IX. The Jacobin Citizen Robot.

Two characteristics of the upper class, wealth and education.—Each of these is criminal.—Measures against rich and well-to-do people.—Affected in a mass and by categories.—Measures against cultivated and polite people. —Danger of culture and distinction.—Proscription of "honest folks."

Two advantages, fortune and education, each involving the other, cause a man to be ranked in the upper class; hence, one or the other, whether each by itself or both together, mark a man out for spoliation, imprisonment and death.—In vain may he have demonstrated his Jacobinism, and Jacobinism of the ultra sort. Herault-Sechelles, who voted for murdering the King, who belongs to the Committee of Public Safety, who, in the Upper-Rhine, has just carried out the worst revolutionary ordinances,[41119] but who has the misfortune to be rich and a man of the world, is led to the scaffold, and those devoted to the guillotine readily explain his condemnation: he is no patriot,—how could he be, enjoying an income of two hundred thousand livres, and, moreover, is he not a general-advocate?[41120] One of these offenses is sufficient.—Alone and by itself, "opulence," writes Saint-Just, "is a disgrace," and, according to him, a man is opulent "who supports fewer children than he has thousands of livres income; in effect, among the persons confined as "rich and egoists" we find, according to the very declaration of the Revolutionary Committee, persons with incomes of only 4,000, 3,700, 1,500, and even 500 livres.[41121] Moreover, a fortune or a competence, inspires its possessor with anti-revolutionary sentiments; consequently, he is for the moment an obstruction; "You are rich," says Cambon, making use of a personification, "you cherish an opinion, which compels us to be on the defensive; pay then, so as to indemnify us and be thankful for our indulgence which, precautionary and until peace is declared, keeps you under bolt and bar."[41122] Rich, anti-revolutionary, and vicious," according to Robespierre,[41123] "these three traits depend on each other, and, therefore, the possession of the superfluous is an infallible sign of aristocracy, a visible mark of incivism" and, as Fouche says, "a stamp of reprobation." "The superfluous is an evident and unwarrantable violation of the people's rights; every man who has more than his wants call for, cannot use, and therefore he must only abuse."[41124] Whoever does not make over to the masses the excess of what is strictly necessary.... places himself in the rank of 'suspects.' Rich egoists, you are the cause of our misfortunes!"[41125] "You dared to smile contemptuously on the appellation of sans-culottes;[41126] you have enjoyed much more than your brethren alongside of you dying with hunger; you are not fit to associate with them, and since you have disdained to have them eat at your table, they cast you out eternally from their bosom and condemn you, in turn, to wear the shackles prepared for them by your indifference or your maneuvers." In other words, whoever has a good roof over his head, or wears good clothes, man or woman, idler or industrious, noble or commoner, is available for the prison or the guillotine, or, at the very least, he is a taxable and workable serf at pleasure; his capital and accumulations, if not spontaneously and immediately handed over, form a criminal basis and proof of conviction.—The orders of arrest are generally issued against him on account of his wealth; in order to drain a town of these offenders one by one, all are penned together according to their resources; at Strasbourg,[41127] 193 persons are taxed, each from 6,000 to 300,000 livres, in all 9 million livres, payable within twenty-four hours, by the leading men of each profession or trade, bankers, brokers, merchants, manufacturers, professors, pastors, lawyers, physicians, surgeons, publishers, printers, upholsterers, glass-dealers, rope-makers, master-masons, coffee-house and tavern keepers. And let there be no delay in responding to these orders within the prescribed time! Otherwise the delinquents will be placed in the stocks, on the scaffold, face to face with the guillotine. "One of the best citizens in the commune, who had steadily manifested his attachment to the Revolution, being unable to realize a sum of 250,000 livres in one day, was fastened in the pillory."[41128] Sometimes the orders affected an entire class, not alone nobles or priests, but all the members of any bourgeois profession or even of any handicraft. At Strasbourg, a little later, "considering that the thirst for gold has always controlled the brewers of the commune," they are condemned to 250,000 livres fine, to be paid in three days under penalty of being declared rebels, with the confiscation of their possessions;" then, upon another similar consideration, the bakers and flour dealers are taxed three hundred thousand livres.[41129] In addition to this, writes Representative Milhaud, at Guyardin,[41130] "We have ordered the arrest of all bankers, stock-brokers and notaries.... All their wealth is confiscated; we estimate the sums under seal at 2 or 3 millions in coin, and 15 or 16 in assignats." There is the same haul of the net at Paris. By order of Lhuillier, procureur of the department, "seals are placed in the offices of all the bankers, stock-brokers, silversmiths, etc.," and they themselves are shut up in the Madelonettes; a few days after, that they may pay their drafts, they are let out as a favor, but on condition that they remain under arrest in their homes, at their own expense, under guard of two good sans-culottes.[41131] In like manner, at Nantes,[41132] Lyons, Marseilles and Bordeaux, the prisons are filled and the guillotine works according to the categories. At one time they are "all of the Grand Theatre," or the principal merchants, "to the number of more than 200," are incarcerated at Bordeaux in one night.[41133] At another time, Paris provides a haul of farmer-generals or parliamentarians. Carts leave Toulouse conveying its parliamentarians to Paris to undergo capital punishment. At Aix, writes an agent,[41134]

"the guillotine is going to work on former lawyers a few hundred heads legally taken off will do the greatest good."

And, as new crimes require new terms to designate them, they add to "incivisme" and "moderantisme," the term "negociantisme," all of which are easily stated and widespread crimes.

"The rich and the merchants," writes an observer,[41135] "are here, as elsewhere, born enemies of equality and lovers of hideous federalism, the only aristocracy that remains to be crushed out."

Barras, with still greater precision, declares in the tribune that, "commerce is usurious, monarchical and anti-revolutionary."[41136] Considered in itself, it may be defined as an appeal to bad instincts; it seems a corrupting, incivique, anti-fraternal institution, many Jacobins having proposed either to interdict it to private persons and attribute it wholly to the State, or suppress it along with the arts and manufactures which nourish it, in order that only a population of agriculturists and soldiers may be left in France.[41137]

The second advantage and the second crime of the notables is superiority of education. "In all respectable assemblages," writes a Dutch traveler in 1795,[41138] "you may be sure that one-half of those present have been in prison. Add the absent, the guillotined, the exiled, emigres, the deported, and note this, that, in the other favored half, those who did not quaff the prison cup had had a foretaste of it for, each expected daily to receive his warrant of arrest; "the worst thing under Robespierre, as several old gentlemen have told me, was that one never knew in the morning whether one would sleep in one's own bed at night." There was not a well-bred man who did not live in dread of this; examine the lists of "suspects," of the arrested, of exiles, of those executed, in any town, district or department,[41139] and you will see immediately, through their quality and occupations, first, that three-quarters of the cultivated are inscribed on it, and next, that intellectual culture in itself is suspect. "They were equally criminal,"[41140] write the Strasbourg administrators, "whether rich or cultivated.... The (Jacobin) municipality declared the University federalist; it proscribed public instruction and, consequently, the professors, regents, and heads of schools, with all instructors, public as well as private, even those provided with certificates of civism, were arrested;.... every Protestant minister and teacher in the Lower-Rhine department was incarcerated, with a threat of being transferred to the citadel at Besancon."—Fourcroy, in the Jacobin Club at Paris, excusing himself for being a savant, for giving lectures on chemistry, for not devoting his time to the rantings of the Convention and of the clubs, is obliged to declare that he is poor, that he lives by his work, that he supports "his father, a sans-culotte, and his sans-culotte sisters;" although a good republican, he barely escapes, and the same with others like him. All educated men were persecuted," he states a month after Thermidor 9;[41141] "to have acquaintances, to be literary, sufficed for arrest, as an aristocrat.... Robespierre... with devilish ingenuity, abused, calumniated and overwhelmed with gall and bitterness all who were devoted to serious studies, all who professed extensive knowledge;... he felt that cultivated men would never bend the knee to him [41142]..... Instruction was paralyzed; they wanted to burn the libraries..... Must I tell you that at the very door of your assembly errors in orthography are seen? Nobody learns how to read or write."—At Nantes, Carrier boasts of having "dispersed the literary chambers," while in his enumeration of the evil-minded he adds "to the rich and merchants," "all gens d'esprit."[41143] Sometimes on the turnkey's register we read that such an one was confined "for being clever and able to do mischief," another for saying "good-day, gentlemen, to the municipal councillors."[41144]

Politeness has, like other signs of a good education, become a stigma; good manners are considered, not only as a remnant of the ancient regime, but as a revolt against the new institutions; now, as the governing principle of these is, theoretically, abstract equality and, practically, the ascendancy of the low class, one rebels against the established order of things when one repudiates coarse companions, familiar oaths, and the indecent expressions of the common workman and the soldier. In sum, Jacobinism, through its doctrines and deeds, its dungeons and executioners, proclaims to the nation over which it holds the rod:[41145]

"Be rude, that you may become republican, return to barbarism that you may show the superiority of your genius; abandon the customs of civilized people that you may adopt those of galley slaves; mar your language with a view to improve it; use that of the populace under penalty of death. Spanish beggars treat each other in a dignified way; they show respect for humanity although in tatters. We, on the contrary, order you to assume our rags, our patois, our terms of intimacy. Don the carmagnole and tremble; become rustics and dolts, and prove your civism by the absence of all education."

This is true to the letter.

"Education,[41146]" says another contemporary, "amiable qualities, gentle ways, a mild physiognomy, bodily graces, a cultivated mind, all natural endowments are henceforth the inevitable causes of proscription."

One is self-condemned if one has not converted oneself into a sans-culotte and proletarian, in accordance with affected modes, air, language and dress. Hence,

"through a hypocritical contest hitherto unknown men who were not vicious deemed it necessary to appear so."

And worse still,

"one was even afraid to be oneself; one changed one's name, one went in disguise, wearing a vulgar and tasteless attire; everybody shrunk from being what he was."

For, according to the Jacobin program, all Frenchmen must be recast[41147] in one uniform mold; they must be taken when small; all must be subject to the same enforced education, that of a mechanic, rustic and soldier's boy. Be warned, ye adults, by the guillotine, reform yourselves beforehand according to the prescribed pattern! No more costly, elegant or delicate crystal or gold vases! All are shattered or are still being shattered. Henceforth, only common ware is to be tolerated or ordered to be made, all alike in substance, shape and color, manufactured by thousands at wholesale and in public factories, for the common and plain uses of rural and military life; all original and superior forms are to be rejected.

"The masters of the day," writes Daunou,[41148] "deliberately aimed their sword thrusts at superior talent, at energetic characters; they mowed down as well as they could in so short a time, the flower and hope of the nation."

In this respect they were consistent; equality-socialism[41149] allows none but automatic citizens, mere tools in the hands of the State, all alike, of a rudimentary fashion and easily managed, without personal conscience, spontaneity, curiosity or integrity; whoever has cultivated himself, whoever has thought for himself and exercised his own will and judgment rises above the level and shakes off the yoke; to obtain consideration, to be intelligent and honorable, to belong to the elite, is to be anti-revolutionary. In the popular club of Bourg-en-Bresse,[41150] Representative Javogues declared that,

"the Republic could be established only on the corpse of the last of the respectable men."



X. The Governors and the Governed.

Prisoners in the rue de Sevres and the "Croix-Rouge" revolutionary committee.—The young Dauphin and Simon his preceptor.—Judges, and those under their jurisdiction. —Trenchard and Coffinhal, Lavoisier and Andre Chenier.

Here we have, on one side, the elite of France, almost every person of rank, fortune, family, and merit, those eminent for intelligence, culture, talent and virtue, all deprived of common rights, in exile, in prison, under pikes, and on the scaffold. On the other side, those above common law, possessing every office and omnipotent in the irresponsible dictatorship, in the despotic proconsulships, in the sovereignty of justice, a horde of the outcasts of all classes, the parvenus of fanaticism, charlatanism, imbecility and crime. Often, when these personalities meet, one sees the contrast between the governed and the governors in such strong relief that one almost regards it as calculated and arranged beforehand; the colors and brush of the painter, rather than words, are necessary to represent it. In the western section of Paris, in the prisons of the rue de Sevres[41151] the prisoners consist of the most distinguished personages of the Quartier Saint Germain, prelates, officers, grand-seigniors, and noble ladies,—Monseigneur de Clermont-Tonnerre, Monseigneur de Crussol d'Amboise, Monseigneur de Hersaint, Monseigneur de Saint Simon, bishop of Agde, the Comtesse de Narbonne-Pelet, the Duchesse de Choiseul, the Princesse de Chimay, the Comtesse de Raymond-Narbonne and her daughter, two years of age, in short, the flower of that refined society which Europe admired and imitated and which, in its exquisite perfection, equalled or surpassed all that Greece, Rome and Italy had produced in brilliancy, polish and amiability. Contrast with these the arbiters of their lives and deaths, the potentates of the same quarter who issue the warrants of arrest against them, who pen them in to speculate on them, and who revel at their expense and before their eyes: these consist of the members of the revolutionary committee of the Croix-Rouge, the eighteen convicted rogues and debauchees previously described,[41152] ex-cab-drivers, porters, cobblers, street-messengers, stevedores, bankrupts, counterfeiters, former or future jail-birds, all clients of the police or alms-house riff-raff.—At the other end of Paris, in the east, in the tower of the Temple, separated from his sister and torn from his mother, still lives the little Dauphin: no one in France merits more pity or respect than him. For, if France exists, it is owing to the thirty-five military chiefs and crowned kings of which he is the last direct scion; without their thousand years of hereditary rule and preserving policy the intruders into the Tuileries who have just profaned their tombs at St. Denis and thrown their bones into a common ditch,[41153] would not be Frenchmen. At this moment, were suffrages free, the immense majority of the people, nineteen Frenchmen out of twenty, would recognize this innocent and precious child for their King, the heir of the people of which their nation and country is formed, a child of eight years, of rare precociousness, as intelligent as he is good, and of a gentle and winning expression. Look at the other figure alongside of him, his fist raised and with insults on his lips, with a hang-dog face, bloated with brandy, titular governor, official preceptor, and absolute master of this child, the cobbler Simon, malignant, foul-mouthed, mean in every way, forcing him to become intoxicated, starving him, preventing him from sleeping, thrashing him, and who, obeying orders, instinctively visits on him all his brutality and corruption that he may pervert, degrade and deprave him.[41154]—In the Palais de Justice, midway between the tower of the Temple and the prison in the rue de Sevres, an almost similar contrast, transposing the merits and demerits, daily brings together in opposition the innocent with the vile. There are days when the contrast, still more striking, seats criminals on the judges' bench and judges on the bench of criminals. On the first and second of Floreal, the old representatives and trustees of liberty under the monarchy, twenty-five magistrates of the Paris and Toulouse parliaments, many of them being eminent intellects of the highest culture and noblest character, embracing the greatest historical names of the French magistracy,—Etienne Pasquier, Lefevre d'Ormesson, Mole de Champlatreux, De Lamoignon, de Malesherbes,—are sent to the guillotine[41155] by the judges and juries familiar to us, assassins or brutes who do not take the trouble, or who have not the capacity, to give proper color to their sentences. M. de Malesherbes exclaims, after reading his indictment, "If that were only common-sense!"—In effect those who pronounce judgment are, by their own admission, "substantial jurymen, good sans-culottes, natural people." And such a nature! One of these, Trenchard, an Auvergnat carpenter, portrays himself accurately in the following note addressed to his wife before the trial comes on:

"If you are not alone, and the companion can work, you may come, my dear, and see the twenty-four gentlemen condemned, all of them former presidents or councillors in the parliaments of Toulouse and Paris. I recommend you to bring something along with you (to eat), it will be three hours before we finish. I embrace you, my dear friend and wife."[41156]

In the same court, Lavoisier, the founder and organizer of chemistry, the great discoverer, and condemned to death, asks for a reprieve of his sentence for a fortnight to complete an experiment, and the president, Coffinhal, another Auvergnat, replies,

"The Republic has no need of savants."[41157]

And it has no need of poets. The first poet of the epoch, Andre Chenier, the delicate and superior artist who reopens antique sources of inspiration and starts the modern current, is guillotined; we possess the original manuscript indictment of his examination, a veritable master-piece of gibberish and barbarism, of which a full copy is necessary to convey an idea of its "turpitudes of sense and orthography."[41158] The reader may there see, if he pleases, a man of genius delivered up to brutes, coarse, angry, despotic animals, who listen to nothing, who comprehend nothing, who do not even understand terms in common use, who stumble through their queries, and who, to ape intelligence, draggle their pens along in supreme stupidity.

The overthrow is complete. France, subject to the Revolutionary Government, resembles a human being forced to walk with his head down and to think with his feet.

*****

[Footnote 4101: Cf. "The Revolution," book I., ch. 3, and book III., chs. 9 and 10.]

[Footnote 4102: Gregoire, "Memoires," II., 172. "About eighteen thousand ecclesiastics are enumerated among the emigres of the first epoch. About eighteen thousand more took themselves off, or were sent off, after the 2nd of September."]

[Footnote 4103: Ibid., 26. "The chief of the emigre bureau in the police department (May 9, 1805) enumerates about two hundred thousand persons reached, or affected, by the laws concerning emigration."—Lally-Tolendal, "Defense des Emigres," (2nd part, p. 62 and passim). Several thousand persons inscribed as emigres did not leave France. The local administration recorded them on its lists either because they lived in another department, and could not obtain the numerous certificates exacted by the law in proof of residence, or because those who made up the lists treated these certificates with contempt. It was found convenient to manufacture an emigre in order to confiscate his possessions legally, and even to guillotine him, not less legally, as a returned emigre.—Message of the Directory to the "Five Hundred," Ventose 3, year V.: "According to a rough estimate, obtained at the Ministry of Finances, the number enrolled on the general list of emigres amounts to over one hundred and twenty thousand; and, again, the lists from some of the departments have not come in."—Lafayette, "Memoires," vol. II., 181. (Letters to M. de Maubourg, Oct. 17, 1799 (note) Oct. 19, 1800.) According to the report of the Minister of Police, the list of emigres, in nine vols., still embraced one hundred and forty-five thousand persons, notwithstanding that thirteen thousand were struck off by the Directory, and twelve hundred by the consular government.]

[Footnote 4104: Cf. Memoires of Louvet, Dulaure and Vaublanc.—Mallet-Dupan, "Memoires," II., 7. "Several, to whom I have spoken, literally made the tour of France in various disguises, without having been able to find an outlet; it was only after a series of romantic adventures that they finally succeeded in gaining the Swiss frontier, the only one at all accessible."—Sauzay, V., 210, 220, 226, 276. (Emigration of fifty-four inhabitants of Charquemont, setting out for Hungary.)]

[Footnote 4105: Ibid., vols. IV., V., VI., VII. (On the banished priests remaining and still continuing their ministrations, and on those who returned to resume them.)—To obtain an idea of the situation of the emigres and their relations and friends, it is necessary to read the law of Sep.15, 1794 (Brumaire 25, year III.), which renews and generalizes previous laws; children of fourteen years and ten years are affected by it. It was with the greatest difficulty, even if one did not leave France, that a person could prove that he had not emigrated.]

[Footnote 4106: Pandour, an 18th century Croatian foot-soldier in the Austrian service: a robber. (SR)]

[Footnote 4107: Moniteur, XVIII., 215. (Letter of Brigadier-general Vandamme to the convention, Ferney, Brumaire I, year II.) The reading of this letter calls forth "reiterated applause."]

[Footnote 4108: Sauzay, V., 196. (The total is five thousand two hundred. Some hundreds of names might be added, inasmuch as many of the village lists are wanting.)]

[Footnote 4109: Buchez et Roux, XXXIV., 434. (Trial of Fouquier-Tinville, deposition of Therriet-Grandpre, one of the heads of the commission on civil Police and Judicial Administration, 51st witness.)]

[Footnote 4110: Report by Saladin, March 4, 1795.]

[Footnote 4111: Wallon, "La Terreur," II., 202.]

[Footnote 4112: Duchatelier, "Brest Pendant la Terreur," p. 105.—Paris, "Histoire de Joseph Lebon," II., 370.—"Tableau des Prisons de Toulouse," by Pescayre, p. 409.—"Recueil de Pieces Authentiques sur la Revolution a Strasbourg," I., 65. (List of arrests after Prairial 7, year II.) "When the following arrests were made there were already over three thousand persons confined in Strasbourg."—Alfred Lallier, "Les Noyades de Nantes," p.90.—Berryat Saint-Prix, p.436. (Letter of Maignet to Couthon, Avignon, Floreal 4, year II.)]

[Footnote 4113: Baulieu, "Essais," V., 283. At the end of December, 1793, Camille Desmoulins wrote: "Open the prison doors to those two hundred thousand citizens whom you call 'suspects'!"—The number of prisoners largely increased during the seven following months. ("Le Vieux Cordelier," No. IV., Frimaire 30, year II.)—Beaulieu does not state precisely what the committee of General Security meant by the word detenu. Does it merely relate to those incarcerated? Or must all who were confined at their own houses be included?—We are able to verify his statement and determine the number, at least approximatively, by taking one department in which the rigor of the revolutionary system was average and where the lists handed in were complete. According to the census of 1791, Doubs contained two hundred and twenty-one thousand inhabitants; France had a population of 26 millions, and we have just seen the number of each category that were under confinement; the proportion for France gives 258 000 persons incarcerated, and 175 000 confined to their houses, and 175 000 persons besides these on the limits in their communes, or ajournees, that is to say, 608 000 persons deprived of their liberty. The first two categories form a total of 433 000 persons, sufficiently near Beaulieu's figures.]

[Footnote 4114: Paris, "Histoire de Joseph Lebon," II., 371, 372, 375, 377, 379, 380.—"Les Angoisses de la Mort," by Poirier and Monjay of Dunkirk (second edition, year III.). "Their children and trusty agents still remained in prison; they were treated no better than ourselves... . we saw children coming in from all quarters, infants of five years, and, to withdraw them from paternal authority, they had sent to them from time to time, commissioners who used immoral language with them."]

[Footnote 4115: Memoires sur les Prisons," (Barriere et Berville collection), II., 354, and appendix F. Ibid., II., 2262.—The women were the first to pass under rapiotage." (Prisons of Arras and that of Plessis, at Paris.)]

[Footnote 4116: "Documents on Daunou," by Taillandier. (Narrative by Daunou, who was imprisoned in turn in La Force, in the Madelonettes, in the English Benedictine establishment, in the Hotel des Fermes, and in Port-Libre.)—On prison management cf., for the provinces, "Tableaux des Prisons de Toulouse," by Pescayre; "Un Sejour en France," and "Les Horreurs des Prisons d'Arras," for Arras and Amiens; Alexandrines des Echerolles, "Une Famille noble sous la Terreur," for Lyons; the trial of Carrier for Nantes; for Paris, "Histoire des Prisons" by Nougaret, 4 vols., and the "Memoires sur les Prisons," 2 vols.]

[Footnote 4117: Testimony of Representative Blanqui, imprisoned at La Force, and of Representative Beaulieu, imprisoned in the Luxembourg and at the Madelonettes.—Beaulieu, "Essais," V., 290: "The conciergerie was still full of wretches held for robbery and assassination, poverty-stricken and repulsive.—It was with these that counts, marquises, voluptuous financiers, elegant dandies, and more than one wretched philosopher, were shut up, pell-mell, in the foulest cells, waiting until the guillotine could make room in the chambers filled with camp-bedsteads. They were generally put with those on the straw, on entering, where they sometimes remained a fortnight... It was necessary to drink brandy with these persons; in the evening, after having dropped their excrement near their straw, they went to sleep in their filth.... I passed those three nights half-sitting, half-stretched out on a bench, one leg on the ground and leaning against the wall."—Wallon, "La Terreur," II., 87. (Report of Grandpre on the Conciergerie, March 17, 1793. "Twenty-six men collected into one room, sleeping on twenty-one mattresses, breathing the foulest air and covered with half-rotten rags." In another room forty-five men and ten straw-beds; in a third, thirty-nine poor creatures dying in nine bunks; in three other rooms, eighty miserable creatures on sixteen mattresses filled with vermin, and, as to the women, fifty-four having nine mattresses and standing up alternately.—The worst prisons in Paris were the Conciergerie, La Force, Le Plessis and Bicetre.—"Tableau des Prisons de Toulouse," p. 316. "Dying with hunger, we contended with the dogs for the bones intended for them, and we pounded them up to make soup with."]

[Footnote 4118: "Recueil de Pieces, etc.," i., p.3. (Letter of Frederic Burger, Prairial 2, year II.)]

[Footnote 4119: Alfred Lallier, "Les Noyades de Nantes," p. 90.—Campardon, "Histoire de Tribunal Revolutionnaire de Paris," (trial of Carrier), II., 55. (Deposition of the health-officer, Thomas.) "I saw perish in the revolutionary hospital (at Nantes) seventy-five prisoners in two days. None but rotten mattresses were found there, on each of which the epidemic had consumed more than fifty persons. At the Entrepot, I found a number of corpses scattered about here and there. I saw children, still breathing, drowned in tubs full of human excrement."]

[Footnote 4120: Narrative of the sufferings of unsworn priests, deported in 1794, in the roadstead of Aix, passim.]

[Footnote 4121: "Histoire des Prisons," I., 10. "Go and visit," says a contemporary, (at the Conciergerie), "the dungeons called 'the great Caesar,' 'Bombie,' 'St. Vincent.' 'Bel Air,' etc., and say whether death is not preferable to such an abode." Some persons, indeed, the sooner to end the matter, wrote to the public prosecutor, accusing themselves, demanding a king and priests, and are at once guillotined, as they hoped to be.—Cf. the narrative of "La Translation des 132 a Nantois Paris," and Riouffe, "Memoires," on the sufferings of prisoners on their way to their last prison.]

[Footnote 4122: Berryat Saint-Prix, p. IX., passim.]

[Footnote 4123: Campardon, II., 224.]

[Footnote 4124: Berryat Saint-Prix, 445.—Paris, "Histoire de Joseph Lebon," II., 352.—Alfred Lallier, p. 90.—Buchez et Roux, XXXII., 394.]

[Footnote 4125: Berryat Saint-Prix, pp.23, 24.]

[Footnote 4126: Berryat Saint-Prix, p.458. "At Orange, Madame de Latour-Vidan, aged eighty and idiotic for many years, was executed with her son. It is stated that, on being led to the scaffold, she thought she was entering a carriage to pay visits and so told her son."—Ibid., 471. After Thermidor, the judges of the Orange commission having been put on trial, the jury declared that "they refused to hear testimony for the defense and did not allow the accused even informal lawyers to defend them."]

[Footnote 4127: Camille Boursier," La Terreur en Anjou," p.228. (Deposition of Widow Edin.) "La Persac, a nun ill and infirm, was ready to take the oath. Nicolas, Vacheron's agent, assisted by several other persons, dragged her out of bed and put her on a cart; from ninety to ninety-four others were shot along with her."]

[Footnote 4128: Berryat Saint-Prix, p. 161. The following are samples of these warrants: "S. (shot), Germinal 13, Widow Menard, seventy-two years old, an old aristocrat, liking nobody, habitually living by herself."—"Warrant of the Marseilles committee, Germinal 28, year II., condemning one Cousineri for having continually strayed off as if to escape popular vengeance, to which he was liable on account of his conduct and for having detested the Revolution."—Camille Boursier, p.72, Floreal 15, year II., execution of "Gerard, guilty of having scorned to assist at the planting of a Liberty-pole, in the commune of Vouille, Sep., 1792, and inducing several municipal officers to join him in his insolent and liberticide contempt."]

[Footnote 4129: Wallon, "Histoire du Tribunal Revolutionnaire de Paris," V., 145.]

[Footnote 4130: Ibid., v., 109. (Deposition of Madame de Maille.)—V., 189. (Deposition of Lhullier.)—Cf. Campardon, in the same affairs.]

[Footnote 4131: Campardon, II., 189, 190, 193, 197. (Depositions of Beaulieu, Duclos, Tirard, Ducray, etc.)]

[Footnote 4132: Berryat Saint-Prix, 395. (Letter of Representative Moyse Bayle,)—Ibid., 216. (Words of Representative Lecarpentier at Saint-Malo.) "Why such delays? Of what use are these eternal examinations? What need is there of going so deep into this matter? The name, profession and the upshot, and the trial is over."—"He publicly stated to the informers: You don't know what facts you require to denounce the Moderates? Well, a gesture, one single gesture, suffices."]

[Footnote 4133: Letter of Payan to Roman Formosa, judge at Orange: "In the commissions charged with punishing the conspirators, no formalities should exist; the conscience of the judge is there as a substitute for these... The commissions must serve as political courts; they must remember that all the men who have not been on the side of the Revolution are against it, since they have done nothing for the country... I say to all judges, in the name of the country, do not risk saving a guilty man."—Robespierre made the same declaration in the Jacobin Club. Frimaire 19, year II.: "We judge, in politics, with the suspicions of an enlightened patriotism."]

[Footnote 4134: "Memoires de Freron" and on Freron, (collection Barriere et Berville,) p.364. Letter of Freron, Toulon, Nivose 16. "More than eight hundred Toulonese have already been shot."]

[Footnote 4135: Lallier, p.90. (The eleven distinct drownings ascertained by M. Lallier extend up to Pluviose 12, year II.)]

[Footnote 4136: Moniteur, XXII., 227. (Official documents read in the Convention, Ventose 21, year III.) These documents authenticate an ulterior drowning. Ventose 9, year II., by order of Lefevre, adjutant general, forty-one persons were drowned, among whom were two men seventy-eight years of age and blind, twelve women, twelve young girls, fifteen children, of which ten were between six and ten years old, and five at the breast. The drowning took place in the Bourgneuf bay.-Carrier says in the Convention, (Moniteur, XXII., p.578), in relation to the drowning of pregnant women: "At Laval, Angers, Saumur, Chaban-Gontier, everywhere the same things took place as at Nantes."]

[Footnote 4137: Camille Boursier, p.159.]

[Footnote 4138: Ibid., 203. Representative Francastel announces "the firm determination to purge, to bleed freely this Vendean question." This same Francastel wrote to General Grignon: "Make those brigands tremble! Give them no quarter! The prisons in Vendee are overflowing with prisoners!... The conversion of this country into a desert must be completed. Show no weakness and no mercy... These are the views of the Convention.... I swear that Vendee shall be depopulated."]

[Footnote 4139: Granier de Cassagnac, "His. du Directoire," II., 241.—(Letter of General Hoche to the Minister of the Interior, Feb. 2, 1796.) "Only one out of five remains of the population of 1789."]

[Footnote 4140: Campardon, II., 247, 249, 251, 261, 321. (Examination of Fouquier-Tinville, Cambon's words.)]

[Footnote 4141: Article by Guffroy, in his journal Le Rougiff: "Down with the nobles, and so much the worse for the good ones, if there are any! Let the guillotine stand permanently throughout the Republic. Five millions of inhabitants are enough for France!"—Berryat Saint-Prix, 445. (Letter of Fauvety, Orange, Prairial 14, year II.) "We have but two confined in our arrondissement. What a trifle!"—Ibid., 447. (Letter of the Orange Committee to the Committee of Public Safety, Messidor 3.) "As soon as the Committee gets fully agoing it is to try all the priests, rich merchants and ex-nobles."—(Letter of Juge, Messidor 2.) "Judging by appearances more than three thousand heads will fall in the department."—Ibid., 311. At Bordeaux, a huge scaffold is put up, authorized by the Military Committee, with seven doors, two of which are large and like barn-doors, called a four-bladed guillotine, so as to work faster and do more. The warrant and orders for its construction bear date Thermidor 3 and 8, year II.—Berryat Saint-Prix, 285. Letter of Representative Blutel, on mission at Rochefort, after Thermidor: "A few men, sunk in debauchery and crime, dared proscribe (here) virtues, patriotism, because it was not associated with their sanguinary excitement: the tree of Liberty, they said, required for its roots ten feet of human gore."]

[Footnote 4142: "Recueil de Pieces Authentiques, concernant le Revolution a Strasbourg," I., 174, 178. Examples of revolutionary taxes.—Orders of Representatives Milhaud, Ruamps, Guyadin, approving of the following contributions, Brumaire 20, year II.

On 3 individuals of Stutzheim......150,000 livres. " 3 " Offenheim....................30,000 " " 21 " Molsheim.....................367,000 " " 17 " Oberenheim....................402,000 " " 84 " Rosheim.......................503,000 " " 10 " Mutzig........................114,000 "]

Another order by Daum and Tisseraud, members of the committee who temporarily replace the district administrators: "Whereas, it is owing to the county aristocrats that the Republic supports the war," they approve of the following taxes:

On the aristocrats of Geispolzheim, 400,000 livres. ditto of Oberschoeffolsheim 200,000 " ditto of Duettlenheim 150,000 " ditto of Duppigheim 100,000 " ditto of Achenheim 100,000 "]

List of contributions raised in the rural communes of the district of Strasbourg, according to an assessment made by Stamm, procureur pro tem. of the district, amounting to three millions one hundred and ninety-six thousand one hundred livres.]

[Footnote 4143: "Recueil des Pieces Authentiques," etc., I., 23. By order of the representatives under date of Brumaire 25, year II. "The municipality of Strasbourg stripped the whole commune of shoes in twenty-four hours, sending for them from house to house."—Ibid.. p.32. Orders of Representatives Lemaire and Baudot, Frimaire I, year II., declaring that kitchen-utensils, boilers, sauce-pans, stew-pans, kettles and other copper and lead vessels, as well as copper and lead not worked-up, found at Strasbourg and in the departments, be levied on."—Archives Nationales, AF., I., 92. (Orders of Taillefer, Brumaire 3, year II. Villefranche 1'Avergnon.) Formation of a Committee of ten persons directed to make domiciliary visits, and authorized to take possession of all the iron, lead, steel and copper found in the houses of "suspects," all of which kitchen utensils, are to be turned into cannon.—Mallet-Dupan, "Memoires," I., 15.]

[Footnote 4144: Moniteur, XXV., 188. (Speech by Blutels, July 9, 1795.)]

[Footnote 4145: "Recueil du Pieces Authentiques," etc., I., 24.—Gregoire, reports on Vandalism, Fructidor 14, year II., and Brumaire 14, year III. (Moniteur, XXII., 86 and 751.)—Ibid., Letter of December 24, 1796: "Not millions, but billions have been destroyed."—Ibid.,, "Memoires," I., 334: "It is incalculable, the loss of religious, scientific and literary objects. The district administrations of Blanc (Indre) notified me that to ensure the preservation of a library, they had the books put in casks."—Four hundred thousand francs were expended in smashing statues of the Fathers of the church, forming a circle around the dome of the Invalides.—A great many objects became worthless through a cessation of their use: for example, the cathedral of Meaux was put up at auction and found no purchaser at six hundred francs. The materials were valued at forty-five thousand francs, but labor (for taking it down) was too high. (Narrative by an inhabitant of Meaux.)]

[Footnote 4146: "Les Origines du Systeme Financier Actuel," by Eugene Sturm, p.53, 79.]

[Footnote 4147: Meissner, "Voyage a Paris," (end of 1795), p. 65. "The class of those who may have really gained by the Revolution.... is composed of brokers, army contractors, and their subordinates, a few government agents and fermiers, enriching themselves by their new acquisitions, and who are cool and shrewd enough to hide their grain, bury their gold and steadily refuse assignats."—Ibid., 68, 70. "On the road, he asks to whom a fine chateau belongs, and they tell him with a significant look, 'to a former scruffy wretch.'—'Oh, monsieur,' said the landlady at Vesoul, 'for every one that the Revolution has made rich, you may be sure that it has made a thousand poor.'"]

[Footnote 4148: The following descriptions and appreciations are the fruit of extensive investigation, scarcely one tenth of the facts and texts that have been of service being cited. I must refer the reader, accordingly, to the series of printed and written documents of which I have made mention in this and the three preceding volumes.]

[Footnote 4149: "The Ancient Regime," book II., ch 2, P IV.]

[Footnote 4150: Ibid., book IV., chs. I., II., III.]

[Footnote 4151: Lacretelle, "Histoire de France au 18eme Siecle," V., 2.—" The Ancient Regime," pp. 163, 300.]

[Footnote 4152: Morellet, "Memoires," I., 166. (Letter by Roederer to Beccaria's daughter, May 20, 1797).]

[Footnote 4153: Beccaria (Cesare Bonesana, marquis de) (Milan 1738—id. 1794). Italian jurist, whose "Traite des delits et des peines" (1764) contributed to the reforms and the softening of of European penal law. (SR)]

[Footnote 4154: Mallet-Dupan, "Memoires," II., 493. "While the Duke of Orleans was undergoing his examination he read a newspaper."—Ibid., 497. "Nobody died with more firmness, spirit and dignity than the Duke of Orleans. He again became a royal prince. On being asked in the revolutionary tribunal whether he had any defense to make, he replied, 'Rather die to-day than to-morrow: deliberate about it.'" His request was granted.—The Duc de Biron refused to escape, considering that, in such a dilemma, it was not worth while. "He passed his time in bed, drinking Bordeaux wine.... Before the tribunal, they asked his name and he replied, 'Cabbage, turnip, Biron, as you like, one is as good as the other.' 'How!' exclaimed the judges, 'you are insolent!' 'And you—you are windbags! I Come to the point; Guillotine, that is all you have to say, while I have nothing to say.'" Meanwhile they proceeded to interrogate him on his pretended treachery in Vendee, etc. "'You do not know what you are talking about! You ignoramuses know nothing about war! Stop your questions. I reported at the time to the Committee of Public Safety, which approved of my conduct. Now, it has changed and ordered you to take my life. Obey, and lose no more time.' Biron asked pardon of God and the King. Never did he appear better than on the (executioner's) cart."]

[Footnote 4155: Morellet, II., 31.-"Memoires de la Duchesse de Tourzel," "de Mlle. des Echerolles," etc.-Beugnot, "Memoires, I., 200-203. "The wittiest remarks, the most delicate allusions, the most brilliant repartees were exchanged on each side of the grating. The conversation was general, without any subject being dwelt on. There, misfortune was treated as if it were a bad child to be laughed at, and, in fact, they did openly make sport of Marat's divinity, Robespierre's sacerdoce and the magistracy of Fouquier. They seemed to say to all these bloody menials: 'You may slaughter us when you please, but you cannot hinder us in being aimable'"-Archives Nationales, F.7, 31167. (Report by the watchman, Charmont, Nivose 29, year II.) "The people attending the executions are very much surprised at the firmness and courage they show (sic) on mounting the scaffold. They say that it looks (sic) like going to a wedding. People cannot get used to it, some declaring that it is supernatural."]

[Footnote 4156: Sauzay, I.. introduction.—De Tocqueville, "L'Ancien Regime et la Revolution," 166. "I have patiently read most of the reports and debates of the provincial Etats,' and especially those of Languedoc, where the clergy took much greater part than elsewhere in administrative details, as well as the proces-verbaux of the provincial assemblies between 1779 and 1787, and, entering on the study with the ideas of my time, I was surprised to find bishops and abbes, among whom were several as eminent for their piety as their learning, drawing up reports on roads and canals, treating such matters with perfect knowledge of the facts, discussing with the greatest ability and intelligence the best means for increasing agricultural products, for ensuring the well-being of the people and the property of industrial enterprises, oftentimes much better than the laymen who were interested with them in the same affairs."]

[Footnote 4157: "The Ancient Regime," p.300.—"The Revolution," vol. I., p. 116. Buchez et Roux, I., 481. The list of notables convoked by the King in 1787 gives an approximate idea of this social staff. Besides the leading princes and seigniors we find, among one hundred and thirty-four members, twelve marshals of France, eight Councillors of State, five maitres de requetes, fourteen bishops and archbishops, twenty presidents and seventeen procureurs generaux des parlements, or of royal councils, twenty-five mayors, prevots des marchands, capitouls, and equerries of large towns, the deputies of the "Etats" of Burgundy, Artois, Brittany and Languedoc, three ministers and two chief clerks.—The capacities were all there, on hand, for bringing about a great reform; but there was no firm, strong, controlling hand, that of a Richelieu or Frederic II.]

[Footnote 4158: See "The Revolution II" Ed. Lafont page 617. US edition P. 69. (SR.)]

[Footnote 4159: "Memoires de Gaudin," duc de Gaete.]

[Footnote 4160: Mallet-Dupan, "Memoires," II., 25, 24. "The War Committee is composed of engineer and staff-officers, of which the principal are Meussuer, Favart, St. Fief, d'Arcon, Lafitte-Clave and a few others. D'Arcon directed the raising of the siege of Dunkirk and that of Maubenge.... These officers were selected with discernment; they planned and carried out the operations; aided by immense resources, in the shape of maps, plans and reconnaissances preserved in the war department, they really operated according to the experience and intelligence of the great generals under the monarchy."]

[Footnote 4161: Miot de Melito, "Memoires," I., 47.—Andre Michel, "Correspondance de Mallet-Dupan avec la Cour de Vienne," I., 26. (January 3, 1795.) "The Convention feels so strongly the need of suitable aids to support the burden of its embarrassments as to now seek for them among pronounced royalists. For instance, it has just offered the direction of the royal treasury to M. Dufresne, former chief of the department under the reign of the late King, and retired since 1790. It is the same spirit and making a still more extraordinary selection, which leads them to appoint M. Gerard de Rayneval to the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, chief-clerk of correspondence since the ministry of the Duc de Choiseul until that of the Comte de Montmorin inclusive. He is a man of decided opinions and an equally decided character; in 1790 I saw him abandon the department through aversion to the maxims which the Revolution had forcibly introduced into it."]

[Footnote 4162: Marshal Marmont, "Memoires." At nine years of age he rode on horseback and hunted daily with his father.]

[Footnote 4163: Among other manuscript documents, a letter of M. Symn de Carneville, March II, 1781. (On the families of Carneville and Montmorin-Saint-Herem, in 1789.) The latter family remains in France; two of its members are massacred, two executed, a fifth "escaped the scaffold by forestalling the justice of the people;" the sixth, enlisted in the revolutionary armies, received a shot at nineteen years of age which made him blind. The other family emigrated, and its chiefs, the count and viscount Carneville commanded, one, a free company in the Austrian service, and the other, a regiment of hussars in Conde's army. Twelve officers of these two corps were brothers-in-law, nephews, first-cousins and cousins of the two commanders, the first of whom entered the service at fifteen, and the second at eleven.—Cf. "Memoires du Prince de Ligne." At seven or eight years of age I had already witnessed the din of battle, I had been in a besieged town, and saw three sieges from a window. A little older, I was surrounded by soldiers; old retired officers belonging to various services, and living in the neighborhood fed my passion.—Turenne said "I slept on a gun-carriage at the age of ten. My taste for war was so great as to lead me to enlist with a captain of the 'Royal Vaissiaux,' in garrison two leagues off. If war had been declared I would have gone off and let nobody know it. I joined his company, determined not to owe my fortune to any but valorous actions."—Cf. also "Memoires du Marechal de Saxe." A soldier at twelve, in the Saxon legion, shouldering his musket, and marching with the rest, he completed each stage on foot from Saxony to Flanders, and before he was thirteen took part in the battle of Malplaquet.]

[Footnote 4164: Alexandrine des Echerolles, "Un Famille Noble sous la Terreur," p.25.—Cf. "Correspondance de Madelle de Fering," by Honore Bonhomme. The two sisters, one sixteen and the other thirteen, disguised as men, fought with their father in Dumouriez' army.—See the sentiment of young nobles in the works of Berquin and Marmontel. (Les Rivaux d' Eux-meme.)]

[Footnote 4165: "The Revolution," I., 158, 325. Ibid., the affair of M. de Bussy, 306; the affair of the eighty-two gentlemen of Caen, 316.—See in Rivarol ("Journal Politique Nationale") details of the admirable conduct of the Body-guards at Versailles, Oct. 5 and 6, 1789.]

[Footnote 4166: The noble families under the ancient regime may be characterized as so many families of soldiers' children.]

[Footnote 4167: "L'Ancien Regime et la Revolution," by M. de Tocqueville, p.169. My judgment, likewise based on the study of texts, and especially manuscript texts, coincides here as elsewhere with that of M. de Tocqueville. Biographies and local histories contain documents too numerous to be cited.]

[Footnote 4168: Sauzay, I., introduction, and Ludovic Sciout, "Histoire de la Constitution Civile du Clerge," I., introduction. (See in Sauzay, biographical details and the grades of the principal ecclesiastical dignitaries of the diocese Besancon.) The cathedral chapter, and that of the Madeleine, could be entered only through nobility or promotion; it was requisite for a graduate to have a noble for a father, or a doctor of divinity, and himself be a doctor of divinity or in canon law. Analogous titles, although lower down, were requisite for collegiate canons, and for chaplains or familiars.]

[Footnote 4169: "The Revolution," I., 233.—Cf. Emile Ollivier, "L'Eglise et l'Etat au Concile du Vatican," I., 134, II., 511.]

[Footnote 4170: Morellet, "Memoires," I., 8, 31. The Sorbonne, founded by Robert Sorbon, confessor to St. Louis, was an association resembling one of the Oxford or Cambridge colleges, that is to say, a corporation possessing a building, revenues, rules, regulations and boarders; its object was to afford instruction in the theological sciences; its titular members, numbering about a hundred, were mostly bishops, vicars-general, canons, cures in Paris and in the principal towns. Men of distinction were prepared in it at the expense of the Church.—The examinations for the doctorate were the tentative, the mineure, the Sorbonique and the majeure. A talent for discussion and argument was particularly developed.—Cf. Ernest Renan, "Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeunesse," p.279, (on St. Sulpice and the study of Theology).]

[Footnote 4171: Cf. the files of the clergy in the States-General, and the reports of ecclesiastics in the provincial assemblies.]

[Footnote 4172: "The Revolution," p.72. (Ed. Lafont I, p 223 etc.)]

[Footnote 4173: In some dioceses, notably that of Besancon, the rural parishes were served by distinguished men. (Sauzay, I., 16.) "It was not surprising to encounter a man of European reputation, like Bergier, so long cure of Flangebouche; an astronomer of great merit, like M. Mongin, cure of la Grand Combe des Bois, whose works occupy an honorable place in Lalande's bibliography, all passing their lives in the midst of peasants. At Rochejean, a priest of great intelligence and fine feeling, M. Boillon, a distinguished naturalist, had converted his house into a museum of natural history as well as into an excellent school.... It was not rare to find priests belonging to the highest social circles, like MM. de Trevillers, of Trevillers, Balard de Bonnevaux of Bonetage, de Mesmay of Mesmay, du Bouvot, at Osselle, cheerfully burying themselves in the depths of the country, some on their family estates, and, not content to share their income with their poor parishioners, but on dying, leaving them a large part of their fortunes."]

[Footnote 4174: De Tocqueville, "L'Ancien Regime," 134, 137.]

[Footnote 4175: Terms signifying certain minor courts of law.]

[Footnote 4176: Albert Babeau, "La Ville sous l'Ancien Regime," p. 26.—(Advertisements in the "Journal de Troyes," 1784, 1789.) "For sale, the place of councillor in the Salt-department at Sezannes. Income from eight to nine hundred livres. Price ten thousand livres."—"A person desires to purchase in this town (Troyes) an office in the Magistracy or Finances, at from twenty-five thousand to sixty thousand livres; cash paid down if required."]

[Footnote 4177: De Tocqueville, "L'Ancien Regime," p.356. The municipal body of Angers comprised, among other members, two deputies of the presidial, two of the Forest and Streams department, two of the Election, two of the Salt-department, two of the Customs, two of the Mint, two Council judges. The system of the ancient regime, universally, is the grouping together of all individuals in one body with a representative of all these bodies, especially those of the notables. The municipal body of Angers, consequently, comprises two deputies of the society of lawyers and procureurs, two of the notarial body, one of the University, one of the Chapter, a Syndic of the clerks, etc.—At Troyes (Albert Babeau," Histoire de Troyes Pendant la Revolution," p.23.) Among the notables of the municipality may be found one member of the clergy, two nobles, one officer of the bailiwick, one officer of the other jurisdictions, one physician, one or two bourgeois, one lawyer, one notary or procureur, four merchants and two members of the trade guild.]

[Footnote 4178: Albert Babeau, "La Ville," p.26. (Cf. note on preceding page.) The Collector's Office at Reteil, in 1746, is sold at one hundred and fifty thousand livres; it brings in from eleven thousand to fourteen thousand livres.—The purchaser, besides, has to pay to the State the "right of the golden marc" (a tax on the transfer of property); in 1762, this right amounted to nine hundred and forty livres for the post of Councillor to the bailiwick of Troyes. D'Espremenil, councillor in the Paris Parliament, had paid fifty thousand livres for his place, besides ten thousand livres taxation of the "golden marc."]

[Footnote 4179: Emile Bos, "Les Avocats au conseil du Roi," p.340. Master Peruot, procureur, was seated on the balcony of the Theatre Francais when Count Moreton Chabrillant arrives and wants his place. The procureur resists and the count calls the guard, who leads him off to prison. Master Peruot enters a complaint; there is a trial, intervention of the friends of M. de Chabrillant before the garde des sceaux, petitions of the nobles and resistance of the entire guild of advocates and procureurs. M. de Chabrillant, senior, offers Peruot forty thousand livres to withdraw his suit, which Peruot refuses to do. Finally, the Count de Chabrillant is condemned, with six thousand livres damages, (which are given to the poor and to prisoners), as well as to the expense of printing two hundred impressions of the verdict.—Duport de Cheverney, "Memoires," (unpublished), communicated by M. Robert de Crevecoeur: "Formerly a man paid fifty thousand livres for an office with only three hundred livres income; the consideration, however, he enjoyed through it, and the certainty of remaining in it for life, compensated him for the sacrifice, while the longer he kept it, the greater was the influence of himself and children."]

[Footnote 4180: Albert Babeau, "La Ville," p. 27;—"Histoire de Troyes," p. 21.—This portrait is drawn according to recollections of childhood and family narrations. I happen to have known the details of two or three small provincial towns, one of about six thousand inhabitants where, before 1800, nearly all the notables, forty families, were relations; to-day all are scattered. The more one studies documents, the more does Montesquieu's definition of the incentive of society under the ancient regime seem profound and just, this incentive consisting of honor. In the bourgeoisie who were confounded with the nobility, namely the Parliamentarians, their functions were nearly gratuitous; the magistrate received his pay in deference. (Moniteur, V., 520. Session of August 30, 1790, speech by d'Espremenil.) "Here is what it cost a Councillor; I take myself as an example. He paid fifty thousand livres for his place, and ten thousand more for the tax of the 'marc d'or.' He received three hundred and eighty-nine livres ten sous salary, from which three hundred and sixty-seven livres 'capitation' had to be deducted. The King allowed us forty-five livres for extra service of 'La Tournelle'. How about the fees? is asked. The (grande chambre) superior court, asserted to have received the largest amount, was composed of one hundred and eighty members; the fees amounted to two hundred and fifty thousand livres, which were not a burden on the nation, but on the litigants. M. Thouret, who practiced in the Rouen parliament, will bear witness to this. I appeal to him to say conscientiously what sum a Councillor derived from his office—not five hundred livres... When a judgment cost the litigant nine hundred livres the King's portion was six hundred livres... To sum up, the profits of an office were seven livres ten sous."]

[Footnote 4181: Albert Babeau, "La Ville," ch. II., and "Histoire de Troyes," I., ch. 1. At Troyes, fifty merchants, notables, elected the judge-consul and two consuls; the merchants' guild possessed its own hall and had its own meetings. At Paris, the drapers, mercers, grocers, furriers, hatters and jewelers formed the six bodies of merchants. The merchants' guild everywhere took precedence of other industrial communities and enjoyed special privileges. "The merchants," says Loyseau, "hold rank (qualite d'honneur), being styled honorable men, honest persons and bourgeois of the towns, qualifications not attributed to husbandmen, nor to sergeants, nor to artisans, nor to manual laborers."—On paternal authority and domestic discipline in these old bourgeois families see the History of Beaumarchais and his father. (" Beaumarchais," by M. de Lomenie, vol. I.)]

[Footnote 4182: Albert Babeau, "Le village sous l'Ancien Regime," p. 56, ch. III and IV., (on the village syndics), and pp. 357 and 359. "The peasants had the right to deliberate on their own affairs directly and to elect their principal agents. They understood their own needs, were able to make a sacrifice for school and church.... for repairs of the town clock and the belfry. They appointed their own agents and generally elected the most capable."—Ibid, "La Ville sous 1'Ancien Regime," p.29. The artisans' guilds numbered at Paris one hundred and twenty-four. at Amiens sixty-four, and at Troyes fifty, also Chalons-sur-Marne, at Angers twenty-seven. The edicts of 1776 reduced them to forty-four at Paris, and to twenty as the maximum for the principal towns within the jurisdiction of the Paris parliament.—"Each guild formed a city within a city... Like the communes, it had its special laws, its selected chiefs, its assemblies, its own building or, at least, a chamber in common, its banner, coat-of-arms and colors."—Ibid., "Histoire de Troyes Pendant la Revolution," I., 13, 329. Trade guilds and corporations bear the following titles, drawn up in 1789, from the files of complaints: apothecaries, jewelers and watch-makers, booksellers and printers, master-barbers, grocers, wax and candle-makers, bakers and tailors, master shoemakers, eating-house-keepers, inn-keepers and hatters, master-masons and plasterers in lime and cement, master-joiners, coopers and cabinet-makers, master-cutlers, armorers, and polishers; founders, braziers, and pin-makers; master-locksmiths, ironmongers, tinsmiths and other metal workers, vinegar-makers, master-shearers, master rope-makers, master-tanners, dealers and master-dyers and dressers; master saddle and harness-makers, charcoal-burners, carters, paper-makers and band-box-makers, cap-makers and associates in arts and trades.—In some towns one or two of these natural guilds kept up during the Revolution and still exist, as, for example, that of the butchers at Limoges.]

[Footnote 4183: F. Leplay, "Les Ouvriers Europeens," V., 456, 2nd ed., (on workmen's guilds), Charpentier, Paris.]

[Footnote 4184: F. Leplay, "Les Quvriers Europeens," (2nd ed.) IV., 377, and the monographs of four families (Bordier of Lower Brittany, Brassier of Armagnac, Savonnier of Lower Provence, Paysan of Lavedan, ch. 7, 8 and 9).—Ibid., "L'Organization de la Famille," p.62, and the whole volume.—M. Leplay, in his exact, methodical and profound researches, has rendered a service of the highest order to political science and, consequently, to history. He has minutely observed and described the scattered fragments of the old organization of society; his analysis and comparison of these fragments shows the thickness and extent of the stratum almost gone, to which they belonged. My own observations on the spot, in many provinces in France, as well as the recollections of my youth, agree with M. Leplay's discoveries.—On the stable, honest and prosperous families of small rural proprietors, Cf. Ibid., p. 68, (Arthur Young's observation in Bearn), and p.75. Many of these families existed in 1789, more of them than at the present time, especially in Gascony, Languedoc, Auvergne, Dauphiny, Franch-Comte, Alsace and Normandy.—Ibid., "L'Organization du Travail," pp.499, 503, 508. (Effects of the "Code Civile" on the transmission of a manufactory and a business establishment in France, and on cultivation in Savoy; the number of suits in France produced by the system of forced partition of property.)]

[Footnote 4185: F. Leplay, "L'Organization de la Famille," p.212. (History of the Melonga family from 1856 to 1869 by M. Cheysson.) Also p.269. (On the difficulty of partitions among ascendants, by M. Claudio Jannet.)]

[Footnote 4186: Retif de la Bretonne, "Vie de mon Pere," (paternal authority in a peasant family in Burgundy). The reader, on this point, may test the souvenirs of his grand-parents. With reference to the bourgeoisie I have cited the family of Beaumarchais. Concerning the nobles, see the admirable letter by Buffon June 22, 1787, (correspondence of Buffon, two vols., published by M. Nadaud de Buffon), telling his son how he ought to act on account of his wife's behavior.]

[Footnote 4187: Moniteur, XIX., 669.]

[Footnote 4188: Dauban, "Paris en 1794," p.245. (Report by Bacon, Ventose 25, year II.)]

[Footnote 4189: Ibid. (Report by Perriere, Ventose 26.)]

[Footnote 4190: Ironical, slang for a hog. TR.]

[Footnote 4191: Ibid., 245. (Report by Bacon, speech of an orator to the general assembly of the section "Contrat-Social," Ventose 25.)]

[Footnote 4192: "Un Sejour en France." (Sep., 1792.) Letter of a Parisian: "It is not yet safe to walk the streets in decent clothes. I have been obliged to procure and put on pantaloons, jacket, colored cravat and coarse linen, before attempting to go outdoors."—Beaulieu, "Essais," V., 281. "Our dandies let their moustaches grow long; while they rumpled their hair, dirtied their hands and donned nasty garments. Our philosophers and literary men wore big fur caps with long fox-tails dangling over their shoulders; some dragged great trailing sabers along the pavement—they were taken for Tartars.... In public assemblies, in the theatre boxes, nothing was seen in the front rows but monstrous red bonnets. All the galeriens of all the convict prisons in Europe seem to have come and set the fashion in this superb city which had given it to all Europe."—"Un Sejour en France," p. 43. (Amiens, September, 1792.) "Ladies in the street who are well-dressed or wear colors that the people regard as aristocratic are commonly insulted. I, myself, have been almost knocked down for wearing a straw hat trimmed with green ribbons."—Nolhac, "Souvenirs de Trois Annees de la Revolution at Lyons," p.132. "It was announced that whoever had two coats was to fetch one of them to the Section, so as to clothe some good republican and ensure the reign of equality."]

[Footnote 4193: Buchez et Roux, XXVI., 455. (Speech by Robespierre, in the Jacobin club, May 10, 1793.): "The rich cherish hopes for an anti-revolution; it is only the wretched, only the people who can save the country."—Ibid., XXX. (Report by Robespierre to the Convention, December 25, 1793.): "Virtue is the appanage of the unfortunate and the people's patrimony."—Archives Nationales, AF.,II., 72. (Letter of the municipality of Montauban, Vendemiaire 23, year IV.) Many workmen in the manufactories have been perverted "by excited demagogues and club orators who have always held out to them equality of fortunes and presented the Revolution as the prey of the class they called sans-culottes.... The law of the 'maximum,' at first tolerably well carried out, the humiliation of the rich, the confiscation of the immense possessions of the rich, seemed to be the realization of these fine promises."]

[Footnote 4194: Archives Nationales, F.7, 4421. Petition of Madeleine Patris.—Petition of Quetrent Cognier, weaver, "sans-culotte, and one of the first members of the Troyes national guard."—(The Style and orthography of the most barbarous kind.)]

[Footnote 4195: bid., AF., II. 135. (Extract from the deliberations of the Revolutionary Committee of the commune of Strasbourg, list of prisoners and reasons for arresting them.) At Oberschoeffolsheim, two farmers "because they are two of the richest private persons in the commune."—"Recueil de Pieces, etc.," I.. 225. (Declaration by Welcher, revolutionary commissioner). "I, the undersigned, declare that, on the orders of citizen Clauer, commissioner of the canton, I have surrendered at Strasbourg seven of the richest in Obershoeffolsheim without knowing why." Four of the seven were guillotined.]

[Footnote 4196: Buchez et Roux, XXVI., 341. (Speech by Chasles in the Convention, May 2, 1793.)]

[Footnote 4197: Moniteur, XVIII., 452. (Speech by Hebert in the Jacobin club, Brumaire 26.)-Schmidt, "Tableaux de la Revolution Francaise," 19. (Reports of Dutard, June II.—Archives Nationales. F7., 31167. (Report of the Pourvoyeur, Nivose 6, year II.) "The people complain (se plain) that there are still some conspirators in the interior, such as butchers and bakers, but particularly the former, who are (son) an intolerable aristocracy. They (il) will sell no more meat, etc. It is frightful to see what they (il) give the people."]

[Footnote 4198: "Recueil de Police," etc., I., 69 and 91. At Strasbourg a number of women of the lower class are imprisoned as "aristocrats and fanatics," with no other alleged motive. The following are their occupations: dressmaker, upholsteress, housewife, midwife, baker, wives of coffee-house keepers, tailors, potters and chimney-sweeps.—Ibid., II., 216. "Ursule Rath, servant to an emigre arrested for the purpose of knowing what her master had concealed.... Marie Faber, on suspicion of having served in a priest's house."—Archives Nationales, AF., II., 135. (List of the occupations of the suspected women detained in the cells of the National college.) Most of them are imprisoned for being either mothers, sisters, wives or daughters of emigres or exiled priests, and many are the wives of shopkeepers or mechanics. One, a professional nurse, is an "aristocrat and fanatic." (Another list describes the men); a cooper as "aristocrat;" a tripe-seller as "very incivique, never having shown any attachment to the Revolution;" a mason has never shown "patriotism," a shoemaker is aristocrat at all times, having accepted a porter's place under the tyrant;" four foresters "do not entertain patriotic sentiments," etc.—"Recueil de Pieces, etc.," II., 220. Citoyenne Genet, aged 75, and her daughter, aged 44, are accused of having sent, May 22, 1792, thirty-six francs in silver to the former's son, an emigre and were guillotined.—Cf. Sauzay, vols. III., IV., and V. (appendices), lists of emigres and prisoners in Doubs, where titles and professions, with motives for confining them, will be found.—At Paris, even (Archives Nationales, F.7, 31167. report of Latour-Lamontagne, September 20, 1793), aversion to the government descends very low. "Three women (market-women) all agree on one point-the necessity of a new order of things. They complain of the authorities without exception.... If the King is not on their lips, it is much to be feared that he is already in their hearts. A woman in the Faubourg St. Antoine, said: If our husbands made the Revolution we know how to make a counter-revolution if that should be necessary."]

[Footnote 4199: See above ch. V., P 4.—Archives Nationales, F.7, 4435, No. 10. (Letter of Collot d'Herbois to Couthon, Frimaire 11, year II.)]

[Footnote 41100: Archives des Affaires etrangeres, vol.331. (Letter of Bertrand, Nimes, Frimaire 3.) "We are sorry to see patriots here not very delicate in the way they cause arrests, in ascertaining who are criminal, and the precious class of craftsmen is no exception."]

[Footnote 41101: Berryat Saint-Prix, "La Justice Revolutionnaire," 1st ed., p.229.]

[Footnote 41102: "Un Sejour en France," p. 186. "I notice that most of the arrests now made are farmers." (In consequence of the requisitions for grain, and on account of the applications of the law of the maximum.)]

[Footnote 41103: "Bulletin du Tribunal Revolutionnaire," No.431. (Testimony of Tontin, secretary of the court.) Twelve hundred of these poor creatures were set free after Thermidor 9.]

[Footnote 41104: Moniteur, session of June 29, 1797. (Report of Luminais.) Danican, "Les Brigands Demasques," p. 194.]

[Footnote 41105: Meillan, "Memoires," p. 166.]

[Footnote 41106: Berryat Saint-Prix, "La Justice Revolutionnaire," p. 419.—Archives Nationales, AF., II., 145. (Orders issued by Representative Maignet, Floreal 14, 15 and 17, year II.) "The criminal court will try and execute the principal criminals; the rest of the inhabitants will abandon their houses in twenty-four hours, and take their furniture along with them. The town will then be burnt. All rebuilding or tillage of the soil is forbidden. The inhabitants will be apportioned among neighboring communes; nobody is allowed to leave the commune assigned to him under penalty of being treated as an emigre. All must appear once every ten days at the municipality under penalty of being declared 'suspect' and imprisoned."]

[Footnote 41107: "Recueil de Pieces, etc.," I., 52. (Carret de Beudot and La Coste, Pluviose 6, year II.) "Whereas, it being impossible to find jurors within an extent of one hundred leagues, two-thirds of the inhabitants having emigrated."—Moniteur, Aug.28 and 29, 1797. (Report by Harmand de la Meuse.)—Ibid., XIX., 714. (Session of Ventose 26, year II., speech by Baudot.) "Forty thousand persons of all ages and both sexes in the districts alone of Haguenau and Wissembourg, fled from the French territory on the lines being retaken. The names are in our hands, their furniture in the depot at Saverne and their property is made over to the Republic."]

[Footnote 41108: Albert Babeau, "Histoire de Troyes," II., 160. "A gardener had carefully accumulated eight thousand two hundred and twenty-three livres in gold, the fruit of his savings; threatened with imprisonment, he was obliged to give them up."]

[Footnote 41109: Archives Nationales, AF.,II., 116. (Orders of Representative Paganel, Toulouse, Brumaire 12, year II.) "The day has arrived when apathy is an insult to patriotism, and indifference a crime. We no longer reply to the objections of avarice; we will force the rich to fulfill the duties of fraternity which they have abjured."—Ibid. (Extract from the minutes of the meetings of the Central committee of Montauban, April II, 1793, with the approval of the representative, Jeanbon-Saint-Andre.) "The moment has at length come when moderatism, royalism and pusillanimity, and all other traitorous or useless sects to the country, should disappear from the soil of Liberty." All opinions opposed to those of sans-culotterie are blamable and merit punishment.]

[Footnote 41110: Archives Nationales, F.7, 2471. (Minutes of the Revolutionary Committee of the Tuileries section, meeting of September 17, 1793.) List of seventy-four persons put under arrest and among them, M. de Noailles, with the following note opposite his name: "The entire family to be arrested, including their heir Guy, and Hervet, their old intendant, rue St. Honore."]

[Footnote 41111: Archives des Affaires etrangeres, vol. 322. (Letters of Ladonay, Chalons, September 17 and 20, 1792.) "At Meaux, the brigands have cut the throats of fifteen prisoners, seven of whom are priests whose relations belong to the town or its environs. Hence an immense number of malcontents."—Sauzay, I., 97. "The country cures are generally recruited from among the rural bourgeoisie and the most respected farmers' families."]

[Footnote 41112: Sauzay, passim, especially vols. 3, 4, 5, and 6.]

[Footnote 41113: Archives Nationales, F.7, 4437. Address of the popular club of Clavisson (Gard.), Messidor 7, year II.—Rodolphe Reuss, "Seligman Alexandre, sur les Tribulations d'un Israelite Strasbourgeois Pendant la Terreur," p. 37. Order issued by General Dieche to Coppin, in command of the "Seminaire" prison. "Strive with the utmost zeal to suppress the cackle of aristocrats." Such is the sum of the instructions to jail keepers.]

[Footnote 41114: Archives Nationales, AF., II., 88. (Edict issued by Representative Milhaud, Narbonne, Ventose 9, year II.) Article II. "The patriotic donation will be doubled if, in three days, all boats are not unloaded and all carts loaded as fast as they arrive." Article IV. "The municipality is charged, on personal responsibility, to proportion the allotment on the richest citizens of Narbonne." Article VII. "If this order is not executed within twenty-four hours, the municipality will designate to the commandant of the post the rich egoists who may have refused to furnish their contingent, etc." Article VIII. "The commandant is specially charged to report (the arrests of the refractory rich) to the representative of the people within twenty-four hours, he being responsible on his head for the punctual execution of the present order."—Ibid., AF., II. 135. (Orders of Saint-Just and Lebas, Strasbourg, Brumaire 10, year II.) The following is equally ironical; the rich of Strasbourg are represented as "soliciting a loan on opulent persons and severe measures" against refractory egoists.]

[Footnote 41115: Archives Nationales, AF., II., 92. Orders of Representative Taillefer, Villefranche, Aveyron, Brumaire 3, year II., and of his delegate, Deitheil, Brumaire 11, year II.]

[Footnote 41116: This is the case in Lyons, Bordeaux, Marseilles, and at Paris, as we see in the signatures of the petition of the eight thousand, or that of the twenty thousand, and for members of the Feuillants clubs, etc.]

[Footnote 41117: Archives Nationales, AF., II., 116. (Minutes of the public session of Ventose 20, year II., held at Montargis, in the Temple of Reason, by Benon, "national agent of the commune and special agent of the people's representative." Previous and subsequent orders, by Representative Lefert.) Eighty-six persons signed, subject to public penance, among them twenty-four wives or widows, which, with the four names sent to the Paris tribunal and the thirty-two imprisoned, makes one hundred and twenty-two. It is probable that the one hundred and six who are wanting to complete the list of two hundred and twenty-eight had emigrated, or been banished in the interval as unsworn priests.—Ibid., D.S., I., 10. (Orders by Delacroix, Bouchet and Legendre, Conches, Frimaire 8 and 9, year II.) The incarceration of the municipal officers of Conches for an analogous petition and other marks of Feuillantism.]

[Footnote 41118: The real sentiments and purposes of the Jacobins are well shown at Strasbourg. ("Recueil de Pieces, etc.," I., 77. Public meeting of the municipal body, and speech by Bierlyn, Prairial 25, year II.) " How can the insipid arrogance of these (Strasbourg) people be represented to you, their senseless attachment to the patrician families in their midst, the absurd feuil1antism of some and the vile sycophancy of others? How is it, they say, that moneyless interlopers, scarcely ever heard of before, dare assume to have credit in a town of sensible inhabitants and honest families, from father to son, accustomed to governing and renowned for centuries?"—Ibid., 113. (Speech of the mayor Mouet, Floreal 21, year II.) "Moral purification (in Strasbourg) has become less difficult through the reduction of fortunes and the salutary terror excited among those covetous men.. . Civilization has encountered mighty obstacles in this great number of well-to-do families who have nourished souvenirs of, and who regret the privileges enjoyed by, these families under the Emperors; they have formed a caste apart from the State carefully preserving the gothic pictures of their ancestors they were united only amongst themselves. They are excluded from all public functions. Honest artisans, now taken from all pursuits, impel the revolutionary cart with a vigorous hand."]

[Footnote 41119: Archives des Affaires etrangeres, vol. 1411. (Instructions for the civil commissioners by Herault, representative of the people, Colmar, Frimaire 2, year II.) He enumerates the diverse categories of persons who were to be arrested, which categories are so large and numerous as to include nine out of ten of the inhabitants.]

[Footnote 41120: Dauban, "Paris en 1794," p.264. (Report of Pourveyeur, Ventose 29.) "They remark (sic) that one is not (sic) a patriot with twenty-thousand livres (sic) income, and especially a former advocate-general."]

[Footnote 41121: De Martel, "Fouche," p.226, 228. For instance, at Nevers, a man of sixty-two years of age, is confined "as rich, egoist, fanatic, doing nothing for the Revolution, a proprietor, and having five hundred livres revenue."]

[Footnote 41122: Buchez et Roux, XXVI., '77. (Speech by Cambon, April 27, 1793.)]

[Footnote 41123: "Who are our enemies? The vicious and the rich."—"All the rich are vicious, in opposition to the Revolution." (Notes made by Robespierre in June and July, 1793, and speech by him in the Jacobin club, May 10, 1793.)]

[Footnote 41124: Guillon, II., 355. (Instructions furnished by Collot d'Herbois and Fouche, Brumaire 26, year II.)]

[Footnote 41125: De Martel, 171, 181. (Orders of Fouche, Nevers, August 25 and October 8, 1793.)]

[Footnote 41126: Guillon.-Archives des Affaires etrangeres, F. 1411. Reports by observers at Paris, Aug. 12 and 13, 1793. "The rich man is the sworn enemy of the Revolution."]

[Footnote 41127: Archives Nationales, AF., II., 135. (Orders of Saint-Just and Lebas, Strasbourg, Brumaire 10, year II., with the list of names of one hundred and ninety-three persons taxed, together with their respective amounts of taxation.)—Among others, "a widow Franck, banker, two hundred thousand livres."—Ibid., AF., II., 49. (Documents relating to the revolutionary tax at Belfort.) "Vieillard, Moderate and egoist, ten thousand francs; Keller, rich egoist, seven thousand; as aristocrats, of whom the elder and younger brother are imprisoned, Barthelemy the younger ten thousand, Barthelemy senior, three thousand five hundred, Barthelemy junior seven thousand, citoyenne Barthelemy, mother, seven thousand, etc."]

[Footnote 41128: "Recueil de Pieces, etc.," I., 22. (Letter of the Strasbourg authorities.) De Martel, p. 288. (Letter of the authorities of Allier.) "Citizens Sainay, Balome, Heulard and Lavaleisse were exposed on the scaffold in the most rigorous season for six hours (at Moulins) with this inscription—'bad citizen who has given nothing to the charity-box.'"]

[Footnote 41129: "Recueil de Pieces, etc.," I., 16.]

[Footnote 41130: Ibid., I., 159. (Orders of Brumaire 15, year II.)]

[Footnote 41131: Archives Nationales, F.7, 2475. (Minutes of the Revolutionary committee of the Piques section.) September 9, 1793, at 3 o'clock in the morning, the committee declares that, for its part, "it has arrested twenty-one persons of the category below stated." October 8, it places two sans-culottes as guards in the houses of all those named below, in the quarter, even those who could not be arrested on account of absence. "It is time to take steps to make sure of all whose indifference (sic) and moderatism is ruining the country."]

[Footnote 41132: Berryat Saint-Prix, pp.36, 38. carrier declares suspect "merchants and the rich."]

[Footnote 41133: Moniteur, XVIII., 641. (Letter of the representatives imprisoned at Bordeaux, Frimaire 10, year II.)]

[Footnote 41134: Archives des Affaires etrangeres, vol.329. (Letter of Brutus, October 3, 1793.)]

[Footnote 41135: Ibid., vol.329. (Letter of Charles Duvivier, Lille, Vendemiaire 15, year II.)]

[Footnote 41136: Speech by Barere, Ventose 17, year II.]

[Footnote 41137: Archives des Affaires etrangeres, vol. 331. Letter by Darbault, political agent, Tarbes, Frimaire II, year II. (Project for doing away with middle men in trade, brokers and bankers.) "The profession of a banker is abolished. All holders of public funds are forbidden to sell them under a year and one day after the date of their purchase. No one must be at the same time wholesale and retail dealer, etc." Projects of this sort are numerous. As to the establishment of a purely agricultural and military Republic, see the papers of Saint-Just, and the correspondence of the Lyons Terrorists. According to them the new France needs no silk-weavers. The definite formulas of the system are always found among the Babeuvists. "Let the arts perish, if it must be so, provided real Equality remains." (Sylvain Marechal," Manifeste des Egaux.")]

[Footnote 41138: "Revue Historique," November, 1878. (Letter of M. Falk, Paris, Oct.19, 1795.)]

[Footnote 41139: "Etude sur l'histoire de Grenoble Pendant la Terreur," by Paul Thibault. (List of notorious "suspects" and of ordinary "suspects" for each district in the Isere, April and May, 1793.)—Cf. the various lists of Doubs in Sauzay, and of Troyes, in Albert Babeau.]

[Footnote 41140: "Recueil de Pieces, etc.," I., 19, and the second letter of Frederic Burger, Thermidor 25.—Archives Nationales, AF., II.,111.(Order of Representatives Merlincourt and Amar, Grenoble, April 27, 1793.) "The persons charged with the actual government of and instruction in the public establishments known in this town under the titles of, 1st, Orphelines; 2nd Presentins; 3rd Capuchins; 4th, Le Propagation; 5th, Hospice for female servants.... are put under arrest and are forbidden to take any part whatever in the functions relating to teaching, education or instruction."]

[Footnote 41141: Moniteur, XXI., 645. (Session of the Convention, Fructidor 14, year II.)—"Biblioteque nationale," LB41, 1802, (Denounciation of the six sections of the commune of Dijon), 3: "Woe betide those are seen in any way, either due to an honest affluence, a good education, an elegant dress or some talent or other, as being different from their fellow citizens! They are likely to be persecuted or to be killed."]

[Footnote 41142: Perhaps there is a connection with Mao Zedong and the Chinese Cultural Revolution. (SR.)]

[Footnote 41143: Moniteur, XVIII., 51. (Letter by Carrier, Brumaire 17, year II.)—Berryat Saint-Prix, pp.36 and 38.]

[Footnote 41144: Berriat-Saint-Prix, 240 (The imprisoned at Brest.)—Duchaltelier ("Brest pendant la Terreur," 205). "Of the 975 prisoners, 106 were former nobles, 239 female nobles, 174 priests or monks, 206 nuns, 111 seamstresses, female workers etc, 56 were farmers, 46 artisans or workers, 17 merchants, 3 with a liberal profession. One is imprisoned for having secret opinions, a girl, for being witty and laughing at the patriots."]

[Footnote 41145: Mallet-Dupan, "Correspondance Politique." Introduction, p. VIII. (Hamburg, 1796.)]

[Footnote 41146: Portalis, "De la Revision des Jugements," 1795. (Saint-Beuve, "Causeries du Lundi," V., 452.)—Moniteur. XXII, 86 (Report of Gregoire, 14 Fructidor, year II): "Dumas said that all clever men (les hommes d'esprit) should be sent to the guillotine... Henriot proposed to burn the National Library.... and his proposal is repeated in Marseille... The systematic persecution of talented persons was organized.... Shouts had been heard in the sections: Beware of that man as he as written a book."]

[Footnote 41147: "Tableau des Prisons de Toulouse" by Pescayre, prisoner, year III, p. 317 ( Messidor 22nd, year II). Pinson, secretary of the reception, indoctrinated as follows the old duke de Lesparre: "Citoyen, your detention is used by your country as a means of conversion. Eight of your immediate family have, because they did not take advantage of his opportunity, carried their heads to the scaffold. What have you done to avoid the sword of justice? Speak! What are your feelings? Let us hear your principles. Have you at last renounced the arrogance of the ancient regime? Do you believe in equality established by nature and ordained by the Convention? Who are the sans-culottes you associate with? Is your cell not a meeting place for the aristocrats?... It is I, who in the future will be your company; I, who will make you familiar with the republican principles, who will make you love them, and who will take care of your improvement."]

[Footnote 41148: Taillandier, Memoires ecrits par Daunau, a Port-Libre, in Aug. 1794, p.51, 52.]

[Footnote 41149: Granier du Cassagnac, "Histoire du Directoire," i., 107. (Trial of Babeuf, extracts from Buonarotti, programme des "Egaux.") "All literature in favor of Revelation must be prohibited: children are to be brought up in common; the child will no longer bear his father's name; no Frenchman shall leave France; towns shall be demolished, chateaux torn down and books proscribed; all Frenchmen shall wear one special costume; armies shall be commanded by civil magistrates; the dead shall be prosecuted and obtain burial only according to the favorable decision of the court; no written document shall be published without the consent of the government, etc."—Cf. "Les Meditations de Saint-Just."]

[Footnote 41150: Guillon de Montleon, II., 174.]

[Footnote 41151: "Memoires sur les Prisons," I., 211, II., 187.—Beaulieu, "Essais," V., 320. "The prisons became the rendezvous of good society."]

[Footnote 41152: "The Revolution," vol.3, ch. 6, ante.]

[Footnote 41153: Chateaubriand: "Genie du Christianisme," part 4, book II., notes on the exhumations at St. Denis taken by a monk, an eye-witness. Destruction, August 6 and 8, 1793, of fifty-one monuments. Exhumation of bodies, October 12 and 25, 1793.—Camille Boursier, "Essai sur la Terreur en Anjou," p.223. (Testimony of Bordier-Langlois.) "I saw the head of our good Duke Rene, deposited in the chapel of St. Bernardin, in the Cordeliers at Angers, tossed like a ball by some laborers from one to the other."]

[Footnote 41154: R. Chantelauze, "Louis XVII.," (according to unpublished documents). This book, free of declamation and composed according to the critical method, sets this question at rest.]

[Footnote 41155: Wallon, "Histoire du Tribunal Revolutionnaire," III., 285.—Campardon, "Hist. du Tribunal Revolutionnaire de Paris," I., 306. Brochet, one of the jury, was formerly a lackey.]

[Footnote 41156: The above simply conveys the sense of the document, which is here given in the original: "Si tu n'est pas toute seulle et que le compagnion soit a travailier tu peus ma chaire amie venir voir juger 24 mesieurs tous si-deven president on conselier au parlement de Paris et de Toulouse. Je t' ainvite a prendre quelque choge aven de venir parcheque nous naurons pas fini de 3 hurres. Je tembrase ma chere amie et epouge." (TR).]

[Footnote 41157: Wallon, III., 402.]

[Footnote 41158: Campardon, II., 350.—Cf. Causeries du Lundi," II., 164. Saint-Beuve's comment on the examination. "Andre Chenier, natife de Constantinoble....son frere vice-consulte en Espagne. "Remark the questions on his health and correspondence and the cock-and-bull story about the 'maison a cotte.' "—They ask him where his servant was on the 10th of August, 1792, and he replies that he could not tell. "A lui represente qua lepoque de cette journee que touts les bons citoyent ny gnoroit point leurs existence et quayant enttendue batte la generale cettait un motife de plus pour reconnoitre tous les bons citoyent et le motife au quelle il setait employee pour sauvee la Republique. A repondue quil avoit dite l'exacte veritee. A lui demandee quel etoit dite l'exacte veritee—a repondue que cetoit toutes ce qui etoit cy dessue."]



CHAPTER II. FOOD AND PROVISIONS.



I. Economical Complexity of Food Chain.

Complexity of the economical operation by which articles of prime necessity reach the consumer.—Conditions of the operation.—Available resources.—Cases in which these are not available.—Case of the holder of these being no longer disposed to make them.

Suppose a man forced to walk with his feet in the air and his head downward. By using extremely energetic measures he might, for a while, be made to maintain this unwholesome attitude, and certainly at the expense of a bruised or broken skull; it is very probable, moreover, that he would use his feet convulsively and kick terribly. But it is certain that if this course were persisted in, the man would experience intolerable pain and finally sink down; the blood would stop circulating and suffocation would ensue; the trunk and limbs would suffer as much as the head, and the feet would become numb and inert.—Such is more or less the history of France under its Jacobin pedagogues; their rigid theory and persistent brutality impose on the nation an attitude against nature; consequently she suffers, and each day suffers more and more; the paralysis increases; the functions get out of order and cease to act, while the last and principal one,[4201] the most urgent, namely, physical support and the daily nourishment of the living individual, is so badly accomplished, against so many obstacles, interruptions, uncertainties and deficiencies, that the patient, reduced to extreme want, asks if to-morrow will not be worse than to-day, and whether his semi-starvation will not end in complete starvation.

Nothing, apparently, is simpler, and yet really more complex, than the physiological process by which, in the organized body, the proper restorative food flows regularly to the spot where it is needed, among the innumerably diverse and distant cells. In like manner, nothing is simpler at the first glance, and yet more complex, than the economical process by which, in the social organism, provisions and other articles of prime necessity, flow of themselves to all points of the territory where they are needed and within reach of each consumer. It is owing to this that, in the social body as in the organized body, the terminal act presupposes many others anterior to and co-ordinate with it, a series of elaborations, a succession of metamorphoses, one elimination and transportation after another, mostly invisible and obscure, but all indispensable, and all of them carried out by infinitely delicate organs, so delicate that, under the slightest pressure, they get out of order, so dependent on each other that an injury to one affects the operations of the rest, and thus suppresses or perverts the final result to which, nearly or remotely, they all contribute.

Consider, for a moment, these precious economical organs and their mode of operation. In any tolerably civilized community that has lasted for any length of time, they consist, first in rank, of those who possess wealth arising from the accumulation of old and recent savings, that is to say, those who possess any sort of security, large or small, in money, in notes, or in kind, whatever its form, whether in lands, buildings or factories, in canals, shipping or machinery, in cattle or tools, as well as in every species of merchandise or produce.—And see what use they make of these: each person, reserving what he needs for daily consumption, devotes his available surplus to some enterprise, the capitalist his ready money, the real-estate owner his land and tenements, the farmer his cattle, seed and farming implements, the manufacturer his mills and raw material, the common-carrier his vessels, vehicles and horses, the trader his warehouses and stock of goods for the year, and the retailer his shop and supplies for a fortnight. To which everybody, the agriculturist, merchant and manufacturer, necessarily adds his cash on hand, the deposits in his bank for paying the monthly salaries of his clerks, and at the end of the week, the wages of his workmen.—Otherwise, it would be impossible to till the soil, to build, to fabricate, to transport, to sell; however useful the work might be, it could not be perfected, or even begun, without a preliminary outlay in money or in kind. In every enterprise, the crop presupposes labor and seed corn. If I want to dig a hole I am obliged to hire a pick and the arms to wield it, or, in other terms, to make certain advances. But these advances are made only on two conditions: first, that he who makes them is able to make them, that is to say, that he is the possessor of an available surplus; and next, being the owner of this surplus, that he desires to make them, with this proviso that he may gain instead of losing by the operation.—If I am wholly or partially ruined, if my tenants and farmers do not pay their rent,[4202] if my lands or goods do not bring half their value in the market, if the net proceeds of my possessions are threatened with confiscation or pillage, not only have I fewer securities to dispose of, but, again, I become more and more uneasy about the future; over and above my immediate consumption I have to provide for a prospective consumption; I add to my reserve stores especially of coin and provisions; I hold on to the remnant of my securities for myself and those who belong to me; they are no longer available and I can no longer make loans or enter upon my enterprise. And, on the other hand, if the loan or enterprise, instead of bringing me a profit, brings me loss; if the law is powerless or fails to do me justice and adds extra to ordinary risks; if my work once perfected is to become the prey of the government, of brigands or of whoever pleases to seize it; if I am compelled to surrender my wares and merchandise at one-half their cost; if I cannot produce, put in store, transport or sell except by renouncing all profit and with the certainty of not getting back my advances, I will no longer make loans or enter upon any under-taking whatever.

Such is the disposition and situation of people able to make advances in anarchical times, when the State falters and no longer performs its customary service, when property is no longer adequately protected by the public force, when jacqueries overspread the country and insurrections break out in the towns, when chateaux are sacked, archives burnt, shops broken into, provisions carried off and transportation is brought to a halt, when rents and leases are no longer paid, when the courts dare no longer convict, when the constable no longer dares serve a warrant, when the gendarmerie holds back, when the police fails to act, when repeated amnesties shield robbers and incendiaries, when a revolution brings into local and central power dishonest and impoverished adventurers hostile to every one that possesses property of any kind.—Such is the disposition and situation of all who are in possession of the means to initiate projects in socialistic times