Title: The French Revolution - Volume 3
Author: Hippolyte Taine
Annotator: Svend Rom
Translator: John Durand
Release date: June 22, 2008 [eBook #2580]
Most recently updated: January 10, 2013
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Svend Rom and David Widger
Text Transcriber's Note: The numbering of Volumes, Books, Chapters
and Sections are as in the French not the American edition.
Annotations by the transcriber are initialled SR.
Svend Rom, April 2000.
HTML Producer's Note: Footnote numbering has been changed to
include as a prefix to the original footnote number, the book and
chapter numbers. A table of contents has been added with active
links.
David Widger, June 2008
Please note that all references to earlier Volumes of the
Origines of Contemporary France are to the American edition.
Since there are no fixed page numbers in the Gutenberg
edition these page numbers are only approximate. (SR).
CONTENTS
PREFACE.
BOOK FIRST. THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT.
CHAPTER I. JACOBIN GOVERNMENT
I. The despotic creed and instincts of the Jacobin.BOOK SECOND. THE JACOBIN PROGRAM.
II. Jacobin Dissimulation.
III. Primary Assemblies
IV. The Delegates reach Paris
V. Fête of August 10th
VI. The Mountain.
VII. Extent and Manifesto of the departmental insurrection
VIII. The Reasons for the Terror.
IX. Destruction of Rebel Cities
X. Destruction of the Girondin party
XI. Institutions of the Revolutionary Government
CHAPTER I. THE JACOBIN PARTY
I. The Doctrine.CHAPTER II. REACTIONARY CONCEPT OF THE STATE.
II. A Communist State.
III. The object of the State is the regeneration of man.
IV. Two distortions of the natural man.
V. Equality and Inequality.
VI. Conditions requisite for making a citizen.
VII. Socialist projects.
VIII. Indoctrination of mind and intellect.
I. Reactionary concept of the State.BOOK THIRD. THE MEN IN POWER.
II. Changed minds.
III. Origin and nature of the modern State.
IV. The state is tempted to encroach.
V. Direct common interest.
VI. Indirect common interest.
VII. Fabrication of social instruments.
VIII. Comparison between despotisms.
CHAPTER I. PSYCHOLOGY OF THE JACOBIN LEADERS.
CHAPTER II. THE RULERS OF THE COUNTRY.
I. The Convention.CHAPTER III. THE RULERS. (continued).
II. Its participation in crime.
III. The Committee of Public Safety.
IV. The Statesmen.
V. Official Jacobin organs.
VI. Commissars of the Revolution.
VII. Brutal Instincts.
IX. Vice.
I. The Central Government Administration.BOOK FOURTH. THE GOVERNED.
II. Subaltern Jacobins.
III. A Revolutionary Committee.
IV. Provincial Administration.
V. Jacobins sent to the Provinces.
VI. Quality of staff thus formed.
VII. The Armed Forces.
CHAPTER I. THE OPPRESSED.
I. Revolutionary Destruction.CHAPTER II. FOOD AND PROVISIONS.
II. The Value of Notables in Society.
III. The three classes of Notables.
IV. The Clergy.
V. The Bourgeoisie.
VI. The Demi-notables.
VII. Principle of socialist Equality.
VIII. Rigor against the Upper Classes.
IX. The Jacobin Citizen Robot.
X. The Governors and the Governed.
I. Economical Complexity of Food Chain.BOOK FIFTH. THE END OF THE REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT.
II. Conditions in 1793. A Lesson in Market Economics.
III. Privation.
IV. Hunger.
V. Revolutionary Remedies.
VI. Relaxation.
VII. Misery at Paris.
CHAPTER I. THE CONVENTION.
I. The Convention.
II. Re-election of the Two-thirds.
III. A Directory of Regicides.
IV. Public Opinon.
VI. The Directory.
VII. Enforcement of Pure Jacobinism.
VIII. Propaganda and Foreign Conquests.
IX. National Disgust.
X. Contrast between Civil and Military France.
"In Egypt," says Clement of Alexandria,1101 "the sanctuaries of the temples are shaded by curtains of golden tissue. But on going further into the interior in quest of the statue, a priest of grave aspect, advancing to meet you and chanting a hymn in the Egyptian tongue, slightly raises a veil to show you the god. And what do you behold? A crocodile, or some indigenous serpent, or other dangerous animal, the Egyptian god being a beast sprawling on a purple carpet."
We need not visit Egypt or go so far back in history to encounter crocodile worship, as this can be readily found in France at the end of the last century.—Unfortunately, a hundred years is too long an interval, too far away, for an imaginative retrospect of the past. At the present time, standing where we do and regarding the horizon behind us, we see only forms which the intervening atmosphere embellishes, shimmering contours which each spectator may interpret in his own fashion; no distinct, animated figure, but merely a mass of moving points, forming and dissolving in the midst of picturesque architecture. I was anxious to take a closer view of these vague points, and, accordingly, deported myself back to the last half of the eighteenth century. I have now been living with them for twelve years, and, like Clement of Alexandria, examined, first, the temple, and next the god. A passing glance at these is not sufficient; it was also necessary to understand the theology on which this cult is founded. This one, explained by a very specious theology, like most others, is composed of dogmas called the principles of 1789; they were proclaimed, indeed, at that date, having been previously formulated by Jean-Jacques Rousseau:
* The well known sovereignty of the people.
* The rights of Man.
* The social contract.
Once adopted, their practical results unfolded themselves naturally. In three years these dogmas installed the crocodile on the purple carpet insides the sanctuary behind the golden veil. He was selected for the place on account of the energy of his jaws and the capacity of his stomach; he became a god through his qualities as a destructive brute and man-eater.—Comprehending this, the rites which consecrate him and the pomp which surrounds him need not give us any further concern.—We can observe him, like any ordinary animal, and study his various attitudes, as he lies in wait for his prey, springs upon it, tears it to pieces, swallows it, and digests it. I have studied the details of his structure, the play of his organs, his habits, his mode of living, his instincts, his faculties, and his appetites.—Specimens abounded. I have handled thousands of them, and have dissected hundreds of every species and variety, always preserving the most valuable and characteristic examples, but for lack of room I have been compelled to let many of them go because my collections was too large. Those that I was able to bring back with me will be found here, and, among others, about twenty individuals of different dimensions, which—a difficult undertaking—I have kept alive with great pains. At all events, they are intact and perfect, and particularly the three largest. These seem to me, of their kind, truly remarkable, and those in which the divinity of the day might well incarnate himself.—Authentic and rather well kept cookbooks inform us about the cost of the cult: We can more or less estimate how much the sacred crocodiles consumed in ten years; we know their bills of daily fare, their favorite morsels. Naturally, the god selected the fattest victims, but his voracity was so great that he likewise bolted down, and blindly, the lean ones, and in much greater number than the fattest. Moreover, by virtue of his instincts, and an unfailing effect of the situation, he ate his equals once or twice a year, except when they succeeded in eating him.—This cult certainly is instructive, at least to historians and men of pure science. If any believers in it still remain I do not aim to convert them; one cannot argue with a devotee on matters of faith. This volume, accordingly, like the others that have gone before it, is written solely for amateurs of moral zoology, for naturalists of the understanding, for seekers of truth, of texts, and of proofs—for these alone and not for the public, whose mind is made up and which has its own opinion on the Revolution. This opinion began to be formed between 1825 and 1830, after the retirement or withdrawal of eye witnesses. When they disappeared it was easy to convince a credulous public that crocodiles were philanthropists; that many possessed genius; that they scarcely ate others than the guilty, and that if they sometimes ate too many it was unconsciously and in spite of themselves, or through devotion and self-sacrifice for the common good.
H. A. Taine, Menthon Saint Bernard, July 1884.
Weakness of former governments.—Energy of the new
government.—The despotic creed and instincts of the
Jacobin.
So far, the weakness of the legal government is extreme. During four years, whatever its kind, it has constantly and everywhere been disobeyed. For four years it never dared enforce obedience. Recruited among the cultivated and refined class, the rulers of the country have brought with them into power the prejudices and sensibilities of the epoch. Under the influence of the prevailing dogma they have submitted to the will of the multitude and, with too much faith in the rights of Man, they have had too little in the authority of the magistrate. Moreover, through humanity, they have abhorred bloodshed and, unwilling to repress, they have allowed themselves to be repressed. Thus from the 1st of May, 1789, to June 2, 1793, they have administrated or legislated, escaping countless insurrections, almost all of them going unpunished; while their constitution, an unhealthy product of theory and fear, have done no more than transform spontaneous anarchy into legal anarchy. Deliberately and through distrust of authority they have undermined the principle of command, reduced the King to the post of a decorative puppet, and almost annihilated the central power: from the top to the bottom of the hierarchy the superior has lost his hold on the inferior, the minister on the departments, the departments on the districts, and the districts on the communes. Throughout all branches of the service, the chief, elected on the spot and by his subordinates, has come to depend on them. Thenceforth, each post in which authority is vested is found isolated, dismantled and preyed upon, while, to crown all, the Declaration of Rights, proclaiming "the jurisdiction of constituents over their clerks,"1102 has invited the assailants to make the assault. On the strength of this a faction arises which ends in becoming an organized band; under its clamor, its menaces and its pikes, at Paris and in the provinces, at the polls and in the parliament, the majorities are all silenced, while the minorities vote, decree and govern; the Legislative Assembly is purged, the King is dethroned, and the Convention is mutilated. Of all the garrisons of the central citadel, whether royalists, Constitutionalists, or Girondins, not one has been able to defend itself, to re-fashion the executive instrument, to draw the sword and use it in the streets: on the first attack, often at the first summons, all have surrendered, and now the citadel, with every other public fortress, is in the hands of the Jacobins.
This time, its occupants are of a different stamp. Aside from the great mass of well-disposed people fond of a quiet life, the Revolution has sifted out and separated from the rest all who are fanatical, brutal or perverse enough to have lost respect for others; these form the new garrison—sectarians blinded by their creed, the roughs (assommeurs) who are hardened by their calling, and those who make all they can out of their offices. None of this class are scrupulous concerning human life or property; for, as we have seen, they have shaped the theory to suit themselves, and reduced popular sovereignty to their sovereignty. The commonwealth, according to the Jacobin, is his; with him, the commonwealth comprises all private possessions, bodies, estates, souls and consciences; everything belongs to him; the fact of being a Jacobin makes him legitimately czar and pope. Little does he care about the wills of actually living Frenchmen; his mandate does not emanate from a vote; it descends to him from aloft, conferred on him by Truth, by Reason, by Virtue. As he alone is enlightened, and the only patriot, he alone is worthy to take command, while resistance, according to his imperious pride, is criminal. If the majority protests it is because the majority is imbecile or corrupt; in either case, it deserves to be brought to heel. And, in fact, the Jacobin only does that and right away too; insurrections, usurpations, pillaging, murders, assaults on individuals, on judges and public attorneys, on assemblies, violations of law, attacks on the State, on communities—there is no outrage not committed by him. He has always acted as sovereign instinctively; he was so as a private individual and clubbist; he is not to cease being so, now that he possesses legal authority, and all the more because if he hesitates he knows he is lost; to save himself from the scaffold he has no refuge but in a dictatorship. Such a man, unlike his predecessors, will not allow himself to be turned out; on the contrary, he will exact obedience at any cost. He will not hesitate to restore the central power; he will put back the local wheels that have been detached; he will repair the old forcing gear; he will set it agoing so as to work more rudely and arbitrarily than ever, with greater contempt for private rights and public liberties than either a Louis XIV. or a Napoleon.
Contrast between his words and his acts.—How he
dissimulates his change of front.—The Constitution of June,
1793.—Its promises of freedom.
In the mean time, he has to harmonize his coming acts with his recent declarations, which, at the first glance, seems a difficult operation: for, in the speeches he has made he has already condemned the actions he meditates. Yesterday he exaggerated the rights of the governed, even to a suppression of those of the government; to-morrow he is to exaggerate the rights of the people in power, even to suppressing those who are governed. The people, as he puts it, is the sole sovereign, and he is going to treat the people as slaves; the government, as he puts it, is a valet, and he is going to endow the government with prerogatives of a sultan. He has just denounced the slightest exercise of public authority as a crime; he is now going to punish as a crime the slightest resistance to public authority. What will justify such a volte-face and with what excuse can he repudiate the principles with which he justified his takeover?—He takes good care not to repudiate them; it would drive the already rebellious provinces to extremes; on the contrary, he proclaims them with renewed vigor, through which move the ignorant crowd, seeing the same flask always presented to it, imagines that it is always served with the same liquor, and is thus forced to drink tyranny under the label of freedom. Whatever the charlatan can do with his labels, signboards, shouting and lies for the next six months, will be done to disguise the new nostrum; so much the worse for the public if, later on, it discovers that the draught is bitter; sooner or later it must swallow it, willingly or by compulsion: for, in the interval, the instruments are being got ready to force it down the public throat.1103
As a beginning, the Constitution, so long anticipated and so often promised, is hastily fabricated:1104 declarations of rights in thirty-five articles, the Constitutional bill in one hundred and twenty-four articles, political principles and institutions of every sort, electoral, legislative, executive, administrative, judicial, financial and military;1105 in three weeks all is drawn up and passed on the double.—Of course, the new Constitutionalists do not propose to produce an effective and serviceable instrument; that is the least of their worries. Hérault Séchelles, the reporter of the bill, writes on the 7th of June, "to have procured for him at once the laws of Minos, of which he has urgent need;" very urgent need, as he must hand in the Constitution that week.1106 Such circumstance is sufficiently characteristic of both the workmen and the work. All is mere show and pretense. Some of the workmen are shrewd politicians whose sole object is to furnish the public with words instead of realities; others, ordinary scribblers of abstractions, or even ignoramuses, and unable to distinguish words from reality, imagine that they are framing laws by stringing together a lot of phrases.—It is not a difficult job; the phrases are ready-made to hand. "Let the plotters of anti-popular systems," says the reporter, "painfully elaborate their projects! Frenchmen.... have only to consult their hearts to read the Republic there!"1107 Drafted in accordance with the "Contrat-Social," filled with Greek and Latin reminiscences, it is a summary "in pithy style" of the manual of current aphorisms then in vogue, Rousseau's mathematical formulas and prescriptions, "the axioms of truth and the consequences flowing from these axioms," in short, a rectilinear constitution which any school-boy may spout on leaving college. Like a handbill posted on the door of a new shop, it promises to customers every imaginable article that is handsome and desirable. Would you have rights and liberties? You will find them all here. Never has the statement been so clearly made, that the government is the servant, creature and tool of the governed; it is instituted solely "to guarantee to them their natural, imprescriptible rights." 1108 Never has a mandate been more strictly limited: "The right of expressing one's thoughts and opinions, either through the press or in any other way; the right of peaceful assembly, the free exercise of worship, cannot be interdicted." Never have citizens been more carefully guarded against the encroachments and excesses of public authority: "The law should protect public and private liberties against the oppression of those who govern... offenses committed by the people's mandatories and agents must never go unpunished. Let free men instantly put to death every individual usurping sovereignty. .. Every act against a man outside of the cases and forms which the law determines is arbitrary and tyrannical; whosoever is subjected to violence in the execution of this act has the right to repel it by force... When the government violates the people's rights insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of rights and the most indispensable of duties."
To civil rights the generous legislator has added political rights, and multiplied every precaution for maintaining the dependence of rulers on the people.—In the first place, rulers are appointed by the people and through direct choice or nearly direct choice: in primary meetings the people elect deputies, city officers, justices of the peace, and electors of the second degree; the latter, in their turn, elect in the secondary meetings, district and department administrators, civil arbitrators, criminal judges, judges of appeal and the eighty candidates from amongst which the legislative body is to select its executive council.—In the second place, all powers of whatever kind are never conferred except for a very limited term: one year for deputies, for electors of the second degree, for civil arbitrators, and for judges of every kind and class. As to municipalities and also department and district administrations, these are one-half renewable annually. Every first of May the fountain-head of authority flows afresh, the people in its primary assemblies, spontaneously formed, manifesting or changing at will its staff of clerks.—In the third place, even when installed and at work, the people may, if it pleases, become their collaborator: means are provided for "deliberating" with its deputies. The latter, on incidental questions, those of slight importance, on the ordinary business of the year, may enact laws; but on matters of general, considerable and permanent interest, they are simply to propose the laws, while, especially as regards a declaration of war, the people alone must decide. The people have a suspensive veto and, finally, a definitive veto, which they may exercise when they please. To this end, they may assemble in extraordinary session; one-fifth of the citizens who have the right to vote suffice for their convocation. Once convoked, the vote is determined by a Yes or a No on the act proposed by the legislative body. If, at the expiration of forty days, one-tenth of the primary assemblies in one-half of the departments vote No, there is a suspensive veto. In that event all the primary assemblies of the Republic must be convoked and if the majority still decides in the negative, that is a definitive veto. The same formalities govern a revision of the established constitution.—In all this, the plan of the "Montagnards" is a further advance on that of the Girondins; never was so insignificant a part assigned to the rulers nor so extensive a part to the governed. The Jacobins profess a respect for the popular initiative which amounts to a scruple.1109 According to them the sovereign people should be sovereign de facto, permanently, and without interregnum, allowed to interfere in all serious affairs, and not only possess the right, but the faculty, of imposing its will on its mandatories.—All the stronger is the reason for referring to it the institutions now being prepared for it. Hence the Convention, after the parade is over, convokes the primary assemblies and submits to them for ratification the Constitutional bill has been drawn up.
Primary Assemblies.—Proportion of Absentees.—Unanimity of
the voters.—Their motives for accepting the Constitution.
—Pressure brought to bear on voters.—Choice of Delegates.
The ratification will, undoubtedly, be approved. Everything has been combined beforehand to secure it, also to secure it as wanted, apparently spontaneously, and almost unanimously.—The primary assemblies, indeed, are by no means fully attended; only one-half, or a quarter, or a third of the electors in the cities deposit their votes, while in the rural districts there is only a quarter, and less.1110 Repelled by their experience with previous convocations the electors know too well the nature of these assemblies; how the Jacobin faction rules them, how it manages the electoral comedy, with what violence and threats it reduces all dissidents to voting either as figurants or claqueurs. From four to five million of electors prefer to hold aloof and stay at home as usual. Nevertheless the organization of most of the assemblies takes place, amounting to some six or seven thousand. This is accounted for by the fact that each canton contains its small group of Jacobins. Next to these come the simple-minded who still believe in official declarations; in their eyes a constitution which guarantees private rights and institutes public liberties must be accepted, no matter what hand may present it to them. And all the more readily because the usurpers offer to resign; in effect, the Convention has just solemnly declared that once the Constitution is adopted, the people shall again be convoked to elect "a new national assembly... a new representative body invested with a later and more immediate trust,"1111 which will allow electors, if they are so disposed, to return honest deputies and exclude the knaves who now rule. Thereupon even the insurgent departments, the mass of the Girondins population, after a good deal of hesitation, resign themselves at last to voting for it.1112 This is done at Lyons and in the department of Calvados only on the 30th of July. A number of Constitutionalists or neutrals have done the same thing, some through a horror of civil war and a spirit of conciliation, and others through fear of persecution and of being taxed with royalism;1113 one conception more: through docility they may perhaps succeed in depriving the "Mountain" of all pretext for violence.
In this they greatly deceive themselves, and, from the first, they are able to see once more the Jacobins interpretation of electoral liberty.—At first, all the registered,1114 and especially the "suspects," are compelled to vote, and to vote Yes; otherwise, says a Jacobin journal,1115 "they themselves will indicate the true opinion one ought to have of their attitudes, and no longer have reason to complain of suspicions that are found to be so well grounded." They come accordingly, "very humbly and very penitent." Nevertheless they meet with a rebuff, and a cold shoulder is turned on them; they are consigned to a corner of the room, or near the doors, and are openly insulted. Thus received, it is clear that they will keep quiet and not risk the slightest objection. At Macon "a few aristocrats muttered to themselves, but not one dared say No."1116 It would, indeed, be extremely imprudent. At Montbrison, "six individuals who decline to vote," are denounced in the procès-verbal of the Canton, while a deputy in the Convention demands "severe measures" against them. At Nogent-sur-Seine, three administrators, guilty of the same offense, are to be turned out of office.1117 A few months later, the offense becomes a capital crime, and people are to be guillotined "for having voted against the Constitution of 1793."1118 Almost all the ill-disposed foresaw this danger; hence, in nearly all the primary assemblies, the adoption is unanimous, or nearly unanimous.1119 At Rouen, there are but twenty-six adverse votes; at Caen, the center of the Girondin opposition, fourteen; at Rheims, there are only two; at Troyes, Besançon, Limoges and Paris, there are none at all; in fifteen departments the number of negatives varies from five to one; not one is found in Var; this apparent unity is most instructive. The commune of St. Donau, the only one in France, in the remote district of Cotês-du-Nord, dares demand the restoration of the clergy and the son of Capet for king. All the others vote as if directed with a baton; they have understood the secret of the plebiscite; that it is a Jacobin demonstration, not an honest vote, which is required.1120 The operation undertaken by the local party is actually carried out. It beats to arms around the ballot-box; it arrives in force; it alone speaks with authority; it animates officers; it moves all the resolutions and draws up the report of proceedings, while the representatives on mission from Paris add to the weight of the local authority that of the central authority. In the Macon assembly "they address the people on each article; this speech is followed by immense applause and redoubled shouting of Vive la République! Vive la Constitution! Vive le Peuple Français!" Beware, ye lukewarm, who do not join in the chorus! They are forced to vote "in a loud, intelligible voice." They are required to shout in unison, to sign the grandiloquent address in which the leaders testify their gratitude to the Convention, and give their adhesion to the eminent patriots delegated by the primary assembly to bear its report to Paris.1121
The Delegates reach Paris.—Precautions taken against them.
—Constraints and Seductions.
The first act of the comedy is over and the second act now begins.—The faction has convoked the delegates of the primary assemblies to Paris for a purpose. Like the primary assemblies, they are to serve as its instruments for governing; they are to form the props of dictatorship, and the object now is to restrict them to that task only.—Indeed, it is not certain that all will lend themselves to it. For, among the eight thousand commissioners, some, appointed by refractory assemblies, bring a refusal instead of an adhesion;1122 others, more numerous, are instructed to present objections and point out omissions:1123 it is very certain that the envoys of the Girondist departments will insist on the release or return of their excluded representatives. And lastly, a good many delegates who have accepted the Constitution in good faith desire its application as soon as possible, and that the Convention should fulfill its promise of abdication, so as to give way to a new Assembly.—As it is important to suppress at once all these vague desires for independence or tendencies for opposition a decree of the Convention "authorizes the Committee of General Security to order the arrest of 'suspect' commissioners;" it is especially to look after those who, "charged with a special mission, would hold meetings to win over their colleagues,.... and engage them in proceedings contrary to their mandate."1124 In the first place, and before they are admitted into Paris, their Jacobinism is to be verified, like a bale in the customs-house, by the special agents of the executive council, and especially by Stanislas Maillard, the famous September judge, and his sixty-eight bearded ruffians, each receiving pay at five francs a day. "On all the roads, within a circuit of fifteen or twenty leagues of the capital," the delegates are searched; their trunks are opened, and their letters read. At the barriers in Paris they find "inspectors" posted by the Commune, under the pretext of protecting them against prostitutes and swindlers. There, they are taken possession of, and conducted to the mayoralty, where they receive lodging tickets, while a picket of gendarmerie escorts them to their allotted domiciles.1125—Behold them in pens like sheep, each in his numbered stall; there is no fear of the dissidents trying to escape and form a band apart: one of them, who comes to the Convention and asks for a separate hall for himself and his adherents, is snubbed in the most outrageous manner; they denounce him as an intriguer, and accuse him of a desire to defend the traitor Castries; they take his name and credentials, and threaten him with an investigation.1126 The unfortunate speaker hears the Abbaye alluded to, and evidently thinks himself fortunate to escape sleeping there that night.—After this, it is certain that he will not again demand the privilege of speaking, and that his colleagues will remain quiet; and all this is the more likely
* because the revolutionary tribunal holds permanent sessions under their eyes,
* because the guillotine is set up and in operation on the "Place de la Révolution;"
* because a recent act of the Commune enjoins on the police "the most active surveillance" and "constant patrols" by the armed force;
* because, from the first to the fourth of August, the barriers are closed;
* because, on the 2nd of August, a raid into three of the theaters puts five hundred young men in the lock-up,1127
so the discontented soon discover, if there are any, that this is not the time or the place to protest.
As to the others, already Jacobin, the faction takes it upon itself to render them still more so.—Lost in the immensity of Paris, all these provincials require moral as well as physical guides; it agrees to exercise toward them "hospitality in all its plenitude, the sweetest of Republican virtues."1128 Hence, ninety-six sans-culottes, selected from among the sections, wait on them at the Mayoralty to serve as their correspondents, and perhaps as their guarantees, and certainly as pilots
* to give them lodging-tickets,
* to escort and install them,
* to indoctrinate them, as formerly with the federates of July, 1792,
* to prevent their getting into bad company,
* to introduce them into all the exciting meetings,
* to see that their ardent patriotism quickly rises to the proper temperature of Parisian Jacobinism.1129
The theaters must not offend their eyes or ears with pieces "opposed to the spirit of the Revolution."1130 An order is issued for the performance three times a week of "republican tragedies, such as 'Brutus', 'William Tell', 'Caius Gracchus,' and other dramas suitable for the maintenance of the principles of equality and liberty." Once a week the theaters must be free, when Chéniér's alexandrines are spouted on the stage to the edification of the delegates, crowded into the boxes at the expense of the State. The following morning, led in groups into the tribunes of the Convention,1131 they there find the same, classic, simple, declamatory, sanguinary tragedy, except that the latter is not feigned but real, and the tirades are in prose instead of in verse. Surrounded by paid yappers like victims for the ancient Romans celebrations of purifications, our provincials applaud, cheer and get excited, the same as on the night before at the signal given by the claqueurs and the regulars. Another day, the procureur-syndic Lhullier summons them to attend the "Evéché," to "fraternize with the authorities of the Paris department;"1132 the "Fraternité" section invites them to its daily meetings; the Jacobin club lends them its vast hall in the morning and admits them to its sessions in the evening.—Thus monopolized and kept, as in a diving bell, they breathe in Paris nothing but a Jacobin atmosphere; from one Jacobin den to another, as they are led about in this heated atmosphere, their pulse beats more rapidly. Many of them, who, on their arrival, were "plain, quiet people,"1133 but out of their element, subjected to contagion without any antidote, quickly catch the revolutionary fever. The same as at an American revival, under the constant pressure of preaching and singing, of shouts and nervous spasms, the lukewarm and even the indifferent have not long to wait before the delirium puts them in harmony with the converted.
They make their profession of Jacobin faith.—Their part in
the Fête of August 10th.—Their enthusiasm.
On the 7th of August things come to a head.—Led by the department and the municipality, a number of delegates march to the bar of the Convention, and make a confession of Jacobin faith. "Soon," they exclaim, "will search be made on the banks of the Seine for the foul marsh intended to engulf us. Were the royalist and intriguers to die of spite, we will live and die 'Montagnards.'"1134 Applause and embraces.—From thence they betake themselves to the Jacobin Club, where one of them proposes an address prepared beforehand: the object of this is to justify the 31st of May, and the 2nd of June, "to open the eyes" of provincial France, to declare "war against the federalists."1135 "Down with the infamous libelers who have calumniated Paris!.... We cherish but one sentiment, our souls are all melted into one... We form here but one vast, terrible mountain, about to vomit forth its fires on the royalists and supporters of tyranny." Applause and cheers.—Robespierre declares that they are there to save the country.1136 On the following day, August 8th, this address is presented to the Convention and Robespierre has a resolution adopted, ordering it to be sent to the armies, to foreign powers and all the Communes. More applause, more embraces, and more cheers.—On the 9th of August,1137 by order of the Convention, the delegates meet in the Tuileries garden, where, divided into as many groups as there are departments, they study the program drawn up by David, in order to familiarize themselves with the parts they are to play in the festival of the following day.
What an odd festival and how well it expresses the spirit of the time! It is a sort of opera played in the streets by the public authorities, with triumphant chariots, altars, censers, an Ark of the Covenant, funeral urns, classic banners and other trappings! Its divinities consist of plaster statues representing Nature, Liberty, the People, and Hercules, all of which are personified abstractions, like those painted on the ceiling of a theater. In all this there is no spontaneity nor sincerity; the actors, whose consciences tell them that they are only actors, render homage to symbols which they know to be nothing but symbols, while the mechanical procession,1138 the invocations, the apostrophes, the postures, the gestures are regulated beforehand, the same as by a ballet-manager. To any truth-loving person all this must seem like a charade performed by puppets.—But the festival is colossal, well calculated to stimulate the imagination and excite pride through physical excitement.1139 On this grandiose stage the delegates become quite intoxicated with their part; for, evidently, theirs is the leading part; they represent twenty-six millions of Frenchmen, and the sole object of this ceremony is to glorify the national will of which they are the bearers.—On the Place de la Bastille1140 where the gigantic effigy of nature pours forth from its two breasts "the regenerating water," Hérault, the president, after offering libations and saluting the new goddess, passes the cup to the eighty-seven elders (les doyens) of the eighty-seven departments, each "summoned by sound of drum and trumpet" to step forward and drink in his turn, while cannon belch forth their thunders as if for a monarch. After the eighty-seven have passed the cup around, the artillery roars. The procession them moves on, and the delegates again are assigned the place of honor. The elders, holding an olive-branch in one hand, and a pike in the other, with a streamer on the end of it bearing the name of their department, "bound to each other by a small three-color ribbon," surround the Convention as if to convey the idea that the nation maintains and conducts its legal representative. Behind them march the rest of the eight thousand delegates, likewise holding olive-branches and forming a second distinct body, the largest of all, and on which all eyes are centered. For, in their wake, "their is no longer any distinction between persons and functionaries," all being confounded together, marching pell-mell, executive council, city officials, judges scattered about haphazard and, by virtue of equality, lost in the crowd. At each station, thanks to their insignia, the delegates form the most conspicuous element. On reaching the last one, that of the Champ de Mars, they alone with the Convention, ascend the steps leading to the alter of the country; on the highest platform stands the eldest of all alongside the president of the Convention, also standing; thus graded above each other, the seven thousand, who envelope the seven hundred and fifty, form "the veritable Sacred Mountain." Now, the president, on the highest platform, turns toward the eighty-seven elders; he confides to the Ark containing the Constitutional Act and the list of those who voted for it; they, on their part, then advance and hand him their pikes, which he gathers together into one bundle as an emblem of national unity and indivisibility. At this, shouts arise from every point of the immense enclosure; salvoes of artillery follow again and again; "one would say that heaven and earth answered each other" in honor "of the greatest epoch of humanity."—Certainly, the delegates are beside themselves; their nerves, strained to the utmost, vibrates too powerfully; the millennium discloses itself before their eyes. Already, many among them on the Place de la Bastille, had addressed the universe; others, "seized with a prophetic spirit," promise eternity to the Constitution. They feel themselves "reborn again, along with the human species;" they regard themselves as beings of a new world. History is consummated in them; the future is in their hands; they believe themselves gods on earth.—In this critical state, their reason, like a pair of ill-balanced scales, yields to the slightest touch; under the pressure of the manufacturers of enthusiasm, a sudden reaction will carry them away. They consider the Constitution as a panacea, and they are going to consign it, like some dangerous drug, to this coffer which they call an ark. They have just proclaimed the liberty of the people, and are going to perpetuate the dictatorship of the Convention.
Maneuvers of the "Mountain."—The Jacobin Club on the eve of
August 11th.—Session of the Convention on the 11th of
August.—The Delegates initiate Terror.—Popular
consecration of the Jacobin dictatorship.
This volteface has, of course, to appear spontaneous and the hand of the titular rulers remain invisible: the Convention, as usual with usurpers, is to simulate reserve and disinterestedness.—Consequently, the following morning, August 11, on the opening of the session, it simply declares that "its mission is fulfilled:"1141 on the motion of Lacroix, a confederate of Danton's, it passes a law that a new census of the population and of electors shall be made with as little delay as possible, in order to convoke the primary assemblies at once; it welcomes with joy the delegates who bring to it the Constitutional Ark; the entire Assembly rises in the presence of this sacred receptacle, and allows the delegates to exhort it and instruct it concerning its duties.1142 But in the evening, at the Jacobin Club, Robespierre, after a long and vague discourse on public dangers, conspiracies, and traitors, suddenly utters the decisive words:
"The most important of my reflections was about to escape me1143... The proposition made this morning will only facilitate the replacement of the purified members of this Convention by the envoys of Pitt and Cobourg."
Dreadful words in the mouth of a man of principles! They are at once understood by the leaders, great and small, also by the selected fifteen hundred Jacobins then filling the hall. "No! no! shouts the entire club." The delegates are carried away:
"I demand," exclaims one of them, "that the dissolution of the Convention be postponed until the end of the war."—
At last, the precious motion, so long desired and anticipated, is made: the calumnies of the Girondins now fall the ground; it is demonstrated that the Convention does not desire to perpetuate itself and that it has no ambition; if it remains in power it is because it is kept there; the delegates of the people compel it to stay.
And better still, they are going to mark out its course of action.—The next day, the 12th of August, with the zeal of new converts, they spread themselves through the hall in such numbers that Assembly, no longer able to carry on is deliberations, crowds toward the left and yields the whole of the space on the right that they may occupy and "purify" it.1144 All the combustible material in their minds, accumulated during the past fortnight, takes fire and explodes; they are more furious than the most ultra Jacobins; they repeat at the bar of the house the extravagances of Rose Lacombe, and of the lowest clubs; they even transcend the program drawn up by the "Mountain." "The time for deliberation is past," exclaims their spokesman, "we must act1145... Let the people rouse themselves in a mass... it alone can annihilate its enemies... We demand that all 'suspects' be put under arrest; that they be dispatched to the frontiers, followed by the terrible mass of sans-culottes. There, in the front ranks, they will be obliged to fight for that liberty which they have outraged for the past four years, or be immolated on the tyrants' cannon.... Women, children, old men and the infirm shall be kept as hostages by the women and children of sans-culottes." Danton seizes the opportunity. With his usual lucidity he finds the expression which describes the situation:
"The deputies of the primary assemblies," he says, "have just begun to practice among us the initiative of terror."
He moreover reduces the absurd notions of the fanatics to a practical measure: "A mobilization en masse, yes, but with order" by at once calling out the first class of conscript, all men from eighteen to twenty-five years of age; the arrest of all 'suspects', yes, but not to lead them against the enemy; "they would be more dangerous than useful in our armies; let us shut them up; they will be our hostages."—He also proposes employment for the delegates who are only in the way in Paris and might be useful in the provinces. Let us make of them "various kinds of representatives charged with animating citizens... Let them, along with all good citizens and the constituted authorities, take charge of the inventories of grain and arms, and make requisitions for men, and let the Committee of Public Safety direct this sublime movement.... All will swear that, on returning to their homes, they will give this impulse their fellow citizens." Universal applause; the delegates exclaim in one voice, "We swear!" Everybody springs to his feet; the men in the tribunes wave their hats and likewise should the same oath.—The scheme is successful; a semblance of popular will has authorized the staff of officials, the policy, the principles and the very name of Terror. As to the instruments for the operation they are all there ready to be back into action. The delegates, of whose demands and interference the "Mountain" is still in dread, are sent back to their departmental holes, where they shall serve as agents and missionaries.1146 There is no further mention of putting the Constitution into operation; this was simply a bait, a decoy, contrived for fishing in turbid waters: the fishing ended, the Constitution is now placed in a conspicuous place in the hall, in a small monument for which David furnished the design.1147—The Convention, now, says Danton, "will rise to a sense of its dignity, for it is now invested with the full power of the nation." In other words, artifice completes what violence has begun. Through the outrages committed in May and June, the Convention had lost its legitimacy; through the maneuvers of July and August it recovered the semblance of it. The Montagnards still hold their slave by his lash, but they have restored his prestige so as to make the most of him to their own profit.
Effect of this maneuver.—Extent and Manifesto of the
departmental insurrection.—Its fundamental weakness.—The
mass of the population inert and distrustful.—The small
number of Girondists.—Their lukewarm adherents.—Scruples
of fugitive deputies and insurgent administrators.—They
form no central government.—They leave military authority
in the hands of the Convention.—Fatal progress of their
concessions.—Withdrawal of the departments one by one.
—Retraction of the compromised authorities.—Effect of
administrative habits.—Failings and illusions of the
Moderates.—Opposite character of the Jacobins.
With the same blow, and amongst the same playacting, they have nearly disarmed their adversaries.—On learning the events of May 31 and June 2, a loud cry of indignation arose among republicans of the cultivated class in this generation, who, educated by the philosophers, sincerely believed in the rights of man.1148 Sixty-nine department administrations had protested,1149 and, in almost all the towns of the west, the south, the east and the center of France, at Caen, Alençon, Evreux, Rennes, Brest, Lorient, Nantes and Limoges, at Bordeaux, Toulouse, Montpellier, Nîmes and Marseilles, at Grenoble, Lyons, Clermont, Lons-le-Saunier, Besançon, Mâcon and Dijon,1150 the citizens, assembled in their sections, had provoked, or maintained by cheering them on, the acts of their administrators. Rulers and citizens, all declared that, the Convention not being free, its decrees after the 31st of May, no longer had the force of law; that the troops of the departments should march on Paris to deliver that city from its oppressors, and that their substitutes should be called out and assemble at Bourges. In many places words were converted into acts. Already before the end of May, Marseilles and Lyons had taken up arms and checkmated their local Jacobins. After the 2nd of June, Normandy, Brittany, Gard, Jura, Toulouse and Bordeaux, had also raised troops. At Marseilles, Bordeaux and Caen representatives on mission, arrested or under guard, were retained as hostages.1151 At Nantes, the national Guard and popular magistrates who, a week before, had so bravely repulsed the great Vendéan army, dared to more than this; they limited the powers of the Convention and condemned all meddling: according to them, the sending of representatives on mission was "an usurpation, an attack on national sovereignty;" representatives had been elected
"to make and not to execute laws, to prepare a constitution and regulate all public powers, and not to confound these together and exercise them all at once; to protect and maintain intermediary powers which the people have delegated, and not to encroach upon and annihilate them."1152
With still greater boldness, Montpellier enjoined all representatives everywhere to meet at the headquarters of their respective departments, and await the verdict of a national jury. In short, in accordance with the very democratic creed, "nothing was visible amid the ruins of the Convention," mutilated and degraded, but interloping "attorneys." "The people's workmen" are summoned "to return to obedience and do justice to the reproaches addressed to them by their legitimate master;"1153 the nation canceled the pay of its clerks at the capital, withdrew the mandate they had misused, and declared them usurpers if they persisted in not yielding up their borrowed sovereignty "to its inalienable sovereignty."—To this stroke, which strikes deep, the "Mountain" replies by a similar stroke; it also renders homage to principles and falls back on the popular will. Through the sudden manufacture of an ultra-democratic constitution, through a convocation of the primary assemblies, and a ratification of its work by the people in these assemblies, through the summoning of delegates to Paris, through the assent of these converted, fascinated, or constrained delegates, it exonerates and justifies itself, and thus deprives the Girondins of the grievances to which they had given currency, of the axioms they had displayed on their standards, and of the popularity they thought they had acquired.1154—Henceforth, the ground their opponents had built on sinks under their feet; the materials collected by them disintegrate in their hands; their league dissolves before it is completed, and the incurable weakness of the party appears in full daylight.
Firstly, in the departments, as at Paris,1155 the party has no roots. For the past three years all the sensible and orderly people, occupied with their own affairs, who has no taste or interest in politics, nine-tenths of the electors, abstain from voting and in this large mass the Girondins have no adherents. As they themselves admit,1156 this class remains attached to the institutions of 1791, which they have overthrown; if it has any esteem for them, it is as "extremely honest madmen." Again, this esteem is mingled with aversion: it reproaches them with the violent decrees they have passed in concert with the "Mountain;" with persecutions, confiscations, every species of injustice and cruelty; it always sees the King's blood on their hands; they, too, are regicides, anti-Catholics, anti-Christians, demolishers and levelers.1157—Undoubtedly they are less so than the "Mountain;" hence, when the provincial insurrection breaks out, many Feuillants and even Royalists follow them to the section assemblies and join in their protests. But the majority goes no further, and soon falls back into is accustomed inertia. It is not in harmony with its leaders:1158 its latent preferences are opposed to their avowed program; it does not wholly trust them; it has only a half-way affection for them; its recent sympathies are deadened by old animosities: everywhere, instead of firmness there is only caprice. All this affords no assurance of steadfast loyalty and practical adhesion. The Girondin deputies scattered through the provinces relied upon each department arousing itself at their summons and forming a republican Vendée against the "Mountain:" nowhere do they find anything beyond mild approval and speculative hopes.
There remains to support them the élite of the republican party, the scholars and lovers of literature, who are honest and sincere thinkers, who, worked upon by the current dogmas, have accepted the philosophical catechism literally and seriously. Elected judges, or department, district, and city administrators, commanders and officers of the National Guard, presidents and secretaries of sections, they occupy most of the places conferred by local authority, and hence their almost unanimous protest seems at first to be the voice of France. In reality, it is only the despairing cry of a group of staff-officers without an army. Chosen under the electoral pressure with which we are familiar, they possess rank, office and titles, but no credit or influence; they are supported only by those whom they really represent, that is to say, those who elected them, a tenth of the population, and forming a sectarian minority. Again, in this minority there are a good many who are lukewarm; with most men the distance is great between conviction and action; the interval is filled up with acquired habits, indolence, fear and egoism. One's belief in the abstractions of the "Contrat-social" is of little account; no one readily bestirs oneself for an abstract end. Uncertainties beset one at the outset; the road one has to follow is found to be perilous and obscure, and one hesitates and postpones; one feels himself a home-body and is afraid of engaging too deeply and of going too far. Having expended one's breath in words one is less willing to give one's money; another may open his purse but he may not be disposed to give himself, which is as true of the Girondins as it is of the Feuillants.
"At Marseilles,1159 at Bordeaux," says a deputy, "in nearly all the principal towns, the proprietor, slow, indifferent and timid, could not make up his mind to leave home for a moment; it was to mercenaries that he entrusted his cause his arms."
Only the federates of Mayenne, Ile-et-Vilaine, and especially of Finisterre, were "young men well brought up and well informed about the cause they were going to support." In Normandy, the Central Committee, unable to do better, has to recruit its soldiers, and especially gunners, from the band of Carabots, former Jacobins, a lot of ruffians ready for anything, pillagers and runaways at the first canon-shot. At Caen, Wimpffen, having ordered the eight battalions of the National Guard to assemble in the court, demands volunteers and finds that only seventeen step forth; on the following day a formal requisition brings out only one hundred and thirty combatants; other towns, except Vire, which furnishes about twenty, refuse their contingent. In short, a marching army cannot be formed, or, if it does march, it halts at the first station, that of Evreux before reaching Vernon, and that of Marseilles at the walls of Avignon.
On the other hand, by virtue of being sincere and logical, those who have rebelled entertain scruples and themselves define the limits of their insurrection. The fugitive deputies at their head would believe themselves guilty of usurpation had they, like the "Mountain" at Paris, constituted themselves at Caen en sovereign assembly1160: according to them, their right and their duty is reduced to giving testimony concerning the 31st of May and the 1st of June, and to exhorting the people and to being eloquent. They are not legally qualified to take executive power; it is for the local magistrates, the élus(elected) of the sections, and better still, the department committees to command in the departments. Lodged as they are in official quarters, they are merely to print formal statements, write letters, and, behaving properly, wait until the sovereign people, their employer, reinstates them. It has been outraged in their persons; it must avenge itself for this outrage; since it approves of its mandatories, it is bound to restore them to office; it being the master of the house, it is bound to have its own way in the house.—As to the department committees, it is true that, in the heat of the first excitement, they thought of forming a new Convention at Bourges,1161 either through a muster of substitute deputies, or through the convocation of a national commission of one hundred and seventy members. But time is wanting, also the means, to carry out the plan; it remains suspended in the air like vain menace; at the end of a fortnight it vanishes in smoke; the departments succeed in federating only in scattered groups; they desist from the formation of a central government, and thus, through this fact alone, condemn themselves to succumb, one after the other, in detail, and each at home.—What is worse, through conscientiousness and patriotism, they prepare their own defeat: the refrain from calling upon the armies and from stripping the frontiers; they do not contest the right of the Convention to provide as it pleases for the national defense. Lyons allows the passage of convoys of cannon-balls which are to be subsequently used in cannonading its defenders1162. The authorities of Puy-de-Dome aid by sending to Vendée the battalion that they had organized against the "Mountain." Bordeaux is to surrender Chateau-Trompette, its munitions of war and supplies, to the representatives on mission; and, without a word, with exemplary docility, both the Bordeaux battalions which guard Blaye suffer themselves to be dislodged by two Jacobin battalions.1163 Comprehending the insurrection in this way, defeat is certain beforehand.
The insurgents are thus conscious of their false position; they have a vague sort of feeling that, in recognizing the military authority of the Convention, they admit its authority in full; insensibly they glide down this slope, from concession to concession, until they reach complete submission. From the 16th of June, at Lyons,1164 "people begin to feel that it ought not break with the Convention." Five weeks later, the authorities of Lyons "solemnly recognize that the Convention is the sole central rallying point of all French citizens and republicans," and decree that "all acts emanating from it concerning the general interests of the republic are to be executed."1165 Consequently, at Lyons and in other departments, the administrations convoke the primary assemblies as the Convention has prescribed; consequently, the primary assemblies accept the Constitution which it has proposed; consequently, the delegates of the primary assemblies betake themselves to Paris according to its orders.—Henceforth, the Girondins' cause is lost; the discharge of a few cannon at Vernon and Avignon disperse the only two columns of soldiery that have set out on their march. In each department, the Jacobins, encouraged by the representatives on mission, raise their heads; everywhere the local club enjoins the local government to submit,1166 everywhere the local governments report the acts they pass, make excuses and ask forgiveness. Proportionately to the retraction of one department, the rest, feeling themselves abandoned, are more disposed to retract. On the 9th of July forty-nine departments are enumerated as having given in their adhesion. Several of them declare that the scales have dropped from their eyes, that they approve of the acts of May 31 and June 2, and thus ensure their safety by manifesting their zeal. The administration of Calvados notifies the Breton fédérés that "having accepted the Constitution it can no longer tolerate their presence in Caen;" it sends them home, and secretly makes peace with the "Mountain;" and only informs the deputies, who are its guests, of this proceeding, three days afterwards, by postings on their door the decree that declares them outlaws.
Disguised as soldiers, the latter depart along with the Breton fédérés; on the way, they are able to ascertain the veritable sentiments of this people whom they believe imbued with their rights and capable of taking a political initiative.1167 The pretended citizens and republicans they have to do with are, in sum, the former subjects of Louis XVI. and the future subjects of Napoleon I., that is to say, administrators and people, disciplined by habit and instinctively subordinate, requiring a government just as sheep require a shepherd and a watch-dog, accepting or submitting to shepherd and dog, provided these look and act the part, even if the shepherd be a butcher and the dog a wolf. To avoid isolation, to rejoin the most numerous herd as soon as possible, to always form masses and bodies and thus follow the impulsion which comes from above, and gather together scattered individuals, such is the instinct of the flock.
In the battalion of federates, they begin by saying that, as the Constitution is now accepted and the convention recognized, it is no longer allowed to protect deputies whom it has declared outlaws: "that would be creating a faction." Thereupon, the deputies withdraw from the battalion, and, in a little squad by themselves, march along separately. As they are nineteen in number, resolute and well armed, the authorities of the market-towns through which they pass make no opposition by force; it would be offering battle, and that surpasses a functionary's zeal; moreover, the population is either indifferent toward them or sympathetic. Nevertheless, efforts are made to stop them, sometimes to surround them and take them by surprise; for, a warrant of arrest is out against them, transmitted through the hierarchical channel, and every local magistrate feels bound to do his duty as gendarme. Under this administrative network, the meshes of which they encounter everywhere, the proscribed deputies can do naught else but hide in caves or escape by sea.—On reaching Bordeaux, they find other sheep getting ready for the slaughter-house. Saige, the mayor, preaches conciliation and patience: he declines the aid of four or five thousand young men, three thousand grenadiers of the National Guard, and two or three hundred volunteers who had formed themselves into a club against the Jacobin club. He persuades them to disband; he sends a deputation to Paris to entreat the Convention to overlook "a moment of error" and pardon their "brethren who had gone astray."—"They flattered themselves," says a deputy, an eye-witness,1168 "that prompt submission would appease the resentment of tyrants and that these would be, or pretend to be, generous enough to spare a town that had distinguished itself more than any other during the Revolution." Up to the last, they are to entertain the same illusions and manifest the same docility. When Tallien, with his eighteen hundred peasants and brigands, enters Bordeaux, twelve thousand National Guards, equipped, armed and in uniform, receive him wearing oak-leaf crowns; they listen in silence to "his astounding and outrageous discourse;" they suffer him to tear off their crowns, cockades and epaulettes; the battalions allow themselves to be disbanded on the spot; on returning to their quarters they listen with downcast eyes to the proclamation which "orders all inhabitants without distinction to bring their arms within thirty-six hours, under the penalty of death, to the glacis of the Chateau-Trompette; before the time elapses thirty thousand guns, swords, pistols and even pocket-knives are given up."
Here, as at Paris, on the 20th of June, 10th of August, 2nd of September, 3rd of May and 2nd of June, as at every critical moment of the Revolution in Paris and the provinces, habits of subordination and of amiability, stamped on a people by a provident monarchy and a time-honored civilization, have blunted in man the foresight of danger, his aggressive instinct, his independence and the faculty of depending upon himself only, the willingness to help one another and of saving himself. Inevitably, when anarchy brings a nation back to the state of nature, the tame animals will be eaten by the savage ones,—these are now let loose and immediately they show their true nature.
The last local resistance.—Political orthodoxy of the
insurgent towns.—They stipulate but one condition.—Reasons
of State for granting this.—Party arguments against it.
If the men of the "Mountain" had been statesmen, or even sensible men, they would have shown themselves humane, if not for the sake of humanity, at least through calculation; for in this France, so little republican, all the republican strength is not too great for the founding of the Republic, while, through their principles, their culture, their social position and their number, the Girondins form the élite and the force, the flower and the sap of the party.—The death-cry of the "Mountain" against the insurgents of Lozére1169 and Vendée can be understood: they had raised the king's white flag; they accepted leaders and instructions from Coblentz and London. But neither Bordeaux, Marseilles nor Lyons are royalist, or in alliance with the foreigner.
"We, rebels!" write the Lyonnese;1170 "Why we see no other than the tri-color flag waving; the white cockade, the symbol of rebellion, has never been raised within our walls. We, royalists! Why, shouts of 'Long live the Republic' are heard on all sides, and, spontaneously (in the session of July 2nd) we have all sworn to fall upon whoever should propose a king.... Your representatives tell you that we are anti-revolutionaries, we who have accepted the Constitution. They tell you that we protect émigrés when we have offered to surrender all those that you might indicate. They tell you that our streets are filled with refractory priests, when we have not even opened the doors of Pierre-en-Cize (prison) to the thirty-two priests confined there by the old municipality, without indictment, without any charge whatever against them, solely because they were priests."
Thus, at Lyons, the pretended aristocrats were, then, not only republicans but democrats and radicals, loyal to the established régime, and submissive to the worst of the revolutionary laws, while the same state of things prevailed at Bordeaux, at Marseilles and even at Toulon.1171 And furthermore, they accepted the outrages of May 31 and June 2;1172 they stopped contesting the usurpations of Paris; they no longer insisted on the return of the excluded deputies. On the 2nd of August at Bordeaux, and the 30th of July at Lyons, the Committee-Extraordinary of Public Safety resigned; there no longer existed any rival assembly opposed to the Convention. After the 24th of July,1173 Lyons solemnly recognized the supreme and central authority, reserving nothing but its municipal franchises.—And better still, in striking testimony of political orthodoxy, the Council-General of the department prescribed a civic festival for the 10th of August analogous to that of Paris. The Lyonnese, already blockaded, indulged in no hostile manifestation; on the 7th of August they marched out of their advanced positions to fraternize with the first body of troops sent against them.1174 They conceded everything, save on one point, which they could not yield without destruction, namely, the assurance that they should not be given up defenseless to the arbitrary judgment of their local tyrants, to the spoliation, proscriptions and revenge of the Jacobin rabble. In sum, at Marseilles and Bordeaux, especially at Lyons and Toulon, the sections had revolted only on that account; acting promptly and spontaneously, the people had thrust aside the knife which a few ruffians aimed at their throats; they had not been, and were not now, willing to be "Septemberised," that was their sole concern. Provided they were not handed over to the butchers bound hand and foot, they would open their gates. On these minimum terms the "Mountain" could terminate the civil war before the end of July. It had only to follow the example of Robert Lindet who, at Evreux the home of Buzot, at Caen the home of Charlotte Corday and the central seat of the fugitive Girondins, established permanent obedience through the moderation he had shown and the promises he had kept.1175 The measures that had pacified the most compromised province would have brought back the others, and through this policy, Paris, without striking a blow, would have secured the three largest cities in France, the capital of the South-west, that of the South, and the capital of the Center.
On the contrary, should Paris persist in imposing on them the domination of its local Jacobins there was a risk of their being thrown into the arms of the enemy. Rather than fall back into the hands of the bandits who had ransomed and decimated them, Toulon, starved out, was about to receive the English within its walls and surrender to them the great arsenal of the South. Not less famished, Bordeaux might be tempted to demand aid from another English fleet; a few marches would brings the Piedmontese army to Lyons; France would then b cut in two, while the plan of stirring up the South against the North was proposed to the allies by the most clear-sighted of their councilors.1176 Had this plan been carried out it is probably that the country would have been lost.—In any event, there was danger in driving the insurgents to despair: for, between the unbridled dictatorship of their victorious assassins and the musketry of the besieging army, there could be no hesitation by men of any feeling; it was better to be beaten on the ramparts than allow themselves to be bound for the guillotine; brought to a stand under the scaffold, their sole resource was to depend on themselves to the last.—Thus, through its unreasonableness, the "Mountain" condemns itself to a number of sieges or blockades which lasted several months,1177 to leaving Var and Savoy unprotected, to exhausting the arsenals, to employing against Frenchmen1178 troops and munitions needed against foreigners, and all this at the moment the foreigner was taking Valenciennes1179 and Mayence, when thirty thousand royalist were organizing in Lozére, when the great Vendean army was laying siege to Nantes, when each new outbreak of fighting was threatening to connect the flaming frontier with the conflagration in the Catholic countries.1180—With a jet of cold water aptly directed, the "Mountain" could extinguish the fires it had kindled in the great republican towns; otherwise, nothing remained but to let them increase at the risk of consuming the whole country, with no other hope than that they might at last die out under a mass of ruins, and with no other object but to rule over captives and the dead.
But this is precisely the Jacobin aim; for, he is not satisfied with less than absolute submission; he must rule at any cost, just as he pleases, by fair means or foul, no matter over what ruins. A despot by instinct and installation, his dogma has consecrated him King; he is King by natural and divine right, in the name of eternal verity, the same as Philip II., enthroned by his religious system and blessed by his Holy Office. Hence he can abandon no jot or title of his authority without a sacrifice of principle, nor treat with rebels, unless they surrender at discretion; simply for having risen against legitimate authority, they are traitors and villains. And who are greater rascals the renegades who, after three years of patient effort, just as the sect finally reaches its goal, oppose its accession to power!1181 At Nîmes, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Toulon, and Lyons, not only have they interfered with or arrested the blow which Paris struck, but they have put down the aggressors, closed the club, disarmed the fanatical and imprisoned the leading Maratists; and worse still, at Lyons and at Toulon, five or six massacreurs, or promoters of massacre, Châlier and Riard, Jassaud, Sylvestre and Lemaille, brought before the courts, have been condemned and executed after a trial in which all the forms were strictly adhered to.—That is the inexpiable crime; for, in this trial, the "Mountain" is involved; the principles of Sylvestre and Châlier are its principles; what is accomplished in Paris, they have attempted in the provinces; if they are guilty, it is also guilty; it cannot tolerate their punishment without assenting to its own punishment. Accordingly,
* it must proclaim them heroes and martyrs,
* it must canonize their memory,1182
* it must avenge their tortures,
* it must resume and complete their assaults,
* it must restore their accomplices to their places,
* it must render them omnipotent,
* it must force each rebel city to accept the rule of its rabble and villains.
It matters little whether the Jacobins be a minority, whether at Bordeaux, they have but four out of twenty-eight sections on their side, at Marseilles five out of thirty-two, whether at Lyons they can count up only fifteen hundred devoted adherents.1183 Suffrages are not reckoned, but weighed, for legality is founded, not on numbers, but on patriotism, the sovereign people being composed wholly of sans-culottes. So much the worse for towns where the anti-revolutionary majority is so great; they are only more dangerous; under the republican demonstrations is concealed the hostility of old parties and of the "suspect" classes, the Moderates, the Feuillants and Royalists, merchants, men of the legal profession, property-owners and muscadins.1184 These towns are nests of reptiles and must be crushed out.
Bordeaux.—Marseilles.—Lyons.—-Toulon.
Consequently, obedient or disobedient, they are crushed out. They are declared traitors to the country, not merely the members of the departmental committees, but, at Bordeaux, all who have "aided or abetted the Committee of Public Safety;" at Lyons, all administrators, functionaries, military or civil officers who "convoked or tolerated the Rhône-et-Loire congress," and furthermore, "every individual whose son, clerk, servant, or even day-laborer, may have borne arms or contributed the means of resistance," that is to say, the entire National Guard who took up arms, and nearly all the population which gave its money or voted in the sections.1185—By virtue of this decree, all are "outlaws," or, in other words subject to the guillotine just on the establishment of their identity, and their property confiscated. Consequently, at Bordeaux, where not a gun had been fired, the mayor Saige, and principal author of the submission, is at once led to the scaffold without any form of trial,1186 while eight hundred and eighty-one others succeed him amidst the solemn silence of a dismayed population.1187 Two hundred prominent merchants are arrested in one night; more than fifteen hundred persons are imprisoned; all who are well off are ransomed, even those against who no political charge could be made; nine millions of fines are levied against "rich egoists." One of these,1188 accused of "indifference and moderatism," pays twenty thousand francs "not to be harnessed to the car of the Revolution;" another "convicted of having shown contempt for his section and for the poor by giving thirty livres per months," is taxed at one million two hundred thousand livres, while the new authorities, a crooked mayor and twelve knaves composing the Revolutionary Committee, traffic in lives and property.1189 At Marseilles, says Danton,1190 the object is "to give the commercial aristocracy an important lesson;" we must "show ourselves as terrible to traders as to nobles and priests;" consequently, twelve thousand of them are proscribed and their possessions sold.1191 From the first day the guillotine works as fast as possible; nevertheless, it does not work fast enough for Representative Fréron who finds the means for making it work faster.
"The military commission we have established in place of the revolutionary tribunal," he writes, "works frightfully fast against the conspirators.... They fall like hail under the sword of the law. Fourteen have already paid for their infamous treachery with their heads. To-morrow, sixteen more are to be guillotined, all chiefs of the legion, notaries, sectionists, members of the popular tribunal; to-morrow, also, three merchants will dance the carmagnole, and they are the ones we are after."1192
Men and things, all must perish; he wishes to demolish the city and proposes to fill up the harbor. Restrained with great difficulty, Fréron contents himself with a destruction of "the haunts" of the aristocracy, two churches, the concert-hall, the houses around it, and twenty-three buildings in which the rebel sections had held their meetings.
At Lyons, to increase the booty, the representatives had taken pains to encourage the manufacturers and merchants with vague promises; these opened their shops and brought their valuable goods, books and papers out of their hiding-places. No time is lost in seizing the plunder; "a list of all property belonging to the rich and to anti-revolutionaries" is drawn up, which is "confiscated for the benefit of the patriots of the city;" in addition to this a tax of six millions is imposed, payable in eight days, by those whom the confiscation may have still spared;1193 it is proclaimed, according to principle, that the surplus of each individual belongs by right to the sans-culottes, and whatever may have been retained beyond the strictly necessary, is a robbery by the individual to the detriment of the nation.1194 In conformity with this rule there is a general rounding up, prolonged for ten months, which places the fortunes of a city of one hundred and twenty thousand souls in the hands of its scoundrels. Thirty-two revolutionary committees "whose members are thick as thieves select thousands of guards devoted to them."1195 In confiscated dwellings and warehouses, they affix seals without an inventory; they drive out women and children "so that there shall be no witnesses;" they keep the keys; they enter and steal when they please, or install themselves for a revel with prostitutes.—Meanwhile, the guillotine is kept going, and people are fired at and shot down with grape-shot. The revolutionary committee officially avow one thousand six hundred and eighty-two acts of murder committed in five months,1196 while a confederate of Robespierre's privately declare that there were six thousand.1197
Blacksmiths are condemned to death for having shod the Lyonnese cavalry, firemen for having extinguished fires kindled by republican bombshells, a widow for having paid a war-tax during the siege, market women for "having shown disrespect to patriots." It is an organized "Septembrisade" made legal and lasting; its authors are so well aware of the fact as to use the word itself in their public correspondence.1198—At Toulon it is worse, people are slaughtered in heaps, almost haphazard. Notwithstanding that the inhabitants the most compromised, to the number of four thousand, take refuge on board English vessels, the whole city, say the representatives, is guilty. Four hundred workmen in the navy-yard having marched out to meet Fréron, he reminds them that they kept on working during the English occupation of the town, and he has them put to death on the spot. An order is issued to all "good citizens to assemble in the Champ de Mars on penalty of death." They come there to the number of three thousand; Fréron, on horseback, surrounded by cannon and troops, arrives with about a hundred Maratists, the former accomplices of Lemaille, Sylvestre, and other well-known assassins, who form a body of local auxiliaries and counselors; he tells them to select out of the crowd at pleasure according to their grudge, fancy, or caprice; all who are designated are ranged along a wall and shot. The next morning, and on the following days, the operation is renewed: Fréron writes on the 16th of Nivose that "eight hundred Toulonese have already been shot." ... "A volley of musketry," says he, in another letter, and after that, volley after volley, until "the traitors are all gone." Then, for three months after this, the guillotine dispatches eighteen hundred persons; eleven young women have to mount the scaffold together, in honor of a republican festival; an old woman of ninety-four is borne to it in an armchair. The population, initially of twenty-eight thousand people, is reduced to six or seven thousand only.
All this is not enough; the two cities that dared maintain a siege must disappear from the French soil. The Convention decrees that "the city of Lyons shall be destroyed: every house occupied by a rich man shall be demolished; only the dwellings of the poor shall remain, with edifices specially devoted to industry, and monuments consecrated to humanity and public education."1199 The same at Toulon: "the houses within the town shall be demolished; only the buildings that are essential for army and navy purposes, for stores and munitions, shall be preserved."11100 Consequently, a requisition is made in Var and the neighboring departments for twelve thousand masons to level Toulon to the ground.—At Lyons, fourteen thousand laborers pull down the Chateau Pierre-Encize; also the superb houses on Place Bellecour, those of the Quai St.-Clair, those of the Rues de Flandre and de Bourgneuf, and many others; the cost of all this amounts to four hundred thousand livres per decade; in six months the Republic expends fifteen millions in destroying property valued at three or four hundred millions, all belonging to the Republic.11101 Since the Mongols of the fifth and thirteenth centuries, no such vast and irrational waste had been seen—such frenzy against the most profitable fruits of industry and human civilization.—Again, one can understand how the Mongols, who were nomads, desired to convert the soil into one vast steppe. But, to demolish a town whose arsenal and harbor is maintained by it, to destroy the leaders of manufacturing interests and their dwellings in a city where its workmen and factories are preserved, to keep up a fountain and stop the stream which flows from it, or the stream without the fountain, is so absurd that the idea could only enter the head of a Jacobin. His imagination has run so wild and his prevision become so limited that he is no longer aware of contradictions; the ferocious stupidity of the barbarian and the fixed idea of the inquisition meet on common ground; the earth is not big enough for any but himself and the orthodox of his species. Employing absurd, inflated and sinister terms he decrees the extermination of heretics: not only shall their monuments, dwellings and persons be destroyed, but every vestige of them shall be eradicated and their names lost to the memory of man.11102
"The name of Toulon shall be abolished; that commune shall henceforth bear the name of Port-la-Montagne."—"The name of Lyons shall be stricken off the list of towns belonging to the Republic; the remaining collection of houses shall henceforth bear the name of Ville-Affranchie. A column shall be erected on the ruins of Lyons bearing this inscription: 'Lyons made war on Liberty! Lyons is no more!'"
Destruction of the Girondin party.—Proscription of the
Deputies of the "Right".—Imprisonment of the 73.—Execution
of the 21.—Execution, suicide, or flight of the rest.
In all this there is no intention to spare in Paris the chiefs of the insurrection or of the party, either deputies or ministers; on the contrary, the object is to complete the subjection of the Convention, to stifle the murmurs of the "Right," to impose silence on Ducos, Boyer-Fonfrède, Vernier, and Couhey, who still speak and protest.11103 Hence the decrees of arrest or death, launched weekly from the top of the "Mountain," fall on the majority like guns fired into a crowd. Decrees of accusation follow: on the 15th of June, against Duchâtel, on the 17th against Barbaroux, on the 23rd against Brissot, on the 8th of July against Devérité and Condorcet, on the 14th against Lauze-Deperret and Fauchet, on the 30th against Duprat Jr., Valée and Mainvielle, on the 2nd of August against Rouyer, Brunel and Carra; Carra, Lauze-Deperret and Fauchet, present during the session, are seized on the spot, which is plain physical warning: none is more effective to check the unruly.—Decrees are passed on the 18th of July accusing Coustard, on the 28th of July against Gensonné, La Source, Vergniaud, Mollevaut, Gardien, Grangeneuve, Fauchet, Boilleau, Valazé, Cussy, Meillan; each being aware that the tribunal before which he must appear is the waiting room to the guillotine.—Decrees of condemnation are passed on the 12th of July against Birotteau, the 28 of July against Buzot, Barbaroux, Gorsas, Lanjuniais, Salles, Louvet, Bergoeing, Pétion, Guadet, Chasset, Chambon, Lidon, Valady, Defermon, Kervelégen, Larivière, Rabaut-Saint-Étienne, and Lesage; pronounced outlaws and traitors, they are to be led to the scaffold without trial as soon as they can be got hold of.—Finally, on the 3rd of October, a great haul of the net in the Assembly itself sweeps off the benches all the deputies that still seem capable of any independence: the first thing is to close the doors of the hall, which is done by Amar, reporter of the Committee of General Security;11104 then, after a declamatory and calumnious speech, which lasts two hours, he reads off names on two lists of proscriptions: forty-five deputies, more or less prominent among the Girondins, are to be at once summoned before the revolutionary tribunal; seventy-three others, who have signed secret protests against the 31st of May and 2nd of June, are to be put in jail. No arguing! the majority dares not even express an opinion. Some of the proscribed attempt to exculpate themselves, but they are not allowed to be heard; none but the Montagnards have the floor, and they do no more than add to the lists, each according to personal enmity; Levasseur has Vigée put down, and Duroi adds the name of Richon. One their names being called, all the poor creatures who happen to be inscribed, quietly advance and "huddle together within the bar of the house, like lambs destined to slaughter," and here they are separated into two flocks; on the one hand the seventy-three, and on the other, the ten or twelve who, with the Girondins already kept under lock and key, are to furnish the sacramental and popular number, the twenty-two traitors, whose punishment is a requirement of the Jacobin imagination;11105 on the left, the batch for the prison; on the right, the batch for the guillotine.
To those who might be tempted to imitate them or defend them this is a sufficient lesson.—Subject to the boos, hisses and insults from the hags lining the streets, the seventy-three11106 are conducted to the prisoners' room in the town hall. This, already full, is where they pass the night standing on benches, scarcely able to breathe. The next day they are crammed into the prison for assassins and robbers, "la Force," on the sixth story, under the roof; in this narrow garret their beds touch each other, while two of the deputies are obliged to sleep on the floor for lack of room. Under the skylights, which serve for windows, and at the foot of the staircase are two pig-pens; at the end of the apartment are the privies, and in one corner a night-tub, which completes the poisoning of the atmosphere already vitiated by this crowded mass of human beings. The beds consist of sacks of straw swarming with vermin; they are compelled to endure the discipline,11107 rations and mess of convicts. And they are lucky to escape at this rate: for Amar takes advantage of their silent deportment to tax them with conspiracy; other Montagnards likewise want to arraign them at the revolutionary Tribunal: at all events, it is agreed that the Committee of General Security shall examine their records and maintain the right of designating new culprits amongst them. For ten months they thus remain under the knife, in daily expectation of joining the twenty-two on the Place de la Révolution.—With respect to the latter, the object is not to try them but to kill them, and the semblance of a trial is simply judicial assassination; the bill of indictment against them consists of club gossip; they are accused of having desired the restoration of the monarchy, of being in correspondence with Pitt and Coburg;11108 of having excited Vendée to insurrection. The betrayal of Dumouriez is imputed to them, also the murder of Lepelletier, and the assassination of Marat; while pretended witnesses, selected from amongst their personal enemies, come and repeat, like a theme agreed upon, the same ill-contrived fable: nothing but vague allegations and manifest falsehoods, not one definite fact, not once convincing document; the lack of proof is such that the trial has to be stopped as soon as possible. "You brave b——forming the court," writes Hébert, "don't trifle away your time. Why so much ceremony in shortening the days of wretches whom the people have already condemned?" Care is especially taken not to let them have a chance to speak. The eloquence of Vergniaud and logic of Guadet might turn the tables at the last moment. Consequently, a prompt decree authorizes the tribunal to stop proceedings as soon as the jury becomes sufficiently enlightened, which is the case after the seventh session of the court, the record of death suddenly greeting the accused, who are not allowed to defend themselves. One of them, Valazé, stabs himself in open court, and the next day the national head-chopper strikes off the remaining twenty heads in thirty-eight minutes.—Still more expeditious are the proceedings against the accused who avoid a trial. Gorsas, seized in Paris on the 8th of October, is guillotined the same day. Birotteau, seized at Bordeaux, on the 24th of October, mounts the scaffold within twenty-four hours. The others, tracked like wolves, wandering in disguise from one hiding-place to another, and most of them arrested in turn, have only choice of several kinds of death. Cambon is killed in defending himself. Lidon, after having defended himself, blows out his brains, Condorcet takes poison in the guard-room of Bourg-la-Reine. Roland kills himself with his sword on the highway. Clavière stabs himself in prison. Rébecqui is found drowned in the harbor of Marseilles, and Pétion and Buzon half eaten by wolves on a moor of Saint-Emilion. Valady is executed at Périgueux, Dechézeau at Rochefort, Grangeneuve, Guadet, Salle and Barbaroux at Bordeaux, Coustard, Cussy, Rabout-Saint-Étienne, Bernard, Masuyer, and Lebrun at Paris. Even those who resigned in January, 1793, Kersaint and Manuel, atone with their lives for the crime of having sided with the "Right" and, of course, Madame Roland, who is taken for the leader of the party, is one of the first to be guillotined.11109—Of the one-hundred and eighty Girondins who led the Convention, one hundred and forty have perished or are in prison, or fled under sentence of death. After such a curtailment and such an example the remaining deputies cannot be otherwise than docile;11110 neither in the central nor in the local government will the "Mountain" encounter resistance; its despotism is practically established, and all that remains is to proclaim this in legal form.
Institutions of the Revolutionary Government.—Its
principle, objects, proceedings, tools and structure.—The
Committee of Public Safety.—Subordination of the Convention
and ministry.—The use of the Committee of General Security
and the Revolutionary Tribunal.—Administrative
centralization.—Representatives on Mission, National Agents
and Revolutionary Committees.—Law of Lése-majesty.
—Restoration and Aggravation of the institutions of the old
monarchy.
After the 2nd of August, on motion of Bazire, the Convention decrees "that France is in revolution until its independence is recognized." which means11111 that the period of hypocritical phrases has come to an end, that the Constitution was merely a signboard for a fair, and that the charlatans who had made use of it no longer need it, that it is to be put away in the store containing other advertising material, that individual, local and parliamentary liberties are abolished, that the government is arbitrary and absolute, that no institution, law, dogma, or precedent affords any guarantee for it against the rights of the people, that property and lives are wholly at its mercy, that there are no longer any rights of man.—Six weeks later, when, through the protest of the forty-five and the arrest of the seventy-three, obedience to the Convention is assured, all this is boldly and officially announced in the tribune. "Under the present circumstances of the Republic," says St. Just, "the Constitution cannot be implemented as this would enable attacks on liberty to take place because it would lack the violent measures necessary to repress these." We are no longer to govern "according to maxims of natural peace and justice; these maxims are only valid among the friends of liberty;" but they are not applicable between patriots and the malevolent. The latter are "outside our sovereignty," are lawless, excluded from the social pact, slaves in rebellion, to be punished or imprisoned, and, amongst the malevolent must be placed "the indifferent11112".—"You are to punish whoever is passive in the Republic and does nothing for it;" for his passivity is treason and ranks him among other public enemies. Now, between the people and its enemies, there is nothing in common but the sword; steel must control those who cannot be ruled "by justice"; the monarchical and neutral majority must be repressed (comprimé);
"The Republic will be founded only when the sans-culottes,11113 the sole representatives of the nation, the only citizens, "shall rule by right of conquest."11114
The meaning of this is more than clear. The régime of which St. Just presents the plan, is that by which every oligarchy of invaders installs and maintains itself over a subjugated nation. Through this régime, in Greece, ten thousand Spartans, after the Dorian invasion, mastered three hundred thousand helots and périocques; through this régime, in England, sixty thousand Normans, after the battle of Hastings, mastered two million Saxons; through this régime in Ireland, since the battle of the Boyne, two hundred thousand English Protestants have mastered a million of Catholic Irish; through this régime, the three hundred thousand Jacobins of France will master the seven or eight millions of Girondins, Feuillants, Royalists or Indifferents.
This system of government is a very simple one and consist in maintaining the subject population in a state of extreme helplessness and of extreme terror. To this end, it is disarmed;11115 it is kept under surveillance; all action in common is prohibited; its eyes should always be directed to the up-lifted ax and to the prison doors always open; it is ruined and decimated.—For the past six months all these rigors are decreed and applied,—disarmament of "suspects," taxes on the rich, the maximum against traders, requisitions on land-owners, wholesale arrests, rapid executions of sentences, arbitrary penalties of death, and publicized, multiplied tortures. For the past six months, all sorts of executive instruments are set up and put into operation: The Committee of Public Safety, the Committee of General Security, ambulating proconsuls with full power, local committees authorized to tax and imprison at will, a revolutionary army, a revolutionary tribunal. But, for lack of internal harmony and of central impulsion, the machine only half works, the power not being sufficient and its action not sufficiently sweeping and universal.
"You are too remote from the conspiracies against you," says St. Just;11116 "it is essential that the sword of the law should everywhere be rapidly brandished and your arm be everywhere present to arrest crime.... The ministers confess that, beyond their first and second subordinates, they find nothing but inertia and indifference."—"A similar apathy is found in all the government agents," adds Billaud-Varennes;11117 "the secondary authorities which are the strong points of the Revolution serve only to impede it." Decrees, transmitted through administrative channels, arrive slowly and are indolently applied. "You are missing that co-active force which is the principle of being, of action, of execution.... Every good government should possess a center of willpower and the levers connected with it.... Every government activity should exclusively originate from the central source."—
"In ordinary governments," says Couthon, finally,11118 "the right of electing belongs to the people; you cannot take it away from them. In extraordinary governments all impulsion must come from the center; it is from the convention that elections must issue.... You would injure the people by confiding the election of officials to them, because you would expose them to electing men that would betray them."
—The result is that the constitutional maxims of 1789 give way to radically opposed maxims; instead of subjecting the government to the people, the people is made subject to the government. The hierarchy of the ancient régime is re-established under revolutionary terms, and henceforth all powers, much more formidable than those of the ancient régime, cease to be delegated from the depths to the summit and will henceforth instead be delegated from the summit to the bottom.
At the summit, a committee of twelve members, similar to the former royal council, exercises collective royalty; nominally, authority is divided amongst the twelve; it is, in practice, concentrated in a few hands. Several members occupy only a subaltern position, and amongst these, Barère, who, official secretary and mouthpiece, is always ready to make a speech or draft an editorial; others, with special functions, Jean Bon St. André, Lindet, and above all, Prieur de la Côte d'Or and Carnot, confine themselves each to his particular department, navy, war, supplies, with blank signatures, for which they give in return their signatures to the political leaders; the latter, called "the statesmen," Robespierre, Couthon, Saint-Just, Collot d'Herbois, Billaud-Varennes, are the real rulers providing overall direction. It is true that their mandate has to be renewed monthly; but this is a certainty, for, in the present state of the Convention, its vote, required beforehand, becomes an almost vain formality. More submissive than the parliament of Louis XIV., the Convention adopts, without discussion, the decrees which the Committee of Public Safety present to it ready made. It is no more than a registry-office, and scarcely that, for it has relinquished its right of appointing its own committees, that office being assigned to the Committee of Public Safety; it votes as a whole all lists of names which the Committee send in.11119 Naturally, none but the creatures of the latter and the faithful are inscribed; thus, the whole legislative and parliamentary power belongs to it.—As to executive and administrative power, the ministers have become mere clerks of the Committee of Public Safety; "they come every day at specified hours to receive its orders and acts;11120 "they submit to it "the list with explanations, of all the agents" sent into the departments and abroad; they refer to it every minute detail; they are its scribes, merely its puppets, so insignificant that they finally lose their title, and for the "Commission on External Relations" a former school-master is taken, an inept clubbist, bar-fly and the pillar of the billiard-room, scarcely able to read the documents brought to him to sign in the café where he passes his days.11121—Thus is the second power in the State converted by the Committee into a squad of domestics, while the foremost one is converted into an audience of claqueurs.
To make them do their duty, it has two hands.—One, the right, which seizes people unawares by the collar, is the Committee of General Security, composed of twelve extreme Montagnards, such as Panis, Vadier, Le Bas, Geoffroy, David, Amar, La Vicomterie, Lebon and Ruhl, all nominated, that is to say, appointed by it, being its confederates and subalterns. They are its lieutenants of police, and once a week they come and take part in its labors, as formerly the Sartines, and the Lenoirs assisted the Comptroller-general. A man who this secret committee deems a "suspect," is suddenly seized, no matter who, whether representative, minister, or general, and finds himself the next morning behind the bars in one of the ten new Bastilles.—There, the other hand seizes him by the throat; this is the revolutionary tribunal, an exceptional court like the extraordinary commissions of the ancient régime, only far more terrible. Aided by its police gang, the Committee of Public Safety itself selects the sixteen judges and sixty jurymen11122 from among the most servile, the most furious, or the most brutal of the fanatics:11123 Fouquier-Tinville, Hermann, Dumas, Payan, Coffinhal, Fleuriot-Lescot, and, lower down on the scale, apostate priests, renegade nobles, disappointed artists, infatuated studio-apprentices, journeymen scarcely able to write their names, shoemakers, joiners, carpenters, tailors, barbers, former lackeys, an idiot like Ganney, a deaf man like Leroy-Dix-Août; their names and professions indicate all that is necessary to be told: these men are licensed and paid murderers. The Jurymen themselves are allowed eighteen francs a day, so that they may attend to their business more leisurely. This business consists in condemning without proof, without any pleadings, and scarcely any examination, in a hurry, in batches, whoever the Committee of Public Safety might send to them, even the most confirmed Montagnards: Danton, who contrived the tribunal, will soon discover this.—it is through these two government institutions that the Committee of Public Safety keeps every head under the cleaver and each head, to avoid being struck off, bows down,11124 in the provinces as well as in Paris.
This has happened when the existing local hierarchy was replaced by new authorities making the omnipotent will of the Committee present everywhere. Directly or indirectly, "for all government measures or measures of public safety, all that relates to persons and the general and internal police, all constituted bodies and all public functionaries, are placed under its inspection."11125 You may imagine how the risk of being guillotined weighed upon them.
To suppress in advance any tendency to administrative inertia, it has had withdrawn from the too powerful, too much respected, department governments, "too inclined to federalism," their departmental dominance and their "political influence."11126 It reduces these to the levying of taxes and the supervision of roads and canals; it purges them out through its agents; it even purges out the governments of municipalities and districts. To suppress beforehand all probability of popular opposition, it has had the sessions of the sections reduced to two per week; it installs in these sections, for about forty sous a day, a majority of sans-culottes; it orders the suspension "until further directives" of all municipal elections.11127
Finally, to have full control on the spot, it appoints its own men, first, the commissioners and the representatives on missions, a sort of temporary corps of directors sent into each department with unlimited powers;11128 next, a body of national agents, a sort of permanent body of sub-delegates, through whom in each district and municipality it replaces the procureurs-syndics.11129 To this army of functionaries is added in each town, bourg or large village, a revolutionary committee, paid three francs a day per member, charged with the application of its decrees, and required to make reports thereon. Never before was such a vast and closely woven network cast from above to envelope and keep captive twenty-six million people. Such is the real constitution which the Jacobins substitute for the constitution they have prepared for show. In the arsenal of the monarchy which they destroyed they took the most despotic institutions—centralization, Royal Council, lieutenants of police, special tribunals, intendants and sub-delegates; they disinterred the antique Roman law of lèse-majesty, refurbished old blades which civilization had dulled, aiming them at every throat and now wielded at random against liberties, property and lives. It is called the "revolutionary government;" according to official statements it is to last until peace is secured; in the minds of genuine Jacobins it must continue until all the French have been regenerated in accordance with the formula.
1101 (return)
[ Titus Flavious
Clemens, (Greek writer born in Athens around 150 and dead in Cappadoce in
250) He lived in Alexandria. (SR).]
1102 (return)
[ The words of Marat.]
1103 (return)
[ After the
Constitution is completed, said Legendre, in the Jacobin club, we will
make the federalists dance.]
1104 (return)
[ Archives Nationales,
F.I.C.. 56, (Circular of Gohier, Minister of Justice, to the French
people, July 6, 1793). "Certain persons are disposed to pervert the events
of May 31 and June 2, by atrocious exaggerations and the grossest fables,
and prevent the fortunate results they present from being seen. They are
absolutely determined to see nothing but violations of the liberty of the
people's representatives in a step which was specially designed to hasten
on the Constitutional Act on which the liberty of all is established. Of
what consequence is it who are the authors of the Constitution presented
to you? What does it matter whether it issues from a mountain amidst
lightning and the rolling thunder, like the Tables of the Law given to the
Hebrews, or whether it comes, like the laws given to the early Romans,
inspired in the tranquil asylum of a divinity jealous of his religious
surroundings? Is this constitution worthy of a free people? That is the
only question which citizens who wear the livery of no party need
examine!"]
1105 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXVIII., 177. (report by Hérault Séchelles, June 10, 1793). Ibid, XXXI.,
400. (Text of constitution submitted to discussion June 11th, and passed
June 24th.)]
1106 (return)
[ De Sybel, II., 331.
(According to the facsimile published in the Quarterly Review). "Hérault
says that he and four of his colleagues are ordered to furnish the draft
of a constitution by Monday."]
1107 (return)
[ Report by
Hérault-Séchelles. (Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 178.)]
1108 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux, XXXI,
400. (Articles of the Declaration of Rights, 1, 7, 9, 11, 27, 31, 35)]
1109 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXVIII., 178. Report by Hérault-Séchelles. "Each of us had the same
desire, that of attaining to the greatest democratic result. The
sovereignty of the people and the dignity of man were constantly in our
minds... A secret sentiment tells us that our work is perhaps the most
popular that ever existed."]
1110 (return)
[ Archives Nationales,
B. II., 23. (Table of votes by the commission appointed to collect the
procès-verbaux of the adoption of the constitution, August 20, 1793.)—Number
of primary assemblies sending in their procès-verbaux, 6,589 (516 cantons
have not yet sent theirs in).—Number of voters on call, 1,795,908;
Yes, 1,784,377; Noes, 11,531.—Number of primary assemblies voting
Yes unanimously, not on call of names, 297.—At Paris, 40,990 voters,
at Troyes, 2,491, at Limoges, 2,137.—Cf. For details and motives of
abstention, Sauzay IV. pp. 157-161. Albert Babeau, II, pp. 83 and 84.
Moniteur, XVII., 375 (speech by the representative Desvars).]
1111 (return)
[ Ibid., Moniteur,
XVII., 20. (report by Barrère on the convocation of the primary
assemblies, June 17, 1793.) Ibid., 102 (Report of Cambon, July 11). "It is
now a fortnight since you demanded a Constitution. Very well, here it
is.... Respect for persons and property is amply secured in it. Yes, more
definitely than in any other constitution. Does it provide for its own
revision? Yes, for in six weeks, we can convoke the primary assemblies and
express our desire for the reform that may appear necessary.—Will
the popular wish be respected? Yes, the people then will make definitive
laws."]
1112 (return)
[ Guillon de Montléon,
I., 282, 309.—Buchez et Roux, XXVIII, 356, 357 (Journal de Lyon Nos.
223 and 224.) "The acceptance of the Constitution was neither entire nor
very sincere; people took credit to themselves for accepting a vicious and
sketchy production." Meillan, "Mémoires," 120. (In July he leaves Caen for
Quimper). "Although we were assured that we should pass only through
Maratist towns, we had the satisfaction of finding nearly all the
inhabitants regarding Marat with horror. They had indeed accepted the
Constitution offered by the Committee of Public Safety, but solely to end
the matter and on conditions which would speak well for them; for,
everywhere the renewal of the Convention was exacted and the punishment of
assaults made on it." This desire, and others analogous to it, are given
in the procès-verbaux of many of the primary assemblies (Archives
Nationales, B. II., 23); for example, in those of the thirteen cantons of
Ain. A demand is made, furthermore, for the reintegration of the
Twenty-two, the abolition of the revolutionary tribunal, the suppression
of absolute proconsulates, the organization of a department guard for
securing the future of the Convention, the discharge of the revolutionary
army, etc.]
1113 (return)
[ Moniteur, XVII., 20.
Report of Barère: "The Constitutional act is going to draw the line
between republicans and royalists."]
1114 (return)
[ Archives Nationales,
F.I.C., 54. (Circular of the Minister, Gohier, July 6, 1793.) "It is
to-day that, summoned to the alter of the country, those who desire the
Republic will be known by name, and those who do not desire it, whether
they speak or keep silent, will be equally known."]
1115 (return)
[ Sauzay, IV., 160,
161. (Article by the Vidette.) Consequently, "all the unconstitutionalists
nobles and priests considered it a duty to go the assemblies and joyfully
accept a constitution which guaranteed liberty and property to
everybody."]
1116 (return)
[ "Journal des Débats
de la Société des Jacobins," No. For July 27, 1793 (correspondence, No.
122).]
1117 (return)
[ Moniteur, XVII., 156,
163.]
1118 (return)
[ Sauzay, IV., 158:
"The motives for judgments were thus stated by judges themselves."]
1119 (return)
[ Moniteur, XVII., 40,
48, 72, 140, 175, 194, 263. (Cf. Speeches by Chaumette, July 14, and
Report by Gossoin, August 9).—Archives Nationales, B. II., 23.
Negative votes in Ardèche 5, in Aude 5, Moselle 5, Saône-et-Loire 5,
Côte-d'Or 4, Creuse 4, Haut-Rhin 4, Gers 4, Haute-Garonne 3, Aube 2,
Bouches-du-Rhône 2, Cantal 2, Basses-Alpes 1, Haute-Marne 1, Haute-Vienne
1, Var 0, Seine 0.—The details and circumstances of voting are
curious. In the department of Aube, at Troyes, the second section in
agreement with the third, excluded "suspects" from the vote. At Paris, the
section "Gardes Française," Fourcroy president, announces 1,714 voters, of
which 1,678 are citizens and 36 citoyennes. In the "Mont Blanc" section,
the secretary signs as follows: Trone segretaire general de la semblé.]
1120 (return)
[ Moniteur, XVII., 375.
(Session of the convention, August 11, 1793). Chabot: "I demand a law
requiring every man who does not appear at a primary meeting to give good
reason for his absence; also, that any man who has not favored the
Constitution, be declared ineligible to all constitutional franchises."
Ibid., 50. (Meeting of the Commune, July 4th). Leonard Bourdon demands, in
the name of his section, the Gravilliers, a register on which to inscribe
those who accept the Constitution, "in order that those who do not vote
for it may be known."—Souzay, IV. 159. M. Boillon, of Belleherbe, is
arrested "for being present at the primary assembly of the canton of
Vaucluse, and when called upon to accept the Constitutional act, leaving
without voting."]
1121 (return)
[ Moniteur, XVII., 11.
(Instructions on the mode of accepting the Constitution).—Sauzay
IV., 158.—Moniteur, XVII., 302. (Speech by Garat, August 2.) "I have
dispatched commissioners to push the Constitutional Act through the
primary assemblies."—Durand- Maillane. 150. "The envoys of the
departments were taken from the sans-culotterie then in fashion, because
they ruled in the Convention."]
1122 (return)
[ Sauzay, IV., 158.]
1123 (return)
[ Moniteur, XVII., 363.
(Report of Gossuin to the Convention, August 9). "There are primary
assemblies which have extended their deliberations beyond the acceptance
of the Constitution. This acceptance being almost unanimous, all other
objects form matter for petitions to be entrusted to competent
committees."—Ibid., 333. (Speech of Delacroix). "The
anti-revolutionary delegates sent by the conspirators we had in the
Convention must be punished. (August 6.).]
1124 (return)
[ Moniteur, ibid., 333.
Speech and motions of Bazire, August 8.—XIX., 116. Report of
Vouland, January 2, 1794. The pay of Maillard and his acolytes amounted to
twenty-two thousand livres.—XVIII., 324. (Session of August 5.
Speeches of Gossuin, Thibault and Lacroix.)—Ibid., 90. (Session of
Germinal 8, year III.) Speech by Bourdon de l'Oise: "We have been obliged
to pick men out of the envoys in order to find those disposed for rigorous
measures."]
1125 (return)
[ Moniteur, XVII., 330.
Ordinance of the Commune, August 6.]
1126 (return)
[ Moniteur, XVII., 332.
(Session of the Convention, August 6.)—Cf. the "Diurnal" of
Beaulieu, August 6. Beaulieu mentions several deputations and motions of
the same order, and states the alarm of the "Mountain."—Durand-Maillane,
"Mémoires," 151. "Among the envoys from the departments were sensible men
who, far from approving of all the steps taken by their brethren,
entertained and manifested very contrary sentiments. These were molested
and imprisoned."—"Archives des Affaires étrangères," vol. 1411.
(Report of the agents of August 10 and 11.) The department
commissioners... seemed to us in the best disposition. There are some
intriguers among them, however; we are following up some of them, and
striving by fraternizing with them to prevent them from being seduced or
led away by the perfidious suggestions of certain scoundrels, the friends
of federalism, amongst them.... A few patriotic commissioners have already
denounced several of their brethren accused of loving royalty and
federalism."]
1127 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXVIII., 408.]
1128 (return)
[ Moniteur., XVII.,
330. (Act passed by the Commune, August 6.)]
1129 (return)
[ Archives des Affaires
étrangères, vol. 1411. (Reports of agents, Aug. 10 and 11). "Citizens are,
to-day, eager to see who shall have a commissioner at his table: who shall
treat him the best. .. the Commissioners of the primary assemblies come
and fraternise with them in the Jacobin club. They adopt their maxims, and
are carried away by the energy of the good and true republican
sans-culottes in the clubs."]
1130 (return)
[ Moniteur, XVII., 307,
308. (Report of Couthon to the Convention, Aug. 2.) "You would wound, you
would outrage these Republicans, were you to allow the performance before
them of an infinity of pieces filled with insulting allusions to
liberty."]
1131 (return)
[ Ibid. 124. (Session
of Aug. 5.)]
1132 (return)
[ Ibid., 314; (Letter
of Lhuillier, Aug. 4.)—322, Session of the Commune, Aug. 4th; 332,
(Session of the Convention, Aug. 6).—Buchez et Roux, XXVIII., 409.
(Meeting of the Jacobin Club, Aug. 5th).]
1133 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux, 411
(Article in the Journal de la Montagne.)]
1134 (return)
[ Moniteur, XVII.,
348.]
1135 (return)
[ "Le Féderation" was
in 1790 "the Association of the National Guards." (SR).]
1136 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XVIII., 415 and following pages.]
1137 (return)
[ Ibid., 352.—Cf.
Beaulieu, "Diurnal," Aug. 9.]
1138 (return)
[ On the mechanical
character of the festivals of the Revolution read the programme of "The
civic fete in honor of Valor and Morals," ordered by Fouché at Nevers, on
the 1st day of the 1st decade of the 2nd month of the year II. (De Martel,
"Etude sur Fouché," 202); also, the programme of the "Fete de l'Etre
Supréme," at Sceaux, organized by the patriot Palloy, Presidial 20, year
II. (Dauban, Paris en 1794, p.187).]
1139 (return)
[ It cost one million
two hundred thousand francs, besides the traveling expenses of eight
thousand delegates.]
1140 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXVIII., 439, and following pages. Procès verbal of he National Festival
of the 10th of August.—Dauban "La Demagogie en 1791." (Extract from
the Republican Ritual.)]
1141 (return)
[ Moniteur, XVII., 366.
(Session of Aug. 11. Speech by Lacroix and decree in conformity
therewith.)]
1142 (return)
[ Ibid., 374. "Remember
that you are accountable to the nation and the universe for this sacred
Ark. Remember that it is your duty to die rather than suffer a
sacrilegious hand....."]
1143 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXVIII., 358. It is evident from the context of the speech that
Robespierre and the Jacobins were desirous of maintaining the Convention
because they foresaw Girondist elections.]
1144 (return)
[ Moniteur, XVII., 382.
(Session of Aug. 12. Speech by Lacroix).]
1145 (return)
[ Ibid., 387.—Cf.
Ibid., 410, session of August 16. The delegates return there to insist on
a levy, en masse, the levy of the first class not appearing sufficient to
them. (levy means mobilization of all men)—Buchez et Roux, XXVIII.,
464. Delegate Royer, Curé of Chalons-sur-Saone, demands that the
aristocrats "chained together in sixes" be put in the front rank in battle
"to avoid the risks of sauve qui peut."]
1146 (return)
[ Decrees of August 14
and 16.]
1147 (return)
[ Moniteur, XVII.,
375.]
1148 (return)
[ Riouffe, "Mémoires,"
19: "An entire generation, the real disciples of Jean-Jacques, Voltaire
and Diderot, could be, and was annihilated, to a large extent under the
pretext of federalism."]
1149 (return)
[ Moniteur, XVII., 102.
(Speech by Cambon, July 11, 1793). Archives Nationales, AF. II., 46.
(Speech of General Wimpffen to the "Société des amis de la Liberté et de
l'Egalité," in session at Cherbourg, June 25, 1793). "Sixty-four
departments have already revoked the powers conferred on their
representatives." Meillan, "Mémoires," 72: "The archives of Bordeaux once
contained the acts passed by seventy-two departments, all of which adhered
to measures nearly the same as those indicted in our documents."]
1150 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XVIII., 148.—Meillan, 70, 71.—Guillon de Montléon, I., 300 (on
Lyons) and I., 280 (on Bordeaux). Archives Nationales, AF II., 46.
(Deliberations of the Nantes section July 5).—Letter of Merlin and
Gillet, representatives on mission, Lorient, June 12. Dissatisfaction at
the outrages of May 31 and June 2, was so manifest that the
representatives on mission Merline, Gillet, Savestre, and Cagaignac print
on the 14th of June a resolution authorising one of their body to go to
the Convention and protest "in their name" against the weakness shown by
it and against the ursurpations of the Paris commune.—Sauzay, IV.,
260. At Besançon, in a general assembly of all the administrative,
judicial and municipal bodies of the department joined to the
commissioners of the section, protest "unanimously" on the 15th of June.]
1151 (return)
[ Archives Nationales,
Ibid.(Letter of Romme and Prieur, Caen, June 10th, to the committee of
Public Safety). The insurgents are so evidently in the right that Romme
and Prieur approve of their own arrest. "Citizens, our colleagues, this
arrest may be of great importance, serve the cause of liberty, maintain
the unity of the republic and revive confidence if, as we hasten to demand
it of you, you confirm it by a decree which declares us hostages.... We
have noticed that among the people of Caen, there is a love of liberty, as
well as of justice and docility."]
1152 (return)
[ Archives Nationales,
AF. II., 46. (Printed July 5). Result of the deliberations of the Nantes
sections. The act is signed by the three administrative bodies of Nantes,
by the district rulers of Clisson, Anceries and Machecoul, who had fled to
Nantes, and by both the deputies of the districts of Paimboeuf and
Chateaubriand, in all, eighty-six signatures.]
1153 (return)
[ Archives Nationales,
ibid., (letter of General Wimpffen to the "Societé des Amis de l'Egalité
et de la Liberté" in session at Cherbourg, June 25, 1793).—Mortimer-Ternaux,
VIII., 126.—On the opinion of the departments cf. Paul Thibaud
("Etudes sur l'histoire de Grenoble et du Department de l'Isére").—Louis
Guibert ("Le Parti Girondin dans le Haute Vienne").—Jarrin, ("Bourg
et Bellay pendant la Révolution").]
1154 (return)
[ Albert Babeau, II.,
83. (Pamphlet by the curé of Cleray). "Every primary assembly that accepts
the Constitution strikes the factions a blow on the head with the club of
Hercules."]
1155 (return)
[ Cf. "The Revolution,"
Vol. II. Ch. XI.]
1156 (return)
[ Buzot.—Archives
Nationales, AF. II., 157. Reports by Baudot and Ysabeau to the Convention.
The 19th of Aug. At the Hotel de Ville of Bordeaux, they eulogize the 21st
of January: "There was then a roar as frightful as it was general. A city
official coolly replied to us: What would you have? To oppose anarchy we
have been forced to join the aristocrats, and they rule." Another says
ironically to Ysabeau: "We did not anticipate that,—they are our
tribunes."]
1157 (return)
[ Jarrin, "Bourg et
Belley pendant la Révolution" ("Annales de la Societé d'Emulation de
l'Ain," 1878, Nos. For January, February and March, p. 16).]
1158 (return)
[ Louvet, 103, 108.—Guillon
de Montléon, I., 305 and following pages.—Buchez et Roux, XXVIII.,
151. (Report of the delegates of the district of Andelys). "One of members
observed that there would be a good deal of trouble in raising an armed
force of one thousand men."—An administrator (a commissioner of
Calvados) replied: "We shall have all the aristocrats on our side." The
principal military leaders at Caen and at Lyons, Wimpffen, Précy, Puisaye,
are Feuillants and form only a provisional alliance with the Girondists
properly so called, Hence constant contentions and reciprocal mistrust.
Birotteau and Chapet leave Lyons because they do not find the spirit of
the place sufficiently republican.]
1159 (return)
[ Louvet, 124, 129.—Buchez
et Roux, XXVII, 360. (Notice by General Wimpffen), July 7.—Puisaye,
"Mémoires" and "L'Insurrection Normande." by et Vaultier et Mancel.]
1160 (return)
[ Mortimer-Ternaux,
VIII., 471. Letter of Barbaroux, Caen, June 18.—Ibid., 133. Letter
of Madame Roland to Buzot, July 7. "You are not the one to march at the
head of battalions (departmental). It would have the appearance of
gratifying personal vengeance."]
1161 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXVIII., 153. (Deliberations of the constituted authorities of Marseilles,
June 7.)]
1162 (return)
[ Guillon de Montléon,
II., 40. The contrast between the two parties is well shown in the
following extract from the letter of a citizen of Lyons to Kellerman's
soldiers. "They tell you that we want to destroy the unity of the
republic, while they themselves abandon the frontiers to the enemy in
order to come here and cut their brethren's throats."]
1163 (return)
[ Guillon de Montléon,
I., 288.—Marcelin Boudet, "Les Conventionnels d'Auvergne," p. 181.—Louvet,
193.—Moniteur, XVII., 101. (Speech of Cambon, July 11). "We have
preferred to expose these funds (one hundred and five millions destined
for the army) to being intercepted, rather than to retard this dispatch.
The first thing the Committee of Public Safety have had to care for was to
save the republic and make the administrations fully responsible for it.
They were fully aware of this, and accordingly have allowed the
circulation of these funds... They have been forced, through the wise
management of the Committee, to contribute themselves to the safety of the
republic."]
1164 (return)
[ Archives Nationales,
Letter of Robert Lindet, June 16, AF. II., 43. The correspondence of
Lindet, which is very interesting, well shows the sentiments of the
Lyonnese and the policy of the "Mountain." "However agitated Lyons may be,
order prevails; nobody wants either king or tyrant; all use the same
language: the words republic, union, are in everybody's mouth." (Eight
letters.) He always gives the same advice to the Committee of Public
Safety: "Publish a constitution, publish the motives of the bills of
arrest," which are indispensable to rally everybody to the Convention,
(June 15).]
1165 (return)
[ Guillon de Montléon,
I., 309 (July 24).]
1166 (return)
[ Sauzay, IV., 268.—Paul
Thibaud, 50.—Marcelin Boudet, 185.—Archives Nationales AF.
II., 46. Extract from the registers of the Council of the department of
Loire-Inferieure, July 14. The department protests that its decree of July
5 was not "a rupture with the Convention, an open rebellion against the
laws of the State, an idea very remote from the sentiments and intentions
of the citizens present." Now, "the plan of a Constitution is offered to
the acceptance of the sovereign. This fortunate circumstance should bring
people to one mind, and, with hope thus renewed, let us at once seize on
the means of salvation thus presented to us."—Moniteur, XVII., 102.
(Speech of Cambon, July 11.)]
1167 (return)
[ Louvet, 119, 128,
150, 193.—Meillan, 130, 141. (On the disposition and sentiments of
the provinces and of the public in general, the reader will find ample and
authentic details in the narratives of the fugitives who scattered
themselves in all directions, and especially those of Louvet, Meillan,
Dulaure, and Vaublanc.) Cf. the "Mémoires de Hua" and "Un Séjour en France
in 1792 and 1795."—Mallet-du-Pan already states this disposition
before 1789 (MS. Journal). "June, 1785: The French live simply in a crowd;
they must all cling together. On the promenades they huddle together and
jostle each other in one alley; the same when there is more space." "Aug.,
1787, (after the first riots): I have remarked in general more curiosity
than excitement in the multitude.... One can judge, at this moment, the
national character; a good deal of bravado and nonsense; neither reason,
rule nor method; rebellious in crowds, and not a soul that does not
tremble in the presence of a corporal."]
1168 (return)
[ Meillan, 143.—Mortimer-Ternaux,
VIII., 203. (Session of August 10).—Mallet-du-Pan, "Mémoires," II.,
9.]
1169 (return)
[ Ernest Daudet, "His.
des Conspirations royalistes dans le midi." (Books II. And III.)]
1170 (return)
[ Guillon de Montléon,
I., 313. (Address of a Lyonais to the patriot soldiers under Kellerman.)]
1171 (return)
[ Mortimer-Ternaux,
VIII., 222.—The insurrection of Toulon, Girondist at the start,
dates July 1st.—Letter of the new administrators of Toulon to the
Convention. "W desire the Republic, one and indivisible; there is no sign
of rebellion with us... Representatives Barras and Fréron lie shamefully
in depicting us as anti-revolutionaries, on good terms with the English
and the families of Vendée."—The Toulon administrators continue
furnishing the Italian army with supplies. July 19, an English boat, sent
to parley, had to lower the white flag and hoist the tri-color flag. The
entry of the English into Toulon did not take place before the 29th of
August.]
1172 (return)
[ Guillon de Montléon,
II., 67. (Letter of the Lyonnese to the representatives of the people,
Sep. 20): "The people of Lyons have constantly respected the laws, and if,
as in some departments, that of Rhone-et-Loire was for a moment mistaken
in the events of May 31, they hastened, as soon as they believed that the
Convention was not oppressed, to recognize and execute its decrees. Every
day, now that these reach it, they are published and observed within its
walls."]
1173 (return)
[ Moniteur, XVII., 269.
(Session of July 28). (Letter of the administrators of the department of
Rhone-et-Loire to the Convention, Lyons, July 24). "We present to the
Convention our individual recantation and declaration; in conforming to
the law we are entitled to its protection. We petition the court to decide
on our declaration, and to repeal the acts which relate to us or make an
exception in our favor... We have always professed ourselves to be true
republicans."]
1174 (return)
[ Guillon de Montléon,
I., 309, 311, 315, 335.—Mortimer-Ternaux, VIII., 197.]
1175 (return)
[ Mortimer-Ternaux,
VIII., 141.]
1176 (return)
[ Mallet du Pan, I.,
379 and following pages; I., 408; II., 10.]
1177 (return)
[ Entry of the
Republican troops into Lyons, October 9th, into Toulon, December 19th.—Bordeaux
had submitted on the 2nd of August. Exasperated by the decree of the 6th
which proscribed all the abettors of the insurrection, the city drives
out, on the 19th, the representatives Baudot and Ysabeau. It submits again
on the 19th of September. But so great is the indignation of the citizens,
Tallien and his three colleagues dare not enter before the 16th of
October. (Mortimer-Ternaux, VIII., 197 and following pages.)]
1178 (return)
[ Seventy thousand men
were required to reduce Lyons, (Guillon de Montléon, II., 226) and sixty
thousand men to reduce Toulon.]
1179 (return)
[ Archives des Affaires
étrangères, vol. CCCXXIX. (Letter of Chépy, political agent, Grenoble,
July 26, 1793). "I say it unhesitatingly, I had rather reduce Lyons than
save Valenciennes."]
1180 (return)
[ Ibid., vol. CCCXXIX.
(Letter of Chépy, Grenoble, August 24, 1793): "The Piedmontese are masters
of Cluse. A large body of mountaineers have joined them. At Annecy the
women have cut down the liberty pole and burnt the archives of the club
and commune. At Chambéry, the people wanted to do the same, but they
forced the sick in the hospitals to take arms and thus kept them down."]
1181 (return)
[ Moniteur, XVIII, 474.
(Report of Billaud-Varennes, October 18, 1793). "The combined efforts of
all the powers of Europe have not compromised liberty and the country so
much as the federalist factions; the assassin the most to be dreaded is
the one that lives in the house."]
1182 (return)
[ The convention
purposely reinstates incendiaries and assassins. (Moniteur, XVIII., 483.
Session of Breumaire 28, year II.): XVII., 176. (Session of July 19,
1793). Rehabilitation of Bordier and Jourdain, hung in August, 1789.
Cancelling of the proceedings begun against the authors of the massacre of
Melun (September, 1792) and release of the accused.—Cf. Albert
Babeau, (I., 277.) Rehabilitation, with indemnities distributed in
Messidor, year II, to their relatives.—"Archives des Affaires
étrangères," vol. 331. (Letter of Chépy, Grenoble, Frimaire 8, year II).
"The criminal court and jury of the department have just risen to the
height of the situation; they have acquitted the castle-burners."]
1183 (return)
[ Mortimer-Ternaux,
VIII., 593. (Deputation of twenty-four sections sent from Bordeaux to the
Convention, August 30).—Buchez et Roux, XXVIII., 494. (Report of the
representatives on mission in Bouches-du-Rhône, September 2nd).—Ibid.,
XXX., 386. (Letter of Rousin, commandant of the revolutionary army at
Lyons. "A population of one hundred twenty thousand souls..... There are
not amongst all these, one thousand five hundred patriots, even one
thousand five hundred persons that one could spare."—Guillon de
Montléon, I., 355, 374. (Signatures of twenty thousand Lyonnese of all
classes, August 17th).]
1184 (return)
[ Guillon de Montléon,
I., 394. (Letter of Dubois-Crancé to the Lyonnese, August 19th.)]
1185 (return)
[ Mortimer-Ternaux,
VIII., 198. (Decree of Aug. 6.)—Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 297, (Decree
of July 12.).—Guillon de Montléon, I., 342. Summons of
Dubois-Crancé, Aug. 8.)]
1186 (return)
[ Meillan, 142.).—"Archives
des Affaires Etrangéres," vol. CCCXXXII. (Letter of Desgranges, Bordeaux,
Brumaire 8, year II.): "The execution of Mayor Saige, who was much loved
by the people for his benefactions, caused much sorrow: but no guilty
murmur was heard."]
1187 (return)
[ Archives Nationales,
AF. II., 46. (Letter of Julien to the Committee of Public Safety Messidor
11, year II). "Some time ago a solemn silence prevailed at the sessions of
the military commission, the people's response to the death-sentences
against conspirators; the same silence attended them to the scaffold; the
whole commune seemed to sob in secret at their fate."]
1188 (return)
[ Berryat Saint-Prix,
"La Justice Révolutionaire," pp. 277-299.—Archives Nationales, AF.
II., 46. (Registers of the Com. Of Surveillance, Bordeaux). The number of
prisoners between Prairial 21 and 28, varies from 1504 to 1529. Number of
the guillotined, 882. (Memoirs of Sénart).]
1189 (return)
[ Archives Nationales,
AF. II., 46. Letter of Julien, Messidor 12, year II. "A good deal has been
stolen here; the mayor, now in prison, is informed of considerable losses.
The former Committee of surveillance came under serious suspicion; many
people who were outlawed only escaped by paying: it is a fact that... Of a
number of those who have thus purchased their lives there are some who did
not deserve to die and who, nevertheless, were threatened with death."—Buchez
et Roux, XXXII., 428. (Extracts from the Memoirs of Sénart). "The
president of the military commission was a man named Lacombe, already
banished from the city on account of a judgment against him for robbery.
The other individuals employed by Tallien comprised a lot of valets,
bankrupts and sharpers."]
1190 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXVIII., 493. (Speech by Danton, August 31, and decree in conformity
therewith by the Convention).]
1191 (return)
[ Mallet-Dupan, II.,
17. "Thousands of traders in Marseilles and Bordeaux, here the respectable
Gradis and there the Tarteron, have been assassinated and their goods
sold. I have seen the thirty-second list only of the Marseilles emigres,
whose property has been confiscated.... There are twelve thousand of them
and the lists are not yet complete." (Feb. 1, 1794.)—Anne
Plumptre.2A Narrative of Three years' Residence in France, from 1802 to
1805." "During this period the streets of Marseilles were almost those of
a deserted town. One could go from one end of the town to the other
without meeting any one he could call an inhabitant. The great terrorists,
of whom scarcely one was a Marseillaise, the soldiers and roughs as they
called themselves, were almost the only persons encountered. The latter,
to the number of fifty or sixty, in jackets with leather straps, fell upon
all whom they did not like, and especially on anybody with a clean shirt
and white cravat. Many persons on the "Cours" were thus whipped to death.
No women went out-doors without a basket, while every man wore a jacket,
without which they were taken for aristocrats." (II., 94.)]
1192 (return)
[ "Mémoires de Fréron."
(Collection Barrière and Berville). Letters of Fréron to Moise Bayle,
Brumaire 23, Pluviose 5 and 11, Novose 16, II, published by Moise Bayle,
also details furnished by Huard, pp. 350-365.—Archives Nationales,
AF. II., 144. (Order of representatives Fréron, Barras, Salicetti and
Richard, Novose 17, year II.)]
1193 (return)
[ Mallet-Dupan, II.,
17.—Guillon de Montléon, II., 259.]
1194 (return)
[ Ibid., II., 281.
(Decree of the Convention, Oct. 12); II. 312. (Orders of Couthon and his
colleagues, Oct. 25); II., 366-372 (Instructions of the temporary
commission, Brumaire 26).]
1195 (return)
[ Ibid. III., 153-156.
Letter of Laporte to Couthon, April 13, 1794.]
1196 (return)
[ The contemporary
French Encyclopedia "QUID" ed. Lafont, 1996 states on page 755 that
according to Louis Marie Prudhomme there were 31 000 victims at Lyons.
(SR.)]
1197 (return)
[ Ibid. II. 135-137.
(Resolutions of the Revolutionary Commission, Germinal 17.) and Letters of
Cadillot to Robespierre, Floréal, year II). III., 63.]
1198 (return)
[ Guillon de Montléon,
II., 399. (Letter of Perrotin, member of the temporary commission to the
revolutionary committee of Moulin.) "The work before the new commission
may be considered as an Organization of the Septembrisade; the process
will be the same but legalized by an act passed."]
1199 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXIX., 192. (Decree of October 12).]
11100 (return)
[ Ibid., XXX., 457.
(Decree of November 23).]
11101 (return)
[ "Mémoires de
Fréron." (Letter of Fréron, Nivose 6).—Guillon de Montléon, II.,
391.]
11102 (return)
[ Decrees of October
12 and December 24.—Archives Nationales, AF. II., 44. The
representatives on mission wanted to do the same thing with Marseilles.
(Orders of Fréron, Barras, Salicetti, and Ricard, Nivôse 17, year II.)
"The name of Marseilles, still borne by this criminal city, shall be
changed. The National Convention shall be requested to give it another
name. Meanwhile it shall remain nameless and be thus known." In effect, in
several subsequent documents, Marseilles is called the nameless commune.]
11103 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXVIII., 204. (Session of June 24: "Strong expressions of dissent are
heard on the right." Legendre, "I demand that the first rebel, the first
man there (pointing to the "Right" party) who interrupts the speaker, be
sent to the Abbaye." Couhey, indeed, was sent to the Abbaye for applauding
a Federalist speech.—Cf. on these three months.—Mortimer-Ternaux,
vol. VIII.]
11104 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXIX., 175.—Dauban: "La Démagogie à Paris en 1793," 436 (Narrative
by Dulaure, an eye-witness).]
11105 (return)
[ There were really
only twenty-two brought before the revolutionary tribunal.]
11106 (return)
[ Dauban, XXVI., p.
440. (Narrative of Blanqui, one of the seventy-three.)]
11107 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux.
XXIX., 178, 179. Osselin: "I demand the decree of accusation against them
all."—Amar: "The apparently negative conduct of the minority of the
Convention since the 2nd of June, was a new plot devised by Barbaroux."
Robespierre: "If there are other criminals among those you have placed
under arrest the Committee of General Security will present to you the
nomenclature of them and you will always be at liberty to strike."]
11108 (return)
[ Ibid., XXIX., 432,
437, 447.—Report by Amar. (this report served as the bill of
indictment against them, "cowardly satellites of royal despotism, vile
agents of foreign tyrants."—Wallon, II., 407, 409. (Letter of
Fouquier-Tinville to the convention). "After the special debates, will not
each of the accused demand a general prosecution? The trial, accordingly,
will be interminable. Besides, one may ask why should there be witnesses?
The convention, all France, accuses those on trial. The evidence of their
crimes is plain; everybody is convinced of their guilt.... It is the
Convention which must remove all formalities that interfere with the
course pursued by the tribunal."—Moniteur, XVII., (Session of
October 28), 291. The decree provoked by a petition of Jacobins, is passed
on motion of Osselin, aggravated by Robespierre.]
11109 (return)
[ Louvet, "Mémoires,"
321. (List of the Girondists who perished or who were proscribed.
Twenty-four fugitives survived.)]
11110 (return)
[ Mortimer-Ternaux,
VIII., 395, 416, 435. The terror and disgust of the majority is seen in
the small number of voters. Their abstention from voting is the more
significant in relation to the election of the dictators. The members of
the Committee of Public Safety, elected on the 16th of July, obtain from
one hundred to one hundred and ninety-two votes. The members of the
Committee of Security obtain from twenty-two to one hundred and thirteen
votes. The members of the same committee, renewed on the 11th of
September, obtain from fifty-two to one hundred and eight votes. The
judges of the revolutionary tribunal, completed on the 3rd of August,
obtain from forty-seven to sixty-five votes.—Meillan, 85. (In
relation to the institution of the revolutionary government, on motion of
Bazire, Aug. 28). "Sixty or eighty deputies passed this decree... it was
preceded by another passed by a plurality of thirty against ten. .. For
two months the session the best attended, contains but one hundred
deputies. The Montagnards overran the departments to deceive or intimidate
the people. The rest, discouraged, keep away from the meetings or take no
part in the proceedings."]
11111 (return)
[ The meaning and
motives of this declaration are clearly indicated in Bazire's speech.
"Since the adoption of the Constitution," he says, "Feuillantism has
raised its head; a struggle has arisen between energetic and moderate
patriots. At the end of the Constituent Assembly, the Feuillants possessed
themselves of the words law, order, public, peace, security, to enchain
the zeal of the friends of freedom; the same manoeuvres are practiced
to-day. You must shatter the weapon in your enemies' hands, which they use
against you."—Durand-Maillane, 154. "The simple execution of
constitutional laws," said Bazire, "made for peaceable times, would be
impotent among the conspiracies that surround you."—Meillan, 108.]
11112 (return)
[ Moniteur, XVIII,
106. (Report of Saint-Just on the organization of the revolutionary
government, October 10th, and the decree in conformity therewith.) Ibid.,
473. (Report of Billaud-Varennes on a mode of provisional and
revolutionary government, Nov. 18th, and decree in conformity therewith.)—Ib.,
479 (session of Nov. 22nd, 1793,.—Speech of Hébrard, spokesman of a
deputation from Cantal). "A central committee of surveillance, a
revolutionary army, has been established in our department. Aristocrats,
suspects, the doubtful, moderates, egoists, all gentlemen without
distinguishing those who have done nothing for the revolution from those
who have acted against it, await in retirement the ulterior measures
required by the interests of the Republic. I have said without distinction
of the indifferent from the suspects; for we hold to these words of
Solon's: 'He who is not with us is against us.'"]
11113 (return)
[ The trousers used
in pre-Revolutionary France by the nobility was called culottes, they
terminated just below the knee where the long cotton or silken stockings
would begin. The less affluent used long trousers and no socks and became
known as the Sans-culottes which became, as mentioned in vol. II. a
nickname for the revolutionary proletariat. (SR.)]
11114 (return)
[ Moniteur, (Speech
by Danton, March 26, 1794.) "In creating revolutionary committees the
desire was to establish a species of dictatorship of citizens the most
devoted to liberty over those who rendered themselves suspects."]
11115 (return)
[ Mallet-Dupan, II.,
8. (February, 1794). "At this moment the entire people is disarmed. Not a
gun can be found either in town or country. If anything attests the
super-natural power which the leaders of the Convention enjoy, it is to
see, in one instant, through one act of the will and nobody offering any
resistance, or complaining of it, the nation from Perpignan to Lille,
deprived of every means of defense against oppression, with a facility
still more unprecedented than that which attended the universal arming of
the nation in 1789."—"A Residence in France," II., 409. "The
National Guard as a regular institution was in great part suppressed after
the summer of 1793, those who composed it being gradually disarmed.
Guard-mounting was continued, but the citizens performing this service
were, with very few exceptions, armed with pikes, and these again were not
fully entrusted to them; each man, on quitting his post, gave up his arms
more punctually than if he had been bound to do so through capitulation
with a victorious enemy."]
11116 (return)
[ Moniteur, XVIII.,
106. (Report by Saint-Just, Oct. 10th).]
11117 (return)
[ Ibid., 473. (Report
of Billaud-Varennes, Nov. 13th).]
11118 (return)
[ Ibid., XVIII., 591.
(Speech by Couthon, December 4th). Ibid., Barère: "Electoral assemblies
are monarchical institutions, they attach to royalism, they must be
specially avoided in revolutionary times."]
11119 (return)
[ Mortimer-Ternaux,
VIII., 40. (Decree passed on the proposition of Danton, session of
September 13th). The motive alleged by Danton is that "members are still
found on the committees whose opinions, at least, approach federalism."
Consequently the committees are purified, and particularly the Committee
of General Security. Six of its members are stricken off (Sept. 14), and
the list sent in by the Committee of Public safety passes without
discussion.]
11120 (return)
[ Moniteur, XVIII.,
592. (Session of December 4, speech by Robespierre).]
11121 (return)
[ Miot de Melito,
"Mémoires," I., 47.]
11122 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXVIII., 153. Mortimer-Ternaux, VIII., 443. (Decree of September 28th).—Wallon,
"Histoire du Tribunal Révolutionaire de Paris," IV., 112.]
11123 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXIV., 300. (Trial of Fouquier-Tinville and associates). Bill of
indictment: "One of these publicly boasted of always having voted death.
Others state that they were content to see people to give their judgment;
physical inspection alone determined them to vote death. Another said,
that when there was no offense committed it was necessary to imagine one.
Another is a regular sot and has never sat in judgment but in a state of
intoxication. Others came to the bench only to fire their volleys." Etc.
(Supporting evidence.)—"Observe, moreover, that judges and juries
are bound to kill under penalty of death (Ibid.,30)." Fouquier-Tinville
states that on the 22nd of Prairial he took the same step (to resign) with
Chatelet, Brochet and Lerry, when they met Robespierre, returning to the
National Convention arm-in-arm with Barère. Fouquier adds, that they were
treated as aristocrats and anti-revolutionaries, and threatened with death
if they refused to remain on their posts." Analogous declarations by
Pigeot, Ganne, Girard, Dupley, Foucault, Nollin and Madre. "Sellier adds,
that the tribunal having remonstrated against the law of Prairial 22, he
was threatened with arrest by Dumas. Had we resigned, he says, Dumas would
have guillotined us.]
11124 (return)
[ Moniteur, XXIV.,
12. (Session of Ventôse 29, year III., speech by Baileul). "Terror subdued
all minds, suppressed all emotions; it was the force of the government,
while such was this government that the numerous inhabitants of a vast
territory seemed to have lost the qualities which distinguish man from a
domestic animal. They seemed even to have no life except what the
government accorded to them. Human personality no longer existed; each
individual was simply a machine, going, coming, thinking or not thinking
as he was impelled or stimulated by tyranny."]
11125 (return)
[ Decree of Frimaire
14, year II., Dec. 4, 1793.]
11126 (return)
[ Moniteur, XVII.,
473, 474, 478. (Speech by Billaud-Varennes). "The sword of Damocles must
henceforth be brandished over the entire surface." This expression of
Billaud sums up the spirit of every new institution.]
11127 (return)
[ Moniteur, XVIII.,
275. (Session of Oct. 26. 1793, speech by Barère.) "This is the most
revolutionary step you can take." (Applause.)]
11128 (return)
[ Ibid., 520. (Report
of Barère and decree in conformity). "The representatives sent on mission
are required to conform strictly to the acts of the Committee of Public
Safety. Generals and other agents of the executive power will, under no
pretext, obey any special order, that they may refuse to carry out the
said acts."—Moniteur, XVIII., 291. (Report by Barère, Oct. 29,
1793.) At this date one hundred and forty representatives are on mission.]
11129 (return)
[ Archives
Nationales, AF. II., 22. (Papers of the 'Committee of Public Safety. Note
on the results of the revolutionary government without either date or
signature.) "The law of Frimaire 14 created two centers of influence from
which action spread, in the sense of the Committee, and which affected the
authorities. These two pivots of revolutionary rule outside the Committee
were the representatives of the people on missions and the national agents
controlling the district committees. The word revolutionary government
alone exercised an incalculable magical influence."—Mallet-Dupan,
"Mémoires," II., p. 2, and following pages.]
Program of the Jacobin party.—Abstract principle and
spontaneous development of the theory.
Nothing is more dangerous than a general idea in narrow and empty minds: as they are empty, it finds no knowledge there to interfere with it; as they are narrow it is not long before it occupies the place entirely. Henceforth they no longer belong to themselves but are mastered by it; it works in them and through them, the man, in the true sense of the word, being possessed. Something which is not himself, a monstrous parasite, a foreign and disproportionate conception, lives within him, developing and giving birth to the evil purposes with which it is pregnant. He did not foresee that he would have them; he did not know what his dogma contained, what venomous and murderous consequences were to issue from it. They issue from it fatally, each in its turn, and under the pressure of circumstances, at first anarchical consequences and now despotic consequences. Having obtained power, the Jacobin brings his fixed idea along with him; whether at the head of the government or in opposition to it, this idea is fruitful, and the all-powerful dogma projects over a new domain the innumerable links of its endless chain.
The Jacobin concept of Society.—The Contrat-Social.—Total
surrender of the Individual to the Community.—Everything
belongs to the State.—Confiscations and Sequestrations.
—Pre-emption and requisition and requisition of produce and
merchandise.—Individuals belong to the State.—Drafts of
persons for Military service.—Drafts of persons for the
Civil service.—The State philanthropist, educator,
theologian, moralist, censor and director of ideas and
intimate feelings.
Let us trace this inward development and go back, along with the Jacobin, to first principles, to the original pact, to the first organization of society. There is but one just and sound society, the one founded on the "contrat-social," and
"the clauses of this contract, fully understood, reduce themselves to one, the total transfer of each individual, with all his rights, to the community,.... each surrendering himself up absolutely, just as he actually stands, he and all his forces, of which the property he possesses forms a part."2101
There must be no exception or reservation. Nothing of what he previously was, or had, now belongs to him in his own right; henceforth, what he is, or has, devolves upon him only through delegation. His property and his person now form a portion of the commonwealth. If he is in possession of these, his ownership is at second hand; if he derives any benefit there from, it is as a concession. He is their depository, trustee and administrator, and nothing more.2102 In other words, with respect to these he is simply a managing director, that is to say a functionary like others, with a precarious appointment and always revocable by the State which has appointed him.
"As nature gives to every man absolute power over the members of his body the social pact gives the social body absolute power over all its members."
The State, as omnipotent sovereign and universal proprietor, exercises at discretion, its boundless rights over persons and things; consequently we, its representatives, take all things and persons into our hands; as they belong to it, so do they belong to us.
We have confiscated the possessions of the clergy, amounting to about four billion livres; we confiscate the property of the emigrés, amounting to three billion livres;2103 we confiscate the property of the guillotined and deported: all this amounts to some hundreds of millions; later on, the count will be made, because the list remains open and is being daily added to. We will sequestrate the property of "suspects," which gives us the right to use it: here are many hundred millions more; after the war and the banishment of "suspects," we shall seize the property along with its income: here, again, are billions of capital.2104 Meanwhile we take the property of hospitals and of other benevolent institutions, about eight hundred million livres; we take the property of factories, of endowments, of educational institutions, and of literary and scientific associations: another lot of millions.2105 We take back the domains rented or surrendered by the State for the past three centuries and more, which gives again about a couple of billions.2106 We take the possessions of the communes up to the amount of their indebtedness. We have already received as inheritance the ancient domains of the crown, also the later domain of the civil list. More than three-fifths2107 of the soil thus falls into our hands, which three-fifths are much the best stocked; they comprise almost all the large and fine edifices, châteaux, abbeys, mansions, houses of superintendents and nearly all the royal, episcopal, seigniorial and bourgeois stock of rich and elegant furniture; all plate, libraries, pictures and artistic objects accumulated for centuries.—Remark, again, the seizure of specie and all other articles of gold and silver; in the months alone of November and December, 1793, this swoop puts into our coffers three or four hundred millions,2108 not assignats, but ringing coin. In short, whatever the form of established capital may be we take all we can get hold of, probably more than three-fourths of it.—There remains the portion which is not fixed capital, that which disappears in use, namely, all that is consumed, all the fruits of the soil, every description of provision, all the products of human art and labor which contribute the maintenance of existence. Through "the right of pre-emption" and through the right of "requisition," "the Republic becomes temporary proprietor of whatever commerce, manufacture and agriculture have produced and added to the soil of France: "all food and merchandise is ours before being owned by their holder. We carry out of his house whatever suits us; we pay him for this with worthless paper; we frequently do not pay him at all. For greater convenience, we seize objects directly and wherever we find them, grain in the farmer's barn, hay in the reaper's shed, cattle in the fold, wine in the vats, hides at the butcher's, leather in the tanneries, soap, tallow, sugar, brandy, cloths, linens and the rest, in stores, depots and ware-houses. We stop vehicles and the horses in the street. We enter the premises of mail or coach contractors and empty their stables. We carry away kitchen utensils to obtain the copper; we turn people out of their rooms to get their beds; we strip them of their coats and shirts; in one day, we make ten thousand individuals in one town go barefoot.2109
"When public needs require it," says representative Isoré, "all belongs to the people and nothing to individuals."
By virtue of the same right we dispose of persons as we do of things. We decree the levy en masse and, stranger still, we carry it out, at least in many parts of the country, and we keep it up for months: in Vendée, and in the northern and eastern departments, it is the entire male, able-bodied population, up to fifty years of age, which we drive in herds against the enemy.2110 We afterwards sign an entire generation on, all young men between eighteen and twenty-five, almost a million of men:2111 whoever fails to appear is put in irons for ten years; he is regarded as a deserter; his property is confiscated, and his family is punished as well; later he is classed with the emigrants, condemned to death, and his father, mother and progenitors, treated as "suspects," imprisoned and their possessions taken.—To clothe, shoe and equip our recruits, we must have workmen; we summon to head-quarters all gunsmiths, blacksmiths and locksmiths, all the tailors and shoemakers of the district, "foremen, apprentices and boys;"2112 we imprison those who do not come; we install the rest in squads in public buildings and assign them their tasks; they are forbidden to furnish anything to private individuals. Henceforth, French shoemakers must work only for us, and each must deliver to us, under penalty, so many pairs of shoes per decade.2113—But, the civil service is no less important than the military service, and to feed the people is as urgent as it is to defend them. Hence we put "in requisition all who have anything to do with handling, transporting or selling provisions and articles of prime necessity,"2114 especially combustibles and food—wood-choppers, carters, raftsmen, millers, reapers, threshers, wine-growers, movers, field-hands, "country people" of every kind and degree. Their hands belong to us: we make them bestir themselves and work under the penalty of fine and imprisonment. There shall be no idlers, especially in crop time: we take the entire population of a commune or canton into the fields, comprising "the lazy of both sexes;"2115 willingly or not, they shall do the harvesting under our eyes, banded together in fields belonging to others as well as in their own, and they shall put the sheaves indiscriminately into the public granary.
But in labor all hangs together, from the initial undertaking to the final result, from the raw material to the most finished production, from the great manufacturer down to the pettiest jobber; grasping the first link of the chain involves grasping the last one. The requisition here again answers the purpose: we apply it to all pursuits; each is bound to continue his own; the manufacturer to manufacture, the trader to trade, even to his own detriment, because, if he works at a loss, the public profits, and every good citizen ought to prefer public profit to his own profit.2116 In effect, let his office be what it will, he is an employee of the community; therefore, the community may not only prescribe task-work to him, but select his task; it need not consult him in the matter, for he has no right to refuse. Hence it is that we appoint or maintain people in spite of themselves, in the magistracy, in the army and in every other species of employment. In vain may they excuse themselves or try get out of the way; they must remain or become generals, judges, mayors, national agents, town councilors, commissioners of public welfare or administration,2117 even against their will. Too bad for them if the responsibility is expensive or dangerous, if they have no time for leisure, if they do not feel themselves qualified for it, if the rank or services seems to them to lead to a prison or the guillotine; when they declare that the work is forced labor we reply that they liable to work for the State.—Such is, henceforth, the condition of all Frenchmen, and likewise of all French women. We force mothers to take their daughters to the meetings of popular clubs. We oblige women to parade in companies, and march in procession at republican festivals; we invade the family and select the most beautiful to be draped as antique goddesses, and publicly promenaded on a chariot; we sometimes even designate those among the rich who must wed patriots2118: there is no reason why marriage, which is the most important of all services, should not be put in requisition like the others.—Accordingly, we enter families, we carry of the child, we subject him to a civic education. We are schoolmasters, philanthropists, theologians, and moralists. We impose by force our religion and our ritual, our morality and our social customs. We lord it over private lives and consciences; we dictate ideas, we scrutinize and punish secret inclinations, we tax, imprison and guillotine not only the evil-disposed, but again "the indifferent, the moderate and the egoists."2119 Over and above his visible acts we dictate to the individual his ideas and his deepest feelings; we prescribe to him his affections as well as his beliefs, and, according to a preconceived type, we refashion his intellect, his conscience and his sensibilities.
The object of the State is the regeneration of man.—Two
sides to this undertaking.—Restoration of the Natural man.
—Formation of the Social man.—Grandeur of the undertaking.
—To carry it out, the use of force is a right and a duty.
There is nothing arbitrary in this operation; for the ideal model is traced beforehand. If the State is omnipotent, it is for the purpose of "regenerating Mankind," and the theory which confers its rights, at the same time assigns to it its object. In what does this regeneration of Man consist?—Consider a domestic animal such as a dog or a horse. Scrawny, battered, tied up or chained, a thousand are strained and overworked compared to the few basking in idleness, dying from rich living; and with all of them, whether fat or lean, the soul is more spoiled than the body. A superstitious respect keeps them cowed under their burden, or makes them cringe before their master. Servile, slothful, gluttonous, feeble, incapable of resisting adversity, if they have acquired the miserable skills of slavery, they have also contracted its needs, weaknesses and vices. A crust of absurd habits and perverse inclinations, a sort of artificial and supplementary being, has covered over their original nature.—And, on the other hand, the better side of their original nature has had no chance to develop itself, for lack of use. Separated from the other, these two parts of its nature have not acquired the sentiment of community; they do not know, like their brethren of the prairies, how to help each other and subordinate private interests to the interests of the flock. Each pulls his own way, nobody cares for others, all are egoists; social interests have miscarried.—Such is Man nowadays, a disfigured slave that has to be restored. Our task, accordingly is two-fold: we have to demolish and we have to construct; we must first set free the natural Man that we may afterwards build up the social Man.
It is a vast enterprise and we are conscious of its vastness.
"It is necessary," says Billaud-Varennes,2120 "that the people to which one desires to restore their freedom should in some way be created anew, since old prejudices must be destroyed, old habits changed, depraved affections improved, superfluous wants restricted, and inveterate vices extirpated."
But the task is sublime, as the aim is "to fulfill the desires of nature,2121 accomplish the destinies of humanity, and fulfill the promises of philosophy".—"Our purpose," says Robespierre,2122 "is to substitute morality for egoism, honesty for honor, principles for custom, duties for etiquette, the empire of reason for the tyranny of fashion, contempt of vice for indifference to misfortune, pride for arrogance, a noble mind for vanity, love of glory for the love of profit, good people for high society, merit for intrigue, genius for intellectual brilliancy, the charm of contentment for the boredom of voluptuous pleasure, the majesty of Man for the high-breeding of the great, a magnanimous, powerful and happy people for an amiable, frivolous and wretched people, that is to say, every virtue and miracle of the Republic in the place of the vices and absurdities of the monarchy."
We will do this, the whole of it, whatever the cost. Little do we care for the present generation: we are working for generations to come.
"Man, forced to isolate himself from society, anchors himself in the future and presses to his heart a posterity innocent of existing evils."2123
He sacrifices to this work his own and the lives of others.
"On the day that I am persuaded," writes Saint-Just, "that it is impossible to render the French people kind, energetic, tender and relentless against tyranny and injustice, I will stab myself."
—"What I have done in the South I will do in the North," says Baudot; "I will convert them into patriots; either they or I must die."—
"We will make France a cemetery," says Carrier, "rather than not regenerate it our own way."
In vain may the ignorant or the vicious protest; they protest because they are ignorant or vicious. In vain may the individual plead his personal rights; he has none: through the social contract, which is obligatory and solely valid, he has surrendered his entire being; having made no reservation, "he has nothing to claim." Undoubtedly, some will grumble, because, with them, the old wrinkle remains and artificial habits still cover over the original instinct. Untie the mill-horse, and he will still go round in the same track; let the mountebank's dog be turned loose, and he will still raise himself on his hind-legs; if we would bring them back to their natural gait we must handle them roughly. In like manner, to restore Man to his normal attitude, you must handle him roughly. But, in this respect, have no scruples,2124 for we do not bow him down, we raise him up; as Rousseau says, "we compel him to be free;" we confer on him the greatest boon a human being can receive; we bring him back to nature and to justice. For this reason, now that he is warned, if he persists in his resistance, he is a criminal and merits every kind of chastisements2125, for, he declares himself a rebel and a perjurer, inimical to humanity, and a traitor to the social compact.
Two distortions of the natural man.—Positive religion.
—Proscription of the orthodox cult.—Measures against unsworn
priests.—Measures against the loyal orthodox.—Destruction
of the constitutional cult.—Pressure on the sworn priests.
—Churches closed and ceremonies suppressed.—Continuation of
these persecutions until the Consulate.
Let us (Taine lets the Jacobin say) begin by figuring to ourselves the natural man; certainly we of to-day have some difficulty in recognizing him; he bears but little resemblance to the artificial being who (in 1789) stands in his shoes, the creature which an antiquated system of constraint and fraud has deformed, held fast in his hereditary harness of thralldom and superstition, blinded by his religion and held in check by prestige, exploited by his government and tamed by dint of blows, always with a halter on, always put to work in the wrong way and against nature, whatever stall he may occupy, high or low, however full or empty his crib may be, now in menial service like the blinded hack-horse turning the mill-wheel, and now on parade like a trained dog which, decked with flags, shows off its antics before the public.2126 But imagine all these out of the way, the flags and the bands, the fetters and compartments in the social stable, and you will see a new man appearing, the original man, intact and healthy in mind, soul and body.—In this condition, he is free of prejudice, he is not ensnared in a net of lies, he is neither Jew, Protestant nor Catholic; if he tries to imagine the universe as a whole and the principle of events, he will not let himself be duped by a pretended revelation; he will listen only to his own reason; he may chance, now and then, to become an atheist, but, generally, he will settle down into a deist.—In this condition of things he is not fettered by a hierarchy; he is neither noble nor commoner, land-owner nor tenant, inferior nor superior. Independent of the others, all are equal, and, if all agree in the forming of an association, their common-sense will stipulate that its first article shall secure the maintenance of this primordial equality.—Such is man, as nature made him, as history has unmade him, and as the Revolution is to re-make him.2127 One cannot batter away too vigorously against the two casings that hold him tight, one the positive religion which narrows and perverts his intellect, and the other the social inequality which perverts and weakens his will;2128 for, at every effort, some band is loosened, and, as each band gives way, the paralyzed limbs recover their action.
Let us trace, (say the Jacobins), the progress of this liberating operation.—Always timid and at loggerheads with the ecclesiastical organization, the Constituent Assembly could take only half-measures; it cut into the bark without daring to drive the ax into the solid trunk. Its work reduced itself down to the confiscation of clerical property, to a dissolution of the religious orders, and to a check upon the authority of the pope; its object was to establish a new church and transform priests into sworn functionaries of the State, and this was all. As if Catholicism, even administrative, would cease to be Catholicism! As if the noxious tree, once stamped with the public seal, would cease to be noxious! Instead of the old laboratory of falsehoods being destroyed another one is officially established alongside of it, so that there are now two instead of one. With or without the official label it operates in every commune in France and, as in the past, it distributes with impunity its drug to the public. This is precisely what we, (the Jacobins) cannot tolerate.—We must, indeed, keep up appearances, and, as far as words go, we will decree anew freedom of worship.2129 But, in fact and in practice, we will demolish the laboratory and prevent the drug from being sold; there shall no longer be any Catholic worship in France, no baptism, no confession, no marriage, no extreme unction, no mass; nobody shall preach or listen to a sermon; nobody shall administer or receive a sacrament, save in secret, and with the prospect before him of imprisonment or the scaffold.—With this object in mind, we do one thing at a time. There is no problem with the Church claiming to be be orthodox: its members having refused to take the oath are outlaws; one excludes oneself from an association when one repudiates the pact; they have lost their qualifications as citizens and have become ordinary foreigners under the surveillance of the police; and, as they propagate around them discontent and disobedience, they are not only foreigners but seditious persons, enemies in disguise, the authors of a secret and widespread Vendée; it is not necessary for us to prosecute them as charlatans, it is sufficient to strike them down as rebels. As such, we have already banished from France all unsworn ecclesiastics, about forty thousand priests, and we are deporting those who did not cross the frontier within the allotted time: we allow only sexagenarians and the infirm to remain on French soil, and, again, as prisoners and in seclusion; they incur the penalty of death if they do not of their own accord report to the prisons of their country town; the banished who return home incur the penalty of death, and there is penalty of death against those who shelter priests.2130 Consequently, in default of an orthodox clergy, there must no longer be an orthodox worship; the most dangerous of the two manufactories of superstition is shut down. That the sale of this poisonous food may be more surely stopped we punish those who ask for it the same as those who provide it, and we prosecute not only the pastors, but, again, the fanatics of the flock; if these are not the authors of the ecclesiastical rebellion they are its promoters and accomplices. Now, thanks to the schism among them, we already know who they are, and, in each commune, the list is made out. We style as fanatics all who reject the ministry of the sworn priests, the bourgeois who calls him an interloper, all the nuns who do not confess to him, all the peasants who stay away from his mass, all the old women who do not kiss his paten, and all the relations of an infant who do not wish him to baptize it. All these people and those who associate with them, whether allied, close relatives, friends, guests or visitors, of whatever class, either men or women, are seditious at heart, and, therefore, "suspects." We deprive them of their electoral rights, we withdraw their pensions, we impose on them special taxation, we confine them to their dwellings, we imprison them by thousands, and guillotine them by hundreds; the rest will gradually become discouraged and abandon an impracticable cult.2131—The lukewarm remain, the sheep-like crowd which holds on to its rites: the Constituent Assembly will seize them wherever it finds them, and, as they are the same in the authorized as in the refractory church, instead of seeking them with the priest who does not submit, it will seek them with the one who does. But it will proceed without zeal, without confidence, often even with distrust, questioning itself whether these rites, being administered by one who is excommunicated, are not of doubtful quality. Such a church is not sound, and we have only to give it a push to knock it down. We will do all we can to discredit constitutional priests: we will prohibit them from wearing the ecclesiastical costume, and force them by law to bestow the nuptial benediction on their apostate brethren; we will employ terror and imprisonment to constrain them to marry; we will given them no respite until they return to civil life, some admitting themselves to be impostors, many by surrendering their priestly credentials, and most of them by resigning their places.2132 Deprived of leaders by these voluntary or forced desertions, the Catholic flock will allow itself to be easily led out of the fold, while, to remove all temptation to go back, we will tear the enclosure down. In the communes in which we are masters we will make the Jacobins of the place demand the abolition of worship, while, in other communes, we will get rid of this authoritatively through our missionary representatives. We will close the churches, demolish the steeples, melt down the bells, send all sacred vessels to the Mint, smash the images of the saints, desecrate relics, prohibit religious burials, impose the civil burial, prescribe rest during the décadi2133 and labor on Sundays. No exception whatever. Since all positive religions deal in error, we will outlaw them all: we will exact from Protestant clergymen a public abjuration; we will not let the Jews practice their ceremonies; we will have "an 'auto-da-fé,' of all the books and symbols of the faith of Moses."2134 But, of all these various juggling machines, the worst is the Catholic, the most hostile to nature due to the celibacy of its priesthood, the most opposed to reason in the absurdity of its dogmas, the most opposed to democracy, since its powers are delegated from above downwards, the best protected from civil authority because its head is outside of France.2135 Accordingly, we must be most furious against it; even after Thermidor,2136 we will keep up constant persecution, great and small; up to the Consulate, we will deport and shoot the priests, we will revive against fanatics the laws of the Reign of Terror, we will hamper their movements, we will exhaust their patience; we will keep them anxious during the day and restless at night; we will not give them a moment's repose.2137 We will restrict the population to the decadal cult only; we will change the market-days, so that no believer shall be able to buy fish on a fast-day.2138—We have nothing more at heart than this war against Catholicism; no article on our program will be carried out with more determination and perseverance. The question involved is truth. We are its guardians, its champions, its ministers, and never did the servants of truth apply force with such minute detail and such effect to the extirpation of error.
Social inequality.—Malice of the aristocratic race.
—Measures against the King and Nobles.—Malice of the
aristocracy of wealth.—Measures against landowners,
capitalists and people with incomes.—Destruction of large
fortunes.—Measures taken to prevent the large fortunes in
reconstituting themselves.
Next to superstition there is another monster to be destroyed, and, also here it was the Constituent Assembly that had begun the assault. But it had also, through lack of courage or of logic, it stopped, after two or three feeble blows:
* Banning of heraldic insignia, titles of nobility and territorial names;
* abolition, without indemnity, of all the dues belonging to the seigneur by right of his former proprietorship over persons;
* abolition of the permission to purchase other feudal rights at a price agreed upon,
* limitation of royal power. This was little enough. When it concerns usurpers and tyrants they must be treated in another fashion; for their privilege is, of itself, an outrage on the rights of man. Consequently,
* we (the Jacobins) have dethroned the King and cut off his head;2139
* we have suppressed, without indemnity, the entire feudal debt, comprising the rights vested in the seigneurs by virtue of their being owners of real-estate, and merely lessors;
* we have abandoned their persons and possessions to the claims and rancor of local jacqueries;
* we have reduced them to emigration;
* we imprison them if they stay at home;
* we guillotine them if they return.
(As the aristocrats are)Reared in habits of supremacy, and convinced that they are of a different species from other men, the prejudices of their race are incorrigible; they are incapable of companionship with their social equals; we cannot too carefully crush them out, or, at the very least, hold them firmly down.2140 Besides, they are guilty from the fact of having existed; for, they have taken both the lead and the command without any right to do so, and, in violation of all right, they have misused mankind; having enjoyed their rank, it is but just that they should pay for it. Privileged in reverse, they must be treated the same as vagabonds were treated under their reign,
* stopped by the police and sent off with their families into the interior,
* crowded into prisons,
* executed in a mass, or, at least,
* expelled from Paris, the seaports and fortified towns, put on the limits,
* compelled to present themselves daily at the municipality,
* deprived of their political rights,
* excluded from public offices, "popular clubs, committees of supervision and from communal and section assemblages."2141
Even this is indulgence; branded with infamy, we ought to class them with galley-slaves, and set them to work on the public highways.2142
"Justice condemns the people's enemies and the partisans of tyranny to eternal slavery."2143
But that is not enough, because, apart from the aristocracy of rank, there are other aristocracies which the Constituent Assembly has left untouched,2144 especially the aristocracy of wealth. Of all the sovereignties, that of the rich man over the poor one is the most burdensome. In effect, not only, in contempt of equality, does he consume more than his share of the common products of labor, and without producing anything himself, but again, in contempt of liberty, he may fix wages as he pleases, and, in contempt of humanity, he always fixes them at the lowest point. Between himself and the needy he never makes other than the most unjust contracts. Sole possessor of land, capital and the necessities of life, he imposes conditions which others, deprived of means, are forced to accept at the risk of starvation; he speculates at his discretion on wants which cannot be put off, and makes the most of his monopoly by maintaining the poor in their destitute situations. That is why, writes Saint Just:2145
"Opulence is a disgrace; for every thousand livres expenditure of this kind a smaller number of natural or adopted children can be looked after."—
"The richest Frenchman," says Robespierre, "ought not to have now more three thousand livres rental."—
Beyond what is strictly necessary, no property is legitimate; we have the right to take the superfluous wherever we find it. Not only to-day, because we now require it for the State and for the poor, but at all times, because the superfluous, in all times, confers on its owner an advantage in contracts, a control of wages, an arbitrary power over the means of living, in short, a supremacy of condition worse than preeminence in rank. Consequently, our hand is not only against the nobles, but also against the rich and well-to-do bourgeois2146 the large land-owners and capitalists; we are going to demolish their crafty feudalism from top to bottom.2147—In the first place, and merely through the effect of the new institutions, we prevent any capitalist from deducting, as he is used to do, the best portion of the fruits of another's labor; the hornets shall no longer, year after year, consume the honey of the bees. To bring this about, we have only to let the assignats (paper money) and their forced rate (of exchange) work things out. Through the depreciation of paper-money, the indolent land-owner or capitalist sees his income melting away in his hands; his receipts consist only of nominal values. On the 1st of January, his tenant pays him really for a half term instead of a full term; on the 1st of March, his farmer settles his account with a bag of grain.2148 The effect is just the same as if we had made fresh contracts, and reduced by one-half, three-quarters, or, even more, the rate of interest on loans, the rent of houses and the leases of farm lands.—Whilst the revenue of the landlord evaporates, his capital melts away, and we do the best we can to help this along. If he has claims on ancient corporations or civil and religious establishments of any description, whether provincial governments, congregations, associations, endowments or hospitals, we withdraw his special guarantee; we convert his title-deeds into a state annuity, we combine his private fortune with the public fortune whether he will or not, we drag him into the universal bankruptcy, toward which we are conducting all the creditors of the Republic.2149—Besides, to ruin him, we have more direct and prompt means. If an émigré, and there are hundreds of thousands of émigrés, we confiscate his possessions. If he has been guillotined or deported, and there are tens of thousands of these, we confiscate his possessions. If he is "recognized as an enemy of the Revolution,"2150 and "all the rich pray for the counter-revolution,"2151 we sequestrate his property, enjoying the usufruct of it until peace is declared, and we shall have the property after the war is over. Usufruct or property, the State, in either case, inherits; at the most we might grant temporary aid to the family, which is not even entitled to maintenance.
It is impossible to uproot fortunes more thoroughly. As to those which are not at once eradicated we get rid of them piecemeal, and against these we employ two axes:
On the one hand, we decree the principle of progressive taxation, and on this basis we establish the forced loan:2152 in incomes, we distinguish between the essential and the surplus; we fix according as the excess is greater or less we take a quarter, a third or the half of it, and, when above nine thousand francs, the whole; beyond its small alimentary reserve, the most opulent family will keep only four thousand five hundred francs income.
On the other hand, we cut deep into capital through revolutionary taxes; our committees and provincial proconsuls levy arbitrarily what suits them, three hundred, five hundred, up to one million two hundred thousand francs,2153 on this or that banker, trader, bourgeois or widow, payable within a week; all the worse for the person taxed if he or she has no money on hand and is unable to borrow it; we declare them "suspects," we imprison them, we sequestrate their property and the State enjoys it in their place.
In any event, even when the amount is paid, we force him or her to deposit their silver and gold coin in our hands, sometimes with assignats as security, and often nothing; henceforth, money must circulate and the precious metals are in requisition;2154 everybody will deliver up what plate he possesses. And let nobody presume to conceal his hoard; all treasure, whether silver-plate, diamonds, ingots, gold or silver, coined or un-coined, "discovered, or that may be discovered, buried in the ground or concealed in cellars, inside of walls or in garrets, under floors, pavements, or hearthstones, or in chimneys and other hiding places,"2155 becomes the property of the Republic, with a premium of twenty per cent. in assignats to the informer.—As, furthermore, we make requisitions for bed-linen, beds, clothes, provisions, wines and the rests, along with specie and precious metals, the condition of the mansion may be imagined, especially after we have lodged in it; it is the same as if the house had been on fire; all movable property and all real estate have perished.—Now that both are destroyed they must not be allowed to accumulate again. To ensure this,
1. we abolish, according to rule, the freedom of bequest,2156
2. we prescribe equal and obligatory divisions of all inheritances;2157
3. we include bastards in this under the same title as legitimate children;
4. we admit representation à l'infini,2158 "in order to multiply heirs and parcel out inheritances;"2159
5. we reduce the disposable portion to one-tenth, in the direct line, and one-sixth in a collateral line;
6. we forbid any gift to persons whose income exceeds one thousand quintals of grain;
7. we inaugurate adoption, "an admirable institution," and essentially republican, "since it brings about a division of large properties without a crisis."
Already, in the Legislative Assembly a deputy had stated that "equal rights could be maintained only by a persistent tendency to uniformity of fortunes."2160
We have provided for this for the present day and we likewise provide for it in the future.—None of the vast tumors which have sucked the sap of the human plant are to remain; we have cut them away with a few telling blows, while the steady-moving machine, permanently erected by us, will shear off their last tendrils should they change to sprout again.
Conditions requisite for making a citizen.—Plans for
suppressing poverty.—Measures in favor of the poor.
In returning Man to his natural condition we have prepared for the advent of the Social Man. The object now is to form the citizen, and this is possible only through a leveling of conditions. In a well made society there shall be "neither rich nor poor"2161: we have already destroyed the opulence which corrupts; it now remains for us to suppress the poverty which degrades. Under the tyranny of material things, which is as oppressive as the tyranny of men, Man falls below himself. Never will a citizen be made out of a poor fellow condemned to remain valet, hireling or beggar, reduced to thinking only of himself and his daily bread, asking in vain for work, or, plodding when he gets it, twelve hours a day at a monotonous pursuit, living like a beast of burden and dying in a alms-house.2162 He should have his own bread, his own roof, and all that is indispensable for life; he must not be overworked, nor suffer anxiety or constraint;
"he must live independently, respect himself, have a tidy wife and healthy and robust children."2163
The community should guarantee him comfort, security, the certainty of not going hungry if he becomes infirm, and, if he dies, of not leaving his family in want.
"It is not enough," says Barère,2164 "to bleed the rich, to pull down colossal fortunes; the slavery of poverty must be banished from the soil of the Republic. No more beggars, no more almsgiving, no poor-houses".
"The poor and unfortunates," says Saint Just, "are the powerful of the earth; they have a right to speak as masters to the governments which neglect them;2165 they have a right to national charity.... In a democracy under construction, every effort should be made to free people from having to battle for the bare minimum needed for survival; by labor if he is fit for work, by education if he is a child, or with public assistance if he is an invalid or in old age."2166
And never had the moment been so favorable. "Rich in property, the Republic now expects to use the many millions the rich would have spent on a counter revolution for the improvement of the conditions of its less fortunate citizens... Those who would assassinate liberty have made it the richer. The possessions of conspirators exist for the benefit of the unfortunate."2167—Let the poor take with a clear conscience: it is not a charity but "an indemnity" which we provide for them; we save their pride by providing for their comfort, and we relieve them without humiliating them.
"We leave charity and benevolent works to the monarchies; this insolent and shabby way of furnishing assistance is fit only for slaves and masters; we substitute for it a system of national works, on a grand scale, over the whole territory of the Republic."2168
On the other hand, we cause a statement to be drawn up in each commune, of "the condition of citizens without property," and "of national possessions not disposed of;" we divide these possession in small lots; we distribute them "in the shape of national sales" to poor folks able to work. We give, "through the form of rental, "an acre to each head of a family who has less than an acre of his own. "We thus bind all citizens to the country as well as to property. We restore idle and robust arms to the soil, and lost or weakened families to the workshops in the towns."—As to old and infirm farmers or craftsmen, also poor mothers, wives and widows of artisans and farmers, we keep in each department a "big ledger of national welfare;" we inscribe thereon for every thousand inhabitants, four farmers, two mechanics, five women, either mothers or widows; each registered person shall be pensioned by the State, the same as a maimed soldier; labor-invalids are as respectable as war-invalids.—Over and above those who are thus aided on account of poverty, we relieve and elevate the entire poor class, not alone the thirteen hundred thousand destitutes counted in France,2169 but, again, all who, having little or no means on hand, live from day to day on what they can earn. We have passed a law2170 by which the public treasury shall, through a tax on large fortunes, "furnish to each commune or district the necessary funds for adapting the price of bread to the rate of wages." Our representatives in the provinces impose on the wealthy the obligation of "lodging, feeding, and clothing all infirm, aged, and indigent citizens and orphans of their respective cantons."2171 Through the decree on monopolization and the establishment of the "maximum" we bring within reach of the poor all objects of prime necessity. We pay them forty sous a day for attending district meetings; and three francs a day for serving on committees of surveillance. We recruit from amongst them our revolutionary army;2172 we select amongst them the innumerable custodians of sequesters: in this way, hundreds of thousands of sans-culottes enter into the various public services.—At last, the poor are taken out of a state of poverty: each will now have his plot of ground, his salary or pension;
"in a well-ordered republic nobody is without some property."2173
Henceforth, among individuals, the difference in welfare will be small; from the maximum to the minimum, there will be only a degree, while there will be found in every dwelling about the same sort of household, a plain, simple household, that of the small rural proprietor, well-off farmer or factory foreman; that of Rousseau at Montmorency, or that of the Savoyard Vicar, or that of Duplay, the carpenter, with whom Robespierre lodges.2174 There will be no more domestic servitude: "only the bond of help and gratitude will exists between employer and employee."2175—He who works for another citizen belongs to his family and sits at his table."2176—Through the transformation of lower social classes into middle class conditions we restore human dignity, and out of the proletarian, the valet and the workman, we begin to liberate the citizen.
Repression of Egoism.—Measures against farmers,
manufacturers and merchants.—Socialist projects.
—Repression of Federalism.—Measures against the local,
professional and family spirit.
Two leading obstacles hinder the development of civism, and the first is egoism. Whilst the citizen prefers the community to himself, the egoist prefers himself to the community. He cares only for his own interest, he gives no heed to public necessities; he sees none of the superior rights which take precedence of his derived right; he supposes that his property is his own without restriction or condition; he forgets that, if he is allowed to use it, he must not use it to another's detriment.2177 This even the middle or low class, who possess goods essential for survival, will do. The greater the demand for these goods the higher they raise their prices; soon, they sell only at an exorbitant rate, and worse still, stop selling and store their goods or products, in the expectation of selling them dearer. In this way, they speculate on another's wants; they augment the general distress and become public enemies. Nearly all the agriculturists, manufacturers and tradesmen of the day, little and big, are public enemies—farmers, tenant farmers, market-gardeners, cultivators of every degree, as well as foremen, shopkeepers, especially wine-dealers, bakers and butchers.
"All merchants are essentially anti-revolutionaries, and would sell their country to gain a few pennies."2178
We will not tolerate this legal brigandage. Since "agriculture has done nothing for liberty and has sought only its own gain,"2179 we will put it under surveillance, and, if necessary, under control. Since "commerce has become a species of miserly tyrant," since "it has become self-paralyzed," and, "through a sort of anti-revolutionary contempt, neglected the manufacture, handling and expedition of diverse materials," we will thwart "the calculations of its barbarous arithmetic, and purge it of the aristocratic and corrupting fermentation which oppresses it." We make monopoly "a capital crime;"2180 we call him a monopolist who "takes food and wares of prime necessity out of circulation," and "keeps them stored without daily and publicly offering them for sale." Penalty of death against whoever, within eight days, does not make a declaration, or if he makes a false one. Penalty of death against the dealer who does not post up the contents of his warehouse, or who does not keep open shop. Penalty of death against any person who keeps more bread on hand than he needs for his subsistence.2181 Penalty of death against the cultivator who does not bring his grain weekly to market. Penalty of death against the dealer who does not post up the contents of his warehouse, or who does not keep open shop. Penalty of death against the manufacturer who does not verify the daily use of his workable material.—As to prices, we intervene authoritatively between buyer and seller; we fix the maximum price for all objects which, near or remotely, serve to feed, warm and clothe man; we will imprison whoever offers or demands anything more. Whether the dealer or manufacturer pays expenses at this rate, matters not; if, after the maximum is fixed, he closes factory, or gives up business, we declare him a "suspect;" we chain him down to his pursuit, we oblige him to lose by it.—This is the way to clip the claws of beasts of prey, little and big! But the claws grow out again, and, instead of paring them down, it would probably be better to pull them out. Some amongst us have already thought of that; the right of pre-emption shall be applied to every article; "in each department, national storehouse might be established where farmers, land-owners and manufacturers would be obliged to deposit at a fixed price, paid down, the surplus of their consumption of every species of merchandise. The nation would distribute this merchandise to wholesale dealers, reserving a profit of six per cent. The profit of the wholesale dealer would be fixed at eight per cent and that of the retailer at twelve per cent."2182 In this way, farmers, manufacturers, and merchants would all become clerks of the State, appointed on a premium or a discount; unable to gain a great deal, they would not be tempted to gain too much; they would cease to be greedy and soon cease to be egoists.2183—Since, fundamentally, egoism is the capital vice and individual proprietorship the food that nourishes it, why not suppress individual proprietorship altogether? Our extreme logicians, with Babæuf at the head of them, go as far as that, and Saint-Just seems to be of that opinion.2184 We are not concerned with the enacting of an Agrarian; the nation may reserve the soil to itself and divide among individuals, not the soil, but its lease. The outcome of this principle affords us a glimpse of an order of things in which the State, sole proprietor of real-estate, sole capitalist, sole manufacturer, sole trader, having all Frenchmen in its pay and service, would assign to each one his task according to his aptitude, and distribute to each one his rations according to his wants.2185—These various uncompleted plans still float in a hazy distance but their common purpose is clearly distinguishable.
"All which tends to center human passions on the vile, individual ego must be repudiated or repressed;"2186
We should annihilate special interests, deprive the individual of the motives and means for self-isolation, suppress preoccupations and ambitions by which Man makes himself a focal point at the expense of the real center, in short, to detach him from himself in order to attach him wholly to the State.
This is why, disregarding the narrow egoism through which the individual prefers himself to the community, we strive towards the enlarged egoism by which the individual prefers the community to the group of which he forms a part. Under no pretext must he separate himself from the whole, at no price, must he be allowed to form for himself a small homeland within the large one, for, by the affection he entertains for the small one, he frustrates the objects of the large one. Nothing is worse than political, civil, religious and domestic federalism; we combat it under all its forms.2187 In this particular, the Constituent Assembly has paved the way for us, since it has broken up all the principal historic or material groups by which men have separated themselves from the masses and formed a band apart, provinces, clergy, nobles, parliaments, religious orders and trades-unions. We complete its work, we destroy churches, we suppress literary or scientific associations, educational or benevolent societies, even down to financial companies.2188 We prohibit any departmental or commercial "local spirit:" we find
"odious and opposed to all principles, that, amongst municipalities, some should be rich and others poor, that one should have immense patrimonial possessions and another nothing but debts."2189
We regard these possessions as the nation's, and we place indebtedness to the nation's account. We take grain from rich communes and departments, to feed poor communes and departments. We build bridges, roads and canals of each district, at the expense of the State; "we centralize the labor of the French people in a broad, opulent fashion."2190 We want no more local interests, recollections, dialects, idioms and patriotisms. Only one bond should subsist between individuals, that which attaches them to the social body. We sunder all others; we do not tolerate any special aggregation; we do the best we can to break up the most tenacious of all, the family.—We therefore give marriage the status of an ordinary contract: we render this loose and precarious, resembling as much as possible the free and transient union of the sexes; it shall be dissolved at the option of both parties, and even of one of the parties, after one month of formalities and of probation. If the couple has lived separate six months; the divorce may be granted without any probation or delay; divorced parties may re-marry. On the other hand, we suppress marital authority: since spouses are equal, each has equal rights over common property and the property of each other; we deprive the husband of its administration and render it "common" to both parties. We abolish "paternal authority;"
"it is cheating nature to enforce her rights through constraint.. .. The only rights that parents have are those of protection and watchfulness."2191
The father can no longer control the education of his children; the State takes charge of it. The father is no longer master of his property; that portion he can dispose of by donation or testament is of the smallest; we prescribe an equal and forced division of property.—Finally we preach adoption, we efface bastardy, we confer on children born of free love, or of a despotic will, the same rights as those of legitimate children. In short, we break that sacred circle, that exclusive group, that aristocratic organization which, under the name of the family, was created out of pride and egoism.2192—Henceforth, affection and obedience will no longer be frittered away; the miserable supports to which they have clung like ivy vines, castes, churches, corporations, provinces, communes or families, are ruined and rooted out; on the ground which is thus leveled, the State alone remains standing, and it alone offers any point of adhesion; all these vines are about to twine themselves in on trunk about the great central column.
Indoctrination of mind and intellect.—Civil religion.
—National education.—Egalitarian moral standards.
—Obligatory civism.—The recasting and reduction of human
nature to the Jacobin type.
Let not Man go astray, let us lead him on, let us direct minds and souls, and, to this end, let us enfold him in our doctrines. He needs general ideas and the daily experiences flowing out of them; he needs some theory explaining the origin and nature of things, one which assigns him his place and the part he has to play in the world, which teaches him his duties, which regulates his life, which fixes the days he shall work and the days he shall rest, which stamps itself on his mind through commemorations, festivals and ceremonies, through a catechism and a calendar. Up to this time Religion has been the power charged with this service, interpreted and served by the Church; now it is to be Reason, interpreted and served by the State.—In this connection, many among us, disciples of the encyclopedists, constitute Reason a divinity, and honor her with a system of worship; but it is plain that they personify an abstraction; their improvised goddess is simply an allegorical phantom; none of them see in her the intelligent cause of the world; in the depths of their hearts they deny this Supreme Cause, their pretended religion being merely a show or a sham.—We discard atheism, not only because it is false, but again, and more especially, because it is disintegrating and unwholesome.2193 We want an effective, consolatory and fortifying religion, and that religion is natural religion, which is social as well as true. "Without this,2194 as Rousseau has said, it is impossible to be a good citizen......The existence of divinity, the future life, the sacredness of the social contract and of the laws," all are its dogmas; "no one may be forced to believe in these, but whoever dares say that he does not believe in them, sets himself up against the French people, the human species and nature." Consequently, we decree that "the French people recognizes the Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul."—The important thing now is to plant this entirely philosophic faith in all hearts. We introduce it into the civil order of things, we take the calendar out of the hands of the Church, we purge it of its Christian imagery; we make the new era begin with the advent of the Republic; we divide the year according to the metric system, we name the months according to the vicissitudes of the seasons, "we substitute, in all directions, the realities of reason for the visions of ignorance, the truths of nature for a sacerdotal prestige,"2195 the decade for the week, the décadi for Sundays, lay festivals for ecclesiastical festivals.2196 On each décadi, through solemn and appropriate pomp, we impress on the popular mind one of the highest truths of our creed; we glorify, in the order of their dates, Nature, Truth, Justice, Liberty, Equality, the People, Adversity, Humanity, the Republic, Posterity, Glory, Patriotism, Heroism, and other virtues. Besides this, we honor the important days of the Revolution, the taking of the Bastille, the fall of the Throne, the punishment of the tyrant, the expulsion of the Girondins. We, too, have our anniversaries, our relics, the relics of Chalier and Marat,2197 our processions, our services, our ritual,2198 and the vast system of visible pageantry by which dogmas are made manifest and propagated. But ours, instead of leading men off to an imaginary heaven, brings them back to a living patrimony, and, through our ceremonies as well as through our creed, we shall preach public-spiritedness (civism).
It is important to preach this to adults, it is still more important to teach it to children: for children are more easily molded than adults. Our hold on these still flexible minds is complete, and, through national education "we seize the coming generations."2199 Naught is more essential and naught is more legitimate.
"The country," says Robespierre, "has a right to bring up its own children; it cannot confide this trust to family pride nor to the prejudices of individuals, the eternal nourishment of aristocracies and of a domestic federalism which narrows the soul by keeping it isolated." We are determined to have "education common and equal for all French people," and "we stamp on it a great character, analogous to the nature of our government and the sublime doctrines of our Republic. The aim is no longer to form gentlemen (messieurs) but citizens."21100
We oblige21101 teachers, male and female, to present certificates of civism, that is to say, of Jacobinism. We close the school if "precepts or maxims opposed to revolutionary morality" are taught in it, that is to say, in conformity with Christian morals. Children will learn to read in the Declaration of Rights and in the Constitution of 1793. Republican manuals and catechisms will be prepared for their use.21102 "They must be taught the virtuous traits which most honor free men, and especially the traits characteristic of the French Revolution, the best calculated to elevate the soul and render them worthy of equality and liberty." The 14th of July, 10th of August, 2nd of September, 21st of January, and 31st of May must be lauded or justified in their presence. They must be taken to meetings of the municipalities, to the law courts,21103 and especially to the popular clubs; from these pure sources they will derive a knowledge of their rights, of their duties, of the laws, of republican morality," and, on entering society, they will find themselves imbued with all good maxims. Over and above their political opinions we shape their ordinary habits. We apply on a grand scale the plan of education drawn out by Jean-Jacques (Rousseau).21104 We want no more literary prigs; in the army, "the 'dandy' breaks down during the first campaign;21105 we want young men able to endure privation and fatigue, toughened, like Emile, "by hard work" and physical exercise.—We have, thus far, only sketched out this department of education, but the agreement amongst the various plans shows the meaning and bearings of our principle. "Children generally, without exception, says Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau,21106 the boys from five to twelve, the girls from five to eleven years of age, must be brought up in common at the expense of the Republic; all, under the sacred law of equality, are to receive the same clothing, the same food, the same education, the same attention "in boarding-schools distributed according to cantons, and containing each from four to six hundred pupils.
"Pupils will be made to submit every day and every moment to the same rigid rules... Their beds must be hard, their food healthy, but simple, their clothing comfortable, but coarse." Servants will not be allowed; children must help themselves and, besides this, they must wait on the old and infirm, lodged with or near them. "Among daily duties, manual labor will be the principal thing; all the rest will be accessory." Girls must learn to spin, sew and wash clothes; the boys will work the roads, be shepherds, ploughmen and work-hands; both will have tasks set them, either in the school-workshops, or in the fields and factories in the neighborhood; they will be hired out to surrounding manufacturers and to the tillers of the soil. Saint-Just is more specific and rigid.21107 "Male children from five to sixteen years of age, must be raised for their country. They must be clad in common cloth at all seasons, and have mats for beds, and sleep eight hours. They are to have common food only, fruits, vegetables, preparations of milk, bread and water. They must not eat meat before sixteen.. Their education, from ten to sixteen, is to be military and agricultural. They will be formed into companies of sixty; six companies make a battalion; the children of a district form a legion; they will assemble annually at the district town, encamp there and drill in infantry tactics, in arenas specially provided for the purpose; they will also learn cavalry maneuvers and every other species of military evolution. In harvest time they are to be distributed amongst the harvesters." After sixteen, "they enter the crafts," with some farmer, artisan, merchant or manufacturer, who becomes their titular "instructor," and with whom they are bound to remain up to the age of twenty-one, "under the penalty of being deprived for life of a citizen's rights.21108... All children will dress alike up to sixteen years of age; from twenty-one to twenty-five, they will dress as soldiers, if they are not in the magistracy."—Already we show the effects of the theory by one striking example; we founded the "Ecole de Mars;"21109 we select out of each district six boys from sixteen to seventeen and a half years old "among the children of sans-culottes;" we summon them to Paris, "to receive there, through a revolutionary education, whatever belongs to the knowledge and habits of a republican soldier. They are schooled in fraternity, in discipline, in frugality, in good habits, in love of country and in detestation of kings." three or four thousand young people are lodged at the Sablons, "in a palisaded enclosure, the intervals of which are guarded by chevaux de frises and sentinels."21110 We puts them into tents; we feed them with bran bread, rancid pork, water and vinegar; we drill them in the use of arms; we march them out on national holidays and stimulate them with patriotic harangues.—Suppose all Frenchmen educated in such a school; the habits they acquire in youth will persist in the adult, and, in each adult we shall find the sobriety, energy and patriotism of a Spartan or Roman.
Already, under the pressure of our decrees, civism affects customs, and there are manifest signs, on all sides, of public regeneration. "The French people," says Robespierre, "seems to have outstripped the rest of humanity, by two thousand years; one might be tempted to regard them, living amongst them, as a different species. In the rest of Europe, a ploughman, an artisan, is an animal formed for the pleasures of a noble; in France, the nobles are trying to transform themselves into ploughmen and artisans, but do not succeed in obtaining that honor."21111 Life in all directions is gradually assuming democratic forms Wealthy prisoners are prohibited from purchasing delicacies, or procuring special conveniences; they eat along with the poor prisoners the same ration, at the common mess21112. Bakers have orders to make but one quality of bread, the brown bread called equality bread, and, to obtain his ration, each person must place himself in line with the rest of the crowd. On holidays21113 everybody will bring his provisions down into the street and eat as one family with his neighbor; on décadi all are to sing and dance together, pell-mell, in the temple of the Supreme being. The decrees of the Convention and the orders of the representatives impose the republican cockade on women; public opinion and example impose on men the costume and appearance of sans-culottes we see even dandies wearing mustaches, long hair, red cap, vest and heavy wooden shoes.21114 Nobody calls a person Monsieur or Madame; the only titles allowed are citoyen and citoyenne while thee and Thou is the general rule. Rude familiarity takes the place of monarchical politeness; all greet each other as equals and comrades.21115 There is now only one tone, one style, one language; revolutionary forms constitute the tissue of speech, as well as of written discourse; thought now seems to consists entirely of our ideas and phrases.21116 All names are transformed, those of months and of days, those of places and of monuments, baptismal names and names of families: St. Denis has become Franciade; Peter Gaspard is converted into Anaxagoras, and Antoine-Louis into Brutus; Leroi, the deputy, calls himself Laloi, and Leroy, the jurist, calls himself August-Tenth.—By dint of thus shaping the exterior we reach the interior, and through outward civism we prepare internal civism. Both are obligatory, but the latter much more so than the former; for that is the fundamental principle,21117 "the incentive which sustains and impels a democratic and popular government." It is impossible to apply the social contract if everybody does not scrupulously observe the first clause of it, namely, the complete surrender of himself to the community; everybody, then, must give himself up entirely, not only actually but heartily, and devote himself to the public good, which public good is the regeneration of Man as we have defined it. The veritable citizen is he who thus marches along with us. With him, as with us, abstract truths of philosophy control the conscience and govern the will. He starts with our articles of faith and follows them out to the end; he endorses our acts, he recites our creed, he observes our discipline, he is a believing and practicing Jacobin, an orthodox Jacobin, unsullied, and without taint of heresy or schism. Never does he swerve to the left toward exaggeration, nor to the right toward toleration; without haste or delay he travels along the narrow, steep and straight path which we have marked out for him; this is the pathway of reason, for, as there is but one reason, there is but one pathway. Let no one swerve from the line; there are abysses on each side of it. Let us follow our guides, men of principles, the pure, especially Couthon, Saint-Just and Robespierre; they are choice specimens, all cast in the true mold, and it is this unique and rigid mold in which all French men are to be recast.
2101 (return)
[ This and the
following text are taken from the "Contrat-Social" by Rousseau. Cf. "The
ancient Régime," book III., ch.. IV.]
2102 (return)
[ This idea, so
universally prevalent and precocious, is uttered by Mirabeau in the
session of the 10th of August, 1789. (Buchez et Roux, II., 257.) "I know
of but three ways of maintaining one's existence in society, and these are
to be either a beggar, a robber or a hireling. The proprietor is himself
only the first of hirelings. What we commonly call his property is nothing
more than the pay society awards him for distributing amongst others that
which is entrusted to him to distribute through his expenses and through
what he consumes; proprietors are the agents, the stewards of the social
body."]
2103 (return)
[ Report by Roland,
January 6, 1793, and by Cambon, February 1, 1793.]
2104 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXI., 311. Report by Saint-Just, Ventôse 8, year II., and decree in
conformity therewith.]
2105 (return)
[ Decree of 13
Brumaire, year II.—Report by Cambon, Feb. 1, 1793. Cambon estimates
the property alone of the order of Malta and of the colleges at four
hundred million livres.]
2106 (return)
[ Moniteur, XVIII., 419
and 486. Reports by Cambon, Brumaire 22 and Frimaire 1st, year II. "Let us
begin with taking possession of the leased domains, notwithstanding
preceding laws."]
2107 (return)
[ Cf. "The Ancient
Régime," p. 14.]
2108 (return)
[ Mallet-Dupan,
"Mémoires," II., 19. Moniteur, XVIII., 565. (Report by Cambon, 11
Frimaire, year II.) Requested to do so by a popular club of Toulouse, the
department of Haute-Garonne has ordered all possessors of articles in gold
or silver to bring them to the treasuries of their districts to be
exchanged for assignats. This order has thus far brought into the Toulouse
treasury about one million five hundred thousand or one million six
hundred thousand livres in gold and silver. The same at Montauban and
other places. "Several of our colleagues have even decreed the death
penalty against whoever did not bring their gold and silver within a given
time."]
2109 (return)
[ Archives Nationales,
AF. II., 106. (Order by representative Beauchamp, l'Isle Jourdan, Pluviose
2, year II.) "All blue and green cloaks in the departments of
Haute-Garonne, as well as of the Landes, Gers and others, are put in
requisition from the present day. Every citizen possessing blue or green
cloaks is required to declare them at the depot of municipality or other
locality where he may chance to be." If not, he is considered "suspect" is
treated as such.—Ibid., AF.II., 92 (Order issued by Taillefer,
Brumaire 3, year II., at Villefranche-l'Aveyron).—De Martel, "Etude
sur Fouché," 368. (Order by Fouché, Collot d'Herbois and Delaporte: Lyons,
Brumaire 21, year II.)—Moniteur, XVIII., 384. (Session of 19th
Brumaire. Letter of Barras and Fréron, dated at Marseilles.)—Moniteur
XVIII., 513 (Orders by Lebon and Saint-Just, at Strasbourg, Brumaire 24
and 25, year II.) Letter of Isoré to the minister Bouchotte, November 4,
1793. (Legros, "La Revolution telle qu'elle est.") The principle of these
measures was laid down by Robespierre in his speech on property (April 24,
1793), and in his declaration of rights unanimously adopted by the Jacobin
Club (Buchez et Roux, XXVI., 93 and 130).]
2110 (return)
[ Rousset, "Les
Volontaires," p. 234 and 254.]
2111 (return)
[ Report by Cambon,
Pluviose 3, year III., p.3. "One fifth of the active population is
employed in the common defense."—Decree of May 12, and Aug. 23,
1793.—Decree of November 22, 1793.—Order of the Directory,
October 18, 1798.]
2112 (return)
[ Moniteur, XIX., 631.
Decree of Ventôse 14, year II. Archives Nationales, D.SI., 10. (Orders by
representatives Delacroix, Louchet and Legendre; Pont-Audemer, Frimaire
14, year II.)—Moniteur, XVIII, 622.—(Decree of Frimaire 18,
year II.)]
2113 (return)
[ Lenin must have read
Taine's text during his long studious stay in Paris. He and Stalin did, in
any case try to let the USSR function in accordance with such central
allocated planning. (SR.)]
2114 (return)
[ Decree of 15-18
Floréal, year II. Decree of September 29, 1793, (in which forty objects of
prime necessity are enumerated.—Article 9 decrees three days
imprisonment against workmen and manufacturers who "without legitimate
reason, shall refuse to do their ordinary task."—Decrees of
September 16 and 20, 1793, and that of September 11, articles 16,19, 20
and 21.]
2115 (return)
[ Archives Nationales,
AF. II., III. Order of the representative Ferry; Bourges, 23 Messidor,
year II.—Ibid., AF. II., 106. Order of the representative
Dartigoyte, Auch, Prairial 18, year II.]
2116 (return)
[ Decree of Brumaire
11, year II., article 7.]
2117 (return)
[ Gouvion Saint Cyr,
"Mémoires sur les campagnes de 1792 à la paix de Campo-Formio," I.,
91-109: "Promotion, which every one feared at this time."... Ibid. 229.
"Men who had any resources obstinately held aloof from any kind of
advancement." Archives Nationales, DS. I, 5. (Mission of representative
Albert in L'Aube and La Marne, and especially the order issued by Albert,
Chalons, Germinal 7, year III., with the numerous petitions of judges and
town officers soliciting their removal.—Letter of the painter Gosse
(published in Le Temps, May 31, 1872), which is very curious, showing the
trials of those in private life during the Revolution: "My father was
appointed charity commissioner and quartermaster for the troops; at the
time of the Reign of Terror it would have been imprudent to have refused
any office"—Archives Nationales, F7, 3485. The case of Girard
Toussaint, notary at Paris, who "fell under the sword of the law,
Thermidor 9, year II." This Girard, who was very liberal early in the
revolution, was president of his section in 1789, but, after the 10th of
August, he had kept quiet. The committee of the section of the "Amis de la
Patrie," "considering that citizen Girard.... came forward only at the
time when the court and Lafayette prevailed against the sans-culottes;"
that, "since equality was established by the Revolution he has deprived
his fellow citizens of his knowledge, which, in a revolution, is criminal,
unanimously agree that the said citizen is "suspect" and order "him to be
sent to the Luxembourg."]
2118 (return)
[ Ludovic Sciout,
"Histoire de la Constitution civile du clergé," IV., 131, 135. (Orders
issued by Dartigoyte and de Pinet).—"Recueil de pieces authentiques
serrant à l'histoire de la révolution à Strasbourg." Vol. I. p. 230.
(Speech by Schneider at Barr, for marrying the patriot Funck.) Schneider,
it appears, did still better on his own account. (Ibid., 317).]
2119 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXIX., 160. (Report of Saint-Just, October 20, 1793.) "You have to punish
not only traitors, but even the indifferent; you must punish all in the
Republic who are passive and do nothing for it."]
2120 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXII., 338. Report of the Convention on the theory of democratic
government, by Billaud-Varennes (April 20, 1794).]
2121 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXI., 270. Report by Robespierre, on the principles which should guide
the National Convention in the internal administration of the Republic,
February 5, 1794.—Cf. "The ancient Régime," 227-230, the ideas of
Rousseau, of which those of Robespierre are simply a recast.]
2122 (return)
[ Ibid., 270.—The
pretension of reforming men's sentiments is found in all the programs.
Ibid., 305. (Report of Saint-Just, February 26, 1794.) "Our object is to
create an order of things establishing a universal inclination toward the
good, and to have factions immediately hurled upon the scaffold." Ibid.,
337. (Report of Saint-Just, March 13, 1794.—Ibid., 337. (Report of
Saint-Just, March 13, 1794.) "We see but one way of arresting the evil,
and that is to convert the revolution into a civil power and wage war on
every species of perversity, as designedly created amongst us for the
enervation of the republic."]
2123 (return)
[ Ibid., XXXV., 276.
(Institutions, by Saint-Just.—Ibid., 287.)—Moniteur, XVIII.,
343. Meeting of the Jacobin Club, Brumaire 13, year II., speech by
Baudot.]
2124 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux, XXIX,
142. (Speech by Jean Bon St. André in the Convention, Sep. 25, 1793.) "We
are said to exercise arbitrary power, we are charged with being despots.
We, despots!... Ah, no doubt, if despotism is to secure the triumph of
liberty, such a despotism is political regeneration." (Applause.)—Ibid,
XXXI., 276. (Report by Robespierre, Pluviose 17, year, II.) "It has been
said that terror is the incentive of despotic government. Does yours,
then, resemble despotism? Yes, as the sword which flashes in the hands of
the heroes of liberty, resembles that with which the satellites of tyranny
are armed..... The government of the Revolution is the despotism of
freedom against tyranny."]
2125 (return)
[ Ibid., XXXII, 353.
Decree of April 1791. "The Convention declares, that, supported by the
virtues of the French people, it will insure the triumph of the democratic
revolution and show no pity in punishing its enemies."]
2126 (return)
[ In the following
portrayal of the ancient régime, the bombast and credulity of the day
overflows in the most extravagant exaggerations (Buchez et Roux, XXXI.,
300, Report, by Saint-Just, February 26, 1794.): "In 1788, Louis XVI.
Caused eight thousand persons of both sexes and of every age to be
sacrificed in the rue Meslay and on the Pont-Neuf. These scenes were
repeated by the court on the Champs de Mars; the court had hangings in the
prisons, and the bodies of the drowned found in the Seine were its
victims. These were four hundred thousand prisoners in confinement;
fifteen thousand smugglers were hung in a year, and three thousand men
were broken on the wheel; there were more prisoners in Paris than there
are now... Look at Europe. There are four millions of people shut up in
Europe whose shrieks are never heard."—Ibid., XXIV., 132. (Speech by
Robespierre, May 10, 1793). "Up to this time the art of governing has
simply consisted in the art of stripping and subduing the masses for the
benefit of the few, and legislation, the mode of reducing these outrages
to a system."]
2127 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXII., 353. (Report by Robespierre to the Convention, May 7, 1794.)
"Nature tells us that man is born for freedom while the experience of man
for centuries shows him a slave. His rights are written in his heart and
history records his humiliation."]
2128 (return)
[ Ibid., 372. "Priests
are to morality what charlatans are to medical practice. How different is
the God of nature from the God of the priests! I know of nothing which is
so much like atheism as the religions they have manufactured." Already, in
the Constituent Assembly, Robespierre wanted to prevent the father from
endowing a child. "You have done nothing for liberty if yours laws do not
tend to diminish by mild and effective means the inequality of fortunes."
(Hamel, I., 403.)]
2129 (return)
[ Decree of Frimaire
18, year II.—Note the restrictions: "The convention, in the
foregoing arrangement, has no idea of derogating from any law or
precaution for public safety against refractory or turbulent priests, or
against those who might attempt to abuse the pretext of religion in order
to compromise the cause of liberty. Nor does it mean to disapprove of what
has thus far been done by virtue of the ordinances of representatives of
the people, nor to furnish anybody with a pretext for unsettling
patriotism and relaxing the energy of public spirit."]
2130 (return)
[ Decrees of May 27,
and August 26, 1792, March 18, April 21 and October 20, 1793, April 11,
and May 11, 1794.—Add (Moniteur, XIX., 697) the decree providing for
the confiscation of the possessions of ecclesiastics "who have voluntarily
left or been so reported, who are retired as old or inform, or who have
preferred transportation to retirement."—Ibid., XVIII., 492,
(session of Frimaire 2). A speech by Forester. "As to the priesthood, its
continuation has become a disgrace and even a crime."—Archives
Nationales, AF. II., 36. (An order by Lequinio, representative of the
people of Charante-Inférieur, la Vendée and Deux-Sèvres, Saintes, Nivose
1, year II.) "In order that freedom of worship may exist in full plenitude
it is forbidden to all whom it may concern to preach or write in favor of
any form of worship or religious opinion whatsoever." And especially "it
is expressly forbidden to any former minister, belonging to any religious
sect whatever, to preach, write or teach morality under penalty of being
regarded as a suspect and, as such, immediately put under arrest.. ..
Every man who undertakes to preach any religious precepts whatsoever is,
by that fact, culpable before the people. He violates ... social equality,
which does not permit the individual to publicly raise his ideal
pretensions above those of his neighbor."]
2131 (return)
[ Ludofic Sciout,
"Histoire de la Constitution Civile du clergé," vols. III. and IV.,
passim.—Jules Sauzay, "Histoire de la persécution révolutionaire
dans le Doubs," vols. III., IV., V., and VI., particularly the list, at
the end of the work, of those deported, guillotined, sent into the
interior and imprisoned.]
2132 (return)
[ Order of the day of
the Convention September 17, 1792; circular of the Executive Council,
January 22, 1793; decrees of the Convention, July 19, August 12, September
17, November 15, 1793.—Moniteur, October, and November, 1793,
passim. (November 23, Order of the Paris Commune, closing the churches.)—In
relation to the terror the constitutional priests were under, I merely
give the following extracts (Archives Nationales, F7,31167): "Citizen
Pontard, bishop of the department of Dordogne, lodging in the house of
citizen Bourbon, No. 66 faubourg Saint-Honoré, on being informed that
there was an article in a newspaper called "le Republican" stating that a
meeting of priests had been held in the said house, declares that he had
no knowledge of it; that all the officers in charge of the apartments are
in harmony with the Revolution; that, if he had had occasion to suspect
such a circumstance, he would have move out immediately, and that if any
motive can possibly be detected in such a report it is his proposed
marriage with the niece of citizen Caminade, an excellent patriot and
captain of the 9th company of the Champs-Elysées section, a marriage which
puts an end to fanaticism in his department, unless this be done by the
ordination of a priest à la sans-culotte which he had done yesterday in
the chapel, another act in harmony with the Revolution. It is well to add,
perhaps, that one of his curés now in Paris has called on him, and that he
came to request him to second his marriage. The name of the said curé is
Greffier Sauvage; he is still in Paris, and is preparing to be married the
same time as himself. Aside from these motives, which may have given rise
to some talk, citizen Pontard sees no cause whatever for suspicion.
Besides, so thoroughly patriotic as he, he asks nothing better than to
know the truth, in order to march along unhesitatingly in the
revolutionary path. He sighs his declaration, promising to support the
Revolution on all occasions, by his writings as well as by his conduct. He
presents the two numbers of his journal which he has had printed in Paris
in support of the principles he adheres to. At Paris, September 7, 1793,
year II. Of the Republic, one and indivisible. F. Pontard, bishop of the
Republic in the department of Dordogne."—Dauban La Demagogie en
1793, p. 557. Arrest of representative Osselin, letter his brother, curé
of Saint-Aubin, to the committee of section Mutius Scoevola, Brumaire 20,
year II.,"Like Brutus and Mutius Scoevola, I trample on the feelings with
which I idolised my brother! O, truth, thou divinity of republicans, thou
knowest the incorruptibility of may intentions!" (and so on for
fifty-three lines). "These are my sentiments, I am fraternally, Osselin,
minister of worship at Saint-Aubin."—P.S. "It was just as I was
going to answer a call of nature that I learned this afflicting news." (He
keeps up this bombast until words fail him, and finally, frightened to
death, and his brain exhausted, he gives this postscript to show that he
was not an accomplice.)]
2133 (return)
[ A term denoting the
substitution of ten instead of seven days as a division of time in the
calendar, and forced into use during the Revolution.]
2134 (return)
[ "Recuil de pieces
authentiques servant à l'histoire de la revolution à Strasbourg," II.,
299. (A district order.)]
2135 (return)
[ Later, when Lenin and
Stalin resurrected Jacobinism, they placed the headquarters of any
subversive movement outside the country where it operated. (SR.)]
2136 (return)
[ Thermidor refers to
the a very important day and event during the French Revolution: the day
Robespierre fell: Thermidor 9, year II, (July 27, 1794), Robespierre's
fall, effective the 10, was prepared by his adversaries, Tallien, Barras,
Fouché etc., essentially because they feared for their lives. Robespierre
and 21 of his followers were executed on the evening of the 10th of
Thermidor year II. (SR.).]
2137 (return)
[ Ludovic Sciout, IV.,
426. (Instructions sent by the Directory to the National Commissions,
Frimaire, year II.)—Ibid., ch. X. to XVIII.]
2138 (return)
[ Ibid., IV., 688.An
order of the Director, Germinal 14, year VI.—"The municipal
governments will designate special days in each decade for market days in
their respective districts, and not allow, in any case, their ordinance to
be set aside on the plea that the said market days would fall on a
holiday. They will specially strive to break up all connection between the
sales of fish and days of fasting designated on the old calendar. Every
person exposing food or wares on sale in the markets on days other than
those fixed by the municipal government will be prosecuted in the police
court for obstructing a public thoroughfare."—The Thermidorians
remain equally as anti-Catholic as their predecessors; only, they disavow
open persecution and rely on slow pressure. (Moniteur, XIII., 523. Speech
by Boissy d'Anglas, Ventôse 3, year II.) "Keep an eye on what you cannot
hinder; regulate what you cannot prohibit.... It will not be long before
these absurd dogmas, the offspring of fear and error, whose influence on
the human mind has been so steadily destructive, will be known only to be
despised.... It will not be long before the religion of Socrates, of
Marcus Aurelius and Cicero will be the religion of the whole world."]
2139 (return)
[ Moniteur, XVI., 646.
(The King's trial.) Speech by Robespierre: "the right of punishing the
tyrant and of dethroning him is one and the same thing."—Speech by
Saint-Just: "Royalty is an eternal crime, against which every man has the
right of taking up arms... To reign innocently is impossible!"]
2140 (return)
[ Epigraph of Marat's
journal: Ute readapt miseries, abet Fortuna superb is.]
2141 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXII., 323. (Report of Saint-Just, Germinal 21, year II., and a decree of
Germinal 26-29, Art. 4, 13, 15.)—Ibid., 315.]
2142 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
(Report of Saint-Just, October 10, 1793.) "That would be the only good
they could do their country.... It would be no more than just for the
people to reign over its oppressors in its turn, and that their pride
should be bathed in the sweat of their brows."]
2143 (return)
[ Ibid., XXXI., 309.
(Report of Saint-Just, Ventôse 8, year II.)]
2144 (return)
[ Ibid., XXVI. 435.
(Speech by Robespierre on the constitution, May 10, 1793.) "What were our
usages and pretended laws other than a code of impertinence and baseness,
where contempt of men was subject to a sort of tariff, and graduated
according to regulations as odd as they were numerous? To despise and be
despised, to cringe in order to rule, slaves and tyrants in turn, now
kneeling before a master, now trampling the people under foot—such
was the ambition of all of us, so long as we were men of birth or well
educated men, whether common folks or fashionable folks, lawyers or
financiers, pettifoggers or wearing swords."—Archives Nationales,
F7, 31167. (Report of the observatory Chaumont, Nivôse 10, year II.)—"Boolean's
effigy, placed in the college of Lisle, has been lowered to the statues of
the saints, the latter being taken out of their niches. There is now no
kind of distinction. Saints and authors are of the same class."]
2145 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux., 296.
("Institutions" by Saint-Just.)—Meillan, "Mémoires," p. 17.—Anne
Plumptre, "A narrative of three years' residence in France, from 1802 to
1805," II., 96. At Marseilles: "The two great crimes charged on those who
doomed to destruction, were here as elsewhere, wealth and aristocracy...
It had been decreed by the Terrorists that no person could have occasion
for more than two hundred livres a year, and that no income should be
permitted to exceed that sum."]
2146 (return)
[ Archives Nationales,
F7, 4437. (Address of the people's club of Caisson (Gard), Messidor 7,
year II.) "The Bourgeoisie, the merchants, the large land-owners have all
the pretension of the ex-nobles. The law provides no means for opening the
eyes of the common people in relation to these new tyrants. The club
desires that the revolutionary tribunal should be empowered to condemn
this proud class of individuals to a prompt partial confinement. The
people would then see that they had committed a misdemeanor and would
withdraw that sort of respect in which they hold them." A note in the
hand-writing of Couthon: "Left to the decision of popular commissions."]
2147 (return)
[ Gouvernor Morris, in
a letter of January 4, 1796, says that French capitalists have been
financially ruined by assignats, and physically by the guillotine.—Buchez
et Roux, XXX., 26. (Notes written by Robespierre in June, 1793.) "Internal
dangers come from the bourgeois... who are our enemies? The vicious and
the rich."]
2148 (return)
[ Narrative by M.
Sylvester de Sacy (May 23, 1873): His father owned a farm bringing in four
thousand francs per annum; the farmer offered him four thousand francs in
assignats or a hog; M. de Sacy took the hog.]
2149 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXI., 441. (Report by Cambon on the institution of the grand livre of
public debt, August 15, 1793.)]
2150 (return)
[ Ibid., XXXI., 311.
Report by Saint-Just, February 26, 1794, and decree in accordance
therewith, unanimously adopted. See, in particular, article 2.—Moniteur,
12 Ventôse, year II. (meeting of the Jacobin club, speech by Collot
d'Herbois). "The Convention has declared that prisoners must prove that
they were patriots from the 1st of May 1789. When the patriots and enemies
of the Revolution shall be fully known, then the property of the former
shall be inviolable and held sacred, while that of the latter will be
confiscated for the benefit of the republic."]
2151 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXVI., 455 (Session of the Jacobin Club, May 10, 1793, speech by
Robespierre.)—Ibid., (Report by Saint-Just, Feb. 26, 1794.) "He who
has shown himself an enemy of his country cannot be one of its
proprietors. Only he has patrimonial rights who has helped to free it."]
2152 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXI., 93 and 130. (Speech by Robespierre on property, and the declaration
of rights adopted by the Jacobin club.) Decree of Sept. 3, 1793 (articles
13 and 14).]
2153 (return)
[ Moniteur, XXII., 719.
(Report by Cambon, Frimaire 6, year III.) "At Bordeaux Raba has been
sentenced to pay a fine of 1,200,000 francs, Pechotte to pay 500,000
francs, Martin-Martin to 300,000 francs."—Cf. Rodolphe Reuss,
"Séligmann Alexandre ou les Tribulations d'un israélite de Strasbourg."]
2154 (return)
[ Ibid., XVIII., 486.
(Report by Cambon, Frimaire 1, year II.) "The egotists who, some time ago,
found it difficult to pay for the national domains they had acquired from
the Republic, even in assignats, now bring us their gold... Collectors of
the revenue who had buried their gold have come and offered to pay what
they owe the nation in ingots of gold and silver. These have been refused,
the Assembly having decreed the confiscation of these objects."]
2155 (return)
[ Decree of Brumaire
23, year II. On taxes and confiscations in the provinces see M. de Martel,
"Etude sur Fouché et Pieces authentiques servant à l'histoire de la
revolution à Strasbourg." And further on the details of this operation at
Troyes.—Meillan, 90: "At Bordeaux, merchants were heavily taxed, not
on account of their incivism, but on account of their wealth."]
2156 (return)
[ Decree of March 7-11,
1793.]
2157 (return)
[ Moniteur, XVIII.,
274, decrees of Brumaire 4, and ibid, 305, decree of Brumaire 9, year II.,
establishing equal partition of inheritances with retroactive effect to
July 14, 1789. Adulterous bastards are excepted. The reporter of the bill,
Cambacèrés, laments this regrettable exception.]
2158 (return)
[ Rights of inheritance
allowed to the descendants of a deceased person who never enjoyed these
rights, but who might have enjoyed them had he been living when they fell
to him.—Tr.]
2159 (return)
[ Fenet, "Travaux du
Code civil." (Report by Cambacèrés on the Code civil, August 9, 1793). The
spokesman for the committee that had framed the bill makes excuses for not
having deprived the father of all the disposable portion. "The committee
believed that such a clause would seriously violate our customs without
being of any benefit to society or of any moral advantage. We assured
ourselves, moreover, that there should always be a division of property."
With respect to donations: "It is repugnant to all ideas of beneficence to
allow donations to the rich. Nature is averse to the making of such gifts
so long as our eyes dwell on misery and misfortune. These affecting
considerations have determined us to fix a point, a sort of maximum, which
prohibits gifts on the part of those who have reached that point."]
2160 (return)
[ Moniteur, XII., 730,
(June 22, 1792), speech by Lamarque.—But this principle is
encountered everywhere. "Equality, indeed, (is) the final aim of social
art." (Condorcet, 'Tableau des progrès de l'esprit humain," II., 59.—"We
desired," writes Baudot, "to apply to politics the equality which the
Gospel awards to Christians." (Quinet, "Revolution Française, II., 407.)]
2161 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux, XXXV,
296 (The words of Saint-Just.)—Moniteur, XVIII, 505 (Ordinance of
the Paris Commune, Frimaire 3, year II). "Wealth and Poverty must alike
disappear under the régime of equality."]
2162 (return)
[ Ib. XXXV, 296
("Institutions" by Saint-Just). "A man is not made for trades, nor for a
workhouse nor for an alms-house; all this is frightful."—Ibid.,
XXXI., 312. (Report of Saint-Just, Ventôse 8, year II.) "Let all Europe
see that you will not allow a miserable man on French territory!...
Happiness is a new idea in Europe."]
2163 (return)
[ Ib. XXXV, 296
("Institutions" by Saint-Just.)]
2164 (return)
[ Moniteur, XX, 444 (
Report by Barère, Floreal 22, year II). "Mendicity is incompatible with
popular government."]
2165 (return)
[ Ib., XIX., 568.
(Report by Saint-Just, Ventôse 8, year II.)]
2166 (return)
[ Ib., XX, 448 (Rapport
by Barère, Floreal 22).]
2167 (return)
[ Ibid., XIX., 568.
(Report by Saint-Just, Ventôse 8, and decree of Ventôse 13.) "The
Committee of Public Safety will report on the means of indemnifying the
unfortunate with property belonging to the enemies of the Revolution."]
2168 (return)
[ Ibid., XIX., 484.
(Report by Barère, Ventôse 21, year II.)—Ibid., XX., 445. (Report by
Barère, Floréal 22, year II.)—Decrees on public assistance, June 28,
1793, July 25, 1793, Frimaire 2, and Floréal 22, year II.)—this
principle, moreover, was set forth in the Constitution of 1793. "Public
help is a sacred obligation; society owes a subsistence to unfortunate
citizens, whether by providing work for them, or by ensuring the means of
existence to those who are not in a condition to work."—Archives
Nationales, AF. II., 39. The character of this measure is very clearly
expressed in the following circular of the Committee of Public Safety to
its representatives on mission in the departments, Ventôse, year II. "A
summary act was necessary to put the aristocracy down. The national
Convention has struck the blow. Virtuous indigence had to recover the
property which crime had encroached upon. The national Convention has
proclaimed its rights. A general list of all prisoners should be sent to
the Committee of General Security, charged with deciding on their fate.
The Committee of Public Safety will receive the statement of the indigent
in each commune so as to regulate what is due to them. Both these
proceedings demand the utmost dispatch and should go together. It is
necessary that terror and justice be brought to bear on all points at
once. The Revolution is the work of the people and it is time they should
have the benefit of it."]
2169 (return)
[ Moniteur, XX., 449.
(Report by Barère, Floréal 22, year II.)]
2170 (return)
[ Decree of April 2-5,
1793.]
2171 (return)
[ Moniteur, XVIII.,
505. (Orders of Fouché and Collet d'Herbois, dated at Lyons and
communicated to the commune of Paris, Frimaire 3, year II.)—De
Martel, "Etude sur Fouché," 132. Orders of Fouché on his mission in the
Nievre, Sept. 19, 1793. "There shall be established in each district town
a Committee of Philanthropy, authorized to levy on the rich a tax
proportionate to the number of the indigent."]
2172 (return)
[ Decree of April 2-5,
1793. "There shall be organized in each large commune a guard of citizens
selected from the least fortunate. These citizens shall be armed and paid
at the expense of the Republic."]
2173 (return)
[ Moniteur, XX., 449.
(Report of Barère, Floréal 22, year II.)]
2174 (return)
[ Ibid., XIX., 689.
(Report by Saint-Just, Ventôse 23, year II.) "We spoke of happiness. It is
not the happiness of Persepolis we have offered to you. It is that of
Sparta or Athens in their best days, the happiness of virtue, that of
comfort and moderation, the happiness which springs from the enjoyment of
the necessary without the superfluous, the luxury of a cabin and of a
field fertilized by your own hands. A cart, a thatched roof affording
shelter from the frosts, a family safe from the lubricity of a robber—such
is happiness!"]
2175 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXI., 402. (Constitution of 1793.)]
2176 (return)
[ Ibid. XXXV., 310.
("Institutions", by Saint-Just.)]
2177 (return)
[ Ibid., XXVI., 93 and
131. (Speech by Robespierre on property, April 24, 1793, and declaration
of rights adopted by the Jacobin Club.)—Mallet-Dupan, "Mémoires,"
I., 401. (Address of a deputation from Gard.) "Material wealth is no more
the special property of any one member of the social body than base metal
stamped as a circulating medium."]
2178 (return)
[ Moniteur, VIII., 452.
(Speech by Hébert in the Jacobin Club, Brumaire 26, year II.) "Un Séjour
en France de 1792 à 1795," p.218. (Amiens, Oct. 4, 1794.) "While waiting
this morning at a shop door I overheard a beggar bargaining for a slice of
pumpkin. Unable to agree on the price with the woman who kept the shop he
pronounced her 'corrupted with aristocracy.' 'I defy you to prove it!' she
replied. But, as she spoke, she turned pale and added, 'Your civism is
beyond all question—but take your pumpkin.' 'Ah,' returned the
beggar, 'what a good republican!'"]
2179 (return)
[ Ibid., XVIII., 320.
(Meeting of Brumaire 11, year II. Report by Barère.)—Meillan, 17.
Already, before the 31st May: "The tribune resounded with charges against
monopoly, every man being a monopolist who was not reduced to living on
daily wages or on alms."]
2180 (return)
[ Decrees of July 26,
1793, Sept. 11 and 29; Brumaire 11, and Ventôse 6, year II.]
2181 (return)
[ Moniteur, XVIII.,
359. "Brumaire 16, year II. Sentence of death of Pierre Gourdier,
thirty-six years of age, stock-broker, resident in Paris, rue Bellefond,
convicted of having monopolized and concealed in his house a large
quantity of bread, in order to bread scarcity in the midst of abundance."
He had gastritis and could eat nothing but panada made with toast, and the
baker who furnished this gave him thirty pieces at a time (Wallon, II.,
155).]
2182 (return)
[ Journal of the
debates of the Jacobin Club, No. 532, Brumaire 20, year II. (Plan of
citizen Dupré, presented in the Convention by a deputation of the Arcis
Club.)—Dauban, "Paris en 1794," p. 483 (a project similar to the
former, presented to the Committee of Public Safety by the Jacobin Club of
Montereau, Thermidor, year II.)]
2183 (return)
[ These proposals
should come to haunt western civilization for a long time. (SR.)]
2184 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXV., 272. ("Institutions," by Saint-Just.)]
2185 (return)
[ These ideas were
still powerful even before Taine wrote these words in 1882. The Oxford
Dictionary of Quotations cites a declaration made by 47 anarchists on
trial after their uprising in Lyons in 1870: "We wish, in a word, equality—equality
in fact as corollary, or rather, as primordial condition of liberty. From
each according to his faculties, to each according to his needs; that is
what we wish sincerely and energetically."]
2186 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux, XXXI,
273, (Report by Robespierre, Pluviôse17, year II. (7 Feb. 1794).]
2187 (return)
[ Moniteur, XIX
(Rapport by Barère, Ventôse 21, an II). "You should detect and combat
federalism in all your institutions, as your natural enemy....A grand
central establishment for all the work of the Republic is an effective
means against federalism."—Buchez et Roux, XXXI, 351, et XXXII, 316
(Rapports by Saint-Just, Ventôse 23 et Germinal 26, year II). "Immorality
is a federalism in the civil state...Civil federalism, by isolating all
parts of the state, has dried up abundance."]
2188 (return)
[ Decree of Germinal
26-29, year II. "Financial companies are and hereby remain suppressed. All
bankers, commission merchants, and other persons, are forbidden to form
any establishment of this order under any pretext or under any
denomination."]
2189 (return)
[ "Memoires de Carnot,"
I., 278 (Report by Carnot). "That is not family life. If there are local
privileges there will soon be individual privileges and local aristocracy
will bring along in its train the aristocracy of inhabitants."]
2190 (return)
[ Moniteur, XIX., 683
(Rapport by Barère, Ventôse 21, year II).—This report should be read
in full to comprehend the communistic and centralizing spirit of the
Jacobins. (Undoubtedly Lenin, during his years in Paris, had read Taine's
footnote and asked the national library for a copy of this rapport. SR.)]
2191 (return)
[ Fenet, "Travaux du
Code civil," 105 (Rapports by Cambacérès, August 9, 1793 and September 9,
1794).—Decrees of September 20, 1793 and Floréal 4, year II (On
divorce).—Cf. "Institutions," by Saint-Just (Buchez et Roux, XXXV,
302). "A man and woman who love each other are married; if they have no
children they may keep their relationship secret."]
2192 (return)
[ This article of the
Jacobin program, like the others, has its practical result.—"At
Paris, in the twenty-seven months after the promulgation of the law of
September, 1792, the courts granted five thousand nine hundred and
ninety-four divorces, and in year VI, the number of divorces exceeded the
marriages." (Glasson, le Mariage civil et le Divorce, 51.)—"The
number of foundlings which, in 1790, in France, did not exceed
twenty-three thousand, is now (year X.) more than sixty-three thousand.
"Statistique de la Sarthe," by Auvray, prefect, year, X.)—In the
Lot-et-Garonne (Statistique, by Peyre, préfet, year X ), more than fifteen
hundred foundlings are counted: "this extraordinary number increased
during the Revolution through the too easy admission of foundlings into
the asylums, through the temporary sojourning of soldiers in their homes,
through the disturbance of every moral and religious principle."—"It
is not rare to find children of thirteen and fourteen talking and acting
in a way that would have formerly disgraced a young man of twenty."
(Moselle, Analyse, by Ferrière.)—"The children of workmen are idle
and insubordinate; some indulge in the most shameful conduct against their
parents;" others try stealing and use the coarsest language." (Meurthe,
Statistique, by Marquis, préfet.)—Cf. Anne Plumptre (A Narrative of
three years' residence in France from 1802 to 1805, I. 436). "You would
not believe it, Madame, said a gardener to her at Nimes, that during the
Revolution we dared not scold our children for their faults. Those who
called themselves patriots regarded it as against the fundamental
principles of liberty to correct children. This made them so unruly that,
very often, when a parent presumed to scold its child the latter would
tell him to mind his business, adding, 'we are free and equal, the
Republic is our only father and mother; if you are not satisfied, I am. Go
where you like it better.' Children are still saucy. It will take a good
many years to bring them back to minding.']
2193 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXII., 364 (Report by Robespierre, Floréal 8, year II.)]
2194 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXII., 385—(Address of a Jacobin deputation to the Convention,
Floréal 27, year II.)—At Bayeux, the young girl who represented
Liberty, had the following inscription on her breast or back: "Do not make
of me an instrument of licentiousness." (Gustave Flaubert, family
souvenirs.)]
2195 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXI., 415. (Report by Fabre d'Eglantine, October 6, 1793.)—(Grégoire,
"Memoires," I., 341.) "The new calendar was invented by Romme in order to
get rid of Sunday. This was his object; he admitted it to me."]
2196 (return)
[ Ibid., XXXII., 274.
(Report by Robespierre, Floréal 18, year II.) "National Festivals form an
essential part of public education.... A system of national festivals is
the most powerful means of regeneration."]
2197 (return)
[ Ibid., XXXVIII., 335.
Marat's heart, placed on a table in the Cordéliers Club, was an object of
religious reverence.—(Grégoire, "Mémoires," I., 341.) "In some
schools the pupils were obliged to make the sign of the cross at the names
of Marat, Lazowski, etc."]
2198 (return)
[ Comte de Martel,
"Étude sur Fouché," 137. Fête at Nevers, on the inaguration of a bust of
Brutus.—Ibid., 222, civic festival at Nevers in honor of valor and
morals.—Dauban, "Paris en 1794." Programme of the fête of the
supreme Being at Sceaux.]
2199 (return)
[ An expression by
Rabaut Saint-Etienne.]
21100 (return)
[ Ibid., XXXII., 373
(Report by Robespierre, Floréal 15, year II.)—Danton had expressed
precisely the same opinion, supported by the same arguments, at the
meeting of Frimaire 22, year II. (Moniteur, XVIII, 654.) "Children first
belong to the Republic before belonging to their parents. Who will assure
me that these children, inspired by parental egoism, will not become
dangerous to the Republic? What do we care for the ideas of an individual
alongside of national ideas?... Who among us does not know the danger of
this constant isolation? It is in the national schools that the child must
suck republican milk! .... The Republic is one and indivisible. Public
instruction must likewise relate to this center of unity."]
21101 (return)
[ Decree of
Vendémaire 30 and Brumaire 7, year II.—Cf. Sauzay, VI., 252, on the
application of this decree in the provinces.]
21102 (return)
[ Albert Duruy, 2L
'Instruction publique et la Revolution,2 164, to 172' (extracts from
various republican spelling-books and catechisms).—Decree of
Frimaire 29, year II., section I., art. I, 83; section II., art. 2;
section III., arts. 6 and 9.]
21103 (return)
[ Moniteur, XVIII.,
653. (Meeting of Frimaire 22, speech by Bouquir, reporter.)]
21104 (return)
[ Moniteur, XVIII.,
351-359. (Meeting of Brumaire 15, year II., report by Chénier.) "You have
made laws—create habits.... You can apply to the public instruction
of the nation the same course that Rousseau follows in 'Emile.' "]
21105 (return)
[ The words of
Bouquier, reporter. (Meeting of Frimaire 22, year II.)]
21106 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXIV, 57 (Plan by Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau, read by Robespierre at the
Convention, July 13, 1793.)—Ibid., 35. (Draft of a decree by the
same hand.)]
21107 (return)
[ Ibid., XXX., 229.
("Institutions," by Saint-Just.)]
21108 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXI., 261. (Meeting of Nivose 17.) On the committee presenting the final
draft of the decrees on public instruction the Convention adopts the
following article: "All boys who, on leaving the primary schools of
instruction, do not devote themselves to tillage, will be obliged to learn
some science, art or occupation useful to society. Otherwise, on reaching
twenty, they will be deprived of citizens' rights for ten years, and the
same penalty will be laid on their father, mother, tutor or guardian."]
21109 (return)
[ Decree of Prairial
13, year II.]
21110 (return)
[ Langlois,
"Souvenirs de l'Ecole de Mars."]
21111 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXII., 355. (Report by Robespierre, Floréal 18, year II.)]
21112 (return)
[ Moniteur, XVIII.,
326. (Meeting of the Commune, Brumaire 11, year II.) the commissary
announces that, at Fontainebleau and other places, "he has established the
system of equality in the prisons and places of confinement, where the
rich and the poor partake of the same food."—Ibid., 210. (Meeting of
the Jacobins, Vendémiaire 29, year II. Speech by Laplance on his mission
to Gers.) "Priests had every comfort in their secluded retreats; the
sans-culottes in the prisons slept on straw. The former provided me with
mattresses for the latter."—Ibid., XVIII., 445. (Meeting of the
convention, Brumaire 26, year II.) "The Convention decrees that the food
of persons kept in places of confinement shall be simple and the same for
all, the rich paying for the poor."]
21113 (return)
[ Archives
Nationales. (AF. II., 37, order of Lequinio, Saintes, Nivose 1, year II.)
"Citizens generally in all communes, are requested to celebrate the day of
the decade by a fraternal banquet which, served without luxury or
display... will render the man bowed down with fatique insensible to his
forlorn condition; which will fill the soul of the poor and unfortunate
with the sentiment of social equality and raise man up to the full sense
of his dignity; which will suppress with the rich man the slightest
feeling of pride and extinguish in the public functionary all germs of
haughtiness and aristocracy."]
21114 (return)
[ Archives
Nationales, AF. II., ii., 48 (Act of Floréal 25, year II.) "the Committee
of Public Safety request David, representative of the people, to present
his views and plans in relation to modifying the present national costume,
so as to render it appropriate to republican habits and the character of
the Revolution."—Ibid., (Act of Prairial 5, year II.) for engraving
and coloring twenty thousand impressions of the design for a civil
uniform, and six thousand impressions for the three designs for a
military, judicial and legislative uniform.]
21115 (return)
[ An identical change
took, strangely enough and as caused by some hidden force, place in
Denmark in the seventies. (SR.)]
21116 (return)
[ This is now the
case in the entire Western 'democratic' sphere, in newspapers, schools,
and on television. (SR.)]
21117 (return)
[ Ibid, XXXI., 271.
(Report by Robespierre, Pluviose 1, year II.) "This sublime principle
supposes a preference for public interests over all private interests;
from which it follows that the love of country supposes again, or
produces, all the virtues." "As the essence of a republic or of democracy
is equality, it follows that love of country necessarily comprises a love
of equality." "The soul of the Republic is virtue, equality."—Lavalette,
"Memoirs," I., 254. (Narrated by Madame Lavalette.) She was compelled to
attend public festivals, and, every month, the patriotic processions. "I
was rudely treated by my associates, the low women of the quarter; the
daughter of an emigré, of a marquis, or of an imprisoned mother, ought not
to be allowed the honor of their company;.... it was all wrong that she
was not made an apprentice.... Hortense de Beauharnais was apprenticed to
her mother's seamstress, while Eugene was put with a carpenter in the
Faubourg St. Germain." The prevailing dogmatism has a singular effect with
simple-minded people. (Archives Nationals, AF. II., 135. petition of
Ursule Riesler, servant to citizen Estreich and arrested along with him,
addressed to Garneri, agent of the Committee of Public Safety. She begs
citizen Garnerin to interest himself in obtaining her freedom. She will
devote her life to praying to the Supreme Being for him, since he will
redeem her life. He is to furnish her, moreover, with the means for
espousing a future husband, a genuine republican, by who she is pregnant,
and who would not allow her to entertain any idea of fanatical capers.]
Reactionary concept of the State.—Analogy between this idea
of the State and that of antiquity.—Difference between
antique and modern society.—Changed circumstances.
The Jacobin theory can then be summarized in the following points:
* The speculative creation of a curtailed type of human being.
* An effort to adapt the living man to this type.
* The interference of public authority in every branch of public endeavor.
* Constraints put upon labor, trade and property, upon the family and education, upon worship, habits, customs and sentiments.
* The sacrifice of the individual to the community.
* The omnipotence of the State.
No theory could be more reactionary since it moves modern man back to a type of society which he, eighteen centuries ago, had already passed through and left behind.
During the historical era proceeding our own, and especially in the old Greek or Latin cities, in Rome or Sparta, which the Jacobins take for their models,2201 human society was shaped after the pattern of an army or convent. In a convent as in an army, one idea, absorbing and unique, predominates:
* The aim of the monk is to please God at any sacrifice.
* The soldier makes every sacrifice to obtain a victory.
Accordingly, each renounces every other desire and entirely abandons himself, the monk to his rules and the soldier to his drill. In like manner, in the antique world, two preoccupations were of supreme importance. In the first place, the city had its gods who were both its founders and protectors: it was therefore obliged to worship these in the most reverent and particular manner; otherwise, they abandoned it. The neglect of any insignificant rite might offend them and ruin it. In the second place, there was incessant warfare, and the spoils of war were atrocious; on a city being taken every citizen might expect to be killed or maimed, or sold at auction, and see his children and wife sold to the highest bidder.2202 In short, the antique city, with its acropolis of temples and its fortified citadel surrounded by implacable and threatening enemies, resembles for us the institution of the Knights of St. John on their rocks at Rhodes or Malta, a religious and military confraternity encamped around a church.—Liberty, under such conditions, is out of the question: public convictions are too imperious; public danger is too great. With this pressure upon him, and thus hampered, the individual gives himself up to the community, which takes full possession of him, because, to maintain its own existence, it needs the whole man. Henceforth, no one may develop apart and for himself; no one may act or think except within fixed lines. The type of Man is distinctly and clearly marked out, if not logically at least traditionally; each life, as well as each portion of each life must conform to this type; otherwise public security is compromised: any falling off in gymnastic education weakens the army; passing the images of the gods and neglecting the usual libation draws down celestial vengeance on the city. Consequently, to prevent all deviations, the State, absolute master, exercises unlimited jurisdiction; no freedom whatever is left to the individual, no portion of himself is reserved to himself, no sheltered corner against the strong hand of public force, neither his possessions, his children, his personality, his opinions or his conscience.2203 If, on voting days, he shares in the sovereignty, he is subject all the rest of the year, even to his private sentiments. Rome, to serve these ends, had two censors. One of the archons of Athens was inquisitor of the faith. Socrates was put to death for not believing in the gods in which the city believed.2204—In reality, not only in Greece and in Rome, but in Egypt, in China, in India, in Persia, in Judea, in Mexico, in Peru, during the first stages of civilization,2205 the principle of human communities is still that of gregarious animals: the individual belongs to his community the same as the bee to its hive and the ant to its ant-hill; he is simply an organ within an organism. Under a variety of structures and in diverse applications authoritative socialism alone prevails.
Just the opposite in modern society; what was once the rule has now become the exception; the antique system survives only in temporary associations, like that of an army, or in special associations, as in a convent. Gradually, the individual has liberated himself, and century after century, he has extended his domain and the two chains which once bound him fast to the community, have snapped or been lightened.
In the first place, public power has ceased to consist of a militia protecting a cult. In the beginning, through the institution of Christianity, civil society and religious society have become two distinct empires, Christ himself having separated the two jurisdictions;
"Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's, and unto God the things that are God's."
Additionally, through the rise of Protestantism, the great Church is split into numerous sects which, unable to destroy each other, have been so compelled to live together and the State, even when preferring one of them, has found it necessary to tolerate the others. Finally, through the development of Protestantism, philosophy and the sciences, speculative beliefs have multiplied. There are almost as many faiths now-a-days as there are thinking men, and, as thinking men are becoming daily more numerous, opinions are daily becoming more numerous. So should the State try to impose any one of these on society, this would excite opposition from an infinity of others; hence the wisdom in governing is found, first, in remaining neutral, and, next, in acknowledging that it is not qualified to interfere.
In the second place, war has become less frequent and less destructive because men have not so many motives for waging it, nor the same motives to push it to the same extremes. Formerly, war was the main source of wealth; through victories Man acquired slaves, subjects and tributaries; he turned these to the best account; he leisurely enjoyed their forced labor. Nothing of this kind is seen now-a-days; people no longer think of providing themselves human cattle; they have discovered that, of all animals, these are the most troublesome, the least productive, and the most dangerous. Comforts and security are obtained much more readily through free labor and machinery; the great object no is not to conquer, but to produce and interchange. Every day, man, pressing forward more eagerly in civil careers, is less disposed to put up with any obstacle that interferes with his aims; if he still consents to be a soldier it is not to become an invader, but to provide against invasion. Meanwhile, war has become more scientific and, through the complications of its machinery, more costly; the State can no longer call out and enlist for life every able-bodied man without ruining itself, nor put too many obstacles in the way of the free industry which, through taxation, provides for its expenses; however short-sighted the State may be, it consults civil interests, even in its military interest.—Thus, of the two nets in which it has enveloped all human activity, one is rent asunder and the other has slackened its meshes. There is no longer any reason for making the community omnipotent; the individual need not alienate himself entirely; he may, without inconvenience, reserve to himself a part of himself, and, if now called upon to sign a social contract, you may be sure that he would make this reservation.
Changed minds.—Conscience and its Christian origin.—Honor
and its feudal origin.—The individual of to-day refuses to
surrender himself entirely.—His motives.—Additional
motives in modern democracy.—Character of the elective
process and the quality of the representative.
And so have not only outward circumstances changed, but the very human attitudes are now different. In the mind of modern man a feeling, distasteful to the antique pact, has evolved.—Undoubtedly, in extreme cases and under the pressure of brutal necessity I may, momentarily, sign a blank check. But, never, if I understand what I am doing, will I sign away in good faith the complete and permanent abandonment of myself: it would be against conscience and against honor, which two possessions are not to be alienated. My honor and my conscience are not to go out of my keeping; I am their sole guardian and depositary; I would not even entrust them to my father.—Both these terms are recent and express two conceptions unknown to the ancients,2206 both being of profound import and of infinite reach. Through them, like a bud separated from its stem and taking root apart, the individual has separated himself from the primitive body, clan, family, caste or city in which he has lived indistinguishable and lost in the crowd; he has ceased to be an organ and appendage; he has become a personality.—The first of these concepts is of Christian origin the second of feudal origin; both, following each other and conjoined, measure the enormous distance which separates an antique soul from a modern soul.2207
Alone, in the presence of God, the Christian has felt melting, like wax, all the ties binding him to his group; this because he is in front of the Great Judge, and because this infallible judge sees all souls as they are, not confusedly and in masses, but clearly, each by itself. At the bar of His tribunal no one is answerable for another; each answers for himself alone; one is responsible only for one's own acts. But those acts are of infinite consequence, for the soul, redeemed by the blood of a God, is of immeasurable value; hence, according as it has or has not profited by the divine sacrifice, so will the reward or punishment be infinite; at the final judgment, an eternity of torment or bliss opens before it. All other interests vanish alongside of a vision of such vastness. Thenceforth, righteousness is the most serious of all aims, not in the eyes of man, but of God and again, day after day, the soul renews within itself that tragic questioning in which the Judge interrogates and the sinner responds.—Through this dialogue, which has been going on for eighteen centuries, and which is yet to continue, conscience has grown more and more sensitive, and man has conceived the idea of absolute justice. Whether this is vested in an all-powerful master, or whether it is a self-existent truth, like mathematical truths, in no way diminishes its sacredness nor, consequently, from its authority. It commands with a superior voice and its commands must be obeyed, irrespective of cost: there are strict duties to which every man is rigorously bound. No pledge may relieve him of these duties; if not fulfilled because he has given contrary pledges he is no less culpable on this account, and besides, he is culpable for having pledged himself; the pledging of himself to crimes was in itself a crime. His fault thus appears to himself twofold, and the inward prick galls him twice instead of once. Hence, the more sensitive the conscience, the more loath it is to give up; it rejects any promise which may lead to wrong-doing, and refuses to give to give others any right of imposing remorse.
At the same time another sentiment has arisen, not less valuable, but hardier, more energetic, more human and more effective. On his own in his stronghold, the feudal chieftain, at the head of his band, could depend on nobody but himself, for a public force did not then exist. It was necessary that he should protect himself, and, indeed, over-protect himself. Whoever, in the anarchical and military society in which he lived, allowed the slightest encroachment, or left unpunished the slightest approach to insult, was regarded as weak or craven and at once became a prey; one had to be proud-spirited, if not, one risked death. This was not difficult either. Sole proprietor and nearly absolute sovereign, with neither equals or peers on his domain, here he was unique being, superior and incomparable to every one else.2208 On that subject revolved his long monologue during his hours of gloomy solitude, which soliloquy has lasted for nine centuries.2209 Thus in his own eyes, his person and all that depends on him are inviolable; rather than tolerate the slightest infringement on his prerogatives he will dare all and sacrifice all.2210 A sensitive pride (orgueil exalté) is the best of sentinels to protect a right; for, not only does it mount guard over the right to preserve it, but, again, and especially, for its own satisfaction; the imagination has conceived a personality appropriate for his rank, and this character the man imposes on himself as his role. Henceforth, he not only forces the respect of others, but he respects himself; he possesses the sentiment of honor, a generous self-esteem which makes him regard himself as noble and incapable of doing anything mean. In discriminating between his actions, he may err; fashion or vanity may sometimes lead him too far, or lead him astray, either on the path of recklessness or on that of puerility; his point of honor may be fixed in the wrong direction. But, in sum, and thanks to this being a fixed point, he will maintain himself erect even under an absolute monarchy, under a Philip II. in Spain, under a Louis XIV. in France, under a Frederick II. in Prussia. From the feudal baron or gentleman of the court to the modern gentleman, this tradition persists and descends from story to story down to lowest social substratum: to-day, every man of spirit, the bourgeois, the peasant, the workman, has his point of honor like the noble. He likewise, in spite of the social encroachments that gain on him, reserves to himself his private nook, a sort of moral stronghold wherein he preserves his faiths, his opinions, his affections, his obligations as son, husband and father; it is the sacred treasury of his innermost being. This stronghold belongs to him alone; no one, even in the name of the public, has a right to enter it; to surrender it would be cowardice, rather than give up its keys he would die in the breach;2211 when this militant sentiment of honor is enlisted on the side of conscience it becomes virtue itself.2212—Such are, in these days, (1870) the two central themes of our European morality.2213 Through the former the individual recognizes duties from which nothing can exempt him; through the latter, he claims rights of which nothing can deprive him: our civilization has vegetated from these two roots, and still vegetates. Consider the depth and the extent of the historical soil in which they penetrate, and you may judge of their vigor. Consider the height and unlimited growth of the trees which they nourish, and you may judge of their healthiness. Everywhere else, one or other having failed, in China, in the Roman Empire, in Islam, the sap has dried downward and the tree has become stunted, or has fallen.... It is the modern man, who is neither Chinese, nor antique, nor Moslem, nor Negro, nor savage, the man formed by Christian education and taking refuge in his conscience as in a sanctuary, the man formed by feudal education and entrenched behind his honor as in a fortress, whose sanctuary and stronghold the new social contract bids him surrender.
Now, in this democracy founded on the preponderance of numbers, into whose hands am I required to make this surrender?—Theoretically, to the community, that is to say, to a crowd in which an anonymous impulse is the substitute for individual judgment; in which action becomes impersonal because it is collective; in which nobody acknowledges responsibility; in which I am borne along like a grain of sand in a whirlwind; in which all sorts of outrages are condoned beforehand for reasons of state: practically, to the plurality of voices counted by heads, to a majority which, over-excited by the struggle for mastery, will abuse its victory and wrong the minority to which I may belong; to a provisional majority which, sooner or later, will be replaced by another, so that if I am to-day oppressor I am sure of being oppressed to-morrow; still more particularly, to six or seven hundred representatives, among who I am called upon to choose but one. To elect this unique mandatory I have but one vote among ten thousand; and in helping to elect him I am only the ten-thousandth; I do not even count for a ten-thousandth in electing the others. And it is these six or seven hundred strangers to me to who I give full power to decide for me—note the expression full power—which means unlimited power, not alone over my possessions and life, but, again, over my conscience, with all its powers combined; that is to say, with powers much more extensive than those I confer separately on ten persons in whom I place the most confidence—to my legal adviser who looks after my fortune, to the teacher of my children, to the physician who cares for my health, to the confessor who directs my conscience, to friends who are to serve as executors of my last will and testament, to seconds in a duel who decide on my life, on the was of my blood and who guard my honor. Without reference to the deplorable farce, so often played around the ballot-box, or to the forced and distorted elections which put a contrary interpretation on public sentiment, or to the official lies by which, at this very moment, a few fanatics and madmen, who represent nobody but themselves, assume to represent the nation,2214 measure what degree of confidence I may have, even after honest elections, in mandatories who are thus chosen! Frequently, I have voted for the defeated candidate; in which case I am represented by the other who I did not want for a representative. In voting for the elected candidate, I did it because I knew of no better one, and because his opponent seemed to me worse. I have only seen him one time out of four and then fleetingly, at odd moment; I scarcely knew more of him than the color of his coat, the tone of his voice, and the way he has of thumping his breast. All I know of him is through his "platform," vague and declamatory, through editorials, and through drawing-room, coffee-house, or street gossip. His title to my confidence is of the flimsiest and shallowest kind; there is nothing to substantiate to me his integrity or competency; he has no diploma, and no one to endorse him as has a private tutor; he has no guarantee from the society to which he belongs, like the physician, the priest or the lawyer. With references as poor as these I should hesitate to recruit him even as a domestic. And all the more because the class from which I am obliged to take him is almost always that of politicians, a suspicious class, especially in countries in which universal suffrage prevails. This class is not recruited among the most independent, the ablest, and the most honest, but among voluble, scheming men, zealous charlatans, who for want of perseverance, having failed in private careers, in situations where one is watched too closely and too nicely weighed in the balance, have selected roles in which the want of scrupulousness and discretion is a force instead of a weakness; to their indelicacy and impudence the doors of a public career stand wide open.—Such is the august personage into whose hands, according to the theory, I am called upon to surrender my will, my will in full; certainly, if self-renunciation were necessary, I should risk less in giving myself up to a king or to an aristocracy, even hereditary; for then would my representatives be at least recommended by their evident rank and their probable competency.—Democracy, in its nature and composition, is a system in which the individual awards to his representatives the least trust and deference; hence, it is the system in which he should entrust them with the least power. Conscience and honor everywhere enjoin a man to retain for himself some portion of his independence; but nowhere is there so little be ceded. If a modern constitution ought to clearly define and limit the domain of the State, it is in respect of contemporary democracy that it ought to be the most restrictive.
Origin and nature of the modern State.—Its functions,
rights and limits.
Let us try to define these limits.—After the turmoil of invasions and conquest, at the height of social disintegration, amidst the combats daily occurring between private parties, there arose in every European community a public force, which force, lasting for centuries, still persists to our day. How it was organized, through what early stages of violence it passed, through what accidents and struggles, and into whose hands it is now entrusted, whether temporarily or forever, whatever the laws of its transmission, whether by inheritance or election, is of secondary importance; the main thing is its functions and their mode of operation. It is essentially a mighty sword, drawn from its scabbard and uplifted over the smaller blades around it, with which private individuals once cut each others' throats. Menaced by it, the smaller blades repose in their scabbards; they have become inert, useless, and, finally rusty; with few exceptions, everybody save malefactors, has now lost both the habit and the desire to use them, so that, henceforth, in this pacified society, the public sword is so formidable that all private resistance vanishes the moment it flashes.—This sword is forged out of two interests: it was necessary to have one of its magnitude, first, against similar blades brandished by other communities on the frontier, and next, against the smaller blades which bad passions are always sharpening in the interior. People demanded protection against outside enemies and inside ruffians and murderers, and, slowly and painfully, after much groping and much re-tempering, the agreement between hereditary forces has fashioned the sole arm which is capable of protecting lives and property with any degree of success.—So long as it does no more I am indebted to the State which holds the hilt: it gives me a security which, without it, I could not have enjoyed. In return for this security I owe it, for my quota, the means for keeping this weapon in good condition: he who enjoys a service is under an obligation to pay for it. Accordingly, there is between the State and myself, if not an express contract, at least a tacit understanding equivalent to that which binds a child to its parent, a believer to his church, and, on both sides, this mutual understanding is clear and precise. The state engages to look after my security within and without; I engage to furnish the means for so doing, which means consist of my respect and gratitude, my zeal as a citizen, my services as a conscript, my contributions as a tax-payer, in short, whatever is necessary for the maintenance of an army, a navy, a diplomatic organization, civil and criminal courts, a militia and police, central and local administrations, in short, a harmonious set of organs of which my obedience and loyalty constitute the food, the substance and the blood. This loyalty and obedience, whatever I am, whether rich or poor, Catholic, Protestant, Jew or free-thinker, royalist or republican, individualist or socialist, upon my honor and in my conscience I owe. This because I have received the equivalent; I am delighted that I am not vanquished, assassinated, or robbed. I reimburse the State, exactly but not more that which it has spent on equipment and personnel for keeping down brutal cupidity, greedy appetites, deadly fanaticism, the entire howling pack of passions and desires of which, sooner or later, I might become the prey, were it not constantly to extend over me its vigilant protection. When it demands its outlay of me it is not my property which it takes away, but its own property, which it collects and, in this light, it may legitimately force me to pay.—On condition, however, that it does not exact more than my liabilities, and this it does when it oversteps its original engagements;
1. when it undertakes some extra material or moral work that I do not ask for;
2. when it constitutes itself sectarian, moralist, philanthropist, or pedagogue;
3. when it strives to propagate within its borders, or outside of them, any religious or philosophic dogma, or any special political or social system.
For then, it adds a new article to the primitive pact, for which article there is not the same unanimous and assured assent that existed for the pact. We are all willing to be secured against violence and fraud; outside of this, and on almost any other point, there are divergent wills. I have my own religion, my own opinions, my habits, my customs, my peculiar views of life and way of regarding the universe; now, this is just what constitutes my personality, what honor and conscience forbid me to alienate, and which the State has promised me to protect. Consequently, when, through its additional article, it attempts to regulate these in a certain way, if that way is not my way, it fails to fulfill its primordial engagement and, instead of protecting me, it oppresses me. Even if it should have the support of a majority, even if all voters, less one, should agree to entrusting it with this supererogatory function, were there only one dissenter, he would be wronged, and in two ways.—
First of all, and in any event, the State, to fulfill its new tasks, exacts from him an extra amount of subsidy and service; for, every supplementary work brings along with it supplementary expenses; the budget is overburdened when the State takes upon itself the procuring of work for laborers or employment for artists, the maintenance of any particular industrial or commercial enterprise, the giving of alms, and the furnishing of education. To an expenditure of money add an expenditure of lives, should it enter upon a war of generosity or of propaganda. Now, to all these expenditures that it does not approve of, the minority contributes as well as the majority which does approve of them; so much the worse for the conscript and the tax-payer if they belong to the dissatisfied group. Like it or not, the collector puts his hand in the tax-payer's pocket, and the sergeant lays his hand on the conscript's collar.—
In the second place, and in many circumstances, not only does the State unjustly take more than its due, but it uses the money it has extorted from me to apply unjustly new constraints against me. Such is the case,
* when it imposes on me its theology or philosophy;
* when it prescribes for me, or interdicts, a cult;
* when it assumes to regulate my ways and habits,
* when it assumes to limit my labor or expenditure,
* when it assumes to direct the education of my children,
* when it assumes to fix the prices of my wares or the rate of my wages.
For then, to enforce its commands and prohibitions, it enacts light or serious penalties against the recalcitrant, all the way from political or civil incapacity to fines, imprisonment, exile and the guillotine. In other words, the money I do not owe it, and of which it robs me, pays for the persecution which it inflicts upon me; I am reduced to paying out of my own purse the wages of my inquisitors, my jailer and my executioner. A more glaring oppression could not be imagined!—Let us watch out for the encroachments of the State and not allow it to become anything more than a watch-dog. Whilst the teeth and nails of other guests in the household have been losing their sharpness, its fangs have become formidable; it is now colossal and it alone still keeps up the practice of fighting. Let us supply it with nourishment against wolves; but never let it touch peaceable folks around the table. Appetite grows by eating; it would soon become a wolf itself, and the most ravenous wolf inside the fold. The important thing is to keep a chain around its neck and confine it within its own enclosure.
The state is tempted to encroach.—Precedents and reasons
for its pretensions.
Let us go around the fold, which is an extensive one, and, through its extensions, reach into almost every nook of private life.—Each private domain, indeed, physical or moral, offers temptations for its neighbors to trespass on it, and, to keep this intact, demands the superior intervention of a third party. To acquire, to possess, to sell, to give, to bequeath, to contract between husband and wife, father, mother or child, between master or domestic, employer or employee, each act and each situation, involves rights limited by contiguous and adverse rights, and it is the State which sets up the boundary between them. Not that it creates this boundary; but, that this may be recognized, it draws the line and therefore enacts civil laws which it applies through its courts and gendarmes in such a way as to secure to each individual what belongs to him. The State stands, accordingly, as regulator and controller, not alone of private possessions, but also of the family and of domestic life; its authority is thus legitimately introduced into that reserved circle in which the individual will has entrenched itself, and, as is the habit of all great powers, once the circle is invaded, its tendency is to occupy it fully and entirely.—To this end, it invokes a new principle. Constituted as a moral personality, the same as a church, university, or charitable or scientific body, is not the State bound, like every corporate body that is to last for ages, to extend its vision far and near and prefer to private interests, which are only life-interests, the common interest (l'intérêt commun) which is eternal? Is not this the superior end to which all others should be subordinated, and must this interest, which is supreme over all, be sacrificed to two troublesome instincts which are often unreasonable and sometimes dangerous; to conscience, which overflows in mystic madness, and to honor, which may lead to strife even to murderous duels?—Certainly not, and first of all when, in its grandest works, the State, as legislator, regulates marriages, inheritances, and testaments, then it is not respect for the will of individuals which solely guides it; it does not content itself with obliging everybody to pay his debts, including even those which are tacit, involuntary and innate; it takes into account the public interest; it calculates remote probabilities, future contingencies, all results singly and collectively. Manifestly, in allowing or forbidding divorce, in extending or restricting what a man may dispose of by testament, in favoring or interdicting substitutions, it is chiefly in view of some political, economical or social advantage, either to refine or consolidate the union of the sexes, to implant in the family habits of discipline or sentiments of affection, to excite in children an initiatory spirit, or one of concord, to prepare for the nation a staff of natural chieftains, or an army of small proprietors, and always authorized by the universal assent. Moreover, and always with this universal assent, it does other things outside the task originally assigned to it, and nobody finds that it usurps when,
* it coins money,
* it regulates weights and measures,
* it establishes quarantines,
* on condition of an indemnity, it expropriates private property for public utility,
* it builds lighthouses, harbors, dikes, canals, roads,
* it defrays the cost of scientific expeditions,
* it founds museums and public libraries;
* at times, toleration is shown for its support of universities, schools, churches, and theaters, and, to justify fresh drafts on private purses for such objects, no reason is assigned for it but the common interest. (l'intérêt commun)—Why should it not, in like manner, take upon itself every enterprise for the benefit of all? Why should it hesitate in commanding the execution of every work advantageous to the community, and why abstain from forbidding every harmful work? Now please note that in human society every act or omission, even the most concealed or private, is either a loss or a gain to society. So if I neglect to take care of my property or of my health, of my intellect or of my soul, I undermine or weaken in my person a member of the community which can only be rich, healthy and strong through the wealth, health and strength of his fellow members, so that, from this point of view, my private actions are all public benefits or public injuries. Why then, from this point of view, should the State scruple about prescribing some of these to me and forbidding others? Why, in order to better exercise this right, and better fulfill this obligation, should it not constitute itself the universal contractor for labor, and the universal distributor of productions? Why should it not become the sole agriculturist, manufacturer and merchant, the unique proprietor and administrator of all France?—Precisely because this would be opposed to the common weal (l'intérêt de tous, the interest of everyone)2215. Here the second principle, that advanced against individual independence, operates inversely, and, instead of being an adversary, it becomes a champion. Far from setting the State free, it puts another chain around its neck, and thus strengthens the fence within which modern conscience and modern honor have confined the public guardian.
Direct common interest.—This consists in the absence of
constraint.—Two reasons in favor of freedom of action.—
Character, in general, of the individual man.—Modern
complication.
In what, indeed, does the common weal (l'intérêt de tous, the interest of everyone) consist?—In the interest of each person, while that which interests each person is the things of which the possession is agreeable and deprivation painful. The whole world would in vain gainsay this point; every sensation is personal. My suffering and my enjoyments are not to be contested any more than my inclination for objects which procure me the one, and my dislike of objects which procure me the other. There is, therefore, no arbitrary definition of each one's particular interest; this exists as a fact independently of the legislator; all that remains is to show what this interest is, and what each individual prefers. Preferences vary according to race, time, place and circumstance. Among the possessions which are ever desirable and the privation of which is ever dreaded, there is one, however, which, directly desired, and for itself, becomes, through the progress of civilization, more and more cherished, and of which the privation becomes, through the progress of civilization, more and more grievous. That is the disposition of one's self, the full ownership of one's body and property, the faculty of thinking, believing and worshipping as one pleases, of associating with others, of acting separately or along with others, in all senses and without hindrance; in short, one's liberty. That this liberty may as extensive as possible is, in all times, one of man's great needs, and, in our days, it is his greatest need. There are two reasons for this, one natural and the other historical.—
By nature Man is an individual, that is to say a small distinct world in himself, a center apart in an enclosed circle, a detached organism complete in itself and which suffers when his spontaneous inclinations are frustrated by the intervention of an outside force.
The passage of time has made him a complicated organism, upon which three or four religions, five or six civilizations, thirty centuries of rich culture have left their imprint; in which its acquisitions are combined together, wherein inherited qualities are crossbred, wherein special traits have accumulated in such a way as to produce the most original and the most sensitive of beings. As civilization increases, so does his complexity: with the result that man's originality strengthens and his sensitivity become keener; from which it follows that the more civilized he becomes, the greater his repugnance to constraint and uniformity.
At the present day, (1880), each of us is the terminal and peculiar product of a vast elaboration of which the diverse stages occur in this order but once, a plant unique of its species, a solitary individual of superior and finer essence which, with its own inward structure and its own inalienable type, can bear no other than its own characteristic fruit. Nothing could be more adverse to the interest of the oak than to be tortured into bearing the apples of the apple tree; nothing could be more adverse to the interests of the apple tree than to be tortured into bearing acorns; nothing could be more opposed to the interests of both oak and apple tree, also of other trees, than to be pruned, shaped and twisted so as all to grow after a forced model, delineated on paper according to the rigid and limited imagination of a surveyor. The least possible constraint is, therefore, everybody's chief interest; if one particular restrictive agency is established, it is that every one may be preserved by if from other more powerful constraints, especially those which the foreigner and evil-doer would impose. Up to that point, and not further, its intervention is beneficial; beyond that point, it becomes one of the evils it is intended to forestall. Such then, if the common weal is to be looked after, the sole office of the State is,
1. to prevent constraint and, therefore, never to use it except to prevent worse constraints;
2. to secure respect for each individual in his own physical and moral domain; never to encroach on this except for that purpose and then to withdraw immediately;
3. to abstain from all indiscreet meddling, and yet more, as far as is practicable, without any sacrifice of public security;
4. to reduce old assessments, to exact only a minimum of subsidies and services;
5. to gradually limit even useful action;
6. to set itself as few tasks as possible;
7. to let each one have all the room possible and the maximum of initiative;
8. to slowly abandon monopolies;
9. to refrain from competition with private parties;
10. to rid itself of functions which these private parties can fulfill equally well—and we see that the limits assigned to the State by the public interest (l'intérêt commun) correspond to those stipulated by duty and justice.
Indirect common interest.—This consists in the most
economical and most productive employment of spontaneous
forces.—Difference between voluntary labor and forced
labor.—Sources of man's spontaneous action. Conditions of
their energy, work and products.—Motives for leaving them
under personal control.—Extent of the private domain.
—Individuals might voluntarily extend it.—What is left
becomes the domain of the State.—Obligatory functions of
the State.—Optional functions of the State.
Let us now take into consideration, no longer the direct, but the indirect interest of all. Instead of considering individuals let us concern ourselves with their works. Let us regard human society as a material and spiritual workshop, whose perfection consists in making it as productive, economical, and as well furnished and managed as possible. Even with this secondary and subordinate aim, the domain of the State is scarcely to be less restricted: very few new functions are to be attributed to it; nearly all the rest will be better fulfilled by independent persons, or by natural or voluntary associations.—
Let us consider the man who works for his own benefit, the farmer, the manufacturer, the merchant, and observe how attentive he is to his business. This is because his interest and pride are involved. One side his welfare and that of those around him is at stake, his capital, his reputation, his social position and advancement; on the other side, are poverty, ruin, social degradation, dependence, bankruptcy and the alms-house. In the presence of this alternative he keeps close watch and becomes industrious; he thinks of his business even when abed or at his meals; he studies it, not from a distance, speculatively, in a general way, but on the spot, practically, in detail, in all its bearings and relationships, constantly calculating difficulties and resources, with such sharp insight and special information that for any other person to try to solve the daily problem which he solves, would be impossible, because nobody could possess or estimate as he can the precise elements which constitute it.—Compare with this unique devotion and these peculiar qualifications the ordinary capacity and listless regularity of a senior public official, even when expert and honest. He is sure of his salary, provided he does his duty tolerably well, and this he does when he is occupied during official hours. Let his papers be correct, in conformity with regulations and custom, and nothing more is asked of him; he need not tax his brain beyond that. If he conceives any economical measure, or any improvement of his branch of the service, not he, but the public, an anonymous and vague impersonality, reaps all the benefit of it. Moreover, why should he care about it, since his project or reform might end up in the archives. The machine is too vast and complicated, too unwieldy, too clumsy, with its rusty wheels, its "old customs and acquired rights," to be renewed and rebuilt as one might a farm, a warehouse or a foundry. Accordingly, he has no idea of troubling himself further in the matter; on leaving his office he dismisses it from his mind; he lets things go on automatically, just as it happens, in a costly way and with indifferent results. Even in a country of as much probity as France, it is calculated that every enterprise managed by the State costs one quarter more, and brings in one quarter less, than when entrusted to private hands. Consequently if work were withheld from individuals in order that the State might undertake it the community, when the accounts came to be balanced, would suffer a loss of one-half.2216
Now, this is true of all work, whether spiritual or material not only of agricultural, industrial and commercial products, but, again, of works of science and of art, of literature and philosophy, of charity, of education and propaganda. Not only when driven by egoism, such as personal interest and vulgar vanity, but also when a disinterested sentiment is involved, such the discovery of truth, the creation of beauty, the propagation of a faith, the diffusion of convictions, religious enthusiasm or natural generosity, love in a broad or a narrow sense, spanning from one who embraces all humanity to one who devotes himself wholly to his friends and kindred. The effect is the same in both cases, because the cause is the same. Always, in the shop directed by the free workman, the motivating force is enormous, almost infinite, because it is a living spring which flows at all hours and is inexhaustible. The mother thinks constantly of her child, the savant of his science, the artist of his art, the inventor of his inventions, the philanthropist of his endowments, Faraday of electricity, Stephenson of his locomotive, Pasteur of his microbes, De Lesseps of his isthmus, sisters of charity of their poor. Through this peculiar concentration of thought, man derives every possible advantage from human faculties and surroundings; he himself gets to be a more and more perfect instrument, and, moreover, he fashions others: with this he daily reduces the friction of the powerful machine which he controls and of which he is the main wheel; he increases its yield ; he economizes, maintains, repairs and improves it with a capability and success that nobody questions; in short, he fabricates in a superior way.—But this living source, to which the superiority of the works is due, cannot be separated from the owner and chief, for it issues from his own affections and deepest sentiments. It is useless without him; out of his hands, in the hands of strangers, the fountain ceases to flow and production stops.—If, consequently, a good and large yield is required, he alone must have charge of the mill; he is the resident owner of it, the one who sets it in motion, the born engineer, installed and specially designed for that position. In vain may attempts be made to turn the stream elsewhere; there simply ensues a stoppage of the natural issue, a dam barring useful canals, a haphazard change of current not only without gain, but loss, the stream subsiding in swamps or undermining the steep banks of a ravine. At the utmost, the millions of buckets of water, forcibly taken from private reservoirs, half fill with a good deal of trouble the great central artificial basin in which the water, low and stagnant, is never sufficient in quantity or force to move the huge public wheel that replaces the small private wheels, doing the nation's work.
Thus, even when we only consider men as manufactures, even if we treat them simply as producers of what is valuable and serviceable, with no other object in view than to furnish society with supplies and to benefit the consumers, even though the private domain includes all enterprises undertaken by private individuals, either singly or associated together, through personal interests or personal taste, then this is enough to ensure that all is managed better than the State could have done; it is by virtue of this that they have devolved into their hands. Consequently, in the vast field of labor, they themselves decide on what they will undertake; they themselves, of their own authority, set their own limits. They may therefore enlarge their own domain to any extent they please, and reduce indefinitely the domain of the State. On the contrary, the State cannot pretend to more than what they leave; as they advance on their common territory separated by vague frontiers, it is bound to recede and leave the ground to them; whatever the task is, it should not perform it except in case of their default, or their prolonged absence, or on proof of their having abandoned it.
All the rest, therefore falls to the State; first, the offices which they would never claim, and which they will deliberately leave in its hands, because they do not have that indispensable instrument, called armed force. This force forces assures the protection of the community against foreign communities, the protection of individuals against one another, the levying of soldiers, the imposition of taxes, the execution of the laws, the administration of justice and of the police.—Next to this, come matters of which the accomplishment concerns everybody without directly interesting any one in particular—the government of unoccupied territory, the administration of rivers, coasts, forests and public highways, the task of governing subject countries, the framing of laws, the coinage of money, the conferring of a civil status, the negotiating in the name of the community with local and special corporations, departments, communes, banks, institutions, churches, and universities.—Add to these, according to circumstances, sundry optional co-operative services,2217 such as subsidies granted to institutions of great public utility, for which private contributions could not suffice, now in the shape of concessions to corporations for which equivalent obligations are exacted, and, again, in those hygienic precautions which individuals fail to take through indifference; so occasionally, such provisional aid as supports a man, or so stimulates him as to enable him some day or other to support himself; and, in general, those discreet and scarcely perceptible interpositions for the time being which prove so advantageous in the future, like a far-reaching code and other consistent regulations which, mindful of the liberty of the existing individual, provide for the welfare of coming generations. Nothing beyond that.
Again, in this preparation for future welfare the same principle still holds.
Fabrication of social instruments.—Application of this
principle.—How all kinds of useful laborers are formed.—
Respect for spontaneous sources, the essential and adequate
condition.—Obligation of the State to respect these.—They
dry up when it monopolizes them.—The aim of patriotism.—
The aim of other liberal dispositions.—Impoverishment of
all the productive faculties.—Destructive effect of the
Jacobin system.
Among the precious products, the most precious and important are, evidently, the animated instruments, namely the men, since they produce the rest. The object then, is to fashion men capable of physical, mental or moral labor, the most energetic, the most persistent, the most skillful and most productive; now, we already know the conditions of their formation. It is essential and sufficient, that the vivacious sources, described above, should flow there, on the spot, each through its natural outlet, and under the control of the owner. On this condition the jet becomes more vigorous, for the acquired impetus increases the original outflow; the producer becomes more and more skillful, since 'practice makes perfect.' Those around him likewise become better workmen, inasmuch as they find encouragement in his success and avail themselves of his discoveries.—Thus, simply because the State respects, and enforces respect, for these individual sources in private hands, it develops in individuals, as well as in those around them, the will and the talent for producing much and well, the faculty for, and desire to, keep on producing more and better; in other words, all sorts of energies and capacities, each of its own kind and in its own place, with all compatible fullness and efficiency. Such is the office, and the sole office, of the State, first in relation to the turbid and frigid springs issuing from selfishness and self-conceit, whose operations demand its oversight, and next for still stronger reasons, in relation to the warm and pure springs whose beneficence is unalloyed, as in the family affections and private friendships; again, in relation to those rarer and higher springs, such as the love of beauty, the yearning for truth, the spirit of association, patriotism and love of mankind; and, finally, for still stronger reasons, in relation to the two most sacred and salutary of all springs, conscience which renders will subject to duty, and honor which makes will the support of justice. Let the State prevent, as well as abstain from, any interference with either; let this be its object and nothing more; its abstention is as necessary as its vigilance. Let it guard both, and it will see everywhere growing spontaneously, hourly, each in degree according to conditions of time and place, the most diligent and most competent workmen, the agriculturist, the manufacturer, the merchant, the savant, the artist, the inventor, the propagandist, the husband and wife, the father and mother, the patriot, the philanthropist and the sister of charity.
On the contrary, if, like our Jacobins, the State seeks to confiscate every natural force to its own profit, it seeks to make affection for itself paramount, if it strives to suppress all other passions and interests, if it tolerates no other preoccupation than that which concerns the common weal, if it tries to forcibly convert every member of society into a Spartan or Jesuit, then, at enormous cost, will it not only destroy private fountains, and spread devastation over the entire territory, but it will destroy its own fountain-head. We honor the State only for the services it renders to us, and proportionately to these services and the security it affords us, and to the liberty which it ensures us under the title of universal benefactor; when it deliberately wounds us through our dearest interests and most tender affections, when it goes so far as to attack our honor and conscience, when it becomes the universal wrong-doer, our affection for it, in the course of time, turns into hatred. Let this system be maintained, and patriotism, exhausted, dries up, and, one by one, all other beneficent springs, until, finally, nothing is visible over the whole country, but stagnant pools or overwhelming torrents, inhabited by passive subjects or depredators. As in the Roman empire in the fourth century, in Italy in the seventeenth century, in the Turkish provinces in our own day, naught remains but an ill-conducted herd of stunted, torpid creatures, limited to their daily wants and animal instincts, indifferent to the public welfare and to their own prospective interests, so degenerate as to have lost sight of their own discoveries, unlearned their own sciences, arts and industries, and, in short, and worse than all, base, false, corrupted souls entirely wanting in honor and conscience. Nothing is more destructive than the unrestricted meddling of the State, even when wise and paternal; in Paraguay, under the discipline of Jesuits, so minute in its details, "Indian physiognomy appeared like that of animals taken in a trap." They worked, ate, drank and gave birth by sound of bells, under watch and ward, correctly and mechanically, but showing no liking for anything, not even for their own existence, being transformed into so may automatons; at least it may be said is that the means employed to produce this result were gentle and that they, before their transformation were mere brutes. But those who the revolutionary-Jesuit now undertakes to transform into robots, and by harsh means, are human beings.
Comparison between despotisms.—Philip II and Louis XIV.—
Cromwell and Frederick the Great.—Peter the Great and the
Sultans.—Relationship between the tasks the Jacobins are to
carry out and the assets at their disposal.—Disproportion
between the burdens they are to carry and the forces at
their disposal.—Folly of their undertaking.—Physical force
the only governmental force they possess.—They are
compelled to exercise it.—They are compelled to abuse it.—
Character of their government.—Character requisite of their
leaders.
Several times, in European history, despotism almost equally harsh have born down heavily on human effort; but never have any of them been so thoroughly inept; for none have ever attempted to raise so heavy a mass with so short a lever. And to start with, no matter how authoritative the despot might have been, his intervention was limited.—Philip II. burned heretics, persecuted Moors and drove out Jews; Louis XIV. forcibly converted the Protestants; but both used violence only against dissenters, about a fifteenth or a twentieth of their subjects. If Cromwell, on becoming Protector, remained sectarian, and the compulsory servant of an army of sectarians, he took good care not to impose on other churches the theology, rites and discipline of his own church;2218 on the contrary, he repressed fanatical outrages; protected the Anabaptists as well as his Independents. He granted paid curates to the Presbyterians as well as the public exercise of their worship, he showed the Episcopalians a large tolerance and gave them the right to worship in private; he maintained the two great Anglican universities and allowed the Jews to erect a synagogue.—Frederick II. drafted into his army every able-bodied peasant that he could feed; he kept every man twenty years in the service, under a discipline worse than slavery, with almost certain prospect of death; and in his last war, he sacrificed about one sixth of his male subjects;2219 but they were serfs, and his conscription did not touch the bourgeois class. He put his hands in the pockets of the bourgeois and of every other man, and took every crown they had; when driven to it, he adulterated coin and stopped paying his functionaries; but, under the scrutiny of his eyes, always open, the administration was honest, the police effective, justice exact, toleration unlimited, and the freedom of the press complete; the king allowed the publication of the most cutting pamphlets against himself, and their public sale, even at Berlin.—A little earlier, in the great empire of the east, Peter the Great,2220 with whip in hand, lashed his Muscovite bears and made them drill and dance in European fashion; but were bears accustomed from father to son to the whip and chain; moreover, he stood as the orthodox head of their faith, and left their mir (the village commune) untouched.—Finally, at the other extremity of Europe, and even outside of Europe, in the seventh century the caliph, in the fifteenth century a sultan, a Mahomet or an Omar, a fanatical Arab or brutal Turk, who had just overcome Christians with the sword, himself assigned the limits of his own absolutism: if the vanquished were reduced to the condition of heavily ransomed tributaries and of inferiors daily humiliated, he allowed them their worship, civil laws and domestic usages; he left them their institutions, their convents and their schools; he allowed them to administer the affairs of their own community as they pleased under the jurisdiction of their patriarch, or other natural chieftains.—Thus whatever the tyrant may have been, he did not attempt to entirely recast Man, nor to subject all his subjects to the recasting. However penetrating the tyranny, it stopped in the soul at a certain point; that point reached, the sentiments were left free. No matter how comprehensive this tyranny may have been, it affected only one class of men; the others, outside the net, remained free. When it wounded all at once all sensitive chords, it did so only to a limited minority, unable to defend themselves. As far as the majority, able to protect itself, their main sensibilities were respected, especially the most sensitive, this one or that one, as the case might be, now the conscience which binds man to his religion, now that amour-propre on which honor depends, and now the habits which make man cling to customs, hereditary usages and outward observances. As far as the others were concerned, those which relate to property, personal welfare, and social position, it proceeded cautiously and with moderation. In this way the discretion of the ruler lessened the resistance of the subject, and a daring enterprise, even mischievous, was not outrageous; it might be carried out; nothing was required but a force in hand equal to the resistance it provoked.
Again, and on the other hand, the tyrant possessed this force. Very many and very strong arms stood behind the prince ready to cooperate with him and countervail any resistance.—Behind Philip II. or Louis XIV. ready to drive the dissidents out or at least to consent to their oppression, stood the Catholic majority, as fanatical or as illiberal as their king. Behind Philip II., Louis XIV., Frederick II., and Peter the Great, stood the entire nation, equally violent, rallied around the sovereign through his consecrated title and uncontested right, through tradition and custom, through a rigid sentiment of duty and the vague idea of public security.—Peter the Great counted among his auxiliaries every eminent and cultivated man in the country; Cromwell had his disciplined and twenty-times victorious army; the caliph or sultan brought along with him his military and privileged population.—Aided by cohorts of this stamp, it was easy to raise a heavy mass, and even maintain it in a fixed position. Once the operation was concluded there followed a sort of equilibrium; the mass, kept in the air by a permanent counterbalance, only required a little daily effort to prevent it from falling.
It is just the opposite with the Jacobin enterprise. When it is put into operation, the theory, more exacting, adds an extra weight to the uplifted mass, and, finally, a burden of almost infinite weight.—At first, the Jacobin confined his attacks to royalty, to nobility, to the Church, to parliaments, to privileges, to ecclesiastical and feudal possessions, in short, to medieval foundations. Then he attacks yet more ancient and more solid foundations, positive religion, property and the family.—For four years he has been satisfied with demolition and now he wants to construct. His object is not merely to do away with a positive faith and suppress social inequality, to proscribe revealed dogmas, hereditary beliefs, an established cult, the supremacy of rank and superiority of fortunes, wealth, leisure, refinement and elegance, but he wants, in addition to all this, to re-fashion the citizen. He wants to create new sentiments, impose natural religion on the individual, civic education, uniform ways and habits, Jacobin conduct, Spartan virtue; in short, nothing is to be left in a human being that is not prescribed, enforced and constrained.—Henceforth, there is opposed to the Revolution, not alone the partisans of the ancient régime—priests, nobles, parliamentarians, royalists, and Catholics—but, again, every person imbued with European civilization, every member of a regular family, any possessor of a capital, large or small; every kind or degree of proprietor, farmer, manufacturer, merchant, artisan or farmer, even most of the revolutionaries. Nearly all the revolutionaries count on escaping the constraints they impose, and who only like the strait jacket when it is on another's back.—The influence of resistant wills at this moment becomes incalculable: it would be easier to raise a mountain, and, just at this moment, the Jacobins have deprived themselves of every moral force through which a political engineer acts on human wills.
Unlike Philip II. and Louis XIV. they are not supported by the intolerance of a vast majority, for, instead of fifteen or twenty orthodox against one heretic, they count in their church scarcely more than one orthodox against fifteen or twenty heretics.2221—They are not, like legitimate sovereigns, supported by the stubborn loyalty of an entire population, following in the steps of its chieftain out of the prestige of hereditary right and through habits of ancient fealty. On the contrary, their reign is only a day old and they themselves are interlopers. At first installed by a coup d'état and afterwards by the semblance of an election, they have extorted or obtained by trick the suffrages through which they act. They are so familiar with fraud and violence that, in their own Assembly, the ruling minority has seized and held on to power by violence and fraud, putting down the majority by riots, and the departments by force of arms. To give their brutalities the semblance of right, they improvise two pompous demonstrations, first, the sudden manufacture of a paper constitution, which molders away in their archives, and next, the scandalous farce of a hollow and compulsory plebiscite.—A dozen leaders of the party concentrate unlimited authority in their own hands; but, as admitted by them, their authority is derivative; it is the Convention which makes them its delegates; their precarious title has to be renewed monthly; a turn of the majority may sweep them and their work away to-morrow; an insurrection of the people, whom they have familiarized with insurrection, may to-morrow sweep them away, their work and their majority.—They maintain only a disputed, limited and transient ascendancy over their adherents. They are not military chieftains like Cromwell and Napoleon, generals of an army obeyed without a murmur, but common stump-speakers at the mercy of an audience that sits in judgment on them. There is no discipline in this public; every Jacobin remains independent by virtue of his principles; if he accepts leaders, it is with a reservation of their worth to him; selecting them as he pleases, he is free to change them when he pleases; his trust in them is intermittent, his loyalty provisional, and, as his adhesion depends on a mere preference, he always reserves the right to discard the favorite of to-day as he has discarded the favorite of yesterday. In this audience, there is no such thing as subordination; the lowest demagogue, any noisy subaltern, a Hébert or Jacques Roux, aspiring to step out of the ranks, overbidding the charlatans in office in order to obtain their places. Even with a complete and lasting ascendancy over an organized band of docile supporters, the Jacobin leaders would be feeble for lack of reliable and competent instruments; for they have but very few partisans other than those of doubtful probity and of notorious incapacity.—Cromwell had around him, to carry out the puritan program, the moral élite of the nation, an army of rigorists, with narrow consciences, but much more strict towards themselves than towards others, men who never drank and who never swore, who never indulged for a moment in sensuality or idleness, who forbade themselves every act of omission or commission about which they held any scruples, the most honest, the most temperate, the most laborious and the most persevering of mankind,2222 the only ones capable of laying the foundations of that practical morality on which England and the United States still subsist at the present day.—Around Peter the Great, in carrying out his European program, stood the intellectual élite of the country, an imported staff of men of ability associated with natives of moderate ability, every well-taught resident foreigner and indigenous Russian, the only ones able to organize schools and public institutions, to set up a vast central and regular system of administration, to assign rank according to service and merit, in short, to erect on the snow and mud of a shapeless barbarism a conservatory of civilization which, transplanted like an exotic tree, grows and gradually becomes acclimated.—Around Couthon, Saint-Just, Billaud, Collot, and Robespierre, with the exception of certain men devoted, not to Utopianism but the country, and who, like Carnot, conform to the system in order to save France, there are but a few sectarians to carry out the Jacobin program. These are men so short-sighted as not to clearly comprehend its fallacies, or sufficiently fanatical to accept its horrors, a lot of social outcasts and self-constituted statesmen, infatuated through incommensurate faculties with the parts they play, unsound in mind and superficially educated, wholly incompetent, boundless in ambition, their consciences perverted, callous or deadened by sophistry, hardened through arrogance or killed by crime, by impunity and by success.
Thus, whilst other despots raise a moderate weight, calling around them either the majority or the flower of the nation, employing the best strength of the country and lengthening their lever (of despotism) as much as possible, the Jacobins attempt to raise an incalculable weight, repel the majority as well as the flower of the nation, discard the best strength of the country, and shorten their lever to the utmost. They hold on only to the shorter end, the rough, clumsy, iron-bound, creaking and grinding extremity, that is to say, to physical force,—the means for physical constraint, the heavy hand of the gendarme on the shoulder of the suspect, the jailer's bolts and keys turned on the prisoner, the club used by the sans-culottes on the back of the bourgeois to quicken his pace, and, better still, the Septembriseur's pike thrust into the aristocrat's belly, and the blade falling on the neck held fast in the clutches of the guillotine.—Such, henceforth, is the only machinery they posses for governing the country, for they have deprived themselves of all other. Their engine has to be exhibited, for it works only on condition that its bloody image be stamped indelibly on every body's imagination; if the Negro monarch or the pasha desires to see heads bowing as he passes along, he must be escorted by executioners. They must abuse their engine because fear losing its effect through habit, needs example to keep it alive; the Negro monarch or the pasha who would keep the fear alive by which he rules, must be stimulated every day; he must slaughter too many to be sure of slaughtering enough; he must slaughter constantly, in heaps, indiscriminately, haphazard, no matter for what offense, on the slightest suspicion, the innocent along with the guilty. He and his are lost the moment they cease to obey this rule. Every Jacobin, like every African monarch or pasha, must it that he may be and remain at the head of his band.—That is the reason why the chiefs of the party, its natural and pre-determined leaders, are theoreticians able to grasp its principle and logicians capable of drawing its consequences. They are, however, so inept as to be unable to understand that their enterprise exceeds both their own and all other human resources, but shrewd enough to see that brutal force is their only tool, inhuman enough to apply it unscrupulously and without reserve, and perverted enough to murder at random in order to disseminate terror.
2201 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXII, 354. (Speech by Robespierre in the Convention, Floréal 18, year
II.) "Sparta gleams like a flash of lightening amidst profoundest
darkness".]
2202 (return)
[ Milos taken by the
Athenians; Thebes, after Alexander's victory; Corinth, after its capture
by the Romans.—In the Peloponnesian war, the Plateans, who surrender
at discretion, are put to death. Nicias is murdered in cold blood after
his defeat in Sicily. The prisoners at oegos-Potamos have their thumbs cut
off.]
2203 (return)
[ Fustel de Coulanges,
"La Cité Antique", ch. XVII.]
2204 (return)
[ Plato, "The Apology
of Socrates."—See also in the "Crito" Socrates' reasons for not
eluding the penalty imposed on him. The antique conception of the State is
here clearly set forth.]
2205 (return)
[ Cf. the code of Manu,
the Zendavesta, the Pentateuch and the Tcheou-Li. In this last code
(Biot's translation), will be found the perfection of the system,
particularly in vol. I., 241, 247, II., 393, III., 9, 11, 21, 52. "Every
district chief, on the twelfth day of the first moon, assembles together
the men of his district and reads to them the table of rules; he examines
their virtue, their conduct, their progress in the right path, and in
their knowledge, and encourages them; he investigates their errors, their
failings and prevents them from doing evil.... Superintendents of
marriages see that young people marry at the prescribed age." The
reduction of man to a State automaton is plain enough in the institution
of "Overseer of Gags..." At all grand hunts, at all gatherings of troops,
he orders the application of gags. In these cases gags are put in the
soldiers' mouths; they then fulfill their duties without tumult or
shouting."]
2206 (return)
[ These two words have
no exact equivalents in Greek or Latin, Conscientia, dignitas, honos
denote different shade of meaning. This difference is most appreciable in
the combination of the two modern terms delicate conscience, scrupulous
conscience, and the phrase of stake one's honour on this or that, make it
a point of honor, the laws of honor, etc. The technical terms of antique
morality: the beautiful, truthfulness, the sovereign good, indicate ideas
of another stamp and origin.]
2207 (return)
[ Alas, modern 20th
century democratic Man has given up honor and conscience, all he has got
to do is to be correct and follow the thousands of rules governing his
life. And, of course, make sure that he is following orders or sure of not
being caught when he breaks the natural rules of friendship, honor or
conscience. Conscience, on the other had, will always lurk somewhere in
the shadows of our mind, because we all know how we would like to be
treated by others, and will be forced not to transgress certain boundaries
in case an intended victim might be in a position to take his revenge.
That I am not alone in seeing things this way I noted in an interview with
the 79 year old French author Michel Déon in Le Figaro on the 16th of May
1998 in which Mr. Déon said: "Everywhere we are still in a nursery. A
great movement attempting to turn us all into half-wits (une grande
campagne de crétinisation est en route). When these are the only ones
left, the governments have an easy job. It is very clever." (SR.)]
2208 (return)
[ Montaigne, Essays,
book I., ch. 42: "Observe in provinces far from the court, in Brittany for
example, the retinue, the subjects, the duties, the ceremony, of a
seignior living alone by himself, brought up among his dependents, and
likewise observe the flights of his imagination, there is nothing which is
more royal; he may allude to his superior once a year, as if he were the
King of Persia... The burden of sovereignty scarcely affects the French
gentilhomme twice in his life... he who lurks in his own place avoiding
dispute and trial is as free as the Duke of Venice."]
2209 (return)
[ "Mémoires de
Chateaubriand," vol. I. ("Les Soirées au Chateau de Cambourg".)]
2210 (return)
[ In China, the moral
principle is just the opposite. The Chinese, amidst obstacles and
embarrassments, always enjoin siao-sin, which means, "abate thy
affections." (Huc, "L'Empire Chinoise," I., 204.)]
2211 (return)
[ In the United states
the moral order of things reposes chiefly on puritan ideas; nevertheless
deep traces of feudal conceptions are found there; for instance, the
general deference for women which is quite chivalric there, and even
excessive.]
2212 (return)
[ Observe, from this
point of view, in the woman of modern times the defenses of female virtue.
The (male) sentiment of duty is the first safeguard of modesty, but this
has a much more powerful auxiliary in the sentiment of honor, or deep
innate pride.]
2213 (return)
[ The moral standard
varies, but according to a fixed law, the same as a mathematical function.
Each community has its own moral elements, organization, history and
surroundings, and necessarily its peculiar conditions of vitality. When
the queen been in a hive is chosen and impregnated this condition involves
the massacre of useless male and female rivals (Darwin). In China, it
consists of paternal authority, literary education and ritual observances.
In the antique city, it consisted of the omnipotence of the State,
gymnastic education, and slavery. In each century, and in each country,
these vital conditions are expressed by more or less hereditary passwords
which set forth or interdict this or that class of actions. When the
individual feels the inward challenge he is conscious of obligation; the
moral conflict consists in the struggle within himself between the
universal password and personal desire. In our European society the vital
condition, and thus the general countersign, is self-respect coupled with
respect for others (including women and children). This countersign, new
in history, has a singular advantage over all preceding ones: each
individual being respected, each can develop himself according to his
nature; he can accordingly invent in every sense, bring forth every sort
of production and be useful to himself and others in every way, thus
enabling society to develop indefinitely.]
2214 (return)
[ Taine is probably
speaking of the colonial wars in China and the conquest of Madagascar.
(SR).]
2215 (return)
[ Here Taine is seeing
mankind as being male, strong and hardy; however I feel that liberty is
more desirable for the strong and confident while the child, the lost, the
sick, the ignorant or feeble person is looking for protection, reassurance
and guidance. When society consisted of strong independent farmers,
hunters, warriors, nomads or artisans backed by family and clan, liberty
was an important idea. Today few if any can rise above the horde and gain
the insights, the wisdom and the competence which once was such a common
thing. Today the strong seek promotion inside the hierarchy of the welfare
state rest-house. (S.R.)]
2216 (return)
[ This is just what
Lenin could not believe when he read this around 1906. Even Taine did not
see how much a French government organization depended upon staff
recruited from a hardworking, modest and honest French population. We have
now lived to see how the nationalization of private property in Egypt,
Argentina, Algeria not to speak of Ethiopia and India proved disastrous
and how 40 years of government ownership should degrade and corrupt the
populations of Russia, China, Yugoslavia, Albania etc. (SR).]
2217 (return)
[ When the function to
be performed is of an uncertain or mixed character the following rule may
be applied in deciding whether the State or individuals shall be entrusted
with it; also in determining, in the case of cooperation, what portion of
it shall be assigned to individuals and what portion to the State. As a
general rule, when individuals, either singly or associated together, have
a direct interest in, or are drawn toward, a special function, and the
community has no direct interest therein, the matter belongs to
individuals and not to the State. On the other hand, if the interest of
the community in any function is direct, and indirect for individuals
singly or associated together, it is proper for the State and not for
individuals to take hold of it.—According to this rule the limits of
the public and private domain can be defined, which limits, as they change
backward and forward, may be verified according to the changes which take
place in interests and preferences, direct or indirect.]
2218 (return)
[ Carlyle: "Cromwell's
Speeches and Letters," III., 418. (Cromwell's address to the Parliament,
September 17, 1656.)]
2219 (return)
[ Seeley, "Life and
Times of Stein," II., 143.—Macaulay, "Biographical essays,"
Frederick the Great. 33, 35, 87, 92.]
2220 (return)
[ Eugene Schuyler,
"Peter the Great," vol. 2.]
2221 (return)
[ Cf. "The Revolution"
vol. II., pp. 46 and 323, vol. III., ch I. Archives des Affaires
Etrangèrés. Vol. 332. (Letter by Thiberge, Marseilles, Brumaire 14, year
II.) "I have been to Marteygne, a small town ten leagues from Marseilles,
along with my colleague Fournet; I found (je trouvée) seventeen patriots
in a town of give thousand population."—Ibid., (Letter by Regulus
Leclerc, Bergues, Brumaire 15, year II.) At Bergues, he says, "the
municipality is composed of traders with empty stores and brewers without
beer since the law of the maximum." Consequently there is universal
lukewarmness, "only forty persons being found to form a popular club,
holding sessions as a favor every five days.... Public spirit at Bergues
is dead; fanaticism rules."—Archives Nationales, F7, 7164
(Department of Var, reports of year V. "General idea.")—"At
Draguignan, out of seven thousand souls, forty patriots, exclusifs,
despised or dishonest; at Vidauban, nine or ten exclusifs, favored by the
municipality and who live freely without their means being known; at
Brignolles, frequent robberies on the road by robbers said to have been
very patriotic in the beginning of the Revolution: people are afraid of
them and dare not name them; at Fréjus, nine leading exclusifs who pass
all their time in the cafe."—Berryat-Saint-Prix, "La Justice
Révolutionnaire," p. 146.—Brutus Thierry, grocer, member of the Rev.
Com. Of Angers, said that "in angers, there were not sixty
revolutionaries."]
2222 (return)
[ Macaulay. "History of
England," I., 152. "The Royalists themselves confessed that, in every
department of honest industry, the discarded warriors prospered beyond
other men, that none was charged with any theft or robbery, that none was
heard to ask an alms, and that, if a baker, a mason, or a waggoner
attracted notice by his diligence and sobriety, he was in all probability
one of Oliver's old soldiers."]
Marat.—Disparity between his faculties and pretensions.
—The Maniac.—The Ambitious delirium.—Rage for persecution.
—The permanent nightmare.—Homicidal frenzy.
Three men among the Jacobins, Marat, Danton and Robespierre, had deserved preeminence and held authority:—that is because they, due to a deformity or warping of their minds and their hearts, met the required conditions.—
Of the three, Marat is the most monstrous; he is nearly a madman, of which he displays the chief characteristics—furious exaltation, constant over-excitement, feverish restlessness, an inexhaustible propensity for scribbling, that mental automatism and single-mindedness of purpose constrained and ruled by a fixed idea. In addition to this, he displays the usual physical symptoms, such as insomnia, a pallid complexion, hot-headed, foulness of dress and person,3101 with, during the last five months of his life, rashes and itching all over his body.3102 Issuing from ill-matched stock, born of a mixed blood and tainted with serious moral agitation,3103 he carries within him a peculiar germ: physically, he is a freak, morally a pretender, and one who covet all places of distinction. His father, who was a physician, intended, from his early childhood, that he should be a scholar; his mother, an idealist, had prepared him to become a philanthropist, while he himself always steered his course towards both summits.
"At five years of age," he says, "it would have pleased me to be a school-master, at fifteen a professor, at eighteen an author, and a creative genius at twenty,"3104and, afterwards, up to the last, an apostle and martyr to humanity. "From my earliest infancy I had an intense love of fame which changed its object at various stages of my life, but which never left me for a moment." He rambled over Europe or vegetated in Paris for thirty years, living a nomadic life in subordinate positions, hissed as an author, distrusted as a man of science and ignored as a philosopher, a third rate political writer, aspiring to every sort of celebrity and to every honor, constantly presenting himself as a candidate and as constantly rejected,—too great a disproportion between his faculties and ambition! Without talents,3105 possessing no critical acumen and of mediocre intelligence, he was fitted only to teach some branch of the sciences, or to practice some one of the arts, either as professor or doctor more or less bold and lucky, or to follow, with occasional slips on one side or the other, some path clearly marked out for him. "But," he says, "I constantly refused any subject which did not hold out a promise.... of showing off my originality and providing great results, for I cannot make up my mind to treat a subject already well done by others."—Consequently, when he tries to originate he merely imitates, or commits mistakes. His treatise on "Man" is a jumble of physiological and moral common-places, made up of ill-digested reading and words strung together haphazard,3106 of gratuitous and incoherent suppositions in which the doctrines of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, coupled together, end in empty phraseology. "Soul and Body are distinct substances with no essential relationship, being connected together solely through the nervous fluid;" this fluid is not gelatinous for the spirits by which it is renewed contains no gelatin; the soul, excited by this, excites that; hence the place assigned to it "in the brain."—His "Optics"3107 is the reverse of the great truth already discovered by Newton more than a century before, and since confirmed by more than another century of experiment and calculation. On "Heat" and "Electricity" he merely puts forth feeble hypotheses and literary generalizations; one day, driven to the wall, he inserts a needle in a resin to make this a conductor, in which piece of scientific trickery he is caught by the physicist Charles.3108 He is not even qualified to comprehend the great discoverers of his age, Laplace, Monge, Lavoisier, or Fourcroy; on the contrary, he libels them in the style of a low rebellious subordinate, who, without the shadow of a claim, aims to take the place of legitimate authorities. In Politics, he adopts every absurd idea in vogue growing out of the "Contrat-Social" based on natural right, and which he renders still more absurd by repeating as his own the arguments advanced by those bungling socialists, who, physiologists astray in the moral world, derive all rights from physical necessities.
"All human rights issue from physical wants3109... If a man has nothing, he has a right to any surplus with which another gorges himself. What do I say? He has a right to seize the indispensable, and, rather than die of hunger, he may cut another's throat and eat his throbbing flesh.... Man has a right to self-preservation, to the property, the liberty and even the lives of his fellow creatures. To escape oppression he has a right to repress, to bind and to massacre. He is free to do what he pleases to ensure his own happiness."
It is plain enough what this leads to.—But, let the consequences be what they may, whatever he writes or does, it is always in self-admiration and always in a counter sense, being as vain-glorious of his encyclopedic impotence as he is of his social mischievousness. Taking his word for it, his discoveries in Physics will render him immortal3110:
"They will at least effect a complete transformation in Optics.... The true primitive colors were unknown before me."
He is a Newton, and still better. Previous to his appearance "the place occupied by the electrical fluid in nature, considered as an universal agent, was completely ignored. .. I have made it known in such a way as to leave no further doubt about it."3111 As to the heat-engendering fluid, "that substance unknown until my discovery, I have freed the theory from every hypothesis and conjecture, from every alembic argument; I have purged it of error, I have rendered it intuitive; I have written this out in a small volume which consigns to oblivion all that scientific bodies have hitherto published on that subject."3112 Anterior to his treatise on "Man," the relationships between moral and physics were incomprehensible. "Descartes, Helvetius, Hailer, Lecat, Hume, Voltaire, Bonnet, held this to be an impenetrable secret, 'an enigma.'" He has solved the problem, he has fixed the seat of the soul, he has determined the medium through which the soul communicates with the body.3113—In the higher sciences, those treating of nature generally, or of human society, he reaches the climax. "I believe that I have exhausted every combination of the human intellect in relation to morals, philosophy and political science."3114 Not only has he discovered the true theory of government, but he is a statesman, a practical expert, able to forecast the future and shape events. He makes predictions, on the average, twice a week, which always turn out right; he already claims, during the early sessions of the Convention, to have made "three hundred predictions on the leading points of the Revolution, all justified by the event."3115—In the face of the Constituents who demolish and reconstruct so slowly, he is sufficiently strong to take down, put up and complete at a moment's notice.
"If I were one of the people's tribunes3116 and were supported by a few thousand determined men, I answer for it that, in six weeks, the Constitution would be perfected, the political machine well agoing, and the nation free and happy. In less than a year there would be a flourishing, formidable government which would remain so as long as I lived."—If necessary, he could act as commander-in-chief of the army and always be victorious: having twice seen the Vendeans carry on a fight he would end the war "at the first encounter."3117—"If I could stand the march, I would go in person and carry out my views. At the head of a small party of trusty troops the rebels could be easily put down to the last man, and in one day. I know something of military art, and; without boasting, I can answer for success."—On any difficulty occurring, it is owing to his advice not having been taken; he is the great political physician: his diagnosis from the beginning of the Revolution is always correct, his prognosis infallible, his therapeutics efficacious, humane and salutary. He provides the panacea and he should be allowed to prescribe it; only, to ensure a satisfactory operation, he should himself administer the dose. Let the public lancet, therefore, be put in his hands that he may perform the humanitarian operation of bloodletting. "Such are my opinions. I have published them in my works. I have signed them with my name and I am not ashamed of it.... If you are not equal to me and able to comprehend me so much the worse for you."3118 In other words, in his own eyes, Marat is in advance of everybody else and, through his superior genius and character, he is the veritable savior.
Such are the symptoms by which medical men recognize immediately one of those partial lunatics who may not be put in confinement, but who are all the more dangerous;3119 the malady, as they would express it in technical terms, may be called the ambitious delirium, well known in lunatic asylums.—Two predispositions, one an habitually perverted judgment, and the other a colossal excess of self-esteem,3120 constitute its sources, and nowhere are both more prolific than in Marat. Never did a man with such diversified culture, possess such an incurably perverted intellect. Never did a man, after so many abortive speculations and such repeated malpractices, conceive and maintain so high an opinion of himself. Each of these two sources in him augments the other: through his faculty of not seeing things as they are, he attributes to himself virtue and genius; satisfied that he possesses genius and virtue, he regards his misdeeds as merits and his whims as truths.—Thenceforth, and spontaneously, his malady runs its own course and becomes complex; to the ambitious delirium comes the persecution mania. In effect, the evident or demonstrated truths which he advances should strike the public at once; if they burn slowly or miss fire, it is owing to their being stamped out by enemies or the envious; manifestly, they have conspired against him, and against him plots have never ceased. First came the philosophers' plot: when his treatise on "Man" was sent to Paris from Amsterdam, "they felt the blow I struck at their principles and had the book stopped at the custom-house."3121 Next came the plot of the doctors: "they ruefully estimated my enormous gains. Were it necessary, I could prove that they often met together to consider the best way to destroy my reputation." Finally, came the plot of the Academicians; "the disgraceful persecution I had to undergo from the Academy of Sciences for two years, after being satisfied that my discoveries on Light upset all that it had done for a century, and that I was quite indifferent about becoming a member of its body.... Would it be believed that these scientific charlatans succeeded in underrating my discoveries throughout Europe, in exciting every society of savants against me, and in closing against me all the newspapers?"3122—Naturally, the would-be-persecuted man defends himself, that is to say, he attacks. Naturally, as he is the aggressor, he is repulsed and put down, and, after creating imaginary enemies, he creates real ones, especially in politics where, on principle, he daily preaches insurrection and murder. And finally, he is of course prosecuted, convicted at the Chatelet court, tracked by the police, obliged to fly and wander from one hiding-place to another; to live like a bat "in a cellar, underground, in a dark dungeon;"3123 once, says his friend Panis, he passed "six weeks sitting on his behind" like a madman in his cell, face to face with his reveries.—It is not surprising that, with such a system, the reverie should become more intense, more and more gloomy, and, at last settle down into a confirmed nightmare; that, in his distorted brain, objects should appear distorted; that, even in full daylight men and things should seem awry, as in a magnifying, dislocating mirror; that, frequently, on the numbers (of his journal) appearing too blood-thirsty, and his chronic disease too acute, his physician should bleed him to arrest these attacks and prevent their return.3124
But it has become a habit: henceforth, falsehood grow in his brain as if it was their native soil; planting himself on the irrational he cultivates the absurd, even physical and mathematical. "If we include everyone;"3125 he says, "the patriotic tax-contribution of one-quarter of all income will produce, at the very least, 4,860 millions, and perhaps twice that sum." With this sum M. Necker may raise five hundred thousand men, which he calculates on for the subjugation of France.—Since the taking of the Bastille, "the municipality's waste alone amount to two hundred millions. The sums pocketed by Bailly are estimated at more than two millions; what 'Mottié' (Lafayette) has taken for the past two years is incalculable."3126—On the 15th of November, 1791, the gathering of emigrés comprises "at least 120,000 former gentlemen and drilled partisans and soldiers, not counting the forces of the German princes about to join them."3127—Consequently, as with his brethren in Bicêtre, (a lunatic asylum), he raves incessantly on the horrible and the foul: the procession of terrible or disgusting phantoms has begun.3128 According to him, the scholars who do not choose to admire him are fools, charlatans and plagiarists. Laplace and Monge are even "automatons," so many calculating machines; Lavoisier, "reputed father of every discovery causing a sensation in the world, has not an idea of his own;" he steals from others without comprehending them, and "changes his system as he changes his shoes." Fourcroy, his disciple and horn-blower, is of still thinner stuff. All are scamps: "I could cite a hundred instances of dishonesty by the Academicians of Paris, a hundred breaches of trust;" twelve thousand francs were entrusted to them for the purpose of ascertaining how to direct balloons, and "they divided it among themselves, squandering it at the Rapée, the opera and in brothels."3129—In the political world, where debates are battles, it is still worse. Marat's publication "The Friend of the people" has merely rascals for adversaries. Praise of Lafayette's courage and disinterestedness, how absurd If he went to America it was because he was jilted, "cast off by a Messalina;" he maintained a park of artillery there as "powder-monkeys look after ammunition-wagons; "these are his only exploits; besides, he is a thief. Bailly is also a thief, and Mabuet a "clown." Necker has conceived the "horrible project of starving and poisoning the people; he has drawn on himself for all eternity the execration of Frenchmen and the detestation of mankind."—What is the Constituent Assembly but a set of "low, rampant, mean, stupid fellows?"—"Infamous legislators, vile scoundrels, monsters athirst for gold and blood, you traffic with the monarch, with our fortunes, with our rights, with our liberties, with our lives!"—"The second legislative corps is no less rotten than the first one."—In the Convention, Roland, "the officious Gilles and the forger Pasquin, is the infamous head of the monopolizers." "Isnard is a juggler, Buzot a Tartuffe, Vergniaud a police spy."3130—When a madman sees everywhere around him, on the floor, on the walls, on the ceiling, toads, scorpions, spiders, swarms of crawling, loathsome vermin, he thinks only of crushing them, and the disease enters on its last stage: after the ambitious delirium, the mania for persecution and the settled nightmare, comes the homicidal mania.
With Marat, this broke out at the very beginning of the Revolution. The disease was innate; he was inoculated with it beforehand. He had contracted it in good earnest, on principle; never was there a plainer case of deliberate insanity.—On the one hand, having derived the rights of man from physical necessities, he concluded, "that society owes to those among its members who have no property, and whose labor scarcely suffices for their support, an assured subsistence, the wherewithal to feed, lodge and clothe oneself suitably, provision for attendance in sickness and when old age comes on, and for bringing up children. Those who wallow in wealth must (then) supply the wants of those who lack the necessaries of life." Otherwise, "the honest citizen whom society abandons to poverty and despair, reverts back to the state of nature and the right of forcibly claiming advantages which were only alienated by him to procure greater ones. All authority which is opposed to this is tyrannical, and the judge who condemns a man to death (through it) is simply a cowardly assassin."3131
Thus do the innumerable riots which the dearth excites, find justification, and, as the dearth is permanent, the daily riot is legitimate.—On the other hand, having laid down the principle of popular sovereignty he deduces from this, "the sacred right of constituents to dismiss their delegates;" to seize them by the throat if they prevaricate, to keep them in the right path by fear, and wring their necks should they attempt to vote wrong or govern badly. Now, they are always subject to this temptation.
"If there is one eternal truth of which it is important to convince man, it is that the mortal enemy of the people, the most to be dreaded by them, is the Government."—"Any minister who remains more than 2 days in office, once the ministry is able to plot against the country is 'suspect.' "3132—Bestir yourselves, then, ye unfortunates in town and country, workmen without work, street stragglers without fuel or shelter sleeping under bridges, prowlers along the highways, beggars, tattered vagabonds, cripples and tramps, and seize your faithless representatives!—On July 14th and October 5th and 6th, "the people had the right not only to execute some of the conspirators in military fashion, but to immolate them all, to put to the sword the entire body of royal satellites leagued together for our destruction, the whole herd of traitors to the country, of every condition and degree."3133 Never go to the Assembly, "without filling your pockets with stones and throwing them at the impudent scoundrels who preach monarchical maxims;" "I recommend to you no other precaution but that of telling their neighbors to look out."3134—"We do not demand the resignation of the ministers-we demand their heads. We demand the heads of all the cabinet officials in the Assembly, your mayor's, your general's, the heads of most of the staff-officers, of most of the municipal council, of the principal agents of the executive power in the kingdom. "—Of what use are half-way measures, like the sack of the hotel de Castries?3135
"Avenge yourselves wisely! Death! Death! is the sole penalty for traitors raging to destroy you It is the only one that strikes terror into them. Follow the example of your implacable enemies! Keep always armed, so that they may not escape through the delays of the law! Stab them on the spot or blow their brains out!"—"Twenty-four millions of men shout in unison: If the black, gangrened, archi-gangrened officials dare pass a bill reducing and reorganizing the army, citizens, then you build eight hundred scaffolds in the Tuileries garden and hang on them every traitor to his country—that infamous Riquetti, Comte de Mirabeau, at the head of them—and, at the same time, erect in the middle of the fountain basin a big pile of logs to roast the ministers and their tools!"3136—Could "the Friend of the People" rally around him two thousand men determined "to save the country, he would go and tear the heart out of that infernal Mottié in the very midst of his battalions of slaves; he would go and burn the monarch and his imps in his palace, impale the deputies on their benches, and bury them beneath the flaming ruins of their den."3137-On the first cannon shot being fired on the frontier,
"it is indispensable that the people should close the gates of the towns and unhesitatingly make way with every priest, public functionary and anti-revolutionary, known instigators and their accomplices."—"It would be wise for the people's magistrates to keep constantly manufacturing large quantities of strong, sharp, short-bladed, double-edged knives, so as to arm each citizen known as a friend of his country. Now, the art of fighting with these terrible weapons consists in this: Use the left arm as buckler, and cover it up to the arm-pit with a sleeve quilted with some woollen stuff, filled with rags and hair, and then rush on the enemy, the right hand wielding the knife."3138—Let us use these knives as soon as possible, for "what means are now remaining for us to put an end to the problems which overwhelm us? I repeat it, no other but executions by the people."3139—The Throne is at last down; but "be careful not to give way to false pity!.... No quarter! I advise you to decimate the anti-revolutionary members of the municipality, of the justices of the peace, of the members of the departments and of the National Assembly."3140—At the outset, a few lives would have sufficed: "five hundred heads ought to have fallen when the Bastille was taken, and all would then have gone on well." But, through lack of foresight and timidity, the evil was allowed to spread, and the more it spread the larger the amputation should have been.—With the sure, keen eye of the surgeon, Marat gives its dimensions; he has made his calculation beforehand. In September, 1792, in the Council at the Commune, he estimates forty thousand as the number of heads that should be laid low.3141 Six weeks later, the social abscess having enormously increased, the figures swell in proportion; he now demands two hundred and seventy thousand heads,3142 always on the score of humanity, "to ensure public tranquility," on condition that the operation be entrusted to him, as the temporary enforcer of the justice.—Except for this last point, the rest is granted to him; it is unfortunate that he could not see with his own eyes the complete fulfillment of his programme, the batches condemned by the revolutionary Tribunal, the massacres of Lyons and Toulon, the drownings of Nantes.—From the beginning to the end, he was in keeping with the Revolution, lucid on account of his blindness, thanks to his crazy logic, thanks to the concordance of his personal malady with the public malady, to the early manifestation of his complete madness in the midst of the incomplete or tardy madness of the rest, he alone steadfast, remorseless, triumphant, perched aloft at the first bound on the sharp pinnacle which his rivals dared not climb or only stumbled up.
Danton.—Richness of his faculties.—Disparity between his
condition and instincts.—The Barbarian.—His work.—His
weakness.
There is nothing of the madman about Danton; on the contrary, not only is his intellect sound, but he possesses political aptitudes to an eminent degree, and to such an extent that, in this particular, none of his associates or adversaries compare with him, while, among the men of the Revolution, only Mirabeau equals or surpasses him. He is an original, spontaneous genius and not, like most of his contemporaries, a disputatious, quill-driving theorist,3143 that is to say, a fanatical pedant, an artificial being composed of his books, a mill-horse with blinkers, and turning around in a circle without an issue. His free judgment is not hampered by abstract prejudices: he does not carry about with him a social contract, like Rousseau, nor, like Siéyès, a social art and cabinet principles or combinations;3144 he has kept aloof from these instinctively and, perhaps, through contempt for them; he had no need of them; he would not have known what to do with them. Systems are crutches for the impotent, while he is able-bodied; formulas serve as spectacles for the short-sighted, while his eyes are good. "He had read and meditated very little," says a learned and philosophical witness;3145 "his knowledge was scanty and he took no pride in investigation; but he observed and saw .. His native capacity, which was very great and not absorbed by other things, was naturally closed to vague, complex and false notions, and naturally open to every notion of experience the truth of which was made manifest." Consequently, "his perceptions of men and things, sudden, clear, impartial and true, were instinct with solid, practical discretion." To form a clear idea of the divergent or concordant dispositions, fickle or earnest, actual or possible, of different parties and of twenty-six millions of souls, to justly estimate probable resistances, and calculate available forces, to recognize and take advantage of the one decisive moment, to combine executive means, to find men of action, to measure the effect produced, to foresee near and remote contingencies, to regret nothing and take things coolly, to accept crimes in proportion to their political efficacy, to dodge before insurmountable obstacles, even in contempt of current maxims, to consider objects and men the same as an engineer contracting for machinery and calculating horse-power3146—such are the faculties of which he gave proof on the 10th of August and the 2nd of September, during his effective dictatorship between the 10th of August and the 21st of September, afterwards in the Convention, on the first Committee of Public Safety, on the 31st of May and on the 2nd of June:3147 we have seen him busy at work. Up to the last, in spite of his partisans, he has tried to diminish or, at least, not add to, the resistance the government had to overcome. Nearly up to the last, in spite of his adversaries, he tried to increase or, at least, not destroy the available forces of the government. In defiance of the outcries of the clubs, which clamor for the extermination of the Prussians, the capture of the King of Prussia, the overthrow of all thrones, and the murder of Louis XVI., he negotiated the almost pacific withdrawal of Brunswick;3148 he strove to detach Prussia from the coalition;3149 he wanted to turn a war of propaganda into one of interests;3150 he caused the Convention to pass the decree that France would not in any way interfere with foreign governments; he secured an alliance with Sweden; he prescribed beforehand the basis of the treaty of Basle, and had an idea of saving the King.3151 In spite of the distrust and attacks of the Girondists, who strove to discredit him and put him out of the way, he persists in offering them his hand; he declared war on them only because they refused to make peace,3152 and he made efforts to save them when they were down. Amidst so many ranters and scribblers whose logic is mere words and whose rage is blind, who grind out phrases like a hand-organ, or are wound up for murder, his intellect, always capacious and supple, went right to facts, not to disfigure and pervert them, but to accept them, to adapt himself to them, and to comprehend them. With a mind of this quality one goes far no matter in what direction; nothing remains but to choose one's path. Mandrin, under the ancient régime, was also, in a similar way, a superior man;3153 only he chose the highway.
Between the demagogue and the highwayman the resemblance is close: both are leaders of bands and each requires an opportunity to organize his band. Danton, to organize his band, needed the Revolution.—"Of low birth, without patronage," penniless, every office being filled, and "the Paris bar exorbitantly priced," admitted a lawyer after "a struggle," he for a long time wandered jobless frequenting the coffee-houses, the same as similar men nowadays frequent the bars. At the Café de l'École, the proprietor, a good natured old fellow "in a small round wig, gray coat and a napkin on his arm," circulated among his tables smiling blandly, while his daughter sat in the rear as cashier.3154 Danton chatted with her and demanded her hand in marriage. To obtain her, he had to mend his ways, purchase an attorneyship in the Court of the Royal Council and find guarantors and sponsors in his small native town.3155 Once married and lodged in the gloomy Passage du Commerce, he finds himself "more burdened with debts than with causes," tied down to a sedentary profession which demands vigorous application, accuracy, a moderate tone, a respectable style and blameless deportment; obliged to keep house on so small a scale that, without the help of a louis regularly advanced to him each week by his coffee-house father-in-law, he could not make both ends meet.3156 His free-and-easy tastes, his alternately impetuous and indolent disposition, his love of enjoyment and of having his own way, his rude, violent instincts, his expansiveness, creativeness and activity, all rebel against this life: he is ill-suited for the quiet routine of our civil careers. It is not the steady discipline of an old society, but the tumultuous brutality of a society going to pieces or in a state of formation, that suits him. In temperament and character he is a barbarian, and a barbarian born to command his fellow-creatures, like this or that vassal of the sixth century or baron of the tenth century. A giant with the face of a "Tartar," pitted with the small-pox, tragically and terribly ugly, with a mask convulsed like that of a growling "bull-dog,"3157 with small, cavernous, restless eyes buried under the huge wrinkles of a threatening brow, with a thundering voice and moving and acting like a combatant, full-blooded, boiling over with passion and energy. His strength in its outbursts appears boundless like a force of nature, when speaking he is roaring like a bull and be heard through closed windows fifty yards off in the street, employing immoderate imagery, intensely in earnest, trembling with indignation, revenge and patriotic sentiments, able to arouse savage instincts in the most tranquil breast and generous instincts in the most brutal personalities.3158 He may be profane, using emphatic terms,3159 cynical, but not monotonous and affected like Hébert, but spontaneous and to the point, full of crude jests worthy of Rabelais, possessing a stock of jovial sensuality and good-humor, cordial and familiar in his ways, frank, friendly in tone. He is, both outwardly and inwardly, the best fitted for winning the confidence and sympathy of a Gallic, Parisian populace. His talents all contribute to "his inborn, practical popularity," and to make of him "a grand-seignior of sans-cullotterie."3160—With such talents for acting, there is a strong temptation to act it out the moment the theatre is ready, whatever the theatre, even unlawful and murky, whatever the actors rogues, scoundrels and loose women, whatever the part, ignoble, murderous, and finally fatal to him who undertakes it.—To hold out against such temptation, would require a sentiment of repugnance which a refined or thorough culture develops in both sense and mind, but which was completely wanting in Danton. Nothing disgusts him physically or morally: he embraces Marat,3161 fraternizes with drunkards, congratulates the Septembriseurs, retorts in blackguard terms to the insults of prostitutes, treats reprobates, thieves and jail-birds as equals,—Carra, Westermann, Huguenin, Rossignol and the confirmed scoundrels whom he sends into the departments after the 2nd of September.
"Eh! What the hell! Do you think we ought to send young misses." 3162 Garbage men are needed for the collection of garbage; one cannot hold one's nose when they come for their wages; one must pay them well, talk to them encouragingly, and leave them plenty of elbow room. Danton is willing to play the part of the fire, and he humors vices; he has no scruples, and lets people scratch and take.—He has stolen as much to give as to keep, to maintain his role as much as to benefit by it, squaring accounts by spending the money of the Court against the Court, probably inwardly chuckling, the same as the peasant in a blouse on getting ahead of his well-duped landlord, or as the Frank, whom the ancient historian describes as leering on pocketing Roman gold the better to make war against Rome.—The graft on this plebeian seedling has not taken; in our modern garden this remains as in the ancient forest; its vigorous sap preserves its primitive raciness and produces none of the fine fruits of our civilization, a moral sense, honor and conscience. Danton has no respect for himself nor for others; the nice, delicate limitations that circumscribe human personality, seem to him as legal conventionality and mere drawing-room courtesy. Like a Clovis, he tramples on this, and like a Clovis, equal in faculties, in similar expedients, and with a worse horde at his back, he throws himself athwart society, to stagger along, destroy and reconstruct it to his own advantage.
At the start, he comprehended the peculiar character and normal procedure of the Revolution, that is to say, the useful agency of popular brutality: in 1788 he had already figured in insurrections. He comprehended from the first the ultimate object and definite result of the Revolution, that is to say, the dictatorship of the violent minority. Immediately after the 14th of July," 1789, he organized in his quarter of the city3163 a small independent republic, aggressive and predominant, the center of the faction, a refuge for the riff-raff and a rendezvous for fanatics, a pandemonium composed of every available madcap, every rogue, visionary, shoulder-hitter, newspaper scribbler and stump-speaker, either a secret or avowed plotter of murder, Camille Desmoulins, Fréron, Hébert, Chaumette, Clootz, Théroigne, Marat,—while, in this more than Jacobin State, the model in anticipation of that he is to establish later, he reigns, as he will afterwards reign, the permanent president of the district, commander of the battalion, orator of the club, and the concocter of bold undertakings. Here, usurpation is the rule there is no recognition of legal authority; they brave the King, the ministers, the judges, the Assembly, the municipality, the mayor, the commandant of the National Guard. Nature and principle raise them above the law; the district takes Marat under its protection, posts two sentinels at his door to protect him from prosecutions, and uses arms against the armed force sent with a warrant to arrest him.3164 yet more, in the name of the city of Paris, "chief sentinel of the nation," they assume to govern France: Danton betakes himself to the National Assembly and declares that the citizens of Paris are the natural representatives of the eighty-three departments, and summons it, on their injunction, to cancel an act it has passed.3165—The entire Jacobin conception is therein expressed: Danton, with his keen insight, took it all in and proclaimed it in appropriate terms; to apply it at the present time on a grand scale,3166 he has merely to pass from the small theatre to the large one, from the Cordeliers club to the Commune, to the Ministry, and the Committee of Public Safety, and, in all these theatres, he plays the same part with the same end in view and the same results. A despotism formed by conquest and maintained by terror, the despotism of the Jacobin Parisian rabble, is the end to which he directly marches. He employs no other means and, adapting the means to the end and the end to the means, manages the important days and instigates the decisive measures of the Revolution: the 10th of August,3167 the 2nd of September, the 31st of May, the 2nd of June;3168 the decree providing for an army of paid sans-culottes "to keep down aristocrats with their pikes;" the decree in each commune where grain is dear, taxing the rich to put bread within reach of the poor;3169 the decree giving laborers forty sous for attending the meetings of the Section Assemblies;3170 the institution of the revolutionary Tribunal;3171 the proposal to erect the Committee of Public Safety into a provisional government; the proclamation of Terror; the concentration of Jacobin zeal on useful works; the employment of the eight thousand delegates of the primary assemblies, who had been sent home as recruiting agents for the universal armament;3172 the inflammatory expressions of young men on the frontier; the wise resolutions for limiting the levy en masse to men between eighteen and twenty-five, which put an end to the scandalous songs and dances by the populace in the very hall of the Convention.3173
In order to set the machine up, he cleared the ground, fused the metal, hammered out the principal pieces, filed off the blisters, designed the action, adjusted the minor wheels, set it agoing and indicated what it had to do, and, at the same time, he forged the armor which guarded it against strangers and outside violence. The machine being his, why, after constructing it, did he not serve as its engineer?
Because, if competent to construct it, he was not qualified to manage it. In a crisis, he may give a helping hand, win the support of an assembly or a mob, direct, high-handedly and for a few weeks, an executive committee. But regular, persistent labor is repugnant to him; he is not made for bookkeeping,3174 for paper and administrative work. Never, like Robespierre and Billaud can he attend to both official and police duties at the same time, carefully reading minute daily reports, annotating mortuary lists, extemporizing ornate abstractions, coolly enunciating falsehoods and acting out the patient, satisfied inquisitor; and especially, he can never become the systematic executioner.—On the one hand, his eyes are not obscured by the gray veil of theory: he does not regard men through the "Contrat-Social" as a sum of arithmetical units,3175 but as they really are, living, suffering, shedding their blood, especially those he knows, each with his peculiar physiognomy and demeanor. Compassion is excited by all this when one has any feeling, and he had. Danton had a heart; he had the quick sensibilities of a man of flesh and blood stirred by the primitive instincts, the good ones along with the bad ones, instincts which culture had neither impaired nor deadened, which allowed him to plan and permit the September massacre, but which did not allow him to practice daily and blindly, systematic and wholesale murder. Already in September, "cloaking his pity under his bellowing,"3176 he had shielded or saved many eminent men from the butchers. When the axe is about to fall on the Girondists, he is "ill with grief" and despair. "I am unable to save them," he exclaimed, " and big tears streamed down his cheeks."—On the other hand, his eyes are not covered by the bandage of incapacity or lack of fore-thought. He detected the innate vice of the system, the inevitable and approaching suicide of the Revolution.
"The Girondists forced us to throw ourselves upon the sans-culotterie which has devoured them, which will devour us, and which will eat itself up."3177—"Let Robespierre and Saint-Just alone, and there will soon be nothing left in France but a Thebiad of political Trappists."3178—At the end, he sees more clearly still:
"On a day like this I organized the Revolutionary Tribunal: I ask pardon for it of God and man.—In Revolutions, authority remains with the greatest scoundrels.—It is better to be a poor fisherman than govern men."3179
But he has aspired to govern them; he constructed a new machine for the purpose, and, deaf to its squeals, it worked in conformity with the structure and the impulse he gave to it. It towers before him, this sinister machine, with its vast wheel and iron cogs grinding all France, their multiplied teeth pressing out each individual life, its steel blade constantly rising and falling, and, as it plays faster and faster, daily exacting a larger and larger supply of human material, while those who furnish this supply are held to be as insensible and as senseless as itself. This Danton cannot, will not be.—He gets out of the way, diverts himself, gambles,3180 forgets; he supposes that the titular decapitators will probably consent to take no notice of him; in any event they do not pursue him; "they would not dare do it." "No one must lay hands on me, I am the ark." At the worst, he prefers "to be guillotined rather than guillotine."—Having said or thought this, he is ripe for the scaffold.
Robespierre.—Mediocrity of his faculties.—The Pedant.
—Absence of ideas.—Study of phrases.—Wounded self-esteem.
—His infatuation.—He plays victim.—His gloomy fancies.—His
resemblance to Marat.—Difference between him and Marat.
—The sincere hypocrite.—The festival in honor of the Supreme
Being, and the law of Prairial 22.—The external and
internal characters of Robespierre and the Revolution.
Even with the firm determination to remain decapitator-in-chief, Danton could never be a perfect representative of the Revolution. It is an armed but philosophical robbery; its creed includes robbery and assassination, but only as a knife in its sheath; the showy, polished sheath is for public display, and not the sharp and bloody blade. Danton, like Marat, lets the blade be too plainly visible. At the mere sight of Marat, filthy and slovenly, with his livid, frog-like face, with his round, gleaming and fixed eyeballs, and his bold, maniacal stare and steady monotonous rage, common-sense rebels; no-one selects a homicidal maniac as a guide. At the mere sight of Danton, with his porter's vocabulary, his voice like an alarm bell of insurrection, his cyclopean features and air of an exterminator, humanity takes alarm; one does not surrender oneself to a political butcher without repugnance. The Revolution demands another interpreter, like itself captivatingly fitted out, and Robespierre fits the bill,3181 with his irreproachable attire, well-powdered hair, carefully brushed coat,3182 strict habits, dogmatic tone, and formal, studied manner of speaking. No mind, in its mediocrity and incompetence, so well harmonizes with the spirit of the epoch. The reverse of the statesman, he soars in empty space, amongst abstractions, always mounted on a principle and incapable of dismounting so as to see things practically.
"That bastard there," exclaims Danton, "is not even able to boil an egg!"
"The vague generalities of his preaching," writes another contemporary,3183 "rarely culminated in any specific measure or legal provision. He combated everything and proposed nothing; the secret of his policy happily accorded with his intellectual impotence and with the nullity of his legislative conceptions." Once he has rattled his revolutionary pedantry off, he no longer knows what to say.—As to financial matters and military art, he knows nothing and risks nothing, except to underrate or calumniate Carnot and Cambon who did know and who took risks.3184—In relation to a foreign policy his speech on the state of Europe is the amplification of a schoolboy; on exposing the plans of the English minister he reaches the pinnacle of chimerical nonsense;3185 eliminate the rhetorical passages, and it is not the head of a government who speaks, but the porter of the Jacobin club. On contemporary France, as it actually exists, he has not one sound or specific idea: instead of men, he sees only twenty-six millions simple robots, who, when duly led and organized, will work together in peace and harmony. Basically they are good,3186 and will, after a little necessary purification, become good again. Accordingly, their collective will is "the voice of reason and public interest," hence, on meeting together, they are wise. "The people's assembly of delegates should deliberate, if possible, in the presence of the whole body of the people;" the Legislative body, at least, should hold its sittings "in a vast, majestic edifice open to twenty thousand spectators." Note that for the past four years, in the Constituent Assembly, in the Legislative Assembly, in the Convention, at the Hotel de-Ville, in the Jacobin Club, wherever Robespierre speaks, the galleries have never ceased to shout, yell and express their opinion. Such a positive, palpable experience would open anybody's eyes; his are closed through prejudice or interest; even physical truth finds no access to his mind, because he is unable to comprehend it, or because he has to keep it out. He must, accordingly, be either obtuse or a charlatan. Actually he is both, for both combine to form the pedant (cuistre), that is to say, the hollow, inflated mind which, filled with words and imagining that these are ideas, revels in its own declamation and dupes itself that it may dictate to others.
Such is his title, his personality and role. In this artificial and declamatory tragedy of the Revolution he takes the leading part; the maniac and the barbarian slowly retire in the background on the appearance of the cuistre; Marat and Danton finally become effaced, or efface themselves, and the stage is left to Robespierre who attracts all the attention.3187—If we want to understand him we must look at him as he stands in the midst of his surroundings. At the last stage of a dying intellectual vegetation, on the last branch of the eighteenth century, he is the final freak and dried fruit of the classical spirit.3188 He has retained nothing of a worn-out system of philosophy but its lifeless dregs and well-conned formulae, the formulae of Rousseau, Mably, and Raynal, concerning "the people, nature, reason, liberty, tyrants, factions, virtue, morality," a ready-made vocabulary,3189 expressions too ample, the meaning of which, ill-defined by the masters, evaporates in the hands of the disciple. He never tries to get at this; his writings and speeches are merely long strings of vague abstract periods; there is no telling fact in them, no distinct, characteristic detail, no appeal to the eye evoking a living image, no personal, special observation, no clear, frank original impression. It might be said of him that he never saw anything with his own eyes, that he neither could nor would see, that false conceptions have intervened and fixed themselves between him and the object;3190 he combines these in logical sequence, and simulates the absent thought by an affected jargon, and this is all. The other Jacobins alongside of him likewise use the same scholastic jargon; but none of them spout and spread out so complacently and lengthily as he. For hours, we grope after him in the vague shadows of political speculation, in the cold and perplexing mist of didactic generalities, trying in vain to make something out of his colorless tirades, and we grasp nothing.3191 When we, in astonishment, ask ourselves what all this talk amounts to, and why he talks at all; the answer is, that he has said nothing and that he talks only for the sake of talking, the same as a sectarian preaching to his congregation, neither the preacher nor his audience ever wearying, the one of turning the dogmatic crank, and the other of listening. So much the better if the container is empty; the emptier it is the easier and faster the crank turns. And better still, if the empty term he selects is used in a contrary sense; the sonorous words justice, humanity, mean to him piles of human heads, the same as a text from the gospels means to a grand inquisitor the burning of heretics.—Through this extreme perversity, the cuistre spoils his own mental instrument; thenceforth he employs it as he likes, as his passions dictate, believing that he serves truth in serving these.
Now, his first passion, his principal passion, is literary vanity. Never was the chief of a party, sect or government, even at critical moments, such an incurable, insignificant rhetorician, so formal, so pompous, and so dull.—On the eve of the 9th of Thermidor, when it was a question of life or death, he enters the tribune with a set speech, written and re-written, polished and re-polished,3192 overloaded with studied ornaments and bits for effect,3193 coated by dint of time and labor, with the academic varnish, the glitter of symmetrical antitheses, rounded periods, exclamations, omissions, apostrophes and other tricks of the pen.3194—In the most famous and important of his reports,3195 I have counted eighty-four instances of personifications3196 imitated from Rousseau and the antique, many of them largely expanded, some addressed to the dead, to Brutus, to young Barra, and others to absentees, priests, and aristocrats, to the unfortunate, to French women, and finally to abstract substantives like Liberty and Friendship. With unshaken conviction and intense satisfaction, he deems himself an orator because he harps on the same old tune. There is not one true tone in his elaborate eloquence, nothing but recipes and only those of a worn-out art, Greek and Roman common-places, Socrates and the hemlock, Brutus and his dagger, classic metaphors like "the flambeaux of discord," and "the vessel of State,"3197s coupled together and beauties of style which a pupil in rhetoric aims at on the college bench;3198times a grand bravura air, so essential for parade in public;3199 centimes a delicate strain of the flute, for, in those days, one must have a tender heart;31100 in short, Marmontel's method in "Belisarius," or that of Thomas in his "Eloges," all borrowed from Rousseau, but of inferior quality, like a sharp, thin voice strained to imitate a rich, powerful voice. All is a sort of involuntary parody, and the more repulsive because a word ends in a blow, because a sentimental, declamatory Trissotin poses as statesman, because the studied elegance of the closet become pistol shots aimed at living breasts, because an epithet skillfully directed sends a man to the guillotine.—The contrast is too great between his talent and the part he plays. With such a talent, as mediocre and false as his intellect, there is no employment for which he is less suited than that of governing men; he was cut out for another, which, in a peaceable community, he would have been able to do. Suppress the Revolution, and Marat would have probably ended his days in an asylum. Danton might possibly have become a legal filibuster, a highwayman or gangster, and finally throttled or hung. Robespierre, on the contrary, might have continued as he began,31101 a busy, hard-working lawyer of good standing, member of the Arras Academy, winner of competitive prizes, author of literary eulogies, moral essays and philanthropic pamphlets; his little lamp, lighted like hundreds of others of equal capacity at the focus of the new philosophy, would have burned moderately without doing harm to any one, and diffused over a provincial circle a dim, commonplace illumination proportionate to the little oil his lamp would hold.
But the Revolution bore him into the Constituent Assembly, where, for a long time on this great stage, his amour propre, the dominant feeling of the pedant, suffered terribly. He had already suffered on this score from his earliest youth, and his wounds being still fresh made him only the more sensitive.—Born in Arras in 1758, orphaned and poor, protégé of his bishop, a bursar through favor at the college Louis-le-Grand, later a clerk with Brissot under the revolutionary system of law-practice, and at length settled down in his gloomy rue des Rapporteurs as a pettifogger. Living with a bad-tempered sister, he has adopts Rousseau, whom he had once seen and whom he ardently studies, for his master in philosophy, politics and style. Fancying, probably, like other young men of his age and condition, that he could play a similar part and thus emerge from his blind alley, he published law pleadings for effect, contended for Academy prizes, and read papers before his Arras colleagues. His success was moderate: one of his harangues obtained a notice in the Artois Almanac; the Academy of Metz awarded him only a second prize; that of Amiens gave him no prize, while the critic of the "Mercure" spoke of his style as smacking of the provinces.—In the National Assembly, eclipsed by men of great and spontaneous ability, he remains a long time in the shade, and, more than once, through obstination or lack of tact, makes himself ridiculous. With his sharp, thin, attorney's visage, "dull, monotonous, coarse voice and wearisome delivery,"—"an artesian accent" and constrained air,31102 his constantly putting himself forward, his elaboration of commonplaces, his evident determination to impose on cultivated people, still a body of intelligent listeners, and the intolerable boredom he caused them—all this is not calculated to render the Assembly indulgent to errors of sense and taste.31103 One day, referring to certain acts of the "Conseil:" "It is necessary that a noble and simple formula should announce national rights and carry respect for law into the hearts of the people. Consequently, in the decrees as promulgated, after the words Louis, by the grace of God," etc., these words should follow:
"People, behold the law imposed on you! Let this law be considered sacred and inviolable for all!" Upon this, a Gascon deputy arises and remarks in his southern accent, "Gentlemen, this style is unsuitable—there is no need for sermons.31104 (cantique)."
General laughter; Robespierre keeps silent and bleeds internally: two or three such mishaps nettle such a man from head to foot. It is not that his stupid remarks seem silly to him; no pedant taken in the act and hissed would avow that he deserved such treatment; on the contrary, he is content to have spoken as becomes a philosophic and moral legislator, and so much the worse for the narrow minds and corrupt hearts unable to comprehend him.—Thrown back upon himself, his wounded vanity seeks inward nourishment and takes what it can find in the sterile uniformity of his bourgeois moderation. Robespierre, unlike Danton, has no cravings. He is sober; he is not tormented by his senses; if he gives way to them, it is only no further than he can help, and with a bad grace. In the rue Saintonge in Paris, "for seven months," says his secretary,31105 "I knew of but one woman that he kept company with, and he did not treat her very well. .. very often he would not let her enter his room": when busy, he must not be disturbed. He is naturally steady, hard-working, studious and fond of seclusion, at college a model pupil, at home in his province an attentive advocate, a punctual deputy in the Assembly, everywhere free of temptation and incapable of going astray.—"Irreproachable" is the word which from early youth an inward voice constantly repeats to him in low tones to console him for obscurity and patience. Thus has he ever been, is now, and ever will be; he says this to himself, tells others so, and on this foundation, all of a piece, he builds up his character. He is not, like Desmoulins, to be seduced by dinners, like Barnave, by flattery, like Mirabeau and Danton, by money, like the Girondists, by the insinuating charm of ancient politeness and select society, like the Dantonists, by the bait of joviality and unbounded license—he is the incorruptible. He is not to be deterred or diverted, like the Feuillants, Girondists, and Dantonists, like statesmen or specialists, by considerations of a lower order, by regard for interests or respect for acquired positions, by the danger of undertaking too much at once, by the necessity of not disorganizing the service and of giving play to human passions, motives of utility and opportunity: he is the uncompromising champion of the right.31106 "Alone, or nearly alone, I do not allow myself to be corrupted; alone or nearly alone, I do not compromise justice; which two merits I possess in the highest degree. A few others may live correctly, but they oppose or betray principles; a few others profess to have principles, but they do not live correctly. No one else leads so pure a life or is so loyal to principles; no one else joins to so fervent a worship of truth so strict a practice of virtue: I am the unique."—What can be more agreeable than this mute soliloquy? From the very first day it can be heard toned down in Robespierre's address to the Third-Estate of Arras;31107 the last day it is spoken aloud in his great speech in the Convention;31108 during the interval, it crops out and shines through all his compositions, harangues, or reports, in exordiums, parentheses and perorations, permeating every sentence like the drone of a bag-pipe.31109—Through the delight he takes in this he can listen to nothing else, and it is just here that the outward echoes supervene and sustain with their accompaniment the inward cantata which he sings to his own glory. Towards the end of the Constituent Assembly, through the withdrawal or the elimination of every man at all able or competent, he becomes one of the conspicuous tenors on the political stage, while in the Jacobin Club he is decidedly the tenor most in vogue.—"Unique competitor of the Roman Fabricius," writes the branch club at Marseilles to him; "immortal defender of popular rights," says the Jacobin crew of Bourges.31110 One of two portraits of him in the exhibition of 1791 bears the inscription: "The Incorruptible." At the Moliere Theatre a drama of the day represents him as launching the thunderbolts of his logic and virtue at Rohan and Condé. On his way, at Bapaume, the patriots of the place, the National Guard on the road and the authorities, come in a body to honor the great man. The town of Arras is illuminated on his arrival. On the adjournment of the Constituent Assembly the people in the street greet him with shouts, crown him with oak wreaths, take the horses from his cab and drag him in triumph to the rue St. Honoré, where he lodges with the carpenter Duplay.—Here, in one of those families in which the semi-bourgeois class borders on the people, whose minds are unsophisticated, and on whom glittering generalities and oratorical tirades take full hold, he finds his worshippers; they drink in his words; they have the same opinion of him that he has of himself; to every person in the house, husband, wife and daughter, he is the great patriot, the infallible sage; he bestows benedictions night and morning; he inhales clouds of incense; he is a god at home. The faithful, to obtain access to him form a line in the court.31111 One by one they are admitted into the reception room, where they gather around portraits of him drawn with pencil, in stump, in sepia and in water color, and before miniature busts in red or gray plaster. Then, on the signal being given by him, they penetrate through a glass door into the sanctuary where he presides, into the private closet in which the best bust of him, with verses and mottoes, replaces him during his absence.—His worshippers adore him on their knees, and the women more than the men. On the day he delivers his apology before the Convention "the passages are lined with women31112.... seven or eight hundred of them in the galleries, and but two hundred men at most;" and how frantically they cheer him! He is a priest surrounded by devotees."31113 In the Jacobin club, when he delivers his "amphigory," there are sobs of emotion, "outcries and stamping of feet almost making the house tumble."31114 An onlooker who shows no emotion is greeted with murmurs and obliged to slip out, like a heretic that has strayed into a church on the elevation of the Host.—The faster the revolutionary thunderbolts fall on other heads, so does Robespierre mount higher and higher in glory and deification. Letters are addressed to him as "the founder of the Republic, the incorruptible genius who foresees all and saves all, who can neither be deceived nor seduced;"31115 who has "the energy of a Spartan and the eloquence of an Athenian;"31116 "who shields the Republic with the aegis of his eloquence;"31117 who "illuminates the universe with his writings, fills the world with his renown and regenerates the human species here below;"31118 whose" name is now, and will be, held in veneration for all ages, present and to come;"31119 who is "the Messiah promised by the Eternal for universal reform."31120 An extraordinary popularity," says Billaud-Varennes,31121 a popularity which, founded under the Constituent Assembly, "only increased during the Legislative Assembly," and, later on, so much more, that, "in the National Convention he soon found himself the only one able to fix attention on his person.... and control public opinion.... With this ascendancy over public opinion, with this irresistible preponderance, when he reached the Committee of Public Safety, he was already the most important being in France." After three years, a chorus of a thousand voices,31122 which he formed and directs, repeats again and again in unison his litany, his personal creed, a hymn of three stanzas composed by him in his own honor, and which he daily recites to himself in a low tone of voice, and often in a loud one:
"Robespierre alone has discovered the best type of citizen! Robespierre alone, modestly and without shortcomings, fits the description! Robespierre alone is worthy of and able to lead the Revolution!"31123
Cool infatuation carried thus far is equivalent to a raging fever, and Robespierre almost attains to the ideas and the ravings of Marat.
First, in his own eyes, he, like Marat, is a persecuted man, and, like Marat, he poses himself as a "martyr," but more skillfully and keeping within bounds, affecting the resigned and tender air of an innocent victim, who, offering himself as a sacrifice, ascends to Heaven, bequeathing to mankind the imperishable souvenir of his virtues.31124
"I arouse against me the pride of everybody;31125 I sharpen against me a thousand daggers. I am a sacrifice to every species of hatred. ... It is certain that my head will atone for the truths I have uttered. I have given my life, and shall welcome death almost as a boon. It is, perhaps, Heaven's will that my blood should indicate the pathway of my country to happiness and freedom. With what joy I accept this glorious destiny!"31126—
"It is hardly in order to live that one declares war against tyrants, and, what is still more dangerous, against miscreants.... The greater their eagerness to put an end to my career here below, the more eager I shall be to fill it with actions serving the welfare of my fellow-creatures."31127
"All these offenders outrage me;31128 actions which to others may appear insignificant or completely legitimate are for me crimes. As soon as someone becomes acquainted with me he is at once calumniated. Others are forgiven for their fortune, my zeal is considered a crime. Deprive me of my conscience and I am the most wretched of men. I do not even enjoy the rights of a citizen. I am not even allowed to perform my duty as a representative of the people.... To the enemies of my country, to whom my existence seems an obstacle to their heinous plots, I am ready to sacrifice it, if their odious empire is to endure..... Let their road to the scaffold be the pathway of crime, ours shall be that of virtue; let the hemlock be got ready for me, I await it on this hallowed spot. I shall at least bequeath to my country an example of constant affection for it, and to the enemies of humanity the disgrace of my death."
Naturally, and always just like Marat, he sees around himself only "the perverted, the plotters, the traitors."31129—Naturally, as with Marat, common sense with him is perverted, and, like Marat again, he thinks at random.
"I am not obliged to reflect," said he to Garat, "I always rely on first impressions."
"For him," says the same authority, "the best reasons are suspicions,"31130 and naught makes headway against suspicions, not even the most positive evidence. On September 4, 1792, talking confidentially with Pétion, and hard pressed with the questions that he put to him, he ends by saying, "Very well, I think that Brissot is on Brunswick's side."31131—Naturally, finally, he, like Marat, imagines the darkest fictions, but they are less improvised, less grossly absurd, more slowly worked out and more industriously interwoven in his calculating inquisitorial brain.
"Evidently," he says to Garat, "the Girondists are conspiring."31132
"And where?" demands Garat.
"Everywhere," Robespierre replies, "in Paris, throughout France, over all Europe. Gensonné, at Paris, is plotting in the Faubourg St. Antoine, going about among the shopkeepers and persuading them that we patriots mean to pillage their shops. The Gironde (department) has for a long time been plotting its separation from France so as to join England; the chiefs of its deputation are at the head of the plot, and mean to carry it out at any cost. Gensonné makes no secret of it; he tells all among them who will listen to him that they are not representatives of the nation, but plenipotentiaries of the Gironde. Brissot is plotting in his journal, which is simply a tocsin of civil war; we know of his going to England, and why he went; we know all about his intimacy with that Lebrun, minister of foreign affairs, a Liegois and creature of the Austrian house. Brissot's best friend is Clavière, and Clavière has plotted wherever he could breathe. Rabaut, treacherous like the Protestant and philosopher that he is, was not clever enough to conceal his correspondence with that courtier and traitor Montesquiou; six months ago they were working together to open Savoy and France to the Piedmontese. Servan was made general of the Pyrenean army only to give the keys of France to the Spaniards."
"Is there no doubt of this in your mind?" asks Garat.
"None, whatever."31133
Such assurance, equal to that of Marat, is terrible and worse in its effect, for Robespierre's list of conspirators is longer than that of Marat. Political and social, in Marat's mind, the list comprehends only aristocrats and the rich; theological and moral in Robespierre's mind, it comprehends all atheists and dishonest persons, that is to say, nearly the whole of his party. In this narrow mind, given up to abstractions and habitually classifying men under two opposite headings, whoever is not with him on the good side is against him on the bad side, and, on the bad side, the common understanding between the factious of every flag and the rogues of every degree, is natural.
"All aristocrats are corrupt, and every corrupt man is an aristocrat;" for, "republican government and public morality are one and the same thing."31134
Not only do evil-doers of both species tend through instinct and interest to league together, but their league is already perfected. One has only to open one's eyes to detect "in all its extent" the plot they have hatched, "the frightful system of destruction of public morality."31135 Guadet, Vergniaud, Gensonné, Danton, Hébert, "all of them artificial characters," had no other end in view: "they felt31136 that, to destroy liberty, it was necessary to favor by every means whatever tended to justify egoism, wither the heart and efface that idea of moral beauty, which affords the only rule for public reason in its judgment of the defenders and enemies of humanity."—Their heirs remain; but let those be careful. Immorality is a political offense; one conspires against the State merely by making a parade of materialism or by preaching indulgence, by acting scandalously, or by following evil courses, by stock-jobbing, by dining too sumptuously; by being vicious, scheming, given to exaggeration, or "on the fence;" by exciting or perverting the people, by deceiving the people, by finding fault with the people, by distrusting the people,31137 short, when one does not march straight along on the prescribed path marked out by Robespierre according to principles: whoever stumbles or turns aside is a scoundrel, a traitor. Now, not counting the Royalists, Feuillantists, Girondists, Hébertists, Dantonists, and others already decapitated or imprisoned according to their merit, how many traitors still remain in the Convention, on the Committees, amongst the representatives on mission, in the administrative bodies not properly weeded out, amongst petty tyrannical underlings and the entire ruling, influential class at Paris and in the provinces? Outside of "about twenty political Trappists in the Convention," outside of a small devoted group of pure Jacobins in Paris, outside of a faithful few scattered among the popular clubs of the departments, how many Fouchés, Vadiers, Talliens, Bourdons, Collots, remain amongst the so-called revolutionaries? How many dissidents are there, disguised as orthodox, charlatans disguised as patriots, and pashas disguised as sans-culottes?31138 Add all this vermin to that which Marat seeks to crush out; it is no longer by hundreds of thousands, but by millions, exclaim Baudot, Jeanbon-Saint-André and Guffroy, that the guilty must be counted and cut off their heads!—And all these heads, Robespierre, according to his maxims, must strike off. He is well aware of this; hostile as his intellect may be to precise ideas, he, when alone in his closet, face to face with himself, sees clearly, as clearly as Marat. Marat's chimera, on first spreading out its wings, bore its frenzied rider swiftly onward to the charnel house; that of Robespierre, fluttering and hobbling along, reaches the goal in its turn; in its turn, it demands something to feed on, and the rhetorician, the professor of principles, begins to assess the voracity of the monstrous brute on which he is mounted. Slower than the other, this one is still more ravenous, for, with similar claws and teeth, it has a vaster appetite. At the end of three years Robespierre has overtaken Marat, at that distant end of the line, at the station where Marat had established himself from the very beginning, and the theoretician now adopts the policy, the aim, the means, the work, and almost the vocabulary of a maniac:31139
armed dictatorship of the urban mob,
systematic perturbation of the bribed rabble,
war against the bourgeoisie,
extermination of the rich,
placing opposition writers, administrators and deputies outside the law.
Both monsters get the same food; only, to the ration of his monster, Robespierre adds "vicious men" as its special and favorite prey. Henceforth, he may in vain abstain from action, take refuge in his rhetoric, stop his chaste ears, and raise his hypocritical eyes to heaven, he cannot avoid seeing or hearing under his immaculate feet the streaming gore, and the bones crashing in the open jaws of the insatiable monster which he has fashioned and on which he rides.31140 These ever open and hungry jaws must be daily fed with an ampler supply of human flesh; not only is he bound to let it eat, but to furnish the food, often with his own hands, except that he must afterwards wash them, declaring, and even believing, that no spot of blood has ever soiled them. He is generally content to caress and flatter the brute, to excuse it, to let it go on. Nevertheless, more than once, tempted by the opportunity, he has launched it against his designated victim.31141 He is now himself starting off in quest of living prey; he casts the net of his rhetoric31142 around it; he fetches it bound to the open jaws; he thrusts aside with an uncompromising air the arms of friends, wives and mothers, the outstretched hands of suppliants begging for lives;31143 he suddenly throttles the struggling victims31144 and, for fear that they might escape, he strangles them in time. Near the end, this is no longer enough; the brute must have grander quarries, and, accordingly, a pack of hounds, beaters-up, and, willingly or not, it is Robespierre who equips, directs and urges them on, at Orange, at Paris,31145 ordering them to empty the prison's, and be expeditious in doing their work.—In this profession of slaughtering, destructive instincts, long repressed by civilization, become aroused. His feline physiognomy, at first "that of a domestic cat, restless but mild, changes into the savage appearance of the wildcat, and close to the ferocious exterior of the tiger. In the Constituent Assembly he speaks with a whine, in the Convention he froths at the mouth."31146 The monotonous drone of a stiff sub-professor changes into the personal accent of furious passion; he hisses and grinds his teeth;31147 Sometimes, on a change of scene, he affects to shed tears.31148 But his wildest outbursts are less alarming than his affected sensibility. The festering grudges, corrosive envies and bitter scheming which have accumulated in his breast are astonishing. The gall bladder is full, and the extravasated gall overflows on the dead. He never tires of re-executing his guillotined adversaries, the Girondists, Chaumette, Hébert and especially Danton,31149 probably because Danton was the active agent in the Revolution of which he was simply the incapable pedagogue; he vents his posthumous hatred on this still warm corpse in artful insinuations and obvious misrepresentations. Thus, inwardly corroded by the venom it distills, his physical machine gets out of order, like that of Marat, but with other symptoms. When speaking in the tribune "his hands crisp with a sort of nervous contraction;" sudden tremors agitate "his shoulders and neck, shaking him convulsively to and fro."31150 "His bilious complexion becomes livid," his eyelids quiver under his spectacles, and how he looks! "Ah," said a Montagnard, "you would have voted as we did on the 9th of Thermidor, had you seen his green eyeballs!" "Physically as well as morally," he becomes a second Marat, suffering all the more because his delirium is not steady, and because his policy, being a moral one, forces him to exterminate on a grander scale.
But he is a discreet Marat, of a timid temperament, anxious,31151 keeping his thoughts to himself, made for a school-master or a pleader, but not for taking the lead or for governing, always acting hesitatingly, and ambitious to be rather the pope, than the dictator of the Revolution.31152 Above all, he wants to remain a political Grandison31153; until the very end, he keeps his mask, not only in public but also to himself and in his inmost conscience. The mask, indeed, has adhered to his skin; he can no longer distinguish one from the other; never did an impostor more carefully conceal intentions and acts under sophisms, and persuade himself that the mask was his face, and that in telling a lie, he told the truth.
Taking his word for it, he had nothing to do with the September events.31154 "Previous to these events, he had ceased to attend the General Council of the Commune... He no longer went there." He was not charged with any duty, he had no influence there; he had not provoked the arrest and murder of the Girondists.31155 All he did was to "speak frankly concerning certain members of the Committee of Twenty-one;" as "a magistrate" and "one of a municipal assembly." Should he not" explain himself freely on the authors of a dangerous plot?" Besides, the Commune "far from provoking the 2nd of September did all in its power to prevent it." After all, only one innocent person perished, "which is undoubtedly one too many. Citizens, mourn over this cruel mistake; we too have long mourned over it! But, as all things human come to an end, let your tears cease to flow." When the sovereign people resumes its delegated power and exercises its inalienable rights, we have only to bow our heads.—Moreover, it is just, wise and good "in all that it undertakes, all is virtue and truth; nothing can be excess, error or crime."31156 It must intervene when its true representatives are hampered by the law "let it assemble in its sections and compel the arrest of faithless deputies."31157 What is more legal than such a motion, which is the only part Robespierre took on the 31st of May. He is too scrupulous to commit or prescribe an illegal act. That will do for the Dantons, the Marats, men of relaxed morals or excited brains, who if need be, tramp in the gutters and roll up their shirt-sleeves; as to himself, he can do nothing that would ostensibly derange or soil the dress proper to an honest man and irreproachable citizen. In the Committee of Public Safety, he merely executes the decrees of the Convention, and the Convention is always free. He a dictator! He is merely one of seven hundred deputies, and his authority, if he has any, is simply the legitimate ascendancy of reason and virtue.31158 He a murderer! If he has denounced conspirators, it is the Convention which summons these before the revolutionary Tribunal,31159 and the revolutionary Tribunal pronounces judgment on them. He a terrorist! He merely seeks to simplify the established proceedings, so as to secure a speedier release of the innocent, the punishment of the guilty, and the final purgation that is to render liberty and morals the order of the day.31160—Before uttering all this he almost believes it, and, when he has uttered it he believes it fully.31161 When nature and history combine, to produce a character, they succeed better than man's imagination. Neither Molière in his "Tartuffe," nor Shakespeare in his "Richard III.," dared bring on the stage a hypocrite believing himself sincere, and a Cain that regarded himself as an Abel.31162 There he stands on a colossal stage, in the presence of a hundred thousand spectators, on the 8th of June, 1794, the most glorious day of his life, at that fête in honor of the Supreme Being, which is the glorious triumph of his doctrine and the official consecration of his papacy. Two characters are found in Robespierre, as in the Revolution which he represents: one, apparent, paraded, external, and the other hidden, dissembled, inward, the latter being overlaid by the former.—The first one all for show, fashioned out of purely cerebral cogitations, is as artificial as the solemn farce going on around him. According to David's programme, the cavalcade of supernumeraries who file in front of an allegorical mountain, gesticulate and shout at the command, and under the eyes, of Henriot and his gendarmes,31163 manifesting at the appointed time the emotions which are prescribed for them. At five o'clock in the morning
"friends, husbands, wives, relations and children will embrace.... The old man, his eyes streaming with tears of joy, feels himself rejuvenated."
At two o'clock, on the turf-laid terraces of the sacred mountain,
"all will show a state of commotion and excitement: mothers here press to their bosoms the infants they suckle, and there offer them up in homage to the author of Nature, while youths, aglow with the ardor of battle, simultaneously draw their swords and hand them to their venerable fathers. Sharing in the enthusiasm of their sons, the deported old men embrace them and bestow on them the paternal benediction..... All the men distributed around the 'Field of Reunion' sing in chorus the (first) refrain.... All the Women distributed around the 'Field of Reunion' sing in unison the (second) refrain.... All Frenchmen partake of each other's sentiments in one grand fraternal embrace."
What could better than such an idyll, ruled with an iron hand, in the presence of moral symbols and colored pasteboard divinities, could better please the counterfeit moralist, unable to distinguish the false from the true, and whose skin-deep sensibility is borrowed from sentimental authors! "For the first time" his glowing countenance beams with joy, while "the enthusiasm"31164 of the scribe overflows, as usual, in book phraseology.
"Behold!" he exclaims, "that which is most interesting in humanity! The Universe is here assembled! O, Nature, how sublime, how exquisite is thy power! How tyrants must quail at the contemplation of this festival!"
Is not he himself its most dazzling ornament? Was not he unanimously chosen to preside over the Convention and conduct the ceremonies? Is he not the founder of the new cult, the only pure worship on the face of the earth, approved of by morality and reason? Wearing the uniform of a representative, nankeen breeches, blue coat, tri-colored sash and plumed hat,31165 holding in his hand a bouquet of flowers and grain, he marches at the head of the Convention and officiates on the platform; he sets fire to the veil which hides from view the idol representing "Atheism," and suddenly, through an ingenious contrivance, the majestic statue of "Wisdom" appears in its place. He then addresses the crowd, over and over again, exhorting, apostrophizing, preaching, elevating his soul to the Supreme Being, and with what oratorical combinations! What an academic swell of bombastic cadences, strung together to enforce his tirades! How cunning the even balance of adjective and substantive!31166 From these faded rhetorical flowers, arranged as if for a prize distribution or a funeral oration, exhales a sanctimonious, collegiate odor which he complacently breathes, and which intoxicates him. At this moment, he must certainly be in earnest; there is no hesitation or reserve in his self-admiration; he is not only in his own eyes a great writer and great orator, but a great statesman and great citizen his artificial, philosophic conscience awards him only praise.—But look underneath, or rather wait a moment. Signs of impatience and antipathy appear behind his back: Lecointre has braved him openly; numerous insults, and, worse than these, sarcasms, reach his ears. On such an occasion, and in such a place! Against the pontiff of Truth, the apostle of Virtue! The miscreants, how dare they! Silent and pale, he suppresses his rage, and,31167 losing his balance, closing his eyes, he plunges headlong on the path of murder: cost what it will, the miscreants must perish and without loss of time. To expedite matters, he must get their heads off quietly, and as "up to this time things have been managed confidentially in the Committee of Public Safety," he, alone with Couthon, two days after, without informing his colleagues,31168 draws up, brings to the Convention, and has passed the terrible act of Prairial which places everybody's life at his disposal.—In his crafty, blundering haste, he has demanded too much; each one, on reflection, becomes alarmed for himself; he is compelled to back out, to protest that he is misunderstood, admit that representatives are excepted, and, accordingly, to sheathe the knife he has already applied to his adversaries throats. But he still holds it in his grasp. He watches them, and, pretending to retreat, affects a renunciation, crouched in his corner,31169 waiting until they discredit themselves, so as to spring upon them a second time. He has not to wait long, for the exterminating machine he set up on the 22nd of Prairial, is in their hands, and it has to work as he planned it, namely, by making rapid turns and almost haphazard: the odium of a blind sweeping massacre rests with them; he not only makes no opposition to this, but, while pretending to abstain from it, he urges it on. Secluded in the private office of his secret police, he orders arrests;31170 he sends out his principal bloodhound, Herman; he first signs and then dispatches the resolution by which it is supposed that there are conspirators among those in confinement and which, authorizing spies or paid informers, is to provide the guillotine with those vast batches which purge and clean prisons out in a trice."31171—"I am not responsible," he states later on...." My lack of power to do any good, to arrest the evil, forced me for more than six weeks to abandon my post on the Committee of Public Safety."31172 To ruin his adversaries by murders committed by him, by those which he makes them commit and which he imputes to them, to whitewash himself and blacken them with the same stroke of the brush, what intense delight! If the natural conscience murmurs in whispers at moments, the acquired superposed conscience immediately imposes silence, concealing personal hatreds under public pretexts: the guillotined, after all, were aristocrats, and whoever comes under the guillotine is immoral. Thus, the means are good and the end better; in employing the means, as well as in pursuing the end, the function is sacerdotal.
Such is the scenic exterior of the Revolution, a specious mask with a hideous visage beneath it, under the reign of a nominal humanitarian theory, covering over the effective dictatorship of evil and low passions. In its true representative, as in itself, we see ferocity issuing from philanthropy, and, from the pedant (cuistre), the executioner.
3101 (return)
[ Harmand (de la
Meuse): "Anecdotes relatives à la Revolution." "He was dressed like a
tough cab-driver. He had a disturbed look and an eye always in motion; he
acted in an abrupt, quick and jerky way. A constant restlessness gave a
convulsive contraction to his muscles and features which likewise affected
his manner of walking so that he didn't walk but hopped."]
3102 (return)
[ Chevremont, "Jean
Paul Marat;" also Alfred Bougeard, "Marat" passim. These two works, with
numerous documents, are panegyrics of Marat.—Bougeat, I., II
(description of Marat by Fabre d'Eglantine); II., 259 and I., 83.—"Journal
de la Republique Française," by Marat, No.93, January 9, 1793. "I devote
only two out of the twenty four hours to sleep, and only one hour to my
meals, toilette and domestic necessities... I have not taken fifteen
minutes recreation for more than three years."]
3103 (return)
[ Chevremont, I., pp. I
and 2. His family, on the father's side, was Spanish, long settled in
Sardinia. The father, Dr. Jean Mara, had abandoned Catholicism and removed
to Geneva where he married a woman of that city; he afterwards established
himself in the canton of Neufchatel.]
3104 (return)
[ "Journal de la
République Française" No.98, description of "l'Ami du peuple" by himself.]
3105 (return)
[ Read his novel "Les
Aventures du jeune comte Potowski," letter 5, by Lucile: "I think of
Potowski only. My imagination, inflamed at the torch of love, ever
presents to me his sweet image." Letter of Potowski after his marriage.
"Lucile now grants to love all that modesty permits... enjoying such
transports of bliss, I believe that the gods are jealous of my lot."]
3106 (return)
[ Preface, XX.
"Descartes, Helvetius, Haller, Lelat all ignored great principles; Man,
with them, is an enigma, an impenetrable secret." He says in a foot-note,
"We find evidence of this in the works of Hume, Voltaire, Bonnet, Racine
and Pascal."]
3107 (return)
[ "Mémoires Académiques
sur la Lumière," pref., VII.—He especially opposes "the differential
refrangibility of heterogeneous rays" which is "the basis of Newton's
theory."]
3108 (return)
[ Chevremont, I., 74.
(See the testimony of Arago, Feb.24, 1844).]
3109 (return)
[ Ibid., I., 104.
(Sketch of a declaration of the rights of man and of the citizen).]
3110 (return)
[ See the epigraph of
his "Mémoires sur la Lumiere." "They will force their way against wind and
tide."—Ibid., preface, VII. "Déconvertes de Monsieur Marat," 1780,
2nd ed., p. 140.]
3111 (return)
[ "Recherches physiques
sur l'electricité," 1782, pp.13, 17.]
3112 (return)
[ Chevremont, I., 59.]
3113 (return)
[ "De l'Homme," preface
VII. and book IV.]
3114 (return)
[ "Journal de la
République Française," No 98.]
3115 (return)
[ "Journal de la
République Française," by Marat, No. I.]
3116 (return)
[ "L'Ami du Peuple" No.
173. (July 26, 1790). The memories of conceited persons, given to
immoderate self-expansion, are largely at fault. I have seen patients in
asylums who, believing in their exalted position, have recounted their
successes in about the same vein as Marat. (Chevremont, I., 40, 47, 54).
"The reports of extraordinary cures effected by me brought me a great
crowd of the sick. The street in front of my door was blocked with
carriages. People came to consult me from all quarters.... The abstract of
my experiments on Light finally appeared and it created a prodigious
sensation throughout Europe; the newspapers were all filled with it. I had
the court and the town in my house for six months.... The Academy, finding
that it could not stifle my discoveries tried to make it appear that they
had emanated from its body." Three academic bodies came in turn the same
day to see if he would not present himself as a candidate.—"Up to
the present time several crowned heads have sought me and always on
account of the fame of my works."]
3117 (return)
[ "Journal de la
République Française," July 6 1793.]
3118 (return)
[ Moniteur, (Session of
the Convention, Sep.25, 1792). Marat, indeed, is constantly claiming the
post of temporary dictator. ("L'Ami du peuple," Nos. 258, 268, 466, 668
and "Appel à la nation," p.53).]
3119 (return)
[ Moniteur, (Session of
the Convention, Sep.25, 1792). Marat, indeed, is constantly claiming the
post of temporary dictator. ("L'Ami du peuple," Nos. 258, 268, 466, 668
and "Appel à la nation," p.53).]
3120 (return)
[ Moniteur, (Session of
the Convention, Sep.25, 1792). Marat, indeed, is constantly claiming the
post of temporary dictator. ("L'Ami du peuple," Nos. 258, 268, 466, 668
and "Appel à la nation," p.53).]
3121 (return)
[ Chevremont, I., 40.
(Marat's letters, 1793).]
3122 (return)
[ Journal de la
Republique Française, No.98.]
3123 (return)
[ The words of Marat
and Panes. (Chevremont, I., 197, 203; also "The Revolution" II., 290, 2nd
note).]
3124 (return)
[ Michelet, "Histoire
de la Révolution," II., 89. (Narrated by M. Bourdier, Marat's physician,
to M. Serre, the physiologist). Barbaroux, "Mémoires," 355, (after a visit
to Marat): "You should see how superficially Marat composed his articles.
Without any knowledge of a public man he would ask the first person he met
what he thought of him and this he wrote down, exclaiming 'I'll crush the
rascal!'"]
3125 (return)
[ Chevremont, I., 361.
(From a pamphlet against Necker, by Marat, July, 1790).]
3126 (return)
[ "L'Ami du Peuple,"
No.552. (August 30, 1791).]
3127 (return)
[ Ibid., No.626. (Dec.
15, 1791). Cf. "The Revolution," II., 129, on the number of armed emigrés.
At this date the authorized number as published is four thousand.]
3128 (return)
[ His filthy
imputations cannot be quoted. See in Buchez et Roux, IX., 419 (April 26,
1791), and X., 220 (Nos. for June 17, 19 and 21), his statement against
Lafayette; again, his list with its vile qualifications of "rascals and
rogues," who are canvassing for election, and his letters on the
Academicians.]
3129 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux, X.,
407 (Sept., 1791).—Cf. ibid., 473. According to Marat, "it is
useless to measure a degree of the meridian; the Egyptians having already
given this measure. The Academicians obtained an appropriation of one
thousand crowns for the expenses of this undertaking, a small cake which
they have fraternally divided amongst themselves."]
3130 (return)
[ Chevremont, I.,
238-249. "L'Ami du peuple," Nos. 419, 519, 543, 608, 641. Other falsehoods
just as extravagant are nearly all grotesque. No.630, (April 15, 1792).
"Simonneau, mayor of d'Etampes, is an infamous ministerial monopolizer."—No.
627, (April 12, 1792). Delessart, the minister, "accepts gold to let a
got-up decree be passed against him." No. 650, (May 10, 1792). "Louis XVI.
desired war only to establish his despotism on an indestructible
foundation."]
3131 (return)
[ Chevremont, I., 106.
(Draft of a declaration of the rights of man and of the citizen, 1789).—Ibid.,
I., 196.]
3132 (return)
[ "L'Ami du peuple,"
Nos. 24 and 274.—Cf. "Placard de Marat," Sept. 18, 1792. "The
National Convention should always be under the eye of the people, so that
the people may stone it if it neglects its duty."]
3133 (return)
[ "L'Ami du peuple,"
Nos. 108-111. (May 20-23, 1790).]
3134 (return)
[ Ibid., No. 258. (Oct.
22, 1790).]
3135 (return)
[ Ibid., No. 286 (Nov.
20, 1790).]
3136 (return)
[ Ibid., No. 198
(August 22, 1790).]
3137 (return)
[ Ibid., Nos. 523 and
524 (July 19 and 20, 1791).]
3138 (return)
[ Ibid., No.626 (Dec.
15, 1791).]
3139 (return)
[ Ibid., No.668 (July
8, 1792).—Cf. No. 649 (May 6, 1792). He approves of the murder of
General Dillon by his men, and recommends the troops everywhere to do the
same thing.]
3140 (return)
[ Ibid., No.677 (August
10, 1792). See also subsequent numbers, especially No. 680, Aug. 19th, for
hastening on the massacre of the Abbaye prisoners. And Aug. 21st: "As to
the officers, they deserve to be quartered like Louis Capet and his manège
toadies."]
3141 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXVIII., 105. (Letter of Chevalier Saint-Dizier, member of the first
committee of Surveillance, Sep.10, 1792.)—Michelet, II., 94. (In
December, 1790, he already demands twenty thousand heads).]
3142 (return)
[ Moniteur, Oct. 26,
1792. (Session of the Convention, Oct. 24th.) "N—: I know a member
of the convention, who heard Marat say that, to ensure public tranquility,
two hundred and seventy thousand heads more should fall."
Vermont: "I declare that Marat made that
statement in my presence."]
Marat: "Well, I did say so; that's my
opinion and I say it again."—
Up to the last he advocates surgical operations. (No. for July 12, 1793, the eve of his death.) Observe what he says on the anti-revolutionaries. "To prevent them from entering into any new military body I had proposed at that time, as an indispensable prudent measure, cutting off their ears, or rather their thumbs." He likewise had his imitators. (Buchez et Roux, XXXII., 186, Session of the Convention, April 4, 1796.) Deputies from the popular club of Cette "regret that they had not followed his advice and cut off three hundred thousand heads."]
3143 (return)
[ Danton never wrote or
printed a speech. "I am no writer," he says. (Garat, Memoires, 31.)]
3144 (return)
[ Garat, "Memoires,"
III.: "Danton had given no serious study to those philosophers who, for a
century past, had detected the principles of social art in human nature.
He had not sought in his own organization for the vast and simple
combinations which a great empire demands. He had that instinct for the
grand which constitutes genius and that silent circumspection which
constitutes judgment."]
3145 (return)
[ Garat, ibid., 311,
312.]
3146 (return)
[ The head of a State
may be considered in the same light as the superintendent of an asylum for
the sick, the demented and the infirm. In the government of his asylum he
undoubtedly does well to consult the moralist and the physiologist; but,
before following out their instructions he must remember that in his
asylum its inmates, including the keepers and himself, are more or less
ill, demented or infirm.]
3147 (return)
[ De Sybel: "Histoire
de l'Europe pendant la Revolution Française," (Dosquet's translation from
the German) II., 303. "It can now be stated that it was the active
operations of Danton and the first committee of Public Safety which
divided the coalition and gave the Republic the power of opposing
Europe... We shall soon see, on the contrary, that the measures of the
"Mountain" party, far from hastening the armaments, hindered them."]
3148 (return)
[ Ibid., I., 558, 562,
585. (The intermediaries were Westermann and Dumouriez.)]
3149 (return)
[ 2 Ibid., II., 28,
290, 291, 293.]
3150 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux, XXV.,
445. (Session of April 13, 1793.)]
3151 (return)
[ According to a
statement made by Count Theodore de Lameth, the eldest of the four
brothers Lameth and a colonel and also deputy in the Legislative Assembly.
During the Assembly he was well acquainted with Danton. After the
September massacre he took refuge in Switzerland and was put on the list
of emigrants. About a month before the King's death he was desirous of
making a last effort and came to Paris. "I went straight to Danton's
house, and, without giving my name, insisted on seeing him immediately.
Finally, I was admitted and I found Danton in a bath-tub. "You here!" he
exclaimed. "Do you know that I have only to say the word and send you to
the guillotine?" "Danton," I replied, "you are a great criminal, but there
are some vile things you cannot do, and one of them is to denounce me."
"You come to save the King?" "Yes." We then began to talk in a friendly
and confidential way. "I am willing," said Danton, "to try and save the
King, but I must have a million to buy up the necessary votes and the
money must be on hand in eight days. I warn you that although I may save
his life I shall vote for his death; I am quite willing to save his head
but not to lose mine." M. de Lameth set about raising the money; he saw
the Spanish ambassador and had the matter broached to Pitt who refused.
Danton, as he said he would, voted for the King's death, and then aided or
allowed the return of M. de Lameth to Switzerland. (I have this account
through M (probably Pasquier).... who had it from count Theodore de
Lameth's own lips.)]
3152 (return)
[ Garat. "Memoires,"
317. "Twenty times, he said to me one day, I offered them peace. They did
not want it. They refused to believe me in order to reserve the right of
ruining me."]
3153 (return)
[ Cf. the "Ancient
Regime," p. 501.]
3154 (return)
[ "Danton," by Dr.
Robinet, passim. (Notices by Béon, one of Danton's fellow-disciples.—Fragment
by Saint-Albin.)—"The Revolution," II., p.35, foot-note.]
3155 (return)
[ Emile Bos, "Les
Avocats du conseil du Roi," 515, 520. (See Danton's marriage-contract and
the discussions about his fortune. From 1787 to 1791, he is found engaged
as counsel only in three cases.)]
3156 (return)
[ Madame Roland,
"Memoires." (Statement of Madame Danton to Madame Roland.)]
3157 (return)
[ Expressions used by
Garat and Roederer.—Larévilliere-Lepaux calls him "the Cyclop."]
3158 (return)
[ Fauchet describes him
as "the Pluto of Eloquence."]
3159 (return)
[ Riouffe, "Mémoires
sur les prisons." "In prison every utterance was mingled with oaths and
gross expressions."]
3160 (return)
[ Terms used by Fabre
d'Eglantine and Garat.—Beugnot, a very good observer, had an
accurate impression of Danton ("Mémoires", I, 249-252).—M. Dufort de
Cheverney, (manuscript memoirs published by M. Robert de Crèveceur), after
the execution of Babeuf, in 1797, had an opportunity to hear Samson, the
executioner, talk with a war commissary, in an inn between Vendôme and
Blois. Samson recounted the last moments of Danton and Fabre d'Églantine.
Danton, on the way to the scaffold, asked if he might sing. "There is
nothing to hinder," said Samson. "All right. Try to remember the verses I
have just composed," and he sang the following to a tune in vogue:
Nous sommes menés au trépas We are led to our death
Par quantité de scélérats, by a gang of scoundrels
c'est ce qui nous désole. that makes us sad.
Mais bientot le moment viendra But soon the time shall come
Où chacun d'eux y passera, when all of them shall follow
c'est ce qui nous console." that's our consolation.]
3161 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux, XXI.,
108. Speech (printed) by Pétion: "Marat embraced Danton and Danton
embraced him. I certify that this took place in my presence."]
3162 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux, XXI.,
126. ("To Maximilian Robespierre and his royalists," a pamphlet by
Louvet.)—Beugnot, "Mémoires," I., 250, "On arriving in Paris as
deputy from my department (to the Legislative Assembly) Danton sought me
and wanted me to join his party. I dined with him three times, in the Cour
du Commerce, and always went away frightened at his plans and energy....
He contented himself by remarking to his friend Courtois and my colleague:
'Thy big Beugnot is nothing but a devotee—you can do nothing with
him.'"]
3163 (return)
[ The Cordeliers
district. (Buchez et Roux, IV., 27.) Assembly meeting of the Cordeliers
district, November 11th, 1789, to sanction Danton's permanent presidency.
He is always re-elected, and unanimously. This is the first sign of his
ascendancy, although sometimes, to save the appearance of his
dictatorship, he has his chief clerk Paré elected, whom he subsequently
made minister.]
3164 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux, IV.,
295, 298, 401; V., 140.]
3165 (return)
[ Ibid., VIII., 28
(October, 1790).]
3166 (return)
[ Ibid., IX., 408: X.,
144, 234, 297, 417.—Lafayette "Mémoires," I., 359, 366. Immediately
after Mirabeau's death (April, 1791) Danton's plans are apparent, and his
initiative is of the highest importance.]
3167 (return)
[ "The Revolution,"
II., 238 (Note) and 283.—Garat, 309: "After the 20th of June
everybody made mischief at the chateau; the power of which was daily
increasing. Danton arranged the 10th of August and the chateau was
thunderstruck."—Robinet: "Le Procès des Dantonistes," 224, 229.
("Journal de la Societé des amis de la Constitution," No. 214, June 5,
1792.) Danton proposes "the law of Valerius Publicola, passed in Rome
after the expulsion of the Tarquins, permitting every citizen to kill any
man convicted of having expressed opinions opposed to the law of the
State, except in case of proof of the crime." (Ibid., Nos. 230 and 231,
July 13, 1792.) Danton induces the federals present "to swear that they
will not leave the capital until liberty is established, and before the
will of the department is made known on the fate of the executive power."
Such are the principles and the instruments, of "August 10th" and
"September 2nd."]
3168 (return)
[ Garat, 314. "He was
present for a moment on the committee of Public Safety. The outbreaks of
May 31st and June 2nd occurred; he was the author of both these days."]
3169 (return)
[ Decrees of April 6
and 7, 1793.]
3170 (return)
[ Decree of September
5, 1793.]
3171 (return)
[ Decree of March 10,
1793.]
3172 (return)
[ August 1 and 12,
1793.]
3173 (return)
[ See "The Revolution,"
vol. III., ch. I.-Buchez et Roux, XXV., 285. (Meeting of Nov.26, 1793.)—Moniteur,
XIX., 726. Danton (March 16, 1794) secures the passing of a decree that
"hereafter prose only shall be heard at the rostrum of the house."]
3174 (return)
[ Archives Nationales,
Papers of the committee of General Security, No 134.—Letter of
Delacroix to Danton, Lille, March 25, 1793, on the situation in Belgium,
and the retreat of Dumouriez.... "My letter is so long I fear that you
will not read it to the end... .Oblige me by forgetting your usual
indolence."—Letter of Chabot to Danton, Frimaire 12, year II. "I
know your genius, my dear colleague, and consequently your natural
indolent disposition. I was afraid that you would not read me through if I
wrote a long letter. Nevertheless I rely on your friendship to make an
exception in my favor."]
3175 (return)
[ Lagrange, the
mathematician, and senator under the empire, was asked how it was that he
voted for the terrible annual conscriptions. "It had no sensible effect on
the tables of mortality," he replied.]
3176 (return)
[ Garat, 305, 310, 313.
"His friends almost worshipped him."]
3177 (return)
[ Ibid., 317.—Thibeaudeau,
"Mémoires," I., 59.]
3178 (return)
[ Quinet, "La
Révolution," II., 304. (According to the unpublished memoirs of Baudot.)
These expressions by Danton's friends all bear the mark of Danton himself.
At all events they express exactly his ideas.]
3179 (return)
[ Riouffe, 67.]
3180 (return)
[ Miot de Melito,
"Mémoires," I., 40, 42.—Michelet, "Histoire de la Révolution
Française," VI., 34; V. 178, 184. (On the second marriage of Danton in
June, 1793, to a young girl of sixteen. On his journey to Arcis, March,
1794.)—Riouffe, 68. In prison "He talked constantly about trees, the
country and nature."]
3181 (return)
[ We can trace the
effect of his attitude on the public in the police reports, especially at
the end of 1793, and beginning of the year 1794. (Archives Nationales, F
7, 31167 report of Charmont, Nivôse 6, year II.) "Robespierre gains
singularly in public estimation, especially since his speech in the
Convention, calling on his colleagues to rally and crush out the monsters
in the interior, also in which he calls on all to support the new
revolutionary government with their intelligence and talents.... I have to
state that I have everywhere heard his name mentioned with admiration.
They wound up by saying that it would be well for all members of the
Convention to adopt the measures presented by Robespierre."—(Report
of Robin, Nivôse 8.) "Citizen Robespierre is honored everywhere, in all
groupes and in the cafe's. At the Café Manouri it was given out that his
views of the government were the only ones which, like the magnet, would
attract all citizens to the Revolution. It is not the same with citizen
Billaud-Varennes." (Report of the Purveyor, Nivôse 9.) "In certain clubs
and groups there is a rumor that Robespierre is to be appointed
dictator..... The people do justice to his austere virtues; it is noticed
that he has never changed his opinions since the Revolution began."]
3182 (return)
[ "Souvenirs d'un
déporté." by P. Villiers, (Robespierre's secretary for seven months in
1790,) p. 2. "Of painstaking cleanliness."—Buchez et Roux, XXXIV.,
94. Description of Robespierre, published in the newspapers after his
death: "His clothes were exquisitely clean and his hair always carefully
brushed."]
3183 (return)
[ D'Hericault, "La
Revolution du 9 Thermidor," (as stated by Daunou).—Meillan,
"Mémoires," p.4. "His eloquence was nothing but diffusive declamation
without order or method, and especially with no conclusions. Every time he
spoke we were obliged to ask him what he was driving at..... Never did he
propose any remedy. He left the task of finding expedients to others, and
especially to Danton."]
3184 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXIII., 437, 438, 440, 442. (Speech by Robespierre, Thermidor 8, year
II.)]
3185 (return)
[ Ibid., XXX., 225,
226, 227, 228 (Speech, Nov. 17, 1793), and XXXI., 255 (Speech, Jan.26,
'794). "The policy of the London Cabinet largely contributed to the first
movement of our Revolution.... Taking advantage of political tempests (the
cabinet) aimed to effect in exhausted and dismembered France a change of
dynasty and to place the Duke of York on the throne of Louis XVI....
Pitt....is an imbecile, whatever may be said of a reputation that has been
much too greatly puffed up. A man who, abusing the influence acquired by
him on an island placed haphazard in the ocean, is desirous of contending
with the French people, could not have conceived of such an absurd plan
elsewhere than in a madhouse."—Cf. Ibid., XXX., 465.]
3186 (return)
[ Ibid., XXVI., 433,
441, (Speech on the Constitution, May 10, 1793); XXXI., 275. "Goodness
consists in the people preferring itself to what is not itself; the
magistrate, to be good, must sacrifice himself to the people.".... "Let
this maxim be first adopted that the people are good and that its
delegates are corruptible.".. . XXX., 464. (Speech, Dec.25, 1793): "The
virtues are the appanages of the unfortunate and the patrimony of the
people."]
3187 (return)
[ Cf. passim, Hamel,
"Histoire de Robespierre," 3 vols. An elaborate panegyric full of details.
Although eighty years have elapsed, Robespierre still makes dupes of
people through his attitudes and rhetorical flourishes. M. Hamel twice
intimates his resemblance to Jesus Christ. The resemblance, indeed, is
that of Pascal's Jesuits to the Jesus of the Gospel.]
3188 (return)
[ "The Ancient Regime,"
p.262.]
3189 (return)
[ Garat, "Mémoires,"
84. Garat who is himself an ideologist, notes "his eternal twadle about
the rights of man, the sovereignty of the people, and other principles
which he was always talking about, and on which he never gave utterance to
one precise or fresh idea."]
3190 (return)
[ Read especially his
speech on the constitution, (May 10, 1793), his report on the principles
of Republican Government, (Dec.15, 1793), his speech on the relationship
between religious and national ideas and republican principles (May 7,
1794) and speech of Thermidor 8.-Carnot: "Memoires," II., 512. "In all
deliberations on affairs he contributed nothing but vague generalities."]
3191 (return)
[ During this century
all important Jacobin leaders, Hitler, Mussolini, Lenin, Stalin, Castro
etc. have in their turn followed robespierre's example and bored their
captive audiences with their interminable speeches. (SR).]
3192 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXIII., 406. (Speech delivered Thermidor 8th.) The printed copy of the
manuscript with corrections and erasures.]
3193 (return)
[ Ibid., 420, 422,
427.]
3194 (return)
[ Ibid., 428, 435, 436.
"O day forever blessed! What a sight to behold, the entire French people
assembled together and rendering to the author of nature the only homage
worthy of him! How affecting each object that enchants the eye and touches
the heart of man! O honored old age! O generous ardor of the young of our
country! O the innocent, pure joy of youthful citizens! O the exquisite
tears of tender mothers! O the divine charms of innocence and beauty! What
majesty in a great people happy in its strength, power and virtue!"—"No,
Charmette, No, death is not the sleep of eternity!"—"Remember, O,
People, that in a republic, etc."—"If such truths must be dissembled
then bring me the hemlock!"]
3195 (return)
[ Speech, May 7, 1794.
(On moral and religious ideas in relation to republican principles.)]
3196 (return)
[ Personifications.
From Greek to make persons. (SR).]
3197 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXIII., 436. "The verres and Catilines of our country." (Speech of
Thermidor 8th.)—Note especially the speech delivered March 7, 1794,
crammed full of classical reminiscences.]
3198 (return)
[ Ibid., XXXIII., 421.
"Truth has touching and terrible accents which reverberate powerfully in
pure hearts as in guilty consciences, and which falsehood can no more
counterfeit than Salome can counterfeit the thunders of heaven."—437:
"Why do those who yesterday predicted such frightful tempests now gaze
only on the fleeciest clouds? Why do those who but lately exclaimed 'I
affirm that we are treading on a volcano' now behold themselves sleeping
on a bed of roses?"]
3199 (return)
[ Ibid., XXXII., 360,
361. (Portraits of the encyclopaedists and Hébertists.)]
31100 (return)
[ Ibid., XXXIII.,
408. "Here, I have to open my heart."—XXXII., 475-478, the
concluding part.]
31101 (return)
[ Hamel: "Histoire de
Robespierre," I., 34-76. An attorney at 23, a member of the Rosati club at
Arras at 24, a member of the Arras Academy at 25. The Royal Society of
Metz awarded him a second prize for his discourse against the prejudice
which regards the relatives of condemned criminals as infamous. His eulogy
of Gresset is not crowned by the Amiens Academy. He reads before the
Academy of Arras a discourse against the civil incapacities of
illegitimate children, and then another on reforms in criminal
jurisprudence. In 1789, he is president of the Arras Academy, and
publishes an eulogy of Dupaty and an address to the people from Artois on
the qualities necessary for future deputies.]
31102 (return)
[ See his eulogy of
Rousseau in the speech of May 7, 1794. (Buchez et Roux, XXXII., 369.—Garat,
85. "I hoped that his selection of Rousseau for a model of style and the
constant reading of his works would exert some good influence on his
character."]
31103 (return)
[ Fievée,
"correspondance" (introduction). Fievée, who heard him at the Jacobin
Club, said that he resembled a "tailor of the ancient regime." La
Réeveillère-Lepeaux, ´"Memoires."—Buchez et Roux, XXXIV., 94.—Malouet,
"Mémoires," II., 135. (Session of May 31, 1791, after the delivery of Abbé
Raynal's address.) "This is the first and only time I found Robespierre
clear and even eloquent.... He spun out his opening phrases as usual,
which contained the spirit of his discourse, and which, in spite of his
accustomed rigmarole, produced the effect he intended."]
31104 (return)
[ Courrier de
Provence, III., No. 52, (Oct. 7 and 8, 1789).—Buchez et Roux, VI.,
372. (Session of July 10, 1790.) Another similar blunder was committed by
him on the occasion of an American deputation. The president had made his
response, which was "unanimously applauded." Robespierre wanted to have
his say notwithstanding the objections of the Assembly, impatient at his
verbiage, and which finally put him down. Amidst the laughter, "M. l'Abbé
Maury demands ironically the printing of M. Robespierre's discourse."]
31105 (return)
[ L. Villiers, 2.]
31106 (return)
[ Cf. his principal
speeches in the constituent Assembly;—against martial law; against
the veto, even suspensive; against the qualification of the silver marc
and in favor of universal suffrage; in favor of admitting into the
National Guard non-acting citizens; of the marriage of priests; of the
abolition of the death penalty; of granting political rights to colored
men; of interdicting the father from favoring any one of his children; of
declaring the "Constituants" ineligible to the Legislative Assembly, etc.
On royalty: "The King is not the representative but the clerk of the
nation." On the danger of allowing political rights to colored men: "Let
the colonies perish if they cost you your honor, your glory, your
liberty!"]
31107 (return)
[ Hamel, I., 76.77,
(March, 1789). "My heart is an honest one and I stand firm; I have never
bowed beneath the yoke of baseness and corruption." He enumerates the
virtues that a representative of the Third Estate should possess (26, 83).
He already shows his blubbering capacity and his disposition to regard
himself as a victim: "They undertake making martyrs of the people's
defenders. Had they the power to deprive me of the advantages they envy,
could they snatch from me my soul and the consciousness of the benefits I
desire to confer on them."]
31108 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXIII. "Who am I that am thus accused? The slave of freedom, a living
martyr to the Republic, at once the victim and the enemy of crime!" See
this speech in full.]
31109 (return)
[ Especially in his
address to the French people, (Aug., 1791), which, in a justificatory
form, is his apotheosis.—Cf. Hamel, II., 212; Speech in the Jacobin
club, (April 27, 1792).]
31110 (return)
[ Hamel, I., 517,
532, 559; II., 5.]
31111 (return)
[
Laréveillère-Lepeaux," Mémoires."—Barbaroux, "Mémoires," 358. (Both,
after a visit to him.)]
31112 (return)
[ Robespierre's
devotees constantly attend at the Jacobin club and in the convention to
hear him speak and applaud him, and are called, from their condition and
dress, "the fat petticoats."]
31113 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XX., 197. (Meeting of Nov. I, 1792.)—"Chronique de Paris," Nov. 9,
1792, article by Condorcet. With the keen insight of the man of the world,
he saw clearly into Robespierre's character. "Robespierre preaches,
Robespierre censures; he is animated, grave, melancholy, deliberately
enthusiastic and systematic in his ideas, and conduct. He thunders against
the rich and the great; he lives on nothing and has no physical
necessities. His sole mission is to talk, and this he does almost
constantly... His characteristics are not those of a religious reformer,
but of the chief of a sect. He has won a reputation for austerity
approaching sanctity. He jumps up on a bench and talks about God and
Providence. He styles himself the friend of the poor; he attracts around
him a crowd of women and 'the poor in spirit, and gravely accepts their
homage and worship.... Robespierre is a priest and never will be anything
else." Among Robespierre's devotees Madame de Chalabre must be mentioned,
(Hamel, I., 525), a young widow (Hamel, III., 524), who offers him her
hand with an income of forty thousand francs. "Thou art my supreme deity,"
she writes to him, "and I know no other on this earth! I regard thee as my
guardian angel, and would live only under thy laws."]
31114 (return)
[ Fievée,
"Correspondance," (introduction).]
31115 (return)
[ Report of Courtois
on the papers found in Robespierre's domicile. Justificatory documents
No.20, letter of the Secretary of the Committee of Surveillance of Saint
Calais, Nivôse 15, year II.]
31116 (return)
[ Ibid., No. 18.
Letter of V—, former inspector of "droits reservés," Feb. 5, 1792.]
31117 (return)
[ Ibid., No.8. Letter
of P. Brincourt, Sedan, Aug.29, 1793.]
31118 (return)
[ Ibid., No. I.
Letter of Besson, with an address of the popular club of Menosque,
Prairial 23, year II]
31119 (return)
[ Ibid., No.14.
Letter of D—, member of the Cordeliers Club, and former mercer,
Jan.31, 1792]
31120 (return)
[ Ibid., No.12.
Letter by C—, Chateau Thierry, Prairial 30, year II.]
31121 (return)
[ Hamel, III., 682.
(Copied from Billaud-Varennes' manuscripts, in the Archives Nationales).]
31122 (return)
[ Moniteur, XXII.,
'75. (Session of Vendémiaire i8, year III. Speech by Laignelot.)
"Robespierre had all the popular clubs under his thumb."]
31123 (return)
[ Garat, 85. "The
most conspicuous sentiment with Robespierre, and one, indeed, of which he
made no mystery, was that the defender of the people could never see
amiss."—(Bailleul, quoted in Carnot's Memoirs, I. 516.) "He regarded
himself as a privileged being, destined to become the people's regenerator
and instructor."]
31124 (return)
[ Speech of May 16,
1794, and of Thermidor 8, year II.]
31125 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux, X.,
295, 296. (Session June 22, 1791, of the Jacobin Club.)—Ibid., 294.—Marat
spoke in the same vein: "I have made myself a curse for all good people in
France." He writes, the same date: "Writers in behalf of the people will
be dragged to dungeons. 'The friend of the people,' whose last sigh is
given for his country, and whose faithful voice still summons you to
freedom, is to find his grave in a fiery furnace." The last expression
shows the difference in their imaginations.]
31126 (return)
[ Hamel, II., 122.
(Meeting of the Jacobin Club, Feb.10, 1792.) "To obtain death at the hands
of tyrants is not enough—one must deserve death. If it be true that
the earliest defenders of liberty became its martyrs they should not
suffer death without bearing tyranny along with them into the grave."—Cf.,
ibid., II., 215. (Meeting of April 27, 1792.)]
31127 (return)
[ Hamel, II., 513.
(Speech in the Convention, Prairial 7, year II.)]
31128 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXIII., 422, 445, 447, 457. (Speech in the Convention, Thermidor 8, year
II.)]
31129 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XX., 11, 18. (Meeting of the Jacobin Club, Oct.29, 1792.) Speech on
Lafayette, the Feuillants and Girondists. XXXI., 360, 363. (Meeting of the
Convention, May 7, 1794.) On Lafayette, the Girondists, Dantonists and
Hébertists.—XXXIII., 427. (Speech of Thermidor 8, year II.)]
31130 (return)
[ Garat, "Mémoires,"
87, 88.]
31131 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXI., 107. (Speech of Pétion on the charges made against him by
Robespierre.) Petion justly objects that "Brunswick would be the first to
cut off Brissot's head, and Brissot is not fool enough to doubt it."]
31132 (return)
[ Garat, 94. (After
the King's death and a little before the 10th of March, 1793.)]
31133 (return)
[ Ibid., 97. In 1789
Robespierre assured Garat that Necker was plundering the Treasury, and
that people had seen mules loaded with the gold and silver he was sending
off by millions to Geneva.—Carnot, "Mémoires," I. 512.
"Robespierre," say Carnot and Prieur, "paid very little attention to
public business, but a good deal to public officers; he made himself
intolerable with his perpetual mistrust of these, never seeing any but
traitors and conspirators."]
31134 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXIII., 417. (Speech of Thermidor 8, year II.)]
31135 (return)
[ Ibid., XXXII., 361,
(Speech May 7, '794,) and 359. "Immorality is the basis of despotism, as
virtue is the essence of the Republic."]
31136 (return)
[ Ibid., 371.]
31137 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXIII., 195. (Report of Couthon and decree in conformity therewith,
Prairial 22, year II.) "The revolutionary tribunal is organised for the
punishment of the people's enemies.. .. The penalty for all offences
within its jurisdiction is death. Those are held to be enemies of the
people who shall have misled the people, or the representatives of the
people, into measures opposed to the interests of liberty; those who shall
have sought to create discouragement by favoring the undertakings of
tyrants leagued against the Republic; those who shall have spread false
reports to divide or disturb the people; those who shall have sought to
misdirect opinion and impede popular instruction, produce depravity and
corrupt the public conscience, diminish the energy and purity of
revolutionary and republican principles, or stay their progress Those who,
charged with public functions, abuse them to serve the enemies of the
Revolution, vex patriots, oppress the people, etc."]
31138 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXV., 290. (" Institutions," by Saint-Just.) "The Revolution is chilled.
Principles have lost their vigor. Nothing remains but red-caps worn by
intrigue."—Report by Courtois, "Pièces justificatives" No.20.
(Letter of Pays and Rompillon, president and secretary of the committee of
Surveillance of Saint-Calais, to Robespierre, Nivôse 15, year II.) "The
Mountain here is composed of only a dozen or fifteen men on whom you can
rely as on yourself; the rest are either deceived, seduced, corrupted or
enticed away. Public opinion is debauched by the gold and intrigues of
honest folks."]
31139 (return)
[ Report by Courtois,
N. 43.—Cf. Hamel, III., 43, 71.—(The following important
document is on file in the Archives Nationales, F 7, 4446, and consists of
two notes written by Robespierre in June and July, 1793): "Who are our
enemies? The vicious and the rich.... How may the civil war be stopped?
Punish traitors and conspirators, especially guilty deputies and
administrators.... make terrible examples.... proscribe perfidious writers
and anti-revolutionaries.... Internal danger comes from the bourgeois; to
overcome the bourgeois, rally the people. The present insurrection must be
kept up.... The insurrection should gradually continue to spread out...
The sans-culottes should be paid and remain in the towns. They ought to be
armed, worked up, taught."]
31140 (return)
[ The committee of
Public Safety, and Robespierre especially, knew of and commanded the
drownings of Nantes, as well as the principal massacres by Carrier,
Turreau, etc. (De Martel, "Etude sur Fouché," 257-265.)—Ibid.,
("Types revolutionnaires," 41-49.)—Buchez et Roux, XXXIII., 101 (May
26, 1794.) Report by Barère and decree of the convention ordering that "No
English prisoners should be taken." Robespierre afterwards speaks in the
same sense. Ibid., 458. After the capture of Newport, where they took five
thousand English prisoners, the French soldiers were unwilling to execute
the convention's decree, on which Robespierre (speech of Thermidor 8)
said: "I warn you that your decree against the English has constantly been
violated; England, so ill-treated in our speeches, is spared by our
arms."]
31141 (return)
[ On the Girondists,
Cf. "The Revolution," II., 216.]
31142 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXX., 157. Sketch of a speech on the Fabre d'Eglantine factim.—Ibid.,
336, Speech at the Jacobin Club against Clootz.—XXXII., abstract of
a report on the Chabot affair, 18.-Ibid., 69, Speech on maintaining
Danton's arrest.]
31143 (return)
[ Ibid., XXX., 378.
(Dec.10, 1793.) With respect to the women who crowd the Convention in
order to secure the liberty of their husbands: "Should the republican
women forget their virtues as citizens whenever they remembering that they
are wives?"]
31144 (return)
[ Hamel, III., 196.—Michelet,
V., 394, abstract of the judicial debates on the disposition of the
Girondists: "The minutes of this decree are found in Robespierre's
handwriting."]
31145 (return)
[ De Martel, "Types
revolutionnaires," 44. The instructions sent to the Revolutionary Tribunal
at Orange are in Robespierre's handwriting.—(Archives Nationales, F7
4439.)]
31146 (return)
[ Merlin de
Thionville.]
31147 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXII., 71. (On Danton.) "Before the day is over we shall see whether the
convention will shatter an idol a long time rotten.... In what respect is
Danton superior to his fellow-citizens?.... I say that the man who now
hesitates is guilty..... The debate, just begun, is a danger to the
country."—Also the speech in full, against Clootz.]
31148 (return)
[ Ibid., XXX., 338.
"Alas, suffering patriots, what can we do, surrounded by enemies fighting
in our own ranks!... Let us watch, for the fall of our country is not far
off," etc.—These cantatas, with the accompaniments of the celestial
harp, are terrible if we consider the circumstances. For instance, on the
3rd of September, 1792, in the electoral assembly while the massacres are
going on: "M. Robespierre climbs up on the tribune and declares that he
will calmly face the steel of the enemies of public good, and carry with
him to his grave the satisfaction of having served his country, the
certainty of France having preserved its liberty".—(Archives
Nationales, C. II., 58-76.)]
31149 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXII., 360, 371. (Speech of May 7, 1794.) "Danton! the most dangerous, if
he had not been the most cowardly, of the enemies of his country....
Danton, the coldest, the most indifferent, during his country's greatest
peril."]
31150 (return)
[ Ibid., XXXIV.,—Cf.
the description of him by Fievée, who saw him in the tribune at the
Jacobin Club.]
31151 (return)
[ Merlin de
Thionville "A vague, painful anxiety, due to his temperament, was the sole
source of his activity."]
31152 (return)
[ Barère, "Mémoires."
"He wanted to rule France influentially rather than directly."—Buchez
et Roux, XIV., 188. (Article by Marat.) During the early sessions of the
Legislative Assembly, Marat saw Robespierre on one occasion, and explained
to him his plans for exciting popular outbreaks, and for his purifying
massacres. "Robespierre listened to me with dismay, turned pale and kept
silent for some moments. This interview confirmed me in the idea I always
had of him, that he combined the enlightenment of a wise senator with the
uprightness of a genuine good man and the zeal of a true patriot, but that
he equally lacked the views and boldness of a statesman."—Thibaudeau,
"Mémoires," 58.—He was the only member of the committee of Public
Safety who did not join the department missions.]
31153 (return)
[ Someone is
"grandisonian" when he is like the novelist Richardson's hero, Sir Walter
Grandison, beneficient, polite and chivalrous. (SR).]
31154 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux XX.,
198. (Speech of Robespierre in the Convention, November 5, 1792.)]
31155 (return)
[ All these
statements by Robespierre are opposed to the truth.—("Procés-verbaux
des Séances de la Commune de Paris.") Sep. 1, 1792, Robespierre speaks
twice at the evening session.—The testimony of two persons, both
agreeing, indicate, moreover, that he spoke at the morning session, the
names of the speakers not being given. "The question," says Pétion (Buchez
et Roux, XXI., 103), "was the decree opening the barriers." This decree is
under discussion at the Commune at the morning session of September 1:
"Robespierre, on this question, spoke in the most animated manner,
wandering off in sombre flights of imagination; he saw precipices at his
feet and plots of liberticides; he designated the pretended conspirators."—Louvet
(ibid., 130), assigns the same date, (except that he takes the evening for
the morning session), for Robespierre's first denunciation of the
Girondists: "Nobody, then," says Robespierre, "dare name the traitors?
Very well, I denounce them. I denounce them for the security of the
people. I denounce the liberticide Brissot, the Girondist faction, the
villainous committee of twenty-one in the National Assembly. I denounce
them for having sold France to Brunswick and for having received pay in
advance for their baseness."—Sep. 2, ("Procès verbaux de la
Commune," evening session), "MM. Billaud-Varennes and Robespierre, in
developing their civic sentiments,.. denounce to the Conseil-Général the
conspirators in favor of the Duke of Brunswick, whom a powerful party want
to put on the throne of France."—September 3, at 6 o'clock in the
morning, (Buchez et Roux, 16, 132, letter of Louvet), commissioners of the
Commune present themselves at Brissot's house with an order to inspect his
papers; one of them says to Brissot that he has eight similar orders
against the Gironde deputies and that he is to begin with Guadet. (Letter
of Brissot complaining of this visit, Monitur, Sep. 7, 1792.) This same
day, Sep. 31 Robespierre presides at the Commune. (Granier de Cassagnac,
"Les Girondins" II., 63.) It is here that a deputation of the Mauconseil
section comes to find him, and he is charged by the "Conseil" with a
commission at the Temple.—Sept. 4 (Buchez et Roux, XXI., 106, Speech
of Petion), the Commune issues a warrant of arrest against Roland; Danton
comes to the Mayoralty with Robespierre and has the warrant revoked;
Robespierre ends by telling Petion: "I believe that Brissot belongs to
Brunswick."—Ibid., 506. "Robespierre (before Sept. 2), took the lead
in the Conseil"—Ibid., 107. "Robespierre," I said, "you are making a
good deal of mischief. Your denunciations, your fears, hatreds and
suspicions, excite the people."]
31156 (return)
[ Garat, 86.-Cf.
Hamel, I., 264. (Speech, June 9, 1791.)]
31157 (return)
[ "The Revolution,"
II., 338, 339. (Speech. Aug. 3, 1792.)]
31158 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXIII., 420. (Speech, Thermidor 8.)]
31159 (return)
[ Ibid., XXXII., 71.
(Speech against Danton.) "What have you done that you have not done
freely?"]
31160 (return)
[ Ibid., XXXIII., 199
and 221. (Speech on the law of Prairial 22.)]
31161 (return)
[ Mirabeau said of
Robespierre: "Whatever that man has said, he believes in it.—Robespierre,
Duplay's guest, dined every day with Duplay, a juryman in the
revolutionary tribunal and co-operator for the guillotine, at eighteen
francs a day. The talk at the table probably turned on the current
abstractions; but there must have been frequent allusions to the
condemnations of the day, and, even when not mentioned, they were in their
minds. Only Robert Browning, at the present day, could imagine and revive
what was spoken and thought in those evening conversations before the
mother and daughters."]
31162 (return)
[ Today, more than
100 years later, where are we? Is it possible that man can thus lie to
himself and hence to others? Robert Wright, in his book "The Moral
Animal", describing "The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology", writes
(page 280): "The proposition here is that the human brain is, in large
part, a machine for winning arguments, a machine for convincing others
that its owner is in the right—and thus a machine for convincing its
owner of the same thing. The brain is like a good lawyer: given any set of
interests to defend, its sets about convincing the world of their moral
and logical worth, regardless of whether they in fact have any of either.
Like a lawyer, it is sometimes more admirable for skill than for virtue."
(SR).]
31163 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXIII., 151.—Cf.. Dauban, "Paris en 1794," p.386 (engraving) and
392, "Fête de l'Être Suprême à Sceaux," according to the programme drawn
up by the patriot Palloy. "All citizens are requested to be at their
windows or doors, even those occupying the rear part of the main
buildings."—Ibid., 399. "Youthful citizens will strew flowers at
each station, fathers will embrace their children and mothers turn their
eyes upward to heaven."—Moniteur, XXX., 653. "Plan of the fête in
honor of the Supreme Being, drawn up by David, and decreed by the National
Convention."]
31164 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXIII., 176. (Narrative by Valate.)]
31165 (return)
[ Hamel, III., 541.]
31166 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXVIII., 178, 180.]
31167 (return)
[ Ibid., 177
(Narrative by Vilate.) Ibid., 170, Notes by Robespierre on Bourdon (de
l'Oise) 417. Passages erased by Robespierre in the manuscript of his
speech of Thermidor 8.—249. Analogous passages in his speech as
delivered,—all these indications enable us to trace the depths of
his resentment.]
31168 (return)
[ Ibid., 183. Memoirs
of Billaud-Varennes, Collot d'Herbois, Vadier and Barère. "The next day
after Prairial 22, at the morning session (of the committee of Public
Safety).... I now see, says Robespierre, that I stand alone, with nobody
to support me, and, getting violently excited, he launched out against the
members of the committee who had conspired against him. He shouted so loud
as to collect together a number of citizens on the Tuileries terrace."
Finally, "he pushed hypocrisy so far as to shed tears." The nervous
machine, I imagine, broke down.—Another member of the committee,
Prieur, (Carnot, "Mémoires," II., 525), relates that, in the month of
Floréal, after another equally long and violent session, "Robespierre,
exhausted, became ill."]
31169 (return)
[ Carnot, "Mémoires,"
II. 526. "As his bureau was in a separate place, where none of us set
foot, he could retire to it without coming in contact with any of us, as
in effect, he did. He even made a pretence of passing through the
committee rooms, after the session was over, and he signed some papers;
but he really neglected nothing, except our common discussions. He held
frequent conferences in his house with the presidents of the revolutionary
tribunals, over which his influence was greater than ever."]
31170 (return)
[ Dauban, "Paris en
1794," 563.—Archives Nationales, AF.II., 58. The signature of
Robespierre, in his own handwriting, is found affixed to many of the
resolutions of the Committee of Public Safety, passed Thermidor 5 and 7,
and those of St. Just and Couthon after this, up to Thermidor 3, 6 and 7.
On the register of the minutes of the Committee of Public Safety,
Robespierre is always recorded as present at all meetings between Messidor
1 and Thermidor 8, inclusive.]
31171 (return)
[ Archives
Nationales, F.7, 4438. Report to the Committee of Public Safety by Herman,
Commissioner of the civil and Police administrations and of the Courts,
Messidor 3, year II. "The committee charged with a general supervision of
the prisons, and obliged to recognize that all the rascals mostly
concerned with liberticide plots are.... still in the prisons, forming a
band apart, and rendering surveillance very troublesome; they are a
constant source of disorder, always getting up attempts to escape, being a
daily assemblage of persons devoting themselves wholly to imprecations
against liberty and its defenders.... It would be easy to point out in
each prison, those who have served, and are to serve, the diverse
factions, the diverse conspiracies.... It may be necessary, perhaps, to
purge the prisons at once and free the soil of liberty of their filth, the
refuse of humanity." The Committee of Public Safety consequently "charges
the commission to ascertain in the prisons of Paris... who have been more
specially concerned in the diverse factions and conspiracies that the
National convention has destroyed." The word "approved" appears at the
foot of the resolution in Robespierre's handwriting, then the signature of
Robespierre, and lower down, those of Billaud and Barère. A similar
resolution providing for the 7th of Messidor, signed by the same parties
and five others, is dispatched the same day. (M. de Martel came across and
made use of this conclusive document before I did, most of it being quoted
in "Les Types Revolutionnaires.")]
31172 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXIII., 434.]
Let us follow the operations of the new government from top to bottom, from those of its ruling bodies and leaders, to its assemblies, committees, delegates, administrators and underlings of every kind and degree. Like living flesh stamped with a red-hot iron, so will the situation put one their brows the two marks, each with its own different depth and discoloration. In vain do they, too, strive to conceal their scars: we detect under the crowns and titles they assume the brand of the slave or the mark of the tyrant.
The Convention.—The "Plain."—The "Mountain."—Degradation
of Souls.—Parades which the Convention is obligated to
make.
At the Tuileries, the omnipotent Convention sits enthroned in the theater, converted into an Assembly room. It carries on its deliberations daily, in grand style. Its decrees, received with blind obedience, startle France and upset all Europe. At a distance, its majesty is imposing, more august than that of the Republican senate in Rome. Near by, the effect is quite otherwise; these undisputed sovereigns are serfs who live in trances, and justly so, for, nowhere, even in prison, is there more constraint and less security than on their benches. After the 2nd of June, 1793, their inviolable precincts, the grand official reservoir from which legal authority flows, becomes a sort of tank, into which the revolutionary net plunges and successfully brings out its choicest fish, singly or by the dozen, and sometimes in vast numbers; at first, the sixty-seven Girondist deputies, who are executed or proscribed; then, the seventy-three members of the "Right," swept off in one day and lodged in the prison of La Force; next, the prominent Jacobins:
Osselin, arrested on the 19th of Brumaire, Bazire, Chabot, and Delaunay, accused by decree on the 24th Brumaire, Fabre d'Eglantine, arrested on the 24th of Nivôse, Bernard, guillotined on the 3rd of Pluviôse, Anacharsis Clootz guillotined on the 4th of Germinal, Hérault de Séchelles, Lacroix, Philippeaux, Camille Desmoulins and Danton, guillotined with four others on the 10th of Germinal, Simon, guillotined on the 24th of Germinal, and Osselin, guillotined on the 8th of Messidor.—Naturally, the others take warning and are careful. At the opening of the session they are seen entering the hall, looking uneasy, full of distrust,"3201 like animals driven into a pen and suspicious of a trap.
"Each," writes an eye-witness, "acted and spoke with circumspection, for fear of being charged with some crime: in effect, nothing was unimportant, the seat one took, a glance of the eye, a gesture, a murmur, a smile."
Hence, they flock instinctively to the side which is best sheltered, the left side.
"The tide flowed towards the summit of the Mountain; the right side was deserted.... Many took no side at all, and, during the session, often changed their seats, thinking that they might thus elude the spy by donning a mixed hue and keeping on good terms with everybody. The most prudent never sat down; they kept off the benches, at the foot of the tribune, and, on matters getting to be serious, slipped quietly out of the hall."
Most of them took refuge in their committee-rooms; each tries to be over-looked, to be obscure, to appear insignificant or absent.3202 During the four months following the 2nd of June, the hall of the Convention is half or three-quarters empty; the election of a president does not bring out two hundred and fifty voters;3203 only two hundred, one hundred, fifty votes, elect the Committees of Public Safety and General Security; about fifty votes elect the judges of the Revolutionary Tribunal; less than ten votes elect their substitutes;3204 not one vote is cast for the adoption of the decree indicting the deputy, Dulaure;3205 "no member rises for or against it; there is no vote;" the president, nevertheless, pronounces the act passed and the Marais lets things take their course."—"Marais frogs"3206 is the appellation bestowed on them before the 2nd of June, when, amongst the dregs of the "Center," they "broke" with the "Mountain;" now, they still number four hundred and fifty, three times as many as the "Montagnards;" but they purposely keep quiet; their old name "renders them, so to say, soft; their ears ring with eternal menaces; their hearts shrivel up with terror;3207 while their tongues, paralyzed by habitual silence, remain as if glued to the roofs of their mouths. In vain do they keep in the back-ground, consent to everything, ask nothing for themselves but personal safety, and surrender all else, their votes, their wills and their consciences; they feel that their life hangs by a thread. The greatest mute among them all, Siéyès, denounced in the Jacobin Club, barely escapes, and through the protection of his shoemaker, who rises and exclaims: "That Siéyès! I know him. He don't meddle with politics. He does nothing but read his book. I make his shoes and will answer for him."3208
Of course, previous to the 9th of Thermidor, none of them open their mouths; it is only the "Montagnards" who make speeches, and on the countersign being given. If Legendre, the admirer, disciple and confidential friend of Danton, dares at one time interfere in relation to the decree which sends his friend to the scaffold, asking that he may first be heard, it is only to retract immediately; that very evening, at the Jacobin club, for greater security, "he wallows in the mud;"3209 he declares "that he submits to the judgment of the revolutionary Tribunal," and swears to denounce "whoever shall oppose any obstacle to the execution of the decree."3210 Has not Robespierre taught him a lesson, and in his most pedantic manner? What is more beautiful, says the great moralist, more sublime, than an Assembly which purges itself?3211—Thus, not only is the net which has already dragged out so many palpitating victims still intact, but it is enlarged and set again, only, the fish are now caught on the "Left" as well as on the "Right," and preferably on the topmost benches of the "Mountain."3212 And better still, through the law of Prairial 22, its meshes are reduced in size and its width increased; with such admirable contraption, the fishpond could not fail to be exhausted. A little before the 9th of Thermidor, David, who was one of Robespierre's devoted adherents, himself exclaimed: "Will twenty of us be left on the Mountain?" About the same time, Legendic, Thuriot, Léonard Bourdon, Tallien, Bourdon de l'Oise, and others, each has a spy all day long at his heels. There are thirty deputies to be proscribed and their names are whispered about; whereupon, sixty stay out all night, convinced that they will be seized the next morning before they can get up.3213
Subject to such a system, prolonged for so many months, people sink down and become discouraged. "Everybody made themselves small so as to pass beneath the popular yoke.3214 Everybody became one of the low class.... Clothes, manners, refinement, cleanliness, the conveniences of life, civility and politeness were all renounced."—People wear their clothes indecently and curse and swear; they try to resemble the sans-culottes Montagnards "who are profane and dress themselves like so many dock-loafers;"3215 at Armonville, the carder, who presides (at a meeting) wears a woolen cap, and similarly at Cusset, a gauze-workman, who is always drunk. Only Robespierre dares appear in neat attire; among the others, who do not have his influence, among the demi-suspects with a pot-belly, such a residue of the ancient régime might become dangerous; they do well not to attract the attention of the foul-mouthed spy who cannot spell;3216 especially is it important at a meeting to be one of the crowd and remain unnoticed by the paid claqueurs, drunken swaggerers and "fat petticoats" of the tribunes. It is even essential to shout in harmony with them and join in their bar-room dances. The deputations of the popular clubs come for fourteen months to the bar of the house and recite their common-place or bombastic tirades, and the Convention is forced to applaud them. For nine months,3217 street ballad-singers and coffee-house ranters attend in full session and sing the rhymes of the day, while the Convention is obliged to join in the chorus. For six weeks,3218 the profaners of churches come to the hall and display their dance-house buffooneries, and the Convention has not only to put up with these, but also to take part in them.—Never, even in imperial Rome, under Nero and Heliogabalus, did a senate descend so low.
How the parades are carried out.—Its slavery and servility
—Its participation in crime.
Observe one of their parades, that of Brumaire 20th, 22nd or 30th, which masquerade often occurs several times a week and is always the same, with scarcely any variation.—Male and female wretches march in procession to the doors of the deputies' hall, still "drunk with the wine imbibed from chalices, after eating mackerel broiled in patens," besides refreshing themselves on the way. "Mounted astride of asses which they have rigged out in chasuble and which they guide with a stole," they halt at each low smoking-den, holding a drinking cup in their hand; the bartender, with a mug in his hand, fills it, and, at each station, they toss off their bumpers, one after the other, in imitation of the Mass, and which they repeat in the street in their own fashion.—On finishing this, they don copes, chasubles and dalmatica, and, in two long lines, file before the benches of the Convention. Some of them bear on hand-barrows or in baskets, candelabra, chalices, gold and silver salvers, monstrances, and reliquaries; others hold aloft banners, crosses and other ecclesiastical spoils. In the mean time "bands play the air of the carmagnole and 'Malbrook.'... On the entry of the dais, they strike up 'Ah! le bel oiseau;'"3219 all at once the masqueraders throw off their disguise, and, mitres, stoles, chasubles flung in the air, "disclose to view the defenders of the country in the national uniform." Peals of laughter, shouts and enthusiasm, while the instrumental din becomes louder! The procession, now in full blast, demands the carmagnole, and the Convention consents; even some of the deputies descend from their benches and cut the pigeon-wing with the merry prostitutes.—To wind up, the Convention decrees that it will attend that evening the fête of Reason and, in fact, they go in a body. Behind an actress in short petticoats wearing a red cap, representing Liberty or Reason, march the deputies, likewise in red caps, shouting and singing until they reach the new temple, which is built of planks and pasteboard in the choir of Notre Dame. They take their seats in the front rows, while the Goddess, an old frequenter of the suppers of the Duc de Soubise, along with "all the pretty dames of the Opera," display before them their operatic graces.3220 They sing the "Hymn to Liberty," and, since the Convention has that morning decreed that it must sing, I suppose that it also joined in.3221 After this there follows dancing; but, unfortunately, the authorities are wanting for stating whether the Convention danced or not. In any event, it is present at the dance, and thus consecrates an unique orgy, not Rubens' "Kermesse" in the open air, racy and healthy, but a nocturnal boulevard-jollification, a "Mardi-gras" composed of lean and haggard scapegraces.—In the great nave of the Cathedral, "the dancers, almost naked, with bare necks and breasts, and stockings down at the heel," writhe and stamp, "howling the carmagnole." In the side chapels, which are "shut off by high tapestries, prostitutes with shrill voices" pursue their avocation.3222—To descend to this low level so barefacedly, to fraternise with barrier sots, and wenches, to endure their embraces and hiccoughs, is bad enough, even for docile deputies. More than one half of them loathed it beforehand and remained at home; after this they do not feel disposed to attend the Convention.3223—But the "Mountain sends for them, and an officer brings them back;" it is necessary that they should co-operate through their presence and felicitations in the profanations and apostasies which follow;3224 it is necessary that they should approve of and decree that which they hold in horror, not alone folly and nonsense, but crime, the murder of innocent people, and that of their friends.—All this is done. "Unanimously, and with the loudest applause," the Left, united with the Right, sends Danton to the scaffold, its natural chieftain, the great promoter and leader of the Revolution.3225 "Unanimously, and with the loudest applause," the Right, united with the Left, votes the worse decrees of the Revolutionary government.3226 "Unanimously," with approving and enthusiastic cheers, manifesting the warmest sympathy for Collot d'Herbois, Couthon, and Robespierre,3227 the Convention, through multiplied and spontaneous re-elections, maintains the homicidal government which the Plain detests, because it is homicidal, and which the Mountain detests, because it is decimated by it. Plain and Mountain, by virtue of terror, majority after majority, end in consenting to and bringing about their own suicide: on the 22nd of Prairial, the entire Convention has stretched out its neck;3228 on the 8th of Thermidor, for a quarter of an hour after Robespierre's speech,3229 it has again stretched this out, and would probably have succumbed, had not five or six of them, whom Robespierre designated or named, Bourdon de l'Oise, Vadier, Cambon, Billaud and Panis, stimulated by the animal instinct of self-preservation, raised their arms to ward off the knife. Nothing but imminent, personal, mortal danger could, in these prostrated beings, supplant long-continued fear with still greater fear. Later on, Siéyès, on being asked how he acted in these times, replied, "I lived." In effect, he and others are reduced to that; they succeeded in doing this, at all costs, and at what a price!3230 His secret notes, his most private sketches confirm this3231...
"On the Committee of March 20, "Paillasse, half drunk, gives a dissertation on the way to carry on the war, and interrogates and censures the Minister. The poor Minister evades his questions with café gossip and a review of campaigns. These are the men placed at the head of the government to save the Republic!"—"H...., in his distraction, had the air of a sly fox inwardly smiling at his own knavish thoughts. Ruit irrevocabile vulgus... Jusque Datum sceleri."—"Are you keeping silent?"—"Of what use is my glass of wine in this torrent of ardent spirits?"—
All this is very well, but he did not merely keep silent and abstain. He voted, legislated and decreed, along with the unanimous Convention; he was a collaborator, not only passively, through his presence, but also through his active participation in the acts of the government which he elected and enthroned, re-elected twelve times, cheered every week, and flattered daily, authorizing and keeping on to the end its work of spoliation and massacre.
"Everybody is guilty here," said Carrier in the Convention, "even to the president's bell."
In vain do they constantly repeat to themselves that they were forced to obey under penalty of death: the conscience of the purest among them, if he has any, replies:
"You too, in spite of yourself, I admit; less than others, if you please, but you were a terrorist, that is to say, a brigand and an assassin."3232
The Men who do the work.—Carnot, Prieur de-la-Côte d'Or,
Jean Bon Saint André, Robert Lindet.
On a man becoming a slave, said old Homer, the Gods take away the half of his soul; the same is true of a man who becomes a tyrant.—In the Pavilion de Flore, alongside of and above the enslaved Convention, sit the twelve kings it has enthroned, twice a day,3233 ruling over it as well as over France.3234 Of course, some guarantee is required from those who fill this place; there is not one of them who is not a revolutionary of long standing, an impenitent regicide, a fanatic in essence and a despot through principle; but the fumes of omnipotence have not intoxicated them all to the same degree.—Three or four of them, Robert Lindet, Jean Bon St. André, Prieur de la Côte-d'Or and Carnot, confine themselves to useful and secondary duties; this suffices to keep them partially safe. As specialists, charged with an important service, their first object is to do this well, and hence they subordinate the rest to this, even theoretical exigencies and the outcries of the clubs.
Lindet's prime object is to feed the departments that are without wheat, and the towns that are soon to be short of bread.
Prieur's business is to see that biscuits, brandy, clothes, shoes, gunpowder and arms are manufactured.3235
Jean Bon, that vessels are equipped and crews drilled.
Carnot, to draw up campaign plans and direct the march of armies: the dispatch of so many bags of grain during the coming fortnight to this or that town, or warehouse in this or that district; the making up of so many weekly rations, to be deported during the month to certain places on the frontier; the transformation of so many fishermen into artillerymen or marines, and to set afloat so many vessels in three months; to expedite certain Corps of Cavalry, infantry and artillery, so as to arrive by such and such roads at this or that pass—
These are precise combinations which purge the brain of dogmatic phrases, which force revolutionary jargon into the background and keep a man sensible and practical; and all the more because three of them, Jean Bon, former captain of a merchantman, Prieur and Carnot, engineering officers, are professional men and go to the front to put their shoulders to the wheel on the spot. Jean Bon, always visiting the coasts, goes on board a vessel of the fleet leaving Brest to save the great American convoy; Carnot, at Watignies, orders Jourdan to make a decisive move, and, shouldering his musket, marches along with the attacking column.3236 Naturally, they have no leisure for speechmaking in the Jacobin club, or for intrigues in the Convention: Carnot lives in his own office and in the committee-room; he does not allow himself time enough to eat with his wife, dines on a crust of bread and a glass of lemonade, and works sixteen and eighteen hours a day;3237 Lindet, more overtasked than any body else, because hunger will not wait, reads every report himself, and passes days and nights at it;"3238 Jean Bon, in wooden shoes and woolen vest, with a bit of coarse bread and a glass of bad beer,3239 writes and dictates until his strength fails him, and he has to lie down and sleep on a mattress on the floor.—Naturally, again, when interfered with, and the tools in their hands are broken, they are dissatisfied; they know well the worth of a good instrument, and for the service, as they comprehend it, good tools are essential, competent, faithful employees, regular in attendance at their offices, and not at the club. When they have a subordinate of this kind they defend him, often at the risk of their lives, even to incurring the enmity of Robespierre. Cambon,3240 who, on his financial committee, is also a sort of sovereign, retains at the Treasury five or six hundred employees unable to procure their certificate of civism, and whom the Jacobins incessantly denounce so as to get their places. Carnot saves and employs eminent engineers, D'Arcon, de Montalembert, d'Obenheim, all of them nobles, and one of them an anti-Jacobin, without counting a number of accused officers whom he justifies, replaces, or maintains.3241—Through these courageous and humane acts, they solace themselves for their scruples, at least partially and for the time being; moreover, they are statesmen only because the occasion and superior force makes it imperative, more led by others than leading, terrorists through accident and necessity, rather than through system and instinct. If, in concert with ten others, Prieur and Carnot order wholesale robbery and murder, if they sign orders by twenties and hundreds, amounting to assassinations, it is owing to their forming part of a body. When the whole committee deliberates, they are bound, in important decrees, to submit to the preponderating opinion of the majority, after voting in the negative. In relation to secondary decrees, in which there has been no preliminary discussion in common, the only responsible member is the one whose signature stands first; the following signatures affixed, without reading the document, are simply a "formality which the law requires," merely a visa, necessarily mechanical; with "four or five hundred business matters to attend to daily," it is impossible to do otherwise. To read all and vote in every case, would be "a physical impossibility."3242—Finally, as things are, "is not the general will, at least the apparent general will, that alone on which the government can decide, itself ultra-revolutionary?"3243 In other words, should not the five or six rascals in a State who vociferate, be listened to, rather than a hundred honest folks who keep their mouths shut? With this sophism, gross as it is, but of pure Jacobin manufacture, Carnot ends by hoodwinking his honor and his conscience; otherwise intact, and far more so than his colleagues, he likewise undergoes moral and mental mutilation; constrained by the duties of his post and the illusions of his creed, he succeeded in an inward decapitation of the two noblest of human faculties, common-sense, the most useful, and the moral sense, the most exalted of all.
Billaud-Varennes, Collot d'Herbois, Robespierre, Couthon and
Saint-Just.—Conditions of this rule.—Dangers to which they
are subject.—Their dissensions.—Pressure of Fear and
Theory.
If such are the ravages which are made in an upright, firm and healthy personality, what must be the havoc in corrupt or weak natures, in which bad instincts already predominate!—And note that they are without the protection provided by a pursuit of some specific and useful objective. They are "government men," also "revolutionaries" or "the people in total control;"3244 they are in actual fact men with an overall concept of things, also direct these. The creation, organization and application of Terror belongs wholly to them; they are the constructors, regulators and engineers of the machine,3245 the recognized heads of the party, of the sect and of the government, especially Billaud and Robespierre, who never serve on missions,3246 nor relax their hold for a moment on the central motor. The former, an active politician, with Collot for his second, is charged with urging on the constituted authorities, the districts, the municipalities, the national agents, the revolutionary committees, and the representatives on mission in the interior.3247 The latter, a theologian, moralist, titular doctor and preacher, is charged with ruling the Convention and indoctrinating the Jacobins with sound principles; behind him stands Couthon, his lieutenant, with Saint-Just, his disciple and executor of works of great importance; in their midst, Barère, the Committee's mouthpiece, is merely a tool, but indispensable, conveniently at hand and always ready to start whatever drum-beating is required on any given theme in honor of the party which stuffs his brain. Below these comes the Committee of General Security, Vadier, Amar, Vouland, Guffroy, Panis, David, Jagot and the rest, those who undertook, reported on, and acted in behalf of universal proscription. All these bear the imprint of their service; they could be recognized by "their pallid hue, hollow and bloodshot eyes,"3248 habits of omnipotence stamped "on their brows, and on their deportment, something indescribably haughty and disdainful. The Committee of General Security reminded one of the former lieutenants of police, and the Committee of Public Safety, of the former ministers of state." In the Convention, "it is considered an honor to talk with them, and a privilege to shake hands with them; one seems to read one's duty on their brows." On the days on which their orders are to be converted into laws "the members of the Committee and the reporter of the bill, keep people waiting, the same as the heads and representatives of the former sovereign power; on their way to the Assembly hall, they are preceded by a group of courtiers who seem to announce the masters of the world."3249—In fact, they reign—but observe on what conditions.
"Make no complaints," said Barère,3250 to the composer of an opera, the performance of which had just been suspended: "as times go, you must not attract public attention. Do we not all stand at the foot of the guillotine, all, beginning with myself?" Again, twenty years later, in a private conversation, on being interrogated as to the veritable object, the secret motive of the Committee of Public Safety, he replied:
"As we were animated by but one sentiment,3251 my dear sir, that of self-preservation, we had but one desire, that of maintaining an existence which each of us believed to be menaced. You had your neighbor guillotined to prevent your neighbor from guillotining you."3252
The same apprehension exists in stouter souls, although there may have been, along with fear, motives of a less debased order.
"How many times," says Carnot,3253 "we undertook some work that required time, with the conviction that we should not be allowed to complete it!"—"It was uncertain3254 whether, the next time the clock struck the hour, we should not be standing before the revolutionary Tribunal on our way to the scaffold without, perhaps, having had time to bid adieu to our families.... We pursued our daily task so as not to let the machine stand still, as if a long life were before us, when it was probable that we should not see the next day's sun."
It is impossible to count on one's life, or that of another, for twenty-four hours; should the iron hand which holds one by the throat tighten its grasp, all will be over that evening.
"There were certain days so difficult that one could see no way to control circumstances; those who were directly menaced resigned themselves wholly to chance."3255—"The decisions for which we are so much blamed," says another,3256 "were not generally thought of two days, or one day, beforehand; they sprung out of the crisis of the moment. We did not desire to kill for the sake of killing... but to conquer at all hazards, remain masters, and ensure the sway of our principles."—That is true,—they are subjects as well as despots. At the Committee table, during their nocturnal sessions, their sovereign presides, a formidable figure, the revolutionary Idea which confers on them the right to slay, on condition of exercising it against everybody, and therefore on themselves. Towards two o'clock, or three o'clock in the morning, exhausted, out of words and ideas, not knowing where to slay, on the right or on the left, they anxiously turn to this figure and try to read its will in its fixed eyes.
"Who shall fall to-morrow?"—
Ever the same reply steadily expressed on the features of the impassable phantom: "the counter-revolutionaries," under which name is comprised all who by act, speech, thought or inmost sentiment, either through irritation or carelessness, through humanity or moderation, through egoism or nonchalance, through passive, neutral or indifferent feeling, serve well or ill the Revolution.3257—All that remains is to add names to this horribly comprehensive decree. Shall Billaud do it? Shall Robespierre do it? Will Billaud put down Robespierre's name, or Robespierre put down Billaud's, or each the name of the other, with those he chooses to select from among the two Committees? Osselin, Chabot, Bazire, Julien de Toulouse, Lacroix, Danton, were on them, and when they left, their heads fell.3258 Hérault-Séchelles, again, was on them, maintained in office with honor through the recent approbation of the Convention,3259 one of the titular twelve, and on duty when an order issued by the other eleven suddenly handed him over to the revolutionary Tribunal for execution.—Whose turn is it now among the eleven? Seized unawares, the docile Convention unanimously applauding, after three days of a judicial farce, the cart will bear him to the Place de la Révolution; Samson will tie him fast, shouters at thirty sous a day will clap their hands, and, on the following morning, the popular politicians will congratulate each other on seeing the name of a great traitor on the bulletin of the guillotined.3260 To this end, to enable this or that king of the day to pass from the national Almanac to the mortuary list, merely required an understanding among his colleagues, and, perhaps, this is already arrived at. Among whom and against whom?—It is certain that, as this idea occurs to the eleven, seated around the table, they eye each other with a shudder they calculate the chances and turn things over in their minds; words have been uttered that are not forgotten. Carnot often made this charge against Saint-Just: "You and Robespierre are after a dictatorship."3261 Robespierre replied to Carnot: "I am ready for you on the first defeat."3262 On another occasion, Robespierre, in a rage, exclaimed: "The Committee is conspiring against me!" and, turning to Billaud, "I know you, now!" Billaud retorted, "I know you too, you are a counter-revolutionary!"3263 There are conspirators and counter-revolutionaries, then, on the committee itself; what can be done to avoid this appellation, which is a sentence of death?—Silently, the fatal phantom enthroned in their midst, the Erinyes3264 through which they rule, renders his oracle and all take it to heart:
"All who are unwilling to become executioners are conspirators and counter-revolutionaries."
Official Jacobin organs.—Reports by Saint-Just are Barère.
—Quality of reports and reporters.
Thus do they march along during twelve months, goaded on by the two sharp thongs of theory and fear, traversing the red pool which they have created, and which is daily becoming deeper and deeper, all together and united, neither of them daring to separate from the group, and each spattered with the blood thrown in his face by the others' feet. It is not long before their eyesight fails them; they no longer see their way, while the degradation of their language betrays the stupor of their intellect.—When a government brings to the tribune and moves the enactment of important laws, it confronts the nation, faces Europe, and takes a historical position. If it cares for its own honor it will select reporters of bills that are not unworthy, and instruct them to support these with available arguments, as closely reasoned out as possible; the bill, discussed and adopted in full council, will show the measure of its capacity, the information it possesses and its common-sense.
To estimate all this, read the bills put forth in the name of the Committee; weigh the preambles, remark the tone, listen to the two reporters usually chosen, Saint-Just, who draws up the acts of proscription, special or general, and Barère, who draws up all acts indifferently, but particularly military announcements and decrees against the foreigner; never did public personages, addressing France and posterity, use such irrational arguments and state falsehoods with greater impudence.3265
The former, stiff in his starched cravat, posing "like the Holy Ghost," more didactic and more absolute than Robespierre himself, comes and proclaims to Frenchmen from the tribune, equality, probity, frugality, Spartan habits, and a rural cot with all the voluptuousness of virtue;3266 this suits admirably the chevalier Saint-Just, a former applicant for a place in the Count d'Artois' body-guard, a domestic thief, a purloiner of silver plate which he takes to Paris, sells and spends on prostitutes, imprisoned for six months on complaint of his own mother,3267 and author of a lewd poem which he succeeds in rendering filthy by trying to render it fanciful.—Now, indeed, he is grave; he no longer leers; he kills—but with what arguments, and what a style!3268 The young Laubardemont as well as the paid informers and prosecutors of imperial Rome, have less disgraced the human intellect, for these creatures of a Tiberius or a Richelieu still used plausible arguments in their reasoning, and with more or less adroitness. With Saint-Just, there is no connection of ideas; there is no sequence or march in his rhapsody; like an instrument strained to the utmost, his mind plays only false notes in violent fits and starts; logical continuity, the art then so common of regularly developing a theme, has disappeared; he stumbles over the ground, piling up telling aphorisms and dogmatic axioms. In dealing with facts there is nothing in his speech but a perversion of the truth; impostures abound in it of pure invention, palpable, as brazen as those of a charlatan in his booth;3269 he does not even deign to disguise them with a shadow of probability; as to the Girondists, and as to Danton, Fabre d'Eglantine and his other adversaries, whoever they may be, old or new, any rope to hang them with suffices for him; any rough, knotted, badly-twisted cord he can lay his hands on, no matter what, provided it strangles, is good enough; there is no need of a finer one for confirmed conspirators; with the gossip of the club and an Inquisition catechism, he can frame his bill of indictment.—Accordingly, his intellect grasps nothing and yields him nothing; he is a sententious and overexcited declaimer, an artificial spirit always on the stretch, full of affectations,3270 his talent reducing itself down to the rare flashes of a somber imagination, a pupil of Robespierre, as Robespierre himself is a pupil of Rousseau, the exaggerated scholar of a plodding scholar, always rabidly ultra, furious through calculation, deliberately violating both language and ideas,3271 confining himself to theatrical and funereal paradoxes, a sort of "grand vizier"3272 with the airs of an exalted moralist and the bearing of the sentimental shepherd.3273 Were one of a mocking humor one might shrug one's shoulders; but, in the present state of the Convention, there is no room for anything but fear. Launched in imperious tones, his phrases fall upon their ears in monotonous strokes, on bowed heads, and, after five or six blows from this leaden hammer, the stoutest are stretched out stupefied on the ground; discussion is out of the question; when Saint-Just, in the name of the Convention, affirms anything, it must be believed; his dissertation is a peremptory injunction and not an effort of reason; it commands obedience; it is not open to examination; it is not a report which he draws from his coat pocket, but a bludgeon.
The other reporter, Barère, is of quite another stamp, a "patent-right" haranguer, an amusing Gascon, alert, "free and easy," fond of a joke, even on the Committee of Public Safety,3274 unconcerned in the midst of assassinations, and, to the very last, speaking of the reign of Terror as "the simplest and most innocent thing in the world."3275 No man was ever less trammeled by a conscience; in truth, he has several, that of two days ago, that of the previous day, that of the present day, that of the morrow, of the following day, and still others, as many as you like, all equally pliant and supple, at the service of the strongest against the weakest, ready to swing round at once on the wind changing, but all joined together and working to one common end through physical instinct, the only one that lasts in the immoral, adroit and volatile being who circulates nimbly about, with no other aim than self-preservation, and to amuse himself.3276—In his dressing-gown, early in the morning, he receives a crowd of solicitors, and, with the ways of a "dandified minister," graciously accepts the petitions handed to him; first, those of ladies, "distributing gallantries among the prettiest;" he makes promises, and smiles, and then, returning to his cabinet, throws the papers in the fire: "There," he says, my correspondence is done."—He sups twice every decade in his fine house at Clichy, along with three more than accommodating pretty women; he is gay, awarding flatteries and attentions quite becoming to an amiable protector: he enters into their professional rivalries, their spites against the reigning beauty, their jealousy of another who wears a blonde wig and pretends "to set the fashion." He sends immediately for the National Agent and gravely informs him that this head-dress, borrowed from the guillotined, is a rallying point for anti-revolutionaries, whereupon, the next day, wigs are denounced at the Commune-council, and suppressed; "Barère roared with laughter on alluding to this piece of fun." The humor of an undertaker and the dexterity of a commercial drummer: he plays with Terror.—In like manner he plays with his reports, and at this latter exercise, he improvises; he is never embarrassed; it is simply necessary to turn the faucet and the water runs. "Had he any subject to treat, he would fasten himself on Robespierre, Hérault, Saint-Just, or somebody else, and draw them out; he would then rush off to the tribune and spin out their ideas; "they were all astonished at hearing their thoughts expressed as fully as if reflected in a mirror." No individual on the Committee, or in the Convention, equaled him in promptness and fluency, for the reason that he was not obliged to think before he spoke: with him, the faculty of speaking, like an independent organ, acted by itself, the empty brain or indifferent heart contributing nothing to his loquacity. Naturally, whatever issues from his mouth comes forth in ready-made bombast, the current jargon of the Jacobin club, sonorous, nauseous commonplace, schoolboy metaphors and similes derived from the shambles.3277 Not an idea is found in all this rhetoric, nothing acquired, no real mental application. When Bonaparte, who employed everybody, even Fouché, were disposed to employ Barère, they could make nothing out of him for lack of substance, except as a low newsmonger, common spy, or agent engaged to stir up surviving Jacobins; later on, a listener at keyholes, and a paid weekly collector of public rumors, he was not even fit for this vile service, for his wages were soon stopped Napoleon, who, having no time to waste, cut short his driveling verbiage.—It is this verbiage which, authorized by the Committee of Public Safety, now forms the eloquence of France; it is this manufacturer of phrases by the dozen, this future informer and prison-spy under the empire, this frolicking inventor of the blonde-wig conspiracy, that the government sends into the tribune to announce victories, trumpet forth military heroism and proclaim war unto death. On the 7th of Prairial,3278 Barère, in the name of the committee, proposes a return to savage law: "No English or Hanoverian prisoner shall henceforth be made;" the decree is endorsed by Carnot and passes the Convention unanimously. Had it been executed, as reprisals, and according to the proportion of prisoners, there would have been for one Englishman shot, three Frenchmen hung: honor and humanity would have disappeared from the camps; the hostilities between Christians would have become as deadly as among savages. Happily, French soldiers felt the nobleness of their profession; on the order being given to shoot the prisoners, a decent sergeant replied:
"We will not shoot—send them to the Convention. If the representatives delight in killing prisoners—let them do it themselves, and eat them, too, savages as they are!"
The sergeant, an ordinary man, is not on a level with the Committee, or with Barère; and yet Barère did his best in a bill of indictment of twenty-seven pages, full of grand flourishes, every possible ritornello, glaring falsehood and silly inflation, explaining how "the Britannic leopard" paid assassins to murder the representatives; how the London cabinet had armed little Cécile Renault, "the new Corday," against Robespierre; how the Englishman, naturally barbarous, "is unable to deny his origins; how he descends from the Carthaginians and Phenicians, and formerly dealt in the skins of wild beasts and slaves; how his trading occupation is not changed; how Cesar, formerly, on landing in the country, found nothing but a ferocious tribe battling with wolves in the forest and threatening to burn every vessel which would try to land there; and how he still remains like that." A lecture from a fairground surgeon who, using bombastic words, recommends extensive amputations, a fairground-prospectus so crude that it does not even deceive a poor sergeant,—such is the exposition of motives by a government for the purpose of enforcing a decree that might have been drawn up by redskins; to horrible acts he adds debased language, and employs the inept to justify their atrocities.
Representatives on Mission.—Their absolute power.—Their
perils and their fear.—Fit for their work.—Effect of this
situation.
A hundred or so representatives of the Committee of Public Safety, are sent to the provinces, "with unlimited power," to establish, enforce or exacerbate the revolutionary government, and their proclamations at once explain the nature of this government.3279—"Brave and vigorous sans-culottes!" writes a deputy on leaving a mission and announcing his successor,3280 "You seem to have desired a good b... of a representative, who has never swerved from his principles, that is to say, a regular Montagnard. I have fulfilled your wishes, and you will have the same thing in citizen Ingrand. Remember, brave sans-culottes, that, with the patriot Ingrand, you can do everything, get anything, cancel whatever you please, imprison, bring to trial, deport and guillotine every-body and regenerate society. Don't try to play with him; everybody is afraid of him, he overcomes all resistance and restores at once the most complete order!"—The representative arrives at the center of the department by post, and presents his credentials. All the authorities at once bow to the ground. In the evening, in his saber and plume, he harangues the popular club, blowing into a flame the smoldering embers of Jacobinism. Then, according to his personal acquaintances, if he has any in the place, or according to the votes of the Committee of General Security, if he is a new-comer, he selects five or six of the "warmest sans-culottes" there, and, forming them into a Revolutionary Committee, installs them permanently at his side, sometimes in the same building, in a room next to his own, where, on lists or with verbal communications furnished to him, he works with a will and without stopping.3281
First comes a purification of all the local authorities. They must always remember that "there can be no exaggeration in behalf of the people; he who is not imbued with this principle, who has not put it in practice, cannot remain on an advanced post;"3282 consequently, at the popular club, in the department, in the district, in the municipality, all doubtful men are excluded, discharged, or incarcerated; if a few weak ones are retained provisionally, or by favor, they are berated and taught their duty very summarily:
"They will strive, by a more energetic and assiduous patriotism, to atone for the evil committed by them in not doing all the good they could do."
Sometimes, through a sudden change of scene, the entire administrative staff is kicked out so as to give place to a no less complete staff, which the same kick brings up out of the ground. Considering that "everything stagnates in Vaucluse, and that a frightful moderation paralyses the most revolutionary measures," Maignet, in one order3283 appoints the administrators and secretary of the department, the national agent, the administrators and council-general of the district, the administrators, council-general and national agent of Avignon, the president, public prosecutor and recorder of the criminal court, members of the Tribunal de Commerce, the collector of the district, the post-master and the head of the squadron of gendarmerie. And the new functionaries will certainly go to work at once, each in his office. The summary process, which has brusquely swept away the first set of puppets, is going to brusquely install the second one. "Each citizen appointed to any of the above mentioned offices, shall betake himself immediately to his post, under penalty of being declared suspect," on the simple notification of his appointment. Universal and passive obedience of governors, as well as of the governed! There are no more elected and independent functionaries; all the authorities, confirmed or created by the representative, are in his hands; there is not one among them who does not subsist or survive solely through his favor; there is not one of them who acts otherwise than according to his approval or by his order. Directly, or through them, he makes requisitions, sequestrates or confiscates as he sees fit, taxes, imprisons, transports or decapitates as he see fit, and, in his circumscription, he is the pasha.
But he is a pasha with a chain around his neck, and at short tether.—From and after December, 1793, he is directed "to conform to the orders of the Committee of Public Safety and report to it every ten days."3284 The circumscription in which he commands is rigorously "limited;" "he is reputed to be without power in the other departments,"3285 while he is not allowed to grow old on his post. "In every magistrature the grandeur and extent of power is compensated by the shortness of its duration. Over-prolonged missions would soon be considered as birthrights."3286 Therefore, at the end of two or three months, often at the end of a month, the incumbent is recalled to Paris or dispatched elsewhere, at short notice, on the day named, in a prompt, absolute and sometimes threatening tone, not as a colleague one humors, but as a subordinate who is suddenly and arbitrarily revoked or displaced because he is deemed inadequate, or "used up." For greater security, oftentimes a member of the Committee, Couthon, Collot, Saint-Just, or some near relation of a member of the Committee, a Lebas or young Robespierre, goes personally to the spot to give the needed impulsion; sometimes, agents simply of the Committee, taken from outside the Convention, and without any personal standing, quite young men, Rousselin, Julien de la Drôme, replace or watch the representative with powers equal to his.—At the same time, from the top and from the center, he is pushed on and directed: his local counselors are chosen for him, and the directors of his conscience;3287 they rate him soundly on the choice of his agents or of his lodgings;3288 they force dismissals on him, appointments, arrests, executions; they spur him on in the path of terror and suffering.—Around him are paid emissaries,3289 while others watch him gratis and constantly write to the Committees of Public Safety and General Security, often to denounce him, always to report on his conduct, to judge his measures and to provoke the measures which he does not take.3290
Whatever he may have done or may do, he cannot turn his eyes toward Paris without seeing danger ahead, a mortal danger which, on the Committee, in the Convention, at the Jacobin Club, increases or will increase against him, like a tempest.—Briez, who, in Valenciennes under siege, showed courage, and whom the Convention had just applauded and added to the Committee of Public Safety, hears himself reproached for being still alive: "He who was at Valenciennes when the enemy took it will never reply to this question—are you dead?"3291 He has nothing to do now but to declare himself incompetent, decline the honor mistakenly conferred on him by the Convention, and disappear.—Dubois-Crancé took Lyons, and, as pay for this immense service, he is stricken off the roll of the Jacobin Club; because he did not take it quick enough, he is accused of treachery; two days after the capitulation, the Committee of Public Safety withdraw his powers; three days after the capitulation, the Committee of Public Safety has him arrested and sent to Paris under escort.3292—If such men after such services are thus treated, what is to become of the others? After the mission of young Julien, then Carrier at Nantes, Ysabeau and Tallien at Bordeaux, feel their heads shake on their shoulders; after the mission of Robespierre jr. in the East and South, Barras, Fréron and Bernard de Saintes believe themselves lost.3293 Fouché, Rovère, Javogue, and how many others, compromised by the faction, Hébertists or Dantonists, of which they are, or were belonging. Sure of perishing if their patrons on the Committee succumb; not sure of living if their patrons keep their place; not knowing whether their heads will not be exchanged for others; restricted to the narrowest, the most rigorous and most constant orthodoxy; guilty and condemned should their orthodoxy of to-day become the heterodoxy of to-morrow. All of them menaced, at first the hundred and eighty autocrats who, before the concentration of the revolutionary government, ruled for eight months boundlessly in the provinces; next, and above all, the fifty hard-fisted "Montagnards," unscrupulous fanatics or authoritarian high livers, who, at this moment, tread human flesh under foot and spread out in arbitrariness like wild boars in a forest, or wallow in scandal, like swine in a mud-pool.
There is no refuge for them, other than temporary, and temporary refuge only in zealous and tried obedience, such as the Committee demands proof of, that is to say, through rigor.—"The Committees so wanted it," says later on Maignet, the arsonist of Bédouin; "The Committees did everything..... Circumstances controlled me. ... The patriotic agents conjured me not to give way.... I did not fully carry out the most imperative orders."3294 Similarly, the great exterminator of Nantes, Carrier, when urged to spare the rebels who surrendered of their own accord:
"Do you want me to be guillotined? It is not in my power to save those people."3295
And another time:
"I have my orders; I must observe them; I do not want to have my head cut off!"
Under penalty of death, the representative on mission is a Terrorist, like his colleagues in the Convention and on the Committee of Public Safety, but with a much more serious disturbance of his nervous and his moral system; for he does not operate like them on paper, at a distance, against categories of abstract, anonymous and vague beings; his work is not merely an effort of the intellect, but also of the senses and the imagination. If he belongs to the region, like Lecarpentier, Barras, Lebon, Javogue, Couthon, André Dumont and many others, he is well acquainted with the families he proscribes; names to him are not merely so many letters strung together, but they recall personal souvenirs and evoke living forms. At all events, he is the spectator, artisan and beneficiary of his own dictatorship; the silver-plate and money he confiscates passes under his eye, through his hands; he sees the "suspects" he incarcerates march before him; he is in the court-room on the rendering of the sentence of death; frequently, the guillotine he has supplied with heads works under his windows; he sleeps in the mansion of an emigré he makes requisitions for the furniture, linen and wine belonging to the decapitated and the imprisoned,3296 lies in their beds, drinks their wine and revels with plenty of company at their expense, and in their place. In the same way as a bandit chief who neither kills nor robs with his own hands, but has murder and robbery committed in his presence, by which he substantially profits, not by proxy, but personally, through the well-directed blows ordered by him.—To this degree, and in such proximity to physical action, omnipotence is a noxious atmosphere which no state of health can resist. Restored to the conditions which poisoned man in barbarous times or countries, he is again attacked by moral maladies from which he was thenceforth believed to be exempt; he retrogrades even to the strange corruptions of the Orient and the Middle Ages; forgotten leprosies, apparently extinct, with exotic pestilences to which civilized lands seemed closed, reappear in his soul with their issues and tumors.
Eruption of brutal instincts.—Duquesnoy at Metz.—Dumont at
Amiens.—Drunkards.—Cusset, Bourbotte, Moustier, Bourdon de
l'Oise, Dartigoyte.
"It seems," says a witness who was long acquainted with Maignet, "that all he did for these five or six years was simply the delirious phase of an illness, after which he recovered, and lived on as if nothing had happened."3297 And Maignet himself writes "I was not made for these tempests." That goes for everyone but especially for the coarser natures; subordination would have restrained them while dictatorial power make the instincts of the brute and the mob appear.
Contemplate Duquesnoy, a sort of mastiff, always barking and biting, when gorged he is even more furious. Delegate to the army of the Moselle, and passing by Metz3298 he summoned before him Altmayer, the public prosecutor, although he had sat down to dinner. The latter waits three hours and a half in the ante-chamber, is not admitted, returns, and, at length received, is greeted with a thundering exclamation:
"Who are you?"
"The public prosecutor," he replies.
"You look like a bishop—you were once a curé or monk—you can't be a revolutionary.... I have come to Metz with unlimited powers. Public opinion here is not satisfactory. I am going to drill it. I am going to set folks straight here. I mean to shoot, here in Metz, as well as in Nancy, five or six hundred every fortnight."
The same at the house of General Bessières, commandant of the town encountering there M. Cledat, an old officer, the second in command, he measures him from head to foot:
"You look like a muscadin. Where did you come from? You must be a bad republican—you look as if you belonged to the ancient régime."
"My hair is gray," he responds, "but I am not the less a good republican: you may ask the General and the whole town."
"Be off! Go to the devil, and be quick about it, or I will have you arrested!"—
The same, in the street, where he lays hold of a man passing, on account of his looks; the justice of the peace, Joly, certifies to the civism of this person, and he "eyes" Joly:
"You too, you are an aristocrat! I see it in your eyes! I never make a mistake."
Whereupon, tearing off the Judge's badge, he sends him to prison.—Meanwhile, a fire, soon extinguished, breaks out in the army bakery; officers, townspeople, laborers, peasants and even children form a line (for passing water) and Duquesnoy appears to urge them on in his way: using his fists and his foot, he falls on whoever he meets, on an employee in the commissariat, on a convalescent officer, on two men in the line, and many others. He shouts to one of them, "You are a muscadin!" To another:
"I see by your eyes that you are an aristocrat!"
To another:
"You are a bloody beggar, an aristocrat, a rascal,"
and he strikes him in the stomach; he seizes a fourth by his collar and throws him down on the pavement.3299 In addition to this, all are imprisoned. The fire being extinguished, an indiscreet fellow, who stood by looking on, recommends "the dispenser of blows" to wipe his forehead." "You can't see straight—who are you? Answer me, I am the representative." The other replies mildly: "Representative, nothing could be more respectable." Duquesnoy gives the unlucky courtier a blow under the nose: "You are disputing—go to prison," "which I did at once," adds the docile subject.—That same evening, "whereas, in the conflagration, none of the inhabitants in good circumstances offered their services in extinguishing the fire,32100 and none but sans-culottes came thereto, from the garrison as well as from the commune," Duquesnoy orders "that a tax of 40,000 livres be imposed on the commune of Metz, levied on the fortunes of the rich and distributed among the poor, payable within ten days."32101—"Fais-moi f.... dedans tous ces b... là32102," "quatre j...f... à raccourcir;"32103 At Arras, as at Metz, the lout is ever the ruffian and the butcher.
Others are either jolly fellows, or blackguards. A certain André Dumont, an old village attorney, now king of Picardie, or sultan, as occasion offers, "figures as a white Negro," sometimes jovial, but generally as a rude hardened cynic, treating female prisoners and petitioners as in a kermesse.32104—One morning a lady enters his ante-room, and waits amidst about twenty sans-culottes, to solicit the release of her husband. Dumont appears in a morning-gown, seats himself and listens to the petitioner.
"Sit down, citoyenne."
He takes her on his lap, thrusts his hand in her bosom and exclaims:
"Who would suppose that the bust of a marchioness would feel so soft to one of the people's representatives."
The sans-culottes shout with laughter. He sends the poor woman away and keeps her husband locked up. In the evening he may write to the Convention that he investigates things himself, and closely examines aristocrats.—If one is to maintain the revolutionary enthusiasm at a high level it is helpful to have a drop too much in one's head, and most of them take precautions in this direction. At Lyons,32105 "the representatives sent to ensure the people's welfare, Albitte and Collot," call upon the Committee of Sequestrations to deliver at their house two hundred bottles of the best wine to be found, and five hundred bottles more of Bordeaux red wine, first quality, for table use.—In three months, at the table of the representatives who devastate la Vendée, nineteen hundred and seventy-four bottles of wine are emptied,32106 taken from the houses of the emigrés belonging to the town; for, "when one has helped to preserve a commune one has a right to drink to the Republic." Representative Bourbotte presides at this bar; Rossignol touches his glass, an ex-jeweler and then a September massacreur, all his life a debauchee and brigand, and now a major-general; alongside of Rossignol, stand his adjutants, Grammont, an old actor, and Hazard, a former priest; along with them is Vacheron, a good républican, who ravishes women and shoots them when they refuse to succumb;32107 in addition to these are some "brilliant" young ladies, undoubtedly brought from Paris, "the prettiest of whom share their nights between Rossignol and Bourbotte," whilst the others serve their subordinates: the entire band, male and female, is installed in a Hotel de Fontenay, where they begin by breaking the seals, so as t o confiscate "for their own benefit, furniture, jewelry, dresses, feminine trinkets and even porcelains."32108 Meanwhile, at Chantonney, representative Bourdon de l'Oise drinks with General Tunck, becomes "frantic" when tipsy, and has patriotic administrators seized in their beds at midnight, whom he had embraced the evening before.—Nearly all of them, like the latter, get nasty after a few drinks,—Carrier at Nantes, Petit-Jean at Thiers, Duquesnoy at Arras, Cusset at Thionville, Monestier at Tarbes. At Thionville, Cusset drinks like a "Lapithe" and, when drunk, gives the orders of a "vizier," which orders are executed.32109 At Tarbes, Monestier "after a heavy meal and much excited," warmly harangues the court, personally examines the prisoner, M. de Lasalle, an old officer, whom he has condemned to death, and signs the order to have him guillotined at once. M. de Lasalle is guillotined that very evening, at midnight, by torchlight. The following morning Monestier says to the president of the court: "Well, we gave poor Lasalle a famous fright last night, didn't we?" "How a famous fright? He is executed!" Monestier is astonished—he did not remember having issued the order.32110—With others, wine, besides sanguinary instincts, brings out the foulest instincts. At Nîmes; Borie, in the uniform of a representative, along with Courbis, the mayor, Géret, the justice and a number of prostitutes, dance the farandole around the guillotine. At Auch, one of the worst tyrants in the South, Dartigoyte, always heated with liquor "vomited every species of obscenity" in the faces of women that came to demand justice; "he compels, under penalty of imprisonment, mothers to take their daughters to the popular club," to listen to his filthy preaching; one evening, at the theatre, probably after an orgy, he shouts at all the women between the acts, lets loose upon them his smutty vocabulary, and, by way of demonstration, or as a practical conclusion, ends by stripping himself naked.32111—This time, the genuine brute appears. All the clothing woven during the past centuries and with which civilization had dressed him, the last drapery of humanity, falls to the ground. Nothing remains but the primitive animal, the ferocious, lewd gorilla supposed to be tamed, but which still subsists indefinitely and which a dictatorship, joined to drunkenness, revives in an uglier guise than in remotest times.
VIII. Delirium.
Approach of madness.—Loss of common-sense.—Fabre, Gaston,
Guiter, in the army of the Eastern Pyrenees.—Baudot, Lebas,
Saint-Just, and the predecessors and successors in the army
of the Rhine.—Furious excitement.—Lebon at Arras, and
Carrier at Nantes.
If intoxication is needed to awaken the brute, a dictatorship suffices to arouse the madman. The mental equilibrium of most of these new sovereigns is disturbed; the distance between what the man once was and what he now is, is too great. Formerly he was a petty lawyer, village doctor, or schoolmaster, an unknown mover of a resolution in a local club, and only yesterday he was one voter in the Convention out of seven hundred and fifty. Look at him now, the arbiter, in one of the departments, of all fortunes and liberties, and master of five thousand lives. Like a pair of scales into which a disproportionate weight has been thrown, his reason totters on the side of pride. Some of them regard their competency unlimited, like their powers, and having just joined the army, claim the right of being appointed major-generals.32112 "Declare officially," writes Fabre to the Committee of Public Safety,32113 "that, in future, generals shall be simply the lieutenants of the delegates to the Convention." Awaiting the required declaration, they claim command and, in reality, exercise it. "I know of neither generals nor privates," says Gaston, a former justice of the peace, to the officers; "as to the Minister, he is like a bull in a china shop; I am in command here and must be obeyed." "What are generals good for?" adds his colleague Guiter; "the old women in our faubourgs know as much as they do. Plans, formal maneuvers, tents, camps, redoubts? All this is of no use! The only war suitable to Frenchmen after this will be a rush with side arms." To turn out of office, guillotine, disorganize, march blindly on, waste lives haphazard, force defeat, sometimes get killed themselves, is all they know, and they would lose all if the effects of their incapacity and arrogance were not redeemed by the devotion of the officers and the enthusiasm of the soldiers.—The same spectacle is visible at Charleroy where, through his absurd orders, Saint-Just does his best to compromise the army, leaving that place with the belief that he is a great man.32114—There is the same spectacle in Alsace, where Lacoste, Baudot, Ruamps, Soubrany, Muhaud, Saint-Just and Lebas, through their excessive rigor, do their best to break up the army and then boast of it. The revolutionary Tribunal is installed at headquarters, soldiers are urged to denounce their officers, the informer is promised money and secrecy, he and the accused are not allowed to confront each other, no investigation, no papers allowed, even to make exception to the verdict—a simple examination without any notes, the accused arrested at eight o'clock, condemned at nine o'clock, and shot at ten o'clock.32115
Naturally, under such a system, no one wants to command; already, before Saint Just's arrival, Meunier had consented to act as Major-General only ad interim; "every hour of the day" he demanded his removal; unable to secure this, he refused to issue any order. The representatives, to procure his successor, are obliged to descend down to a depot captain, Carlin, bold enough or stupid enough to allow himself to take a commission under their lead, which was a commission for the guillotine.—If such is their presumption in military matters, what must it be in civil affairs! On this side there is no external check, no Spanish or German army capable of at once taking them in flagrante delicto, and of profiting by their ambitious incapacity and mischievous interference. Whatever the social instrumentality may be—judiciary, administration, credit, commerce, manufactures, agriculture—they can dislocate and destroy it with impunity.—They never fail to do this, and, moreover, in their dispatches, they take credit to themselves for the ruin they cause. That, indeed, is their mission; otherwise, they would be regarded as bad Jacobins; they would soon become "suspects;" they rule only on condition of being infatuated and destructive; the overthrow of common-sense is with them an act of State grace, a necessity of the office, and, on this common ground of compulsory unreason, every species of physical delirium may be set established.
With those that we can follow closely, not only is their judgment perverted, but the entire nervous apparatus is affected; a permanent over-excitement and a morbid restlessness has begun.—Consider Joseph Lebon, son of a sergeant-at-arms, subsequently, a teacher with the Oratoriens of Beaune, next, curé of Neuville-Vitasse, repudiated as an interloper by the élite of his parishioners, not respected, without house or furniture, and almost without a flock.32116 Two years after this, finding himself sovereign of his province, his head is spinning. Lesser events would have made it turn; his is only a twenty-eight-year-old head, not very solid, without any inside ballast,32117 already disturbed by vanity, ambition, rancor, and apostasy, by the sudden and complete volteface which puts him in conflict with his past educational habits and most cherished affections: it breaks down under the vastness and novelty of this greatness.—In the costume of a representative, a Henry IV hat, tri-color plume, waving scarf, and saber dragging the ground, Lebon orders the bell to be rung and summons the villagers into the church, where, aloft in the pulpit in which he had formerly preached in a threadbare cassock, he displays his metamorphosis.
"Who would believe that I should have returned here with unlimited powers!"32118
And that, before his counterfeit majesty, each person would be humble, bowed down and silent! To a member of the municipality of Cambray who, questioned by him, looked straight at him and answered curtly, and who, to a query twice repeated in the same terms, dared to answer twice in the same terms, he says:
"Shut up! You disrespect me, you do not behave properly to the national representative."
He immediately commits him to prison.32119—One evening, at the theater, he enters a box in which the ladies, seated in front, keep their places. In a rage, he goes out, rushes on the stage and, brandishing his great saber, shouts and threatens the audience, taking immense strides across the boards and acting and looking so much like a wild beast that several of the ladies faint away:
"Look there!" he shouts, at those muscadines who do not condescend to move for a representative of twenty-five millions of men! Everybody used to make way for a prince—they will not budge for me, a representative, who am more than a king!"32120
The word is spoken. But this king is frightened, and he is one who thinks of nothing but conspiracy;32121 in the street, in open daylight, the people who are passing him are plotting against him either by words or signs. Meeting in the main street of Arras a young girl and her mother talking Flemish,—that seems to him "suspect." "Where are you going?" he demands. "What's that to you?" replies the child, who does not know him. The girl, the mother and the father are sent to prison.32122—On the ramparts, another young girl, accompanied by her mother, is taking the air, and reading a book. "Give me that book," says the representative. The mother hands it to him; it is the "History of Clarissa Harlowe." The young girl, extending her hand to receive back the book, adds, undoubtedly with a smile: "That is not 'suspect.'" Lebon deals her a blow with his fist on her stomach which knocks her down; both women are searched and he personally leads them to the guard-room.—The slightest expression, a gesture, puts him beside himself; any motion that he does not comprehend makes him start, as with an electric shock. Just arrived at Cambray, he is informed that a woman who had sold a bottle of wine below the maximum, had been released after a procès-verbal. On reaching the Hotel-de-ville, he shouts out: "Let everybody here pass into the Consistory!" The municipal officer on duty opens a door leading into it. Lebon, however, not knowing who he is, takes alarm. "He froths at the mouth," says the municipal officer, "and cries out as if possessed by a demon. 'Stop, stop, scoundrel, you are running off!' He draws his saber and seizes me by the collar; I am dragged and borne along by him and his men. 'I have hold of him, I have hold of him!' he exclaims, and, indeed, he did hold me with his teeth, legs, and arms, like a madman. At last, 'scoundrel, monster, bastard,' says he, 'are you a marquis?' 'No,' I replied, 'I am a sans-culotte.' 'Ah, well people, you hear what he says,' he exclaims, 'he says that he is a sans-culotte, and that is the way he greets a denunciation on the maximum! I remove him. Let him be kicked in prison!'"32123 It is certain that the King of Arras and Cambray is not far from a raging fever; with such symptoms an ordinary individual would be sent to an asylum.
Not so vain, less fond of parading his royalty, but more savage and placed in Nantes amidst greater dangers, Carrier, under the pressure of more somber ideas, is much more furious and constant in his madness. Sometimes his attacks reach hallucination. "I have seen him," says a witness, "so carried away in the tribune, in the heat of his harangue when trying to overrule public opinion, as to cut off the tops of the candles with his saber," as if they were so many aristocrats' heads.32124 Another time, at table, after having declared that France could not feed its too numerous population, and that it was decided to cut down the excess, all nobles, magistrates, priests, merchants, etc., he becomes excited and exclaims, "Kill, kill!" as if he were already engaged in the work and ordering the operation.32125 Even when fasting, and in an ordinary condition, he is scarcely more cooled down. When the administrators of the department come to consult with him,32126 they gather around the door to see if he looks enraged, and is in a condition to hear them. He not only insults petitioners, but likewise the functionaries under him who make reports to him, or take his orders; his foul nature rises to his lips and overflows in the vilest terms:
"Go to hell and be damned. I have no time."32127
They consider themselves lucky if they get off with a volley of obscene oaths, for he generally draws his saber:
"The first bastard that mentions supplies, I will cut his head off."32128
And to the president of the military commission, who demands that verdicts be rendered before ordering executions:
"You, you old rascal, you old bastard, you want verdicts, do you! Go ahead! If the whole pen is not emptied in a couple of hours I will have you and your colleagues shot!"
His gestures, his look have such a powerful effect upon the mind that the other, who is also a "bruiser," dies of the shock a few days after.32129 Not only does he draw his saber, but he uses it; among the petitioners, a boatman, whom he is about to strike, runs off as fast as he can; he draws General Moulins into the recess of a window and gives him a cut.32130—People "tremble" on accosting him, and yet more in contradicting him. The envoy of the Committee of Public Safety, Julien de la Drôme, on being brought before him, takes care to "stand some distance off, in a corner of the room," wisely trying to avoid the first spring; wiser still, he replies to Carrier's exclamations with the only available argument:
"If you put me out of the way to-day, you yourself will be guillotined within a week!"32131
On coming to a stand before a mad dog one must aim the knife straight at its throat; there is no other way to escape its fangs and slaver. Accordingly, with Carrier, as with a mad dog, the brain is mastered by the steady mechanical reverie, by persistent images of murder and death. He exclaims to President Tronjolly, apropos of the Vendean children:
"The guillotine, always the guillotine!"32132
In relation to the drownings:
"You judges must have verdicts; pitch them into the water, which is much more simple."
Addressing the popular club of Nantes, he says:
"The rich, the merchants, are all monopolizers, all anti-revolutionists; denounce them to me, and I will have all their heads under the national razor. Tell me who the fanatics are that shut their shops on Sunday and I will have them guillotined." "When will the heads of those rascally merchants fall?"—"I see beggars here in rags; you are as big fools at Ancenis as at Nantes. Don't you know that the money, the wealth of these old merchants, belongs to you, and is not the river there?" "My brave bastards, my good sansculottes your time is come! Denounce them to me! The evidence of two good sans-culottes is all I want to make the heads of those old merchants tumble!"—"We will make France a grave-yard rather than not regenerate it in our own way."32133—His steady howl ends in a cry of anguish:
"We shall all be guillotined, one after the other!"32134—
Such is the mental state to which the office of representative on mission leads. Below Carrier, who is on the extreme verge, the others, less advanced, likewise turn pale at the lugubrious vision, which is the inevitable effect of their work and their mandate. Beyond every grave they dig, they catch a glimpse of the grave already dug for them. There is nothing left for the gravedigger but to dig mechanically day after day, and, in the meantime, make what he can out of his place; he can at least render himself insensible by having "a good time."
The development of vice.—Vanity and the need of gambling.—
Collot d'Herbois, Ysabeau, Tallien.—The Robbers.—Tallien,
Javogues, Rovère, Fouché.—Two sources of cruelty.—Need of
demonstrating one's power.—Saint-Just in the Pas-de-Calais
department, and in Alsace.—Collot d'Herbois at Lyons.—
Pressure exercised by the Representatives on the tribunals.
—Pleasure caused by death and suffering.—Monestier, Fouché,
Collot d'Herbois, Lebon and Carrier.
Most of them follow this course, some instinctively and through lassitude, and others because the display they make adds to their authority. "Dragged along in Carriages with six horses, surrounded by guards, seated at sumptuous tables set for thirty persons, eating to the sound of music along with a Cortege of actors, courtesans and praetorians,"32135 they impress the imagination with an idea of their omnipotence, and people bow all the lower because they make a grand show.—At Troyes, on the arrival of young Rousselin, cannon are discharged as if for the entry of a prince. The entire population of Nevers is called upon to honor the birth of Fouché's child; the civil and military authorities pay their respects to him, and the National Guards are under arms.32136 At Lyons, "The imposing display of Collot d'Herbois resembles that of the Grand Turk. It requires three successive applications to obtain an audience; nobody approaches nearer than a distance of fifteen feet; two sentinels with muskets stand on each side of him, with their eyes fixed on the petitioners."32137—Less menacing, but not less imposing, is the pomp which surrounds the representatives at Bordeaux; to approach them, requires "a pass from the captain of the guards,"32138 through several squads of sentinels. One of them, Ysabeau, who, after having guillotined to a considerable extent, has become almost tractable, allows adulation, and, like a Duc de Richelieu coming down from Versailles, tries to play the popular potentate, with all the luxuries which the situation affords. At the theaters, in his presence, they give a ballet in which shepherds form with garlands of flowers the words "Ysabeau, Liberty, Equality." He allows his portrait to pass from hand to hand, and condescendingly smiles on the artist who inscribes these words at the bottom of an engraving of the day: "An event which took place under Ysabeau, representative of the people." "When he passes in the street people take off their hats to him, cheer him, and shout 'Hurrah for Ysabeau! Hurrah for the savior of Bordeaux, our friend and father!' The children of aristocrats come and apostrophize him in this way, even at the doors of his carriage; for he has a Carriage, and several of them, with a coachman, horses, and the equipage of a former noble, gendarmes preceding him everywhere, even on excursions into the country," where his new courtiers call him "great man," and welcome him with "Asiatic magnificence." There is good cheer at his table, "superb white bread," called "representatives' bread," whilst the country folk of the neighborhood live on roots, and the inhabitants of Bordeaux can scarcely obtain more than four ounces of musty bread per day.—There is the same feasting with the representatives at Lyons, in the midst of similar distress. In the reports made by Collot we find a list of bottles of brandy at four francs each, along with partridges, capons, turkeys, chickens, pike, and crawfish, note also the white bread, the other kind, called "equality bread," assigned to simple mortals, offends this august palate. Add to this the requisitions made by Albitte and Fouché, seven hundred bottles of fine wine, in one lot, another of fifty pounds of coffee, one hundred and sixty ells of muslin, three dozen silk handkerchiefs for cravats, three dozen pairs of gloves, and four dozen pairs of stockings: they provide themselves with a good stock.32139—Among so many itinerant tyrants, the most audaciously sensual is, I believe, Tallien, the Septembriseur at Paris and guillotineur at Bordeaux, but still more rake and robber, caring mostly for his palate and stomach. Son of the cook of a grand seignior, he is doubtless swayed by family traditions: for his government is simply a larder where, like the head-butler in "Gil Blas," he can eat and turn the rest into money. At this moment, his principal favorite is Teresa Cabarrus, a woman of society, or one of the demi-monde, whom he took out of prison; he rides about the streets with her in an open carriage, "with a courier behind and a courier in front," sometimes wearing the red cap and holding a pike in her hand,32140 thus exhibiting his goddess to the people. And this is the sentiment which does him the most credit; for, when the crisis comes, the imminent peril of his mistress arouses his courage against Robespierre, and this pretty woman, who is good-natured, begs him, not for murders, but for pardons.32141—Others, as gallant as he is, but with less taste, obtain recruits for their pleasures in a rude way, either as fast-livers on the wing, or because fear subjects the honor of women to their caprices, or because the public funds defray the expenses of their guard-room habits. At Blois, for this kind of expenditure, Guimberteau discharges his obligations by drafts on the proceeds of the revolutionary tax.32142 Carrier, at Nantes, appropriates to himself the house and garden of a private person for "his seraglio"; the reader may judge whether, on desiring to be a third party in the household, the husband would make objections. At other times, in the hotel Henry IV., "with his friends and prostitutes brought under requisition, he has an orgy;" he allows himself the same indulgence on the galiot during the drownings; there at the end of a drunken frolic, he is regaled with merry songs, for example, "la gamelle":32143 he needs his amusements.
Some, who are shrewd, think of the more substantial and look out for the future. Foremost among these is Tallien, the king of robbers, but prodigal, whose pockets, full of holes, are only filled to be at once emptied; Javogues, who makes the most of Montbrison; Rovère, who, for eighty thousand francs in assignats, has an estate adjudged to him worth five hundred thousand francs in coin; Fouché, who, in Nièvre, begins to amass the twelve or fourteen millions which he secures later on;32144 and so many others, who were either ruined or impoverished previous to the outbreak of the Revolution, and who are rich when it ends: Barras with his domain of Gros Bois; André Dumont, with the Hotel de Plouy, its magnificent furniture, and an estate worth four hundred thousand livres; Merlin de Thionville, with his country-houses, equipages, and domain of Mont-Valérien, and other domains; Salicetti, Reubell, Rousselin, Chateauneuf-Randon, and the rest of the gluttonous and corrupted members of the Directory. Without mentioning the taxes and confiscations of which they render no account, they have, for their hoard, the ransoms offered underhandedly by "suspects" and their families; what is more convenient?32145 And all the more, because the Committee of General Security, even when informed, let things take their course: to prosecute "Montagnards," would be "making the Revolution take a step backward." One is bound to humor useful servants who have such hard work, like that of the September killings, to do. Irregularities, as with these September people, must be overlooked; it is necessary to allow them a few perquisites and give them gratuities.32146
All this would not suffice to keep them at work if they had not been held by an even greater attraction.—To the common run of civilized men, the office of Septembriseur is at first disagreeable; but, after a little practice, especially with a tyrannical nature, which, under cover of the theory, or under the pretext of public safety, can satiate its despotic instincts, all repugnance subsides. There is keen delight in the exercise of absolute power; one is glad, every hour, to assert one's omnipotence and prove it by some act, the most conclusive of all acts being some act of destruction. The more complete, radical and prompt the destruction is, the more conscious one is of one's strength. However great the obstacle, one is not disposed to recede or stand still; one breaks away all the barriers which men call good sense, humanity, justice, and the satisfaction of breaking them down is great. To crush and to subdue becomes voluptuous pleasure, to which pride gives keener relish, affording a grateful incense of the holocaust which the despot consumes on his own altar; at this daily sacrifice, he is both idol and priest, offering up victims to himself that he may be conscious of his divinity.—Such is Saint-Just, all the more a despot because his title of representative on mission is supported by his rank on the Committee of Public Safety: to find natures strained to the same pitch as his, we must leave the modern world and go back to a Caligula, or to a caliph Hakem in Egypt in the tenth century.32147 He also, like these two monsters, but with different formulae, regards himself as a God, or God's vicegerent on earth, invested with absolute power through Truth incarnated in him, the representative of a mysterious, limitless and supreme power, known as the People; to worthily represent this power, it is essential to have a soul of steel.32148 Such is the soul of Saint-Just, and only that. All other sentiments merely serve to harden it; all the metallic agencies that compose it—sensuality, vanity, every vice, every species of ambition, all the frantic outbursts and melancholy vaporings of his youth—are violently commingled and fused together in the revolutionary mold, so that his soul may take the form and rigidity of trenchant steel. Suppose this an animated blade, feeling and willing in conformity with its temper and structure; it would delight in being brandished, and would need to strike; such is the need of Saint-Just. Taciturn, impassible, keeping people at a distance, as imperious as if the entire will of the people and the majesty of transcendent reason resided in his person, he seems to have reduced his passions to the desire of dashing everything to atoms, and to creating dismay. It may be said of him that, like the conquering Tartars, he measures his self-attributed grandeur by what he fells; no other has so extensively swept away fortunes, liberties and lives; no other has so terrifically heightened the effect of his deeds by laconic speech and the suddenness of the stroke. He orders the arrest and close confinement of all former nobles, men and women, in the four departments, in twenty-four hours; he orders the bourgeoisie of Strasbourg to pay over nine millions in twenty-four hours; ten thousand persons in Strasbourg must give up their shoes in twenty-four hours; random and immediate discharges of musketry on the officers of the Rhine army—such are the measures.32149 So much the worse for the innocent; there is no time to discern who they are; "a blind man hunting for a pin in a dust-heap takes the whole heap."32150—And, whatever the order, even when it cannot be executed, so much the worse for him to whom it is given, for the captain who, directed by the representative to establish this or that battery in a certain time, works all night with all his forces, "with as many men as the place will hold."32151 The battery not being ready at the hour named, Saint-Just sends the captain to the guillotine.—The sovereign having once given an order it cannot be countermanded; to take back his words would be weakening himself;32152 in the service of omnipotence, pride is insatiable, and, to mollify it, no barbaric act is too great.—The same appetite is visible in Collot d'Herbois, who, no longer on the stage, plays before the town the melo-dramatic tyrant with all becoming ostentation. One morning, at Lyons, he directs the revolutionary Tribunal to arrest, examine and sentence a youthful "suspect" before the day is over. "Towards six o'clock,32153 Collot being at table enjoying an orgy with prostitutes, buffoons and executioners, eating and drinking to choice music, one of the judges of the Tribunal enters; after the usual formalities, he is led up to the Representative, and informs him that the young man had been arrested and examined, and the strictest inquiries made concerning him; he is found irreproachable and the Court decided to set him free. Collot, without looking at the judge, raises his voice and says to him:
"I ordered you to punish that young man and I want him out of the way before night. If the innocent are spared, too many of the guilty will escape. Go."
The music and gaiety begin again, and in an hour the young man is shot."—And so in most of the other pachalics; if any head mentally condemned by the pacha escapes or does not fall soon enough, the latter is indignant at the delays and forms of justice, also against the judges and juries, often selected by himself. Javogues writes an insulting letter to the commission of Feurs which has dared acquit two former nobles. Laignelot, Lecarpentier, Michaud, Monestier, Lebon, dismiss, recompose, or replace the commissions of Fontenoy, Saint-Malo, and Perpignan, and the tribunals of Pau, Nîmes, and Arras, whose judgments did not please them.32154 Lebon, Bernard de Saintes, Dartigoyte and Fouché re-arrest prisoners on the same charge, solemnly acquitted by their own tribunals. Bô, Prieur de la Marne, and Lebon, send judges and juries to prison that do not always vote death.32155 Barras and Fréron dispatch, from brigade to brigade, to the revolutionary Tribunal in Paris, the public prosecutor and president of the revolutionary Tribunal of Marseilles, for being indulgent to anti-revolutionaries, because, out of five hundred and twenty-eight prisoners, they guillotined only one hundred and sixty-two.32156—To contradict the infallible Representative! That of itself is an offense. He owes it to himself to punish those who are not docile, to re-arrest absolved delinquents, and to support cruelty with cruelty.
When for a long time someone has been imbibing a strong and nauseating drink, not only does the palate get accustomed, but it often acquires a taste for it; it soon wants to have it stronger; finally, it swallows it pure, completely raw, with no admixture or condiment to disguise its repulsiveness—Such, to certain imaginations, is the spectacle of human gore; after getting accustomed to it they take delight in seeing it. Lequinio, Laignelot and Lebon invite the executioner to dine with them;32157 Monestier, "with his cut-throats, is going himself in search of prisoners in the dungeons, so that he may accompany them to the Tribunal and overwhelm them with charges, if they are disposed to defend themselves; after their condemnation, he attends in uniform" at their execution.32158 Fouché, lorgnette in hand, looks out of his window upon a butchery of two hundred and ten Lyonnese. Collot, Laporte and Fouché feast together in a large company on the days when executions by shooting takes place, and, at each discharge, stand up and cheer lustily, waving their hats.32159 At Toulon, Fréron, in person, orders and sees executed, the first grand massacre on the Champ de Mars.32160—On the Place d'Arras, M. de Vielfort, already tied and stretched out on the plank, awaits the fall of the knife. Lebon appears on the balcony of the theatre, makes a sign to the executioner to stop, opens the newspaper, and, in a loud voice, reads off the recent successes of the French armies; then, turning to the condemned man, exclaims: "Go, wretch, and take the news of our victories to your brethren."32161 At Feurs, where the shootings take place at the house of M. du Rosier, in the great avenue of the park, his daughter, quite a young woman, advances in tears to Javogues, and asks for the release of her husband. "Oh, yes, my dear," replies Javogues, "you shall have him home to-morrow." In effect, the next day, her husband is shot, and buried in the avenue.32162—It is evident that they get to liking the business. Like their September predecessors, they find amusement in murdering: people around them allude gaily to "the red theater" and "the national razor." An aristocrat is said to be "putting his head at the national window," and "he has put his head through the cathole."32163 They themselves have the style and humor of their trade. "To-morrow, at seven o'clock," writes Hugues, "let the sacred guillotine be erected!"—"The demoiselle guillotine," writes Lecarlier, "keeps steadily agoing."32164—"The relatives and friends of emigrés and of refractory priests," writes Lebon, "monopolize the guillotine.. .32165 Day before yesterday, the sister of the former Comte de Bethune sneezed in the sack." Carrier loudly proclaims "the pleasure he has derived" from seeing priests executed: "I never laughed in my life as I did at the faces they made in dying."32166 This is the extreme perversity of human nature, that of a Domitian who watches the features of the condemned, to see the effect of suffering, or, better still, that of the savage who holds his sides with laughter at the aspect of a man being impaled. And this delight of contemplating death throes, Carrier finds it in the sufferings of children. Notwithstanding the remonstrances of the revolutionary Tribunal and the entreaties of President Phélippes-Tronjolly,32167 he signs on the 29th of Frimaire, year II., a positive order to guillotine without trial twenty-seven persons, of whom seven are women, and, among these, four sisters, Mesdemoiselles de la Metayrie, one of these twenty-eight years old, another twenty-seven, the third twenty-six, and the fourth seventeen. Two days before, notwithstanding the remonstrances of the same tribunal and the entreaties of the same president, he signed a positive order to guillotine twenty-six artisans and farm-hands, among them two boys of fourteen, and two of thirteen years of age. He was driven "in a cab to the place of execution and he followed it up in detail. He could hear one of the children of thirteen, already bound to the board, but too small and having only the top of the head under the knife, ask the executioner, "Will it hurt me much?" What the triangular blade fell upon may be imagined! Carrier saw this with his own eyes, and whilst the executioner, horrified at himself, died a few days after in consequence of what he had done, Carrier put another in his place, began again and continued operations.
3201 (return)
[ Thibaudeau:
"Mémoires," I., 47, 70.—Durand-Maillane, "Mémoires," 183.—Vatel,
"Charlotte Corday et les Girondins," II., 269. Out of the seventy-six
presidents of the convention eighteen were guillotined, eight deported,
twenty-two declared outlaws, six incarcerated, three who committed
suicide, and four who became insane, in all sixty-one. All who served
twice perished by a violent death.]
3202 (return)
[ Moniteur, XVIII., 38.
(Speech by Amar, reporter, Oct. 3. '793.) "The apparently negative
behavior of the minority in the convention, since the 2nd of June, is a
new plot hatched by Barbaroux."]
3203 (return)
[ Mortimer-Ternaux,
VIII., 44. Election of Collot d'Herbois as president by one hundred and
fifty-one out of two hundred and forty-one votes, June 13, 1793.-Moniteur,
XVII., 366. Election of Hérault-Sechelles as president by one hundred and
sixty-five out of two hundred and thirty-six votes, Aug. 3, 1793.]
3204 (return)
[ "The Revolution,"
vol. III., ch. I.—Mortimer-Ternaux, VII., 435. (The three
substitutes obtain, the first, nine votes, the second, six votes, and the
third, five votes.)]
3205 (return)
[ Marcelin Boudet, "Les
conventionnels d' Auvergne," 206.]
3206 (return)
[ Le Marais or the
Swamp (moderate party in the French Revolution). SR.]
3207 (return)
[ Dussault: "Fragment
pour servir a' l'histoire de la convention."]
3208 (return)
[ Sainte-Beuve
"causeries du Lundi," V., 216. (According to the unpublished papers of
Siéyès.)]
3209 (return)
[ Words of Michelet.]
3210 (return)
[ Moniteur, XX., 95,
135. (Sessions of Germinal II. in the Convention and at the Jacobin
club.)]
3211 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXII., 17. (Sessions of Ventôse 26, year II. Speech of Robespierre.) "In
what country has a powerful senate ever sought in its own bosom for the
betrayers of the common cause and handed them over to the sword of the
law? Who has ever furnished the world with this spectacle? You, my fellow
citizens."]
3212 (return)
[ Miot de Melito,
"Mémoires," I. 44. Danton, at table in the ministry of Foreign Affairs,
remarked: "The Révolution, like Saturn, eats its own children." As to
Camille Desmoulins, "His melancholy already indicated a presentiment of
his fate; the few words he allowed to escape him always turned on
questions and observations concerning the nature of punishment, inflicted
on those condemned by the revolutionary Tribunal and the best way of
preparing oneself for that event and enduring it."]
3213 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXIII., 363.357. (Police reports on the deputies, Messidor 4, and
following days.)—Vilate: "coups secrètes de la Revolution du 9 et 10
Thermidor," a list designated by Barère.—Denunciation by Lecointre.
(2nd ed. p.13.)]
3214 (return)
[ Thibaudeau, I., 47.
"Just as in ordinary times one tries to elevate oneself, so does one
strive in these times of calamity to lower oneself and be forgotten, or
atone for one's inferiority by seeking to degrade oneself."]
3215 (return)
[ Madame Roland:
"Mémoires," I., 23.]
3216 (return)
[ Archives Nationales,
F.7, 31167. This set of papers contains five hundred and thirty-seven
police reports, especially those of Nivôse, year II. The following is a
sample Report of Nivôse 25, year II. "Being on a deputation to the
convention, some colleagues took me to dine in the old Breteuil gardens,
in a large room with a nice floor.... The bill-of-fare was called for, and
I found that after having eaten a ritz soup, some meat, a bottle of wine
and two potatoes, I had spent, as they told me, eight francs twelve sous,
because I am not rich. 'Foutre!' I say to them how much do the rich pay
here?... It is well to state that I saw some deputies come into this large
hall, also former marquises, counts and knights of the poniard of the
ancient regime... but I confess that I cannot remember the true names of
these former nobles.... for the devil himself could not recognize those
bastards, disguised like sans-culottes."]
3217 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXVIII., 237, 308. (July 5 and 14, 1793.)—Moniteur, XIX., 716.
(Ventôse 26, year II.) Danton secures the passage of a decree "that
nothing but prose shall be heard at the bar." Nevertheless, after his
execution, this sort of parade begins again. On the 12th of Messidor, "a
citizen admitted to the bar reads a poem composed by him in honor of the
success of our arms on the Sambre." (Moniteur, XVI., 101.)]
3218 (return)
[ Moniteur, XVIII. 369,
397, 399, 420, 455, 469, 471, 479, 488, 492, 500, etc.—Mercier, "Le
Nouveau Paris," II., 96.—Dauban, "La Demagogie en 1793," 500, 505.
(Articles by Prudhomme and Diurnal by Beaulieu.)]
3219 (return)
[ Moniteur, XVIII.,
420, 399.—"Ah, le bel oiseau," was a song chosen for its symbolic
and double meaning, one pastoral and the other licentious.]
3220 (return)
[ De Goncourt, "La
Societé française pendant la Révolution," 418. (Article from" Pêre
Duchesne ".)—Dauban, ibid., 506. (Article by Prud'homme.) "Liberty
on a seat of verdure, receives the homage of republicans, male and
female,... and then.... she turns and bestows a benevolent regard on her
friends."]
3221 (return)
[ Moniteur, XVIII.,
399. Session of Brumaire 20, on motion of Thuriot: "I move that the
convention attends the temple of Reason to sing the hymn to Liberty."—"The
motion of Thuriot is decreed."]
3222 (return)
[ Mercier, ibid., 99.
(Similar scenes in the churches of St. Eustache and St. Gervais.)]
3223 (return)
[ Durand-Maillane,
'"Mémoires," 182.—Gregoire, "Mémoires," II., 34. On the 7th of
November, 1793, in the great scene of the abjurations, Grégoire alone
resisted, declaring: "I remain a bishop; I invoke freedom of worship."
"Outcries burst forth to stifle my voice the pitch of which I raised
proportionately.... A demoniac scene occurred, worthy of Milton.... I
declare that in making this speech I thought I was pronouncing sentence of
death on myself." For several days, emissaries were sent to him, either
deputies or bandits, to try and make him retract. On the 11th of November
a placard posted throughout Paris declared him responsible for the
continuance of fanaticism. "For about two years, I was almost the only one
in Paris who wore the ecclesiastical costume."]
3224 (return)
[ Moniteur, XVIII.,
480. (Session of Brumaire 30.) N...."I must make known the ceremony which
took place here to-day. I move that the speeches and details of this day
be inserted in full in the bulletin, and sent to all the departments."
(Another deputy): "And do not neglect to state that the Right was never so
well furnished." (Laughter and applause.)]
3225 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXII., 103. (Germinal 11.)—Moniteur, XX., 124. (Germinal 15.)
Decree for cutting short the defense of Danton and his accused
associates.]
3226 (return)
[ Moniteur, XX., 226.
(Germinal 26. Report by Saint-Just and decree on the police.)—Ibid.,
XIX., 54. (Report by Robespierre, and decree on the principles of
revolutionary government, Nivôse 5.)—Ibid., XX., 567, 589. Prairial
6, (Decree forbidding the imprisonment of any Englishman or Hanoverian),
and XXI., 13. (Messidor 16.)]
3227 (return)
[ Moniteur, XX., 544.
After the effort of L'Admiral against Collot d'Herbois, the latter appears
in the tribune. "The loudest applause greets him from all sides of the
house."—Ibid., XXI., 173. (Messidor 21.) On the report of Barère who
praises the conduct of Joseph Lebon, criticizing nothing but "somewhat
harsh formalities," a decree is passed to the order of the day, which is
"adopted unanimously with great applause."]
3228 (return)
[ Moniteur, XX., 698,
715, 716, 719. (Prairial 22 and 24.) After the speeches of Robespierre and
Couthon "Loud and renewed applause; the plaudits begin over again and are
prolonged." Couthon, having declared that the Committee of Public Safety
was ready to resign, "on all sides there were cries of No, No."—Ibid.,
XXI., 268. (Thermidor 2.) Eulogy of the revolutionary government by Barère
and decree of the police "unanimously adopted amidst the loudest
applause."]
3229 (return)
[ Moniteur, XXI., 329.]
3230 (return)
[ Lafayette,
"Mémoires," IV., 330. "At last came the 9th of Thermidor. It was not due
to people of common sense. Their terror was so great that an estimable
deputy, to whom one of his colleagues put the question, no witness being
present, 'how long must we endure this tyranny?' was upset by it to such a
degree as to denounce him."]
3231 (return)
[ Sainte-Beuve,
"Causeries du Lundi," V., 209. (Siéyès' unpublished papers.)—Moniteur,
XVIII., 631, containing an example of both the terror and style of the
most eminent men, among others of Fourcroy the celebrated chemist, then
deputy, and later, Counselor of State and Minister of Public Instruction.
He is accused in the Jacobin Club, Brumaire 18, year II., of not
addressing the Convention often enough, to which he replies: "After twenty
years' devotion to the practice of medicine I have succeeded in supporting
my sans-culotte father and my sans-culottes sisters.... As to the charge
made by a member that I have given most of my time to science. ... I have
attended the Lycée des Arts but three times, and then only for the purpose
of sans-culotteising it."]
3232 (return)
[ Michelet,
(1798-1874), "Histoire de la Révolution," V., preface XXX (3rd ed.). "When
I was young and looking for a job, I was referred to an esteemed Review,
to a well-known philanthropist, devoted to education, to the people, and
to the welfare of humanity. I found a very small man of a melancholic,
mild and tame aspect. We were in front of the fire, on which he fixed his
eyes without looking at me. He talked a long time, in a didactic,
monotonous tone of voice. I felt ill at ease and sick at heart, and got
away as soon as I could. It was this little man, I afterwards learned, who
hunted down the Girondists, and had them guillotined, and which he
accomplished at the age of twenty."—This man's name was Julien de la
Drôme. I (Taine) saw him once when quite young. He is well known; first,
through his correspondence, and next, by his mother's diary. ("Journal
d'une bourgeoise pendant la Revolution," ed. Locroy.)—We have a
sketch of David ("La Demagogie à Paris en 1793," by Dauban, a fac-simile
at the beginning of the volume), representing Queen Marie Antoinette led
to execution. Madame Julien was at a window along with David looking at
the funeral convoy, whilst he made the drawing.—Madame Julien writes
in her "Journal," September 3, 1792: "To attain this end we must will the
means. No barbarous humanity! The people are aroused, the people are
avenging the crimes of the past three years."—Her son, a sort of
raw, sentimental Puritan, fond of bloodshed, was one of Robespierre's most
active agents. He remembered what he had done, as is evident by Michelet's
narrative, and cast his eyes down, well knowing that his present
philanthropy could not annihilate past acts.]
3233 (return)
[ Archives Nationales,
AF. II., 46. Register of the Acts of the Committee of Public Safety, vol.
II., orders of August 3, 1793.]
3234 (return)
[ On the concentration
and accumulation of business, cf. Archives Nationales, ibid., acts of Aug.
4, 5, 6, 1793; and AF. II., 23, acts of Brumaire I and 15, year II.—On
the distribution and dispatch of business in the Committee and the hours
devoted to it, see Acts of April 6, June 13, 17, 18, Aug. 3, 1793, and
Germinal 27, year II.—After August 3, two sessions were held daily,
from 8 o'clock in the morning to 1 o'clock in the afternoon, and from 7 to
10 o'clock in the evening; at 10 o'clock, the Executive Council met with
the Committee of Public Safety, and papers were signed about 2 or 3
o'clock in the morning.—The files of AF. II., 23 to 42, contain an
account of the doings of the Committee, the minutes of its meetings and of
its correspondence. A perusal of these furnishes full details concerning
the initiative and responsibility of the Committee. For example, (Nivôse
4, year II., letters to Freron and Barras, at Marseilles,) "The Committee
commend the vigorous measures you have sanctioned in your orders at
Marseilles.—Marseilles, through you, affords a great example.
Accustomed, as you are, to wielding thunderbolts, you are best calculated
for still governing it... How glorious, citizen colleagues, to be able
like you, after long continued labors and immortal fame, how gratifying,
under such auspices, to return to the bosom of the National Convention!"—(AF.
II., 36, Pluviôse 7, year II., letter to the representatives on mission at
Bordeaux, approving of the orders issued by them against merchants.)
"concealed behind the obscurity of its complots, mercantilism cannot
support the ardent, invigorating atmosphere of Liberty; Sybaritic
indolence quails before Spartan virtue. "—(AF. II., 37, Pluviôse 20,
letter to Prieur de la Marne, sent to Nantes to replace Carrier.)
"Carrier, perhaps, has been badly surrounded;.... his ways are harsh, the
means he employs are not well calculated to win respect for the national
authority;... he is used up in that city. He is to leave and go
elsewhere."—(AF. II., 36, Nivôse 21, letter to Fouché, Laporte, and
Albitte, at Commune-affranchie, signed by Billaud-Varennes and composed by
him.) "The convention, Nivôse I, has approved of the orders and other
measures taken by you. We can add nothing to its approval. The Committee
of Public Safety subjects all operations to the same principles, that is
to say, it conforms to yours and acts with you."]
3235 (return)
[ Sainte-Beuve,
"Nouveaux Lundis," VIII., 105. (Unpublished report by Vice-admiral
Villaret-Joyeuse, May 28, 1794.)]
3236 (return)
[ Carnot, "Mémoires,"
I., 107.]
3237 (return)
[ Ibid., I., 450, 523,
527, "we often ate only a morsel of dry bread on the Committee's table."]
3238 (return)
[ Moniteur, XXI., 362.
(Speech by Cambon, Session of Thermidor 11, year II.)]
3239 (return)
[ Beugnot, "Mémoires,"
II., 15. (Stated by Jean Bon himself in a conversation at Mayence in
1813.)]
3240 (return)
[ Gaudia, duc de Gaéte,
"Mémoires," I., 16, 28. "I owed my life to Cambon personally, while,
through his firmness, he preserved the whole Treasury department,
continually attacked by the all-powerful Jacobin club."—On the 8th
of Thermidor, Robespierre was "very severe on the administration of the
Treasury, which he accused of an aristocratic and anti-revolutionary
spirit.... Under this pretext, it was known that the orator meant to
propose an act of accusation against the representative charged with its
surveillance, as well as against the six commissioners, and bring them
before the Revolutionary Tribunal, whose verdict could not be doubtful."—Buchez
et Roux, XXXIII., 431, 436, 441. Speech by Robespierre, Thermidor 8, year
II... ". Machiavellian designs against the small fund-holders of the
State.. .. A contemptible financial system, wasteful, irritating,
devouring, absolutely independent of your supreme oversight....
Anti-revolution exists in the financial department.... Who are its head
administrators? Brissotins, Feuillants, aristocrats and well-known knaves—the
Cambons, the Mallarmés, the Ramels!"]
3241 (return)
[ Carnot, "Mémoires,"
I., 425.]
3242 (return)
[ Moniteur, XXIV., 47,
50. (Session of Germinal 2, year II.) Speeches by Lindet and Carnot with
confirmatory details.—Lindet says that he had signed twenty thousand
papers.—Ibid., XXXIII., 591. (Session of Ventôse 12, year III.
Speech by Barère.) "The labor of the Committee was divided amongst the
different members composing it, but all, without distinction, signed each
other's work. I, myself, knowing nothing of military affairs, have
perhaps, in this matter, given four thousand signatures."—Ibid.,
XXIV., 74. (Session of Germinal 6, year III.) Speech of Lavesseur, witness
of an animated scene between Carnot and Robespierre concerning two of
Carnot's clerks, arrested by order of Robespierre.—Carnot adds "I
had myself signed this order of arrest without knowing it."—Ibid.,
XXII., 116. (Session of Vendémiaire 8, year II., speech by Carnot in
narrating the arrest of General Huchet for his cruelties in Vendée.) On
appearing before the committee of Public Safety, Robespierre defended him
and he was sent back to the army and promoted to a higher rank; I was
obliged to sign in spite of my opposition."]
3243 (return)
[ Carnot, "Mémoires,"
I., 572. (Speech by Carnot, Germinal 2, year III.)]
3244 (return)
[ Sénart, "Mémoires,"
145, 153. (Details on the members of the two Committees.)]
3245 (return)
[ Reports by Billaud on
the organization of the revolutionary government, November 18, 1793 and on
the theory of democratic government, April 20, 1794.—Reports by
Robespierre on the political situation of the Republic, November 17, 1793;
and on the principles of revolutionary government, December 5, 1793.—Information
on the genius of revolutionary laws, signed principally by Robespierre and
Billaud, November 29, 1793.—Reports by Robespierre on the principles
of political morality which ought to govern the Convention, February 5,
1794; and on the relationship between religious and moral ideas and
republican principles, May 7, 1794.]
3246 (return)
[ Billaud no longer
goes on mission after he becomes one of the Committee of Public Safety.
Robespierre never went. Barère, who is of daily service, is likewise
retained at Paris.—All the others serve on the missions and several
repeatedly, and for a long time.]
3247 (return)
[ Moniteur, XXIV., 60.
The words of Carnot, session of Germinal 2, year III.—Ibid., XXII.,
138, words of Collot, session of Vendémiaire 12, year III. "Billaud and
myself have sent into the departments three hundred thousand written
documents, and have made at least ten thousand minutes (of meetings) with
our own hand."]
3248 (return)
[ Dussault "Fragment
pour servir à l'histoire de la Convention."]
3249 (return)
[ Thibaudeau, I., 49.]
3250 (return)
[ Arnault, "Souvenirs
d'un Sexagenaire," II., 78.]
3251 (return)
[ "Mémoires d'un
Bourgeois de Paris," by Veron, II., 14. (July 7, 1815.)]
3252 (return)
[ Cf. Thibaudeau,
"Mémoires," I., 46. "It seemed, then, that to escape imprisonment, or the
scaffold, there was no other way than to put others in your place."]
3253 (return)
[ Carnot, "Mémoires."
I., 508.]
3254 (return)
[ Carnot, I., 527.
(Words of Prieur de la Côte d'Or.)]
3255 (return)
[ Carnot, ibid., 527.
(The words of Prieur.)]
3256 (return)
[ "La Nouvelle
Minerve," I., 355, (Notes by Billaud-Varennes, indited at St. Domingo and
copied by Dr. Chervin.) "We came to a decision only after being wearied
out by the nightly meetings of our Committee."]
3257 (return)
[ Decree of September
17, 1793, on "Suspects." Ordinance of the Paris Commune, October 10, 1793,
extending it so as to include "those who, having done nothing against the
Revolution, do nothing for it."—Cf. "Papers seized in Robespierre's
apartments," II., 370, letter of Payan. "Every man who has not been for
the Revolution has been against it, for he has done nothing for the
country.... In popular commissions, individual humanity, the moderation
which assumes the veil of justice, is criminal."]
3258 (return)
[ Mortimer-Ternaux,
VIII., 394, and following pages; 414 and following pages, (on the
successive members of the two Committees).]
3259 (return)
[ Wallon, "Histoire du
Tribunal Révolutionaire," III., 129-131. Hérault de Sechelles, allied with
Danton, and accused of being indulgent, had just given guarantees,
however, and applied the revolutionary regime in Alsace with a severity
worthy of Billaud. (Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol. V., 141.)
"Instructions for civil commissioners by Hérault, representative of the
people," (Colmar, Frimaire 2, year II.,) with suggestions as to the
categories of persons that are to be "sought for, arrested and immediately
put in jail," probably embracing nineteen-twentieths of the inhabitants.]
3260 (return)
[ Dauban, "Paris" en
1794, 285, and following pages. (Police Reports, Germinal, year II.)
Arrest of Hébert and associates "Nothing was talked about the whole
morning but the atrocious crimes of the conspirators. They were regarded
as a thousand times more criminal than Capet and his wife. They ought to
be punished a thousand times over.... The popular hatred of Hébert is at
its height... . The people cannot forgive Hébert for having deceived
them.... Popular rejoicings were universal on seeing the conspirators led
to the scaffold."]
3261 (return)
[ Moniteur, XXIV., 53.
(Session of Germinal 2, year III.) Words of Prieur de la Côte-d'Or: "The
first quarrel that occurred in the Committee was between Saint-Just and
Carnot; the latter says to the former, 'I see that you and Robespierre are
after a dictatorship.'"—Ibid., 74. Levasseur makes a similar
statement.-Ibid., 570. (Session of Germinal 2, year III., words of
Carnot): "I had a right to call Robespierre a tyrant every time I spoke to
him. I did the same with Saint-Just and Couthon."]
3262 (return)
[ Carnot, I., 525.
(Testimony of Prieur.) Ibid., 522. Saint-Just says to Carnot: "You are in
league with the enemies of the patriots. It is well for you to know that a
few lines from me could send you to the guillotine in two days."]
3263 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux, XXX.,
185. (Reply of Billaud, Collot, Vadier and Barère to the renewed charges
against them by Lecointre.)—Moniteur, XXIV., 84. (Session of
Germinal 7, year III.) Words of Barère: "On the 4th of Thermidor, in the
Committee, Robespierre speaks like a man who had orders to give and
victims to point out."—"And you, Barère," he replies, "remember the
report you made on the 2nd of Thermidor,"]
3264 (return)
[ Heraclitus ( c.
540-480 BC) pre-Socratic philosopher, who believed in a cosmic justice
where sinners would be punished and haunted by the Erinyes, (the furies)
the handmaids of justice. (SR).]
3265 (return)
[ Saint-Just, report on
the Girondists, July 8, 1793; on the necessity of imprisoning persons
inimical to the Revolution, Feb.26, 1794; on the Hébertists, March 13; on
the arrest of Herault-Séchelles and Simond, March 17; on the arrest of
Danton and associates March 31; on a general policy, April 15.—Cf.,
likewise, his report on declaring the government revolutionary until peace
is declared, Oct. 10, 1793, and his report of the 9th of Thermidor, year
II.]
3266 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXI., 346. (Report of March 13, 1794.)—XXXII., 314. (Report of
April 15.)]
3267 (return)
[ See "The Revolution,"
II., 313.]
3268 (return)
[ A single phrase often
suffices to give the measure of a man's intellect and character. The
following by Saint-Just has this merit. (Apropos of Louis XVI. who,
refraining from defending himself, left the Tuileries and took refuge in
the Assembly on the 10th of August.) "He came amongst you; he forced his
way here.... He resorted to the bosom of the legislature; his soldiers
burst into the asylum.. .. He made his way, so to say, by sword thrusts
into the bowels of his country that he might find a place of
concealment."]
3269 (return)
[ Particularly in the
long report on Danton containing a historic survey of the factions,
(Buchez et Roux, XXXII., 76,) and the report on the general police,
(Ibid., 304,) with another historic document of the same order. "Brissot
and Ronsin (were) recognized royalists.. .. Since Necker a system of
famine has been devised.... Necker had a hand in the Orleans faction....
Double representation (of the Third Estate) was proposed for it." Among
other charges made against Danton; after the fusillade on the Champ de
Mars in July, 1791 "You went to pass happy days at Arcis-sur-Aube, if it
is possible for a conspirator against his country to be happy.... When you
knew that the tyrant's fall was prepared and inevitable you returned to
Paris on the 9th of August. You wanted to go to bed on that evil night....
Hatred, you said, is insupportable to me and (yet) you said to us 'I do
not like Marat,' etc." There is an apostrophe of nine consecutive pages
against Danton, who is absent.]
3270 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
Ibid., 312. "Liberty emanated from the bosom of tempests; its origin dates
with that of the world issuing out of chaos along with man, who is born
dissolved in tears." (Applause.)—Ibid., 308. Cf. his portrait, got
up for effect, of the "revolutionary who is a treasure of good sense and
probity."]
3271 (return)
[ Ibid., 312. "Liberty
is not the chicanery of a palace; it is rigidity towards evil."]
3272 (return)
[ Barère, "Mémoires,"
I. 347. "Saint-Just... discussed like a vizier."]
3273 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXII., 314. "Are the lessons furnished by history, the examples afforded
by all great men, lost to the universe? These all counsel us to lead
obscure lives; the lowly cot and virtue form the grandeurs of this world.
Let us seek our habitations on the banks of streams, rock the cradles of
our children and educate them in Disinterestedness and Intrepidity."—As
to his political or economic capacity and general ideas, read his speeches
and his "Institutions," (Buchez et Roux, XXVIII., 133; XXX., 305, XXXV.,
369,) a mass of chemical and abstract rant.]
3274 (return)
[ Carnot, I., 527.
(Narrated by Prieur.) "Often when hurriedly eating a bit of dry bread at
the Committee table, Barère with a jest, brought a smile on our lips."]
3275 (return)
[ Veron, II.,
14.-Arnault, II., 74.—Cf., passim, "Mémoires de Barère," and the
essay on Barère by Macaulay.]
3276 (return)
[ Vilate, Barère
Edition, 184, 186, 244. "Fickle, frank, affectionate, fond of society,
especially that of women, in quest of luxuries and knowing how to spend
money."—Carnot, II. 511. In Prieur's eyes, Barère was simply "a good
fellow."]
3277 (return)
[ Moniteur, XXI., 173.
(Justification of Joseph Lebon and "his somewhat harsh ways.") "The
Revolution is to be spoken of with respect, and revolutionary measures
with due regard. Liberty is a virgin, to raise whose veil is a crime."—And
again: "The tree of Liberty grows when watered with the blood of
tyrants."]
3278 (return)
[ Moniteur, XX., 580,
582, 583, 587.—"Campagnes de la Révolution Française dans les
Pyrénées-Orientales," by Fervel, II., 36 and following pages.—General
Dugommier, after the capture of Toulouse, spared the English general
O'Hara, taken prisoner in spite of the orders of the Convention. and
received the following letter from the committee of Public Safety. "The
Committee accepts your victory and your wound as compensations." On the
24th of December, Dugommier, that he may not be present at the Toulon
massacres, asks to return to the convention and is ordered off to the army
of the eastern Pyrenees.—In 1797, there were thirty thousand French
prisoners in England.]
3279 (return)
[ Moniteur, XVIII.,
291. (Speech by Barère, session of Brumaire 8, year II.) At this rate,
there are one hundred and forty deputies on mission to the armies and in
the departments.—Before the institution of the Committee of Public
Safety, (April 7, 1793) there were one hundred and sixty representatives
in the departments, sent there to hasten the levy of two hundred thousand
men. (Moniteur, XVII., 99, speech by Cambon, July 11, 1793.) The Committee
gradually recalled most of these representatives and, on the 16th July,
only sixty-three were on mission.—(Ibid., XVII., 152, speech by
Gossuin, July 16.)—On the 9th of Nivôse, the committee designated
fifty-eight representatives to establish the revolutionary government in
certain places and fixing the limits of their jurisdictions. (Archives
Nationales, AF., II., 22.) Subsequently, several were recalled, and
replaced by others.—The letters and orders of the representatives on
mission are filed in the National Archives according to departments, in
two series, one of which comprises missions previous to Thermidor 9, and
the other missions after that date.]
3280 (return)
[ Thibaudeau, "Histoire
du Terrorisme dans le department de la Vienne," p.4. "Paris, Brumaire 15,
the sans-culotte Piorry, representative of the people to the sans-culottes
composing the popular club of Poitiers."]
3281 (return)
[ Archives Nationales,
AF., II., 116. (Letter of Laplanche, Orleans, September 10, 1793.—"Also
procès-verbaux of the Orleans sections, September 7.) "I organized them,
after selecting them from the popular club, into a revolutionary
committee. They worked under my own eye, their bureau being in an
adjoining chamber... I required sure, local information, which I could not
have had without collaborators of the country.... The result is that I
have arrested this night more than sixty aristocrats, strangers or
'suspects."—"De Martel, Études sur Fouche," 84. Letter of Chaumette,
who posted Fouché concerning the Nevers Jacobins. "Surrounded by
royalists, federalists and fanatics, representative Fouché had only 3 or 4
persecuted patriots to advise him."]
3282 (return)
[ Archives Nationales,
AF., II., 88. Speech by Rousselin, Frimaire 9—Ibid., F.7, 4421.
Speech and orders issued by Rousselin, Brumaire 25.—Cf.. Albert
Babeau, "Histoire de Troyes pendant la Revolution," vol. II. Missions of
Gamier de Rousselin and Bô.]
3283 (return)
[ Archives Nationales,
AF., II., 145. (Order of Maignet, Avignon, Floreal 13, year II., and
proclamation of Floréal 14.)—Ibid., AF., II., 111, Grenoble.
Prairial 8, year II. Similar orders issued by Albitte and Laporte, for
renewing all the authorities of Grenoble.—Ibid, AF., II., 135.
Similar order of Ricord at Grasse, Pluviôse 28, and throughout the Var.—Ibid.,
AF., II., 36. Brumaire, year II., circular of the Committee of Public
Safety to the representatives on mission in the departments: "Before
quitting your post, you are to effect the most complete purification of
the constituted authorities and public functionaries."]
3284 (return)
[ Decrees of Frimaire 6
and 14, year II.]
3285 (return)
[ Archives Nationales,
AF., II., 22. Acts of the committee of Public Safety, Nivôse 9, year II.]
3286 (return)
[ Ibid., AF., II., 37.
Letter to the Committee on the War, signed by Barère and Billaud-Varennes,
Pluviôse 23,, year II.]
3287 (return)
[ Ibid., AF., II., 36.
Letter of the Committee of Public Safety to Le Carpentier, on mission in
l'Orne, Brumaire 19, year II. "The administrative bodies of Alençon, the
district excepted, are wholly gangrened; all are Feuillants, or infected
with a no less pernicious spirit.... For the choice of subjects, and the
incarceration of individuals, you can refer to the sans-culottes: the most
nervous are Symaroli and Préval.—At Montagne, the administration
must be wholly removed, as well as the collector of the district, and the
post-master;... purify the popular club, expel nobles and limbs of the
law, those that have been turned out of office, priests, muscadins,
etc.... Dissolve two companies, one the grenadiers and the other the
infantry who are very muscadin and too fond of processions.... Re-form the
staff and officers of the National Guard. To secure more prompt and surer
execution of these measures of security you may refer to the present
municipality, the Committee of Surveillance and the Cannoneers.]
3288 (return)
[ Ibid., AF.,II., 37.
To Ricord, on mission at Marseilles, Pluviôse 7, year II, a strong and
rude admonition: he is going soft, he has gone to live with Saint-Même, a
suspect; he is too biased in favor of the Marseilles people who, during
the siege "made sacrifices to procure subsistences;" he blamed their
arrest, etc.—Floréal 13, year II., to Bouret on mission in the
Manche and at Calvados. "The Committee are under the impression that you
are constantly deceived by an insidious secretary who, by the bad
information he has given you, has often led you to give favorable terms to
the aristocracy, etc."—Ventôse 6, year II., to Guimberteau, on
mission near the army on the coasts of Cherbourg: "The committee is
astonished to find that the military commission established by you,
undoubtedly for striking off the heads of conspirators, was the first to
let them off. Are you not acquainted with the men who compose it? For what
have you chosen them? If you do not know them, how does it happen that you
have summoned them for such duties?"—Ibid., and Ventôse 23, order to
Guimberteau to investigate the conduct of his secretary]
3289 (return)
[ See especially in the
"Archives des Affaires étrangères," vols. 324 to 334, the correspondence
of secret agents sent into the interior.]
3290 (return)
[ Archives Nationales,
AF.,II., 37, to Fromcastel on mission in Indre-et-Loire, Floréal 13, year
II. "The Committee sends you a letter from the people's club of Chinon,
demanding the purging and organization of all the constituted authorities
of this district. The committee requests you to proceed at once to carry
out this important measure."]
3291 (return)
[ Words of Robespierre,
session of the convention September 24, 1793.—On another
representative, Merlin de Thionville, who likewise stood fire, Robespierre
wrote as follows: "Merlin de Thionville, famous for surrendering Mayence,
and more than suspected of having received his reward."]
3292 (return)
[ Guillon, II., 207.—"Fouché,"
by M. de Martel, 292.]
3293 (return)
[ Hamel, III., 395, and
following pages.—Buchez et Roux, XXX., 435. (Session of the Jacobin
club, Nivôse 12, year II. Speech of Collot d'Herbois.) "To-day I no longer
recognize public opinion; had I reached Paris three days later, I should
probably have been indicted."]
3294 (return)
[ Marcelin Boudet, "Les
conventionnels d'Auvergne," 438. (Unpublished memoir of Maignet.)]
3295 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXIV., 165, 191. (Evidence of witnesses on the trial of Carrier.)—Paris,
II., 113, "Histoire de Joseph Lebon." "The prisons," says Le Bon,
"overflowed at Saint-Pol. I was there and released two hundred persons.
Well, in spite of my orders, several were put back by the committee of
Surveillance, authorised by Lebas, a friend of Darthé. What could I do
against Darthé supported by Saint-Just and Lebas? He would have denounced
me."—Ibid., 128, apropos of a certain Lefèvre, "veteran of the
Revolution," arrested and brought before the revolutionary tribunal by
order of Lebon. "It was necessary to take the choice of condemning him, or
of being denounced and persecuted myself, without saving him."—Beaulieu,
"Essai," V., 233. "I am afraid and I cause fear was the principle of all
the revolutionary atrocities."]
3296 (return)
[ Ludovic Sciout,
"Histoire de la Constitution civile du Clergé," IV., 136. (Orders of Pinét
and Cavaignac, Pluviôse 22, and Ventôse 2.)—Moniteur, XXIV., 469.
(Session of Prairial 30, year III., denunciation of representative
Laplanche at the bar of the house, by Boismartin.) On the 24th of
Brumaire, year II., Laplanche and General Seepher installed themselves at
St. Lô in the house of an old man of seventy, a M. Lemonnier then under
arrest. "Scarcely had they entered the house when they demanded provisions
of every kind, linen, clothes, furniture, jewelry, plate, vehicles and
title-deeds—all disappeared." Whilst the inhabitants of St. Lô were
living on a few ounces of brown bread, "the best bread, the choicest
wines, pillaged in the house of Lemonnier, were lavishly given in pans and
kettles to General Seepher's horses, also to those of representative
Laplanche." Lemonnier, set at liberty, could not return to his emptied
dwelling then transformed into a storehouse. He lived at the inn, stripped
of all his possessions, valued at sixty thousand livres, having saved from
his effects only one silver table-service, which he had taken with him
into prison.]
3297 (return)
[ Marcelin Boudet, 446.
(Notes of M. Ignace de Barante.) Also 440. (Unpublished memoir of
Maignet).]
3298 (return)
[ Archives Nationales,
AF., II., 59. Extract from the minutes of the meetings of the People's
club of Metz, and depositions made before the committee of Surveillance of
the club, Floreal 12, year II., on the conduct of representative
Duquesnoy, arrived at Metz the evening before at six o'clock.—There
are thirty-two depositions, and among others those of M. Altmayer, Joly
and Clédat. One of the witnesses states: "As to these matters, I regarded
this citizen (Duquesnoy) as tipsy or drunk, or as a man beside himself."—This
is customary with Duquesnoy.—Cf. Paris, "His. de Joseph Lebon," I.,
273, 370.-"Archives des Affaires étrangères," vol. 329. Letter of Gadolle,
September 11, 1793. "I saw Duquesnoy, the deputy, dead drunk at Bergues,
on Whit-Monday, at 11 o'clock in the evening."—"Un Séjour en France,
1792 to 1796, p. 136. "His naturally savage temper is excited to madness
by the abuse of strong drink. General de .....assures us that he saw him
seize the mayor of Avesnes, a respectable old man, by the hair on his
presenting him with a petition relating to the town, and throw him down
with the air of a cannibal." "He and his brother were dealers in hops at
retail, at Saint Pol. He made this brother a general."]
3299 (return)
[ Alexandrine des
Echerolles, "Une famile noble sous la Terreur," 209. At Lyons, Marin, the
commissioner, "a tall, powerful, robust man with stentorian lungs," opens
his court with a volley of "republican oaths... ".. The crowd of
supplicants melts away. One lady alone dared present her petition. "Who
are you?" She gives her name. "What! You have the audacity to mention a
traitor's name in this place?" Get away and, giving her a push, he put her
outside the door with a kick.]
32100 (return)
[ Ibid. A mass of
evidence proves, on the contrary, that people of every class gave their
assistance, owing to which the fire was almost immediately extinguished.]
32101 (return)
[ Ibid. The popular
club unanimously attests these facts, and despatches six delegates to
enter a protest at the convention. Up to the 9th of Thermidor, no relief
is granted, while the tax imposed by Duquesnoy is collected. On the 5th
Fructidor, year II., the order of Duquesnoy is cancelled by the committee
of Public Safety, but the money is not paid back.]
32102 (return)
[ Paris, I., 370.
(Words of Duquesnoy to Lebon.)]
32103 (return)
[ Carnot, "Mémoires,"
I., 414. (Letter of Duquesnoy to the central bureau of representatives at
Arras.) The import of these untranslatable profanities being sufficiently
clear I let them stand as in the original.-Tr.]
32104 (return)
[ "Un Sejour en
France," 158, 171.—Manuscript journal of Mallet du Pan (January,
1795).—Cf. his letters to the convention, the jokes of jailors and
sbirri, for instance.—(Moniteur, XVIII., 214, Brumaire I, year II.)—Lacretelle,
"Dix Années d'Epreuves," 178. "He ordered that everybody should dance in
his fief of Picardy. They danced even in prison. Whoever did not dance was
"suspect." He insisted on a rigid observance of the fêtes in honor of
Reason, and that everybody should visit the temple of the Goddess each
decadi, which was the cathedral (at Noyon). Ladies, bourgeoises,
seamstresses, and cooks, were required to form what was called the chain
of Equality. We dragoons were forced to be performers in this strange
ballet."]
32105 (return)
[ De Martel,
"Fouché," 418. (Orders of Albitte and Collot, Nivôse 13, year II.)]
32106 (return)
[ Camille Boursier,
"Essai sur la Terreur en Anjou," 225. Letter of Vacheron, Frimaire 15,
year II.) "Republiquain, it is absolutely necessary, immediately, that you
have sent or brought into the house of the representatives, a lot of red
wine, of which the consumption is greater than ever. People have a right
to drink to the Republic when they have helped to preserve the commune you
and yours live in. I hold you responsible for my demand." Signed, "le
republiquain, Vacheron."]
32107 (return)
[ Ibid., 210.
Deposition of Madame Edin, apropos of Quesnoy, a prostitute, aged
twenty-six, Brumaire 12, year III.; and of Rose, another prostitute.
Similar depositions by Benaben and Scotty.]
32108 (return)
[ Dauban, "La
Demagogie en 1793," p.369. (Extracts from the unpublished memoirs of
Mercier de Rocher.)—Ibid., 370. "Bourdon de l'Oise had lived with
Tuncq at Chantonney, where they kept busy emptying bottles of fine wine.
Bourdon is an excellent patriot, a man of sensibility, but, in his fits of
intoxication, he gives himself up to impracticable views. "Let those
rascally administrators," he says, "be arrested!" Then, going to the
window,—he heard a runaway horse galloping in the street—"That's
another anti-revolutionary! Let 'em all be arrested!"—Cf.
"Souvenirs," by General Pélleport, p.21. At Perpignan, he attended the
fête of Reason. "The General in command of the post made an impudent
speech, even to the most repulsive cynicisim. Some prostitutes, well known
to this wretch, filled one of the tribunes; they waved their handkerchiefs
and shouted "Vive la Raison!" After listening to similar harangues by
representatives Soubrang and Michaud, Pélleport, although half cured (of
his wound) returns to camp: "I could not breathe freely in town, and did
not think that I was safe until facing the enemy along with my comrades."]
32109 (return)
[ Archives des
Affaires étrangères, vol.332; correspondence of secret agents, October,
1793. "Citizen Cusset, representative of the people, shows no dignity in
his mission; he drinks like a Lapithe, and when intoxicated commits the
arbitrary acts of a vizier." For the style and orthography of Cusset, see
one of his letters. (Dauban, "Paris en 1794," p 14.)—Berryat St.
Prix, "La Justice Révolutionnaire," (2nd ed.) 339.]
32110 (return)
[ Ibid., 371.
(According to "Piecès et Documents" published by M. Fajon.)—Moniteur,
XXIV., 453. (Session of Floréal 24, year III.) Address of the commune of
Saint-Jean du Gard.—XXI., 528. (Session of Fructidor 2, year III.)
Address of the Popular club of Nîmes.]
32111 (return)
[ Moniteur, XXIV.,
602. (Session of Prairial 13, year III.) Report of Durand Meillan: "This
denunciation is only too well supported by documents. It is for the
convention to say whether it will hear them read. I have to state
beforehand that it can hear nothing more repulsive nor better
authenticated."—De Martel, "Fouché, 246. (Report of the constituted
authorities of la Nièvre on the missions of Collot d'Herbois, Laplanche,
Fouché and Pointe, Prairial 19, year III.) Laplanche, a former
Benedictine, is the most foul-mouthed." In his speech to the people of
Moulins-Engelbert, St. Pierre-le-Montier, and Nevers, Laplanche asked
girls to surrender themselves and let modesty go. "Beget children," he
exclaims, "the Republic needs them. continence is the virtue of fools."
Bibliotheque Nationale, Lb. 41, No. 1802. (Denunciation, by the six
sections of the Dijon commune to the convention, of Leonard Bourdon and
Piochefer Bernard de Saintes, during their mission in Côte-d'Or.) Details
on the orgies of Bernard with the municipality, and on the drunkenness and
debaucheries of Bourdon with the riff-raff~ of the country; authentic
documents proving the robberies and assassinations committed by Bernard.
He pillaged the house of M. Micault, and, in four hours, had this person
arrested, tried and guillotined; he attended the execution himself, and
that evening, in the dead man's house, danced and sang before his daughter
with his acolytes.]
32112 (return)
[ "Souvenirs," by
General Pélleport, p.8. He, with his battalion, is inspected in the Place
du Capitale, at Toulouse, by the representative on mission. "It seems as
if I can still see that charlatan: He shook his ugly plumed head and
dragged along his saber like a merry soldier, wishing to appear brave. It
made me feel sad."]
32113 (return)
[ Fervel, "Campagnes
des Français dans les Pyrenees Orientals," I., 169. (October, 1793.)—Ibid.,
201, 206.—Cf. 188. Plan of Fabre for seizing Roses and Figuières,
with eight thousand men, without provisions or transports. "Fortune is on
the side of fools," he said. Naturally the scheme fails. Collioure is
lost, and disasters accumulate. As an offset to this the worthy general
Dagobert is removed. Commandant Delatre and chief-of-staff Ramel are
guillotined. In the face of the impracticable orders of the
representatives the commandant of artillery commits suicide. On the
devotion of the officers and enthusiasm of the troops, Ibid., 105, 106,
130, 131, 162.]
32114 (return)
[ Sybel (Dosquet's
translation, French:), II., 435; III., 132, 140. (For details and
authorities, cf. the Memoirs of Marshal Soult.)]
32115 (return)
[ Gouvion St. Cyr,
"Mémoires sur les campagnes de 1792 à la paix de Campio-Formio," I., pp.91
to 139.—Ibid., 229. "The effect of this was to lead men who had any
means to keep aloof from any sort of promotion."—Cf., ibid., II.,
131 (November, 1794,) the same order of things still kept up. By order of
the representatives the army encamps during the winter in sheds on the
left bank of the Rhine, near Mayence, a useless proceeding and mere
literary parade. "They would listen to no reason; a fine army and
well-mounted artillery were to perish with cold and hunger, for no object
whatever, in quarters that might have been avoided." The details are
heart-rending. Never was military heroism so sacrificed to the folly of
civilian commanders.]
32116 (return)
[ See Paris,
"Histoire de Joseph Lebon," I., ch. I, for biographical details and traits
of character.]
32117 (return)
[ Ibid., I., 13.—His
mother became crazy and was put in an asylum. Her derangement, he says,
was due to "her indignation at his oath of allegiance (to the Republic)
and at his appointment to the curacy of Nouvelle-Vitasse."]
32118 (return)
[ Ibid., I., 123.
Speech by Lebon in the church of Beaurains.]
32119 (return)
[ Ibid., II., 71, 72.—Cf.
85. "Citizen Chamonart, wine-dealer, standing at the entrance of his
cellar, sees the representative pass, looks at him and does not salute
him. Lebon steps up to him, arrests him, treats him as an agent of Pitt
and Cobourg."...."They search him, take his pocket-book and lead him off
to the Anglaises (a prison)."]
32120 (return)
[ Ibid., II., 84.]
32121 (return)
[ Moniteur, XXV.,
201. (Session of Messidor 22, year III.) "When in the tribune (of the
Convention) prison conspiracies were announced. ... my dreams were wholly
of prison conspiracies."]
32122 (return)
[ Ibid., 211.
(Explanations given by Lebon to the Convention.)—Paris, II., 350,
351. (Verdict of the jury.)]
32123 (return)
[ Paris, II., 85.]
32124 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXIV., 181. (Depositions of Monneron, a merchant.)]
32125 (return)
[ Ibid., 184.
(Deposition of Chaux.)—Cf. 200. (Depositions of Monneron and
Villemain, merchants.)]
32126 (return)
[ Ibid., 204.
(Deposition of Lamarie, administrator of the department.)]
32127 (return)
[ Ibid., 173.
(Deposition of Erard, a copyist.)—168. (Deposition of Thomas, health
officer.) "To all his questions, Carrier replied in the grossest
language."]
32128 (return)
[ Ibid., 203.
(Deposition of Bonami, merchant.)]
32129 (return)
[ Ibid., 156.
(Deposition of Vaujois, public prosecutor to the military commission.)]
32130 (return)
[ Ibid., 169.
(Deposition of Thomas.)—Berryat Saint-Prix, pp. 34, 35..—Buchez
et Roux, 118. "He received the members of the popular club with blows,
also the municipal officers with saber thrusts, who came to demand
supplies"...."He draws his saber (against the boatman) and strikes at him,
which he avoids only by running away."]
32131 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXIV., 196. (Deposition of Julien.) "Carrier said to me in a passion: 'It
is you, is it, you damned beggar, who presumes to denounce me to the
Committee of Public Safety.... As it is sometimes necessary for the public
interests to get rid of certain folks quickly, I won't take the trouble to
send you to the guillotine, I'll be your executioner myself!"]
32132 (return)
[ Ibid., 175.
(Deposition of Tronjolly.) 295. (Depositions of Jean Lavigne, a
shopkeeper; of Arnandan, civil commissioner; also of Corneret, merchant.)
179. (Deposition of Villemain).—Berryat Saint-Prix, 34. "Carrier,
says the gendarme Desquer, who carried his letters, was a roaring lion
rather than an officer of the people." "He looked at once like a charlatan
and a tiger," says another witness.]
32133 (return)
[ Ibid., XXXIV., 204.
(Deposition of Lamarie.)]
32134 (return)
[ Ibid., 183.
(Deposition of Caux.)]
32135 (return)
[ Mallet-Dupan,
"Mémoires," II., 6. (Memorial of Feb. I, 1794.) On André Dumont, "Un
Séjour en France," 158, 171.—On Merlin de Thionville, Michelet, VI.,
97.]
32136 (return)
[ De Martel, "Fouché"
100.]
32137 (return)
[ Mallet-Dupan, II.,
46.]
32138 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXII., 413, 423. (Letter of Julien to Robespierre.)]
32139 (return)
[ Archives
Nationales, AF., II., III. An order issued by Bourbotte, Tours, Messidor
5, year II., "requiring the district administration to furnish him
personally, as well as for the citizens attached to his commission, forty
bottles of red wine and thirty of white wine, to be taken from the cellars
of emigrés, or from those of persons condemned to death; and, besides
this, fifty bottles of common wine other than white or red."—On the
2nd of Messidor, ale is drunk and there is a fresh order for fifty bottles
of red wine, fifty of common wine, and two bottles of brandy.—De
Martel, "Fouché," 419, 420.—Moniteur, XXIV., 604. (Session of
Prairial 13, par III.) "Dugué reads the list of charges brought against
Mallarmé. He is accused.... of having put in requisition whatever pleased
him for his table and for other wants, without paying for anything, not
even for the post-horses and postillions that carried him."—Ibid.
602. Report of Perès du Gers. "He accuses Dartigoyte... of having taken
part with his secretaries in the auction of the furniture of Daspe, who
had been condemned; of having kept the most valuable pieces for himself,
and afterwards fixing their price; of having warned those who had charge
of the sale that confinement awaited whoever should bid on the articles he
destined for himself."—Laplanche, ex-Benedictine, said in his
mission in Loiret, that "those who did not like the Revolution must pay
those who make it."]
32140 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXII., 426. (Extract from the Memoirs of Sénart.)—Hamel, III., 565.
(Description of Teresa's domicile by the Marquis de Paroy, a petitioner
and eye-witness.)]
32141 (return)
[ The reader might
read about Tallien in the book written by Thérèse Chatrles-Vallin:
"Tallien," "Le mal-aimé de la Révolution", Ed. Jean Picollec, Paris 1997.
(SR).]
32142 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXIII., 12. (Extract from the Memoirs of Sénart.) "The certified copies
of these drafts are on file with the committee of General Security."]
32143 (return)
[ Report of Courtois,
360. (Letters of Julien to Robespierre, Pluviôse 15 and 16, year II.)—Buchez
et Roux, XXXIV., 199, 200, 202, 203, 211. (Depositions of Villemain,
Monneron, Legros, Robin.)—Berryat Saint-Prix, 35. (Depositions of
Fourrier, and of Louise Courant, sempstress.)]
32144 (return)
[ See, on Tallien,"
Mémoires de Sénart."—On Javogues, Moniteur, XXIV., 461, Floreal 24,
III. Petition against Javogues, with several pages of signatures,
especially those of the inhabitants of Montbrison: "In the report made by
him to the Convention he puts down coin and assignats at seven hundred and
seventy-four thousand six hundred and ninety-six francs, while the spoils
of one person provided him with five hundred thousand francs in cash."—On
Fouché, De Martel, 252.—On Dumont, Mallet-Dupan, "Manuscript notes."
(January, 1795.) On Rovère, Michelet, VI., 256.—Carnot, II., 87.
(According to the Memoirs of the German Olsner, who was in Paris under the
Directory:) "The tone of Barras' Salon was that of a respectable gambling
house; the house of Reubell resembled the waiting-room of an inn at which
the mail-coach stops."]
32145 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXII., 391, and XXXIII., 9. (Extracts from the Memoirs of Sénart.)]
32146 (return)
[ Carnot, "Mémoires,"
I. 416. Carnot, having shown to the Committee of Public Safety, proofs of
the depredations committed on the army of the North, Saint-Just got angry
and exclaimed: "It is only an enemy of the Republic that would accuse his
colleagues of depredations, as if patriots hadn't a right to everything!"]
32147 (return)
[ As to Caligula see
Suetonius and Philo.—With respect to Hakem, see "L'Exposé de la
Religion des Druses," by M. de Sacy.]
32148 (return)
[ Saint-Just,
speaking in the Convention, says: "What constitutes a republic is the
utter destruction of whatever is opposed to it."]
32149 (return)
[ Orders issued by
Saint-Just and Lebas for the departments of Pas-de-Calais, Nord, la Somme
et l'Aisne.—Cf. "Histoire de l'Alsace," by Stroebel, and "Recueil de
pieces authentiques pour servir à l'histoire de la Révolution à
Strasbourg," 3 vols.-Archives Nationales AF., II., 135, orders issued
Brumaire 10, year II., and list of the one hundred and ninety-three
persons taxed.]
32150 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXI., 32. (Saint-Just's reply to Mayor Monet.)—De Sybel, II., 447,
448. At the first interview Saint-Just said to Schneider: "Why use so much
ceremony? You know the crimes of the aristocrats? In the twenty-four hours
taken for one investigation you might have twenty-four condemned."]
32151 (return)
[ "Journal de marche
du sergent Fricasse," p.34. (Narrative by Marshal Soult.)]
32152 (return)
[ Cf. in the Bible,
the story of Ahasuerus who, out of respect for his own majesty, can-not
retract the order he has issued against the Jews, but he turns the
difficulty by allowing them to defend themselves.]
32153 (return)
[ Mallet-Dupan, II.,
47.]
32154 (return)
[ Berryat Saint-Prix,
"La Justice Revolutionnaire," XVII.-Marcelin Boudet, "Les Conventionnels
d'Auvergne," 269.—Moniteur, Brumaire 27, year III., report by
Calès.]
32155 (return)
[ Paris, "Histoire de
Joseph Lebon," I., 371; II., 341, 344.-De Martel, "Fouché," 153.—Berryat
Saint-Prix, 347, 348.]
32156 (return)
[ Berryat Saint-Prix,
390.—Ibid., 404. (On Soubrié, executioner at Marseilles, letter of
Lazare Giraud, public prosecutor): "I put him in the dungeon for having
shed tears on the scaffold, in executing the anti-revolutionists we sent
to be executed."]
32157 (return)
[ Moniteur, XVIII.,
413. (Session of the Convention, letter of Lequinio and Laignelot,
Rochefort, Brumaire 17, year II.) "We have appointed the patriot Anse
guilloteneur and we have invited him, in dining with us, to come and
assume his prescribed powers, and water them with a libation in honor of
the Republic."—Paris, II., 72.]
32158 (return)
[ Marcelin Boudet,
270. (Testimony of Bardanèche de Bayonne.)]
32159 (return)
[ Guil1on, "Histoire
de la ville de Lyons pendant la Revolution," II., 427, 431, 433.]
32160 (return)
[ "Mémoire du Citoyen
Fréron," (in the Barrière collection,) p.357. (Testimony of a survivor.)]
32161 (return)
[ Paris, II., 32]
32162 (return)
[ Delandine,
"Tableaux des prisons de Lyons," p.14.]
32163 (return)
[ Camille Boursier,
"Essai sur la Terreur en Anjou," 164. (Letter of Boniface, ex-Benedictine,
president of the Revolutionary committee, to Representative Richard,
Brumaire 3, year II.) "We send you the said Henri Verdier, called de la
Saurinière.... It will not be long before you will see that we make the
guillotine a present.... The Committee begs you to send him sacram sanctam
guillotinam, and the republican minister of his worship... Not an hour of
the day passes that new members do not come to us whom we desire to
initiate in its mysteries, (sic)."]
32164 (return)
[ Thibaudeau,
"Histoire du Terrorisme dans le départment de la Vienne," 34, 48.—Berryat
Saint-Prix, 239.]
32165 (return)
[ Archives Nationales
F.7, 4435. (Letter of Lebon, Floréal 23, year II.)—Paris, I. 241.]
32166 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXIV., 184, 200. (Depositions of Chaux, Monneron and Villemain.)]
32167 (return)
[ Register of the
Revolutionary Tribunal of Nantes, copied by M. Chevrier. (M. Chevrier has
kindly sent me his manuscript copy.)—Berryat Saint-Prix, 94.—Archives
Nationales, F7. 4591. (Extract from the acts of the Legislative Committee,
session of Floréal 3, year III. Restitution of the confiscated property of
Alexander Long to his son.) Dartigoyte, at Auch, did what Carrier did at
Nantes. "It follows from the above abstract duly signed that on the 27th
Germinal, year II., between eight and nine o'clock in the evening,
Alexandre Long, Sr., was put to death on the public square of the commune
of Auch by the executioner of criminal sentences, without any judgment
having been rendered against the said Long."—In many places an
execution becomes a spectacle for the Jacobins of the town and a party of
pleasure. For instance, at Arras, on the square devoted to executions, a
gallery was erected for spectators with a room for the sale of
refreshments, and, during the execution of M. de Montgon, the "Ça ira" is
played on the bass drum. (Paris, II., 158, and I., 159.) A certain
facetious representative has rehearsals of the performance in his own
house. "Lejeune, to feed his bloodthirsty imagination, had a small
guillotine put up, on which he cut off the heads of all the poultry
consumed at his table.... Often, in the middle of the repast, he had it
brought in and set to work for the amusement of his guests." (Moniteur,
XXIV., 607, session of June 1, 1795, letter from the district of Besançon,
and with the letter, the confirmatory document.) "This guillotine, says
the reporter, is deposited with the Committee of Legislation."]
The administrative body at Paris.—Composition of the group
out of which it was recruited.—Deterioration of this
group.—Weeding-out of the Section Assemblies.—Weeding out
of the popular clubs.—Pressure of the government.
To provide these local sovereigns with the subordinate lieutenants and agents which they require, we have the local Jacobin population, and we have seen the composition of the recruits,3301
* the distressed and the perverted of every class and degree, especially the lowest,
* the castaways,
* envious and resentful subordinates,
* small shopkeepers in debt,
* the migrating, high-living workers,
* barflies,
* vagrants,
* men of the gutters,
* street-walkers,
—in short, every species of "anti-social vermin," male and female,3302 including a few honest crack-brains into which the fashionable theory had freely found its way; the rest, and by far the largest number, are veritable beasts of prey, speculating on the established order of things and adopting the revolutionary faith only because it provides food for their appetites.—In Paris, they number five or six thousand, and, after Thermidor, there is about the same number, the same appetites rallying them around the same dogma,3303 levelers and terrorists, "some because they are poor, others because they have broken off the habit of working at their trade," furious with "the scoundrels who own a coach house, against the rich and the hoarders of objects of prime necessity." Many of them "having soiled themselves during the Revolution, ready to do it again provided the rich rascals, monopolists and merchants can all be killed," all "frequenters of popular clubs who think themselves philosophers, although most of them are unable to read," at the head of them the remnant of the most notorious political bandits,
* the famous post-master, Drouet, who, in the tribune at the Convention, declared himself a "brigand,"3304
* Javogues, the robber of Montbrison and the "Nero of Ain,"
* the drunkard Casset, formerly a silk-worker and later the pasha of Thionville,
* Bertrand, the friend of Charlier, the ex-mayor and executioner of Lyons,
* Darthé, ex-secretary of Lebon and the executioner at Arras,
* Rossignol and nine other Septembriseurs of the Abbaye and the Carmelites, and, finally, the great apostle of despotic communism,
* Babeuf, who, sentenced to twenty years in irons for the falsification of public contracts, and as needy as he is vicious, rambles about Paris airing his disappointed ambitions and empty pockets along with the swaggering crew who, if not striving to reach the throne by a new massacre,3305 tramp through the streets slipshod, for lack of money "to redeem a pair of boots at the shoemakers," or to sell some snuff-box their last resource, for a morning dram.3306
In this class we see the governing rabble fully and distinctly. Separated from its forced adherents and the official robots who serve it as they would any other power, it stands out pure and unalloyed by any neutral influx; we recognize here the permanent residue, the deep, settled slime of the social sewer. It is to this sink of vice and ignorance that the revolutionary government betakes itself for its staff-officers and its administrative bodies.
Nowhere else could they be found. For the daily task imposed upon them, and which must be done by them, is robbery and murder; excepting the pure fanatics, who are few in number, only brutes and blackguards have the aptitudes and tastes for such business. In Paris, as in the provinces, it is from the clubs or popular associations in which they congregate, that they are sought for.—Each section of Paris contains one of these clubs, in all forty-eight, rallied around the central club in the Rue St. Honoré, forty-eight district alliances of professional rioters and brawlers, the rebels and blackguards of the social army, all the men and women incapable of devoting themselves to a regular life and useful labor,3307 especially those who, on the 31st of May and 2nd of June, had aided the Paris Commune and the "Mountain" in violating the Convention. They recognize each other by this sign that, "each would be hung in case of a counter-revolution,"3308 laying it down "as an incontestable fact that, should a single aristocrat be spared, all of them would mount the scaffold."3309 They are naturally wary and they stick together: in their clique "everything is done on the basis of good fellowship;"3310 no one is admitted except on the condition of having proved his qualifications "on the 10th of August and 31st of May."3311 And, as they have made their way into the Commune and into the revolutionary committees behind victorious leaders, they are able, through the certificates of civism which these arbitrarily grant or refuse, to exclude, not only from political life but, again, from civil life, whoever is not of their party.
"See," writes one of Danton's correspondents,3312 "the sort of persons who easily obtain these certificates,—the Ronsins, the Jourdans, the Maillards, the Vincents, all bankrupts, keepers of gambling-hells and cut-throats. Ask these individuals whether they have paid the patriotic contribution, whether they regularly pay the usual taxes, whether they give to the poor of their sections, to the volunteer soldiers, etc.; whether they mount guard or see it regularly done, whether they have made a loyal declaration for the forced loan. You will find that they have not.... The Commune issues certificates of civism to its satellites and refuses them to the best citizens."
The monopoly is obvious; they make no attempt to conceal it; six weeks later,3313 it becomes official: several revolutionary committees decide not to grant certificates of civism to citizens who are not members of a popular club." And strict exclusion goes on increasing from month to month. Old certificates are canceled and new ones imposed, which new certificates have new formalities added to them, a larger number of endorsers being required and certain kinds of guarantees being rejected; there is greater strictness in relation to the requisite securities and qualifications; the candidate is put off until fuller information can be obtained about him; he is rejected at the slightest suspicion:3314 he is only too fortunate if he is tolerated in the Republic as a passive subject, if he is content to be taxed and taxed when they please, and if he is not sent to join the "suspects" in prison; whoever does not belong to the band does not belong to the community.
Amongst themselves and in their popular club it is worse, for
"the eagerness to get any office leads to every one denouncing each other; "3315
consequently, at the Jacobin club in the rue St. Honoré, and in the branch clubs of the quarter, there is constant purging, and always in the same sense, until the faction is cleansed of all honest or passable alloy and only a minority remains, which has its own way at every balloting. One of them announces that, in his club, eighty doubtful members have already been gotten rid of; another that, in his club, one hundred are going to be excluded.3316 On Ventose 23, in the "Bon-Conseil" club, most of the members examined are rejected: "they are so strict that a man who cannot show that he acted energetically in critical times, cannot form part of the assembly; he is set aside for a mere trifle." On Ventôse 13, in the same club, "out of twenty-six examined, seven only are admitted; one citizen, a tobacco dealer, aged sixty-eight, who has always performed his duty, is rejected for having called the president Monsieur, and for having spoken in the tribune bareheaded; two members, after this, insisted on his being a Moderate, which is enough to keep him out." Those who remain, consist of the most restless and most loquacious, the most eager for office, the self-mutilated club being thus reduced to a nucleus of charlatans and scoundrels.
To these spontaneous eliminations through which the club deteriorates, add the constant pressure through which the Committee of Public Safety frightens and degrades it. The lower the revolutionary government sinks, and the more it concentrates its power, the more servile and sanguinary do its agents and employees become. It strikes right and left as a warning; it imprisons or decapitates the turbulent among its own clients, the secondary demagogues who are impatient at not being principal demagogues, the bold who think of striking a fresh blow in the streets, Jacques Roux, Vincent, Momoro, Hébert, leaders of the Cordeliers club and of the Commune. After these, the indulgent who are disposed to exercise some discernment or moderation in terrorism, Camille Desmoulins, Danton and their adherents; and lastly, many others who are more or less doubtful, compromised or compromising, wearied or eccentric, from Maillard to Chaumette, from Antonelle to Chabot, from Westermann to Clootz. Each of the proscribed has a gang of followers, and suddenly the whole gang are obliged to do a volte-face; those who were able to show initiative, grovel, while those who could show mercy, become hardened. Henceforth, amongst the subaltern Jacobins, the roots of independence, humanity, and loyalty, hard to extirpate even in an ignoble and cruel nature, are eradicated even to the last fiber, the revolutionary staff, already so debased, becoming more and more degraded, until it is worthy of the office assigned to it. The confidants of Hébert, those who listen to Chaumette, the comrades of Westermann, the officers of Ronsin, the faithful readers of Camille, the admirers and devotees of Danton, all are bound to publicly repudiate their incarcerated friend or leader and approve of the decree which sends him to the scaffold, to applaud his calumniators, to overwhelm him on trial: this or that judge or juryman, who is one of Danton's partisans, is obliged to stifle a defense of him, and, knowing him to be innocent, pronounce him guilty; one who had often dined with Desmoulins is not only to guillotine him, but, in addition to this, to guillotine his young widow. Moreover, in the revolutionary committees, at the Commune, in the offices of the Committee of General Safety, in the bureau of the Central Police, at the headquarters of the armed force, at the revolutionary Tribunal, the service to which they are compelled to do becomes daily more onerous and more repulsive. To denounce neighbors, to arrest colleagues, to go and seize innocent persons, known to be such, in their beds, to select in the prisons the thirty or forty unfortunates who form the daily food of the guillotine, to "amalgamate" them haphazard, to try them and condemn them in a lot, to escort octogenarian women and girls of sixteen to the scaffold, even under the knife-blade, to see heads dropping and bodies swinging, to contrive means for getting rid of a multitude of corpses, and for removing the too-visible stains of blood. Of what species do the beings consist, who can accept such a task, and perform it day after day, with the prospect of doing it indefinitely? Fouquier-Tinville himself succumbs. One evening, on his way to the Committee of Public Safety, "he feels unwell" on the Pont-Neuf and exclaims: "I think I see the ghosts of the dead following us, especially those of the patriots I have had guillotined!"3317 And at another time: "I would rather plow the ground than be public prosecutor. If I could, I would resign."—The government, as the system becomes aggravated, is forced to descend lower still that it may find suitable instruments; it finds them now only in the lowest depths: in Germinal, to renew the Commune, in Floréal, to renew the ministries, in Prairial, to re-compose the revolutionary Tribunal, month after month, purging and re-constituting the committees of each quarter3318 of the city. In vain does Robespierre, writing and re-writing his secret lists, try to find men able to maintain the system; he always falls back on the same names, those of unknown persons, illiterate, about a hundred knaves or fools with four or five second-class despots or fanatics among them, as malevolent and as narrow as himself.—The purifying crucible has been used too often and for too long a time; it has overheated; what was sound, or nearly so, in the elements of the primitive fluid has been forcibly evaporated; the rest has fermented and become acid; nothing remains in the bottom of the vessel but the lees of stupidity and wickedness, their concentrated and corrosive dregs.
Quality of subaltern leaders.—How they rule in the section
assemblies.—How they seize and hold office.
Such are the subordinate sovereigns3319 who in Paris, during 14 months dispose as they please, of fortunes, liberties and lives.—And first, in the section assemblies, which still maintain a semblance of popular sovereignty, they rule despotically and uncontested.—
"A dozen or fifteen men wearing a red cap,3320 well-informed or not, claim the exclusive right of speaking and acting, and if any other citizen with honest motives happens to propose measures which he thinks proper, and which really are so, no attention is paid to these measures, or, if it is, it is only to show the members composing the assemblage of how little account they are. These measures are accordingly rejected, solely because they are not presented by one of the men in a red cap, or by somebody like themselves, initiated in the mysteries of the section."
"Sometimes," says one of the leaders,3321 "we find only ten members of the club at the general assembly of the section; but there are enough of us to intimidate the rest. Should any citizen of the section make a proposition we do not like, we rise and shout that he is an schemer, or a signer (of former constitutional petitions). In this way we impose silence on those who are not in line with the club."—
Since September, 1793, operation is all the easier because the majority, is now composed of beasts of burden, ruled with an iron hand.
"When something has to be effected that depends on intrigue or on private interest,3322 the motion is always put by one of the members of the Revolutionary Committee of the section, or by one of those fanatical patriots who join in with the Committee, and otherwise act as its spies. Immediately the ignorant men, to whom Danton has allowed forty sous for each meeting, and who, from now on crowd an assembly, where they never came before, welcome the proposition with loud applause, shouting and demanding a vote, and the act is passed unanimously, notwithstanding the contrary opinions of all well-informed and honest citizens. Should any one dare make an objection, he would run the risk of imprisonment as a suspect,3323 after being treated as an aristocrat or federalist, or at least, refused a certificate of civism, ( a serious matter) if he had the misfortune to need one, did his survival depend on this, either as employee or pensioner."—In the Maison-Commune section, most of the auditory are masons, "excellent patriots," says one of the clubbists of the quarter:3324 they always vote on our side; we make them do what we want." Numbers of day-laborers, cab-drivers, cartmen and workmen of every class, thus earn their forty sous, and have no idea that anything else might be demanded from them. On entering the hall, when the meeting opens, they write down their names, after which they go out "to take a drink," without thinking themselves obliged to listen to the rigmarole of the orators; towards the end, they come back, make all the noise that is required of them with their lungs, feet and hands, and then go and "take back their card and get their money."3325—With paid applauders of this stamp, they soon get the better of any opponents, or, rather, all opposition is suppressed beforehand. "The best citizens keep silent" in the section assemblies, or "stay away;" these are simply "gambling-shops" where "the most absurd, the most unjust, the most impolitic of resolutions are passed at every moment.3326 Moreover, citizens are ruined there by the unlimited sectional expenditure, which exceeds the usual taxation and the communal expenses, already very heavy. At one time, some carpenter or locksmith, member of the Revolutionary Committee, wants to construct, enlarge or decorate a hall, and it is necessary to agree with him. Again, a poor speech is made, full of exaggeration and political extravagance, of which three, four, five and six thousand impressions are ordered to be printed. Then, to cap the climax, following the example of the Commune, no accounts are rendered, or, if this is done for form's sake, no fault must be found with them, under penalty of suspicion, etc."—The twelve leaders, proprietors and distributors of civism, have only to agree amongst themselves to share the profits, each according to his appetite; henceforth, cupidity and vanity are free to sacrifice the common weal, under cover of the common interest.—The pasture is vast and it is at the disposal of the leaders. In one of his orders of the day, Henriot says:3327
"I am very glad to announce to my brethren in arms that all the positions are at the disposal of the government. The actual government, which is revolutionary, whose intentions are pure, and which merely desires the happiness of all,.... will search everywhere, even into the attics for virtuous men,.... poor and genuine sans-culottes." And there is enough to satisfy them thirty-five thousand places of public employment in the capital alone:3328 it is a rich mine; already, before the month of May, 1793, "the Jacobin club boasted of having placed nine thousand agents in the administration,"3329 and since the 2nd of June, "virtuous men, poor, genuine sans-culottes," arrive in crowds from "their garrets," dens and hired rooms, each to grab his share.—They besiege and install themselves by hundreds the ancient offices in the War, Navy and Public-Works departments, in the Treasury and Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Here they rule, constantly denouncing all the remaining, able employees thus creating vacancies in order to fill them.3330 Then there are twenty new administrative departments which they keep for themselves: commissioners of the first confiscation of national property, commissioners of national property arising from emigrants and the convicted, commissioners of conscripted carriage-horses, commissioners on clothing, commissioners on the collecting and manufacturing of saltpeter, commissioners on monopolies, civil-commissioners in each of the forty-eight sections, commissioners on propagandas in the departments, Commissioners on provisions, and many others. Fifteen hundred places are counted in the single department of subsistence in Paris,3331 and all are salaried. Here, already, are a number of desirable offices.—Some are for the lowest rabble, two hundred, at twenty sous a day, paid to "stump-speakers," employed to direct opinion in the Palais-Royal, also among the Tuileries groups, as well as in the tribunes of the Convention and of the Hôtel-de-Ville;3332 two hundred more at four hundred francs per annum, to waiters in coffee-houses, gambling-saloons and hotels, for watching foreigners and customers; hundreds of places at two, three, and five francs a day with meals, for the guardians of seals, and for garrisoning the domiciles of "suspects"; thousands, with premiums, pay, and full license, for brigands who, under Ronsin, compose the revolutionary army, and for the gunners, paid guard and gendarmes of Henriot.—The principal posts, however, are those which subject lives and freedom to the discretion of those who occupy them: for, through this more than regal power, they possess all other power, and such is that of the men composing the forty-eight revolutionary committees, the bureaus of the Committee of General Security and of the Commune, and the staff-officers of the armed force. They are the prime-movers and active incentives of the system of Terror, all picked Jacobins and tested by repeated selection, all designated or approved by the Central Club, which claims for itself the monopoly of patriotism, and which, erected into a supreme council of the party, issues no patent of orthodoxy except to its own henchmen.3333
They immediately assume the tone and arrogance of dictatorship. " Pride has reached its highest point:3334... One who, yesterday, had no post and was amiable and honest, has become haughty and insolent because, deceived by appearances, his fellow-citizens have elected him commissioner, or given him some employment or other." Henceforth, he behaves like a Turkish agha amongst infidels, and, in command, carries things out with a high hand.—On the 20th of Vendémiaire, year II., "in the middle of the night," the committee of the Piques section summons M. Bélanger, the architect. He is notified that his house is wanted immediately for a new Bastille.—"But, said he, 'I own no other, and it is occupied by several tenants; it is decorated with models of art, and is fit only for that purpose.'—'Your house or you go to prison!'—'But I shall be obliged to indemnify my tenants.'—'Either your house or you go to prison; as to indemnities, we have vacant lodgings for your tenants, as well as for yourself, in (the prisons of) La Force, or Sainte-Pélagie.' Twelve sentinels on the post start off at once and take possession of the premises; the owner is allowed six hours to move out and is forbidden, henceforth, to return; the bureaus, to which he appeals, interpret his obedience as 'tacit adhesion,' and, very soon, he himself is locked up."3335—Administrative tools that cut so sharply need the greatest care, and, from time to time, they are carefully oiled:3336 on the 20th of July, 1793, two thousand francs are given to each of the forty-eight committees, and eight thousand francs to General Henriot, "for expenses in watching anti-revolutionary maneuvers;" on the 7th of August, fifty thousand francs "to indemnify the less successful members of the forty-eight committees;" three hundred thousand francs to Gen. Henriot "for thwarting conspiracies and securing the triumph of liberty;" fifty thousand francs to the mayor, "for detecting the plots of the malevolent;" on the 10th of September, forty thousand francs to the mayor, president and procureur-syndic of the department, "for measures of security;" on the 13th of September, three hundred thousand francs to the mayor "for preventing the attempts of the malevolent;" on the 15th of November, one hundred thousand francs to the popular clubs, "because these are essential to the propagation of sound principles."—Moreover, besides gratuities and a fixed salary, there are the gratifications and perquisites belonging to the office.3337 Henriot appoints his comrades on the staff of paid spies and denunciators, and, naturally, they take advantage of their position to fill their pockets; under the pretext of incivism, they multiply domiciliary visits, make the master of the house ransom himself, or steal what suits them on the premises.3338—In the Commune, and on the revolutionary-committees, every extortion can be, and is, practiced.
"I know," says Quevremont, "two citizens who have been put in prison, without being told why, and, at the end of three weeks or a month, let out and do you know how? By paying, one of them, fifteen thousand livres, and the other, twenty-five thousand.... Gambron, at La Force, pays one thousand five hundred livres a month for a room not to live amongst lice, and besides this, he had to pay a bribe of two thousand livres on entering. This happened to many others who, again, dared not speak of it, except in a whisper."3339
Woe to the imprudent who, never concerning themselves with public affairs, and relying on their innocence, discard the officious broker and fail to pay up at once! Brichard, the notary, having refused or tendered too late, the hundred thousand crowns demanded of him, is to put his head "at the red window."—And I omit ordinary rapine, the vast field open to extortion through innumerable inventories, sequestrations and adjudications, through the enormities of contractors, through hastily executed purchases and deliveries, through the waste of two or three millions given weekly by the government to the Commune for supplies for the capital, through the requisitions of grain which give fifteen hundred men of the revolutionary army an opportunity to clean out all the neighboring farms, as far as Corbeil and Meaux, and benefit by this after the fashion of the chauffeurs.3340—With such a staff, these anonymous thefts cannot surprise us. Babeuf, the falsifier of public contracts, is secretary for provisions to the Commune; Maillard, the Abbaye Septembriseur, receives eight thousand francs for his direction, in the forty-eight sections, of the ninety-six observers and leaders of public opinion; Chrétien, whose smoking-shop serves as the rendezvous of rowdies, becomes a juryman at eighteen francs a day in the revolutionary Tribunal, and leads his section with uplifted saber;3341 De Sade, professor of crimes, is now the oracle of his quarter, and, in the name of the Piques Section, he reads addresses to the Convention.
A Minister of Foreign Affairs.—A General in command.—The
Paris Commune.—A Revolutionary Committee.
Let us examine some of these figures closely: the nearer they are to the eye and foremost in position, the more the importance of the duty brings into light the unworthiness of the potentate.—There is already one of them, whom we have seen in passing, Buchot, twice noticed by Robespierre under his own hand as "a man of probity, energetic and capable of fulfilling the most important functions,"3342 appointed by the Committee of Public Safety "Commissioner on External Relations," that is to say, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and kept in this important position for nearly six months. He is a school-master from the Jura,3343 recently disembarked from his small town and whose "ignorance, low habits and stupidity surpass anything that can be imagined... The chief clerks have nothing to do with him; he neither sees nor asks for them. He is never found in his office, and when it is indispensable to ask for his signature on any legislative matter, the sole act to which he has reduced his functions, they are compelled to go and force it from him in the Café Hardy, where he usually passes his days." It must be borne in mind that he is envious and spiteful, avenging himself for his incapacity on those whose competency makes him sensible of his incompetence; he denounces them as Moderates, and, at last, succeeds in having a warrant of arrest issued against his four chief clerks; on the morning of Thermidor 9, with a wicked leer, he himself carries the news to one of them, M. Miot. Unfortunately for him, after Thermidor, he is turned out and M. Miot is put in his place. With diplomatic politeness, the latter calls on his predecessor and "expresses to him the usual compliments." Buchot, insensible to compliments, immediately thinks of the substantial, and the first thing he asks for is to keep provisionally his apartment in the ministry. On this being granted, he expresses his thanks and tells M. Miot that it was very well to appoint him, but "for myself, it is very disagreeable. I have been obliged to come to Paris and quit my post in the provinces, and now they leave me in the street." Thereupon, with astounding impudence, he asks the man whom he wished to guillotine to give him a place as ministerial clerk. M. Miot tries to make him understand that for a former minister to descend so low would be improper. Buchot regards such delicacy as strange, and, seeing M. Miot's embarrassment, he ends by saying: "If you don't find me fit for a clerk, I shall be content with the place of a servant." This estimate of himself shows his proper value.
The other, whom we have also met before, and who is already known by his acts,3344 general in Paris of the entire armed force, commander-in-chief of one hundred and ten thousand men, is that former servant or under-clerk of the procureur Formey, who, dismissed by his employer for robbery, shut up in Bicêtre, by turns a runner and announcer for a traveling show, barrier-clerk and September assassin, has purged the Convention on the 2nd of June—in short, the famous Henriot, and now simply a brute and a sot. In this latter capacity, spared on the trial of the Hébertists, he is kept as a tool, for the reason, doubtless, that he is narrow, coarse and manageable, more compromised than anybody else, good for any job, without the slightest chance of becoming independent, unemployed in the army,3345 having no prestige with true soldiers, a general for street parade and an interloper and lower than the lowest of the mob; his mansion, his box at the Opera-Comique, his horses, his importance at festivals and reviews, and, above all, his orgies make him perfectly content.—Every evening, in full uniform, escorted by his aides-de-camp, he gallops to Choisy-sur-Seine, where, in the domicile of a flatterer named Fauvel, along with some of Robespierre's confederates or the local demagogues, he revels. They toss off the wines of the Duc de Coigny, smash the glasses, plates and bottles, betake themselves to neighboring dance-rooms and kick up a row, bursting in doors, and breaking benches and chairs to pieces—in short, they have a good time.—The next morning, having slept himself sober, he dictates his orders for the day, veritable masterpieces in which the silliness, imbecility and credulity of a numskull, the sentimentality of the drunkard, the clap-trap of a mountebank and the tirades of a cheap philosopher form an unique compound, at once sickening and irritating, like the fiery, pungent mixtures of cheap bars, which suit his audience better because they contain the biting, mawkish ingredients that compose the adulterated brandy of the Revolution.—He is posted on foreign maneuvers, and enlarges upon the true reasons for the famine: "A lot of bread has been lately found in the privies: the Pitts and Cobourgs and other rascals who want to enslave justice and reason, and assassinate philosophy, must be called to account for this. Headquarters, etc."3346 He has theories on religions and preaches civic modesty to all dissenters: "The ministers and sectaries of every form of worship are requested not to practice any further religious ceremonies outside their temples. Every good sectarian will see the propriety of observing this order. The interior of a temple is large enough for paying one's homage to the Eternal, who requires no rites that are repulsive to every thinking man. The wise agree that a pure heart is the sublimest homage that Divinity can desire. Headquarters, etc."—He sighs for the universal idyllic state, and invokes the suppression of the armed force:
"I beg my fellow-citizens, who are led to the criminal courts out of curiosity, to act as their own police; this is a task which every good citizen should fulfill wherever he happens to be. In a free country, justice should not be secured by pikes and bayonets, but through reason and philosophy. These must maintain a watchful eye over society; these must purify it and proscribe thieves and evil-doers. Each individual must bring his small philosophic portion with him and, with these small portions, compose a rational totality that will turn out to be of benefit and to the welfare of all. Oh, for the time when functionaries shall be rare, when the wicked shall be overthrown, when the law shall become the sole functionary in society! Headquarters, etc. "—Every morning, he preaches in the same pontifical strain. Imagine the scene—Henriot's levee at head-quarters, and a writing table, with, perhaps, a bottle of brandy on it; on one side of the table, the rascal who, while buckling on his belt or drawing on his boots, softens his husky voice, and, with his nervous twitchings, flounders through his humanitarian homily; on the other side the mute, uneasy secretary, who may probably be able to spell, but who dares not materially change the grotesque phraseology of his master.
The Commune which employs the commanding-general is of about the same alloy, for, in the municipal sword, the blade and hilt, forged together in the Jacobin shop, are composed of the same base metal.—Fifty-six, out of eighty-eight members, whose qualifications and occupations are known, are decidedly illiterate, or nearly so, their education being rudimentary, or none at all.3347 Some of them are petty clerks, counter-jumpers and common scribblers, one among them being a public writer; others are small shopkeepers, pastry-cooks, mercers, hosiers, fruit-sellers and wine-dealers; yet others are simple mechanics or even laborers, carpenters, joiners, cabinet-makers, locksmiths, and especially three tailors, four hair-dressers, two masons, two shoemakers, one cobbler, one gardener; one stone-cutter, one paver, one office-runner, and one domestic. Among the thirty-two who are instructed, one alone has any reputation, Paris, professor at the University and the assistant of Abbé Delille. Only one, Dumetz, an old engineer, steady, moderate and attending to the supplies, seems a competent and useful workman. The rest, collected from amongst the mass of unknown demagogues, are six art-apprentices or bad painters, six business-agents or ex-lawyers, seven second or third-rate merchants, one teacher, one surgeon, one unfrocked married priest, all of whom, under the political direction of Mayor Fleuriot-Lescot and Payen, the national agent, bring to the general council no administrative ability, but the faculty for verbal argumentation, along with the requisite amount of talk and scribbling indispensable to a deliberative assembly. And it is curious to see them in session. Toward the end of September, 1793,3348 one of the veterans of liberal philosophy and political economy, belonging to the French Academy and ruined by the Revolution, the old Abbé Morellet, needs a certificate of civism, to enable him to obtain payment of the small pension of one thousand francs, which the Constituent Assembly had voted him in recompense for his writings; the Commune, desiring information about this, selects three of its body to inquire into it. Morellet naturally takes the preliminary steps. He first writes "a very humble, very civic note," to the president of the General Council, Lubin Jr., formerly an art-apprentice who had abandoned art for politics, and is now living with his father a butcher, in the rue St. Honoré; he calls on this authority, and passes through the stall, picking his way amongst the slaughterhouse offal; admitted after some delay, he finds his judge in bed, before whom he pleads his cause. He then calls upon Bernard, an ex-priest, "built like an incendiary and ill-looking," and respectfully bows to the lady of the house, "a tolerably young woman, but very ugly and very dirty." Finally, he carries his ten or a dozen volumes to the most important of the three examiners, Vialard, "ex-ladies' hair-dresser;" the latter is almost a colleague, "for," says he, "I have always liked technicians, having presented to the Academy of Sciences a top which I invented myself." Nobody, however, had seen the petitioner in the streets on the 10th of August, nor on the 2nd of September, nor on the 31st of May; how can a certificate of civism be granted after such evidences of lukewarmness? Morellet, not disheartened, awaits the all-powerful hair-dresser at the Hôtel-de-Ville, and accosts him frequently as he passes along. He, "with greater haughtiness and distraction than the most unapproachable Minister of War would show to an infantry lieutenant," scarcely listens to him and walks on; he goes in and takes his seat, and Morellet, much against his will, has to be present at ten or twelve of these meetings. What strange meetings, to which patriotic deputations, volunteers and amateurs come in turn to declaim and sing; where the president, Lubin, "decorated with his scarf," shouts the Marseilles Hymn five or six times, "Ca Ira," and other songs of several stanzas, set to tunes of the Comic Opera, and always "out of time, displaying the voice, airs and songs of an exquisite Leander.. . I really believe that, at the last meeting, he sung alone in this manner three quarters of an hour at different times, the assembly repeating the last line of the verse."—"How odd!" exclaims a common woman alongside of Morellet, "how droll, passing all their time here, singing in that fashion! Is that what they come here for?"—Not alone for that: after the circus-parade is over, the ordinary haranguers, and especially the hair-dresser, come and propose measures for murder "in infuriate language and with fiery gesticulation." Such are the good speakers3349 and men for show. The others, who remain silent, and hardly know to write, act and do the rough work. A certain Chalaudon, member of the Commune,3350 is one of this kind, president of the Revolutionary Committee of the section of "L'Homme armé," and probably an excellent man-hunter; for "the government committees assigned to him the duty of watching the right bank of the Seine, and, with extraordinary powers conferred on him, he rules from his back shop one half of Paris. Woe to those he has reason to complain of, those who have withdrawn from, or not given him, their custom! Sovereign of his quarter up to Thermidor 10, his denunciations are death-warrants. Some of the streets, especially that of Grand Chantier, he "depopulates." And this Marais exterminator is a "cobbler," a colleague in leather, as well as in the Commune, of Simon the shoemaker, the preceptor and murderer of the young Dauphin.
Still lower down than this admirable municipal body, let us try to imagine, from at least one complete example, the forty-eight revolutionary committees who supply it with hands.—There is one of them of which we know all the members, where the governing class, under full headway, can be studied on the spot and in action.3351 This consists of the underworld, nomadic class which is revolutionary only through its appetites; no theory and no convictions animate it; during the first three years of the Revolution it pays no attention to, or cares for, public matters; if, since the 10th of August, and especially since the 2nd of June, it takes any account of these, it is to get a living and gorge itself with plunder.—Out of eighteen members, simultaneously or in succession, of the "Bonnet Rouge," fourteen, before the 10th of August and especially since the 2nd of June, are unknown in this quarter, and had taken no part in the Revolution. The most prominent among these are three painters, heraldic, carriage and miniature, evidently ruined and idle on account of the Revolution, a candle-dealer, a vinegar-dealer, a manufacturer of saltpeter, and a locksmith; while of these seven personages, four have additionally enhanced the dignity of their calling by vending tickets for small lotteries, acting as pawnbrokers or as keepers of a biribi3352 saloon. Seated along with these are two upper-class domestics, a hack-driver, an ex-gendarme dismissed from the corps, a cobbler on the street corner, a runner on errands who was once a carter's boy, and another who, two months before this, was a scavenger's apprentice, the latter penniless and in tatters before he became one of the Committee, and since that, well clad, lodged and furnished. Finally, a former dealer in lottery-tickets, himself a counterfeiter by his own admission, and a jail-bird. Four others have been dismissed from their places for dishonesty or swindling, three are known drunkards, two are not even Frenchmen, while the ring-leader, the man of brains of this select company is, as usual, a seedy, used-up lawyer, the ex-notary Pigeot, and expelled from his professional body on account of bankruptcy. He is probably the author of the following speculation: After the month of September, 1793, the Committee, freely arresting whomsoever it pleased in the quarter, and even outside of it, makes a haul of "three hundred heads of families" in four months, with whom it fills the old barracks it occupies in the rue de Sèvres. In this confined and unhealthy tenement, more than one hundred and twenty prisoners are huddled together, sometimes ten in one room, two in the same bed, and, for their keeping, they pay three hundred francs a day. As sixty-two francs of this charge are verified, there is of this sum, (not counting other extortions or concessions which are not official), two hundred and thirty-eight francs profit daily for these 'honest' contractors. Accordingly, they live freely and have "the most magnificent dinners" in their assembly chamber; the contribution of ten or twelve francs apiece is "nothing" for them.—But, in this opulent St. Germain quarter, so many rich and noble men and women form a herd which must be conveniently stalled, so as to be the more easily milked. Consequently, toward the end of March, 1794, the Committee, to increase its business and fill up the pen, hires a large house on the corner of the boulevard possessing a court and a garden, where the high society of the quarter is assigned lodgings of two rooms each, at twelve francs a day, which gives one hundred and fifty thousand livres per annum, and, as the rent is twenty-four hundred francs, the Committee gain one hundred and forty-seven thousand six hundred livres by the operation; we must add to this twenty sorts of profit in money and other matters—taxes on the articles consumed and on supplies of every description, charges on the dispatch and receipt of correspondence and other gratuities, such as ransoms and fees. A penned-up herd refuses nothing to its keepers,3353 and this one less than any other; for if this herd is plundered it is preserved, its keepers finding it too lucrative to send it to the slaughter-house. During the last six months of Terror, but two out of the one hundred and sixty boarders of the "Bonnet Rouge" Committee are withdrawn from the establishment and handed over to the guillotine. It is only on the 7th and 8th of Thermidor that the Committee of Public Safety, having undertaken to empty the prisons, breaks in upon the precious herd and disturbs the well-laid scheme, so admirably managed.—It was only too well managed, for it excited jealousy; three months after Thermidor, the "Bonnet Rouge" committee is denounced and condemned; ten are sentenced to twenty years in irons, with the pillory in addition, and, among others, the clever notary,3354 amidst the jeering and insults of the crowd.—And yet these are not the worst; their cupidity had mollified their ferocity. Others, less adroit in robbing, show greater cruelty in murdering. In any event, in the provinces as well as in Paris, in the revolutionary committees paid three francs a day for each member, the quality of one or the other of the officials is about the same. According to the pay-lists which Barère keeps, there are twenty-one thousand five hundred of these committees in France.3355
The administrative staff in the provinces.—Jacobinism less
in the departmental towns than in Paris.—Less in the
country than in the towns.—The Revolutionary Committees in
the small communes.—Municipal bodies lukewarm in the
villages.—Jacobins too numerous in bourgs and small towns.
—Unreliable or hampered as agents when belonging to the
administrative bodies of large or moderate-sized towns.
—Deficiency of locally recruited staff.
Had the laws of March 21 and September 5, 1793, been strictly enforced, there would, instead of 21,500 have been 45,000 of these revolutionary committees. They would have been composed of 540,000 members costing the public 591 millions per year.3356 This would have made the regular administrative body, already twice as numerous and twice as costly as under the ancient régime, an extra corps expending, "simply in surveillance," one hundred millions more than the entire taxation of the country, the greatness of which had excited the people against the ancient régime.—Happily, the poisonous and monstrous fungal growth was only able to achieve half its intended size; neither the Jacobin seed nor the bad atmosphere it required to make it spread could be found anywhere. "The people of the provinces," says a contemporary,3357 "are not up to the level of the Revolution; it opposes old habits and customs and the resistance of inertia to innovations which it does not understand." "The plowman is an estimable man," writes a missionary representative, "but he is generally a poor patriot."3358 Actually, there is on the one hand, less of human sediment in the departmental towns than in the great Parisian sink, and, on the other hand, the rural population, preserved from intellectual miasmas, better resists social epidemics than the urban population. Less infested with vicious adventurers, less fruitful in disordered intellects, the provinces supply a corps of inquisitors and terrorists with greater difficulty.
And first, in the thousands of communes which have less than five hundred inhabitants,3359 in many other villages of greater population, but scattered3360 and purely agricultural, especially in those in which patois is spoken, there is a scarcity of suitable subjects for a revolutionary committee. People make use of their hands too much; horny hands do not write every day; nobody desires to take up a pen, especially to keep a register that may be preserved and some day or other prove compromising. It is already a difficult matter to recruit a municipal council, to find a mayor, the two additional municipal officers, and the national agent which the law requires; in the small communes, these are the only agents of the revolutionary government, and I fancy that, in most cases, their Jacobin fervor is moderate. Municipal officer, national agent or mayor, the real peasant of that day belongs to no party, neither royalist nor republican;3361 his ideas are rare, too transient and too sluggish, to enable him to form a political opinion. All he comprehends of the Revolution is that which nettles him, or that which he sees every day around him, with his own eyes; to him '93 and '94 are and will remain "the time of bad paper (money) and great fright," and nothing more.3362 Patient in his habits., he submits to the new as he did to the ancient régime, bearing the load put on his shoulders, and stooping down for fear of a heavier one. He is often mayor or national agent in spite of himself; he has been obliged to take the place and would gladly throw the burden off. For, as times go, it is onerous; if he executes decrees and orders, he is certain to make enemies; if he does not execute them, he is sure to be imprisoned; he had better remain, or go back home "Gros-Jean," as he was before. But he has no choice; the appointment being once made and confirmed, he cannot decline, nor resign, under penalty of being a "suspect;" he must be the hammer in order not to become the anvil. Whether he is a wine-grower, miller, ploughman or quarry-man, he acts reluctantly, "submitting a petition for resignation," as soon as the Terror diminishes, on the ground that "he writes badly," that "he knows nothing whatever about law and is unable to enforce it;" that "he has to support himself with his own hands;" that "he has a family to provide for, and is obliged to drive his own cart" or vehicle; in short, entreating that he "may be relieved of his charge."3363—These involuntary recruits are evidently nothing more than common laborers; if they drag along the revolutionary cart they do it like their horses, because they are pressed into the service.
Above the small communes, in the large villages possessing a revolutionary committee, and also in certain bourgs, the horses in harness often pretend to draw and do not, for fear of crushing some one.—At this epoch, a straggling village, especially when isolated, in an out-of-the-way place and on no highway, is a small world in itself, much more secluded than now-a-days, much less accessible to Parisian verbiage and outside pressure; local opinion here preponderates; neighbors support each other; they would shrink from denouncing a worthy man whom they had known for twenty years; the moral sway of honest folks suffices for keeping down "blackguards."3364 If the mayor is republican, it is only in words, perhaps for self-protection, to protect his commune, and because one must howl along with the other wolves.—-Moreover, in other bourgs, and in the small towns, the fanatics and rascals are not sufficiently numerous to fill all the offices, and, in order to fill the vacancies, those who are not good Jacobins have been pushed forward or admitted into the new administrative corps, lukewarm, indifferent, timid or needy men, who take the place as an asylum or ask for it as a means of subsistence. "Citizens," one of the recruits, more or less under restraint, writes later on,3365 "I was put on the Committee of Surveillance of Aignay by force, and installed by force." Three or four madmen on it ruled, and if one held any discussion with them, "it was always threats.... Always trembling, always afraid,—that is the way I passed eight months doing duty in that miserable place."—Finally, in medium-sized or large towns, the dead-lock produced by collective dismissals, the pell-mell of improvised appointments, and the sudden renewal of an entire set of officials, threw into the administration, willingly or not, a lot of pretended Jacobins who, at heart, are Girondists or Feuillantists, but who, having been excessively long-winded, are assigned offices on account of their stump-speeches, and who thenceforth sit alongside of the worst Jacobins, in the worst employment. "Members of the Feurs Revolutionary Committee—those who make that objection to me," wrote a lawyer in Clermont,3366 "are persuaded that those only who secluded themselves, felt the Terror. They are not aware, perhaps, that nobody felt it more than those who were compelled to execute its decrees. Remember that the handwriting of Couthon which designated some citizen for an office also conveyed a threat, and in case of refusal, of being declared 'suspect,' a threat which promised in perspective the loss of liberty and the sequestration of property! Was I free, then, to refuse?"—Once installed, the man must act, and many of those who do act let their repugnance be seen in spite of themselves: at best, they cannot be got to do more than mechanical service.
"Before going to court," says a judge at Cambray, "I swallowed a big glass
of spirits to give me strength enough to preside."
He leaves his house with no other intention than to finish the job, and, the sentence once pronounced, to return home, shut himself up, and close his eyes and ears.
"I had to pronounce judgment according to the jury's declaration—what could I do?"3367
Nothing, but remain blind and deaf: "I drank. I tried to ignore everything, even the names of the accused."—It is plain enough that, in the local official body, there are too many agents who are weak, not zealous, without any push, unreliable, or even secretly hostile; these must be replaced by others who are energetic and reliable, and the latter must be taken wherever they can be found.3368 This reservoir in each department or district is the Jacobin nursery of the principal town; from this, they are sent into the bourgs and communes of the conscription. The central Jacobin nursery for France is in Paris, from whence they are dispatched to the towns and departments.
Importation of a staff of strangers.—Paris Jacobins sent
into the provinces.—Jacobins of enthusiastic towns deported
to moderate ones.—The Jacobins of a district headquarters
spread through the district.—Resistance of public opinion.
—Distribution and small number of really Jacobin agents.
Consequently, swarms of Jacobin locusts spread from Paris out over the provinces, and from the local country-towns over the surrounding country.—In this cloud of destructive insects, there are various figures of different sizes: in the front rank, are the representatives on mission, who are to take command in the departments; in the second rank, "the political agents," who, assigned the duty of watching the neighboring frontier, take upon themselves the additional duty of leading the popular club of the town they reside in, or of urging on its administrative body.3369 Besides that, there issue from the Paris headquarters in the rue St. Honoré, select sans-culottes who, authorized or delegated by the Committee of Public Safety, proceed to Lyons, Marseilles, Bordeaux, Tonnerre, Rochefort and elsewhere, to act as missionaries among the too inert population, or form the committees of action and the tribunals of extermination that are recruited with difficulty on the spot.3370—Sometimes also, when a town has a bad record, the popular club of a sounder-minded city sends its delegates there, to bring it into line; thus, four deputies of the Metz club arrive without notice in Belfort, catechize their brethren, associate with them on the local Revolutionary Committee, and, suddenly, without consulting the municipality, or any other legal authority, draw up a list of "moderates, fanatics and egoists," on whom they impose an extraordinary tax of one hundred and thirty-six thousand six hundred and seventeen livres;3371 in like manner, sixty delegates from the club of Côte-d'Or, Haute-Marne, Vosges, Moselle, Saone-et-Loire and Mont-Terrible, all "tempered by the white heat of Pére Duchesne," proceed to Strasbourg at the summons of the representatives, where, under the title of "propagandists," they are to regenerate the town.—At the same time, in each department, the Jacobins of the principal town are found scattered along the high ways, that they may inspect their domain and govern their subjects. Sometimes, it is the representative on mission, who, personally, along with twenty "hairy devils," makes his round and shows off his traveling dictatorship; again, it is his secretary or delegate who, in his place and in his name, comes to a second-class town and draws up his documents.3372 At another time, it is "a committee of investigation and propaganda" which, "chosen by the club and provided with full powers," comes, in the name of the representatives, to work up for a month all the communes of the district.3373 Again, finally, it is the revolutionary committee of the principal town, which," declared central for the whole department,"3374 delegates one or the other of its members to go outside the walls, and purge and recompose suspected municipalities.—Thus does Jacobinism descend and spread itself, story after story, from the Parisian center to the smallest and remotest commune: throughout provincial France, whether colorless or of uncertain color, the imposed or imported administration imposes its red stigma.
But the stamp is only superficial; for the sans-culottes, naturally, are not disposed to confer offices on any but men of their sort, while in the provinces, especially in the rural districts, such men are rare. As one of the representatives says: there is a "dearth of subjects."—At Mâcon, Javogues tries in vain;3375 he finds in the club only "disguised federalists;" the people, he says, "will not open their eyes it seems to me that this blindness is due to the physique of the country, which is very rich." Naturally, he storms and dismisses; but, even in the revolutionary committee, none but dubious candidates are presented to him for selection; he does not know how to manage in order to renew the local authorities. "They play into each others' hands," and he ends by threatening to transfer the public institutions of the town elsewhere, if they persist in proposing to him none but bad patriots.—At Strasbourg,3376 Couturier, and Dentzel, on mission, report that: "owing to an unexampled coalition among all the capable citizens, obstinately refusing to take the office of mayor, in order, by this course, to clog the wheels, and subject the representatives to repeated and indecent refusals," he is compelled to appoint a young man, not of legal age, and a stranger in the department.—At Marseilles, write the agents,3377 "in spite of every effort and our ardent desire to republicanize the Marseilles people, our pains and fatigues are nearly all fruitless.... Public spirit among owners of property, mechanics and journey-men is everywhere detestable.... The number of discontented seems to increase from day to day. All the communes in Var, and most of those in this department are against us.... they constitute a race to be destroyed, a country to be colonized anew....
"I repeat it, the only way to work out the Revolution in the federalized departments, and especially in this one, is to deport all the indigenous population who are able to bear arms, scatter them through the armies and put garrisons in their places, which, again, will have to be changed from time to time."—At the other extremity of the territory, in Alsace, "republican sentiments are still in the cradle; fanaticism is extreme and incredible; the spirit of the inhabitants in general is in no respect revolutionary... Nothing but the revolutionary army and the venerated guillotine will cure them of their conceited aristocracy. The execution of the laws depends on striking off the heads of the guilty, for nearly all the rural municipalities are composed only of the rich, of clerks of former bailiffs, almost always devoted to the ancient régime."3378—And in the rest of France, the population, less refractory, is not more Jacobin; here where the people appear "humble and submissive" as in Lyons and Bordeaux, the inspectors report that it is wholly owing to terror;3379 there, where opinion seems enthusiastic, as at Rochefort and Grenoble, they report that it is "artificial heat."3380 At Rochefort, zeal is maintained only "by the presence of five or six Parisian Jacobins." At Grenoble, Chépy, the political agent and president of the club, writes that "he is knocked up, worn out, and exhausted, in trying to keep up public spirit and maintain it on a level with events," but he is "conscious that, if he should leave, all would crumble."—There are none other than Moderates at Brest, at Lille, at Dunkirk; if this or that department, the Nord, for instance, hastened to accept the "Montagnard" constitution, it is only a pretense: "an infinitely small portion of the population answered for the rest."3381—At Belfort, where "from one thousand to twelve hundred fathers of families alone are counted," writes the agent,3382 "one popular club of thirty or forty members, at the most, maintains and enforces the love of liberty."—In Arras, "out of three or four hundred members composing the popular club" the weeding-out of 1793 has spared but "sixty-three, one tenth of whom are absent."3383 At Toulouse, "out of about fourteen hundred members" who form the club, only three or four hundred remain after the weeding-out of 1793,3384 "mere machines, for the most part," and "whom ten or a dozen intriguers lead as they please."—The same state of things exists elsewhere, a dozen or two determined Jacobins-twenty-two at Troyes, twenty-one at Grenoble, ten at Bordeaux, seven at Poitiers, as many at Dijon-constitute the active staff of a large town:3385 the whole number might sit around one table.—The Jacobins, straining as they do to swell their numbers, only scatter their band; careful as they are in making their selections, they only limit their number. They remain what they always have been, a small feudality of brigands superposed on conquered France.3386 If the terror they spread around multiplies their serfs, the horror they inspire diminishes their proselytes, while their minority remains insignificant because, for their collaborators, they can have only those just like themselves.
Quality of staff thus formed.—Social state of the agents.
—Their unfitness and bad conduct.—The administrators in
Seine-et-Marne.—Drunkenness and feasting.—Committees and
Municipalities in the Côte-d'Or.—Waste and extortions.
—Traffickers in favors at Bordeaux.—Seal breakers at Lyons.
—Monopolizers of national possessions.—Sales of personal
property.—Embezzlements and Frauds.-A procès-verbal in the
office of the mayor of Strasbourg.—Sales of real-estate.
—Commissioners on declarations at Toulouse.—The
administrative staff and clubs of buyers in Provence.—The
Revolutionary Committee of Nantes.
But when we regard the final and last set of officials of the revolutionary government closely, in the provinces as well as at Paris, we find among them we hardly anyone who is noteworthy except in vice, dishonesty and misconduct, or, at the very least, in stupidity and grossness.—First, as is indicated by their name, they all must be, and nearly all are, sans-culottes, that is to say, men who live from day to day on their daily earnings, possessing no income from capital, confined to subordinate places, to petty trading, to manual services, lodged or encamped on the lowest steps of the social ladder, and therefore requiring pay to enable them to attend to public business;3387 it is on this account that decrees and orders allow them wages of three, five, six, ten, and even eighteen francs a day.—At Grenoble, the representatives form the municipal body and the revolutionary committee, along with two health-officers, three glovers, two farmers, one tobacco-merchant, one perfumer, one grocer, one belt-maker, one innkeeper, one joiner, one shoemaker, one mason, while the official order by which they are installed, appoints "Teyssière, licoriste," national agent.3388—At Troyes,3389 among the men in authority we find a confectioner, a weaver, a journeyman-weaver, a hatter, a hosier, a grocer, a carpenter, a dancing-master, and a policeman, while the mayor, Gachez, formerly a private soldier in the regiment of Vexin, was, when appointed, a school-teacher in the vicinity.—At Toulouse,3390 a man named Terrain, a pâté dealer, is installed as president of the administration; the revolutionary committee is presided over by Pio, a journeyman-barber; the inspiration, "the soul of the club," is a concierge, that of the prison.—The last and most significant trait is found at Rochefort,3391 where the president of the popular club is the executioner.—If such persons form the select body of officials in the large towns, what must they be in the small ones, in the bourgs and in the villages?" Everywhere they are of the meanest"3392 cartmen, sabot—(wooden shoe) makers, thatchers, stone-cutters, dealers in rabbit-skins, day laborers, unemployed craftsmen, many without any pursuit, or mere vagabonds who had already participated in riots or jacqueries, bar flies, having given up work and designated for a public career only by their irregular habits and incompetence to follow a private career.—Even in the large towns, it is evident that discretionary power has fallen into the hands of nearly raw barbarians; one has only to note in the old documents, at the Archives, the orthography and style of the committees empowered to grant or refuse civic cards, and draw up reports on the opinions and pursuits of prisoners. "His opinions appear insipid (Ces opignons paroisse insipide)3393.... He is married with no children." (Il est marie cent (sans) enfants).... Her profession is wife of Paillot-Montabert, she is living on her income, his relations are with a woman we pay no attention to; we presume her opinions are like her husband's."3394 The handwriting, unfortunately, cannot be represented here, being that of a child five years old.3395
"As stupid as they are immoral,"3396 says Representative Albert, of the Jacobins he finds in office at Troyes. Low, indeed, as their condition may be, their feeling and intelligence are yet lower because, in their professions or occupations, they are the refuse instead of the élite, and, especially on this account, they are turned out after Thermidor, some, it is true, as Terrorists, but the larger number as either dolts, scandalous or crazy, simply intruders, or mere valets.—At Rheims, the president of the district is3397 "a former bailiff, on familiar terms with the spies of the Robespierre régime, acting in concert with them, but without being their accomplice, possessing none of the requisite qualities for administration." Another administrator is likewise "a former bailiff, without means, negligent in the highest degree and a confirmed drunkard." Alongside of these sit "a horse-dealer, without any means, more fit for shady dealings than governing, moreover a drunkard, a dyer, lacking judgment, open to all sorts of influences, pushed ahead by the Jacobin faction, and having used power in the most arbitrary manner, rather, perhaps, through ignorance than through cruelty, a shoemaker, entirely uninstructed, knowing only how to sign his name," and others of the same character. In the Tribunal, a judge is noted as
"true in principle, but whom poverty and want of resources have driven to every excess, a turncoat according to circumstances in order to get a place, associated with the leaders in order to keep the place, and yet not without sensibility, having, perhaps, acted criminally merely to keep himself and his family alive."
In the municipal body, the majority is composed of an incompetent lot, some of them being journeymen-spinners or thread twisters, and others second-hand dealers or shopkeepers, "incapable," "without means," with a few crack-brains among them: one, "his brain being crazed, absolutely of no account, anarchist and Jacobin;" another, "very dangerous through lack of judgment, a Jacobin, over-excited;" a third, "an instrument of tyranny, a man of blood capable of every vice, having assumed the name of Mutius Scoevola, of recognized depravity and unable to write."—Similarly, in the Aube districts, we find some of the heads feverish with the prevailing epidemic, for instance, at Nogent, the national agent, Delaporte, "who has the words 'guillotine' and 'revolutionary tribunal' always on his lips, and who declares that if he were the government he would imprison doctor, surgeon and lawyer, who delights in finding people guilty and says that he is never content except when he gets three pounds' weight of denunciations a day." But, apart from these madcaps, most of the administrators or judges are either people wholly unworthy of their offices, because they are "inept," "too uneducated," "good for nothing," "too little familiar with administrative forms," "too little accustomed to judicial action," "without information," "too busy with their own affairs," "unable to read or write," or, because "they have no delicacy," are "violent," "agitators," "knaves," "without public esteem," and more or less dishonest and despised.3398—As an example a fellow from Paris, who was at first at Troyes, a baker's apprentice,3399 and afterwards a dancing-master; then he appeared at the Club, making headway, doubtless, through his Parisian chatter, until he stood first and soon became a member of the district. Appointed an officer in the sixth battalion of Aube, he behaved in such a manner in Vendée that, on his return, "his brethren in arms" broke up the banner presented to him, "declaring him unworthy of such an honor, because he cowardly fled before the enemy." Nevertheless, after a short plunge, he came back to the surface and, thanks to his civil compeers, was reinstated in his administrative functions; during the Terror, he was intimate with all the Terrorists, being one of the important men of Troyes.—The mayor of the town, Gachez, an old soldier and ex-schoolmaster, is of the same stuff as this baker's apprentice. He, likewise, was a Vendéan hero; only, he was unable to distinguish himself as much as he liked, for, after enlisting, he failed to march; having pocketed the bounty of three hundred livres, he discovered that he had infirmities and, getting himself invalidated, he served the nation in a civil capacity. "His own partisans admit that he is a drunkard and that he has committed forgery." Some months after Thermidor he is sentenced to eight years imprisonment and put in the pillory for this crime. Hence, "almost the entire commune is against him; the women in the streets jeer him, and the eight sections meet together to request his withdrawal." But Representative Bô reports that he is every way entitled to remain, being a true Jacobin, an admirable terrorist and "the only sans-culotte mayor which the commune of Troyes has to be proud of."33100
It would be awarding too much honor to men of this stamp, to suppose that they had convictions or principles; they were governed by animosities and especially by their appetites,33101 to satiate which they33102 made the most of their offices.—At Troyes, "all provisions and foodstuffs are drawn upon to supply the table of the twenty-four" sans-culottes33103 to whom Bô entrusted the duty of weeding-out the popular club; before the organization of "this regenerating nucleus" the revolutionary committee, presided over by Rousselin, the civil commissioner, carried on its "gluttony" in the Petit-Louvre tavern, "passing nights bozing" and in the preparation of lists of suspects.33104 In the neighboring provinces of Dijon, Beaune, Semur and Aignayle-Duc, the heads of the municipality and of the club always meet in taverns and bars. At Dijon, we see "the ten or twelve Hercules of patriotism traversing the town, each with a chalice under his arm:"33105 this is their drinking-cup; each has to bring his own to the Montagnard inn; there, they imbibe copiously, frequently, and between two glasses of wine "declare who are outlaws." At Aignay-le-Duc, a small town with only half a dozen patriots "the majority of whom can scarcely write, most of them poor, burdened with families, and living without doing anything, never quit the bars, where, night and day, they revel;" their chief, a financial ex-procureur, now "concierge, archivist, secretary and president of the popular club," holds municipal council in the tavern. "Should they go out it was to chase female aristocrats," and one of them declares "that if the half of Aignay were slaughtered the other half would be all the better for it."—There is nothing like drinking to excite ferocity to the highest pitch. At Strasbourg the sixty mustachioed propagandist lodged in the college in which they are settled fixtures, have a cook provided for them by the town, and they revel day and night "on the choice provisions put in requisition," "on wines destined to the defenders of the country."33106 It is, undoubtedly, when coming out from one of these orgies that they proceed, sword in hand, to the popular club,33107 vote and force others to vote "death to all prisoners confined in the Seminary to the number of seven hundred, of every age and of both sexes, without any preliminary trial." For a man to become a good cut-throat, he must first get intoxicated;33108 such was the course pursued in Paris by those who did the work in September: the revolutionary government being an organized, prolonged and permanent Septembrisade, most of its agents are obliged to drink hard.33109—For the same reasons when the opportunity, as well as the temptation, to steal, presents itself, they steal.—At first, during six months, and up to the decree assigning them pay, the revolutionary committees "take their pay themselves;"33110 they then add to their legal salary of three and five francs a day about what they please: for it is they who assess the extraordinary taxes, and often, as at Montbrison, "without making any list or record of collections." On Frimaire 16, year II., the financial committee reports that "the collection and application of extraordinary taxes is unknown to the government; that it was impossible to supervise them, the National treasury having received no sums whatever arising from these taxes."33111 Two years after, four years after, the accounts of revolutionary taxation of forced loans, and of pretended voluntary gifts, still form a bottomless pit; out of forty billions of accounts rendered to the National Treasury only twenty are found to be verified; the rest are irregular and worthless. Besides, in many cases, not only is the voucher worthless or not forthcoming, but, again, it is proved that the sums collected disappeared wholly or in part. At Villefranche, out of one hundred and thirty-eight thousand francs collected, the collector of the district deposited but forty-two thousand; at Baugency, out of more than five hundred thousand francs collected, there were only fifty thousand deposited; at la Réole, out of at least five hundred thousand francs collected, there were but twenty-two thousand six hundred and fifty deposited. "The rest," says the collector at Villefranche, "were wasted by the Committee of Surveillance." "The tax-collectors," writes the national-agent at Orleans, "after having employed terror gave themselves up to orgies and are now building palaces."33112—As to the expenses which they claim, they almost always consist of "indemnities to members of revolutionary committees, to patriots, and to defray the cost of patriotic missions," to maintaining and repairing the meeting-rooms of the popular clubs, to military expeditions, and to succoring the poor, so that three or four hundred millions in gold or silver, extorted before the end of 1793, hundreds of millions of assignats extorted in 1793 and 1794, in short, almost the entire product of the total extraordinary taxation33113 was consumed on the spot and by the sans-culottes. Seated at the public banqueting table they help themselves first, and help themselves copiously.
A second windfall, equally gross. Enjoying the right to dispose arbitrarily of fortunes, liberties and lives, they can traffic in these, while no traffic can be more advantageous, both for buyers and sellers. Any man who is rich or well-off, in other words, every man who is likely to be taxed, imprisoned or guillotined, gladly consents "to compound," to redeem himself and those who belong to him. If he is prudent, he pays, before the tax, so as not to be over-taxed; he pays, after the tax, to obtain a diminution or delays; he pays to be admitted into the popular club. When danger draws near he pays to obtain or renew his certificate of civism, not to be declared "suspect," not to be denounced as a conspirator. After being denounced, he pays to be allowed imprisonment at home rather than in the jail, to be allowed imprisonment in the jail rather than in the general prison, to be well treated if he gets into this, to have time to get together his proofs in evidence, to have his record (dossier) placed and kept at the bottom of the file among the clerk's registers, to avoid being inscribed on the next batch of cases in the revolutionary Tribunal. There is not one of these favors that is not precious; consequently, ransoms without number are tendered, while the rascals33114 who swarm on the revolutionary committees, need but open their hands to fill their pockets. They run very little risk, for they are held in check only by their own kind, or are not checked at all. In any large town, two of them suffice for the issue of a warrant of arrest save a reference to the Committee within twenty-four hours, with the certainty that their colleagues will kindly return the favor.33115 Moreover, the clever ones know how to protect themselves beforehand. For example, at Bordeaux, where one of these clandestine markets had been set up, M. Jean Davilliers, one of the partners in a large commercial house, is under arrest in his own house, guarded by four sans-culottes; on the 8th of Brumaire, he is taken aside and told "that he is in danger if he does not come forward and meet the indispensable requirements of the Revolution in its secret expenditures." An important figure, Lemoal, member of the revolutionary committee and administrator of the district, had spoken of these requirements and thought that M. Davilliers should contribute the sum of one hundred and fifty thousand livres. Upon this, a knock at the door is heard; Lemoal enters and all present slip out of the room, and Lemoal pronounces these words only: "Do you consent?"—"But I cannot thus dispose of my partners' property."—"Then you will go to prison." At this threat the poor man yields and gives his note to Lemoal at twenty days, payable to bearer, for one hundred and fifty thousand livres, and, at the end of a fortnight, by dint of pushing his claims, obtains his freedom. Thereupon, Lemoal thinks the matter over, and deems it prudent to cover up his private extortion by a public one. Accordingly, he sends for M. Davilliers: "It is now essential for you to openly contribute one hundred and fifty thousand livres more for the necessities of the Republic. I will introduce you to the representatives to whom you should make the offer." The chicken being officially plucked in this way, nobody would suppose that it had been first privately plucked, and, moreover, the inquisitive, if there were any, would be thrown off the scent by the confusion arising from two sums of equal amount. M. Davilliers begs to be allowed to consult his partners, and, as they are not in prison, they refuse. Lemoal, on his side, is anxious to receive the money for his note, while poor Davilliers, "struck with terror by nocturnal arrests," and seeing that Lemoal is always on the top of the ladder, concludes to pay; at first, he gives him thirty thousand livres, and next, the charges, amounting in all to forty-one thousand livres, when, being at the end of his resources, he begs and entreats to have his note returned to him. Lemoal, on this, considering the chicken as entirely stripped, becomes mollified, and tears off in presence of his debtor "the signature in full of the note," and, along with this, his own receipts for partial payments underneath. But he carefully preserves the note itself, for, thus mutilated, it will show, if necessary, that he had not received anything, and that, through patriotism, he had undoubtedly wished to force a contribution from a merchant, but, finding him insolvent, had humanely canceled the written obligation.33116—Such are the precautions taken in this business. Others, less shrewd, rob more openly, among others the mayor, the seven members of the military commission surnamed "the seven mortal sins," and especially their president, Lacombe, who, by promising releases, extracts from eight or nine captives three hundred and fifty-nine thousand six hundred livres.33117 "Through such schemes," writes a rigid Jacobin,33118 "many of those who had been declared outlaws returned to Bordeaux by paying; of the number who thus redeemed their lives, some did not deserve to lose it, but, nevertheless, they were threatened with execution if they did not consent to everything. But material proofs of this are hard to obtain. These men now keep silent, for fear, through open denunciation, of sharing in the penalty of the traffickers in justice, and being unwilling to expose (anew) the life they have preserved." In short, the plucked pigeon is mute, so as not to attract attention, as well as to avoid the knife; and all the more, because those who pluck him hold on to the knife and might, should he cry out, dispatch him with the more celerity. Even if he makes no noise, they sometimes dispatch him so as to stifle in advance any possible outcry, which happened to the Duc du Chatelet and others. There is but one mode of self-preservation33119 and that is, "to settle with such masters by installments, to pay them monthly, like wet nurses, on a scale proportionate to the activity of the guillotine."—In any event, the pirates are not disturbed, for the trade in lives and liberties leaves no trace behind it, and is carried on with impunity for two years, from one end of France to the other, according to a tacit understanding between sellers and buyers.
There is a third windfall, not less large, but carried on in more open sunshine and therefore still more enticing.—Once the "suspect is incarcerated, whatever he brings to prison along with him, whatever he leaves behind him at home, becomes plunder; for, with the incompleteness, haste and irregularity of papers,33120 with the lack of surveillance and known connivance, the vultures, great and small, could freely use their beaks and talons.—At Toulouse, as in Paris and elsewhere, commissioners take from prisoners every object of value and, accordingly, in many cases, all gold, silver, assignats, and jewelry, which, confiscated for the Treasury, stop half-way in the hands of those who make the seizure.33121 At Poitiers, the seven scoundrels who form the ruling oligarchy, admit, after Thermidor, that they stole the effects of arrested parties.33122 At Orange, "Citoyenne Riot," wife of the public prosecutor, and "citoyennes Fernex and Ragot," wives of two judges, come in person to the record-office to make selections from the spoils of the accused, taking for their wardrobe silver shoe-buckles, laces and fine linen.33123—But all that the accused, the imprisoned and fugitives can take with them, amounts to but little in comparison with what they leave at home, that is to say, under sequestration. All the religious or seignorial chateaux and mansions in France are in this plight, along with their furniture, and likewise most of the fine bourgeois mansions, together with a large number of minor residences, well-furnished and supplied through provincial economy; besides these, nearly every warehouse and store belonging to large manufacturers and leading commercial houses; all this forms colossal spoil, such as was never seen before, consisting of objects one likes to possess, gathered in vast lots, which lots are distributed by hundreds of thousands over the twenty-six thousand square miles of territory. There are no owners for this property but the nation, an indeterminate, invisible personage; no barrier other than so many seals exists between the spoils and the despoilers, that is to say, so many strips of paper held fast by two ill-applied and indistinct stamps. Bear in mind, too, that the guardians of the spoil are the sans-culottes who have made a conquest of it; that they are poor; that such a profusion of useful or precious objects makes them feel the bareness of their homes all the more; that their wives would like to lay in a stock of furniture; moreover, has it not held out to them from the beginning of the Revolution, that "forty-thousand mansions, palaces and chateaux, two-thirds of the property of France, would be the reward of their valor?"33124 At this very moment, does not the representative on mission authorize their greed? Are not Albitte and Collot d'Herbois at Lyons, Fouché at Nevers, Javogues at Montbrison, proclaiming that the possessions of anti-revolutionaries and a surplus of riches form "the patrimony of the sans-culottes?"33125 Do they not read in the proclamations of Monestier,33126 that the peasants "before leaving home may survey and measure off the immense estates of their seigneurs, choose, for example, on their return, whatever they want to add to their farm.. .. tacking on a bit of field or rabbit-warren belonging to the former count or marquis?" Why not take a portion of his furniture, any of his beds or clothes-presses—It is not surprising that, after this, the slip of paper which protects sequestrated furniture and confiscated merchandise should be ripped off by gross and greedy hands! When, after Thermidor, the master returns to his own roof it is generally to an empty house; in this or that habitation in the Morvan,33127 the removal of the furniture is so complete that a bin turned upside down serves for a table and chairs, when the family sit down to their first meal.
In the towns the embezzlements are often more brazenly carried out than in the country. At Valenciennes, the Jacobin chiefs of the municipality are known under the title of "seal-breakers and patriotic robbers."33128 At Lyons, the Maratists, who dub themselves "the friends of Chalier," are, according to the Jacobins' own admission, "brigands, thieves and rascals."33129 They compose, to the number of three or four hundred, the thirty-two revolutionary committees; one hundred and fifty of leaders, "all of them administrators," form the popular club; in this town of one hundred and twenty thousand souls they number, as they themselves state, three thousand, and they firmly rely on "sharing with each other the wealth of Lyons. This huge cake belongs to them; they do not allow that strangers, Parisians, should have a slice,33130 and they intend to eat the whole of it, at discretion, without control, even to the last crumb. As to their mode of operations, it consists in "selling justice, in trading on denunciations, in holding under sequestration at least four thousand households," in putting seals everywhere on dwellings and warehouses, in not summoning interested parties who might watch their proceedings, in expelling women, children and servants who might testify to their robberies, in not drawing up inventories, in installing themselves as "guardians at five francs a day," themselves or their boon companions, and in "general squandering, in league with the administrators." It is impossible to stay their hands or repress them, even for the representatives. Take them in the act,33131 and you must shut your eyes or they will all shout at the oppression of patriots; they do this systematically so that nobody may be followed up.
We passed an order forbidding any authority to remove seals without our consent, and, in spite of the prohibition, they broke into a storehouse under sequestration,.... forced the locks and pillaged, under our own eyes, the very house we occupy. And who are these devastators? Two commissioners of the Committee who emptied the storehouse without our warrant, and even without having any power from the Committee."—It is a sack in due form, and day after day; it began on the 10th of October, 1793; it continued after, without interruption, and we have just seen that, on Floréal 28, year II., that is to say, April 26, 1794, after one hundred and twenty-three days, it is still maintained.
The last mad scramble and the most extensive of all.—In spite of the subterfuges of its agents, the Republic, having stolen immensely, and although robbed in its turn, could still hold on to a great deal; and first, to articles of furniture which could not be easily abstracted, to large lots of merchandise, also to the vast spoil of the palaces, chateaux and churches; next, and above all, to real estate, fixtures and buildings. To meet its expenses it put all that up for sale, and whoever wants anything has only to come forward as a buyer, the last bidder becoming the legal owner and at a cheap rate. The wood cut down in one year very often pays for a whole forest.33132 Sometimes a chateau can be paid for by a sale of the iron-railings of the park, or the lead on the roof.—Here are found chances for a good many bargains, and especially with objects of art. "The titles alone of the articles carried off, destroyed or injured, would fill volumes."33133 On the one hand, the commissioners on inventories and adjudications, "having to turn a penny on the proceeds of sales," throw on the market all they can, "avoiding reserving" objects of public utility and sending collections and libraries to auction with a view to get their percentages. On the other hand, nearly all these commissioners are brokers or second-hand dealers who alone know the value of rarities, and openly depreciate them in order to buy them in themselves, "and thus ensure for themselves exorbitant profits." In certain cases the official guardians and purchasers who are on the look-out take the precaution to disfigure "precious articles" so as to have them bought by their substitutes and accomplices: "for instance, they convert sets of books into odd volumes, and take machines to pieces; the tube and object-glass of a telescope are separated, which pieces the rogues who have bought them cheap know how to put together again." Often, in spite of the seals, they take in advance antiques, pieces of jewelry, medals, enamels and engraved stones;" nothing is easier, for "even in Paris in Thermidor, year II., agents of the municipality use anything with which to make a stamp, buttons, and even large pennies, so that whoever has a sou can remove and re-stamp the seals as he pleases;" having been successful, "they screen their thefts by substituting cut pebbles and counterfeit stones for real ones." Finally, at the auction sales, "fearing the honesty or competition of intelligent judges, they offer money (to these) to stay away from the sales; one case is cited where they have knocked a prospective bidder down." In the meantime, at the club, they shout with all their might; this, with the protection of a member of the municipality or of the Revolutionary Committee, shelters them from all suspicion. As for the protector, he gets his share without coming out into the light. Accuse, if you dare, a republican functionary who secretly, or even openly, profits by these larcenies; he will show clean hands.—Such is the incorruptible patriot, the only one of his species, whom the representatives discover at Strasbourg, and whom they appoint mayor at once. On the 10th of Vendémiaire, year III.,33134 there is found "in his apartments" a superb and complete assortment of ecclesiastical objects, "forty-nine copes and chasubles, silk or satin, covered with gold or silver; fifty-four palles of the same description;" a quantity of "reliquaries, vases and spoons, censers, laces, silver and gold fringe, thirty-two pieces of silk," etc. None of these fine things belong to him; they are the property of citizen Mouet, his father. This prudent parent, taking his word for it, "deposited them for safe keeping in his son's house during the month of June, 1792 (old style);"—could a good son refuse his father such a slight favor? It is very certain that, in '93 and '94, during the young man's municipal dictatorship, the elder did not pay the Strasbourg Jew brokers too much, and that they did business in an off-hand way. By what right could a son and magistrate prevent his father, a free individual, from looking after "his own affairs" and buying according to trade principles, as cheap as he could?
If such are the profits on the sale of personal property, what must they be on the sale of real estate?—It is on this traffic that the fortunes of the clever terrorists are founded. It accounts for the "colossal wealth peaceably enjoyed," after Thermidor, of the well-known "thieves" who, before Thermidor, were so many "little Robespierres," each in his own canton, "the patriots" who, around Orleans, "built palaces," who, "exclusives" at Valenciennes, "having wasted both public and private funds, possess the houses and property of emigrants, knocked down to them at a hundred times less than their value."33135 On this side, their outstretched fingers shamelessly clutch all they can get hold of; for the obligation of each arrested party to declare his name, quality and fortune, as it now is and was before the Revolution, gives local cupidity a known, sure, direct and palpable object.—At Toulouse, says a prisoner,33136 "the details and value of an object were taken down as if for a succession," while the commissioners who drew up the statement, "our assassins, proceeded, beforehand and almost under our eyes, to take their share, disputing with each other on the choice and suitableness of each object, comparing the cost of adjudication with the means of lessening it, discussing the certain profits of selling again and of the transfer, and consuming in advance the pickings arising from sales and leases."—In Provence, where things are more advanced and corruption is greater than elsewhere, where the purport and aims of the Revolution were comprehended at the start, it is still worse. Nowhere did Jacobin rulers display their real character more openly, and nowhere, from 1789 to 1799, was this character so well maintained. At Toulon, the demagogues in the year V., as in the year II., are33137 "former workmen and clerks in the Arsenal who had become 'bosses' by acting as informers and through terrorism, getting property for nothing, or at an insignificant price, and plotting sales of national possessions, petty traders from all quarters with stocks of goods acquired in all sorts of ways, through robberies, through purchases of stolen goods from servants and employees in the civil, war and navy departments, and through abandoned or bought-up claims; in a word, men who, having run away from other communes, pass their days in coffee-houses and their nights in houses of ill-fame."—At Draguignan, Brignolles, Vidauban, Fréjus, at Marseilles, after Thermidor, the intermittent returns to Terrorism always restore the same quarries of the justiciary and the police to office.33138 "Artisans, once useful, but now tired of working, and whom the profession of paid clubbists, idle guardians," and paid laborers "has totally demoralized," scoundrels in league with each other and making money out of whatever they can lay their hands on, like thieves at a fair, habitually living at the expense of the public, "bestowing the favors of the nation on those who share their principles, harboring and aiding many who are under the ban of the law and calling themselves model patriots,33139 that is, in the pay of gambling hells and houses of prostitution."—In the rural districts, the old bands "consisting of hordes of homeless brigands" who worked so well during the anarchy of the Constituent and Legislative assemblies, form anew during the anarchy of the Directory; they make their appearance in the vicinity of Apt "commencing with petty robberies and then, strong in the impunity and title of sans-culottes, break into farm-houses, rob and massacre the inmates, strip travelers, put to ransom all who happen to cross their path, force open and pillage houses in the commune of Gorges, stop women in the streets, tear off their rings and crosses," and attack the hospital, sacking it from top to bottom, while the town and military officers, just like them, allow them to go on.33140—Judge by this of their performances in the time of Robespierre, when the vendors and administrators of the national possessions exercised undisputed control. Everywhere, at that time, in the departments of Var, Bouches-du-Rhône, and Vaucluse, "a club of would-be patriots" had long prepared the way for their exactions. It had "paid appraisers for depreciating whatever was put up for sale, and false names for concealing real purchasers; "a person not of their clique, was excluded from the auction-room; if he persisted in coming in they would, at one time, put him under contribution for the privilege of bidding," and, at another time, make him promise not to bid above the price fixed by the league, while, to acquire the domain, they paid him a bonus. Consequently, "national property" was given away "for almost nothing," the swindlers who acquired it never being without a satisfactory warrant for this in their own eyes. Into whose hands could the property of anti-revolutionists better fall than into those of patriots? According to Marat, the martyr apostle and canonised saint of the Revolution, what is the object of the Revolution but to give to the lowly the fortunes of the great?33141 In all national sales everywhere, in guarding sequestrations, in all revolutionary ransoms, taxes, loans and seizures, the same excellent argument prevails; nowhere, in printed documents or in manuscripts, do I find any revolutionary committee which is at once terrorist and honest. Only, it is rare to find specific and individual details regarding all the members of the same committee.—Here, however, is one case, where, owing to the lucky accident of an examination given in detail, one can observe in one nest, every variety of the species and of its appetites, the dozen or fifteen types of the Jacobin hornet, each abstracting what suits him from whatever he lights on, each indulging in his favorite sort of rapine.—At Nantes, "Pinard, the great purveyor of the Committee,33142 orders everything that each member needs for his daily use to be carried to his house."—"Gallou takes oil and brandy," and especially "several barrels from citizen Bissonneau's house."—"Durassier makes domiciliary visits and exacts contributions;" among others "he compels citizen Lemoine to pay twenty-five hundred livres, to save him from imprisonment."—"Naud affixes and removes seals in the houses of the incarcerated, makes nocturnal visits to the dwellings of the accused and takes what suits him."—"Grandmaison appropriates plate under sequestration, and Bachelier plate given as a present."—"Joly superintends executions and takes all he can find, plate, jewelry, precious objects."—"Bolognié forces the return of a bond of twenty thousand livres already paid to him."—Perrochaux demands of citoyenne Ollemard-Dudan "fifty thousand livres, to prevent her imprisonment," and confiscates for his own benefit sixty thousand livres worth of tobacco, in the house of the widow Daigneau-Mallet, who, claiming it back, is led off by him to prison under the pretext of interceding for her.—Chaux frightens off by terrorism his competitors at auction sales, has all the small farms on the Baroissière domain knocked down to him, and exclaims concerning a place which suits him: "I know how to get it! I'll have the owner arrested. He'll be very glad to let me have his ground to get out of prison.' "—The collection is complete, and gathered on a table, it offers specimens which can be found scattered all over France.
The Armed Force, the National Guard and the Gendarmerie.
—Its purgation and composition.—The Revolutionary Armies in
Paris and in the departments.—Quality of the recruits.
—Their employment.—Their expeditions into the countryside
and the towns.—Their exploits in the vicinity of Paris and
Lyons.—The company of Maratists, the American Hussars and
the German Legion at Nantes.—General character of the
Revolutionary government and of the administrative staff of
the Reign of Terror.
The last manipulators of the system remain, the hands which seize, the armed force which takes bodily hold of men and things.—The first who are employed for this purpose are the National Guard and the ordinary gendarmerie. Since 1790, these bodies are of course constantly weeded out until only fanatics and robots are left;33143 nevertheless, the weeding-out continues as the system develops itself. At Strasbourg,33144 on Brumaire 14, the representatives have dismissed, arrested and sent to Dijon the entire staff of the National Guard to serve as hostages until peace is secured; three days afterwards, considering that the cavalry of the town had been mounted and equipped at its own expense, they deem it aristocratic, bourgeois, and "suspect," and seize the horses and put the officers in arrest.—At Troyes, Rousselin, "National civil commissioner," dismisses, for the same reason, and with not less dispatch, all of the gendarmes at one stroke, except four, and "puts under requisition their horses, fully equipped, also their arms, so as to at once mount well known and tried sans-culottes." On principle, the poor sans-culottes, who are true at heart and in dress, alone have the right to bear arms, and should a bourgeois be on duty he must have only a pike, care being taken to take it away from him the moment he finishes his rounds.33145
But, alongside of the usual armed force, there is still another, much better selected and more effective, the reserve gendarmerie, a special, and, at the same time, movable and resident body, that is to say, the "revolutionary army," which, after September 5, 1793, the government had raised in Paris and in most of the large towns.—That of Paris, comprising six thousand men, with twelve hundred cannoneers, sends detachments into the provinces—two thousand men to Lyons, and two hundred to Troyes;33146 Ysabeau and Tallien have at Bordeaux a corps of three thousand men; Salicetti, Albitte and Gasparin, one of two thousand men at Marseilles; Ysoré and Duquesnoy, one of one thousand men at Lille; Javogues, one of twelve hundred at Montbrison. Others, less numerous, ranging from six hundred down to two hundred men, hold Moulins, Grenoble, Besançon, Belfort, Bourg, Dijon, Strasbourg, Toulouse, Auch and Nantes.33147 When, on March 27, 1794, the Committee of Public Safety, threatened by Hébert, has them disbanded for being Hébertists, in any of them are to remain at least as a nucleus, under various forms and names, either as kept by the local administration under the title of "paid guards,"33148 or as disbanded soldiers, loitering about and doing nothing, getting themselves assigned posts of rank in the National Guard of their town on account of their exploits; in this way they keep themselves in service, which is indispensable, for it is through these that the régime is established and lasts. "The revolutionary army,33149 say the orders and decrees promulgated, "is intended to repress anti-revolutionaries, to execute, whenever it is found necessary, revolutionary laws and measures for public safety," that is to say, "to guard those who are shut up, arrest 'suspects,' demolish chateaux, pull down belfries, ransack vestries for gold and silver objects, seize fine horses and carriages," and especially "to seek for private stores and monopolies," in short, to exercise manual constraint and strike every one on the spot with physical terror.—We readily see what sort of soldiers the revolutionary army is composed of.
Naturally, as it is recruited by voluntary enlistment, and all candidates have passed the purifying scrutiny of the clubs, it comprises none but ultra-Jacobins. Naturally, the pay being forty sous a day, it comprises none but the very lowest class. Naturally, as the work is as loathsome as it is atrocious, it comprises but few others33150 than those out of employment and reduced to an enlistment to get a living, "hairdressers without customers, lackeys without places, vagabonds, wretches unable to earn a living by honest labor," "thick and hard hitters" who have acquired the habit of bullying, knocking down and keeping honest folks under their pikes, a gang of confirmed scoundrels making public brigandage a cloak for private brigandage, inhabitants of the slums glad to bring down their former superiors into the mud, and themselves take precedence and strut about in order to prove by their arrogance and self-display that they, in their turn, are princes.—"Take a horse, the nation pays for it!"33151 said the sans-culottes of Bordeaux to their comrades in the street, who, "in a splendid procession," of three carriages, each drawn by six horses, escorted by a body on horseback, behind, in front, and each side, conducting Riouffe and two other "suspects" to the Réole prison. The commander of the squad who guards prisoners on the way to Paris, and who "starves them along the road to speculate on them," is an ex-cook of Agen, having become a gendarme; he makes them travel forty leagues extra, "purposely to glorify himself," and "let all Agen see that he has government money to spend, and that he can put citizens in irons." Accordingly, in Agen, "he keeps constantly and needlessly inspecting the vehicle," winking at the spectators, "more triumphant than if he had made a dozen Austrians prisoners and brought them along himself." At last, to show the crowd in the street the importance of his capture, he summons two blacksmiths to come out and rivet, on the legs of each prisoner, a cross-bar cannon-ball weighing eighty pounds.33152 The more display these henchmen make of their brutality, the greater they think themselves. At Belfort, a patriot of the club dies, and a civic interment takes place; a detachment of the revolutionary army joins the procession; the men are armed with axes; on reaching the cemetery, the better to celebrate the funeral, "they cut down all the crosses (over the graves) and make a bonfire of them, while the carmagnole ends this ever memorable day."33153—Sometimes the scene, theatrical and played by the light of flambeaux, makes the actors think that they have performed an extraordinary and meritorious action, "that they have saved the country." "This very night," writes the agent at Bordeaux,33154 nearly three thousand men have been engaged in an important undertaking, with the members of the Revolutionary Committee and of the municipality at the head of it. They visited every wholesale dealer's store in town and in the Faubourg des Chartrons, taking possession of their letter-books, sealing up their desks, arresting the merchants and putting them in the Seminiare.... Woe to the guilty!"—If the prompt confinement of an entire class of individuals is a fine thing for a town, the seizure of a whole town itself is still more imposing. Leaving Marseilles with a small army,33155 commanded by two sans-culottes, they surround Martigne and enter it as if it were a mill. The catch is superb; in this town of five thousand souls there are only seventeen patriots; the rest are Federalists or Moderates. Hence a general disarmament and domiciliary visits. The conquerors depart, carrying off every able-bodied boy, "five hundred lads subject to the conscription, and leave in the town a company of sans-culottes to enforce obedience." It is certain that obedience will be maintained and that the garrison, joined to the seventeen patriots, will do as they like with their conquest.
In effect, all, both bodies and goods, are at their disposal, and they consequently begin with the surrounding countryside, entering private houses to get at their stores, also the farmhouses to have the grain threshed, in order to verify the declarations of their owners and see if these are correct: if the grain is not threshed out at once it will be done summarily and confiscated, while the owner will be sentenced to twelve months in irons; if the declaration is not correct, he is condemned as a monopolist and punished with death. Armed with this order,33156 each band takes the field and gathers together not only grain, but supplies of every description. "That of Grenoble, the agent writes,33157 does wonderfully; in one little commune alone, four hundred measures of wheat, twelve hundred eggs, and six hundred pounds of butter had been found. All this was quickly on the way to Grenoble." In the vicinity of Paris, the forerunners of the throng, provided "with pitchforks and bayonets, rush to the farms, take oxen out of their stalls, grab sheep and chickens, burn the barns, and sell their booty to speculators."33158 "Bacon, eggs, butter and chickens—the peasants surrender whatever is demanded of them, and thenceforth have nothing that they can take to market. They curse the Republic which has brought war and famine on them, and nevertheless they do what they are told: on being addressed, 'Citizen peasant, I require of you on peril of your head,'... it is not possible to refuse."33159—Accordingly, they are only too glad to be let off so cheaply. On Brumaire 19, about seven o'clock in the evening, at Tigery, near Corbeil, twenty-five men "with sabers and pistols in their belts, most of them in the uniform of the National Guards and calling themselves the revolutionary army," enter the house of Gibbon, an old ploughman, seventy-one years of age, while fifty others guard all egress from it, so that the expedition may not be interfered with. Turlot, captain, and aid-de-camp to General Henriot, wants to know where the master of the house is.—"In his bed," is the reply.—"Wake him up."—The old man rises.—Give up your arms."—His wife hands over a fowling-piece, the only arm on the premises. The band immediately falls on the poor man, "strikes him down, ties his hands, and puts a sack over his head," and the same thing is done to his wife and to eight male and two female servants. "Now, give us the keys of your closets;" they want to be sure that there are no fleur-de-lys or other illegal articles. They search the old man's pockets, take his keys, and, to dispatch business, break into the chests and seize or carry off all the plate, "twenty-six table-dishes, three soup-ladles, three goblets, two snuff-boxes, forty counters, two watches, another gold watch and a gold cross." "We will draw up a procès-verbal of all this at our leisure in Meaux. Now, where's your silver? If you don't say where it is, the guillotine is outside and I will be your executioner." The old man yields and merely requests to be untied. But it is better to keep him bound, "so as to make him 'sing.'" They carry him into the kitchen and "put his feet into a heated brazier." He shouts with pain, and indicates another chest which they break open and then carry off what they find there, "seventy-two francs in coin and five or six thousand livres in assignats, which Gibbon had just received for the requisitions made on him for corn." Next, they break open the cellar doors, set a cask of vinegar running, carry wine upstairs, eat the family meal, get drunk and, at last, clear out, leaving Gibbon with his feet burnt, and garroted, as well as the other eleven members of his household, quite certain that there will be no pursuit.33160—In the towns, especially in federalist districts, however, these robberies are complicated with other assaults. At Lyons, whilst the regular troops are lodged in barracks, the revolutionary army is billeted on the householders, two thousand vile, sanguinary blackguards from Paris, and whom their general, Ronsin himself, calls "scoundrels and brigands," alleging, in excuse for this, that "honest folks cannot be found for such business." How they treat their host, his wife and his daughters may be imagined; contemporaries glide over these occurrences and, through decency or disgust, avoid giving details.33161 Some simply use brutal force; others get rid of a troublesome husband by the guillotine; in the most exceptional cases they bring their wenches along with them, while the housekeeper has to arouse herself at one o'clock at night and light a fire for the officer who comes in with the jolly company.—And yet, there are others still worse, for the worst attract each other. We have seen the revolutionary committee at Nantes, also the representative on mission in the same city; nowhere did the revolutionary Sabbat rage so furiously, and nowhere was there such a traffic in human lives. With such band-leaders as Carrier and his tools on the Committee, one may be sure that the instrumentalists will be worthy.
Accordingly, several members of the Committee themselves oversee executions and lend a hand in the massacres.—One of these, Goullin, a creole from St. Domingo, sensual and nervous, accustomed to treating a Negro as an animal and a Frenchman as a white Negro, a Septembriseur on principle, chief instigator and director of the "drownings," goes in person to empty the prison of Bouffay, and, verifying that death, the hospital or releases, had removed the imprisoned for him, adds, of his own authority, fifteen names, taken haphazard, to reach his figures.—Joly, a commissioner on the Committee, very expert in the art of garroting, ties the hands of prisoners together two and two and conducts them to the river.33162—Grand-maison, another member of the Committee, a former dancing-master, convicted of two murders and pardoned before the Revolution, strikes down with his saber the imploring hands stretched out to him over the planks of the lighter.33163—Pinard, another Committee-commissioner, ransoms, steals off into the country and himself kills, through preference, women and children.33164 Naturally, the three bands which operate along with them, or under their orders, comprise only men of their species. In the first one, called the Marat company, each of the sixty members swears, on joining it, to adopt Marat's principles and carry out Marat's doctrine. Goullin,33165 one of the founders, demands in relation to each member, "Isn't there some one still more rascally? For we must have that sort to bring the aristocrats to reason!"33166 After Frimaire 5 "the Maratists" boast of their arms being "tired out" with striking prisoners with the flat of their sabers to make them march to the Loire,33167 and we see that, notwithstanding this fatigue, the business suited them, as their officers tried to influence Carrier to be detailed on the "drowning" service and because it was lucrative. The men and women sentenced to death, were first stripped of their clothes down to the shirt, and even the shift; it would be a pity to let valuable objects go to the bottom with their owners, and therefore the drowners divide these amongst themselves; a wardrobe in the house of the adjutant Richard is found full of jewelry and watches.33168 This company of sixty must have made handsome profits out of the four or five thousand drowned.-The second band, called "the American Hussars," and who operated in the outskirts, was composed of blacks and mulattos, numerous enough in this town of privateers. It is their business to shoot women, whom they first violate; "they are our slaves," they say; "we have won them by the sweat of our brows." "Those who have the misfortune to be spared, become in their hands mad in a couple of days; in any event they are re-arrested shortly afterwards and shot.—The last band, which is styled "The German Legion," is formed out of German deserters and mercenaries speaking little or no French. They are employed by the Military Commission to dispatch the Vendeans picked up along the highways, and who are usually shot in groups of twenty five. "I came," says an eye-witness,33169 "to a sort of gorge where there was a semi-circular quarry; there, I noticed the corpses of seventy-five women naked and lying on their backs." The victims of that day consisted of girls from sixteen to eighteen years of age. One of them says to her conductor, "I am sure you are taking us to die," and the German replies in his broken jargon, probably with a coarse laugh," No, it is for a change of air. They are placed in a row in front of the bodies of the previous day and shot. Those who do not fall, see the guns reloaded; these are again shot and the wounded dispatched with the butt ends of the muskets. Some of the Germans then rifle the bodies, while others strip them and "place them on their backs."—To find workmen for this task, it is necessary to descend, not only to the lowest wretches in France but, again, to the brutes of a foreign race and tongue, and yet lower still, to an inferior race degraded by slavery and perverted by license.
Such, from the top to the bottom of the ladder, at every stage of authority and obedience, is the ruling staff of the revolutionary government.33170 Through its recruits and its work, through its morals and modes of proceeding, it evokes the almost forgotten image of its predecessors, for there is an image of it in the period from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century. At that time also, society was frequently overcome and ravaged by barbarians; dangerous nomads, malevolent outcasts, bandits turned into soldiers suddenly pounced down on an industrious and peaceful population. Such was the case in France with the "Routiers" and the "Tard-venus," at Rome with the army of the Constable of Bourbon, in Flanders with the bands of the Duke of Alba and the Duke of Parma, in Westphalia and in Alsace, with Wallenstein's veterans, and those of Bernard of Saxe-Weimar. They lived upon a town or province for six months, fifteen months, two years, until the town or province was exhausted. They alone were armed, master of the inhabitants, using and abusing things and persons according to their caprices. But they were declared bandits, calling themselves scorchers, (ecorcheurs) riders and adventurers, and not pretending to be humanitarian philosophers. Moreover, beyond an immediate and personal enjoyment, they demanded nothing; they employed brutal force only to satiate their greed, their cruelty, their lust.—The latter add to private appetites a far greater devastation, the systematic and gratuitous ravages enforced upon them by the superficial theory with which they are imbued.
3301 (return)
[ "The Revolution,"
II., pp. 298-304, and p. 351.]
3302 (return)
[ "The Revolution,"
II., pp.298-304, and p. 351. Should the foregoing testimony be deemed
insufficient, the following, by those foreigners who had good
opportunities for judging, may be added: (Gouverneur Morris, letter of
December 3, 1794.) "The French are plunged into an abyss of poverty and
slavery, a slavery all the more degrading because the men who have plunged
them into it merit the utmost contempt."—Meissner, "Voyage à Paris,"
(at the end of 1795,) p. 160. "The (revolutionary) army and the
revolutionary committees were really associations organized by crime for
committing every species of injustice, murder, rapine, and brigandage with
impunity. The government had deprived all men of any talent or integrity
of their places and given these to its creatures, that is to say, to the
dregs of humanity."—Baron Brinckmann, Chargé d'Affaires from Sweden.
(Letter of July 11, 1799.) "I do not believe that the different classes of
society in France are more corrupt than elsewhere; but I trust that no
people may ever be ruled by as imbecile and cruel scoundrels as those that
have ruled France since the advent of its new state of freedom... The
dregs of the people, stimulated from above by sudden and violent
excitement, have everywhere brought to the surface the scum of
immorality."]
3303 (return)
[ Fleury, "Babeuf,"
139, 150.—Granier de Cassagnac, "Histoire du Directoire," II.,
24-170.—(Trial of Babeuf, passim.) The above quotations are from
documents seized in Babeuf's house, also from affidavits made by
witnesses, and especially by captain Grizel.]
3304 (return)
[ Moniteur, session of
September 5, 1793. "Since our virtue, our moderation, our philosophic
ideas, are of no use to us, let us be brigands for the good of the people;
let us be brigands!"]
3305 (return)
[ Babeuf, "Le Tribun du
Peuple," No.40. Apologia for the men of September, "who have only been the
priests, the sacrificers of a just immolation for public security. If
anything is to be regretted it is that a larger and more general Second of
September did not sweep away all starvers and all despoilers."]
3306 (return)
[ Granier de Cassagnac,
II., 90. (Deposition of Grisel.) Rossignol said, "That snuff-box is all I
have left, here it is so that I may exist."—"Massard owned a pair of
boots which he could not collect because he had no money with which to pay
the shoemaker."]
3307 (return)
[ Archives Nationales,
Cf. 31167. (Report of Robin, Nivôse 9.): "The women always had a
deliberative voice in the popular assemblies of the Pantheon section," and
in all the other clubs they attended the meetings.]
3308 (return)
[ Moniteur, XIX., 103.
(Meeting of the Jacobin club, Dec. 28, 1793.) Dubois-Crancé introduces the
following question to each member who is subjected to the weeding-out
vote: "What have you done that would get you hung in case of a counter
revolution?"]
3309 (return)
[ Ibid., XVII., 410.
(Speech by Maribon-Montaut, Jacobin club, Brumaire 21, year II.)]
3310 (return)
[ Dauban, "Paris in
1794," 142. (Police report of Ventôse 13, year II.)]
3311 (return)
[ Morellet, "Mémoires,"
II. 449.]
3312 (return)
[ Dauban, ib.,, 35.
(Note drawn up in January, 1794, probably by the physician Quêvremont de
Lamotte.)—Ibid., 82.—Cf. Morellet, II., 434-470. (Details on
the issue of certificates of civism, in September, 1793.)]
3313 (return)
[ Archives Nationales,
F.7, 31167. (Report by Latour-Lamontagne, Ventôse 1, year II.): "It is
giving these associations too much influence; it is destroying the
jurisdiction of the general assemblies (of the section.) We find
accordingly, that these are being deserted and that the plotters and
intriguers succeed in making popular clubs the centers of public business
in order to control affairs more easily."]
3314 (return)
[ Dauban, ibid., 203.
(Report by Bacon-Tacon, Ventose 19.) "In the general assembly of the
Maison Commune section all citizens of any rank in the companies have been
weeded out. The slightest stain of incivism, the slightest negligence in
the service, caused their rejection. Out of twenty-five who passed
censorship-nineteen at least were rejected....Most of them due to their
trade such as eating-house keeper, shoe-maker, cook, carpenter, tailor
etc."]
3315 (return)
[ Ibid., 141. (Report
by Charmont, Ventôse 12.)—Ibid, 140. "There is only one way, it is
said at the Café des Grands Hommes, on the boulevard, to keep from being
arrested, and that is to scheme for admission into the civil and
revolutionary committees when there happens to be a vacancy. Before
salaries were attached to these places nobody wanted them; since that,
there are disputes as to who shall be appointed."]
3316 (return)
[ Ibid., 307. (Report
of Germinal 7.)]
3317 (return)
[ Wallon, "Histoire du
Tribunal Revolutionaire," IV., 129.]
3318 (return)
[ Archives Nationales,
AF., II., 46. (Act of the Committee of Public Safety, Prairial 15.):
"Citizens Pillon, Gouste and Né, members of the Revolutionary committee of
the Marat section, are removed. Their duties will be performed by citizens
Martin, Majon and Mirel. Mauvielle, rue de la Liberté, No. 32, is
appointed on the said Revolutionary Committee to complete it, as it was
only composed of eleven members."—And other similar acts.]
3319 (return)
[ Duverger, decree of
Frimaire 14, year II. "The application of revolutionary laws and measures
of general security and public safety is confided to the municipalities
and revolutionary committees." See, in chapter II., the extent of the
domain thus defined. It embraces nearly everything. It suffices to run
through the registers of a few of the revolutionary committees, to verify
this enormous power and see how they interfere in every detail of
individual life]
3320 (return)
[ Archives Nationales,
F.7, 31167. (Report, Nivôse 1, year II., by Leharival.)]
3321 (return)
[ Dauban, "Paris en
1794," 307. (Report of March 29, 1794.) It here relates to the "Piques"
Section, Place Vendome.]
3322 (return)
[ Dauban, ib., 308.
(Note found among Danton's papers and probably written by the physician,
Quevremont de Lamotte.)]
3323 (return)
[ Dauban, ib., 125.
(Report of Bérard, Ventôse 10.) In the words of a woman belonging to the
Bonne-Novelle section: "My husband has been in prison four months. And
what for? He was one of the first at the Bastille; he has always refused
places so that the good sans-culottes might have them, and, if he has made
enemies, it was because he was unwilling to see these filled by
ignoramuses or new-comers, who, vociferating and apparently thirsting for
blood, have created a barrier of partisans around them."]
3324 (return)
[ Dauban, ibid., 307.
(Report of March 29, 1794.)]
3325 (return)
[ Ibid., 150. (Report
of Ventôse 14.)—Archives Nationales, F.7, 31167. (Reports of Nivôse
9 and 25.): "A great many citizens are found in the sections who are
called out after the meeting, to get forty sous. I notice that most of
them are masons, and even a few coach drivers belonging to the nation, who
can do without the nation's indemnity, which merely serves them for drink
to make them very noisy."—"The people complain, because the persons
to whom the forty sous are given, to attend the section assemblies do
nothing all day, being able to work at different trades.... and they relay
upon these forty sous."]
3326 (return)
[ Dauban, ibid., 312.
(Note by Quevremont.)—Moniteur, XVIII., 568, (Meeting of the
commune, Frimaire 11, year II.): "The Beaurepaire section advertises that
wishing to put a stop to the cupidity of the wine-dealers of the
arrondissement, it has put seals on all their cellars."]
3327 (return)
[ Dauban, ibid., 345.
(Order of the day by Henriot, Floreal 9.)]
3328 (return)
[ Mallet-Dupan, II.,
56. (March, 1794.)]
3329 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXVII., 10. (Speech by Barbaroux, May 14, 1793.)—Report on the
papers found in Robespierre's apartment by Courtois, 285. (Letter by
Collot d'Herbois Frimaire 3, year II., demanding that Paris Jacobins be
sent to him at Lyons.) "If I could have asked for our old ones I should
have done... but they are necessary at Paris, almost all of them having
been made mayors."]
3330 (return)
[ Meissner, "Voyage à
Paris," (at the end of 1795,) 160. "Persons who can neither read nor write
obtain the places of accountants of more or less importance."? Archives
des Affaires étrangères, vol. 324. (Denunciations of Pio to the club,
against his colleagues.)—Dauban, ibid., 35. (Note by Quevremont,
Jan., 1794.): "The honest man who knows how to work cannot get into the
ministerial bureaux, especially those of the War and Navy departments, as
well as those of the Commune and of the Departments, without having a lump
in his throat.—Offices are mostly filled by creatures of the Commune
who very often have neither talent nor integrity. Again, the
denunciations, always welcomed, however frivolous and baseless they may
be, turn everything upside down."]
3331 (return)
[ Moniteur, XXIV., 397
(Speech of Dubois-Crancé in the Convention Floréal 16, year III.)—Archives
Nationales, F.7, 31167. (Report by Rolin, Nivôse 7, year II.) "The same
complaints are heard against the civil Commissioners of the section, most
of whom are unintelligent, not even knowing how to read."]
3332 (return)
[ Archives des Affaires
étrangères, vol. 1411. (August, 1793.) "Plan adopted" for the organization
of the Police, "excepting executive modifications." In fact, some months
later, the number of claqueurs, male and female, is much greater, and
finally reaches a thousand. (Beaulieu, "Essais," V., l10.)—The same
plan comprehends fifteen agents at two thousand four hundred francs,
"selected from the frequenters of the clubs," to revise the daily morning
lists; thirty at one thousand francs, for watching popular clubs, and
ninety to twelve hundred francs for watching the section assemblies.]
3333 (return)
[ Archives Nationales,
F.7, 4436. (Letter of Bouchotte, Minister of war, Prairial 5, year II.)
"The appointment of Ronsin, as well as of all his staff, again excited
public opinion. The Committee, to assure itself, sent the list to the
Jacobin club, where they were accepted."—Ibid., AF.,II., 58. "Paris,
Brumaire II, year II., club of the Friends of Liberty and Equality, in
session at the former Jacobin club, rue St. Honoré. List of the citizens
who are to set out for Lyons and act as national commissioners. (Here
follow their names.) All the citizens designated have undergone the
inspection of the said club, at its meeting this day." (Here follow the
signatures of the President and three secretaries.)—"Journal des
Débats et Correspondence de la Société des Jacobins, No.543, 5th day of
the 3rd month of the year II.—In relation to the formation of a new
Central club, "Terrasson is of opinion that this club may become
liberticide, and demands a committee to examine into it and secure its
extinction. The committee demanded by Terrasson is appointed."—It is
evident that they hold on energetically to this monopoly.—Cf.
Moniteur, XIX., 637. (Ventôse 13.) Motion adopted in the Jacobin club,
obliging the ministers to turn out of office any individual excluded from
the club.]
3334 (return)
[ Dauban, ibid., 307.
(Report of Germinal 9.)]
3335 (return)
[ Moniteur, XXII. 353.
(Session of Brumaire 20, year III. Reclamation made by M. Bélanger at the
bar of the Convention.)]
3336 (return)
[ Archives Nationales,
AF., II., 40. (Acts passed by the Committee of Public Safety at the dates
indicated.) Beaulieu, "Essais," v., 200. (Ibid.) The registers of the
Committee of Public Safety contain a number of similar gratuities paid to
provincial clubs and patriots, for instance, AF., II. 58, (Brumaire 8),
fifty thousand francs to Laplanche, and, (Brumaire 9), fifty thousand
francs to Couthon, "to maintain public spirit in Calvados, to revive
public spirit in Lyons, to aid, as required, the less successful patriots
who zealously devote their time to the service of their country."]
3337 (return)
[ Dauban, ibid., 171,
(report of Ventôse 17), and 243, (report of Ventôse 25), on the
civil-committees and revolutionary committees, who order meat served to
them before serving it to the sick, and who likewise serve the good
friends of their wives.? Ibid., 146. (Report of Ventôse 10.)... Archives
Nationales F.7, 2475. (Register of the deliberations of the revolutionary
committee of the Piques sections, Brumaire 27, year II.) "The Committee
orders that the two-horse cab belonging to Lemarche be henceforth at the
service of the section and of the Committee when measures of security are
concerned." In this register, and others of the same series, we clearly
see the inside of a committee and its vast despotism. Style and
orthography, with almost all, are of the same low order.]
3338 (return)
[ Archives des Affaires
étrangères, vol. 1411. (Report of Aug.21 and 22, 1793.) "General Henriot
sent me several.... who made use of the authority of the Committee of
Public Safety and General Security, as well as of that which he delegated
to me, to make domiciliary visits at the houses of individuals who were
not assured patriots; but that did not warrant their receiving money and
even abstracting it."]
3339 (return)
[ Dauban, ibid., 36 and
48. (Case of the Notary, Brichard.)]
3340 (return)
[ Cf. "The Revolution,"
II., 302, 303.—Mercier, "Paris pendant la Revolution," I., 151.—Moniteur,
XVIII., 660. (Session of Frimaire 24, speech by Lecomtre in the
Convention.)—On robberies and the bribes paid, see, among other
documents, "Mémoires sur les Prisons," I., 290. (Eighty thousand francs of
bribes given to the head of the police force by Perisial, keeper of an
eating-house, for the privilege of feeding prisoners in St. Lazare.)]
3341 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXV., 77. (Trial of Fouquier-Tinville.) Testimony of Robillard: "Another
day, in the general assembly, he struck a citizen with his saber."]
3342 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XXXV., 407. (Lists in Robespierre's handwriting.)]
3343 (return)
[ Miot de Melito,
"Mémoires," I., 46-51.-Buchot is not the only one of his species in the
ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the archives of this ministry, vol. 324,
may be found the sayings and doings of a certain Pio, an Italian refugee
who slipped into the place, simulating poverty, and displaying patriotism,
and who denounces his chief and colleagues.-The ex-notary Pigeot,
condemned to twenty years in irons and put in the pillory, Frimaire 9,
year III., will come to the surface; he is encountered under the Directory
as introducer of ambassadors.-Concerning one of the envoys of the
Directory to Switzerland, here is a note b~ Mallet-Dupan. ("Anecdotes
manuscrites," October, 1797.) "The Directonal ambassador, who has come to
exact from the Swiss the expulsion of the body-guard, is named Mingot, of
Belfort, a relation of Reubell's, former body-guard to M. le Comte
d'Artois.-He came to Zurich with a prostitute, a seamstress of Zurich,
established in Berne. He was living with her at the expense of the Zurich
government. Having invited the family of this creature, that is to say a
common horse-driver with his wife and some other persons, to dinner, they
drank and committed such excesses that the driver's wife, who was big with
child, gave birth to it in the midst of the banquet. This creature gave
Mingot a disease which has laid him up at Basle."]
3344 (return)
[ "The Revolution,"
II., 338, 348, 354.]
3345 (return)
[ Martel, "Types
Révolutionnaires," 136-144.—The Minister of War appoints Henriot
brigadier-general, July 3, 1793, and major-general on the 19th of
September, and says in a postscript, "Please communicate your service
record to me," unknown in the ministry because they were of no account.—On
the orgies at Choisy-sur-Seine, V. (Archives, W2, 500-501), see
investigation of Thermidor 18 and 19, year II., made at Boisy-sur-Seine by
Blache, agent of the committee of General Security. Boulanger,
brigadier-general, and Henriot's first lieutenant, was an ex-companion
jeweller.]
3346 (return)
[ Archives des Affaires
étrangères, vol. 1411. Orders of the day by Henriot, September 16,
Vendémiaire 29, year II., and Brumaire 19, year II. Many of these orders
of the day are published in Dauban, ("Paris en 1794"), p. 33. "Let our
enemies pile up their property, build houses and palaces, let them have
them, what do we care, we republicans, we do not want them! All we need to
shelter us is a cabin, and as for wealth, simply the habits, the virtues
and the love of our country. Headquarters, etc."—P. 43: "Yesterday
evening a fire broke out in the Grand Augustins.... Everybody worked at it
and it was put out in a very short time. Under the ancient regime the fire
would have lasted for days. Under the system of freemen the fire lasted
only an hour. What a difference!.. Headquarters, etc."]
3347 (return)
[ Wallon, "Histoire du
Tribunal Révolutionnaire de Paris," V.252, 420. (Names and qualifications
of the members of the Commune of Paris, guillotined Thermidor 10 and 11.)
The professions and qualifications of some of its members are given in
Lymery's Biographical Dictionary, in Morellet's Memoirs and in Arnault's
Souvenirs.??Moniteur?? XVI., 719. (Verdicts of the Revolutionary Tribunal,
Fructidor 15, year II.) Forty-three members of the civil or revolutionary
committees, sectional commissioners, officers of the National Guard and of
the cannoneers, signed the list of the council-general of the commune as
present on the 9th of Thermidor and are put on trial as Robespierre's
adherents. But they promptly withdrew their signatures, all being
acquitted except one. They are leaders in the Jacobin quarter and are of
the same sort arid condition as their brethren of the Hôtel-de-ville. One
only, an ex-collector of rentes, may have had an education; the rest are
carpenters, floor-tilers, shoemakers, tailors, wine-dealers, eating-house
keepers, cartmen, bakers, hair-dressers, and joiners. Among them we find
one ex-stone-cutter, one ex-office runner, one ex-domestic and two sons of
Samson the executioner.]
3348 (return)
[ Morellet, "Mémoires,"
I., 436-472.]
3349 (return)
[ On the ascendancy of
the talkers of this class see Dauban ("Paris en 1794," pp. 118-143).
Details on an all-powerful clothes-dealer in the Lombards Section. If we
may believe the female citizens of the Assembly "he said everywhere that
whoever was disagreeable to him should be turned out of the popular club."
(Ventôse 13, year II.)]
3350 (return)
[ Arnault, "Souvenirs
d'un Sexagénaire," III., 111. Details on another member of the commune,
Bergot, ex-employee at the Halle-aux-Cuirs and police administrator, may
be found in "Mémoires des Prisons," I., 232, 239, 246, 289, 290. Nobody
treated the prisoners more brutally, who protested against the foul food
served out to them, than he. "It is too good for bastards who are going to
be guillotined.".... "He got drunk with the turnkeys and with the
commissioners themselves. One day he staggered in walking, and spoke only
in hiccoughs: he would go in that condition. The house-guard refused to
recognize him; he was arrested" and the concierge had to repeat her
declarations to make the officer of the post "give up the hog."]
3351 (return)
[ "Mémoires sur les
Prisons," I., 211. (" Tableau Historique de St. Lazare.") The narrator is
put into prison in the rue de Sèvres in October, 1793.—II., 186.
("An historical account of the jail in the rue de Sèvres.") The narrator
was confined there during the last months of the Reign of Terror.]
3352 (return)
[ A game of chance.]
3353 (return)
[ "Un Séjour en France
de 1792 à 1795," 281. "We had an appointment in the afternoon with a
person employed by the committee on National Domains; he was to help my
friend with her claims. This man was originally a valet to the Marquise's
brother; on the outbreak of the Revolution he set up a shop, failed and
became a rabid Jacobin, and, at last, member of a revolutionary committee.
As such, he found a way.... to intimidate his creditors and obtain two
discharges of his indebtedness without taking the least trouble to pay his
debts.".... "I know an old lady who was kept in prison three months for
having demanded from one of these patriots three hundred livres which he
owed her." (June 3, 1795.) "I have generally noticed that the republicans
are either of the kind I have just indicated, coffee-house waiters,
jockeys, gamblers, bankrupts, and low scribblers, or manual laborers more
earnest in their principles, more ignorant and more brutal, all spending
what they have earned in vulgar indulgence."]
3354 (return)
[ Schmidt, "Tableaux
Historiques de la Revolution Française," II., 248, 249. (Agent's reports,
Frimaire 8, year 111.) "The prosecution of Carrier is approved by the
public, likewise the condemnation of the former revolutionary committee
called the "BonnetRouge." Ten of its members are condemned to twenty years
in irons. The public is overjoyed."—Ibid., (Frimaire 9), "The people
rushed in crowds to the square of the old commune building to see the
members of the former revolutionary committee of the Bonnet-Rouge
sections, who remained seated on the bench until six o'clock, in the light
of flambeaux. They had to put up with many reproaches and much
humiliation."—"Un Sejour en France," 286, (June 6, 1795). "I have
just been interrupted by a loud noise and cries under my window; I heard
the names Scipio and Solon distinctly pronounced in a jeering and
insulting tone of voice. I sent Angelique to see what was the matter and
she tells me that it is a crowd of children following a shoemaker of the
neighborhood who was member of a revolutionary committee... and had called
himself Scipio Solon. As he had been caught in several efforts at stealing
he could no longer leave his shop without being reviled for his robberies
and hooted at under his Greek and Roman names."]
3355 (return)
[ Barère, "Mémoires,"
II., 324.]
3356 (return)
[ Montieur, XXII., 742.
(Report by Cambon, Frimaire 6, year II.) Ibid., 22.—Report by
Lindet, September 20, 1794): "The land and navy forces, war and other
services, deprive agricultural pursuits and other professions of more than
one million five hundred thousand citizens. It would cost the Republic
less to support six million men in all the communes."—"Le
Departement des Affaires étrangères," by Fr. Masson, 382. (According to
"Paris à la fin du dix-huitieme siecle," by Pujoulx, year IX.): "At Paris
alone there are more than thirty thousand (government) clerks; six
thousand at the most do the necessary writing; the rest cut away quills,
consume ink and blacken paper. In old times, there were too many clerks in
the bureaux relatively to the work; now, there are three times as many,
and there are some who think that there are not enough."]
3357 (return)
[ "Souvenirs de M.
Hua," a parliamentary advocate, p.96. (A very accurate picture of the
small town Coucy-le-Chateau, in Aisne, from 1792 to 1794.)—"Archives
des Affaires étrangères," vol.334. (Letter of the agents, Thionville,
Ventôse 24, year II.) The district of Thionville is very patriotic,
submits to the maximum and requisitions, but not to the laws prohibiting
outside worship and religious assemblies. "The apostles of Reason preached
in vain to the people, telling them that, up to this time, they had been
deceived and that now was the time to throw off the yoke of prejudice: 'we
are willing to believe that, thus far, we have been deceived, but who will
guarantee us that you will not deceive us in your turn?'"]
3358 (return)
[ Lagros: "La
Révolution telle qu'elle est." (Unpublished correspondence of the
committee of Public Safety, I., 366. Letter of Prieur de la Marne.) "In
general, the towns are patriotic; but the rural districts are a hundred
leagues removed from the Revolution.. .. Great efforts will be necessary
to bring them up to the level of the Revolution."]
3359 (return)
[ According to the
statistics of 1866 (published in 1869) a district of one thousand square
kilometres contains on an average, thirty-three communes above five
hundred souls, twenty-three from five hundred to one thousand, seventeen
bourgs and small towns from one thousand to five thousand, and one average
town, or very large one, about five thousand. Taking into account the
changes that have taken place in seventy years, one may judge from these
figures of the distribution of the population in 1793. This distribution
explains why, instead of forty-five thousand revolutionary committees,
there were only twenty-one thousand five hundred.]
3360 (return)
[ "Souvenirs des M.
Hua," 179. "This country (Coucy-le-Chateau) protected by its bad roads and
still more by its nullity, belonged to that small number in which the
revolutionary turmoil was least felt."]
3361 (return)
[ Among other documents
of use in composing this picture I must cite, as first in importance, the
five files containing all the documents referring to the mission of the
representative Albert, in Aisne and Marne. (Ventôse and Germinal, year
III.) Nowhere do we find more precise details of the sentiments of the
peasant, of the common laborer and of the lower bourgeois from 1792 to
1795. (Archives Nationales, D. PP 2 to 5.)]
3362 (return)
[ Daubari, "La
Demagogie en 1793," XII. (The expression of an old peasant, near
Saint-Émilion, to M. Vatel engaged in collecting information on the last
days of Petion, Guadet and Buzot.)]
3363 (return)
[ Archives Nationales,
D. p I., 5. (Petition of Claude Defert, miller, and national agent of
Turgy.) Numbers of mayors, municipal officers, national agents,
administrators and notables of districts and departments solicit
successors, and Albert compels many of them to remain in office.—(Joint
letter of the entire municipality of Landreville; letter of Charles,
stone-cutter, mayor of Trannes; Claude Defert, miller, national agent of
Turgy; of Elegny, meat-dealer; of a wine-grower; municipal official at
Merrex, etc.) The latter writes: "The Republic is great and generous; it
does not desire that its children should ruin themselves in attending to
its affairs; on the contrary, its object is to give salaried
(emolumentaires) places to those who have nothing to live on."—Another,
Mageure, appointed mayor of Bar-sur-Seine writes, Pluviôse 29, year III.:
"I learned yesterday that some persons of this community would like to
procure for me the insidious gift of the mayoralty," and he begs Albert to
turn aside this cup.]
3364 (return)
[ "Souvenirs de M.
Hua," 178-205. "M. P..., mayor of Crépy-au-Mont, knew how to restrain some
low fellows who would have been only too glad to revolutionize his
village.... And yet he was a republican.... One day, speaking of the
revolutionary system, he said: 'They always say that it will not hold on;
meanwhile, it sticks like lice.' "—"A general assembly of the
inhabitants of Coucy and its outskirts was held, in which everybody was
obliged to undergo an examination, stating his name, residence,
birth-place, present occupation, and what he had done during the
Revolution." Hua avoids telling that he had been a representative in the
Legislative Assembly, a recognized fact in the neighborhood: "Not a voice
was raised to compromise me."—Ibid., 183. (Reply of the Coucy
Revolutionary Committee to that of Meaux.)]
3365 (return)
[ "Frochot," by Louis
Passy, 175. (Letter of Pajot, member of the Revolutionary committee of
Troyes, Vendémiaire, year III.)—Archives Nationales, F.7, 4421.
(Register of the Revolutionary committee of Troyes.) Brumaire 27, year II.
Incarceration of various suspects, among others of "Lerouge, former
lawyer, under suspicion of having constantly and obstinately refused
revolutionary offices." Also, a person named Corps, for "having refused
the presidency of the district tribunal at the time of its organization,
under the pretext of consulting the Chambre des Comptes; also for being
the friend of suspects, and for having accepted office only after the
Revolution had assumed an imposing character."]
3366 (return)
[ Marcelin Boudet, "Les
conventionnels d'Auvergne," 161. (Justification of Etienne Bonarmé, the
last months of 1794.)]
3367 (return)
[ Pans, "Histoire de
Joseph Lebon," II., 92. (Declaration by Guérard, lawyer, appointed judge
at Cambrai, by the Cambrai Revolutionary committee.)—Ibid., 54.
(Declaration by Lemerre, appointed juryman without his knowledge, in the
Cambrai court.) "What was my surprise, I, who never was on a jury in my
life! The summons was brought to me at a quarter to eleven (à onze heur
moin un car—specimen of the orthography) and I had to go at eleven
without having time to say good-by to my family."]
3368 (return)
[ Report by Courtois on
the papers found in Robespierre's domicile, 370. (Letter of Maignet to
Payan, administrator of the department of Drôme, Germinal 20, year II.)
"You know the dearth of subjects here. .. Give me the names of a dozen
outspoken republicans... . If you cannot find them in this department
(Vaucluse) hunt for them either in the Drôme or the Isère, or in any
other. I should like those adapted to a revolutionary tribunal. I should
even like, in case of necessity, to have some that are qualified to act as
national agents."]
3369 (return)
[ Archives des Affaires
étrangères, vols. 322 to 334, and 1409 to 1411.—These agents reside
in Nîmes, Marseilles, Toulouse, Tarbes, Bordeaux, Auch, Rochefort, Brest,
Bergues, Givet, Metz, Thionville, Strasbourg, Colmar, Belfort and
Grenoble, and often betake themselves to towns in the vicinity.—The
fullest reports are those of Chepy, at Grenoble, whose correspondence is
worthy of publication; although an ultra Jacobin, he was brought before
the revolutionary Tribunal as a moderate, in Ventôse, year II. Having
survived (the Revolution) he became under the Empire a general commissary
of Police at Brest. Almost all of them are veritable Jacobins, absolutist
at bottom, and they became excellent despotic tools.]
3370 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux, XXX.,
425.—Twenty-four commissioners, drawn by lot from the Jacobins of
Paris, are associated with Collot d'Herbois. One of them, Marino, becomes
president of the temporary Committee of Surveillance, at Lyons. Another,
Parrien, is made president of the Revolutionary Committee.—Archives
Nationales, AF., II., 59. (Deliberations in the Paris Jacobin club,
appointing three of their number to go to Tonnerre and request the
Committee of Public Safety "to give them the necessary power, to use it as
circumstances may require, for the best good of the Republic." Frimaire 6,
year II.)—"Order of the Committee of Public Safety, allowing two
thousand francs to the said parties for their traveling expenses."—Archives
des Affaires Étrangères, vol. 333. The agents sent to Marseilles affix
their signatures, "sans-culottes, of Paris," and one of them, Brutus,
becomes president of the Marseilles revolutionary tribunal.]
3371 (return)
[ Archives Nationales,
AF., II., 49. Papers relating to the revolutionary tax of Belfort, giving
all the amounts and names. (Brumaire 30, year