[Footnote 2107: 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 cures 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,"]

[Footnote 2108: 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."]

[Footnote 2109: "The French Revolution," Vol. I. p. 182 and following pages.]

[Footnote 2110: "Correspondence of M. de Stael" (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"]

[Footnote 2111: 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 300."—The seven deputies who remain at the Jacobin Club, are Robespierre, Petion, Gregoire, Buzot, Coroller, and Abbe Royer.]

[Footnote 2112: "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).]

[Footnote 2113: Decree of Sept 29, 30, 1791, with report and instructions of the Committee on the Constitution.]

[Footnote 2114: 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."]

[Footnote 2115: A few months after this, on the election of a mayor for Paris, the court voted against Lafayette, and for Petion]

[Footnote 2116: M. de Montlosier, "Memoires," 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."]

[Footnote 2117: This is what is, today in 1998, taking place whenever any political faction, disliked by the Socialists, try to arrange a meeting. (SR).]

[Footnote 2118: Malout, II. 50.—Mercure de France, Jan. 7, Feb. 5, and April 9, 1791 (letter of a member of the Monarchical Club)]

[Footnote 2119: Ferrieres, 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."]

[Footnote 2120: "Journal des Amis de la Constitution." Letter of the Cafe National! Club at Bordeaux, Jan. 20, 1791.—Letters of the "Friends of the Constitution," at Brives and Cambray, Jan. 19, 1791.]

[Footnote 2121: "The French Revolution," I. pp. 243, 324.]

[Footnote 2122: 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).]

[Footnote 2123: "The French Revolution," I. 256, 307.]

[Footnote 2124: Mercure de France, Dec. 14, 1790 (letter from Villeneuve-St.-Georges, Nov.29).]

[Footnote 2125: "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"]

[Footnote 2126: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3,249. Memorial on the actual condition of the town and district of Mortagne, department of Orne (November, 1791).]

[Footnote 2127: Revolutionary song with the refrain: "Les aristocrates, a la lanterne, tous les aristocrates on les pendra" (all the aristocrats will hang). (SR)]

[Footnote 2128: On the 15th of August, 1791, the mother-superior of the Hotel-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.]

[Footnote 2129: Cf. "Archives Nationales," DXXIX. 13. Letter of the municipal officers and notables of Champoeuil 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 cure 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.]

[Footnote 2130: Police searches of private homes. (SR).]

[Footnote 2131: "The French Revolution," pp. 159, 160, 310, 323, 324.—Lauvergne, "Histoire du departement du Var," (August 23).]

[Footnote 2132: '"Archives Nationales," F7, 3,198, deposition of Verand-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 Abbe 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 metayers and artisans, and all "who are most interested in a good administration" The question is, whether the Abbe 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, the town hall."]

[Footnote 2133: Ibid., F7, 3,229. Letters of M. de Laurede, 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.]

[Footnote 2134: 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. Theri 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."]

[Footnote 2135: Buchez et Roux, X. 223 (l'Ami du Peuple, June 17, 19, 21, 1791)]

[Footnote 2136: "'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,[2201] "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,[2202] nearly all of them trained in the clubs and the popular assemblies". There is not one noble or prelate belonging to the ancient regime, no great landed proprietor,[2203] 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,[2204] 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,[2205] 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."[2206] 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.[2207] 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 formuloe, 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."[2208]—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,[2209]

"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 regime. 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 cures. 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,"[2210] 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?[2211]

"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.—Francois de Nantes is exasperated at the pope "who holds in servitude the posterity of Cato and of Scoevola."—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. "Coesar'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?"[2212]—Add to this collegiate lore the philosophic dregs deposited in all minds by the great sophist then in vogue. Lariviere reads in the tribune[2213] 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 Heloise"

"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."[2214] 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."[2215]

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.[2216]



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"[2217] 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.[2218] They enter on their official report and without any disapproval, the petition of M. Hure, "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.[2219] 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.[2220] 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.[2221] 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 Chateau—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.[2222] 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.[2223]



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."[2224] 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.[2225] 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;[2226] rigidity of opinion, however, more than compensates for lack of numbers. In the front row are Guadet, Brissot, Gensonne, 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;[2227] 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,[2228]

"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,[2229] 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 formuloe of books and reason out an abstract proposition, they fancy that they are statesmen.[2230] 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.[2231] 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, Baziere, 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.[2232] The customary riot is instigated against these, whereupon ensue tumult, violent outcries and scuffles; mayor Petion 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."[2233] "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 Quatremere, "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 Quatremere, "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."[2234]

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, "Torne 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."[2235] "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 lese-majeste, 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 Abbe Maury and Montlosier."[2236] After having hurled abuse at the president, Mathieu Dumas, they insult his wife who has been recognized in a reserved gallery.[2237] 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 Lariviere, 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.[2238]—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,"[2239] 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."[2240]—"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 emigres,.. or that unsworn priests should be subject to special surveillance.[2241]... 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'."[2242] 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.[2243] Encouraged for a moment by the appearance of some possible protection, they twice exonerate General Lafayette, behind whom they see an army,[2244] 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.[2245]

*****

[Footnote 2201:"Correspondence (manuscript) of Baron de Stael," with his Court in Sweden. Oct. 6, 1791.]

[Footnote 2202: "Souvenirs", by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc), chancelier de France, in VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893.—Dumouriez, "Memoires," 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."]

[Footnote 2203: Mathieu Dumas, "Memoires," 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."]

[Footnote 2204: They rank as Marechaux de camp, a grade corresponding to that of brigadier-general. They are Dupuy-Montbrun (deceased in March, 1792), Descrots-d'Estree, 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.]

[Footnote 2205: "Correspondance du Baron de Stael," 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 propriete,' 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.'"]

[Footnote 2206: Moniteur, speech by Cambon, sittings of Feb. 2 and April 20, 1792.]

[Footnote 2207: 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, "Memoires," 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.]

[Footnote 2208: 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), "Memoires," 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."]

[Footnote 2209: Malouet, II. 215.—Dumouriez, III. ch. V. "They were elected to represent the nation to defend, they say, its interests against a perfidious court."]

[Footnote 2210: Moniteur, X. 223 (session of Oct. 26, 1791). Speech by M. Francois 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.]

[Footnote 2211: Ibid., XII. 230 (sessions of April 26 and May 5). Report and speech by Francois 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 Scoevola 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!]

[Footnote 2212: Moniteur, XI. 179 (session of Jan. 20, 1792).—Ibid., 216 (session of Jan. 24).—XII. 426 (May 9).]

[Footnote 2213: 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.]

[Footnote 2214: Moniteur. Speech by Aubert Dubayer, session of Aug. 30.]

[Footnote 2215: Speech by Chaumette, procureur of the commune, to the newly married. (Mortimer-Ternaux, IV. 408).]

[Footnote 2216: 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."]

[Footnote 2217: Etienne Dumont, "Memoires," 40.—Mercure de France, Nov. 19, 1791; Feb. 11 and March 3, 1792. (articles by Mallet du Pan).]

[Footnote 2218: 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."]

[Footnote 2219: 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!"]

[Footnote 2220: Cf. Moniteur, XI. 192 (sitting of Jan. 22, 1792). "M. Burnet, chaplain of the national guard, presents himself at the bar of the house with an English woman, named Lydia Kirkham, and three small children, one of which is in her arms. M. Burnet announces that she is his wife and that the child in her arms is the fruit of their affection. After referring to the force of natural sentiments which he could not resist, the petitioner thus continues: 'One day, I met one of those sacred questioners. Unfortunate man, said he, of what are you guilty? Of this child, sir; and I have married this woman, who is a Protestant, and her religion has nothing to do with mine... Death or my wife! Such is the cry that nature now and always will, inspire me with."—The petitioner receives the honors of the Assembly.—(Ibid., XII 369).]

[Footnote 2221: The grotesque is often that of a farce. "M. Piorry, in the name of poor; but virtuous citizens, tenders two pairs of buckles, with this motto: 'They have served to hold the shoe-straps on my feet; they will serve to reduce under them, with the imprint and character of truth, all tyrants leagued against the constitution' (Moniteur, XII. 457, session of May 21)"—Ibid., XIII. 249 (session of July 25). "A young citoyenne offers to combat, in person, against the enemies of her country;" and the president, with a gallant air, replies: "Made rather to soothe, than to combat tyrants, your offer, etc."]

[Footnote 2222: Moniteur, XL 576 (session of March 6); XII. 237, 314, 368 (sessions of April 27, May 5 and 14).]

[Footnote 2223: Mercure de France. Sept. 19,1791, Feb.11, and March 3, 1792.—Buchez et Roux, XVI 185 (session of July 26, 1792).]

[Footnote 2224: "Memoires de Mallet du Pan," 1433 (tableau of the three parties, with special information).]

[Footnote 2225: Buchez et Roux, XII. 348 (letter by the deputy Cheron, president of the Feuillants Club). The deputies of the Legislative Assembly, registered at the Feuillants Club, number 264 besides a large number of deputies in the Constituent Assembly.—According to Mallet du Pan the so-called Independents number 250.]

[Footnote 2226: These figures are verified by decisive ballottings (Mortimer-Ternauz, II. 205, 348.)]

[Footnote 2227: Moniteur, XII. 393 (session of May 15, speech by Isnard): "The Constituent Assembly only half dared do what it had the power to do. It has left in the field of liberty, even around the very roots of the young constitutional tree, the old roots of despotism and of the aristocracy... It has bound us to the trunk of the constitutional tree, like powerless victims given up to the rage of their enemies."——Etienne Dumont saw truly the educational defects peculiar to the party. He says, apropos of Madame Roland: "I found in her too much of that distrustful despotism which belongs to ignorance of the world.. . What her intellectual development lacked was a greater knowledge of the world and intercourse with men of superior judgment to her own. Roland himself had little intellectual breadth, while all those who frequented her house never rose above the prejudices of the vulgar."]

[Footnote 2228: "Souvenirs", by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc), chancelier de France. in VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893.]

[Footnote 2229: Madame de Stael, "Considerations sur la Revolution Francaise," IIIrd part, ch. III.-Madame de Stael conversed with them and judges them according to the shrewd perceptions of a woman of the world.]

[Footnote 2230: Louvet, "Memoires" 32. "I belonged to the bold philosophers who, before the end of 1791, lamented the fate of a great nation, compelled to stop half-way in the career of freedom," and, on page 38—"A minister of justice was needed. The four ministers (Roland, Servane, etc.) cast their eyes on me... Duranthon was preferred to me. This was the first mistake of the republican party. It paid dear for it. That mistake cost my country a good deal of blood and many tears." Later on, he thinks that he has the qualifications for ambassador to Constantinople.]

[Footnote 2231: Buzot, "Memoires" (Ed. Dauban), pp.31, 39. "Born with a proud and independent spirit which never bowed at any one's command, how could I accept the idea of a man being held sacred? With my heart and head possessed by the great beings of the ancient republics, who are the greatest honor to the human species, I practiced their maxims from my earliest years, and nourished myself on a study of their virtues... The pretended necessity of a monarchy... could not amalgamate, in my mind, with the grand and noble conceptions formed by me, of the dignity of the human species. Hope deceived me, it is true, but my error was too glorious to allow me to repent of it."—Self-admiration is likewise the mental substratum of Madame Roland, Roland, Petion, Barbaroux, Louvet, etc., (see their writings). Mallet du Pan well says: "On reading the memoirs of Madame Roland, one detects the actress, rehearsing for the stage. "—Roland is an administrative puppet and would-be orator, whose wife pulls the strings. There is an odd, dull streak in him, peculiarly his own. For example, in 1787 (Guillon de Montleon, "Histoire de la ville de Lyon, pendant la Revolution," 1.58), he proposes to utilize the dead, by converting them into oil and phosphoric acid. In 1788, he proposes to the Villefranche Academy to inquire "whether it would not be to the public advantage to institute tribunals for trying the dead?" in imitation of the Egyptians. In his report of Jan. 5, 1792, he gives a plan for establishing public festivals, "in imitation of the Spartans," and takes for a motto, Non omnis moriar (Baron de Girardot, "Roland and Madame Roland". I. 83, 185)]

[Footnote 2232: Political club uniting moderate and constitutional monarchists. They got their nickname because they held their meetings in the old convent formerly used by the feullants, a branch of Cistercians who, led by LaBarriere, broke away in 1577. The Feuillant Club was dissolved in 1791. (SR).]

[Footnote 2233: Moniteur, XI. 61 (session of Jan 7, 1792).—Ibid., 204 (Jan. 25); 281 (Feb. 1); 310 (Feb. 4); 318 (Feb. 6); 343 (Feb. 9); 487 (Feb. 26).—XII. 22 (April 2). Reports of all the sessions must be read to appreciate the force of the pressure. See, especially, the sessions of April 9 and 16, May 15 and 29, June 8, 9, 15, and 25, July 1, 2, 5, 9, 11, 17, 18, and 21, and, after this date, all the sessions.—Lacretelle, "Dix Ans d'Epreuves," p. 78-81. "The Legislative Assembly served under the Jacobin Club while keeping up a counterfeit air of independence. The progress which fear had made in the French character was very great, at a time when everything was pitched in the haughtiest key... The majority, as far as intentions go, was for the conservatives; the actual majority was for the republicans."]

[Footnote 2234: Moniteur, XIII. 212, session of July 22.]

[Footnote 2235: Moniteur, XII. 22, session of April 2.—Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 95.—Moniteur, XIII. 222, session of July 22.]

[Footnote 2236: Lacretelle, "Dix Ans d'Epreuves," 80.]

[Footnote 2237: Mathieu Dumas, "Memoires," II. 88 (Feb. 23).—Hua, "Memoires d'un Avocat au Parliament de Paris," 106, 121, 134, 154. Moniteur, XIII. 212 (session of July 21), speech by M.—-"The avenues to this building are daily beset with a horde of people who insult the representatives of the nation."]

[Footnote 2238: De Vaublanc, "Memoires," 344.—Moniteur, XIII. 368 (letters and speeches of deputies, session of Aug. 9).]

[Footnote 2239: Hua, 115.—Ibid., 90. 3 out of 4 deputies of Seine-et-Oise were Jacobins. "We met once a week to talk over the affairs of the department. We were obliged to drive out the vagabonds who, even at the table, talked of nothing but killing."]

[Footnote 2240: Moniteur, XII. 702. For example, on the 19th of June, 1792, on a motion unexpectedly proposed by Condorcet, that the departments be authorized to burn all titles (to nobility) in the various depots.—Adopted at once, and unanimously.]

[Footnote 2241: Later Stalin and his successors should invest the United Nations and other international organizations to indirectly propose and ensure the acceptance of a new convention of human rights, children's rights, the rights of refugees etc. In many cases these became the base of national legislation which is now giving trouble to many of the Western democracies. (SR).]

[Footnote 2242: Hua, 114.]

[Footnote 2243: Moniteur, XII. 664.—Mercure de France, June 23, 1792.]

[Footnote 2244: Hua, 141.—Mathieu Dumas, II. 399: "It is remarkable that Lafond de Ladebat, one of our trustiest friends, was elected president on the 23rd of July, 1792. This shows that the majority of the Assembly was still sound; but it was only brought about by a secret vote in the choice of candidates. The same men who obeyed their consciences, through a sentiment of justice and of propriety, could not face the danger which surrounded them in the threats of the factions when they were called upon to vote by rising or sitting."]

[Footnote 2245: This description and others of the same period have undoubtedly been studied carefully by thousands of socialists and political hopefuls who, in any case, made use of similar tactics to take over thousands of governing committees, institutions and organizations. (SR).]



CHAPTER III.



I.—Policy of the Assembly.—State of France at the end of 1791.

Powerlessness of the Law.

If the deputies who, on the 1st of October, 1791, so solemnly and enthusiastically swore to the Constitution, had been willing to open their eyes, they would have seen this Constitution constantly violated, both in its letter and spirit, over the entire territory. As usual, and through the vanity of authorship, M. Thouret, the last president of the Constituent Assembly, had, in his final report, hidden disagreeable truth underneath pompous and delusive phrases; but it was only necessary to look over the monthly record to see whether, as guaranteed by him, "the decrees were faithfully executed in all parts of the empire."—" Where is this faithful execution to be found?" inquires Mallet du Pan.[2301] "Is it at Toulon, in the midst of the dead and wounded, shot in the very face of the amazed municipality and Directory? Is it at Marseilles, where two private individuals are knocked down and massacred as aristocrats," under the pretext "that they sold to children poisoned sugar-plums with which to begin a counter-revolution?" Is it at Arles, "against which 4,000 men from Marseilles, dispatched by the club, are at this moment marching?" Is it at Bayeux, "where the sieur Fauchet against whom a warrant for arrest is out, besides being under the ban of political disability, has just been elected deputy to the Legislative Assembly?" Is it at Blois, "where the commandant, doomed to death for having tried to execute these decrees, is forced to send away a loyal regiment and submit to licentious troops?" Is it at Nimes, "where the Dauphiny regiment, on leaving the town by the Minister's orders, is ordered by the people" and the club "to disobey the Minister and remain?" Is it in those regiments whose officers, with pistols at their breasts, are obliged to leave and give place to amateurs? Is it at Toulouse, "where, at the end of August, the administrative authorities order all unsworn priests to leave the town in three days, and withdraw to a distance of four leagues?" Is it in the outskirts of Toulouse, "where, on the 28th of August, a municipal officer is hung at a street-lamp after an affray with guns?" Is it at Paris, where, on the 25th of September, the Irish college, vainly protected by an international treaty, has just been assailed by the mob; where Catholics, listening to the orthodox mass, are driven out and dragged to the authorized mass in the vicinity; where one woman is torn from the confessional, and another flogged with all their might?[2302]

These troubles, it is said, are transient; on the Constitution being proclaimed, order will return of itself. Very well, the Constitution is voted, accepted by the King, proclaimed, and entrusted to the Legislative Assembly. Let the Legislative Assembly consider what is done in the first few weeks. In the eight departments that surround Paris, there are riots on every market-day; farms are invaded and the cultivators of the soil are ransomed by bands of vagabonds; the mayor of Melun is riddled with balls and dragged out from the hands of the mob streaming with blood.[2303] At Belfort, a riot for the purpose of retaining a convoy of coin, and the commissioner of the Upper-Rhine in danger of death; at Bouxvillers, owners of property attacked by poor National Guards, and by the soldiers of Salm-Salm, houses broken into and cellars pillaged; at Mirecourt, a flock of women beating drums, and, for three days, holding the Hotel-de-Ville in a state of siege.——One day Rochefort is in a state of insurrection, and the workmen of the harbor compel the municipality to unfurl the red flag.[2304] On the following day, it is Lille, the people of which, "unwilling to exchange its money and assignats for paper-rags, called billets de confiance, gather into mobs and threaten, while a whole garrison is necessary to prevent an explosion." On the 16th of October, it is Avignon in the power of bandits, with the abominable butchery of the Glaciere. On the 5th of November, at Caen, there are eighty-two gentlemen, townsmen and artisans, knocked down and dragged to prison, for having offered their services to the municipality as special constables. On the 14th of November, at Montpellier, the roughs triumph; eight men and women are killed in the streets or in their houses, and all conservatives are disarmed or put to flight. By the end of October, it is a gigantic column of smoke and flame shooting upward suddenly from week to week and spreading everywhere, growing, on the other side of the Atlantic, into civil war in St. Domingo, where wild beasts are let loose against their keepers; 50,000 blacks take the field, and, at the outset, 1,000 whites are assassinated, 15,000 Negroes slain, 200 sugar-mills destroyed and damage done to the amount of 600,000,000; "a colony of itself alone worth ten provinces, is almost annihilated."[2305] At Paris, Condorcet is busy writing in his journal that "this news is not reliable, there being no object in it but to create a French empire beyond the seas for the King, where there will be masters and slaves." A corporal of the Paris National Guard, on his own authority, orders the King to remain indoors, fearing that he may escape, and forbids a sentinel to let him go out after nine o'clock in the evening;[2306] at the Tuileries, stump-speakers in the open air denounce aristocrats and priests; at the Palais-Royal, there is a pandemonium of public lust and incendiary speeches.[2307] There are centers of riot in all quarters, "as many robberies as there are quarter-hours, and no robbers punished; no police; overcrowded courts; more delinquents than there are prisons to hold them; nearly all the private mansions closed; the annual consumption in the faubourg St. Germain alone diminished by 250 millions; 20,000 thieves, with branded backs, idling away time in houses of bad repute, at the theaters, in the Palais-Royal, at the National Assembly, and in the coffee-houses; thousands of beggars infesting the streets, crossways, and public squares. Everywhere an image of the deepest poverty which is not calling for one's pity as it is accompanied with insolence. Swarms of tattered vendors are offering all sorts of paper-money, issued by anybody that chose to put it in circulation, cut up into bits, sold, given, and coming back in rags, fouler than the miserable creatures who deal in it."[2308] Out of 700,000 inhabitants there are 100,000 of the poor, of which 60,000 have flocked in from the departments;[2309] among them are 30,000 needy artisans from the national workshops, discharged and sent home in the preceding month of June, but who, returning three months later, are again swallowed up in the great sink of vagabondage, hurling their floating mass against the crazy edifice of public authority and furnishing the forces of sedition.—At Paris, and in the provinces, disobedience exists throughout the hierarchy. Directories countermand ministerial orders. Here, municipalities brave the commands of their Directory; there, communities order around their mayor with a drawn sword. Elsewhere, soldiers and sailors put their officers under arrest. The accused insult the judge on the bench and force him to cancel his verdict; mobs tax or plunder wheat in the market; National Guards prevent its distribution, or seize it in the storehouses. There is no security for property, lives, or consciences. The majority of Frenchmen are deprived of their right to worship in their own faith, and of voting at the elections. There is no safety, day or night, for the elite of the nation, for ecclesiastics and the gentry, for army and navy officers, for rich merchants and large landed proprietors; no protection in the courts, no income from public funds; denunciations abound, expulsions, banishments to the interior, attacks on private houses; there is no right of free assemblage, even to enforce the law under the orders of legal authorities.[2310] Opposed to this, and in contrast with it, is the privilege and immunity of a sect formed into a political corporation, "which extends its filiations over the whole kingdom, and even abroad; which has its own treasury, its committees, and its by-laws; which rules the government, which judges justice,"[2311] and which, from the capital to the hamlet, usurps or directs the administration. Liberty, equality, and the majesty of the law exist nowhere, except in words. Of the three thousand decrees given birth to by the Constituent Assembly, the most lauded, those the best set off by a philosophic baptism, form a mass of stillborn abortions of which France is the burying-ground. That which really subsists underneath the false appearances of right, proclaimed and sworn to over and over again, is, on the one hand, an oppression of the upper and cultivated classes, from which all the rights of man are withdrawn, and, on the other hand, the tyranny of the fanatical and brutal rabble which assumes to itself all the rights of sovereignty.



II.—The Assembly hostile to the oppressed and favoring oppressors.

Decrees against the nobles and clergy.—Amnesty for deserters, convicts, and bandits.—Anarchical and leveling maxims.

In vain do the honest men of the Assembly protest against this scandal and this overthrow. The Assembly, guided and forced by the Jacobins, will only amend the law to damn the oppressed and to authorize their oppressors.—Without making any distinction between armed assemblages at Coblentz, which it had a right to punish, and refugees, three times as numerous, old men, women and children, so many indifferent and inoffensive people, not merely nobles but plebeians,[2312] who left the soil only to escape popular outrages, it confiscates the property of all emigrants and orders this to be sold.[2313] Through the new restriction of the passport, those who remain are tied to their domiciles, their freedom of movement, even in the interior, being subject to the decision of each Jacobin municipality.[2314] It completes their ruin by depriving them without indemnity of all income from their real estate, of all the seignorial rights which the Constituent Assembly had declared to be legitimate.[2315] It abolishes, as far as it can, their history and their past, by burning in the public depots their genealogical titles.[2316]—To all unsworn ecclesiastics, two-thirds of the French clergy, it withholds bread, the small pension allowed them for food, which is the ransom of their confiscated possessions;[2317] it declares them "suspected of revolt against the law and of bad intentions against the country;" it subjects them to special surveillance; it authorizes their expulsion without trial by local rulers in case of disturbances; it decrees that in such cases they shall be banished.[2318] It suppresses "all secular congregations of men and women ecclesiastic or laic, even those wholly devoted to hospital service will take away from 600,000 children the means of learning to read and write."[2319] It lays injunctions on their dress; it places episcopal palaces in the market for sale, also the buildings still occupied by monks and nuns.[2320] It welcomes with rounds of applause a married priest who introduces his wife to the Assembly.—Not only is the Assembly destructive but it is insulting; the authors of each decree passed by it add to its thunderbolt the rattling hail of their own abuse and slander.

"Children," says a deputy, "have the poison of aristocracy and fanaticism injected into them by the congregations."[2321]

"Purge the rural districts of the vermin which is devouring them!"—"Everybody knows," says Isnard, "that the priest is as cowardly as he is vindictive... Let these pestiferous fellows be sent back to Roman and Italian lazarettos.. What religion is that which, in its nature, is unsocial and rebellious in principle?"

Whether unsworn, whether immigrants actually or in feeling, "large proprietors, rich merchants, false conservatives,"[2322] are all outspoken conspirators or concealed enemies. All public disasters are imputed to them. "The cause of the troubles," says Brissot,[2323] "which lay waste the colonies, is the infernal vanity of the whites who have three times violated an engagement which they have three times sworn to maintain." Scarcity of work and short crops are accounted for through their cunning malevolence.

"A large number of rich men, "says Francois de Nantes,[2324] "allow their property to run down and their fields to lie fallow, so as to enjoy seeing the suffering of the people."

France is divided into two parties, on the one hand, the aristocracy to which is attributed every vice, and, on the other hand, the people on whom is conferred every virtue.[2325]

"The defense of liberty," says Lamarque,[2326] "is basely abandoned every day by the rich and by the former nobility, who put on the mask of patriotism only to cheat us. It is not in this class, but only in that of citizens who are disdainfully called the people, that we find pure beings, those ardent souls really worthy of liberty."—One step more and everything will be permitted to the virtuous against the wicked; if misfortune befalls the aristocrats so much the worse for them. Those officers who are stoned, M. de la Jaille and others, "wouldn't they do better not to deserve being sacrificed to popular fury?"[2327] Isnard exclaims in the tribune, "it is the long-continued immunity enjoyed by criminals which has rendered the people executioners. Yes, an angry people, like an angry God, is only too often the terrible supplement of silent laws."[2328]—In other words crimes are justified and assassinations still provoked against those who have been assassinated for the past two years.

By a forced conclusion, if the victims are criminals, their executioners are honest, and the Assembly, which rigorously proceeds against the former, reserves all its indulgence for the latter. It reinstates the numerous deserters who abandoned their flags previous to the 1st of January, 1789;[2329] it allows them three sous per league mileage, and brings them back to their homes or to their regiments to become, along with their brethren whose desertion is more recent, either leaders or recruits for the mob. It releases from the galleys the forty Swiss guards of Chateauroux whom their own cantons desired to have kept there; it permits these "martyrs to Liberty" to promenade the streets of Paris in a triumphal car;[2330] it admits them to the bar of the house, and, taking a formal vote on it, extends to them the honors of the session.[2331] Finally, as if it were their special business to let loose on the public the most ferocious and foulest of the rabble, it amnesties Jourdan, Mainvielle, Duprat, and Raphel, fugitive convicts, jail-birds, the condottieri of all lands assuming the title of "the brave brigands of Avignon," and who, for eighteen months, have pillaged and plundered the Comtat[2332]; it stops the trial, almost over, of the Glaciere butchers; it tolerates the return of these as victors,[2333] and their installation by their own act in the places of the fugitive magistrates, allowing Avignon to be treated as a conquered city, and, henceforth, to become their prey and their booty. This is a willful restoration of the vermin to the social body, and, in this feverish body, nothing is overlooked that will increase the fever. The most anarchical and deleterious maxims emanate, like miasma, from the Assembly benches. The reduction of things to an absolute level is adopted as a principle; "equality of rights," says Lamarque,[2334] "is to be maintained only by tending steadily to an equality of fortunes;" this theory is practically applied on all sides since the proletariat is pillaging all who own property.—"Let the communal possessions be partitioned among the citizens of the surrounding villages," says Francois de Nantes, "in an inverse ratio to their fortunes, and let him who has the least inheritance take the largest share in the divisions."[2335] Conceive the effect of this motion read at evening to peasants who are at this very moment claiming their lord's forest for their commune. M. Corneille prohibits any tax to be levied for the public treasury on the wages of manual labor, because nature, and not society, gives us the "right to live."[2336] On the other hand, he confers on the public treasury the right of taking the whole of an income, because it is society, and not nature, which institutes public funds; hence, according to him, the poor majority must be relieved of all taxation, and all taxes must fall on the rich minority. The system is well-timed and the argument apt for convincing indigent or straitened tax-payers, namely, the refractory majority, that its taxes are just, and that it should not refuse to be taxed.—

"Under the reign of liberty," says President Daverhoult,[2337] "the people have the right to insist not merely on subsistence, but again on plenty and happiness."[2338]

Accordingly, being in a state of poverty they have been betrayed.—"Elevated to the height achieved by the French people," says another president, "it looks down upon the tempests under its feet."[2339] The tempest is at hand and bursts over its head. War, like a black cloud, rises above the horizon, overspreads the sky, thunders and wraps France filled with explosive materials in a circle of lightening, and it is the Assembly which, through the greatest of its mistakes, draws down the bolt on the nation's head.



III.—War.

Disposition of foreign powers.—The King's dislikes.— Provocation of the Girondins.—Dates and causes of the rupture

It might have been turned aside with a little prudence. Two principal grievances were alleged, one by France and the other by the Empire.—On the one hand, and very justly, France complained of the gathering of emigre's, which the Emperor and Electors tolerated against it on the frontier. In the first place, however, a few thousand gentlemen, without troops or stores, and nearly without money,[2340] were hardly to be feared, and, besides this, long before the decisive hour came these troops were dispersed, at once by the Emperor in his own dominions, and, fifteen days afterwards, by the Elector of Treves in his electorate.[2341]—On the other hand, according to treaties, the German princes, who owned estates in Alsace, made claims for the feudal rights abolished on their French possessions and the Diet forbade them to accept the offered indemnity. But, as far as the Diet is concerned, nothing was easier nor more customary than to let negotiations drag along, there being no risk or inconvenience attending the suit as, during the delay, the claimants remained empty-handed.—If, now, behind the ostensible motives, the real intentions are sought for, it is certain that, up to January, 1792, the intentions of Austria were pacific. The grants made to the Comte d'Artois, in the Declaration of Pilnitz, were merely a court-sprinkling of holy-water, the semblance of an illusory promise and subject to a European concert of action, that is to say, annulled beforehand by an indefinite postponement, while this pretended league of sovereigns is at once "placed by the politicians in the class of august comedies.[2342]" Far from taking up arms against "New France" in the name of old France, the emperor Leopold and his prime minister Kaunitz, were delighted to see the constitution completed and accepted by the King; it "got them out of an embarrassing position,"[2343] and Prussia as well. In the running of governments, political advantage is the great incentive and both powers needed all their forces in another direction, in Poland. One for retarding, and the other for accelerating the division of this country, and both, when the partition took place, to get enough for themselves and prevent Russia from getting too much.—The sovereigns of Prussia and Austria, accordingly, did not have any idea of saving Louis XVI, nor of conducting the emigres back, nor of conquering French provinces. If anything was to be expected from them on account of personal ill-will, there was no fear of their armed intervention.—In France it is not the King who urges a rupture; he knows too well that the hazards of war will place him and his dependents in mortal danger. Secretly as well as publicly, in writing to the emigres, his wishes are to bring them back or to restrain them. In his private correspondence he asks of the European powers not physical but moral aid, the external support of a congress which will permit moderate men, the partisans of order, all owners of property, to raise their heads and rally around the throne and the laws against anarchy. In his ministerial correspondence every precaution is taken not to touch off or let someone touch off an explosion. At the critical moment of the discussion[2344] he entreats the deputies, through M. Delessart, his Minister of Foreign Affairs, to weigh their words and especially not to send a demand containing a "dead line." He resists, as far as his passive nature allows him, to the very last. On being forced to declare war he requires beforehand the signed advice of all his ministers. He does not utter the fatal words, until he, "with tears in his eyes" and in the most dire straits, is dragged on by an Assembly qualifying all caution as treason and which has just dispatched M. Delessart to appear, under a capital charge, before the supreme court at Orleans.

It is the Assembly then which launches the disabled ship on the roaring abysses of an unknown sea, without a rudder and leaking at every seam. It alone slips the cable which held it in port and which the foreign powers neither dared nor desired to sever. Here, again, the Girondists are the leaders and hold the axe; since the last of October they have grasped it and struck repeated blows.[2345]—As an exception, the extreme Jacobins, Couthon, Collot d'Herbois, Danton, Robespierre, do not side with them. Robespierre, who at first proposed to confine the Emperor "within the circle of Popilius,"[2346] fears the placing of too great a power in the King's hands, and, growing mistrustful, preaches distrust.—But the great mass of the party, led by clamorous public opinion, impels on the timid marching in front. Of the many things of which knowledge is necessary to conduct successfully such a complex and delicate affair, they know nothing. They are ignorant about cabinets, courts, populations, treaties, precedents, timely forms and requisite style. Their guide and counselor in foreign relations is Brissot whose pre-eminence is based on their ignorance and who, exalted into a statesman, becomes for a few months the most conspicuous figure in Europe.[2347] To whatever extent a European calamity may be attributed to any one man, this one is to be attributed to him. It is this wretch, born in a pastry-cook's shop, brought up in an attorney's office, formerly a police agent at 150 francs per month, once in league with scandal-mongers and black-mailers,[2348] a penny-a-liner, busybody, and meddler, who, with the half-information of a nomad, scraps of newspaper ideas and reading-room lore,[2349] added to his scribblings as a writer and his club declamation, directs the destinies of France and starts a war in Europe which is to destroy six millions of lives. In the attic where his wife is washing his shirts, he enjoys rebuking rulers and, on the 20th of October, in the tribune,[2350] he begins by insulting thirty foreign sovereigns. Such keen, intense enjoyment is the stuff on which the new fanaticism daily feeds itself. Madame Roland herself delights, with evident complacency, in it, something which can be seen in the two famous letters in which, with a supercilious tone, she first instructs the King and next the Pope.[2351] Brissot, at bottom, regards himself as a Louis XIV, and expressly invites the Jacobins to imitate the haughty ways of the Great Monarch.[2352]—To the tactlessness of the intruder, and the touchiness of the parvenu, we can add the rigidity of the sectarian. The Jacobins, in the name of abstract rights, deny historic rights; they impose from above, and by force, that truth of which they are the apostles, and allow themselves every provocation which they prohibit to others.

"Let us tell Europe," cries Isnard,[2353] "that ten millions of Frenchmen, armed with the sword, with the pen, with reason, with eloquence, might, if provoked, change the face of the world and make tyrants tremble on their thrones of clay."

"Wherever a throne exists," says Herault de Sechelles, "there is an enemy."[2354]

"An honest peace between tyranny and liberty," says Brissot, "is impossible. Our Constitution is an eternal anathema to absolute monarchs... It places them on trial, it pronounces judgment on them; it seems to say to each: to-morrow thou have ceased to be or shalt be king only through the people... War is now a national benefit, and not to have war is the only calamity to be dreaded." [2355]

"Tell the king," says Gensonne, "that the war is a must, that public opinion demands it, that the safety of the empire makes it a law."[2356]

"The state we are in," concludes Vergniaud, "is a veritable state of destruction that may lead us to disgrace and death. So then to arms! to arms! Citizens, freemen, defend your liberty, confirm the hopes of that of the human race... Lose not the advantage of your position. Attack now that there is every sign of complete success... The spirits of past generations seem to me crowding into this temple to conjure you, in the name of the evils which slavery had compelled them to endure, to protect the future generations whose destinies are in your hands! Let this prayer be granted! Be for the future a new Providence! Ally yourselves with eternal justice!"[2357]

Among the Marseilles speakers there is no longer any room for serious discussion. Brissot, in reply to the claim made by the Emperor on behalf of the princes' property in Alsatia, replies that "the sovereignty of the people is not bound by the treaties of tyrants."[2358] As to the gatherings of the emigres, the Emperor having yielded on this point, he will yield on the others.[2359] Let him formally renounce all combinations against France.

"I want war on the 10th of February," says Brissot, "unless we have received his renunciation."

No explanations; it is satisfaction we want; "to require satisfaction is to put the Emperor at our mercy."[2360] The Assembly, so eager to start the quarrel, usurps the King's right to take the first step and formally declares war, fixing the date.[2361]—The die is now cast.

"They want war," says the Emperor, "and they shall have it."

Austria immediately forms an alliance with Prussia, threatened, like herself, with revolutionary propaganda.[2362] By sounding the alarm belles the Jacobins, masters of the Assembly, have succeeded in bringing about that "monstrous alliance," and, from day to day, this alarm sounds the louder. One year more, thanks to this policy, and France will have all Europe for an enemy and as its only friend, the Regency of Algiers, whose internal system of government is about the same as her own.



IV.—Secret motives of the leaders.

Their control compromised by peace.—Discontent of the rich and cultivated class.—Formation and increase of the party of order.—The King and this party reconciled.

Behind their carmagnoles[2363] we can detect a design which they will avow later on.

"We were always obstructed by the Constitution," Brissot is to say, "and nothing but war could destroy the Constitution."[2364]

Diplomatic wrongs, consequently, of which they make parade, are simply pretexts; if they urge war it is for the purpose of overthrowing the legal order of things which annoys them; their real object is the conquests of power, a second internal revolution, the application of their system and a final state of equality.—Concealed behind them is the most politic and absolute of theorists, a man "whose great art is the attainment of his ends without showing himself, the preparation of others for far-sighted views of which they have no suspicion, and that of speaking but little in public and acting in secret."[2365] This man is Sieyes, "the leader of everything without seeming to lead anything."[2366] As infatuated as Rousseau with his own speculations, but as unscrupulous and as clear-sighted as Macchiavelli in the selection of practical means, he was, is, and will be, in decisive moments, the consulting counsel of radical democracy.