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not amount to 300,000.[46] — This is a small number for the enslavement of six millions of able-bodied men, and for installing in a country of twenty-six millions inhabitants a more absolute despotism than that of an Asiatic sovereign. Force, however, is not measured by numbers; they form a band in the midst of a crowd and, in this disorganized, inert crowd, a band that is determined to push its way like an iron wedge splitting a log.

And against sedition from within as well as conquest from without a nation may only defend itself through the activities of its government, which provides the indispensable instruments of common action. Let it fail or falter and the great majority, undecided about what to do, lukewarm and busy elsewhere, ceases to be a corps and disintegrates into dust. Of the two governments around which the nation might have rallied, the first one, after July 14, 1789, lies prostrate on the ground where it slowly crumbles away. Now its ghost, which returns, is still more odious because it brings with it the same senseless abuses and intolerable burdens, and, in addition to these, a yelping pack of claimants and recriminators. After 1790 it appears on the frontier more arbitrary than ever at the head of a coming invasion of angry émigrés and grasping foreigners. – – The other government, that just constructed by the Constituent Assembly, is so badly put together that the majority cannot use it. It is not adapted to its hand; no political instrument at once so ponderous and so helpless was ever seen. An enormous effort is needed to set it in motion; every citizen is obliged to give it about two days labor per week.[47] Thus laboriously started but half in motion, it poorly meets the various tasks imposed upon it — the collection of taxes, public order in the streets, the circulation of supplies, and security for consciences, lives and property. Toppled over by its own action, another rises out of it, illegal and serviceable, which takes its place and stands. — In a great centralized state whoever possesses the head possesses the body. By virtue of being led, the French have contracted the habit of letting themselves be led.[48] People in the provinces involuntarily turn their eyes to the capital, and, on a crisis occurring, run out to stop the mailman to know what government happens to have fallen, the majority accepts or submits to it. — Because, in the first place, most of the isolated groups which would like to overthrow it dare not engage in the struggle: it seems too strong; through inveterate routine they imagine behind it that great, distant France which, under its impulsion, will crush them with its mass.[49] In the second place, should a few isolated groups undertake to overthrow it, they are not in a condition to keep up the struggle: it is too strong. They are, indeed, not yet organized while it is fully so, owing to the docile set of officials inherited from the government overthrown. Under monarchy or republic the government clerk comes to his office regularly every morning to dispatch the orders transmitted to him.[50] Under monarchy or republic the policeman daily makes his round to arrest those against who he has a warrant. So long as instructions come from above in the hierarchical order of things, they are obeyed. From one end of the territory to the other, therefore, the machine, with its hundred thousand arms, works efficiently in the hands of those who have seized the lever at the central point. Resolution, audacity, rude energy, are all that are needed to make the lever act, and none of these are wanting in the Jacobin. [51]

First, he has faith, and faith at all times “moves mountains.[52] “Take any ordinary party recruit, an attorney, a second-rate lawyer, a shopkeeper, an artisan, and conceive, if you can, the extraordinary effect of this doctrine on a mind so poorly prepared for it, so narrow, so out of proportion with the gigantic conception which has mastered it. Formed for the routine and the limited views of one in his position, he is suddenly carried away by a complete system of philosophy, a theory of nature and of man, a theory of society and of religion, a theory of universal history,[53] conclusions about the past, the present, and the future of humanity, axioms of absolute right, a system of perfect and final truth, the whole concentrated in a few rigid formulae as, for example:

“Religion is superstition, monarchy is usurpation, priests are impostors, aristocrats are vampires, and kings are so many tyrants and monsters.”

These ideas flood a mind of his stamp like a vast torrent precipitating itself into a narrow gorge; they upset it, and, no longer under self-direction, they sweep it away. The man is beside himself. A plain bourgeois, a common laborer is not transformed with impunity into an apostle or liberator of the human species. – – For, it is not his country that he would save, but the entire race. Roland, just before the 10th of August, exclaims “with tears in his eyes, should liberty die in France, she is lost the rest of the world forever! The hopes of philosophers will perish! The whole earth will succumb to the cruelest tyranny!”[54] — Grégoire, on the meeting of the Convention, obtained a decree abolishing royalty, and seemed overcome with the thought of the immense benefit he had conferred on the human race.

“I must confess,” said he, “that for days I could neither eat nor sleep for excess of joy!”

One day a Jacobin in the tribune declared: “We shall be a nation of gods!” — Fancies like these bring on lunacy, or, at all events, they create disease. “Some men are in a fever all day long,” said a companion of St. Just; “I had it for twelve years . . .”[55] Later on, “when advanced in life and trying to analyze their experiences, they cannot comprehend it.”[56] Another tells that, in his case, on a “crisis occurring, there was only a hair’s breadth between reason and madness.” — “When St. Just and myself,” says Baudot, “discharged the batteries at Wissenbourg, we were most liberally thanked for it. Well, there was no merit in that; we knew perfectly well that the shot could not do us any harm.” – – Man, in this exalted state, is unconscious of obstacles, and, according to circumstances, rise above or falls below himself, freely spilling his own blood as well as the blood of others, heroic as a soldier and atrocious as a civilian; he is not to be resisted in either direction for his strength increases a hundredfold through his fury, and, on his tearing wildly through the streets, people get out of his way as on the approach of a mad bull.

If they do not jump aside of their own accord, he will run at them, for he is unscrupulous as well as furious. — In every political struggle certain kinds of actions are prohibited; at all events, if the majority is sensible and wishes to act fairly, it repudiates them for itself. It will not violate any particular law, for, if one law is broken, this tends to the breaking of others. It is opposed to overthrowing an established government because every interregnum is a return to barbarism. It is opposed to the element of popular insurrection because, in such a resort, public power is surrendered to the irrationality of brutal passion. It is opposed to a conversion of the government into a machine for confiscation and murder because it deems the natural function of government to be the protection of life and property. — The majority, accordingly, in confronting the Jacobin, who allows himself all this,[57] is like a unarmed man facing one who is fully armed.[58] The Jacobin, on principle, holds the law in contempt, for the only law, which he accepts is arbitrary mob rule. He has no hesitation in proceeding against the government because, in his eyes, the government is a clerk which the people always has the right to remove. He welcomes insurrection because, through it, the people recover their sovereignty with no limitations. — Moreover, as with casuists, “the end justifies the means.”[59] “Let the colonies perish,” exclaims a Jacobin in the Constituent Assembly, “rather than sacrifice a principle.” “Should the day come,” says St. Just, “when I become convinced that it is impossible to endow the French with mild, vigorous, and rational ways, inflexible against tyranny and injustice, that day I will stab myself.” Meanwhile he guillotines the others. “We will make France a graveyard,” exclaimed Carrier, “rather than not regenerating it our own way!”[60] They are ready to risk the ship in order to seize the helm. From the first, they organize street riots and jacqueries in the rural districts, they let loose on society prostitutes and ruffians, vile and savage beasts. Throughout the struggle they take advantage of the coarsest and most destructive passions, of the blindness, credulity, and rage of an infatuated crowd, of dearth, of fear of bandits, of rumors of conspiracy, and of threats of invasion. At last, having seized power through a general upheaval, they hold on to it through terror and executions. — Straining will to the utmost, with no curb to check it, steadfastly believing in its own right and with utter contempt for the rights of others, with fanatical energy and the expedients of scoundrels, a minority may, in employing such forces, easily master and subdue a majority. So true is that, with faction itself, that victory is always on the side of the group with the strongest faith and the least scruples. Four times between 1789 and 1794, political gamblers take their seats at a table where the stake is supreme power, and four times in succession the “Impartiaux,” the “Feuillants,” the “Girondins,” and the “Dantonists,” form the majority and lose the game. Four times in succession the majority has no desire to break customary rules, or, at the very least, to infringe on any rule universally accepted, to wholly disregard the teachings of experience, the letter of the law, the precepts of humanity, or the suggestions of pity. — The minority, on the contrary, is determined beforehand to win at any price; its views and opinion are correct, and if rules are opposed to that, so much the worse for the rules. At the decisive moment, it claps a pistol to its adversary’s head, overturns the table, and collects the stakes.
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NOTES:

[1] See the figures further on.

[2] Mallet du Pan, II. 491. Danton, in 1793, said one day to one of his former brethren an advocate to the Council. : “The old régime made a great mistake. It brought me up on a scholarship in Plessis College. I was brought up with nobles, who were my comrades, and with whom I lived on familiar terms. On completing my studies, I had nothing; I was poor and tried to get a place. The Paris bar was very expensive, and it required extensive efforts to be accepted. I could not get into the army, having neither rank nor patronage. There was no opening for me in the Church. I could purchase no employment, for I hadn’t a cent. My old companions turned their backs on me. I remained without a situation, and only after many long years did I succeed in buying the post of advocate in the Royal Council. The Revolution came, when I, and all like me, threw themselves into it. The ancient régime forced us to do so, by providing a good education for us, without providing an opening for our talents.” This applies to Robespierre, C. Desmoulins, Brissot, Vergniaud, and others.

[3] Religious order founded in Rome in 1654 by saint Philippe Neri and who dedicated their efforts to preaching and the education of children. (SR)

[4] Dauban, “La Demagogie à Paris en 1793,” and “Paris in 1794.” Read General Henriot’s orders of the day in these two works. Comparton, “Histoire du Tribunal Révolutionaire de Paris,” a letter by Trinchard, I. 306 (which is here given in the original, on account of the ortography): “Si tu nest pas toute seulle et que le compagnion soit a travailler tu peus ma chaire amie ventir voir juger 24 mesieurs tous si devent président ou conselier au parlement de Paris et de Toulouse. Je t’ainvite a prendre quelque chose aven de venir parcheque nous naurons pas fini de 3 hurres. Je t’embrase ma chaire amie et épouge.”- Ibid. II. 350, examination of André Chenier. – Wallon, “Hist. Du Trib. Rév.”, I, 316. Letter by Simon. “Je te coitte le bonjour mois est mon est pousse.”

[5] Cf. “The Revolution,” page 60.

[6] Cf. On this point the admissions of the honest Bailly (“Mémoires,” passim)

[7] Rétif de la Bretonne: “Nuits de Paris,” 11éme nuit, p. 36. “I lived in Paris twenty-five years as free as air. All could enjoy as much freedom as myself in two ways – by living uprightly, and by not writing pamphlets against the ministry. All else was permitted, my freedom never being interfered with. It is only since the Revolution that a scoundrel could succeed in having me arrested twice.”

[8] Cf. “The Revolution,” vol. I. p.264.

[9] Moniteur, IV. 495. (Letter from Chartres, May 27, 1790.)

[10] Sauzay, I.147, 195 218, 711.

[11] Mercure de France, numbers of August 7, 14, 26, and Dec. 18, 1790.

[12] Ibid. number of November 26, 1790. Pétion is elected mayor of Paris by 6,728 out of 10,632 voters. “Only 7,000 voters are found at the election of the electors who elect deputies to the legislature. Primary and municipal meetings are deserted in the same proportion.” – -Moniteur, X. 529 (Number of Dec. 4, 1791). Manuel is elected Attorney of the Commune by 3,770 out of 5,311 voters. — Ibid. XI. 378. At the election of municipal officers for Paris, Feb.10 and 11, 1792, only 3,787 voters present themselves; Dussault, who obtains the most votes, has 2,588; Sergent receives 1,648. — Buchez et Roux, XI. 238 (session of Aug.12, 1791). Speech by Chapelier; “Archives Nationales,” F.6 (carton), 21. Primary meeting of June 13, 1791, canton of Bèze (Cote d’Or). Out of 460 active citizens, 157 are present, and, on the final ballot, 58. –Ibid., F7, 3235, (January, 1792). Lozerre: “1,000 citizens, at most, out of 25,000, voted in the primary meetings. At. Saint-Chèly, capital of the district, a few armed ruffians succeed in forming the primary meeting and in substituting their own election for that of eight parishes, whose frightened citizens who withdrew from it. . . At Langogne, chief town of the canton and district, out of more than 400 active citizens, 22 or 23 at most — just what one would suppose them to be when their presence drove away the rest — alone formed the meeting.”

[13] This power, with its gratifications, is thus shown, Beugnot, I. 140, 147. “On the publication of the decrees of August 4, the committee of surveillance of Montigny, reinforced by all the patriots of the country, came down like a torrent on the barony of Choiseul, and exterminated all the hares and partridges. . . They fished out the ponds . At Mandres we find, in the best room of the inn, a dozen peasants gathered around a table decked with tumblers and bottles, amongst which we noticed an inkstand, pens, and something resembling a register. — ‘I don’t know what they are about,’ said the landlady, ‘but there they are, from morning till night, drinking, swearing, and storming away at everybody, and they say that they are a committee.'”

[14] Albert Babeau, I. 206, 242. — The first meeting of the revolutionary committee of Troyes in the cemetery of St. Jules, August, 1789. This committee becomes the only authority in the town, after the assassination of the mayor, M. Huez (Sept 10, 1790).

[15] “The French Revolution,” Vol.I. pp. 235, 242, 251. – Buchez et Roux, VI, 179. – Guillon de Montléon, “Histoire de la Ville de Lyon pendant la Revolution,” I. 87. — Guadet, “Les Girondins.”

[16] Michelet, “Histoire de la Révolution,” II.47.

[17] The rules of the Paris club state that members must “labor to establish and strengthen the Constitution, according to the spirit of the club.”

[18] Mercure de France, Aug.11, 1790. — “Journal de la Société des Amis la Constitution,” Nov.21, 1790. — Ibid., March, 1791. – Ibid., March, 1791. – Ibid., Aug.14, 1791 (speech by Rœderer) — Buchez et Roux, XI. 481.

[19] Michelet, II. 407. — Moniteur, XII 347 (May 11, 1792), article by Marie-Joseph Chénier, according to whom 800 Jacobin clubs exist at this date. — Ibid., XII. 753 (speech by M. Delfaux session of June 25, 1792). -Rœderer, preface to his translation of Hobbes.

[20] “Les Révolutions de Paris,” by Prudhomme, number 173.

[21] Constant, “Histoire d’un Club Jacobin en province, “passim (Fontainbleau Club, founded May 5, 1791). — Albert Babeau, I.434 and following pages (foundation of the Troyes Club, Oct 1790). — Sauzay, I 206 and following pages (foundation of the Besançon Club Aug. 28, 1790). — Ibid., 214 (foundation of the Pontarlier Club, March, 1791)

[22] Sauzay, I. 214 (April 2, 1791)

[23] “Journal des Amis de la Constitution,” I. 534 (Letter of the “Café National” Club of Bordeaux, Jan.29, 1791). Guillon de Monthléon, I. 88.-“The French Revolution,” vol. I. 128, 242.

[24] Here we have a complete system of propaganda and organizational tactics identical to those used by the NAZIS, the Marxist-Leninists and other ‘children’ of the original communist-Jacobins. (SR.)

[25] Eugène Hatin, “Histoire politique et littéraire de la presse,” IV. 210 (with Marat’s text in “L’Ami “I’Ami du peuple,” and Fréron’s in “l’Orateur du peuple”).

[26] Mercure de France, Nov. 27, 1790.

[27] Mercure de France, Sept. 3, 1791 (article by Mallet du Pan). “On the strength of a denunciation, the authors of which I knew, the Luxembourg section on the 21st of June, the day of the king’s departure, sent commissaries and a military detachment to my domicile. There was no judicial verdict, no legal order, either of police-court, or justice of the peace, no examination whatever preceding this mission. . . The employees of the section overhauled my papers, books and letters, transcribing some of the latter, and carried away copies and the originals, putting seals on the rest, which were left in charge of two fusiliers.”

[28] Mercure de France, Aug. 27, 1791 (report by Duport-Dutertre, Minister of Justice). — Ibid., Cf. numbers of Sept. 8, 1790, and March 12, 1791.

[29] Sauzay, I.208. (Petition of the officers of the National Guard of Besançon, and observations of the municipal body, Sept. 15, 1790. — Petition of 500 national guards, Dec. 15, 1790). — Observations of the district directory, which directory, having authorized the club, avows that “three-quarters” of the national guard and a portion of other citizens “are quite hostile to it.” — Similar petitions at Dax, Chalons-sur-Saône, etc., against the local club.

[30] “Lettres” (manuscript) of M. Roullé, deputy from Pontivy, to his constituents (May 1, 1789).

[31] A rule of the association says: “The object of the association is to discuss questions beforehand which are to be decided by the National Assembly, . . . and to correspond with associations of the same character which may be formed in the kingdom.”

[32] Grégoires, “Mémoires,” I. 387.

[33] Malouet, II. 248. “I saw counselor Duport, who was a fanatic, and not a bad man, with two or three others like him, exclaim: ‘Terror! Terror! What a pity that it has become necessary!

[34] Lafayette, “Mémoires” (in relation to Messieurs de Lameth and their friends). — According to a squib of the day: “What Duport thinks, Barnave says and Lameth does” — This trio was named the Triumvirate. Mirabeau, a government man, and a man to whom brutal disorder was repugnant, called it the Triumgueusat. (A trinity of shabby fellows)

[35] Moniteur, V.212, 583. (Report and speech of Dupont de Nemours, sessions of July 31 and September 7, 1790.) — Vagabonds and ruffians begin to play their parts in Paris on the 27th of April, 1789 (the Réveillon affair). — Already on the 30th of July, 1789, Rivarol wrote: “Woe to whoever stirs up the dregs of a nation! The century Enlightenment has not touched the populace!” — In the preface of his future dictionary, he refers to his articles of this period: “There may be seen the precautions I took to prevent Europe from attributing to the French nation the horrors committed by the crowd of ruffians which the Revolution and the gold of a great personage had attracted to the capital.” — “Letter of a deputy to his constituents,” published by Duprez, Paris, in the beginning of 1790 (cited by M. de Ségur, in the Revue de France, September 1, 1880). It relates to the maneuvers for forcing a vote in favor of confiscating clerical property. “Throughout All-Saints’ day (November 1, 1789), drums were beaten to call together the band known here as the Coadjutors of the Revolution. On the morning of November 2, when the deputies went to the Assembly, they found the cathedral square and all the avenues to the archbishop’s palace, where the sessions were held, filled with an innumerable crowd of people. This army was composed of from 20,000 to 25,000 men, of which the greater number had no shoes or stockings; woollen caps and rags formed their uniform and they had clubs instead of guns. They overwhelmed the ecclesiastical deputies with insults, as they passed on their way, and shouted that they would massacre without mercy all who would not vote for stripping the clergy. . . Near 300 deputies who were opposed to the motion did not dare attend the Assembly. . . The rush of ruffians in the vicinity of the hall, their comments and threats, excited fears of this atrocious project being carried out. All who did not feel courageous enough to sacrifice themselves, avoided going to the Assembly.” (The decree was adopted by 378 votes against 346.)

[36] Cf. “The Ancient Régime,” p. 51.

[37] Malouet, 1.247, 248. — “Correspondence (manuscript) of M. de Staël,” Swedish Ambassador, with his court, copied from the archives at Stockholm by M. Léouzon-le-Duc. Letter from M. Staël of April 21, 1791: “M. Laclos, secret agent of this wretched prince, (is a) clever and subtle intriguer.” April 24: “His agents are more to be feared than himself. Through his bad conduct, he is more of a nuisance than a benefit to his party.

[38] Especially after the king’s flight to Varennes, and at the time of the affair in the Champ de Mars. The petition of the Jacobins was drawn up by Laclos and Brissot.

[39] Investigations at the Chatelet, testimony of Count d’Absac de Ternay.

[40] Malouet I. 247, 248. This evidence is conclusive. “Apart from what I saw myself,” says Malouet, “M. de Montmorin and M. Delessart communicated to me all the police reports of 1789 and 1790.”

[41] Sauzay, II.79 (municipal election, Nov.15, 1791). — III. 221 (mayoralty election, November, 1792). The half-way moderates had 237 votes, and the sans-culottes, 310.

[42] Mercure de France, Nov. 26, 1791 (Pétion was elected mayor, Nov.17, by 6,728 votes out of 10,682 voters). — Mortimer-Ternaux, V. 95. (Oct 4, 1792, Pétion was elected mayor by 13,746 votes out of 14,137 voters. He declines. – Oct. 21, d’Ormessan, a moderate, who declines to stand, has nevertheless, 4,910 votes. His competitor, Lhuillier, a pure Jacobin, obtains only 4,896.)

[43] Albert Babeau, II. 15. (The 32,000 inhabitants of Troyes indicate about 7,000 electors. In December, 1792, Jacquet is elected mayor by 400 votes out of 555 voters. A striking coincidence is found in there being 400 members of the Troyes club at this time.) — Carnot, Mémoires,” I. 181. “Dr. Bollmann, who passed through Strasbourg in 1792, relates that out of 8,000 qualified citizens, only 400 voters presented themselves.

[44] Mortimer-Ternaux, VI. 21. In February, 1793, Pache is elected mayor of Paris by 11,881 votes. – Journal de Paris, number 185. Henriot, July 2, 1793, is elected commander-in-chief of the Paris national guard, by 9,084, against 6,095 votes given for his competitor, Raffet. The national guard comprises at this time110,000 registered members, besides 10,000 gendarmes and federates. Many of Henriot’s partisans, again, voted twice. (Cf. on the elections and the number of Jacobins at Paris, chapters XI. and XII. of this volume.)

[45] Michelet, VI. 95. “Almost all (the missionary representatives) were supported by only, the smallest minority. Baudot, for instance, at Toulouse, in 1793, had but 400 men for him.”

[46] For example, “Archives Nationales,” Fl 6, carton 3. Petition of the inhabitants of Arnay-le-Duc to the king (April, 1792), very insulting, employing the most familiar language; about fifty signatures. — Sauzay, III. ch. XXXV. and XXXIV. (details of local elections). – Ibid., VII. 687 (letter of Grégoire, Dec. 24, 1796). — Malouet, II. 531 (letter by Malouet, July 22, 1779). Malouet and Grégoire agree on the number 300,000. Marie-Joseph Chénier (Moniteur, XII, 695, 20 avril 1792) carries it up to 400,000.

[47] Cf. “The French Revolution,” Vol. I. book II. Ch. III.

[48] Cf. “The Ancient Régime,” p.352.

[49] “Memoires de Madame de Sapinaud,” p. 18. Reply of M. de Sapinaud to the peasants of La Vendée, who wished him to act as their general: “My friends, it is the earthen pot against the iron pot. What could we do? One department against eighty-two – we should be smashed!”

[50] Malouet, II. 241. “I knew a clerk in one of the bureaus, who, during these sad days “September, 1792), never missed going. as usual, to copy and add up his registers. Ministerial correspondence with the armies and the provinces followed its regular course in regular forms. The Paris police looked after supplies and kept its eye on sharpers, while blood ran in the streets.” — Cf. on this mechanical need and inveterate habit of receiving orders from the central authority, Mallet du Pan, “Mémoires,” 490: “Dumouriez’ soldiers said to him: ‘F–, papa general, get the Convention to order us to march on Paris and you’ll see how we will make mince-meat of those b– in the Assembly!'”

[51] With want great interest did any aspiring radical politicians read these lines, whether the German socialist from Hitler learned so much or Lenin during his long stay in Paris around 1906. Taine maybe thought that he was arming decent men to better understand and defend the republic against a new Jacobin onslaught while, in fact, he provided them with an accurate recipe for repeating the revolution. (SR).

[52] At. Matthew, 17:20. (SR.)

[53] Buchez et Roux, XXVIII 55. Letter by Brun-Lafond, a grenadier in the national guard, July 14, 1793, to a friend in the provinces, in justification of the 31st of May. The whole of this letter requires to be read. In it are found the ordinary ideas of a Jacobin in relation to history: “Can we ignore, that it is ever the people of Paris which, through its murmurings and righteous insurrections against the oppressive system of many of our kings, has forced them to entertain milder sentiments regarding the relief of the French people, and principally of the tiller of the soil? . . Without the energy of Paris, Paris and France would now be inhabited solely by slaves, while this beautiful soil would present an aspect as wild and deserted as that of the Turkish empire or that of Germany,” which has led us “to confer still greater lustre on this Revolution, by re-establishing on earth the ancient Athenian and other Grecian republics in all their purity. Distinctions among the early people of the earth did not exist; early family ties bound people together who had no ancient founders or origin; they had no other laws in their republics but those which, so to say, inspired them with those sentiments of fraternity experienced by them in the cradle of primitive populations.”

[54] Barbaroux, “Mémoires” (Ed. Dauban), 336. — Grégoire, “Mémoires,” I. 410.

[55] “La Révolution Française,” by Quinet (extracts from the unpublished “Mémoires” of Baudot), II. 209, 211, 421, 620. — Guillon de Montléon I. 445 (speech by Chalier, in the Lyons Central Club, March 23, 1793). “They say that the sans-culottes will go on spilling their blood. This is only the talk of aristocrats. Can a sans-culotte be reached in that quarter? Is he not invulnerable, like the gods whom he replaces on this earth?” — Speech by David, in the Convention, on Barra and Viala: “Under so fine a government woman will bring forth without pain.” — Mercier “Le Nouveau Paris,” I. 13. “I heard (an orator) exclaim in one of the sections, to which I bear witness: ‘Yes, I would take my own head by the hair, cut it off, and, presenting it to the despot, I would say to him: Tyrant, behold the act of a free man!'”

[56] Now, one hundred years later, I consider the tens of thousands of western intellectuals, who, in their old age, seem unable to understand their longtime fascination with Lenin, Stalin and Mao, I cannot help to think that history might be holding similar future surprises in store for us. (SR).

[57] And my lifetime, our Jacobins the communists, have including in their register the distortion, the lie and slander as a regular tool of their trade. (SR).

[58] Lafayette, “Mémoires,” I.467 (on the Jacobins of August 10, 1792). “This sect, the destruction of which was desired by nineteen- twentieths of France.”– Durand-Maillan, 49. The aversion to the Jacobins after June 20, 1792, was general. “The communes of France, everywhere wearied and dissatisfied with popular clubs, would gladly have got rid of them, that they might no longer be under their control.”

[59] The words of Leclerc, a deputy of the Lyons committee in the Jacobin Club at Paris May 12, 1793. “Popular machiavelianism must be established . . . Everything impure must disappear off the French soil. . . I shall doubtless be regarded as a brigand, but there is one way to get ahead of calumny, and that is to exterminate the calumniators.”

[60] Buchez et Roux, XXXIV. 204 (testimony of François Lameyrie). “Collection of authentic documents for the History of the Revolution at Strasbourg,” II. 210 (speech by Baudot, Frimaire 19, year II., in the Jacobin club at Strasbourg). “Egoists, the heedless, the enemies of liberty, the enemies of all nature should not be regarded as her children. Are not all who oppose the public good, or who do not share it, in the same case? Let us, then, utterly destroy them. . . Were they a million, would not one sacrifice the twenty-fourth part of one’s self to get rid of a gangrene which might infect the rest of the body?..” For these reasons, the orator thinks that every man who is not wholly devoted to the Republic must be put to death. He states that the Republic should at one blow cause the instant disappearance of every friend to kings and feudalism.–Beaulieu, “Essai,” V. 200. M. d’Antonelle thought, “like most of the revolutionary clubs, that, to constitute a republic, an approximate equality of property should be established; and to do this, a third of the population should be suppressed.” — ” This was the general idea among the fanatics of the Revolution. ” — Larevellière-Lépaux, “Mémoires,” I.150 “Jean Bon St. André . . . suggested that for the solid foundation of the Republic in France, the population should be reduced one-half.” He is violently interrupted by Larevellière-Lépeaux, but continues and insists on this. – Guffroy, deputy of the Pas-de-Calais, proposed in his journal a still larger amputation; he wanted to reduce France to five millions of inhabitants.

BOOK SECOND. THE FIRST STAGE OF THE CONQUEST.

CHAPTER I.

THE JACOBINS COME INTO IN POWER. – THE ELECTIONS OF 1791. – PROPORTION OF PLACES GAINED BY THEM.

In June, 1791, and during the five following months, the class of active citizens[1] are convoked to elect their representatives, which, as we know, according to the law, are of every kind and degree. In the first place, there are 40,000 members of electoral colleges of the second degree and 745 deputies. Next, there are one-half of the administrators of 83 departments, one-half of the administrators of 544 districts, one-half of the administrators of 41,000 communes, and finally, in each municipality, the mayor and syndic-attorney. Then in each department they have to elect the president of the criminal court and the prosecuting-attorney, and, throughout France, officers of the National Guard; in short, almost the entire body of the agents and depositories of legal authority. The garrison of the public citadel is to be renewed, which is the second and even the third time since 1789. — At each time the Jacobins have crept into the place, in small bands, but this time they enter in large bodies. Pétion becomes mayor of Paris, Manual, syndic-attorney, and Danton the deputy of Manuel. Robespierre is elected prosecuting-attorney in criminal cases. The very first week,[2] 136 new deputies enter their names on the club’s register. In the Assembly the party numbers about 250 members. On passing all the posts of the fortress in review, we may estimate the besiegers as occupying one-third of them, and perhaps more. Their siege for two years has been carried on with unerring instinct, the extraordinary spectacle presenting itself of an entire nation legally overcome by a troop of insurgents.[3]

I.

Their siege operations. — Means used by them to discourage the majority of electors and conservative candidates. — Frequency of elections. – Obligation to take the oath.

First of all, they clear the ground, and through the decrees forced out of the Constituent Assembly, they keep most of the majority away from the polls. — On the one hand, under the pretext of better ensuring popular sovereignty, the elections are so multiplied, and held so near together, as to demand of each active citizen one-sixth of his time; such an exaction is very great for hard-working people who have a trade or any occupation,[4] which is the case with the great mass; at all events, with the useful and sane portion of the population. Accordingly, as we have seen, it stays away from the polls, leaving the field open to idlers or fanatics.[5] — On the other hand, by virtue of the constitution, the civic oath, which includes the ecclesiastical oath, is imposed on all electors, for, if any one takes the former and reserves the latter, his vote is thrown out: in November, in the Doubs, the municipal elections of thirty- three communes are invalidated solely on this pretext.[6] Not only forty thousand ecclesiastics are thus rendered unsworn (insermentés), but again, all scrupulous Catholics lose the right of suffrage, these being by far the most numerous in Artois, Doubs and the Jura, in the Lower and Upper Rhine district,[7] in the two Sévres and la Vendée, in the Lower Loire, Morbihan, Finisterre and Côtes du Nord, in Lozère and Ardèche, without mentioning the southern departments.[8] Thus, aided by the law which they have rendered impracticable, the Jacobins, on the one hand, are rid of all sensible voters in advance, counting by millions; and, on the other, aided by a law which they have rendered intolerant, they are rid of the Catholic vote which counts by hundreds of thousands. On entering the electoral lists, consequently, thanks to this double exclusion, they find themselves confronted by only the smallest number of electors.

II.

Annoyances and dangers of public elections. – The constituents excluded from the Legislative body.

Operations must now be commenced against these, and a first expedient consists in depriving them of their candidates. The obligation of taking the oath has already partly provided for this, in Lozère all the officials send in their resignations rather than take the oath;[9] here are men who will not be candidates at the coming elections, for nobody covets a place which he was forced to abandon; in general, the suppression of all party candidatures is effected in no other way than by making the post of a magistrate distasteful. — The Jacobins have successfully adhered to this principle by promoting and taking the lead in innumerable riots against the King, the officials and the clerks, against nobles, ecclesiastics, corn-dealers and land-owners, against every species of public authority whatever its origin. Everywhere the authorities are constrained to tolerate or excuse murders, pillage and arson, or, at the very least, insurrections and disobedience. For two years a mayor runs the risk of being hung on proclaiming martial law; a captain is not sure of his men on marching to protect a tax levy; a judge on the bench is threatened if he condemns the marauders who devastate the national forests. The magistrate, whose duty it is to see that the law is respected, is constantly obliged to strain the law, or allow it to be strained; if refractory, a summary blow dealt by the local Jacobins forces his legal authority to yield to their illegal dictate, so that he has to resign himself to being either their accomplice or their puppet. Such a rôle is intolerable to a man of feeling or conscience. Hence, in 1790 and 1791, nearly all the prominent and reputable men who, in 1789, had seats in the Hôtels-de-villes, or held command in the National Guard, all country-gentlemen, chevaliers of St. Louis, old parliamentarians, the upper bourgeoisie and large landed-proprietors, retire into private life and renounce public functions which are no longer tenable. Instead of offering themselves to public suffrage they avoid it, and the party of order, far from electing the magistracy, no longer even finds candidates for it.

Through an excess of precaution, its natural leaders have been legally disqualified, the principal offices, especially those of deputy and minister, being interdicted beforehand to the influential men in whom we find the little common sense gained by the French people during the past two years.-In the month of June, 1779, even after the irreconcilables had parted company with the “Right,” there still remained in the Assembly about 700 members who, adhering to the constitution but determined to repress disorder, would have formed a sensible legislature had they been re-elected. All of these, except a very small group of revolutionaries, had learned something by experience, and, in the last days of their session, two serious events, the king’s flight and the riot in the Champ de Mars, had made them acquainted with the defects of their machinery. With this executive instrument in their hands for three months, they see that it is racked, that things are tottering, and that they themselves are being run over by fanatics and the crowd. They accordingly attempt to put on a drag, and several even think of retracing their steps.[10] They cut loose from the Jacobins; of the three or four hundred deputies on the club list in the Rue St. Honoré[11] but seven remain; the rest form at the Feuillants a distinct opposition club, and at their head are the first founders, Duport, the two Lameths, Barnave, the authors of the constitution, all the fathers of the new régime.[12] In the last decree of the Constituent Assembly they loudly condemn the usurpations of popular associations, and not only interdict to these all meddling in administrative or political matters, but likewise any collective petition or deputation.[13] — Here may the friends of order find candidates whose chances are good, for, during two years and more, each in his own district is the most conspicuous, the best accredited, and the most influential man there; he stands well with his electors on account of the popularity of the constitution he has made, and it is very probable that his name would rally to it a majority of votes.-The Jacobins, however, have foreseen this danger: Four months earlier,[14] with the aid of the Court, which never missed an opportunity to ruin itself and everything else,[15] they made the most of the grudges of the conservatives and the wearyness of the Assembly. Tired and disgusted, in a fit of mistaken selflessness, the Assembly, through enthusiasm and taken by surprise, passes an act declaring all its members ineligible for election to the next Assembly dismissing in advance the leaders of the gentlemen’s party.

III.

The friends of order deprived of the right of free assemblage. — Violent treatment of their clubs in Paris and the provinces. — Legal prevention of conservative associations.

If the latter (the honest men of the Right), in spite of so many drawbacks, attempt a struggle, they are arrested at the very first step. For, to enter upon an electoral campaign, requires preliminary meetings for conference and to understand each other, while the faculty of forming an association, which the law grants them as a right, is actually withheld from them by their adversaries. As a beginning, the Jacobins hooted at and “stone” the members of the “Right”[16] holding their meetings in the Salon français of the Rue Royale, and, according to the prevailing rule, the police tribunal, “considering that this assemblage is a cause of disturbance, that it produces gatherings in the street, that only violent means can be employed to protect it,” orders its dissolution.[17] — Towards the month of August, 1790, a second club is organized, and, this time, composed of the wisest and most liberal men. Malouet and Count Clermont-Tonnerre are at the head of it. It takes the name of “Friends of a Monarchical Constitution,” and is desirous of restoring public order by maintaining the reforms which have been reached. All formalities on its part have been complied with. There are already about 800 members in Paris. Subscriptions flow into its treasury. The provinces send in numerous adhesions, and, what is worse than all, bread is distributed by them at a reduced price, by which the people, probably, will be conciliated. Here is a center of opinion and influence, analogous to that of the Jacobin club, which the Jacobins cannot tolerate.[18] M. de Clermont-Tonnerre having leased the summer Vauxhall, a captain in the National Guard notifies the proprietor of it that if he rents it, the patriots of the Palais-Royal will march to it in a body, and close it; fearing that the building will be damaged, he cancels the lease, while the municipality, which fears skirmishes, orders a suspension of the meetings. The club makes a complaint and follows it up, while the letter of the law is so plain that an official authorization of the club is finally granted. Thereupon the Jacobin newspapers and stump- speakers let loose their fury against a future rival that threatens to dispute their empire. On the 23rd of January, 1791, Barnave, in the National Assembly, employing metaphorical language apt to be used as a death-shout, accuses the members of the new club “of giving the people bread that carries poison with it.” Four days after this, M. Clermont-Tonnerre’s dwelling is assailed by an armed throng. Malouet, on leaving it, is almost dragged from his carriage, and the crowd around him cry out, “There goes the bastard who denounced the people! “- At length, its founders, who, out of consideration for the municipality, have waited two months, hire another hall in the Rue des Petites-Ecuries, and on the 28th of March begin their sessions. “On reaching it,” writes one of them, “we found a mob composed of drunkards, screaming boys, ragged women, soldiers exciting them on, and especially those frightful hounds, armed with stout, knotty cudgels, two feet long, which are excellent skull-crackers.”[19] The thing was made up beforehand. At first there were only three or four hundred of them, and, ten minutes after, five or six hundred; in a quarter of an hour, there are perhaps four thousand flocking in from all sides; in short, the usual make-up of an insurrection. “The people of the quarter certified that they did not recognize one of the faces.” Jokes, insults, cuffs, clubbings, and saber-cuts, — the members of the club “who agreed to come unarmed” being dispersed, while several are knocked down, dragged by the hair, and a dozen or fifteen more are wounded. To justify the attack, white cockades are shown, which, it is pretended, were found in their pockets. Mayor Bailly arrives only when it is all over, and, as a measure of “public order,” the municipal authorities have the club of Constitutional Monarchists closed for good.

Owing to these outrages by the faction, with the connivance of the authorities, other similar clubs are suppressed in the same way. There are a good many of them, and in the principal towns –“Friends of Peace,” “Friends of the Country,” “Friends of the King, of Peace, and of Religion,” “Defenders of Religion, Persons, and Property”. Magistrates and officers, the most cultivated and polished people, are generally members; in short, the élite of the place. Formerly, meetings took place for conversation and debate, and, being long- established, the club naturally passes over from literature to politics. — The watch-word against all these provincial clubs is given from the Rue St. Honoré.[20] “They are centers of conspiracy, and must be looked after” forthwith, and be at once trodden out. — At one time, as at Cahors,[21] a squad of the National Guard, on its return from an expedition against the neighboring gentry, and to finish its task breaks in on the club, “throws its furniture out of the windows and demolishes the house.” — At another time, as at Perpignan, the excited mob surrounds the club, dancing a fandango, and yell out, to the lantern! The club-house is sacked, while eighty of its members, covered with bruises, are shut up in the citadel for their safety.[22] — At another time, as at Aix, the Jacobin club insults its adversaries on their own premises and provokes a scuffle, whereupon the municipality causes the doors of the assailed club to be walled up and issues warrants of arrest against its members. — Always punishment awaits them for whatever violence they have to submit to. Their mere existence seems an offense. At Grenoble, they scarcely assemble before they are dispersed. The fact is, they are suspected of “incivism;” their intentions may not be right; in any event, they cause a division of the place into two camps, and that is enough. In the department of Gard, their clubs are all broken up, by order of the department, because “they are centers of malevolence.” At Bordeaux, the municipality, considering that “alarming reports are current of priests and privileged persons returning to town,” prohibits all reunions, except that of the Jacobin club. — Thus, “under a system of liberty of the most exalted kind, in the presence of the famous Declaration of the Rights of Man which legitimates whatever is not unlawful,” and which postulates equality as the principle of the French constitution, whoever is not a Jacobin is excluded from common rights. An intolerant club sets itself up as a holy church, and proscribes others which have not received from it “orthodox baptism, civic inspiration, and the aptitude of languages.” To her alone belongs the right of assemblage, and the right of making proselytes. Conservative, thoughtful men in all towns throughout the kingdom are forbidden to form electoral committees, to possess a tribune, a fund, subscribers and adherents, to cast the weight of their names and common strength into the scale of public opinion, to gather around their permanent nucleus the scattered multitude of sensible people, who would like to escape from the Revolution without falling back into the ancient régime. Let them whisper amongst themselves in corners, and they may still be tolerated, but woe to them if they would leave their lonely retreat to act in concert, to canvass voters, and support a candidate. Up to the day of voting they must remain in the presence of their combined, active, and obstreperous adversaries, scattered, inert, and mute.

IV.
Turmoil of the elections of 1790. — Elections in 1791. — Effect of the King’s flight.– Domiciliary visits. — Montagne during the electoral period.

Will they at least be able to vote freely on that day? They are not sure of it, and, judging by occurrences during the past year, it is doubtful. — In April, 1790, at Bois d’Aisy, in Burgundy, M. de Bois d’Aisy, a deputy, who had returned from Paris to deposit his vote,[23] was publicly menaced. He was informed that nobles and priests must take no part m the elections, while many were heard to say, in his hearing, that in order to prevent this it would be better to hang him. Not far off; at Ste. Colombe, M. de Viteaux was driven out of the electoral assembly, and then put to death after three hours of torture. The same thing occurred at Semur; two gentlemen were knocked down with clubs and stones, another saved himself with difficulty, and a curé died after being stabbed six times. — A warning for priests and for gentlemen: they had better not vote, and the same good advice may be given to dealers in grain, to land-owners, and every other suspected person. For this is the day on which the people recover their sovereignty; the violent believe that they have the right to do exactly what suits them, nothing being more natural than to exclude candidates in advance who are distrusted, or electors who do not vote as they ought to. — At Villeneuve-St.-Georges, near Paris,[24] a barrister, a man of austere and energetic character, is about to be elected judge by the district electors; the proletariat, however, mistrust a judge likely to condemn marauders, and forty or fifty vagabonds collect together under the windows and cry out: “We don’t want him elected.” The curé of Crosne, president of the electoral assembly, informs them in vain that the assembled electors represent 90 communes, nearly 100,000 inhabitants, and that “40 persons should not prevail against 100,000. Shouts redouble and the electors renounce their candidate.- At Pau, patriots among the militia[25] forcibly release one of their imprisoned leaders, circulate a list for proscriptions, attack a poll-teller with their fists and afterwards with sabers, until the proscribed hide themselves away; on the following day “nobody is disposed to attend the electoral assembly.” – – Things are much worse in 1791. In the month of June, just at the time of the opening of the primary meetings, the king has fled to Varennes, the Revolution seems compromised, civil war and a foreign war loom up on the horizon like two ghosts; the National Guard had everywhere taken up arms, and the Jacobins were making the most of the universal panic for their own advantage. To dispute their votes is no longer the question; it is not well to be visible: among so many turbulent gatherings a popular execution is soon over. The best thing now for royalists, constitutionalists, conservatives and moderates of every kind, for the friends of law and of order, is to stay at home — too happy if they may be allowed to remain there, to which the armed rabble agrees; on the condition of frequently paying them visits.

Consider their situation during the whole of the electoral period, in a calm district, and judge of the rest of France by this corner of it. At Mortagne,[26] a small town of 6,000 souls, the laudable spirit of 1789 still existed up to the journey to Varennes. Among the forty or fifty noble families were a good many liberals. Here, as elsewhere among the gentry, the clergy and the middle class, the philosophic education of the eighteenth century had revived the old provincial spirit of initiative, and the entire upper class had zealously and gratuitously undertaken the public duties which it alone could perform well. District presidents, mayors, and municipal officers, were all chosen from among ecclesiastics and the nobles; the three principal officers of the National Guard were chevaliers of St. Louis, while other grades were filled by the leading people of the community. Thus had the free elections placed authority in the hands of the socially superior, the new order of things resting on the legitimate hierarchy of conditions, educations, and capacities. – But for six months the club, formed out of “a dozen hot-headed, turbulent fellows, under the presidency and in the hands of a certain Rattier, formerly a cook,” worked upon the population and the rural districts. Immediately on the receipt of the news of the King’s flight, the Jacobins “give out that nobles and priests had supplied him with money for his departure, to bring about a counter-revolution.” One family had given such an amount, and another so much; there was no doubt about it; the precise figures are given, and given for each family according to its known resources.– Forthwith, “the principal clubbists, associated with the dubious part of the National Guard,” spread through the streets in squads: the houses of the nobles and of other suspected persons are invaded. All the arms, “guns, pistols, swords, hunting-knives, and sword-canes,” are carried off. Every hole and corner is ransacked; they make the inmates open, or they force open, secretaries and clothes-presses in search of ammunition, the search extending “even to the ladies’ toilette-tables”. By way of precaution “they break sticks of pomatum in two, presuming that musket-balls are concealed in them, and they take away hair-powder under the pretext that it is either colored or masked gunpowder.” Then, without disbanding, the troop betakes itself to the environs and into the country, where it operates with the same promptness in the chateaux, so that “in one day all honest citizens, those with the most property and furniture to protect, are left without arms at the mercy of the first robber that comes along.” All reputed aristocrats are disarmed. As such are considered those who “disapprove of the enthusiasm of the day, or who do not attend the club, or who harbor any unsworn ecclesiastic,” and, first of all, “the officers of the National Guard who are nobles, beginning with the commander and his entire staff.” — The latter allow their swords to be taken without resistance, and with a forbearance and patriotic spirit of which their brethren everywhere furnish an example “they are obliging enough to remain at their posts so as not to disorganize the army, hoping that this frenzy will soon come to an end,” contenting themselves with making their complaint to the department. — But in vain the department orders their arms to be restored to them. The clubbists refuse to give them up so long as the king refuses to accept the Constitution; meanwhile they do not hesitate to say that “at the very first gun on the frontier, they will cut the throats of all the nobles and unsworn priests.” — After the royal oath to the Constitution is taken, the department again insists, but no attention is paid to it. On the contrary, the National Guard, dragging cannons along with them, purposely station themselves before the mansions of the unarmed gentry; the ladies of their families are followed in the streets by urchins who sing ÇA IRA[27] in their faces, and, in the final refrain, they mention them by name and promise them the lantern; “not one of them could invite a dozen of his friends to supper without incurring the risk of an uproar.” — On the strength of this, the old chiefs of the National Guard resign, and the Jacobins turn the opportunity to account. In contempt of the law the whole body of officers is renewed, and, as peaceable folks dare not deposit their votes, the new staff “is composed of maniacs, taken for the most part, from the lowest class.” With this purged militia the club expels nuns, drives off unsworn priests, organizes expeditions in the neighborhood, and goes so far as to purify suspected municipalities.[28] — So many acts of violence committed in town and country, render town and country uninhabitable, and for the élite of the propriety owners, or for well-bred persons, there is no longer any asylum but Paris. After the first disarmament seven or eight families take refuge there, and a dozen or fifteen more join them after a threat of having their throats cut; after the religious persecution, unsworn ecclesiastics, the rest of the nobles, and countless other townspeople, “even with little means,” betake themselves there in a mass. There, at least, one is lost in the crowd; one is protected by an incognito against the outrages of the commonalty; one can live there as a private individual. In the provinces even civil rights do not exist; how could any one there exercise political rights? “All honest citizens are kept away from the primary meetings by threats or maltreatment . . . The electoral battlefield is left for those who pay forty-five sous of taxes, more than one-half of them being registered on the poor list.” – Thus the elections are decided beforehand! The former cook is the one who authorizes or creates candidatures, and on the election of the department deputies at the county town, the electors elected are, like himself, true Jacobins.[29]

V.

Intimidation and withdrawal of the Conservatives. — Popular outbreaks in Burgundy, Lyonnais, Provence, and the large cities. — Electoral proceedings of the Jacobins; examples at Aix, Dax, and Montpellier. — Agitators go unpunishes — Denunciations by name. — Manoeuvres with the peasantry. — General tactics of the Jacobins.

Such is the pressure under which voting takes place in France during the summer and fall of 1791. Domiciliary visits[30] and disarmament everywhere force nobles and ecclesiastics, landed proprietors and people of culture, to abandon their homes, to seek refuge in the large towns and to emigrate,[31] or, at least, confine themselves strictly to private life, to abstain from all propaganda, from every candidature, and from all voting. It would be madness to be seen in so many cantons where searches end in a riot; in Burgundy and the Lyonnais, where castles are sacked, where aged gentlemen are mauled and left for dead, where M. de Guillin has just been assassinated and cut to pieces; at Marseilles, where conservative party leaders are imprisoned, where a regiment of Swiss guards under arms scarcely suffices to enforce the verdict of the court which sets them at liberty, where, if any indiscreet person opposes Jacobin resolutions his mouth is closed by being notified that he will be buried alive; at Toulon, where the Jacobins shoot down all conservatives and the regular troops, where M. de Beaucaire, captain in the navy, is killed by a shot in the back, where the club, supported by the needy, by sailors, by navvies, and “vagabond peddlers,” maintains a dictatorship by right of conquest; at Brest, at Tulle, at Cahors, where at this very moment gentlemen and officers are massacred in the street. It is not surprising that honest people turn away from the ballot-box as from a center of cut-throats. — Nevertheless, let them come if they like; it will be easy to get rid of them. At Aix, the assessor whose duty it is to read the electors’ names is informed that “the names should be called out by an unsullied mouth, that, being an aristocrat and fanatical, he could neither speak nor vote,” and, without further ceremony, they put him out of the room.[32] The process is an admirable one for converting a minority into a majority and yet here is another, still more effective. — At Dax, the Feuillants, taking the title of “Friends of the French Constitution,” have split up with the Jacobins,[33] and, moreover, they insist on excluding from the National Guard “foreigners without property or position,” the passive citizens who are admitted into it in spite of the law, who usurp the right of voting and who “daily affront tranquil inhabitants.” Consequently, on election day, in the church where the primary meeting is held, two of the Feuillants, Laurède, formerly collector of the vingtièmes,, and Brunache, a glazier, propose to exclude an intruder, a servant on wages. The Jacobins at once rush forward. Laurède is pressed back on the holy-water basin and wounded on the head; on trying to escape he is seized by the hair, thrown down, pierced in the arm with a bayonet, put in prison, and Brunache along with him. Eight days afterwards, at the second meeting none are present but Jacobins; naturally, “they are all elected”. They form the new municipality, which, notwithstanding the orders of the department, not only refuses to liberate the two prisoners, but throws them into a dungeon. — At Montpellier, the delay in the operation is greater, but it is only the more complete. The votes are deposited, the ballot-boxes closed and sealed up and the conservatives obtain a majority. Thereupon the Jacobin club, with the Society of the “iron-clubs,” calling itself the Executive power, betake themselves in force to the sectional meetings, burn one of the ballots, use firearms and kill two men. To restore order the municipality stations each company of the National Guard at its captain’s door, The moderates among them naturally obey orders, but the violent party do not. They overrun the town, numbering about 2,000 inhabitants, enter the houses, kill three men in the street or in their domiciles, and force the administrative body to suspend its electoral assemblies. In addition to this they require the disarmament “of the aristocrats,” and this not being done soon enough, they kill an artisan who is walking in the street with his mother, cut off his head, bear it aloft in triumph, and suspend it in front of his dwelling. The authorities are now convinced and accordingly decree a disarmament, and the victors parade the streets in a body. In exuberance or as a precaution, they fire, as they pass along, at the windows of suspected houses and happen to kill an additional man and woman. During the three following days six hundred families emigrate, while the authorities report that everything is going on well, and that order is restored. “The elections,” they say, “are now proceeding in the quietest manner since the ill-intentioned voluntarily keeping away from them, a large number having left the town. “[34] A void is created around the ballot-box and this is called the unanimity of voters. — The effect of such assassinations is great and only a few are required; especially when they go unpunished, which is always the case. Henceforth all that the Jacobins have to do is to threaten; people no longer resist them for they know that it costs too much to face them down. They do not care to attend electoral meetings where they meet insult and danger; they acknowledge defeat at the start. Have not the Jacobins irresistible arguments, without taking blows into account? At Paris,[35] Marat in three successive numbers of his paper has just denounced by name “the rascals and thieves” who canvass for electoral nominations, not the nobles and priests but ordinary citizens, lawyers, architects, physicians, jewellers, stationers, printers, upholsterers and other artisans, each name being given in full with the professions, addresses and one of the following qualifications, “hypocrite (tartufe), immoral, dishonest, bankrupt, informer, usurer, cheat,” not to mention others that I cannot write down. It must be noted that this slanderous list may become a proscriptive list, and that in every town and village in France similar lists are constantly drawn up and circulated by the local dub, which enables us to judge whether the struggle between it and its adversaries is a fair one.-As to rural electors, it has suitable means for persuading them, especially in the innumerable cantons ravaged or threatened by the jacqueries, (country- riots) or, for example, in Corrèze, where “the whole department is smattered with insurrections and devastation’s, and where nobody talks of anything but of hanging the officers who serve papers.”[36] Through-out the electoral operations the sittings of the dub are permanent; “its electors are incessantly summoned to its meetings; ” at each of these “the main question is the destruction of fish-ponds and rentals, their principal speakers summing it all up by saying that none ought to be paid.” The majority of electors, composed of rustics, are found to be sensitive to speeches like this; all its candidates are obliged to express themselves against fishponds and rentals; its deputies and the public prosecuting attorney are nominated on this profession of faith; in other words, to be elected, the Jacobins promise to greedy tenants the incomes and property of their owners. — We already see in the proceedings by which they secure one-third of the offices in 1791 the germ of the methods by which they will secure the whole of them in 1792; in this first electoral campaign their acts indicate not merely their maxims and policy but, again, the condition, education, spirit and character of the men whom they place in power locally as well as at the capital.

NOTES:

[1] Law of May 28, 29, 1791 (according to official statements, the total of active citizens amounted to 4,288,360). — Laws of July 23, Sept. 12, Sept. 29, 1791. — Buchez et Roux, XII. 310.

[2] Bucher Ct Roux, XII. 33. — Mortimer-Ternaux, “Histoire de la Terreur,” II. 205, 348. — Sauzay, II. ch. XVIII — AIbert Babeau, I. ch. XX.

[3] Lenin repeated this performance in 1917 and Stalin attempted to do the same in the rest of the World. (SR)..

[4] The following letter, by Camille Desmoulins (April 3, 1792), shows at once the time consumed by public affairs, the sort of attraction they had, and the kind of men which they diverted from their business. “I have gone back to my old profession of the law, to which I give nearly all the time which my municipal or electoral functions, and the Jacobins (club), allow me — that is to say, very little. It is very disagreeable to me to come down to pleading bourgeois cases after having managed interests of such importance, and the affairs of the government, in the face of all Europe.”

[5] I cannot help but think of the willful proliferation of idle functionaries, pensioners and other receivers of public funds which today vote for the party which represents their interests. (SR.)

[6] Sauzay, II. 83-89 and 123. A resolution of the inhabitants of Chalèze, who, headed by their municipal officers, declare themselves unanimously “non-conformists,” and demand “the right of using a temple for the exercise of their religious opinions, belonging to them and built with their contributions” On the strength of this, the municipal officers of Chalèze are soundly rated by the district administration, which thus states what principles are: “Liberty, indefinite for the private individual, must be restricted for the public man whose opinions must conform to the law: otherwise, . . he must renounce all public functions.”

[7] Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,253 (letter of the department directory, April 7, 1792). “On the 25th of January, in our report to the National Assembly, we stated the almost general opposition which the execution of the laws relating to the clergy has found in this department . . . nine-tenths, at least, of the Catholics refusing to recognize the sworn priests. The teachers, influenced by their old curés or vicars, are willing to take the civic oath, but they refuse to recognize their legitimate pastors and attend their services. We are, therefore, obliged to remove them, and to look out for others to replace them. The citizens of a large number of the communes, persisting in trusting these, will lend no assistance whatever to the election of the new ones; the result is, that we are obliged, in selecting these people, to refer the matter to persons whom we scarcely know, and who are scarcely better known to the directories of the district. As they are elected against the will of the citizens, they do not gain their confidence, and draw their salaries from the commune treasury, without any advantage to public instruction,”

[8] Mercure de France, Sep. 3, 1791. “The right of attending primary meetings is that of every citizen who pays a tax of three livres; owing to the violence to which opinions are subject, more than one- half of the French are compelled to stay away from these reunions, which are abandoned to persons who have the least interest in maintaining public order and in securing stable laws, with the least property, and who pay the fewest taxes.”

[9] “The French Revolution,” Vol. I. p. 182 and following pages.

[10] “Correspondence of M. de Staël” (manuscript), Swedish ambassador, with his court, Sept 4, 1791. “The change in the way of thinking of the democrats is extraordinary; they now seem convinced that it is impossible to make the Constitution work. Barnave, to my own knowledge, has declared that the influence of assemblies in the future should be limited to a council of notables, and that all power should be in the government”

[11] Ibid. Letter of July 17, 1791. “All the members of the Assembly, with the exception of three or four, have passed a resolution to separate from the Jacobins; they number about 3oo.” — The seven deputies who remain at the Jacobin Club, are Robespierre, Pétion, Grégoire, Buzot, Coroller, and Abbé Royer.

[12] “Les Feuillants” Was a political club consisting of constitutional monarchists who held their meetings in the former Feuillants monastery in Paris from 1791 to 1792. (SR).

[13] Decree of Sept 29, 30, 1791, with report and instructions of the Committee on the Constitution.

[14] Decree of May 17, 1791. — Malouet, XII. 161. ‘There was nothing left to us but to make one great mistake, which we did not fail to do.”

[15] A few months after this, on the election of a mayor for Paris, the court voted against Lafayette, and for Pétion

[16] M. de Montlosier, “Mémoires,” II. 309. “As far as concerns myself, truth compels me to say, that I was stuck on the head by three carrots and two cabbages only.” — Archives of the prefecture of police (decisions of the police court, May 15, 1790). Moniteur, V. 427. “The prompt attendance of the members at the hour of meeting, in spite of the hooting and murmurings of the crowd, seemed to convince the people that this was yet another conspiracy against liberty.”

[17] This is what is, today in 1998, taking place whenever any political faction, disliked by the Socialists, try to arrange a meeting. (SR).

[18] Malout, II. 50. – Mercure de France, Jan. 7, Feb. 5, and April 9, 1791 (letter of a member of the Monarchical Club

[19] Ferrières, II. 222. “The Jacobin Club sent five or six hundred trusty men, armed with clubs,” besides “about a hundred national guards, and some of the Palais-Royal prostitutes.”

[20] Journal des Amis de la Constitution.” Letter of the Café National! Club at Bordeaux, Jan. 20, 1791. — Letters of the “Friends of the Constitution,” at Brives and Cambray, Jan. 19, 1791.

[21] “The French Revolution,” I. pp. 243, 324.

[22] Mercure de France, Dec.18, 1790, Jan. 17, June 8, and July 14, 1791. — Moniteur, VI. 697. — “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,193. Letter from the Directory of the department of Aveyron, April 20, 1792. Narrative of events after the end of 1790. — May 22, 1791, the club of “The Friends of Order and Peace” is burned by the Jacobins, the fire lasting all night and a part of the next day. (Official report of the Directory of Milhau, May 22, 1791).

[23] “The French Revolution,” I. 256, 307.

[24] Mercure de France, Dec. 14, 1790 (letter from Villeneuve-St.- Georges, Nov.29).

[25] “Archives Nationales,” II. 1,453. Correspondence of M. Bercheny. Letter from Pau, Feb. 7, 1790. “No one has any idea of the actual state of things, in this once delightful town. People are cutting each other’s throats. Four duels have taken place within 48 hours, and ten or a dozen good citizens have been obliged to hide themselves for three days past”

[26] “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,249. Memorial on the actual condition of the town and district of Mortagne, department of Orne (November, 1791).

[27] Revolutionary song with the refrain: “Les aristocrates, à la lanterne, tous les aristocrates on les pendra” (all the aristocrats will hang). (SR)

[28] On the 15th of August, 1791, the mother-superior of the Hôtel- Dieu hospital is forcibly carried off and placed in a tavern, half a league from the town, while the rest of the nuns are driven out and replaced by eight young girls from the town. Among other motives that require notice is the hostility of two pharmacists belonging to the club; in the Hotel-Dieu the nuns, keeping a pharmacy from which they sold drugs at cost and thereby brought themselves into competition with the two pharmacists.

[29] Cf. “Archives Nationales,” DXXIX. 13. Letter of the municipal officers and notables of Champceuil to the administrators of Seine-et- Oise, concerning elections, June 17, 1791. — Similar letters, from various other parishes, among them that of Charcon, June 16: “They have the honor to inform you that, at the time of the preceding primary meetings, they were exposed to the greatest danger; that the curé of Charcon, their pastor, was repeatedly stabbed with a bayonet, the marks of which he will carry to his grave. The mayor, and several other inhabitants of Charcon, escaped the same peril with difficulty.” – Ibid., letters from the administrators of Hautes-Alpes to the National Assembly (September, 1791), on the disturbances in the electoral assembly of Gap, August 29, 1791.

[30] Police searches of private homes. (SR).

[31] “The French Revolution,” pp. 159, 160, 310, 323, 324. – Lauvergne, “Histoire du département du Var,” (August 23).

[32] ‘”Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,198, deposition of Vérand-Icard, an elector at Arles, Sep. 8, 1791. – Ibid., F7, 3,195. Letter of the administrators of the Tarascon district, Dec. 8, 1791. Two parties confront each other at the municipal elections of Barbantane, one headed by the Abbé Chabaud, brother of one of the Avignon brigands, composed of three or four townsmen, and of “the most impoverished in the country,” and the other, three times as numerous, comprising all the land-owners, the substantial métayers and artisans, and all “who are most interested in a good administration” The question is, whether the Abbé Chabaud is to be mayor. The elections took place Dec.5th, 1791. Here is the official report of the acting mayor: mayor: “We, Pierre Fontaine, mayor, addressed the rioters, to induce them to keep the peace. At this very moment, the said Claude Gontier, alias Baoque, struck us with his fist on the left eye, which bruised us considerably, and on account of which we are almost blind, and, conjointly with others, jumped upon us, threw us down, and dragged us by the hair, continuing to strike us, from in front of the church door, till we came in front of the door a, the town hall.”

[33] Ibid., F7, 3,229. Letters of M. de Laurède, June 18, 1791; from the directory of the department, June 8, July 31, and Sept. 22, 1791; from the municipality, July 15, 1791. The municipality “leaves the release of the prisoners in suspense,” for six months, because, it says, the people is disposed to “insurrectionise against their discharge.” – Letter of many of the national guard, stating that the factions form only a part of it.

[34] Mercure de France, Dec. 10, 1791, letter from Montpellier, dated Nov. 17, 1791. — ” Archives Nationales,” F7, 3,223. Extracts from letters, on the incidents of Oct. 9 and 12, 1791. Petition by Messrs. Théri and Devon, Nov. 17, 1791. Letter addressed them to the Minister, Oct. 25. Letters of M. Dupin, syndical attorney of the department, to the Minister, Nov.14 and 15, and Dec. 26, 1791 (with official reports). — Among those assassinated on the 14th and 15th of November, we find a jeweler, an attorney, a carpenter, and a dyer. “This painful Scene,” writes the syndic attorney, “has restored quiet to the town.”

[35] Buchez et Roux, X. 223 (1’Ami du Peuple, June 17, 19, 21, 1791)

[36] “‘Archives Nationales,’ F7, 3204. letter by M. Melon de Tradou, royal commissary at Tulle, Sept. 8, 1791

CHAPTER II.

I.
Composition of the Legislative Assembly. — Social rank of the Deputies. Their inexperience, incompetence, and prejudices.

If it be true that a nation should be represented by its superior men, France was strangely represented during the Revolution. From one Assembly to another we see the level steadily declining; especially is the fall very great from the Constituent to the Legislative Assembly. The actors entitled to perform withdraw just as they begin to understand their parts; and yet more, they have excluded themselves from the theatre, while the stage is surrendered to their substitutes.

“The preceding Assembly,” writes an ambassador,[1] “contained men of great talent, large fortune, and honorable name, a combination which had an imposing effect on the people, although violently opposed to personal distinctions. The actual Assembly is but little more than a council of lawyers, got together from every town and village in France.”

In actual fact, out of 745 deputies, indeed, “400 lawyers belong, for the most part, to the dregs of the profession”; there are about twenty constitutional priests, “as many poets and literary men of but little reputation, almost all without any fortune,” the greater number being less than thirty years old, sixty being less than twenty-six,[2] nearly all of them trained in the clubs and the popular assemblies”. There is not one noble or prelate belonging to the ancient régime, no great landed proprietor,[3] no head of a service, no eminent specialist in diplomacy, in finance, in the administrative or military arts. But three general officers are found there, and these are of the lower rank,[4] one of them having held his appointment but three months, and the other two being wholly unknown. — At the head of the diplomatic committee stands Brissot, itinerant journalist, lately traveling about in England and the United States. He is supposed to be competent in the affairs of both worlds; in reality he is one of those presuming, threadbare, talkative fellows, who, living in a garret, lecture foreign cabinets and reconstruct all Europe. Things, to them, seem to be as easily worked out as words and sentences: one day,[5] to entice the English into an alliance with France, Brissot proposes to place two towns, Dunkirk and Calais, in their hands as security; another day, he proposes “to make a descent on Spain, and, at the same time, to send a fleet to conquer Mexico.” — The leading member on the committee on finances is Cambon, a merchant from Montpellier, a good accountant, who, at a later period, is to simplify accounting and regulate the Grand Livre of the public debt, which means public bankruptcy. Mean-while, he hastens this on with all his might by encouraging the Assembly to undertake the ruinous and terrible war that is to last for twenty-three years; according to him, “there is more money than is needed for it.”[6] In actual fact, the guarantee of assignats is used up and the taxes do not come in. They live only on the paper money they issue. The assignats lose forty per centum, and the ascertained deficit for 1792 is four hundred millions.[7] But this revolutionary financier relies upon the confiscations which he instigates in France, and which are to be set agoing in Belgium; here lies all his invention, a systematic robbery on a grand scale within and without the kingdom.

As to the legislators and manufacturers of constitutions, we have Condorcet, a cold-blooded fanatic and systematic leveler, satisfied that a mathematical method suits the social sciences fed on abstractions, blinded by formulœ, and the most chimerical of perverted intellects. Never was a man versed in books more ignorant of mankind; never did a lover of scientific precision better succeed in changing the character of facts. It was he who, two days before the 20th of June, amidst the most brutal public excitement, admired “the calmness” and rationality of the multitude; “considering the way people interpret events, it might be supposed that they had given some hours of each day to the study of analysis.” It is he who, two days after the 20th of June, extolled the red cap in which the head of Louis XVI. had been muffled. “That crown is as good as any other. Marcus Aurelius would not have despised it.”[8] — Such is the discernment and practical judgment of the leaders; from these one can form an opinion of the flock. It consists of novices arriving from the provinces and bringing with them the principles and prejudices of the newspaper. So remote from the center, having no knowledge of general affairs or of their unity, they are two years behind their brethren of the Constituent Assembly. They are described in the following manner by Malouet,[9]

“Most of them, without having decided against a monarchy, had decided against the court, the aristocracy, and the clergy, ever imagining conspiracies and believing that defense consisted solely in attack. There were still many men of talent among them, but with no experience; they even lacked that which we had obtained. Our patriot deputies, in great part, were aware of their errors; the novices were not, they were ready to begin all over again.”

Moreover, they have their own political bent, for nearly all of them are upstarts of the new régime. We find in their ranks 264 department administrators, 109 district administrators, 125 justices and prosecuting-attorneys, 68 mayors and town officers, besides about twenty officers of the National Guard, constitutional bishops and curés. The whole amounting to 566 of the elected functionaries, who, for the past twenty months, have carried on the government under the direction of their electors. We have seen how this was done and under what conditions, with what compliances and with what complicity, with what deference to clamorous opinion, with what docility in the presence of rioters, with what submission to the orders of the mob, with what a deluge of sentimental phrases and commonplace abstractions. Sent to Paris as deputies, through the choice or toleration of the clubs, they bear along with them their politics and their rhetoric. The result is an assemblage of narrow, perverted, hasty, inflated and feeble minds; at each daily session, twenty word- mills turn to no purpose, the greatest of public powers at once becoming a manufactory of nonsense, a school of extravagancies, and a theatre for declamation.

II.

Degree and quality of their intelligence and Culture.

Is it possible that serious men could have listened to such weird nonsense until the bitter end?

“I am a tiller of the soil,”[10] says one deputy, “I now dare speak of the antique nobility of my plow. A yoke of oxen once constituted the pure, incorruptible legal worthies before whom my good ancestors executed their contracts, the authenticity of which, far better recorded on the soil than on flimsy parchment, is protected from any species of revolution whatever.”

Is it conceivable that the reporter of a law, that is about to exile or imprison forty thousand priests, should employ in an argument such silly bombast as the following?[11]

“I have seen in the rural districts the hymeneal torch diffusing only pale and somber rays, or, transformed into the flambeaux of furies, the hideous skeleton of superstition seated even on the nuptial couch, placed between nature and the wedded, and arresting, etc. . . . Oh Rome, art thou satisfied? Art thou then like Saturn, to whom fresh holocausts were daily imperative? . . . Depart, ye creators of discord! The soil of liberty is weary of bearing you. Would ye breathe the atmosphere of the Aventine mount? The national ship is already prepared for you. I hear on the shore the impatient cries of the crew; I see the breezes of liberty swelling its sails. Like Telemachus, ye will go forth on the waters to seek your father; but never will you have to dread the Sicilian rocks, nor the seductions of a Eucharis.”

Courtesies of pedants, rhetorical personifications, and the invective of maniacs is the prevailing tone. The same defect characterizes the best speeches, namely, an overexcited brain, a passion for high- sounding terms, the constant use of stilts and an incapacity for seeing things as they are and of so describing them. Men of talent, Isnard, Guadet, Vergniaud himself, are carried away by hollow sonorous phrases like a ship with too much canvas for its ballast. Their minds are stimulated by souvenirs of their school lessons, the modern world revealing itself to them only through their Latin reminiscences. — François de Nantes is exasperated at the pope “who holds in servitude the posterity of Cato and of Scœvola.” — Isnard proposes to follow the example of the Roman senate which, to allay discord at home, got up an outside war: between old Rome and France of 1792, indeed, there is a striking resemblance. — Roux insists that the Emperor (of Austria) should give satisfaction before the 1st of March; “in a case like this the Roman people would have fixed the term of delay; why shouldn’t the French people fix one? . . .” “The circle of Popilius” should be drawn around those petty, hesitating German princes. When money is needed to establish camps around Paris and the large towns, Lasource proposes to dispose of the national forests and is amazed at any objection to the measure. “Cœsar’s soldiers,” he exclaims, “believing that an ancient forest in Gaul was sacred, dared not lay the axe to it; are we to share their superstitious respect?”[12] — Add to this collegiate lore the philosophic dregs deposited in all minds by the great sophist then in vogue. Larivière reads in the tribune[13] that page of the “Contrat Social,” where Rousseau declares that the sovereign may banish members “of an unsocial religion,” and punish with death “one who, having publicly recognized the dogmas of civil religion, acts as if he did not believe in them.” On which, another hissing parrot, M. Filassier, exclaims, “I put J. J. Rousseau’s proposition into the form of a motion and demand a vote on it.” — In like manner it is proposed to grant very young girls the right of marrying in spite of their parents by stating, according to the “Nouvelle Héloise”

“that a girl thirteen or fourteen years old begins to sigh for the union which nature dictates. She struggles between passion and duty, so that, if she triumphs, she becomes a martyr, something that is rare in nature. It may happen that a young person prefers the serene shame of defeat to a wearisome eight year long struggle.”

Divorce is inaugurated to “preserve in matrimony that happy peace of mind which renders the sentiments livelier.”[14] Henceforth this will no longer be a chain but “the acquittance of an agreeable debt which every citizen owes to his country. . . Divorce is the protecting spirit of marriage.”[15]

On a background of classic pedantry, with only vague and narrow notions of ordinary instruction, lacking exact and substantial information, flow obscenities and enlarged commonplaces enveloped in a mythological gauze, spouting in long tirades as maxims from the revolutionary manual. Such is the superficial culture and verbal argumentation from which vulgar and dangerous ingredients the intelligence of the new legislators is formed.[16]

III.

Aspects of their sessions. — Scenes and display at the club. — Co- operation of spectators.

From this we can imagine what their sessions were. “More in-coherent and especially more passionate than those of the Constituent Assembly”[17] they present the same but intensified characteristics. The argument is weaker, the invective more violent, and the dogmatism more intemperate. Inflexibility degenerates into insolence, prejudice into fanaticism, and near-sightedness into blindness. Disorder becomes a tumult and constant din an uproar. Suppose, says an eye- witness,

“a classroom with hundreds of pupils quarreling and every instant on the point of seizing each other by the hair. Their dress neglected, their attitudes angry, with sudden transitions from shouting to hooting . . is a sight hard to imagine and to which nothing can be compared.”

It lacks nothing for making it a club of the lowest species. Here, in advance, we contemplate the ways of the future revolutionary inquisition. They welcome burlesque denunciations; enter into petty police investigations; weigh the tittle-tattle of porters and the gossip of servant-girls; devote an all-night session to the secrets of a drunkard.[18] They enter on their official report and without any disapproval, the petition of M. Huré, “living at Pont-sur-Yonne, who, over his own signature, offers one hundred francs and his arm to become a killer of tyrants.” Repeated and multiplied hurrahs and applause with the felicitations of the president is the sanction of scandalous or ridiculous private misconduct seeking to display itself under the cover of public authority. Anacharsis Clootz, “a Mascarille officially stamped,” who proposes a general war and who hawks about maps of Europe cut up in advance into departments beginning with Savoy, Belgium and Holland “and thus onward to the Polar Sea,” is thanked and given a seat on the benches of the Assembly.[19] Compliments are made to the Vicar of Sainte-Marguerite and his wife is given a seat in the Assembly and who, introducing “his new family,” thunders against clerical celibacy.[20] Crowds of men and women are permitted to traverse the hall letting out political cries. Every sort of indecent, childish and seditious parade is admitted to the bar of the house.[21] To-day it consists of “citoyennes of Paris,” desirous of being drilled in military exercises and of having for their commandants “former French guardsmen;” to-morrow children come and express their patriotism with “touching simplicity,” regretting that “their trembling feet do not permit them to march, no, fly against the tyrants;” next to these come convicts of the Château – Vieux escorted by a noisy crowd; at another time the artillerymen of Paris, a thousand in number, with drums beating; delegates from the provinces, the faubourgs and the clubs come constantly, with their furious harangues, and imperious remonstrances, their exactions, their threats and their summonses. — In the intervals between the louder racket a continuous hubbub is heard in the clatter of the tribunes.[22] At each session “the representatives are chaffed by the spectators; the nation in the gallery is judge of the nation on the floor;” it interferes in the debates, silences the speakers, insults the president and orders the reporter of a bill to quit the tribune. One interruption, or a simple murmur, is not all; there are twenty, thirty, fifty in an hour, clamoring, stamping, yells and personal abuse. After countless useless entreaties, after repeated calls to order, “received with hooting,” after a dozen “regulations that are made, revised, countermanded and posted up” as if better to prove the impotence of the law, of the authorities and of the Assembly itself, the usurpations of these intruders keep on increasing. They have shouted for ten months “Down with the civil list! Down with the ministerials! Down with those curs! Silence, slaves!’ On the 26th of July, Brissot himself is to appear lukewarm and be struck on the face with two plums. “Three or four hundred individuals without either property, title, or means of subsistence . . . have become the auxiliaries, petitioners and umpires of the legislature,” their paid violence completely destroying whatever is still left of the Assembly’s reason.[23]

IV.

The Parties.- The “Right.” – “Center.” – The “Left.” – Opinions and sentiments of the Girondins. – Their Allies of the extreme “left.”

In an assembly thus composed and surrounded, it is easy to foresee on which side the balance will turn. — Through the meshes of the electoral net which the Jacobins have spread over the whole country, about one hundred well-meaning individuals of the common run, tolerably sensible and sufficiently resolute, Mathieu Dumas, Dumolard, Becquet, Gorguereau, Vaublanc, Beugnot, Girardin, Ramond, Jaucourt, were able to pass and form the party of the “Right.”[24] They resist to as great an extent as possible, and seem to have obtained a majority. — For, of the four hundred deputies who have their seats in the center, one hundred and sixty-four are inscribed on the rolls with them at the Feuillants club, while the rest, under the title of “Independents,” pretend to be of no party.[25] Besides, the whole of these four hundred, through monarchical traditions, respect the King; timid and sensible, violence is repugnant to them. They distrust the Jacobins, dread what is unknown, desire to be loyal to the Constitution and to live in peace. Nevertheless, the pompous dogmas of the revolutionary catechism still have their prestige with them; they cannot comprehend how the Constitution which they like produces the anarchy which they detest; they are “foolish enough to bemoan the effects while swearing to maintain their causes; totally deficient in spirit, in union and in boldness,” they float backwards and forwards between contradictory desires, while their predisposition to order merely awaits the steady impulsion of a vigorous will to turn it in the opposite direction. — On such docile material the “Left” can work effectively. It comprises, indeed, but one hundred and thirty-six registered Jacobins and about a hundred others who, in almost all cases, vote with the party;[26] rigidity of opinion, however, more than compensates for lack of numbers. In the front row are Guadet, Brissot, Gensonné, Veygniaud, Ducos, and Condorcet, the future chiefs of the Girondists, all of them lawyers or writers captivated by deductive politics, absolute in their convictions and proud of their faith. According to them principles are true and must be applied without reservation;[27] whoever would stop half-way is wanting in courage or intelligence. As for themselves their minds are made up to push through. With the self-confidence of youth and of theorists they draw their own conclusions and hug themselves with their strong belief in them. “These gentlemen,” says a keen observer,[28]

“professed great disdain for their predecessors, the Constituents, treating them as short-sighted and prejudiced people incapable of profiting by circumstances.”

“To the observations of wisdom, and disinterested wisdom,[29] they replied with a scornful smile, indicative of the aridity proceeding from self-conceit. One exhausted himself in reminding them of events and in deducing causes from these; one passed in turn from theory to experience and from experience to theory to show them their identity and, when they condescended to reply it was to deny the best authenticated facts and contest the plainest observations by opposing to these a few trite maxims although eloquently expressed. Each regarded the other as if they alone were worthy of being heard, each encouraging the other with the idea that all resistance to their way of looking at things was pusillanimity.”

In their own eyes they alone are capable and they alone are patriotic. Because they have read Rousseau and Mably, because their tongue is untied and their pen flowing, because they know how to handle the formulœ of books and reason out an abstract proposition, they fancy that they are statesmen.[30] Because they have read Plutarch and “Le Jeune Anacharsis,” because they aim to construct a perfect society out of metaphysical conceptions, because they are in a ferment about the coming millennium, they imagine themselves so many exalted spirits. They have no doubt whatever on these two points even after everything has fallen in through their blunders, even after their obliging hands are sullied by the foul grasp of robbers whom they were the first to instigate, and by that of executioners of which they are partners in complicity.[31] To this extent is self-conceit the worst of sophists. Convinced of their superior enlightenment and of the purity of their sentiments, they put forth the theory that the government should be in their hands. Consequently they lay hold of it in the Legislative body in ways that are going to turn against them in the Convention. They accept for allies the worst demagogues of the extreme “Left,” Chabot, Couthon, Merlin, Bazière, Thuriot, Lecointre, and outside of it, Danton, Robespierre, Marat himself, all the levelers and destroyers whom they think of use to them, but of whom they themselves are the instruments. The motions they make must pass at any cost and, to ensure this, they let loose against their adversaries the low, yelping mob which others, still more factious, will to-morrow let loose on them.

V.

Their means of action. — Dispersion of the Feuillants’ club.– Pressure of the tribunes on the Assembly. — Street mobs.

Thus, for the second time, the pretended freedom fighters seek power by boldly employing force. — They begin by suppressing the meetings of the Feuillants club.[32] The customary riot is instigated against these, whereupon ensue tumult, violent outcries and scuffles; mayor Pétion complains of his position “between opinion and law,” and lets things take their course; finally, the Feuillants are obliged to evacuate their place of meeting. – – Inside the Assembly they are abandoned to the insolence of the galleries. In vain do they get exasperated and protest. Ducastel, referring to the decree of the Constituent Assembly, which forbids any manifestation of approbation or disapprobation, is greeted with murmurs. He insists on the decree being read at the opening of each session, and “the murmurs begin again.”[33] “Is it not scandalous,” says Vaublanc, “that the nation’s representatives speaking from the tribune are subject to hootings like those bestowed upon an actor on the stage!” whereupon the galleries give him three rounds more. “Will posterity believe,” says Quatremère, “that acts concerning the honor, the lives, and the fortunes of citizens should be subject, like games in the arena, to the applause and hisses of the spectators!” “Come to the point!” shout the galleries. “If ever,” resumes Quatremère, “the most important of judicial acts (an act of capital indictment) can be exposed to this scandalous prostitution of applause and menaces . . . ” “The murmurs break out afresh.” — Every time that a sanguinary or incendiary measure is to be carried, the most furious and prolonged clamor stops the utterance of its opponents: “Down with the speaker! Send the reporter of that bill to prison! Down! Down! Sometimes only about twenty of the deputies will applaud or hoot with the galleries, and sometimes it is the entire Assembly which is insulted. Fists are thrust in the president’s face. All that now remains is “to call down the galleries on the floor to pass decrees,” which proposition is ironically made by one of the “Right.”[34]

Great, however, as this usurpation may be, the minority, in order to suppress the majority, accommodate themselves to it, the Jacobins in the chamber making common cause with the Jacobins in the galleries. The disturbers should not be put out; “it would be excluding from our deliberations,” says Grangeneuve, “that which belongs essentially to the people.” On one of the deputies demanding measures to enforce silence, “Torné demands that the proposition be referred to the Portugal inquisition.” Choudieu “declares that it can only emanate from deputies who forget that respect which is due to the people, their sovereign judge.”[35] “The action of the galleries,” says Lecointe-Puyraiveaux, “is an outburst of patriotism.” Finally, this same Choudieu, twisting and turning all rights about with incomparable audacity, wishes to confer legislative privileges on the audience, and demands a decree against the deputies who, guilty of popular lèse- majesté, presume to complain of those who insult them. — Another piece of oppressive machinery, still more energetic, operates outside on the approaches to the Assembly. Like their predecessors of the Constituent Assembly, the members of the “Right” “cannot leave the building without encountering the threats and imprecations of enraged crowds. Cries of ‘to the lantern!’ greet the ears of Dumolard, Vaublanc, Raucourd, and Lacretelle as often as those of the Abbé Maury and Montlosier.”[36] After having hurled abuse at the president, Mathieu Dumas, they insult his wife who has been recognized in a reserved gallery.[37] In the Tuileries, crowds are always standing there listening to the brawlers who denounce suspected deputies by name, and woe to any among them who takes that path on his way to the chamber! A broadside of insults greets him as he passes along. If the deputy happens to be a farmer, they exclaim: “Look at that queer old aristocrat — an old peasant dog that used to watch cows!” One day Hua, on going up the steps of the Tuileries terrace, is seized by the hair by an old vixen who bids him “Bow your head to your sovereigns, the people, you bastard of a deputy!” On the 20th of June one of the patriots, who is crossing the Assembly room, whispers in his ear, “You scamp of a deputy, you’ll never die but by my hand!” Another time, having defended the juge-de-paix Larivière, there awaits him at the door, in the middle of the night, “a set of blackguards, who crowd around him and thrust their fists and cudgels in his face;” happily, his friends Dumas and Daverhoult, two military officers, foreseeing the danger, present their pistols and set him free “although with some difficulty.” — As the 10th of August draws near there is more open aggression. Vaublanc, for having defended Lafayette, just misses being cut to pieces three times on leaving the Assembly; sixty of the deputies are treated in the same fashion, being struck, covered with mud, and threatened with death if they dare go back.[38] — With such allies a minority is very strong. Thanks to its two agencies of constraint it will detach the votes it needs from the majority and, either through terror or craft, secure the passage of all the decrees it needs.

VI.

Parliamentary maneuvers. — Abuses of urgency. — Vote on the principle. — Call by name. -Intimidation of the “Center.” — Opponents inactive. — The majority finally disposed of.

Sometimes it succeeds surreptitiously by rushing them through. As “there is no order of the day circulated beforehand, and, in any event, none which anybody is obliged to adhere to,”[39] the Assembly is captured by surprise. “The first knave amongst the ‘Left,’ (which expression, says Hua, I do not strike out, because there were many among those gentlemen), brought up a ready-made resolution, prepared the evening before by a clique. We were not prepared for it and demanded that it should be referred to a committee. Instead of doing this, however, the resolution was declared urgent, and, whether we would or not, discussion had to take place forthwith.”[40] — “There were other tactics equally perfidious, which Thuriot, especially, made use of. This great rascal got up and proposed, not the draft of a law, but what he called a principle; for instance, a decree should be passed confiscating the property of the émigrés, . . or that unsworn priests should be subject to special surveillance.[41] . . . In reply, he was told that his principle was the core of a law, the very law itself; so let it be debated by referring it to a committee to make a report on it. — Not at all — the matter is urgent; a committee might fix the articles as it pleases; they are worthless if the principle is not common sense.” Through this expeditious method discussion is stifled. The Jacobins purposely prevent the Assembly from giving the matter any consideration. They count on its bewilderment. In the name of reason, they discard reason as far as they can, and hasten a vote because their decrees do not stand up to analysis. — At other times, and especially on grand occasions, they compel a vote. In general, votes are given by the members either sitting down or standing up, and, for the four hundred deputies of the “Center,” subject to the scolding of the exasperated galleries, it is a tolerably hard trial. “Part of them do not arise, or they rise with the ‘Left’.”[42] If the “Right” happens to have a majority, “this is contested in bad faith and a call of the house is demanded.” Now, “the calls of the house, through an intolerable abuse, are always published; the Jacobins declaring that it is well for the people to know their friends from their enemies.” The meaning of this is that this list of the opposition will soon serve as a list of the outlaws, on which the timid are not disposed to inscribe themselves. The result is an immediate defection in the heavy battalions of the “Centre”; “this is a positive fact,” says Hua, “of which we were all witnesses; we always lost a hundred votes on the call of the house.” — Towards the end they give up, and protest no more, except by staying away: on the 14th of June, when the abolishment of the whole system of feudal credit was being dealt with, only the extreme left was attending; the rest of the “Assembly hall was nearly empty”; out of 497 deputies in attendance, 200 had left the session.[43] Encouraged for a moment by the appearance of some possible protection, they twice exonerate General Lafayette, behind whom they see an army,[44] and brave the despots of the Assembly, the clubs, and the streets. But, for lack of a military chief and base, the visible majority is twice obliged to yield, to keep silent, and fly or retreat under the dictatorship of the victorious faction, which has strained and forced the legislative machine until it has become disjointed and broken down.[45]

NOTES:

[1]”Correspondence (manuscript) of Baron de Staël,” with his Court in Sweden. Oct. 6, 1791.

[2] “Souvenirs”, by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc), chancelier de France. in VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893. – Dumouriez, “Mémoires,” III. ch. V: “The Jacobin party, having branches all over the country, used its provincial clubs to control the elections. Every crackbrain, every seditious scribbler, all the agitators were elected . . . very few enlightened or prudent men, and still fewer of the nobles, were chosen.”– Moniteur, XII. 199 (meeting of April 23, 1792). Speech M. Lecointe-Puyravaux. “We need not dissimulate; indeed, we are proud to say, that this legislature is composed of persons who are not rich.”

[3] Mathieu Dumas, “Mémoires,” I. 521. “The excitement in the electoral assemblages was very great; the aristocrats and large land- owners abstained from coming there.” — Correspondance de Mirabeau et du Comte de la Mark, III. 246, Oct.10, 1791. “Nineteen twentieths of this legislature have no other transportation (turn-out) than galoshes and umbrellas. It has been estimated, that all these deputies put together do not possess 300,000 livres solid income. The majority of the members of this Assembly have received no education whatever.”

[4] They rank as Maréchaux de camp, a grade corresponding to that of brigadier-general. They are Dupuy-Montbrun (deceased in March, 1792), Descrots-d’Estrée, a weak and worn old man whom his children forced into the Legislative Assembly, and, lastly, Mathieu Dumas, a conservative, and the only prominent one.

[5] “Correspondance du Baron de Staël,” Jan.19, 1792. — Gouverneur Morris (II.162, Feb. 4, 1792) writes to Washington that M. de Warville, on the diplomatic committee, proposed to cede Dunkirk and Calais to England, as a pledge of fidelity by France, in any engagement which she might enter into. You can judge, by this, of the wisdom and virtue of the faction to which he belongs — Buchez et Roux, XXX 89 (defense of Brissot, Jan. 5, 1793) “Brissot, like all noisy, reckless, ambitious men, started in full blast with the strangest paradoxes. In 1780. in his ‘Recherches philosophiques sur le droit de propriété,’ he wrote as follows: ‘If 40 crowns suffice to maintain existence, the possession of 200,000 crowns is plainly unjust and a robbery . . . Exclusive ownership is a veritable crime against nature . . . The punishment of robbery in our institutions is an act of virtue which nature herself commands.'”

[6] Moniteur, speech by Cambon, sittings of Feb. 2 and April 20, 1792.

[7] Ibid., (sitting of April 3). Speech by M. Cailliasson. The property belonging to the nation, sold and to be sold, is valued at 2,195 millions, while the assignats already issued amount to 2,100 millions. — Cf. Mercure de France, Dec. 17, 1791, p.201; Jan.28, 1792, p. 215; May 19, 1792, p. 205. — Dumouriez, “Mémoires,” III. 296, and 339, 340, 344, 346. – “Cambon, a raving lunatic, without education, humane principle, or integrity (public) a meddler, an ignoramus, and very giddy. He tells me that one resource remained to him, which is, to seize all the coin in Belgium, all the plate belonging to the churches, and all the cash deposits . . . that, on ruining the Belgians, on reducing them to the same state of suffering as the French, they would necessarily share their fate with them; that they would then be admitted members of the Republic, with the prospect of always making headway, through the same line of policy; that the decree of Dec. 15, 1792, admirably favored this and, because it tended to a complete disorganization, and that the luckiest thing that could happen to France was to disorganize all its neighbors and reduce them to the same state of anarchy.” (This conversation between Cambon and Dumouriez occurs in the middle of January, 1793.) – Moniteur, XIV. 758 (sitting of Dec. 15, 1792). Report by Cambon.

[8] Chronique de Paris, Sept. 4, 1792. “It is a sad and terrible situation which forces a people, naturally amiable and generous, to take such vengeance! ” – Cf. the very acute article, by St. Beuve, on Condorcet, in “Causeries du Lundi,” — Hua (a colleague of Condorcet, in the Legislative Assembly), “Mémoires,” 89. “Condorcet, in his journal, regularly falsified things, with an audacity which is unparelleled. The opinions of the ‘Right’ were so mutilated and travestied the next day in his journal, that we, who had uttered them, could scarcely recognise them. On complaining of this to him and on charging him with perfidy, the philosopher only smiled.”

[9] Malouet, II. 215. — Dumouriez, III. ch. V. “They were elected to represent the nation to defend, they say, its interests against a perfidious court.”

[10] Moniteur, X. 223 (session of Oct. 26, 1791). Speech by M. François Duval. — Grandiloquence is the order of the day at the very first meeting. On the 1st of October, 1791, twelve old men, marching in procession, go out to fetch the constitutional act. “M. Camus, keeper of the records, with a composed air and downcast eyes, enters with measured steps,” bearing in both hands the sacred document which he holds against his breast, while the deputies stand up and bare their heads. “People of France,” says an orator, “citizens of Paris, all generous Frenchmen, and you, our fellow citizens — virtuous, intelligent women, bringing your gentle influence into the sanctuary of the law — behold the guarantee of peace which the legislature presents to you!” — We seem to be witnessing the last act of an opera.

[11] Ibid., XII. 230 (sessions of April 26 and May 5). Report and speech by François de Nantes. The whole speech, a comic treasure from the beginning to the end, ought to have been quoted: “Tell me, pontiff of Rome, what your sentiments will be when you welcome your worthy and faithful co-operators? . . I behold your sacred hands, ready to launch those pontifical thunderbolts, which, etc. . . Let the brazier of Scœvola be brought in, and, with our outstretched palms above the burning coals, we will show that there is no species of torture, no torment which can excite a frown on the brow of him whom the love of country exalts above humanity!” — Suppose that, just at this moment, a lighted candle had been placed under his hand!

[12] Moniteur, XI. 179 (session of Jan. 20, 1792). – Ibid., 216 (session of Jan. 24). – XII. 426 (May 9).

[13] Ibid., XII. 479 (session of May 24). – XIII. 71 (session of July 7, speech by Lasource). – Cf. XIV. 301 (session of July 31) a quotation from Voltaire brought in for the suppression of the convents.

[14] Moniteur. Speech by Aubert Dubayer, session of Aug. 30.

[15] Speech by Chaumette, procureur of the commune, to the newly married. (Mortimer-Ternaux, IV. 408).

[16] The class to which they belonged has been portrayed, to the life, by M. Roye-Collard (Sainte-Beuve, “Nouveaux Lundis,” IV. 263): “A young lawyer at Paris, at first received in a few houses on the Ile St. Louis, he soon withdrew from this inferior world of attorneys and pettyfoggers, whose tone oppressed him. The very thought of the impression this gallant and intensely vulgar mediocrity made upon him, still inspired disgust. He much preferred to talk with longshoremen, if need be, than with these scented limbs of the law.”

[17] Etienne Dumont, “Mémoires,” 40. — Mercure de France, Nov. 19, 1791; Feb. 11 and March 3, 1792. (articles by Mallet du Pan).

[18] Moniteur, Dec. 17 (examination at the bar of the house of Rauch, a pretended labor contractor, whom they are obliged to send off acquitted). Rauch tells them: “I have no money, and cannot find a place where I can sleep at less than 6 sous, because I pee in the bed.” — Moniteur, XII. 574. (session of June 4), report by Chabot: “A peddler from Mortagne, says that a domestic coming from Coblentz told him that there was a troop about to carry off the king and poison him, so as to throw the odium of it on the National Assembly.” Bernassais de Poitiers writes: “A brave citizen told me last evening: ‘I have been to see a servant-girl, living with a noble. She assured me that her master was going to-night to Paris, to join the 30,000, who, in about a month, meant to cut the throats of the National Assembly and set fire to every corner of Paris!'” – “M. Gerard, a saddler at Amiens, writes to us that Louis XVI is to be aided in his flight by 5,000 relays, and that afterwards they are going to fire red-hot bullets on the National Assembly.”

[19] Mercure de France, Nov. 5, 1791 (session of Oct. 25). — Ibid., Dec. 23.-Moniteur, XII. 192 (session of April 21, 1792). — XII. 447 (address to the French, by Clootz): “God brought order out of primitive chaos; the French will bring order out of feudal chaos. God is mighty, and manifested his will; we are mighty, and we will manifest our will. . . The more extensive the seat of war the sooner, and more fortunately, will the suit of plebeians against the nobles be decided. . . We require enemies, . . Savoy, Tuscany, and quickly, quickly!”

[20] Cf. Moniteur, XI. 192 (sitting of Jan. 22, 1792). “M. Burnet, chaplain of the national guard, presents himself at the bar of the house with an English woman, named Lydia Kirkham, and three small children, one of which is in her arms. M. Burnet announces that she is his wife and that the child in her arms is the fruit of their affection. After referring to the force of natural sentiments which he could not resist, the petitioner thus continues: ‘One day, I met one