During these two days and nights, says Bailly, "Paris ran the risk of being pillaged, and was only saved from the marauders by the National Guard." Already, in the open street,[1240] "these creatures tore off women's shoes and earrings," and the robbers were beginning to have full sway.—Fortunately the militia organized itself and the principal inhabitants and gentlemen enrolled themselves; 48,000 men are formed into battalions and companies; the bourgeoisie buy guns of the vagabonds for three livres apiece, and sabers or pistols for twelve sous. At last, some of the offenders are hung on the spot, and others disarmed, and the insurrection again becomes political. But, whatever its object, it remains always wild, because it is in the hands of the mob. Dusaulx, its panegyrist, confesses[1241] that "he thought he was witnessing the total dissolution of society." There is no leader, no management. The electors who have converted themselves into the representatives of Paris seem to command the crowd, but it is the crowd which commands them. One of them, Legrand, to save the Hotel-de-Ville, has no other resource but to send for six barrels of gun-powder, and to declare to the assailants that he is about to blow everything into the air. The commandant whom they themselves have chosen, M. de Salles, has twenty bayonets at his breast during a quarter of an hour, and, more than once, the whole committee is near being massacred. Let the reader imagine, on the premises where the discussions are going on, and petitions are being made, "a concourse of fifteen hundred men pressed by a hundred thousand others who are forcing an entrance," the wainscoting cracking, the benches upset one over another, the enclosure of the bureau pushed back against the president's chair, a tumult such as to bring to mind 'the day of judgment," the death-shrieks, songs, yells, and "people beside themselves, for the most part not knowing where they are nor what they want."—Each district is also a petty center, while the Palais-Royal is the main center. Propositions, "accusations, and deputations travel to and fro from one to the other, along with the human torrent which is obstructed or rushes ahead with no other guide than its own inclination and the chances of the way. One wave gathers here and another there, their strategy consisting in pushing and in being pushed. Yet, their entrance is effected only because they are let in. If they get into the Invalides it is owing to the connivance of the soldiers.—At the Bastille, firearms are discharged from ten in the morning to five in the evening against walls forty feet high and thirty feet thick, and it is by chance that one of their shots reaches an invalid on the towers. They are treated the same as children whom one wishes to hurt as little as possible. The governor, on the first summons to surrender, orders the cannon to be withdrawn from the embrasures; he makes the garrison swear not to fire if it is not attacked; he invites the first of the deputations to lunch; he allows the messenger dispatched from the Hotel-de-Ville to inspect the fortress; he receives several discharges without returning them, and lets the first bridge be carried without firing a shot.[1242] When, at length, he does fire, it is at the last extremity, to defend the second bridge, and after having notified the assailants that he is going to do so. In short, his forbearance and patience are excessive, in conformity with the humanity of the times. The people, in turn, are infatuated with the novel sensations of attack and resistance, with the smell of gunpowder, with the excitement of the contest; all they can think of doing is to rush against the mass of stone, their expedients being on a level with their tactics. A brewer fancies that he can set fire to this block of masonry by pumping over it spikenard and poppy-seed oil mixed with phosphorus. A young carpenter, who has some archaeological notions, proposes to construct a catapult. Some of them think that they have seized the governor's daughter, and want to burn her in order to make the father surrender. Others set fire to a projecting mass of buildings filled with straw, and thus close up the passage. "The Bastille was not taken by main force," says the brave Elie, one of the combatants; "it surrendered before even it was attacked,"[1243] by capitulation, on the promise that no harm should be done to anybody. The garrison, being perfectly secure, had no longer the heart to fire on human beings while themselves risking nothing,[1244] and, on the other hand, they were unnerved by the sight of the immense crowd. Eight or nine hundred men only[1245] were concerned in the attack, most of them workmen or shopkeepers belonging to the faubourg, tailors, wheelwrights, mercers and wine-dealers, mixed with the French Guards. The Place de la Bastille, however, and all the streets in the vicinity, were crowded with the curious who came to witness the sight; "among them," says a witness,[1246] "were a number of fashionable women of very good appearance, who had left their carriages at some distance." To the hundred and twenty men of the garrison looking down from their parapets it seemed as though all Paris had come out against them. It is they, also, who lower the drawbridge an introduce the enemy: everybody has lost his head, the besieged as well as the besiegers, the latter more completely because they are intoxicated with the sense of victory. Scarcely have they entered when they begin the work of destruction, and the latest arrivals shoot at random those that come earlier; "each one fires without heeding where or on whom his shot tells." Sudden omnipotence and the liberty to kill are a wine too strong for human nature; giddiness is the result; men see red, and their frenzy ends in ferocity.

For the peculiarity of a popular insurrection is that nobody obeys anybody; the bad passions are free as well as the generous ones; heroes are unable to restrain assassins. Elie, who is the first to enter the fortress, Cholat, Hulin, the brave fellows who are in advance, the French Guards who are cognizant of the laws of war, try to keep their word of honor; but the crowd pressing on behind them know not whom to strike, and they strike at random. They spare the Swiss soldiers who have fired at them, and who, in their blue smocks, seem to them to be prisoners; on the other hand, by way of compensation, they fall furiously on the invalides who opened the gates to them; the man who prevented the governor from blowing up the fortress has his wrist severed by the blow of a saber, is twice pierced with a sword and is hung, and the hand which had saved one of the districts of Paris is promenaded through the streets in triumph. The officers are dragged along and five of them are killed, with three soldiers, on the spot, or on the way. During the long hours of firing, the murderous instinct has become aroused, and the wish to kill, changed into a fixed idea, spreads afar among the crowd which has hitherto remained inactive. It is convinced by its own clamor; a hue and cry is all that it now needs; the moment one strikes, all want to strike. "Those who had no arms," says an officer, "threw stones at me;[1247] the women ground their teeth and shook their fists at me. Two of my men had already been assassinated behind me. I finally got to within some hundreds of paces of the Hotel-de-Ville, amidst a general cry that I should be hung, when a head, stuck on a pike, was presented to me to look at, while at. the same moment I was told that it was that of M. de Launay," the governor.—The latter, on going out, had received the cut of a sword on his right shoulder; on reaching the Rue Saint-Antoine "everybody pulled his hair out and struck him." Under the arcade of Saint-Jean he was already "severely wounded." Around him, some said, "his head ought to be struck off;" others, "let him be hung;" and others, "he ought to be tied to a horse's tail." Then, in despair, and wishing to put an end to his torments, he cried out, "Kill me," and, in struggling, kicked one of the men who held him in the lower abdomen. On the instant he is pierced with bayonets, dragged in the gutter, and, striking his corpse, they exclaim, "He's a scurvy wretch (galeux) and a monster who has betrayed us; the nation demands his head to exhibit to the public," and the man who was kicked is asked to cut it off.—This man, an unemployed cook, a simpleton who "went to the Bastille to see what was going on," thinks that as it is the general opinion, the act is patriotic, and even believes that he "deserves a medal for destroying a monster." Taking a saber which is lent to him, he strikes the bare neck, but the dull saber not doing its work, he takes a small black-handled knife from his pocket, and, "as in his capacity of cook he knows how to cut meat," he finishes the operation successfully. Then, placing the head on the end of a three-pronged pitchfork, and accompanied by over two hundred armed men, "not counting the mob," he marches along, and, in the Rue Saint-Honore, he has two inscriptions attached to the head, to indicate without mistake whose head it is.—They grow merry over it: after filing alongside of the Palais-Royal, the procession arrives at the Pont-Neuf, where, before the statue of Henry IV., they bow the head three times, saying, "Salute thy master!"—This is the last joke: it is to be found in every triumph, and inside the butcher, we find the rogue.



VII.—Murders of Foulon and Berthier.

Meanwhile, at the Palais-Royal, other buffoons, who with the levity of gossips sport with lives as freely as with words, have drawn u. During the night between the 13th and 14th of July, a list of proscriptions, copies of which are hawked about. Care is taken to address one of them to each of the persons designated, the Comte d'Artois, Marshal de Broglie, the Prince de Lambesc, Baron de Bezenval, MM. de Breteuil, Foulon, Berthier, Maury, d'Espremenil, Lefevre d'Amecourt, and others besides.[1248] A reward is promised to whoever will bring their heads to the Cafe de Caveau. Here are names for the unchained multitude; all that now is necessary is that some band should encounter a man who is denounced; he will go as far as the lamppost at the street corner, but not beyond it.—Throughout the day of the 14th, this improvised tribunal holds a permanent session, and follows up its decisions with its actions. M. de Flesselles, provost of the merchants and president of the electors at the Hotel-de-Ville, having shown himself somewhat lukewarm,[1249] the Palais-Royal declares him a traitor and sends him off to be hung. On the way a young man fells him with a pistol-shot, others fall upon his body, while his head, borne upon a pike, goes to join that of M. de Launay.—Equally deadly accusations and of equally speedy execution float in the air and from every direction. "On the slightest pretext," says an elector, "they denounced to us those whom they thought opposed to the Revolution, which already signified the same as enemies of the State. Without any investigation, there was only talk of the seizure of their persons, the ruin of their homes, and the razing of their houses. One young man exclaimed: 'Follow me at once, let us start off at once to Bezenval's!'"—Their brains are so frightened, and their minds so distrustful, that at every step in the streets "one's name has to be given, one's profession declared, one's residence, and one's intentions. . .. One can neither enter nor leave Paris without being suspected of treason." The Prince de Montbarrey, advocate of the new ideas, and his wife, are stopped in their carriage at the barrier, and are on the point of being cut to pieces. A deputy of the nobles, on his way to the National Assembly, is seized in his cab and conducted to the Place de Greve; the corpse of M. de Launay is shown to him, and he is told that he is to be treated in the same fashion.—Every life hangs by a thread, and, on the following days, when the King had sent away his troops, dismissed his Ministers, recalled Necker, and granted everything, the danger remains just as great. The multitude, abandoned to the revolutionaries and to itself, continues the same bloody antics, while the municipal chiefs[1250] whom it has elected, Bailly, Mayor of Paris, and Lafayette, commandant of the National Guard, are obliged to use cunning, to implore, to throw themselves between the multitude and the unfortunates whom they wish to destroy.

On the 15th of July, in the night, a woman disguised as a man is arrested in the court of the Hotel-de-Ville, and so maltreated that she faints away; Bailly, in order to save her, is obliged to feign anger against her and have her sent immediately to prison. From the 14th to the 22nd of July, Lafayette, at the risk of his life, saves with his own hand seventeen persons in different quarters.[1251]—On the 22nd of July, upon the denunciations which multiply around Paris like trains of gunpowder, two administrators of high rank, M. Foulon, Councillor of State, and M. Berthier, his son-in-law, are arrested, one near Fontainebleau, and the other near Compiegne. M. Foulon, a strict master,[1252] but intelligent and useful, expended sixty thousand francs the previous winter on his estate in giving employment to the poor. M. Berthier, an industrious and capable man, had officially surveyed and valued Ile-de-France, to equalize the taxes, and had reduced the overcharged quotas first one-eighth and then a quarter. But both of these gentlemen have arranged the details of the camp against which Paris has risen; both are publicly proscribed for eight days previously by the Palais-Royal, and, with a people frightened by disorder, exasperated by hunger, and stupefied by suspicion, an accused person is a guilty one.—With regard to Foulon, as with Reveillon, a story is made up, coined in the same mint, a sort of currency for popular circulation, and which the people itself manufactures by casting into one tragic expression the sum of its sufferings and rankling memories:[1253] "He said that we were worth no more than his horses; and that if we had no bread we had only to eat grass."—The old man of seventy-four is brought to Paris, with a truss of hay on his head, a collar of thistles around his neck, and his mouth stuffed with hay. In vain does the electoral bureau order his imprisonment that he may be saved; the crowd yells out: "Sentenced and hung!" and, authoritatively, appoints the judges. In vain does Lafayette insist and entreat three times that the judgment be regularly rendered, and that the accused be sent to the Abbaye. A new wave of people comes up, and one man, "well dressed," cries out: "What is the need of a sentence for a man who has been condemned for thirty years?" Foulon is carried off; dragged across the square, and hung to the lamp post. The cord breaks twice, and twice he falls upon the pavement. Re-hung with a fresh cord and then cut down, his head is severed from his body and placed on the end of a pike.[1254] Meanwhile, Berthier, sent away from Compiegne by the municipality, afraid to keep him in his prison where he was constantly menaced, arrives in a cabriolet under escort. The people carry placards around him filled with opprobrious epithets; in changing horses they threw hard black bread into the carriage, exclaiming, "There, wretch, see the bread you made us eat!" On reaching the church of Saint-Merry, a fearful storm of insults burst forth against him. He is called a monopolist, "although he had never bought or sold a grain of wheat." In the eyes of the multitude, who has to explain the evil as caused by some evil-doer, he is the author of the famine. Conducted to the Abbaye, his escort is dispersed and he is pushed over to the lamp post. Then, seeing that all is lost, he snatches a gun from one of his murderers and bravely defends himself. A soldier of the "Royal Croats" gives him a cut with his saber across the stomach, and another tears out his heart. As the cook, who had cut off the head of M. de Launay, happens to be on the spot, they hand him the heart to carry while the soldiers take the head, and both go to the Hotel-de-Ville to show their trophies to M. de Lafayette. On their return to the Palais-Royal, and while they are seated at table in a tavern, the people demand these two remains. They throw them out of the window and finish their supper, whilst the heart is marched about below in a bouquet of white carnations.—Such are the spectacles which this garden presents where, a year before, "good society in full dress" came on leaving the Opera to chat, often until two o'clock in the morning, under the mild light of the moon, listening now to the violin of Saint-Georges, and now to the charming voice of Garat.



VIII.—Paris in the hands of the people.

Henceforth it is clear that no one is safe: neither the new militia nor the new authorities suffice to enforce respect for the law. "They did not dare," says Bailly,[1255] "oppose the people who, eight days before this, had taken the Bastille."—In vain, after the last two murders, do Bailly and Lafayette indignantly threaten to withdraw; they are forced to remain; their protection, such as it is, is all that is left, and, if the National Guard is unable to prevent every murder, it prevents some of them. People live as they can under the constant expectation of fresh popular violence. "To every impartial man," says Malouet, "the Terror dates from the 14th of July".—On the 17th, before setting out for Paris, the King attends communion and makes his will in anticipation of assassination. From the 16th to the 18th, twenty personages of high rank, among others most of those on whose heads a price is set by the Palais-Royal, leave France: The Count d'Artois, Marshal de Broglie, the Princes de Conde, de Conti, de Lambesc, de Vaudemont, the Countess de Polignac, and the Duchesses de Polignac and de Guiche.—The day following the two murders, M. de Crosne, M. Doumer, M. Sureau, the most zealous and most valuable members of the committee on subsistence, all those appointed to make purchases and to take care of the storehouses, conceal themselves or fly. On the eve of the two murders, the notaries of Paris, being menaced with a riot, had to advance 45,000 francs which were promised to the workmen of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine; while the public treasury, almost empty, is drained of 30,000 livres per day to diminish the cost of bread.—Persons and possessions, great and small, private individuals and public functionaries, the Government itself, all is in the hands of the mob. "From this moment," says a deputy,[1256] "liberty did not exist even in the National Assembly. . . France stood dumb before thirty factious persons. The Assembly became in their hands a passive instrument, which they forced to serve them in the execution of their projects."—They themselves do not lead, although they seem to lead. The great brute, which has taken the bit in its mouth, holds on to it, and it's plunging becomes more violent. Not only do both spurs which maddened it, I mean the desire for innovation and the daily scarcity of food, continue to prick it on. But also the political hornets which, increasing by thousands, buzz around its ears. And the license in which it revels for the first time, joined to the applause lavished upon it, urges it forward more violently each day. The insurrection is glorified. Not one of the assassins is sought out. It is against the conspiracy of Ministers that the Assembly institutes an inquiry. Rewards are bestowed upon the conquerors of the Bastille; it is declared that they have saved France. All honors are awarded to the people-to their good sense, their magnanimity, and their justice. Adoration is paid to this new sovereign: he is publicly and officially told, in the Assembly and by the press, that he possesses every virtue, all rights and all powers. If he spills blood it is inadvertently, on provocation, and always with an infallible instinct. Moreover, says a deputy, "this blood, was it so pure?" The greater number of people prefers the theories of their books to the experience of their eyes; they persist in the idyll, which they have fashioned for themselves. At the worst their dream, driven out from the present, takes refuge in the future. To-morrow, when the Constitution is complete, the people, made happy, will again become wise: let us endure the storm, which leads us on to so noble a harbor.

Meanwhile, beyond the King, inert and disarmed, beyond the Assembly, disobeyed or submissive, appears the real monarch, the people—that is to say, a crowd of a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand individuals gathered together at random, on an impulse, on an alarm, suddenly and irresistibly made legislators, judges, and executioners. A formidable power, undefined and destructive, on which no one has any hold, and which, with its mother, howling and misshapen Liberty, sits at the threshold of the Revolution like Milton's two specters at the gates of Hell.

. . . Before the gates there sat On either side a formidable shape; The one seem'd woman to the waist, and fair, but ended foul in many a scaly fold Voluminous and vast, a serpent arm'd With mortal sting: about her middle round A cry of hell hounds never ceasing bark'd With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung A hideous peal: yet, when they list, would creep, If aught disturb'd their noise, into her womb, And kennel there; yet there still bark'd and howl'd Within unseen. . . ........the other shape, If shape it might be call'd, that shape had none Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb, Or substance might be call'd that shadow seem'd For each seem'd either: black it stood as night, Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell, And shook a dreadful dart; what seem'd his head The likeness of a kingly crown had on.

The monster moving onward came as fast, With horrid strides; hell trembled as he strode.

*****

[Footnote 1201: "Archives Nationales," H. 1453. Letter of M. Miron, lieutenant de police, April 26th; of M. Joly de Fleury, procureur-general, May 29th; of MM. Marchais and Berthier, April 18th and 27th, March 23rd, April 5th, May 5th.—Arthur Young, June 10th and 29th. "Archives Nationales," H. 1453 Letter of the sub-delegate of Montlhery, April 14th.]

[Footnote 1202: "Archives Nationales," H. 1453. Letter of the sub-delegate Gobert, March 17th; of the officers of police, June 15th:—" On the 12th, 13th, 14th and 15th of March the inhabitants of Conflans generally rebelled against the game law in relation to the rabbit."]

[Footnote 1203: Montjoie, 2nd part, ch. XXI. p.14 (the first week in June). Montjoie is a party man; but he gives dates and details, and his testimony, when it is confirmed elsewhere, deserves, to be admitted.]

[Footnote 1204: Montjoie, 1st part, 92-101.—"Archives Nationales," H. 1453. Letter of the officer of police of Saint-Denis: "A good many workmen arrive daily from Lorraine as well as from Champagne," which increases the prices.]

[Footnote 1205: De Bezenval, "Memoires," I.353. Cf. "The Ancient Regime," p.509.—Marmontel, II, 252 and following pages.—De Ferrieres, I. 407.]

[Footnote 1206: Arthur Young, September 1st, 1788]

[Footnote 1207: Barrere, "Memoires," I. 234.]

[Footnote 1208: See, in the National Library, the long catalogue of those which have survived.]

[Footnote 1209: Malouet, I. 255. Bailly, I. 43 (May 9th and 19th).—D'Hezecques, "Souvenirs d'un page de Louis XV." 293.—De Bezenval, I. 368.]

[Footnote 1210: Marmontel, II, 249.—Montjoie, 1st part, p. 92.—De Bezenval, I. 387: "These spies added that persons were seen exciting the tumult and were distributing money."]

[Footnote 1211: "Archives Nationales," Y.11441. Interrogatory of the Abbe Roy, May 5th.—Y.11033, Interrogatory (April 28th and May 4th) of twenty-three wounded persons brought to the Hotel-Dieu—These two documents are of prime importance in presenting the true aspect of the insurrection; to these must be added the narrative of M. de Bezenval, who was commandant at this time with M. de Chatelet. Almost all other narratives are amplified or falsified through party bias.]

[Footnote 1212: De Ferrieres, vol. III. note A. (justificatory explanation by Reveillon).]

[Footnote 1213: Bailly I. 25 (April 26th).]

[Footnote 1214: Hippeau, IV. 377 (Letters of M. Perrot, April 29th).]

[Footnote 1215: Letter to the King by an inhabitant of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine—"Do not doubt, sire, that our recent misfortunes are due to the dearness of bread"]

[Footnote 1216: Dampmartin, "Evenements qui se sont passes sous mes yeux," etc. I. 25: "We turned back and were held up by small bands of scoundrels, who insolently proposed to us to shout 'Vive Necker! Vive le Tiers-Etat!'" His two companions were knights of St. Louis, and their badges seemed an object of "increasing hatred." "The badge excited coarse mutterings, even on the part of persons who appeared superior to the agitators."]

[Footnote 1217: Dampmartin, ibid. i. 25: "I was dining this very day at the Hotel d'Ecquevilly, in the Rue Saint-Louis." He leaves the house on foot and witnesses the disturbance. "Fifteen to Sixteen hundred wretches, the excrement of the nation, degraded by shameful vices, covered with rags, and gorged with brandy, presented the most disgusting and revolting spectacle. More than a hundred thousand persons of both sexes and of all ages and conditions interfered greatly with the operations of the troops. The firing soon commenced and blood flowed: two innocent persons were wounded near me."]

[Footnote 1218: De Goncourt, "La Societe Francaise pendant la Revolution." Thirty-one gambling-houses are counted here, while a pamphlet of the day is entitled "Petition des deux mill cent filles du Palais-Royal."]

[Footnote 1219: Montjoie, 2nd part, 144.—Bailly, II, 130.]

[Footnote 1220: Arthur Young, June 24th, 1789.—Montjoie, 2nd part, 69.]

[Footnote 1221: Arthur Young, June 9th, 24th, and 26th.—"La France libre," passim, by C. Desmoulins.]

[Footnote 1222: C. Desmoulins, letters to his father, and Arthur Young, June 9th.]

[Footnote 1223: Montjoie, 2nd part, 69, 77, 124, 144. C. Desmoulins, letter, of June 24th and the following days.]

[Footnote 1224: Etienne Dumont, "Souvenirs," p.72.—C. Desmoulins, letter of; June 24th.—Arthur Young, June 25th.—Buchez and Roux, II. 28.]

[Footnote 1225: Bailly, I. 227 and 179.—Monnier, "Recherches sur les causes," etc. I. 289, 291; II.61;—Malouet, I. 299; II. 10.—"Actes des Apotres," V.43. (Letter of M. de Guillermy, July 31st, 1790).—Marmontel, I. 28: "The people came even into the Assembly, to encourage their partisans, to select and indicate their victims, and to terrify the feeble with the dreadful trial of open balloting."]

[Footnote 1226: Manuscript letters of M. Boulle, deputy, to the municipal authorities of Pontivy, from May 1st, 1789, to September 4th, 1790 (communicated by M. Rosenzweig, archivist at Vannes). June 16th, 1789: "The crowd gathered around the hall. . . was, during these days, from 3,000 to 4,000 persons."]

[Footnote 1227: Letters of M. Boulle, June 23rd. "How sublime the moment, that in which we enthusiastically bind ourselves to the country by a new oath!. . . . Why should this moment be selected by one of our number to dishonor himself? His name is now blasted throughout France. And the unfortunate man has children! Suddenly overwhelmed by public contempt he leaves, and falls fainting at the door, exclaiming, 'Ah! this will be my death!' I do not know what has become of him since. What is strange is, he had not behaved badly up to that time, and he voted for the Constitution."]

[Footnote 1228: De Ferrieres, I. 168.—Malouet, I. 298 (according to him the faction did not number more than ten members),—idem II. 10.—Dumont, 250.]

[Footnote 1229: "Convention nationale" governed France from 21st September 1792 until Oct. 26th 1796. We distinguish between three different assemblies, "la Convention Girondine" 1792-93, "the Mountain," 1793-94 and "la Thermidorienne," from 1794-1795. (SR).]

[Footnote 1230: Declaration of June 23rd, article 15.]

[Footnote 1231: Montjoie, 2nd part, 118.—C. Desmoulins, letters of June 24th and the following days. A faithful narrative by M. de Sainte-Fere, formerly an officer in the French Guard, p.9.—De Bezenval, III, 413.—Buchez and Roux, II. 35.—"Souvenirs", by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc), chancelier de France. in VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893..]

[Footnote 1232: Peuchet ("Encyclopedie Methodique," 1789, quoted by Parent Duchatelet): "Almost all of the soldiers of the Guard belong to that class (the procurers of public women): many, indeed, only enlist in the corps that they may live at the expense of these unfortunates."]

[Footnote 1233: Gouverneur Morris, "Liberty is now the general cry; authority is a name and no longer a reality." (Correspondence with Washington, July 19th.)]

[Footnote 1234: Bailly. I. 302. "The King was very well-disposed; his measures were intended only to preserve order and the public peace. . . Du Chatelet was forced by facts to acquit M. de Bezenval of attempts against the people and the country."—Cf. Marmontel, IV. 183; Mounier, II, 40.]

[Footnote 1235: Desmoulins, letter of the 16th July. Buchez and Roux, II. 83.]

[Footnote 1236: Trial of the Prince de Lambesc (Paris, 1790), with the eighty-three depositions and the discussion of the testimony.—It is the crowd which began the attack. The troops fired in the air. But one man, a sieur Chauvel, was wounded slightly by the Prince de Lambesc. (Testimony of M. Carboire, p.84, and of Captain de Reinack, p. 101.) "M. le Prince de Lambesc, mounted on a gray horse with a gray saddle without holsters or pistols, had scarcely entered the garden when a dozen persons jumped at the mane and bridle of his horse and made every effort to drag him off. A small man in gray clothes fired at him with a pistol. . . . The prince tried hard to free himself, and succeeded by making his horse rear up and by flourishing his sword; without, however, up to this time, wounding any one. . . . He deposes that he saw the prince strike a man on the head with the flat of his saber who was trying to close the turning-bridge, which would have cut off the retreat of his troops The troops did no more than try to keep off the crowd which assailed them with stones, and even with firearms, from the top of the terraces."—The man who tried to close the bridge had seized the prince's horse with one hand; the wound he received was a scratch about 23 lines long, which was dressed and cured with a bandage soaked in brandy. All the details of the affair prove that the patience and humanity of the officer, were extreme. Nevertheless "on the following day, the 13th, some one posted a written placard on the crossing Bussy recommending the citizens of Paris to seize the prince and quarter him at once."—(Deposition of M. Cosson, p.114.)]

[Footnote 1237: Bailly, I. 3, 6.—Marmontel, IV. 310]

[Footnote 1238: Montjoie, part 3, 86. "I talked with those who guarded the chateau of the Tuileries. They did not belong to Paris. . . . A frightful physiognomy and hideous apparel." Montjoie, not to be trusted in many places, merits consultation for little facts of which he was an eye-witness.—Morellet, "Memoires," I. 374.—Dusaulx, "L'oeuvre des sept jours," 352.—Revue Historique," March, 1876. Interrogatory of Desnot. His occupation during the 13th of July (published by Guiffrey).]

[Footnote 1239: Mathieu Dumas, "Memoires," I. 531. "Peaceable people fled at the sight of these groups of strange, frantic vagabonds. Everybody closed their houses. . .. When I reached home, in the Saint-Denis quarter, several of these brigands caused great alarm by firing off guns in the air."]

[Footnote 1240: Dusaulx, 379.]

[Footnote 1241: Dusaulx, 359, 360, 361, 288, 336. "In effect their entreaties resembled commands, and, more than once, it was impossible to resist them."]

[Footnote 1242: Dusaulx, 447 (Deposition of the invalides).—"Revue Retrospective," IV. 282 (Narrative of the commander of the thirty-two Swiss Guards).]

[Footnote 1243: Marmontel, IV. 317.]

[Footnote 1244: Dusaulx, 454. "The soldiers replied that they would accept whatever happened rather than cause the destruction of so great a number of their fellow-citizens."]

[Footnote 1245: Dusaulx, 447. The number of combatants, maimed, wounded, dead, and living, is 825.—Marmontel, IV. 320. "To the number of victors, which has been carried up to 800, people have been added who were never near the place."]

[Footnote 1246: "Memoires", by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc, 1767-1862), chancelier de France. in VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893. Vol. I. p.52. Pasquier was eye-witness. He leaned against the fence of the Beaumarchais garden and looked on, with mademoiselle Contat, the actress, at his side, who had left her carriage in the Place-Royale.—Marat, "L'ami du peuple," No. 530. "When an unheard-of conjunction of circumstances had caused the fall of the badly defended walls of the Bastille, under the efforts of a handful of soldiers and a troop of unfortunate creatures, most of them Germans and almost all provincials, the Parisians presented themselves the fortress, curiosity alone having led them there."]

[Footnote 1247: Narrative of the commander of the thirty-two Swiss.—Narrative of Cholat, wine-dealer, one of the victors.—Examination of Desnot (who cut off the head of M. de Launay).]

[Footnote 1248: Montjoie, part 3, 85.—Dusaulx, 355, 287, 368.]

[Footnote 1249: Nothing more. No Witness states that he had seen the pretended note to M. do Launay. According to Dusaulx, he could not have had either the time or the means to write it.]

[Footnote 1250: Bailly, II. 32, 74, 88, 90, 95, 108, 117, 137, 158, 174. "I gave orders which were neither obeyed nor listened to. . . . They gave me to understand that I was not safe." (July 15th.) "In these sad times one enemy and one calumnious report sufficed to excite the multitude. All who had formerly held power, all who had annoyed or restrained the insurrectionists, were sure of being arrested."]

[Footnote 1251: M. de Lafayette, "Memoires," III. 264. Letter of July 16th, 1789. "I have already saved the lives of six persons whom they were hanging in different quarters."]

[Footnote 1252: Poujoulat. "Histoire de la Revolution Francaise," p.100 (with supporting documents). Proces-verbaux of the Provincial Assembly, lle-de-France (1787), p.127.]

[Footnote 1253: For instance: "He is severe with his peasants."—"He gives them no bread, and he wants them then to eat grass." "He wants them to eat grass like horses."—"He has said that they could very well eat hay, and that they are no better than horses."—The same story is found in many of the contemporary jacqueries.]

[Footnote 1254: Bailly, II. 108. "The people, less enlightened and as imperious as despots, recognize no positive signs of good administration but success."]

[Footnote 1255: Bailly, II, 108, 95.—Malouet, II, 14.]

[Footnote 1256: De Ferrieres, I. 168.]



CHAPTER III.



I.—Anarchy from July 14th to October 6th, 1789

Destruction of the Government.—To whom does real power belong?

However bad a particular government may be, there is something still worse, and that is the suppression of all government. For, it is owing to government that human wills form a harmony instead of chaos. It serves society as the brain serves a living being. Incapable, inconsiderate, extravagant, engrossing, it often abuses its position, overstraining or misleading the body for which it should care, and which it should direct. But, taking all things into account, whatever it may do, more good than harm is done, for through it the body stands erect, marches on and guides its steps. Without it there is no organized deliberate action, serviceable to the whole body. In it alone do we find the comprehensive views, knowledge of the members of which it consists and of their aims, an idea of outward relationships, full and accurate information, in short, the superior intelligence which conceives what is best for the common interests, and adapts means to ends. If it falters and is no longer obeyed, if it is forced and pushed from without by a violent pressure, it ceases to control public affairs, and the social organization retrogrades by many steps. Through the dissolution of society, and the isolation of individuals, each man returns to his original feeble state, while power is vested in passing aggregates that like whirlwinds spring up from the human dust.—One may divine how this power, which the most competent find it difficult to apply properly, is exercised by bands of men springing out of nowhere. It is a matter of supplies, of their possessions, price and distribution. It is a matter of taxes, its proportion, apportionment and collection; of private property, its varieties, rights, and limitations It is a problem of public authority, its allocation and its limits; of all those delicate cogwheels which, working into each other, constitute the great economic, social, and political machine. Each band in its own canton lays its rude hands on the wheels within its reach. They wrench or break them haphazardly, under the impulse of the moment, heedless and indifferent to consequences, even when the reaction of to-morrow crushes them in the ruin that they cause to day. Thus do unchained Negroes, each pulling and hauling his own way, undertake to manage a ship of which they have just obtained mastery.—In such a state of things white men are hardly worth more than black ones. For, not only is the band, whose aim is violence, composed of those who are most destitute, most wildly enthusiastic, and most inclined to destructiveness and to license. But also, as this band tumultuously carries out its violent action, each individual the most brutal, the most irrational, and most corrupt, descends lower than himself, even to the darkness, the madness, and the savagery of the dregs of society. In fact, a man who in the interchange of blows, would resist the excitement of murder, and not use his strength like a savage, must be familiar with arms. He must be accustomed to danger, be cool-blooded, alive to the sentiment of honor, and above all, sensitive to that stern military code which, to the imagination of the soldier, ever holds out to him the provost's gibbet to which he is sure to rise, should he strike one blow too many. Should all these restraints, inward as well as outward, be wanting, the man plunges into insurrection. He is a novice in the acts of violence, which he carries out. He has no fear of the law, because he abolishes it. The action begun carries him further than he intended to go. Peril and resistance exasperate his anger. He catches the fever from contact with those who are fevered, and follows robbers who have become his comrades.[1301] Add to this the clamors, the drunkenness, the spectacle of destruction, the nervous tremor of the body strained beyond its powers of endurance, and we can comprehend how, from the peasant, the laborer, and the bourgeois, pacified and tamed by an old civilization, we see all of a sudden spring forth the barbarian. Or still worse, the primitive animal, the grinning, sanguinary, wanton baboon, who giggles while he slays, and gambols over the ruin he has accomplished. Such is the actual government to which France is given up, and after eighteen months' experience, the best qualified, most judicious and profoundest observer of the Revolution will find nothing to compare it to but the invasion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century.[1302] "The Huns, the Heruli, the Vandals, and the Goths will come neither from the north nor from the Black Sea; they are in our very midst."



II.—The provinces

Destruction of old Authorities.—Inadequacy of new Authorities

When in a building the principal beam gives way, cracks follow and multiply, and the secondary joists fall in one by one for lack of the prop, which supported them. In a similar manner the authority of the King being broken, all the powers, which he delegated, fall to the ground.[1303] Intendants, parliaments, military commands, grand provosts, administrative, judicial, and police functionaries in every province, and of every branch of the service, who maintain order and protect property, taught by the murder of M. de Launey, the imprisonment of M. de Besenval, the flight of Marshal de Broglie, the assassinations of Foullon and Bertier, know what it costs should they try to perform their duties. Should it be forgotten local insurrections intervene, and keep them in mind of it.

The officer in command in Burgundy is a prisoner at Dijon, with a guard at his door; and he is not allowed to speak with any one without permission, and without the presence of witnesses.[1304] The Commandant of Caen is besieged in the old palace and capitulates. The Commandant of Bordeaux surrenders Chateau-Trompette with its guns and equipment. The Commandant at Metz, who remains firm, suffers the insults and the orders of the populace. The Commandant of Brittany wanders about his province "like a vagabond," while at Rennes his people, furniture, and plate are kept as pledges. As soon as he sets foot in Normandy he is surrounded, and a sentinel is placed at his door.—The Intendant of Besancon takes to flight; that of Rouen sees his dwelling sacked from top to bottom, and escapes amid the shouts of a mob demanding his head.—At Rennes, the Dean of the Parliament is arrested, maltreated, kept in his room with a guard over him, and then, although ill, sent out of the town under an escort.—At Strasbourg "thirty-six houses of magistrates are marked for pillage."[1305]—At Besancon, the President of the Parliament is constrained to let out of prison the insurgents arrested in a late out-break, and to publicly burn the whole of the papers belonging to the prosecution.—In Alsace, since the beginning of the troubles, the provosts were obliged to fly, the bailiffs and manorial judges hid themselves, the forest-inspectors ran away, and the houses of the guards were demolished. One man, sixty years of age, is outrageously beaten and marched about the village, the people, meanwhile, pulling out his hair; nothing remains of his dwelling but the walls and a portion of the roof. All his furniture and effects are broken up, burnt or stolen. He is forced to sign, along with his wife, an act by which he binds himself to refund all penalties inflicted by him, and to abandon all claims for damages for the injuries to which he has just been subjected.—In Franche-Comte the authorities dare not condemn delinquents, and the police do not arrest them; the military commandant writes that "crimes of every kind are on the increase, and that he has no means of punishing them." Insubordination is permanent in all the provinces; one of the provincial commissions states with sadness:

"When all powers are in confusion and annihilated, when public force no longer exists, when all ties are sundered, when every individual considers himself relieved from all kinds of obligation, when public authority no longer dares make itself felt, and it is a crime to have been clothed with it, what can be expected of our efforts to restore order?"[1306]

All that remains of this great demolished State is forty thousand groups of people, each separated and isolated, in towns and small market villages where municipal bodies, elected committees, and improvised National Guards strive to prevent the worst excesses.—But these local chiefs are novices; they are human, and they are timid. Chosen by acclamation they believe in popular rights; in the midst of riots they feel themselves in danger. Hence, they generally obey the crowd.

"Rarely," says one of the provincial commissions reports, "do the municipal authorities issue a summons; they allow the greatest excesses rather than enter upon prosecutions for which, sooner or later, they may be held responsible by their fellow-citizens. . . . Municipal bodies have no longer the power to resist anything."

Especially in the rural districts the mayor or syndic, who is a farmer, makes it his first aim to make no enemies, and would resign his place if it were to bring him any "unpleasantness" with it. His rule in the towns, and especially in large cities, is almost as lax and more precarious, because explosive material is accumulated here to a much larger extent, and the municipal officers, in their arm-chairs at the town-hall, sit over a mine which may explode at any time. To-morrow, perhaps, some resolution passed at a tavern in the suburbs, or some incendiary newspaper just received from Paris, will furnish the spark.—No other defense against the populace is at hand than the sentimental proclamations of the National Assembly, the useless presence of troops who stand by and look on, and the uncertain help of a National Guard which will arrive too late. Occasionally these townspeople, who are now the rulers, utter a cry of distress from under the hands of the sovereigns of the street who grasp them by the throat. At Puy-en-Velay,[1307] a town of twenty thousand inhabitants, the presidial,[1308] the committee of twenty-four commissioners, a body of two hundred dragoons, and eight hundred men of the guard of burgesses, are "paralyzed, and completely stupefied, by the vile populace. A mild treatment only increases its insubordination and insolence." This populace proscribes whomsoever it pleases, and six days ago a gibbet, erected by its hands, has announced to the new magistrates the fate that awaits them.

" What will become of us this winter," they exclaim, "in our impoverished country, where bread is not to be had! We shall be the prey of wild beasts!"



III.—Public feeling.—Famine

These people, in truth, are hungry, and, since the Revolution, their misery has increased. Around Puy-en-Velay the country is laid waste, and the soil broken up by a terrible tempest, a fierce hailstorm, and a deluge of rain. In the south, the crop proved to be moderate and even insufficient.

"To trace a picture of the condition of Languedoc," writes the intendant,[1309] "would be to give an account of calamities of every description. The panic which prevails in all communities, and which is stronger than all laws, stops traffic, and would cause famine even in the midst of plenty. Commodities are enormously expensive, and there is a lack of cash. Communities are ruined by the enormous outlays to which they are exposed: The payment of the deputies to the seneschal's court, the establishment of the burgess guards, guardhouses for this militia, and the purchase of arms, uniforms, and outlays in forming communes and permanent councils. To this must be add the cost of the printing of all kinds, and the publication of trivial deliberations. Further the loss of time due to disturbances occasioned by these circumstances, and the utter stagnation of manufactures and of trade." All these causes combined "have reduced Languedoc to the last extremity."—In the Center, and in the North, where the crops are good, provisions are not less scarce, because wheat is not put in circulation, and is kept concealed.

"For five months," writes the municipal assembly of Louviers,[1310] "not a farmer has made his appearance in the markets of this town. Such a circumstance was never known before, although, from time to time, high prices have prevailed to a considerable extent. On the contrary, the markets were always well supplied in proportion to the high price of grain."

In vain the municipality orders the surrounding forty-seven parishes to provide them with wheat. They pay no attention to the mandate; each for himself and each for his own house; the intendant is no longer present to compel local interests to give way to public interests.

"In the wheat districts around us," says a letter from one of the Burgundy towns, "we cannot rely on being able to make free purchases. Special regulations, supported by the civic guard, prevent grain from being sent out, and put a stop to its circulation. The adjacent markets are of no use to us. Not a sack of grain has been brought into our market for about eight months."

At Troyes, bread costs four sous per pound, at Bar-sur-Aube, and in the vicinity, four and a half sous per pound. The artisan who is out of work now earns twelve sous a day at the relief works, and, on going into the country, he sees that the grain crop is good. What conclusion can he come to but that the dearth is due to the monopolists, and that, if he should die of hunger, it would be because those scoundrels have starved him?—By virtue of this reasoning whoever has to do with these provisions, whether proprietor, farmer, merchant or administrator, all are considered traitors. It is plain that there is a plot against the people: the government, the Queen, the clergy, the nobles are all parties to it; and likewise the magistrates and the wealthy amongst the bourgeoisie and the rich. A rumor is current in the Ile-de-France that sacks of flour are thrown into the Seine, and that the cavalry horses are purposely made to eat unripe wheat in stalk. In Brittany, it is maintained that grain is exported and stored up abroad. In Touraine, it is certain that this or that wholesale dealer allows it to sprout in his granaries rather than sell it. At Troyes, a story prevails that another has poisoned his flour with alum and arsenic, commissioned to do so by the bakers.—Conceive the effect of suspicions like these upon a suffering multitude! A wave of hatred ascends from the empty stomach to the morbid brain. The people are everywhere in quest of their imaginary enemies, plunging forward with closed eyes no matter on whom or on what, not merely with all the weight of their mass, but with all the energy of their fury.



IV.—Panic.

General arming.

From the earliest of these weeks they were already alarmed. Accustomed to being led, the human herd is scared at being left to itself; it misses its leaders who it has trodden under foot; in throwing off their trammels it has deprived itself of their protection. It feels lonely, in an unknown country, exposed to dangers of which it is ignorant, and against which it is unable to guard itself. Now that the shepherds are slain or disarmed, suppose the wolves should unexpectedly appear!—And there are wolves—I mean vagabonds and criminals—who have but just issued out of the darkness. They have robbed and burned, and are to be found at every insurrection. Now that the police force no longer puts them down, they show themselves instead of keeping themselves concealed. They have only to lie in wait and come forth in a band, and both life and property will be at their mercy.—Deep anxiety, a vague feeling of dread, spreads through both town and country: towards the end of July the panic, like a blinding, suffocating whirl of dusts, suddenly sweeps over hundreds of leagues of territory. The brigands are coming! They are burning the crops! They are only six leagues off, and then only two—the refugees who have run away from the disorder prove it.

On the 28th of July, at Angouleme,[1311] the alarm bell is heard about three o'clock in the afternoon; the drums beat to arms, and cannon are mounted on the ramparts. The town has to be put in a state of defense against 15,000 bandits who are approaching, and from the walls a cloud of dust on the road is discovered with terror. It proves to be the post-wagon on its way to Bordeaux. After this the number of brigands is reduced to 1,500, but there is no doubt that they are ravaging the country. At nine o'clock in the evening 20,000 men are under arms, and thus they pass the night, always listening without hearing anything. Towards three o'clock in the morning there is another alarm, the church bells ringing and the people forming a battle array. They are convinced that the brigands have burned Ruffec, Vernenil, La Rochefoucauld, and other places. The next day countrymen flock in to give their aid against bandits who are still absent. "At nine o'clock," says a witness, "we had 40,000 men in the town, to whom we showed our gratitude." As the bandits do not show themselves, it must be because they are concealed; a hundred horsemen, a large number of men on foot, start out to search the forest of Braconne, and to their great surprise they find nothing. But the terror is not allayed; "during the following days a guard is kept mounted, and companies are enrolled among the townsmen," while Bordeaux, duly informed, dispatches a courier to offer the support of 20,000 men and even 30,000. "What is surprising," adds the narrator, is that at ten leagues off in the neighborhood, in each parish, a similar disturbance took place, and at about the same hour."—All that is required is that a girl, returning to the village at night, should meet two men who do not belong to the neighborhood. The case is the same in Auvergne. Whole parishes, on the strength of this, betake themselves at night to the woods, abandoning their houses, and carrying away their furniture; "the fugitives trod down and destroyed their own crops; pregnant women were injured in the forests, and others lost their wits." Fear lends them wings. Two years after this, Madame Campan was shown a rocky peak on which a woman had taken refuge, and from which she was obliged to be let down with ropes.—The people at last return to their homes, and resume their usual routines. But such large masses are not unsettled with impunity; a tumult like this is, in itself, a lively source of alarm. As the country did rise, it must have been on account of threatened danger and if the peril was not due to brigands, it must have come from some other quarter. Arthur Young, at Dijon and in Alsace,[1312] hears at the public dinner tables that the Queen had formed a plot to undermine the National Assembly and to massacre all Paris. Later on he is arrested in a village near Clermont, and examined because he is evidently conspiring with the Queen and the Comte d'Entraigues to blow up the town and send the survivors to the galleys.

No argument, no experience has any effect against the multiplying phantoms of an over-excited imagination. Henceforth every commune, and every man, provide themselves with arms and keep them ready for use. The peasant searches his hoard, and "finds from ten to twelve francs for the purchase of a gun." "A national militia is found in the poorest village." Burgess guards and companies of volunteers patrol all the towns. Military commanders deliver arms, ammunition, and equipment, on the requisition of municipal bodies, while, in case of refusal, the arsenals are pillaged, and, voluntarily or by force, four hundred thousand guns thus pass into the hands of the people in six months.[1313] Not content with this they must have cannon. Brest having demanded two, every town in Brittany does the same thing; their self-esteem is at stake as well as a need of feeling themselves strong.—They lack nothing now to render themselves masters. All authority, all force, every means of constraint and of intimidation is in their hands, and in theirs alone; and these sovereign hands have nothing to guide them in this actual interregnum of all legal powers, but the wild or murderous suggestions of hunger or distrust.



V.—Attacks on public individuals and public property.

At Strasbourg.—At Cherbourg.—At Mauberge.—At Rouen.—At Besancon.—At Troyes.

It would take too much space to recount all the violent acts which were committed,—convoys arrested, grain pillaged, millers and corn merchants hung, decapitated, slaughtered, farmers called upon under the threats of death to give up even the seed reserved for sowing, proprietors ransomed and houses sacked.[1314] These outrages, unpunished, tolerated and even excused or badly suppressed, are constantly repeated, and are, at first, directed against public men and public property. As is commonly the case, the rabble head the march and stamp the character of the whole insurrection.

On the 19th of July, at Strasbourg, on the news of Necker's return to office, it interprets after its own fashion the public joy, which it witnesses. Five or six hundred beggars,[1315] their numbers soon increased by the petty tradesmen, rush to the town hall, the magistrates only having time to fly through a back door. The soldiers, on their part, with arms in their hands, allow all these things to go on, while several of them spur the assailants on. The windows are dashed to pieces under a hailstorm of stones, the doors are forced with iron crowbars, and the populace enter amid a burst of acclamations from the spectators. Immediately, through every opening in the building, which has a facade frontage of eighty feet, "there is a shower of shutters, sashes, chairs, tables, sofas, books and papers, and then another of tiles, boards, balconies and fragments of wood-work." The public archives are thrown to the wind, and the surrounding streets are strewed with them; the letters of enfranchisement, the charters of privileges, all the authentic acts which, since Louis XIV, have guaranteed the liberties of the town, perish in the flames. Some of the rabble in the cellars stave in casks of precious wine; fifteen thousand measures of it are lost, making a pool five feet deep in which several are drowned. Others, loaded with booty, go away under the eyes of the soldiers without being arrested. The havoc continues for three days; a number of houses belonging to some of the magistrates "are sacked from garret to cellar." When the honest citizens at last obtain arms and restore order, they are content with the hanging of one of the robbers; although, in order to please the people, the magistrates are changed and the price of bread and meat is reduced.—It is not surprising that after such tactics, and with such rewards, the riot should spread through the neighborhood far and near: in fact, starting from Strasbourg it overruns Alsace, while in the country as in the city, there are always drunkards and rascals found to head it.

No matter where, be it in the East, in the West, or in the North, the instigators are always of this stamp. At Cherbourg, on the 21st of July,[1316] the two leaders of the riot are "highway robbers," who place themselves at the head of women of the suburbs, foreign sailors, the populace of the harbor, and it includes soldiers in workmen's smocks. They force the delivery of the keys of the grain warehouses, and wreck the dwellings of the three richest merchants, also that of M. de Garantot, the sub-delegate: "All records and papers are burnt; at M. de Garantot's alone the loss is estimated at more than 100,000 crowns at least."—The same instinct of destruction prevails everywhere, a sort of envious fury against all who possess, command, or enjoy anything. At Maubeuge, on the 27th of July, at the very assembly of the representatives of the commune,[1317] the rabble interferes directly in its usual fashion. A band of nail and gun-makers takes possession of the town-hall, and obliges the mayor to reduce the price of bread. Almost immediately after this another band follows uttering cries of death, and smashes the windows, while the garrison, which has been ordered out, quietly contemplates the damage done. Death to the mayor, to all rulers, and to all employees! The rioters force open the prisons, set the prisoners free, and attack the tax-offices. The octroi offices are demolished from top to bottom: they pull down the harbor offices and throw the scales and weights into the river. All the custom and excise stores are carried off; and the officials are compelled to give acquaintances. The houses of the registrar and of the sheriff, that of the revenue comptroller, two hundred yards outside the town, are sacked; the doors and the windows are smashed, the furniture and linen is torn to shreds, and the plate and jewelry is thrown into the wells. The same havoc is committed in the mayor's town-house, also in his country-house a league off. "Not a window, not a door, not one article or eatable," is preserved; their work, moreover, is conscientiously done, without stopping a moment, "from ten in the evening up to ten in the morning on the following day." In addition to this the mayor, who has served for thirty-four years, resigns his office at the solicitation of the well-disposed but terrified people, and leaves the country.—At Rouen, after the 24th of July,[1318] a written placard shows, by its orthography and its style, what sort of intellects composed it and what kind of actions are to follow it:

"Nation, you have here four heads to strike off, those of Pontcarry (the first president), Maussion (the intendant), Godard de Belboeuf (the attorney-general), and Durand (the attorney of the King in the town). Without this we are lost, and if you do not do it, people will take you for a heartless nation."

Nothing could be more explicit. The municipal body, however, to whom the Parliament denounces this list of proscriptions, replies, with its forced optimism, that

"no citizen should consider himself or be considered as proscribed; he may and must believe himself to be safe in his own dwelling, satisfied that there is not a person in the city who would not fly to his rescue."

This is equal to telling the populace that it is free to do as it pleases. On the strength of this the leaders of the riot work on in security for ten days. One of them is a man named Jourdain, a lawyer of Lisieux, and, like most of his brethren, a demagogue in principles; the other is a strolling actor from Paris named Bordier, famous in the part of harlequin,[1319] a bully in a house of ill-fame, "a night-rover and drunkard, and who, fearing neither God nor devil," has taken up patriotism, and comes down into the provinces to play tragedy, and that, tragedy in real life. The fifth act begins on the night of the 3rd of August, with Bordier and Jourdain as the principal actors, and behind them the rabble along with several companies of fresh volunteers. A shout is heard, "Death to the monopolists! death to Maussion! we must have his head!" They pillage his hotel: many of them become intoxicated and fall asleep in his cellar. The revenue offices, the toll-gates of the town, the excise office, all buildings in which the royal revenue is collected, are wrecked. Immense bonfires are lighted in the streets and on the old market square; furniture, clothes, papers, kitchen utensils, are all thrown in pell-mell, while carriages are dragged out and tumbled into the Seine. It is only when the town-hall is attacked that the National Guard, beginning to be alarmed, makes up its mind to seize Bordier and some others. The following morning, however, at the shout of Carabo, and led by Jourdain, the prison is forced, Bordier set free, and the intendant's residence, with its offices, is sacked a second time. When, finally, the two rascals are taken and led to the scaffold, the populace is so strongly in their favor as to require the pointing of loaded cannon on them to keep them down.—At Besancon,[1320] on the 13th of August, the leaders consist of the servant of an exhibitor of wild animals, two goal-birds of whom one has already been branded in consequence of a riot, and a number of "inhabitants of ill-repute," who, towards evening, spread through the town along with the soldiers. The gunners insult the officers they meet, seize them by the throat and want to throw them into the Doubs. Others go to the house of the commandant, M. de Langeron, and demand money of him; on his refusing to give it they tear off their cockades and exclaim, "We too belong to the Third-Estate!" in other words, that they are the masters: subsequently they demand the head of the intendant, M. de Caumartin, forcibly enter his dwelling and break up his furniture. On the following day the rabble and the soldiers enter the coffee-houses, the convents, and the inns, and demand to be served with wine and eatables as much as they want, and then, heated by drink, they burn the excise offices, force open several prisons, and set free all the smugglers and deserters. To put an end to this saturnalia a grand banquet in the open air is suggested, in which the National Guard is to fraternize with the whole garrison; but the banquet turns into a drinking-bout, entire companies remaining under the tables dead drunk; other companies carry away with them four hogsheads of wine, and the rest, finding themselves left in the lurch, are scattered abroad outside the walls in order to rob the cellars of the neighboring villages. The next day, encouraged by the example set them, a portion of the garrison, accompanied by a number of workmen, repeat the expedition in the country. Finally, after four days of this orgy, to prevent Besancon and its outskirts from being indefinitely treated as a conquered country, the burgess guard, in alliance with the soldiers who have remained loyal, rebel against the rebellion, go in quest of the marauders and hang two of them that same evening.—Such is rioting![1321] an irruption of brute force which, turned loose on the habitations of men, can do nothing but gorge itself, waste, break, destroy, and do damage to itself; and if we follow the details of local history, we see how, in these days, similar outbreaks of violence might be expected at any time.

At Troyes,[1322] on the 18th of July, a market-day, the peasants refuse to pay the entrance duties; the octroi having been suppressed at Paris, it ought also to be suppressed at Troyes. The populace, excited by this first disorderly act, gather into a mob for the purpose of dividing the grain and arms amongst themselves, and the next day the town-hall is invested by seven or eight thousand men, armed with clubs and stones. The day after, a band, recruited in the surrounding villages, armed with flails, shovels, and pitch-forks, enters under the leadership of a joiner who marches at the head of it with a drawn saber; fortunately, "all the honest folks among the burgesses "immediately form themselves into a National Guard, and this first attempt at a Jacquerie is put down. But the agitation continues, and false rumors constantly keep it up.—On the 29th of July, on the report being circulated that five hundred "brigands" had left Paris and were coming to ravage the country, the alarm bell sounds in the villages, and the peasants go forth armed. Henceforth, a vague idea of some impending danger fills all minds; the necessity of defense and of guarding against enemies is maintained. The new demagogues avail themselves of this to keep their hold on the people, and when the time comes, to use it against their chiefs.—It is of no use to assure the people that the latter are patriots; that the recently welcomed Necker with enthusiastic shouts; that the priests, the monks, and canons were the first to adopt the national cockade; that the nobles of the city and its environs are the most liberal in France; that, on the 20th of July, the burgess guard saved the town; that all the wealthy give to the national workshops; that Mayor Huez, "a venerable and honest magistrate," is a benefactor to the poor and to the public. All the old leaders are objects of distrust.—On the 8th of August, a mob demands the dismissal of the dragoons, arms for all volunteers, bread at two sous the pound, and the freedom of all prisoners. On the 19th of August the National Guard rejects its old officers as aristocrats, and elects new ones. On the 27th of August, the crowd invade the town-hall and distribute the arms amongst themselves. On the 5th of September, two hundred men, led by Truelle, president of the new committee, force the salt depot and have salt delivered to them at six sous per pound.—Meanwhile, in the lowest quarters of the city, a story is concocted to the effect that if wheat is scarce it is because Huez, the mayor, and M. de St. Georges, the old commandant, are monopolists, and now they say of Huez what they said five weeks before of Foulon, that "he wants to make the people eat hay." The many-headed brute growls fiercely and is about to spring. As usual, instead of restraining him, they try to manage him.

"You must put your authority aside for a moment," writes the deputy of Troyes to the sheriffs," and act towards the people as to a friend; be as gentle with them as you would be with your equals, and rest assured that they are capable of responding to it."

Thus does Huez act, and he even does more, paying no attention to their menaces, refusing to provide for his own safety and almost offering himself as a sacrifice.

"I have wronged no one," he exclaimed; "why should any one bear me ill-will?"

His sole precaution is to provide something for the unfortunate poor when he is gone: he bequeaths in his will 18,000 livres to the poor, and, on the eve of his death, sends 100 crowns to the bureau of charity. But what avail self-abnegation and beneficence against blind, insane rage! On the 9th of September, three loads of flour proving to be unsound, the people collect and shout out,

"Down with the flour-dealers! Down with machinery! Down with the mayor! Death to the mayor, and let Truelle be put in his place!"

Huez, on leaving his court-room, is knocked down, murdered by kicks and blows, throttled, dragged to the reception hall, struck on his head with a wooden-shoe and pitched down the grand staircase. The municipal officers strive in vain to protect him; a rope is put around his neck and they begin to drag him along. A priest, who begs to be allowed at least to save his soul, is repulsed and beaten. A woman jumps on the prostrate old man, stamps on his face and repeatedly thrusts her scissors in his eyes. He is dragged along with the rope around his neck up to the Pont de la Selle, and thrown into the neighboring ford, and then drawn out, again dragged through the streets and in the gutters, with a bunch of hay crammed in his mouth.[1323]

In the meantime, his house as well as that of the lieutenant of police, that of the notary Guyot, and that of M. de Saint-Georges, are sacked; the pillaging and destruction lasts four hours; at the notary's house, six hundred bottles of wine are consumed or carried off; objects of value are divided, and the rest, even down to the iron balcony, is demolished or broken; the rioters cry out, on leaving, that they have still to burn twenty-seven houses, and to take twenty-seven heads. "No one at Troyes went to bed that fatal night."—During the succeeding days, for nearly two weeks, society seems to be dissolved. Placards posted about the streets proscribe municipal officers, canons, divines, privileged persons, prominent merchants, and even ladies of charity; the latter are so frightened that they throw up their office, while a number of persons move off into the country; others barricade themselves in their dwellings and only open their doors with saber in hand. Not until the 26th does the orderly class rally sufficiently to resume the ascendancy and arrest the miscreants.—Such is public life in France after the 14th of July: the magistrates in each town feel that they are at the mercy of a band of savages and sometimes of cannibals. Those of Troyes had just tortured Huez after the fashion of Hurons, while those of Caen did worse; Major de Belzance, not less innocent, and under sworn protection,[1324] was cut to pieces like Laperouse in the Fiji Islands, and a woman ate his heart.



VI.—Taxes are no longer paid.

Devastation of the Forests.—The new game laws.

It is, under such circumstances, possible to foretell whether taxes come in, and whether municipalities that sway about in every popular breeze will have the authority to collect the odious revenues.—Towards the end of September,[1325] I find a list of thirty-six committees or municipal bodies which, within a radius of fifty leagues around Paris, refuse to ensure the collection of taxes. One of them tolerates the sale of contraband salt, in order not to excite a riot. Another takes the precaution to disarm the employees in the excise department. In a third the municipal officers were the first to provide themselves with contraband salt and contraband tobacco.

At Peronne and at Ham, the order having come to restore the toll-houses, the people destroy the soldiers' quarters, conduct all the employees to their homes, and order them to leave within twenty-four hours, under penalty of death. After twenty months' resistance Paris will end the matter by forcing the National Assembly to give in and by obtaining the final suppression of its octroi.[1326]—Of all the creditors whose hand each one felt on his shoulders, that of the exchequer was the heaviest, and now it is the weakest; hence this is the first whose grasp is to be shaken off; there is none which is more heartily detested or which receives harsher treatment. Especially against collectors of the salt-tax, custom-house officers, and excisemen the fury is universal. These, everywhere,[1327] are in danger of their lives and are obliged to fly. At Falaise, in Normandy, the people threaten to "cut to pieces the director of the excise." At Baignes, in Saintonge, his house is devastated and his papers and effects are burned; they put a knife to the throat of his son, a child six years of age, saying, "Thou must perish that there may be no more of thy race." For four hours the clerks are on the point of being torn to pieces; through the entreaties of the lord of the manor, who sees scythes and sabers aimed at his own head, they are released only on the condition that they "abjure their employment."—Again, for two months following the taking of the Bastille, insurrections break out by hundreds, like a volley of musketry, against indirect taxation. From the 23rd of July the Intendant of Champagne reports that "the uprising is general in almost all the towns under his command." On the following day the Intendant of Alencon writes that, in his province, "the royal dues will no longer be paid anywhere." On the 7th of August, M. Necker states to the National Assembly that in the two intendants' districts of Caen and Alencon it has been necessary to reduce the price of salt one-half; that "in an infinity of places" the collection of the excise is stopped or suspended; that the smuggling of salt and tobacco is done by "convoys and by open force" in Picardy, in Lorraine, and in the Trois-Eveches; that the indirect tax does not come in, that the receivers-general and the receivers of the taille are "at bay" and can no longer keep their engagements. The public income diminishes from month to month; in the social body, the heart, already so feeble, faints; deprived of the blood which no longer reaches it, it ceases to propel to the muscles the vivifying current which restores their waste and adds to their energy.

"All controlling power is slackened," says Necker, "everything is a prey to the passions of individuals." Where is the power to constrain them and to secure to the State its dues?—The clergy, the nobles, wealthy townsmen, and certain brave artisans and farmers, undoubtedly pay, and even sometimes give spontaneously. But in society those who possess intelligence, who are in easy circumstances and conscientious, form a small select class; the great mass is egotistic, ignorant, and needy, and lets its money go only under constraint; there is but one way to collect the taxes, and that is to extort them. From time immemorial, direct taxes in France have been collected only by bailiffs and seizures; which is not surprising, as they take away a full half of the net income. Now that the peasants of each village are armed and form a band, let the collector come and make seizures if he dare!—" Immediately after the decree on the equality of the taxes," writes the provincial commission of Alsace,[1328] "the people generally refused to make any payments, until those who were exempt and privileged should have been inscribed on the local lists." In many places the peasants threaten to obtain the reimbursement of their installments, while in others they insist that the decree should be retrospective and that the new rate-payers should pay for the past year. "No collector dare send an official to distrain; none that are sent dare fulfill their mission."—" It is not the good bourgeois" of whom there is any fear, "but the rabble who make the latter and every one else afraid of them;" resistance and disorder everywhere come from "people that have nothing to lose."—Not only do they shake off taxation, but they usurp property, and declare that, being the Nation, whatever belongs to the Nation belongs to them. The forests of Alsace are laid waste, the seignorial as well as communal, and wantonly destroyed with the wastefulness of children or of maniacs. "In many places, to avoid the trouble of removing the woods, they are burnt, and the people content themselves with carrying off the ashes."—After the decrees of August 4th, and in spite of the law which licenses the proprietor only to hunt on his own grounds, the impulse to break the law becomes irresistible. Every man who can procure a gun begins operations;[1329] the crops which are still standing are trodden under foot, the lordly residences are invaded and the palings are scaled; the King himself at Versailles is wakened by shots fired in his park. Stags, fawns, deer, wild boars, hares, and rabbits, are slain by thousands, cooked with stolen wood, and eaten up on the spot. There is a constant discharge of musketry throughout France for more than two months, and, as on an American prairie, every living animal belongs to him who kills it. At Choiseul, in Champagne, not only are all the hares and partridges of the barony exterminated, but the ponds are exhausted of fish; the court of the chateau even is entered, to fire on the pigeon-house and destroy the pigeons, and then the pigeons and fish, of which they have too many, are offered to the proprietor for sale—It is "the patriots" of the village with "smugglers and bad characters" belonging to the neighborhood who make this expedition; they are seen in the front ranks of every act of violence, and it is not difficult to foresee that, under their leadership, attacks on public persons and public property will be followed by attacks on private persons and private property.



VII.—Attack upon private individuals and private property.

Aristocrats denounced to the people as their enemies. —Effect of news from Paris.—Influence of the village attorneys.—Isolated acts of violence.—A general rising of the peasantry in the east.—War against the castles, feudal estates, and property.—Preparations for other Jacqueries.

Indeed, an outlawed class already exists, they are called "aristocrats." This deadly term, applied at first to the nobles and prelates in the States-General who declined to take part in the reunion of the three orders, is extended so as to embrace all whose titles, offices, alliances, and manner of living distinguish them from the multitude. That which entitled them to respect is that which marks them out as objects of ill-will; while the people, who, though suffering from their privileges, did not regard them personally with hatred, are now taught to consider them as their enemies. Each, on his own estate, is held accountable for the evil designs attributed to his brethren at Versailles, and, on the false report of a plot at the center, the peasants classify him as one of the conspirators.[1330] Thus does the peasant jacquerie commence, and the fanatics who have fanned the flame in Paris are to do the same in the provinces. "You wish to know the authors of the agitation," writes a sensible man to the committee of investigation; "you will find them amongst the deputies of the Third-Estate," and especially among the attorneys and advocates. "These dispatch incendiary letters to their constituents, which letters are received by municipal bodies alike composed of attorneys and of advocates.... they are read aloud in the public squares, while copies of them are distributed among all the villages. In these villages, if any one knows how to read besides the priest and the lord of the manor, it is the legal practitioner," the born enemy of the lord of the manor, whose place he covets, vain of his oratorical powers, embittered by his power, and never failing to blacken everything.[1331] It is highly probable that he is the one who composes and circulates the placards calling on the people, in the King's name, to resort to violence.—At Secondigny, in Poitou, on the 23rd of July,[1332] the laborers in the forest receive a letter "which summons them to attack all the country gentlemen round about, and to massacre without mercy all those who refuse to renounce their privileges.... promising them that not only will their crimes go unpunished, but that they will even be rewarded." M. Despretz-Montpezat, correspondent of the deputies of the nobles, is seized, and dragged with his son to the dwelling of the procurator-fiscal, to force him to give his signature; the inhabitants are forbidden to render him assistance "on pain of death and fire." "Sign," they exclaim, "or we will tear out your heart, and set fire to this house!" At this moment the neighboring notary, who is doubtless an accomplice, appears with a stamped paper, and says to him, "Monsieur, I have just come from Niort, where the Third-Estate has done the same thing to all the gentlemen of the town; one, who refused, was cut to pieces before our eyes."—"We are compelled to sign renunciations of our privileges, and give our assent to one and the same taxation, as if the nobles had not already done so." The band gives notice that it will proceed in the same fashion with all the chateaux in the vicinity, and terror precedes or follows them. "Nobody dares write," M. Despretz sends word; "I attempt it at the risk of my life."—Nobles and prelates become objects of suspicion everywhere; village committees open their letters, and they have to suffer their houses to be searched.[1333] They are forced to adopt the new cockade: to be a gentleman, and not wear it, is to deserve hanging. At Mamers, in Maine, M. de Beauvoir refuses to wear it, and is at the point of being put into the pillory and felled. Near La F1eche, M. de Brissac is arrested, and a message is sent to Paris to know if he shall be taken there, "or be beheaded in the meantime." Two deputies of the nobles, MM. de Montesson and de Vasse who had come to ask the consent of their constituents to their joining the Third-Estate, are recognized near Mans; their honorable scruples and their pledges to the constituents are considered of no importance, nor even the step that they are now taking to fulfill them; it suffices that they voted against the Third-Estate at Versailles; the populace pursues them and breaks up their carriages, and pillages their trunks.—Woe to the nobles, especially if they have taken any part in local rule, and if they are opposed to popular panics! M. Cureau, deputy-mayor of Mans,[1334] had issued orders during the famine, and, having retired to his chateau of Nouay, had told the peasants that the announcement of the coming of brigands was a false alarm; he thought that it was not necessary to sound the alarm bell, and all that was necessary was that they should remain quiet. Accordingly he is set down as being in league with the brigands, and besides this he is a monopolist, and a buyer of standing crops. The peasants lead him off; along with his son-in-law, M. de Montesson, to the neighboring village, where there are judges. On the way "they dragged their victims on the ground, pummeled them, trampled on them, spit in their faces, and besmeared them with filth." M. de Montesson is shot, while M. Cureau is killed by degrees; a carpenter cuts off the two heads with a double-edged ax, and children bear them along to the sound of drums and violins. Meanwhile, the judges of the place, brought by force, draw up an official report stating the finding of thirty louis and several bills of the Banque d'Escompte in the pockets of M. de Cureau, on the discovery of which a shout of triumph is set up: this evidence proves that they were going to buy up the standing wheat!—Such is the course of popular justice. Now that the Third-Estate has become the nation, every mob thinks that it has the right to pronounce sentences, which it carries out, on lives and on possessions.