THE MARCH ON VERSAILLES

DISORDERS IN THE PROVINCES

THE desire of the people for peace and for a return to law and order after the King’s visit to Paris on the 17th of July necessitated strenuous efforts on the part of the revolutionary leaders to fan up anew the flame of insurrection. Often the task seemed almost hopeless, and Camille Desmoulins—now embarking on his sanguinary Discours de la Lanterne, in which the Parisians were incited to hang further victims—afterwards described to the Assembly the immense difficulty the agitators encountered in overcoming the disinclination of the people to continue the Revolution. “ I reduce to three,” wrote Buzot later, “ the methods employed by the masters of France to lead this nation to the point she has now reached— calumny, corruption, and terror,” [1] and though in these words Buzot alluded to the men who afterwards became his enemies, the Terrorists, they might still more aptly be applied to his former colleagues, the members of the Orléaniste conspiracy.[2]

Calumny directed against the victims, corruption of the instruments, and terror created in the minds of the people—such is the history of the three months that led up to the march on Versailles.

Of these three methods terror proved the most potent ; in order to rouse the people one must begin by frightening them. It was Adrien Duport, [3] one of the most inventive

members of the Club Breton, who devised the project known to contemporaries as “ the Great Fear,” a scheme which consisted in sending messengers to all the towns and villages of France to announce the approach of imaginary brigands, Austrians or English, who were arriving to massacre the citizens.

On the same day, the 28th of July, and almost at the same hour, this diabolical manœuvre was repeated all over France ; everywhere the panic-stricken peasants flew to arms, and thus the great aim of the revolutionary leaders was realized—the arming of the entire population against law and order.[4]

By this means anarchy was complete throughout the kingdom, and the crimes of July 14

and 22 in Paris were followed in the provinces by atrocities too revolting to describe.

This Reign of Terror, organized by the Orléanistes, was, in fact, even more frightful than the Terror of Robespierre four years later ; the victims were arraigned before no http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_03.html (1 of 58)5.4.2006 10:39:58

 

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Revolutionary Tribunal, received no warning of their fate, but suddenly found themselves the centre of a raging mob, accused of crimes they had never committed, reproached for words they had never uttered, and put finally to a death even more horrible than the guillotine.

In no case, however, do we find these outrages to be the spontaneous work of the people ; the conception of downtrodden peasants rising incontrollably to overthrow their oppressors, as in the earlier jacqueries, is entirely mythical, and exists in the minds of no contemporaries. Such violence as the people committed was invariably instigated by revolutionary emissaries who persuaded them to act under a misapprehension, and methods of diabolical ingenuity were employed to overcome their reluctance. Thus, for example, the agitators, taking advantage of the King’s benevolent proclamations in favour of reform, succeeded in making the peasants believe that Louis XVI. wished to take part with them against the noblesse, and to invoke their aid in demolishing the Old Régime. Messengers were sent into the towns and villages bearing placards or proclaiming by word of mouth : “ The King orders all châteaux to be burnt down ; he only wishes to keep his own ! ” and such was the amazing credulity of the country people that they set forth to burn and destroy, believing in all good faith that they were carrying out the orders of “ not’ bon roi.”[5]

When, however, the people proved recalcitrant, the revolutionaries were obliged to resort to force ; in Dauphiné in Burgundy, in Franche Comté, real bands of brigands were employed to stir up the villagers, who in some cases offered a spirited resistance. “ This troop of maniacs went into all the villages, rang the bells to collect the inhabitants, and forced them with a pistol at their throats to join in their brigandage… . This army of bandits threw the whole of Burgundy into consternation, where the bravest inhabitants of the towns and country places united all their efforts and advanced against these common enemies of the human race, who breathed only murder and pillage.”[6] At Cluny the peasants, led by the monks to whom they were devoted, received the brigands with guns and cannonfire and with stones flung from the windows. “ They did not allow a single brigand to escape, they were all killed or led away as prisoners to the royal prison. They were found in possession of printed forms : ‘ By order of the King.’ This document gave instructions to burn down the abbeys and châteaux because the seigneurs and the abbots were monopolizers of grain and poisoners of the wells, and intended to reduce the people and the subjects of the King to the lowest pitch of misery.”[7]

At St. Germain the brigands unfortunately won the day, and the inhabitants sent a deputation to the Assembly protesting against the murder of their mayor, Sauvage, guiltless of any offence, the victim of “ a crowd of strangers who had thrown themselves http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_03.html (2 of 58)5.4.2006 10:39:58

 

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upon the town ” and torn the unhappy man from the hands of his fellow-citizens. [8] The

mayor of St. Denis, Châtel, met with a still more terrible fate. Throughout the preceding winter he had been seen “ always surrounded by the unfortunate, to whom he gave free orders for bread and meat and wood … so that the inhabitants of St. Denis called him ‘

the father and the saviour of the poor people.’ ” But suddenly Châtel found himself accused by messengers from Paris of monopolizing grain, and was put to a lingering death of which the details are so unspeakably revolting that it is impossible to describe them.[9] Huez, the mayor of Troyes, another “ benefactor of the poor,” was also butchered in much the same manner. It will be seen, therefore, that the aristocrats and clergy were not the only victims pointed out for vengeance to the people : the lawabiding bourgeois, the benevolent citizen, whatever his rank, was equally abhorrent to the revolutionary leaders ; the houses of peasants who would not join in excesses were burnt likewise.[10] It was not a case of “ misdirected popular fury,” but of a definite system pursued by the agitators which consisted in exterminating every one who encouraged contentment with the Old Régime. Three years later the minister, Roland, gave the clue to this design when he stated that “ in 1789 the misguided people allowed themselves to be worked up into fury and to immolate the men who were occupied in feeding them.”[11] The massacre of these good citizens is therefore to be explained in the

same way as the attacks on Réveillon and Berthier.

So obvious was it, indeed, to all contemporaries that these outrages were contrary to the interests of the people, that revolutionary writers can only explain them by the theory that they were instigated by the “ enemies of the Revolution,” that is to say, by the aristocrats themselves, who, in order to bring the cause of “ liberty ” into disrepute, stirred the people up to violence, and for this purpose had their own châteaux burnt down ![12] But if the object of the aristocrats in persuading the people to burn down their châteaux appears incomprehensible, the object of the revolutionary leaders in doing so is very obvious, for by this means not only were the nobles driven out of the country, but in the process of destruction the seigneurial granaries were frequently burnt down likewise, fields of standing corn were trampled under foot, and consequently the famine was seriously aggravated.[13]

The manner in which the news of all such excesses was received at the National Assembly proves only too clearly the collusion between the revolutionary deputies and the agitators of the provinces. No historian has revealed this more clearly than Taine, and his strange inconsequence in heading his chapter on the disorders in the provinces as “ spontaneous anarchy ” has been commented on by several modern French historians. [14]

“ Thus,” writes Taine himself, “ is rural ‘ jacquerie ’ prepared, and the fanatics who http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_03.html (3 of 58)5.4.2006 10:39:58

 

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fanned up the flame in Paris fan it up likewise in the provinces. ‘ You wish to know the authors of the troubles,’ writes a man of good sense to the Committee of Inquiry ; ‘ you will find them amongst the deputies of the Tiers, and particularly amongst those who are attorneys or lawyers. They write incendiary letters to their constituents, these letters are received by the municipalities which are likewise composed of attorneys and lawyers …

they are read aloud in the principal square, and copies are sent into all the villages.’ ”[15]

“ I will tell my century, I will tell posterity,” cries Ferrières, “ that the National Assembly authorized these murders and these burnings ! ” [16]

In vain the true democrats in the Assembly—Mounier, Malouet, Lally Tollendal, Virieu, and Boufflers—rose to protest against outrages on humanity and civilization committed in the name of liberty ; the members of the revolutionary factions in every case defended these excesses.

On July 20 Lally, in harrowing terms, described the horrors that were taking place in Normandy, Brittany, and Burgundy, and ended with the words : “ A citizen king forces us to accept our liberty, and I do not know why we should wrest it from him as from a tyrant. If I insist on the motion I have put forward, it is that love of my country impels me, it is that I accede to the impulse of my conscience ; and if blood must flow, at least I wash my hands of that which will be shed.”[17]

The speech was received with cries of fury from all parts of the Assembly, though the side of the nobles ventured to applaud.

The murder of Foullon and Berthier had filled Lally with burning indignation. On the morning of the 22nd of July, he told the Assembly, the son of Berthier, pale and disfigured, had entered his room crying out, “ Monsieur, you spent fifteen years defending the memory of your father ; save the life of mine and let him be given judges ! ” But Lally appealed in vain to the humanity of the Assembly. Barnave, rising furiously, exclaimed with a violent gesture, “ Is this blood then so pure that one need fear to shed it ? ”[18]

Mirabeau went further. “ The nation,” he declared, “ must have victims ! ” In a letter to his constituents he had openly defended the crimes attending the siege of the Bastille : “ The people must be essentially kind-hearted since so little blood has been shed… . The anger of the people ! ah ! if the anger of the people is terrible, the cold-bloodedness of despotism is atrocious ; its systematic cruelties create more wretchedness in a day than popular insurrections create victims in the course of years.”[19]

The unhappy people of France had yet to learn that demagogy can be systematic too ; that demagogy, moreover, can become more potent than despotism, because it does not merely bring external force to bear upon the people, but like a skilful jiujitsu wrestler http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_03.html (4 of 58)5.4.2006 10:39:58

 

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turns the people’s own power against themselves. This was the whole secret of the early revolutionary movement the people, by calumny, corruption, and terror, were made to work out their own destruction, to kill their best friends, and to strike down the hands that fed them.