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The French Revolution Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive in 2007 witii funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation littp://www.arGliive.org/details/frenclirevolutionOlGarluoft THE FRENCH REVOLUTION A HISTORY BY THOMAS CARLYLE WITH INTRODUCTION, NOTES AND APPENDICES BY JOHN HOLLAND ROSE, M.A. AUTHOR OK "the LIFE OF NAPOLEON I," "THE REVOLUTIONARY AND NAPOLEONIC ERA," ETC. IN THREE VOLUMES WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND PLANS 5^ 0^ VOL. I ^,---^1 6 THE BASTILLE LONDON GEORGE BELL AND SONS 1902 ! Diesem Ambos vergleich' ich das Land, den Hammer dem Herrscher ; Und dem Volke das Blech, das in der Mitte sich krlimmt. Wehe dem armen Blech, wenn nur willkiirliche Schlage Ungewiss treffen, und nie fertig der Kessel erscheint Goethe. CniSWICK PRKSS : CilARLES VVHITTINGHAM AND CO. TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE Introduction by the Editor ix Book I. Death of Louis XV. I. Louis the Well-beloved I II. Realised Ideals 7 III. Viaticum i8 IV. Louis the Unforgotten 22 Book II. The Paper Age. I. Astraea Redux 30 II. Petition in Hieroglyphs 38 III. Questionable .... 41 IV. Maurepas 46 V. Astraea Redux without Cash 51 VI. Windbags 56 VII. Contrat Social 62 VIII. Printed Paper .... 66 Book III. The Parlement of Paris. I. Dishonoured Bills 11 II. Controller Calonne 79 III. The Notables . 83 IV. Lomenie's Edicts 94 V. Lomenie's Thunderbolts 100 VI. Lomenie's Plots 106 VII. Internecine 112 VIII. Lomenie's Death-throes 119 IX. Burial with Bonfire . 131 Book IV. States-General. I. The Notables again .... 136 II. The Election 143 III. Grown electric 151 IV. The Procession 156 CONTENTS Book V. The Third Estate. CHAFTEB PACK I. Inertia i79 II. Mercury de Breze . 190 III. Brogue the War-God 199 206 IV. To Arms ! . V. Give us Arms . 212 VI. Storm and Victory 220 VII. Not a Revolt . 231 VIII. Conquering your King . 236 . IX. The Lanterne . 241 Book VI. Consolidation. I. Make the Constitution . - . .248 II. The Constituent Assembly . • 255 III. The General Overturn . 263 IV. In Queue .... 273 V. The Fourth Estate 277 Book VII. The Insurrection of Women. I. Patrollotism 281 II. O Richard, O my King 287 III. Black Cockades 293 IV. The Menads 296 V. Usher Maillard 301 VI. To Versailles 307 VII. At Versailles 312 VIII. The Equal Diet 317 IX. Lafayette 323 X. The Grand Entries 328 XI. From Versailles 334 I : Appendix "Le Contrat Social" . 343 Appendix II : Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen 346 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Louis XVI., from a painting by Duplessis . Frontispiece Marie-Antoinette, from a painting by Mme. Vig^e- Lebrun 36 Philippe, Due d'Orl]£ans 58 Assembly of the Notables 84 A "Lit de Justice" 98 Scene as the Comte d'Artois left the Palais . 103 The Crowd stopping Coaches on the Pont-Neuf 134 Riot in Faubourg St.-Antoine 154 Camille Desmoulins . 162 J. S. Bailly 170 Opening of the States-General 176 The Tennis-Court Oath . 192 The Procession WITH Busts of Neckeranid d'Orleans 208 Lambesc and the Regiment Royal-Allemand 210 Pillage of the Maison de Saint-Lazare 214 Capture of the Bastille . 224 The Death of Foulon 244 Abolition of all Privileges . 258 The Garden of the Palais Royal 284 Marquis de la Fayette . 305 The Royal Family arriving at Paris, October Cth, 17S9 340 Plan of the Bastille page " INTRODUCTION I " T FIND on a general view that the book is one of X the savagcst written for several centuries. It is a book written by a wild man, a man disunited from the fellowship of the world he lives in, looking King and beggar in the face with an indifference of brotherhood and an indifference of contempt." Such was the verdict passed by Thomas Carlyle on his own handiwork when he made its acquaintance once again in type. The words come quite naturally in his letter of February i/th, 1837, written to his brother John, whose advice he had taken as to several omissions and a more minute division of chapters ; and they tally with those which he wrote to " his mother a little earlier : It is not altogether a bad book. For one thing I consider it to be the sincerest book this nation has got offered to it for a good few years, or is likely to get for a good few. And so I ' say to them : Good Christian people ; there it is. Shriek over it, since ye will not shout over it. Trample it, and kick it, and use it all ways ye judge best. If ye can kill it and extinguish it, then in God's name do. If ye cannot, why then ye will not. My share in it is done.' And the book was not killed. There was a good deal " " of lamentation and admonition about the style ; but on the whole there was more shouting than shrieking, :; X INTRODUCTION so Carlyle noted with grim surprise, even in the circles where Macaulay and Jeffrey intoned their Hterary deca- logues. In truth, it soon became clear to all but the devotees of conventionality that here was a book that vibrated with irrepressible emotion. Carlyle himself said " as much in his letter to John Sterling : It has come hot out of my own soul, born in blackness, whirlwind, and sorrow." There, surely, we have the explanation of many of its characteristics. We can see, for one thing, why its style set all the recognised canons at defiance. It is not the outcome of mere historical study—though there is a great deal of honest research in the book ; it is not the style of a literary man who has strayed somewhat scornfully into the domain of History, deeming it, as did Dr. Johnson, the least honoured department of Literature a mere workshop for the turning out of sonorous prose. No : Carlyle's work is the outpouring of a vehement nature, the protest of a mind flaming up in revolt against the evils of his time. It is that of one crying in the wilderness ; and the sons of wisdom will not expect from this John the Baptist of modern thought the elegances of those who wear soft raiment and aspire to dwell in kings' houses. He himself stated that the style of " The French Revolution " was the natural outcome of his thoughts. Nearly two years before he struggled through to the longed-for end of the work, he wrote to his brother " The book is certainly better some ways than any I have hitherto written ; contains no falsehood, singularity, or triviality that I can help." ^ This testimony from a ^ See, too, the entry in his Journal of July 15th, 1835, regretting the difficulty that he found in composing : " What to do ? To INTRODUCTION xi man of utter truthfulness, who at that time did not know whether the book would see the light, ought to convince every unbiassed mind that his writing was devoid of affectation. I quote his words here, not in defence of his strange desire to reform our Comparatives and Superla- tives, and of the resulting abortions, " audibler," " insup- portablest," etc. ; for, from the literary standpoint, they are inexcusable. I do claim, however, that, though they are not English, they are honest Carlylese. We must wonderingly accept these and many other singu- larities as, so to speak, the sackcloth of the prophet. II Granting, then, that the work was the truthful expres- sion of an overmastering conviction, what was the im- pulse that drove him to it ? Though there is little direct evidence in his letters on this topic, yet we can see from his other writings that the mysterious magic of that great upheaval early laid its spell on him. He hailed it as a sign of the heights and depths of human nature, which transcend all experience and set at naught the wisdom of the wiseacres. Its very horrors he regarded as a Nemesis for the lingering wrongs of the past. Above all, it was a mighty /"^z^/, or as he says (*' French Revolu- tion," vol. iii., p. 260), " This Republic and National write on the best 07ie can, get the freest sincerest possible utterance. " . Truly I feel like one that was bursting with meaning (" Car- lyle's Life in London," vol. i., p. 56). I think that a comparison of the rather monotonous and laboured diction of his early essays with the fresh vivid utterance of " Sartor" and "The French Revo- lution" will show that the latter was his natural style, while the other was adopted in order to please the editors of reviews. " xi INTRODUCTION Tigress is a New-Birth ; a Fact of Nature among Formulas, in an Age of Formulas." He viewed it, there- fore, as a volcanic outburst, revealing the utmost powers and passions of human nature ; and he gazed into the crater with eager longing, so that he might learn some- thing of that daemonic force that lies hidden under the surface of a seemingly outworn society. To describe the meanest of the mean, " in its actual truth as it swims there, were a poem," he says in his " Diamond Neck- lace." " How much more if the object fixed on were not mean, but already wonderful. Romance exists, strictly speaking, in Reality alone. The thing that is, what can be so wonderful } Furthermore, he felt strongly that this wonderful event had never yet been described. He says rightly that Thiers' " History of the French Revolution " wears a superficial air of order and clearness, while inwardly it is waste, inorganic, and singularly false. As for Mignet's work, it has the symmetry, not of a tree, but " of a firm, well-manufactured gridiron." For two works only has " he a good word ; these are the account by Deux Amis de la Liberte," the value of which he certainly overrated, and the " Histoire Parlementaire " by Buchez and Roux, which deserves all the good that he said of it.^ Then, too, he had had the advantage of visiting Paris in the year 1825, when he introduced himself to that sinister friend of Danton, the butcher Legendre.
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