 81. Albert Babeau, I. 515–517. Guillon de Montleón, I. 120. At Lyons after the 10th of August the unsworn conceal themselves; the municipality offers them passports; many who come for them are incarcerated; others receive a passport with a markon it which serves for their recognition on the road, and which excites against them the fury of the volunteers. “A majority of the soldiers filled the air with their cries of ‘Death to kings and priests!’”—Sauzay, III. ch. ix., and especially p. 193: “M. Pescheur, while running along the road from Belfort to Porentruy, is seen by a captain of the volunteers, riding along the same road with other officers: demanding his gun, he aimed at M. Pescheur and shot him.” The Jacobin Conquest / 721

It is getting far into the night. The files are too numerous and too large; Roland finds that, out of eighty-three, he can examine but fifty; he must hasten on; leaving the East, his eyes again turn to the South.—On this side, too, there are strange sights. On the 2d of September, at Chaˆlons-sur-Marne,82 M. Chanlaire, an octogenarian and deaf, is returning, with his prayer-bookunder his arm, from the Mall, to which he resorted daily to read his prayers. A number of Parisian volunteers who meet him, seeing that he looks like a devotee, order him to shout, “Vive la Liberte´!” Unable to understand them, he makes no reply. They then seize him by the ears, and, not marching fast enough, they drag him along; his old ears give way, and, excited by seeing blood, they cut off his ears and nose, and thus, the poor old man dripping with blood, they reach the Hoˆtel- de-Ville. At this sight a notary, posted there as sentinel, and who is a man of feeling, is horror-stricken and escapes, while the other National Guards hasten to shut the iron gates. The Parisians, still dragging along their captive, go to the district and then to the department bureau “to denounce aristocrats”; on the way they continue to strike the tottering old man, who falls down; they then decapitate him, place pieces of his body on pikes, and parade these about. Meanwhile, in this same town, twenty-two gentlemen; at Beaune, forty priests and nobles; at Dijon, eighty-three heads of families, locked up as suspected without evidence or examination, and confined at their own expense two months under pikes, ask themselves every morning whether the populace and the volunteers, who shout death cries through the streets, mean to release them in the same way as in Paris.83—A trifle is sufficient to provoke a mur-

82. “Histoire de Chalons-sur-Marne et de ses monuments,” by L. Barbat, pp. 420, 425. 83. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,207. Letter of the directory of the Coˆte d’Or, Aug. 28 and Sept. 26. Address of the Beaune municipality, Sept. 2. Letter of M. Jean Sallier, Oct. 9: “Allow me to appeal to you for justice and to interest yourself in behalf of my brother, myself, and five servants, who on the 14th of September last, at the order of the municipality of La Roche-en-Bressy, where we have lived for three years, were arrested by the national guard of Saulieu, 722 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION der. On the 19th of August, at Auxerre, as the National Guard is marching along, three citizens, after having taken the civic oath, “left the ranks,” and, on being called back, “to make them fall in,” one, either impatient or in ill-humor, “replied with an indecent gesture”; the populace, taking it as an insult, instantly rush at them, and shoving aside the municipal body and the National Guards, wound one and kill the other two.84 A fortnight after, in the same town, several young ecclesiastics are massacred, and “the corpse of one of them remains three days on a manure heap, the relatives not being allowed to bury it.” About the same date, in a village of sabot- makers, five leagues from Autun, four ecclesiastics provided with passports, among them a bishop and his two grand-vicars, are arrested, then examined, robbed, and murdered by the peasantry.— Below Autun, especially in the district of Roanne, the villagers burn the rent-rolls of national property; the volunteers put property- owners to ransom; both, apart from each other or together, give themselves up “to every excess and to every sort of iniquity against those whom they suspect of incivisme under pretense of religious opinions.”85 However obfuscated Roland’s mind may be by the phil- and, first imprisoned here in this town, were on the 18th transferred to Semur, no reason for our detention being given, and where we have in vain demanded a trial from the directory of the district, which body, making no examination or inquiry into our case, sent us on the 25th, at great expense, to Dijon, where the department has imprisoned us again without, as before, giving any reason therefor.”—The directory of the department writes “the communes of the towns and of the country arrest persons suspected by them, and instead of caring for these themselves, send them to the district.”—These arbitrary imprisonments multiply towards the end of 1792 and early in 1793. The commissaries of the convention arrest at Sedan 55 persons in one day; at Nancy, 104 in three weeks; at Arras, more than 1,000 in two months; in the Jura, 4,000 in two months. At Lons-le-Saulnier all the nobles with their domestics, at Aix all the inhabitants of one quarter without exception are put in prison (De Sybel, II. 305.) 84. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,276. Letters of the administrators of the Yonne, Aug. 20 and 21.—Ibid., F7, 3,255. Letter of the commissary, Bonnemant, Sept. 11.—Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 338.—De Lavalette, “Me´moires,” I. 100. 85. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,255. Letter of the district-administrators of The Jacobin Conquest / 723 osophic generalities with which it is filled, he has long inspected manufactures in this country; the name of every place is familiar to him; objects and forms are this time clearly defined to his arid imagination, and he begins to see things through and beyond mere words. Madame Roland rests her finger on Lyons, so familiar to her two years before; she becomes excited against “the quadruple aristocracy of the town, petty nobles, priests, heavy merchants, and limbs of the law; in short, those formerly known as honest folks, according to the insolence of the ancient re´gime”;86 she now finds there an aristocracy of another kind, that of the gutter. Following the example of Paris, the Lyons clubbists, led by Charlier, have arranged for a massacre on a grand scale of the evil-disposed or suspected; another ringleader, Dodieu, has drawn up a list by name of two hundred aristocrats to be hung; on the 9th of September, women with pikes, the maniacs of the suburbs, bands of “the unknown,” collected by the central club,87 undertake to clean out the prisons. If the butchery

Roanne, Aug. 18. Fourteen volunteers of the canton of Ne´ronde betake themselves to Chenevoux, a mansion belonging to M. Dulieu, a supposed e´migre´. They exact 200 francs from the keeper of the funds of the house under penalty of death, which he gives them.—Letter of the same, Sept. 11. “Repressive means are daily becoming a nullity. Juges-de-paix before whom complaints are made dare not report them, nor try citizens who cause themselves to be feared. Wit- nesses dare not give testimony for fear of being maltreated or pillaged by these malefactors.”—Letter of the same, Aug. 22.—Official report of the municipality of Charlieu, Sept. 9, on the destruction of the rent-rolls. “We represented to them that not having force at command to oppose them, since they themselves were the force, we would retire.”—Letter of an officer of the gendarmerie, Sept. 9, etc. 86. “Lettres autographes de Madame Roland,” published by Madame Bancal des Issarts, p. 5 (June 2, 1790). 87. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,245.—Letter of the mayor and municipal officers of Lyons, Aug. 2.—Letter of the deputy procureur of the commune, Aug. 29.—Copy of a letter by Dodieu, Aug. 27. (Roland replies with consternation and says that there must be a prosecution.)—Official report of the 9th of Sep- tember, and letter of the municipality, Sept. 11.—Memorial of the officers of the Royal-Pologne regiment, Sept. 7.—Letter of M. Perigny, father-in-law of one of the officers slain, Sept. 19.—Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 342.—Guillon de Montleón, I. 124.—Balleyder, “Histoire du peuple de Lyon,” 91. 724 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION is not equal to that of Paris, it is because the National Guard, more energetic, interferes just at the moment when a Parisian emissary, Saint-Charles, reads off a list of names in the prison of Roanne, already taken from the prison register. But, in other places, it arrives too late.—Eight officers of the Royal-Pologne regiment, in garrison at Auch, some of them having been in the service twenty and thirty years, had been compelled to resign owing to the insubordination of their men; but, at the express desire of the Minister of War, they had patriotically remained at their posts, and, in twenty days of laborious marching, they had led their regiment from Auch to Lyons. Three days after their arrival, seized at night in their beds, conducted to Pierre-Encize, pelted with stones on the way, kept in secret confinement, and with frequent and prolonged examinations, all this merely places their services and their innocence in stronger light. They are taken from the prison by the Jacobin populace; of the eight, seven are killed in the street, and four priests along with them, while the display of their workby the murderers is still more brazen than at Paris. They parade the heads of the dead all night on the ends of their pikes; they carry them to the Place des Terreaux into the coffee-houses; they set them on the tables and derisively offer them beer; they then light torches, enter the Ce´lestins theatre, and, marching on the stage with their trophies, mingle together real and mocktragedy.—The epilogue is both grotesque and horrible. Ro- land, at the bottom of the file, finds a letter from his colleague, Danton,88 who begs him to release the officers, already three months massacred, “for,” says Danton, “if no charge can be found against them, it would be crying injustice to keep them longer in irons.” Roland’s clerkmakesa minute on Danton’s letter: “This matter disposed of.” At this, I imagine the couple looking at each other in silence. Madame Roland may remember that, at the beginning of the Revolution, she herself demanded heads, especially “two illustrious heads,” and hoped “that the National Assembly would formally try them, or that some generous Decius” would devote himself

88. “Archives Nationales,” Letter of Danton, Oct. 3. The Jacobin Conquest / 725 to “striking them down.”89 Her prayers are granted. The trial is about to begin in the regular way, and the Decius she has invoked is everywhere found throughout France. The south-east corner remains, that Provence, described to him by Barbaroux as the last retreat of philosophy and freedom. Roland follows the Rhoˆne down with his finger, and on both banks he finds, as he passes along, the usual characteristic misdeeds.—On the right bank, in Cantal and in the Gard, “the defenders of the country” fill their pockets at the expense of rate-payers designated by themselves;90 this forced subscription is called “a voluntary gift.” “Poor

89. “Etude sur Madame Roland,” by Dauban, 82. Letter of Madame Roland to Bosc, July 26, 1798. “You busy yourselves with a municipality and allow heads to escape which will devise new horrors. You are mere children; your enthusiasm is merely a straw bonfire! If the National Assembly does not try two illustrious heads in regular form or some generous Dećius strike them down, you are all .” Ibid., May 17, 1790: “Our rural districts are much dissatisfied with the decree on feudal privileges....Areform is necessary, in which more chaˆteaux must be burnt. It would not be a serious evil were there not some danger of the enemies of the Revolution profiting by these discontents to lessen the confidence of the people in the National Assembly.”—Sept. 27, 1790. “The worst party is successful; it is forgotten that insurrection is the most sacred of duties when the country is in danger.”—Jan. 24, 1791. “The wise man shuts his eyes to the grievances or weaknesses of the private individual; but the citizen should show no mercy, even to his father, when the public welfare is at stake.” 90. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,202. Report of the commissary, member of the Cantal directory, Oct. 24. On the 16th of October at Chaudesaigues the volunteers breakopen a door and then killone of their comrades who opposes them, whom the commissary tries to save. The mayor of the place, in uniform, leads them to the dwellings of aristocrats, urging them on to pillage; they enter a number of houses by force and exact wine. The next day at St. Urcise they breakinto the house of the former cure´, devastate or pillage it, and “sell his furniture to different persons in the neighborhood.” The same treatment is awarded to sieur Vaissier, mayor, and to dame Lavalette; their cellars are forced open, barrels of wine are taken to the public square, faucets put in, and drunk. After this “the volunteers go in squads into the neighboring parishes and compel the inhabitants to give them money or effects.” The commissary and municipal officers of St. Urcise who tried to mediate were nearly killed and were saved only through the efforts of a detachment of regular cavalry. As to the Jacobin 726 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION laborers at Nismes were taxed 50 francs, others 200, 300, 900, 1,000, under penalty of devastation and of bad treatment.” In the country near Tarascon the volunteers, returning to the old-fashioned ways of brigands, brandish the sabre over the mother’s head, threaten to smother the aunt in her bed, hold the child over a deep well, and thus extort from the farmer or proprietor even as much as 4,000 or 5,000 francs; generally he keeps silent, for, in case of complaint, he is sure to have his buildings burnt and his olive trees cut down.91— On the left bank, in the Ise`re, Lieutenant-colonel Spendeler, seized by the populace of Tullins, was murdered, and then suspended by his feet to a tree on the roadside;92 in the Droˆme, the volunteers of Gard forced the prison at Monte´limart and hacked an innocent person to death with a sabre;93 in Vaucluse, the pillaging is general and constant. With all public offices in their hands, and they alone admitted into the National Guard, the old brigands of Avignon, with the municipality for their accomplice, sweep the town and raid about the country; in town, 450,000 francs of “voluntary gifts” are handed over to the Glacie`re murderers by the friends and relatives of the dead; in the country, ransoms of 1,000 and 10,000 francs are imposed mayor of Chaudesaigues, it was natural that he should preach pillage: on the sale of the effects of the nuns “he kept all bidders away, and had things knocked down to him for almost nothing.” 91. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,217. Letter of Castanet, an old gendarme, Nismes, Aug. 21.—Letter of M. Griolet, syndic-attorney of the Gard, Sept. 8: “I beg, sir, that this letter may be considered as confidential; I pray you, do not compromise me.”—Letter of M. Gilles, juge-de-paix at Rocquemaure, Oct. 31 (with official reports). 92. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,227. Letter of the municipal officers of Tullins, Sept. 8. 93. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,190. Letter of Danton, Oct. 9.—Memorial of M. Casimir Audiffret (with documents in support of it). His son had been locked up by mistake, instead of another Audiffret, belonging to the Comtat; he was sabred in prison Aug. 25. Report of the surgeon, Oct. 17: “The wounded man has two gashes more on the head, one on the left cheek, and the right leg is paralysed; he has been so roughly treated in carrying him from prison to prison as to bring on an abscess on the wrist; if he is kept there he will soon die.” The Jacobin Conquest / 727 on rich cultivators, to say nothing of the orgies of conquest and the pleasures of despots, money forcibly obtained in honor of innumerable liberty trees, banquets at a cost of five or six hundred francs, paid for by extorted funds, revelling of every sort and unrestrained havoc on the invaded farms;94 in short, every abuse characteristic of force, delighting in brutality and proud of its performances. Following this long line of murders and robbery, the Minister reaches Marseilles, and I imagine him stopping at this city somewhat dumbfounded. Not that he is anywise astonished at popular murders; undoubtedly he has had advices of them from Aix, Aubagne, Apt, Brignolles, and Eyguie`res, while there are a series of them at Mar- seilles, one in July, two in August, and two in September;95 but this he must be accustomed to. What disturbs him here is to see the national bond dissolving; he sees departments breaking away, new, distinct, independent, complete governments forming on the basis of popular sovereignty; publicly and officially, they keep funds raised for the central government for local uses; they institute penalties against their inhabitants seeking refuge in France; they organise tribunals, levy taxes, raise troops, and undertake military expeditions.96 Assembled together to elect representatives to the Conven-

94. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,195. Letter of M. Amiel, president of the bureau of conciliation, Oct. 28.—Letter of an inhabitant of Avignon, Oct. 7.— Other letters without signatures.—Letter of M. Gilles, juge-de-paix, Jan. 23, 1793. 95. Fabre, “Histoire de Marseilles,” II. 478 and following pages.—“Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,195. Letter of the Minister of Justice, M. de Joly (with supporting documents), Aug. 6.—Official reports of the Marseilles municipality, July 21, 22, 23.—Official report of the municipality of Aix, Aug. 24.—Letter of the syndic-attorney of the department (with a letter of the municipality of Aubagne), Sept. 22, etc., in which M. Jourdan, a ministerial officer, is accused of “aristocracy.” A guard is assigned to him. About midnight the guard is overcome, he is carried off, and then killed in spite of the entreaties of his wife and son. The letter of the municipality ends with the following: “Their lam- entations pierced our hearts. But, alas! who can resist the French people when aroused? We remain, gentlemen, very cordially yours, the municipal officers of Aubagne.” 96. Moniteur, XIII. 560. Act passed by the administrators of the Bouches- 728 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION tion, the electors of the Bouches-du-Rhoˆne were, additionally, disposed to establish throughout the department “the reign of liberty and equality,” and to this effect they found, says one of them, “an army of 1,200 heroes to purge the districts in which the bourgeois aristocracy still raises its bold, imprudent head.” Consequently, at Sonas, Noves, St. Re´my, Maillane, Eyrages, Graveson, Eyguie`res, extended over the territory consisting of the districts of Tarascon, Arles and Salon, these twelve hundred heroes are authorised to get a living out of the inhabitants at pleasure, while the rest of the expenses of the expedition are to be borne “by suspected citizens.”97 These expeditions are prolonged six weeks and more; one of them du-Rhoˆne, Aug. 3, “forbidding special collectors from henceforth paying taxes with the national treasury.”—Ibid., 744. A report by Roland. The department of Var, having called a meeting of commissaries at Avignon to provide for the defense of these regions, the Minister says: “This step, subversive of all government, nullifies the general regulations of the executive power.”—“Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,195. Deliberation of the three administrative bodies assembled at Marseilles, Nov. 5, 1792.—Petition of Anselm, a citizen of Avignon residing in Paris, Dec. 14.—Report of the Saint-Re´my affair, etc. 97. “Archives Nationales,” CII. I. 32. Official Report of the Electoral As- sembly of Bouches-du-Rhoˆne, Sept. 4. “To defray the expenses of this expenditure the syndic-attorney of the district of Tarascon is authorised to draw upon the collector of stamps and of the registry, and in addition thereto on the collector of direct taxation. The expenses of this expedition will be borne by the anti-revolutionary agitators who have made it necessary. A list, therefore, is to be drawn up and sent to the National Assembly. The commissioners will be empowered to suspend the district administrations, municipal officers, and generally all public functionaries who, through incivisme or improper conduct, shall have endangered the public weal. They may even arrest them as well as suspected citizens. They will see that the law regarding the disarming of suspected citizens and the banishment of priests be faithfully executed.”—Ibid., F7, 3,195. Letter of Truchement, commissary of the department, Nov. 15.— Memorial of the community of Eyguie`res and letter of the municipality of Eyguie`res, Sept. 23.—Letter of M. Jaubert, secretary of the Salon popular club, Oct. 22: “The department of Bouches-du-Rhoˆne has for a month past been ravaged by commissions....Thedespotism of one is abolished, and we now stagger under the much more burdensome yoke of a crowd of despots.”— Situation of the department in September and October, 1792 (with supporting documents). The Jacobin Conquest / 729 goes outside of the department, to Monosque, in the Basses-Alpes, and Monosque, obliged to pay 104,000 francs to its “saviors and fathers,” as an indemnity for travelling expenses, writes to the Min- ister that, henceforth, it can no longer meet his impositions. What kind of improvised sovereigns are these who have instituted perambulating brigandage? Roland, on this point, has simply to question his friend Barbaroux, their president and the executive agent of their decrees. “Nine hundred persons,” Barbaroux himself writes, “generally of slight education, impatiently listening to conservatives, and yielding all attention to the effervescent, cunning in the diffusion of calumnies, petty suspicious minds, a few men of integrity but unenlightened, a few enlightened but cowardly; many of them patriotic, but without judgment, without philosophy”; in short, a Jacobin club, and Jacobin to such an extent as to “make the hall ring with applause98 on receiving the news of the September massacre”; in the foremost ranks, “a crowd of men eager for office and money, eternal denunciators, imagining trouble or exaggerating it to obtain for themselves lucrative commissions”;99 in other words, the usual packof hungry appetites in full chase.—Perfectly to comprehend them, Roland has only to examine the last file, that of the

98. Barbaroux, “Me´moires,” 89. 99. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,196.—Letters and petition of citizen de Sades, Nov., 1792, Feb. 17, 1793, and Ventose 8, year III.: “Towards the middle of Sept., 1792 (old style), some Marseilles brigands broke into a house of mine near Apt. Not content with carrying away six loads of furniture . . . they broke the mirrors and wood-work.” The damage is estimated at 80,000 francs. Report of the executive council according to the official statement of the municipality of Coste. On the 27th of September Montbrion, commissioner of the administration of the Bouches-du-Rhoˆne, sends two messengers to fetch the furniture to Apt. On reaching Apt Montbrion and his colleague Bergier have the vehicles unloaded, putting the most valuable effects on one cart, which they appropriate to themselves, and drive away with it to some distance out of sight, paying the driver out of their own pockets: “No doubt whatever exists as to the knavery of Montbrion and Bergier, administrators and commissioners of the administration of the department.”—De Sades, the author of “Justine,” pleads his well- known civism and the ultra-revolutionary petitions drawn up by him in the name of the section of the Pikes. 730 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION neighboring departments, and consider their colleagues in Var. In this great wreckof reason and of integrity, which is termed the Jacobin Revolution, a few stray waifs still float on the surface; many of the department administrations are composed of liberals, friends of order, intelligent men, upright and firm defenders of the law. Such was the Directory of Var.100 To get rid of it the Toulon Jacobins contrived an ambush worthy of the Borgias and Oliverettos of the sixteenth century.101 On the 28th of July, in the forenoon, Sylvestre, president of the club, distributed among his trusty men in the suburbs and purlieus of the town an enormous sackof red caps, while he posted his squads in convenient places. In the mean time the municipal body, his accomplices, formally present themselves at the department bureau, and invite the administrators to join them in fraternising with the people. The administrators, suspecting nothing, accompany them, each arm in arm with a municipal officer or delegate of the club. They scarcely reach the square when there rushes upon it from every avenue a troop of red-caps lying in wait. The syndic-attorney, the vice-president of the department, and two other administrators, are seized, cut down and hung; another, M. Debaux, succeeding in making his escape, hides away, scales the ramparts during the night, breaks his thigh and lies there on the ground; he is discovered the next morning; a band, led by Jassaud, a harbor- laborer, and by Lemaille, calling himself “town hanger,” come and raise him up, carry him away in a barrow, and hang him at the first lantern. Other bands despatch the public prosecutor in the same fashion, a district administrator, a merchant, and then, spreading over the country, pillage and slay among the country houses.—In vain has the commandant of the place, M. Dumerbion, entreated the municipality to proclaim martial law. Not only does it refuse, but it enjoins him to order one-half of his troops backto their barracks.

100. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,272. Read in this ﬁle the entire correspondence of the directory and the public prosecutor. 101. Deliberation of the commune of Toulon, July 28 and following days.— That of the three administrative bodies, Sept. 10.—Lauvergne, “Histoire du department du Var,” 104–137. The Jacobin Conquest / 731

By way of an offset, it sets free a number of soldiers condemned to the galleys, and all that are confined for insubordination.—Hence- forth every shadow of discipline vanishes, and, in the following month, murders multiply. M. de Possel, a navy administrator, is taken from his dwelling, and a rope is passed around his neck; he is saved just in time by a bombardier, the secretary of the club. M. Senis, caught in his country-house, is hung on the Place du Vieux Palais. Desidery, a captain in the navy, the cure´ of La Valette, and M. de Sacqui des Thourets, are decapitated in the suburbs, and their heads are brought into town on the ends of three poles. M. de Flotte d’Argenson, vice-admiral, a man of Herculean stature, of such a grave aspect, and so austere that he is nicknamed the “Pe`re Eternel,” is treacherously enticed to the entrance of the Arsenal, where he sees the lantern already dropping; he seizes a gun, defends himself, yields to numbers, and after having been slashed with sabres, is hung. M. de Rochemaure, a major-general of marines, is likewise sabred and hung in the same manner; a main artery in the neck, severed by the blow of the sabre, spouts blood from the corpse and forms a pool on the pavement; Barry, one of the executioners, washes his hands in it and sprinkles the by-standers as if bestowing a blessing on them.—Barry, Lemaille, Jassaud, Sylvestre, and other leading assassins, the new kings of Toulon, sufficiently resemble those of Paris. Add to these a certain Figon, who gives audience in his garret, straightens out social inequalities, forces the daughters of large farmers to marry poor republicans, and rich young men to marry prostitutes,102 and, taking the lists furnished by the club or neighboring

102. “Souvenirs,” (manuscript) of M. X .M.X and his wife, stopped in Picardy, were brought to Paris by a member of the commune, a small, bandy-legged fellow formerly a chair-letter in his parish church, imbued with the doctrines of the day and a determined leveller. At the village of Saralles they passed the house of M. de Livry, a rich man enjoying an income of 50,000 francs, and the lover of Saunier, an opera-dancer. “He is a good fellow,” exclaims the bandy-legged conductor: “we have just made him marry. Lookhere, we said to him, it is time that was put a stop to! Down with prejudices! Marquises and dancers ought to marry each other. He made her his wife, and it is well he did; otherwise he would have been done for before this, or caged behind the 732 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION municipalities, ransoming all the well-to-do and opulent persons inscribed on them. In order that the portraiture of the band may be complete, it must be noted that, on the 23d of August, it attempted to set free the sixteen hundred convicts; the latter, not comprehending that they were wanted for political allies, did not dare sally forth, or, at least, the reliable portion of the National Guard arrived in time to put their chains on again. But here its eﬀorts cease, while for more than a year public authority remains in the hands of a faction which, as far as public order is concerned, does not even entertain the sentiments of a convict. More than once during the course of this long review the Minister must have been conscious of a blush of shame; for, to the reprimands despatched by him to these listless administrations, they reply by citing himself as an example: “You desire us to bring arbitrary arrests before the public prosecutor; have you denounced similar and yet greater crimes committed at the capital?”103—From all quarters come the cries of the oppressed appealing to “the patriot Minister, the sworn enemy of anarchy,” to “the good and incorruptible Min- ister of the Interior, . . . his only reproach, the good sense of his wife,” and his sole return for this is condolence and dissertations: “To lament the events which so grievously distress the province, all administrations being truly useful when they forestall evils, it being very sad to be obliged to resort to such remedies, and recommend to them a more active supervision.”104 “To lament and ﬁnd consolation in the observations made in the letter,” which announces four

Luxembourg walls.”—Elsewhere, on passing a chaˆteau in progress of demolition, the former chair-letter quotes Rousseau: “For every chaˆteau that falls, twenty cottages rise in its place.” His mind was stored with similar phrases and tirades, uttered by him as the occasion warranted. This man may be considered as an excellent specimen of the average Jacobin. 103. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,207. Letter of the administrators of the Coˆte d’Or to the Minister, Oct. 6, 1792. 104. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,195. Letter of the administrators of the Bouches-du-Rhoˆne, Oct. 29, and the Minister’s answer on the margin. The Jacobin Conquest / 733 murders, but calls attention to the fact that “the victims immolated are anti-revolutionists.”105 He has carried on written dialogues with the village municipalities, and given lessons in constitutional law to communities of pot-breakers.106 But, on this territory, he is defeated by his own principles, while the pure Jacobins read him a lesson in turn; they, likewise, are able to deduce the consequences of their own creed. “Brother and Friend, Sir,” write those of Rouen, “not to be always at the knees of the municipality, we have declared ourselves permanent, deliberative sections of the Commune.”107 Let the so- called constituted authorities, the formalists and pedants of the Ex- ecutive Council and the Minister of the Interior, looktwice before censuring the exercise of popular sovereignty. This sovereign lifts its voice and drives its clerks back into their holes; spoliation and murder, all is just that it has done. “Can you have forgotten that,

105. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,249. Letter of the administrators of the Orne, Sept. 7, and the Minister’s reply noted on the margin. 106. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,249. Correspondence with the municipality of St. Firmin (Oise). Letter of Roland, Dec. 3: “I have read the letter addressed to me on the 25th of the past month, and I cannot conceal from you the pain it gives me to find in it principles so destructive of all the ties of subordination existing between constituted authorities, principles so erroneous that should the communes adopt them every form of government would be impossible and all society broken up. Can the commune of St. Firmin, indeed, have persuaded itself that it is sovereign, as the letter states? and have the citizens composing it forgotten that the sovereign is the entire nation, and not the forty-four thousandth part of it? that St. Firmin is simply a fraction of it, contributing its share to endowing the deputies of the National Convention, the administrators of departments and districts with the power of acting for the greatest advantage of the commune, but which, the moment it elects its own administrators and agents, can no longer revoke the powers it has bestowed, without a total subversion of order? etc.” All the documents belonging to this affair ought to be given; there is nothing more instructive or ludicrous, and especially the style of the secretary-clerk. “We conjure you to remember that the administrators of the district of Senlis strive to play the part of the sirens who sought to enchant Ulysses.” 107. Letter of the central bureau of the Rouen sections, Aug. 30. 734 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION after the tempest, as you yourself declared in the height of the storm, it is the nation which saves itself? Well, sir, this is what we have done.108 . . . What! when all France was resounding with that long expected proclamation of the abolition of tyranny, you were willing that the traitors, who strove to reestablish it, should escape public prosecution! My God, what century is this in which we find such Ministers!” Arbitrary taxes, penalties, confiscations, revolutionary expeditions, nomadic garrisons, pillagings, what fault can be found with all that? “We do not pretend that these are legal ways; but, drawing nearer to nature, we demand what object the oppressed have in view in invoking justice. Is it to lag behind and vainly pursue an equitable adjustment which is rendered fleeting by judicial forms? Correct these abuses or do not complain of the sovereign people suppressing them in advance....You,sir,with so many reasons for it, would do well to recall your insults and redeem the wrongs you have inflicted before we happen to render them public.” . . . “Citizen Minister, people flatter you; you are told too often that you are virtuous; the moment this gives you pleasure you cease to be so.... Discard the astute brigands who surround you, listen to the people, and remember that a citizen Minister is merely the executor of the sovereign will of the people.” However narrow Roland may be, he must finally comprehend that the innumerable robberies and murders which he has conned over are not a thoughtless eruption, a passing crisis of delirium, but a manifesto of the victorious party, the beginning of an established regimen. Under this system, write

108. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,195. Letter of the three administrative bodies and commissaries of the sections of Marseilles, Nov. 15, 1792. Letter of the electors of Bouches-du-Rhoˆne, Nov. 28.—(Forms of politeness are omitted at the end of these letters, and no doubt purposely.) Roland replies (Dec. 31): “While fully admiring the civism of the brave Marseilles people, . . I do not fully agree with you on the exercise of popular sovereignty.” He ends by stating that all their letters with replies have been transmitted to the deputies of the Bouches-du-Rhoˆne, and that the latter are in accord with him and will arrange matters. The Jacobin Conquest / 735 the Marseilles Jacobins, “to-day, in our happy region, the good rule over the bad, and form a body which allows no contamination; whatever is vicious is in concealment or exterminated.”—The programme is very precise, and acts form its commentary. This is the programme which the faction, throughout the interregnum, sets openly before the electors. 9 CHAPTER XI =

I. The second stage of the Jacobin conquest—The importance and multitude of vacant offices— II. The elections—The young and the poor invited to the ballot- box—Danger of the Conservatives if candidates—Their chiefs absent themselves—Proportion of absentees at the primary assemblies— III. Composition and tone of the secondary assemblies—Exclusion of “Feuillant” electors—Pres- sure on other electors—Persons elected by the Conservatives obliged to resign— Elections by the Catholics cancelled—Secession of the Jacobin minorities—The election of their men made valid—Public opinion not in accord with official selections— IV. Composition of the National Convention—Number of Monta- gnards at the start—Opinions and sentiments of the deputies of the Plain—The Gironde—Ascendency of the Girondists in the Convention—Their intellectual character—Their principles—The plan of their Constitution—Their fanaticism—Their sincerity, culture and tastes—How they differ from pure Jacobins— How they comprehend popular sovereignty—Their stipulations with regard to the initiative of individuals and of groups—Weakness of philosophic thought and of parliamentary authority in times of anarchy— V. Opinion in Paris—The majority of the population constitutional—The new re´gime unpopular—Scarcity and dearness of food—Catholic customs obstructed—Universal and increasing discontent—Aversion or indifference to the Girondists—Political resignation of the majority—Modern customs incompatible with pure democracy—Men of property and income, manufacturers and tradesmen, keep aloof—Dissensions, timidity and feebleness of the Conservatives—The Jacobins alone form the sovereign people— VI. Composition of the party—Its numbers and quality decline—The Underlings—Idle and dissipated workmen—The suburban rabble—Bandits and blackguards—Prostitutes—The September actors— VII. The ruling representative man—His mental character and compass—The political ideas of M. Saule.

736 The Jacobin Conquest / 737

WENOWreach the second stage of the Jacobin conquest. After August 10 the Jacobins, for three consecutive months, extend and multiply all vacancies from the top to the bottom of the hierarchy, for the purpose of filling them with their own men.—In the first place, the faction installs representatives on the summits of public authority which represent itself alone, seven hundred and forty-nine omnipotent deputies, in a Convention which, curbed neither by collateral powers nor by a previously established constitution, disposes at pleasure of the property, the lives and the consciences of all French people.—After this, through this scarcely installed convention, it decrees the complete renewal1 of all administrative and judicial bodies, councils and directories of departments, councils and Commune municipalities, civil, criminal and commercial tribunals, justices and their assistants in the lower courts, deputies of the justices, national commissaries of the civil courts, with secretaries and bailiffs belonging to the various tribunals and administrations.2 The obligation of having practiced as a lawyer is abolished by the same stroke, so that the first comer, if he belongs to the club, may become a judge without knowing how to write, and even without being able to read.3—Just before this the staff of the National Guard, in all towns

1. Duvergier, “Collection des lois et dećrets,” decrees of Sept. 22 and Oct. 19, 1792. The electoral assemblies and clubs had already proceeded in many places to renew on their own authority the decree rendering their appointments valid. 2. The necessity of placing Jacobins everywhere is well shown in the following letter: “Please designate by a cross, on the margin of the jury-panel for your district, those Jacobins that it will do to put on the list of 200 for the next quarter. We require patriots.” (Letter from the attorney-general of Doubs, Dec. 23, 1792. Sauzay, III. 220.) 3. Pe´tion, “Me´moires” (Ed. Dauban), p. 118: “The justice who accompanied me was very talkative, but could not speak a word of French. He told me that he had been a stone-cutter before he became a justice, having taken this office on patriotic grounds. He wanted to draw up a statement and give me a guard of two gendarmes; he did not know how, so I dictated to him what to say; but my patience was severely taxed by his incredibly slow writing.” 738 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION above fifty thousand souls, and afterwards in all the towns on the frontier, has again passed through the electoral sieve.4 In like manner, the officers of the gendarmerie at Paris and throughout France once more undergo an election by their men. Finally, all post-masters and post-office comptrollers have to submit to election.—Again, this administrative weeding reaches all functionaries and employees not elective alongside of or below those who are, no matter how insignificant their service may be, however feebly and indirectly their office may be connected with political matters, such as tax receivers and assessors, directors and other agents of streams and forests, engineers, notaries, attorneys, clerks and scribes belonging to the administrative bureaus, all of whom are subject to dismissal if they do not obtain a certificate of civism from their municipality: at Troyes, out of fifteen notaries, it is refused to four,5 which leaves four places to be filled by their Jacobin clerks. At Paris,6 “all honest folks, all clerks who are educated,” are driven out of the navy offices; the war department is getting to be “a den where everybody on duty wears a red cap, where all thee-and-thou each other, even the Minister, where four hundred employees, among which are a number of women, show off in the dirtiest dress, affect the coolest cynicism, do nothing, and steal on all sides.”—Under the denunciation of the clubs, the broom is applied even at the bottom of the hierarchical scale, even to secretaries of village mayoralties, to messengers and call-boys in the towns, to jail-keepers and door-keepers, to beadles and sextons, to foresters, field-custodians, and others of this class.7

4. Decrees of July 6, Aug. 15 and 20, Sept. 26, 1792. 5. Decree of Nov. 1, 1792.—Albert Babeau, II. 14, 39, 40. 6. Dumouriez, III. 309, 355.—Miot de Melito, “Me´moires,” I. 31, 33.— Gouverneur Morris, letter of Feb. 14, 1793: “The state of disorganisation appears to be irremediable. The venality is such that, if there be no traitors, it is because the enemy have not common sense.” 7. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,268. Letter of the municipal oﬃcers of Ram- bouillet, Oct. 3, 1792. They denounce a petition of the Jacobins of the town, who strive to deprive forty foresters of their places, nearly all with families, “on account of their once having been in the pay of a perjured king.”—Arnault (“Souvenirs d’un sexage´naire”), II. 15. He resigns a small place he had in the The Jacobin Conquest / 739

All these persons must be, or appear to be, Jacobin; otherwise, their place slips away from them, for there is always some one to covet it, apply for it and take it.—Outside of employees the sweeping operation reaches the commissariat; even here there are the faithful to be provided for, and nowhere is the bait so large. The State, in ordinary times, is always the largest of consumers, and, at this moment, it is expending monthly, merely on the war, two hundred millions extra. What fish may be caught in these disturbed waters!8 All these lucrative orders as well as paid employees are at the disposition of the Jacobin people, and it makes the distribution of them; it is a lawful proprietor, who comes home after a long absence and gives or withdraws his custom as he pleases, while he makes a clean sweep in his own household.—The administrative and judicial services alone number 1,300,000 places, all those in the treasury department, in that of public works, in that of public education, and in the Church; all posts in the National Guard and in the army, from that of commander-in-chief down to a drummer; the whole of the central or local power, with the vast patronage flowing from this. assignat manufactor, because, he says, “the most insignificant place being sought for, he found himself exposed to every kind of denunciation.” 8. Dumouriez, III. 339.—Meillan, “Me´moires,” 27. “Eight days after his installation as Minister of War, Beurnonville confessed to me that he had been offered sums to the amount of 500,000 francs to lend himself to embezzlements.” He tries to sweep out the vermin of stealing employees, and is forthwith denounced by Marat.—Barbaroux, “Me´moires” (Ed. Dauban). (Letter of Feb. 5, 1793.) “I found the Minister of the Interior in tears at the obstinacy of Vieilz, who wanted him to violate the law of Oct. 12, 1791 (on promotion).” Vieilz had been in the service only four months, instead of five years, as the law required, and the Minister did not dare to make an enemy of a man of so much influence in the clubs. Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 19 (“Publication des pie`ces relatives au 31 Mai,” at Caen, by Bergoing, June 28, 1793): “My friend learned that the place had been given to another, who had paid 50 louis to the deputy.— The places in the bureaus, the armies, the administrations and commissions are estimated at 9,000. The deputies of the Mountain have exclusive disposal of them and set their price on them, the rates being almost publicly stated.” The number greatly increases during the following year (Mallet-Dupan, II. 56, March, 1794). “The public employees at the capital alone amount to 35,000.” 740 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Never was a pile of similar booty got together at one time on a public square. Lots will be drawn, apparently, by vote; but it is clear enough that the Jacobins have no idea of surrendering their prey to the chances of a free ballot; they mean to keep it as they got it, by force, and will leave no stone unturned to control the elections. II They begin by opening the way for themselves. From the first day9 a decree has suppressed the feeble and last guarantee which the law required in relation to the independence, good-standing and competency of the elector and the e´ligible. There must no longer be any distinction between active and passive citizens; there must be no difference between the qualification tax of an elector of the first degree and that of the second degree; no electoral qualification whatever. All Frenchmen, except domestics, of whom they are distrustful, supposing them under their employer’s influence, may vote at the primary assemblages, and no longer at the age of twenty-five, but at twenty-one, which brings to the polls the two most revolutionary groups, on the one hand the young, and on the other the indigent, the latter in prodigious numbers in these times of no work, dearth and poverty, amounting in all to two millions and a half, and, perhaps, three millions of new electors. At Besançon the number of the registered is doubled.10—Thus are the usual clients of the Jacobins admitted within the electoral pale, from which they had hitherto been excluded,11 and, to ensure their coming, their patrons decide that every elector obliged to leave his abiding-place “shall receive

9. Decree of Aug. 11, 12, 1792. 10. Sauzay, III. 45. The number increases from 3,200 to 7,000. 11. Durand-Maillane, “Me´moires,” p. 30: “This proceeding converted the French proletariat, which had no property or tenacity, into the dominant party at electoral assemblages.... The various clubs established in France (were) then masters of the elections.” In the Bouches-du-Rhoˆne “400 electors in Mar- seilles, one-sixth of whom had not the income of a silver marc, despotically controlled our Electoral Assembly. Not a voice was allowed to be raised against them. Only those were elected whom Barbaroux designated.” The Jacobin Conquest / 741 twenty sous mileage,” besides “three francs per diem for his sojourn.”12 In gathering together their patrons they at the same time keep away their adversaries. Political brigandage, through which they dominate and terrify France, has already provided for that. So many arbitrary arrests and unpunished murders are a warning to all candidates unwilling to join their sect; and I do not allude here to the nobles or friends of the ancient re´gime that have ﬂed or are in prison, but to the Constitutionalists and the Feuillants. Any electoral enterprise on their part would be madness, almost a suicide. Accordingly, none of them step to the front. If any discreditable conservative, like Durand-Maillane, appears on the list, it is because the revolutionists have adopted him without knowing him, and because he is a sworn enemy to royalty.13 The rest, who are more frank, and not disposed to don the popular livery and resort to club patronage, carefully stay away; they know too well that to do otherwise would mark their heads for pikes and their homes for pillage. At the very moment of depositing the vote the domains of several deputies are sacked simply because, “on the comparative lists of seven calls by name,” sent to the departments from Paris by the Jacobins, their names are found on the right.14—Through an excess of precaution the Con- stitutionalists of the Legislative body are kept at the capital, their

12. Decree of Aug. 11, 12, “Archives Nationales,” CII. 58 to 76. Official report of the Electoral Assembly of the Rhoˆne-et-Loire, held at St. Etienne. The electors of St. Etienne demand remuneration the same as the others, considering that they gave their time in the same way. Granted. 13. “Archives Nationales,” CII. 1 to 32. Official report of the Electoral Assembly of the Bouches-du-Rhoˆne, speech by Durand-Maillane: “Could I in the National Convention be otherwise than I have been in relation to the former Louis XVI., who, after his flight on the 22d of June, appeared to me unworthy of the throne? Can I do otherwise than abhor royalty, after so many of our regal crimes?” 14. Moniteur, XIII. 623, session of Sept. 8, speech by Larivie`re.—“Archives Nationales,” CII. 1 to 83. (The official reports make frequent mention of the despatch of this comparative list, and the Jacobins who send it request the Electoral Assembly to have it read forthwith.) 742 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION passports being refused to them to prevent them from returning into the provinces and obtaining votes by publicly stating the truth in relation to the recent revolution.—In like manner, all conservative journals are suppressed, reduced to silence, or compelled to turn palinodists.—Now, when one has no organ for discussion, nor candidate for representative, of what use is it to vote? And especially, since the primary assemblies are places of disorder and violence,15 patriots alone, in many places, being admitted,16 a conservative being

15. Re´tif de la Bretonne, “Les Nuits de Paris,” Night X. p. 301: “Primary assemblies were soon formed, the intriguers were active, electors were nominated, and through the vicious system adopted in the sections, uproar took the place of a majority of voices.” Cf. Schmidt, “Tableaux de la Re´volution Fran- çaise,” I. 98. Letter of Damour, vice-president of the section of the Theáˆtre- Français, Oct. 29.—“Un Se´jour en France,” p. 29. “The primary assemblies are already begun in this department (Pas-de-Calais). We happened to enter a church, where we found young Robespierre haranguing an audience as small in point of number as it was in that of respectability. In other respects noise made up for all deficiencies.” 16. Albert Babeau, I. 518. At Troyes, Aug. 26, the revolutionists in most of the sections have it decided that the relations of an e´migre´, designated as hostages and the signers of royalist addresses, shall not be entitled to vote: “The sovereign people in their primary assembly may admit among its members only pure citizens against whom there is not the slightest reproach” (resolution of the Madeleine section).—Sauzay, III. 47, 49 and following pages. At Quingey, Aug. 26, Louvot, working the Chatillon furnaces, along with a hundred of his men armed with clubs, keeps away from the ballot-box the electors of the commune of Courcelles, “suspected of incivisme.”—“Archives Nationales,” F7 3,217. Letters of Gilles, justice in the canton of Roquemaure (Gard), Oct. 31, 1792, and Jan. 23, 1793, on the electoral proceedings employed in this canton: Dutour, president of the club, left his chair to support the motion for “lantern- ing” the cross-grained and all false patriots....Onthe4thofNovember “he forced contributions by threatening to cut off heads and destroy houses.” He was elected juge-de-paix.—Another, Mage`re, “approved of the motion for setting up a gallows, provided that it was not placed in front of his windows, and stated openly in the club that if people followed the law they would never accomplish anything to be remembered.” He was elected member of the department directory.—A third, Fournier, “wrote that the gifts which citizens made to save their lives were voluntary gifts.” He is made a department councillor. “Peaceable citizens are storing their furniture in safe places in order to take to flight....There is no security in France; the epithet of aristocrat, of The Jacobin Conquest / 743

“insulted and overwhelmed with numbers,” and, if he utters an opinion, exposed to danger, also, if he remains silent, incurring the risk of denunciations, threats, and blows. To keep in the background, remain on one side, avoid being seen, and to strive to have it forgotten that one exists, is the rule under a pacha, and especially when this pacha is the commonalty. Hence the absenteeism of the majority; around the ballot-box there is an enormous void. At Paris, in the election of mayor and municipal oﬃcers, the ballottings of October, November and December collect together only 14,000 out of 160,000 registered voters, then 10,000, and, again, 7,000.17 At Besanc¸on, 7,000 registered voters result in less than 600; there is the same proportion in other towns, as, for example, in Troyes. In like manner, in the rural cantons, east of Doubs and west of Loire-Infe´rieure, but one-tenth of the electors dare exercise their right to vote.18 The electoral spring is so exhausted, so often disturbed, and so stopped up as to be almost dry: in these primary assemblies which, directly or indirectly, delegate all public powers, and which, in the expression of the common will, should be full, there are lacking six millions three hundred thousand electors out of seven millions.

Feuillant, of moderate affixed to the most honest citizen’s name suffices to make him an object of spoliation and to expose him to losing his life....Iinsist on regarding the false idea which is current in relation to popular sovereignty as the principal cause of the existing anarchy.” 17. Schmidt, “Pariser Zustande,” I. 50 and following pages.—Mortimer- Ternaux, V. 95, 109, 117, 129. (Ballot of Oct. 4, 14,137 voters; Oct. 22, 14,006; Nov. 19, 9,800; Nov. 10, 10,223; Dec. 6, 7,062.) 18. Sauzay, III. 45, 46, 221.—Albert Babeau, I. 517.—Lallie´, “Le district de Machecoul,” 225.—Cf. in the above the history of the elections of St. Afrique: out of more than 600 registered electors the mayor and syndic-attorney are elected by forty votes.—The ple´biscite of September, 1795, on the constitution of the year III. calls out only 958,000 voters. Repugnance to voting still exists. “Ninety times out of a hundred, on asking: ‘Citizen, how did the Electoral Assembly of your canton go off?’ he would reply (in patois): ‘Me, citizen? why should I go there? They had a good deal of trouble in getting along together.’ Or, ‘What would you? There were not many there; honest people stayed at home!’” (Meissner, “Voyage a` Paris,” towards the end of 1795.) 744 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

III Through this anticipated purgation the assemblies of the first degree find themselves, for the most part, Jacobin; consequently the electors of the second degree, appointed by them, are, for the most part, Jacobin; in many departments, their assembly becomes the most anarchical, the most turbulent, and the most usurping of all the clubs. Here there is only shouting, denunciations, oath-takings, incendiary motions, cheerings which carry all questions, furious speeches by Parisian commissaries, by delegates from the local club, by passing Federates, and by female wretches demanding arms.19 The Pas-de- Calais assemblage sets free and applauds a woman imprisoned for having beaten a drum in a mob. The Paris assembly fraternises with the Versailles slaughterers and the assassins of the mayor of Etampes. The assembly of the Bouches-du-Rhoˆne gives a certificate of virtue to Jourdan, the Glacie`re murderer. The assembly of Seine-et-Marne applauds the proposal to cast a cannon which might contain the head of Louis XVI. for a cannon-ball to be fired at the enemy.—It is not surprising that an electoral body without self-respect should respect nothing, and practice self-mutilation under the pretext of purification.20 The object of the despotic majority was to reign at once, without any contest, on its own authority, and to expel all offensive electors. At Paris, in the Aisne, in Haute-Loire, in Ille-et-Vilaine,

19. “Archives Nationales,” CII. 1 to 76, passim, especially the official reports of the assemblies of the Bouches-du-Rhoˆne, He´rault and Paris. Speech by Bar- baroux to the Electoral Assembly of the Bouches-du-Rhoˆne, “Brothers and friends, liberty will perish if you do not elect men to the National Convention whose hearts are filled with hatred of royalty....Mine is the soul of a freeman; ever since my fourth year it has been nourished on hatred to kings. I will relieve France from this detestable race, or I will die in the attempt. Before I leave you I will sign my own death-warrant, I will designate what I love most, I will show you all my possessions, I will lay a dagger on the table which shall pierce my heart if ever for an instant I prove false to the cause of the people!” (session of Sept. 3).—Guillon de Montleón, I. 135.—Sauzay, III. 140. 20. Durand-Maillane, I. 33. In the Electoral Assembly of the Bouches-du- Rhoˆne “there was a desire to kill an elector suspected of aristocracy.” The Jacobin Conquest / 745 in Maine-et-Loire, it excludes as unworthy the members of old Feuil- lants and monarchical clubs, and the signers of constitutionalist protests. In He´rault it cancels the elections in the canton of Servian, because the e´lus, it says, are “mad aristocrats.” In Orne it drives away an old Constituent, Goupil de Pre´feln, because he voted for the revision, also, his son-in-law, because he is his son-in-law. In the Bouches-du-Rhoˆne, where the canton of Seignon, by mistake or through routine, swore “to maintain the constitution of the kingdom,” it sets aside these retrograde e´lus, commences proceedings against the “crime committed,” and sends troops against Noves because the Noves elector, a justice who is denounced and in peril, has escaped from the electoral den.—After the purification of persons it proceeds to the purification of sentiments. At Paris, and in, at least, nine departments,21 and in contempt of the law, it suppresses the secret ballot, the last refuge of timid conservatives, and imposes on each elector a public vote by word of mouth, on his name being called; that is to say, if he does not vote as he ought to, he has the lantern before him.22 Nothing could more surely convert hesitation and indecision into good sense, while, in many a place, still more powerful machinery is violently opposed to the elections. At Paris the elections are carried on in the midst of atrocities, under the pikes of the butchers, and conducted by their instigators. At Meaux and at Rheims the electors in session were within hearing of the screeches

21. Mortimer-Ternaux, IV. 52. “Archives Nationales,” CII. 1 to 32.—Offi- cial report of the Electoral Assembly of Bouches-du-Rhoˆne. Speech by Pierre Bayle, Sept. 3: “That man is not free who tries to conceal his conscience in the shadow of a vote. The Romans openly elected their tribunes....Whoamongst us would reject so wise a measure? The galleries of the National Assembly have had as much to do with fostering the Revolution as the bayonets of patriots.”—In Seine-et-Marne the Assembly at first decided for the secret vote; at the request of the Paris commissaries, Ronsin and Lacroix, it rescinds its decision and adopts voting aloud and by call. 22. Barbaroux, “Me´moires,” 379: “One day, on proceeding to the elections, tumultuous shouts break out: ‘That is an anti-revolutionist from Arles, hang him!’ An Arlesian had, indeed, been arrested on the square, brought into the Assembly, and they were letting down the lantern to run him up.” 746 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION of the murdered priests. At Rheims the butchers themselves ordered the electoral assembly to elect their candidates, Drouet, the famous post-master, and Armonville, a tipsy wool-carder, upon which one- half of the assembly withdrew, while the two candidates of the assassins are elected. At Lyons, two days after the massacre, the Jacobin commander writes to the Minister: “Yesterday’s catastrophe puts the aristocrats to flight, and ensures us the majority in Lyons.”23 From universal suffrage thus subjected to so much sifting, submitted to such heavy pressure, heated and refined in the revolutionary alem- bic, those who control it obtain all they want, a concentrated extract, the quintessence of the Jacobin spirit. And yet, should this extract not seem to them sufficiently strong, wherever they are sovereign, they throw it away and begin over again. At Paris,24 by means of a purifying and surplus ballot, the new Council of the Commune undertakes the expulsion of its lukewarm members, while d’Ormesson, the mayor elect of the moderates, is assailed with so many threats that, on the verge of his installation, he resigns. At Lyons,25 another moderate, Nivie`re-Chol, twice elected, and, by 9,000 out of 11,000 votes, is twice compelled to abandon his place; after him, Gilibert, the physician, who, supported by the same voters, is about to obtain the majority, is seized suddenly and cast into prison; even in prison, he is elected; the clubbists confine him there more rigidly, and do not let him out even after extorting his resignation.—Elsewhere in the rural cantons, for example, in Franche-Comte´,26 a number of elections are cancelled when the person elected happens to be a Catholic. The Jacobin

23. Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 338.—De Sybel, “Histoire de l’Europe pendant la Re´volution Française” (Dosquet’s translation), I. 525. (Correspondence of the army of the South, letter by Charles de Hesse, commanding the regular troops at Lyons.) 24. Mortimer-Ternaux, V. 101, 122 and following pages. 25. Guillon de Montleón, I. 172, 196 and following pages. 26. Sauzay, III. 220 and following pages.—Albert Babeau, II. 15. At Troyes, two mayors elected refuse in turn. At the third ballot in this town of from 32,000 to 35,000 souls, the mayor-elect obtains 400 out of 555 votes. The Jacobin Conquest / 747 minority frequently secede, meet in a tavern, elect their mayor or justice of the peace, and the validity of his election is secured because he is a patriot; so much the worse for that of the majority, whose more numerous votes are null because given by “fanatics.”—The response of universal suffrage thus appealed to cannot be other than that which is framed for it. Indisputable facts are to show to what extent this response is compulsive or perverted, what a distance there is between an official choice and public opinion, how the elections give a contrary meaning to popular sentiment. The departments of Deux-Se`vres, Maine-et-Loire, la Vendeé, Loire-Infe`rieure, Morbi- han, and Finiste`re, send only anti-catholic republicans to the Con- vention, while these same departments are to become the inexhaustible nursery of the great catholic and royalist insurrection. Three regicides out of four deputies represent Loze`re, where, six months later, thirty thousand peasants are to march under the white flag. Six regicides out of nine deputies represent la Vendeé, which is going to rise from one end of it to the other in the name of the King.27 IV However vigorous the electoral pressure may have been, the voting machine has not answered what was expected from it. At the opening of the session, out of seven hundred and forty-nine deputies, only about fifty28 are found to approve of the Commune, nearly all of

27. Moniteur, XV. 184 to 223 (the roll-call of those who voted for the death of Louis XVI).—Dumouriez, II. 73 (Dumouriez reaches Paris Feb. 2, 1793, after visiting the coasts of Dunkirk and Antwerp): “All through Picardy, Artois, and maritime Flanders Dumouriez found the people in consternation at the tragic end of Louis XVI. He noticed that the very name of Jacobin excited horror as well as fear.” 28. This number, so important, is verified by the following passages:— Moniteur, session of Dec. 29, 1792. Speech by Birotteau: “Fifty members against 690.... About twenty former nobles, fifteen or twenty priests, and a dozen September judges (want to prevail against) 700 deputies.”—Ibid., 851 (Dec. 26, on the motion to defer the trial of the king): “About fifty voices, with energy, No! no!”—Ibid., 865, (Dec. 27, a violent speech by Lequinio, applauded by the extreme “Left” and the galleries; the president calls them to order): “The ap- 748 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION them elected, as at Rheims and Paris, where terror has the elector by the throat, “under the clubs, axes, daggers, and bludgeons of the butchers.”29 In other quarters, where the physical impressions of murder have not been so tangible and keen, some sense of propriety has prevented too glaring elections. The inclination to vote for well- known names could not be wholly arrested; seventy-seven members of the Constituent Assembly, and one hundred and eighty-six of the Legislative Assembly enter the Convention, and the practical knowledge which many of these have of government business has given them some light. In short, the consciences of six hundred and fifty deputies are only in part perverted. They are all, unquestionably, decided republicans, enemies of tradition, apostles of reason, and trained in deductive politics; only on these conditions could they be elected. Every candidate is supposed to possess the Jacobin faith, or, at least, to recite the revolutionary creed. The Convention, consequently, at its opening session votes unanimously, with cheers and enthusiasm, the abolition of royalty, and three months later it pronounces, by a large majority, Louis XVI. “guilty of conspiring against the liberty of the nation, and of assaults on the general welfare of the State.”30—Nevertheless, social plause continues of about fifty members of the extreme ‘Left.’”—Mortimer- Ternaux, VI. 557. (Address by Tallien to the Parisians, Dec. 23, against the banishment of the Duke of Orleans): “To-morrow, under the vain pretext of another measure of general safety, the 60 or 80 members who on account of their courageous and inflexible adherence to principles are offensive to the Brissotine faction, will be driven out.”—Moniteur, XV. 74 (Jan. 6). Robespierre, addressing Roland, utters this expression: “the factious ministers.” “Cries of Order! A vote of censure! To the Abbaye! ‘Is the honest minister whom all France esteems,’ says a member, ‘to be treated in this way?’—Shouts of laughter greet the exclamation from about sixty members.”—Ibid., XV. 114 (Jan. 11). De- nunciation of the party of anarchists by Buzot. Garnier replies to him: “You calumniate Paris; you preach civil war!” “Yes! yes!” exclaim about sixty members.—Buchez et Roux, XXIV. 368 (Feb. 26). The question is, whether Marat shall be indicted. “Murmurs from the extreme ‘Left,’ about a dozen members vociferously demanding the order of the day.” 29. Mercier, “Le nouveau Paris,” II. 200. 30. Buchez et Roux, XIX. 17, XXVIII. 168.—The king is declared guilty by 683 votes; 37 abstain from voting, as judges; of these 37, 26, either as The Jacobin Conquest / 749 habitudes still subsist under political prejudices. A man who is born in and lives for a long time in an old community, is, through this alone, marked with its imprint; the customs to which he conforms have crystallised in him in the shape of sentiments: if it is well- regulated and civilised, he has involuntarily arrived at respect for property and for human life, and, in most characters, this respect has taken very deep root. A theory, even if adopted, does not wholly succeed in destroying this respect; only in rare instances is it successful, when it encounters coarse and defective natures; to take full hold, it is necessary that it should fall on the scattered inheritors of former destructive appetites, on those hopelessly degenerate souls in which the passions of an anterior date are slumbering; then only does its malevolence fully appear, for it rouses the ferocious or plundering instincts of the barbarian, the raider, the inquisitor, and the pacha. On the contrary, with the greatest number, do what it will, integrity and humanity always remain powerful motors. Nearly all these legislators, born amongst the average of the middle class, are at bottom, whatever momentary excitement may stir their minds, what they always have been up to the time being, advocates, attorneys, merchants, priests, or physicians of the ancient re´gime, and what they continue to be later on, docile administrators or zealous functionaries of the empire,31 that is to say, ordinary civilised persons belonging to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, sufficiently individuals or legislators, declare the king guilty. None of the other 11 declare him innocent. 31. “Dictionnaire biographique,” by Eymery, 1807 (4 vols.). The situation of the conventionists who survive the Revolution may here be ascertained. Most of them become civil or criminal judges, prefects, commissaries of police, heads of bureaus, post-office employees, or registry clerks, collectors, review- inspectors, etc. The following is the proportion of regicides among those thus in office: Out of 23 prefects 21 voted for the king’s death; 42 out of 43 magistrates voted for it, the 43d being ill at the time of the sentence. Of 5 senators 4 voted for his death, and 14 deputies out of 16. Out of 36 other functionaries of various kinds 35 voted for death. Among the remaining regicides we again find 2 councillors of state, 4 diplomatic agents and consuls, 2 generals, 2 receiver-generals, 1 commissary-general of the police, 1 minister in the cabinet of King Joseph, the minister of police, and the arch-chancellor of the empire. 750 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION honest in private life to have a desire to be equally so in public life.—Hence their horror of anarchy, of Marat,32 and of the Septem- ber butchers and robbers. Three days after their assembling together they vote, “almost unanimously,” the preparation of a law “against the instigators of murder and assassination.” “Almost unanimously,” they desire to raise a guard, recruited in the eighty-three departments, against the armed bands of Paris and the Commune. Pe´tion is elected as their first president by “almost the totality of suffrages.” Roland, who has just read his report to them, is greeted with the “loudest” applause from nearly the “entire” Assembly. In short, they are for the ideal republic against actual brigands. This accounts for their ranging themselves around those upright and sincere deputies, who, in the two preceding Assemblies or alongside of them, were the ablest defenders of both principles and humanity, around Buzot, Lanjuinais, Pe´tion, and Rabaut-Saint-Etienne; around Brissot, Ver- gniaud, Guadet, Gensonne´, Isnard, and Condorcet; around Roland, Louvet, Barbaroux, and the five hundred deputies of the “Plain,” marching in one body under the leadership of the one hundred and eighty Girondists who now form the “Right.”33 The latter, among the republicans, are the most sincere and have the most faith; for they have long been such, through reflection, study and system. Nearly all of them are reading men, reasoners, philosophers, disciples of Diderot or of Rousseau, satisfied that absolute truth had been revealed by their masters, thoroughly imbued with the Encyclope´die or the Contrat Social, the same as the Puritans formerly were with the Bible.34 At the age when the mind is matur-

32. Buchez et Roux, XIX. 97, session of Sept. 25, 1792. Marat states: “‘I have many personal enemies in this assembly.’ ‘All! all!’ exclaim the entire Assembly, indignantly rising.”—Ibid., XIX. 9, 49, 63, 338. 33. Meillan, “Me´moires,” 20.—Buchez et Roux, XXVI. Session of April 15, 1793. Denunciation of the Twenty-Two Girondists by the sections of Paris: Royer-Fonfre`de regrets “that his name is not inscribed on this honorable list. ‘And all of us—all! all!’ exclaim three-quarters of the Assembly, rising from their seats.” 34. “Archives Nationales,” AF. 45. Letter of Thomas Paine to Danton, May 6, 1792 (in English). “I do not know better men or better patriots.” This letter, The Jacobin Conquest / 751 ing, and fondly clings to general ideas,35 they espoused the theory and aimed at a reconstruction of society according to abstract principles. They have accordingly set to work as pure logicians, rigorously applying the superficial and false system of analysis then in vogue. They have formed for themselves an idea of man in general, the same in all times and ages, an extract or minimum of man; they have pondered over several thousands or millions of these abstract mortals, erected their imaginary wills into primordial rights, and drawn up in anticipation the chimerical contract which is to regulate their impossible union. There are to be no more privileges, no more heredity, no qualifications of any kind; all are to be electors, all eligible and all equal members of the sovereignty; all powers are to be of short date, and conferred through election; there must be but one assembly, elected and entirely renewed annually, one executive council elected and one-half renewed annually, a national treasury- board elected and one-third renewed annually; all local administrations and tribunals must be elected; a referendum to the people, the electoral body endowed with the initiative, a constant appeal to the sovereignty, which, always consulted and always active, will manifest its will not alone by the choice of its mandatories but, again, through “the censure” which it will apply to the laws—such is the Constitution they forge for themselves.36 “The English Constitu- tion,” says Condorcet, “is made for the rich, that of America for citizens well-off; the French Constitution should be made for all men.”—Thus entitled, it is the only legitimate one; every institution that departs from it is opposed to natural right and, therefore, fit compared with the speeches or publications of the day, produces a singular impression through its practical good sense. This Anglo-American, however radical he may be, relies on nothing but experience and example in his political discussions. 35. Cf. the memoirs of Buzot, Barbaroux, Louvet, Madame Roland, etc. 36. Buchez et Roux, XXIV. 102. (Plan drawn up by Condorcet, and reported in the name of the Committee on the Constitution, April 15 and 16, 1793.) Condorcet adds to this a report of his own, of which he publishes an abstract in the Chronique de Paris. 752 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION only to be put down.—This is what the Legislative Assembly has done, and we are well aware through what persecution of Catholic consciences, through what violations of feudal property, through what encroachments on the legal authority of the King, with what passion against the remains of the ancient re´gime, with what toleration of crime by the people, with what rigidity, haste and rashness, and with what illusions,37 even to plunging France into an European war, even to arming the vilest classes, even to seeing, in the overthrow of all government, the advent of philosophy and the triumph of reason.—The Girondist, where his Utopia is concerned, is a sectarian, and he knows no scruples. Little does he care whether nine out of ten electors vote; he regards himself as the authorised representative of the ten. Little does he care whether the great majority of Frenchmen favor the Constitution of 1791; it is his business to impose on them his own. Little does he care whether his former opponents, King, e´migre´s, unsworn ecclesiastics, are honorable men or at least excusable; he will launch against them every rigorous legal proceeding, transportation, confiscation, civil death and physical death.38 In his own eyes he is the justiciary, and his investiture is bestowed upon him by eternal right. There is no human infatuation so pernicious to man as that of absolute right; nothing is better calculated for the destruction in him of the hereditary accumulation of moral conceptions.—Within the narrow bounds of their creed, however, the Girondists are sincere and consistent. They are masters of their formulae; they know how to deduce consequences from them; they believe in them the same as a geometrician in his theorems, and a theologian in the articles of his faith; they are anxious to apply them, to devise a constitution, to establish a regular government, to emerge from a barbarous state, to put an end to fighting

37. Buchez et Roux, XXIV. 102. Condorcet’s abstract contains the following extraordinary sentence: “In all free countries the influence of the populace is feared with reason; but give all men the same rights and there will be no populace.” 38. Cf. Edmond Bire´, “La le´gende des Girondins,” on the part of the Gi- rondists in all these odious measures. The Jacobin Conquest / 753 in the street, to pillaging, to murders, to the sway of brutal force and of naked arms. The disorder, moreover, so repugnant to them as logicians is still more repugnant to them as cultivated, polished men. They have a sense of what is proper,39 of becoming ways, and their tastes are even refined. They are not familiar with, nor do they desire to imitate, the rude manners of Danton, his coarse language, his oaths, and his low associations with the populace. They have not, like Robespierre, gone to lodge with a boss-carpenter, to live with him and eat with his family. Unlike Pache, Minister of War, no one among them “feels honored” by “going down to dine with his porter,” and by sending his daughters to the club to give a fraternal kiss to drunken Jacobins.40 At Madame Roland’s house there is a salon, although it is stiff and pedantic; Barbaroux sends verses to a marchioness, who, after the 2d of June, elopes with him to Caen.41 Condorcet has lived in high society, while his wife, a former can- oness, possesses the charms, the repose, the instruction, and the finesse of an accomplished woman. Men of this stamp cannot endure

39. These traits are well defined in the charges of the popular party against them made by Fabre d’Eglantine. Maillan, “Me´moires,” 323. (Speech of Fabre d’Eglantine at the Jacobin Club in relation to the address of the commune, demanding the expulsion of the Twenty-Two.) “You have often taken the people to task; you have even sometimes tried to flatter them; but there was about this flattery that aristocratic air of coldness and dislike which could deceive nobody. Your ways of a bourgeois patrician are always perceptible in your words and acts; you never wanted to mix with the people. Here is your doctrine in few words: after the people have served in revolutions they must return to dust, be of no account, and allow themselves to be led by those who know more than they and who are willing to take the trouble to lead them. You, Brissot, and especially you, Pe´tion, you have received us formally, haughtily, and with reserve. You extend to us one finger, but you never grasp the whole hand. You have not even refused yourselves that keen delight of the ambitious, insolence and disdain.” 40. Buzot, “Me´moires,” 78. 41. Edmond Bire´, “La le´gende des Girondins.” (Inedited fragments of the memoirs of Pe´tion and Barbaroux, quoted by Vatel in “Charlotte Corday and the Girondists,” III. 471, 478.) 754 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION close alongside of them the inept and gross dictatorship of an armed rabble. In providing for the public treasury they require regular taxes and not tyrannical confiscations.42 To repress the malevolent they require “punishments and not proscriptions.”43 In all State trials they oppose irregular courts, and strive to maintain for those under indictment some of the usual safeguards.44 On declaring the King guilty they hesitate in pronouncing sentence of death, and try to lighten their responsibility by appealing to the people. “Laws and not blood,” an expression uttered with great effect in a drama of the day, is the statement in brief of their political ideas.—Now the law, in its essence, especially Republican law, is the law of all; once enacted, nobody, no citizen, no city, no party, can refuse to obey it without being criminal. It is monstrous that one city should arrogate to itself the privilege of ruling the nation; Paris, like other departments, ought to be reduced to its one-eighty-third proportion of influence. It is monstrous that, in a capital of 700,000 souls, five or six thousand radical Jacobins should oppress the sections and alone elect their candidates; in the sections and at the polls, all citizens, at least all republicans, should enjoy an equal and free vote. It is monstrous that the principle of popular sovereignty should be used to cover up attacks against popular sovereignty, that, under the pretence of saving the State, the first-comer may kill whom he pleases, that, under the color of resisting oppression, each mob should have the right to put the government down.—Hence, this militant right must be moderated, kept within legal bounds and subjected to a fixed process.45 Should any individual desire a law, a reform or a

42. Buchez et Roux, XXVI. 177. A financial plan offered by the department of He´rault, adopted by Cambon and rejected by the Girondists. 43. Buchez et Roux, XXV. Speech by Vergniaud (April 10), pp. 376, 377, 378. “An effort is made to accomplish the Revolution by terror. I would accomplish it through love.” 44. Maillan, 22. 45. Buchez et Roux, XXIV. 109. Plan of a constitution presented by Con- dorcet. Declaration of rights, article 32. “In every free government the mode of resistance to different acts of oppression should be regulated by law.”—Ibid., 136. Title VIII. of the Constitution “De la Censure des lois.” The Jacobin Conquest / 755 public measure, let him state this on paper over his own signature and that of fifty other citizens of the same primary assembly; then the proposition must be submitted to his own primary assembly; then, in case it obtains a majority, to the primary assemblies of his arrondissement; then, in case of a majority, to the primary assemblies of his department; then, in case of a majority, to the Legislative body; then, in case of rejection, to all the primary assemblies of the empire, so that after a second verdict of the same assemblies twice consulted, the Legislative body, yielding to the majority of primary suffrages, may dissolve and a new Legislative body, in which all old members shall be declared ineligible, take its place.—This is the final expression, and the master idea, of the theory. Condorcet, its able constructor, surpassed himself. No more ingenious nor more complicated piece of mechanism could be drawn out on paper. The Girondists, in the closing article of this unobjectionable constitution, think that they have discovered a way to muzzle the brute and give the sovereign full sway. Just as if the brute could be muzzled with any constitution, and especially this one! Just as if it was in the humor to let the muzzle be put on! Robespierre, on the part of the Jacobins, replies by an article opposing that of Condorcet.46 “To subject resistance to oppression to legal formalities is the last refinement of tyranny.... When a government violates the people’s rights, a general insurrection of the people, as well as of portions of the people, is the most sacred of duties.” Now, political orthodoxy, close reasoning, and oratorical talent are no arms against this ever-muttering insurrection. “Our philosophers,” says a good observer,47 “want to attain their

46. Buchez et Roux, XXIV. 93. Session of the Jacobin Club, April 21, 1793. 47. Schmidt, “Tableaux de la Re´volution Française,” II. 4. (Report of Du- tard, June 6, 1793.)—The mental traits of the Jacobins form a contrast and are fully visible in the following speeches: “We desire despotically a popular constitution.” (Address of the Paris Jacobin Club to the clubs in the departments, Jan. 7, 1793.)—Buchez et Roux, XXIII. 288.—Ibid., 274. (Speech by Legros in the Jacobin Club, Jan. 1.) “Patriots are not counted; they go by weight.... One patriot in a scale weighs more than 100,000 aristocrats. One Jacobin weighs 756 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION ends by persuasion; which is equivalent to saying that battles are won by eloquence, fine speeches, and plans of a constitution. Very soon, according to them, . . . it will suffice to take complete copies of Machiavelli, Rousseau and Montesquieu into a fight instead of cannon, it never occurring to them that these men, like their works, never were, and are not still, anything but simpletons against a cut- throat provided with a good sword.”—The parliamentary ground is fallen away; things have returned to a state of nature, that is, to a state of war, and not discussion but force is the question now on hand. To be in the right, to convince the convention, to obtain majorities, to pass decrees, would be suitable in ordinary times, under a government provided with an armed force and a regular administration, by which, from the summits of public authority, the decrees of a majority descend through submissive functionaries to a sympathetic and obedient population. But, in times of anarchy, and above all, in the den of the Commune, in Paris, such as the 10th of August and the 2d of September made it, all this is of no account.

V And, first of all, because in this great city of Paris they are isolated, and have no group of zealous partisans to depend upon. For, if the large majority is opposed to their adversaries, that is not in their favor, it having secretly, at heart, remained “constitutionalist.”48 “I more than 10,000 Feuillants. One republican weighs more than 100,000 monarchists. One patriot of the Mountain weighs more than 100,000 Brissotins. Hence I conclude that the convention should not be stopped by the large number of votes against the death-sentence of Louis XVI., (and that) even (if there should be) but a minority of the nation desiring Capet’s death.”—“Applauded.” (I am obliged to correct the last sentence, as it would otherwise be obscure.) 48. Buzot, “Me´moires,” 33: “The majority of French people yearned after royalty and the Constitution of 1790. This was the strongest feeling, and especially at Paris....This people is republican under the guillotine....Allits desires, all its hopes incline to the constitution of 1791.”—Schmidt, I. 232 (Du- tard, May 16). Dutard, an old advocate and friend of Garat, is one of those rare men who see facts behind words; clear-sighted, energetic, active, abounding in practical counsels, and deserving of a better chief than Garat. The Jacobin Conquest / 757 would make myself master of Paris,” says a professional observer, “in ten days without striking a blow if I had but six thousand men, and one of Lafayette’s stable-boys to command them.”49 Lafayette, indeed, since the departure or concealment of the royalists, represents the old, fixed, and deep-seated opinion of the capital. Paris submits to the Girondists as well as to the Montagnards as usurpers; the mass of the public regards them with ill-will, and not only the bourgeoisie, but likewise the majority of the people, is opposed to the established re´gime. Work is scarce and food is dear; brandy has tripled in price; only four hundred oxen are brought in at the Poissy market instead of seven or eight thousand; the butchers declare that, the following week, there will be no meat in Paris except for the sick. To obtain a small ration of bread it is necessary to wait five or six hours in a line at the baker’s shops, and,50 as is customary, workmen and housekeepers impute all this to the government. This government, which so poorly provides for its needs, injures them yet more in their deepest feelings, in the habits most dear to them, in their faith and worship. The common people, even at Paris, is still at this time very religious, much more so than at the present day. When the priest bearing the Host passes along the street, the crowd “gathers from all sides, men, women, and children, young and old, and fall on their knees in adoration.”51 The day on which the relics of Saint- Leu are borne in procession through the Rue St. Martin, “everybody kneels; I did not see a man,” says a careful observer, “that did not take off his hat. At the guard-house of the Mauconseil section, the

49. Schmidt, ibid., I. 173, 179 (May 1, 1793). 50. Dauban (“Diurnal de Beaulieu,” April 17), “La Demagogie a` Paris en 1793,” p. 152.—“Archives Nationales,” AFII. 45 (report by the police, May 20). “The dearness of supplies is the leading cause of agitation and complaints.”—(Ibid., May 24). “The tranquillity which now prevails in Paris will soon be disturbed if the prices of the prime necessities of life do not shortly diminish.”—(Ibid., May 25). “Complaints against dear food increase daily and this circumstance looks as if it might become one of the motives of forthcoming events.” 51. Schmidt, I. 198 (Dutard, May 9). 758 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION entire company presented arms.” At the same time the “citoyennes around the markets talked with each other to know if there was any way of decking houses with tapestry.”52 The following week they compel the revolutionary committee of Saint-Eustache53 to authorise another procession, and again each one kneels: “everybody approved of the ceremony, no one, that I heard of, making any objection. This is a striking picture....Isawrepentance, I saw the parallel each is forced to draw between the actual state of things and the former one. I saw what a privation the people had to endure in the loss of that which, formerly, was the most imposing of all church ceremonies. People of all ranks and ages were deeply aﬀected and humble, and many had tears in their eyes.” Now, in this respect, the Girondists, by virtue of being philosophers, are more icono- clastic, more intolerant than any one, and there is no reason for preferring them to their adversaries. At bottom, the government installed by the recent electoral comedy, for the major portion of the Parisians, has no authority but the fact of its existence; people put up with it because there is no other, fully recognising its worth- lessness;54 it is a government of strangers, of interlopers, of cavillers,

52. Schmidt, I. 350; II. 6 (Dutard, May 30, June 7 and 8). 53. Durand-Maillane, 100: “The Girondist party was yet more impious than Robespierre.”—A deputy having demanded that mention should be made of the Supreme Being in the preamble of the constitution, Vergniaud replied: “We have no more to do with Numa’s nymph than with Mahomet’s pigeon; reason is sufficient to give France a good constitution.”—Buchez et Roux, XIII. 444. Robespierre having spoken of the Emperor Leopold’s death as a stroke of Prov- idence, Guadet replies that he sees “no sense in that idea,” and blames Robes- pierre for “endeavoring to restore the people to the slavishness of superstition.”—Ibid., XXVI. 63 (session of April 19, 1793). Speech by Vergniaud against article IX. of the Declaration of Rights, which states that “all men are free to worship as they please.” This article, says Vergniaud, “is a result of the despotism and superstition under which we have so long groaned.”—Salles: “I ask the Convention to draw up an article by which each citizen, whatever his form of worship, shall bind himself to submit to the law.”—Lanjuinais, often ranked along with the Girondists, is a Catholic and confirmed Gallican. 54. Schmidt, I. 347 (Dutard, May 30). “What do I now behold? A discontented people hating the Convention, all its administrators, and the actual state of things generally.” The Jacobin Conquest / 759 of bunglers, the weak and the violent. The Convention has no hold either on the people or on the bourgeois class, and in proportion as it glides more rapidly down the revolutionary hill, it severs one by one the ties which still bind it to the indifferent. In a reign of eight months it has alienated public opinion entirely. “Almost all who have property of any kind are conservative,”55 and all the conservatives are against it. “The gendarmes here openly talk against the Revolution, even up to the revolutionary tribunal, whose judgments they loudly condemn. All the old soldiers detest the actual order of things.”56—The volunteers “who come back from the army appear angry at putting the King to death, and on that account they would flay all the Jacobins.”57—No party in the Convention escapes this universal disaffection and growing aversion. “If the question of guillotining the members of the Convention could be put to an open vote, it would be carried against them by a majority of nineteen- twentieths,”58 which, in fact, is about the proportion of electors who, through fright or disgust, keep away from the polls. Let the “Right” or the “Left” of the Convention be victors or vanquished, that is a matter which concerns them; the public at large does not enter into the discussions of its conquerors, and no longer cares for either Gironde or “Mountain.” Its old grievances always revive “against the Vergniauds, Guadets” and company;59 it does not like them, and has no confidence in them, and will let them be crushed without helping them. The infuriates may expel the Thirty-Two, if they choose, and put them under lock and key. “There is nothing the aristocracy (meaning by this, owners of property, merchants, bankers, the rich, and the well-to-do), desire so much as to see them guillotined.”60 “Even the inferior aristocracy (meaning petty trades-

55. Schmidt, I. 278 (Dutard, May 23). 56. Schmidt, I. 216 (Dutard, May 13). 57. Schmidt, I. 240 (Dutard, May 17). 58. Schmidt, I. 217 (Dutard, May 13). 59. Schmidt, I. 163 (Dutard, April 30). 60. Schmidt, II. 37 (Dutard, June 13). Cf. Ibid., II. 80. (Dutard, June 21): “If the guillotining of the Thirty-Two were subject to the call by name, and the vote a secret one, I declare to you that every respectable man would hasten 760 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION men and head-workmen) take no more interest in their fate than if they were so many escaped wild beasts . . . again caught and put in their cages.”61 “Guadet, Pe´tion, Brissot, would not find thirty persons in Paris who would take their part, or even take the first step to save them.”62 Apart from all this, it makes but little difference whether the majority has any preferences; its sympathies, if it has any, will never be other than platonic. It no longer counts for anything in either camp, it has withdrawn from the battle-field, it is now simply the sport of the conflict, the prey or the booty of the future conqueror. For, unable or unwilling to comply with the political system imposed on it, it is self-condemned to utter powerlessness. This system is the direct government of the people by the people, with all that ensues, permanence of the section assemblies, debates in public of the clubs, uproar in the galleries, motions in the open air, mobs and manifestations in the streets; nothing is less attractive and more impracticable to occupied and civilised beings. In our modern communities, work, the family, and social intercourse absorb nearly all our time; hence, such a system suits only the indolent and brutal, who, without homes or a calling, pass their days at the club, the same as in a tavern or cafe´, and there find themselves in their place; the others refuse to enter a circle which seems wholly and expressly shaped for celibates, foundlings, and persons with no profession, living in lodgings, foul-mouthed, destitute of the sense of smell, with a gift of the gab, robust arms, tough hide, solid haunches, expert in hustling, and with whom blows are the substitute for arguments.63—After the in from the country to give his vote and that none of those now in Paris would fail to betake themselves to their sections.” 61. Schmidt, II. 35 (Dutard, June 13). On the sense of these two words, inferior aristocracy, Cf. all of Dutard’s reports and those of other observers in the employ of Garat. 62. Schmidt, II. 37 (Dutard, June 13). 63. Schmidt, I. 328 (Perrie`re, May 28): “Intelligent men and property- owners abandoned the section assemblies to others as places where the workman’s fist prevailed against the orator’s tongue.”—Moniteur, XV. 114 (session The Jacobin Conquest / 761

September massacres, and on the opening of the barriers, a number of proprietors and persons living on their incomes, not alone the suspected but those who thought they might become so, escaped from Paris, and, during the following months, the emigration increases along with the danger. Towards December lists have been reported against former Feuillants; “we are assured that during the past eight days more than fourteen thousand persons have left the capital.”64 According to the report of the Minister himself,65 “many who are independent in fortune and position abandon a city where the renewal of proscription is talked of daily.”—“Grass grows in the finest streets,” writes a deputy, “while the silence of the grave reigns in the The´baıˆdes of the faubourg Saint-Germain.”—As to the conservatives who remain, they confine themselves to private life, from which it follows that, in the political balance, those present are of no more account than the absentees. At the municipal elections in October, November, and December, out of 160,000 registered, there are 144,000, then 150,000, and then 153,000 who stay away from the polls; these, certainly, and for a much stronger reason, do not show themselves at the assemblies of their sections. Commonly, out of three or four thousand citizens, only fifty or sixty attend; one of these, called a general assembly, which signifies the will of the people to the Convention, is composed of twenty-five voters.66 Ac- of Jan. 11, speech by Buzot). “There is not a man in this town who owns anything, that is not afraid of being insulted and struck in his section if he dares raise his voice against the ruling power....Thepermanent assemblies of Paris consist of a small number of men who have succeeded in keeping other citizens away.”—Schmidt, I. 325 (Dutard, May 28): “Another plan would be to drill young men in the use of the club. One must be a sans-culotte, must live with sans-culottes, to find out expedients of this sort. There is nothing the sans-culottes fear so much as a club. A number of young men lately carried them in their pantaloons, and everybody trembled as they passed. I wish that the fashion were general.” 64. Moniteur, XV. 95 (Letter of Charles Villette, deputy). 65. Moniteur, XV. 179 (Letter of Roland, Jan. 11. 1793). 66. Moniteur, XV. 66, session of Jan. 5, speech of the mayor of Paris; XV. 114, session of Jan. 14, speech by Buzot; XV. 136, session of Jan. 13, speech by 762 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION cordingly, what would a sensible man, a friend of order, do in these dens of fanatics? He stays at home, as on stormy days; he lets the shower of words spend itself, not caring to be spattered in the gutter of nonsense which carries off the filth of his district. If he leaves his house at all he goes out for a walk, the same as in old times, to indulge the tastes he had under the old re´gime, those of the well-cared-for (administre´) Parisian, those of the talkative, loitering, refined cockney. “Yesterday evening,” writes a man who feels the coming Reign of Terror, “I took my stand in the middle of the right alley of the Champs-Elyseés;67 it was thronged with— who do you think? Would you believe it, with moderates, aristocrats, those who have any property, and very pretty women, elegantly dressed, seeking the caresses of the balmy spring breeze! It was a charming sight. All were gay and smiling. I was the only one that wasnotso....Iwithdrew hastily, and, on passing through the Tui- leries garden, I saw a repetition of what I had seen before, forty thousand proprietors scattered here and there, almost as many as Paris contains.”—These are evidently the sheep ready for the slaughter-house. They no longer think of defence, they have abandoned their posts to the sans-culottes, “they refuse all civil and military functions,”68 they avoid doing duty in the National Guard and pay their substitutes. In short, they withdraw from a game which, in 1789, they desired to play without understanding it, and in which, since the end of 1791, they have always burnt their fingers. The cards may be handed over to others, especially as the cards are dirty and the players fling them in each others’ faces; as for themselves

a deputation of Federates.—Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 91 (Letter of Gadol to Roland, October, 1792).—XXI. 417 (Dec. 20, article by Marat): “The assemblies are deserted through ennui and disgust.”—Schmidt, II. 69 (Dutard, June 18). 67. Schmidt, I. 203 (Dutard, May 10). The engravings published during the early period of the Revolution and under the directory exhibit this scene perfectly (cabinet des estampes). 68. Moniteur, XV. 67 (session of Jan. 5, 1793). Speech by the mayor of Paris. The Jacobin Conquest / 763 they are content to be lookers-on.—“Leave them their old enjoyments,69 leave them the pleasure of going and coming throughout the kingdom; do not force them to take part in the war. Subject them to the heaviest taxation and they will not complain; nobody will even know that they exist, while the most serious question that disturbs them in their thoughtful days is, can one amuse one’s self as much under a republican form of government as under the ancient re´gime?” They hope, perhaps, to escape under cover of inoffensive neutrality. Is it likely that the victor, whoever he is, will regard people as enemies who are resigned to his rule beforehand? “A dandy70 alongside of me remarked, yesterday morning, ‘They will not take my arms away, for I never had any.’ ‘Alas,’ I replied to him, ‘don’t make a boast of it, for you may find forty thousand ninnies in Paris that would say the same thing, and, indeed, it is not at all to the credit of Paris.’”—Such is the blindness or self-complacency of the city denizen who, having always lived under a good police, is unwilling to change his habits, and is not aware that the time has come for him to turn fighting man in his turn. The shopman, below the manufacturers, the merchants and the man living on his income, is still less disposed to give up his private affairs for public affairs, inasmuch as his business will not wait for him, he being confined to his office, store or counting-room. For example, “the wine-dealers71 are nearly all aristocrats in the sense

69. Schmidt, I. 378 (Blanc, June 12). 70. Schmidt, II. 5 (Dutard, June 5). 71. Schmidt, II. (Dutard, June 11).—Ibid., II. (Dutard, June 18): “I should like to visit with you,” if it were possible, “the 3,000 or 4,000 wine-dealers, and as many other places of refreshment in Paris; you would find the 15,000 clerks they employ constantly busy. If we should then go to the offices of the 114 notaries, we should again find two-thirds of these gentlemen in their caps and red slippers, also very much engaged. We might then, again, go to the 200 or 300 printing establishments, where we should find 4,000 or 5,000 editors, com- positors, clerks, and porters all conservatised because they no longer earn what they did before; and some because they have made a fortune.”—The incom- patibility between modern life and direct democratic rule strikes one at every step, owing to modern life being carried on under other conditions than those 764 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION of this word at this period,” but “never were their sales so great as during the insurrections of the people and in revolutionary days.” Hence the impossibility of obtaining their services in those days. “They are seen on their premises very active, with three or four of their assistants,” and turn a deaf ear to every appeal. “How can we leave when custom is so good? People must have their wants supplied. Who will attend to them if I and the waiters should go away?”—There are other causes of weakness. All grades in the National Guard and all places in the municipality having been given up to the Jacobin extremists, they have no chiefs; the Girondists are incapable of rallying them, while Garat, the Minister, is unwilling to employ them. Moreover, they are divided amongst themselves, no one having any confidence in the other, “it being necessary to chain them together to have anything accomplished.”72 Besides this, the remembrance of September weighs upon their spirits like a nightmare.—All this converts people into a timid flock, ready to scamper at the slightest alarm. “In the Contrat Social section,” says an officer of the National Guard, “one-third of those who are able to defend the section are off in the country; another third are hiding away in their houses, and the other third dare not do anything.”73 “If, out of fifty thousand of the conservatised, you can collect together three thousand, I shall be very much astonished. And if, out of these three thousand, five hundred only are found to agree, and have courage enough to express their opinion, I shall be still more astonished. The latter, for instance, must expect to be Septemberised!”74 This they know, and hence they keep silent and bend beneath the yoke. “What, in- which characterise life in ancient times. For modern life these conditions are, the magnitude of States, the division of labor, the suppression of slavery and the requirements of personal comforts and prosperity. Neither the Girondists nor the Montagnards, who aimed to revive Athenian and Spartan ways, comprehended the precisely opposite conditions on which Athens and Sparta flourished. 72. Schmidt, I. 207 (Dutard, May 10). 73. Schmidt, II. (Dutard, June 19). 74. Schmidt, II. 70 (Dutard, June 10). The Jacobin Conquest / 765 deed, would the majority of the sections do when it is demonstrated that a dozen raving maniacs at the head of a sans-culottes section puts the other forty-seven sections of Paris to flight?”75 —Through this desertion of the commonwealth and their self-abandonment, they surrender in advance, and, in this great city, as formerly in ancient Athens and Rome, we see alongside of an immense population of subjects without any rights, a small despotic oligarchy in itself composing the sovereign people.

VI Not that this minority has been on the increase since the 10th of August, but on the contrary.—On the 19th of November, 1792, its candidate for the mayoralty, Lhuillier, obtains only 4,896 votes.76 On the 18th of June, 1793, its candidate for the command of the National Guard, Henriot, will secure but 4,573 votes; to ensure his election it will be necessary to cancel the election twice, impose the open vote, and relieve voters from showing their section tickets, which will permit the trusty to vote successively in other quarters and apparently double their number by allowing each to vote two or three times.77 Putting all together, there are not six thousand Jacobins in Paris, all of them sans-culottes and partisans of the “Mountain.”78

75. Schmidt, II. 81 (Dutard, June 19).—Cf. I 333 (Dutard, May 29): “It is a positive fact that twenty moderates often surround two or three obstreperous fellows who apparently force them to applaud the most incendiary motions.”— I. 163 (Dutard, April 30): “A dozen Jacobins can frighten 200 or 300 aristocrats.” 76. Mortimer-Ternaux, V. 101. 77. Meillan, 54.—Raffet, Henriot’s competitor and denounced as an aristocrat, had at first the most votes, 4,953 against 4,578. At the last ballot, out of about 15,000 he still has 5,900 against 9,087 for Henriot.—Mortimer-Ternaux, VIII. 31: “The electors had to vote thirty at a time. All who dared give their votes to Raffet were marked with a red cross on the roll-call, followed by the epithet of anti-revolutionist.” 78. Schmidt, II. 37 (Dutard, June 13): “Marat and others have a party of from 4,000 to 6,000 men, who would do anything to rescue them.”—Meillan, 155 (depositions taken by the Commission of the Twelve): Laforet has stated that there were 6,000 sans-culottes ready to massacre objectionable deputies at 766 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Ordinarily, in a section assembly, they number “ten or fifteen,” at most “thirty or forty,” “organised into a permanent tyrannical board.” . . . “The rest listen and raise their hands mechanically.” . . . “Three or four hundred visionaries, whose devotion is as frank as it is stupid, and two or three hundred more to whom the result of the last revolution did not bring the places and honors they too evidently relied on,” form the entire staff of the party; “these are the clamorers of the sections and of the groups, the only ones who have clearly declared themselves against order, the apostles of a new sedition, scathed or ruined men who need disturbance to keep alive,” while under these comes the train of Marat, vile women, worthless wretches, and “paid shouters at three francs a day.”79 The quality, again, of the factious is still more reduced than their number. Plenty of worthy men, small tradesmen, wine-dealers, cook-shop keepers, clerks, who, on the 10th of August, were against the Court, are now against the Commune.80 The September affair, probably, disgusted them, and they were not disposed to recommence the massacres. A workman named Gonchon, for example, the usual spokesman of the faubourg Saint-Antoine, an upright man, sincere and disinterested, supports Roland, and, very soon, at Lyons, seeing how things are with his own eyes, he is to loyally endorse the revolt of the moderates against the Maratists.81 “Insensibly,” say observers, “the respectable class of the arts is leaving the faction to the first signal.—Schmidt, II, 87 (Dutard, June 24): “I know that there are not in all Paris 3,000 decided revolutionists.” 79. Moniteur, XV. 114, session of Jan 11, speech by Buzot.—Ibid., 136, session of Jan. 13, speech of the federates.—XIV. 852, session of Dec. 23, 1792, speech of the Federates of Finisterre.—Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 80, 81, 87, 91, 93 (Letter of Gadol to Roland, October 1792).—Schmidt, I. 207 (Dutard, May 10, 1793). 80. Schmidt, II. 37 (Dutard, June 13). 81. Mortimer-Ternaux, IV. 269 (petition presented by Gonchon).—Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 82, 83, 93 (Letter by Gadol, testimony in relation to Gon- chon).—“Archives Nationales,” AF, II. 43. (Letters of Gonchon to the Minister Garat, May 31, June 1, June 3, 1793). These letters are very ingenuous and interesting. He addresses the Minister: “Citizen Garra.” The Jacobin Conquest / 767 join the healthy party.”82 “Now that water-carriers, porters and the like storm the loudest in the sections, it is plain to all eyes that the gangrene of disgust has reached the fruit-sellers, tailors, shoe-makers, keepers of refreshment saloons,” and others of that class.83— Towards the end, “butchers of both classes, high and low, are ar- istocratised.”—In like manner, “the women in the markets, except a few who are paid and whose husbands are Jacobins, curse and swear, fume, fret and storm.” “This morning,” says a merchant, “four or five of them were here; they no longer insist on being called citoyennes; they declare that they “spit on the republic.”84 —There are no patriot females now but the lowest of the low class, the harpies who pillage shops as much through envy as through necessity, “boat- women, embittered by hard labor,85 . . . jealous of the grocer’s wife, better dressed than herself, as the latter was of the wives of the attorney and counsellor, as these were of those of the financier and noble. The woman of the people thinks she cannot do too much to degrade the grocer’s wife to her own level.” Thus reduced to its dregs through the withdrawal of its tolerably honest recruits, the faction now comprises none but the scum of the populace, first, “subordinate workmen who look upon the downfall of their employers with a certain satisfaction,” then, the meanest of petty vendors, old-clothes dealers, hucksters, “those who offer second-hand coats for sale around the market, fourth-class cooks who, at the cemetery of the Innocents, sell meat and beans under umbrella tops,”86 next, domestics highly pleased with now being masters of their masters, scullions, grooms, lackeys, concierges, every

82. Schmidt, I, 254 (Dutard, May 19).—Moniteur, XIV. 522 (Letter addressed to Roland, number for Nov. 21, 1792): “The sections (are) composed of, or at least frequented, nineteen-twentieths of them, by the lowest class, both in manners and information.” 83. Schmidt, II. 39 (Dutard, June 13). 84. Schmidt, II. 87 (Dutard, June 14). The expression of these fish-women is still coarser. 85. Re´tif de la Bretonne (“Bibliographie de ses oeuvres, par Jacob,” 287).— (On the pillage of shops, Feb. 25 and 26, 1793). 86. Schmidt, II. 61; I. 265 (Dutard, May 21 and June 17). 768 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION species of valet, who, in contempt of the law, voted at the elections87 and formed at the Jacobin club “stupid people” satisfied “that they were universal geographers because they had ridden post once or twice,” and that they were politicians “because they had read ‘The Four Sons of Aymon.’”88—But, in this overflowing slime, spreading around in broad sunshine, it is the ordinary scum of great cities which forms the grossest flux, the outcasts of every trade and profession, dissipated workmen of all kinds, the irregular and marauding troops of the social army, the class which, “discharged from La Pitie´, run through a career of disorder and end in Biceˆtre.”89 “From La Pitie´ to Biceˆtre is a well known popular adage. Men of this stamp are without any principle whatever. If they have fifty francs they live on fifty, and if they have only five they live on five; spending everything, they are always out of pocket and save nothing. This is the class that took the Bastille,90 got up the 10th of August, etc. It is the same class which filled the galleries in the Assembly with all sorts of characters, filling up the groups,” and, during all this time

87. Schmidt, I. 96 (Letter of citizen Lauchou to the president of the Con- vention, Oct. 11, 1792).—II. 37 (Dutard, June 13). Statement of a barber’s wife. “They are a vile set, the servants. Some of them come here every day. They chatter away and say all sorts of horrible things about their masters. They are all just alike. Nobody is crazier than they are. I knew that some of them had received favors from their masters, and others who were still being kindly treated; but nothing stopped them.” 88. Schmidt, I. 246 (Dutard, May 18).—Gre´goire, “Me´moires,” I. 387. The mental and moral decline of the party is well shown in the new composition of the Jacobin Club after September, 1792: “I went back there,” says Gre´goire in September, 1792 (after a year’s absence), “and found it inrecognisable; no opinions could be expressed there other than those of the Paris faction.... I did not set foot there again; (it was) a factious gambling-hell.”—Buchez et Roux, XXVI. 214 (session of April 30, 1793, speech by Buzot). “Behold that once famous club. But thirty of its founders remain there; you find there none but men steeped in debt and crime.” 89. Schmidt, I. 189 (Dutard, May 6). 90. Cf. Re´tif de la Bretonne, “Nuits de Paris,” vol. XVI. (July 12, 1789). At this date Re´tif is in the Palais-Royal, where “since the 13th of June numerous meetings have been held and motions made....Ifound there none but brutal fellows with keen eyes, preparing themselves for plunder rather than for liberty.” The Jacobin Conquest / 769 it never did a stroke of work. Consequently, “a wife who owns a watch, ear-rings, finger-rings, any jewels, first takes them to the pawnbrokers where they are at last sold. At this period many of these personages owe the butcher, the baker, the wine-dealer, etc.; nobody trusts them any more. They have ceased to love their wives, and their children cry for food, while the father is at the Jacobin club or at the Tuileries. Many of them have abandoned their pursuits and lost standing,” while, either through “indolence” or consciousness “of their incapacity,” . . . “they would see this pursuit prosper- ing with a sort of regret.” That of a political gossip, of a paid clamorer, is more agreeable, and such is the opinion of all the loungers which the bugle summons to the works on the camp around Paris.—Here,91 eight thousand men are paid forty sous a day “to do nothing”; “the workmen come along at eight, nine and ten o’clock in the morning. If they remain after roll-call . . . they merely trundle about a few wheelbarrow loads of dirt. Others play cards all day, and most of them leave at three or four o’clock, after dinner. On asking the inspectors about this they reply that they are not strong enough to enforce discipline, and are not disposed to be killed.” Whereupon, on the Convention decreeing piece-work, the pretended workmen fall back on their equality, remind it that they had risen on the 10th of August, and wish to massacre the commissioners. It is not until the 2d of November that they are finally dismissed with an allowance of three sous per league mileage for those of the departments. Enough, however, remain in Paris to increase immeasurably the troop of drones which, accustomed to consuming the store of honey, think they have a right to be paid by the public for buzzing around the State. As a rear-guard, they have “the rabble of the suburbs of Paris, which flocks in at every tap of the drum because it hopes to make

91. Mortimer-Ternaux, V. 226 and following pages (address of the sans- culottes section, Sept. 25).—“Archives Nationales,” F7, 146 (address of the Roule section, Sept. 23). In relation to the threatening tone of those at work on the camp, the petitioners add: “Such was the language of the workshops in 1789 and 1790.” 770 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION something.”92 As advance-guard they have “brigands,” while the front ranks contain “all the robbers in Paris, which the faction has enrolled in its party to use when required”; the second ranks are made up of “a number of former domestics, the bullies of gambling- houses and of houses of ill-fame, all the vilest class.”93—Naturally, lost women form a part of the crowd. “Citoyennes,” Henriot says, addressing the prostitutes of the Palais-Royal, whom he has assembled in its garden, “citoyennes, are you good republicans?” “Yes, general, yes!” “Have you, by chance, any refractory priest, any Austrian, any Prussian, concealed in your apartments?” “Fie, ﬁe! We have nobody but sans-culottes!”94—Along with these are the thieves and prostitutes out of the Chaˆtelet and Conciergerie, set at liberty and then enlisted by the September slaughterers, under the command of an old hag named Rose Lacombe,95 forming the usual audience of the Convention; on important days, seven or eight hundred of these may be counted, sometimes two thousand, stationed at the entrance and in the galleries, from nine o’clock in the morning.96—Male and female, “this anti-social vermin”97 thus crawls around at the sessions of the Assembly, the Commune, the Jacobin

92. Schmidt, II. 12 (Dutard, June 7): “During a few days past I have seen men from Neuilly, Versailles, and St. Germain staying here, attracted by the scent.” 93. Schmidt, I. 254 (Dutard, May 19).—At this date robbers swarm in Paris; Mayor Chambon, in his report to the Convention, himself admits it. (Moniteur, XV. 67, session of Jan. 5, 1793.) 94. De Goncourt, “La Socie´te´ Française pendant la Re´volution.” (Accord- ing to the “Courrier de l’Egalite´,” July, 1793.) 95. Buzot, 72. 96. Moore, Nov. 10, 1792 (according to an article in the Chronique de Paris). The day Robespierre made his “apology,” “the galleries contained from seven to eight hundred women, and two hundred men at most. Robespierre is a priest who has his congregation of devotees.”—Mortimer-Ternaux, VII. 562 (letter of the deputy Michel, May 20, 1793): “Two or three thousand women, organised and drilled by the Fraternal Society in session at the Jacobin Club, began their uproar, which lasted until 6 o’clock, when the house adjourned. Most of these creatures are prostitutes.” 97. An expression of Gadol’s in his letter to Roland. The Jacobin Conquest / 771 club, the revolutionary tribunal, the sections, and one may imagine the physiognomies it offers to view. “It would seem,” says a deputy,98 “as if every sink in Paris and other great cities had been scoured to find whatever was foul, the most hideous, and the most infected.... Ugly, cadaverous features, black or bronzed, surmounted with tufts of greasy hair, and with eyes sunken half-way into the head.... They belched forth with their nauseous breath the grossest insults amidst sharp cries like those of carnivorous animals.” Among them there can be distinguished “the September murderers, whom” says an observer99 in a position to know them, “I can compare to nothing but lazy tigers licking their paws, growling and trying to find a few more drops of blood just spilled, awaiting a fresh supply.” Far from hiding away they strut about and show themselves. One of them, Petit-Mamain, son of an innkeeper at Bordeaux and a former soldier, “with a pale, wrinkled face, sharp eyes and bold air, wearing a scimetar at his side and pistols at his belt,” promenades the Palais- Royal100 “accompanied or followed at a distance by others of the same species,” and “taking part in every conversation.” “It was me,” he says, “who ripped open La Lamballe and tore her heart out.... All I have to regret is that the massacre was such a short one. But we shall have it over again. Only wait a fortnight!” and, thereupon, he calls out his own name in defiance.—Another, who has no need of stating his well-known name, Maillard, president of the Abbaye massacres, has his head-quarters at the cafe´ Chre´tien,101

98. Buzot, 57. 99. Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 80 (Letter of Gadol to Roland). 100. Beaulieu, “Essais,” I. 108 (an eye-witness).—Schmidt, II. 15. Report by Perrie`res, June 8. 101. Beaulieu, Ibid., I. 100. “Maillard died, his stomach eaten away by brandy” (April 15, 1794).—Alexandre Sorel, “Stanislas Maillard,” pp. 32 to 42. Report of Fabre d’Eglantine on Maillard, Dec. 17, 1793. A decree subjecting him to indictment along with Ronsin and Vincent, Maillard publishes his apology, in which we see that he was already active in the Rue Favart before the 31st of May. “I am one of the members of that meeting of true patriots and I am proud of it, for it is there that the spark of that sacred insurrection of the 31st of May was kindled.” 772 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Rue Favart, from which, guzzling drams of brandy, “he despatches his moustached men, sixty-eight cut-throats, the terror of the surrounding region”; we see them in coffee-houses and in the foyers of the theatres “drawing their huge sabres,” and telling inoffensive people: “I am Mr. so and so; if you look ugly at me I’ll cut you down!”—A few months more and, under the command of one of Henriot’s aids, a squad of this band will rob and toast (chauffer) peasants in the environs of Corbeil and Meaux.102 In the mean time, even in Paris, they toast, rob, and commit rape on grand occasions. On the 25th and 26th of February, 1793,103 they pillage wholesale and retail groceries, “save those belonging to Jacobins,” in the Rue des Lombards, Rue des Cinq-Diamants, Rue Beaurepaire, Rue Montmartre, in the Ile Saint-Louis, on the Port-au-Ble´, before the Hoˆtel-de-Ville, Rue Saint-Jacques, in short, twelve hundred of them, not alone articles of prime necessity, soap and candles, but again, sugar, brandy, cinnamon, vanilla, indigo and tea. “In the Rue de la Bourdonnaie, a number of persons came out with loaves of sugar they had not paid for and which they re-sold.” The affair was arranged beforehand, the same as on the 5th of October, 1789; among the women are seen “several men in disguise who did not even take the precaution of shaving,” and in many places, thanks to the confusion, they heartily abandon themselves to it. With his feet in the

102. Alexandre Sorel, ibid. (denunciation of the circumstance by Lecointre, Dec. 14, 1793, accompanied with oﬃcial reports of the justices).—“Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,268 (letter of the directory of Corbeil to the Minister, with oﬃcial report, Nov. 28, 1792). On the 26th of November eight or ten armed men, foot-soldiers, and others on horseback, entered the farm-house of a man named Ruelle, in the commune of Lisse. They dealt him two blows with their sabres, then put a bag over his head, kicked him in the face, tormented him, and almost smothered his wife and two women servants, to make him give up his money. A carter was shot with a pistol in the shoulder and twice struck with a sabre; the hands about the premises were tied and bound like so many cattle. Finally the bandits went away, carrying with them silver plate, a watch, rings, laces, two guns, etc. 103. Moniteur, XV. 565.—Buchez et Roux, XXIV. 335 and following pages.—Re´tif de la Bretonne, “Nuits de Paris,” VIII. 460 (an eye-witness). The last of these details are given by him. The Jacobin Conquest / 773

ﬁre or a pistol at his head, the master of the house is compelled to give them “gold, money, assignats and jewels,” only too glad if his wife and daughters are not outraged before his eyes as in a town taken by assault. VII Such is the political populace which, after the last months of the year 1792, rules over Paris, and, through Paris, over the whole of France, ﬁve thousand brutes and blackguards with two thousand hussies, about the number a good police force would expel from the city, were it important to give the capital a cleaning out;104 they also, convinced of their rights, are all the more ardent in their revolutionary faith, because their creed converts their vices into virtues, and transforms their misdeeds into public services.105 They are really

104. Cf. Ed. Fleury, “Baboeuf,” pp. 139 and 150. Through a striking coincidence the party staff is still of the same order in 1796. Baboeuf estimates his adherents in Paris as “4,000 revolutionists, 1,500 members of old governments, and 1,000 bourgeois cannoneers,” besides soldiers, prisoners, and a police force. He also recruited a good many prostitutes. The men who come to him are workmen who pretend to have arsouille´ in the Revolution and who are ready to repeat the job, provided it is for the purpose of killing those rich rascals, the monopolisers, merchants, informers, and panache´s at the Luxembourg.” (Letter of the agent of the Bonne-Nouvelle section, April 13, 1796.) 105. The proportion, composition and spirit of the party are everywhere the same, especially at Lyons (Guillon de Montleón, “Me´moires,” and Balleydier, “Histoire du peuple de Lyon,” passim); at Toulon (Lauvergne, “Histoire du de´partment du Var”); at Marseilles, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Strasbourg, Besançon, etc.—At Bordeaux (Riouffe, “Me´moires,” 23) “it consisted wholly of vagabonds, Savoyards, Biscayans, even Germans . . . errand-men and water-carriers, so powerful that they arrested the rich, and so well-off that they travelled by post.” Riouffe adds: “When I read this passage in the Conciergerie men from every corner of the republic exclaimed in one voice: ‘It is the same in all the communes!’”—Cf. Durand-Maillane, “Me´moires,” 67: “This people, thus qualified, since the suppression of the silver marc has been the most vicious and most depraved in the community.”—Dumouriez, II. 51. “The Jacobins, taken for the most part, from the most abject and most brutal of the nation, unable to furnish men of sufficient dignity for offices, have degraded offices to their own level.... They are drunken, barbarous Helots that have taken the places of the 774 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION the sovereign people, and it is their innermost thought which has to be brought to light. If we would clearly understand passing events we must discern the emotions which spontaneously arise in them on the trial of the King, at the defeat of Neerwinden, at the defection of Dumouriez, on the insurrection in La Vendeé, at the accusation of Marat, the arrest of He´bert, and each of the dangers which in turn fall on their heads. For, this is not borrowed emotion; it does not descend from above; they are not a trusty army of disciplined soldiers, but a suspicious accumulation of temporary adherents. To command them requires obedience to them, while their leaders must always be their instruments. However popular and firmly established a chief may seem to be, he is there only for a short time, for what he is worth as a speaking-trumpet for their passions, and as purveyor to their appetites. Such was Pe´tion in July, 1792, and such is Marat since the days of September. “One Marat more or less (which will soon be seen) would not change the course of events.”106—“But one only would remain,107 Chaumette, for instance; one would suffice to lead the horde,” because it is the horde itself which leads. “Its attachment will always be awarded to whoever shows a disposition to follow it the closest in its outrages without in any respect caring for its old patrons....Its liking for Marat and Robespierre is not so great as for those who will exclaim, Let us kill, let us plunder!” Let the leader of the day stop following the current of the day, and he will be crushed as an obstacle or cast off as an incubus.—Judge if they are willing to be entangled in the spider’s web which the

Spartans.”—The sign of their advent is the expulsion of the liberals and of the reﬁned of 1789. (“Archives Nationales,” F7, 4,434, No. 6. Letter of Richard to the Committee on Public Safety, Ventoˆse 3, year II.). During the proconsulate of Baudot at Toulouse “almost all the patriots of 1789 were excluded from the popular club they had founded; an immense number were admitted whose patriotism reached only as far back as the 10th of August, 1792, if it even went so far as the 31st of last May. It is an established fact that out of more than 1,000 persons who now compose the club there are not ﬁfty whose patriotism dates as far back as the beginning of the Revolution.” 106. Roederer, “Chronique des cinquante jours.” 107. Schmidt, I. 246 (Dutard, May 18). The Jacobin Conquest / 775

Girondists put in their way. Instead of the metaphysical constitution with which the Girondists confront them, they have one in their own head ready made, simple to the last point, adapted to their capacity and their instincts. The reader will call to mind one of their chiefs, whom we have already met, M. Saule, “a stout, stunted little old man, drunk all his life, formerly an upholsterer, then a peddler of quackeries in the shape of fourpenny boxes of hangman’s grease, to cure pains in the loins,”108 afterwards head applauder in the galleries of the Constituent Assembly and driven out for ras- cality, restored under the Legislative Assembly, and, under the protection of a groom of the Court, favored with a spot near the As- sembly door, to set up a patriotic coﬀee-house, then awarded six hundred francs as a recompense, provided with national quarters, appointed inspector of the tribunes, a regulator of public opinion, and now “one of the madcaps of the Corn-market.” Such a man is typical, an average specimen of his party, not only in education, character and conduct, but, again, in ambition, principles, logic and success. “He swore that he would make his fortune, and he did it. His constant cry was that nobles and priests should be put down, and we no longer have either. He has constantly shouted against the civil list, and the civil list has been suppressed. At last, lodged in the house belonging to Louis XVI., he told him to his face that his head ought to be struck oﬀ, and the head of Louis XVI. has fallen.”—Here, in brief compass, is the history and the portrait of all the rest; it is not surprising that genuine Jacobins comprehend the Revolution in the same way as M. Saule,109 when, for them, the

108. Schmidt, I. 215 (Dutard, May 23). 109. Buchez et Roux, XXV. 156 (extract from the Patriote Français, March 30, 1793). Speech by Chasles at the Jacobin Club, March 27: “We have announced to our fellow-citizens in the country that by means of the war-tax the poor could be fed by the rich, and that they would find in the purses of those egoists the wherewithal to live on.”—Ibid., 269. Speech by Rose Lacombe: “Let us make sure of the aristocrats; let us force them to meet the enemies which Dumouriez is bringing against Paris. Let us give them to understand that if they prove treacherous their wives and children shall have their throats cut, and that we will burn their houses....Idonotwant patriots to leave the city; 776 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION sole legitimate Constitution is the definitive establishment of their omnipotence; when they call order and justice the boundless despotism they exercise over property and life; when their instinct, as narrow and violent as that of a Turkish bey, comprises only extreme and destructive measures, arrests, transportations, confiscations, executions, all of which is done with head erect, with delight as if a patriotic duty, by right of a moral priesthood, in the name of the people, either directly and tumultuously with their own hands, or indirectly and legally by the hands of their docile representatives. This is the sum of their political system, from which nothing will detach them; for they are anchored fast to it with the full weight and with every hold upon it that characterises their immorality, ignorance and folly. Through the hypocritical glitter of compulsory parades, their one fixed idea imposes itself on the orator that he may utter it in tirades, on the legislator that he may put it into decrees, on the administrator that he may put it in practice, and, from their opening campaign up to their final victory, they will tolerate but one variation, and this variation is trifling. In September, 1792, they declare by their acts: “Those whose opinions are opposed to ours will be assassinated, and their gold, jewels and pocket-books will

I want them to guard Paris. And if we are beaten, the first man who hesitates to apply the torch, let him be stabbed at once. I want all the owners of property who have grabbed everything and excited the people’s anger, to kill the tyrants themselves or else be killed.” [Applause—April 3.]—Ibid., 302 (in the Con- vention, April 8): “Marat demands that 100,000 relations and friends of the e´migre´s be seized as hostages for the safety of the commissioners in the hands of the enemy.”—Cf. Balleydier, 117, 122. At Lyons, Jan. 26, 1793, Challier addresses the central club: “Sans-culottes, rejoice! the blood of the royal tiger has flowed in sight of his den! But full justice is not yet done to the people. There are still 500 among you deserving of the tyrant’s fate!”—He proposes on the 5th of February a revolutionary tribunal for trying arrested persons in a revolutionary manner. “It is the only way to force it (the Revolution) on royal and aristocratic factionists, the only rational way to avenge the sovereignty of the brave sans-culottes, who belong only to us.”—Hydens, a national commissioner, adds: “Let 25,000,000 of Frenchmen perish a hundred times over rather than one single indivisible Republic!” The Jacobin Conquest / 777 belong to us.” In November, 1793, they are to declare through the official inauguration of the revolutionary government: “Those whose opinions differ from ours will be guillotined and we shall be their heirs.”110 Between this programme, which is supported by the Jacobin populace and the programme of the Girondists which the majority in the Convention supports, between Condorcet’s Consti- tution and the summary articles of M. Saule, it is easy to see which will prevail. “These Parisian blackguards,” says a Girondist, “take us for their valets!”111 Let a valet contradict his master and he is sure to lose his place. From the first day, when the Convention in a body traversed the streets to begin its sessions, certain significant expressions enabled it to see into what hands it had fallen: “Why should so many folks come here to govern France,” says a by-stander, “haven’t we enough in Paris?”112

110. Mallet-Dupan, the last expression. 111. Buzot, 64. 112. Michelet, IV. 6 (according to an oral statement by Daunou).—Buchez et Roux, 101 (Letter of Louvet to Roland): “At the moment of the presentation of their petition against armed force (departmental) by the so-called commissioners of the 48 sections of Paris, I heard Santerre say in a loud tone to those around him, somewhat in these words: ‘You see, now, these deputies are not up to the Revolution....That all comes from ﬁfty, a hundred, two hundred leagues oﬀ; they don’t understand one word you say!’” 9 CHAPTER XII =

Precarious situation of a central government within the precincts of a local jurisdiction— I. Jacobin advantages—Their sway in the section assemblies—Main- tenance, re-election and completion of the Commune—Its new chiefs, Chaumette, He´bert and Pache—The National Guard recast—Jacobins elected officers and sub-officers—The paid band of roughs—Private and public funds of the party— II. Its parliamentary recruits—Their characters and minds—Saint-Just—Vio- lence of the minority in the Convention—Pressure of the galleries—Menaces of the streets— III. Defection among the majority—Effect of physical fear—Effect of moral cowardice—Effect of political necessity—Internal weakness of the Gi- rondists—Accomplices in principle of the Montagnards— IV. Principal decrees of the Girondist majority—Arms and means of attack surrendered by it to its adversaries— V. Committees of Supervision after March 28, 1793—The re´gime of August and September, 1792, revived—Disarmament—Certificates of civism—Forced enlistments—Forced loans—Use made of the sums raised—Vain resistance of the Convention—Marat, indicted, is acquitted—Vain resistance of the population—Manifestations by young men repressed—Violence and victory of the Jacobins in the assemblies of the sections— VI. Jacobin tactics to constrain the Convention—Petition of April 15 against the Girondists—Means employed to obtain signatures—The Convention declares the petition calumnious—The commission of Twelve and arrest of He´bert—Plans for massacres—Intervention of the Mountain leaders— VII. The 27th day of May—The central revolutionary committee—The municipal body displaced and then restored—Henriot, commanding general—The 31st of May—Measures of the Commune—The 2d of June—Arrest of the Twelve and of the Twenty-two— VIII. Character of the new governors—Why France accepted them.

778 The Jacobin Conquest / 779

“CITIZEN DANTON,” wrote the deputy Thomas Paine, “the danger, every day increasing, is of a rupture between Paris and the departments. The departments did not send their deputies to Paris to be insulted, and every insult shown to them is an insult to the department that elected and sent them. I see but one effectual plan to prevent this rupture taking place, and that is to fix the residence of the Convention and of the future assemblies at a distance from Paris....Isaw,during the American Revolution, the exceeding inconvenience that arose from having the government of Congress within the limits of any municipal jurisdiction. Congress first resided in Philadelphia, and, after a residence of four years, it found it necessary to leave it. It then adjourned to the State of Jersey. It afterwards removed to New York. It again removed from New York to Philadelphia, and, after experiencing in every one of these places the great inconvenience of a government within a government, it formed the project of building a town not within the limits of any municipal jurisdiction for the future residence of Congress. In every one of the places where Congress resided, the municipal authority privately or publicly opposed itself to the authority of Congress, and the people of each of those places expected more attention from Congress than their equal share with the other States amounted to. The same thing now takes place in France, but in a greater excess.”—Danton knows all this, and he is sufficiently clear-headed to comprehend the danger; but the furrow is laid out, traced, and by himself. Since the 10th of August Paris holds France down while a handful of revolutionists tyrannise over Paris.1

1. Moore, II. 185 (Oct. 20): “It is evident that all the departments of France are in theory allowed to have an equal share in the government; yet in fact the single department of Paris has the whole power of the government.” Through the pressure of the mob Paris makes the law for the Convention and for all France.—Ibid., II. 534 (during the king’s trial). “All the departments of France, including that of Paris, are in reality often obliged to submit to the clamorous tyranny of a set of hired ruﬃans in the tribunes who usurpthe name and functions of the sovereign people, and, secretly directed by a few demagogues, govern this unhappy nation.” Cf. Ibid., II. (Nov. 13). 780 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

I Owing to the composition and the holding of the section assemblies, the original source of power has remained Jacobin, and has become of a darker and darker hue; accordingly, the electoral processes which, under the Legislative body, had fashioned the usurping Com- mune of the 10th of August, are perpetuated and aggravated under the Convention.2 “In nearly all the sections,3 those who occupy the chair are sans-culottes, and who arrange things inside the chamber, place the sentinels and establish the censors and auditors. Five or six spies, familiar with the section, and paid forty sous a day, remain during the session, and dare do all things. These same individuals, again, are intended for the transmission of orders from one Com- mittee of Supervision to another, . . . so that if the sans-culottes of one section are not strong enough they may call in those of a neighboring section.”—In such assemblies the elections are decided beforehand, and we see how the faction keeps forcibly in its hands, or obtains by force, every elective position. The Council of the Com- mune, in spite of the hostile inclinations of the Legislative Assembly and the Convention, succeeds at ﬁrst in maintaining itself four months; then, in December,4 when it is at last compelled to break

2. Schmidt, I. 96. Letter of Lauchou to the president of the Convention, Oct. 11, 1792: “The section of 1792 on its own authority decreed on the 5th of this month that all persons in a menial service should be allowed to vote in our primary assemblies....Itwould be well for the National Convention to convince the inhabitants of Paris that they alone do not constitute the entire republic. However absurd this idea may be, it is gaining ground every day.”— Ibid., 99. Letter of Damour, vice-president of the Pantheon section, Oct. 29: “Citizen Paris . . . has declared that when the law is in conflict with general opinion no attention must be paid to it....These disturbers of the public peace who desire to monopolise all places, either in the municipality or elsewhere, are themselves the cause of the greatest tumult.” 3. Schmidt, I. 223 (report by Dutard, May 14). 4. Mortimer-Ternaux, VI. 117; VII. 59 (ballottings of Dec. 2 and 4).—In most of these and the following ballottings the number of voters is but one- twentieth of those registered. Chaumette is elected in his section by 53 votes; He´bert by 56; Geney, a master-cooper, by 34: Lachenard, a tailor, by 39; Douce, The Jacobin Conquest / 781 up, it reappears through the authorisation of the suffrage, reinforced and completed by its own class, with three chiefs, a syndic-attorney, a deputy and a mayor, all three authors or abettors of the September massacre; with Chaumette, Anaxagoras, so-called, once a cabin-boy, then a clerk, always in debt, a chatterer, and given to drink; He´bert, called “Pe`re Duchesne,” which states about all that is necessary for him; Pache, a subaltern busy-body, a bland, smooth-faced intriguer, who, with his simple air and seeming worth, pushes himself up to the head of the War Department, where he used all its resources for pillaging, and who, born in a door-keeper’s lodgings, returns there, either through craft or inclination, to take his dinner.—The Jaco- bins, with the civil power in their hands, also grab the military power. Immediately after the 10th of August,5 the National Guard is reorganised and distributed in as many battalions as there are sections, each battalion thus becoming “an armed section”; by this one may divine its composition, and what demagogues are selected for its officers and sub-officers. “The title of National Guard,” writes a deputy, “can no longer be given to the lot of pikemen and substitutes, mixed with a few bourgeois, who, since the 10th of August, maintain the military service in Paris.” There are, indeed, 110,000 names on paper; when called out on important occasions, all who are registered may respond, if not disarmed, but, in general, almost all stay at home and pay a sans-culotte to mount guard in their place. In fact, there is for the daily service only a hired reserve in each section, about one hundred men, always the same individuals. This makes in Paris a band of four or five thousand roughs, in which the squads may be distinguished which have already figured in Septem- ber—Maillard and his 68 men at the Abbaye, Gauthier and his 40 men at Chantilly, Audouin, the “Sapper of the Carmelites,” and his a building-hand, by 24.—Pache is elected mayor Feb. 15, 1793, by 11,881 votes, out of 160,000 registered. 5. Buchez et Roux, XVII. 101 (decrees of Aug. 19, 1792).—Mortimer- Ternaux, IV. 223.—Beaulieu, “Essais,” III. 454. “The National Guard ceased to exist after the 10th of August.”—Buzot, 454.—Schmidt, I. 33 (Dutard, May 29). “It is certain that there is no armed force belonging to Paris.” 782 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

350 men in the suburbs of Paris, Fournier, Lazowski and their 1,500 men at Orleans and Versailles.6—As to the pay of these and that of their civil auxiliaries, the faction is not troubled about that; for, along with power, it has seized money. To say nothing of its rapine in September,7 and without including the lucrative offices at its disposition, four hundred of these being distributed by Pache alone, and four hundred more by Chaumette,8 the Commune has 850,000 francs per month for its military police. Other bleedings at the Trea- sury cause more public money to flow into the pockets of its clients. One million per month supports the idle workmen which fife and drum have collected together to form the camparound Paris. Five millions of francs protect the petty tradesmen of the capital against the depreciation in value of certificates of credit. Twelve thousand francs a day keep down the price of bread for the Paris poor.9 To these regularly allowed subsidies add the funds which are diverted or extorted. On one side, in the War Department, Pache, its accomplice before becoming its mayor, organizes a steady stream of waste and stealings; in three months he succeeds in bringing about a deficiency of 130,000,000, “without vouchers.”10 On another side, the

6. Beaulieu, Ibid., IV. 6.—“Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,249 (Oise).—Let- ters of the Oise administrators, Aug. 24, Sept. 12 and 20, 1792. Letters of the administrators of the district of Clermont, Sept. 14, etc. 7. Cf. above, ch. ix.—“Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,249. Letter of the administrators of the district of Senlis, Oct. 31, 1792. Two of the administrators of the Senlis hospital were arrested by Paris commissaries and conducted “before the pretended Committee of Public Safety in Paris, with all that they possessed in money, jewels, and assignats.” The same commissaries carry off two of the hospital sisters of charity, with all the silver plate in the establishment; the sisters are released, but the plate is not returned.—Buchez et Roux, XXVI. 209 (Patriote Français). Session of April 30, 1793, the final report of the commission appointed to examine the accounts of the old Committee of Supervision: “Panis and Sergent are convicted of breaking seals.” . . “67,580 francs found in Septenil’s domicile have disappeared, as well as many articles of value.” 8. Schmidt, I, 270. 9. Mortimer-Ternaux, IV. 221 to 229, 242 to 260; VI. 43 to 52. 10. De Sybel, “Histoire de l’Europe pendant la Re´volution Française,” II. 76.—Madame Roland, II. 152. “It was not only impossible to make out the The Jacobin Conquest / 783

Duke of Orleans, become Philippe-Egalite´, dragged along by his old stipendiaries with a rope around his neck and almost strangled, has to pay out more than ever, even down to the very depths of his purse; to save his own life he consents to vote for the King’s death, besides resigning himself to other sacriﬁces;11 it is probable that a large portion of his 74,000,000 of indebtedness at his death is due to all this.—Thus in possession of civil and military oﬃces, of arms and money, the faction, masters of Paris, has nothing to do but master the isolated Convention, and this it invests on all sides.12

II Through the elections, its advance-guard of fifty deputies is already posted there; while, owing to the charm it exercises over excitable and despotic natures, over brutal temperaments, narrow, disjointed minds, weak imaginations, doubtful honesty, and old religious or social rancor, it succeeds in doubling this number at the end of six months.13 On the benches of the extreme “Left,” around Robes- accounts, but to imagine where 130,000,000 had gone.... Thedayhewas dismissed he made sixty appointments,...fromhisson-in-law, who, a vicar, was made a director at 19,000 francs salary, to his hair-dresser, a young scape- grace of nineteen, whom he makes a commissary of war.” . . . “It was proved that he paid in full regiments that were actually reduced to a few men.”— Meillan, 20. “The faction became the master of Paris through hired brigands, aided by the millions placed at its disposition by the municipality, under the pretext of ensuring supplies.” 11. See in the “Memoirs of Mme. Elliot,” the particulars of this vote.— Beaulieu, I. 445. “I saw a placard signed by Marat posted on the corners of the streets, stating that he had demanded 15,000 francs of the Duke of Orleans as compensation for what he had done for him.”—Gouverneur Morris, I. 260 (Letter of Dec. 21, 1792). The galleries force the Convention to revoke its decree against the expulsion of the Bourbons.—On the 22d of December the sections present a petition in the same sense, while there is a sort of riot in the suburbs in favor of Philippe-Egalite´. 12. Schmidt, I. 246 (Dutard, May 13). “The Convention cannot count in all Paris thirty belonging to its party.” 13. Buchez et Roux, XXV. 463. On the call of the house, April 13, 1793, ninety-two deputies vote for Marat. 784 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION pierre, Danton and Marat, the original nucleus of the September faction, sit men of their stamp, first, the corrupt like Chabot, Tallien and Barras, wretches like Fouche´, Guffroy and Javogues, crazy enthusiasts like David, savage maniacs like Carrier, paltry simpletons like Joseph Lebon, common fanatics like Levasseur, Baubot, Jean Bon St. Andre´, Romme and Lebas, after which and especially, the future representatives who have a grip, rough, domineering, dull fellows, who make good troopers for a political militia, Bourbotte, Duquesnoy, Rewbell, and Bentabolle, “a lot of beggarly ignoramuses,” exclaimed Danton,14 “without any common sense, and patriotic only when drunk....Maratisnothing but a yelper. Legendre is fit for nothing but to cut uphis meat. The rest do not know how to vote either sitting or standing, but they have nerves and back- bone.” From amongst these energetic nullities arises a young monster, with calm, handsome features, Saint-Just, a sort of precocious Sylla, who, twenty-five years of age and a new-comer, springs at once from the ranks and, by dint of atrocities, obtains a prominent position.15 Six years before this he began life by a domestic robbery; on a visit to his mother, he left the house during the night, carrying off the plate and jewels, which he squandered while living in a lodging house in the Rue Eromenteau, in the centre of Parisian prostitution;16 on the strength of this, and at the demand of his

14. Prudhomme, “Crimes de la Re´volution,” V. 133. Conversation with Danton, December, 1792.—De Barante, III. 123. The same conversation, probably after another verbal tradition.—I am obliged to substitute less coarse terms for those of the quotation. 15. He is the first speaker on the part of the “Mountain” in the king’s trial, and at once becomes president of the Jacobin Club. His speech against Louis XVI. is significant. “Louis is another Catiline.” He should be executed, first as traitor taken in the act, and next as king; that is to say, as a natural enemy and wild beast taken in a net. 16. Vatel, “Charlotte Corday and the Girondists,” I. preface, CXLI. (with all the documents, the letters of Madame de Saint-Just, the examination on the 6th of October, 1786, etc.) The articles stolen consisted of six pieces of plate, a fine ring, gold-mounted pistols, packets of silver lace, etc.—The youth declares that he is “about to enter the Comte d’Artois’ regiment of guards until The Jacobin Conquest / 785 friends, he is shut upin a sort of house of correction for six months. On returning to his abode he occupied himself with writing an obscene poem in the style of La Pucelle and then, through a fit of rage resembling a spasm, he plunged headlong into the Revolution. With “blood calcined by application to study,” colossal self-conceit, a conscience that has broken its bounds, a sombre, extravagant imagination haunted with the bloody records of Rome and Sparta, a mind so warped and perverted as to find rest only in the wildest paradoxes, in shameless sophistry, and in murderous falsehoods;17 all these perilous ingredients, mingled in the crucible of suppressed, concentrated ambition, long and silently boiling within him, end in constant defiance, in determined callousness, in automatic rigidity, and in the absolute policy of the Utopian dictator and nihilist.—It is plain that such a minority will not obey parliamentary rules, and, rather than yield to the majority, that it will use in debate vociferations, insults, threats, and scuffles with daggers, pistols, sabres and even the “blunder-busses” of a veritable combat. “Vile intriguers, calumniators, scoundrels, monsters, assassins, blackguards, fools and hogs,” such are the usual terms in which they address each other, and these form the least of their outrages.18 The president, at certain sessions, is obliged three times to put on his hat and, at last, breaks his bell. They insult him, force him to leave his seat and demand that “he be removed.” Bazire tries to snatch a he is old enough to enter the king’s guards.” He also had an idea of entering the Oratoire. 17. Cf. his speech against the king, his report on Danton, on the Girondists, etc. If the reader would comprehend Saint-Just’s character he has only to read his letter to d’Aubigny, July 20, 1792: “Since I came here I am consumed with a republican fury, which is wasting me away....Itisunfortunate that I cannot remain in Paris. I feel something within me which tells me that I shall float on the waves of this century....Youdastards, you have not appreciated me! My renown will yet blaze forth and cast yours in the shade. Wretches that you are, you call me a thief, a villain, because I can give you no money. Tear my heart out of my body and eat it, and you will become what you are not now—great!” 18. Buchez et Roux, XXIV. 296, 363; XXV. 323; XXVII. 144, 145.—Mo- niteur, XIV. 89 (terms employed by Danton, David, Legendre, and Marat). 786 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION declaration presented by him “out of his hands.” Bourdon, from the department of Oise, cries out to him that if he “dares to read it he will assassinate him.”19 The chamber “has become an arena of glad- iators.”20 Sometimes the entire “Mountain” darts from its benches on the left, while a similar human wave rolls down from those on the right; both clash in the centre of the room amidst furious screams and shouts; in one of these hubbubs one of the “Mountain” having drawn a pistol the Girondist Duperret draws his sword.21 After the middle of December prominent members of the “Right,” “constantly persecuted, threatened and outraged,” reduced to “being out every night, are compelled to carry arms in self-defense,”22 and, after the King’s execution, “almost all” bring them to the sessions of the Convention. Any day, indeed, they may look for the final attack, and they are not disposed to die unavenged: during the night of March 9, finding that they are only forty-three, they agree to launch themselves in a body “at the first hostile movement, against their adversaries and kill as many as possible” before perishing.23 It is a desperate resource, but the only one. For, besides the madmen belonging to the Convention, they have against them the madmen in the galleries, and these likewise are September murderers. The vilest Jacobin rabble purposely takes its stand near them, at first in the old Riding-school, and then in the new hall in the Tuileries. They see above and in a circle around them drilled adversaries, eight or nine hundred heads packed “in the great gallery

19. Moniteur, XV. 74.—Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 254, 257, sessions of Jan. 6 and May 27. 20. Moniteur, XIV. 851. (Session of Dec. 26, 1792. Speech by Julien.) 21. Moniteur, XIV. 768 (session of Dec. 16). The president says: “I have called Calon to order three times, and three times has he resisted.”—Vergniaud declares that “The majority of the Assembly is under the yoke of a seditious minority.”—Ibid., XIV. 851, 853, 865 (session of Dec. 26 and 27).—Buchez et Roux, XXV. 396 (session of April 11). 22. Louvet, 72. 23. Meillan, 24: “We were for some time all armed with sabres, pistols, and blunderbusses.”—Moore, II. 235 (October, 1792). A number of deputies already at this date carried sword-canes and pocket-pistols. The Jacobin Conquest / 787 at the bottom, under a deepand silent vault,” and, besides these, on the sides, a thousand or fifteen hundred more, two immense tribunes completely filled.24 The galleries of the Constituent and Legislative Assemblies, compared with these, were calm. Nothing is more disgraceful to the Convention, writes a foreign spectator,25 than the insolence of the audience. One of the regulations prohibits, indeed, any mark of approval or disapproval, “but it is violated every day, and nobody is ever punished for this delinquency.” The majority in vain expresses its indignation at this “gang of hired ruffians,” who beset and oppress it, while at the very time that it utters its complaints, it endures and tolerates it. “The struggle is frightful,” says a deputy,26 “screams, murmurs, stampings, shouts....Thefoulest insults were launched from the galleries.” “For a long time,” says another, “no one can speak here without obtaining their permission.”27 The day that Buzot obtains the floor to speak against Marat, “they break out furiously, yelling, stamping, and threatening”;28 every time that Buzot tries to begin his voice is drowned in the clamor, while he remains half an hour in the tribune without completing a sentence. On the calls of the House, especially, their cries resemble those of the excited crowd at a Spanish bull-fight, with their eager eyes and heaving breasts, watching the contest between the bull and the picadores; every time that a deputy votes against the death of the King or for an appeal to the people, there are the “vociferations of cannibals,” and “interminable yells” every time

24. Dauban, “La Demagogie en 1793,” p. 101. Description of the hall by Prudhomme, with illustrations.—Ibid., 199. Letter of Brissot to his constituents: “The brigands and the bacchantes have found their way into the new hall.”— According to Prudhomme the galleries hold 1,400 persons in all, and according to Dulaure, 2,000 or 3,000. 25. Moore, I. 44 (Oct. 10), and II. 534. 26. Moniteur, XIV. 795. Speech by Lanjuinais, Dec. 19. 1792. 27. Buchez et Roux, XX. 5, 396. Speech by Duperret, session of April 11, 1793. 28. Dauban, 143. Letter of Valaze´, April 14.—Cf. Moniteur, XIV. 746, session of Dec. 14.—Ibid., 800, session of Dec. 20.—Ibid., 853, session of Dec. 26. 788 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION that one votes for the indictment of Marat. “I declare,” say deputies in the tribune, “that I am not free here; I declare that I am forced to debate under the knife.”29 Charles Villette is told at the entrance that “if he does not vote for the King’s death he will be massacred.”—And these are not empty threats. On the 10th of March, awaiting the promised riot, “the tribunes, duly advised,...hadal- ready loaded their pistols.”30 In the month of May, the tattered women hired for the purpose, under the title of “Ladies of the Fra- ternity,” formed a club, came daily early in the morning to mount guard, with arms in their hands, in the corridors of the Convention; they tear upall tickets given to men or women not of their band; they take possession of all the seats, show pistols and daggers, and declare that “eighteen hundred heads must be knocked off to make things go on right.”31 Behind these two first rows of assailants is a third, much more compact, the more fearful because it is undefined and obscure, namely, the vague multitude forming the anarchical set, scattered throughout Paris, and always ready to renew the 10th of August and 2d of September against the obstinate majority. Incendiary motions and demands for riots come incessantly from the Commune, and Jacobin, Cordeliers, and l’Eveˆche´ clubs; from the assemblies of the sections and groups stationed at the Tuileries and in the streets. “Yesterday,” writes the president of the Tuileries section,32 “at the same moment, at various points about Paris, the Rue du Bac, at the Marais, in the Church of St. Eustache, at the Palace of the Revo- lution, on the Feuillants terrace, scoundrels were preaching pillage and assassination.”—On the following day, again on the Feuillants

29. Speech by Salles.—Lanjuinais also says: “One seems to deliberate here in a free Convention; but it is only under the dagger and cannon of the factions.”—Moniteur, XV. 180, session of Jan. 16. Speech by N , deputy, its delivery insisted on by Charles Villette. 30. Meillan, 24. 31. “Archives Nationales,” AF, II. 45. Police reports, May 16, 18, 19. “There is fear of a bloody scene the first day.”—Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 125. Report of Gamon inspector of the Convention hall. 32. Moniteur, XIV. 362 (Nov. 1, 1792).—Ibid., 387, session of Nov. 4. Speech by Royer and Gorsas.—Ibid., 382. Letter by Roland, Nov. 5. The Jacobin Conquest / 789 terrace, that is to say, right under the windows of the Convention, “they urge the assassination of Louvel for having denounced Robes- pierre.”—Minister Roland writes: “I hear of nothing but conspiracy and plans to murder.”—Three weeks later, for several days, “an uprising is announced in Paris”;33 the Minister is warned that “alarm guns would be fired,” while the heads are designated beforehand on which this ever muttering insurrection will burst. In the following month, in spite of the recent precise law, “the electoral assembly prints and circulates gratis the list of members of the Feuillants and Sainte-Chapelle clubs; it likewise orders the printing and circulation of the list of the eight thousand, and of the twenty thousand, as well as of the clubs of 1789 and of Montaigu.”34 In January, “hawkers cry through the streets a list of the aristocrats and royalists who voted for an appeal to the people.”35 Some of the appellants are singled out by name through placards; Thibaut, bishop of Cantal, while reading the poster on the wall relating to him, hears some one alongside of him say: “I should like to know that bishopof Cantal; I would make bread tasteless to him.” Roughs point out certain deputies leaving the Assembly, and exclaim: “Those are the beggars to cut up!”—From week to week signs of insurrection increase and multiply, like flashes of lightning in a coming tempest. On the 1st of January, “it is rumored that the barriers are to be closed at night, and that domiciliary visits are going to begin again.”36 On the 7th of January, on the motion of the Gravilliers section, the Commune

33. Moniteur, XIV. 699. Letter of Roland, Nov. 28. 34. Moniteur, XIV. 697, number for Dec. 11. 35. Moniteur, XV. 180, session of Jan. 16. Speech by Lehardy, Hugues, and Thibaut.—Meillan, 14: “A line of separation between the two sides of the Assembly was then traced. Several deputies which the faction wished to put out of the way had voted for death (of the king). Almost all of these were down on the list of those in favor of the appeal to the people, which was the basis preferred. We were then known as appellants.” 36. Moniteur, XV. 8. Speech by Rabaud St. Etienne.—Buchez et Roux, XXIII. 24—Mortimer-Ternaux, V. 418.—Moniteur, XV. 180, session of Jan. 16.—Buchez et Roux, XXIV. 292—Moniteur, XV. 182. Letter of the mayor of Paris, Jan. 16.—Ibid., 179. Letter of Roland, Jan. 16—Buchez et Roux, XXIV. 448. Report by Santerre. 790 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION demands of the Minister of War 132 cannon stored at Saint-Denis, to divide among the sections. On the 15th of January the same section proposes to the other forty-seven to appoint, as on the 10th of August, special commissaries to meet at the Eveˆche´ and watch over public safety. That same day, to prevent the Convention from misunderstanding the object of these proceedings, it is openly stated in the tribunes that the cannon brought to Paris “are for another 10th of August against that body.” The same day, military force has to be employed to prevent bandits from going to the prisons “to renew the massacres.” On the 28th of January the Palais-Royal, the resort of the pleasure-seeking, is surrounded by Santerre, at eight o’clock in the evening, and “about six thousand men, found without a certiﬁcate of civism,” are arrested, subject to the decision one by one of their section.—Not only does the lightning ﬂash, but already the bolt descends in isolated places.37 On the 31st of December a man named Louvain, formerly denounced by Marat as Lafayette’s agent, is slain in the faubourg St. Antoine, and his corpse dragged through the streets to the Morgue. On the 25th of February, the grocer-shops are pillaged at the instigation of Marat, with the connivance or sanction of the Commune. On the 9th of March the printing establishment of Gorsas is sacked by two hundred men, armed with sabres and pistols. The same evening and on the next morning the riot extends to the Convention itself; “the committee of the Jacobin club summons every section in Paris to arms” to “get rid” of the appellant deputies and the ministers; the Cordeliers club requests the Parisian authorities “to take sovereignty into their own hands and place the treacherous deputies under arrest”; Fournier, Varlet, and Champion ask the Commune “to declare itself in insurrection and close the barriers”; all the approaches to the Convention

37. Buchez et Roux, XXV. 23 to 26.—Mortimer-Ternaux, VI. 184 (Mani- festo of the central committee, March 9, 2 o’clock in the morning).—Ibid., 193. Narrative of Fournier at the bar of the Convention, March 12.—Report of the mayor of Paris, March 10.—Report of the Minister of Justice, March 13.— Meillan, 24.—Louvet, 72, 74. The Jacobin Conquest / 791 are occupied by the “dictators of massacre,” Pe´tion38 and Beurnon- ville being recognised on their passing, pursued and in danger of death, while furious mobs gather on the Feuillants terrace “to award popular judgment,” “to cut off heads” and “send them into the departments.”—Luckily, it rains, which always cools down popular effervescence. Kerve´legan, a deputy from Finiste`re, who escapes, finds means of sending to the other end of the faubourg St. Marceau for a battalion of volunteers from Brest that had arrived a few days before, and who were still loyal; these come in time and save the Convention.—Thus does the majority live under the triple pressure of the “Mountain,” the galleries and the outside populace, and from month to month, especially after March 10, the pressure gets to be worse and worse. III Under this pressure from month to month the majority falters.— Some are overcome by purely physical fright. On the King’s trial, at the third call of the House, when votes for death came down from the galleries above, a deputy near Daunou “showed in a most energetic manner his disapproval of this.” On his turn coming, “the galleries, which had undoubtedly noticed his attitude,” burst out in such violent threats that for some minutes his voice could not be heard; “silence was at length restored, and he voted—death.”39— Others, like Durand-Maillane, “warned by Robespierre that the

38. Pe´tion, “Me´moires,” 106 (Ed. Dauban): “How many times I heard, ‘You rascal, we’ll have your head!’ And I have no doubt that they often planned my assassination.” 39. Taillandier, “Documents biographiques,” on Daunou (Narrative by Daunou), p. 38.—Doulcet de Pontećoulant, “Me´moires,” I. 139: “It was then that the ‘Mountain’ used all the means of intimidation it knew so well how to bring into play, filling the galleries with its satellites, who shouted out to each other the name of each deputy as he stepped up to the president’s table to give his vote, and yelling savagely at every one who did not vote for immediate and unconditional death.”—Carnot, “Me´moires,” I. 293. Carnot voted for the death of the king; yet afterwards he avowed that “Louis XVI. would have been saved, if the Convention had not held its deliberations under the dagger.” 792 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION strongest party is the safest,” say to themselves “that it is wise and necessary not to oppose excited people,” making up their minds “to keepaloof under the shield of their silence and insignificance.” 40 Among the five hundred deputies of the Plain, many are of this stamp. They begin to be called “the Marsh Frogs.” In six months they settle down of themselves into so many mute figure-heads, or, rather, homicidal puppets, “whose hearts, shrunk through fear, rise in their throats”41 every time that Robespierre looks at them. Long before the fall of the Girondists, “downcast at the present state of things, and no longer stirred by any inward impulse,” their faces already disclose “the pallor of fear or the resignation of despair.”42 Cambace´re`s beats to the windward, and then takes refuge in his Committee on Legislation.43 Barre`re, born a valet, and a valet ready for anything, places his southern mode of doing things at the service of the probable majority, up to the time of devoting his cruel rhetoric to the service of the dominant minority. Sie`yes, after casting his vote for death, maintains obstinate silence, as much through disgust as through prudence: “Of what avail is my glass of wine in this torrent of dram-drinking?”44—Many, even among the Girondists, use sophistry to color their concessions in their own eyes. Some among these “think that they enjoy some degree of popularity, and fear that this will be compromised.45 Again, they put forth the pretext or the necessity of maintaining one’s influence for important occasions.

40. Durand-Maillane, 35, 38, 57. 41. An expression by Dussault, in his “Fragments pour servir a` l’histoire de la Convention.” 42. Madame Roland, “Me´moires,” ed. Barrie`re et Berville, II. 52.—(Note by Roland.) 43. Moniteur, XV. 187. Cambace´re`s votes: “Louis has incurred the penalties established in the penal code against conspirators.... Theexecution to be postponed until hostilities cease. In case of invasion of the French territory by the enemies of the republic, the decree to be enforced.”—On Barre`re, see Macaulay’s crushing article in “Biographical Essays.” 44. Sainte-Beuve, “Causeries du Lundi,” V. 209. (“Sie`yes,” according to his unpublished manuscripts.) 45. Madame Roland, II. 56. Note by Roland. The Jacobin Conquest / 793

Occasionally, they affect to say, or say it in good faith, “Let them (the extravagant) keepon, they will find each other out and use themselves up.”—Frequently, the motives alleged are scandalous or grotesque. According to Barbaroux, immediate execution must be voted, because that is the best way to exculpate the Gironde and shut the mouths of their Jacobin calumniators.46 According to Ber- lier, it is essential to vote death for, why vote for exile? Louis XVI. would be torn to pieces before reaching the frontier.47—On the eve of the verdict, Vergniaud says to M. de Se´gur: “I vote Death? It is an insult to suppose me capable of such a disgraceful act!” And, “he sets forth the frightful iniquity of such a course, its uselessness, and even its danger.” “I would rather stand alone in my opinion than vote Death!”48 The next day, having voted as is well known, he excuses himself by saying “that he did not think he ought to put the life of one man in the scale against the public welfare.”49 Fifteen or twenty deputies, influenced by his example, voted as he did, which support sufficed to turn the majority.50—The same weakness is found at other decisive moments. Charged with the denunciation of the conspiracy of the 10th of March, Vergniaud attributes it to the aristocrats, and admits to Louvet that “he did not wish to name the real conspirators for fear of embittering violent men already pushing things to excess.”51 The truth is, the Girondists, as formerly the Constitutionalists, are too civilized for their adversaries, and submit to force for lack of resolution to employ it themselves. “To put down the faction,” says one of them,52 “can be done only by cutting its throat, which, perhaps, would not be difficult to do.

46. Mortimer-Ternaux, V. 476. 47. Mortimer-Ternaux, V. 513. 48. Philippe de Se´gur, “Me´moires,” I. 13. 49. Harmand de la Meuse (member of the Convention), “Anecdotes relatives a`laRe´volution,” 83, 85. 50. Meissner, “Voyage a` Paris,” (last months of 1795). Testimony of the regicide Audrein. 51. Louvet, 75. 52. Meillan, 16. 794 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

All Paris is as weary as we are of its yoke, and if we had any liking for or knowledge how to deal with insurrections, we could soon throw it off. But how can measures of atrocity be adopted against men who would make them a reproach against their adversaries? And yet they would have saved the country.” Consequently, incapable of action, able only to talk, reduced to protests, to barring the way to revolutionary decrees, to making appeals to the department against Paris, they stand as an obstacle to all the practical people who are heartily engaged in the brunt of the action.—“There is no doubt that Carnot is as honest as they are, as honest as a booby fanatic can be.”53 Cambon, undoubtedly with as much integrity as Roland, pronounced as loudly as he against the 2d of September, the Commune, and anarchy.54—But, to Carnot and Cambon, who pass their nights, one in establishing his budgets, and the other in studying his cards, they require, first of all, a government which will provide them with millions and with armies, and, therefore, an unscrupulous and unanimous Convention; that is to say, there being no other expedient, a Convention under compulsion, which means, finally, a Convention purged of troublesome, dissentient orators;55 in other words, the dictatorship of the Parisian populace. After the 15th of December, 1792, Cambon gives himself upto it entirely, and even erects the terrorism of the rabble into an European system; from that date on,56 he preaches universal sans-culotterie, are´gime

53. M. Guizot (“Me´moires”), II. 73. 54. Moniteur, XIV. 432, session of Nov. 10, 1792. Speech by Cambon: “That is the reason why I shall always detest the 2d of September; for never will I approve of assassinations.” In the same speech he justifies the Girondists against any reproach of federalism. 55. “Le Marećhal Davoust,” by Madame de Blocqueville. Letter of Davoust, battalion officer, June 2, 1793: “We are animated with the spirit of Lepelletier, which is all that need be said with respect to our opinions and what we will do in the coming crisis, in which, perhaps, a faction will try to plunge us anew into a civil war between the departments and Paris. Perfidious eloquence . . . conservative Tartufes.” 56. Moniteur, XIV. 738. Report by Cambon, Dec. 15. “On the way French generals are to act in countries occupied by the armies of the republic.” This The Jacobin Conquest / 795 which will have the poor for its administrators and the rich for its rate-payers, in short, the restoration of privileges in an inverse sense; already the expression is true which Sie`yes subsequently utters; the question is no longer an application of the principles of the Revo- lution, but the salvation of its men. In the presence of this ever keener and keener necessity, numbers of hesitating deputies follow the stream, letting the Montagnards have their own way and separating themselves from the Girondists. And, what is graver still, the Girondists, above all these defec- tions, are untrue to themselves. Not only are they ignorant of how to draw a line, of how to form themselves into a compact body; not only “is the very idea of a collective proceeding repulsive, each member desiring to keephimself independent,and act as he thinks best,”57 make motions without consulting others, and vote as the occasion calls for against his party, but, through its abstract principle, they are in accord with their adversaries, and, on the fatal declivity whereon their honorable and humane instincts still retain them, this common dogma, like a concealed weight, causes them to sink lower and lower down, even into the bottomless pit, where the State, according to the formulae of Jean Jacques, omnipotent, philosophic, anti-catholic, anti-Christian, despotic, levelling, intolerant, and propagandist, forbids education, levels fortunes, persecutes the Church, oppresses consciences, crushes out the individual, and, by military force, imposes its forms abroad.58 At bottom, save an excess of bru- important document is a true manifesto of the Revolution.—Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 140, session of May 20, and XXVI. 177, session of April 27, speech by Cambon: “The department of He´rault says to this or that individual: ‘You are rich; your opinions cause us expenditure. . . . I mean to fix you to the Revolution in spite of yourself. You shall lend your fortune to the republic, and when liberty is established the republic will return your capital to you.’—I should like, then, following the example of the department of He´rault, that the Con- vention should organise a civic loan of one billion, to be supplied by egoists and the lukewarm.”—Decree of May 20, “passed almost unanimously. A forced loan of one billion shall be made on wealthy citizens.” 57. Meillan, 100. 58. Speech by Ducos, March 20. “We must decide between domestic edu- 796 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION tality and of precipitation, the Girondists, setting out from the same principles as the “Mountain,” march forward to the same end along with the “Mountain.” Hence the effect of sectarian prejudice on them in mollifying their moral repugnances. Secretly, in their hearts, revolutionary instincts conspire with those of their enemies, and, on many occasions, they betray themselves.—Through these devices and multiplied weaknesses, on the one hand, the majority diminishes so as to present but 279 votes against 228;59 on the other hand, through frequent failures it surrenders to the besiegers one by one every commanding post of the public citadel, so that nothing remains but to fly, or beg for mercy, at the first attack. IV On principle, it carries a vote for a departmental guard, but, owing to the opposition of the Montagnards, it fails to put the principle into operation.—For six months it is protected, and, on the 10th of March, saved, through the spontaneous aid of provincial federates, but, far from organising these passing auxiliaries into a permanent body of faithful defenders, it allows them to be dispersed or corrupted by Pache and the Jacobins.—It passes decrees frequently for cation and liberty. So long as the poor and the rich are not brought close together through a common education, in vain will your laws proclaim sacred equality!”—Rabaut-Saint-Etienne: “In every canton a national temple will be erected, in which every Sunday its municipal officers will give moral instruction to the assembled citizens. This instruction will be drawn from books approved of by the legislative body, and followed by hymns also approved of by the legislative body. A catechism, as simple as it is short, drawn up by the legislative body, shall be taught and every boy will know it by heart.”—On the sentiments of the Girondists in relation to Christianity, see chapters v. and xi. of this volume.—On the means for equalising fortunes, see articles by Babaut-Saint- Etienne (Buchez et Roux, XXIII. 467).—Ibid., XXIV. 475 (March 7–11) decree abolishing the testamentary right.—Condorcet, in his “Tableau des progre`s de l’Esprit humain,” assigns the levelling of conditions as the object of society.— On propagandism abroad, read the report by Cambon (Dec. 15). This report is nearly unanimously accepted, and Buzot makes it worse by adding an amendment. 59. Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 287, session of May 28, vote on the maintenance of the Commission of Twelve. The Jacobin Conquest / 797 the punishment of the abettors of the September crime, but, on their menacing petition, the trials are indefinitely postponed.60—It has summoned to its bar Fournier, Lazowski, Deffieux, and other leaders, who, on the 10th of March, were disposed to throw it out of the windows, but, on making their impudent apology, it sends them away acquitted, free, and ready to begin over again.61 At the War Department it raises up in turn two cunning Jacobins, Pache and Bouchotte, who are to work against it unceasingly. At the Depart- ment of the Interior it allows the fall of its firmest support, Roland, and appoints Garat in his place, an ideologist, whose mind, composed of glittering generalities, with a character made up of contradictory inclinations, fritters itself away in reticences, in falsehoods and in half-way treachery, under the burden of his too onerous duties.—It votes the murder of the King, which places an insurmountable barrier of blood between it and all honest persons.—It plunges the nation into a war in behalf of principles,62 and excites an European league against France, which league, in transferring the perils arising from the September crime to the frontier, permanently establishes the September re´gime in the interior.—It forges in advance the vilest instruments of the forthcoming Reign of Ter- ror, through the decree which establishes the revolutionary tribune, with Fouquier-Tinville as public prosecutor, and the obligation for each juryman to utter his verdict aloud;63 through the decree condemning every e´migre´ to civil death, and the confiscation of his

60. Moniteur, XV. 395, session of Feb. 8, 1793. 61. Decrees of March 13 and 14. 62. Moore, II. 44 (October, 1792). Danton declares in the tribune that “the Convention should be a committee of instruction for kings throughout the universe.” On which Moore remarks that this is equivalent to declaring war against all Europe except Switzerland.—Mallet-Dupan, “Conside´rations sur la Re´volution de France,” p. 37: “In a letter which chance has brought to my notice, Brissot wrote to one of his minister-generals towards the close of last year: ‘The four quarters of Europe must be set on fire; that is our salvation.’” 63. Duvergier, “Collection des lois et dećrets.” Decree of March 10–12. Title I. articles 1, 12, 13; title II. articles 2, 3. Add to this the decree of March 29–31, establishing the penalty of death against whoever composes or prints documents favoring the re-establishment of royalty. 798 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION property “of either sex,” even a simple fugitive, even returned within six months;64 through the decree which “outlaws aristocrats and enemies of the Revolution”;65 through the decree which, in each commune, establishes a tax on the wealth of the commune in order to adapt the price of bread to wages;66 through the decree which subjects every bag of grain to declaration and to the maximum;67 through the decree which awards six years in irons for any traffic in the currency;68 through the decree which orders a forced loan of a billion, extorted from the rich;69 through the decree which raises in each town a paid army of sans-culottes “to hold aristocrats under their pikes”;70 in fine, through the decree which, instituting the Com- mittee of Public Safety,71 fashions a central motor to set these sharp scythes agoing and mow down fortunes and lives with the utmost rapidity.—To these engines of general destruction it adds one more, which is special and operates against itself. Not only does it furnish its rivals of the Commune with the millions they need to pay their bands; not only does it advance to the different sections,72 in the form of a loan, the hundreds of thousands of francs which are needed to satisfy the thirst of their yelpers; but again, at the end of March, just at the moment when it happens to escape the first Jacobin invasion, it provides for the election by each section of a Committee of Supervision, authorised to make domiciliary visits and to disarm the suspected;73 it allows this committee to make arrests and inflict

64. Decree of March 28, April 5 (article 6).—Cf. the decrees of March 18 and April 23, 24. 65. Decree of March 27–30. 66. Decree of April 5–7. 67. Decree of May 4. A law fixing the highest price at which grain shall be sold.—TR. 68. Decree of April 11–16 (bearing on the reduction in value of the legal currency.—TR.). 69. Decree of May 20–25. 70. Decree of April 5–7. Words used by Danton in the course of the debate. 71. Decree of April 5–11. 72. Decrees of May 13, 16, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, and 29, June 1. 73. Decrees of March 21–23 and March 26–30. The Jacobin Conquest / 799 special taxes; to facilitate its operations it orders a list of the inmates of each house, legibly “stating names, surnames, ages and professions,” to be affixed to the entrance,74 a copy of which must be left with the committee, and which is subject to its control. To end the matter, it submits itself, and, “regardless of the inviolability of a representative of the French nation,”75 it decides that, in case of political denunciation, its own members may be brought to trial. V “I seem to hear you,” writes a sarcastic observer,76 “addressing the faction in these terms: Now, look here, we have the means, but we are not disposed to make use of them against you; it would be unfair to attack you unarmed. Public power emanates from two principles, legal authority and armed force. Now we will at once create committees of supervision, of which you shall appoint the heads, for the reason that, with a whipof this kind, you can lash every honest man in Paris, and thus regulate public opinion. We will do more than this, for the sacrifice would not be complete; we are disposed to make you a present of our armed force, with authority to disarm anybody that you may suspect. As far as we are concerned, we are ready to surrender even our pocket-knives,77 and remain apart, content with our virtues and talents.—But mind what you are about. Should you be so ungrateful as to attack our sacred persons, we shall find avengers in the departments.” “What good will the departments do you, let loose against each other, after you are out of

74. Decree of March 29–31. 75. Decree of April 1–5. 76. Schmidt, I. 232. Report by Dutard, May 10. 77. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 2,401 to 2,505. Records of the section debates in Paris.—Many of these begin March 28, 1793, and contain the deliberations of revolutionary committees; for example, F7, 2,475, the section of the Pikes or of the Place Vendoˆme. We see by the official reports dated March 28 and the following days that the suspected were deprived of all weapons, even the smallest, every species of sword-cane, including dress-swords with steel or silver handles. 800 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION the way?”—No summary could be more exact nor any prediction more accurately based. Henceforth, and by virtue of the Conven- tion’s own decrees, not only have the Jacobins the whole of the executive power in their hands, as this is found in civilised countries, but likewise the discretionary power of the antique tyrant or modern pacha, that arbitrary, strong arm which, singling out the individual, falls upon him and takes from him his arms, his freedom, and his money. After the 28th of March, we see in Paris a resumption of the system which, instituted by the 10th of August, was completed by the 2d of September. In the morning, drums beat to arms; at noon, the barriers are shut, the bridges and passages guarded, and sentinels stand on the corners of the streets; no one is allowed “to pass outside the limits of his section,” or circulate within them without showing his certificate of civism; houses are invested, numbers of persons are arrested,78 and, during the succeeding months, this operation is carried on under the sway of the Committee of Supervision. Now, this Committee, in almost all the sections, “is made upof sans-culottes,” not fathers of families, men of judgment and experience, people living a long time in the quarter, but “strangers, or young men trying to be something,”79 ambitious underlings, ignorant dare-devils, despotic intermeddlers, implacable, gloomy, raw inquisitors. The first thing is the disarmament of the suspected. “It suffices that any citizen shall be denounced as such, and that the said case

78. Buchez et Roux, XXV. 157.—“Archives Nationales,” F7, 2,494, section of the Reúnion, official report, March 28. 79. Schmidt, I. 223 (Dutard, May 14).—Ibid., 224. “If the Convention allows committees of supervision to exercise its authority, I will not give it eight days.”—Meillan, p. 3. “Almost all the section agitators were strangers.”— “Archives nationales,” F7, 3,294 and 3,297, records of debate in the committees of supervision belonging to the sections of the Reúnion and Droits de l’Homme. Quality of mind and education are both indicated by orthography. For instance: “Le dit jour et an que deçus; orloger; Lecture d’une letres du comite´ de surete´ general de la convention qui invite le comite´ a se transporter de suites chez le citoyen Louis Feline rue Baubourg, a leffets de faire perquisition chez lui et dans tout ces papiers, et que ceux qui paraitrous suspect lon y metes les sele´s.” The Jacobin Conquest / 801 of suspicion be known to the Committee”;80 or that his certificate of civism be delivered to him only within a month,81 for any delegate, accompanied by ten armed men, to resort to his house and search it. In the section of the Reúnion alone, on the first day, 57 denounced persons are thus disarmed for “acts of incivism or expressions adverse to the Republic,” not merely lawyers, notaries, architects, and other prominent men, but petty tradesmen and shop-keepers, hatters, dyers, locksmiths, mechanics, gilders, and keepers of refreshment saloons. One section, in defiance of the law, adds to these in block the signers of the petition of the eight thousand and that of the twenty thousand. “Through such contrivances,” says an observer,82 “all the guns in Paris, numbering more than a hundred thousand, pass into the hands of the faction.” None remain for its adversaries, even in the gunshops; for, through an ordinance of the Commune, no one may purchase a gun without a certificate issued by the Com- mittee of Supervision of the section.83—On the other hand, owing to the power of granting or refusing certificates of civism, each Committee, on its own authority, interposes barriers as it pleases in all directions, public or private, to every inhabitant within its bounds. It is impossible for any person who has not obtained his certificate84 to have a passport for travelling, although a tradesman; no public employee, no clerk of the administration, advocate or notary can keephis placewithout it; no one can go out of Paris or return late at night. If one goes out to take an airing, there is danger of being arrested and brought back between two soldiers to the committee of the section; if one stays at home, it is with the chance of being

80. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,294. Section of the Reúnion, official report, March 28. 81. Buchez et Roux, XXV. 168. An ordinance of the commune, March 27. 82. Schmidt, I. 223. Report by Dutard, May 14. 83. Buchez et Roux, XXV. 167. Ordinance of May 27. XXXVII. 151. Or- dinance of May 20. 84. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,294. See, in particular, the official reports of the month of April.—Buchez et Roux, XXV. 149, and XXVI. 342 (ordinances of the commune, March 27 and May 2). 802 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION inspected as a harborer of priests or nobles. Any Parisian opening his windows in the morning may find his house surrounded by a company of carmagnoles, if he has not the indispensable certificate in his pocket.85 In the eyes of a Jacobin committee, there is no civism but in Jacobinism, and we can imagine whether this patent would be willingly conferred on opponents, or even on the lukewarm; what examinations they would have to undergo; what questions they would be obliged to answer; how many going and comings, solicitations, appearances and waitings would be imposed on them; with what persistency it would excite delay, and with what satisfaction it would be refused. Buzot presented himself four times at the Com- mittee of Quatre-Nations to obtain a certificate for his domestic, and failed to get it.86—There is another still more effectual expedient for keeping the ill-disposed in check. The committee of each section, aided by a member of the Commune,87 designates the twelve thousand men drafted for the expedition into La Vendeé, and picks them by name, one by one, as it may select them; the effect of this is to purge Paris of twelve thousand anti-Jacobins, and tranquillise the section assemblies, where opposition is often objectionable. To this end the committee selects first, and gives the preference to, the clerks of lawyers and notaries, those of banking-houses, the administration, and of merchants, the unmarried in all offices and counting-rooms, in short, all celibates belonging to the middle class of Paris, of which there are more than twenty-five thousand;88 according to the ordi-

85. Buchez et Roux, XXVI. 402 (article from the Patriote Français, May 8). “Arrests are multiplied lately to a frightful extent. The mayoralty overflows with prisoners. Nobody has any idea of the insolence and harshness with which citizens are treated. Slaughter and a Saint-Bartholomew are all that are talked of.”—Meillan, 55. “Let anybody in any assemblage or club express any opinion not in unison with municipal views, and he is sure to be arrested the following night.”—Gouverneur Morris, March 29, 1793. “Yesterday I was arrested in the street and conducted to the section of Butte-des-Moulins....Armedmencame to my house yesterday.”—Reply of the minister, Lebrun, April 3. “Domiciliary visits were a general measure from which no house in Paris was exempt.” 86. Buchez et Roux, XXVI. 384. Speech by Buzot, session of May 8. 87. Buchez et Roux, XXVI. 332. Ordinance of the commune, May 1. 88. Schmidt, I. 216. Report by Dutard, May 13. The Jacobin Conquest / 803 nance, every other one is taken, those undoubtedly in worst repute with the Committee, this proceeding silencing the tongues of the others and preventing evil talking in their sections.89 While one hand clutches the collar, the other rummages the pocket. The Committee of Supervision of each section, always aided by a member of the Commune,90 designates all persons in easy circumstances, estimates their incomes as it pleases, or according to common report, and sends them an order to pay a particular sum in proportion to their surplus, and according to a progressive tax. The allowance which is exempt for the head of a family is 1,500 francs per annum, besides 1,000 francs for his wife and 1,000 francs for each child; if the excess is over 15,000 or 20,000 francs, they assess it 5,000 francs; if more than 40,000 or 50,000 francs, they assess it 20,000; in no case may the surplus retained exceed 30,000 francs; all above this amount goes to the State. The first third of this sudden contribution to the public funds is required in forty- eight hours, the second in a fortnight, and the remaining third in a month, under serious penalties. If the tax happens to be exaggerated, if an income is uncertain or imaginary, if receipts are yet to come in, if there is no ready money, if, like Francoeur, the opera manager, a man “has nothing but debts,” so much the worse. “In case of refusal,” writes the section of Bon-Conseil, “his personal and real property shall be sold by the revolutionary committee, and his per-

89. Schmidt, I. 301. “In our sections the best class of citizens are still afraid of imprisonment or of being disarmed. Nobody talks freely.”—The Lyons revolutionists make the same calculation (“Archives Nationales,” AF, II. 43). Letter addressed to the representatives of the people by the administrators of the department of the Rhoˆne, June 4, 1793. The revolutionary committee “designated for La Vendeé those citizens who were most comfortably off or those it hated, whilst conditional enlistments with the privilege of remaining in the department were granted only to those in favor of disorganisation.”—Cf. Guil- lon de Montleón, I. 235. 90. Buchez et Roux, XXVI. 399. Ordinance of the commune, May 3, on a forced loan of twelve millions, article 6. “The revolutionary committees will regard the apportionment lists simply as guides, without regarding them as a basis of action.”—Article 14. “The personal and real property of those who have not conformed to the patriotic draft will be seized and sold at the suit of the revolutionary committees, and their persons declared suspected.” 804 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION son declared suspected.”91—Even this is simply an installment on account: “There is no desire on the part of the Committee at the present moment to demand more than a portion of your surplus,” that which remains will be taken hereafter. Desfieux, the bankrupt,92 has already, in the tribune of the Jacobin club, estimated the fortunes of one hundred of the wealthiest notaries and financiers in Paris at 640,000,000 francs; the municipality sent a list of their names to the sections to have it completed; if only one-tenth was taken from them, it would amount to 64,000,000, which “big sponges,” thoroughly squeezed, would disgorge a much larger amount. “The richest of Frenchmen,” says Robespierre, “should not have more than 3,000 francs a year.”93 The contributions of “these gentlemen” suffice to arm the sans-culottes, “remunerate artisans for their attendance in the section meetings, and support laborers without work.”94 Already through the sovereign virtue of summary requisitions, everything is spoil; carriage-horses are seized in their stables, while vehicles belonging to aged ladies, mostly widows, and the last of the berlins still remaining in Paris, are taken out of the livery-stables.95—With

91. Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 17 (Patriote Français, number for May 14). Francoeur is taxed at 3,600 francs.—The same process at Lyons (Balleydier, 174, and Guillon de Montleón, I. 238). The authorised tax by the commissaries of the Convention amounted to six millions. The revolutionary committee levied thirty and forty millions, payable in twenty-four hours on warrants without delay (May 13 and 14). Many persons are taxed from 80,000 to 100,000 francs, the text of the requisitions conveying ironically a hostile spirit. 92. Buchez et Roux, XXVI. 463, session of the Jacobin Club, May 11. 93. Meillan, 17. 94. Buchez et Roux, XXVI. 463, session of the Jacobin Club, May 11. Speech by Hassenfratz.—Ibid., 455, session of the Jacobin Club, May 10, speech by Robespierre. “The rich are all anti-revolutionists; only beggars and the people can save the country.”—Ibid., 453, N——: “Revolutionary battalions should be maintained in the department at the expense of the rich, who are cowards.”—Ibid., XXVII. 317. Petition of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, May 11.—Schmidt, I. 315 (Report by Dutard, May 13). “There is no recruiting in the faubourgs, because people there know that they are more wanted here than in La Vendeé. They let the rich go and fight. They watch things here, and trust nobody but themselves to guard Paris.” 95. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 2,494. Section of the Reúnion, official reports The Jacobin Conquest / 805 such powers used in this way, the section makes the most of the old deep-seated enmity of the poor against the rich;96 it secures the firm attachment of the needy and of vagabonds; thanks to the vigorous arms of its active clients, it completely overcomes the feeble, transient, poorly-contrived resistance which the National Convention and the Parisian population still oppose to its rule. On the 13th of April Marat, accused three months before and daily becoming bolder in his factiousness, is finally indicted through a decree of the incensed majority;97 on the 24th he appears before the revolutionary tribunal. But the revolutionary tribunal, like other newly organised institutions, is composed of pure Jacobins, and, moreover, the party has taken its precautions. Marat, for his escort to the court-room has “the municipal commissaries, envoys from the various sections, delegates from all the patriotic clubs”; besides these, “a multitude of good patriots” fill the hall beforehand; “early in the morning the other chambers of the Palais de Justice, the corridors, the courts and adjacent streets” overflow with “sans- culottes ready to avenge any outrage that may be perpetrated on their favorite defender.”98 Naturally, with his supreme infatuation, he speaks not like an accused person, but “as an apostle and martyr.” He is overwhelmed with applause, unanimously acquitted, crowned with laurel, borne in triumph to the Convention, where he thunders a song of victory, while the Girondist majority is compelled to endure his presence, awaiting his forthcoming proscriptions.—Equally of May 15 and 16.—Buchez et Roux, XXV. 167, ordinance of the commune, March 27. 96. Schmidt, I. 327. Report of Perrie`re, May 28. “Our groupitself seemed to be governed by nothing but hatred of the rich by the poor. One must be a dull observer not to see by a thousand symptoms that these two natural enemies stand in battle array, only awaiting the signal or the opportunity.” 97. Buchez et Roux, XXV. 460. The papers examined by the accusers are the numbers of Marat’s journal for the 5th of January and the 25th of February. The article which provoked the decree is his “Address to the National Con- vention,” pp. 446 and 450. 98. Buchez et Roux, XXVI. 149; Narrative by Marat, 114. Bulletin of the revolutionary tribunal, session of the Convention. 806 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION as impotent as the moderates of the Legislative Assembly, the moderates in the street recover themselves only to be again felled to the ground. On the 4th and 5th of May, five or six hundred young fellows, well-dressed and without arms, have assembled in the Champs-Elyseés and at the Luxembourg to protest against the ordinance of the Commune, which drafts them for the expedition to La Vendeé;99 they shout, “Vive la Republique! Vive la Loi! Down with anarchists! Send Marat, Danton and Robespierre to the Devil!” Naturally, Santerre’s paid guard disperses these young sparks; about a thousand are arrested, and henceforth the rest will be careful not to make any open demonstration on the public thoroughfares.— Again, for lack of something better to do, we see them frequently returning to the section assemblies, especially early in May; they find themselves in a majority, and enter on discussions against Jac- obin tyranny; at the Bon-Conseil section, and at those of Marseilles and l’Unite´, Lhuillier is hooted at, Marat threatened, and Chaumette denounced.100—But these are only flashes in the pan; to maintain lasting sway in these permanent assemblies, the moderates, like the sans-culottes, would have to be in constant attendance, and use their fists every night. Unfortunately, the young men of 1793 have not yet arrived at that painful experience, that implacable hate, that ath- letic ruggedness which is to sustain them in 1795. “After one evening, in which the seats everywhere were broken”101 on the backs

99. Buchez et Roux, XXVI. 358, article in the Chronique de Paris; 358, article by Marat.—Schmidt, 1. 184. Report by Dutard, May 5.—Paris, “Histoire de Joseph Lebon,” 1. 81. Letter by Robespierre, Jr., May 7. 100. Buchez et Roux, XXV. 240 and 246. Protest of the Mail section, of the electoral body of the Arsenal, Marais, Gravilliers and Arcis sections. (The Convention, session of April 2; the commune, session of April 2.)—XXVI. 358. Protests of the sections of Bon-Conseil and the Unite´ (May 5).—XXVII. 71. Defeat of the anarchists in the section of Butte-des-Moulins. “A great many sections openly show a determination to put anarchy down.” (Patriote Français, May 15).—Ibid., 137. Protests of the Pantheón Francais, Piques, Mail, and many other sections (Patriote Français, May 19).—Ibid., 175. Protest of the Fraternite´ section (session of the Convention, May 23). 101. Schmidt, I. 189. Dutard, May 6. The Jacobin Conquest / 807 of the contestants, they falter, and never recover themselves, the professional roughs, at the end of a fortnight, being victorious all along the line.—The better to put resistance down, the roughs form a special league amongst themselves, and go around from section to section to give each other help.102 Under the title of a deputation, under the pretext of preventing disturbance, a troop of sturdy fellows, despatched by the neighboring section, arrives at the meeting, and suddenly transforms the minority into a majority, or controls the vote by force of clamor. Sometimes, at a late hour, when the hall is nearly empty, they declare themselves a general meeting, and about twenty or thirty will cancel the discussions of the day. At other times, being, through the municipality, in possession of the police, they summon an armed force to their aid, and oblige the refractory to decamp....And, as examples are necessary to secure perfect silence, the fifteen or twenty who have formed themselves into a full meeting, with the five or six who form the Committee of Supervision, issue warrants of arrest against the most prominent of their opponents. The vice-president of the Bon-Conseil section, and

102. Mortimer-Ternaux, VII. 218. Official report of the reunion of the two sections of the Lombards and Bon-Conseil (April 12), “by which the two said sections promise and swear union, aid, fraternity, and mutual help, in case the aristocracy are disposed to destroy liberty.”—“Consequently,” says the Bon- Conseil section, “many of the citizens of the Lombards section, justly alarmed at the disturbances occasioned by the evil-disposed, came and proffered their assistance.”—Adhesion of the section of Les Amis de la Patrie.—Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 138. (Article of the Patriote Français, May 19): “This brigandage is called assembly of combined sections.”—Ibid., 236, May 26, session of the commune. “Deputations of the Montreuil, Quinze-Vingts and Droits de l’Homme sections came to the assistance of the Arsenal patriots; the aristocrats took to flight, leaving their hats behind them.”—Schmidt, I. 213, 313 (Dutard, May 13 and 27). Violent treatment of the moderates in the Bon-Conseil and Arsenal sections; “struck with chairs, several persons wounded, one captain carried off on a bench; the gutter-jumpers and dumpy shopkeepers cleared out, leaving the sans-culottes masters of the field.”—Meillan, p. III.—Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 237, session of the Jacobin Club, May 26. “In the section of Butte-des-Moulins, the patriots, finding they were not in force, seized the chairs and drove the aristocrats out.” 808 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION the juge-de-paix of the Unite´ section, learn in prison that it is dangerous to present to the Convention an address against anarchists or sign a debate against Chaumette.103—Towards the end of May, in the section assemblies, nobody dares open his mouth against a Jacobin motion; often, even, there are none present but Jacobins; for example, at the Gravilliers, they have driven out all not of their band, and henceforth no “intriguer”104 is imprudent enough to present himself there.—Having become the people in council assembled, with free power to disarm, put on the index, displace, tax, send off to the army, and imprison whoever gives them umbrage, they are able now, with the municipality at their back and as guides, to turn the arms which they have obtained from the Convention against it, attack the Girondists in their last refuge, and possess themselves of the only fort not yet surrendered.

VI To accomplish this they have only to do in all sections simultaneously what they are accustomed to do in each section apart from the rest; thus substituted for the veritable people by force and fraud, they are able to conjure upbefore the Convention the phantomof popular disapproval.—From the municipality, holding its sessions at the Hoˆtel-de-Ville, and from the conventicle established at the Eveˆche´, emissaries are sent forth who present the same addresses at the same time in every section in Paris.105 “Here is a petition for

103. Buchez et Roux, 78, XXVII. on the juge-de-paix Roux, carried off at night and imprisoned, April 16.—Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 220, on the vice- president Sagnier, May 10.—Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 231, May 26, on the five citizens of the Unite´ section arrested by the revolutionary committee of the section “for having spoken against Robespierre and Marat.” 104. Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 154. Speech of Leónard Bourdon to the Jac- obins, May 20. 105. Buchez et Roux, XXVI. 3. Address drawn upby the commissaries of the 48 sections, approved of by 35 sections, also by the commune, and presented to the Convention April 15.—Others have preceded it, like pilot balloons.— Ibid., XXV. 319. Petition of the Bon-Conseil session, April 8—XXV. 320. Petition of the Halle-au-Ble´ section, April 10. The Jacobin Conquest / 809 signatures.” “Read it.” “But that is useless—it is already adopted by a majority of the sections.” “In some of them this falsehood is successful, or several of them sign it in good faith without reading it. In others they read it and refuse to sign it; in others, again, it is read and they pass to the order of the day. What happens? The intriguers and ringleaders remain until all conscientious citizens have withdrawn; then, masters of the debate, they decide that the petition must be signed, and they accordingly affix their signatures. The next day, on the arrival of citizens at the section, the petition is handed to them for their names, and the debate of the previous evening is advanced against them. If they offer any remarks, they are met with these terrifying words: Sign, or no certificate of civism! And, as the sanction of this threat, several of the sections which are mastered by those who draw up the lists of proscriptions, decide that the certificates of civism must be changed, and new ones are refused to those refusing to sign the petition. They do not rest content with these manoeuvrings; men armed with pikes are posted in the streets to force the signatures of those who pass.”106—The whole weight of municipal authority has been publicly cast into the scale. “Com- missaries of the Commune, accompanied by municipal secretaries, with tables, inkstands, paper and registers, promenade about Paris

106. Buchez et Roux, XXVI. 83. Speech by Vergniaud to the Convention, session of April 20. “These facts are notorious. Nobody can contradict them. More than 10,000 witnesses would confirm them.”—There are the same proceedings at Lyons Jan. 13, 1792, against the petition for an appeal to the people (Guillon de Montleón, I. 145, 155). The official report of the Jacobins claims that the petition obtained 40,215 signatures. “The petition was first signed by about 200 clubbists, who pretended to be the people....They spread the report among the people that all who would not sign the address would have a black mark or be put on a list of proscriptions. They then had desks placed in all the public squares, and seized by the arm all who came, and forced them to sign. Finding no great result from this they made children ten years of age, women, and ignorant rustics put down their names.” They were told that the object was to put down the price of bread. “I swear to you that this address is the work of a hundred persons at most; the great majority of the citizens of Lyons desire to avail themselves of their own sovereignty in the judgment of Louis.” (Letter of David of Lyons to the president of the Convention, Jan. 16.) 810 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION preceded by drums and a body of militia.” From time to time, they make “a solemn halt,” and declaim against Brissot, Vergniaud, Guadet, and then “demand and obtain signatures.”107—Thus extorted and borne to the Convention by the mayor, in the name of the council-general of the Commune and of the thirty-five sections, the imperious petition denounces twenty-two Girondists as traitors, and insolently demands their expulsion.—Another day it is found that a similar summons and similarly presented, in the name of the forty-eight sections, is authorised only by thirteen or fourteen.108— Sometimes the political parade is still more incautious. Pretended deputies of the faubourg St. Antoine appear before the Convention and assert the revolutionary programme. “If you do not adopt it,” they say, “we will declare ourselves in a state of insurrection; there are 40,000 men at the door.”109 The truth is, “about fifty bandits, scarcely known in the faubourg,” and led by a former upholsterer, now a commissary of police, “have gathered together on their route” all they could find in the workshops “and in the stores,” the multitude packed into the Place Vendoˆme not knowing what was demanded in their name.110—Factitious as these tumults may be, they are useful; they show the Convention its master, and prepare the way for a more effectual invasion. The day Marat was acquitted, the whole of his “slums,” male and female, came along with him; under pretext of parading before the Convention, they invaded the hall, scattered themselves over the benches and steps, and, supported by the galleries, installed anew in the tribune, amidst a tempest of applause and of clamorings, the usual promoter of insurrection, pillage and assassination.111—Notwithstanding, however, the energy

107. “Fragment,” by Lanjuinais (in the memoirs of Durand-Maillane, p. 297). 108. Meillan, 113. 109. Buchez et Roux, XXVI. 319 (May 12).—Meillan, 113. 110. Buchez et Roux, XVI. 327. On being informed of this the crowd sent new deputies, the latter stating in relation to the others: “We do not recognise them.” 111. Buchez et Roux, XXVI. 143. The Jacobin Conquest / 811 and persistency of the blockade, the Convention, which has yielded on so many points, will not consent to self-injury. It pronounces the petition presented against the Twenty-two calumnious; it institutes a special commission of twelve members to search the papers of the Commune and the sections for legal proofs of the plot openly and steadily maintained by the Jacobins against the national representation; Mayor Pache is summoned to the bar of the house; warrants of arrest are issued against He´bert, Dobsen and Varlet.—Since popular manifestations have not answered the purpose, and the Con- vention, instead of obeying, is rebellious, nothing is left but to employ force. “Since the 10th of March,” says Vergniaud, in the tribune,112 “murder is openly and unceasingly fomented against you.”—“It is a terrible time,” says an observer, “strongly resembling that preceding the 2d of September.”113—That same evening, at the Jacobin club, a member proposes to “exterminate the wretches before leaving.” “I have studied the Convention,” he says;114 “it is composed in part of wretches who ought to be punished. All the supporters of Dumouriez and the other conspirators should be put out of the way; ﬁre the alarm gun and close the barriers!” The following forenoon, “all the walls in Paris are covered with posters,” calling on the Parisians to “despatch the men at the head of the State as soon as possible.”115—“This thing must be stopped!” is the exclamation of the sans-culottes.—The following week, at the Jacobin club, as elsewhere, “immediate insurrection is the order of the day....What we formerly called the sacred enthusiasm of freedom and patriotism, is now metamorphosed into the fury of an excited populace, which can no longer be regulated or disciplined except by force. There is not one of these wretches who would not accept a counter-

112. Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 175, May 23. 113. Schmidt, I. 212. Report of Dutard, May 13.—I. 218. “A plot is really under way, and many heads are singled out.” (Terrasson, May 13.) 114. Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 9. Speech of Guadet to the Convention, May 14. 115. Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 2. Patriote Français, May 13. 812 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION revolution, provided they could be allowed to crush and stamp on the most noted conservatives.116 . . . The conclusion is that the day, the hour, the minute that the faction believes that it can usefully and without risk bring into play all the brigands in Paris,117 then will the insurrection undoubtedly take place.” Already the plan of the massacre is under consideration by the lowest class of fanatics at the mayoralty, the Eveˆche´, and the Jacobin club.118 Some isolated house is to be selected, with a suite of three rooms on the ground floor, and a small court in the rear; the twenty-two Girondists are to be caught in the night and brought to this slaughter-house arranged beforehand; each in turn is to be passed along to the last room, where he is to be killed and his body tumbled into a hole dug in the middle of the court, and then the whole covered over with quick-lime; it will be supposed that they have emigrated, and, to establish the fact, false correspondence will be printed.119 A member of the Committee on the Municipal Police declares that the plan is feasible: “We will Septemberise them—not we ourselves, but men who are ready, and who will be well paid for it.”—The Montagnards present, Leónard Bourdon and Legendre, make no objection. The latter simply remarks that the Girondists should not be seized in the Convention; outside the Convention “they are wretches whose death would save the Republic,” and the act is lawful; he would see “every rascal with them on the ‘black’

116. Schmidt, I. 242. Report of Dutard, May 18.—Also 245. 117. Schmidt, I. 254. Report of Dutard, May 19. 118. Bergoeing, Chatry, Dubosq, “Pie`ces recueillies par la commission des Douze et publieés a` Caen,” June 28, 1793 (in the “Me´moires” of Meillan, pp. 176–198). Attempts at murder had already occurred. “Lanjuinais came near being killed. Many of the deputies were insulted and threatened. The armed force joins with the malefactors; we have accordingly no means of repression.” (Mortimer-Ternaux, VII. 562, letter of the deputy Michel to his constituents, May 20.) 119. Bergoeing, “Pie`ces, etc.”—Meillan, pp. 39 and 40.—The depositions are all made by eye-witnesses. The propositions for the massacre were made in the meetings at the mayoralty May 19, 20, and 21, and at the Cordeliers club May 22 and 23. The Jacobin Conquest / 813 side perish without interfering.”—Several, instead of 22 deputies, demand 30 or 32, and some 300; the suspected of each district may be added, while ten or a dozen proscription lists are already made out. Through a clean sweep, executed the same night, at the same hour, they may be conducted to the Carmelites, near the Luxem- bourg, and, “if there is not room enough there,” to Biceˆtre; here, “they will disappear from the surface of the globe.”120 Certain leaders desired to entrust the purification of Paris to the sagacity of popular instinct. “In loose and disconnected phrases” they address the people: “Rouse yourselves, and act according to your inspira- tions, since no counsel of mine will enable you to banish those you must strike down!” On the contrary, Varlet proposes a plan of public safety, very full and explicit, in fifteen articles: “Sweep away the deputies of the ‘Plain,’ and other deputies of the Constituent and

120. The Jacobins at Lyons plot the same thing (Guillon de Montleón, 248). Chalier says to the club: “We shall not fail to have 300 noted heads. Get hold of the members of the department, the presidents and secretaries of the sections, and let us make a bundle of them for the guillotine; we will wash our hands in their blood.” Thereupon, on the night of May 28 the revolutionary municipality seize the arsenal and plant cannon on the Hoˆtel-de-Ville. The Lyons sections, however, more energetic than those of Paris, take uparms, and after a terrible fight they get possession of the Hoˆtel-de-Ville. The moral difference between the two parties is very marked in Gonchon’s letters. (“Archives Nationales,” AF, II. 43, letters of Gonchon to Garat, May 31, June 1 and 3.) “Keepupthe courage of the Convention. It need not be afraid. The citizens of Lyons have covered themselves with glory. They displayed the greatest courage in every fight that took place in various quarters of the town, and the greatest magna- minity to their enemies, who behaved most villainously.” The municipal body had sent a flag of truce, pretending to negotiate, and then treacherously opened fire with its cannon on the columns of the sections, and cast the wounded into the river. “The citizens of Lyons, so often slandered, will be the first to have set an example of true republican character. Find me a similar instance, if you can, in the history of revolutions: being victorious, not to have shed a dropof blood!” They cared for the wounded, and raised a subscription for the widows and orphans of the dead, without distinction of party. Cf. Lauvergne, “Histoire du Var,” 175. The same occurs at Toulon (insurrection of the moderates, July 12 and 13, 1793).—At Toulon, as at Lyons, there was no murder after the victory; only regular trials and the execution of two or three assassins whose crimes were legally proved. 814 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Legislative Assemblies, all nobles, priests, pettifoggers, etc.; exterminate the whole of that race, and the Bourbons, too, with entire suppression of the Ministers.” He´bert, for his part, alluding to the Girondists, writes in his gazette that “the last hour of their death is going to strike,” and that, “when their foul blood shall have been spilled, aristocratic brawlers will return to their holes, the same as on the 10th of August.”—Naturally, the professional slaughterers are notiﬁed. A certain Laforet, an old-clothes dealer on the Quai- du-Louvre, who, with his wife, had already distinguished themselves on the 2d of September, reckons that “there are in Paris 6,000 sans- culottes ready to massacre at the ﬁrst sign all dangerous deputies, and eight thousand petitioners,” undoubtedly those who, in the several sections, signed the addresses to the Convention against the Com- mune.—Another “Septemberizer,”121 commanding the battalion of the Jardin des Plantes, Henriot, on meeting a gang of men working on the river, exclaims in his rough voice: “Good morning, my good fellows, we shall need you soon, and at better work. You won’t have wood to carry in your garbage-carts—you’ll have to carry dead bodies.” “All right,” replies one of the hands, half tipsy, “we’ll do it as we did the 2d of September. We’ll turn a penny by it.”—“Cheynard, a locksmith and machinist at the mint, is manufacturing daggers, . . . and the women of the tribunes are already supplied with two hundred of them.”—Finally, on the 29th of May, He´bert proposes, in the Jacobin club,122 “to pounce down on the Commission of Twelve,” and another Jacobin declares that “those who have usurped dictatorial power,” meaning by that the Girondists, “are outlawed.” All this is extreme, clumsily done, useless and dangerous, or, at least, premature, and the chiefs of the “Mountain,” Danton, Robes- pierre, and Marat himself, better informed and less short-sighted, are well aware that brutal murder would be revolting to the already half-aroused departments.123 The legislative machinery is not to be

121. Schmidt, I. 335. Report of Perrie`re, May 29. 122. Bergoeing, “Pie`ces, etc.”, p. 195.—Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 296. 123. The insurrection at Lyons took place on May 29. On the 2d of June it The Jacobin Conquest / 815 shattered, but made use of; it must be employed against itself to effect the required injury; in this way the operation at a distance will appear legal, and, garnished with the usual high-flown speeches, impose on the provincial mind.124 From the 3d of April, Robespierre, in the Jacobin club, always circumspect and considerate, had limited and defined in advance the coming insurrection. “Let all good citizens,” he says, “meet in their sections, and come and force us to place the disloyal deputies under arrest.” Carefully guarded, this, and quite proper, on referring back to principles. The people always reserves the right to co-operate with its mandatories, which right it practices daily in the galleries. Through extreme precaution, which well depicts the man,125 Robespierre refuses to go any further in his interference. “I am incapable of advising the people what steps to take for its salvation. That is not given to one man alone. I, who am exhausted by four years of revolution, and by the heart-rending spectacle of the triumph of tyranny, am not thus favored....I,who am wasted by a slow fever, and, above all, by the fever of patriotism. As I have said, there remains for me no other duty to fulfill at the present moment.” Moreover, he enjoins the municipality “to unite with the people, and form a close alliance with it.”—In other words, the blow must be struck by the Commune, the “Mountain” must appear to have nothing to do with it. But, “it is fully in the secret”;126 is announced in the Convention that the insurgent army of Loze`re, more than 30,000 strong, has taken Marve´jols and is about to take Mende (Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 387).—A threatening address from Bordeaux (May 14) and from thirty- two sections in Marseilles (May 25) against the Jacobins (Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 3, 214).—Cf. Robinet in “Le Proce`s des Dantonistes,” 303, 305. 124. Mortimer-Ternaux, VII. 38. 125. Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 297, session of the Jacobins, May 29. 126. Barre`re, “Me´moires,” II. 91, 94. Mendacious as Barre`re is, his testimony here may be accepted. I see no reason why he should state what is not true; he was well informed, as he belonged to the Committee of Public Safety. His statements, besides, on the complicity of the Mountain and on the roˆle of Danton are confirmed by the whole mass of facts.—Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 200 (speech by Danton in the Convention, June 13). “Without the cannon of the 31st of May, without the insurrection the conspirators would have triumphed; 816 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION its chiefs pull the wires which set the brutal dancing-jacks in motion on the public trestles of the Hoˆtel-de-Ville. Danton and Lacroix wrote in the bureau of the Committee of “Public Safety,” the insolent summons which the procureur of the Commune is to read to the Convention on the 31st of May, and, during seven days of crisis, Danton, Robespierre and Marat are the counsellors, directors and moderators of all proceedings, and lead, push on or restrain the supernumeraries of the insurrection within the limits of this programme. VII It is a tragi-comic play in three acts, each winding up with a sensation, always the same and always foreseen; Legendre, one of the principal machinists, has taken pains to announce beforehand that, “If this lasts any longer,” said he, at the Cordeliers club,127 “if the ‘Mountain’ remains quiet any longer, I shall call in the people, and tell the galleries to come down and take part with us in the deliberations.”—To begin, on the 27th of May, in relation to the arrest of He´bert and his companions, the “Mountain,” supported by the galleries, becomes furious.128 In vain has the majority declared itself, and still frequently repeats its declaration. “We shall resist,” says Danton, “so long as there are a hundred true citizens to helpus.” “President,” exclaims Marat to Isnard, “you are a tyrant! a despi- they would have given us the law. Let the crime of that insurrection be on our heads! That insurrection—I myself demanded it! . . I demand a declaration by the Convention, that without the insurrection of May 31, liberty would be no more!”—Ibid., 220. Speech by Leclerc at the Cordeliers club, June 27. “Was it not Legendre who rendered abortive our wise measures, so often taken, to exterminate our enemies? He and Danton it was, who, through their culpable resistance, reduced us to the moderatism of the 31st of May, Legendre and Danton are the men who opposed the revolutionary steps which we had taken on those great days to crush out all the aristocrats in Paris!” 127. Schmidt, I. 244. Report by Dutard, May 18. 128. Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 253 and following pages, session of May 27.— Mortimer-Ternaux, VII. 294.—Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 9 (“Prećis rapide,” by Gorsas). The Jacobin Conquest / 817 cable tyrant!” “I demand,” says Couthon, “that the President be impeached!” “Off with the President to the Abbaye!”—The “Moun- tain” has decided that he shall not preside; it springs from the benches and rushes at him, shouts “death to him,” becomes hoarse with its vociferations, and compels him to leave the chair through weariness and exhaustion. It drives out his successor, Fonfre`de, in the same manner, and ends by putting He´rault-Sećhelles, one of its own accomplices, in the chair.—Meanwhile, at the entrance of the Convention, “the regulations have been violated”; a crowd of armed men “have spread through the passages and obstructed the approaches”; the deputies, Meillan, Chiappe and Lydon, on attempting to leave, are arrested, Lydon being stopped “by the point of a sabre at his breast,”129 while the leaders on the inside encourage, protect and justify their trusty aids outdoors.—Marat, with his usual audacity, on learning that Raffet, the commandant, was clearing the passages, comes to him “with a pistol in his hand and puts him under arrest,”130 on the ground that the people, the sacred rights of petition and the petitioners must be respected. There are “five or six hundred, almost all of them armed,”131 stationed for three hours at the doors of the hall; at the last moment, two other troops, despatched by the Gravilliers and Croix-Rouge sections, arrive and bring them their final afflux. Thus strengthened, they spring over the benches assigned to them, spread through the hall, and mingle with the deputies who still remain in their seats. It is after midnight; many of the representatives, worn out with fatigue and disgust, have left; Pe´tion, Lasource, and a few others, who wish to get in, “cannot penetrate the threatening crowd.” To compensate themselves, and in the places of the absent, the petitioners, constituting themselves representatives of France, vote with the “Mountain,” while the Jac- obin president, far from turning them out, himself invites them “to set aside all obstacles prejudicial to the welfare of the people.” In

129. Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 258.—Meillan, 43. 130. Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 259 (words of Raffet). 131. Meillan, 44.—Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 267, 280. 818 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION this gesticulating crowd, in the half-light of smoky lamps, amidst the uproar of the galleries, it is difficult to hear well what motion is put to vote; it is not easy to see who rises or sits down, and two decrees pass, or seem to pass, one releasing He´bert and his accomplices, and the other revoking the commission of the Twelve.132 Forthwith the messengers who await the issue run out and carry the good news to the Hoˆtel-de-Ville, the Commune celebrating its triumph with an explosion of applause. The next morning, however, notwithstanding the terrors of a call of the House and the fury of the “Mountain,” the majority, as a defensive stroke, revokes the decree by which it is disarmed, while a new decree maintains the commission of the Twelve; the operation, accordingly, is to be done over again, but not the whole of it; for He´bert and the others imprisoned remain at liberty, while the majority, which, through a sense of propriety or the instinct of self- preservation, had again placed its sentinels on the outposts, consents, either through weakness or hopes of conciliation, to let the prisoners remain free. The result is they have had the worst of the fight. Their adversaries, accordingly, are encouraged, and at once renew the attack, their tactics, very simple, being those which have already proved so successful on the 10th of August. The matter now in hand is to invoke against the derived and provisional rights of the government, the superior and inalienable right of the people; also, to substitute for legal authority, which, in its nature, is limited, revolutionary power, which, in its essence,

132. Meillan, 44. “Placed opposite the president, within ten paces of him, with my eyes constantly fixed on him, because in the horrible din which disgraced the Assembly we could have no other compass to steer by, I can testify that I neither saw nor heard the decree put to vote.”—Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 278. Speech by Osselin, session of May 28: “I presented the decree as drawn upto the secretaries for their signatures this morning. One of them, after reading it, observed to me that the last article had not been decreed, but that the preceding articles had been.”—Mortimer-Ternaux, VII. 562. Letter of the deputy Michel, May 29. “The guards were forced, and the sanctuary of the law invested from about four to ten hours, so that nobody could leave the hall even for the most urgent purposes.” The Jacobin Conquest / 819 is absolute. To this end the section of the City, under the vice- presidency of Maillard, the “Septemberiser,” invites the other forty- seven sections each to elect two commissaries, with “unlimited powers.” In thirty-three sections, purged, terrified, or deserted, the Jacobins, alone, or almost alone,133 elect the most determined of their band, particularly aliens and its greatest rascals, in all sixty-six commissaries, who, on the evening of the 29th, meet at the Eveˆche´, and select nine of their number to form, under the presidency of Dobsen, a central and revolutionary executive committee. These nine persons are entirely unknown;134 all are obscure subordinates,135 mere puppets and manikins; eight days after, on finishing their performance, when they are no longer needed, they will be withdrawn behind the scenes. In the mean time they pass for the mandatories of the popular sovereign, with full power in all directions, because he has delegated his omnipotence to them, and the sole power, because their investiture is the most recent; under this sanction, they stalk around somewhat like supernumeraries at the Opera, dressed in purple and gold, representing a conclave of cardinals or the Diet of the Holy

133. Mortimer-Ternaux, VII. 308. Extract from the official reports of the patriotic club of Butte-des-Moulins, May 30. “Considering that the majority of the section, known for its incivism and its anti-revolutionary spirit, would decline this election or would elect commissaries not enjoying the confidence of patriots,” . . the patriotic club takes upon itself the duty of electing the two commissaries demanded. 134. Durand-Maillan, 297. “Fragment,” by Lanjuinais. “Seven aliens, seven outside agents, Desfieux, Proly, Pereyra, Dubuisson, Gusman, the two brothers Frey, etc., were set upby the commune as an insurrectionary committee.” Most of them are vile fellows, as is the case with Varlet, Dobsen, Hassenfratz, Rous- selin, Desfieux, Gusman, etc. 135. Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 156. “We, members of the revolutionary commission, citizens Cle´mence, of the Bon-Conseil section; Dunouy, of the Sans-culottes section; Bonin, of the section of Les Marche´s; Auvray, of the section of Mont-Blanc; Se´guy, of the section of Butte-des-Moulins; Moissard, of Grenelle; Berot, canton d’Issy; Rousselin, section of the Unite´; Marchand, section of Mont-Blanc; Grespin, section of Gravilliers.” They resign on the 6th of June.—The commission, at first composed of nine members, ends in comprising eleven. (Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 316, official reports of the commune, May 31.) May 25 (Speech by Pache to the Committee of Public Safety, June 1.) 820 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Empire. Never has the political drama degenerated into such an impudent farce!—On the 31st, at half-past six o’clock in the morning, Dobsen and his bullies present themselves at the council-general of the Commune, tender their credentials, and make known to it its deposition. The Council, with edifying complacency, accepts the ﬁat and leaves the department. With no less grateful readiness Dobsen summons it back, and reinstates it in all its functions, in the name of the people, and declares that it merits the esteem of the country.136 At the same time another demagogue, Varlet, performs the same ceremony with the Council of the department, and both bodies, consecrated by a new baptism, join the sixty-six commissaries to exercise together the same dictatorship.—What could be more legitimate? The Convention would err in making any opposition: “It was elected merely to condemn the tyrant and to frame a constitution; the sovereign has invested it with no other power;137 accordingly, other acts, its warrants of arrest, are simply usurpations and despotism. Paris, moreover, represents France better than it does, for Paris is “the extract of all the departments, the mirror of opinion,”138 the advance-guard of patriotism. “Remember the 10th of August;139 previous to that epoch, opinions in the Republic were divided; but, scarcely had you struck the decisive blow when all subsided into silence. Have no fear of the departments; with a little terror and a few teachings, we shall turn all minds in our favor.” Fault-ﬁnders persist in demanding the convocation of primary assemblies. “Was not the 10th of August necessary? Did not the departments then endorse what Paris did? They will do so this time.

136. Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 306. Oﬃcial reports of the commune, May 31.—Ibid., 316. Mortimer-Ternaux, VII. 319. 137. Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 274. Speech by Hassenfratz to the Jacobin Club, May 27. 138. Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 346 (speech by Lhuillier in the Convention, May 31). 139. Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 302, session of the Convention, May 30. Words uttered by Hassenfratz, Varlet, and Chabot, and denounced by Lanjui- nais. The Jacobin Conquest / 821

It is Paris which saved them.”140—Consequently, the new government places Henriot, a reliable man, and one of the September massacrers, in full command of the armed force; then, through a proceeding which the law declares a capital offence, it orders the alarm gun to be fired; on the other hand, it beats a general call to arms, sounds the tocsin and closes the barriers; the post-office managers are put in arrest, and letters are intercepted and opened; the order is given to disarm the suspected and hand their arms over to patriots; “forty sous a day are allowed to citizens with small means while under arms.”141 Notice is given without fail the preceding evening to the trusty men of the quarter; accordingly, early in the morning, the Committee of Supervision has already selected from the Jacobin sections “the most needy companies in order to arm those the most worthy of combatting for liberty,” while all its guns are distributed “to the good republican workmen.”142—From hour to hour as the day advances, we see in the refractory sections all authority passing over to the side of force; at the Finiste`re, Butte-des-Moulins, Lom- bards, Fraternite´, and Marais143 sections, the encouraged sans-culottes obtain the ascendency, nullify the deliberations of the moderates, and, in the afternoon, their delegates go and take the oath at the Hoˆtel-de-Ville. Meanwhile the Commune, dragging behind it the semblance of popular unanimity, besieges the Convention with multiplied and threatening petitions. As on the 27th of May, the petitioners invade the hall, and “mix in fraternally with the members of the ‘Left.’”

140. Madame Roland, “Appel a` l’impartiale poste´rite´.” Conversation of Ma- dame Roland on the evening of May 31, on the Place do Carrousel, with a cannoneer. 141. Buchez et Roux, 307–323. Official reports of the commune, May 31. 142. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 2,494, register of the revolutionary committee of the Reúnion section, official report of May 31, 6 o’clock in the morning. 143. Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 335, session of the Convention, May 31. Pe- tition presented by the commissaries in the name of forty-eight sections; their credentials show that they are not at first authorised by more than twenty-six sections. 822 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Forthwith, on the motion of Levasseur, the “Mountain,” “conﬁdent of its place being well guarded,” leaves it and passes over to the “Right.”144 Invaded in its turn, the “Right” refuses to join in the deliberations; Vergniaud demands that “the Assembly join the armed force on the square, and put itself under its protection”; he and his friends leave the hall, and the decapitated majority falls back upon its usual hesitating course. All is hubbub and uproar around it. In the hall the clamors of the “Mountain,” the petitioners, and the galleries, seem like the constant roar of a tempest. Outside, twenty or thirty thousand men will probably clash in the streets;145 the battalion of Butte-des-Moulins, with detachments sent by neighboring sections, is intrenched in the Palais-Royal, and Henriot, spreading the report that the rich sections of the centre have displayed the white cockade, send against it the sans-culottes of the faubourgs Saint-Antoine and Saint-Marceau; cannon are pointed on both sides.—These loaded cannon must not be discharged; the signal of civil war must not be given; it is simply necessary “to forestall the consequences of a movement which could be only disastrous to liberty,”146 and it is important to ensure public tranquillity. The majority, accordingly, think that it is acting courageously in refusing to the Commune the arrest of the Twenty-two, and of the Ministers, Lebrun and Clavie`re; in exchange for this it consents to suppress its commission of Twelve; it conﬁrms the act of the Commune which allows forty sous a day to the workmen under arms; it declares freedom of entry into its tribunes, and, thanking all the sections, those who defended as well as those who attacked it, it maintains

144. Buchez et Roux, 347, 348. Mortimer-Ternaux, VII. 350 (third despatch of the Hoˆtel-de-Ville delegates, present at the session): “The National Assembly was not able to accept the above important measures . . . until the perturbators of the Assembly, known under the title of the ‘Right,’ did themselves the justice to perceive that they were not worthy of taking part in them; they evacuated the Assembly, amid great gesticulations and imprecations, to which you know they are liable.” 145. Dauban, “La Demagogie en 1793.” Diary of Beaulieu, May 31.—Dec- laration of Henriot, Germinal 4, year III.—Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 351. 146. Mortimer-Ternaux, VII. 565. Letter of the deputy Loiseau, June 5. The Jacobin Conquest / 823 the National Guard on permanent call, announces a general federation for the 10th of August following, and goes oﬀ to fraternise with the battalions in the Palais-Royal, in battle array against each other through the calumnies of the Commune, and which, unde- ceived at the last moment, now embrace instead of cutting each other’s throats. This time, again, the advantage is on the side of the Commune. Not only have many of its requirements been converted into decrees, but again, its revolutionary baptism remains in full force; its executive committee is tacitly recognised, the new government performs its functions, its usurpations are endorsed, its general, Henriot, keeps command of the entire armed force, and all its dictatorial measures are carried out without let or hindrance.—There is another reason why they should be maintained and aggravated. “Your victory is only half-won,” writes He´bert in his Pe`re Duchesne, “all those b—— of intriguers still live!”—On the evening of the 31st of May the Com- mune issues warrants of arrest against the Ministers, Clavie`re and Lebrun, and against Roland and his wife. That same evening and throughout the following day and night, and again the day after, the Committees of Supervision of the forty-eight sections, conform- ably with instructions from the Hoˆtel-de-Ville,147 read over the lists of their quarters,148 add new names to these, and send commissaries

147. Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 352 to 360, 368 to 377. Official reports of the commune, June 1 and 2. Proclamation of the revolutionary committee, June 1. “Your delegates have ordered the arrest of all suspected persons concealing themselves in the sections of Paris. This arrest is in progress in all quarters.” 148. “Archives Nationales,” F7, 2,494. Section of the Reúnion, official report, June 1. Ibid., June 2. Citizen Robin is arrested on the 2d of June, “for having manifested opinions contrary to the sovereignty of the people in the National Assembly.” The same day a proclamation is made on the territory of the section by a deputation of the commune, accompanied by one member and two drummers, “tending (tendantes) to make known to the people that the country will be saved by awaiting (en atendans) with courage the decree which is to be rendered to prevent traitors (les traitre) from longer sitting in the senate- house.” Ibid., June 4. The committee decides that it will add new members to its number, but they will be taken only from all “good sans-culote; no notary, no notary’s clerk, no lawyers nor their clerks, no banker nor rich landlord” 824 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION to disarm and arrest the suspected. Whoever has spoken against revolutionary committees, or disapproved of the assaults of the 31st of May, or not openly shown himself on the 10th of August, or voted on the wrong side in the old Legislative Assembly, is eligible; it is a general, simultaneous raid; in all the streets we see nothing but people seized and sent to prison, or before the section committee, under escort, “anti-patriotic” journalists first of all, the entire impression of their journals being additionally confiscated, and the journal suppressed; the printing-rooms of Gorsas are sacked, seals placed on his presses,149 and Prudhomme himself is locked up. All resistance is overcome in the Contrat-Social, Fraternity, Marais and Marseilles sections, leaving the Commune free, as far as the street is concerned, to recommence its attack on the Convention. “Lists of sans-culottes workmen” have been drawn upin each section, and six francs a head is allowed them, payable by the Convention, as indemnity for their temporary suspension from work;150 this is a premium offered to voters, and as nothing is more potent than cash in hand, Pache provides the funds by diverting 150,000 francs intended for the colonists in San Domingo; the whole day on the 2d of June, trusty men go about among the ranks distributing five-franc assignats.151 Vehicles loaded with supplies accompany each battalion, the better to keepthe men under arms; 152 the stomach needs filling up, and a pint of wine is excellent for strengthening patriotic sentiment. Henriot has ordered back from Courbevoie the battalions of being admissible, unless he gives evidence of unmistakable civism since 1789.— Cf. F7, 2,497 (section of the Droits de l’Homme), F7, 2,484 (section of the Halle-au-ble´), the resemblance in orthography and in their acts; the register of the Piques section (F7, 2,475) is one of the most interesting; here may be found the details of the appearance of the ministers before it; the committee that examines them does not even spell their names correctly, “Clavier” being often written for Clavie`re, and “Goyer” for Gohier. 149. Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 19. 150. Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 354. Official reports of the commune, June I. 151. Meillan, 307.—“Fragment,” by Lanjuinais.—“Diurnal,” of Beaulieu, June 2. Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 399 (speech by Barre`re). 152. Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 357. Official reports of the commune, June I. The Jacobin Conquest / 825 volunteers which a few days before had been enlisted for La Ven- deé,153 the dissolute pillaging “adventurers,” later known as “the heroes of the 500 francs.” Besides these he has under his thumb Rosenthal’s hussars, a body of German veterans who do not understand French, and will remain deaf to any legal summons. Finally, he surrounds the Convention with a circle of picked sans-culottes, especially cannoneers, the best of Jacobins,154 who drag along with them the most formidable park of artillery, 163 cannons, with grates and charcoal to heat the balls. The Tuileries is thus encircled by bands of roughs and fanatics; the National Guard, five or six times as many,155 brought out “to give the air of a popular movement to the proceedings of five or six thousand bandits,” cannot come to the aid of the Convention, it being stationed out of reach, beyond the Pont-Tournant, which is raised, and behind the wooden fence separating the Carrousel from the palace. Kept in its position by its orders, merely serving as a stationary piece of scenery, employed against itself unbeknown to itself,156 it can do no more than let the factionists act who serve as its advanced guard.—Early in the morn-

153. Meillan, 58, 53, 307. Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 14 (“Prećis,” by Gordas). 154. Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 359. Official reports of the commune, June I. “One member of the Council stated that on going to the Beaurepaire section he was not well received; that the president of this section spoke uncivilly to him and took him for an imaginary municipalist; that he was threatened with the lock-up, and that his liberty was solely due to the brave citizens of the Sans- culottes section and the cannoneers of the Beaurepaire section who went with him.”—Preparations for the investment began on the 1st of June. (“Archives Nationales,” F7, 2,497, official reports of the Droits de l’Homme section, June 1.) Orders of Henriot to the commandant of the section to send “400 homme et la compagnie de canonier avec les 2 pie`ces de canon au Carouzel le long des Thuilerie plasse de la Re´volution.” 155. Lanjuinais states 100,000 men, Meillan 50,000; the deputies of the Somme say 60,000, but without any evidence. Judging by various indications I should put the number much lower, on account of the disarmament and absentees: say 30,000 men, the same as May 31. 156. Mortimer-Ternaux, VII. 566. Letter of the deputy Loiseau: “I passed through the whole of one battalion; the men all said that they did not know why the movement was made; that only their officers knew.” (June 1.) 826 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION ing the vestibules, stairs and passages in the hall of the Convention have been invaded by the frequenters of the galleries and the women under pay; the commandant of the post, with his officers, have been confined by “men with moustaches,” armed with sabres and pistols; the legal guard has been replaced with an extraordinary guard,157 and the deputies are prisoners. If one of them is obliged to go out for a moment, it is under the supervision of four fusileers, “who conduct him, wait for him, and bring him back.”158 Others, in trying to look out the windows, are aimed at; the venerable Dussaulx is struck, and Boissy d’Anglas, seized by the throat, returns with his cravat and shirt all in shreds. For six hours by the clock the Con- vention is under arrest, and when the decree is passed, ordering the removal of the armed force bearing upon it, Henriot replies to the officer who notifies him of it: “Tell your d president that he and his Assembly may go to h . If he don’t surrender the Twenty-two in an hour, I’ll send him there!”159 In the hall the majority, abandoned by its recognised guides and its favorite spokesmen, grows more and more feeble from hour to hour. Brissot, Pe´tion, Guadet, Gensonne´, Buzot, Salle, Grange- neuve, and others, two-thirds of the Twenty-two, kept away by their friends, remain at home.160 Vergniaud, who had come, remains silent, and then leaves; the “Mountain,” probably, gaining by his absence, allows him to pass out. Four other Girondists who remain in the Assembly to the end, Isnard, Dussaulx, Lauthenas, and Fauchet, consent to resign; when the generals give uptheir swords, the sol-

157. Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 400. Session of the Convention, June 2.— XXVIII. 43 (report by Saladin). 158. Mortimer-Ternaux, VII. 392. Official report of the Jacobin Club, June 2. “The deputies were so surrounded as not to be able to go out even for special purposes.”—Ibid., 568. Letter of the deputy Loiseau. 159. Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 44. Report by Saladin.—Meillan, 237.— Mortimer-Ternaux, VII. 547. Declaration of the deputies of the Somme. 160. Meillan, 52.—Pe´tion, “Me´moires,” 109 (Edition Dauban).—Lanjuinais (“Fragment”) 199. “Nearly all those called Girondists thought it best to stay away.”—Letter of Vergniaud, June 3 (in the Republicain Français, June 5, 1793). “I left the Assembly yesterday between 1 and 2 o’clock.” The Jacobin Conquest / 827 diers soon lay down their arms. Lanjuinais, alone, who is not a Girondist, but a Catholic and Breton, speaks like a man against this outrageous attack on the nation’s representatives; they rush at him and assail him in the tribune; the butcher, Legendre, simulating “the cleaver’s blow,” cries out to him, “Come down or I’ll knock you down!” A groupof Montagnards springforward to helpLegendre, and one of them claps a pistol to his throat;161 he clings fast to the tribune and strives in vain, for his party around him lose their spirits.—At this moment Barre`re, remarkable for expedients, proposes to the Convention to adjourn, and hold the session “amidst the armed force that will afford it protection.”162 All other things failing, the majority avails itself of this last straw. It rises in a body, in spite of the vociferations in the galleries, descends the great staircase, and proceeds to the entrance of the Carrousel. There the Mon- tagnard president, He´rault-Sećhelles, reads the decree of Henriot, which enjoins him to withdraw, and he officially and correctly summons him in the usual way. But a large number of the Montagnards have followed the majority, and are there to encourage the insurrection; Danton takes Henriot’s hand and tells him, in a low voice, “Go ahead, don’t be afraid; we want to show that the Assembly is free, be firm.”163 At this the tall bedizened gawky recovers his assurance, and in his husky voice, he addresses the president: “He´rault, the people have not come here to listen to big words. You are a good patriot....Doyoupromise on your head that the Twenty- two shall be given upin twenty-four hours?” “No.” “Then, in that case, I am not responsible. To arms, cannoneers, make your guns ready!” The cannoneers take their lighted matches, “the cavalry draw their sabres, and the infantry aim at the deputies.”164 Forced back on this side, the unhappy Convention turns to the left, passes

161. Lanjuinais, “Fragment,” 299. 162. Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 400. 163. Robinet, “Le Proce`s de Danton,” 169. Words of Danton (according to the notes of a juryman, Topino-Lebrun). 164. Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 44. Report by Saladin.—Meillan, 59.—Lan- juinais, 308, 310. 828 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION through the archway, follows the broad avenue through the garden, and advances to the Pont-Tournant to find an outlet. There is no outlet; the bridge is raised, and everywhere the barrier of pikes and bayonets remains impenetrable; shouts of “Vive la Montagne! Vive Marat! To the guillotine with Brissot, Vergniaud, Guadet and Gen- sonne´! Away with bad blood!” greet the deputies on all sides, and the Convention, similar to a flock of sheep, in vain turns round and round in its pen. At this moment, to get them back into the fold, Marat, like a barking dog, runs upas fast as his short legs will allow, followed by his troopof tatterdemalions, and exclaims: “Let all loyal deputies return to their posts!” With bowed heads, they mechanically return to the hall; it is immediately closed, and they are once more in confinement. To assist them in their deliberations a crowd of the well-disposed entered pell-mell along with them. To watch them and hurry on the matter, the sans-culottes, with fixed bayonets, gesticulate and threaten them from the galleries. Outside and inside, necessity, with its iron hand, has seized them and holds them fast. There is a dead silence. Couthon, a paralytic, tries to stand up; his friends carry him in their arms to the tribune; an intimate friend of Robespierre’s, he is a grave and important personage; he sits down, and in his mild tone of voice, he speaks: “Citizens, all members of the Convention must now be satisfied of their freedom....Youare now aware that there is no restraint on your deliberations.”165 The comedy is at an end. Even in Molie`re there is none like it. The sentimental cripple in the tribune winds up by demanding that the Twenty-two, the Twelve, and the Ministers, Clavie`re and Lebrun be placed in arrest. Nobody opposes the motion,166 “because physical necessities begin to be felt, and an impression of terror pervades the Assembly.” Several say to themselves, “Well, after all, those who are proscribed will be as well off at home, where they will be safe. . . . It is better to put up with a lesser evil than encounter a greater

165. Buches et Roux, XXVII. 401. 166. Mortimer-Ternaux, VII. 569. Letter of the deputy Loiseau.—Meil- lan, 60. The Jacobin Conquest / 829 one.” Another exclaims: “It is better not to vote than to betray one’s trust.” The salvo being found, all consciences are easy. Two-thirds of the Assembly declare that they will no longer take part in the discussions, hold aloof, and remain in their seats at each calling of the vote. With the exception of about ﬁfty members of the “Right,” who rise on the side of the Girondists, the “Mountain,” whose forces are increased by the insurgents and amateurs sitting fraternally in its midst, alone votes for, and ﬁnally passes the decree.—Now that the Convention has mutilated itself, it is checkmated, and is about to become a governing machine in the service of a clique; the Jacobin conquest is completed, and in the hands of the victors, the grand operations of the guillotine are going to commence.

VIII Let us observe them at this decisive moment. I doubt if any such contrast ever presented itself in any country or in any age.— Through a series of purifications in an inverse sense, the faction has become reduced to its dregs; nothing remains of the vast surging wave of 1789 but its froth and its slime; the rest has been cast off or has withdrawn to one side; at first the highest class, the clergy, the nobles, and the parliamentarians; next the middle class of traders, manufacturers, and the bourgeois; and finally the best of the inferior class, small proprietors, farmers,167 and master-workmen—in short, the prominent in every pursuit, profession, state, or occupation, whoever possesses capital, a revenue, an establishment, respectability, public esteem, education, and mental and moral culture. The party in June, 1793, is composed of little more than shiftless workmen, town and country vagabonds, inmates of hospitals, trulls and trollops of the gutter, a degraded and dangerous populace,168 outcasts

167. Buchez et Roux, XXVI. 341. Speech by Chasles in the Convention, May 2. “The cultivators . . . are nearly all aristocrats.” 168. Sie`yes (quoted by Barante, “Histoire de la Convention,” III. 169) thus describes it: “That false people, than which the French people never had a more mortal enemy, incessantly obstructed the approaches to the Convention....At the entrance or exit of the Convention the astonished spectator thought that a 830 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION from society, those gone astray, libertines, the crazy of every description; and in Paris, from which they command the rest of France, their troop, an insignificant minority, is recruited from that refuse of humanity infesting all capitals, amongst the epileptic and scrof- ulous rabble which, inheriting vitiated blood and rendering this still more so by its misconduct, imports into civilisation the degeneracy, imbecility, and infatuations of shattered temperaments, retrograde instincts, and bad cerebral organisations.169 What it did with the powers of the State is narrated by three or four contemporary witnesses; this is revealed in its work and in its chiefs; we stand face to face with the men of action and of enterprise who have managed the last attack and who represent it the best.—Since the 2d of June “nearly one-half of the deputies in the Convention refrain from taking any part in its deliberations; more than one hundred and fifty have fled or disappeared;”170 there is its work—the mute, the absent, the condemned. On the evening of June 2 the friend of its heart, the director of its conscience, the foul abortion, Marat, the charlatan, monomaniac, and murderer, who regularly every morning pours his political poison into its bosom, has at last obtained the discretionary power craved by him for the last four years, that of Marius and Sylla, that of Octavius, Antony, and Lepidus; the power of adding or removing names from lists of proscription: “while the reading was going on he indicated retrenchments or augmentations, the reader effacing or adding names as he suggested them, without any consultation whatever with the Assembly.”171—At the Hoˆtel-de- new invasion of barbarian hordes had suddenly occurred, a new irruption of voracious, sanguinary harpies, flocking there to seize hold of the Revolution as if it were the natural prey of their species.” 169. Gouverneur Morris, II. 241. Letter of Oct. 23, 1792. “The populace— something, thank God, that is unknown in America!”—He often insists on this essential characteristic of the French Revolution.—On this ever-present class, see the accurate and complete work well supported by facts, of Dr. Lombroso, “L’Uomo delinquente.” 170. Mortimer-Ternaux, VII. Letter of the deputy Laplaigne, July 6. 171. Meillan, 51.—Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 356. Official report of the commune, session of June 1. In the afternoon Marat comes to the commune, ha- The Jacobin Conquest / 831

Ville on the 3d of June, in the Salle de la Reine, Pe´tion and Guadet, under arrest, see with their own eyes this Central Committee which has just started the insurrection, and which through its singular delegation sits enthroned over all other established authorities. “Some stretched out on the benches and others leaning on the tables with their elbows, were snoring;172 others were barefoot or wearing their shoes slipshod like slippers: almost all were dirty and poorly clad; their clothes were unbuttoned, their hair uncombed, and their faces frightful; they wore pistols in their belts, and sabres, with scarfs turned into shoulder-straps. Bottles, bits of bread, fragments of meat and bones lay strewn around on the floor, and the odor was intolerable.” It looks like a robber’s den. The chief of the band here is not Chaumette, who entertains legal scruples,173 nor Pache, who under a mask of Swiss phlegm is cunningly trimming his sails, but another Marat, more brutal and yet more depraved—He´bert, who profits by the opportunity to “put more coal into the furnace of his Pe`re Duchesne,” striking off 600,000 copies of it, pocketing 135,000 francs for the numbers sent to the armies, and gaining seventy-five per centum on the contract.174—In the street the active body of supporters consists of two bands, one military and the other civil, the former composed of roughs who are soon to furnish the revolutionary army. “This army175 exists (in reality) since 1789. The rangues the council, and gives the insurrection the last impetus. It is plain that he was chief actor on both these days (June 1 and 2). 172. Pe´tion, 116. 173. Schmidt, I. 370.—Mortimer-Ternaux, VII. 391. Letter of Marchand, member of the Central Committee. “I saw Chaumette do everything he could to hinder this glorious revolution, . . exclaim, shed tears, and tear his hair.”— Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 46. According to Saladin, Chaumette went so far as to demand He´bert’s arrest. 174. Mortimer-Ternaux, VII. 300.—Cf. “Le vieux Cordelier,” by C. Des- moulins, No. 5. 175. Mallet-Dupan, II. 52 (March 8, 1794).—The titular general of the revolutionary army was Ronsin. “Previous to the Revolution he was a seedy author earning his living and reputation by working for the boulevard stalls....One day a person informed him that his staff ‘was behaving very badly, acting 832 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION agents of the Duke of Orleans formed its first nucleus. It grew, became organised, had officers appointed to it, mustering points, orders of the day, and a peculiar slang....Alltherevolutions were effected by its aid; it excited popular violence everywhere, even when not present in a body. On the 12th of July, 1789, it had Necker’s bust carried in public and the theatres closed; on the 5th of October it started the populace off to Versailles; on the 20th of April, 1791, it caused the king’s arrest in the court of the Tuileries....Ledby Westermann and Fournier, it formed the centre battalion in the attack of August 10, 1792; it executed the September massacres; it protected the Maratists on the 31st of May, 1793,...itscomposition is in keeping with its exploits and its functions. It contains the most determined scoundrels, the brigands of Avignon, the scum of Mar- seilles, Brabant, Lie`ge, Switzerland and the shores of Genoa.” Through a careful sifting,176 it is to be inspected, strengthened, made worse, and converted into a legal body of janissaries under triple pay; once “augmented with idle hair-dressers, lackeys out of place, outdoor motion-makers and other wretches unable to earn their bread honorably,” it will supply the detachments needed for garrison at Bordeaux, Lyons, Dijon and Nantes, still leaving “ten thousand of these mamelukes to keepdown the capital.” The civil body of supporters comprises, first, those who haunt the sections, and are about to receive 40 sous for attending each meeting; next, the troop of figure-heads who, in other public places, are to represent the people, about 1,000 clamorers and claqueurs, “two-thirds of which are women.” “While I was free,” says Beau- lieu,177 “I closely observed their movements. It was a magic-lantern tyrannically in the most outrageous manner at the theatres and everywhere else, striking women and tearing their bonnets to pieces. Your men commit rape, pillage, and massacre.’ To which he replied: ‘Well, what shall I do? I know that they are a lot of ruffians as well as you do; but those are the fellows I need for my revolutionary army. Find me honest people, if you can, that will do that business.’” (Prudhomme, “Crimes de la Re´volution,” V. 130.) 176. Buchez et Roux, XXIX. 152. 177. Beaulieu, “Essais sur la Re´volution,” V. 200. The Jacobin Conquest / 833 constantly in operation. They travelled to and fro from the Con- vention to the Revolutionary Tribunal, and from this to the Jacobin Club, or to the Commune, which held its meetings in the evening. . . . They scarcely took time for their natural requirements; they were often seen dining and supping at their posts when any general measure or any important murder was on the carpet.” Henriot is the commander-in-chief of both hordes, formerly a swindler, then a police-spy, then imprisoned at Biceˆtre for robbery, and then one of the September murderers. His military bearing and popularity are due to parading the streets in the uniform of a general, and appearing in humbug performances; he is the type of a swaggerer, always drunk or soaked with brandy. With the head of a numbskull, a cracked voice, blinking eyes, and a face distorted by nervous twitchings, he possesses all the externals characteristic of his employment. “In talking, he vociferates like men with the scurvy; his voice is sepulchral, and when he stops talking his features come to rest only after repeated agitations; he blinks three times, after which his face recovers its equilibrium.”178—Marat, He´bert, and Henriot, the maniac, the thief and the brute. Were it not for the dagger of Charlotte Corday, it is probable that this trio, master of the press and of the armed force, aided by Jacques Roux, Leclerc, Vincent, Ronsin, and other madmen of the slums, would have put aside Danton, suppressed Robespierre, and governed France. Such are the counsellors, the favorites, and the leaders of the ruling class;179 did one not know what was to occur during the next fourteen months, one might form an idea of its government from the quality of these men. And yet, such as this government is, France accepts or submits

178. Schmidt, II. 85. Report of Dutard, June 24 (on the review of the previous evening). “A short of low-class artisan who seemed to me to have been a soldier....Apparently he had associated only with dissipated men; I am sure that he would be found fond of gaming, wine, women, and everything that denotes a bad character.” 179. Barbaroux, 12. “The movement given to the Revolution tends to cause the disappearance of able men and to place the helm of affairs in the hands of men gangrened with ignorance and vice.” 834 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION to it. In fact, Lyons, Marseilles, Toulon, Nismes, Bordeaux, Caen, and other cities, feeling the knife at their throats,180 turn aside the stroke with a movement of horror. They rise against these local Jacobins; but it is nothing more than an instinctive movement. They do not think of forming States within the State, as the “Mountain” pretends that they do, nor of usurping the central authority, as the “Mountain” actually does. Lyons cries, “Long live the Republic, one and indivisible,” receives with honor the commissioners of the Con- vention, permits convoys of arms and horses destined for the army of the Alps to pass; to excite a revolt there, requires the insensate demands of Parisian despotism just as in La Vendeé, to render that province insurgent, requires the brutal persistence of religious persecution. Without the prolonged oppression that weighs down consciences, and the danger to life always imminent, no city or province would have attempted secession. Even under this government of inquisitors and butchers no community, save those of Lyons and La Vendeé, makes any sustained effort to break upthe State, withdraw from it and live by itself. The national sheaf has been too strongly bound together by secular centralisation. One’s country exists; and when that country is in danger, when the armed stranger attacks the frontier, one follows the flag-bearer, whoever he may be, whether usurper, adventurer, blackguard, or cut-throat, provided only that he marches in the van and holds the banner with a firm hand.181 To tear that flag from him, to contest his pretended right, to expel him and replace him by another, would be a complete destruction of the common weal. Brave men sacrifice their own repugnances for the sake of the common good; in order to serve France, they serve her

180. Lauvergne, “Histoire de la Re´volution dans le de´partment du Var,” 176. At Toulon “the spirit of counter-revolution was nothing else than the sentiment of self-preservation.” It was the same thing at Lyons. (Nolhac, “Sou- venir de trois anneé de la Re´volution a` Lyon,” p. 14.) 181. Gouverneur Morris, II. 395. Letter of Jan. 21, 1794. “Admitting what has been asserted by persons in a situation to know the truth and deeply interested to prove the contrary, it is an undoubted truth that ninety-nine-hundredths are opposed to all ideas of a dismemberment, and will fight to prevent it.” The Jacobin Conquest / 835 unworthy government. In the committee of war, the engineering and staff officers who give their days to studying the military map, think of nothing else than of knowing it thoroughly; one of them, d’Arcon, “managed the raising of the siege of Dunkirk, and of the blockade of Maubeuge;182 nobody excels him in penetration, in practical knowledge, in quick perception and in imagination; it is a spirit of flame, a brain compact of resources. I speak of him,” says Mallet- Dupan, “from an intimate acquaintance of ten years. He is no more a revolutionnaire than I am.” Carnot does even more than this: he gives uphis honor when, with his colleagues on the Committee of Public Safety, Billaud-Varennes, Couthon, Saint-Just, Robespierre, he puts his name to decrees which are assassinations. A like devotion brings recruits into the armies by hundreds of thousands, bourgeois183 and peasants, from the volunteers of 1791 to the levies of 1793; and the latter class fight not only for France, but also, and more than all, for the Revolution. For, now that the sword is drawn, the mutual and growing exasperation leaves only the extreme parties in the field. Since the 10th of August, and more especially since the 21st of January, it has no longer been a question how to deal with the

182. Mallet-Dupan, II. 44. 183. Among other documents, the following letter will show the quality of these recruits, especially of the recruits of 1791, who were much the best men. (Letter from the municipal officers of Dorat, December 28, 1792, “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,275.) “The commune of Dorat is made upof three classes of citizens: The richest class, composed of persons confirmed in the prejudices of the ancien re´gime, has been disarmed. The second, composed of well-to-do people, fills the administrative positions. It is against them that the fury of the turbulent is aimed; but those of this class who could make resistance have gone to fight the enemy abroad. The third class, and the most numerous, is made upin part of the seditious and in part of laborers, who, not daring to mix in the revolt, content themselves with coveting the tax on grain.”—Toulongeon, “Histoire de France depuis la Re´volution,” IV. 94. “Do not degrade a nation by ascribing base motives to it and a servile fear. Every one, on the contrary, felt himself informed by an exalted instinct for the public welfare.”—Gouvion Saint-Cyr, “Me´moires,” I. 56: “A young man would have blushed to remain at home when the independence of the nation was threatened. Each one quitted his studies or his profession.” 836 / THE FRENCH REVOLUTION ancient re´gime, of cutting away its dead portions or its troublesome thorns, of accommodating it to modern wants, of establishing civil equality, a limited monarchy, a parliamentary government. The question is how to escape conquest by armed force to avert the military executions of Brunswick,184 the vengeance of the proscribed e´migre´s, the restoration and the aggravation of the old feudal and fiscal order of things. Both through their traditions and their experience, the mass of the country people hate this ancient order, and with all the accumulated hatred that is begotten by an unceasing and secular spoliation. At whatever price, the rural masses will never again suffer the tax-collector among them, nor the excise man in the cellar, nor the fiscal agent on the frontier. For them the ancient re´gime is nothing more than these things; and, in fact, they have paid no taxes, or scarcely any, since the beginning of the Revolution. On this matter the people’s idea is fixed, positive, unalterable; and as soon as they perceive in the distant future the possible re-establishment of the taille, villein-taxes, and seignorial rights, they choose their side; they will fight to the death.—As to the artisans and lesser bourgeois, their excitement is the magnificent prospect of careers, to which the doors are thrown open, of unbounded advancement, of promotion offered to merit; more than all, their illusions are still intact. In the campwithout, before the enemy, those noble generalisations which among the Parisian demagogues had become sanguinary harlots, remain virgin in the imagination of the officer and the soldier. Liberty, equality, the rights of man, the reign of reason—all these vague and sublime images moved before their eyes when they climbed the escarpment of Jemmapes under a storm of grapeshot, or when they wintered, with naked feet, among the snows of the Vosges. These ideas, in descending from heaven to earth, were not smirched and trodden under their feet; they did not see them transformed in their hands to frightful caricatures. These men are not pillars of clubs, nor brawlers in the sections, nor the inquisitors of

184. Gouvion Saint-Cyr, 26. “The manifesto of Brunswick assigns to France more than a hundred battalions, which, within three weeks, were raised, armed, and put in the field.” The Jacobin Conquest / 837 a committee, nor hired denunciators, nor providers for the scaffold. Apart from the demonism of revolution, brought back to common sense by the presence of danger, perceiving the inequality of talents, the necessity of obedience, they do the work of men; they suffer, they fast, they face bullets, they are conscious of their disinterestedness and their sacrifices; they are heroes, and they look upon themselves as liberators.185 Over this idea their pride exalts itself. According to a great observer186 who knew their survivors, “many of them believed that the French alone were reasonable beings. To our eyes the inhabitants of the rest of Europe, who were fighting to keeptheir chains, were only pitiable imbeciles or knaves sold to the despots who were attacking us. Pitt and Cobourg seemed to us the chief of these knaves and the personification of all the treachery and stupidity in the world. In 1794 our inmost, serious sentiment was wholly contained in this idea: to be useful to our country; all other things, our clothes, our food, advancement, were poor ephemeral details. As society did not exist, there was no such thing for us as social success, that leading element in the character of our nation. Our only gatherings were national festivals, affecting ceremonies which nourished in us the love of our country. In the streets our eyes filled with tears when we saw an inscription in honor of the young drummer, Barra....This sentiment was the only religion we had.”187 But it was a religion. When the heart of a nation is so high it will deliver itself, in spite of its rulers, whatever their excesses may be, whatever their crimes; for the nation atones for their follies by its courage; it hides their crimes beneath its great achievements.

185. In respect of these sentiments, cf. Gouvion Saint-Cyr, “Me´moires,” and Fervel, “Campagnes de la Re´volution Française dans les Pyreńeés orientales.” 186. Stendhal, Me´moires sur Napoleón. 187. Gouvion Saint-Cyr, “Me´moires,” p. 43. “Patriotism made up for everything; it alone gave us victory; it supplied our most pressing needs.”