I. Composition of the Legislative Assembly. -- Social rank of the Deputies. Their inexperience, incompetence, and prejudices.
If it be true that a nation should be represented by its superior men, France was strangely 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 Legislative 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, although violently opposed to personal distinctions. The actual Assembly is but little more than a council of lawyers, got together from every town and village in France."
In actual fact, 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 fortune," the greater number being less than thirty years old, sixty being less than twenty-six,[2] nearly all of them trained in the clubs and the popular assemblies". There is not one noble or prelate belonging to the ancient régime, no great landed proprietor,[3] no head of a service, no eminent specialist in diplomacy, in finance, in the administrative or military arts. But three general officers are found there, and these are of the lower rank,[4] one of them having held his appointment but three months, and the other two being wholly unknown. -- At the head of the diplomatic committee stands Brissot, itinerant journalist, lately traveling about in England and the United States. He is supposed to be competent in the affairs of both worlds; in reality he is one of those presuming, threadbare, talkative fellows, who, living in a garret, lecture foreign cabinets and reconstruct all Europe. Things, to them, seem to be as easily worked out as words and sentences: 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 leading member on the committee on finances is Cambon, a merchant from Montpellier, a good accountant, who, at a later period, is to simplify accounting and regulate the Grand Livre of the public debt, which means public bankruptcy. Mean-while, 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 actual fact, the guarantee of assignats is used up and 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 the confiscations which he instigates in France, and which are to be set agoing in Belgium; here lies all his invention, a systematic robbery 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 leveler, satisfied that a mathematical method suits the social sciences fed on abstractions, blinded by formulœ, 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 public excitement, 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." It is he who, 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 can form an opinion of the flock. It consists of novices arriving from the provinces and bringing with them the principles and prejudices of the newspaper. So remote from the center, having no knowledge of general affairs or of their unity, they are two years behind their brethren of the Constituent Assembly. They are described in the following manner by Malouet,[9]
"Most of them, without having decided against a monarchy, had decided against the court, the aristocracy, and the clergy, ever imagining conspiracies and believing that defense 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, in great part, were aware of their errors; the novices were not, they were ready to begin all over again."
Moreover, they have their own political bent, for nearly all of them are upstarts of the new régime. 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 curés. 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 compliances 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 mob, 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.
II.
Degree and quality of their intelligence and Culture.
Is it possible that serious men could have listened to such weird nonsense until the bitter end?
"I am a tiller of the soil,"[10] says one deputy, "I now dare speak of the antique nobility of my plow. A yoke of oxen once constituted the pure, incorruptible legal worthies before whom my good 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 somber 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. . . . Oh Rome, art thou satisfied? Art thou then like Saturn, to whom fresh holocausts were daily imperative? . . . Depart, 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."
Courtesies of pedants, rhetorical personifications, and the invective of maniacs is the prevailing tone. The same defect characterizes the best speeches, namely, an overexcited 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 Scœvola." -- 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 of 1792, 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? . . ." "The circle of Popilius" should be drawn around those petty, hesitating German princes. When money is needed to establish camps around Paris and the large towns, Lasource proposes to dispose of the national forests and is amazed at any objection to the measure. "Cœsar's soldiers," he exclaims, "believing that an ancient forest in Gaul was sacred, dared not lay the axe to it; are we to share their superstitious respect?"[12] --- Add to this collegiate lore the philosophic dregs deposited in all minds by the great sophist then in vogue. Larivière reads in the tribune[13] that 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 recognized 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 "Nouvelle Héloise"
"that a girl thirteen or fourteen years old begins to sigh for the union which nature dictates. She struggles between passion and duty, so that, if she triumphs, she becomes a martyr, something that is rare in nature. It may happen that a young person prefers the serene shame of defeat to a wearisome eight year long struggle."
Divorce is inaugurated to "preserve in matrimony that happy peace of mind which renders the sentiments livelier."[14] Henceforth this will no longer be a chain but "the acquittance of an agreeable debt which every citizen owes to his country. . . Divorce is the protecting spirit of marriage."[15]
On a background of classic pedantry, with only vague and narrow notions of ordinary instruction, lacking exact and substantial information, flow obscenities and enlarged commonplaces enveloped in a mythological gauze, spouting in long tirades as maxims from the revolutionary manual. Such is the superficial culture and verbal argumentation from which vulgar and dangerous ingredients the intelligence of the new legislators is formed.[16]
III.
Aspects of their sessions. -- Scenes and display at the club. -- Co- operation of spectators.
From this we can imagine what their sessions were. "More in-coherent and especially more passionate than those of the Constituent Assembly"[17] they present the same but intensified characteristics. The argument is weaker, the invective more violent, and the dogmatism more intemperate. Inflexibility degenerates into insolence, prejudice into fanaticism, and near-sightedness into blindness. Disorder becomes a tumult and constant din an uproar. Suppose, says an eye- witness,
"a classroom with hundreds of pupils quarreling and every instant on the point of seizing each other by the hair. Their dress neglected, their attitudes angry, with sudden transitions from shouting to hooting . . is a sight hard to imagine 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; enter into petty police investigations; weigh the tittle-tattle of porters and the gossip of servant-girls; devote an all-night session to the secrets of a drunkard.[18] They enter on their official report and without any disapproval, the petition of M. Huré, "living at Pont-sur-Yonne, who, over his own signature, offers one hundred francs and his arm to become a killer of tyrants." 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 made to 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] Crowds of men and women are permitted to traverse the hall letting out 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," 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 Château - Vieux escorted by a noisy 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 between the 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, clamoring, stamping, yells and personal abuse. After countless useless entreaties, after repeated calls to order, "received with hooting," 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 violence completely destroying whatever is still left of the Assembly's reason.[23]
IV.
The Parties.- The "Right." - "Center." - The "Left." - Opinions and sentiments of the Girondins. - Their Allies of the extreme "left."
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, Dumolard, 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 center, 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 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, Gensonné, Veygniaud, 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 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 untied and their pen flowing, because they know how to handle the formulœ of books and reason out an abstract proposition, they fancy that they are statesmen.[30] Because they have read Plutarch and "Le Jeune Anacharsis," because they aim to construct a perfect society out of metaphysical conceptions, because they are in a ferment about the coming millennium, 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. Convinced 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, Bazière, Thuriot, Lecointre, and outside of it, Danton, Robespierre, Marat himself, all the levelers 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 mob which others, still more factious, will to-morrow let loose on them.
V.
Their means of action. -- Dispersion of the Feuillants' club.-- Pressure of the tribunes on the Assembly. -- Street mobs.
Thus, for the second time, the pretended freedom fighters seek power by boldly employing force. -- They begin by suppressing the meetings of the Feuillants club.[32] The customary riot is instigated against these, whereupon ensue tumult, violent outcries and scuffles; mayor Pétion 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 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."[33] "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 Quatremère, "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 Quatremère, "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 prison! Down! Down! Sometimes only about twenty of the deputies will applaud or hoot with the galleries, and sometimes 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."[34]
Great, however, as this usurpation may be, the minority, in order 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, "Torné 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."[35] "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 lèse- majesté, 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 Abbé Maury and Montlosier."[36] After having hurled abuse at the president, Mathieu Dumas, they insult his wife who has been recognized in a reserved gallery.[37] 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 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 bastard 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 Larivière, 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. Vaublanc, 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.[38] -- 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.
Parliamentary maneuvers. -- Abuses of urgency. -- Vote on the principle. -- Call by name. -Intimidation of the "Center." -- Opponents inactive. -- The majority finally disposed of.
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,"[39] 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 doing this, however, the resolution was declared urgent, and, whether we would or not, discussion had to take place forthwith."[40] -- "There were other tactics equally perfidious, which Thuriot, especially, made use of. This great rascal 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 émigrés, . . or that unsworn priests should be subject to special surveillance.[41] . . . In reply, he was told that his principle was the core of a law, the very law itself; so let it be debated by referring it to a committee to make a report on it. -- Not at all -- the matter is urgent; a committee might 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 stand up to analysis. -- At other times, and especially on grand occasions, they compel a vote. In general, votes are given by the members either sitting down or standing up, and, for the four hundred deputies of the "Center," 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'."[42] 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 this list of the opposition will soon serve as a list of the outlaws, on which the timid are not disposed to inscribe themselves. The result is an immediate defection in the heavy battalions of the "Centre"; "this is a positive fact," says Hua, "of which we were all witnesses; we 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, when the abolishment of the whole system of feudal credit was being dealt with, only the extreme left was attending; the rest of the "Assembly hall was nearly empty"; out of 497 deputies in attendance, 200 had left the session.[43] Encouraged for a moment by the appearance of some possible protection, they twice exonerate General Lafayette, behind whom they see an army,[44] and brave the despots of the Assembly, the clubs, and the streets. But, for lack of a military chief and base, the visible majority is twice obliged to yield, to keep silent, and fly or retreat under the dictatorship of the victorious faction, which has strained and forced the legislative machine until it has become disjointed and broken down.[45]
NOTES:
[1]"Correspondence (manuscript) of Baron de Staël," with his Court in Sweden. Oct. 6, 1791.
[2] "Souvenirs", by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc), chancelier de France. in VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893. - Dumouriez, "Mémoires," III. ch. V: "The Jacobin party, having branches all over the country, used its provincial clubs to control 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 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, "Mémoires," 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 transportation (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 majority of the members of this Assembly have received no education whatever."
[4] They rank as Maréchaux de camp, a grade corresponding to that of brigadier-general. They are Dupuy-Montbrun (deceased in March, 1792), Descrots-d'Estrée, 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.
[5] "Correspondance du Baron de Staël," 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 (defense 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 propriété,' 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 . . . The punishment 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. Cailliasson. 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, "Mémoires," III. 296, and 339, 340, 344, 346. - "Cambon, a raving lunatic, without education, humane principle, or integrity (public) a meddler, an ignoramus, 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 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 disorganization, and that the luckiest thing that could happen to France was to disorganize 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. "It is a sad and terrible situation which forces a people, naturally amiable and generous, to take such vengeance! " - Cf. the very acute article, by St. Beuve, on Condorcet, in "Causeries du Lundi," -- Hua (a colleague of Condorcet, in the Legislative Assembly), "Mémoires," 89. "Condorcet, in his journal, regularly falsified things, with an audacity which is unparelleled. 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."
[9] Malouet, II. 215. -- Dumouriez, III. ch. V. "They were elected to represent the nation to defend, they say, its interests against a perfidious court."
[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 treasure from the beginning to the end, ought to have been quoted: "Tell me, pontiff of Rome, what your sentiments will be when you welcome your worthy and faithful co-operators? . . I behold your sacred hands, ready to launch those pontifical thunderbolts, which, etc. . . Let the brazier of Scœvola 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!
[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 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. Roye-Collard (Sainte-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 pettyfoggers, 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."
[17] Etienne Dumont, "Mémoires," 40. -- Mercure de France, Nov. 19, 1791; Feb. 11 and March 3, 1792. (articles by Mallet du Pan).
[18] Moniteur, Dec. 17 (examination at the bar of the house of Rauch, a pretended labor contractor, whom they are obliged to send off acquitted). Rauch tells them: "I have no money, and cannot find a place where I can sleep at less than 6 sous, because I pee in the bed." -- Moniteur, XII. 574. (session of June 4), report by Chabot: "A peddler from Mortagne, says that a domestic coming from 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. Gerard, 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."
[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. . . The more 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, and quickly, 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." - The petitioner receives the honors of the Assembly. - (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 the shoe-straps on my feet; they will serve to reduce under them, with the imprint and character of truth, all tyrants leagued against 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, your offer, etc."
[22] Moniteur, XL 576 (session of March 6); XII. 237, 314, 368 (sessions of April 27, May 5 and 14).
[23] Mercure de France. Sept. 19,1791, Feb.11, and March 3, 1792. -- Buchez et Roux, XVI 185 (session of July 26, 1792).
[24] "Mémoires de Mallet du Pan," 1433 (tableau of the three parties, with special information).
[25] Buchez et Roux, XII. 348 (letter by the deputy Chéron, 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 Constituent Assembly. -- According to Mallet du Pan the so-called Independents number 250.
[26] These figures are verified by decisive ballottings (Mortimer- Ternauz, II. 205, 348.)
[27] Moniteur, XII. 393 (session of May 15, speech by Isnard): "The Constituent 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 . . . It has bound 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", by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc), chancelier de France. in VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893.
[29] Madame de Stael, "Considerations sur la Révolution Française, IIIrd part, ch. III.-Madame de Staël conversed with them and judges them according to the shrewd perceptions of a woman of the world.
[30] Louvet, "Mémoires" 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, "Mémoires" (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 myself on a study of their virtues. . . The pretended 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, Pétion, Barbaroux, Louvet, etc., (see their writings). Mallet du Pan 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 Montléon, "Histoire de la ville de Lyon, pendant la Révolution," 1.58), he proposes to utilize 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 public advantage 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 public festivals, "in imitation of the Spartans," and takes for a motto, Non omnis moriar (Baron de Girardot, "Roland and Madame Roland". I. 83, 185)
[32] Political club uniting moderate and constitutional monarchists. They got their nickname because they held their meetings in the old convent formerly used by the feullants, a branch of Cistercians who, led by LaBarrière, broke away in 1577. The Feuillant Club was dissolved in 1791. (SR).
[33] 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, 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 Assembly 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."
[34] Moniteur, XIII. 212, session of July 22.
[35] Moniteur, XII. 22, session of April 2. - Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 95. - Moniteur, XIII. 222, session of July 22.
[36] Lacretelle, "Dix Ans d'Epreuves," 80.
[37] Mathieu Dumas, "Mémoires," II. 88 (Feb. 23). - Hua, "Mémoires" 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."
[38] De Vaublanc, "Mémoires," 344. - Moniteur, XIII. 368 (letters and speeches of deputies, session of Aug. 9).
[39] 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."
[40] Moniteur, XII. 702. For example, on the 19th of June, 1792, on a motion unexpectedly proposed by Condorcet, that the departments be authorized to burn all titles (to nobility) in the various depots. -- Adopted at once, and unanimously.
[41] Later Stalin and his successors should invest the United Nations and other international organizations to indirectly propose and ensure the acceptance of a new convention of human rights, children's rights, the rights of refugees etc. In many cases these became the base of national legislation which is now giving trouble to many of the Western democracies. (SR).
[42] Hua, 114.
[43] Moniteur, XII. 664. - Mercure de France, June 23, 1792.
[44] Hua, 141. -- Mathieu Dumas, II. 399: "It is remarkable that Lafond de Ladébat, one of our trustiest friends, was elected president on the 23rd 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."
[45] This description and others of the same period have undoubtedly been studied carefully by thousands of socialists and political hopefuls who, in any case, made use of similar tactics to take over thousands of governing committees, institutions and organizations. (SR).
I.
Policy of the Assembly. - State of France at the end of 1791. - Powerlessness of the Law.
If the deputies 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 found?" inquires Mallet du Pan.[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, dispatched 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 Nîmes, "where the Dauphiny 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 mob; where Catholics, listening to the orthodox mass, are driven out and dragged to the authorized mass in the vicinity; where one woman is torn from the confessional, and another flogged with all their might?[2]
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 mob 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 flock of women beating drums, and, for three days, holding the Hôtel-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 abominable butchery of the Glacière. 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 centers 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. Germain alone diminished by 250 millions; 20,000 thieves, with branded backs, idling away time in houses of bad repute, at the theaters, in the Palais-Royal, at the National Assembly, and in the coffee-houses; thousands of beggars infesting the streets, crossways, and public squares. Everywhere an image of the deepest poverty which is not calling for one's pity as it is accompanied with insolence. Swarms of tattered vendors are offering 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 artisans from 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 élite of the nation, for ecclesiastics and the gentry, for army and navy officers, for rich merchants and large landed proprietors; no protection in the courts, no income from public funds; denunciations abound, expulsions, 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.
The Assembly hostile to the oppressed and favoring oppressors. -- Decrees against the nobles and clergy. -- Amnesty for deserters, convicts, and bandits. -- Anarchical and leveling maxims.
In vain do the honest men of the Assembly protest against this scandal and this overthrow. The Assembly, guided and forced by the Jacobins, will only amend the law to damn the oppressed and to authorize their oppressors. -- Without making any distinction between armed assemblages at Coblentz, which it had a right to punish, and refugees, three times as numerous, old men, women and children, so many indifferent and inoffensive people, not merely nobles but plebeians,[12] who left the soil only to escape popular outrages, it 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 freedom of movement, 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 depots their genealogical titles.[16] -- To all unsworn ecclesiastics, two-thirds of the French clergy, it withholds bread, the small pension allowed them for food, which is the ransom of their confiscated possessions;[17] it declares them "suspected of revolt against the law and of bad intentions against the country;" it subjects them to special surveillance; it authorizes their expulsion without trial by local rulers in case of disturbances; it decrees that in such cases they shall be banished.[18] It suppresses "all secular congregations of men and women ecclesiastic or laic, even those wholly devoted to hospital service will take away from 600,000 children the means of learning to read and write."[19] It lays injunctions 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.
"Children," 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 immigrants actually or in feeling, "large proprietors, rich merchants, false conservatives,"[22] are all 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 engagement 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.[25]
"The defense of liberty," says Lamarque,[26] "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?"[27] Isnard exclaims in the tribune, "it is 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."[28] -- 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 numerous deserters who abandoned their flags previous to the 1st of January, 1789;[29] 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 mob. 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;[30] it admits them to the bar of the house, and, taking a formal vote on it, extends to them the honors of the session.[31] 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[32]; it stops the trial, almost over, of the Glacière butchers; it tolerates the return of these as victors,[33] 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,[34] "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."[35] Conceive the effect of this motion read at evening to peasants who are at this very moment claiming their lord'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."[36] 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 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,[37] "the people have the right to insist not merely on subsistence, but again on plenty and happiness."[38]
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."[39] 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 lightening, and it is the Assembly which, through the greatest of its mistakes, draws down the bolt on the nation's head.
III.
War. - -Disposition of foreign powers. - - The King's dislikes. -- Provocation of the Girondins. -- Dates and causes of the rupture.
It might have been turned aside with a little prudence. Two principal grievances were alleged, one by France and the other by the Empire. -- On the one hand, and very justly, France complained of the gathering of émigré's, which the Emperor and Electors tolerated against it on the frontier. In the first place, however, a few thousand gentlemen, without troops or stores, and nearly without money,[40] were hardly to be feared, 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 Trèves in his electorate.[41] -- 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 European concert of action, that is to say, annulled beforehand by an indefinite postponement, while this pretended league of sovereigns is at once "placed by the politicians in the class of august comedies.[42]" Far from taking up arms against "New France" in the name of old France, the emperor Leopold and his prime minister Kaunitz, were delighted to see the constitution completed and accepted by the King; it "got them out of an embarrassing position,"[43] and Prussia as well. In the running of governments, political advantage is the great incentive and both powers needed all their forces in another direction, in Poland. One for retarding, and the other for accelerating the division of this country, and both, when the partition took place, to get enough for themselves and prevent Russia from getting too much. -- The sovereigns of Prussia and Austria, accordingly, did not have any idea of saving Louis XVI, nor of conducting the émigrés back, nor of conquering French provinces. If anything was to be expected from them on account of personal ill-will, there was no fear of their armed intervention. -- In France it is not the King who urges a rupture; he knows too well that the hazards of war will place him and his dependents in mortal danger. Secretly as well as publicly, in writing to the émigrés, 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 touch off or let someone touch off an explosion. At the critical moment of the discussion[44] he entreats the deputies, through M. Delessart, his Minister of Foreign Affairs, to weigh their words and especially not to send a demand containing a "dead line." He resists, as far as his passive nature allows him, to the very last. On being forced to declare war he requires beforehand the signed advice of all his ministers. He does not utter the fatal words, until he, "with tears in his eyes" and in the most dire straits, is dragged on by an Assembly qualifying all caution as treason and which has just dispatched M. Delessart to appear, under a capital charge, before the supreme court at Orléans.
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.[45] -- As an exception, the extreme Jacobins, Couthon, Collot d'Herbois, Danton, Robespierre, do not side with them. Robespierre, who at first proposed to confine the Emperor "within the circle of Popilius,"[46] fears the placing of too great a 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 counselor in foreign relations is Brissot whose pre-eminence is based on their ignorance and who, exalted into a statesman, becomes for a few months the most conspicuous figure in Europe.[47] 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,[48] a penny-a-liner, busybody, and meddler, who, with the half-information of a nomad, scraps of newspaper ideas and reading- room lore,[49] 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. In the attic where his wife is washing his shirts, he enjoys rebuking rulers and, on the 20th of October, in the tribune,[50] he begins by insulting thirty foreign sovereigns. Such keen, intense enjoyment is the stuff on which the new fanaticism daily feeds itself. Madame Roland herself delights, with evident complacency, in it, something which can be seen in the two famous letters in which, with a supercilious tone, she first instructs the King and next the Pope.[51] Brissot, at bottom, regards himself as a Louis XIV, and expressly invites the Jacobins to imitate the haughty ways of the Great Monarch.[52] -- To the tactlessness of the intruder, and the touchiness of the parvenu, we can add the rigidity of the sectarian. The Jacobins, in the name of abstract rights, deny historic rights; 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.
"Let us tell Europe," cries Isnard,[53] "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 Hérault de Séchelles, "there is an enemy."[54]
"An honest peace between tyranny and liberty," says Brissot, "is impossible. Our Constitution is an eternal anathema to absolute monarchs . . . It places them on trial, it pronounces judgment on them; it seems to say to each: to-morrow thou have ceased to be 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." [55]
" Tell the king," says Gensonné, "that the war is a must, that public opinion demands it, that the safety of the empire makes it a law."[56]
"The state we are in," concludes Vergniaud, "is a veritable state of destruction that may lead us to disgrace and death. So then 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. . . The spirits of past generations seem to me crowding into this temple to conjure you, in the name of the evils which slavery had compelled them to endure, to protect the future generations whose destinies are in your hands! Let this prayer be granted! Be for the future a new Providence! Ally yourselves with eternal justice!"[57]
Among the Marseilles speakers there is no longer any room for serious discussion. Brissot, in reply to the claim made by the Emperor on behalf of the princes' property in Alsatia, replies that "the sovereignty of the people is not bound by the treaties of tyrants."[58] As to the gatherings of the émigrés, the Emperor having yielded on this point, he will yield on the others.[59] Let him formally renounce all combinations against France.
"I want war on the 10th of February," says Brissot, "unless we have received his renunciation."
No explanations; it is satisfaction we want; "to require satisfaction is to put the Emperor at our mercy."[60] The Assembly, so eager to start the quarrel, usurps the King's right to take the first step and formally declares war, fixing the date.[61] -- 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.[62] By sounding the alarm belles the Jacobins, masters of the Assembly, have succeeded in bringing about that "monstrous alliance," and, from day to day, this alarm sounds the louder. One year more, thanks to this policy, and France will have all Europe for an enemy and as its only friend, the Regency of Algiers, whose internal system of government is about the same as her own.
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.
Behind their carmagnoles[63] we can detect a design which they will avow later on.
"We were always obstructed by the Constitution," Brissot is to say, "and nothing but war could destroy the Constitution."[64]
Diplomatic wrongs, consequently, of which they make parade, 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 conquests 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."[65] This man is Sieyès, "the leader of everything without seeming to lead anything."[66] As infatuated as Rousseau with his own speculations, but as unscrupulous and as clear-sighted as Macchiavelli 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 ascendance 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 the mob. 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 Etampes not to dare send away their wheat, to be obliged to supply customers at night, to tremble in their own houses, and to know that if they went out-doors they risked their lives.[67] 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, parceled 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.[68] 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 hundred or dozens of stump-speakers and firebrands. -- Already, in the beginning of 1792, this dissatisfaction was so great as to be denounced in the tribune and in the press. Isnard[69] railed against "that multitude of large property-holders, those opulent merchants, those haughty, wealthy personages who, advantageously placed in the social amphitheater, are unwilling to have their seats changed." The bourgeoisie," wrote Pétion,[70] "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 law; it rallies to itself "the multitude of conservative, timid people, for whom tranquility 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, André Chénier, a man of feeling, starts up in the midst of the silent crowd and openly tears off the mask from the Jacobins.[71] He brings into full light the daily sophism by which a mob, "some hundreds of idlers gathered in a garden or at a theater, are impudently 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 French 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 own business, indemnify themselves by managing that of the public. He shows how, around the central factory and its twelve hundred branches of insurrection, the 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 the center; their confederation, installed and enthroned, is not only as a State within the State, but rather as a sovereign State in a vassal State; summoning their administrative bodies to their bar, judicial verdicts set aside through their intervention, private individuals searched, assessed and condemned through their verdicts. All this constitutes a steady, systematic defense of insubordination and revolt; as, "under the name of hoarding and monopoly, commerce and industry are described as misdemeanors;" property is unsettled and every rich man rendered suspicious, "talent and integrity silenced." In short, a public conspiracy made against society in the very name of society, "while the sacred symbol of liberty is made use of as a seal" to exempt a few tyrants from punishment. Such a protest said aloud what most Frenchmen muttered to themselves, and from month to month, graver excesses exited greater censure.
"Anarchy exists[72] to a degree scarcely to be paralleled, wrote the ambassador of the United States. The horror and apprehension, which the licentious associations have universally inspired, are such that there is reason to believe that the great mass of the French population would consider even despotism a blessing, if accompanied with that security to persons and property, experienced even under the worst governments in Europe."
Another observer, not less competent,[73] 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.[74] "Eighteen thousand officers of every grade, elected by the constitutionalists, seventy-one department administrations out of eighty-two, most of the tribunals,[75] all traders and manufacturers, every chief and a large portion of the National Guard of Paris," in short, the élite 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," he said to one of his ministers, "is the surest way to make the nation see the changes that ought to be made in it."[76] -- 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 finally chosen 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 mob. 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 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.
Effects of the war on the common people.-- Its alarms and fury. -- The second revolutionary outburst and its characteristics. -- Alliance of the Girondists with the mob. -- The red cap and pikes. -- Universal substitution of government by force for government by law.
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 regime, for, behind foreign opponents on the frontier, there stand the émigrés. The commotion is terrible, especially amongst the lower classes which mainly bore the whole weight of the old establishment; among the millions who live by the sweat of their brow, artisans, small farmers, métayers, 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 inquisition of excise men, of inspectors of the salt tax, wine tax (rats de cave) 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 poor wretches gathered like heaps of dirt and filth, the promiscuousness, the over- crowding, the filth and the starvation of the prisons.[77] They have simply 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 pennies a pot, wine at six, pigeons in their meat-safes, game on their turn-spits, the wood of the national forests in their lofts, 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 the crowds 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 speeches, the jacket and the blouse considered as symbols of patriotism, and supremacy in the State claimed for the sans-culottes[78] in the name 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 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.[79] This is the second wave of the Revolution, fast swelling and roaring, less general than the first, 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 coarse and crude, but a new sentiment animates it, the force of which is incalculable, that of plebeian pride, that of the poor man, the subject, who, suddenly erect after ages of debasement, relishes, far beyond his hopes and unstintedly, the delights of equality, independence, and dominion. "Fifteen millions white Negroes," says Mallet du Pan,[80] worse fed, more miserable than those of St. Domingo, like them rebelled and freed from all authority by their revolt, 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,[81] but also against the King, the ministers, the gentry, priests, parliamentarians, orthodox Catholics; against
all administrators and magistrates imprudent enough to have appealed to the law;
all manufacturers, merchants, and owners of property who condemn disorder;
the wealthy whose egotism keeps them at home;
all those who are well-off, well-bred and well-dressed.
They are all under suspicion because they have lost by the new regime, or because they have not adopted its ways. -- Such is the colossal brute which the Girondins introduce into the political arena.[82] 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 aristocrats inside France in complicity with those of Coblentz,
* against "the Austrian 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 themselves are the instigators.[83]
Thus over-excited and topsy-turvy, the proletariat require only arms and a rallying-point. The Girondins furnish both. Through a striking coincidence, one which shows that the plan was concerted,[84] they start three political engines at the same time. Just at the moment when, through their deliberate saber-rattling, they made war inevitable, they invented popular insignia and armed the poor. At the end of January, 1792, almost during one week, they announced their ultimatum to Austria using a fixed deadline, they adopted the red woolen cap and began the manufacture of pikes. -- It is evident that pikes are of no use in the open field against cannon and a regular army; accordingly the 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 stevedore, 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 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."[85] "Ah," say the regulars of the Tuileries gardens, "if the good patriots of the Champs de Mars only had had pikes like these the blue-coats (Lafayette's guards) would not have had such a good hand!" - "They are to be used everywhere, wherever there are enemies of the people, to the Château, if any can be found there!" They will override the veto and make sure that the National Assembly will approve the good laws. To this purpose, the Faubourg St. Antoine volunteers its pikes, and, to mark the use made of them, it complains that "efforts are made to substitute an aristocracy of wealth for the omnipotence of inherited rank." 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 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.
The leaders of the Assembly and the people armed with pikes unite against the rich, against Constitutionalists, against the government, and henceforth, the Jacobin extremists march side by side with the Girondins, both reconciled for the attack but reserved their right to disagree until after the victory.
"The object of the Girondists[86] is not a republic in name, but an actual republic through a reduction of the civil lists 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 leveling process to every constituted authority, to all legal pre-eminence and to property. The only regime 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 pillage" 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 hand 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 party, in the provinces as well as at Paris, substitutes, under the cry of public danger, a government of might for the government of law. _____________________________________________________________________
NOTES:
[1] Mercure de France, September 24, 1791. -- Cf. Report of M. Alquier (session of Sept. 23).
[2] Mercure de France, Oct. 15, 1792 (the treaty with England was dated Sep. 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 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 laving the chapel, "In the name of human justice, I order you to follow me to the church of Saint-Etienne, or I shall abandon you to the people."
[3] "The French Revolution," Vol. I. pp.261, 263. -- "Archives Nationales," F7, 3185 and 3186 (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 Ambuscade, dated Sep. 30). The captain, M. d'Orléans, 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."
[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 Corporal Lebreton. (Nov. 11, 1791).
[7] Saint Huruge is first tenor. Justine (Sado-machosistic book by de Sade) 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 Tahiti. (" Souvenirs of chancelier Pasquier. Ed. Plon, 1893))
[8] Mercure de France, Nov. 5, 1791. - Buchez et Roux, XII. 338. Report by Pétion, 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 to a frightful degree." "Correspondance de M. de Staël" (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 de Lacépède and de Mulot.
[10] Lacretelle, "Dix ans d'Epreuves." "I know no more dismal and discouraging aspect than the interval between the departure of the National Assembly, on the 10th August consummated by that of September 2."
[11] Mercure de France, Sept. 3, 1791, article by Mallet du Pan.
[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-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. 9 and March 30, 1792, bear upon all, without exception. -- "Correspondance 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 Vendôme, at 2 o'clock: 1st, 600, more or less, of files of papers, forming the last of genealogical collections, titles and proofs of nobility; 2nd, 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).
[18] At the Jacobin Club, Legendre proposes a much a 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 19 and 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; XII 230 (session of April 26). -- The last sentence quoted was uttered by François de Nantes.
[22] Moniteur, XI. 43. (session of Jan. 5, speech by Isnard).
[23] Moniteur, XI. 356 (session of Feb. 10).
[24] Moniteur, XI. 230 (session of April 26).
[25] When I was a child the socialists etc. had substituted aristocracy with capitalists and today, in France, when the capitalists have largely disappeared, a great many evils are caused by the 'patronat'. (SR).
[26] Moniteur (session of June 22).
[27] 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, even though we would have taken an interest in him, that decorated aristocrat only deserved what he got. . . We shall not remain idle 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, 3215, 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 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 theater, 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 du Pan "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. Proceedings 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 paralyze its ministrants."
[28] Mercure de France, Nov. 12 (session of Oct. 31st, 1792).
[29] Decree of Feb. 8, and others like it, on the details, as, for instance, that of Feb. 7.
[30] April 9, at the Jacobin Club, Vergniaud, the president, welcomes and compliments the convicts of Chateau-vieux.
[31] Mortimer-Ternaux, book I, vol. I. (especially the session of April 15).
[32] Comtat (or comtat Venaisssin) ancient region in France under papal authority from 1274 to 1791.(SR)
[33] Moniteur, XII. 335. - Decree of March 20 (the triumphal entry of Jourdan and his associates belongs to the next month).
[34] Moniteur, XII. 730 (session of June 23).
[35] Moniteur, XII. 230 (session of April 12).
[36] Moniteur. XI. 6, (session of March 6).
[37] Moniteur, XI. 123, (session of Jan. 14)
[38] 150 years later these rights were written into the International Declaration of Human Rights in Paris in 1948. (SR).
[39] Mercure de France, Dec. 23 (session of Dec. 23), p.98.
[40] 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 émigrés 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 Condé, is composed of three hundred gentlemen, and as many valets and grooms. I have to add, that the letters which reach me from Strasbourg, containing extracts of inside information from Frankfort, Munich, Regensburg, 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 remain very small (Moniteur, X. 678, letter of M. Delatouche, an eyewitness, 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."
[41] 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 (Now in Belgium). -- Buchez et Roux, XII. 395, demands of the king, Dec. 14, -- Ibid., XIII. 15, 16, 19, 52, complete satisfaction given by the Elector of Trèves, 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."
[42] Mallet du Pan, "Mémoires," I. 254 (February, 1792). -- " Correspondance de Mirabeau et du M. 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, "that the convention which he had just signed does not really bind him to anything; that it only contains insignificant declarations, extorted by the Count d'Artois." He ends by assuring him that "neither himself nor his government is in any way bound by this instrument."
[43] Words of M. de Kaunitz, Sept. 4, 1791 ("Recueil," by Vivenot, I. 242).
[44] Moniteur, XI. 142 (session of Jan. 17). - Speech by M. Delessart. - Decree of accusation against him March 10. - Declaration of war, April 20. - On the real intentions of the King, cf. Malouet, "Malouet, "Mémoires" II. 199-209; Lafayette, "Mémoires," I. 441 (note 3); Bertrand de Molleville, "Mémoires," VI. 22; Governor Morris, II. 242, letter of Oct. 23, 1792.
[45] Moniteur, X. 172 (session of Oct. 20, 1791). Speech by Brissot. - - Lafayette, I. 441. "It is the Girondists who, at this time, wanted a war at any price" - 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."
[46] Buchez et Roux, XII. 402 (session of the Jacobin Club, Nov. 28, 1791).
[47] Gustave III., King of Sweden, assassinated by Ankerstrom, says: "I should like to know what Brissot will say."
[48] On Brissot's antecedents, cf. Edmond Biré, "La Légende des Girondins." 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 bénitier," 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.
[49] Moniteur, XI. 147. Speech by Brissot, Jan. 17. Examples from whom he borrows authority, Charles XII., Louis XIV., Admiral Blake, Frederic II., etc.
[50] 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 Liège, whose yoke bows down a people that ought to be free . . . I disdain 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. . . As to that 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.)
[51] 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."
[52] 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, might hesitate for an instant!"
[53] Moniteur, X, 503 (session of Nov.29). The Assembly orders this speech to be printed and distributed in the departments.
[54] Moniteur , X. 762 (session of Dec. 28).
[55] Moniteur, XI. 147, 149 (session of Jan.17); X. 759 (session of Dec. 28). -- Already, on the 10th 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."
[56] Moniteur, XI. 119 (session of Jan.13). Speech by Gensonné, in the name of the diplomatic committee, of which he is the reporter.
[57] Moniteur, XI. 158 (session of Jan. 18). The Assembly orders the printing of this speech.
[58] Moniteur, XI. 760 (session of Dec. 28).
[59] Moniteur, XI. 149 (session of Jan. 17). Speech by Brissot.
[60] 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 Swiss, Polish, and Dutch nations, as long as they will be 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 . . . Let us occupy 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 Gélon, King of Syracuse, 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.
[61] 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 Révolution Française," I. 457).
[62] Albert Sorel, "La Mission du Comte de Ségur à Berlin" (published in the Temps, Oct. 15, 1878). Dispatch of M. de Ségur 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 it off than risk one's life. How can you expect to secure tranquility, 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?"
[63] A popular jig of these revolutionary times, danced in the streets and on the public squares. -TR.
[64] Buchez et Roux, XXV. 203 (session of April 3, 1793). Speech by Brissot. -Ibid., XX. 127. "A tous les Républicains de France, par Brissot," Oct. 24, 1792. "In declaring war, I had in view the abolition of royalty." He refers, in this connection, to his speech of Dec. 30, 1791, where he says, "I fear only one thing, and that is, that we shall not be betrayed. We need treachery, for strong doses of poison still exist in the heart of France, and heavy explosions are necessary to clear it out."
[65] Mallet du Pan, "Mémoires," I. 260 (April, 1792), and I. 439 (July, 1792).
[66] Any revolutionary leader, from Lenin, through Stalin to Andropov may confirm the advantage of acting in secret. (SR).
[67] "The French Revolution," I. 262 and following pages.
[68] Buchez et Roux, XIII. 92-99 (January, 1792); (February). -- Coral, "Lettres inédites," 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 editors conjectures that the year was 1791. I rather think that it was 1792.)
[69] Moniteur, XI. 45 and 46 (session of Jan. 5). The whole of Isnard's speech should be read.
[70] Buchez et Roux, XIII. 177. Letter by Pétion, Feb. 10.
[71] Buchez et Roux, XIII. 252. Letter of André Chénier, in the Journal de Paris, Feb. 26. - Schmidt, "Tableaux de la Révolution Franaise," 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 reflecting public Opinion, indicates the extreme effort made to prevent the expression of public opinion. . . We have studied 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 workers . . . An inviolable attachment . . . to the constitution, and mainly to national Sovereignty, to political equality and constitutional monarchy, which are its most important characteristics and their almost unanimous sentiment."
[72] Governor Morris, letter of June 20, 1792.
[73] "Souvenirs", by Pasquier (Etienne-Dennis, duc), chancelier de France. in VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893. Vol. I. page 84.
[74] 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 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 du Pan, "Mémoires," II. 120.
[75] Moniteur, XII. 776 (session of June 28). Speech by M. Lamarque, in a district court: "The incivism of the district courts in general is well known."
[76] Bertand de Molleville, "Mémoires," 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."
[77] M. de Lavalette, "Mémoires," 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 short and wearing a forage cap. The following shows the sentiments of the peasantry: In a village of makers of wooden shoes, 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 the other one, they were on the look-out 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"
[78] The reader will meet the French expression sans-culottes again and again in Taine's or any other book about the French revolution. The nobles wore a kind of breeches terminating under the knee while tight long stockings, fastened to the trousers, exposed their calves. The male leg was as important an adornment for the nobles as it was to be for the women in the 20th Century. The poor, on the other hand, wore crude long trousers, mostly without a crease, often without socks or shoes, barefoot in the summer and wooden shoed in the winter. (SR).
[79] The song of "Veillons au salut de l'empire" belongs to the end of 1791. The "Marseillaise" was composed in April, 1792.
[80] Mercure de France, Nov. 23, 1791.
[81] Philippe de Ségur, "Mémoires," I. (at Fresnes, a village situated about seven leagues from Paris, a few days after Sep. 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 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."
[82] 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."
[83] These pages must have made a strong impression upon Lenin when he read them in the National Library in Paris around 1907. (SR).
[84] 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. 60, 216, 217. 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. 31, and the first article by Brissot, on the red cap, is on Feb. 6.
[85] Buchez et Roux, XIII. 217 (proposal of a woman, member of the club of l'Evêché, 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 the caps of labor in conflict with the military casques, the pike with the gun, the rustic's dress with the uniform."
[86] Mallet du Pan, "Mémoires," II 429 (note of July, 1792). - Mercure de France, March 10, 1792, article by Mallet du Pan.
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 "Earnest" regiment.
Should you like to see the revolutionary tree when, for the first time, it came fully into leaf, it is in the department of the Bouches- du-Rhône you have to look. Nowhere else had it been so precocious, nowhere were local circumstances and native temperament so well adapted to enhance its growth. -- " A blistering sky, an excessive climate, an arid soil, rocks, . . . savage rivers, torrential or dry or overburdened," blinding dust, nerves upset by steady northern blasts or by the intermittent gusts of the sirocco. A sensual race choleric and impetuous, with no intellectual or moral ballast, in which the mixture of Celt and Latin has destroyed the humane suavity of the Celt and the serious earnestness of the Roman; "complete, tough, powerful, and restless men,"[1] and yet gay, spontaneous, eloquent, dupes of their own bombast, suddenly carried away by a flow of words 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 of suddenly- acquired fortunes expended on sensual enjoyments constantly undermines all stability of Character; in which politics, like speculation, is a lottery offering its prizes to audacity; besides all this, a free port and a rendezvous for lawless nomads, disreputable people, without steady trade,[2] scoundrels, and blackguards, who, like uprooted, decaying seaweed, drift from coast to coast around the entire circle of the Mediterranean sea; a veritable sink filled with the dregs of twenty corrupt and semi-barbarous civilizations, where the scum of crime cast forth from the prisons of Genoa, Piedmont, Sicily, indeed, of all Italy, of Spain, of the Archipelago, and of Barbary,3 accumulates and ferments.2 No wonder that, in such a time the reign of the mob should be established there sooner than elsewhere.[3] -- After many an explosion, this reign is inaugurated August 17, 1790, by the removal of M. Lieutaud, a sort of bourgeois, moderate Lafayette, who commands the National Guard. Around him rally a majority of the population, all men "honest or not, who have anything to lose."[4] After he is driven out, then proscribed, then imprisoned, they resign themselves, and Marseilles belongs to the low class, to 40,000 destitute and rogues led by the club.
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 of the sections in contempt of constitutional law. The consequence, was that property-owners and commercial men withdrew, which was wise on their part, for the usual demagogic machinery is set in motion without delay. "Each section-assembly is composed of a dozen factious spirits, members of the club, who drive out honest people by displaying cudgels and bayonets. The deliberations are prepared 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 majority of honest people are so frightened and so timid" that not one of them dare attend these meetings, unless protected by public force. "More than 80,000 inhabitants do not sleep peacefully," while all the political rights 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 of the club and its satellites, they form a league which plays the part of a sovereign State, scarcely recognizing, even in words, the authority of the central government.[8] The decree by which the National Assembly gives full power to the Commissioners to re- establish order is denounced as plébécide; these conscientious and cautious moderators are qualified as "dictators"; they are denounced in circular letters to all the municipalities of the 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 of the National Assembly, with a threat that the same penalty awaits himself and all the deputies if they do not revoke their recent decrees. A few days after this, four sections draw up an act before a notary, stating the measures they had taken towards sending an army of 6,000 men from Marseilles to Aix, to get rid of the three intruders. The commissioners 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 lése-nation, confined without a shadow of proof, 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 of suicide, barely escape murder a dozen times in the courtroom and in prison.[11] Against the decree of the National Assembly ordering their release, the municipality makes reclamations, contrives 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 of the accused is too manifest"; it demands the return of 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 if they 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 decide to drive it out of the town. For four months the municipality multiplies against it every kind of annoyance,[13] and, on the 16th of October, 1791, the Jacobins provoke a row in the theater against its officers. The same night, outside the theater, four of these are attacked 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." Meanwhile, to ensure "public tranquility," the municipality has required the commander of the 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 of the department.
II. The expedition to Aix.
The town of Marseilles send an expedition to Aix. -- The regiment is disarmed. -- The Directory driven out. -- Pressure on the new Directory.
The first thing is to lay its hand on the district 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 Directory of the department loudly commends the loyalty of the Swiss Guard and takes occasion to remind the Marseilles municipality of the respect due to the law. Such remonstrance is an insult, and the municipality, in a haughty tone, calls upon the Directory to avow or disavow its letter; "if you did not write it, it is a foul report which it is our duty to examine into, and if you did, it is a declaration of war 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 prorata list of taxes of Marseilles 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. -- If it will not bend it must break, and on the 4th of February, 1792, the municipality sends Barbaroux, its secretary, to Paris, that he may mitigate the outrages 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 of cannon. 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 of those in league with them among the populace of the 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 recognize one another or know who is an enemy." It sends back a detachment of three hundred and fifty Swiss Guards, which the Directory 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 street-lamp 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 headquarters, or rather it has changed hands. Another Directory, more pliable, is installed in the place of the fugitive Directory. Of the thirty-six administrators who form the Council only twelve are present at the election. Of the nine elected only six consent to sit, while often only three are found at its sessions, which three, to recruit their colleagues, are obliged to pay them.[18] Hence, notwithstanding their 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 of Marseilles 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 of them, "we are wholly under the yoke" of these intruders. "We have twice in succession seen more than three hundred men, many of them with guns and pistols, enter the hall and threaten us with death if we refused them what they asked. We have seen infuriate motionnaires, nearly all belonging to Avignon, mount the desks of the 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 of an hour to choose." "National guards have offered their sabers 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 of the Marseilles demagogues. Camoïn, 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, to which the Directory vainly remonstrates; they declare to it that "not being under its inspection, it has no authority over them; being independent of it, they have no orders to receive from it nor to render to it any account of their conduct." So much the worse for the Directory on attempting to revoke their powers. Bertin informs its vice-president that, if it 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 of the stroke and prepare another, their march on Aix being only the first halt in the long-meditated campaign which involves the possession of Arles.
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.
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- revolutionary, repeatedly visited and personally encouraged the bandits of Avignon. To supply them with cannon and ammunition he stripped the Tour St. Louis of its artillery, at the risk of abandoning the mouths of the Rhone to the Barbary pirates.[21] In concert with his allies of the Comtat, the Marseilles club, and his henchmen from the neighboring boroughs, he rules in Arles "by terror." Three hundred men recruited in the vicinity of the Mint, artisans or sailors with strong arms and rough hands, serve him as satellites. On the 6th of June 1791, they drive away, on their own authority, the unsworn priests, who had taken refuge in the town.[22] -- At this, however, the "property-owners and decent people," much more numerous and for a long time highly indignant, raise their heads; twelve hundred of them assemble in the church of Saint-Honorat, swore to maintain the constitution and public order,"[23] and then moved to the (Jacobin) club, where, in their quality of national guards and active citizens and in conformity with its by-laws, they were admitted en masse. At the same time, acting in concert with the municipality, they reorganize the National Guard and form new companies, the effect of which is to put an end to the Mint gang, thus depriving the faction of all its strength. Thenceforth, without violence or illegal acts, the majority of the club, as well as of the National Guard, consists of constitutional monarchists, the elections of November, 1791, giving to the partisans of order nearly all the administrative offices of the commune and of the district. M. Loys, a physician and a man of energy, is elected mayor in the place of M. d'Antonelle; he is known as able to suppress a riot, "holding martial law in one hand, and his saber in the other." -- This is too much; so Marseilles feel compelled to bring Arles under control "to atone for the disgrace of having founded it."[24] In this land of ancient cities political hostility is embittered with old municipal grudges, similar to those of Thebes against Platœe, of Rome against Veii, of Florence against Pisa. The Guelphs of Marseilles brooded over the one idea of crushing the Ghibellins of Arles. -- Already, in the electoral assembly of November, 1791, M. d'Antonelle, the president, had invited the communes of the 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 of the hostile 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 of the three commissioners, resolutions passed by the Directory still intact, royal proclamations, a decree of the Constituent Assembly, the firmness of the still loyal troops and the firmer stand taken by the Arlesians who, putting down an insurrection of the 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 of the Constitutionalists by the Jacobins, a fresh Jacobin expedition may be started against the Constitutionalists with impunity. Accordingly, on the 23rd of March, 1792, the Marseilles army of 4,500 men sets out on its march with nineteen pieces of cannon.
In vain the commissioners of the 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 of the line; -- the Marseilles army requires the withdrawal of this 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 of the affair and refuses to give the government any assistance. -- In vain M. de Wittgenstein, commander-in-chief in 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 of March, the Marseilles army effects a breach with its cannon in the walls of defenseless Arles; its fortifications are demolished and a tax of 1,400,000 francs is levied on the owners of property. In contempt of the National Assembly's decree the Mint bandits, the longshoremen, the whole of the lowest class again take up their arms and lord it over the disarmed population. Although "the King's commissioner and most of the judges have fled, jury examinations are instituted against absentees," the juries consisting of the members of the Mint band.[29] The conquerors imprison, smite and slaughter as they please. Countless peaceable individuals are struck down and mauled, dragged to prison and many of them are mortally wounded. An old soldier, eighty years of age, retired to his country home three months earlier, dies after twenty days' confinement in a dungeon, from a blow received in the stomach by a rifle butt; women are flogged. "All citizens that with an interest in law and order," nearly five 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 hard core of the Marseilles army, rove about and gorge themselves as in a vanquished country.[30]
They eat and drink voraciously, force the closets, carry off linen and food, steal horses and valuables, smash the furniture, tear up books, and burn papers.[31] All this is only the appropriate punishment of the aristocrats. Moreover, it is no more than right that patriots should be indemnified for their toil, and a few blows too many are not out of place in securing the rule of the right party. -- For example, on the false report of order being disturbed at Château-Renard, Bertin and Rebecqui send off a detachment of men, 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 of warning, the Marseilles troop falls upon the cortège, 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 counselors, 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 Château-Renard they will look twice before subjecting patriots to indictment.[32] -- At Vélaux "the country house of the late seignior is sacked, and everything is carried away, even to the tiles and window-glass." A troop of two hundred men "overrun the village, levy contributions, and put all citizens who are well-off under bonds for considerable sums." Camoïn, the Marseille chief, one of the 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.-Taught by the example others follow 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 of Apt appeals to its neighbors, whereupon 1,500 National Guards of Gordes, St. Saturnin, Gouls and Lacoste, with a thousand women and children armed 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 of their journey": they therefore "want lodgings at the expense of the fanatics only." The three day's occupation results for the latter and for the town in a cost of 20,000 livres.[33] They begin by breaking everything in the church of the Récollets, 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, apologize 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 of the court, and the syndic-attorney. A number of citizens have fled; -- the town is purged, while the same purging is pursued in numbers of places in and out of the district.[34] It is, indeed, attractive business. It empties the purses of the ill-disposed, and fills the stomachs of patriots; it is agreeable to be well entertained, and especially at the expense of one's adversaries; the Jacobin is quite content to save the country through a round of feastings. 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 "sabbath," ends in a carnival. Of the 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.
The Jacobins of Avignon.-- How they obtain recruits. - -Their robberies in the Comtat. -- The Avignon municipality in flight or in prison. -- Murder of Lécuyer and the Glacière massacre. -- Entry of the murderers, supported by their Marseilles allies. -- Jacobin dictatorship in Vaucluse and the Buches-du-Rhône.
Nowhere else in France was there another nest of brigands like it: not that a great misery might have produced a more savage uprising; on the contrary, the Comtat, before the Revolution, was a land of plenty. There was no taxation by the Pope; the taxes were very light, and were expended on the spot. "For one or two pennies, one here could have meat, bread, and wine."[37] But, under the mild and corrupt administration of the Italian legates, the country had become "the safe asylum of all the rogues in France, Italy, and Genoa, who by means of a trifling sum paid to the Pope's agents, obtained protection and immunity." Smugglers and receivers of stolen goods abounded here in order to break through the lines of the French customs. "Bands of robbers and assassins were formed, which the vigorous measures of the parliaments of Aix and Grenoble could not wholly extirpate. Idlers, libertines, professional gamblers,"[38] kept-cicisbeos, schemers, parasites, and adventurers, mingle with men with branded shoulders, the veterans "of vice and crime, "the scapegraces of the Toulon and Marseilles galleys." Ferocity here is hidden in debauchery, like a serpent hidden in its own slime, here all that is required is some chance event and this bad place will be transformed into a death trap.
The Jacobin leaders, Tournal, Rovère, the two Duprats, the two Mainvielles, and Lécuyer, readily obtain recruits in this sink. - They begin, aided by the rabble of the town and of its suburbs, peasants enemies of the octroi, vagabonds opposed to order of any kind, porters and watermen armed with scythes, turnspits and clubs, by exciting seven or eight riots. Then they 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 of the municipal offices. --After this their band increases to the dimensions of an army, which, with license for its 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 of 3,000 men, only 200 belong in Avignon; the rest are composed of French deserters, smugglers, fugitives from justice, vagrant foreigners, marauders and criminals, who, scenting a prey, come from afar, and even from Paris;[40] along with them march the women belonging to them, still more base and bloodthirsty. In order to make it perfectly plain that with them murder and robbery are the order of the day, they massacred their first general, Patrix, guilty of having 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 of his execution, and who bore the nickname of Coupe-tête, because he is said to have cut off the heads at Versailles of two of the 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, which is severe for Mandrin,[42] because their war is not merely on public persons and property, as his was, but on the possessions, the proprieties, and the lives of private 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 of torture of so many Hurons. An old lady of eighty, and a paralytic, is shot at arms length, and left weltering in her blood in the midst of the flames. A child five years of age is cut in two, its mother decapitated, and its sister mutilated; they cut off the ears of the curé, set them on his brow like a cockade, and then cut his throat, along with that of a 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 of the chauffeurs manifested at a later date, the ancient cannibalistic 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 of distress.[44] But the brute, which feels its strength, turns 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 himself has designated the members. Twenty of the 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 of Mandrins 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 of being disbanded, when the brute again boldly seizes its prey, about to make its escape. On the 21st of August, Jourdan, with his herd of miscreants, obtains possession of the 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 of houses 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 front men, chosen by Duprat and his associates, compose, with Lécuyer 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 of the Mont-de-Piété, 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 of the churches, together with the laborers in want of work or bread, all the common class, become furious, assemble of their own accord in the church of the Cordeliers, summon Lécuyer to appear before them, drag him from the pulpit and massacre him.[47]
This time there seems to be an end of the brigand party, for the 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 of numbers, and, with the 350 hired killers bravos still left to them, the extreme Jacobins undertake to overcome a city of 30,000 souls. Mainvielle the elder, dragging along two cannon, arrives with a patrol, fires at random into the already semi-abandoned church, and kills two men. Duprat assembles about thirty of the towns-people, imprisoned by him on the 31st of August, and, in addition to these, about forty artisans 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 of them, "because she spoke ill of Madame Mainvielle." Jourdan supplies the executioners; the apothecary Mende, brother-in-law of Duprat, plies them with liquor, while a clerk of Tournal, the newsman, bids them "kill all, so that there shall be no witnesses left." Whereupon, at the reiterated orders of Mainvielle, Tournal, Duprat, and Jourdan, with a complications of hilarious lewdness,[48] the massacre develops itself on the 16th of October and following days, during sixty-six hours, the victims being a couple of priests, three children, an old man of eighty, thirteen women, two of whom are pregnant, in all, sixty-one persons, with their throats slit or knocked out and then cast one on top of each other into the Glacière hole, a mother on the body of her infant, a son on the body of his father, all finished off with rocks, the hole being filled up with stones and covered over with quicklime on account of the smell.[49] In the meantime about a hundred more, killed in the streets, are pitched into the Sorgues canal; five hundred families make their escape. The ousted bandits return in a body, while the assassins who are at the head of them, enthroned by murder, organize for the benefit of their new band a legal system of brigandage, against which nobody defends himself.[50]
These are the friends of the Jacobins of Arles and Marseilles, the respectable men whom M. d'Antonelle has come to address 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 of the new mediating commissioners,[52] are included in the amnesty proclaimed by the Legislative Assembly a month before their last crime. - But the sovereigns of the Bouches-du-Rhône do not regard the release of their friends and allies as a pardon: something more than pardon and forgetfulness must be awarded to the murderers of the Glacière. On the 29th of April, 1792, Rebecqui and Bertin, the vanquishers of Arles, enter Avignon[53] along with a cortége, at the head of which are from thirty to forty of the principal murderers whom the Legislative Assembly itself had ordered to be recommitted to prison, Duprat, Mainvielle, Toumal, Mende, then Jourdan in the uniform of a commanding general crowned with laurel and seated on a white horse, and, lastly, the dames Duprat, Mainvielle and Tournal, in dashing style, standing on a sort of triumphal chariot; during the procession the cry is heard, "The Glacière will be full this time! " -- On their approach the public functionaries fly; twelve hundred persons abandon the town. Forthwith each terrorist, under the protection of the Marseilles bayonets, resumes his office, like a man at the head of his household. Raphel, the former judge, along with his clerk, both with warrants of arrest against them, publicly officiate, while the relatives of the poor victims slain on the 16th of October, and the witnesses that appeared on the trial, are threatened in the streets; one of them is killed, and Jourdan, king of the department for an entire year, begins over again on a grand scale, at the head of the National Guard, and afterwards of the police body, the same performance which, on a small scale, he pursued under the ancient régime, when, with a dozen "armed and mounted" brigands, he traversed the highways, forced open lonely houses at night, and, in one château alone, stole 24,000 francs.
V.
The other departments. -- Uniform process of the Jacobin conquest. -- Preconceived formation of a Jacobin State.
The Jacobin conquest takes place like this: already in during April, 1792, through acts of violence almost equal to those we have just described, it spreads over more than twenty departments and, to a smaller degree, over the other sixty.[54] The composition of the parties is the same everywhere. On one side are the irresponsible of all conditions,
"squanderers who, having consumed their own inheritance, cannot tolerate that of another, men without property to whom disorder is a door open to wealth and public office, the envious, the ungrateful whose obligations to their benefactors the revolution cancels, the hot-headed, all those enthusiastic innovators who preach reason with a dagger in their hand, the poor, the brutal and the wretched of the lower class who, possessed by one leading anarchical idea, one example of immunity, 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, upper and lower middle class in mind and spirit,
"weakened by being used to security and wealth, surprised at any unforeseen disturbance and trying to find their way, isolated from each other by diversity of interests, opposing only tact and caution to persevering audacity in defiance of legitimate 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 weakness and egoism to bear against the liberated passions, great poverty and hardened immorality."[55]
The issue of the conflict is everywhere the same. In each town or canton an aggressive squad of unscrupulous fanatics and resolute adventurers imposes its rule over a sheep-like majority which, accustomed to the regularity of an old civilization, dares neither disturb order for the sake of putting and end to disorder, or get together a mob to put down another mob. Everywhere the Jacobin principle is the same.
"Your system," says one of the 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 if the empire would always be in a state of insurrection, as if you were granted a dictatorship essential for the city's salvation, as if you were given such full power in the name of public safety."
Everywhere are Jacobin tactics the same. At the outset they assume to have a monopoly of patriotism and, through the brutal destruction of other associations, they are the only visible organ of public opinion. Their voice, accordingly, seems to be the voice of the people; their control is established on that of the legal authorities; they have taken the lead through persistent and irresistible misdeeds; their crimes are consecrated by exemption from punishment.
"Among officials and 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]
They accordingly govern and their indirect influence is promptly transformed into direct authority. -- Voting alone, or almost alone, in the primary meetings, which are deserted or under constraint, the Jacobins easily choose the municipal body and the officers of the National 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. One the one hand, however conciliatory or timid the Directory of the district or department may be, elected as it is by electors of the 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 of the law. Consequently the Jacobins denounce it to the National Assembly as an unpatriotic and anti-revolutionary center of "bourgeois aristocracy." Sometimes, as at Brest,[59] they shamefully disobey orders which are perfectly legal and proper, often repeated and strictly formal; afterward, still more shamefully, they demand of the Minister if, "placed in the cruel alternative of giving offense to the hierarchy of powers, or of leaving 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 of honor with the latter to solicit its own suspension.[60] Sometimes, as a 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 of riots, are always in the way of those who stir up the rioters. Consequently, they expel, corrupt and, especially purify the gendarmerie together with the troops. At Cahors they drive out a sergeant of the gendarmerie, "alleging that he keeps company with none 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 pretense that "its principles are adverse to the Constitution."[64] At Auch, and at Rennes, through the insubordination which they provoke among the men, they exhort resignations from their officers. At Perpignan, by means of a riot which they foment, they seize, beat and drag to prison, the commandant and staff whom they accuse "of wanting to bombard the town with five pounds of powder."[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 of punishing the relatives of émigrés and the abettors of unsworn priests, they create an army of their own made up of robbers and the destitute who, in anticipation of the exploits of the coming revolutionary army, freely kill, burn, pillage, hold to ransom and prey at large on the defenseless flock of proprietors of every class and degree.[66]
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 expelling unsworn priests, and to help the patriots of the place "to rid themselves of the tyranny of their administrators."[67] That of Besançon declares the three administrative bodies of Strasbourg "unworthy of the confidence with which they have been honored," and openly enters into a league with all the clubs of the Upper and Lower Rhine, to set free a Jacobin arrested as a fomenter of insurrections.[68] Those of the Puy-de-Dôme and neighboring departments depute to and establish at Clermont a central club of direction and propaganda.[69] Those of the Bouches-du-Rhône treat with the commissioners of the departments of Drôme, Gard, and Hérault, to watch the Spanish frontier, and send delegates of their own to see the state of the fortifications of Figuières.[70] -- There is no recourse to the criminal 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 maneuver their proletariat clients in obedience to the word of command dispatched from Paris. It is a complete, organized, active State, with its central government, its active 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 of administrations 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 of all order, . . . in the present weakness of the public forces, and in the degradation of the constituted authorities, . . . it is impossible for them to maintain the life and energy of the vast body, the members of which are paralyzed." -
When the roots of a 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. ____________________________________________________________________
NOTES:
[1] De Loménie, "Les Mirabeaus," I. 11. (Letter of the Marquis de Mirabeau).
[2] " Archives Nationales," F7, 7171, No. 7915. Report on the situation in Marseilles, by Miollis, commissioner of the Directory in the department, year V. Nivôse 15. "A good many strangers from France and Italy are attracted there by the lust of gain, a love of pleasure, the want of work, a desire to escape from the effects of ill conduct . . . Individuals of both sexes and of every age, with no ties of country or kindred, with no profession, no opinions, pressed by daily necessities that are multiplied by debauched habit, seeking to indulge these without too much effort, the means for this being formerly found in the many manual operations of commerce, gone astray during the Revolution and, subsequently, scared 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 of food, 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 of the population of Marseilles most in sight; eager to profit by whatever occurs, easily won over, active through its necessities, flocking everywhere, and appearing very numerous . . . The patriot Escalon had twenty rations a day; Féri, the journalist, had six; etc. . . Civil officers and district commissioners still belong, for the most part, to that class of men which the Revolution had accustomed to live without work, to making those who shared their principles the beneficiaries of the nation's favors, and finally, to receiving contributions from gambling halls and brothels. These commissioners give notice to their protégés, even the crooks, when warrants against them are to be enforced."
[3] Blanc-Gilly, "Réveil d'alarme d'un député de Marseilles" (cited in the Memoirs" of Barbaroux, 40, 41). Blanc-Gilly must have been acquainted with these characters, inasmuch as he made use of them in the August riot, 1789, and for which he was indicted. - Cf. Fabre "Histoire de Marseilles," II. 422.
[4] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3197. Correspondence of Messrs. Debourge, Gay, and Lafitte, commissioners sent to Provence to restore order in accordance with an act of the National Assembly. Letter of May 10, 1791. Letter of May 10. 1791, and passim.
[5] Mayor Martin, says Juste, was a sort of Pétion, weak and vain. -- Barbaroux, clerk of the municipality, is the principal opponent of M. Lieutaud. - The municipal decree referred to is dated Sept. 10, 1790.
[6] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3197. Letters of three commissioners, April 13, 17, 18, and May 10, 1791.
[7] Blanc-Gilly, "Réveil d'Alarme." Ibid., "Every time that the national guard marched outside the city walls, the horde of homeless brigands never failed to close up in their rear and carry devastation wherever they went."
[8] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3197. Correspondence of the three commissioners, letter of May 10,1791. "The municipality of Marseilles obeys only the decrees it pleases, and for eighteen months has not paid a cent into the city treasury.-Proclamation of April 13. - Letters of April 13 and 18.
[9] "Archives Nationales," letter of the municipal officers of Marseilles to the minister, June 11, 1791. -- They demand the recall of the three commissioners, one of their 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 of gaining the love of children for their parent."
[10] "Archives Nationales," letter of the 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 of the prisoners, Feb. 1. "The municipality, in despair of our innocence and not knowing how to justify its 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 ale the speeches of the sieur Rebecqui, leading man, and of Madame Elliou, wife of a municipal officer, in the house of the sieur Rousset."
[11] Letter of M. Lieutaud to the commissioners, May 11 and 18, 1791. "If I have not fallen under the assassin's dagger I owe my preservation to your strict orders and to the good behavior of the national guard and the regular troops . . . At the hearing of the case today, the prosecutor on the part of the 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 courtroom and the stairways were filled with barefooted vagabonds."-- Letter of Cabrol, commander of the national guard, and of the municipal officers to the commissioners, May 21. That picket-guard of fifty men on the great square, is it not rather the cause of a riot than the means of preventing one? A requisition to send four national 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?"
[12] Letter of M. d'Olivier, lieutenant-colonel of the Ernest regiment, May 28. -- Extracts from the papers of the secretary to the municipality, May 28 (Barbaroux is the clerk). - Letter of the commissions, May 29
[13] Letter of the commissioners, June 29.
[14] Letter of M. Laroque-Dourdan, naval commander at Marseilles, Oct. 18, 1791. (in relation to the departure of the Swiss regiment).
[15] The elections are held on the 13th of November, 1791. Martin, the former mayor, showed timidity, and Mouraille was elected in his place.
[16] "Archives Nationales." F 7 3197. Letter (printed) of the Directory to the Minister of War, Jan. 4, 1792. -- Letter of the municipality of Marseilles to the Directory, Jan. 4, and the Directory's reply. - Barbaroux, "Mémoires," 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] "Archives Nationales." F7, 3195. Official report of the municipality of Aix (on the events of Feb. 26). March 1st. -- Letter of M. Villardy, president of the directory, dated Avignon, March 10. (He barely escaped assassination at Aix.) -- Ibid., F7,3196. Report of the district administrators of Arles, Feb. 28 (according to private letters from Aix and Marseilles). - Barbaroux, "Mémoires" (collection of Berville and Barrière), 106. (Narrative of M. Watteville, major in the Ernest regiment. Ibid., 108 (Report from M. de Barbentane, commanding general). These two documents show the liberalism, want of vigor, and the usual indecision of the superior authorities, especially the military authorities - Mercure de France, March 24, 1792 (letters from Aix).
[18] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3196. Dispatches of the new Directory to the Minister, March 24 and April 4, 1792. "Since the departure of the Directory, our administrative assembly is composed of only six members, notwithstanding our repeated summons to every member of the Council. . . Only three members of the Council consent to act with us; the reason is a lack of pecuniary means." The new Directory, consequently, passes a resolution to indemnify members of the 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] Ib., Letters of Borelly, vice-president of the 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, 3195. Letters from Aix, March 12 and 16, addressed to M. Verdet.
[20] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3195. Letter of the administrators of the department Council to the Minister, March 10, "The Council of the administration is surprised, sir, at the fa1se impressions given you of the city of Marseilles; it should be regarded as the patriotic buckler of the department . . . If the people of Paris did not wait for orders to destroy the Bastille and begin the Revolution, can you wonder that in this fiery climate the impatience of good citizens should make them anticipate legal orders, and that they cannot comply with the slow forms of justice when their personal safety and the safety of the country is in peril?"
[21] "Archives Nationales." F7, 3197. Dispatches of the three commissioners, passim, and especially those of May 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 of terror over honest folks, who trembled in secret."
22 Ibid., Dispatch of the commissioners, June 19: "One of the Mint gang causes notes to be publicly distributed (addressed to the unsworn) in these words: 'If you don't "piss-off" you will have to deal with the gang from the Mint.'"
[23] "Archives Nationales." F7, 3198. Narration (printed) of what occurred at Arles, June 9 and 10, 1791. -- Dispatch of M. Ripert, royal commissioner, Aug. 5, 1791. -- F 7, 3197. Dispatch of the three commissioners, June 19. "Since then, many of the farm laborers have taken the same oath. It is this class of citizens which most eagerly desires a return to order. " -- Other dispatches to the same effect, Oct. 24 and 29, and Dec. 14, 1791. -- Cf. "The French Revolution," I. 301, 302.
[24] "Archives Nationales." F7, 3196. Dispatch of the members of the Directory of Arles and the municipal officers to the Minister, March 3, 1792 (with a printed diatribe of the Marseilles municipality)
[25] Ibid.,F7, 3198. Dispatches of the procureur- syndic of the department to the Minister, Aix, Sept. 14, 15, 20, and 23, 1791. The electoral assembly declared itself permanent, the constitutional authorities being fettered and unrecognized. -- Dispatch of the members of the military bureau and correspondence with the Minister, Arles, Sept.17, 1791.
[26] Ibid., Dispatch of the commandant of the Marseilles detachment to the Directory of the department, Sept. 22, 1791: "I feel that our proceedings are not exactly legal, but I thought it prudent to acquiesce in the general desire of the battalion."
[27] "Archives Nationales." Official report of the municipal officers of Arles on the insurrection of the Mint band, Sept. 2, 1791. -- Dispatch of Ripert, royal commissioner, Oct. 2 and 8. -- Letter of M. d'Antonelle, to the Friends of the 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 of their bread and shelter. . . The king's proclamation has all the appearance of having been hastily prepared. and every sign of having been secured unawares."
[28] De Dampmartin (an eye-witness), II. 60-70. -- " Archives Nationales," F7, 3196. -- Dispatch of the two delegated commissioners to the Minister, Nimes, March 25, 1792. - Letter of M. Wittgenstein to the Directory of the Bouche-du- Rhône, April 4, 1792. -- Reply and act passed by the Directory, April 5. -- Report of Bertin and Rebecqui to the administrators of the department, April 3. -- Moniteur, XII. 379. Report of the Minister of the Interior to the National Assembly, April 4.
[29] Moniteur, XII. 408 (session of May 16). Petition of M. Fossin, deputy from Arles. -- "Archives Nationales," F7, 3196. Petition of the Arlesians to the Minister, June 28. -- Despatches of M. Lombard, provisional royal commissioner, 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, 3196. Letter of M. Borelly, vice- president of the Directory, to the Minister, Aix, April 30, 1792. "The course pursued by the sieur: Bertin and Rébecqui is the cause of all the disorders committed in these unhappy districts. . . Their sole object is to levy contributions, as they did at Aries, to enrich themselves and render the Comtat-Venaisson desolate."
[31] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3196. Deposition of one of the keepers of the sieur Coye, a proprietor at Mouriez-les-Baux, April 4. -- Petition of Peyre, notary at Maussane, April 7. -- Statement by Manson, a resident of Mouriez-les-Baux, March 27. -- Petition of Andrieu, March 30. - Letter of the municipality of Maussane, April 4: "They watch for a favorable opportunity to devastate property and especially country villas."
[32] "Archives Nationales," Claim of the national guard presented to the district administrators of Tarascon by the national guard of Château-Renard, April 6. -- Petition of Juliat d'Eyguières, district administrator of Tarascon, April 2 (in relation to a requisition of 30,000 francs by Camoïn on the commune of Eyguières). -- Letter of M. Borelly, April 30. "Bertin and Rébecqui have openly protected the infamous Camoïn, and have set him free. " - Moniteur, XII. 408. Petition of M. Fossin, deputy from Arles.
[33] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3195. Dispatch of M. Mérard, royal commissioner at the district court of Apt, Apt, March 15, 1792 (with official report of the Apt municipality and debates of the district, March 13). -- Letter of M. Guillebert, syndic-attorney of the district March 5.. (He has fled. ) -- Dispatches of the district Directory, March 23 and 28. "It must not be supposed for a 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] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3195. Letter of the district Directory of Apt, March 28. "On the 26th of March 600 armed men, belonging to the communes of Apt, Viens, Rustrel, etc. betook themselves to St.-Martin-de-Castillon and, under the pretense of restoring order, taxed the inhabitants, lodging and feeding themselves at their charge" -- The expeditions extend even to the neighboring departments, one of them March 23, going to Sault, near Forcalquier, in the Upper-Alps.
[35] Ib., F7, 3195. On the demand of a number of petitioning soldiers who went to Aries on the 22d of March, 1792, the department administration passes an act (September, 1793) granting them each forty-five francs indemnity. There are 1,916 of them, which makes 86,200 francs "assessed on the goods and property of individuals for the authors, abettors, and those guilty of the disturbances occasioned by the party of Chiffonists in the commune of Arles." The municipality of Aries designates fifty-one individuals, who pay the 86,200 livres, plus 2,785 francs exchange, and 300 francs for the cost of sojourn and delays. -- Petition of the ransomed, Nov.21, 1792.
[36] Ib., F7, 3165. Official report of the Directory on the events which occurred in Aix, April 27, 28, and 29, 1792.
[37] Michelet, "Histoire de la Révolution Française," III.56 (according to the narratives of aged peasants). -- Mercure de France, April 30, 1791 (letter from an inhabitant of the 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. -- André, "Histoire de la Révolution Avignonaise," I. 61. -- The Comtat possessed representative institutions, an armed general assembly, composed of three bishops, the elected representative of the nobility, and thirteen consuls of the leading towns. -- Mercure de France, Oct. 15, 1791 (letter from an inhabitant of the Comtat). -- There were no bodies of militia in the Comtat; the privileges of nobles were of little account. Nobody had the exclusive right to hunt or fish, while people without property could own guns and hunt anywhere.
[38] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3272. Letter of M. Pelet de la Lozère, prefect of Vaucluse; to the Minister, year VIII. Germinal 30. - Ibid., DXXIV. 3. Letter of M. Mulot, one of the mediating commissioners, to the Minister, Oct. 10, 1791. "What a country you have sent me to! It is the land of duplicity. Italianism has struck its roots deep here, and I fear that they are very hardy."
[39] The details of these occurrences may be found in André and in Soulier, "Histoire de la Révolution Avignonaise." The murder of their seven principal opponents, gentlemen, priests and artisans, took place June 11, 1790. -- "Archives Nationales," DXXIV. 3. The starting-point of the riots is the hostility of the Jansenist Camus, deputy to the Constituent Assembly. Several letters, the first from April, 1790, may be found in this file, addressed to him from the leading Jacobins of Avignon, Mainvielle, Raphel, Richard, and the rest, and among others the following (3uly, 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 protégé, in Avignon, of Camus, addressed to him July 13, 1791: "I have just obtained from the commune the use of a 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!"
[40] "Archives Nationales," DXXIV. 3. Report on the events of Oct.10, 1791. -- Ibid., F7, 3197. Letter of the three commissioners to the municipality of Avignon, 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 of brigandage that ever disgraced or preyed upon this human species. " -- Letter of M. Villardy, president of the Directory of the Bouches-du-Rhône May 21. "More than two millions of the national property is exposed to pillage and total destruction by the new Mandrins who devastate this unfortunate country. " -- Letter of Méglé, recruiting sergeant of the La Mark regiment, arrested along with two of his comrades. "The corps of Mandrins which arrested us set us at liberty. . . We were 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). -- Barbaroux, "Mémoires"(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 of discipline. Jourdan arose and declared that as far as he was concerned, he was ready to accept the position. No reply was made. He nominated himself, and asked the soldiers if they wanted him for general. A drunkard is likely to please other drunkards; they applauded him, and he was thus proclaimed."
[42] After a famous brigand in Dauphiny, named Mandrin.-TR. [Mandrin, (Louis) (Saint Étienne-de- Saint-Geoirs, Isère, 1724 - Valence, 1755). French smuggler who, after 1750, was active over an enormous territory with the support of the population; hunted down by the army, caught, condemned to death to be broken alive on the wheel. See also Taine's explanation in Ancient Régime page 356 app. (SR).]
[43] Cf. André, passim, and Soulier, passim. - Mercure de France, June 4, 1791. -- "Archives Nationales," F7, 3197. Letter of Madame 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 of Orange, May 22. "Last Wednesday, a little girl ten years of age, on her way from Châteauneuf to Courtheson, was violated by one on of them, and the poor child is almost dead. " -- Dispatch of the 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 of the Directory of the Bouches-du- Rhône, May 21, 1791. -- Deliberations of the 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 arc deemed bad or good patriots. . . The municipality, the military committee, and the club of the Friends of the Constitution dared to make a protest; the proscription against them is their reward for their attachment to the French constitution.
[45] Letter of M. Boulet, formerly physician in the French military hospitals and member of the electoral assembly, May 21.
[46] "Archives Nationales," DXXIv. 16-23, No.3. Narrative of what took place yesterday, August 21, in the town of Avignon. -- Letters by the mayor, Richard, and two others, Aug. 21. -- Letter to the president of the National Assembly, Aug.22 (with five signatures, in the name of 200 families that had taken refuge in the Ile de la Bartelasse).
[47] "Archives Nationales," DXXIV. 3. -- Letter of M. Laverne, for M. Canonge, keeper of the Mont-de-Piété. (The electoral assembly of Vaucluse and the juge-de-paix had forbidden him to give this box into any other hands.) -- Letters of M. Mulot, mediating commissioner, Gentilly les Sorgues, Oct. 14, 15, 16, 1791. -- Letter of M. Laverne, mayor, and the municipal officers, Avignon, Jan. 6, 1792. -- Statement of events occurring at Avignon, Oct. 16, 17, and 18 (without a signature, but written at once on the spot). -- Official rapport of the provisional administrators of Avignon, Oct. 16. -- Certified copy of the notice found posted in Avignon in different places this day, Oct. 16 (probably written by one of the women of the lower class and showing what the popular feeling was). -- A letter written to M. Mulot, Oct. 13' already contains this phrase: "Finally, even if they delay stopping their robberies and pillage, misery and the miserable will still remain " -- Testimony of Joseph Sauton, a chasseur in the paid guard of Avignon, Oct. 17 (an eye-witness of what passed at the Cordeliers).
[48] André. II.62. Deposition of la Ratapiole. -- Death of the girl Ayme and of Mesdames Niel et Crouzet. -- De Dampmartin, II. 2.
[49] "Archives Nationales," DXXIV, 3. Report on the events of Oct. 16: "Two sworn priests were killed, which proves that a counter- revolution had nothing to do with it, . . Six of the municipal officers were assassinated. They had been elected according to the terms of the decree; they were the fruit of the popular will at the outbreak of the Revolution; they were accordingly patriots." -- Buchez et Roux, XII. 420.-- Official report of the Commune of Avignon, on the events of Oct. 16.
[50] "Archives Nationales," DXXIV. 3. Dispatch of the civil Commissioners deputized by France (Messrs. Beauregard, Lecesne, and Champion) to the Minister Jan. 8, 1792. (A long and admirable letter, in which the difference between the two parties is exhibited, supported by facts, in refutation of the calumnies of Duprat. The oppressed party is composed not of royalists, but of Constitutionalists.)
[51] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3177. Dispatches of the three commissioners, April 27, May 4, 18, and 21.
[52] Three hundred and thirty-five witnesses testified during the trial. -- De Dampmartin, I.266. Entry of the 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 of 2,287 active citizens Mayor Levieux de Laverne obtains 2,227 votes, while the municipal officer lowest on the list 1,800. All are Constitutionalists and conservatives.
[53] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3196. Official report of Augier and Fabre, administrators of the Bouches-du-Rhône, Avignon, May 11, 1792. -- Moniteur, XII. 313. Report of the Minister of Justice, May 5. -- XII. 324. Petition of forty inhabitants of Avignon, May 7. -- XII 334. Official report of Pinet, commissioner of the Drôme, sent to Avignon. -- XII. 354 Report of M. Chassaignac and other papers, May 10.-- XI. 741 Letter of the civil commissioners, also of the Avignon municipality, March 23.
[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 of action. ("Archives Nationales," F7, 3202. Letter of the Directory of the district of Aurillac, 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 of Capelle-Viscamp to give them money, generally five francs each person, and sometimes ten, twenty, and forty francs." Others tear down or pillage the châteaux of Rouesque, Rode, Marcolès, and Vitrac and drag the municipal officers along with them. "We, the mayor and municipal officers of the parish of Vitrac, held a meeting yesterday, March 22, following the example of our neighboring parishes on the occasion of the demolition of the châteaux. We marched at the head of our national guard and that of Salvetat to the said châteaux. We began by hoisting the national flag and to demolish . . . The national guard of Boisset, eating and drinking without stint, entered the château and behaved in the most brutal manner; for whatever they found in their way, whether clocks, mirrors, doors, closets, 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 of Boisset carried off the furniture of the château. -- There is something burlesque in the conflicts of the municipalities with the Jacobin expeditions (letter of the municipal officers of Cottines to the Directory of St. 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 of money of which we do not know the amount is demanded, and that they will not leave without that sum so that they cam have something to live on, these people being assembled solely to maintain the constitution and give greater éclat to the law."
[55] Mercure de France, numbers for Jan. 1 and 14, 1792 (articles by Mallet du Pan). - " Archives Nationales," F7, 3185, 3186. Letter of the president of the district of Laon (Aisne) to the Minister, Feb. 8, 1792: "With respect to the nobles and priests, any mention of them as trying to sow discord among us indicates a desire to spread fear. All they ask is tranquility and the regular payment of their pensions." -- De Dampmartin, II. 63 (on the evacuation of Arles, April, 1792). On the illegal approach of the Marseilles army, M. de Dampmartin, 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, 3224. Speech of M. Saint-Amans, vice-president of the Directory of Lot-et-Garonne, to the mayor of Tonneins, April 20 and the letter of the syndic-attorney-general to M. Roland, minister, April 22: "According to the principles of the mayor of Tonneins, 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 of them." -- Dubois, formerly a Benedictine and now a Protestant minister. -- Act of the Directory against the municipality of Tonneins, April 13. The latter appeals to the Legislative Assembly. The mayor and one of the municipal counselors appear in its name (May 19) at the bar of the Assembly.
[57] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3198. Letter of M. Debourges, one of the three commissioners sent by the National Assembly and the king, Nov. 2, 1791 (apropos of the Marseilles club). "This club has quite recently obtained from the Directory of the department, on the most contemptible allegation, an order requiring of M. de Coincy, lieutenant-general at Toulon, to send the admirable Ernest regiment out of Marseilles, and M. de Coincy has yielded."
[58] For instance (Guillon de Montléon, "Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de Lyon," I. 109), the general in command of the national guard of this large town in 1792 is Juillard, a poor silk-weaver of the faubourg of the Grande Côte, a former soldier.
[59] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3215, affair of Plabennec (very curious, showing the tyrannical spirit of the Jacobins and the good disposition at bottom of the Catholic peasantry) -- The commune of Brest dispatches against that of Plabennec 400 men, with two cannon and commissioners chosen by the club. -- Many documents, among them: Petition of 150 active citizens of Brest, May 16, 1791. Deliberations of the council-general and commune of Brest, May 17. Letter of the Directory of the district, May 17 (very eloquent). Deliberations of the municipality of Plabennec, May 20. Letter of the municipality of Brest to the minister, May 21. Deliberations of the department Directory, June 13.
[60] Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 376 (session of the Directory of the Pas- du-Calais, July 4, 1792). The petition, signed by 127 inhabitants of Arras, 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, 3223. Letter of M. Valéry, syndic- attorney of the department, April 4, 1792.
[62] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3220. Extract from the deliberations of the department Directory and letter to the king, Jan.28, 1792. -- Letter of M. Lafiteau, president of the Directory, Jan. 30. (The mob is composed of from 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.
[63] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3223. Letter of M. de Riolle, colonel of the gendarmerie, Jan. 19, 1792. -- "One hundred members of the club Friends of Liberty" come and request the brigadier's discharge. On the following day, after a meeting of the same club, "four hundred persons move to the barracks to send off or exterminate the brigadier."
[64] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3219. Letter of M. Sainfal, Toulouse, March 4, 1792. -- Letter of the department Directory, March 14.
[65] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3229. Letter of M. de Narbonne, minister, to his colleague M. Cahier, Feb. 3, 1792. -- "The municipality of Auch has persuaded the under-officers and soldiers of the 1st battalion that their chiefs were making preparation to withdraw." -- The same with the municipality and club of the Navarreins. "All the officers except three have been obliged to leave and send in their resignations." - F7, 3225. The same to the same, March 8. -- The municipality of Rennes orders the arrest of Col. de Savignac, and four other officers. Mercure de France, Feb. 18, 1792. De Dampmartin, I. 230; II. 70 (affairs of Landau, Lauterbourg, 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, 3219. Letter of M. Neil, administrator of Haute- Garonne, Feb. 27, 1792. "The constitutional priests and the club of the canton of Montestruc suggested to the inhabitants that all the abettors of unsworn priests and of aristocrats should be put to ransom and laid under contribution." - Cf. 7, 3193, (Aveyron), F7, 3271 (Tarn), etc.
[67] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3200. Letter of the syndic-attorney of Bayeux, May 14, 1792, and letter of the Bayeux Directory, May 21. "The dubs should be schools of patriotism; they have become the terror of it. If this 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, 3253. Letter, of the Directory of the Bas-Rhin, April 26, 1792, and of Dietrich, Mayor of Strasbourg, May 8. (The Strasbourg club had publicly invited the citizens to take up arms, "to vigorously pursue priests and administrators." ) -- Letter of the Besançon club to M. Dietrich, May 3. "If the 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 of the Friends of the Constitution by the patriotic central society, formed at Clermont-Ferrand." (there is the same centralization between Lyons and Bordeaux.)
[70] " Archives Nationales," F7, 3198. Report of Commissioners 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.
[71] Moniteur, X. 420. Report of M. Cahier, Minister of the 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 of the King and his ministers, Cf. Moniteur, XI. 11 (Dec. 31, 1791). -- Letter of the Minister of Finances. -- XII. 200 (April 23, 1792), report of the Minister of the Interior. -- XIII. 53 (July 4, 1792), letter of the Minister of Justice.
[72] Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 369. Letter of the Directory of the Basses- Pyrénées, June 25, 1792. -- "Archives Nationales," F7, 3200. Letter of the Directory of Calvados to the Minister of the Interior, Aug. 3. "We are not agents of the king or his ministers." - Moniteur, XIII. 103. Declaration of M. de Joly, minister, in the name of his colleagues (session of July 10, 1792).