Nearly every author in embarking on the story of the Revolution has considered it de rigueur to enlarge on the progress of philosophy that heralded the movement. The oppressions that had prevailed during the reigns of Louis XIV. and Louis XV. had, we are told, been endured in a spirit of dumb resignation until the teaching of Rousseau, Diderot, and other social reformers proclaimed to the nation that they need be endured no longer. If we regard the Revolution from the point of view of the people, this time-honoured preamble may, however, be dispensed with. Doubtless the philosophers played an important part in preparing the Revolution, but their direct influence was confined to the aristocracy and the educated bourgeoisie ; to the peasant tilling the soil, the Encyclopédie and the Contrat Social were of less pressing interest than the condition of his crop and the profit of his labour. How the abuses of the Old Régime affected him in this tangible respect we can read in Arthur Young’s Travels, in Albert Babeau’s Le Village sous l’Ancien Régime, or in the works of Taine, where all the injustices of tailles, capitaineries, corvées, gabelles, etc., are set forth categorically, and are too well known to be enumerated here. Suffice it to say, these oppressions were many and grievous, but they sprang less from intentional tyranny than from an obsolete system that demanded readjustment. Thus certain customs that originated in benevolence had, through the progress of civilization, become oppressive—the liberty to grind at the seigneur’s mill had become the obligation to grind at the seigneur’s mill, whilst many feudal exactions and personal services were merely relics of the days when rent was paid in kind or in labour. It is evident, moreover, that many of these feudal oppressions that look so terrible on paper had fallen into disuse ; thus, although the parchments enumerating the seigneurial rights were still in existence, “the power of the seigneurs over the persons of their vassals only existed in romances” at the time of the Revolution. [1] In every ancient
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enact that a man may beat his wife with any weapon no thicker than his thumb ? but so far the women of England have not found it necessary to rise in revolt against this extraordinary stipulation.
For the peasant of France the most real grievances were undoubtedly the inequality of taxation and the “ capitaineries ” or gamelaws, monstrous injustices that crippled his energies and often made his labour vain. Yet were the peasants of old France the wretched, downtrodden beings that certain historians have described them ? The strange thing is that no contemporary evidence corroborates this theory ; in none of the letters or memoirs written before the Revolution, even by such advanced thinkers as Rousseau and Madame Roland, do we encounter the starving scarecrows of the villages or the ragged spectres of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine portrayed by Dickens ; on the contrary, gaiety seems to have been the distinguishing characteristic of the people. The dancing peasants of Watteau and Lancret were no figments of an artist’s brain, but very charming realities described by every traveller. Arthur Young, who has been persistently represented as the great opponent of the Ancien Régime, records few actual instances of misery or oppression, and, as we shall see, Young was later on led to reconstruct his views on the old government of France in a pamphlet which has been carefully ignored by writers who quote his earlier work in support of their theories.
But the most remarkable evidence on peasant life before the Revolution is to be found in the letters of Dr. Rigby, who travelled in France during the summer of 1789. This curious book, published for the first time in 1880, aroused less attention in England than in France, where it was regarded as an important contribution to the history of the period.
[2] The accounts it contains are so subversive of the accepted theories on peasant misery current in this country, and have been so little quoted, that a few extracts must be given here.
Between Calais and Lille “ the most striking character of the country ” through which Dr. Rigby passed was its extraordinary fertility : “ We went through an extent of seventy miles, and I will venture to say there was not a single acre but what was in a state of the highest cultivation. The crops are beyond any conception I could have had of them—thousands and ten thousands of acres of wheat superior to any which can be produced in England… .
“ The general appearance of the people is different to what I expected ; they are strong and well-made. We saw many agreeable scenes as we passed along in the evening before we came to Lisle : little parties sitting at their doors, some of the men smoking, some playing at cards in the open air, and others spinning cotton. Everything we see bears the marks of industry, and all the People look happy. We have indeed seen few http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_01.html (2 of 32)5.4.2006 10:39:31
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signs of opulence in individuals, for we do not see so many gentlemen’s seats as in England, but then we have seen few of the lower classes in rags, idleness, and misery.
What strange prejudices we are apt to take regarding foreigners ! …
“ What strikes me most in what I have seen is the wonderful difference between this country and England … the difference seems to be in favour of the former ; if they are not happy, they look at least very like it… .” Throughout the whole course of his journey across France Dr. Rigby continues in the same strain of admiration—an admiration that we might attribute to lack of discernment were it not that it ceases abruptly on his entry into Germany. Here he finds “ a country to which Nature has been equally kind as to France, for it has a fertile soil, but as yet the inhabitants live under an oppressive government.” At Cologne he finds that “ tyranny and oppression have taken up their abode…. There was a gloom and an appearance of disease in almost every man’s face we saw ; their persons also look filthy. The state of wretchedness in which they live seems to deprive them of every power of exertion … the whole country is divided between the Archbishop and the King of Prussia … the land is uncultivated and depopulated. How every country and every People we have seen since we left France sink in comparison with that animated country ! ” It is evident that, however rose-coloured was Dr. Rigby’s view of France, the French people had certainly not reached that pitch of “ exasperation ” that according to certain historians would account for the excesses of the Revolution. Lady Eastlake, Dr. Rigby’s daughter, who edited these letters from France, fearing apparently that her father will be accredited with telling travellers’ tales, attempts in the preface to explain his remarks by quoting the observation of De Tocqueville : “ One must not be deceived by the gaiety the Frenchman displays in his greatest troubles, it only proves that, believing his unhappy fate to be inevitable, he tries to distract himself by not thinking about it—it is not that he does not feel it.” This might possibly describe the attitude of the French people towards their government during the centuries that preceded the Revolution, when, convinced of their impotence to revolt, they resigned themselves to oppression ; but at the period Dr.
Rigby describes the work of reform had long since begun and they had therefore no cause for hopelessness or despair. Louis XVI. had not waited for the gathering of the revolutionary storm in order to redress the evils from which the people suffered ; in the very first year of his reign he had embarked on the work of reform with the cooperation of Turgot and Malesherbes. In 1775 he had attempted to introduce the free circulation of grain—thereby enraging the monopolizers who in revenge stirred up the “ Guerre de Farines ” ; in 1776 he had proposed the suppression of the corvée which the opposition of the Parlements prevented ; [3] in 1779 he had abolished all forms of servitude in his
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1780 he had abolished torture ; in 1784 he had accorded liberty of conscience to the Protestants ; in 1787 he had proposed the equality of territorial taxation, the suppression of the gabelle or salt tax, and again urged the abolition of the corvée and the free circulation of grain ; in 1787 and 1788 he had proposed reforms in the administration of justice, the equal admission of citizens of every rank to all forms of employment, the abolition of lettres de cachet, and greater liberty of the press. Meanwhile he had continued to reduce the expenses of his household and had reformed the prisons and hospitals. Finally on August 8, 1788, he had announced the assembling of the States-General, at which he accorded double representation to the Tiers États.
In this spring of 1789 the French people had therefore every reason to feel hopeful of the future and to believe that now at last all their wrongs would be redressed. Had not the King sent out a proclamation to the whole nation saying, “ His Majesty has desired that in the extremities of his kingdom and in the obscurest dwellings every man shall rest assured that his wishes and requests shall be heard ” ?
“ All over the country,” says Taine, “ the people are to meet together to discuss abuses… . These confabulations are authorized, provoked from above. In the early days of 1788 the provincial assemblies demand from the syndicate and from the inhabitants of each parish that a local enquiry shall be held ; they wish to know the details of their grievances, what part of the revenue each tax removes, what the cultivator pays and suffers… . All these figures are printed … artisans and countrymen discuss them on Sunday after mass or in the evening in the great room at the inn… .” The King has been bitterly reproached by Royalists for thus taking the people into his confidence over schemes of reform ; such changes in the government as were needed, they remark, should have been effected by the royal authority unaided by popular opinion. But the King doubtless argued that no one knows better than the wearer where the shoe pinches ; and since his great desire was to alleviate the sufferings of his people, it seemed to his simple mind that the best way to do this was to ask them for a list of their grievances before attempting to redress them. Believers in despotism may deplore the error in judgement, but the people of France did not mistake the good intentions of the King, for in the cahiers de doléances or lists of grievances that arrived from all parts of the country in response to this appeal the people were unanimous in their respect and loyalty to Louis XVI.
What, then, did the cahiers demand ? What were the true desires of the people in the matter of government ? This all-important point has been too often overlooked in histories of the Revolution ; yet it must be clearly understood if we would realize how far the Revolution as it took place was the result of the people’s will. Now the http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_01.html (4 of 32)5.4.2006 10:39:31
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summarizing of the cahiers by the National Assembly[4] revealed that the following
principles of government were laid down by the nation :
I. The French government is monarchic.
II. The person of the King is inviolable and sacred.
III. His crown is hereditary from male to male.
On these three Points the cahiers were unanimous, and the great majority were agreed on the following :
IV. The King is the depositary of the executive power.
V. The agents of authority are responsible.
VI. The royal sanction is necessary for the promulgation of the laws.
VII. The nation makes the laws with the royal sanction.
VIII. The consent of the nation is necessary for loans and taxes.
IX. Taxes can only be imposed from one meeting of the States-General to another.
X. Property is sacred.
XI. Individual liberty is sacred.
In the matter of reforms the cahiers asked first and foremost for the equality of taxation, for the abolition of that monstrous privilege by which the wealthier classes of the community were enabled to avoid contributing their rightful share towards the expenses of the State ; they asked for the free admission of citizens of all ranks to civil and military employment, for revision of the civil and criminal code, for the substitution of money payments in the place of feudal and seigneurial dues, for the abolition of gabelles, corvées, franc-fief, and arbitrary imprisonment.
In all these demands we shall find no element of sedition or of disaffection towards the monarchy, but the response of a loyal and spirited people to the King’s proposals for reform. Such animosity as they displayed was directed against the “ privileged orders,” and, as we shall see, this sentiment was not wholly spontaneous. Hua, a member of the Legislative Assembly, has well described the attitude of the people in pages that may be summarized thus :
The Ancien Régime had very real abuses, there was every reason to attack it. The clergy and noblesse had lost their power and their raison d’être ; they were obliged to let the Third Estate come into its own by giving up their privileges. Nothing could have stopped this or ought to have stopped it. “ It has been said that the Revolution was made in public opinion before it was realized by events ; this is true, but one must add that it was not the Revolution such as we saw it … it was not by the people that the Revolution http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_01.html (5 of 32)5.4.2006 10:39:31
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was made in France.” And in confirmation of this statement, with which, as I shall show, contemporaries of all parties agree, Hua points out that “ the voice of the nation cried out for reform, for changes in the government, but all proclaimed respect for religion, loyalty to the King, and desire for law and order.” [5]
What, then, was needed to kindle the flame of revolution ? To understand this we must examine the intrigues at work amongst the people ; these and these alone explain the gigantic misunderstanding that arose between the King and his subjects, and that plunged the country on the brink of regeneration into the black abyss of anarchy.
At the beginning of the Revolution the principal intrigue, and the one that paved the way for all the rest, was undoubtedly
THE ORLÉANISTE CONSPIRACY
Louis Philippe Joseph, fifth Due d’Orléans in direct descent from the brother of Louis XIV., and therefore fourth cousin once removed to Louis XVI., came into the world with a heredity tainted from various sources. His great-grandfather Philippe, Regent of France during the minority of Louis XV., had married the daughter of Louis XIV. and Madame de Montespan. More German than French—for his mother was the Princess Elizabeth of the Palatinate, whose memoirs are perhaps the most nauseous reading of the period—the Regent had introduced into the gay gallantry of France the bestial forms of vice that prevailed in those days at the courts of Germany. Amongst the most dissolute frequenters of the Palais Royal during the Regency was Louis Armand, Prince de Conti, a moral maniac of the Sadic variety, and it was his daughter who, married to the fourth Duc d’Orléans, became the mother of Louis Philippe Joseph, later to be known as Philippe Égalité. Of such elements was the man composed—if indeed he was the son of the duke and not—as the people of Paris believed, and as he himself afterwards declared to the Commune—of the duchess’s coachman.
In appearance, certain contemporaries assure us, Philippe was not unattractive, since he had blue eyes, good teeth, and a fine white skin ; but when they proceed to relate that his face was bloated and adorned with collections of red pimples, whilst his portraits show him to us with a large fleshy nose, thick lips, and a massive neck and chin, we find it difficult to understand the charm he exercised over his intimes. Yet so fervent was their admiration that when Philippe in time grew bald his boon companions loyally shaved off their front hair in compliment. The Anglomania which had increased his popularity amongst the young bloods of the day disgusted Louis XVI., since it consisted in no appreciation for the better qualities of the English, but in adopting all their worst http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_01.html (6 of 32)5.4.2006 10:39:31
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habits—the betting, gambling, and heavy drinking that prevailed in England at that date.
As the leader of this imported fashion, the Duc d’Orléans affected English dress of the sporting kind, appearing habitually in a cloth frock coat, buckskin breeches, and top boots ; thus attired he rode to race-meetings, or drove about the town in his English “ whisky.” His two ruling passions, says the Duc de Cars, were money, and after money debauchery. Entirely indifferent to public opinion he flaunted his vices in the eyes of all Paris ; arm-in-arm with the Marquis de Sillery he might be seen on the steps of the Coliseum in the Champs Élysées, insolently accosting women who had the misfortune to meet his eye ; at Longchamps he would gallop ostentatiously beside the carriage of some notorious demi-mondaine, whilst at the Palais Royal his entourage was composed of the most worthless men and women of the day. The evil reputation borne by society at the time of the Revolution is attributable more to the Due d’Orléans and his set than to any other cause, whilst as a climax of hypocrisy the severest strictures on the morals of society emanated from the pens of the very men and women who outraged them—Laclos, Chamfort, and Madame de Genlis. By the side of the Due d’Orléans and his boon companions the follies of the Comte d’Artois and the Polignacs fade into insignificance, and the games of “ descamptivos,” so luridly described by Orléaniste writers as the favourite diversion at Versailles, seem innocuous indeed compared with the ducal pastime of “ collecting girls from the lowest quarters of Paris, and thrusting them nude and inebriated into the park of Monceaux.”
Yet this was the prince who, we are asked to believe, became the idol of the Paris populace. It is only one of the many calumnies directed against the people by socalled democratic writers. The instincts of the people are not naturally perverse ; they do not admire a bad master, a faithless husband, a man of corrupt and vicious tastes. We have only to consult the records written before the Revolution to find that the people of Paris loathed and despised the Due d’Orléans. The duke returned their aversion with contempt ; to the future bearer of the name “ Égalité ” the people were indeed less than the dust. In order to keep up the “ aristocratic ” character of his garden at the Palais Royal, he had issued an order that no admittance was to be granted to “ soldiers, men in livery, people in caps and shirts, to dogs or workmen.”[6]
“ The Due d’Orléans,” a chronicler writes on April 5, 1787, “ allowed himself to be so carried away by the ardour of the chase that he followed the quarry he was hunting, with his train, through the Faubourg Montmartre, the Place Vendôme, and the Rue Saint-Honoré, as far as the Place Louis XV., not without having overturned and wounded several people.” Thereupon the Parisians composed satirical verses on the duke, ending with these lines :
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… an sein de Paris, un grand, noble de race,
Sans respect pour les droits des gens,
Écrase quelques habitants
Pour goûter en plein jour le plaisir de la chasse[7]
It was certainly no easy task for the party who wished to substitute the Due d’Orléans for Louis XVI. on the throne of France to persuade the people that the man who treated them with so much insolence had now become the champion of their liberties. M. Émile Dard in his interesting book, Le General Choderlos de Laclos, declares that the Orléaniste conspiracy originated with Brissot as early as 1787, and that in this year he sketched out, in a letter to Ducrest, the brother of Madame de Genlis, his plan for inaugurating a second Fronde with the Due d’Orléans at its head. “ His cause must be identified with that of the people.” If in the beginning the duke were to distinguish himself by “ striking acts of benevolence and patriotism,” he would soon become “ the idol of the people.” “ Let him then embrace the doctrines in vogue, disseminate them in writing, and gain the leaders to his side.” Whether this scheme was adopted on the advice of Brissot or not, it was precisely the one pursued by the duke and his supporters.
From the moment the States-General met, says a democratic pamphlet of the day, “ the seigneur who was the hardest towards his vassals, the most exacting and the most severe, especially in the matter of pecuniary rights, made a show of moderation, generosity, and even lavishness.”[8] It is a common ruse of Orléaniste writers to represent the duke as an amiable, weak, and irresponsible puppet, incapable of serious designs. This was precisely the impression he intended to create ; an affectation of irresponsibility is a time-honoured ruse of conspirators. At the same time it is probable that, left to himself, the Due d’Orléans would have had neither the wit nor the energy to form a conspiracy ; the genius of Laclos was needed to devise and organize a vast and formidable intrigue.
Choderlos de Laclos belonged to a poor and recently ennobled family of Spanish origin, and in 1788, at the age of forty-seven, after leaving the army, he was introduced to the Palais Royal by the Vicomte de Ségur, who obtained for him the post of secrétaire des commandements to the Due d’Orléans. Laclos had already made a name for himself as the author of the scandalous Liaisons Dangereuses, a novel describing in the form of letters from country-houses the depraved morals of society. “ A monster of immorality ” himself, he revelled in depicting the baser sides of human nature—“ according to him, good people, if any such existed, would be simply lambs amongst a herd of tigers, and he holds it better to be a tiger, since it is better to devour than to be devoured.” [9]
To the cynical mind of Laclos there was something infinitely diverting in the idea of placing the dissolute duke at the head of the kingdom, and the very weakness and want http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_01.html (8 of 32)5.4.2006 10:39:31
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of energy that characterized his royal protégé offered all the wider a field to Laclos’s own ambition.
In order to inspire the duke with the will to collaborate in this scheme Laclos well knew, moreover, the vulnerable side from which to approach him. Place and power had little attraction for Philippe d’Orléans ; as king he would have access to no more money and to less pleasure than fell to his share as “ first prince of the blood.” “ The Due d’Orléans,” a wit had once remarked, “ would always be afraid to belong to any party where he would not have the chorus-girls of the opera on his side.” But if incapable of great ambitions, the duke possessed one characteristic that lent not merely energy but fire to his otherwise sluggish nature—this was the spirit of revenge. If he could not devise, if he could not scheme, if he could not strive to achieve some settled purpose, he could hate. He was immeasurably and unrelentingly vindictive. To revenge himself on any one who had piqued his vanity or thwarted his designs, he would stick at nothing, he would know no pity. And now for years all the bitter rancour of which he was capable had been growing in intensity towards one woman who had humiliated him—the Queen of France.
In a lesser degree he hated the King also : had not Louis XVI. refused to make him grand admiral of the fleet, in consequence of his conduct at the battle of Ouessant ? But it was Marie Antoinette who had withheld her consent to the marriage of his daughter with the Due d’Angoulême, it was to her he owed his banishment from the Court, and it was her rejection of his infamous love-making that still rankled in his mind.
The Due d’Orléans was not the only member of the Palais Royal set who had suffered a like rebuff. “ The Queen,” says M. smile Dard, “ was proud and coquette ; she held back with disdain those that her charm attracted. The spite of men was directed against her as cruelly as the jealousy of women. Under a chaste king many courtiers had hoped that the reign of lovers would succeed to that of mistresses. What a prospect for the ambitions of the Court ! What glory and profit for roués like Tilly, Biron, Bézénval, Ségur, to record amongst their successful ventures the Queen of France ! In how many calumnies did self-interest and vanity find their vent ! ” Biron, we know from his insufferable memoirs, had actually made overtures to the Queen, and we may safely accept the version of this incident given by Madame Campan, who states that the interview ended after a few moments with the words pronounced in indignant tones by Marie Antoinette, “ Sortez, monsieur ! ” and the hasty exit of Biron from her presence.
The advances of the Vicomte de Noailles met with no better success, [10] and both these
séducteurs became the bitterest enemies of the Queen.
On such resentments was the animosity of the Palais Royal roues for the Court founded.
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At the duke’s country-house of Monceaux all these malcontents collected, and it was here, amidst the clinking of champagne glasses, that the foulest libels, the most obscene verses on the Queen, were uttered and afterwards circulated through the underworld of Paris.
The exile of the Duc d’Orléans in 1787 provided his party with a fresh cause de guerre.
At the Seance Royale the King had announced two fresh taxes—the timbre and the subvention territoriale—to be imposed on the “privileged classes”; whereupon the duke at the instigation of Ducrest rose and declared the royal decree to be “ illegal.” “ Do not imagine,” he said afterwards to Brissot, “ that if I made this stand against the King it was in order to serve a people I despise, or a body of which I make no account (the Parlement), but that I was indignant at a man treating me with so much insolence.”[11]
The insolence, however, seems to have been entirely on the side of the duke. Louis XVI. on his return to Versailles remarked that it was not the declaration of the Due d’Orléans that had offended him, but the threatening tone in which the words were pronounced, and the way he had looked at him as he spoke.[12] On the advice of the Queen he accordingly exiled the duke, stipulating that he should not go as he wished—for reasons we shall see later—to England, but to his property at Villers-Cotterets.
This edict admirably served the interests of the Orléanistes, since the duke was now able to pose as the victim of despotism, and it did much to inflame his fury against the King and Queen. When two years later he was elected deputy in the States-General, he cynically declared : “ I laugh at the States-General, but I wished to belong to them if only for the moment when individual liberty should be discussed in order to vote for a law that will enable me to go where I like, so that when I want to start for London, Rome, or Pekin, I shall not be sent to Villers-Cotterets. I laugh at all the rest.”[13]
Such were the motives that inspired the “ democracy ” of the Palais Royal party.
Directed by the genius of Laclos, and financed by the millions of the Due d’Orléans, the vast organization of the Orléaniste conspiracy took form and grew, until by the spring of 1789 the plan of campaign was complete. Orléaniste propaganda were circulated all over France in preparation for the States-General ; models of cahiers drafted by Sieyès and Laclos were distributed to different constituencies, and it was undoubtedly by this means that the people’s animosity towards the noblesse was largely engineered, for in the upholders of the Old Régime the Orléanistes saw the most serious obstacle to their schemes.
But the crowning triumph of the Orléaniste conspiracy was the acquisition of Mirabeau.
This amazing man, whose striking personality and thunderous oratory must have ensured http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_01.html (10 of 32)5.4.2006 10:39:31
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the success of any party to which he attached himself, was lost to the royal cause mainly by the ineptness of the King’s ministers. It is almost certain that at this crisis Mirabeau needed only the slightest encouragement to throw himself into the movement for reform by peaceful methods, and in this he rightly saw that the King was the real leader. Such rancour as he entertained against the Old Régime was directed against the noblesse who had shunned him on account of his irregularities ; the royal authority he was prepared to defend. He alone of all the men who should have advised the King on the assembling of the States-General foresaw the disasters impending from the unpreparedness of the Government, and in a letter addressed to the King’s minister Montmorin in December 1788 he implored him to be advised in time.
Alas, for the eternal weakness of Conservatism, the fatal unresponsiveness that has driven many a would-be ally into the enemy’s camp ! To Montmorin, Mirabeau with his discreditable past and his unscrupulous business transactions was a man to distrust, and therefore to be rejected. He failed to realize the truth of Gouverneur Morris’s aphorism—a maxim that should surely be laid to heart by every one concerned in government : “ There are in the world men who are to be employed, not trusted.” Mirabeau was decidedly not to be trusted. “ I was born to be an adventurer ! ” he once said gaily to Dumont and Duroverai. But was that a reason not to employ him ? Were not some of the greatest men who ever lived adventurers ? Was not France saved ten years later by the great adventurer from Corsica ? Yet with this term Conservatism too often brands the man whose dynamic force is needed to counteract its own inertia. The letter of Mirabeau was ignored, his mémoire never reached the King, and all the disasters he had foreseen came to pass. So the man who might have saved the monarchy, smarting at this rebuff, threw himself into the opposite camp, and devoted all his force, his eloquence, and his vast energy to overthrowing the Government that had repulsed him. At the very moment that Montmorin refused his services, the Orléanistes were making every effort to secure him. It is evident that from the first the Duc d’Orléans inspired him with no sympathy, but he needed a field for his talents, he needed a goal for his ambitions, and alas, he needed also the wherewithal to satisfy his taste for luxury and pleasure ! Convinced that for the present he could hope for nothing from the Court, Mirabeau therefore allowed himself against his inclination to be drawn into the Orléaniste conspiracy.[14]
With the annexation of Mirabeau the success of the conspiracy seemed assured. The duke and a number of his supporters—the Duc de Biron, the Marquis de Sillery (husband of the famous Madame de Genlis), the Baron de Menou, the Vicomte de Noailles, and the De Lameths—had succeeded in securing election to the States-General, and with Mirabeau at their head constituted a formidable faction. At Montrouge, a little http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_01.html (11 of 32)5.4.2006 10:39:31
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house near Paris belonging to the Due de Biron, the conspirators met by night and discussed their schemes, but “ of those nocturnal confabulations,” remarks M. Dard, “ nothing transpired either for contemporaries or for posterity.”
The amazing thoroughness with which the intrigue was carried out has never been surpassed except by the pan-German plot of our day. At the Palais Royal, Laclos, “ like a spider in his web,” wove the almost invisible network of intrigue that soon covered France, and stretched out into other countries—England, Holland, Germany. In Paris he had enlisted the services of various unscrupulous agitators who stirred up the Faubourgs of Saint-Antoine and Saint-Marceau ; pamphleteers in the pay of the duke loaded the bookstalls with seditious pamphlets ; at the street corners and in the garden of the Palais Royal mob orators inflamed the minds of the people, and in the palace of Versailles the spies of Orléans hovered round the Queen, gained access to her correspondence, and sent copies of her letters to the councils of Montrouge.[15]
It is probable, however, that all these schemes would have proved unavailing to produce a revolution had not the country at this crisis been faced with famine. Hua, looking back on the beginnings of the Revolution, was convinced that but for the threatened famine the people would have remained indefinitely submissive to the Old Régime. “ Everywhere they know how to endure, to expect from time improvements that often do not come, but for which they continue to hope. They know only present evils, and of these famine alone is intolerable to them. Struck by this terrible scourge, it is not a change in the State that they demand, it is bread. So the French people would long have endured their accustomed burdens, they would have continued to pay taxes, tithes, to carry out feudal duties, to bend beneath the corvée and the other miseries of vassaldom.
I find the proof of their patience in the means employed to make them lose it.”[16] It was
here the conspirators saw their greatest opportunity. “ Bread,” says Hua, “ was the potent lever by which the people were roused to action. What lies, what fables were thrown to public credulity ! ” It is evident from all accounts that the famine was more fabulous than real. The people were not starving, but haunted by the fear of starvation.
And to this fear was added exasperation, owing to the conviction that no real scarcity of grain existed. It was true that a fearful hailstorm in July of the previous year had destroyed many of the crops round Paris, but had not the minister Necker declared that, in spite of this disaster, “ the stores of grain in the country were more than sufficient to supply the needs of the nation until the next harvest ” ? The want of bread in itself is bad enough, but to believe that bread is being wilfully withheld from one is enough to stir the meekest to revolt. This was the “ lever ” employed by the conspirators. When the peasants of France creeping to their doors saw wagons laden with wheat winding their way through the village street, voices were not lacking to whisper, “ There is corn http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_01.html (12 of 32)5.4.2006 10:39:31
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in plenty, but it is not for you ; it is to be stored for the Court, the aristocrats, the rich, who will feast in plenty while you go hungry.” And forthwith the maddened people would hurl themselves on to the sacks of corn and fling them into the nearest river. [17]
The fact that in many cases the corn was destroyed and not appropriated by the people proves that hunger was less the incentive to revolt than rage at the monopolizers ; and if the name of a supposed monopolizer were but whispered likewise, the unfortunate man fell a victim to the same fate as the sacks of corn. It is, of course, impossible to defend such excesses, yet if during a time of scarcity there were really profiteers enriching themselves at the expense of the people, the fury of the peasants is certainly justified.
Their guilt must therefore be measured by the facts on which their suspicions were founded.
Was the scarcity of grain, then, imaginary or real ? Undoubtedly it was not to be entirely accounted for by the failure of the crops. On this point contemporaries of all parties agree. But the question of monopolizers is one on which pro-revolutionary historians are strangely silent, since for their purpose—the glorification of the revolutionary leaders—it does not bear examination. The truth is probably that the monopolizers were in league with the very men who were stirring up popular fury against monopoly—the leaders of the Orléaniste conspiracy. Montjoie asserts that agents employed by the Duc d’Orléans deliberately bought up the grain, and either sent it out of the country or concealed it in order to drive the people to revolt, and in this accusation he is supported by innumerable contemporaries, including the democrat Fantin-Désodoards, Mounier, whose integrity is not to be doubted, the Liberal Malouet, Ferrières, and Madame de la Tour du Pin.
Beaulieu, however, one of the most reliable of contemporaries, considers that the Orléanistes would have been unable to create a famine by these means, but that they accomplished their purpose by stirring up public feeling on the subject of monopolizers, thereby inducing the people to pillage the grain. The farmers and corn merchants, therefore, fearing that their supplies would be destroyed in transit, were afraid to release them. By this means a fictitious famine was created.[18]
M. Gustave Bord, whose researches into the question of the famine are perhaps the most complete of any French historian’s, believes that the farmers and bakers were not altogether guiltless, but that many had an interest in producing a scarcity in order to raise the price of bread : “ It is they who were the real authors of the scarcity, and the Old Régime hunted them down without mercy. In their rôle of exploiters of the People they were the natural allies of the revolutionaries, who upheld them in their calumnies. It was they who triumphed in 1789, and who succeeded in deluding history by throwing the responsibility on their enemies.”
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Yet against these enemies, that is to say “ the Court,” the noblesse, the clergy, and the King’s ministers, not a shred of evidence was ever produced. The ridiculous legend of the “ Pacte de Famine,” by which certain revolutionary writers have sought to prove that Louis XV. speculated in grain,[19] has no bearing on the question, since at this date Louis XV. had been dead for fifteen years, and against Louis XVI. not even the most rabid of revolutionary writers has ventured to raise such an accusation. On the contrary, the King, the noblesse, and the clergy [20] contributed immense sums towards the relief of the famine, and the King’s ministers, headed by Necker, were incessantly occupied with the problem of ensuring corn supplies, and in thwarting the designs of speculators.
All through the terrible winter of 1788-1789 the intendant of Paris, Berthier de Sauvigny, travelled about the country interviewing farmers to find out how much grain they had in reserve, how much they required, and what surplus they could put on the market ; when, however, in the spring, a shortage occurred, and Berthier applied to these men for the grain they had promised him, they immediately put up the price to a prohibitive figure, and Montjoie declares that this price was paid by agents of the Duc d’Orléans : “ They did not bargain, they gave what was asked. The farmers and monopolizers alone profited by this manoeuvre ; the artisan, the labourer, the poor man could not afford the price that the monopolizers offered, and it was only by outbidding them that the Government succeeded in wresting from these vampires a portion of their spoil.”
Whether, then, the Orléanistes achieved their purpose by actually cornering supplies, or by terrorizing the farmers into holding them up, there can be no doubt that the famine of 1789 was deliberately engineered by the agents of the duke, and that by this means the people were driven to the pitch of desperation necessary to produce the Revolution.
The Orléanistes, however, did not constitute the only revolutionary element in the country ; a second intrigue was at work amongst the people, that of