The French Revolution, Volume 2
                                           
The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3
                                          
by Hippolyte A. Taine




THE REVOLUTION. Volume II. THE JACOBIN CONQUEST.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION VOLUME II.
THE JACOBIN CONQUEST.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION VOLUME II.

BOOK FIRST. THE JACOBINS.
CHAPTER I. The Establishment of the new political organ.	6
I.  The Revolutionary Party.
II.  The Jacobins.
III. Jacobin Mentality.
IV.  What the Theory Promises.

CHAPTER II. The Party.
I. Formation of the Party
II.  Jacobin and other Associations
III.  The Press.
IV. The Clubs.
V.  Jacobin Power.

BOOK SECOND. THE FIRST STAGE OF THE CONQUEST.
CHAPTER I. The Jacobins in Power.
I.  Manipulating the Vote.
II. Danger of holding Public Office.
III.  Pursuit of the Opponents.
IV. Turmoil.
V. Tactics of Intimidation.

CHAPTER II.  The Legislative Assembly.
I. New Incompetent Assembly.
II. Jacobin Intelligence and Culture.
III. Their Sessions.
IV.   The political Parties.
V.  Means and Ways.
VI.  Political Tactics.
CHAPTER III.  Policy of the Assembly.
I.  Lawlessness.
II.  Revolutionary Laws.
III. War.
IV. Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
V.  Citoyens! Aux Armes!!
CHAPTER IV.  The Departments.
I. Provence in 1792.
II. The expedition to Aix.
III. Marseilles against Arles.
IV. The Jacobins of Avignon.
V.  The Class Struggle.
CHAPTER V.  PARIS.
I. Weakening of the King.
II.  The Armed Revolutionaries.
III.  Jacobin Rabble-rousers.
IV.  The King in front of the people.
CHAPTER VI. The Birth of the Terrible Paris Commune.
I. The Plan of the Girondists.
II. Girondists Foiled.
III.  Preparations for the Coup.
IV. The Commune in Action.
V.  Purging the Assembly.
VI.   Take-over.
VII.  The King's Submission.
VIII.  Paris and its Jacobin leaders.

BOOK THIRD. THE SECOND STAGE OF THE CONQUEST.
CHAPTER I. Mob rule in times of anarchy.
I.    Brigands.
II. Homicidal Part of Revolutionary Creed.
III.  Terror is their Salvation.
IV. Carnage.
V.  Abasement and Stupor.
VI. Jacobin Massacre.
CHAPTER II. THE DEPARTMENTS.
I. The Sovereignty of the People..
II. Robbers and Victims.
III.  Local Dictature.
IV.  Jacobin Violence, Rape and Pillage.
V.  The Roving Gangs.
VI. The Programme of the Party.
CHAPTER III.  The New Sovereigns..
I. Sharing the Spoils.
II. Doctoring the Elections
III Electoral Control..
IV: The New Republican Assembly.
V. The Jacobins forming alone the Sovereign People.
VI. Composition of the Jacobin Party.
VII. The Jacobin Chieftains.
CHAPTER IV.  TAKEN HOSTAGE.
I.     Jacobin tactics and power.
II.    Jacobin characters and minds.
III.   Physical fear and moral cowardice.
IV.  Jacobin victory over Girondist majority.
V.    Jacobin violence against the people.
VI.   Jacobin tactics.
VII.  The central Jacobin committee in power.
VIII. Right or Wrong, my Country.



Preface:

In this volume, as in those preceding it and in those to come, there
will be found only the history of Public Authorities. Others will
write that of diplomacy, of war, of the finances, of the Church; my
subject is a limited one. To my great regret, however, this new part
fills an entire volume; and the last part, on the revolutionary
government, will be as long.

I have again to regret the dissatisfaction I foresee this work will
cause to many of my countrymen. My excuse is, that almost all of them,
more fortunate than myself, have political principles which serve them
in forming their judgments of the past. I had none; if indeed, I had
any motive in undertaking this work, it was to seek for political
principles. Thus far I have attained to scarcely more than one; and
this is so simple that will seem puerile, and that I hardly dare
express it. Nevertheless I have adhered to it, and in what the reader
is about to peruse my judgments are all derived from that; its truth
is the measure of theirs. It consists wholly in this observation: that

HUMAN SOCIETY, ESPECIALLY A MODERN SOCIETY, IS A VAST AND COMPLICATED
THING.

Hence the difficulty in knowing and comprehending it. For the same
reason it is not easy to handle the subject well. It follows that a
cultivated mind is much better able to do this than an uncultivated
mind, and a man specially qualified than one who is not. From these
two last truths flow many other consequences, which, if the reader
deigns to reflect on them, he will have no trouble in defining.

	H. A. Taine, Paris 1881.
----------------------------------------------------------------------


BOOK FIRST. THE JACOBINS.

CHAPTER I.   THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE NEW POLITICAL ORGAN.


In this disorganized society,  in which the passions of the people are
the sole real force, authority belongs to the party that understands
how to flatter and take advantage of these. As the legal government
can neither repress nor gratify them, an illegal government arises
which sanctions, excites, and directs these passions. While the former
totters and falls to pieces, the latter grows stronger and improves
its organization, until, becoming legal in its turn, it takes the
other's place.


I.

Principle of the revolutionary party. - Its applications.

As a justification of these popular outbreaks and assaults, we
discover at the outset a theory, which is neither improvised, added
to, nor superficial, but now firmly fixed in the public mind. It has
for a long time been nourished by philosophical discussions. It is a
sort of enduring, long-lived root out of which the new constitutional
tree has arisen. It is the dogma of popular sovereignty. -- Literally
interpreted, it means that the government is merely an inferior clerk
or servant.[1]  We, the people, have established the government; and
ever since, as well as before its organization, we are its masters.
Between it and us no infinite or long lasting "contract".  "None which
cannot be done away with by mutual consent or through the
unfaithfulness of one of the two parties."  Whatever it may be, or
provide for, we are nowise bound by it; it depends wholly on us. We
remain free to "modify, restrict, and resume as we please the power of
which we have made it the depository."  Through a primordial and
inalienable title deed the commonwealth belongs to us and to us only.
If we put this into the hands of the government it is as when kings
delegate authority for the time being to a minister He is always
tempted to abuse; it is our business to watch him, warn him, check
him, curb him, and, if necessary, displace him. We must especially
guard ourselves against the craft and maneuvers by which, under the
pretext of preserving law and order, he would tie our hands. A law,
superior to any he can make, forbids him to interfere with our
sovereignty; and he does interfere with it when he undertakes to
forestall, obstruct, or impede its exercise. The Assembly, even the
Constituent, usurps when it treats the people like a lazybones (roi
fainéant), when it subjects them to laws, which they have not
ratified, and when it deprives them of action except through their
representatives.[2] The people themselves must act directly, must
assemble together and deliberate on public affairs. They must control
and censure the acts of those they elect; they must influence these
with their resolutions, correct their mistakes with their good sense,
atone for their weakness by their energy, stand at the helm alongside
of them, and even employ force and throw them overboard, so that the
ship may be saved, which, in their hands, is drifting on a rock.[3]
    Such, in fact, is the doctrine of the popular party. This doctrine
is carried into effect July 14 and October 5 and 6, 1789. Loustalot,
Camille Desmoulins, Fréron, Danton, Marat, Pétion, Robespierre
proclaim it untiringly in the political clubs, in the newspapers, and
in the assembly. The government, according to them, whether local or
central, trespasses everywhere. Why, after having overthrown one
despotism, should we install another?  We are freed from the yoke of a
privileged aristocracy, but we still suffer from "the aristocracy of
our representatives."[4]  Already at Paris, "the population is
nothing, while the municipality is everything". It encroaches on our
imprescriptible rights in refusing to let a district revoke at will
the five members elected to represent it at the Hôtel-de-Ville, in
passing ordinances without obtaining the approval of voters, in
preventing citizens from assembling where they please, in interrupting
the out-door meetings of the clubs in the Palais Royal where
"Patriots are driven away be the patrol."   Mayor Bailly, "who keeps
liveried servants, who gives himself a salary of 110,000 livres," who
distributes captains' commissions, who forces peddlers to wear
metallic badges, and who compels newspapers to have signatures to
their articles is not only a tyrant, but a crook, thief and "guilty of
lése-nation."  -- Worse are the abuses of the National Assembly. To
swear fidelity to the constitution, as this body has just done, to
impose its work on us, forcing us to take a similar oath, disregarding
our superior rights to veto or ratify their decisions,[5] is to
"slight and scorn our sovereignty". By substituting the will of 1200
individuals for that of the people,  "our representatives have failed
to treat us with respect."   This is not the first time, and it is not
to be the last. Often do they exceed their mandate, they disarm,
mutilate, and gag their legitimate sovereign and they pass decrees
against the people in the people's name. Such is their martial law,
specially devised for "suppressing the uprising of citizens", that is
to say, the only means left to us against conspirators, monopolists,
and traitors. Such a decree against publishing any kind of joint
placard or petition, is a decree "null and void," and "constitutes a
most flagrant attack on the nation's rights."[6] Especially is the
electoral law one of these, a law which, requiring a small
qualification tax for electors and a larger one for those who are
eligible, "consecrates the aristocracy of wealth."  The poor, who are
excluded by the decree, must regard it as invalid; register themselves
as they please and vote without scruple, because natural law has
precedence over written law. It would simply be "fair reprisal" if, at
the end of the session, the millions of citizens lately deprived of
their vote unjustly, should seize the usurping majority by the threat
and tell them:

"You cut us off from society in your chamber, because you are the
strongest there; we, in our turn, cut you off from the living society,
because we are strongest in the street. You have killed us civilly -
we kill you physically."

Accordingly, from this point of view, all riots are legitimate.
Robespierre from the rostrum[7] excuses jacqueries, refuses to call
castle-burners brigands, and justifies the insurgents of Soissons,
Nancy, Avignon, and the colonies. Desmoulins, alluding to two men hung
at Douai, states that it was done by the people and soldiers combined,
and declares that:  "Henceforth, -- I have no hesitation in saying it
-- they have legitimated the insurrection;" they were guilty, and it
was well to hang them.[8]  Not only do the party leaders excuse
assassinations, but they provoke them. Desmoulins, "attorney-general
of the Lantern, insists on each of the 83 departments being threatened
with at least one lamppost hanging." (This sobriquet is bestowed on
Desmoulins on account of his advocacy of street executions, the
victims of revolutionary passions being often hung at the nearest
lanterne, or street lamp, at that time in Paris suspended across the
street by ropes or chains. - (Tr.)) Meanwhile Marat, in the name of
principle, constantly sounds the alarm in his journal:

 "When public safety is in peril, the people must take power out of
the hands of those whom it is entrusted . . . Put that Austrian woman
and her brother-in-law in prison . . . Seize the ministers and their
clerks and put them in irons . . . Make sure of the mayor and his
lieutenants; keep the general in sight, and arrests his staff. . . The
heir to the throne has no rights to a dinner while you want bread.
Organize bodies of armed men. March to the National Assembly and
demand food at once, supplied to you out of the national stocks. . .
Demand that the nation's poor have a future secured to them out of the
national contribution. If you are refused join the army, take the
land, as well as gold which the rascals who want to force you to come
to terms by hunger have buried and share it amongst you. Off with the
heads of the ministers and their underlings, for now is the time; that
of Lafayette and of every rascal on his staff, and of every
unpatriotic battalion officer, including Bailly and those municipal
reactionaries - all the traitors in the National Assembly!"

 Marat, indeed, still passes for a furious ranter among people of some
intelligence.  But for all that, this is the sum and substance of his
theory: It installs in the political establishment, over the heads of
delegated, regular, and legal powers an anonymous, imbecile, and
terrific power whose decisions are absolute, whose projects are
constantly adopted, and whose intervention is sanguinary. This power
is that of the crowd, of a ferocious, suspicious sultan, who,
appointing his viziers, keeps his hands free to direct them and his
scimitar ready sharpened to cut of their heads.

II.  The Jacobins. -

Formation of the Jacobins. - The common human elements of his
character. - Conceit and dogmatism are sensitive and rebellious in
every community. - How kept down in all well-founded societies. -
Their development in the new order of things. -Effect of milieu on
imagination and ambitions. - The stimulants of Utopianism, abuses of
speech, and derangement of ideas. - Changes in office; interests
playing upon and perverted feeling.

That a speculator in his closet should have concocted such a theory is
comprehensible; paper will take all that is put upon it, while
abstract beings, the hollow simulacra and philosophic puppets he
concocts, are adapted to every sort of combination. - That a lunatic
in his cell should adopt and preach this theory is also
comprehensible; he is beset with phantoms and lives outside the actual
world, and, moreover in this ever-agitated democracy he is the eternal
informer and instigator of every riot and murder that takes place; he
it is who under the name of  "the people's friend" becomes the arbiter
of lives and the veritable sovereign. -- That a people borne down with
taxes, wretched and starving, indoctrinated by public speakers and
sophists, should have welcomed this theory and acted under it is again
comprehensible; necessity knows no law, and where the is oppression,
that doctrine is true which serves to throw oppression off.

But that public men, legislators and statesmen, with, at last,
ministers and heads of the government, should have made this theory
their own;

* that they should have more fondly clung to it as it became more
destructive;

* that, daily for three years they should have seen social order
crumbling away piecemeal under its blows and not have recognized it as
the instrument of such vast ruin;

* that, in the light of the most disastrous experience, instead of
regarding it as a curse they should have glorified it as a boon;

* that many of them - an entire party; almost all of the Assembly -
should have venerated it as a religious dogma and carried it to
extremes with enthusiasm and rigor of faith;

* that, driven by it into a narrow strait, ever getting narrower and
narrower, they should have continued to crush each other at every
step;

* that, finally, on reaching the visionary temple of their so-called
liberty, they should have found themselves in a slaughter-house, and,
within its precincts, should have become in turn butcher and brute;

* that, through their maxims of a universal and perfect liberty they
should have inaugurated a despotism worthy of Dahomey, a tribunal like
that of the Inquisition, and raised human hecatombs like those of
ancient Mexico;

* that amidst their prisons and scaffolds they should persist in
believing in the righteousness of their cause, in their own humanity,
in their virtue, and, on their fall, have regarded themselves as
martyrs -

is certainly strange. Such intellectual aberration, such excessive
conceit are rarely encountered, and a concurrence of circumstances,
the like of which has never been seen in the world but once, was
necessary to produce it.[8]

Extravagant conceit and dogmatism, however, are not rare in the human
species. These two roots of the Jacobin intellect exist in all
countries, underground and indestructible. Everywhere they are kept
from sprouting by the established order of things; everywhere are they
striving to overturn old historic foundations, which press them down.
Now, as in the past, students live in garrets, bohemians in lodgings,
physicians without patients and lawyers without clients in lonely
offices, so many Brissots, Dantons, Marats, Robespierres, and St.
Justs in embryo; only, for lack of air and sunshine, they never come
to maturity. At twenty, on entering society, a young man's judgment
and pride are extremely sensitive. - - Firstly, let his society be
what it will, it is for him a scandal to pure reason: for it was not
organized by a legislative philosopher in accordance with a sound
principle, but is the work of one generation after another, according
to manifold and changing necessities. It is not a product of logic,
but of history, and the new-fledged thinker shrugs his shoulders as he
looks up and sees what the ancient tenement is, the foundations of
which are arbitrary, its architecture confused, and its many repairs
plainly visible. -- In the second place, whatever degree of perfection
preceding institutions, laws, and customs have reached, these have not
received his approval; others, his predecessors, have chosen for him,
he is being subjected beforehand to moral, political, and social forms
which pleased them. Whether they please him or not is of no
consequence. Like a horse trotting along between the poles of a wagon
in the harness that happens to have been put on his back, he has to
make best of it. -- Besides, whatever its organization, as it is
essentially a hierarchy, he is nearly always subaltern in it, and must
ever remain so, either soldier, corporal or sergeant. Even under the
most liberal system, that in which the highest grades are accessible
to all, for every five or six men who take the lead or command others,
one hundred thousand must follow or be commanded. This makes it vain
to tell every conscript that he carriers a marshal's baton in his
sack, when, nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand, he
discovers too late, on rummaging his sack, that the baton is not
there. - - It is not surprising that he is tempted to kick against
social barriers within which, willing or not, he is enrolled, and
which predestine him to subordination. It is not surprising that on
emerging from traditional influences he should accept a theory, which
subjects these arrangements to his judgment and gives him authority
over his superiors. And all the more because there is no doctrine more
simple and better adapted to his inexperience, it is the only one he
can comprehend and manage off-hand. Hence it is that young men on
leaving college, especially those who have their way to make in the
world, are more or less Jacobin, - it is a disorder of growing up.[9]
--  In well organized communities this ailment is beneficial, and soon
cured. The public establishment being substantial and carefully
guarded, malcontents soon discover that they have not enough strength
to pull it down, and that on contending with its guardians they gain
nothing but blows. After some grumbling, they too enter at one or the
other of its doors, find a place for themselves, and enjoy its
advantages or become reconciled to their lot. Finally, either through
imitation, or habit, or calculation, they willingly form part of that
garrison which, in protecting public interests, protects their own
private interests as well. Generally, after ten years have gone by,
the young man has obtained his rank in the file, where he advances
step by step in his own compartment, which he no longer thinks of
tearing to pieces, and under the eye of a policeman who he no longer
thinks of condemning. He even sometimes thinks that policeman and
compartment are useful to him. Should he consider the millions of
individuals who are trying to mount the social ladder, each striving
to get ahead of the other, it may dawn upon him that the worst of
calamities would be a lack of barriers and of guardians.

    Here the worm-eaten barriers have cracked all at once, their easy-
going, timid, incapable guardians having allowed things to take their
course. Society, accordingly, disintegrated and a pell-mell, is turned
into a turbulent, shouting crowd, each pushing and being pushed, all
alike over-excited and congratulating each other on having finally
obtained elbow-room, and all demanding the new barriers shall be as
fragile and the new guardians as feeble, as defenseless, and as inert
as possible. This is what has been done. As a natural consequence,
those who were foremost in the rank have been relegated to the last;
many have been struck down in the fray, while in this permanent state
of disorder, which goes under the name of  lasting order, elegant
footwear continue to be stamped upon by hobnailed boots and wooden
shoes. - The fanatic and the intemperate egoists can now let
themselves go.  They are no longer subject to any ancient
institutions, nor any armed might which can restrain them. On the
contrary, the new constitution, through its theoretical declarations
and the practical application of these, invites them to let themselves
go. -- For, on the one hand, legally, it declares to be based upon
pure reason, beginning with a long string of abstract dogmas from
which its positive prescriptions are assumed to be rigorously deduced.
As a consequence all laws are submitted to the shallow comments of
reasoners and quibblers who will both interpret and break them
according to the principles.[10] -- On the other hand, as a matter of
fact, it hands over all government powers to the elections and confers
on the clubs the control of the authorities:  which is to offer a
premium to the presumption of the ambitious who put themselves forward
because they think themselves capable, and who defame their rulers
purposely to displace them.  - Every government department,
organization or administrative system is like a hothouse which serves
to favor some species of the human plant and wither others. This one
is the best one for the propagation and rapid increase of the coffee-
house politician, club haranguer, the stump-speaker, the street-
rioter, the committee dictator -- in short, the revolutionary and the
tyrant. In this political hothouse wild dreams and conceit will assume
monstrous proportions, and, in a few months, brains that are now only
ardent become hotheads.

    Let us trace the effect of this excessive, unhealthy temperature
on imaginations and ambitions. The old tenement is down; the
foundations of the new one are not yet laid; society has to be made
over again from top to bottom. All willing men are asked to come and
help, and, as one plain principle suffices in drawing a plan, the
first comer may succeed. Henceforth political fancies swarm in the
district meetings, in the clubs, in the newspapers, in pamphlets, and
in every head-long, venturesome brain.

 "There is not a merchant's clerk educated by reading the 'Nouvelle
Héloise,'[11]  not a school teacher that has translated ten pages of
Livy, not an artist that has leafed through Rollin, not an aesthete
converted into journalists by committing to memory the riddles of the
'Contrat Social,' who does not draft a constitution. . . As nothing is
easier than to perfect a daydream,  all perturbed minds gather, and
become excited, in this ideal realm. They start out with curiosity and
end up with enthusiasm. The man in the street rushes to the enterprise
in the same manner as a miser to a conjurer promising treasures, and,
thus childishly attracted, each hopes to find at once, what has never
been seen under even the most liberal governments: perpetual
perfection, universal brotherhood, the power of acquiring what one
lacks, and a life composed wholly of enjoyment."

   One of these pleasures, and a keen one, is to daydream. One soars
in space. By means of eight or ten ready-made sentences, found in the
six-penny catechisms circulated by thousands in the country and in the
suburbs of the towns and cities,[12] a village attorney, a customs
clerk, a theater attendant, a sergeant of a soldier's mess,  becomes a
legislator and philosopher. He criticizes Malouet, Mirabeau, the
Ministry, the King, the Assembly, the Church, foreign Cabinets,
France, and all Europe. Consequently, on these important subjects,
which always seemed forever forbidden to him, he offers resolutions,
reads addresses, makes harangues, obtains applause, and congratulates
himself on having argued so well and with such big words. To hold fort
on questions that are not understood is now an occupation, a matter of
pride and profit.

"More is uttered in one day," says an eye-witness,[13] "in one section
of Paris than in one year in all the Swiss political assemblies put
together. An Englishman would give six weeks of study to what we
dispose of in a quarter of an hour."

Everywhere, in the town halls, in popular meetings, in the sectional
assemblies, in the wine shops, on the public promenades, on street
corners vanity erects a tribune of verbosity.

"Contemplate the incalculable activity of such a machine in a
loquacious nation where the passion for being something dominates all
other affections, where vanity has more phases than there are starts
in the firmament, where reputations already cost no more than the
trouble of insisting on their being deserved, where society is divided
between mediocrities and their trumpeters who laud them as divinities;
where so few people are content with their lot, where the corner
grocer is prouder of his epaulette than the Grand Condé of his
Marshal's baton, where agitation without object or resources is
perpetual, where, from the floor-scrubber to the dramatist, from the
academician to the simpleton who gets muddled over the evening
newspaper, from the witty courtier down to his philosophic lackey,
each one revises Montesquieu with the self-sufficiency of a child
which, because it is learning to read, deems itself wise; where self-
esteem, in disputation, caviling and sophistication, destroys all
sensible conversation; where no one utters a word, but to teach, never
imagining that to learn one must keep quiet; where the triumphs of a
few lunatics entice every crackbrain from his den; where, with two
nonsensical ideas put together out of a book that is not understood, a
man assumes to have principles; where swindlers talk about morality,
women of easy virtue about civism, and the most infamous of beings
about the dignity of the species; where the discharged valet of a
grand seignior calls himself Brutus!"

- In reality, he is Brutus in his own eyes. Let the time come and he
will be so in earnest, especially against his late master; all he has
to do is to give him a thrust with his pike. Until he acts out the
part he spouts it, and grows excited over his own tirades; his common
sense gives way to the bombastic jargon of the revolution and to
declamation, which completes the Utopian performance and eases his
brain of its last  modicum of ballast.

It is not merely ideas which the new regime has disturbed, but it has
also disordered sentiments.  "Authority is transferred from the
Château of Versailles and the courtier's antechamber, with no
intermediary or counterpoise, to the proletariat and its
flatterers."[14]  The whole of the staff of the old government is
brusquely set aside, while a general election has brusquely installed
another in is place, offices not being given to capacity, seniority,
and experience, but to self-sufficiency, intrigue, and exaggeration.
Not only are legal rights reduced to a common level, but natural
grades are transposed; the social ladder, overthrown, is set up again
bottom upwards; the first effect of the promised regeneration is  "to
substitute in the administration of public affairs pettifoggers for
magistrates, ordinary citizens for cabinet ministers, ex-commoners for
ex-nobles, rustics for soldiers, soldiers for captains, captains for
generals, curés for bishops, vicars for curés, monks for vicars,
brokers for financiers, empiricists for administrators, journalists
for political economists, stump-orators for legislators, and the poor
for the rich."  -  Every species of covetousness is stimulated by this
spectacle. The profusion of offices and the anticipation of vacancies
"has excited the thirst for command, stimulated self-esteem, and
inflamed the hopes of the most inept. A rude and grim presumption
renders the fool and the ignoramus unconscious of their
insignificance. They have deemed themselves capable of anything,
because the law granted public functions merely to capacity. There has
appeared in front of one and all an ambitious perspective; the soldier
thinks only of displacing his captain, the captain of becoming
general, the clerk of supplanting the chief of his department, the
new-fledged attorney of being admitted to the high court, the curé of
being ordained a bishop, the shallow scribbler of seating himself on
the legislative bench. Offices and professions vacated by the
appointment of so many upstarts afford in their turn a vast field for
the ambition of the lower classes." -- Thus, step by step, owing to
the reversal of social positions, is brought about a general
intellectual fever.

 "France is transformed into a gaming-table, where, alongside of the
discontented citizen offering his stakes, sits, bold, blustering, and
with fermenting brain, the pretentious subaltern rattling his dice-
box. . .  At the sight of a public official rising from nowhere,  even
the soul of a bootblack will  bound with emulation."  --  He has
merely to push himself ahead and elbow his way to secure a ticket  "in
this immense lottery of popular luck, of preferment without merit, of
success without talent, of apotheoses without virtues, of an infinity
of places distributed by the people wholesale, and enjoyed by the
people in detail."  --  Political charlatans flock thither from every
quarters, those taking the lead who, being most in earnest, believe in
the virtue of their nostrum, and need power to impose its recipe on
the community; all being saviors, all places belong to them, and
especially the highest. They lay siege to these conscientiously and
philanthropically ; if necessary, they will take them by assault, hold
them through force, and, forcibly or otherwise, administer their cure-
all to the human species.



III.

Psychology of the Jacobin. -- His intellectual method. -- Tyranny of
formulae and suppression of facts. -- Mental balance disturbed. --
Signs of this in the revolutionary language. -- Scope and expression
of the Jacobin intellect. -- In what respect his method is
mischievous. -- How it is successful. -- Illusions produced by it.

Such are our Jacobins, born out of social decomposition like mushrooms
out of compost. Let us consider their inner organization, for they
have one as formerly the Puritans; we have only to follow their dogma
down to its depths, as with a sounding-line, to reach the
psychological stratum in which the normal balance of faculty and
sentiment is overthrown.

When a statesman, who is not wholly unworthy of that great name, finds
an abstract principle in his way, as, for instance, that of popular
sovereignty, he accepts it, if he accepts it at all, according to his
conception of its practical bearings. He begins, accordingly, by
imagining it applied and in operation. From personal recollections and
such information as he can obtain, he forms an idea of some village or
town, some community of moderate size in the north, in the south, or
in the center of the country, for which he has to make laws. He then
imagines its inhabitants acting according to his principle, that is to
say, voting, mounting guard, levying taxes, and administering their
own affairs. Familiar with ten or a dozen groups of this sort, which
he regards as examples, he concludes by analogy as to others and the
rest on the territory. Evidently it is a difficult and uncertain
process; to be exact, or nearly so, requires rare powers of
observation and, at each step, a great deal of tact, for a nice
calculation has to be made on given quantities imperfectly ascertained
and imperfectly noted![15]  Any political leader who does this
successfully, does it through the ripest experience associated with
genius. And even then he keeps his hand on the check-rein in pushing
his innovation or reform; he is almost always tentative; he applies
his law only in part, gradually and provisionally; he wishes to
ascertain its effect; he is always ready to stay its operation, amend
it, or modify it, according to the good or ill results of experiment;
the state of the human material he has to deal with is never clear to
his mind, even when superior, until after many and repeated gropings.
-- Now the Jacobin pursues just the opposite course. His principle is
an axiom of political geometry, which always carries its own proof
along with it; for, like the axioms of common geometry, it is formed
out of the combination of a few simple ideas, and its evidence imposes
itself at once on all minds capable of embracing in one conception the
two terms of which it is the aggregate expression. Man in general, the
rights of Man, the social contract, liberty, equality, reason, nature,
the people, tyrants, are examples of these basic concepts: whether
precise or not, they fill the brain of the new sectarian. Often these
terms are merely vague and grandiose words, but that makes no
difference; as soon as they meet in his brain an axiom springs out of
them that can be instantly and absolutely applied on every occasion
and to excess.  Mankind as it is does not concern him. He does not
observe them; he does not require to observe them; with closed eyes he
imposes a pattern of his own on the human substance manipulated by
him; the idea never enters his head of forming any previous conception
of this complex, multiform, swaying material - contemporary peasants,
artisans, townspeople, curés and nobles, behind their plows, in their
homes, in their shops, in their parsonages, in their mansions, with
their inveterate beliefs, persistent inclinations, and powerful wills.
Nothing of this enters into or lodges in his mind; all its avenues are
stopped by the abstract principle which flourishes there and fills it
completely. Should actual experience through the eye or ear plant some
unwelcome truth forcibly in his mind, it cannot subsist there; however
noisy and relentless it may be, the abstract principle drives it
out;[16] if need be it will distort and strangle it, considering it a
slanderer since it refutes a principle which is true and undeniable in
itself. Obviously, a mind of this kind is not sound; of the two
faculties which should pull together harmoniously, one is degenerated
and the other overgrown; facts cannot turn the scale against the
theory. Charged on one side and empty on the other, the Jacobin mind
turns violently over on that side to which it leans, and such is its
incurable infirmity.

Consider, indeed, the authentic monuments of Jacobin thought, the
"Journal des Amis de la Constitution," the gazettes of Loustalot,
Desmoulins, Brissot, Condorcet, Fréron and Marat, Robespierre's, and
St. Just's pamphlets and speeches, the debates in the Legislative
Assembly and in the Convention, the harangues, addresses and reports
of the Girondins and Montagnards, in brief, the forty volumes of
extracts compiled by Buchez and Roux. Never has so much been said to
so little purpose; all the truth that is uttered is drowned in the
monotony and  inflation of empty verbiage and vociferous bombast. One
experience in this direction is sufficient.[17]  The historian who
resorts this mass of rubbish for accurate information finds none of
any account; in vain will he read kilometers of it: hardly will he
there meet one fact, one instructive detail, one document which brings
before his eyes a distinct personality, which shows him the real
sentiments of a villager or of a gentleman, which vividly portrays the
interior of a hôtel-de-ville, of a soldier's barracks, of a municipal
chamber, or the character of an insurrection. To define fifteen or
twenty types and situations which sum up the history of the period, we
have been and shall be obliged to seek them elsewhere - in the
correspondence of local administrators, in affidavits on criminal
records, in confidential reports of the police,[18] and in the
narratives of foreigners,[19] who, prepared for it by a different
education, look behind words for things, and see France beyond the
"Contrat Social." This teeming France, this grand tragedy which
twenty-six millions of players are performing on a stage of 26 000
square leagues, is lost to the Jacobin. His literature, as well as his
brain, contain only insubstantial generalizations like those above
cited, rolling out in a mere play of ideas, sometimes in concise terms
when the writer happens to be a professional reasoner like Condorcet,
but most frequently in a tangled, knotty style full of loose and
disconnected meshes when the spokesman happens to be an improvised
politician or a philosophic tyro like the ordinary deputies of the
Assembly and the speakers of the clubs. It is a pedantic scholasticism
set forth with fanatical rant. Its entire vocabulary consists of about
a hundred words, while all ideas are reduced to one, that of man in
himself: human units, all alike equal and independent, contracting
together for the first time. This is their concept of society. None
could be briefer, for, to arrive at it, man had to be reduced to a
minimum. Never were political brains so willfully dried up. For it is
the attempt to systematize and to simplify which causes their
impoverishment. In that respect they go by the methods of their time
and in the track of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: their outlook on life is
the classic view,  which, already narrow in the late philosophers, has
now become even more narrow and hardened. The best representatives of
the type are Condorcet,[20] among the Girondins, and Robespierre,
among the Montagnards, both mere dogmatists and pure logicians, the
latter the most remarkable and with a perfection of intellectual
sterility never surpassed. -- Unquestionably, as far as the
formulation of durable laws is concerned, i.e. adapting the social
machinery to personalities, conditions, and circumstances; their
mentality is certainly the most impotent and harmful. It is
organically short-sighted, and by interposing their principles between
it and reality, they shut off the horizon. Beyond their crowd and the
club it distinguishes nothing, while in the vagueness and confusion of
the distance it erects the hollow idols of its own Utopia. -- But when
power is to be seized by assault, and a dictatorship arbitrarily
exercised, the mechanical inflexibility of such a mind is useful
rather than detrimental. It is not embarrassed or slowed down, like
that of a statesman, by the obligation to make inquiries, to respect
precedents, of looking into statistics, of calculating and tracing
beforehand in different directions the near and remote consequences of
its work as this affects the interests, habits, and passions of
diverse classes. All this is now obsolete and superfluous: the Jacobin
knows on the spot the correct form of government and the good laws.
For both construction as well as for destruction, his rectilinear
method is the quickest and most vigorous. For, if calm reflection is
required to get at what suits twenty-six millions of living Frenchmen,
a mere glance suffices to understand the desires of the abstract men
of their theory. Indeed, according to the theory, men are all shaped
to one pattern, nothing being left to them but an elementary will;
thus defined, the philosophic robot demands liberty, equality and
popular sovereignty, the maintenance of the rights of man and adhesion
to the "Contrat Social." That is enough: from now on the will of the
people is known, and known beforehand; a consultation among citizens
previous to action is not essential; there is no obligation to await
their votes. In any events, a ratification by the people is sure; and
should this not be forthcoming it is owing to their ignorance, disdain
or malice, in which case their response deserves to be considered as
null. The best thing to do, consequently, through precaution and to
protect the people from what is bad for them, is to dictate to them
what is good for them. --  Here, the Jacobin might be sincere; for the
men in whose behalf he claims rights are not flesh-and-blood
Frenchmen, as we see them in the streets and in the fields, but men in
general, as they ought to be on leaving the hands of Nature, or after
the teachings of Reason. As to the former, there is no need of being
scrupulous because they are infatuated with prejudices and their
opinions are mere drivel; as for the latter, it is just the opposite:
full of respect for the vainglorious images of his own theory, of
ghosts produced by his own intellectual device, the Jacobin will
always bow down to responses that he himself has provided, for, the
beings that he has created are more real in his eyes than living ones
and it is their suffrage on which he counts. Accordingly, viewing
things in the worst lights, he has nothing against him but the
momentary antipathy of a purblind generation. To offset this, he
enjoys the approval of humanity, self-obtained; that of a posterity
which his acts have regenerated; that of men who, thanks to him, who
are again become what they should never have ceased to be. Hence, far
from looking upon himself as an usurper or a tyrant, he considers
himself the natural mandatory of a veritable people, the authorized
executor of the common will. Marching along in the procession formed
for him by this imaginary crowd, sustained by millions of metaphysical
wills created by himself in his own image, he has their unanimous
assent, and, like a chorus of triumphant shouts, he will fill the
outward world with the inward echo of his own voice.

IV.

What the theory promises. - How it flatters wounded self-esteem. --
The ruling passion of the Jacobin. -- Apparent both in style and
conduct. -- He alone is virtuous in his own estimation, while his
adversaries are vile. -- They must accordingly be put out of the way.
-- Perfection of this character. -- Common sense and moral sense both
perverted.

'When an ideology attracts people, it is less due to its
sophistication than to the promises it holds out. It appeals more to
their desires than to their intelligence; for, if the heart sometimes
may be the dupe of the head, the latter is much more frequently the
dupe of the former. We do not accept a system because we deem it a
true one, but because the truth we find in it suits us. Political or
religious fanaticism, any theological or philosophical channel in
which truth flows, always has its source in some ardent longing, some
secret passion, some accumulation of intense, painful desire to which
a theory affords and outlet. In the Jacobin, as well as in the
Puritan, there is a fountain-head of this description. What feeds this
source with the Puritan is the anxieties of a disturbed conscience
which, forming for itself some idea of perfect justice, becomes rigid
and multiplies the commandments it believes that God has promulgated;
on being constrained to disobey these it rebels, and, to impose them
on others, it becomes tyrannical even to despotism. The first effort
of the Puritan, however, wholly internal, is self-control; before
becoming political he becomes moral. With the Jacobin, on the
contrary, the first precept is not moral, political; it is not his
duties which he exaggerates but his rights, while his doctrine,
instead of being a prick to his conscience, flatters his pride.[21]
However vast and insatiate human pride may be, now it is satisfied,
for never before has it had so much to feed upon. -- In the program of
the sect, do not look for the restricted prerogatives growing out of
self-respect which the proud-spirited man claims for himself, such as
civil rights accompanied by those liberties that serve as sentinels
and guardians of these rights - security for life and property, the
stability of the law, the integrity of courts, equality of citizens
before the law and under taxation, the abolition of privileges and
arbitrary proceedings, the election of representatives and the
administration of public funds.   Summing it up, the precious
guarantees which render each citizen an inviolable sovereign on his
limited domain, which protect his person and property against all
species of public or private oppression and exaction, which maintain
him calm and erect before competitors as well as adversaries, upright
and respectful in the presence of magistrates and in the presence of
the government.

A Malouet, a Mounier, a Mallet du Pan, partisans of the English
Constitution and Parliament, may be content with such trifling gifts,
but the Jacobin theory holds them all cheap, and, if need be, will
trample them in the dust. Independence and  security for the private
citizen is not what it promises, not the right to vote every two
years, not a moderate exercise of influence, not an indirect, limited
and intermittent control of the commonwealth, but political dominion
in the full and complete possession of France and the French people.
There is no doubt on this point. In Rousseau's own words, the "Contrat
Social" prescribes "the complete alienation to the community of each
associate and all his rights," every individual surrendering himself
wholly, "just as he may actually be, he himself and all his powers of
which his possessions form a part," so that the state not only the
recognized owner of property, but of minds and bodies as well, may
forcibly and legitimately impose on every member of it such education,
form of worship, religious faith, opinions and sympathies as it deems
best.[22]  Now each man, solely because he is a man, is by right a
member of this despotic sovereignty. Whatever, accordingly, my
condition may be, my incompetence, my ignorance, my insignificance in
the career in which I have plodded along, I have full control over the
fortunes, lives, and consciences of twenty-six million French people,
being accordingly Czar and Pope, according to my share of authority. -
- But if I adhere strictly to this doctrine, I am yet more so than my
quota warrants. This royal prerogative with which I am endowed is only
conferred on those who, like myself, sign the Social Contract in full;
others, merely because they reject some clause of it, incur a
forfeiture; no one must enjoy the advantages of a pact of which some
of the conditions are repudiated. - Even better, as this pact is based
on natural right and is obligatory, he who rejects it or withdraws
from it, becomes by that act a miscreant, a public wrong-doer and an
enemy of the people. There were once crimes of royal lèse-majesty; now
there are crimes of popular lèse-majesty. Such crimes are committed
when by deed, word, or thought, any portion whatever of the more than
royal authority belonging to the people is denied or contested. The
dogma through which popular sovereignty is proclaimed thus actually
ends in a dictatorship of the few, and a proscription of the many.
Outside of the sect you are outside of the laws. We, the five or six
thousand Jacobins of Paris, are the legitimate monarch, the infallible
Pontiff, and woe betide the refractory and the lukewarm, all
government agents, all private persons, the clergy, the nobles, the
rich, merchants, traders, the indifferent among all classes, who,
steadily opposing or yielding uncertain adhesion, dare to throw doubt
on our unquestionable right.

One by one these consequences are to come into light, and it is
evident that, let the logical machinery by which they unfold
themselves be what it may, no ordinary person, unless of consummate
vanity, will fully adopt them. He must have an exalted opinion of
himself to consider himself sovereign otherwise than by his vote, to
conduct public business with no more misgivings than his private
business, to directly and forcibly interfere with this, to set himself
up, he and his clique, as guides, censors and rulers of his
government, to persuade himself that, with his mediocre education and
average intellect, with his few scraps of Latin and such information
as is obtained in reading-rooms, coffee-houses, and newspapers, with
no other experience than that of a club, or a municipal council, he
could discourse wisely and well on the vast, complex questions which
superior men, specially devoted to them, hesitate to take up. At first
this presumption existed in him only in germ, and, in ordinary times,
it would have remained, for lack of nourishment, as dry-rot or
creeping mold, But the heart knows not what strange seeds it contains!
Any of these, feeble and seemingly inoffensive, needs only air and
sunshine to become a noxious excrescence and a colossal plant. Whether
third or fourth rate attorney, counselor, surgeon, journalist, curé,
artist, or author, the Jacobin is like the shepherd that has just
found, in one corner of his hut, a lot of old parchments which entitle
him to the throne. What a contrasts between the meanness of his
calling and the importance with which the theory invests him! With
what rapture he accepts a dogma that raises him so high in his own
estimation! Diligently conning the Declaration of Rights, the
Constitution, all the official documents that confer on him such
glorious prerogatives, charging his imagination with them, he
immediately assumes a tone befitting his new position.[23] -- Nothing
surpasses the haughtiness and arrogance of this tone. It declares
itself at the outset in the harangues of the clubs and in the
petitions to the Constituent Assembly. Loustalot, Fréron, Danton,
Marat, Robespierre, St. Just, always employ dictatorial language, that
of the sect, and which finally becomes the jargon of their meanest
valets. Courtesy or toleration, anything that denotes regard or
respect for others, find no place in their utterances nor in their
acts; a swaggering, tyrannical conceit creates for itself a language
in its own image, and we see not only the foremost actors, but their
minor associates, enthroned on their grandiloquent platform. Each in
his own eyes is Roman, savior, hero, and great man.

 "I stood in the tribune of the palace," writes Anarcharsis
Clootz,[24] "at the head of the foreigners, acting as ambassador of
the human species, while the ministers of the tyrants regarded me with
a jealous and disconcerted air."

A schoolmaster at Troyes, on the opening of the club in that town,
advises the women "to teach their children, as soon as they can utter
a word, that they are free and have equal rights with the mightiest
potentates of the universe."[25]  Pétion's account of the journey in
the king's carriage, on the return from Varennes, must be read to see
how far self-importance of a pedant and the self-conceit of a lout can
be carried.[26]   In their memoirs and even down to their epitaphs,
Barbaroux, Buzot, Pétion, Roland, and Madame Roland[27] give
themselves certificates of virtue and, if we could take their word for
it, they would pass for Plutarch's model characters. --  This
infatuation, from the Girondins to the Montagnards, continues to grow.
St. Just, at the age of twenty-four, and merely a private individual,
is already consumed with suppressed ambition. Marat says:

 "I believe that I have exhausted every combination of the human
intellect in relation to morality, philosophy and political science."

 Robespierre, from the beginning to the end of the Revolution, is
always, in his own eyes, Robespierre the unique, the one pure man, the
infallible and the impeccable; no man ever burnt to himself the
incense of his own praise so constantly and so directly. - At this
level, conceit may drink the theory  to the bottom, however revolting
the dregs and however fatal its poison even to those defy its nausea
for the sake of swallowing it. And, since it is virtue, no one may
refuse it without committing a crime. Thus construed, the theory
divides Frenchmen into two groups: one consisting of aristocrats,
fanatics, egoists, the corrupt, bad citizens in short, and the other
patriots, philosophers, and the virtuous, that is to say, those
belonging to the sect.[28] Thanks to this reduction, the vast moral
and social world with which they deal finds its definition,
expression, and representation in a ready-made antithesis.  The aim of
the government is now clear: the wicked must submit to the good, or,
which is briefer, the wicked must be suppressed. To this end let us
employ confiscation, imprisonment, exile, drowning and the guillotine
and a large scale. All means are justifiable and meritorious against
these traitors; now that the Jacobin has canonized his slaughter, he
slays through philanthropy. -- Thus is the forming of his personality
completed like that of a theologian who becomes inquisitor.
Extraordinary contrasts are gathered to construct it: - a lunatic that
is logical, and a monster that pretends to have a conscience. Under
the pressure of his faith and egotism, he has developed two
deformities, one of the head and the other of the heart; his common
sense is gone, and his moral sense is utterly perverted. In fixing his
mind on abstract formulas, he is no longer able to see men as they
are. His self-admiration makes him consider his adversaries, and even
his rivals, as miscreants deserving of death. On this downhill road
nothing stops him, for, in qualifying things inversely to their true
meaning, he has violated within himself the precious concepts which
brings us back to truth and justice. No light reaches eyes which
regard blindness as clear-sightedness; no remorse affects a soul which
erects barbarism into patriotism, and which sanctions murder with
duty.
__________________________________________________________________

NOTES:

[1]  Cf. "The Ancient Régime," p. 242. Citations from the "Contrat
Social." - Buchez et Roux, "Histoire Parlementaire," XXVI. 96.
Declaration of rights read by Robespierre in the Jacobin club, April
21, 1793, and adopted by the club as its own. "The people is
sovereign, the government is its work and its property, and public
functionaries are its clerks. The people can displace its mandatories
and change its government when it pleases.

[2]  Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and other dictators that like that
also organized elections and saw themselves as being the people,
speaking and acting on their behalf and therefore entitled to do
anything they pleased.(SR).

[3] Rightly so, might Lenin have thought when he first read this text.
Later, under his and Stalin's leadership the Party, guided by the
first secretary of its central committee, aided by the secret police,
should penetrate all affairs slowly extending their power or influence
to the entire world through their secret party members, mutually
ensuring their promotion into the highest posts, the party will
eventually come to govern the world. (SR).

[4] Buchez and Roux, III, 324. .  (An article by Loustalot, Sept. 8,
1789). Ibid. 331 Motion of the District of Cordéliers, presided over
by Danton. -Ibid 239.. Denunciation of the municipality by Marat. -V.,
128, Vi. 24-41 (March, 1790). The majority of the districts demand the
permanent authority of the districts, that is to say, of the sovereign
political assemblies

[5] Buchez et Roux. IV. 458. Meeting of Feb. 24, 1790, an article by
Loustalot. - III 202. Speech by Robespierre, meeting of Oct. 21, 1789.
Ibid. 219. Resolution of the district of St. Martin declaring that
martial law shall not be enforced. Ibid. 222.  Article by Loustalot.

[6] Buchez et Roux, X. 124, an article by Marat. - X. 1-22,  speech by
Robespierre at the meeting of May 9, 1791.-III. an article by
Loustalot. III. 217, speech by Robespierre, meeting of Oct.22, 1789.
Ibid. 431, article by Loustalot and Desmoulins, Nov., 1789.--VI. 336,
articles by Loustalot and Marat, July, 1790.

[7] Ernest Hamel, "Histoire de Robespierre", passim, (I.436).
Robespierre proposed to confer political rights on the blacks. -
Buchez et Roux, IX. 264 (March, 1791).

[8] Buchez et Roux, V. 146 (March, 1790) ; VI. 436 (July 26, 1790) ;
VIII. 247 (Dec 1790) ; X. 224 (June, 1791).

[9] Gustave Flaubert. "Tout notaire a rêvé des sultanes." (All
barristers have dreams of being sultans!)  (Madame Bovary"). --
"Frédéric trouvait que le bonheur mérité par 1'excellence de son âme
tardait à venir." (Frédéric found that the happiness he deserved due
to his brilliancy was a long time coming.) ("L'Education
sentimentale.)

[10]  Such has also been the effect of similar declarations set forth
in the Constitutions of the United Nations, the European Community, as
well as many individual nations. All that was required for the
international Communist movement was then to await the slow promotion
of the secret party members directed to seek a career inside the
various legal administrations for, one day, to see all superior courts
staffed by their men. (SR).

[11]  Mallet du Pan, "Correspondance politique." 1796.

[12] "Entretiens du Père Gérard," by Collot d'Herbois. --  "Les
Etrennes au Peuple," by Barrère.-"La Constitution française pour les
habitants des campagnes," etc. - Later "L'Alphabet des Sans-Culottes,
le Nouveau Catéchisme républicain, les Commandements de la Patrie et
de la République (in verse), etc.

[13]  Mercure de France,  an article by Mallet du Pan, April 7, 1792.
(Summing up of the year 1791.)

[14] Mercure de France, see the numbers of Dec. 30, 1791, and April 7,
1792. (Note the phrase, it is close to Marx statement in 1850 'that
the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the
proletariat.' SR.)

[15] Fox, before deciding on any measure, consulted a Mr. H.---, one
of the most uninfluential, and even narrow-minded members of the House
of Commons. Some astonishment being expressed at this, he replied that
he regarded Mr. H.---- as a perfect type of the faculties and
prejudices of a country gentleman, and he used him as a thermometer.
Napoleon likewise stated that before framing an important law, he
imagined to himself the impression it would make on the mind of a
burly peasant.

[16]  Just like the strong influence  which the current fashionable
principles and buzz-words introduced by the media have over today's
audiences. (SR).

[17]  Alas! This phenomenon should be repeated with the interminable
speeches held by Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Castro, Mao and all the other
inheritors of the Jacobin creed. (SR).

[18]  Tableaux de la Révolution Française," by Schmidt (especially the
reports by Dutard), 3 vols.

[19]  "Correspondence of Gouverneur Morris," -- "Memoirs of Mallet du
Pan," John Moore'

[20]  See, in "Progrès de l'esprit humaine," the superiority awarded
to the republican constitution of 1793. (Book IX.) "The principles
from which the constitution and laws of France have been combined are
purer, more exact, and deeper than those which governed the Americans:
they have more completely escaped the influence of every sort of
prejudice, etc."

[21]  Camille Desmoulins, the enfant terrible  of the Revolution,
confesses this, as well as other truths. After citing the Revolutions
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, "which derived their
virtue from and had their roots in conscience, which were sustained by
fanaticism and the hopes of another world," he thus concludes: "Our
Revolution, purely political, is wholly rooted in egotism, in
everybody's amour propre,  in the combinations of which is found the
common interest." ("Brissot dévoilé," by Camille Desmoulins, January,
1792) -- Bouchez et Roux, XIII, 207.)

[22] Rousseau's idea of the omnipotence of the State is also that of
Louis XIV and Napoleon... It is curious to see the development of the
same idea in the mind of a contemporary bourgeois, like Rétif de la
Bretonne, half literary and half one of the people ("Nuits de Paris,"
XVe nuit, 377, on the September Massacres) "No, I do not pity those
fanatical priests; they have done the country too much mischief.
Whatever a society, or a majority of it, desires, that is right.  He
who opposes this, who calls down war and vengeance on the Nation, is a
monster. Order is always found in the agreement of the majority.  The
minority is always guilty, I repeat it, even if it is morally right.
Nothing but common sense  is needed to see that truth." --  Ibid.  (On
the execution of Louis XVI.), p. 447. "Had the nation the right to
condemn and execute him? No thinking person can ask such a question.
The nation is everything in itself; its power is that which the whole
human kind would have if but one nation, one single government
governed the globe. Who would dare then dispute the power of humanity?
It is this indisputable power that a nation has, to hang even an
innocent man, felt by the ancient Greeks, which led them to exile
Aristoteles and put Phocion to death. 'Oh truth, unrecognized by our
contemporaries, what evil has arisen through forgetting it!'"

[23] Moniteur, XI. 46. Speech by Isnard in the Assembly, Jan. 5, 1792.
"The people are now conscious of their dignity. They know, according
to the constitution, that every Frenchman's motto is: 'Live free, the
equal of all, and one of the common sovereignty.'"-- Guillon de
Montléon, I. 445. Speech by Chalier, in the Lyons Central Club, March
21, 1793. "Know that you are kings, and more than kings. Do you not
feel sovereignty circulating in your veins?"

[24] Moniteur, V. 136. (Celebration of the Federation, July 14, 1790.)

[25] Albert Babeau, "Histoire de Troyes pendant la Révolution," I. 436
(April 10, 1790).

[26] Mortimer-Ternaux, "Histoire de la Terreur," I. 353. (Pétion's own
narrative of this journey.) This pert blockhead cannot even spell: he
writes aselle for aisselle, etc.  He is convinced that Madame
Elizabeth, the king's sister, wants to seduce him, and that she makes
advances to him: "If we had been alone, I believe that she would have
fallen into my arms, and let the impulses of nature have their way."
He makes a display of virtue however, and becomes only the more
supercilious as he talks with the king, the young dauphin, and the
ladies he is fetching back.

[27] The "Mémoires de Madame Roland" is a masterpiece of that conceit
supposed to be so careflilly concealed as not to be visible and never
off its stilts. "I am beautiful, I am affectionate, I am sensitive, I
inspire love, I reciprocate, I remain virtuous, my mind is superior,
and my courage indomitable. I am philosopher, statesman, and writer,
worthy of the highest success," is constantly in her mind, and always
perceptible in her phraseology. Real modesty never shows itself. On
the contrary, many indecorous things are said and done by her from
bravado, and to set herself above her sex. Cf. the "Memoirs of Mirs.
Hutchinson," which present a great contrast. Madame Roland wrote: "I
see no part in society which suits me but that of Providence."-- The
same presumption shines out in others, with less refined pretensions.
The deputy Rouyer addresses the following letter, found among the
papers of the iron wardrobe, to the king, "I have compared, examined,
and foreseen everything. All I ask to carry out my noble purposes, is
that direction of forces, which the law confers on you. I am aware of
and brave the danger; weakness defers to this, while genius overcomes
it I have turned my attention to all the courts of Europe, and am sure
that I can force peace on them." -- Robert, an obscure pamphleteer,
asks Dumouriez to make him ambassador to Constantinople, while Louvet,
the author of "Faublas," declares in his memoirs that liberty perished
in 1792, because he was not appointed Minister of Justice.

[28] Moniteur, p. 189. Speech by Collot d'Herbois, on the mitraillades
at Lyons. "We too, possess sensibility! The Jacobins have every
virtue; they are compassionate, humane, and generous. These virtues,
however, are reserved for patriots, who are their brethren, but never
for aristocrats." -- Meillan, "Mémoires," p. 4.  "Robespierre was one
day eulogizing a man named Desfieux, well known for his lack of
integrity, and whom he finally sacrificed. 'But, I said to him, your
man Desfieux is known to be a rascal.' - 'No matter,' he replied, 'he
is a good patriot.' - 'But he is a fraudulent bankrupt.'-'He is a good
patriot.' -- 'But he is a thief.' -'He is a good patriot.' I could not
get more than these three words out of him."



CHAPTER II.

I.

Formation of the party. -- Its recruits -- These are rare in the upper
class and amongst the masses. -- They are numerous in the low
bourgeois class and in the upper stratum of the people. -- The
position and education which enroll a man in the party.

PERSONALITIES like these are found in all classes of society; no
situation or position in life protects one from wild Utopia or frantic
ambition. We find among the Jacobins a Barras and a Châteauneuf-
Randon, two nobles of the oldest families; Condorcet, a marquis,
mathematician, philosopher and member of two renowned academies;
Gobel, bishop of Lydda and suffragan to the bishop of Bâle; Hérault de
Séchellles, a protégé of the Queen's and attorney-general to the Paris
parliament; Lepelletier de St. Fargeau, chief-justice and one of the
richest land-owners in France; Charles de Hesse, major-general, born
in the royal family; and, last of all, a prince of the blood and
fourth personage in the realm, the Duke of Orleans. -- But, with the
exception of these rare deserters, neither the hereditary aristocracy
nor the upper magistracy, nor the highest of the middle class, none of
the land-owners who live on their estates, or the leaders of
industrial and commercial enterprises, no one belonging to the
administration, none of those, in general, who are or deserve to  be
considered social authorities, furnish the party with recruits. All
have too much at stake in  the political establishment, shattered as
it is, to wish its entire demolition. Their political experience,
brief as it is, enables them to see at once that a habitable house is
not built by merely tracing a plan of it on paper according the
theorems of school geometry. -- On the other hand, among the ordinary
rural population the ideology finds, unless it can be changed into a
legend, no listeners.  Share croppers, small holders and farmers
looking after their own plots of ground, peasants and craftsmen who
work too hard to think and whose minds never range beyond a village
horizon, busy only with that which brings in their daily bread, find
abstract doctrines unintelligible; should the dogmas of the new
catechism arrest their attention the same thing happens as with the
old one, they do not understand them; that mental faculty by which an
abstraction is reached is not yet formed in them. On being taken to a
political club they fall asleep; they open their eyes only when some
one announces that tithes and feudal privileges are to be restored;
they can be depended on for nothing more than a brawl and a jacquerie;
later on, when their grain comes to be taxed or is taken, they prove
as unruly under the republic as under the monarchy.

The believers in this theory come from other quarters, from the two
extremes of the lower stratum of the middle class and the upper
stratum of the low class. Again, in these two contiguous groups, which
merge into each other, those must be left out who, absorbed in their
daily occupations or professions, have no time or thought to give to
public matters, who have reached a fair position in the social
hierarchy and are not disposed to run risks, almost all of them well-
established, steady-going, mature, married folks who have sown their
wild oats and whom experience in life has rendered distrustful of
themselves and of theories. Overweening conceit is, most of the time,
only average in the average human being, so speculative ideas will
with most people only obtain a loose, transient and feeble hold.
Moreover, in this society which, for many centuries consists of people
accustomed to being ruled, the hereditary spirit is bourgeois that is
to say, used to discipline, fond of order, peaceable and even timid.
-- There remains a minority, a very small one,[1] innovating and
restless. This consisted, on the one hand, of people who were
discontented with their calling or profession, because they were of
secondary or subaltern rank in it.[2] Some were debutantes not fully
employed and others aspirants for careers not yet entered upon. Then,
on the other hand, there were the men of unstable character and all
those who were uprooted by the immense upheaval of things: in the
Church, through the suppression of convents and through schism; in the
judiciary, in the administration, in the financial departments, in the
army, and in various private and public careers, through the
reorganization of institutions, through the novelty of fresh resources
and occupations, and through the disturbance caused by the changed
relationships of patrons and clients. Many who, in ordinary times,
would otherwise remain quiet, become in this way nomadic and
extravagant in politics. Among the foremost of these are found those
who, through a classical education, can take in an abstract
proposition and deduce its consequences, but who, for lack of special
preparation for it, and confined to the narrow circle of local
affairs, are incapable of forming accurate conceptions of a vast,
complex social organization, and of the conditions which enable it to
subsist.  Their talent lies in making a speech, in dashing off an
editorial, in  composing a pamphlet, and in drawing up reports in more
or less pompous and dogmatic style; the genre admitted, a few of them
who are gifted become eloquent, but that is all. Among those are the
lawyers, notaries, bailiffs and former petty provincial judges and
attorneys who furnish the leading actors and two-thirds of the members
of the Legislative Assembly and of the Convention:  There are surgeons
and doctors in small towns, like Bo, Levasseur, and Baudot, second and
third-rate literary characters, like Barrère, Louvet, Garat, Manuel,
and Ronsin, college professors like Louchet and Romme, schoolmasters
like Leonard Bourdon, journalists like Brissot, Desmoulins and Freron,
actors like Collot d'Herbois, artists like Sergent, Oratoriens[3] like
Fouché, capuchins like Chabot, more or less secularized priests like
Lebon, Chasles, Lakanal, and Grégoire, students scarcely out of school
like St. Just, Monet of Strasbourg, Rousseline of St. Albin, and
Julien of the Drôme -- in short, the poorly sown and badly cultivated
minds, and on which the theory had only to fall to smother the good
grain and thrive like a nettle. Add to these charlatans and others who
live by their wits, the visionary and morbid of all sorts, from
Fanchet and Klootz to Châlier or Marat, the whole of that needy,
chattering, irresponsible crowd, ever swarming about large cities
ventilating its shallow conceits and abortive pretensions. Farther in
the background appear those whose scanty education qualifies them to
half understand an abstract principle and imperfectly deduce its
consequences, but whose roughly-polished instinct atones for the
feebleness of a coarse argumentation. Through cupidity, envy and
rancor, they divine a rich pasture-ground behind the theory, and
Jacobin dogmas become dearer to them, because the imagination sees
untold treasures beyond the mists in which they are shrouded. They can
listen to a club harangue without falling asleep, applaud its tirades
in the rights place, offer a resolution in a public garden, shout in
the tribunes, pen affidavits for arrests, compose orders-of-the-day
for the national guard, and lend their lungs, arms, and sabers to
whoever bids for them. But here their capacity ends. In this group
merchants' and notaries' clerks abound, like Hébert and Henriot,
Vincent and Chaumette, butchers like Legendre, postmasters like
Drouet, boss-joiners like Duplay, school-teachers like that Buchot who
becomes a minister, and many others of the same sort, accustomed to
jotting down ideas, with vague notions of orthography and who are apt
in speech-making,[4] foremen, sub-officers, former begging friars,
peddlers, tavern-keepers, retailers, market-porters, and city-
journeymen from Gouchon, the orator of the faubourg St. Antoine, down
to Simon, the cobbler of the Temple, from Trinchard, the juryman of
the Revolutionary Tribunal, down to grocers, tailors, shoemakers,
tapster, waiters, barbers, and other shopkeepers or artisans who do
their work at home, and who are yet to do the work of the September
massacres. Add to these the foul remnants of every popular
insurrection and dictatorship, beasts of prey like Jourdain of
Avignon, and Fournier the American, women like Théroigne, Rose
Lacombe, and the tricoteuses of the Convention who have unsexed
themselves, the amnestied bandits and other gallows birds who, for
lack of a police, have a wide range, street-rollers and vagabonds,
rebels against labor and discipline, the whole of that class in the
center of civilization which preserves the instincts of savages, and
asserts the sovereignty of the people to glut a natural appetite for
license, laziness, and ferocity. -- Thus is the party recruited
through an enlisting process that gleans its subjects from every
station in life, but which reaps them down in great swaths, and
gathers them together in the two groups to which dogmatism and
presumption naturally belong. Here, education has brought man to the
threshold, even to the heart of general ideas; consequently, he feels
hampered within the narrow bounds of his profession or occupation, and
aspires to something beyond. But as his education has remained
superficial or rudimentary, consequently, outside of his narrow circle
he feels out of his place. He has a perception or obtains a glimpse of
political ideas and, therefore, assumes that he has capacity. But his
perception is confided to a formula, and he sees them dimly through a
cloud; hence his incapacity, and the reason why his mental lacunae  as
well as his attainments both contribute to make him a Jacobin.



II.

Spontaneous associations after July 14, 1789. --  How these dissolve.
- Withdrawal of people of sense and occupation. -- Number of those
absent at elections. -- Birth and multiplication of Jacobin societies.
-- Their influence over their adherents -- Their maneuvers and
despotism.

Men thus disposed cannot fail to draw near each other, to understand
each other, and combine together; for, in the principle of popular
sovereignty, they have a common dogma, and, in the conquest of
political supremacy, a common aim. Through a common aim they form a
faction, and through a common dogma they constitute a sect, the league
between them being more easily effected because they are a faction and
sect at the same time.

 At first their association is not distinguishable in the multitude of
other associations. Political societies spring up on all sides after
the taking of the Bastille. Some kind of organization had to be
substituted for the deposed or tottering government, in order to
provide for urgent public needs, to secure protection against
ruffians, to obtain supplies of provisions, and to guard against the
probably machinations of the court. Committees installed themselves in
the town halls, while volunteers formed bodies of militia: hundreds of
local governments, almost independent, arose in the place of the
central government, almost destroyed.[5] For six months everybody
attended to matters of common interest, each individual getting to be
a public personage and bearing his quota of the government load: a
heavy load at all times, but heavier in times of anarchy; this, at
least, is the opinion of the majority but not of all of them.
Consequently, a division arises amongst those who had assumed this
load, and two groups are formed, one huge, inert and disintegrating,
and the other small, compact and energetic, each taking one of two
ways which diverge from each other, and which keep on diverging more
and more.

On one hand are the ordinary, sensible people, those who are busy, and
who are, to some extent, not over-conscientious, and not over-
conceited. The power is in their hands because they find it prostrate,
lying abandoned in the street; they hold it provisionally only, for
they knew beforehand, or soon discover, that they are not qualified
for the post, it being one of those which, to be properly filled,
needs some preparation and fitness for it. A man does not become
legislator or administrator in one day, any more than he suddenly
becomes a physician or surgeon. If an accident obliges me to act in
the latter capacity, I yield, but against my will, and I do no more
than is necessary to save my patients from hurting themselves, My fear
of their dying under the operation is very great, and, as soon as some
other person can be found to take my place, I go home.[6] -- I should
be glad, like everybody else, to have my vote in the selection of this
person, and, among the candidates. I should designate, to the best of
my ability, one who seemed to me the ablest and most conscientious.
Once selected, however, and installed, I should not attempt to dictate
to him; his cabinet is private, and I have no right to run there
constantly and cross-question him, as if he were a child or under
suspicion. It does not become me to tell him what to do; he probably
knows more about the case than I do; in any event, to keep a steady
hand, he must not be threatened, and, to keep a clear head, he must
not be disturbed.  Nor must I be disturbed; my office and books, my
shop, my customers must be attended to as well. Everybody has to mind
his own business, and whoever would attend to his own and another's
too, spoils both. -- This way of thinking prevails with most healthy
minds towards the beginning of the year 1790, all whose heads are not
turned by insane ambition and the mania for theorizing, especially
after six months of practical experience and knowing the dangers,
miscalculation, and vexations to which one is exposed in trying to
lead an eager, over-excited population. -- Just at this time, December
1789, municipal law becomes established throughout the country; all
the mayors and municipal officers are elected almost immediately, and
in the following months, all administrators of districts and
departments. The interregnum has a length come to an end. Legal
authorities now exist, with legitimate and clearly-determined
functions. Reasonable, honest people gladly turn power over to those
to whom it belongs, and certainly do not dream of resuming it. All
associations for temporary purposes are at once disbanded for lack of
an object, and if others are formed, it is for the purpose of
defending established institutions. This is the object of the
Federation, and, for six months, people embrace each other and
exchange oaths of fidelity. -- After this, July 14, 1790, they retire
into private life, and I have no doubt that, from this date, the
political ambition of a large plurality of the French people is
satisfied, for, although Rousseau's denunciation of the social
hierarchy are still cited by them, they, at bottom, desire but little
more than the suppression of administrative brutality and state
favoritism.[7]  All this is obtained, and plenty of other things
besides; the august title of sovereign, the respect of the public
authorities, honors to all who wield a pen or make a speech, and,
better still, actual sovereignty in the appointment to office of all
local land national administrators; not only do the people elect their
deputies, but every species of functionary of every degree, those of
commune, district, and department, officers in the national guard,
civil and criminal magistrates, bishops and priests. Again, to ensure
the responsibility of the elected to their electors, the term of
office fixed by law is a short one,[8] the electoral machine which
summons the sovereign to exercise his sovereignty being set agoing
about every four months. -- This was a good deal, and too  much, as
the sovereign himself soon discovers. Voting so frequently becomes
unendurable; so many prerogatives end in getting to be drudgery. Early
in 1790, and after this date, the majority forego the privilege of
voting and the number of absentees becomes enormous. At Chartres, in
May, 1790,[9] 1,447 out of 1,551 voters do not attend preliminary
meetings. At Besançon, in January, 1790, on the election of mayor and
municipal officers, 2,141 out of 3,200 registered electors are
recorded as absent from the polls, and 2,900 in the following month of
November.[10]  At Grenoble, in August and November of this year, out
of 2,500 registered voters, more than 2,000 are noted as absent.[11]
At Limoges, out of about the same number, there are only 150 voters.
At Paris, out of 81,400 electors, in August, 1790, 67,200 do not vote,
and, three months later, the number of absentees is 71 ,408.[12]

 Thus for every elector that votes, there are four, six, eight, ten,
and even sixteen that abstain from voting. -- In the election of
deputies, the case is the same. At the primary meetings of 1791, in
Paris, out of  81,200 registered names more than 74,000 fail to
respond.  In the Doubs, three out of four voters stay away.  In one of
the cantons of the Côte d'Or, at the close of the polls, only one-
eighth of the electors remain at the counting of the votes, while in
the secondary meetings the desertion is not less.  At Paris, out of
946 electors chosen only 200 are found to give their suffrage; at
Rouen, out of 700 there are but 160, and on the last day of the
ballot, only 60. In short, "in all departments," says an orator in the
tribune, "scarcely one out of five electors of the second degree
discharges his duty."

In this manner the majority hands in its resignation. Through inertia,
want of forethought, lassitude, aversion to the electoral hubbub, lack
of political preferences, or dislike of all the political candidates,
it shirks the task which the constitution imposes on it.  Most
certainly is has no taste for the painstaking burden of being involved
in a league (of human rights). Men who cannot find time once in three
months to drop a ballot in the box, will not come three times a week
to attend the meetings of a club. Far from meddling with the
government, they abdicate, and as they refuse to elect it, they cannot
undertake to control it.

It is, on the other hand,  just the opposite with the upstarts and
dogmatists who regard their royal privileges seriously. They not only
vote at the elections, but they mean to keep the authority they
delegate in their own hands. In their eyes every official is one of
their creatures, and remains accountable to them, for, in point of
law, the people may not part with their sovereignty, while, in fact,
power has proved so sweet that they are not disposed to part with
it.[13]  During six months preceding the regular elections, they have
come to know, comprehend, and test each other; they have held secret
meetings; a mutual understanding is arrived at, and henceforth, as
other associations disappear like fleeting bloom, theirs[14] rise
vigorously on the abandoned soil. A club is established at Marseilles
before the end of 1789; each large town has one within the first six
months of 1790, Aix in February, Montpellier in March, Nîmes in April,
Lyons in May, and Bordeaux in June.[15]  But their greatest increase
takes place after the Federation festival. Just when local gatherings
merge into that of the whole country, the sectarian Jacobins keep
aloof, and form leagues of their own. At Rouen, July 14, 1790, two
surgeons, a printer, a chaplain at the prison, a widowed Jewess, and
four  women or children living in the house, - eight persons in all,
pure and not to be confounded with the mass,[16] bind themselves
together, and form a distinct association. Their patriotism is of
superior quality, and they take a special view of the social
compact;[17] in swearing fealty to the constitution they reserve to
themselves the Rights of Man, and they mean to maintain not only the
reforms already effected, but to complete the Revolution just begun. -
During the Federation they have welcomed and indoctrinated their
fellows who, on quitting the capital or large cities, become bearers
of instructions to the small towns and hamlets; they are told what the
object of a club is, and how to form one, and, everywhere, popular
associations arise on the same plan, for the same purpose, and bearing
the same name. A month later, sixty of these associations are in
operation; three months later, one hundred; in March, 1791, two
hundred and twenty-nine, and in August, 1791, nearly four hundred.[18]
After this date a sudden increase takes place, owing to two
simultaneous impulses, which scatter their seeds over the entire
territory. -- On the one hand, at then end of July, 1791, all moderate
men, the friends of law and order, who still hold the clubs in check,
all constitutionalists, or Feuillants, withdraw from them and leave
them to exaggeration or the triviality of proposing motions; the
political tone immediately falls to that of the tavern and guard-
house, so that wherever one or the other is found, there is a
political club. On the other hand, a convocation of the electoral body
is held at the same date for the election of a new National Assembly,
and for the renewal of local governments; the prey being in sight,
hunting-parties are everywhere formed to capture it. In two
months,[19] six hundred new clubs spring up; by the end of September
they amount to one thousand, and in June, 1792, to twelve hundred --
as many as there are towns and walled boroughs. On the fall of the
throne, and at the panic caused by the Prussian invasion, during a
period of anarchy which equaled that of July, 1789, there were,
according to Roederer, almost as many clubs as there were communes,
26,000, one for every village containing five or six hot-headed,
boisterous fellows, or roughs, (tape-durs), with a clerk able to pen a
petition.

After November, 1790,[20] "every street in every town and hamlet,"
says a Journal of large circulation, "must have a club of its own. Let
some honest craftsman invite his neighbors to his house, where, with
using a shared candle, he may read aloud the decrees of the National
Assembly, on which he and his neighbors may comment. Before the
meeting closes, in order to enliven the company, which may feel a
little disturbed on account of Marat's articles, let him read the
patriotic oaths in 'Pêre Duchesne.'"[21] -- The advice is followed. At
the meetings in the club are read aloud pamphlets, newspapers, and
catechisms dispatched from Paris, the "Gazette Villageoise," the
"Journal du Soir," the "Journal de la Montagne," "Pêre Duchesne," the
"Révolutions de Paris,"  and "Laclos' Gazette." Revolutionary songs
are sung, and, if a good speaker happens to be present, a former monk
(oratorien), lawyer, or school-master, he pours out his stock of
phrases, speaking of  the Greeks and Romans, proclaiming the
regeneration of the human species. One of them, appealing to the
women, wants to see

 "the declaration of the Rights of Man suspended on the walls of their
bedrooms as their principal ornament, and, should war break out, these
virtuous supporters, marching at the head of our armies like new
bacchantes with flowing hair, the wand of Bacchus in their hand."

Shouts of applause greet this sentiment. The minds of the listeners,
swept away by this gale of declamation, become overheated and ignite
through mutual contact; like half-consumed embers that would die out
if let alone, they kindle into a blaze when gathered together in a
heap. - - Their convictions, at the same time, gain strength. There is
nothing like a coterie to make these take root. In politics, as in
religion, faith generating the church, the latter, in its turn,
nourishes faith. In the club, as in the private religious meeting,
each derives authority from the common unanimity, every word and
action of the whole tending to prove each in the right. And all the
more because a dogma which remains uncontested, ends in seeming
incontestable; as the Jacobin lives in a narrow circle, carefully
guarded, no contrary opinions find their way to him. The public, in
his eyes, seems two hundred persons; their opinion weighs on him
without any counterpoise, and, outside of their belief, which is his
also, every other belief is absurd and even culpable. Moreover, he
discovers through this constant system of preaching, which is nothing
but flattery, that he is patriotic, intelligent, virtuous, of which he
can have no doubt, because, before being admitted into the club, his
civic virtues have been verified and he carries a printed certificate
of them in his pocket. - - Accordingly, he is one of an élite corps, a
corps which, enjoying a monopoly of patriotism, holds itself aloof,
talks loud, and is distinguished from ordinary citizens by its tone
and way of conducting things. The club of Pontarlier,[22] from the
first, prohibits its members from using the common forms of
politeness.

 "Members are to abstain from saluting their fellow-citizens by
removing the hat, and are to avoid the phrase, 'I have the honor to
be,' and others of like import, in addressing persons."

A proper idea of one's importance is indispensable.

"Does not the famous tribune of the Jacobins in Paris inspire traitors
and impostors with fear? And do not anti-Revolutionaries return to
dust on beholding it?"

All this is true, in the provinces as well as at the capital, for,
scarcely is a club organized before it sets to work on the population.
In may of the large cities, in Paris, Lyons, Aix and Bordeaux, there
are two clubs in partnership,[23] one, more or less respectable and
parliamentary, "composed partly of the members of the different
branches of the administration and specially devoted to purposes of
general utility," and the other, practical and active, made up of bar-
room politicians and club-haranguers, who indoctrinate workmen,
market-gardeners and the rest of the lower bourgeois class. The latter
is a branch of the former, and, in urgent cases, supplies it with
rioters.

 "We are placed amongst the people," says one of these subaltern
clubs, "we read to them the decrees, and, through lectures and
counsel, we warn them against the publications and intrigues of the
aristocrats. We ferret out and track plotters and their machinations.
We welcome and advise all complainants; we enforce their demands, when
just; finally, we, in some way, attend to all details."

Thanks to these vulgar auxiliaries, but whose lungs and arms are
strong, the party soon becomes dominant; it has force and uses it,
and, denying that its adversaries have any rights, it re-establishes
all the privileges for its own advantage.[24]



III.

How they view the liberty of the press. - Their political doings.

Let us consider its mode of procedure in one instance and upon a
limited field, the freedom of the press.[25]  In December, 1790, M.
Etienne, an engineer, whom Marat and Fréron had denounced as a spy in
their periodicals, brought a suit against them in the police court.
The numbers containing the libel were seized, the printers summoned to
appear, and M. Etienne claimed a public retraction or 25,000 francs
damages with costs. At this the two journalists, considering
themselves infallible as well as exempt from arrest, are indignant.

" It is of the utmost importance," writes Marat, "that the informer
should not be liable to prosecution as he is accountable only to the
public for what he says and does for the public good."

M. Etienne (surnamed Languedoc), therefore, is a traitor:  "Monsieur
Languedoc, I advise you to keep your mouth shut; if I can have you
hung I will."  M. Etienne, nevertheless, persists and obtains a first
decision in his favor. Fire and flame are at once belched forth by
Marat and Fréon:

 "Master Thorillon," exclaims Fréron to the commissary of police, "you
shall be punished and held up to the people as an example; this
infamous decision must be canceled." --  "Citizens," writes Marat, "go
in a body to the Hôtel-de-Ville and do not allow one of the guards to
enter the court-room. " -- On the day of the trial, and in the most
condescending spirit, but two grenadiers are let in. Even these,
however, are too many and shouts from the Jacobin crowd arise "Turn
'em out! We rule here," upon which the two grenadiers withdraw. On the
other hand, says Fréron triumphantly, that there were in the court-
room "sixty of the victors at the Bastille led by the brave Santerre,
who intended to interfere in the trial." - They intervene, indeed, and
first against the plaintiff.  M. Etienne is attacked at the entrance
of the court-room and nearly knocked down He is so maltreated that he
is obliged to seek shelter in the guard-room. He is spit upon, and
they "move to cut off his ears."  His friends receive "hundreds of
kicks," while he runs away, and the case is postponed. --  It is
called up again several times, so no the judges have to be restrained.
A certain Mandart in the audience, author of a pamphlet on "Popular
Sovereignty," springs to his feet and, addressing Bailly, mayor of
Paris, and president of the tribunal, challenges the court. As usual
Bailly yields, attempting to cover up his weakness with an honorable
pretext: "Although a judge can be challenged only by the parties to a
suit, the appeal of one citizen is sufficient for me and I leave the
bench." The other judges, who are likewise insulted and menaced, yield
also, and, through a sophism which admirably illustrates the times,
they discover in the oppression to which the plaintiff is subject a
legal device by which they can give a fair color to their denial of
justice. M. Etienne having signified to them that neither he nor his
counsel could attend in court, because their lives were in danger, the
court decides that M. Etienne, "failing to appear in person, or by
counsel, is non-suited." -- Victorious shouts at once proceed from the
two journalists, while their articles on the case disseminated
throughout France set a precedence contained in the .ruling.  Any
Jacobin may after this with impunity denounce, insult, and calumniate
whomsoever he pleases, sheltered as he is from the action of courts,
and held superior to the law.

Let us see, on the other hand, what liberty they allow their
adversaries. A fortnight before this, Mallet du Pan, a writer of great
ability, who, in the best periodical of the day, discusses questions
week after week free of all personalities, the most independent,
straight-forward, and honorable of men, the most eloquent and
judicious advocate of public order and true liberty, is waited upon by
a deputation from the Palais-Royal,[26] consisting of about a dozen
well-dressed individuals, civil enough and not too ill-disposed, but
quite satisfied that they have a right to interfere. The conversation
which ensues shows to what extent the current political creed had
turned peoples' heads.

"One of the party, addressing me, informed me that he and his
associates were deputies of the Palais-Royal clubs, and that they had
called to notify me that I would do well to change my principles and
stop attacking the constitution, otherwise extreme violence would be
brought to bear on me.  I replied that I recognized no authority but
the law and that of the courts; the law is your master and mine, and
no respect is shown to the constitution by assailing the freedom of
the press."


"The constitution is the common will, resumed the spokesman.  The law,
is the authority of the strongest.  You are subject to the strongest
and you ought to submit.  We notify you of the will of the nation and
that is the law.'"


Mallet du Pan stated to them that he was not in favor of the ancient
régime, but that he did approve of royal authority.



"Oh!" exclaimed all together, " we should be sorry not to have a king.
We respect the King and maintain his authority.  But you are forbidden
to oppose the dominant opinion and the liberty which is decreed by the
National Assembly."



Mallet du Pan, apparently, knows more about this than they do, for he
is a Swiss by birth, and has lived under a republic for twenty years.
But this does not concern them. They persist all the same, five or six
talking at once, misconstruing the sense the words they use, and each
contradicting the other in point of detail, but all agreeing to impose
silence on him:


"You should not run counter to the popular will, for in doing this you
preach civil war, bring the assembly's decrees into contempt, and
irritate the nation."


Evidently, for them, they constitute the nation, or, more or less,
they represent it. Through this self-investiture they are at once
magistrates, censors, and police, while the scolded journalist is only
too glad, in his case, to have them stop at injunctions. -- Three days
before this he is advised that a body of rioters in his neighborhood
"threatened to treat his house like that of M. de Castries," in which
everything had been smashed and thrown out the windows. At another
time, apropos of the suspensive or absolute veto; "four savage fellows
came to his domicile to warn him, showing him their pistols, that if
he dared write in behalf of M. Mounier he should answer for it with
his life." Thus, from the outset,

"just as the nation begins to enjoy the inestimable right of free
thought and free speech, factional tyrants lose no time in depriving
citizens of these, proclaiming to all that would maintain the
integrity of their consciences: Tremble, die, or believe as we do!"

After this, to impose silence on those who express what is offensive,
the crowd, the club, the section, decree and execute, each on its own
authority,[27] searches, arrests, assaults, and, at length,
assassinations.  During the month of June, 1792, "three decrees of
arrest and fifteen denunciations, two acts of affixing seals, four
civic invasions of his premises, and the confiscation of whatever
belonged to him in France" is the experience of Mallet du Pan.  He
passes four years "without knowing with any certainty on going to bed
whether he should get out of it in the morning alive and free." Later
on, if he escapes the guillotine and the lantern, it is owing to
exile.  On the 10th of August, Suleau, a conservative journalist, is
massacred in the street. -- This shows how the party regards the
freedom of the press.  Other liberties may be judged of by its
encroachments on this domain.  Law, in its eyes, is null when it
proves an obstacle, and when it affords protection to adversaries;
consequently there is no excess which it does not sanction for itself;
and no right which it does not refuse to others.

There is no escape from the tyranny of the clubs.  "That of Marseilles
has forced the city officials to resign;[28] it has summoned the
municipal body to appear before it; it has ignored the authority of
the department, and has insulted the administrators of the law.
Members of the Orleans club have kept the national Supreme Court under
supervision, and taken part in its proceedings. Those of the Caen club
have insulted the magistrates, and seized and burnt the records of the
proceedings commenced against the destroyers of the statue of Louis
XIV. At Alby they have forcibly abstracted from the record-office the
papers relating to an assassin's trial, and burnt them." The club at
Coutance gives the deputies of its district to understand that "no
reflections must be cast on the laws of the people." That of Lyons
stops an artillery train, under the pretext that the ministry in
office does not enjoy the nation's confidence. -- Thus does the club
everywhere govern, or prepare to govern.  On the one hand, at the
elections, it sets aside or supports candidates; it alone votes, or,
at least, controls the voting. In short, the club is the elective
power, and practically, if not legally, enjoys the privileges of a
political aristocracy.  On the other hand, it assumes to be a
spontaneous police-board; it prepares and circulates the lists which
designate the ill-disposed, suspected, and lukewarm; it lodges
information against nobles whose sons have emigrated; against unsworn
priests who still reside in their former parishes, and against nuns,
"whose conduct is unconstitutional". It prompts, directs, and rebukes
local authorities; it is itself a supplemental, superior, and usurping
authority.  -- All at once, sensible men realize its character, and
protest against it.



"A body thus organized," says a petition,[29] "exists solely for
arming one citizen against another. . . . Discussions take place
there, and denunciations are made under the seal of inviolable
secrecy. . . . . Honest citizens, surrendered to the most atrocious
calumny, are destroyed without an opportunity of defending themselves.
It is a veritable Inquisition. It is the center of seditious
publications, a school of cabals and intrigue. If the citizens have to
blush at the selection of unworthy candidates, they are all due to
this class of associations . . . Composed of the excited and the
incendiary, of those who aim to rule the State," the club everywhere
tends

"to a mastery of the popular opinion, to thwarting the municipalities,
to an intrusion of itself between these and the people," to an
usurpation of legal forms and to become  a "colossus of despotism."

Vain complaints!  The National Assembly, ever in alarm on its own
account, shields the popular club and accords it its favor or
indulgence.  A journal of the party had recommended "the people to
form themselves into small platoons."  These platoons, one by one, are
growing.  Each borough now has a local oligarchy, an enlisted and
governing band.  To create an army out of these scattered bands,
simply requires a staff and a central rallying-point.  The central
point and the staff have both for a long time been ready in Paris, it
is the association of the "Friends of the Constitution."


IV.

Their rallying-points. -- Origin and composition of the Paris Jacobin
club. --  It affiliates with provincial clubs. --  Its leaders. --
The fanatics. --  The Intriguers. --  Their object. --  Their means.

No association in France, indeed, dates farther back, and has an equal
prestige. It was born before the Revolution, April 30, 1789.[30]  At
the assembly of the States-General in Brittany, the deputies from
Quimper, Hennebon, and Pontivy saw how important it was to vote in
concert, and they had scarcely reached Versailles when, in common with
others, they hired a hall, and, along with Mounier, secretary of the
States-General of Dauphiny, and other deputies from the provinces, at
once organized a union which was destined to last. Up to the 6th of
October, none but deputies were comprised in it; after that date, on
removing to Paris, in the library of the Jacobins, a convent in the
Rue St. Honoré, many well-known eminent men were admitted, such as
Condorcet, and then Laharpe, Chénier, Champfort, David, and Talma,
among the most prominent, with other authors and artists, the whole
amounting to about a thousand notable personages. --  No assemblage
could be more imposing -- two or three hundred deputies are on its
benches, while its rules and by-laws seem specially designed to gather
a superior body of men. Candidates for admission were proposed by ten
members and afterwards voted on by ballot. To be present at one of its
meetings required a card of admission. On one occasion, a member of
the committee of two, appointed to verify these cards, happens to be
the young Duke of Chartres. There is a committee on administration and
a president. Discussions took place with parliamentary formalities,
and, according to its status, the questions considered there were
those under debate in the National Assembly.[31]  In the lower hall,
at certain hours, workmen received instruction and the constitution
was explained to them. Seen from afar, no society seems worthier of
directing public opinion; near by, the case is different. In the
departments, however, where distance lends enchantment, and where old
customs prevail implanted by centralization, it is accepted as a guide
because its seat is at the capital. Its statutes, its regulations, its
spirit, are all imitated; it becomes the alma mater  of other
associations and they its adopted daughters. It publishes,
accordingly, a list of all clubs conspicuously in its journal,
together with their denunciations;  it insists on their demands;
henceforth, every Jacobin in the remotest borough feels the support
and endorsement, not only of his local, club, but again of the great
club whose numerous offshoots reached the entire territory and which
extends its all-powerful protection to the least of its adherents. In
return for this protection, each associated club obeys the word of
command given at Paris, and to and from, from the center to the
extremities, a constant correspondence maintains the established
harmony. A vast political machine is thus set agoing, a machine with
thousands of arms, all working at once under one impulsion, and the
lever which the motions is in the hands of a few master spirits in the
Rue St. Honoré.

No machine could be more effective; never was one seen so well
contrived for manufacturing artificial, violent public opinion, for
making this appear to be national, spontaneous sentiment, for
conferring the rights of the silent majority on a vociferous minority,
for forcing the surrender of the government.

 "Our tactics were very simple," says Grégoire[32].  "It was
understood that one of us should take advantage of the first favorable
opportunity to propose some measure in the National Assembly that was
sure to be applauded by a small minority and cried down by the
majority. But that made no difference. The proposer demanded, which
was granted, that the measure should be referred to a committee in
which its opponents hoped to see it buried. Then the Paris Jacobins
took hold of it. A circular was issued, after which an article on the
measure was printed in their journal and discussed in three or four
hundred clubs that were leagued together. Three weeks after this the
Assembly was flooded with petitions from every quarter, demanding a
decree of which the first proposal had been rejected, and which is now
passed by a great majority because a discussion of it had ripened
public opinion."

In other words, the Assembly must go ahead or it will be driven along,
in which process the worst expedients are the best. Those who conduct
the club, whether fanatics or intriguers, are fully agreed on this
point.

At the head of the former class is Duport, once a counselor in the
parliament, who, after 1788, knew how to turn riots to account. The
first revolutionary consultations were held in his house. He wants to
plough deep, and his devices for burying the ploughshare are such that
Sieyès, a radical, if there ever was one, dubbed it a "cavernous
policy."[33] Duport, on the 28th of July, 1789, is the organizer of
the Committee on Searches, by which all favorably disposed informers
or spies form in his hands a supervisory police, which fast becomes a
police of provocation. He finds recruits in the lower hall of the
Jacobin club, where workmen come to be catechized every morning, while
his two lieutenants, the brothers Laurette, have only to draw on the
same source for a zealous staff in a choice selection of their
instruments. "Ten reliable men receive orders there daily;[34] each of
these in turn gives his orders to ten more, belonging to different
battalions in Paris. In this way each battalion and section receives
the same insurrectionary orders, the same denunciations of the
constituted authorities, of the mayor of Paris, of the president of
the department, and of the commander of the National Guard,"
everything taking place secretly. These are dark deeds: the leaders
themselves call it 'the Sabbath' and, along with fanatics they enlist
ruffians. "They spread the rumor that, on a certain day, there will be
a great commotion with assassinations and pillage, preceded by the
payment of money distributed from hand to hand by subaltern officers
among those that can be relied on, and that these bands are to
assemble, as advertised, within a radius of thirty or forty
leagues."[35]-- -- One day, to provoke a riot, "half a dozen men, who
have arranged the thing, form a small group, in which one of them
holds forth vehemently; at once a crowd of about sixty others gathers
around them. Then the six men move on from place to place," to form
fresh groups making their apparent excitement pass for popular
irritation. -- Another day, "about forty fanatics, with powerful
lungs, and four or five hundred paid men," scatter themselves around
the Tuileries, "yelling furiously," and, gathering under the windows
of the Assembly, "move resolutions to assassinate." -- "Our ushers,"
says a deputy to the Assembly, "whom you ordered to suppress this
tumult, heard reiterated threats of bringing you the heads of those
the crowd wished to proscribe. That very evening, in the Palais-Royal,
"I heard a subordinate leader of this factious band boast of having
charged your ushers to take this answer back, adding that there was
time enough yet for all good citizens to follow his advice." --The
watchword of these agitators is, are you true and the response is, a
true man. Their pay is twelve francs a day, and when in action they
make engagements on the spot at that rate. "From several depositions
taken by officers of the National Guard and at the mayoralty," it is
ascertained that twelve francs a day were tendered to "honest people
to join in with those you may have heard shouting, and some of them
actually had the twelve francs put into their hands." -- The money
comes from the coffers of the Duke of Orleans, and they are freely
drawn upon; at his death, with a property amounting to 114,000,000
francs, his debts amount to 74,000,000.[36]  Being one of the faction,
he contributes to its expenses, and, being the richest man in the
kingdom, he contributes proportionately to his wealth. Not because he
is a party leader, for he is too effeminate, too nervous; but "his
petty council,"[37] and especially one of his private secretaries,
Laclos, cherishes great designs for him, their object being to make
him lieutenant-general of the kingdom, afterwards regent, and even
king,[38] so that they may rule in his name and "share the profits." -
- In the mean time they turn his whims to the best account,
particularly Laclos, who is a kind of subordinate Macchiavelli,
capable of anything, profound, depraved, and long indulging his
fondness for monstrous combinations; nobody ever so coolly delighted
in indescribable compounds of human wickedness and debauchery. In
politics, as in romance, his department is "Les Liaisons Dangereuses."
Formerly he maneuvered as an amateur with prostitutes and ruffians in
the fashionable world; now he maneuvers in earnest with the
prostitutes and ruffians of the sidewalks.  On the 5th of October
1789, he is seen, "dressed in a brown coat,"[39] foremost among the
women starting for Versailles, while his hand[40] is visible "in the
Réveillon affair, also in the burning of barriers and Châteaux," and
in the widespread panic which aroused all France against imaginary
bandits.  His operations, says Malouet, "were all paid for by the Duke
of Orleans"; he entered into them "for his own account, and the
Jacobins for theirs." -- At this time their alliance is plain to
everybody.  On the 21st of November, 1790, Laclos becomes secretary of
the club, chief of the department of correspondence, titular editor of
its journal, and the invisible, active, and permanent director of all
its enterprises. Whether actual demagogues or prompted by ambition,
whether paid agents or earnest revolutionaries, each group works on
its own account, both in concert, both in the same direction, and both
devoted to the same undertaking, which is the conquest of power by
every possible means.


V.

Small number of Jacobins. - Sources of their power. - They form a
league. - They have faith. - Their unscrupulousness. - The power of
the party vested in the group which best fulfills these conditions.

At first sight their success seems doubtful, for they are in a
minority, and a very small one. At Besançon, in November, 1791, the
revolutionaries of every shade of opinion and degree, whether
Girondists or Montagnards, consist of about 500 or 600 out of 3,000
electors, and, in November, 1792, of not more than the same number out
of 6,000 and 7,000.[41]  At Paris, in November, 1791, there are 6,700
out of more than 81,000 on the rolls; in October, 1792, there are less
than 14,000 out of 160,000.[42]  At Troyes, in 1792, there are found
only 400 or 500 out of 7,000 electors, and at Strasbourg the same
number out of 8,000 electors.[43]  Accordingly only about one-tenth of
the electoral population are revolutionaries, and if we leave out the
Girondists and the semi-conservatives, the number is reduced by one-
half. Towards the end of 1792, at Besançon, scarcely more than 300
pure Jacobins are found in a population of from 25,000 to 30,000,
while at Paris, out of 700,000 inhabitants only 5,000 are Jacobins.
It is certain that in the capital, where the most excitement prevails,
and where more of them are found than elsewhere, never, even in a
crisis and when vagabonds are paid and bandits recruited, are there
more than 10,000.[44]   In a large town like Toulouse a representative
of the people on missionary service wins over only about 400
persons.[45] Counting fifty or so in each small town, twenty in each
large borough, and five or six in each village, we find, on an
average, but one Jacobin to fifteen electors and National Guards,
while, taking the whole of France, all the Jacobins put together do
not amount to 300,000.[46]  -- This is a small number for the
enslavement of six millions of able-bodied men, and for installing in
a country of twenty-six millions inhabitants a more absolute despotism
than that of an Asiatic sovereign. Force, however, is not measured by
numbers; they form a band in the midst of a crowd and, in this
disorganized, inert crowd, a band that is determined to push its way
like an iron wedge splitting a log.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NOTES:

[1] See the figures further on.

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

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

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

[5]  Cf. "The Revolution," page 60.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[32] Grégoires,  "Mémoires," I. 387.

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

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

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

[36] Cf. "The Ancient Régime," p. 51.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[48] Cf. "The Ancient Régime," p.352.

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

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

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

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

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

[54] Barbaroux, "Mémoires" (Ed. Dauban), 336. -- Grégoire, "Mémoires,"
I. 410.

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

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

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

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

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

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




BOOK SECOND. THE FIRST STAGE OF THE CONQUEST.

CHAPTER I.

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

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

I.

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

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

II.

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

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

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

III.

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

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

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

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

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

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


V.

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

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


NOTES:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[23]  "The French Revolution," I. 256, 307.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




CHAPTER II.

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

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



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



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

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

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

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


II.

Degree and quality of their intelligence and Culture.

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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



III.


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


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

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

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



IV.

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

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

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

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

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



V.

Their means of action. -- Dispersion of the Feuillants' club.--
Pressure of the tribunes on the Assembly. -- Street mobs.

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

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


VI.

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

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


NOTES:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[24] "Mémoires de Mallet du Pan," 1433 (tableau of the three parties,
with special information).

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

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

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

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

[29] Madame de Stael, "Considerations sur la Révolution Française,
IIIrd part, ch. III.-Madame de Staël conversed with them and judges
them according to the shrewd perceptions of a woman of the world.

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

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

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

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

[34] Moniteur, XIII. 212, session of July 22.

[35] Moniteur,  XII. 22, session of April 2. - Mortimer-Ternaux, II.
95. - Moniteur,  XIII. 222, session of July 22.

[36]  Lacretelle, "Dix Ans d'Epreuves," 80.

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

[38]  De Vaublanc, "Mémoires," 344. - Moniteur,  XIII. 368 (letters
and speeches of deputies, session of Aug. 9).

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

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

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

[42]  Hua, 114.

[43]  Moniteur, XII. 664. - Mercure de France, June 23, 1792.

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

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



CHAPTER III.
I.

Policy of the Assembly.  -  State of  France at the end of 1791. -
Powerlessness of the Law.

If the deputies who, on the 1st of October, 1791, so solemnly and
enthusiastically swore to the Constitution, had been willing to open
their eyes, they would have seen this Constitution constantly
violated, both in its letter and spirit, over the entire territory. As
usual, and through the vanity of authorship, M. Thouret, the last
president of the Constituent Assembly, had, in his final report,
hidden disagreeable truth underneath pompous and delusive phrases; but
it was only necessary to look over the monthly record to see whether,
as guaranteed by him, "the decrees were faithfully executed in all
parts of the empire." -- " Where is this faithful execution to be
found?" inquires Mallet du Pan.[1] "Is it at Toulon, in the midst of
the dead and wounded, shot in the very face of the amazed municipality
and Directory?  Is it at Marseilles, where two private individuals are
knocked down and massacred as aristocrats," under the pretext "that
they sold to children poisoned sugar-plums with which to begin a
counter-revolution?" Is it at Arles, "against which 4,000 men from
Marseilles, dispatched by the club, are at this moment marching?" Is
it at Bayeux, "where the sieur Fauchet against whom a warrant for
arrest is out, besides being under the ban of political disability,
has just been elected deputy to the Legislative Assembly?" Is it at
Blois, "where the commandant, doomed to death for having tried to
execute these decrees, is forced to send away a loyal regiment and
submit to licentious troops?" Is it at Nîmes, "where the Dauphiny
regiment, on leaving the town by the Minister's orders, is ordered by
the people" and the club "to disobey the Minister and remain?" Is it
in those regiments whose officers, with pistols at their breasts, are
obliged to leave and give place to amateurs?  Is it at Toulouse,
"where, at the end of August, the administrative authorities order all
unsworn priests to leave the town in three days, and withdraw to a
distance of four leagues?" Is it in the outskirts of Toulouse, "where,
on the 28th of August, a municipal officer is hung at a street-lamp
after an affray with guns?" Is it at Paris, where, on the 25th of
September, the Irish college, vainly protected by an international
treaty, has just been assailed by the mob; where Catholics, listening
to the orthodox mass, are driven out and dragged to the authorized
mass in the vicinity; where one woman is torn from the confessional,
and another flogged with all their might?[2]

These troubles, it is said, are transient; on the Constitution being
proclaimed, order will return of itself. Very well, the Constitution
is voted, accepted by the King, proclaimed, and entrusted to the
Legislative Assembly. Let the Legislative Assembly consider what is
done in the first few weeks.  In the eight departments that surround
Paris, there are riots on every market-day; farms are invaded and the
cultivators of the soil are ransomed by bands of vagabonds; the mayor
of Melun is riddled with balls and dragged out from the hands of the
mob streaming with blood.[3] At Belfort, a riot for the purpose of
retaining a convoy of coin, and the commissioner of the Upper-Rhine in
danger of death; at Bouxvillers, owners of property attacked by poor
National Guards, and by the soldiers of Salm-Salm, houses broken into
and cellars pillaged; at Mirecourt, a flock of women beating drums,
and, for three days, holding the Hôtel-de-Ville in a state of siege. -
- One day Rochefort is in a state of insurrection, and the workmen of
the harbor compel the municipality to unfurl the red flag.[4]  On the
following day, it is Lille, the people of which, "unwilling to
exchange its money and assignats for paper-rags, called billets de
confiance, gather into mobs and threaten, while a whole garrison is
necessary to prevent an explosion."  On the 16th of October, it is
Avignon in the power of bandits, with the abominable butchery of the
Glacière.  On the 5th of November, at Caen, there are eighty-two
gentlemen, townsmen and artisans, knocked down and dragged to prison,
for having offered their services to the municipality as special
constables.  On the 14th of November, at Montpellier, the roughs
triumph; eight men and women are killed in the streets or in their
houses, and all conservatives are disarmed or put to flight. By the
end of October, it is a gigantic column of smoke and flame shooting
upward suddenly from week to week and spreading everywhere, growing,
on the other side of the Atlantic, into civil war in St. Domingo,
where wild beasts are let loose against their keepers; 50,000 blacks
take the field, and, at the outset, 1,000 whites are assassinated,
15,000 Negroes slain, 200 sugar-mills destroyed and damage done to the
amount of 600,000,000; "a colony of itself alone worth ten provinces,
is almost annihilated."[5]  At Paris, Condorcet is busy writing in his
journal that "this news is not reliable, there being no object in it
but to create a French empire beyond the seas for the King, where
there will be masters and slaves." A corporal of the Paris National
Guard, on his own authority, orders the King to remain indoors,
fearing that he may escape, and forbids a sentinel to let him go out
after nine o'clock in the evening;[6] at the Tuileries, stump-speakers
in the open air denounce aristocrats and priests; at the Palais-Royal,
there is a pandemonium of public lust and incendiary speeches.[7]
There are centers of riot in all quarters, "as many robberies as there
are quarter-hours, and no robbers punished; no police; overcrowded
courts; more delinquents than there are prisons to hold them; nearly
all the private mansions closed; the annual consumption in the
faubourg St. Germain alone diminished by 250 millions; 20,000 thieves,
with branded backs, idling away time in houses of bad repute, at the
theaters, in the Palais-Royal, at the National Assembly, and in the
coffee-houses; thousands of beggars infesting the streets, crossways,
and public squares. Everywhere an image of the deepest poverty which
is not calling for one's pity as it is accompanied with insolence.
Swarms of tattered vendors are offering all sorts of paper-money,
issued by anybody that chose to put it in circulation, cut up into
bits, sold, given, and coming back in rags, fouler than the miserable
creatures who deal in it."[8]  Out of 700,000 inhabitants there are
100,000 of the poor, of which 60,000 have flocked in from the
departments;[9] among them are 30,000 needy artisans from the national
workshops, discharged and sent home in the preceding month of June,
but who, returning three months later, are again swallowed up in the
great sink of vagabondage, hurling their floating mass against the
crazy edifice of public authority and furnishing the forces of
sedition. -- At Paris, and in the provinces, disobedience exists
throughout the hierarchy.  Directories countermand ministerial orders.
Here, municipalities brave the commands of their Directory; there,
communities order around their mayor with a drawn sword.  Elsewhere,
soldiers and sailors put their officers under arrest. The accused
insult the judge on the bench and force him to cancel his verdict;
mobs tax or plunder wheat in the market; National Guards prevent its
distribution, or seize it in the storehouses.  There is no security
for property, lives, or consciences. The majority of Frenchmen are
deprived of their right to worship in their own faith, and of voting
at the elections. There is no safety, day or night, for the élite of
the nation, for ecclesiastics and the gentry, for army and navy
officers, for rich merchants and large landed proprietors; no
protection in the courts, no income from public funds; denunciations
abound, expulsions, banishments to the interior, attacks on private
houses; there is no right of free assemblage, even to enforce the law
under the orders of legal authorities.[10]   Opposed to this, and in
contrast with it, is the privilege and immunity of a sect formed into
a political corporation, "which extends its filiations over the whole
kingdom, and even abroad; which has its own treasury, its committees,
and its by-laws; which rules the government, which judges
justice,"[11] and which, from the capital to the hamlet, usurps or
directs the administration. Liberty, equality, and the majesty of the
law exist nowhere, except in words.  Of the three thousand decrees
given birth to by the Constituent Assembly, the most lauded, those the
best set off by a philosophic baptism, form a mass of stillborn
abortions of which France is the burying-ground.  That which really
subsists underneath the false appearances of right, proclaimed and
sworn to over and over again, is, on the one hand, an oppression of
the upper and cultivated classes, from which all the rights of man are
withdrawn, and, on the other hand, the tyranny of the fanatical and
brutal rabble which assumes to itself all the rights of sovereignty.



II.

The Assembly hostile to the oppressed and favoring oppressors. --
Decrees against the nobles and clergy. -- Amnesty for deserters,
convicts, and bandits. --  Anarchical and leveling maxims.

In vain do the honest men of the Assembly protest against this scandal
and this overthrow. The Assembly, guided and forced by the Jacobins,
will only amend the law to damn the oppressed and to authorize their
oppressors. -- Without making any distinction between armed
assemblages at Coblentz, which it had a right to punish, and refugees,
three times as numerous, old men, women and children, so many
indifferent and inoffensive people, not merely nobles but
plebeians,[12] who left the soil only to escape popular outrages, it
confiscates the property of all emigrants and orders this to be
sold.[13]  Through the new restriction of the passport, those who
remain are tied to their domiciles, their freedom of movement, even in
the interior, being subject to the decision of each Jacobin
municipality.[14] It completes their ruin by depriving them without
indemnity of all income from their real estate, of all the seignorial
rights which the Constituent Assembly had declared to be
legitimate.[15] It abolishes, as far as it can, their history and
their past, by burning in the public depots their genealogical
titles.[16] -- To all unsworn ecclesiastics, two-thirds of the French
clergy, it withholds bread, the small pension allowed them for food,
which is the ransom of their confiscated possessions;[17] it declares
them "suspected of revolt against the law and of bad intentions
against the country;" it subjects them to special surveillance; it
authorizes their expulsion without trial by local rulers in case of
disturbances; it decrees that in such cases they shall be
banished.[18]  It suppresses "all secular congregations of men and
women ecclesiastic or laic, even those wholly devoted to hospital
service will take away from 600,000 children the means of learning to
read and write."[19]  It lays injunctions on their dress; it places
episcopal palaces in the market for sale, also the buildings still
occupied by monks and nuns.[20] It welcomes with rounds of applause a
married priest who introduces his wife to the Assembly. -- Not only is
the Assembly destructive but it is insulting; the authors of each
decree passed by it add to its thunderbolt the rattling hail of their
own abuse and slander.

 "Children," says a deputy, "have the poison of aristocracy and
fanaticism injected into them by the congregations."[21]

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

Whether unsworn, whether immigrants actually or in feeling, "large
proprietors, rich merchants, false conservatives,"[22] are all
outspoken conspirators or concealed enemies. All public disasters are
imputed to them. "The cause of the troubles," says Brissot,[23] "which
lay waste the colonies, is the infernal vanity of the whites who have
three times violated an engagement which they have three times sworn
to maintain." Scarcity of work and short crops are accounted for
through their cunning malevolence.

 "A large number of rich men, "says François de Nantes,[24] "allow
their property to run down and their fields to lie fallow, so as to
enjoy seeing the suffering of the people."

France is divided into two parties, on the one hand, the aristocracy
to which is attributed every vice, and, on the other hand, the people
on whom is conferred every virtue.[25]

"The defense of liberty," says Lamarque,[26] "is basely abandoned
every day by the rich and by the former nobility, who put on the mask
of patriotism only to cheat us. It is not in this class, but only in
that of citizens who are disdainfully called the people, that we find
pure beings, those ardent souls really worthy of liberty." -- One step
more and everything will be permitted to the virtuous against the
wicked; if misfortune befalls the aristocrats so much the worse for
them.  Those officers who are stoned, M. de la Jaille and others,
"wouldn't they do better not to deserve being sacrificed to popular
fury?"[27] Isnard exclaims in the tribune, "it is the long-continued
immunity enjoyed by criminals which has rendered the people
executioners. Yes, an angry people, like an angry God, is only too
often the terrible supplement of silent laws."[28] -- In other words
crimes are justified and assassinations still provoked against those
who have been assassinated for the past two years.

By a forced conclusion, if the victims are criminals, their
executioners are honest, and the Assembly, which rigorously proceeds
against the former, reserves all its indulgence for the latter. It
reinstates the numerous deserters who abandoned their flags previous
to the 1st of January, 1789;[29] it allows them three sous per league
mileage, and brings them back to their homes or to their regiments to
become, along with their brethren whose desertion is more recent,
either leaders or recruits for the mob. It releases from the galleys
the forty Swiss guards of Chateauroux whom their own cantons desired
to have kept there; it permits these "'martyrs to Liberty " to
promenade the streets of Paris in a triumphal car;[30] it admits them
to the bar of the house, and, taking a formal vote on it, extends to
them the honors of the session.[31] Finally, as if it were their
special business to let loose on the public the most ferocious and
foulest of the rabble, it amnesties Jourdan, Mainvielle, Duprat, and
Raphel, fugitive convicts, jail-birds, the condottieri of all lands
assuming the title of "the brave brigands of Avignon," and who, for
eighteen months, have pillaged and plundered the Comtat[32]; it stops
the trial, almost over, of the Glacière butchers; it tolerates the
return of these as victors,[33] and their installation by their own
act in the places of the fugitive magistrates, allowing Avignon to be
treated as a conquered city, and, henceforth, to become their prey and
their booty. This is a willful restoration of the vermin to the social
body, and, in this feverish body, nothing is overlooked that will
increase the fever. The most anarchical and deleterious maxims
emanate, like miasma, from the Assembly benches. The reduction of
things to an absolute level is adopted as a principle; "equality of
rights," says Lamarque,[34] "is to be maintained only by tending
steadily to an equality of fortunes;" this theory is practically
applied on all sides since the proletariat is pillaging all who own
property. -- "Let the communal possessions be partitioned among the
citizens of the surrounding villages," says François de Nantes, "in an
inverse ratio to their fortunes, and let him who has the least
inheritance take the largest share in the divisions."[35] Conceive the
effect of this motion read at evening to peasants who are at this very
moment claiming their lord's forest for their commune. M. Corneille
prohibits any tax to be levied for the public treasury on the wages of
manual labor, because nature, and not society, gives us the "right to
live."[36] On the other hand, he confers on the public treasury the
right of taking the whole of an income, because it is society, and not
nature, which institutes public funds; hence, according to him, the
poor majority must be relieved of all taxation, and all taxes must
fall on the rich minority. The system is well-timed and the argument
apt for convincing indigent or straitened tax-payers, namely, the
refractory majority, that its taxes are just, and that it should not
refuse to be taxed. -

"Under the reign of liberty," says President Daverhoult,[37] "the
people have the right to insist not merely on subsistence, but again
on plenty and happiness."[38]

Accordingly, being in a state of poverty they have been betrayed. --
"Elevated to the height achieved by the French people," says another
president, "it looks down upon the tempests under its feet."[39]  The
tempest is at hand and bursts over its head. War, like a black cloud,
rises above the horizon, overspreads the sky, thunders and wraps
France filled with explosive materials in a circle of lightening, and
it is the Assembly which, through the greatest of its mistakes, draws
down the bolt on the nation's head.




III.

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

It might have been turned aside with a little prudence. Two principal
grievances were alleged, one by France and the other by the Empire. --
On the one hand, and very justly, France complained of the gathering
of émigré's, which the Emperor and Electors tolerated against it on
the frontier.  In the first place, however, a few thousand gentlemen,
without troops or stores, and nearly without money,[40] were hardly to
be feared, and, besides this, long before the decisive hour came these
troops were dispersed, at once by the Emperor in his own dominions,
and, fifteen days afterwards, by the Elector of Trèves in his
electorate.[41]  -- On the other hand, according to treaties, the
German princes, who owned estates in Alsace, made claims for the
feudal rights abolished on their French possessions and the Diet
forbade them to accept the offered indemnity. But, as far as the Diet
is concerned, nothing was easier nor more customary than to let
negotiations drag along, there being no risk or inconvenience
attending the suit as, during the delay, the claimants remained empty-
handed. -- If, now, behind the ostensible motives, the real intentions
are sought for, it is certain that, up to January, 1792, the
intentions of Austria were pacific.  The grants made to the Comte
d'Artois, in the Declaration of Pilnitz, were merely a court-
sprinkling of holy-water, the semblance of an illusory promise and
subject to a European concert of action, that is to say, annulled
beforehand by an indefinite postponement, while this pretended league
of sovereigns is at once "placed by the politicians in the class of
august comedies.[42]"  Far from taking up arms against "New France" in
the name of old France, the emperor Leopold and his prime minister
Kaunitz, were delighted to see the constitution completed and accepted
by the King; it "got them out of an embarrassing position,"[43]  and
Prussia as well.  In the running of governments, political advantage
is the great incentive and both powers needed all their forces in
another direction, in Poland. One for retarding, and the other for
accelerating the division of this country, and both, when the
partition took place, to get enough for themselves and prevent Russia
from getting too much. -- The sovereigns of Prussia and Austria,
accordingly, did not have any idea of saving Louis XVI, nor of
conducting the émigrés  back, nor of conquering French provinces. If
anything was to be expected from them on account of personal ill-will,
there was no fear of their armed intervention. -- In France it is not
the King who urges a rupture; he knows too well that the hazards of
war will place him and his dependents in mortal danger. Secretly as
well as publicly, in writing to the émigrés, his wishes are to bring
them back or to restrain them.  In his private correspondence he asks
of the European powers not physical but moral aid, the external
support of a congress which will permit moderate men, the partisans of
order, all owners of property, to raise their heads and rally around
the throne and the laws against anarchy. In his ministerial
correspondence every precaution is taken not to touch off or let
someone touch off an explosion. At the critical moment of the
discussion[44] he entreats the deputies, through M. Delessart, his
Minister of Foreign Affairs, to weigh their words and especially not
to send a demand containing a "dead line."  He resists, as far as his
passive nature allows him, to the very last. On being forced to
declare war he requires beforehand the signed advice of all his
ministers. He does not utter the fatal words, until he, "with tears in
his eyes" and in the most dire straits, is dragged on by an Assembly
qualifying all caution as treason and which has just dispatched M.
Delessart to appear, under a capital charge, before the supreme court
at Orléans.

It is the Assembly then which launches the disabled ship on the
roaring abysses of an unknown sea, without a rudder and leaking at
every seam. It alone slips the cable which held it in port and which
the foreign powers neither dared nor desired to sever. Here, again,
the Girondists are the leaders and hold the axe; since the last of
October they have grasped it and struck repeated blows.[45]  -- As an
exception, the extreme Jacobins, Couthon, Collot d'Herbois, Danton,
Robespierre, do not side with them. Robespierre, who at first proposed
to confine the Emperor "within the circle of Popilius,"[46] fears the
placing of too great a power in the King's hands, and, growing
mistrustful, preaches distrust. -- But the great mass of the party,
led by clamorous public opinion, impels on the timid marching in
front.  Of the many things of which knowledge is necessary to conduct
successfully such a complex and delicate affair, they know nothing.
They are ignorant about cabinets, courts, populations, treaties,
precedents, timely forms and requisite style. Their guide and
counselor in foreign relations is Brissot whose pre-eminence is based
on their ignorance and who, exalted into a statesman, becomes for a
few months the most conspicuous figure in Europe.[47]  To whatever
extent a European calamity may be attributed to any one man, this one
is to be attributed to him. It is this wretch, born in a pastry-cook's
shop, brought up in an attorney's office, formerly a police agent at
150 francs per month, once in league with scandal-mongers and black-
mailers,[48] a penny-a-liner, busybody, and meddler, who, with the
half-information of a nomad, scraps of newspaper ideas and reading-
room lore,[49] added to his scribblings as a writer and his club
declamation, directs the destinies of France and starts a war in
Europe which is to destroy six millions of lives. In the attic where
his wife is washing his shirts, he enjoys rebuking rulers and, on the
20th of October, in the tribune,[50] he begins by insulting thirty
foreign sovereigns. Such keen, intense enjoyment is the stuff on which
the new fanaticism daily feeds itself. Madame Roland herself delights,
with evident complacency, in it, something which can be seen in the
two famous letters in which, with a supercilious tone, she first
instructs the King and next the Pope.[51]  Brissot, at bottom, regards
himself as a Louis XIV, and expressly invites the Jacobins to imitate
the haughty ways of the Great Monarch.[52]  -- To the tactlessness of
the intruder, and the touchiness of the parvenu, we can add the
rigidity of the sectarian. The Jacobins, in the name of abstract
rights, deny historic rights; they impose from above, and by force,
that truth of which they are the apostles, and allow themselves every
provocation which they prohibit to others.

"Let us tell Europe," cries Isnard,[53] "that ten millions of
Frenchmen, armed with the sword, with the pen, with reason, with
eloquence, might, if provoked, change the face of the world and make
tyrants tremble on their thrones of clay."

"Wherever a throne exists," says Hérault de Séchelles, "there is an
enemy."[54]

 "An honest peace between tyranny and liberty," says Brissot, "is
impossible.  Our Constitution is an eternal anathema to absolute
monarchs . . .  It places them on trial, it pronounces judgment on
them; it seems to say to each: to-morrow thou have ceased to be or
shalt be king only through the people. . . War is now a national
benefit, and not to have war is the only calamity to be dreaded." [55]

 " Tell the king," says Gensonné, "that the war is a must, that public
opinion demands it, that the safety of the empire makes it a law."[56]

 "The state we are in," concludes Vergniaud, "is a veritable state of
destruction that may lead us to disgrace and death. So then to arms!
to arms! Citizens, freemen, defend your liberty, confirm the hopes of
that of the human race. . . Lose not the advantage of your position.
Attack now that there is every sign of complete success. . . The
spirits of past generations seem to me crowding into this temple to
conjure you, in the name of the evils which slavery had compelled them
to endure, to protect the future generations whose destinies are in
your hands!  Let this prayer be granted! Be for the future a new
Providence! Ally yourselves with eternal justice!"[57]

Among the Marseilles speakers there is no longer any room for serious
discussion.  Brissot, in reply to the claim made by the Emperor on
behalf of the princes' property in Alsatia, replies that "the
sovereignty of the people is not bound by the treaties of
tyrants."[58]  As to the gatherings of the émigrés, the Emperor having
yielded on this point, he will yield on the others.[59]  Let him
formally renounce all combinations against France.

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

No explanations; it is satisfaction we want; "to require satisfaction
is to put the Emperor at our mercy."[60]  The Assembly, so eager to
start the quarrel, usurps the King's right to take the first step and
formally declares war, fixing the date.[61] -- The die is now cast.

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

Austria immediately forms an alliance with Prussia, threatened, like
herself, with revolutionary propaganda.[62]  By sounding the alarm
belles the Jacobins, masters of the Assembly, have succeeded in
bringing about that "monstrous alliance," and, from day to day, this
alarm sounds the louder. One year more, thanks to this policy, and
France will have all Europe for an enemy and as its only friend, the
Regency of Algiers, whose internal system of government is about the
same as her own.



IV.

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

Behind their carmagnoles[63]  we can detect a design which they will
avow later on.

 "We were always obstructed by the Constitution," Brissot is to say,
"and nothing but war could destroy the Constitution."[64]

Diplomatic wrongs, consequently, of which they make parade, are simply
pretexts; if they urge war it is for the purpose of overthrowing the
legal order of things which annoys them; their real object is the
conquests of power, a second internal revolution, the application of
their system and a final state of equality.-- Concealed behind them is
the most politic and absolute of theorists, a man "whose great art is
the attainment of his ends without showing himself, the preparation of
others for far-sighted views of which they have no suspicion, and that
of speaking but little in public and acting in secret."[65] This man
is Sieyès, "the leader of everything without seeming to lead
anything."[66]  As infatuated as Rousseau with his own speculations,
but as unscrupulous and as clear-sighted as Macchiavelli in the
selection of practical means, he was, is, and will be, in decisive
moments, the consulting counsel of radical democracy.

"His pride tolerates no superiority. He causes nobility to be
abolished because he is not a noble; because he does not possess all
he will destroy all. His fundamental doctrine for the consolidation of
the Revolution is, that it is indispensable to change religion and to
change the dynasty."

Now, had peace been maintained all this was impossible; moreover the
ascendance of the party was compromised.   Entire classes that had
adhered to the party when it launched insurrection against the
privileged, broke loose from it now that insurrection was directed
against them; among thoughtful men and among those with property, most
were disgusted with anarchy, and likewise disgusted with the abettors
of it. Many administrators, magistrates and functionaries recently
elected, loudly complained of their authority being subject to the
mob. Many cultivators, manufacturers and merchants have become
silently exasperated at the fruits of their labor and economy being
surrendered at discretion to robbers and the indigent. It was hard for
the flour-dealers of Etampes not to dare send away their wheat, to be
obliged to supply customers at night, to tremble in their own houses,
and to know that if they went out-doors they risked their lives.[67]
It was hard for wholesale grocers in Paris to see their warehouses
invaded, their windows smashed, their bags of coffee and boxes of
sugar valued at a low price, parceled out and carried away by old hags
or taken gratis by scamps who ran off and sold them at the other end
of the street.[68] It was hard in all places for the families of the
old bourgeoisie, for the formerly prominent men in each town and
village, for the eminent in each art, profession or trade, for
reputable and well-to-do people, in short, for the majority of men who
had a good roof over their heads and a good coat on their backs, to
undergo the illegal domination of a crowd led by a few hundred or
dozens of stump-speakers and firebrands. -- Already, in the beginning
of 1792, this dissatisfaction was so great as to be denounced in the
tribune and in the press. Isnard[69] railed against "that multitude of
large property-holders, those opulent merchants, those haughty,
wealthy personages who, advantageously placed in the social
amphitheater, are unwilling to have their seats changed." The
bourgeoisie," wrote Pétion,[70] "that numerous class free of any
anxiety, is separating itself from the people; it considers itself
above them, . . . they are the sole object of its distrust. It is
everywhere haunted by the one idea that the revolution is a war
between those who have and those who have not." -- It abstains,
indeed, from the elections, it keeps away from patriotic clubs, it
demands the restoration of order and the reign of law; it rallies to
itself "the multitude of conservative, timid people, for whom
tranquility is the prime necessity," and especially, which is still
more serious, it charges the disturbances upon their veritable
authors.  With suppressed indignation and a mass of undisputed
evidence, André Chénier, a man of feeling, starts up in the midst of
the silent crowd and openly tears off the mask from the Jacobins.[71]
He brings into full light the daily sophism by which a mob, "some
hundreds of idlers gathered in a garden or at a theater, are
impudently called the people." He portrays those "three or four
thousand usurpers of national sovereignty whom their orators and
writers daily intoxicate with grosser incense than any adulation
offered to the worst of despots;" those assemblies where "an
infinitely small number of French appears large, because they are
united and yell;" that Paris club from which honest, industrious,
intelligent people had withdrawn one by one to give place to
intriguers in debt, to persons of tarnished reputations, to the
hypocrites of patriotism, to the lovers of uproar, to abortive
talents, to corrupted intellects, to outcasts of every kind and degree
who, unable to manage their own business, indemnify themselves by
managing that of the public. He shows how, around the central factory
and its twelve hundred branches of insurrection, the twelve hundred
affiliated clubs, which, "holding each other's hands, form a sort of
electric chain around all France" and giving it a shock at every touch
from the center; their confederation, installed and enthroned, is not
only as a State within the State, but rather as a sovereign State in a
vassal State; summoning their administrative bodies to their bar,
judicial verdicts set aside through their intervention, private
individuals searched, assessed and condemned through their verdicts.
All this constitutes a steady, systematic defense of insubordination
and revolt; as, "under the name  of hoarding and monopoly, commerce
and industry are described as misdemeanors;" property is unsettled and
every rich man rendered suspicious, "talent and integrity silenced."
In short, a public conspiracy made against society in the very name of
society, "while the sacred symbol of liberty is made use of as a seal"
to exempt a few tyrants from punishment. Such a protest said aloud
what most Frenchmen muttered to themselves, and from month to month,
graver excesses exited greater censure.

"Anarchy exists[72] to a degree scarcely to be paralleled, wrote the
ambassador of the United States. The horror and apprehension, which
the licentious associations have universally inspired, are such that
there is reason to believe that the great mass of the French
population would consider even despotism a blessing, if accompanied
with that security to persons and property, experienced even under the
worst governments in Europe."

Another observer, not less competent,[73] says:

"it is plain to my eyes that when Louis XVI. finally succumbed, he had
more partisans in France than the year previous, at the time of his
flight to Varennes."

The truth of this, indeed, was frequently verified at the end of 1791
and beginning of 1792, by various investigations.[74]  "Eighteen
thousand officers of every grade, elected by the constitutionalists,
seventy-one department administrations out of eighty-two, most of the
tribunals,[75] all traders and manufacturers, every chief and a large
portion of the National Guard of Paris," in short, the élite of the
nation, and among citizens generally, the great majority who lived
from day to day were for him, and for the "Right" of the Assembly
against the "Left".   If internal trouble had not been complicated by
external difficulties, there would have been a change in opinion, and
this the King expected. In accepting the Constitution, he thought that
its defects would be revealed in practical operation and that they
would lead to a reform. In the mean time he scrupulously observed the
Constitution, and, through interest as well as conscience, kept his
oath to the letter. "The most faithful execution of the Constitution,"
he said to one of his ministers, "is the surest way to make the nation
see the changes that ought to be made in it."[76]  -- In other words,
he counted on experience, and it is very probable that if there had
been nothing to interfere with experience, his calculations would have
finally chosen between the defenders of order and the instigators of
disorder. It would have decided for the magistrates against the clubs,
for the police against rioters, for the king against the mob. In one
or two years more it would have learned that a restoration of the
executive power was indispensable for securing the execution of the
laws; that the chief of police, with his hands tied, could not do his
duty; that it was undoubtedly wise to give him his orders, but that if
he was to be of any use against knaves and fools, his hands should
first be set free.




V.

Effects of the war on the common people.-- Its alarms and fury. -- The
second revolutionary outburst and its characteristics. -- Alliance of
the Girondists with the mob. -- The red cap and pikes. -- Universal
substitution of government by force for government by law.

Just the contrary with war; the aspect of things changes, and the
alternative is the other way. It is no longer a choice between order
and disorder, but between the new and the old regime, for, behind
foreign opponents on the frontier, there stand the émigrés. The
commotion is terrible, especially amongst the lower classes which
mainly bore the whole weight of the old establishment; among the
millions who live by the sweat of their brow, artisans, small farmers,
métayers, day-laborers and soldiers, also the smugglers of salt and
other articles, poachers, vagabonds, beggars and half-beggars, who,
taxed, plundered, and harshly treated for centuries, have to endure,
from father to son, poverty, oppression and disdain. They know through
their own experience the difference between their late and their
present condition. They have only to fall back on personal knowledge
to revive in their imaginations the enormous royal, ecclesiastical,
and seignorial taxes, the direct tax of eighty-one per cent., the
bailiffs in charge, the seizures and the husbandry service, the
inquisition of excise men, of inspectors of the salt tax, wine tax
(rats de cave) and game-keepers, the ravages of wild birds and of
pigeons, the extortions of the collector and his clerk, the delay and
partiality in obtaining justice, the rashness and brutality of the
police, the kicks and cuffs of the constabulary, the poor wretches
gathered like heaps of dirt and filth, the promiscuousness, the over-
crowding, the filth and the starvation of the prisons.[77]  They have
simply to open their eyes to see their immense deliverance; all direct
or indirect taxes for the past two years legally abolished or
practically suppressed, beer at two pennies a pot, wine at six,
pigeons in their meat-safes, game on their turn-spits, the wood of the
national forests in their lofts, the gendarmerie timid, the police
absent, in many places the crops all theirs, the owner not daring to
claim his share, the judge avoiding condemning them, the constable
refusing to serve papers on them, privileges restored in their favor,
the public authorities cringing to the crowds and yielding to their
exactions, remaining quiet or unarmed in the face of their misdeeds,
their outrages excused or tolerated, their superior good sense and
deep feeling lauded in thousands of speeches, the jacket and the
blouse  considered as symbols of patriotism, and supremacy in the
State claimed for the sans-culottes[78] in the name their merits and
their virtues. -- And now the overthrow of all this is announced to
them, a league against them of foreign kings, the emigrants in arms,
an invasion imminent, the Croats and Pandours in the field, hordes of
mercenaries and barbarians crowding down on them again to put them in
chains. -- From the workshop to the cottage there rolls along a
formidable outburst of anger, accompanied with national songs,
denouncing the plots of tyrants and summoning the people to arms.[79]
This is the second wave of the Revolution, fast swelling and roaring,
less general than the first, since it bears along with it but little
more than the lower class, but higher and much more destructive.

Not only, indeed, is the mass now launched forth coarse and crude, but
a new sentiment animates it, the force of which is incalculable, that
of plebeian pride, that of the poor man, the subject, who, suddenly
erect after ages of debasement, relishes, far beyond his hopes and
unstintedly, the delights of equality, independence, and dominion.
"Fifteen millions white Negroes," says Mallet du Pan,[80] worse fed,
more miserable than those of St. Domingo, like them rebelled and freed
from all authority by their revolt, accustomed like them, through
thirty months of license, to ruling over all that is left of their
former masters, proud like them of the restoration of their caste and
exulting in their horny hands. One may imagine their transports of
rage on hearing the trumpet-blast which awakens them, showing them on
the horizon the returning planters, bringing with them new whips and
heavier manacles? -- Nothing is more distrustful than such a sentiment
in such breasts -- quickly alarmed, ready to strike, ready for any act
of violence, blindly credulous, headlong and easily impelled, not
merely against real enemies on the outside, but at first against
imaginary enemies on the inside,[81] but also against the King, the
ministers, the gentry, priests, parliamentarians, orthodox Catholics;
against

all administrators and magistrates imprudent enough to have appealed
to the law;

all manufacturers, merchants, and owners of property who condemn
disorder;

the wealthy whose egotism keeps them at home;

all those who are well-off, well-bred and well-dressed.

They are all under suspicion because they have lost by the new regime,
or because they have not adopted its ways. -- Such is the colossal
brute which the Girondins introduce into the political arena.[82] For
six months they shake red flags before its eyes, goad it on, work it
up into a rage and drive it forward by decrees and proclamations,

* against their adversaries and against its keepers,

* against the nobles and the clergy,

* against aristocrats inside France in complicity with those of
Coblentz,

* against "the Austrian committee" the accomplice of Austria,

* against the King, whose caution they transform into treachery,

* against the whole government to which they impute the anarchy they
excite, and the war of which they themselves are the instigators.[83]

Thus over-excited and topsy-turvy, the proletariat require only arms
and a rallying-point. The Girondins furnish both. Through a striking
coincidence, one which shows that the plan was concerted,[84] they
start three political engines at the same time. Just at the moment
when, through their deliberate saber-rattling, they made war
inevitable, they invented popular insignia and armed the poor. At the
end of January, 1792, almost during one week, they announced their
ultimatum to Austria using a fixed deadline, they adopted the red
woolen cap and began the manufacture of pikes. -- It is evident that
pikes are of no use in the open field against cannon and a regular
army; accordingly the are intended for use in the interior and in
towns. Let the national-guard who can pay for his uniform, and the
active citizen whose three francs of direct tax gives him a privilege,
own their guns; the stevedore, the market-porter, the lodger, the
passive citizen, whose poverty excludes them from voting must have
their pikes, and, in these insurrectionary times, a ballot is not
worth a good pike wielded by brawny arms. --  The magistrate in his
robes may issue any summons he pleases, but it will be rammed down his
throat, and, lest he should be in doubt of this he is made to know it
beforehand. "The Revolution began with pikes and pikes will finish
it."[85]  "Ah," say the regulars of the Tuileries gardens, "if the
good patriots of the Champs de Mars only had had pikes like these the
blue-coats (Lafayette's guards) would not have had such a good hand!"
- "They are to be used everywhere, wherever there are enemies of the
people, to the Château, if any can be found there!" They will override
the veto and make sure that the National Assembly will approve the
good laws. To this purpose, the Faubourg St. Antoine volunteers its
pikes, and, to mark the use made of them, it complains that "efforts
are made to substitute an aristocracy of wealth for the omnipotence of
inherited rank."  It demands "severe measures against the rascally
hypocrites who, with the Constitution in their hands, slaughter the
people." It declares that "kings, ministers and a civil list will pass
away, but that the rights of man, national sovereignty and pikes will
not pass away," and, by order of the president, the National Assembly
thanks the petitioners, "for the advice their zeal prompts them to
give.

The leaders of the Assembly and the people armed with pikes unite
against the rich, against Constitutionalists, against the government,
and henceforth, the Jacobin extremists march side by side with the
Girondins, both reconciled for the attack but reserved their right to
disagree until after the victory.

 "The object of the Girondists[86] is not a republic in name, but an
actual republic through a reduction of the civil lists to five
millions, through the curtailment of most of the royal prerogatives,
through a change of dynasty of which the new head would be a sort of
honorary president of the republic to which they would assign an
executive council appointed by the Assembly, that is to say, by
themselves." As to the Jacobin extremists we find no principle with
them but "that of a rigorous, absolute application of the Rights of
Man. With the aid of such a charter they aim at changing the laws and
public officers every six months, at extending their leveling process
to every constituted authority, to all legal pre-eminence and to
property. The only regime they long for is the democracy of a
contentious rabble. . .  The vilest instruments, professional
agitators, brigands, fanatics, every sort of wretch, the hardened and
armed poverty-stricken, who, in wild disorder" march to the attack of
property and to "universal pillage" in short, barbarians of town and
country  "who form their ordinary army and never leave it inactive one
single day." - Under their universal, concerted and growing usurpation
the substance of power melts wholly away in the hand of the legal
authorities; little by little, these are reduced to vain counterfeits,
while from one end of France, to the other, long before the final
collapse, the party, in the provinces as well as at Paris,
substitutes, under the cry of public danger, a government of might for
the government of law.
_______________________________________________________________________

NOTES:

[1] Mercure de France, September 24, 1791. -- Cf. Report of M. Alquier
(session of Sept. 23).

[2] Mercure de France, Oct. 15, 1792 (the treaty with England was
dated Sep. 26, 1786). --  Ibid., Letter of M. Walsh, superior of the
Irish college, to the municipality of Paris. Those who use the whips,
come out of a neighboring grog-shop. The commissary of police, who
arrives with the National Guard, "addresses the people, and promises
them satisfaction,"  requiring M. Walsh to dismiss all who are in the
chapel, without waiting for the end of the mass. -- M. Walsh refers to
the law and to treaties. -- The commissary replies that he knows
nothing about treaties, while the commandant of the national guard
says to those who laving the chapel, "In the name of human justice, I
order you to follow me to the church of Saint-Etienne, or I shall
abandon you to the people."

[3] "The French Revolution," Vol. I. pp.261, 263. -- "Archives
Nationales," F7, 3185 and  3186 (numerous documents on the rural
disturbances in Aisne). - Mercure de  France, Nov. 5 and 26, Dec. 10,
1791. - Moniteur, X. 426 (Nov.22, 1791).

[4] Moniteur, X. 449, Nov. 23, 1791. (Official report of the crew of
the Ambuscade, dated Sep. 30). The captain, M. d'Orléans, stationed at
the Windward Islands, is obliged to return to Rochefort and is
detained there on board his ship: "Considering the uncertainty of his
mission, and the fear of being ordered to use the same hostilities
against brethren for which he is already denounced in every club in
the kingdom, the crew has forced the captain to  return to France."

[5] Mercure de France, Dec. 17, address of the colonists to the king.

[6] Moniteur, XIII. 200. Report of Sautereau, July 20, on the affair
of Corporal Lebreton. (Nov. 11, 1791).

[7] Saint Huruge is first tenor. Justine  (Sado-machosistic book by de
Sade) makes her appearance in the Palais-Royal about the middle of
1791. They exhibit two pretended savages there, who, before a paying
audience, revive the customs of Tahiti. (" Souvenirs of chancelier
Pasquier. Ed. Plon, 1893))


[8]  Mercure de France, Nov. 5, 1791. - Buchez et Roux, XII. 338.
Report by Pétion, mayor, Dec. 9, 1791. "Every branch of the police is
in a state of complete neglect. The streets are dirty, and full of
rubbish; robbery, and crimes of every kind, are increasing to a
frightful degree." "Correspondance de M. de Staël" (manuscript), Jan.
22, 1792. "As the police is almost worthless, freedom from punishment,
added to poverty, brings on disorder."

[9] Moniteur, XI. 517 (session of Feb. 29, 1792). Speeches by de
Lacépède and de Mulot.

[10] Lacretelle, "Dix ans d'Epreuves." "I know no more dismal and
discouraging aspect than the interval between the departure of the
National Assembly, on the 10th August consummated by that of September
2."

[11] Mercure de France, Sept. 3, 1791, article by Mallet du Pan.

[12] Moniteur, XI. 317 (session of Feb. 6, 1792). Speech by M. Cahier,
a minister. Many of the emigrants belong to the class formerly called
the Third-Estate. No reason for emigrating, on their part, can be
supposed but that of religious anxieties."

[13] Decree of Nov. 9, 1791. The first decree seems to be aimed only
at the armed gatherings on the frontier. We see, however, by the
debates, that it affects all emigrants. The decrees of Feb. 9 and
March 30, 1792, bear upon all, without exception. -- "Correspondance
de Mirabeau et du Comte de la Marck,"  III. 264 (letter by M. Pellenc,
Nov. 12, 1791) The decree (against the emigrants) was prepared in
committee; it was expected that the emigrants would return, but there
was fear of them. It was feared that the nobles, associated with the
unsworn priests in the rural districts, might add strength to a
troublesome resistance. The decree, as it was passed, seemed to be the
most suitable for keeping the emigrants beyond the frontiers."

[14] Decree of Feb. 1, 1792. -- Moniteur, XI. 412 (session of Feb.
17). Speech by Goupilleau. "Since the decree of the National Assembly
on passports, emigrations have redoubled." People evidently escaped
from France as from a prison.

[15] Decrees of June 18 and August 25.

[16] Decree of June 19. --  Moniteur, XIII. 331. "In execution of the
law . . .  there will be burnt, on Tuesday, August 7, on the Place
Vendôme, at 2 o'clock: 1st, 600, more or less, of files of papers,
forming the last of genealogical collections, titles and  proofs of
nobility; 2nd, about 200 files, forming part of a work composed of 263
volumes, on the Order of the Holy Ghost."

[17] Decree of Nov. 29, 1791. (This decree is not in Duvergier's
collection~) --  Moniteur,  XII.  59, 247 (sessions of April 5 and 28,
1792).

[18] At the Jacobin Club, Legendre proposes a much a more expeditious
measure for getting rid of the priests. "At Brest, he says, boats are
found which are called Marie-Salopes, so constructed that, on being
loaded with dirt, they go out of the harbor themselves. Let us have a
similar arrangement for priests; but, instead of sending them out of
the harbor, let us send them out to sea, and, if necessary, let them
go down." ("Journal de Amis de la Constitution," number 194, May 15,
1792.)

[19] Moniteur, XII. 560 (decree of June 3).

[20] Decrees of July 19 and Aug. 4, completed by those of Aug. 16 and
19.

[21] Moniteur, XII. 59, 61 (session of April 3); X. 374 (session of
Nov. 13; XII 230 (session of April 26). -- The last sentence quoted
was uttered by François de Nantes.

[22] Moniteur, XI. 43. (session of Jan. 5, speech by Isnard).

[23] Moniteur, XI. 356 (session of Feb. 10).

[24] Moniteur, XI. 230 (session of April 26).

[25]  When I was a child the socialists etc. had substituted
aristocracy with capitalists and today, in France, when the
capitalists have largely disappeared, a great many evils are caused by
the 'patronat'. (SR).

[26] Moniteur (session of June 22).

[27] The words of Brissot (Patriote Français), number 887. -- Letter
addressed Jan. 5 to the club of Brest, by Messrs. Cavalier and
Malassis, deputies to the National Assembly: "As to the matter of the
sieur Lajaille, even though we would have taken an interest in him,
that decorated aristocrat only deserved what he got. . . We shall not
remain idle until all these traitors, these perjurers, whom we have
spared so long, shall be exterminated" (Mercure de France, Feb. 4). --
This Jaille affair is one of the most instructive, and the best
supported by documents (Mercure de France, Dec.10 and 17). --
"Archives Nationales," F7, 3215, official report of the district
administrators, and of the municipal officers of Brest, Nov. 27, 1791.
-- Letter by M. de Marigny, commissary in the navy, at Brest, Nov. 28.
-- Letters by M. de la Jaille, etc. -- M. de la Jaille, sent to Brest
to take command of the Dugay-Trouin, arrives there Nov.27. While at
dinner, twenty persons enter the room, and announce to him, "in the
name of many others," that his presence in Brest is causing trouble,
that he must leave, and that "he will not be allowed to take command
of a vessel." He replies, that he will leave the town, as soon as he
has finished his dinner. Another deputation follows, more numerous
than the first one, and insists on his leaving at once; and they act
as his escort. He submits, is conducted to the city gates, and there
the escort leaves him. A mob attacks him, and "his body is covered
with contusions.  He is rescued, with great difficulty, by six brave
fellows, of whom one is a pork-dealer, sent to bleed him on the spot.
"This insurrection is due to an extra meeting of 'The Friends of the
constitution,' held the evening before in the theater, to which the
public were invited." M. de la Jaille, it must be stated, is not a
proud aristocrat, but a sensible man, in the style of Florian's and
Berquin's heroes. But just pounded to a jelly, he writes to the
president of the "Friends of the Constitution," that, "could he have
flown into the bosom of the club, he would have gladly done so, to
convey to it his grateful feelings. He had accepted his command only
at the solicitation of the Americans in Paris, and of the six
commissioners recently arrived from St. Domingo." -- Mercure de
France, April 14, article by Mallet du Pan  "I have asked in vain for
the vengeance of the law against the assassins of M. de la Jaille.
The names of the authors of this assault in full daylight, to which
thousands can bear witness, are known to everybody in Brest.
Proceedings have been ordered and begun, but the execution of the
orders is suspended. More potent than the law, the motionnaires,
protectors of assassins, frighten or paralyze its ministrants."

[28] Mercure de France, Nov. 12 (session of Oct. 31st, 1792).

[29]  Decree of Feb. 8, and others like it, on the details, as, for
instance, that of Feb. 7.

[30] April 9, at the Jacobin Club, Vergniaud, the president, welcomes
and compliments the convicts of Chateau-vieux.

[31]  Mortimer-Ternaux, book I, vol. I. (especially the session of
April 15).

[32] Comtat (or comtat Venaisssin) ancient region in France under
papal authority from 1274 to 1791.(SR)

[33] Moniteur, XII. 335. - Decree of March 20 (the triumphal entry of
Jourdan and his associates belongs to the next month).

[34] Moniteur,  XII. 730 (session of June 23).

[35]  Moniteur, XII. 230 (session of April 12).

[36] Moniteur. XI. 6, (session of March 6).

[37] Moniteur, XI. 123, (session of Jan. 14)

[38]  150 years later these rights were written into the International
Declaration of Human Rights in Paris in 1948. (SR).

[39] Mercure de France,  Dec. 23 (session of Dec. 23), p.98.

[40] Moniteur, X. 178 (session of Oct. 20, 1791). Information supplied
by the deputies of the Upper and Lower Rhine departments. -- M. Koch
says: "An army of émigrés never existed, unless it be a petty
gathering, which took place at Ettenheim, a few leagues from
Strasbourg. .  . (This troop) encamped in tents, but only because it
lacked barracks and houses."  -- M. ---, deputy of the lower Rhine,
says: "This army at Ettenheim is composed of about five or six hundred
poorly-clad, half-paid men, deserters of all nations, sleeping in
tents, for lack of other shelter, and armed with clubs, for lack of
fire-arms and deserting every day, because money is getting scarce.
The second army, at Worms, under the command of a Condé, is composed
of three hundred gentlemen, and as many valets and grooms. I have to
add, that the letters which reach me from Strasbourg, containing
extracts of inside information from Frankfort, Munich, Regensburg, and
Vienna, announce the most pacific intentions on the part of the
different courts, since receiving the notification of the king's
submission." The number of armed emigrants increases, but always
remain very small (Moniteur, X. 678, letter of M. Delatouche, an
eyewitness, Dec. 10). "I suppose that the number of emigrants
scattered around on the territories of the grand-duke of Baden, the
bishop of Spires, the electorates, etc., amounts to scarcely 4,000
men."

[41] Moniteur, X. 418 (session of Nov. 15, 1791). Report by the
minister Delessart. In August, the emperor issued orders against
enlistments, and to send out of the country all Frenchmen under
suspicion; also, in October, to send away the French who formed too
numerous a body at Ath and at Tournay (Now in Belgium). -- Buchez et
Roux, XII. 395, demands of the king, Dec. 14,  -- Ibid., XIII. 15, 16,
19, 52, complete satisfaction given by the Elector of Trèves, Jan. 1,
1792, communicated to the Assembly Jan. 6; publication of the
elector's orders in the electorate, Jan. 3. The French envoy reports
that they are fully executed, which news with the documents, are
communicated to the Assembly, on the 8th, 16, and 19th of January. --
" Correspondance de Mirabeau et M. de la Marck," III.287. Letter of M.
de Mercy-Argenteau, Jan. 9, 1792.  "The emperor has promised aid to
the elector, under the express stipulation  that he should begin by
yielding to the demands of the French, as otherwise no assistance
would be given to him in case of attack."

[42] Mallet du Pan, "Mémoires," I. 254 (February, 1792). -- "
Correspondance de Mirabeau et du M. de la Marck," III. 232 (note of M.
de Bacourt). On the very day and at the moment of signing the treaty
at Pilnitz, at eleven o'clock in the evening, the Emperor Leopold
wrote to his prime minister, M. de Kaunitz, "that the convention which
he had just signed does not really bind him to anything; that it only
contains insignificant declarations, extorted by the Count d'Artois."
He ends by assuring him that "neither himself nor his government is in
any way bound by this instrument."

[43]  Words of M. de Kaunitz, Sept. 4, 1791 ("Recueil," by Vivenot, I.
242).

[44] Moniteur,  XI. 142 (session of Jan. 17). - Speech by M.
Delessart. - Decree of accusation against him March 10. - Declaration
of war, April 20. - On the real intentions of the King, cf. Malouet,
"Malouet, "Mémoires" II. 199-209; Lafayette, "Mémoires," I. 441 (note
3); Bertrand de Molleville, "Mémoires," VI. 22; Governor Morris, II.
242, letter of Oct. 23, 1792.

[45] Moniteur, X. 172 (session of Oct. 20, 1791). Speech by Brissot. -
- Lafayette, I. 441. "It is the Girondists who, at this time, wanted a
war at any price" - Malouet, II. 209. "As Brissot has since boasted,
it was the republican party which wanted war, and which provoked it by
insulting all the powers."

[46] Buchez et Roux, XII. 402 (session of the Jacobin Club, Nov. 28,
1791).

[47] Gustave III., King of Sweden, assassinated by Ankerstrom, says:
"I should like to know what Brissot will say."

[48] On Brissot's antecedents, cf. Edmond Biré, "La Légende des
Girondins." Personally, Brissot was honest, and remained poor. But he
had passed through a good deal of filth, and bore the marks of it. He
had lent himself to the diffusion of an obscene book, "Le Diable dans
un bénitier," and, in 1783, having received 13,355 francs to found a
Lyceum in London, not only did not found it, but was unable to return
the money.

[49] Moniteur, XI. 147.  Speech by Brissot, Jan. 17. Examples from
whom he borrows authority, Charles XII., Louis XIV., Admiral Blake,
Frederic II., etc.

[50] Moniteur.  X. 174.  "This Venetian government, which is nothing
but a farce . . .  Those petty German princes, whose insolence in the
last century despotism crushed out. . .  Geneva, that atom of a
republic. . .That bishop of Liège, whose yoke bows down a people that
ought to be free . . . I disdain to speak of other princes. . . That
King of Sweden, who has only twenty-five millions income, and who
spends two-thirds of it in poor pay for an army of generals and a
small number of discontented soldiers. . . As to that princess
(Catherine II.), whose dislike of the French constitution is well
known, and who is about as good looking as Elizabeth, she cannot
expect greater success than Elizabeth in the Dutch revolution."
(Brissot, in this last passage, tries to appear at once witty and well
read.)

[51] Letter of Roland to the king, June 10, 1792, and letter of the
executive council to the pope, Nov. 25, 1792. Letter of Madame Roland
to Brissot, Jan. 7, 1791. "Briefly, adieu. Cato's wife need not
gratify herself by complimenting  Brutus."

[52] Buchez et Roux, XII. 410 (meeting of the Jacobin club, Dec. 10,
1791). "A Louis XIV. declares war against Spain, because his
ambassador had been insulted by the Spanish ambassador. And we, who
are free, might hesitate for an instant!"

[53] Moniteur, X, 503 (session of Nov.29). The Assembly orders this
speech to be printed and distributed in the departments.

[54] Moniteur , X. 762 (session of Dec. 28).

[55] Moniteur, XI. 147, 149 (session of Jan.17); X. 759 (session of
Dec. 28). -- Already, on the 10th of December, he had declared at the
Jacobin club: "A people that has conquered its freedom, after ten
centuries of slavery, needs war. War is essential to it for its
consolidation." (Buchez et Roux, XII. 410). -- On the 17th of January,
in the tribune, he again repeats: "I have only one fear, and that is,
that we may not have war."

[56] Moniteur, XI. 119 (session of Jan.13). Speech by Gensonné, in the
name of the diplomatic committee, of which he is the reporter.

[57] Moniteur, XI. 158 (session of Jan. 18).  The Assembly orders the
printing of this speech.

[58] Moniteur, XI. 760 (session of Dec. 28).

[59] Moniteur, XI. 149 (session of Jan. 17). Speech by Brissot.

[60] Moniteur, XI. 178 (session of Jan.20). Fauchet proposes the
following decree: "All partial treaties actually existent are declared
void. The National Assembly substitutes in their place alliances with
the English, the Anglo-American, the Swiss, Polish, and Dutch nations,
as long as they will be free . . When other nations want our alliance,
they have only to conquer their freedom to have it. Meanwhile, this
will not prevent us from having relations with them, as with good
natured savages . . . Let us occupy the towns in the neighborhood
which bring our adversaries too near us . . . Mayence, Coblentz, and
Worms are sufficient" - Ibid.,, p.215 (session of Jan.25). One of the
members, supporting himself with the authority of Gélon, King of
Syracuse, proposes an additional article: "We declare that we will not
lay down our arms until we shall have established the freedom of all
peoples." These stupidities show the mental condition of the Jacobin
party.

[61] The decree is passed Jan. 25. The alliance between Prussia and
Austria takes place Feb. 7 (De Bourgoing, "Histoire diplomatique de
l'Europe pendant la Révolution Française," I. 457).

[62] Albert Sorel, "La Mission du Comte de Ségur à Berlin" (published
in the Temps, Oct. 15, 1878). Dispatch of M. de Ségur to M. Delessart,
Feb. 24, 1792. Count Schulemburg repeated to me that they had no
desire whatever to meddle with our constitution. But, said he with
singular animation, we must guard against  gangrene. Prussia is,
perhaps, the country which should fear it least; nevertheless, however
remote a gangrened member may be, it is better to it off than risk
one's life. How can you expect to secure tranquility, when thousands
of writers every day . . .  mayors, office-holders, insult kings, and
publish that the Christian religion has always supported despotism,
and that we shall be free only by destroying it, and that all princes
must be exterminated because they are all tyrants?"

[63]  A popular jig of these revolutionary times, danced in the
streets and on the public squares. -TR.

[64] Buchez et Roux, XXV. 203 (session of April 3, 1793). Speech by
Brissot. -Ibid., XX. 127.  "A tous les Républicains de France, par
Brissot," Oct. 24, 1792. "In declaring war, I had in view the
abolition of royalty." He refers, in this connection, to his speech of
Dec. 30, 1791, where he says, "I fear only one thing, and that is,
that we shall not be betrayed. We need treachery, for strong doses of
poison still exist in the heart of France, and heavy explosions are
necessary to clear it out."

[65]  Mallet du Pan, "Mémoires," I. 260 (April, 1792), and I. 439
(July, 1792).

[66]  Any revolutionary leader, from Lenin, through Stalin to Andropov
may confirm the advantage of acting in secret. (SR).

[67] "The French Revolution," I. 262 and following pages.

[68]  Buchez et Roux, XIII. 92-99 (January, 1792); (February). --
Coral, "Lettres inédites," 33. (One of these days, out of curiosity,
he walked along as far as the Rue des Lombards.) "Witness of such
crying injustice, and indignant at not being able to seize any of the
thieves that were running along the street, loaded with sugar and
coffee to sell again, I suddenly felt a feverish chill over all my
body." (The letter is not dated. The editors conjectures that the year
was 1791. I rather think that it was 1792.)

[69]  Moniteur,  XI. 45 and 46 (session of Jan. 5). The whole of
Isnard's speech should be read.

[70]  Buchez et Roux, XIII. 177. Letter by Pétion, Feb. 10.

[71] Buchez et Roux, XIII. 252. Letter of André Chénier, in the
Journal de Paris,  Feb. 26. - Schmidt, "Tableaux de la Révolution
Franaise," I. 76. Reply of the Directory of the Department of the
Seine to a circular by Roland, June 12, 1792. The contrast between the
two classes is here clearly defined. "We have not resorted to those
assemblages of men, most of them foreigners, for the opinion of the
people, among the enemies of labor and repose standing by themselves
and having no part in common interests, already inclined to vice
through idleness, and who prefer the risks of disorder to the
honorable resources of indigence. This class of men, always large in
large cities, is that whose noisy harangues fill the streets, Squares,
and public gardens of the capital, that which excites seditious
gatherings,  that which constantly fosters anarchy and contempt for
the laws -- that, in fine, whose clamor, far from reflecting public
Opinion, indicates the extreme effort made to prevent the expression
of public opinion. . . We have studied the opinion of the people of
Paris among those useful and laborious men warmly attached to the
State at all points of their existence through every object of their
affection, among owners of property, tillers of the soil, tradesmen
and workers . . . An inviolable attachment . . . to the constitution,
and mainly to national Sovereignty, to political equality and
constitutional monarchy, which are its most important characteristics
and their almost unanimous sentiment."

[72] Governor Morris, letter of June 20, 1792.

[73] "Souvenirs", by Pasquier (Etienne-Dennis, duc), chancelier de
France. in VI volumes, Librarie Plon,  Paris 1893. Vol. I. page 84.

[74] Malouet, II. 203. Every report that came in from the provinces
announced (to the King and Queen) a perceptible amelioration of public
opinion, which was becoming more and more perverted. That which
reached them was uninfluenced, whilst the opinions of clubs, taverns,
and street-corners gained enormous power, the time being at hand when
there was to be no other power."  The figures given above are by
Mallet du Pan, "Mémoires," II. 120.

[75] Moniteur, XII. 776 (session of June 28). Speech by M. Lamarque,
in a district court: "The incivism of the district courts in general
is well known."

[76] Bertand de Molleville, "Mémoires," VI. 22. -- After having
received the above instructions from the King, Bertrand calls on the
Queen, who makes the same remark: "Do you not think that fidelity to
one's oath is the only plan to pursue?"  "Yes, Madame, certainly."
"Very well; rest assured that we shall not waver. Come, M. Bertrand,
take courage; I hope that with firmness, patience, and what comes of
that, all is not yet lost."

[77] M. de Lavalette, "Mémoires," I. 100. --  Lavalette, in the
beginning of September, 1792, enlists as a volunteer and sets out,
along with two friends, carrying his knapsack on his back, dressed in
a short and wearing a forage cap.  The following shows the sentiments
of the peasantry: In a village of makers of wooden shoes, near
Vermanton (in the vicinity of Autun), "two days before our arrival a
bishop and two vicars, who were escaping in a carriage, were stopped
by them. They rummaged the vehicle and found some hundreds of francs,
and, to avoid returning these, they thought it best to massacre their
unfortunate owners. This sort of occupation seeming more lucrative to
these good people than the other one, they were on the look-out for
all wayfarers." The three volunteers are stopped by a little hump-
backed official and conducted to the municipality, a sort of market,
where their passports are read and their knapsacks are about to be
examined. "We were lost, when d'Aubonnes, who was very tall jumped on
the table. . . and began with a volley of imprecations and market
slang which took his hearers by surprise. Soon raising his style, he
launched out in patriotic terms, liberty, sovereignty of the people,
with such vehemence and in so loud a voice, as to suddenly effect a
great change and bring down thunders of applause.  But the crazy
fellow did not stop there. Ordering Leclerc de la Ronde imperiously to
mount on the table, he addressed the assemblage: "You shall see
whether we are not Paris republicans. Now, sir, say your republican
catechism - 'What is God? what are the People? and what is a King?'
His friend, with an air of contrition and in a nasal tone of voice,
twisting himself about like a harlequin, replies: 'God is matter, the
People are the poor, and the King is a lion, a tiger, an elephant who
tears to pieces, devours, and crushes the people down.'" -- "They
could no longer restrain themselves. The shouts, cries, and enthusiasm
were unbounded. They embraced the actors, hugged them, and bore them
away.  Each strove to carry us home with him, and we had to drink all
round"

[78] The reader will meet the French expression sans-culottes again
and again in Taine's or any other book about the French revolution.
The nobles wore a kind of breeches terminating under the knee while
tight long stockings, fastened to the trousers, exposed their calves.
The male leg was as important an adornment for the nobles as it was to
be for the women in the 20th Century. The poor, on the other hand,
wore crude long trousers, mostly without a crease, often without socks
or shoes, barefoot in the summer and wooden shoed in the winter. (SR).

[79] The song of  "Veillons au salut de l'empire" belongs to the end
of 1791. The "Marseillaise" was composed in April, 1792.

[80] Mercure de France, Nov. 23, 1791.

[81] Philippe de Ségur, "Mémoires," I. (at Fresnes, a village situated
about seven leagues from Paris, a few days after Sep. 2, 1792). "A
band of these demagogues pursued a large farmer of this place,
suspected of royalism and denounced as a monopoliser because he was
rich. These madmen had seized him, and, without any other form of
trial, were about to put an end to him, when my father ran up to them.
He addressed them, and so successfully as to change their rage into a
no less exaggerated enthusiasm for humanity. Animated by their new
transports, they obliged the poor farmer, still pale and trembling,
and whom they were just going to hang on its branches, to drink and
dance along with them around the tree of liberty."

[82] Lacretelle, "Dix ans d'Epreuves," 78. "The Girondists wanted to
fashion a Roman people out of the dregs of Romulus, and, what is
worse, out of the brigands of the 5th of October."

[83]  These pages must have made a strong impression upon Lenin when
he read them in the National Library in Paris around 1907. (SR).

[84] Lafayette, I. 442. "The Girondists sought in the war an
opportunity for attacking with advantage, the constitutionalists of
1791 and their institutions." -- Brissot (Address to my constituents).
"We sought in the war an opportunity to set traps for the king, to
expose his bad faith and his relationship with the emigrant princes."
- Moniteur, (session of April 3, 1793). Speech by Brissot: "'I had
told the Jacobins what my opinion was, and had proved to them that war
was the sole means of unveiling the perfidy of Louis XVI. The event
has justified my opinion." -- Buchez et Roux, VIII. 60, 216, 217. The
decree of the Legislative Assembly is dated Jan. 25, the first money
voted by a club for the making of pikes is on Jan. 31, and the first
article by Brissot, on the red cap, is on Feb. 6.

[85] Buchez et Roux, XIII.  217 (proposal of a woman, member of the
club of l'Evêché, Jan. 31, 1792). -- Articles in the Gazette
Universelle, Feb.11, and in the Patriote Français, Feb. 13. -
Moniteur,  XI. 576 (session of March 6). - Buchez et Roux, XV.
(session of June 10). Petition of 8,000 national guards in Paris:
"This faction which stirs up popular vengeance . . . which seeks to
put the caps of labor in conflict with the military casques, the pike
with the gun, the rustic's dress with the uniform."

[86] Mallet du Pan, "Mémoires," II 429 (note of July, 1792). - Mercure
de France,  March 10, 1792, article by Mallet du Pan.




CHAPTER IV.  The Departments.

I.

Provence in 1792. -- Early supremacy of the Jacobins in Marseilles. --
Composition of the party. -- The club and the municipality. --
Expulsion of the "Earnest" regiment.

Should you like to see the revolutionary tree when, for the first
time, it came fully into leaf, it is in the department of the Bouches-
du-Rhône you have to look.  Nowhere else had it been so precocious,
nowhere were local circumstances and native temperament so well
adapted to enhance its growth. -- " A blistering sky, an excessive
climate, an arid soil, rocks, . . . savage rivers, torrential or dry
or overburdened," blinding dust, nerves upset by steady northern
blasts or by the intermittent gusts of the sirocco.  A sensual race
choleric and impetuous, with no intellectual or moral ballast, in
which the mixture of Celt and Latin has destroyed the humane suavity
of the Celt and the serious earnestness of the Roman; "complete,
tough, powerful, and restless men,"[1] and yet gay, spontaneous,
eloquent, dupes of their own bombast, suddenly carried away by a flow
of words and superficial enthusiasm.  Their principal city numbering
120,000 souls, in which commercial and maritime risks foster
innovating and adventurous spirits; in which the sight of suddenly-
acquired fortunes expended on sensual enjoyments constantly undermines
all stability of Character; in which politics, like speculation, is a
lottery offering its prizes to audacity; besides all this, a free port
and a rendezvous for lawless nomads,  disreputable people, without
steady trade,[2] scoundrels, and blackguards, who, like uprooted,
decaying seaweed, drift from coast to coast around the entire circle
of the Mediterranean sea; a veritable sink filled with the dregs of
twenty corrupt and semi-barbarous civilizations, where the scum of
crime cast forth from the prisons of Genoa, Piedmont, Sicily, indeed,
of all Italy, of Spain, of the Archipelago, and of Barbary,3
accumulates and ferments.2 No wonder that, in such a time the reign of
the mob should be established there sooner than elsewhere.[3] -- After
many an explosion, this reign is inaugurated August 17, 1790, by the
removal of M. Lieutaud, a sort of bourgeois, moderate Lafayette, who
commands the National Guard.   Around him rally a majority of the
population, all men "honest or not, who have anything to lose."[4]
After he is driven out, then proscribed, then imprisoned, they resign
themselves, and Marseilles belongs to the low class, to 40,000
destitute and rogues led by the club.

The better to ensure their empire, the municipality, one month after
the expulsion of M. Lieutaud, declared every citizen "active" who had
any trade or profession[5]; the consequence is that vagabonds attend
the meetings of the sections in contempt of constitutional law.  The
consequence, was that property-owners and commercial men withdrew,
which was wise on their part, for the usual demagogic machinery is set
in motion without delay.  "Each section-assembly is composed of a
dozen factious spirits, members of the club, who drive out honest
people by displaying cudgels and bayonets.  The deliberations are
prepared beforehand at the club, in concert with the municipality, and
woe to him who refuses to adopt them at the meeting! They go so far as
to threaten citizens who wish to make any remarks with instant burial
in the cellars under the churches."[6] The argument proved
irresistible: "the majority of honest people are so frightened and so
timid" that not one of them dare attend these meetings, unless
protected by public force.  "More than 80,000 inhabitants do not sleep
peacefully," while all the political rights are vested in "five or six
hundred individuals," legally disqualified.  Behind them marches the
armed rabble, "the horde of brigands without a country,"[7] always
ready for plundering, murder, and hanging.  In front of them march the
local authorities, who, elected through their influence, carry on the
administration under their guidance.  Patrons and clients, members of
the club and its satellites, they form a league which plays the part
of a sovereign State, scarcely recognizing, even in words, the
authority of the central government.[8]  The decree by which the
National Assembly gives full power to the Commissioners to re-
establish order is denounced as plébécide; these conscientious and
cautious moderators are qualified as "dictators"; they are denounced
in circular letters to all the municipalities of the department, and
to all Jacobin clubs throughout the kingdom;[9] the club is somewhat
disposed to go to Aix to cut off their heads and send them in a trunk
to the president of the National Assembly, with a threat that the same
penalty awaits himself and all the deputies if they do not revoke
their recent decrees.  A few days after this, four sections draw up an
act before a notary, stating the measures they had taken towards
sending an army of 6,000 men from Marseilles to Aix, to get rid of the
three intruders.  The commissioners dare not enter Marseilles, where
"gibbets are ready for them, and a price set on their heads." It is as
much as they can do to rescue from the faction M. Lieutaud and his
friends, who, accused of lése-nation, confined without a shadow of
proof, treated like mad dogs, put in chains,[10] shut up in privies
and holes, and obliged to drink their own urine for lack of water,
impelled by despair to the brink of suicide, barely escape murder a
dozen times in the courtroom and in prison.[11]  Against the decree of
the National Assembly ordering their release, the municipality makes
reclamations, contrives delays, resists, and finally stirs up its
usual instruments.  Just as the prisoners are about to be released a
crowd of "armed persons without uniform or officer," constantly
increased "by vagabonds and foreigners," gathers on the heights
overlooking the Palais de Justice, and makes ready to fire on M.
Lieutaud.  Summoned to proclaim martial law, the municipality refuses,
declaring that "the general detestation of the accused is too
manifest"; it demands the return of the Swiss regiment to its
barracks, and that the prisoners remain where they are; the only thing
which it grants them is a secret permission to escape, as if they were
guilty; they, accordingly, steal away clandestinely and in
disguise.[12]  -- The Swiss regiment, however, which prevents the
magistrates from violating the law, must pay for its insolence, and,
as it is incorruptible, they decide to drive it out of the town.   For
four months the municipality multiplies against it every kind of
annoyance,[13] and, on the 16th of October, 1791, the Jacobins provoke
a row in the theater against its officers.  The same night, outside
the theater, four of these are attacked by armed bands; the post to
which they retreat is nearly taken by assault; they are led to a
prison for safety, and there they still remain five days afterwards,
"although their innocence is admitted." Meanwhile, to ensure "public
tranquility," the municipality has required the commander of the post
to immediately replace the Swiss Guard with National Guards on all the
military posts; the latter yields to force, while the useless
regiment, insulted and threatened, has nothing to do but to pack
off.[14] This being done, the new municipality, still more Jacobin
than the old one,[15] separates Marseilles from France, erects the
city into a marauding republican government, gets up expeditions,
levies contributions, forms alliances, and undertakes an armed
conquest of the department.



II.  The expedition to Aix.

The town of Marseilles send an expedition to Aix. --  The regiment is
disarmed. -- The Directory driven out. -- Pressure on the new
Directory.

The first thing is to lay its hand on the district capital, Aix, where
the Swiss regiment is stationed in garrison and where the superior
authorities are installed.  This operation is the more necessary
inasmuch as the Directory of the department loudly commends the
loyalty of the Swiss Guard and takes occasion to remind the Marseilles
municipality of the respect due to the law.  Such remonstrance is an
insult, and the municipality, in a haughty tone, calls upon the
Directory to avow or disavow its letter; "if you did not write it, it
is a foul report which it is our duty to examine into, and if you did,
it is a declaration of war made by you against Marseilles."[16]  The
Directory, in polite terms and with great circumspection, affirms both
its right and its utterance, and remarks that "the prorata list of
taxes of Marseilles for 1791 is not yet reported;" that the
municipality is much more concerned with saving the State than with
paying its contribution and, in short, it maintains its censure. -- If
it will not bend it must break, and on the 4th of February, 1792, the
municipality sends Barbaroux, its secretary, to Paris, that he may
mitigate the outrages they are preparing.  During the night of the 25-
26, the drums beat the general alarm, and three or four thousand men
gather and march to Aix with six pieces of cannon.  As a precaution
they pretend to have no leaders, no captains or lieutenants or even
corporals; to quote them, all are equal, all volunteers, each being
summoned by the other; in this fashion, as all are responsible, no one
is.[17]  They reach Aix at eleven o'clock in the forenoon, find a gate
open through the connivance of those in league with them among the
populace of the town and its suburbs, and summon the municipality to
surrender the sentinels.  In the mean time their emissaries have
announced in the neighboring villages that the town was menaced by the
Swiss regiment; consequently four hundred men from Aubagne arrive in
haste, while from hour to hour the National Guards from the
surrounding villages likewise rush in.  The streets are full of armed
men; shouts arise and the tumult increases; the municipal body, in the
universal panic, loses its wits.  This body is afraid of a nocturnal
fight "between troops of the line, citizens, National Guards and armed
strangers, no one being able to recognize one another or know who is
an enemy."  It sends back a detachment of three hundred and fifty
Swiss Guards, which the Directory had ordered to its support, and
consigns the regiment to its quarters.  -- At this the Directory takes
to flight.  Military sentinels of all kinds are disarmed while the
Marseilles throng, turning its advantages to account, announces to the
municipality at two o'clock in the morning that, "allow it or not " it
is going to attack the barracks immediately; in fact, cannon are
planted, a few shots are fired, a sentinel killed, and the hemmed-in
regiment is compelled to evacuate the town, the men without their guns
and the officers without their swords.  Their arms are stolen, the
people seize the suspected, the street-lamp is hauled down and the
noose is made ready.  Cayol, the flower-girl, is hung.  The
municipality, with great difficulty, saves one man who is already
lifted by the rope two feet from the ground, and obtains for three
others "a temporary refuge" in prison.



Henceforth there is no authority at the department headquarters, or
rather it has changed hands.  Another Directory, more pliable, is
installed in the place of the fugitive Directory.  Of the thirty-six
administrators who form the Council only twelve are present at the
election.  Of the nine elected only six consent to sit, while often
only three are found at its sessions, which three, to recruit their
colleagues, are obliged to pay them.[18]  Hence, notwithstanding their
position is the best in the department, they are worse treated and
more unfortunate than their servants outside.  The delegates of the
club, with the municipal officers of Marseilles seated alongside of
them, oblige them either to keep silent, or to utter what they dictate
to them.[19] "Our arms are tied," writes one of them, "we are wholly
under the yoke" of these intruders.  "We have twice in succession seen
more than three hundred men, many of them with guns and pistols, enter
the hall and threaten us with death if we refused them what they
asked.  We have seen infuriate motionnaires, nearly all belonging to
Avignon, mount the desks of the Directory, harangue their comrades and
excite them to rioting and crime.  "You must decide between life or
death," they exclaimed to us, "you have only a quarter of an hour to
choose." "National guards have offered their sabers through the
windows, left open on account of the extreme heat, to those around us
and made signs to them to cut our throats." -- Thus fashioned, reduced
and drilled, the Directory is simply an instrument in the hands of the
Marseilles demagogues.  Camoïn, Bertin and Rebecqui, the worst
agitators and usurpers, rule there without control.  Rebecqui and
Bertin, appointed delegates in connection with matters in Arles, have
themselves empowered to call for defensive troops; they immediately
demand them for attack, to which the Directory vainly remonstrates;
they declare to it that "not being under its inspection, it has no
authority over them; being independent of it, they have no orders to
receive from it nor to render to it any account of their conduct." So
much the worse for the Directory on attempting to revoke their powers.
Bertin informs its vice-president that, if it dares do this he will
cut off his head.  They reply to the Minister's observations with the
utmost insolence.[20]  They glory in the boldness of the stroke and
prepare another, their march on Aix being only the first halt in the
long-meditated campaign which involves the possession of Arles.



III.

The Constitutionalists of Arles. -- The Marseilles expedition against
Arles. -- Excesses committed by them in the town and its vicinity. --
Invasion of "Apt," the club and its volunteers.

No city, indeed, is more odious to them. -- For two years, led or
pushed on by its mayor, M. d'Antonelle, it has marched along with them
or been dragged along in their wake.  D'Antonelle, an ultra-
revolutionary, repeatedly visited and personally encouraged the
bandits of Avignon.  To supply them with cannon and ammunition he
stripped the Tour St. Louis of its artillery, at the risk of
abandoning the mouths of the Rhone to the Barbary pirates.[21] In
concert with his allies of the Comtat, the Marseilles club, and his
henchmen from the neighboring boroughs, he rules in Arles "by terror."
Three hundred men recruited in the vicinity of the Mint, artisans or
sailors with strong arms and rough hands, serve him as satellites.  On
the 6th of June 1791, they drive away, on their own authority, the
unsworn priests, who had taken refuge in the town.[22]   -- At this,
however, the "property-owners and decent people," much more numerous
and for a long time highly indignant, raise their heads; twelve
hundred of them assemble in the church of Saint-Honorat, swore to
maintain the constitution and public order,"[23] and then moved to the
(Jacobin) club, where, in their quality of national guards and active
citizens and in conformity with its by-laws, they were admitted en
masse.  At the same time, acting in concert with the municipality,
they reorganize the National Guard and form new companies, the effect
of which is to put an end to the Mint gang, thus depriving the faction
of all its strength.  Thenceforth, without violence or illegal acts,
the majority of the club, as well as of the National Guard, consists
of constitutional monarchists, the elections of November, 1791, giving
to the partisans of order nearly all the administrative offices of the
commune and of the district.  M. Loys, a physician and a man of
energy, is elected mayor in the place of M. d'Antonelle; he is known
as able to suppress a riot, "holding martial law in one hand, and his
saber in the other." --  This is too much;  so Marseilles feel
compelled to bring Arles under control "to atone for the disgrace of
having founded it."[24] In this land of ancient cities political
hostility is embittered with old municipal grudges, similar to those
of Thebes against Platœe, of Rome against Veii, of Florence against
Pisa.  The Guelphs of Marseilles brooded over the one idea of crushing
the Ghibellins of Arles. -- Already, in the electoral assembly of
November, 1791, M. d'Antonelle, the president, had invited the
communes of the department to take up arms against this anti-jacobin
city.[25]  Six hundred Marseilles volunteers set out on the instant,
install themselves at Salon, seize the syndic-attorney of the hostile
district, and refuse to give him up, this being an advance-guard of
4,000 men promised by the forty or fifty clubs of the party.[26] To
arrest their operations requires the orders of the three
commissioners, resolutions passed by the Directory still intact, royal
proclamations, a decree of the Constituent Assembly, the firmness of
the still loyal troops and the firmer stand taken by the Arlesians
who, putting down an insurrection of the Mint band, had repaired their
ramparts, cut away their bridges and mounted guard with their guns
loaded.[27] But it is only a postponement.  Now that the commissioners
have gone, and the king's authority a phantom, now that the last loyal
regiment is disarmed, the terrified Directory recast and obeying like
a servant, with the Legislative Assembly allowing everywhere the
oppression of the Constitutionalists by the Jacobins, a fresh Jacobin
expedition may be started against the Constitutionalists with
impunity. Accordingly, on the 23rd of March, 1792, the Marseilles army
of 4,500 men sets out on its march with nineteen pieces of cannon.

In vain the commissioners of the neighboring departments, sent by the
Minister, represent to them that Arles submits, that she has laid down
her arms, and that the town is now garrisoned with troops of the line;
-- the Marseilles army requires the withdrawal of this garrison. -- In
vain the garrison departs. Rebecqui and his acolytes reply that
"nothing will divert them from their enterprise; they cannot defer to
anybody's decision but their own in relation to any precaution tending
to ensure the safety of the southern departments." -- In vain the
Minister renews his injunctions and counter-orders.  The Directory
replies with a flagrant falsehood, stating that it is ignorant of the
affair and refuses to give the government any assistance. -- In vain
M. de Wittgenstein, commander-in-chief in the south, offers his
services to the Directory to repel the invaders.  The Directory
forbids him to take his troops into the territory of the
department.[28] -- Meanwhile, on the 29th of March, the Marseilles
army effects a breach with its cannon in the walls of defenseless
Arles; its fortifications are demolished and a tax of 1,400,000 francs
is levied on the owners of property.  In contempt of the National
Assembly's decree the Mint bandits, the longshoremen, the whole of the
lowest class again take up their arms and lord it over the disarmed
population. Although "the King's commissioner and most of the judges
have fled, jury examinations are instituted against absentees," the
juries consisting of the members of the Mint band.[29] The conquerors
imprison, smite and slaughter as they please. Countless peaceable
individuals are struck down and mauled, dragged to prison and many of
them are mortally wounded. An old soldier, eighty years of age,
retired to his country home three months earlier, dies after twenty
days' confinement in a dungeon, from a blow received in the stomach by
a rifle butt; women are flogged. "All citizens that with an interest
in law and order," nearly five thousand families, have emigrated;
their houses in town and in the country are pillaged, while in the
surrounding boroughs, along the road leading from Arles to Marseilles,
the villains forming the hard core of the Marseilles army, rove about
and gorge themselves as in a vanquished country.[30]



They eat and drink voraciously, force the closets, carry off linen and
food, steal horses and valuables, smash the furniture, tear up books,
and burn papers.[31] All this is only the appropriate punishment of
the aristocrats.  Moreover, it is no more than right that patriots
should be indemnified for their toil, and a few blows too many are not
out of place in securing the rule of the right party. -- For example,
on the false report of order being disturbed at Château-Renard, Bertin
and Rebecqui send off a detachment of men, while the municipal body in
uniform, followed by the National Guard, with music and flags, comes
forth to meet and salute it. Without uttering a word of warning, the
Marseilles troop falls upon the cortège, strikes down the flags,
disarms the National Guard, tears the epaulettes off the officers'
shoulders, drags the mayor to the ground by his scarf, pursues the
counselors, sword in hand, puts the mayor and syndic-attorney in
arrest, and, during the night, sacks four dwellings, the whole under
the direction of three Jacobins of the place under indictment for
recent crimes or misdemeanors.  Henceforth at Château-Renard they will
look twice before subjecting patriots to indictment.[32] -- At Vélaux
"the country house of the late seignior is sacked, and everything is
carried away, even to the tiles and window-glass." A troop of two
hundred men "overrun the village, levy contributions, and put all
citizens who are well-off under bonds for considerable sums." Camoïn,
the Marseille chief, one of the new department administrators, who is
in the neighborhood, lays his hand on everything that is fit to be
taken, and, a few days after this, 30,000 francs are found in his
carpet-bag.-Taught by the example others follow and the commotion
spreads.  In every borough or petty town the club profits by these
acts to satiate its ambition its greed, and its hatred. That of Apt
appeals to its neighbors, whereupon 1,500 National Guards of Gordes,
St. Saturnin, Gouls and Lacoste, with a thousand women and children
armed with clubs and scythes, arrive one morning before the town.  On
being asked by whose orders they come in this fashion, they reply, "by
the orders which their patriotism has given them." --  "The fanatics,"
or partisans of the sworn priests, "are the cause of their journey":
they therefore "want lodgings at the expense of the fanatics only."
The three day's occupation results for the latter and for the town in
a cost of 20,000 livres.[33]  They begin by breaking everything in the
church of the Récollets, and wall up its doors. They then expel
unsworn ecclesiastics from the town, and disarm their partisans. The
club of Apt, which is the sole authority, remains in session three
days: "the municipal bodies in the vicinity appear before it,
apologize for themselves, protest their civism, and ask as a favor
that no detachment be sent to their places.  Individuals are sent for
to be interrogated"; several are proscribed, among whom are
administrators, members of the court, and the syndic-attorney. A
number of citizens have fled; -- the town is purged, while the same
purging is pursued in numbers of places in and out of the
district.[34] It is, indeed, attractive business.  It empties the
purses of the ill-disposed, and fills the stomachs of patriots; it is
agreeable to be well entertained, and especially at the expense of
one's adversaries; the Jacobin is quite content to save the country
through a round of feastings.  Moreover, he has the satisfaction of
playing king among his neighbors, and not only do they feed him for
doing them this service, but, again, they pay him for it.[35] - All
this is enlivening, and the expedition, which is a "sabbath," ends in
a carnival.  Of the two Marseilles divisions, one, led back to Aix,
sets down to "a grand patriotic feast," and then dances fandangoes, of
which "the principal one is led off by the mayor and commandant";[36]
the other makes its entry into Avignon the same day, with still
greater pomp and jollity.



IV.

The Jacobins of Avignon.-- How they obtain recruits. - -Their
robberies in the Comtat. -- The Avignon municipality in flight or in
prison. -- Murder of Lécuyer and the Glacière massacre. --  Entry of
the murderers, supported by their Marseilles allies. --  Jacobin
dictatorship in Vaucluse and the Buches-du-Rhône.

Nowhere else in France was there another nest of brigands like it: not
that a great misery might have produced a more savage uprising; on the
contrary, the Comtat, before the Revolution, was a land of plenty.
There was no taxation by the Pope; the taxes were very light, and were
expended on the spot. "For one or two pennies, one here could have
meat, bread, and wine."[37]  But, under the mild and corrupt
administration of the Italian legates, the country had become "the
safe asylum of all the rogues in France, Italy, and Genoa, who by
means of a trifling sum paid to the Pope's agents, obtained protection
and immunity."  Smugglers and receivers of stolen goods abounded here
in order to break through the lines of the French customs.  "Bands of
robbers and assassins were formed, which the vigorous measures of the
parliaments of Aix and Grenoble could not wholly extirpate.  Idlers,
libertines, professional gamblers,"[38] kept-cicisbeos, schemers,
parasites, and adventurers, mingle with men with branded shoulders,
the veterans "of vice and crime, "the scapegraces of the Toulon and
Marseilles galleys." Ferocity here is hidden in debauchery, like a
serpent hidden in its own slime, here all that is required is some
chance event and this bad place will be transformed into a death trap.

The Jacobin leaders, Tournal, Rovère, the two Duprats, the two
Mainvielles, and Lécuyer, readily obtain recruits in this sink. - They
begin, aided by the rabble of the town and of its suburbs, peasants
enemies of the octroi, vagabonds opposed to order of any kind, porters
and watermen armed with scythes, turnspits and clubs, by exciting
seven or eight riots. Then they drive off the legate, force the
Councils to resign, hang the chiefs of the National Guard and of the
conservative party,[39] and take possession of the municipal offices.
--After this their band increases to the dimensions of an army, which,
with license for its countersign and pillage for its pay, is the same
as that of Tilly and Wallenstein, "a veritable roving Sodom, at which
the ancient city would have stood aghast." Out of 3,000 men, only 200
belong in Avignon; the rest are composed of French deserters,
smugglers, fugitives from justice, vagrant foreigners, marauders and
criminals, who, scenting a prey, come from afar, and even from
Paris;[40] along with them march the women belonging to them, still
more base and bloodthirsty.  In order to make it perfectly plain that
with them murder and robbery are the order of the day, they massacred
their first general, Patrix, guilty of having released a prisoner, and
elected in his place an old highway tramp named Jourdan, condemned to
death by the court at Valence, but who had escaped on the eve of his
execution, and who bore the nickname of Coupe-tête, because he is said
to have cut off the heads at Versailles of two of the King's
guards.[41] -- Under such a commander the troop increases until it
forms a body of five or six thousand men, which stops people in the
streets and forcibly enrolls them; they are called Mandrins, which is
severe for Mandrin,[42] because their war is not merely on public
persons and property, as his was, but on the possessions, the
proprieties, and the lives of private individuals.  One detachment
alone, at one time, extorts in Cavaillon 25,000 francs, in Baume
12,000, in Aubignon 15,000, in Pioline 4,800, while Caumont is taxed
2,000 francs a week. At Sarrians, where the mayor gives them the keys,
they pillage houses from top to bottom, carry off their plunder in
carts, set fire, violate and slay with all the refinements of torture
of so many Hurons. An old lady of eighty, and a paralytic, is shot at
arms length, and left weltering in her blood in the midst of the
flames. A child five years of age is cut in two, its mother
decapitated, and its sister mutilated; they cut off the ears of the
curé, set them on his brow like a cockade, and then cut his throat,
along with that of a pig, and tear out the two hearts and dance around
them.[43]  After this, for fifty days around Carpentras, to which they
lay siege in vain, the unprovoked, cruel instincts of the chauffeurs
manifested at a later date, the ancient cannibalistic desires which
sometimes reappear in convicts, and the perverted and over-strained
sensuality found in maniacs, have full play.

On beholding the monster it has nourished, Avignon, in alarm, utters
cries of distress.[44]  But the brute, which feels its strength, turns
against its former abettors, shows its teeth, and exacts its daily
food.  Ruined or not, Avignon must furnish its quota. "In the
electoral assembly, Mainvielle the younger, elected elector, although
he is only twenty-two, draws two pistols from his belt and struts
around with a threatening air."[45]  Duprat, the president, the better
to master his colleagues, proposes to them to leave Avignon and go to
Sorgues, which they refuse to do; upon this he orders cannon to be
brought, promises to pay those who will accompany him, drags along the
timid, and denounces the rest before an upper national court, of which
he himself has designated the members. Twenty of the electors thus
denounced are condemned and proscribed; Duprat threatens to enter by
force and have them executed on the spot, and, under his leadership,
the army of Mandrins advances against Avignon. -- Its progress is
arrested, and, for two months, restrained by the two mediating
commissioners for France; they reduce its numbers, and it is on the
point of being disbanded, when the brute again boldly seizes its prey,
about to make its escape.  On the 21st of August, Jourdan, with his
herd of miscreants, obtains possession of the palace.  The municipal
body is driven out, the mayor escapes in disguise, Tissot, the
secretary, is cut down, four municipal officers and forty other
persons are thrown into prison, while a number of houses belonging to
the fugitives and to priests are pillaged, and thus supply the bandits
with their first financial returns.[46] -- Then begins the great
fiscal operation which is going to fill their pockets.  Five front
men, chosen by Duprat and his associates, compose, with Lécuyer as
secretary, a provisional municipal body, which, taxing the town
300,000 francs and suppressing the convents, offers the spoils of the
churches for sale. The bells are taken down, and the hammers of the
workmen engaged in breaking them to pieces are heard all day long. A
strong-box full of plate, diamonds, and gold crosses, left with the
director of the Mont-de-Piété, on deposit, is taken and carried off to
the commune; a report is spread that the valuables pawned by the poor
had been stolen by the municipality, and that those "robbers had
already sent away eighteen trunks full of them."  Upon this the women,
exasperated at the bare walls of the churches, together with the
laborers in want of work or bread, all the common class, become
furious, assemble of their own accord in the church of the Cordeliers,
summon Lécuyer to appear before them, drag him from the pulpit and
massacre him.[47]

This time there seems to be an end of the brigand party, for the
entire town, the populace and the better class, are against them,
while the peasants in the country shoot them down wherever they come
across them. -- Terror, however, supplies the place of numbers, and,
with the 350 hired killers bravos still left to them, the extreme
Jacobins undertake to overcome a city of 30,000 souls. Mainvielle the
elder, dragging along two cannon, arrives with a patrol, fires at
random into the already semi-abandoned church, and kills two men.
Duprat assembles about thirty of the towns-people, imprisoned by him
on the 31st of August, and, in addition to these, about forty artisans
belonging to the Catholic brotherhoods, porters, bakers, coopers, and
day-laborers, two peasants, a beggar, a few women seized haphazard and
on vague denunciations, one of them, "because she spoke ill of Madame
Mainvielle." Jourdan supplies the executioners; the apothecary Mende,
brother-in-law of Duprat, plies them with liquor, while a clerk of
Tournal, the newsman, bids them "kill all, so that there shall be no
witnesses left." Whereupon, at the reiterated orders of Mainvielle,
Tournal, Duprat, and Jourdan, with a complications of hilarious
lewdness,[48] the massacre develops itself on the 16th of October and
following days, during sixty-six hours, the victims being a couple of
priests, three children, an old man of eighty, thirteen women, two of
whom are pregnant, in all, sixty-one persons, with their throats slit
or knocked out and then cast one on top of each other into the
Glacière hole, a mother on the body of her infant, a son on the body
of his father, all finished off with rocks, the hole being filled up
with stones and covered over with quicklime on account of the
smell.[49]  In the meantime about a hundred more, killed in the
streets, are pitched into the Sorgues canal; five hundred families
make their escape. The ousted bandits return in a body, while the
assassins who are at the head of them, enthroned by murder, organize
for the benefit of their new band a legal system of brigandage,
against which nobody defends himself.[50]

These are the friends of the Jacobins of Arles and Marseilles, the
respectable men whom M. d'Antonelle has come to address in the
cathedral at Avignon.[51]  These are the pure patriots, who, with
their hands in the till and their feet in gore, caught in the act by a
French army, the mask torn off through a scrupulous investigation,
universally condemned by the emancipated electors, also by the
deliberate verdict of the new mediating commissioners,[52] are
included in the amnesty proclaimed by the Legislative Assembly a month
before their last crime. - But the sovereigns of the Bouches-du-Rhône
do not regard the release of their friends and allies as a pardon:
something more than pardon and forgetfulness must be awarded to the
murderers of the Glacière.  On the 29th of April, 1792, Rebecqui and
Bertin, the vanquishers of Arles, enter Avignon[53] along with a
cortége, at the head of which are from thirty to forty of the
principal murderers whom the Legislative Assembly itself had ordered
to be recommitted to prison, Duprat, Mainvielle, Toumal, Mende, then
Jourdan in the uniform of a commanding general crowned with laurel and
seated on a white horse, and, lastly, the dames Duprat, Mainvielle and
Tournal, in dashing style, standing on a sort of triumphal chariot;
during the procession the cry is heard, "The Glacière will be full
this time! " -- On their approach the public functionaries fly; twelve
hundred persons abandon the town.  Forthwith each terrorist, under the
protection of the Marseilles bayonets, resumes his office, like a man
at the head of his household. Raphel, the former judge, along with his
clerk, both with warrants of arrest against them, publicly officiate,
while the relatives of the poor victims slain on the 16th of October,
and the witnesses that appeared on the trial, are threatened in the
streets; one of them is killed, and Jourdan, king of the department
for an entire year, begins over again on a grand scale, at the head of
the National Guard, and afterwards of the police body, the same
performance which, on a small scale, he pursued under the ancient
régime, when, with a dozen "armed and mounted" brigands, he traversed
the highways, forced open lonely houses at night, and, in one château
alone, stole 24,000 francs.



V.

The other departments. --  Uniform process of the Jacobin conquest. --
Preconceived formation of a Jacobin State.

The Jacobin conquest takes place like this: already in during April,
1792, through acts of violence almost equal to those we have just
described, it spreads over more than twenty departments and, to a
smaller degree, over the other sixty.[54]  The composition of the
parties is the same everywhere. On one side are the irresponsible of
all conditions,

 "squanderers who, having consumed their own inheritance, cannot
tolerate that of another, men without property to whom disorder is a
door open to wealth and public office, the envious, the ungrateful
whose obligations to their benefactors the revolution cancels, the
hot-headed, all those enthusiastic innovators who preach reason with a
dagger in their hand, the poor, the brutal and the wretched of the
lower class who, possessed by one leading anarchical idea, one example
of immunity, with the law dumb and the sword in the scabbard, are
stimulated to dare all things

On the other side are the steady-going, peaceable class, minding their
own business, upper and lower middle class in mind and spirit,

 "weakened by being used to security and wealth, surprised at any
unforeseen disturbance and trying to find their way, isolated from
each other by diversity of interests, opposing only tact and caution
to persevering audacity in defiance of legitimate means, unable either
to make up their mind or to remain inactive, perplexed over sacrifices
just at the time when the enemy is going to render it impossible to
make any in the future, in a word, bringing weakness and egoism to
bear against the liberated passions, great poverty and hardened
immorality."[55]

The issue of the conflict is everywhere the same. In each town or
canton an aggressive squad of unscrupulous fanatics and resolute
adventurers imposes its rule over a sheep-like majority which,
accustomed to the regularity of an old civilization, dares neither
disturb order for the sake of putting and end to disorder, or get
together a mob to put down another mob. Everywhere the Jacobin
principle is the same.

 "Your system," says one of the department Directories to them,[56]
"is to act imperturbably on all occasions, even after a constitution
is established, and the limitations to power are fixed, as if the
empire would always be in a state of insurrection, as if you were
granted a dictatorship essential for the city's salvation, as if you
were given such full power in the name of public safety."

Everywhere are Jacobin tactics the same. At the outset they assume to
have a monopoly of patriotism and, through the brutal destruction of
other associations, they are the only visible organ of public opinion.
Their voice, accordingly, seems to be the voice of the people; their
control is established on that of the legal authorities; they have
taken the lead through persistent and irresistible misdeeds; their
crimes are consecrated by exemption from punishment.

"Among officials and agents, good or bad, constituted or not
constituted, that alone governs which is inviolable. Now the club, for
a long time, has been too much accustomed to domineering, to annoying,
to persecuting, to wreaking vengeance, for any local administration to
regard it in any other light than as inviolable."[57]

They accordingly govern and their indirect influence is promptly
transformed into direct authority. -- Voting alone, or almost alone,
in the primary meetings, which are deserted or under constraint, the
Jacobins easily choose the municipal body and the officers of the
National Guard.[58] After this, through the mayor, who is their tool
or their accomplice, they have the legal right to launch or arrest the
entire armed force and they avail themselves of it. -- Two obstacles
still stand in their way. One the one hand, however conciliatory or
timid the Directory of the district or department may be, elected as
it is by electors of the second degree, it usually contains a fair
proportion of well-informed men, comfortably off, interested in
keeping order, and less inclined than the municipality to put up with
gross violations of the law. Consequently the Jacobins denounce it to
the National Assembly as an unpatriotic and anti-revolutionary center
of "bourgeois aristocracy." Sometimes, as at Brest,[59] they
shamefully disobey orders which are perfectly legal and proper, often
repeated and strictly formal; afterward, still more shamefully, they
demand of the Minister if, "placed in the cruel alternative of giving
offense to the hierarchy of powers, or of leaving the commonwealth in
danger, they ought to hesitate."  Sometimes, as at Arras, they impose
themselves illegally on the Directory in session and browbeat it so
insolently as to make it a point of honor with the latter to solicit
its own suspension.[60] Sometimes, as a Figeac, they summon an
administrator to their bar, keep him standing three-quarters of an
hour, seize his papers and oblige him, for fear of something worse, to
leave the town.[61]  Sometimes, as at Auch, they invade the
Directory's chambers, seize the administrators by the throat, pound
them with their fists and clubs, drag the president by the hair, and,
after a good deal of trouble, grant him his life.[62] -- On the other
hand, the gendarmerie and the troops brought for the suppression of
riots, are always in the way of those who stir up the rioters.
Consequently, they expel, corrupt and, especially purify the
gendarmerie together with the troops. At Cahors they drive out a
sergeant of the gendarmerie, "alleging that he keeps company with none
but aristocrats."[63] At Toulouse, without mentioning the lieutenant-
colonel, whose life they threaten by anonymous letters and oblige to
leave the town, they transfer the whole corps to another district
under the pretense that "its principles are adverse to the
Constitution."[64] At Auch, and at Rennes, through the insubordination
which they provoke among the men, they exhort resignations from their
officers. At Perpignan, by means of a riot which they foment, they
seize, beat and drag to prison, the commandant and staff whom they
accuse "of wanting to bombard the town with five pounds of
powder."[65]- Meanwhile, through the jacquerie, which they let loose
from the Dordogne to Aveyron, from Cantal to the Pyrenees and the Var,
under the pretence of punishing the relatives of émigrés and the
abettors of unsworn priests, they create an army of their own made up
of robbers and the destitute who, in anticipation of the exploits of
the coming revolutionary army, freely kill, burn, pillage, hold to
ransom and prey at large on the defenseless flock of proprietors of
every class and degree.[66]

In this operation each club has its neighbors for allies, offering to
them or receiving from them offers of men and money. That of Caen
tenders its assistance to the Bayeux association for expelling unsworn
priests, and to help the patriots of the place  "to rid themselves of
the tyranny of their administrators."[67] That of Besançon declares
the three administrative bodies of Strasbourg "unworthy of the
confidence with which they have been honored," and openly enters into
a league with all the clubs of the Upper and Lower Rhine, to set free
a Jacobin arrested as a fomenter of insurrections.[68] Those of the
Puy-de-Dôme and neighboring departments depute to and establish at
Clermont a central club of direction and propaganda.[69] Those of the
Bouches-du-Rhône treat with the commissioners of the departments of
Drôme, Gard, and Hérault, to watch the Spanish frontier, and send
delegates of their own to see the state of the fortifications of
Figuières.[70] -- There is no recourse to the criminal tribunals. In
forty departments, these are not yet installed, in the forty-three
others, they are cowed, silent, or lack money and men to enforce their
decisions.[71]

Such is the foundation of the Jacobin State, a confederation of twelve
hundred oligarchies, which maneuver their proletariat clients in
obedience to the word of command dispatched from Paris. It is a
complete, organized, active State, with its central government, its
active force, its official journal, its regular correspondence, its
declared policy, its established authority, and its representative and
local agents; the latter are actual administrators alongside of
administrations which are abolished, or athwart administrations which
are brought under subjection. --  In vain do the latest ministers,
good clerks and honest men, try to fulfill their duties; their
injunctions and remonstrances are only so much waste paper.[72] They
resign in despair, declaring that,

 "in this overthrow of all order, . . .  in the present weakness of
the public forces, and in the degradation of the constituted
authorities, . . . it is impossible for them to maintain the life and
energy of the vast body, the members of which are paralyzed." -

 When the roots of a tree are laid bare, it is easy to cut it down;
now that the Jacobins have severed them, a push on the trunk suffices
to bring the tree to the ground.
______________________________________________________________________

NOTES:



[1] De Loménie, "Les Mirabeaus," I. 11. (Letter of the Marquis de
Mirabeau).

[2] " Archives Nationales," F7, 7171, No. 7915. Report on the
situation in Marseilles, by Miollis, commissioner of the Directory in
the department, year V. Nivôse 15. "A good many strangers from France
and Italy are attracted there by the lust of gain, a love of pleasure,
the want of work, a desire to escape from the effects of ill conduct .
. . Individuals of both sexes and of every age, with no ties of
country or kindred, with no profession, no opinions, pressed by daily
necessities that are multiplied by debauched habit, seeking to indulge
these without too much effort, the means for this being formerly found
in the many manual operations of commerce, gone astray during the
Revolution and, subsequently, scared of the dominant party, accustomed
unfortunately at that time to receiving pay for taking part in
political strife, and now reduced to living on almost gratuitous
distributions of food, to dealing in small wares, to the menial
occupations which chance rarely presents -- in short, to swindling.
Such is what the observer finds in that portion of the population of
Marseilles most in sight; eager to profit by whatever occurs, easily
won over, active through its necessities, flocking everywhere, and
appearing very numerous . . . The patriot Escalon had twenty rations a
day; Féri, the journalist, had six; etc. .  . Civil officers and
district commissioners still belong, for the most part, to that class
of men which the Revolution had accustomed to live without work, to
making those who shared their principles the beneficiaries of the
nation's favors, and finally, to receiving contributions from gambling
halls and brothels. These commissioners give notice to their protégés,
even the crooks, when warrants against them are to be enforced."

[3] Blanc-Gilly, "Réveil d'alarme d'un député de Marseilles" (cited in
the Memoirs" of Barbaroux, 40, 41). Blanc-Gilly must have been
acquainted with these characters, inasmuch as he made use of them in
the August riot, 1789, and for which he was indicted. - Cf. Fabre
"Histoire de Marseilles," II. 422.

[4] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3197. Correspondence of Messrs.
Debourge, Gay, and Lafitte, commissioners sent to Provence to restore
order in accordance with an act of the National Assembly. Letter of
May 10, 1791. Letter of May 10. 1791, and passim.

[5] Mayor Martin, says Juste, was a sort of Pétion, weak and vain. --
Barbaroux, clerk of the municipality, is the principal opponent of M.
Lieutaud. - The municipal decree referred to is dated Sept. 10, 1790.

[6] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3197. Letters of three commissioners,
April 13, 17, 18, and May 10, 1791.

[7] Blanc-Gilly, "Réveil d'Alarme." Ibid., "Every time that the
national guard marched outside the city walls, the horde of homeless
brigands never failed to close up in their rear and carry devastation
wherever they went."

[8] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3197. Correspondence of the three
commissioners, letter of May 10,1791. "The municipality of Marseilles
obeys only the decrees it pleases, and for eighteen months has not
paid a cent into the city treasury.-Proclamation of April 13. -
Letters of April 13 and 18.

[9] "Archives Nationales," letter of the municipal officers of
Marseilles to the minister, June 11, 1791. -- They demand the recall
of the three commissioners, one of their arguments being as follows:
"In China, every mandarin against whom public opinion is excited is
dismissed  from his place; he is regarded as an ignorant instructor,
who is incapable of gaining the love of children for their parent."

[10] "Archives Nationales," letter of the commissioners, May 25, 1791.
"It is evident, on recording the proceedings at Aix and Marseilles,
that only the accusers and the judges were guilty." -- Petition of the
prisoners, Feb. 1. "The municipality, in despair of our innocence and
not knowing how to justify its conduct, is trying to buy up witnesses.
They say openly that it is better to sacrifice one innocent man than
disgrace a whole body. Such ale the speeches of the sieur Rebecqui,
leading man, and of Madame Elliou, wife of a municipal officer, in the
house of the sieur Rousset."

[11] Letter of M. Lieutaud to the commissioners, May 11 and 18, 1791.
"If I have not  fallen under the assassin's dagger I owe my
preservation to your strict orders and to the good behavior of the
national guard and the regular troops . . . At the hearing of the case
today, the prosecutor on the part of the commune ventured to threaten
the court with popular opinion and its avenging fury. . . The people,
stirred up against us, and brought there, shouted, 'Let us seize
Lieutaud and take him there by force and if he will not go up the
steps, we will cut his head off!'  The hall leading to the courtroom
and the stairways were filled with barefooted vagabonds."-- Letter of
Cabrol, commander of the national guard, and of the municipal officers
to the commissioners, May 21. That picket-guard of fifty men on the
great square, is it not rather the cause of a riot than the means of
preventing one? A requisition to send four national guards inside the
prison, to remain there day and night, is it not insulting citizen
soldiers, whose function it is to see that the laws are maintained,
and not to do jail duty?"

[12] Letter of M. d'Olivier, lieutenant-colonel of the Ernest
regiment, May 28. -- Extracts from the papers of the secretary to the
municipality, May 28 (Barbaroux is the clerk). - Letter of the
commissions, May 29

[13] Letter of the commissioners, June 29.

[14] Letter of M. Laroque-Dourdan, naval commander at Marseilles, Oct.
18, 1791. (in relation to the departure of the Swiss regiment).

[15] The elections are held on the 13th of November, 1791. Martin, the
former mayor, showed timidity, and Mouraille was elected in his place.

[16] "Archives Nationales." F 7 3197. Letter (printed) of the
Directory to the Minister of War, Jan. 4, 1792. -- Letter of the
municipality of Marseilles to the Directory, Jan. 4, and the
Directory's reply. - Barbaroux, "Mémoires," 19. -- Here we see the
part played by Barbaroux at Marseilles. Guadet played a similar part
at Bordeaux. This early political period is essential for a
comprehension of the Girondists.

[17] "Archives Nationales." F7, 3195. Official report of the
municipality of Aix (on the events of Feb. 26). March 1st. -- Letter
of M. Villardy, president of the directory, dated Avignon, March 10.
(He barely escaped assassination at Aix.) -- Ibid., F7,3196. Report of
the district administrators of Arles, Feb. 28 (according to private
letters from Aix and Marseilles). - Barbaroux, "Mémoires" (collection
of Berville and Barrière), 106. (Narrative of M. Watteville, major in
the Ernest regiment. Ibid., 108 (Report from M. de Barbentane,
commanding general). These two documents show the liberalism, want of
vigor, and the usual indecision of the superior authorities,
especially the military authorities - Mercure de France, March 24,
1792 (letters from Aix).

[18] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3196. Dispatches of the new Directory
to the Minister, March 24 and April 4, 1792. "Since the departure of
the Directory, our administrative assembly is composed of only six
members, notwithstanding our repeated summons to every member of the
Council. . . Only three members of the Council consent to act with us;
the reason is a lack of pecuniary means." The new Directory,
consequently, passes a resolution to indemnify members of the Council.
This, indeed, is contrary to a royal proclamation of Jan. 15;  but
"this proclamation was wrested from the King, on account of his firm
faith. You must be aware that, in a free nation, the influence of a
citizen on his government must not be estimated by his fortune; such a
principle is false, and destructive of equality of rights. We trust
that the King will consent to revoke his proclamation."

[19] Ib., Letters of Borelly, vice-president of the Directory, to the
Minister, April 10, 17, and 30, 1792. -- Letter from another
administrator, March 10. "They absolutely want us to march against
Arles, and to force us to give the order. - Ibid., F7, 3195.  Letters
from Aix, March 12 and 16, addressed to M. Verdet.

[20] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3195. Letter of the administrators of
the department Council to the Minister, March 10, "The Council of the
administration is surprised, sir, at the fa1se impressions given you
of the city of Marseilles; it should be regarded as the patriotic
buckler of the department . . . If the people of Paris did not wait
for orders to destroy the Bastille and begin the Revolution, can you
wonder that in this fiery climate the impatience of  good  citizens
should make them anticipate legal orders, and that they cannot comply
with the slow forms of justice when their personal safety and the
safety of the country is in peril?"

[21] "Archives Nationales." F7, 3197. Dispatches of the three
commissioners, passim, and especially those of May 11, June 10 and 19,
1791 (on affairs in Arles). "The property-owners were a long time
subject to oppression. A few of the factions maintained a reign of
terror over honest folks, who trembled in secret."

22 Ibid., Dispatch of the commissioners, June 19: "One of the Mint
gang causes notes to be publicly distributed (addressed to the
unsworn) in these words: 'If you don't "piss-off" you will have to
deal with the gang from the Mint.'"

[23] "Archives Nationales." F7, 3198. Narration (printed) of what
occurred at Arles, June 9 and 10, 1791. -- Dispatch of M. Ripert,
royal commissioner, Aug. 5, 1791. -- F 7,  3197. Dispatch of the three
commissioners, June 19. "Since then, many of the farm laborers have
taken the same oath. It is this class of citizens which most eagerly
desires a return to order. " --  Other dispatches to the same effect,
Oct. 24 and 29, and Dec. 14, 1791. -- Cf. "The French Revolution," I.
301, 302.

[24] "Archives Nationales." F7, 3196. Dispatch of the members of the
Directory of Arles and the municipal officers to the Minister, March
3, 1792 (with a printed diatribe of the Marseilles municipality)

[25] Ibid.,F7, 3198. Dispatches of the procureur- syndic of the
department to the Minister, Aix, Sept. 14, 15, 20, and 23, 1791. The
electoral assembly declared itself permanent, the constitutional
authorities being fettered and unrecognized. -- Dispatch of the
members of the military bureau and correspondence with the Minister,
Arles, Sept.17, 1791.

[26] Ibid., Dispatch of the commandant of the Marseilles detachment to
the Directory of the department, Sept. 22, 1791: "I feel that our
proceedings are not exactly legal, but I thought it prudent to
acquiesce in the general desire of the battalion."

[27] "Archives Nationales." Official report of the municipal officers
of Arles on the insurrection of the Mint band, Sept. 2, 1791. --
Dispatch of Ripert, royal commissioner, Oct. 2 and 8. -- Letter of M.
d'Antonelle, to the Friends of the Constitution, Sept.22. "I cannot
believe in the counter-orders with which we are threatened. Such a
decision in the present crisis would be too inhuman and dangerous. Our
co-workers, who have had the courage to devote themselves to the new
law, would be deprived of their bread and shelter. . . The king's
proclamation has all the appearance of having been hastily prepared.
and every sign of having been secured unawares."

[28] De Dampmartin (an eye-witness), II. 60-70. -- " Archives
Nationales," F7, 3196. -- Dispatch of the two delegated commissioners
to the Minister, Nimes, March 25, 1792. - Letter of M. Wittgenstein to
the Directory of the Bouche-du- Rhône, April 4, 1792. -- Reply and act
passed by the Directory, April 5. -- Report of Bertin and Rebecqui to
the administrators of the department, April 3. -- Moniteur, XII. 379.
Report of the Minister of the Interior to the National Assembly, April
4.

[29] Moniteur, XII. 408 (session of May 16). Petition of M. Fossin,
deputy from Arles. -- "Archives Nationales,"  F7, 3196. Petition of
the Arlesians to the Minister, June 28. -- Despatches of M. Lombard,
provisional royal commissioner, Arles, July 6 and 10. "Neither persons
nor property have been respected for three months by those who wear
the mask of patriotism."

[30] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3196. Letter of M. Borelly, vice-
president of the Directory, to the Minister, Aix, April 30, 1792. "The
course pursued by the sieur: Bertin and Rébecqui is the cause of all
the disorders committed in these unhappy districts. . . Their sole
object is to levy contributions, as they did at Aries, to enrich
themselves and render the Comtat-Venaisson desolate."

[31] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3196. Deposition of one of the keepers
of the sieur Coye, a proprietor at Mouriez-les-Baux, April 4. --
Petition of Peyre, notary at Maussane, April 7. -- Statement by
Manson, a resident of Mouriez-les-Baux, March 27.  -- Petition of
Andrieu, March 30. - Letter of the municipality of Maussane, April 4:
"They watch for a favorable opportunity to devastate property and
especially country villas."

[32] "Archives Nationales," Claim of the national guard presented to
the district administrators of Tarascon by the national guard of
Château-Renard, April 6. -- Petition of Juliat d'Eyguières, district
administrator of Tarascon, April 2 (in relation to a requisition of
30,000 francs by Camoïn on the commune of Eyguières). -- Letter of M.
Borelly, April 30. "Bertin and Rébecqui have openly protected the
infamous Camoïn, and have set him free. " - Moniteur, XII. 408.
Petition of M. Fossin, deputy from Arles.

[33] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3195.  Dispatch of M. Mérard, royal
commissioner at the district court of Apt, Apt, March 15, 1792 (with
official report of the Apt municipality and debates of the district,
March 13). -- Letter of M. Guillebert, syndic-attorney of the district
March 5.. (He has fled. ) -- Dispatches of the district Directory,
March 23 and 28. "It must not be supposed for a moment that either the
court or the juge-de-paix will take the least notice of this
circumstance. One step in this direction would, in a week, bring
10,000 men on our hands."

[34] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3195.  Letter of the district
Directory of Apt, March 28. "On the 26th of March 600 armed men,
belonging to the communes of Apt, Viens, Rustrel, etc. betook
themselves to St.-Martin-de-Castillon and, under the pretense of
restoring order, taxed the inhabitants, lodging and feeding themselves
at their charge" -- The expeditions extend even to the neighboring
departments, one of them March 23, going to Sault, near Forcalquier,
in the Upper-Alps.

[35] Ib., F7, 3195. On the demand of a number of petitioning soldiers
who went to Aries on the 22d of March, 1792, the department
administration passes an act (September, 1793) granting them each
forty-five francs indemnity. There are 1,916 of them, which makes
86,200 francs "assessed on the goods and property of individuals for
the authors, abettors, and those guilty of the disturbances occasioned
by the party of Chiffonists in the commune of Arles." The municipality
of Aries designates fifty-one individuals, who pay the 86,200 livres,
plus 2,785 francs exchange, and 300 francs for the cost of sojourn and
delays.  -- Petition of the ransomed, Nov.21, 1792.

[36] Ib., F7, 3165. Official report of the Directory on the events
which occurred in Aix, April 27, 28, and 29, 1792.

[37] Michelet, "Histoire de la Révolution Française," III.56
(according to the narratives of aged peasants). -- Mercure de France,
April 30, 1791 (letter from an inhabitant of the Comtat). -- All
public dues put together (octrois and interest on the debt) did not go
beyond 800,000 francs for 126,684 inhabitants. On the contrary, united
with France, it would pay 3,793,000 francs.  -- André, "Histoire de la
Révolution Avignonaise," I. 61. -- The Comtat possessed representative
institutions, an armed general assembly, composed of three bishops,
the elected representative of the nobility, and thirteen consuls of
the leading towns.  -- Mercure de France, Oct. 15, 1791 (letter from
an inhabitant of the Comtat). -- There were no bodies of militia in
the Comtat; the privileges of nobles were of little account. Nobody
had the exclusive right to hunt or fish, while people without property
could own guns and hunt anywhere.

[38] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3272. Letter of M. Pelet de la Lozère,
prefect of Vaucluse; to the Minister, year VIII. Germinal 30. - Ibid.,
DXXIV. 3. Letter of M. Mulot, one of the mediating commissioners, to
the Minister, Oct. 10, 1791. "What a country you have sent me to! It
is the land of duplicity. Italianism has struck its roots deep here,
and I fear that they are very hardy."

[39] The details of these occurrences may be found in André and in
Soulier, "Histoire de la Révolution Avignonaise." The murder of their
seven principal opponents, gentlemen, priests and artisans, took place
June 11, 1790. -- "Archives Nationales," DXXIV. 3. The starting-point
of the riots is the hostility of the Jansenist Camus, deputy to the
Constituent Assembly. Several letters, the first from April, 1790, may
be found in this file, addressed to him from the leading Jacobins of
Avignon, Mainvielle, Raphel, Richard, and the rest, and among others
the following (3uly, 1790): "Do not abandon your work, we entreat you.
You, sir, were the first to inspire us with a desire to be free and to
demand our right to unite with a generous nation, from which we have
been severed by fraud."-- As to the political means and enticements,
these are always the same. Cf., for instance, this letter of a
protégé, in Avignon, of Camus, addressed to him July 13, 1791: "I have
just obtained from the commune the use of a room inside the Palace,
where I can carry on my tavern business . . My fortune is based on
your kindness . . . what a distance between you and myself!"

[40] "Archives Nationales," DXXIV. 3. Report on the events of Oct.10,
1791. -- Ibid., F7, 3197. Letter of the three commissioners to the
municipality of Avignon, April 21, and to the Minister, May 14, 1791.
"The deputies of Orange certify that there were at least 500 French
deserters in the Avignon army. " -- In the same reports, May 21 and
June 8: "It is not to be admitted that enrolled brigands should
establish in a small territory, surrounded by France on all sides, the
most dangerous school of brigandage that ever disgraced or preyed upon
this human species. " -- Letter of M. Villardy, president of the
Directory of the Bouches-du-Rhône May 21. "More than two millions of
the national property is exposed to pillage and total destruction by
the new Mandrins who devastate this unfortunate country. " -- Letter
of Méglé, recruiting sergeant of the La Mark regiment, arrested along
with two of his comrades.  "The corps of Mandrins which arrested us
set us at liberty. . . We were arrested because we refused to join
them, and on our refusal we were daily threatened with the gallows."

[41] Mortimer-Ternaux, I. 379 (note on Jourdan, by Faure, deputy). --
Barbaroux, "Mémoires"(Ed. Dauban), 392. "After the death of Patrix a
general had to be elected. Nobody wanted the place in an army that had
just shown so great a lack of discipline. Jourdan arose and declared
that as far as he was concerned, he was ready to accept the position.
No reply was made. He nominated himself, and asked the soldiers if
they wanted him for general. A drunkard is likely to please other
drunkards; they applauded him, and he was thus proclaimed."

[42] After a famous brigand in Dauphiny, named Mandrin.-TR. [Mandrin,
(Louis)  (Saint Étienne-de- Saint-Geoirs, Isère, 1724  -  Valence,
1755). French smuggler who, after 1750, was active over an enormous
territory with the support of the population; hunted down by the army,
caught, condemned to death to be broken alive on the wheel. See also
Taine's explanation in Ancient Régime page 356 app. (SR).]

[43] Cf. André, passim, and Soulier, passim. - Mercure de France,
June 4, 1791. -- "Archives Nationales," F7, 3197. Letter of Madame de
Gabrielli, March 14, 1791. (Her house is pillaged Jan. 10, and she and
her maid escape by the roof.) -- Report of the municipal officers of
Tarascon, May 22. "The troop which has entered the district pillages
everything it can lay its hands on." -- Letter of the syndic-attorney
of Orange, May 22. "Last Wednesday, a little girl ten years of age, on
her way from Châteauneuf to Courtheson, was violated by one on of
them, and the poor child is almost dead. " -- Dispatch of the three
commissioners to the Minister, May 21. "It is now fully proved by men
who are perfectly reliable that the pretended patriots, said to have
acted so gloriously at Sarrians, are cannibals equally execrated both
at Avignon and Carpentras."

[44] "Archives Nationales," letter of the Directory of the Bouches-du-
Rhône, May 21, 1791. -- Deliberations of the Avignon municipality,
associated with the notables and the military committee, May 15:  "The
enormous expense attending the pay and food for the detachments . .
.forced contributions. . .  What is most revolting is that those who
are charged with the duty arbitrarily tax the inhabitants, according
as they arc deemed bad or good patriots. . . The municipality, the
military committee, and the club of the Friends of the Constitution
dared to make a protest; the proscription against them is their reward
for their attachment to the French constitution.

[45] Letter of M. Boulet, formerly physician in the French military
hospitals and member of the electoral assembly, May 21.

[46] "Archives Nationales," DXXIv. 16-23, No.3. Narrative of what took
place yesterday, August 21, in the town of Avignon. -- Letters by the
mayor, Richard, and two others, Aug. 21. -- Letter to the president of
the National Assembly, Aug.22 (with five signatures, in the name of
200 families that had taken refuge in the Ile de la Bartelasse).

[47] "Archives Nationales," DXXIV. 3. -- Letter of M. Laverne, for M.
Canonge, keeper of the Mont-de-Piété. (The electoral assembly of
Vaucluse and the  juge-de-paix  had forbidden him to give this box
into any other hands.) -- Letters of M. Mulot, mediating commissioner,
Gentilly les Sorgues, Oct. 14, 15, 16,  1791. -- Letter of M. Laverne,
mayor, and the municipal officers, Avignon, Jan. 6, 1792. -- Statement
of events occurring at Avignon, Oct. 16, 17, and 18 (without a
signature, but written at once on the spot). --  Official rapport of
the provisional administrators of Avignon, Oct. 16. -- Certified copy
of the notice found posted in Avignon in different places this day,
Oct. 16 (probably written by one of the women of the lower class and
showing what the popular feeling was). -- A letter written to M.
Mulot, Oct. 13' already contains this phrase: "Finally, even if they
delay stopping their robberies and pillage, misery and the miserable
will still remain " -- Testimony of Joseph Sauton, a chasseur in the
paid guard of Avignon, Oct. 17 (an eye-witness of what passed at the
Cordeliers).

[48] André. II.62. Deposition of la Ratapiole. -- Death of the girl
Ayme and of Mesdames Niel et Crouzet. -- De Dampmartin, II. 2.

[49] "Archives Nationales,"  DXXIV, 3. Report on the events of Oct.
16: "Two sworn priests were killed, which proves that a counter-
revolution had nothing to do with it, . . Six of the municipal
officers were assassinated. They had been elected according to the
terms of the decree; they were the fruit of the popular will at the
outbreak of the Revolution; they were  accordingly patriots." --
Buchez et Roux, XII. 420.-- Official report of the Commune of Avignon,
on the events of Oct. 16.

[50] "Archives Nationales," DXXIV. 3. Dispatch of the civil
Commissioners deputized by France (Messrs. Beauregard, Lecesne, and
Champion) to the Minister Jan. 8, 1792. (A long and admirable letter,
in which the difference between the two parties is exhibited,
supported by facts, in refutation of the calumnies of Duprat. The
oppressed party is composed not of royalists, but of
Constitutionalists.)

[51] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3177.  Dispatches of the three
commissioners, April 27, May 4, 18, and 21.

[52] Three hundred and thirty-five witnesses testified during the
trial. -- De Dampmartin, I.266. Entry of the French army into Avignon,
Nov. 16, 1791: "All who were rich, except a very small number, had
taken flight or perished. The best houses were all empty or closed." -
- Elections for a new municipality were held Nov.26, 1791. Out of
2,287 active citizens Mayor Levieux de Laverne obtains 2,227 votes,
while the municipal officer lowest on the list 1,800. All are
Constitutionalists and conservatives.

[53] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3196. Official report of Augier and
Fabre, administrators of the Bouches-du-Rhône, Avignon, May 11, 1792.
-- Moniteur, XII. 313. Report of the Minister of Justice, May 5. --
XII. 324. Petition of forty inhabitants of Avignon, May 7. -- XII 334.
Official report of Pinet, commissioner of the Drôme, sent to Avignon.
-- XII. 354 Report of M. Chassaignac and other papers, May 10.-- XI.
741  Letter of the civil commissioners, also of the Avignon
municipality, March  23.

[54] "The French Revolution," vol. I . pp. 344-352, on the sixth
jacquerie, everywhere managed by the Jacobins. Two or three traits
show its spirit and course of action. ("Archives Nationales,"  F7,
3202. Letter of the Directory of the district of Aurillac, March 27,
1792, with official reports.) "On the 20th of March, about forty
brigands, calling themselves patriots and friends of the constitution,
force honest and worthy but very poor citizens in nine or ten of the
houses of Capelle-Viscamp to give them money, generally five francs
each person, and sometimes ten, twenty, and forty francs." Others tear
down or pillage the châteaux of Rouesque, Rode, Marcolès, and Vitrac
and drag the municipal officers along with them. "We, the mayor and
municipal officers of the parish of Vitrac, held a meeting yesterday,
March 22, following the example of our neighboring parishes on the
occasion of the demolition of the châteaux. We marched at the head of
our national guard and that of Salvetat to the said châteaux. We began
by hoisting the national flag and to demolish . . . The national guard
of Boisset, eating and drinking without stint, entered the château and
behaved in the most brutal manner; for whatever they found in their
way, whether clocks, mirrors, doors, closets, and finally documents,
all were made way with. They even sent off forty of the men to a
patriotic village in the vicinity. They forced the inmates of every
house to give them money, and those who refused were threatened with
death." Besides this the national guard of Boisset carried off the
furniture of the château. -- There is something burlesque in the
conflicts of the municipalities with the Jacobin expeditions (letter
of the municipal officers of Cottines to the Directory of St. Louis,
March 26). "We are very glad to inform you that there is a crowd in
our parish, amongst which are many belonging to neighboring parishes;
and that they have visited the house of  sieur Tossy and a sum of
money of which we do not know the amount is demanded, and that they
will not leave without that sum so that they cam have something to
live on, these people being assembled solely to maintain the
constitution and give greater éclat to the law."

[55] Mercure de France,  numbers for Jan. 1 and 14, 1792 (articles by
Mallet du Pan). - " Archives Nationales," F7, 3185, 3186. Letter of
the president of the district of Laon (Aisne) to the Minister, Feb. 8,
1792: "With respect to the nobles and priests, any mention of them as
trying to sow discord among us indicates a desire to spread fear. All
they ask is tranquility and the regular payment of their pensions." --
De Dampmartin, II. 63 (on the evacuation of Arles, April, 1792). On
the illegal approach of the Marseilles army, M. de Dampmartin,
military commander, orders the Arlesians to rise in a body. Nobody
comes forward. Wives hide away their husbands' guns in the night. Only
one hundred volunteers are found to act with the regular troops.

[56] "Archives Nationales," F7,  3224.  Speech of M. Saint-Amans,
vice-president of the Directory of Lot-et-Garonne, to the mayor of
Tonneins, April 20 and the letter of the syndic-attorney-general to M.
Roland, minister, April 22:  "According to the principles of the mayor
of Tonneins, all resistance to him is aristocratic, his doctrine being
that all property-owners are aristocrats. You can readily perceive,
sir, that he is not one of them." -- Dubois, formerly a
Benedictine and now a Protestant minister. -- Act of the Directory
against the municipality of Tonneins, April 13. The latter appeals to
the Legislative Assembly. The mayor and one of  the municipal
counselors appear in its name (May 19) at the bar of the Assembly.

[57] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3198. Letter of M. Debourges, one of
the three commissioners sent by the National Assembly and the king,
Nov. 2, 1791 (apropos of the Marseilles club). "This club has quite
recently obtained from the Directory of the department, on the most
contemptible allegation, an order requiring of M. de Coincy,
lieutenant-general at Toulon, to send the admirable Ernest regiment
out of Marseilles, and M. de Coincy has yielded."

[58] For instance (Guillon de Montléon, "Mémoires pour servir à
l'histoire de Lyon," I. 109), the general in command of the national
guard of this large town in 1792 is Juillard, a poor silk-weaver of
the faubourg of the Grande Côte, a former soldier.

[59] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3215, affair of Plabennec (very
curious, showing the tyrannical spirit of the Jacobins and the good
disposition at bottom of the Catholic peasantry) -- The commune of
Brest dispatches against that of Plabennec 400 men, with two cannon
and commissioners chosen by the club. -- Many documents, among them:
Petition of 150 active citizens of Brest, May 16, 1791. Deliberations
of the council-general and commune of Brest, May 17. Letter of the
Directory of the district, May 17 (very eloquent). Deliberations of
the municipality of Plabennec, May 20. Letter of the municipality of
Brest to the minister, May 21. Deliberations of the department
Directory, June 13.

[60] Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 376 (session of the Directory of the Pas-
du-Calais, July 4, 1792). The petition, signed by 127 inhabitants of
Arras, is presented to the Directory by Robespierre the younger and
Geoffroy. The administrators are treated as impostors, conspirators,
etc.,  while the president, listening to these refinements, says to
his colleagues: "Gentlemen, let us sit down; we can attend to insults
sitting as well as standing."

[61] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3223. Letter of M. Valéry, syndic-
attorney of the department, April 4, 1792.

[62] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3220. Extract from the deliberations
of the department Directory and letter to the king, Jan.28, 1792. --
Letter of M. Lafiteau, president of the  Directory, Jan. 30. (The mob
is composed of from five to six hundred persons.  The president is
wounded on the forehead by a sword-cut and obliged to leave the town.)
Feb. 20, following this, a deputy of the department denounces the
Directory as unpatriotic.

[63] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3223. Letter of M. de Riolle, colonel
of the gendarmerie, Jan. 19, 1792. -- "One hundred members of the club
Friends of Liberty" come and request the brigadier's discharge. On the
following day, after a meeting of the same club, "four hundred persons
move to  the barracks to send off or exterminate the brigadier."

[64] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3219. Letter of M. Sainfal, Toulouse,
March 4, 1792. -- Letter of the department Directory, March 14.

[65] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3229. Letter of M. de Narbonne,
minister, to his colleague M. Cahier, Feb. 3, 1792. -- "The
municipality of Auch has persuaded the under-officers and soldiers of
the 1st battalion that their chiefs were making preparation to
withdraw." -- The same with the municipality and club of the
Navarreins. "All the officers except three have been obliged to leave
and send in their resignations." - F7, 3225. The same to the same,
March 8. -- The municipality of Rennes orders the arrest of Col. de
Savignac, and four other officers. Mercure de France, Feb. 18, 1792.
De Dampmartin, I. 230; II. 70 (affairs of Landau, Lauterbourg, and
Avignon).

[66]  "'The French Revolution," I. 344 and following pages. Many other
facts could be added to those cited in this volume. - "Archives
Nationales," F7, 3219. Letter of M. Neil, administrator of Haute-
Garonne, Feb. 27, 1792. "The constitutional priests and the club of
the canton of Montestruc suggested to the inhabitants that all the
abettors of unsworn priests and of aristocrats should be put to ransom
and laid under contribution." - Cf. 7,  3193, (Aveyron), F7, 3271
(Tarn), etc.

[67] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3200. Letter of the syndic-attorney of
Bayeux, May 14, 1792, and letter of the Bayeux Directory, May 21. "The
dubs should be schools of patriotism; they have become the terror of
it. If this scandalous struggle against the law and legitimate
authority does not soon cease liberty, a constitution, and safeguards
for the French people will no longer exist"

[68] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3253. Letter, of the Directory of the
Bas-Rhin, April 26, 1792, and of Dietrich, Mayor of Strasbourg, May 8.
(The Strasbourg club had publicly invited the citizens to take up
arms, "to vigorously pursue priests and administrators." ) -- Letter
of the Besançon club to M. Dietrich, May 3. "If the constitution
depended on the patriotism or the perfidy of a few magistrates in one
department, like that of the Bas-Rhin, for instance, we might pay you
some attention, and all the freemen of the empire would then stoop to
crush you. " -- Therefore the Jacobin clubs of the Upper and Lower
Rhine send three deputies to the Paris club.

[69] Moniteur, XII. 558, May 19, 1792. "Letter addressed through
patriotic journalists to all clubs of the Friends of the Constitution
by the patriotic central society, formed at Clermont-Ferrand." (there
is the same centralization between Lyons and Bordeaux.)

[70] " Archives Nationales," F7, 3198. Report of Commissioners Bertin
and Rebecqui, April 3, 1792. -- Cf. Dumouriez, book II. ch. V. The
club at Nantes wants to send commissioners to inspect the foundries of
the Ile d'Indrette.

[71] Moniteur, X. 420. Report of M. Cahier, Minister of the Interior,
Feb. 18, 1792. "In all the departments freedom of worship has been
more or less violated. . . Those who hold power are cited before the
tribunals of the people as their enemies." -- On the radical and
increasing powerlessness of the King and his ministers, Cf. Moniteur,
XI. 11 (Dec. 31, 1791). -- Letter of the Minister of Finances. -- XII.
200 (April 23, 1792), report of the Minister of the Interior. -- XIII.
53 (July 4, 1792), letter of the Minister of Justice.

[72] Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 369. Letter of the Directory of the Basses-
Pyrénées, June 25, 1792. -- "Archives Nationales," F7, 3200. Letter of
the Directory of Calvados to the Minister of the Interior, Aug. 3. "We
are not agents of the king or his ministers." - Moniteur, XIII. 103.
Declaration of M. de Joly, minister, in the name of his colleagues
(session of July 10, 1792).






CHAPTER V.  PARIS.

I.

Pressure of the Assembly on the King. -- His veto rendered void or
eluded. -- His ministers insulted and driven away. -- The usurpations
of his Girondist ministry. -- He removes them. - Riots being prepared.

PREVIOUS to this the tree was so shaken as to be already tottering at
its base.  -- Reduced as the King's prerogative is, the Jacobins still
continue to contest it, depriving him of even its shadow. At the
opening session they refuse to him the titles of Sire and Majesty; to
them he is not, in the sense of the constitution, a hereditary
representative of the French people, but "a high functionary," that is
to say, a mere employee, fortunate enough to sit in an equally good
chair alongside of the president of the Assembly, whom they style
"president of the nation."[1] The Assembly, in their eyes, is sole
sovereign, "while the other powers," says Condorcet, "can act
legitimately only when specially authorized by a positive law;[2] the
Assembly may do anything that is not formally prohibited to it by the
law," 'in other words, interpret the constitution, then change it,
take it to pieces, and do away with it. Consequently, in defiance of
the constitution, it takes upon itself the initiation of war, and, on
rare occasions, on the King using his veto, it sets this aside, or
allows it to be set aside.[3]  In vain he rejects, as he has a legal
right to do, the decrees which sanction the persecution of unsworn
ecclesiastics, which confiscate the property of the émigrés, and which
establish a camp around Paris. At the suggestion of the Jacobin
deputies,[4] the unsworn ecclesiastics are interned, expelled, or
imprisoned by the municipalities and Directories; the estates and
mansions of the émigrés and of their relatives are abandoned without
resistance to the jacqueries;  the camp around Paris is replaced by
the summoning of the Federates to Paris.  In short, the monarch's
sanction is eluded or dispensed with. -- As to his ministers, "they
are merely clerks of the Legislative Body decked with a royal
leash."[5]  In full session they are maltreated, reviled, grossly
insulted, not merely as lackeys of bad character, but as known
criminals. They are interrogated at the bar of the house, forbidden to
leave Paris before their accounts are examined; their papers are
overhauled; their most guarded expressions and most meritorious acts
are held to be criminal; denunciations against them are provoked;
their subordinates are incited to rebel against them;[6] committees to
watch them and calumniate them are appointed; the perspective of a
scaffold is placed before them in every relation, acts or threats of
accusation being passed against them, as well as against their agents,
on the shallowest pretexts, accompanied with such miserable
quibbling,[7] and such an evident falsification of facts and texts
that the Assembly, forced by the evidence, twice reverses its hasty
decision, and declares those innocent whom it had condemned the
evening before.[8]  Nothing is of any avail, neither their strict
fulfillment of the law, their submission to the committees of the
Assembly, nor their humble attitude before the Assembly itself; "they
are careful now to treat it politely and avoid the galleys."[9] -- But
this does not suffice.  They must become Jacobins; otherwise the high
court of Orleans will be for them as for M. Delessart, the ante-room
to the prison and the guillotine.  "Terror and dismay," says
Vergniaud, pointing with his finger to the Tuileries, "have often
issued in the name of despotism in ancient times from that famous
palace; let them to-day go back to it in the name of law."[10]

Even with a Jacobin Minister, terror and dismay are permanent.
Roland, Clavières, and Servan not only do not shield the King, but
they give him up, and, under their patronage and with their
connivance, he is more victimized, more harassed, and more vilified
than ever before. Their partisans in the Assembly take turns in
slandering him, while Isnard proposes against him a most insolent
address.[11]  Shouts of death are uttered in front of his palace. An
abbé or soldier is unmercifully beaten and dragged into the Tuileries
basin.  One of the gunners of the Guard reviles the queen like a fish
woman, and exclaims to her, "How glad I should be to clap your head on
the end of my bayonet!"[12] They supposed that the King is brought to
heel under this double pressure of the Legislative Body and the
street; they rely on his accustomed docility, or at least, on his
proven lethargy; they think that they have converted him into what
Condorcet once demanded, a signature machine.[13]  Consequently,
without notifying him, just as if the throne were vacant, Servan, on
his own authority, proposes to the Assembly the camp outside
Paris.[14]  Roland, for his part, reads to him at a full meeting of
the council an arrogant, pedagogical remonstrance, scrutinizing his
sentiments, informing him of his duties, calling upon him to accept
the new "religion," to sanction the decree against unsworn
ecclesiastics, that is to say, to condemn to beggary, imprisonment,
and transportation[15] 70,000 priests and nuns guilty of orthodoxy,
and authorize the camp around Paris, which means, to put his throne,
his person, and his family at the mercy of 20,000 madmen, chosen by
the clubs and other assemblages expressly to do him harm;[16] in
short, to discard at once his conscience and his common sense. --
Strange enough, the royal will this time remains staunch; not only
does the King refuse, but he dismisses his ministers. So much the
worse for him, for sign he must, cost what it will; if he insists on
remaining athwart their path, they will march over him. -- Not because
he is dangerous, and thinks of abandoning his legal immobility.  Up to
the 10th of August, through a dread of action, and not to kindle a
civil war, he rejects all plans leading to an open rupture.  Up to the
very last day he resigns himself even when his personal safety and
that of his family is at stake, to constitutional law and public
common sense. Before dismissing Roland and Servan, he desires to
furnish some striking proof of his pacific intentions by sanctioning
the dissolution of his guard and disarming himself not only for attack
but for defense; henceforth he sits at home and awaits the
insurrection with which he is daily menaced; he resigns himself to
everything, except drawing his sword; his attitude is that of a
Christian in the amphitheatre.[17]  -- The proposition of a camp
outside Paris, however, draws out a protest from 8,000 Paris National
Guards. Lafayette denounces to the Assembly the usurpations of the
Jacobins; the faction sees that its reign is threatened by this
reawakening and union of the friends of order. A blow must be struck.
This has been in preparation for a month past, and to renew the days
of October 5th and 6th, the materials are not lacking.


II.

The floating and poor population of Paris. --  Disposition of the
workers.--  Effect of poverty and want of work. --  Effect of Jacobin
preaching. -- The revolutionary army. - Quality of its recruits  --
Its first review. -- Its actual effective force.



Paris always has its interloping, floating population. A hundred
thousand of the needy, one-third of these from the departments,
"beggars by race," those whom Rétif de la Bretonne had already seen
pass his door, Rue de Bièvre, on the 13th of July, 1789, on their way
to join their fellows on the suburb of St. Antoine,[18] along with
them "those frightful raftsmen," pilots and dock-hands, born and
brought up in the forests of the Nièvre and the Yonne, veritable
savages accustomed to wielding the pick and the ax, behaving like
cannibals when the opportunity offers,[19] and who will be found
foremost in the ranks when the September days come. Alongside these
stride their female companions "barge-women who, embittered by toil,
live for the moment only," and who, three months earlier, pillaged the
grocer-shops.[20]  All this "is a frightful crowd which, every time it
stirs, seems to declare that the last day of the rich and well-to-do
has come; tomorrow it is our turn, to-morrow we shall sleep on
eiderdown." --  Still more alarming is the attitude of the steady
workmen, especially in the suburbs. And first of all, if bread is not
as expensive as on the 5th of October, the misery is worse. The
production of articles of luxury has been at a standstill for three
years, and the unemployed artisan has consumed his small savings.
Since the ruin of St. Domingo and the pillaging of grocers' shops
colonial products are dear; the carpenter, the mason, the locksmith,
the market-porter, no longer has his early cup of coffee,[21] while
they grumble every morning at the thought of their patriotism being
rewarded by an increase of deprivation.

But more than all this they are now Jacobins, and after nearly three
years of preaching, the dogma of popular sovereignty has taken deep
root in their empty brains. "In these groups," writes a police
commissioner, "the Constitution is held to be useless and the people
alone are the law. The citizens of Paris on the public square think
themselves the people, populus,  what we call the universality of
citizens."[22] -- It is of no use to tell them that, alongside of
Paris, there is a France. Danton has shown them that the capital " is
composed of citizens belonging one way or another to the eighty-three
departments; that is has a better chance than any other place to
appreciate ministerial conduct; that it is the first sentinel of the
nation," which makes them confident of being right.[23] --  It is of
no use to tell them that there are better-informed and more competent
authorities than themselves. Robespierre assures them that "in the
matter of genius and public-spiritedness the people are infallible,
whilst every one else is subject to mistakes,"[24] and here they are
sure of their capacity. --  In their own eyes they are the legitimate,
competent authorities for all France, and, during three years, the
sole theme their courtiers of the press, tribune, and club, vie with
each other in repeating to them, is the expression of the Duc de
Villeroy to Louis XIV. when a child: "Look my master, behold this
great kingdom! It is all for you, it belongs to you, you are its
master!" -- Undoubtedly, to swallow and digest such gross irony people
must be half-fools or half-brutes; but it is exactly their capacity
for self-deception which makes them different from the sensible or
passive crowd and casts them into a band whose ascendancy is
irresistible. Convinced that a street mob is entitled to absolute rule
and that the nation expresses its sovereignty through its gatherings,
they alone assemble the street mobs, they alone, by virtue of their
conceit and lack of judgment, believe themselves kings .

Such is the new power which, in the early months of the year 1792,
starts up alongside of the legal powers. It is not foreseen by the
Constitution; nevertheless it exists and declares itself; it is
visible and its recruits can be counted.[25]  On the 29th of April,
with the Assembly consenting, and contrary to the law, three
battalions from the suburb of St. Antoine, about 1500 men,[26] march
in three columns into the hall, one of which is composed of fusiliers
and the other two of pikemen, "their pikes being from eight to ten
feet long," of formidable aspect and of all sorts, "pikes with laurel
leaves, pikes with clover leaves, pikes à carlet, pikes with turn-
spits, pikes with hearts, pikes with serpents tongues, pikes with
forks, pikes with daggers, pikes with three prongs, pikes with battle-
axes, pikes with claws, pikes with sickles, lance-pikes covered with
iron prongs."  On the other side of the Seine three battalions from
the suburb of St. Marcel are composed and armed in the same fashion.
This constitutes a kernel of 3,000 more in other quarters of Paris.
Add to these in each of the sixty battalions of the National guard the
gunners, almost all of them blacksmiths, locksmiths and horse-shoers,
also the majority of the gendarmes, old soldiers discharged for
insubordination and naturally inclined to rioting, in all an army of
about 9,000 men, not counting the usual accompaniment of vagabonds and
mere bandits; ignorant and eager, but men who do their work, well
armed, formed into companies, ready to march and ready to strike.
Alongside of the talking authorities we have the veritable force that
acts, for it is the only one which does act. As formerly the
praetorian guard of the Caesars in Rome, or the Turkish guards of the
Caliphs of Baghdad, it is henceforth master of the capital, and
through the capital, of the Nation.



III.

Its leaders. - Their committee. -. Methods for arousing the crowd.

As the troops are so are their leaders. Bulls must have drovers to
conduct them, one degree superior to the brute but only one degree,
dressed, talking and acting in accordance with his occupation, without
dislikes or scruples, naturally or willfully hardened, fertile in
jockeying and in the expedients of the slaughterhouse, themselves
belonging to the people or pretending to belong to them. Santerre is a
brewer of the Faubourg St. Antoine, commander of the battalion of "
Enfants Trouvés," tall, stout and ostentatious, with stentorian lungs,
shaking the hand of everybody he meets in the street, and when at home
treating everybody to a drink paid for by the Duke of Orleans.
Legendre is a choleric butcher, who even in the Convention maintains
his butchering traits. There are three or four foreign adventurers,
experienced in all  kinds of deadly operations, using the saber or the
bayonet without warning people to get out of the way. Rotonde, the
first one, is an Italian, a teacher of English and professional
rioter, who, convicted of murder and robbery, is to end his days in
Piedmont on the gallows. The second, Lazowski, is a Pole, a former
dandy, a conceited fop, who, with Slave facility, becomes the barest
of naked sans-culottes;  former enjoying a sinecure, then suddenly
turned out in the street, and shouting in the clubs against his
protectors who he sees put down; he is elected captain of the gunners
of the battalion St. Marcel, and is to be one of the September
slaughterers. His drawing-room temperament, however, is not rigorous
enough for the part he plays in the streets, and at the end of a year
he is to die, consumed by a fever and by brandy. The third is another
chief slaughterer at the September massacres. Fournier, known as the
American, a former planter, who has brought with him from St. Domingo
a contempt for human life; "with his livid and sinister countenance,
his mustache, his triple belt of pistols, his coarse language, his
oaths, he looks like a pirate."  By their side we encounter a little
hump-backed lawyer named Cuirette-Verrières, an unceasing speaker,
who, on the 6th of October, 1789, paraded the city on a large white
horse and afterwards pleaded for Marat, which two qualifications with
his Punch figure, fully establish him in the popular imagination;  the
rugged guys, moreover, who hold nocturnal meetings at Santerre's
needed a writer and he probably met their requirements. - This secret
society can count on other faithfuls.  "Brière, wine-dealer, Nicolas,
a sapper in the 'Enfants Trouvés' battalion, Gonor, claiming to be one
of the victors of the Bastille,"[27] Rossignol, an old soldier and
afterwards a journeyman-jeweler, who, after presiding at the massacres
of La Force, is to become an improvised general and display his
incapacity, debauchery, and thievery throughout La Vendée. "There are
yet more of them," Huguenin undoubtedly, a ruined ex-lawyer,
afterwards carabineer, then a deserter, next a barrier-clerk, now
serving as spokesman for the Faubourg St. Honoré and finally president
of the September commune; there was also, doubtless, St. Huruge alias
Père Adam,  the great barker of the Palais-Royal, a marquis fallen
into the gutter, drinking with and dressing like a common porter,
always flourishing an enormous club and followed by the riffraff.[28]
-- These are all the leaders. The Jacobins of the municipality and of
the Assembly confine their support of the enterprise to conniving at
it and to giving it their encouragement.[29]  It is better for the
insurrection to seem spontaneous. Through caution or shyness the
Girondins, Pétion, Manual and Danton himself, keep in the background -
-  there is not reason for their coming forward. --  The rest,
affiliated with the people and lost in the crowd, are better qualified
to fabricate the story which their flock will like. This tale, adapted
to the crowd's intellectual limits, form and activity, is both simple
and somber, such as children like, or rather a melodrama taken from an
alien stage in which the good appear on one side, and the wicked on
the other with an ogre or tyrant in the center, some infamous traitor
who is sure to be unmasked at the end of the piece and punished
according to his deserts, the whole grandiloquent terms and, as a
finale, winding up with a grand chorus. In the raw brain of an over-
excited workman politics find their way only in the shape of rough-
hewn, highly-colored imagery, such as is furnished by the
Marseillaise, the Carmagnole, and the Ça ira. The requisite motto is
adapted to his use; through this misshapen magnifying glass the most
gracious figure appears under a diabolical aspect. Louis XVI. is
represented here "as a monster using his power and treasure to oppose
the regeneration of the French. A new Charles IX., he desires to bring
on France death and desolation. Be gone, cruel man, your crimes must
end! Damiens was less guilty than thou art! He was punished with the
most horrible torture for having tried to rid France of a monster,
while you, attempting twenty-five million times more, are allowed full
immunity![30]  Let us trample under our feet this simulacra of royalty
! Tremble tyrants, Scœvolas are still amongst you!"

All this is pronounced, declaimed or rather shouted, publicly, in full
daylight, under the King's windows, by stump-speakers mounted on
chairs, while similar provocations daily flow from the committee
installed in Santerre's establishment, now in the shape of displays
posted in the faubourgs, now in that of petitions circulated in the
clubs and sections, now through motions which are gotten up "among the
groups in the Tuileries, in the Palais-Royal, in the Place de Grève
and especially on the Place de la Bastille." After the 2nd of June the
leaders founded a new club in the church of the "Enfants Trouvés"
that they might have their special laboratory and thus do their work
on the spot.[31]   Like Plato's demagogues, they understand their
business. They have discovered the cries which make the popular animal
take note, what offense offends him, what charm attracts him, and on
what road he should be made to follow. Once drawn in and under way, he
will march blindly on, borne along by his own involuntary inspiration
and crushing with his mass all that he encounters on his path.


IV.

The 20th of June. --  The programme. --  The muster. --  The
procession before the Assembly. --  Irruption into the Château. -- The
King in the presence of the people.

The bait has been carefully chosen and is well presented. It takes the
form of a celebration of the anniversary of the oath of the Tennis-
court. A tree of Liberty will be planted on the terrace of the
Feuillants and "petitions relating to circumstances" will be presented
in the Assembly and then to the King. As a precaution, and to impose
on the ill-disposed, the petitioners provide themselves with arms and
line the approaches.[32] -- A popular procession is an attractive
thing, and there are so many workers who do not know what to do with
their empty day! And, again, it is so pleasant to appear in a
patriotic opera while many, and especially women and children, want
very much to see Monsieur and Madame Veto.  The people from the
surrounding suburbs are invited,[33] the homeless prowlers and beggars
will certainly join the party, while the numerous body of Parisian
loafers, the loungers that join every spectacle can be relied on, and
the curious who, even in our time, gather by hundreds along the quays,
following a dog that has chanced to tumble into the river. All this
forms a body which, without thinking, will follow its head.

At five o'clock in the morning on the 20th of June groups are already
formed in the faubourgs St. Antoine and St. Marcel, consisting of
National Guards, pikemen, gunners with their cannon, persons armed
with sabers or clubs, and women and children.  -- A notice, indeed,
just posted on the walls, prohibits any assemblage, and the municipal
officers appear in their scarves and command or entreat the crowd not
to break the law.[34]   But, in a working-class brain, ideas are as
tenacious as they are short-lived.  People count on a civic procession
and get up early in the morning to attend to it; the cannon have been
hitched up, the maypole tree is put on wheels and all is ready for the
ceremony, everybody takes a holiday and none are disposed to return
home.  Besides, they have only good intentions. They know the law as
well as the city officials; they are "armed solely to have it observed
and respected." Finally, other armed petitioners have already filed
along before the National Assembly, and, as one is as good as another,
"the law being equal for all," others must be admitted as well.  In
any event they, too, will ask permission of the National Assembly and
they go expressly. This is the last and the best argument of all, and
to prove to the city officials that they have no desire to engage in a
riot, they request them to join the procession and march along with
them.

Meanwhile, time passes.  In a crowd irritated by delay, the most
impatient, the rudest, those most inclined to commit violence, always
lead the rest. -- At the head-quarters of the Val-de-Grâce[35] the
pikemen seize the cannon and drag them along; the National Guards let
things take their course; Saint-Prix and Leclerc, the officers in
command, threatened with death, have nothing to do but to yield with a
protest. -- There is the same state of things in the Montreuil
section; the resistance of four out of six of the battalion officers
merely served to give full power to the instigator of the
insurrection, and henceforth Santerre becomes the sole leader of the
assembled crowd. About half-past eleven he leaves his brewery, and,
followed by cannon, the flag, and the truck which bears the poplar
tree, he places himself at the head of the procession "consisting of
about fifteen hundred persons including the bystanders."[36]  Like a
snowball, however, the troop grows as it marches along until, on
reaching the National Assembly, Santerre has behind him from seven to
eight thousand persons.[37]   Guadet and Vergniaud move that the
petitioners be introduced; their spokesman, Huguenin, in a bombastic
and threatening address, denounces the ministry, the King, the accused
at Orleans, the deputies of the "Right," demands "blood," and informs
the Assembly that the people "resolute" is ready to take the law in
their own hands.[38] Then, with drums beating and bands playing, the
crowd defiles for more than an hour through the chamber under the eyes
of Santerre and Saint-Huruge: here and there a few files of the
National Guard pass mingled with the throng and lost in "the moving
forest of pikes"; all the rest is pure rabble, "hideous faces,"[39]
says a deputy, on which poverty and loose living have left their
marks, ragamuffins, men "without coats," in their shirt-sleeves, armed
in all sorts of ways, with chisels and shoe-knives fastened on sticks,
one with a saw on a pole ten feet long, women and children, some of
them brandishing a saber.[40]  In the middle of this procession, an
old pair of breeches [culottes] borne on a pike with this motto:
Vivent les Sans-Culottes! and, on a pitch-fork, the heart of a calf
with this inscription: Cœur d'aristocrate, both significant emblems of
the grim humor the imaginations of rag-dealers or butchers might come
up with for a political carnival. -- This, indeed, it is, they have
been drinking and many are drunk.[41]  A parade is not enough, they
want also to amuse themselves: traversing the hall they sing ça ira
and dance in the intervals. They at the same time show their civism by
shouting  Vive les patriotes! A bas le Veto! They fraternise, as they
pass along, with the good deputies of the "Left"; they jeer those of
the "Right" and shake their fists at them; one of these, known by his
tall stature, is told that his business will be settled for him the
first opportunity.[42] Thus do they flaunt their collaborators to the
Assembly, everyone prepared and willing to act, even against the
Assembly itself. -- And yet, with the exception of an iron-railing
pushed in by the crowd and an irruption on to the terrace of the
"Feuillants," no act of violence was committed. The Paris population,
except when in a rage, is rather voluble and curious than ferocious;
besides, thus far, no one had offered any resistance.  The crowd is
now sated with shouting and parading; many of them yawn with boredom
and weariness;[43] at four o'clock they have stood on their legs for
ten or twelve hours. The human stream issuing from the Assembly and
emptying itself into the Carrousel remains stagnant there and seems
ready to return to its usual channels. -- This is not what the leaders
had intended. Santerre, on arriving with Saint-Huruge, cries out to
his men, "Why didn't you enter the château?  You must go in -- that is
what we came here for."[44]  A lieutenant of the Val-de-Grâce gunners
shouts:  "We have forced open the Carrousel, we must force open the
château too! This is the first time the Val-de-Grâce gunners march --
they are not j.... f....  Come, follow me, my men, on to the
enemy![45] - "Meanwhile, outside the gate, some of the municipal
officers selected by Pétion amongst the most revolutionary members of
the council, overcome resistance by their speeches and commands.
'After all," says one of them, named Mouchet, "the right of petition
is sacred." -- " Open the gate!" shout Sergent and Boucher-René,
"nobody has a right to shut it.  Every citizen has a right to go
through it!"[46]  A gunner raises the latch, the gate opens and the
court fills in the winkling of an eye;[47] the crowd rushes under the
archway and up the grand stairway with such impetuosity that a cannon
borne along by hand reaches the third room on the first story before
it stops. The doors crack under the blows of axes and, in the large
hall of the Oeil de Bœuf, the multitude find themselves face to face
with the King.

In such circumstances the representatives of public authority, the
directories, the municipalities, the military chiefs, and, on the 6th
of October, the King himself, have all thus far yielded; they have
either yielded or perished. Santerre, certain of the issue, preferred
to take no part in this affair; he prudently holds back, he shies
away, and lets the crowd push him into the council chamber, where the
Queen, the young Dauphin, and the ladies have taken refuge.[48]
There, with his tall, corpulent figure, he formed a sort of shield to
forestall useless and compromising injuries.  In the mean time, in the
Oeil de Bœuf, he lets things take their course; everything will be
done in his absence that ought to be done, and in this he seems to
have calculated justly. -- On one side, in a window recess, sits the
King on a bench, almost alone, while in front of him, as a guard, are
four or five of the National Guards; on the other side, in the
apartments, is an immense crowd, hourly increasing according as the
rumor of the irruption spreads in the vicinity, fifteen or twenty
thousand persons, a prodigious accumulation, a pell-mell traversed by
eddies, a howling sea of bodies crushing each other, and of which the
simple flux and reflux would flatten against the walls obstacles ten
times as strong, an uproar sufficient to shatter the window panes,
"frightful yells," curses and imprecations, "Down with M. Veto!" "Let
Veto go to the devil!" "Take back the patriot ministers!" "He shall
sign; we won't go away till he does!"[49] -- Foremost among them all,
Legendre, more resolute than Santerre, declares himself the spokesman
and trustee of the powers of the sovereign people: "Sir," says he to
the King, who, he sees, makes a gesture of surprise, "yes, Sir, listen
to us; you are made to listen to what we say!  You are a traitor! You
have always deceived us; you deceive us now! But look out, the measure
is full; the people are tired of being played upon ! " -- " Sire,
Sire," exclaims another fanatic, "I ask you in the name of the hundred
thousand beings around us to recall the patriot ministers. . .   I
demand the sanction of the decree against the priests and the twenty
thousand men. Either the sanction or you shall die!" -- But little is
wanting for the threat to be carried out. The first comers are on
hand, "presenting pikes," among them "a brigand," with a rusty sword
blade on the end of a pole, "very sharp," and who points this at the
King. Afterwards the attempt at assassination is many times renewed,
obstinately, by three or four madmen determined to kill, and who make
signs of so doing, one, a shabby, ragged fellow, who keeps up his
excitement with "the foulest propositions," the second one, "a so-
called conqueror of the Bastille," formerly  porte-tête for Foulon and
Berthier, and since driven out of the battalion, the third, a market-
porter, who, "for more than an hour," armed with a saber, makes a
terrible effort to make his way to the king.[50] -- Nothing is done.
The king remains impassible under every threat.  He takes the hand of
a grenadier who wishes to encourage him, and, placing it on his
breast, bids him, "See if that is the beating of a heart agitated by
fear."[51]  To Legendre and the zealots who call upon him to sanction,
he replies without the least excitement:

"I have never departed from the Constitution. .  . . I will do what
the Constitution requires me to do. . . . It is you who break the
law."

-- And, for nearly three hours, remaining standing, blockaded on his
bench,[52] he persists in this without showing a sign of weakness or
of anger. This cool deportment at last produces an effect, the
impression it makes on the spectators not being at all that which they
anticipated.  It is very clear that the personage before them is not
the monster which has been depicted to them, a somber, imperious
tyrant, the savage, cunning Charles IX. they had hissed on the stage.
They see a man somewhat stout, with placid, benevolent features, whom
they would take, without his blue sash, for an ordinary, peaceable
bourgeois.[53]  His ministers, near by, three or four men in black
coats, gentlemen and respectable employees, are just what they seem to
be.  In another window recess stands his sister, Madame Elizabeth,
with her sweet and innocent face. This pretended tyrant is a man like
other men; he speaks gently, he says that the law is on his side, and
nobody says the contrary; perhaps he is less wrong than he is thought
to be.  If he would only become a patriot! -- A woman in the room
brandishes a sword with a cockade on its point; the King makes a sign
and the sword is handed to him, which he raises and, hurrahing with
the crowd, cries out: Vive la Nation! That is already one good sign. A
red cap is shaken in the air at the end of a pole.  Some one offers it
to him and he puts it on his head; applause bursts forth, and shouts
of Vive la Nation! Vive la Liberte! and even vive le Roi!

From this time forth the greatest danger is over.  But it is not that
the besiegers abandon the siege. "He did damned well," they exclaim,
"to put the cap on, and if he hadn't we would have seen what would
come of it. And damn it, if he does not sanction the decree against
the priests, and do it right off; we will come back every day.  In
this way we shall tire him out and make him afraid of us. -- But the
day wears on. The heat is over-powering, the fatigue extreme, the King
less deserted and better protected.  Five or six of the deputies,
three of the municipal officers, a few officers of the National Guard,
have succeeded in making their way to him.  Pétion himself, mounted on
a sofa, harangues the people with his accustomed flattery.[54]  At the
same time Santerre, aware of the opportunity being lost, assumes the
attitude of a liberator, and shouts in his rough voice: "I answer for
the royal family.  Let me see to it." A line of National Guards forms
in front of the King, when, slowly and with difficulty, urged by the
mayor, the crowd melts away, and, by eight o'clock in the evening, it
is gone.
_______________________________________________________________________
Notes:

[1] Moniteur, X. 39 and following pages (sessions of Oct. 5 and 6,
1791). Speeches by Chabot, Couthon, Lequinio, and Vergniaud. - Mercure
de France, Oct. 15. Speech by Robespierre, May 17, 1790.  "The king is
not the nation's representative, but its clerk. - Cf. Ernest Hamel,
"Vie de Robespierre."

[2] Moniteur,  XIII. 97 (session of July 6, 1792)

[3] Buchez et Roux, XIII. 61, Jan.28, 1792. The King in his usually
mild way calls the attention of the Assembly to the usurpation it is
committing. "The form adopted by you is open to important
observations. I shall not extend these to-day; the gravity of the
situation demands that I concern myself much more with maintaining
harmonious sentiments than with continually discussing my rights."

[4] Sauzay, II. 99. Letter of the deputy Vernerey to the Directory of
Doubs: "The Directory of the department may always act with the
greatest severity against the seditious, and, apart from the article
relating to their pension, follow the track marked out in the decree.
If the executive desires to impede the operations of the Directory. .
.  the latter has its recourse in the National Assembly, which in all
probability will afford it a shelter against ministerial attacks." --
Moniteur, XII. 202 (session of April 23). Report of Roland, Minister
of the Interior. Already at this date forty-two departments had
expelled or interned the unsworn ecclesiastics.

[5] Mercure-de-France, Feb.25.

[6] Moniteur, X. 440 (session of Nov.22, 1791). A letter to M.
Southon, Director of the Mint at Paris, is read, "complaining of an
arbitrary order, that of the Minister of the Interior, to report
himself at Pau on the 25th of this month, under penalty of dismissal."
Isnard supports the charge: "M. Southon," he says, "is here at work on
a very circumstantial denunciation of the Minister of the Interior
[Applause from the galleries.] If citizens who are zealous enough to
make war on abuses are sent back to their departments we shall never
have denunciations" [The applause is renewed.] - Ibid., X, 504
(session of Nov. 29). Speech by Isnard: "Our ministers must know that
we are not fully satisfied with the conduct of each of them [repeated
applause]; that henceforth they must simply choose between public
gratitude and the vengeance of the law, and that our understanding of
the word responsibility  is death." [The applause is renewed.] -- The
Assembly orders this speech to be printed and sent into the
departments. - Cf. XII, 73, 138, etc.

[7] Moniteur, XI. 603. (Session of March 10. Speech by Brissot, to
secure a decree of accusation against M. Delessart, Minister of
Foreign Affairs.) M. Delessart is a "perfidious man," for having
stated in a dispatch that "the Constitution, with the great majority
of the nation, has become a sort of religion which is embraced with
the greatest enthusiasm." Brissot denounces these two expressions as
inadequate and anti-patriotic.-Ibid., XII. 438 (session of May 20).
Speech by Guadet: "Larivière, the juge-de-paix, has convicted himself
of the basest and most atrocious of passions, in having desired to
usurp the power which the Constitution has placed in the hands of the
National Assembly." -- I do not believe that Laubardemont himself
could have composed anything equal to these two speeches. -- Cf. XII.
462 (session of May 23). Speech by Brissot and one by Gonsonné on the
Austrian committee. The feebleness and absurdity of their argument is
incredible.

[8] Affairs of the Minister Duport-Dutertre and of the Ambassador to
Vienna, M. de Noailles.

[9] Mercure de France, March 10, 1792.

[10] Moniteur,  XI. 607 (session of March 10).

[11] Moniteur, XII .396 (session of May 15). Isnard's address is the
ground-plan of Roland's famous letter. -- Cf. passim, the sessions of
the Assembly during the Girondist ministry, especially those of May 19
and 20, June 5, etc.

[12] Dumouriez, "Mémoires," book III. ch. VI.

[13] "Letter of a young mechanician," proposing to make a
constitutional king, which, "by means of a spring, would receive from
the hands of the president of the Assembly a list of ministers
designated by the majority" (1791).

[14] Servan, who was Girondist minister of war, proposed to let 20 000
fédérés  or provincial National guards establish themselves outside
Paris. (SR).

[15] You will meet this sinister expression later on when the
Government ceased killing in France but simply sent undesirables and
imaginary or real opponents overseas to death-camps. Transportation
was used by Stalin and Hitler only their extermination took place in
their own countries not overseas. (SR).

[16] Moniteur, XI. 426 (session of May 19). Speech by Lasource: "Could
not things be so arranged as to have a considerable force near enough
to the capital to terrify and keep inactive the factions, the
intriguers, the traitors who are plotting perfidious plans in its
bosom, simultaneously with the maneuvers of outside enemies?"

[17] 'Mallet du Pan, "Mémoires." I. 303. Letter of Malouet, June 29:
"The king is calm and perfectly resigned. On the 19th he wrote to his
confessor: "Come, sir; never have I had so much need of your
consolations. I am done with men; I must now turn my eyes to heaven.
Sad events are announced for to-morrow. I shall have courage.' " --
"Lettres de Coray au Protopsalte de Smyrne" (translated by M. de Queux
de Saint-Hilaire,) 145, May 1st: "The court is in peril every moment.
Do not be surprised if I write you some day that his unhappy king and
his wife are assassinated."."

[18] Rétif de la Bretonne, "Nuits de Paris," VoL XVI. (analyzed by
Lacroix in "Bibliothèque de Rétif de la Bretonne" ). --Rétif is the
man in Paris who lived the most in the streets and had the most
intercourse with the low class.

[19] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3276. Letter from the Directory of
Clamecy, March 27, and official report of the civil commissioners,
March 31, 1792, on the riot of the raftsmen. Tracu, their captain,
armed with a cudgel ten feet long, compelled peaceful people to march
along with him, threatening to knock them down; he tried to get the
head of Peynier, the clerk of the Paris dealers in wood. "I shall have
a good supper to-night," he exclaimed "(or the head of that bastard
Peynier is a fat one, and I'll stick it in my Pot!"

[20] Letters of Coray, 126. "This pillaging has lasted three days,
Jan. 22, 23 and 24, and we expect from hour to hour similar riots
still more terrible."

[21] Mercier (" Tableau de Paris") had already noticed before the
Revolution this habit of the Parisian workman, especially among the
lowest class of workmen.

[22] Mortimer-Ternaux, 1.346 (letter of June 21, 1792).

[23] Buchez et Roux,  VIII. 25 (session of the National Assembly,
Nov.10, 1790). Petition presented by Danton in the name of the forty-
eight sections of Paris.

[24] Buchez et Roux, XIV. 268 (May. 1792). Article by Robespierre
against the fête decreed in honor of Simonneau, Mayor of Etampes,
assassinated in a riot: "Simonneau was guilty before he became a
victim."

[25] How can one forget that great seducer of the masses Hitler? In
his book "Hitler Speaks" page 208 Rauschning reports Hitler as saying:
"It is true that the masses are uncritical, but not in the way these
idiots of Marxists and  reactionaries imagine. The masses have their
critical faculties, too, but they function differently from those of
the private individual. The masses are like an animal they obeys
instincts. They do not reach conclusions by reasoning. My success in
initiating the greatest people's movement of all time is due to my
never having done anything in violation of the vital laws and feelings
of the mass. These feelings may be primitive, but they have the
resistance and indestructibility of natural qualities. A once
intensely felt experience in the life of the masses, like ration cards
and inflation, will never again be driven out of their blood. The
masses have a simple system of thinking and feeling, and anything that
cannot be fitted into it disturbs them. It is only because I take
their vital laws into consideration that I can rule them."

[26]  Moniteur,  XII. 254. - According to the royal almanac of 1792
the Paris national guard comprises 32,000 men, divided into sixty
battalions, to which must be added the battalions of pikemen,
spontaneously organized and composed, especially of the non-active
citizens. - Cf. in "Les Révolutions de Paris," Prudhomme's Journal,
the engravings which represent this sort of procession.

[27] Buchez et Roux, XV. 122. Declaration of Lareynie, a volunteer
soldier in the Ile Saint-Louis battalion. -- To those which he names I
add Huguenin, because on the 20th of June it was his duty to read the
petition of the rioters; also Saint-Huruge, because he led the mob
with Santerre. -- About Rossignol, Cf. Dauban, "La Demagogie à Paris,"
369 (according to the manuscript memoirs of Mercier du Rocher). He
reaches Fontenay Aug.21, 1793, with the representative Bourbotte,
Momoro, commissary-general, three adjutants, Moulins, Hasard, the ex-
priest, Grammont, an ex-actor and several prostitutes.  "The prettiest
shared her bed with Bourbotte and Rossignol." They lodge in a mansion
to which seals are affixed. "The seals were broken, and jewelry,
dresses, and female apparel were confiscated for the benefit of the
general and his followers. There was nothing, even down to the
crockery, which did not become the booty of these self-styled
republicans"

[28] Mathon de la Varenne, "Histoire particulière des événements qui
ont eu lieu en juin, juillet, août, et septembre, 1792," p. 23. (He
knew Saint-Huruge personally.) Saint-Huruge had married an actress at
Lyons in 1778. On returning to Paris he learned through the police
that his wife was a trollop, and he treated her accordingly. Enraged,
she looked up Saint-Huruge's past career, and found two charges
against him, one for the robbery and assassination of an alien
merchant, and the other for infanticide; she obtained his
incarceration by a lettre-de-cachet. He was shut in Charenton from
Jan. 14, 1781, to December, 1784, when he was transferred to another
prison and afterwards exiled to his estates, from which he fled to
England.  He returned to France on the outbreak of the Revolution.

[29] With respect to connivance,  Cf. Mortimer-Ternaux, I. 132 and the
following pages. - Mallet du Pan, "Mémoires," I. 300. Letter of the
Abbé de Pradt, June 21, 1795. "The insurrection had been announced for
several days. . . The evening before, 150 deputies so many Jacobins,
had dined at their great table in the Champs-Elysées, and distributed
presents of wine and food."

[30] Moniteur, XII. 642 (session of June 12, 1792, narrative of M.
Delfaux, deputy). - The execution of Damiens was witnessed by
Parisians still living, while "Charles IX.,," by Marie Chénier, was at
this time the most popular tragedy. --  The French people," says M.
Ferières (I. 35), "went away from its representation eager for
vengeance and tormented with a thirst for blood. At the end of the
fourth act a lugubrious bell announces the moment of the massacre, and
the audience, drawing in its breath sighing and groaning, furiously
exclaims silence! silence! as if fearing that the sound of this death-
knell had not stirred the heart to its very depths." -- " Révolutions
de Paris," number for June 23, 1792. "The speakers, under full sail,
distributed their parts amongst themselves," one against the staffs,
another against priests, another against judges, department, and the
ministers, and especially the king. "Some there are, and we agree in
this with the sieur Delfaux, who pass the measure and advise murder
through gestures, eyes, and speech."

[31] Mortimer-Ternaux, I. 133. -- There is the same calculation and
the same work-shop in the faubourg Saints-Marcel (report of Saint-
Prix, commandant of the Val-de-Grâce battalion). "Minds remained
tranquil until a club was opened at the Porte Saint-Marcel; now they
are all excited and divided. This dub, which is in contact with that
of Santerre, urges citizens to go armed to-morrow (June 20) to the
National Assembly and to the king's Palace, notwithstanding the acts
of the constituted authorities."

[32] Mortimer-Ternaux, I. 136. This program is first presented to the
council-general of the commune by Lazowski and nine others (June 16).
The council-general rejects it and refers to the law. "The
petitioners, on learning this decision, loudly declare that it shall
not prevent them from assembling in arms" (Buchez et Roux, XV. 120,
official report by M. Borie). -- The bibliography of documents
relating to the 20th of June is given by Mortimer-Ternaux, I. 397 and
following pages. The principal documents are found in Mortimer-
Ternaux, in "L'Histoire Parlementaire" of Buchez et Roux, and in the
Revue Rétrospective.

[33] "Correspondance de Mirabeau et M. de la Marck,"  III. 319. Letter
of the Count de Montmorin, June 21, 1792. "The Paris bandits not being
sufficient, they have invited in these of the neighboring villages."

[34] Reports of the municipal officers Perron (7 o'clock in the
morning), Sergent (8 o'clock), Mouchet, Gujard, and Thomas (9
o'clock).

[35] Report of Saint Prix, commandant of the Val-de-Grâce battalion
(10 o'clock In the morning). -- Report of Alexandre, commanding the
Saint-Marcel battalion. "The whole battalion was by no means ready to
march." -- Official report of the Montreuil section. Bonneau, the
commander concludes to march only under protest and to avoid spilling
blood.

[36] Deposition of Lareyrnie, a volunteer soldier of the Ile Saint-
Louis battalion.

[37] Deposition of M. Witinghof, lieutenant-general. --
"Correspondence of Mirabeau and M. de la Marck." Letter of M. de
Montmorin, June 21. "At two o'clock the gathering amounted to 8,000 or
10,000 persons."

[38] Moniteur, XII. 717. "What a misfortune for the freemen who have
transferred their powers to you, to find themselves reduced to the
cruel necessity of dipping their hands in the blood of conspirators!"
etc. -- The character of the leaders is apparent in their style. The
incompetent copyist who drew up the address did not even know the
meaning of words. "The people so wills it, and its head is of more
account than that of crowned despots. That head is the genealogical
tree of the nation, and before that robust head the feeble reed must
bend!" He has already recited the fable of "The Oak and the Bulrush,"
and he knows  the names of Demosthenes, Cicero, and Catiline. It seems
to be the composition of a school master turned public letter writer,
at a penny a page.

[39] Hua, "Mémoires," 134.

[40] Moniteur, XII. 718.

[41]  "Chronique des cinquante jours," by Rœderer, syndic-attorney of
the department.

[42] Hua, 134. -- Bourrienne, "Mémoires," I. 49. (He was with
Bonaparte in a restaurant, rue Saint-Honoré, near the Palais-Royal.)
"On going out we saw a troop coming from the direction of the market,
which Bonaparte estimated at from 5,000 to 6,000 men, all in rags and
armed in the oddest manner, yelling and shouting the grossest
provocations, and turning towards the Tuileries. It was certainly the
vilest and most abject lot that could be found in the faubourgs. 'Let
us follow that rabble,' said Bonaparte to me." They ascend the terrace
on the river bank.  "I could not easily describe the surprise and
indignation which these scenes excited in him. He did not like so much
weakness and forbearance. 'Che coglione! he exclaimed in a loud tone.
'How could they let those rascals in?  Four or five hundred of them
ought to have been swept off with cannon, and the rest would still be
running!'"

[43] "Chronique des cinquante jours," by Rœderer. - Deposition of
Lareynie.

[44] Deposition of  Lareynie.

[45] Report of Saint-Prix.

[46] Report by Mouchet. -- Deposition of Lareynie. (The interference
of Sergent and Boucher-Réne is contested, but Raederer thinks it very
probable.)

[47] M. Pinon, in command of the 5th legion, and M. Vannot, commanding
a battalion, tried to shut the iron gate of the archway, but are
driven back and told: "You want thousands to perish, do you, to save
one man?" This significant expression is heard over and over again
during the Revolution, and it explains the success of the
insurrections. -- Alexandre, in command of the Saint-Marcel battalion,
says in his report: "Why make a resistance which can be of no
usefulness to the public, one which may even compromise it a great
deal more?..."

[48] Deposition of Lareynie. The attitude of Santerre is here clearly
defined. At the foot of the staircase in the court he is stopped by a
group of citizens, who threaten "to make him responsible for any harm
done," and tell him: "You alone are the author of this
unconstitutional assemblage; it is you alone who have led away these
worthy people. You are a rascal!" - "The tone of these honest citizens
in addressing the sieur Santerre made him turn pale. But, encouraged
by a glance from the sieur Legendre, he resorted to a hypocritical
subterfuge, and addressing the troop, he said: 'Gentlemen, draw up a
report, officially stating that I refuse to enter the king's
apartments.' The only answer the crowd made, accustomed to divining
what Santerre meant, was to hustle the group of honest citizens out of
the way.

[49] Depositions of four of the national guard, Lecrosnier, Gossé,
Bidault, and Guiboult. -- Reports of Acloque and de Lachesnaye,
commanding officers of the legion. -- "Chronique des cinquante jours,"
by Rœderer. - Ibid. p.65: "I have to state that, during the
Convention, the butcher Legendre declared to Boissy d'Anglas, from
whom I had it, that the plan was to kill the king." -- Prudhomme,
"Crimes de la Révolution," III.43. "The king was to be assassinated.
We heard citizens all in rags say that it was a pity; he looks like a
good sort of a bastard."

[50] Madame Campan, "Mémoires," II. 212. "M. Vannot, commander of the
battalion, had turned aside a weapon aimed at the king. One of the
grenadiers of the Filles-Saint-Thomas warded off a blow with a sword,
aimed in the same direction with the same intention."

[51] Declaration of Lachesnaye, in command of the legion. - Moniteur,
XII. 719 (evening session of June 20). Speech of M. Alos, an eye-
witness. (The king does this twice, using about the same words, the
first time immediately on the irruption of the crowd, and the second
time probably after Vergniaud's harangue.) Declaration of Lachesnaye,
in command of the legion. - Moniteur,  XII. 719 (evening session of
June 20). Speech of M. Alos, an eye-witness. (The king does this
twice, using about the same words, the first time immediately on the
irruption of the crowd, and the second time probably after Vergniaud's
harangue.)

[52] The engraving in the "Révolutions de Paris" represents him
seated, and separated from the crowd by an empty space; that is a
falsehood of the party..

[53] The queen produces the same impression. Prudhomme, in his
journal, calls her "the Austrian panther," which word well expresses
the idea of her in the faubourgs. A prostitute stops before her and
bestows on her a volley of curses. The reply of the queen is: "Have I
ever done you any wrong?" "No; but it is you who do so much harm to
the nation." You have been deceived," replies the queen. "I married
the King of France. I am the mother of the dauphin. I am a French
woman. I shall never again see my own country. I shall never be either
happy or miserable anywhere but in France. When you loved me I was
happy then." The prostitute burst into tears. "Ah. Madame, forgive me!
I did not know you. I see that you have been very good."  Santerre,
however, wishing to put an end to this emotion, cries out: "The girl
is drunk " -(Madame Campan, II. 214. - Report by Mandat, an officer of
the legion.)

[54] Mortimer-Ternaux, I. 213. "Citizens, you have just legally made
known your will to the hereditary representative of the nation; you
have done this with the dignity, with the majesty  of  a free people!
There is no doubt that your demands will be reiterated by the eighty-
three departments, while the king cannot refrain from acquiescing in
the manifest will of the people. . .  Retire now, . . . and if you
remain any longer, do not give occasion to anything which may
incriminate your worthy intentions."





CHAPTER VI. The Birth of the Terrible Paris Commune.



I.

Indignation of the Constitutionalists. -- Cause of their weakness. -
The Girondins renew the attack. --  Their double plan.

As the blow has missed the target, it must be repeated. This is the
more urgent, inasmuch as the faction has thrown off the mask and
"honest people"[1] on all sides become indignant at seeing the
Constitution subject to the arbitrariness of the lowest class. Nearly
all the higher administrative bodies, seventy-five of the department
directories,[2] give in their adhesion to Lafayette's letter, or
respond by supporting the proclamation, so noble and so moderate, in
which the King, recounting the violence done to him, maintains his
legal rights with mournful, inflexible gentleness. Many of the towns,
large and small, thank him for his firmness, the addresses being
signed by "the notables of the place,"[3] chevaliers of St. Louis,
former officials, judges and district-administrators, physicians,
notaries, lawyers, recorders, post-masters, manufacturers, merchants,
people who are settled down, in short the most prominent and the most
respected men.  At Paris, a similar petition, drawn up by two former
Constituents, contains 247 pages of signatures attested by 99
notaries.[4]  Even in the council-general of the commune a majority is
in favor of publicly censuring the mayor Pétion, the syndic-attorney
Manuel, and the police administrators Panis, Sergent, Viguer, and
Perron.[5]  On the evening of June 20th, the department council orders
an investigation; it follows this up; it urges it on; it proves by
authentic documents the willful inaction, the hypocritical connivance,
the double-dealing of the syndic-attorney and the mayor;[6] it
suspends both from their functions, and cites them before the courts
as well as Santerre and his accomplices.  Lafayette, finally, adding
to the weight of his opinion the influence of his presence, appears at
the bar of the National Assembly and demands "effectual" measures
against the usurpations of the Jacobin sect, insisting that the
instigators of the riot of the 20th of June be punished "as guilty of
lése-nation."  As a last and still more significant symptom, his
proceedings are approved of in the Assembly by a majority of more than
one hundred votes.[7]

All this must and will be crushed out.  For on the side of the
Constitutionalists, whatever they may be, whether King, deputies,
ministers, generals, administrators, notables or national-guards, the
will to act evaporates in words; and the reason is, they are civilized
beings, long accustomed to the ways of a regular community, interested
from father to son in keeping the law, disconcerted at the thought of
consequences, upset by multifaceted ideas, unable to comprehend that,
in the state of nature to which France has reverted, but one idea is
of any account, that of the man who, in accepting a declared war,
meets the offensive with the offensive, loads his gun, descends into
the street and contends with the savage destroyers of human society. -
- Nobody comes to the support of Lafayette, who alone has the courage
to take the lead; about one hundred men muster at the rendezvous named
by him in the Champs-Élysées.  They agree to march to the Jacobin club
the following day and close it, provided the number is increased to
three hundred; but the next day only thirty turn up.  Lafayette can do
no more than leave Paris and write a letter containing another
protest. -- Protestations, appeals to the Constitution, to the law, to
public interest, to common sense, well-reasoned arguments; this side
will never resort to anything else than speeches and paperwork; and,
in the coming conflict words will be of no use. -- Imagine a quarrel
between two men, one ably presenting his case and the other indulging
in little more than invective; the latter, having encountered an
enormous mastiff on his road, has caressed him, enticed him, and led
him along with him as an auxiliary. To the mastiff, clever
argumentation is only so much unmeaning sound; with his eager eyes
fixed on his temporary master he awaits only his signal to spring on
the adversaries he points out.  On the 20th of June he has almost
strangled one of them, and covered him with his slaver.  On the
21st,[8] he is ready to spring again. He continues to growl for fifty
days, at first sullenly and then with terrific energy.  On the 25th of
June, July 14 and 27, August 3 and 5, he again makes a spring and is
kept back only with great difficulty.[9]   Already on one occasion,
July 29th, his fangs are wet with human gore.[10] -- At each turn of
the parliamentary debate the defenseless Constitutionalists beholds
those open jaws before him; it is not surprising that he throws to
this dog, or allows to be thrown to him, all the decrees demanded by
the Girondists as a bone for him to gnaw on. -- Sure of their strength
the Girondists renew the attack, and the plan of their campaign seems
to be skillfully prepared. They are quite willing to retain the King
on his throne, but on the condition that he shall be a mere puppet;
that he shall recall the patriot ministers, allow them to appoint the
Dauphin's tutor, and that Lafayette shall be removed;[11] otherwise
the Assembly will pass the act of de-thronement and seize the
executive power. Such is the defile with two issues in which they have
placed the Assembly and the King.  If the King  balks at leaving by
the first door, the Assembly, equally nonplused, will leave through
the second; in either case, as the all-powerful ministers of the
submissive King or as executive delegates of the submissive Assembly,
the Girondists will become the masters of France.



II.

Pressure on the King. --  Pétion and Manual brought to the Hôtel-de-
ville. --  The Ministry obliged to resign. --  Jacobin agitation
against the King. --  Pressure on the Assembly. - - Petition of the
Paris Commune. -- Threats of the petitioners and of the galleries. --
Session of August 8th. - Girondist strategy foiled in two ways.

With this in mind they begin by attacking the King, and try to make
him yield through fear. -- They remove the suspension pronounced
against Pétion and Manuel, and restore them both to their places in
the Hôtel-de-ville. They will from now on rule Paris without
restriction or supervision; for the Directory of the department has
resigned, and no superior authority exists to prevent them from
calling upon or giving orders as they please to the armed forces; they
are exempt from all subordination, as well as from all control.
Behold the King of France in good hands, in those of the men who, on
the 20th of June, refused to nuzzle the popular brute, declaring that
it had done well, that it had right on its side, and that it may begin
again. According to them, the palace of the monarch belongs to the
public; people may enter it as they would a coffee-house; in any
event, as the municipality is occupied with other matters, it cannot
be expected to keep people out.  "Is there nothing else to guard in
Paris but the Tuileries and the King?"[12] -- Another maneuver
consists in rendering the King's instruments powerless. Honorable and
inoffensive as the new ministers may be, they never appear in the
Assembly without being hooted at in the tribunes.  Isnard, pointing
with his finger to the principal one, exclaims: "That is a
traitor!"[13]  Every popular outburst is imputed to them as a crime,
while Guadet declares that, "as royal counselors, they are answerable
for any disturbances" that the double veto might produce.[14]  Not
only does the faction declare them guilty of the violence provoked by
itself, but, again, it demands their lives for the murders which it
commits. "France must know," says Vergniaud, "that hereafter ministers
are to answer with their heads for any disorders of which religion is
the pretext." --  "The blood just spilt at Bordeaux," says Ducos, "may
be laid at the door of the executive power. "[15] La Source proposes
to "punish with death," not alone the minister who is not prompt in
ordering the execution of a decree, but, again, the clerks who do not
fulfill the minister's instructions. Always death on every occasion,
and for every one who is not of the sect.  Under this constant terror,
the ministers resign in a body, and the King is required at once to
appoint others; meanwhile, to increase the danger of their position,
the Assembly decrees that hereafter they shall "be answerable for each
other." It is evident that they are aiming at the King over his
minister's shoulders, while the Girondists leave nothing unturned to
render government to him impossible. The King, again, signs this new
decree; he declines to protest; to the persecution he is forced to
undergo he opposes nothing but silence, sometimes a simple, frank,
good-hearted expression,[16] some kindly, touching complaining, which
seems like a suppressed moan.[17]  But dogmatic obstinacy and
impatient ambition are willfully deaf to the most sorrowful strains!
His sincerity passes for a new false-hood. Vergniaud, Brissot, Torné,
Condorcet, in the tribune, charge him with treachery, demand from the
Assembly the right of suspending him,[18] and give the signal to their
Jacobin auxiliaries. -- At the invitation of the parent club, the
provincial branches bestir themselves, while all other instruments of
agitation belonging to the revolutionary machine are likewise put in
motion, -- gatherings on the public squares, homicidal announcements
on the walls, incendiary resolutions in the clubs, shouting in the
tribunes, insulting addresses and seditious deputations at the bar of
the National Assembly.[19] After the working of this system for a
month, the Girondists regard the King as subdued, and, on the 26th of
July, Guadet, and then Brissot, in the tribune, make their last
advances to him, and issue the final summons.[20]  A profound
delusion! He refuses, the same as on the 20th of June: "Girondist
ministers, Never!"

Since he bars one of the two doors, they will pass out at the other,
and, if the Girondists cannot rule through him, they will rule without
him. Pétion, in the name of the Commune, appears personally and
proposes a new plan, demanding the dethronement. "This important
measure once passed,"[21] he says, "the confidence of the nation in
the actual dynasty being very doubtful, we demand that a body of
ministers, jointly responsible, appointed by the National Assembly,
but, as the constitutional law provides, outside of itself, elected by
the open vote of freemen,  be provisionally entrusted with the
executive power." Through this open vote the suffrage will be easily
controlled. This is but one more decree extorted, like so many others,
the majority for a long time having been subject to the same pressure
as the King. "If you refuse to respond to our wishes," as a placard of
the 23rd of June had already informed them, "our hands are lifted, and
we shall strike all traitors wherever they can be found, even amongst
yourselves."[22] -- "Court favorites," says a petition of August 6,
"have seats in your midst. Let their inviolability perish if the
national will must always tamely submit to that lethal power!" -- In
the Assembly the yells from the galleries are frightful; the voices of
those who speak against dethronement are overpowered; so great are the
hooting, the speakers are driven out of the tribune.[23] Sometimes the
"Right" abandons the discussion and leaves the chamber. The insolence
of the galleries goes so far that frequently almost the entire
Assembly murmurs while they applaud; the majority, in short, loudly
expresses anger at its bondage.[24] -- Let it be careful!  In the
tribunes and at the approaches to the edifice, stand the Federates,
men who have a tight grip. They will force it to vote the decisive
measure, the accusation of Lafayette, the decree under which the armed
champion of the King and the Constitution must fall. The Girondists,
to make sure of it, exact a call of the house; in this way the names
are announced and printed, thus designating to the populace the
opponents of the measure, so that none of them are sure of getting to
their homes safe and sound. -- Lafayette, however, a liberal, a
democrat, and a royalist, as devoted to the Revolution as to the Law,
is just the man, who, through his limited mental grasp, his
disconnected political conceptions, and the nobleness of his
contradictory sentiments, best represents the present opinion of the
Assembly, as well as that of France.[25]  Moreover, his popularity,
his courage, and his army are the last refuge.  The majority feels
that in giving him up they themselves are given up, and, by a vote of
400 to 224, it acquits him. -- On this side, again, the strategy of
the Girondists is found erroneous.  Power slips away from them the
second time.  Neither the King nor the Assembly have consented to
restore it to them, while they can no longer leave it suspended in the
air, or defer it until a better opportunity, and keep their Jacobin
acolytes waiting.  The feeble leash restraining the revolutionary dog
breaks in their hands; the dog is free and in the street



III.

The Girondins have worked for the benefit of the Jacobins. --  The
armed force sent away or disorganized. -- The Federates summoned. --
Brest and Marseilles send men. --  Public sessions of administrative
bodies. --  Permanence of administrative bodies and of the sections. -
-  Effect of these two measures. -- The central bureau of the Hôtel-
de-ville. --  Origin and formation of the revolutionary Commune.

Never was better work done for another. Every measure relied on by
them for getting power back, serves only to place it in the hands of
the mob. -- On the one hand, through a series of legislative acts and
municipal ordinances, they have set aside or disbanded the army, alone
capable of repressing or intimidating it. On the 29th of May they
dismissed the king's guard. On the 15th of July they ordered away from
Paris all regular troops. On the 16th of July,[26]  they select " for
the formation of a body of infantry-gendarmerie, the former French-
guardsmen who served in the Revolution about the epoch of the 1st day
of June, 1789, the officers, under-officers, gunners, and soldiers who
gathered around the flag of liberty after the 12th of July of that
year," that is to say, a body of recognized insurgents and deserters.
On the 6th of July, in all towns of 50,000 souls and over, they strike
down the National Guard by discharging its staff, "an aristocratic
corporation," says a petition,[27] "a sort of modern feudality
composed of traitors, who seem to have formed a plan for directing
public opinion as they please." Early in August,[28] they strike into
the heart of the National Guard by suppressing special companies,
grenadiers, and chasseurs, recruited amongst well-to-do-people, the
genuine elite, stripped of its uniform, reduced to equality, lost in
the mass, and now, moreover, finding its 'ranks degraded by a mixture
of interlopers, federates, and men armed with pikes. Finally, to
complete the pell-mell, they order that the palace guard be hereafter
composed daily of citizens taken from the sixty battalions,[29] so
that the chiefs may no longer know their men nor the men their chiefs;
so that no one may place confidence in his chief, in his subordinate,
in his neighbor, or in himself; so that all the stones of the human
dike may be loosened beforehand, and the barrier crumble at the first
onslaught. --  On the other hand, they have taken care to provide the
insurrection with a fighting army and an advanced guard. By another
series of legislative acts and municipal ordinances, they authorize
the assemblage of the Federates at Paris; they allow them pay and
military lodgings;[30] they allow them to organize under a central
committee sitting at the Jacobin club, and to take their instructions
from that club. Of these new-comers, two-thirds, genuine soldiers and
true patriots, set out for the camp at Soissons and for the frontier;
one-third of them, however, remain at Paris,[31] perhaps 2,000, the
rioters and politicians, who, feasted, entertained, indoctrinated, and
each lodged with a Jacobin, become more Jacobin than their hosts, and
incorporate themselves with the revolutionary battalions, so as to
serve the good cause with their guns.[32] -- Two squads, late comers,
remain separate, and are only the more formidable; both are dispatched
by the towns on the sea-cost in which, four months before this,
"twenty-one capital acts of insurrection had occurred, all unpunished,
and several under sentence of the maritime jury."[33]  The first,
numbering 300 men, comes from Brest,

* where the municipality, as infatuated as those of Marseilles and
Avignon, engages in armed expeditions against its neighbors; where
popular murder is tolerated;

* where M. de la Jaille is nearly killed ;

* where the head of M. de la Patry is borne on a pike;

* where veteran rioters compose the crews of the fleet,

* where "workers paid by the State, clerks, masters, non-commission
officers, converted into agitators, political stump-speakers, movers,
and critics of the administration," ask only to be given roles to
perform on a more conspicuous stage.

The second troop, summoned from Marseilles by the Girondins, Rebecqui,
and Barbaroux,[34] comprises 516 men, intrepid, ferocious adventurers,
from everywhere, either Marseilles or abroad, Savoyards, Italians,
Spaniards, driven out of their country, almost all of the vilest
class, or gaining a livelihood by infamous pursuits, "hit-men and
their henchmen of evil haunts," used to blood, quick to strike, good
cut-throats, picked men out of the bands that had marched on Aix,
Arles, and Avignon, the froth of that froth which, for three years, in
the Comtat and in the Bouches-du-Rhône, boiled over the useless
barriers of the law. --  The very day they reach Paris they show what
they can do.[35]  Welcomed with great pomp by the Jacobins and by
Santerre, they are conducted, for a purpose, to the Champs-Elysées,
into a tavern, near the restaurant in which the grenadiers of the
Filles St. Thomas, bankers, brokers, leading men, well-known for their
attachment to a monarchical constitution, were dining in a body, as
announced several days in advance. The mob which had formed a convoy
for the Marseilles battalion, gathers before the restaurant, shouts,
throws mud, and then lets fly a volley of stones ; the grenadiers draw
their sabers. Forthwith a shout is heard just in front of them, à nous
les Marseillais! upon which the gang jump out of the windows with true
southern agility, clamber across the ditches, fall upon the grenadiers
with their swords, kill one and wound fifteen. -- No début could be
more brilliant. The party at last possesses men of action;[36] and
they must be kept within reach! Men who do such good work, and so
expeditiously, must be well posted near the Tuileries. The mayor,
consequently, on the night of the 8th of August, without informing the
commanding general, solely on his own authority, orders them to leave
their barracks in the Rue Blanche and take up their quarters, with
their arms and cannon, in the barracks belonging to the
Cordeliers.[37]

Such is the military force in the hands of the Jacobin masses; nothing
remains but to place the civil power in their hands also, and, as the
first gift of this kind was made to them by the Girondins, they will
not fail to make them the second one. --  On the 1st of July, they
decree that the sessions of administrative bodies should thenceforth
be public; this is submitting municipalities, district, and department
councils, as well as the National Assembly itself, to the clamor, the
outrages, the menaces, the rule of their audiences, which in these
bodies as in the National Assembly, will always be Jacobin.[38] On the
11th of July, on declaring the country in danger,[39] they render the
sessions permanent, first of the administrative bodies, and next of
the forty-eight sections of Paris, which is a surrender of the
administrative bodies  and the forty-eight sections of Paris to the
Jacobin minority, which minority, through its zeal and being ever
present, knows how to convert itself into a majority.  --  Let us
trace the consequences of this, and see the selection which is thus
effected by the double decree. Those who attend these meetings, day
and night, are not the steady, busy people. In the first place, they
are too busy in their own counting-rooms, shops and factories to lose
so much time. In the next place, they are too sensible, to docile, and
too honest to go and lord it over their magistrates in the Hôtel-de-
ville, or regard themselves in their various sections as the sovereign
people. Moreover, they are disgusted with all this bawling. Lastly,
the streets of Paris, especially at night, are not safe; owing to so
much outdoor politics, there is a great increase of caning and of
knocking down. Accordingly, for a long time, they do not attend at the
clubs, nor are they seen in the galleries of the National Assembly;
nor will they be seen again at the sessions of the municipality, nor
at the meetings of the sections. -- Nothing, on the other hand, is
more attractive to the idle tipplers of the cafés, to bar-room
oracles, loungers, and talkers, living in furnished rooms,[40] to the
parasites and refractory of the social army, to all who have left the
social structures and unable to get back again, who want to tear
things to pieces, and, for lack of a private career, establish one for
themselves in public. Permanent sessions, even at night, are not too
long either for them, or for lazy Federates, for disordered
intellects, and for the small troop of genuine fanatics. Here they are
either performers or claqueurs, an uproar not being offensive to them,
because they create it. They relieve each other, so as to be always on
hand in sufficient number, or compensate for a deficiency by
usurpations and brutality.  The section of the Théâtre-Français, for
instance, in contempt of the law, removes the distinction between
active and passive citizens, by granting to all residents in its
circumscription the right to be present at its meetings and the right
to vote. Other sections[41] admit to their sittings all well-disposed
spectators, all women, children, and the nomads, all agitators, and
the agitated, who, as at the National Assembly, applaud or hoot at the
word of command. In the sections not disposed to be at the mercy of an
anonymous public, the same herd of frantic characters make a racket at
the doors, and insult the electors who pass through them. -- Thanks to
this itinerant throng of co-operating intruders, the Jacobin
extremists rule the sections the same as the Assembly; in the sections
as in the Assembly, they drive away or silence the moderates, and when
the hall becomes half empty or dumb, their motion is passed. Hawked
about in the vicinity, the motion is even carried off; in a few days
it makes the tour of Paris, and returns to the Assembly as an
authentic and unanimous expression of popular will.[42]

At present, to ensure the execution of this counterfeit will, it
requires a central committee, and through a masterpiece of delusion,
Pétion, the Girondist mayor, is the one who undertakes to lodge,
sanction, and organize the committee. On the 17th day of July,[43] he
establishes in the offices belonging to the Commune, "a central bureau
of correspondence between the sections." To this a duly elected
commissioner is to bring the acts passed by his section each day, and
carry away the corresponding acts of the remaining forty-seven
sections. Naturally, these elected commissioners will hold meetings of
their own, appointing a president and secretary, and making official
reports of their proceedings in the same form as a veritable municipal
council. As they are elected to-day, and with a special mandate, it is
natural that they should consider themselves more legitimate than a
municipal council elected four or five months before them, and with a
very uncertain mandate. Installed in the town hall of Paris (Hôtel-de-
ville), only two steps from the municipal council, it is natural for
them to attempt to take its place; to substitute themselves for it,
they have only to cross over to the other side of a corridor.



IV.

Vain attempts of the Girondins to put it down. --  Jacobin alarm,
their enthusiasm, and their program.

   Thus, hatched by the Girondins, does the terrible Commune of Paris
come into being, that of August 10th, September 2nd 1792 and May 31st.
1793.   The viper has hardly left its nest before it begins to hiss. A
fortnight before the 10th of August[44] it begins to uncoil, and the
wise statesmen who have so diligently sheltered and fed it, stand
aghast at its hideous, flattened head. Accordingly, they back away
from it up to the last hour, and strive to prevent it from biting
them. Pétion himself visits Robespierre on the 7th of August, in order
to represent to him the perils of an insurrection, and to allow the
Assembly time enough to discuss the question of dethronement. The same
day Verginaud and Guadet propose to the King, through the medium of
Thierry, his valet-de-chambre, that, until peace is assured, the
government be carried on under a regency. Pétion, on the night of
August 9-10, issues a pressing circular to the sections, urging them
to remain tranquil.[45]

   But it is too late. Fifty days of excitement and alarm have worked
up the aberrations of morbid imaginations into a delirium. -- On the
second of August, a crowd of men and women rush to the bar of the
Assembly, exclaiming, "Vengeance! Vengeance! our brethren are being
poisoned!"[46]  The fact as ascertained is this: at Soissons, where
the bread of the soldiery was prepared in a church, some fragments of
broken glass were found in the oven, on the strength of which a rumor
was started that 170 volunteers had died, and that 700 were lying in
the hospital. A ferocious instinct makes men see their adversaries in
their own image and thus justify them to take those measures which
they imagine their enemies would have taken in their place.[47]  --
The committee of Jacobin leaders states positively that the Court is
about to attack, and, accordingly, has devised "not merely signs of
this, but of the most unmistakable proof."[48] -- "It is the Trojan
horse," exclaimed Panis; "We are lost if we do not succeed in
disemboweling it. . . .  The bomb explodes on the night of August 9-
10. . .  Fifteen thousand aristocrats stand ready to slaughter all
patriots."   Patriots, consequently, attribute to themselves the right
to slaughter aristocrats. --  Late in June, in the Minimes section, "a
French guardsman had already determined to kill the King," if the King
persisted in his veto. When the president of the section wanted to
expulse the regicide, it was the latter who was retained and the
president was expelled.[49]  On the 14th of July, the day of the
Federation festival, another predecessor of Louvel and Fieschi,
provided with a cutlass, had introduced himself into the battalion on
duty at the palace, for the same purpose; during the ceremony the
crowd warmed up, and, for a moment, the King owed his life to the
firmness of his escort. On the 27th of July, in the garden of the
Tuileries, d'Espréménil, the old Constituent[50], beaten, slashed, and
his clothes torn, pursued like a stag across the Palais Royal, falls
bleedings on a mattress at the gates of the Treasury.[51]  On the 29th
of July, whilst one of Lafayette's aides, M. Bureau de Pusy, is at the
bar of the house, "they try to have a motion passed in the Palais
Royal to parade his head on the end of a pike."[52] --  At this level
of rage and fear, the brutal and the excited can wait no longer. On
the 4th of August,[53] the Mauconseil section declares "to the
Assembly, to the municipality, and to all the citizens of Paris, that
it no longer recognizes Louis XVI. as King of the French". Its
president, the foreman of a tailor's shop, and its secretary, employed
in the leather market, support their manifesto with three lines of a
tragedy floating vaguely in their minds,[54] and name the Boulevard
Madeleine St. Honoré as a rendezvous on the following Sunday for all
well-disposed persons. On the 6th of August, Varlet, a post-office
clerk, makes known to the Assembly, in the name of the petitioners of
the Champ de Mars, the program of the faction:

1. the dethronement of the King,

2. the indictment, arrest, and speedy condemnation of Lafayette,

3. the immediate convoking of the primary assemblies,

4. universal suffrage,

5. the discharge of all staff officers,

6. the renewal of the departmental directories,

7. the recall of all ambassadors,

8.  the suppression of diplomacy,

9.  and a return to the state of nature.

The Girondins may now delay, negotiate, beat about and argue as much
as they please; their hesitation has no other effect that to consign
them into the background, as being lukewarm and timid. Thanks to them,
the (Jacobin) faction now has its deliberative assemblies, its
executive powers, its central seat of government, its enlarged, tried,
and ready army, and, forcibly or otherwise, its program will be
carried out.



V.

Evening of August 8. --  Session of August 9. --  Morning of August
10.- Assembly purged. --



The Assembly must first of all be made to depose the King. Several
times already,[55] on the 26th of July and August 4, clandestine
meetings had been held where strangers decided the fate of France, and
gave the signal for insurrection. -- Restrained with great difficulty,
they consented "to have patience until August 9, at 11 o'clock in the
evening."[56] On that day the discussion of the dethronement is to
take place in the Assembly, and calculations are made on a favorable
vote under such a positive threat; its reluctance must yield to the
certainty of a military occupation -- On the 8th of August, however,
the Assembly refuses, by a majority of two-thirds, to indict the great
enemy, Lafayette. The double amputation essential for State security,
must therefore begin with the destruction of this majority.

The moment Lafayette's acquittal is announced, the galleries, usually
so vociferous, maintain "gloomy silence."[57] The word of command for
them is to keep themselves in reserve for the streets. One by one the
deputies who voted for Lafayette are pointed out to the mob at the
doors, and a shout is raised, "the rascals, the knaves, the traitors
living on the civil list! Hang them! Kill them! Put an end to them!
Mud, mortar, plaster, stones are thrown at them, and they are severely
pummeled.   M. Mézières, in the Rue du Dauphin, is seized by the
throat, and a woman strikes at him, which he parries. In the Rue St.
Honoré, a number of men in red caps surround M. Regnault-Beauceron,
and decide to "string him up at the lantern"; a man in his jacket had
already grabbed him from behind and raised him up, when the grenadiers
of Sainte-Opportune arrive in time to set him free. In the Rue St.
Louis, M. Deuzy, repeatedly struck on the back with stones, has a
saber twice raised over his head. In the Passage des  Feuillants, M.
Desbois is pummeled, and a "snuff-box, his pocket-book, and cane" are
stolen from him. In the lobbies of the Assembly, M. Girardin is on the
point of being assassinated.[58] Eight deputies besides these are
pursued, and take refuge in the guard-room of the Palais Royal. A
Federate enters along with them, and "there, his eyes sparkling with
rage and thumping on the table like a madman," he exclaims to M.
Dumolard, who is the best known:"  "If you are unlucky enough to put
your feet in the Assembly again, I'll cut off your head with my
sword!"   As to the principal defender of Lafayette, M. Vaublanc, he
is assailed three times, but he is wary enough not to return home; a
number of infuriates, however, invest his house, yelling out that
"eighty citizens are to perish by their hands, and he is one of the
first"; a dozen of the gang ascend to his apartments, rummage them in
every corner, make another effort to find him in the adjoining houses,
and, not being able to secure him, try to find his family; he is
notified that, if he returns to his house, he will be massacred. -- In
the evening, on the Feuillants terrace, other deputies are subjected
to the same outrages; the gendarmerie tries in vain to protect them,
while the 'commandant of the National Guard, on leaving his post, is
attacked and cut down."[59] --  Meanwhile, some of the Jacobins in the
lobbies "doom the majority of the Assembly to destruction"; one orator
declares that "the people have a right to form lists of proscription,"
and the club accordingly decides on printing and publishing the names
of all the deputies who acquitted Lafayette. -- Never was physical
constraint displayed and applied with such open shamelessness.[60]

On the following day, August 9, armed men gather around the approaches
to the Assembly, and sabers are seen even in the corridors.[61]  The
galleries, more imperious than ever, cheer, and break out in ironic
shouts of triumph and approval every time the attacks of the previous
evening are denounced in the tribune. The president calls the
offenders to order more than twenty times, but his voice and his bell
are drowned in the uproar. It is impossible to express an opinion.
Most of the representatives who were maltreated the evening before,
write that they will not return, while others, who are present,
declare that they will not vote again "if they cannot be secure of
freedom of conscience in their deliberations."  At this utterance,
which expresses the secret sentiment of  "nearly the whole of the
Assembly,"[62]  "all the members of the 'Right', and many of the
'Left' arise simultaneously and exclaim: 'Yes, yes; we will debate no
longer unless we are free!"  -- As usual, however, the majority gives
away the moment effective measures are to be adopted; its heart sinks,
as it always has done, on being called upon to act in self-defense,
while these official declarations, one on top of the other, in hiding
from it the gravity of the danger, sink it deeper in its own timidity.
At this same session the syndic-attorney of the department reports
that the mob is ready, that 900 armed men had just entered Paris, that
the tocsin would be rung at midnight, and that the municipality
tolerates or favors the insurrection. At this same session, the
Minister of Justice gives notice that "the laws are powerless," and
that the government is no longer responsible. At this same session,
Pétion, the mayor, almost avowing his complicity, appears at the bar
of the house, and declares positively that he will have nothing to do
with the public forces, because "it would be arming one body of
citizens against another."[63] -- Every support is evidently knocked
away.   Feeling that it is abandoned, the National Assembly gives up,
and, as a last expedient, and with a degree of weakness or simplicity
which admirably depicts the legislators of the epoch, it adopts a
philosophic address to the people, "instructing it what to do in the
exercise of its sovereignty."

How this is done, it may see the next morning. At 7 o'clock, a Jacobin
deputy stops in a cab before the door of the Feuillants club; a crowd
gathers around him, and he gives his name, Delmas. The crowd
understood it as Dumas, a well-known Constitutionalist, and, in a
rage, drag him out of the vehicle and knock him down; had not other
deputies run up and given assurances that he was the patriot Delmas,
of Toulouse, instead of "the traitor, Mathieu Dumas," he was a lost
man.[64]  Dumas makes no effort to enter. He finds on the Place
Vendôme a second and not less instructive warning. Some wretches,
followed by the usual rabble, carry about a number of heads on pikes,
those probably of the journalist Suleau, and three others, massacred a
quarter of an hour before; "boys quite young, mere children, play with
these heads by tossing them in the air, and catching them on the ends
of their sticks." -- There is no doubt but that the deputies of the
"Right" and even the "Center," would do well to go home and stay
there. In fact, they are no longer seen in the Assembly.[65]  In the
afternoon, out of the 630 members still present the evening before,
346 do not answer the call, while about thirty others, had either
withdrawn before this or sent in their resignations.[66] The  purging
is complete, like that to which Cromwell, in 1648, subjected the Long
Parliament. Henceforth the Legislative body, reduced to 224 Jacobins
or Girondins, with 60 frightened or tractable neutrals, will obey the
orders of the street without any difficulty. A change has come over
the spirit of the body as well as over its composition; it is nothing
more now than a servile instrument in the hands of the seditious, who
have mutilated it, and who, masters of it through a first misdeed, are
going to use it to legalize other crimes.



VI.

Nights of August 9 and 10. --  The sections. --  Commissioners of the
sections at the Hôtel-de-ville. --  The revolutionary Commune is
substituted for the legal Commune.

During the night of the 9th and 10th of August their government forms
itself for action, it has been set up as it will behave, with violence
and fraud. i --  In vain have they annoyed and worked on the sections
for the past fortnight; they are not yet submissive, only six out of
forty-eight at the present hour, eleven o'clock at night, being found
sufficiently excited or purged to send their commissioners forthwith,
with full power, to the Hôtel-de-ville. The others will follow, but
the majority rests inert or recalcitrant.[67] --  It is necessary,
therefore, to deceive or force this majority, and, to this end,
darkness, the late hour, disorder, dread of the coming day, and the
uncertainty of what to do, are precious auxiliaries. In many of the
sections,[68] the meetings are already adjourned or deserted; only a
few members of the permanent bureau in the room, with a few men,
perhaps asleep, on the nearly empty benches. An emissary arrives from
the insurgent sections, along with a company of trusty fellows
belonging to the quarter, and cries out, Save the country! The
sleepers open their eyes, stretch themselves, raise their hands, and
elect whoever is designated, sometimes strangers and other unknown
individuals, who will be disowned the coming day at a full meeting of
the section. There is no official report drawn up, no balloting, the
course pursued being the most prompt. At the Arsenal section, six
electors present choose three among their own number to represent
1,400 active citizens. Elsewhere, a throng of shrews, night-brawlers
and dishonorable persons, invade the premises, chase out the believers
in law and order, and win all the desired appointments.[69]  Other
sections consent to elect, but without consenting to give power of
attorney. Several make express reservations, stipulating that their
delegates shall act in concert with the legal municipality,
distrusting the future committee, and declaring in advance that they
will not obey it. A few elect their commissioners only to obtain
information, and, at the same time, to show that they intend earnestly
to stop all rioting.[70]  Finally, at least twenty sections abstain
from or disapprove of the proceedings and send no delegates. --  Never
mind, they can be dispensed with.  At three o'clock in the morning, 19
sections, and, at seven o'clock, 24 or 25,[71] are represented one way
or another at the Town-hall (Hôtel-de-ville), and this representation
forms a central committee. Anyhow, there is nothing to prevent seventy
or eighty subordinate intriguers and desperadoes, who have slipped in
or pushed through, from calling themselves authorized delegates and
ministers plenipotentiary of the entire Paris population,[72] and to
operate accordingly. -- Scarcely are they installed under the
presidency of Huguenin, with Tallien as secretary, when they issue a
summons for "twenty-five armed men from each section," five hundred
strapping lads, to act as guards and serve as an executive force. --
Against a band of this description the municipal council, in session
in the opposite chamber, is feeble enough. Moreover, the most moderate
and firmest of its members, sent away on purpose, are on missions to
the Assembly, at the palace, and in different quarters of Paris, while
its galleries are crammed with villainous looking men, posted there to
create an uproar, its deliberations being carried on under menaces of
death. --  That's why, as the night passes, the equilibrium between
the two assemblages, one legal the other illegal, facing each other
like the two sides of a scale, disappears. Lassitude, fear,
discouragement, desertion, increase on one side,  while numbers,
audacity, force and usurpation increase on the other. At length, the
latter wrests from the former all the acts it needs to start the
insurrection and render defense impossible. About six o'clock in the
morning the intruding committee, in the name of the people, ends the
matter by suspending the legitimate council, which it then expels, and
takes possession of its chairs.

The first act of the new sovereign rulers indicates at once what they
mean to do. M. de Mandat, in  command of the National guard, summoned
to the Hôtel-de-ville,  had come to explain to the council what
disposition he had made of his troops, and what orders he had issued.
They seize him, interrogate him in their turn,[73] depose him, appoint
Santerre in his place, and, to derive all the benefit they can from
his capture, they order him to withdraw one-half of his men stationed
around the palace. Fully aware of what he was exposed to in this den
of thieves, he nobly refuses; forthwith they consign him to prison,
and send him to the Abbaye "for his greater safety." At these
significant words from Danton,[74] he is murdered at the door as he
leaves by Rossignol, one of Danton's acolytes, with a pistol-shot at
arm's length. --  After tragedy comes comedy. At the repeated
entreaties of Pétion, who does not want to be requisitioned against
the rioters,[75] they send him a guard of 400 men, thus confining him
in his own house, and, apparently in spite of himself.

On one side, sheltered by treachery and, on the other side, by
assassination, the insurrection may now go on in full security in
front of the terrible hypocrite who solemnly complains of his
voluntary captivity, and before the corpse, with shattered brow, lying
on the steps of the Hôtel-de-ville.  On the right bank of the river,
the battalions of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, and, on the left, those
of the Faubourg Saint-Marcel, the Bretons, and the Marseilles band,
march forth as freely as if going to parade. Measures of defense are
frustrated by the murder of the commanding general, and by the mayor's
duplicity; there is not resistance on guarded spots, at the arcade
Saint-Jean, the passages of the bridges, along the quays, and in the
court of the Louvre. An advance guard of the mob, women, children, and
men, armed with cutters, cudgels, and pikes, spread over the abandoned
Carrousel, and, towards eight o'clock, the advance column, led by
Westerman, appears in front of the palace.



VII.

August 10. --  The King's forces. --  Resistance abandoned. - -The
King in the National Assembly. --  Conflict at the palace and
discharge of the Swiss Guard. --  The palace evacuated by the King's
order. --  The massacres. --  The enslaved Assembly and its decrees.

If the King had wanted to fight, he might still have defended himself,
saved himself, and even been victorious.[76] -- In the Tuileries, 950
of the Swiss Guard and 200 gentlemen stood ready to die for him to the
last man. Around the Tuileries, two or three thousand National Guard,
the élite of the Parisian population, had just cheered him as he
passed.[77]  "Hurrah for the King! Hurrah for Louis XVI.! He is our
King and we want no other; we want him only! Down with the rioters!
Down with the Jacobins! We will defend him unto death! Let him put
himself at our head! Hurrah for the Nation, the Law, the Constitution,
and the King, which are all one! If the gunners were silent, and
seemed ill-disposed,[78] it was simply necessary to disarm them
suddenly, and hand over their pieces to loyal men. Four thousand
rifles and eleven pieces of artillery, protected by the walls of the
courts and by the thick masonry of the palace, were certainly
sufficient against the nine or ten thousand Jacobins in Paris, most of
them pikemen, badly led by improvised or rebellious battalion
officers,[79] and, still worse, commanded by their new general,
Santerre, who, always cautious, kept himself aloof in the Hôtel-de-
ville, out of harm's way. The only staunch men in the Carrousel were
the eight hundred men from Brest and Marseilles; the rest consisted of
a rabble like that of July 14, October 5, and June 20;[80] the palace,
says Napoleon Bonaparte, was attacked by the vilest canaille,
professional rioters, Maillard's band, and the bands of Lazowski,
Fournier, and Théroigne, by all the assassins, indeed of the previous
night and day, and of the following day, which species of combatants,
as was proved by the event, would have scattered at the first
discharge of a cannon. -- But, with the governing as with the
governed, all notion of the State was lost, the former through
humanity become a duty, and the latter through insubordination erected
into a right. At the close of the eighteenth century, in the upper as
well as in the middle class, there was a horror of blood;[81] refined
social ways, coupled with an idyllic imagination, had softened the
militant disposition. Everywhere the magistrates had forgotten that
the maintenance of society and of civilization is a benefit of
infinitely greater importance than the lives of a parcel of maniacs
and malefactors;  that the prime object of government, as well as of a
police, is the preservation of order by force; that a gendarme is not
a philanthropist; that, if attacked on his post, he must use his
sword, and that, in sheathing it for fear of wounding his aggressors,
he fails to do his duty.

This time again, in the court of the Carrousel, the magistrates on the
spot, finding that "their responsibility is insupportable," concern
themselves only with how to "avoid the effusion of blood;" it is with
regret, and this they state to the troops, "in faltering tones," that
they proclaim martial law.[82] They "forbid them to attack," merely
"authorizing them to repel force with force;" in other words, they
order them to stand up to the first fire; "you are not to fire until
you are fired upon." -- Still better, they go from company to company,
"openly declaring that opposition to such a large and well-armed
assemblage would be folly, and that it would be a very great
misfortune to attempt it." -- "I repeat to you," said Leroux, "that a
defense seems to me madness." -- Such is the way in which, for more
than an hour, they encourage the National Guard. "All I ask," says
Leroux again, "is that you wait a little longer. I hope that we shall
induce the King to yield to the National Assembly." --  Always the
same tactics:  hand the fortress and the general over rather than fire
on the mob. To this end they return to the King, with Rœderer at their
head, and renew their efforts: "Sire," says Rœderer, "time presses,
and we ask you to consent to accompany us." --  For a few moments, the
last and most solemn of the monarchy, the King hesitates.[83]  His
good sense, probably, enabled him to see that a retreat was
abdication; but his phlegmatic understanding is at first unable to
clearly define its consequences; moreover, his optimism had never
explored the vastness of the stupidity of the people, nor sounded the
depths of human malice and spite; he cannot imagine that slander may
transform his determination not to shed blood into a desire to shed
blood.[84] Besides, he is bound by his past, by his habit of always
yielding; by his determination, declared and maintained for the past
three years, never to cause civil war; by his obstinate
humanitarianism, and especially by his religious goodwill. He has
systematically extinguished in himself the animal instinct of
resistance, the flash of anger in all of us which starts up under
unjust and brutal aggressions; the Christian has supplanted the King;
he is no longer aware that duty obliges him to be a man of the sword
that, in his surrender, he surrenders the State, and that to yield
like a lamb is to lead all honest people, along with himself, to the
slaughterhouse. "Let us go," said he, raising his right hand; "we will
give, since it is necessary, one more proof of our self-
sacrifice."[85] Accompanied by his family and Ministers, he sets out
between two lines of National Guards and the Swiss Guard,[86] and
reaches the Assembly, which sends a deputation to meet him; entering
the chamber he says: "I come here to prevent a great crime. " -- No
pretext, indeed, for a conflict now exists. An assault on the
insurgent side is useless, since the monarch, with all belonging to
him and his government, have left the palace. On the other side, the
garrison will not begin the fight; diminished by 150 Swiss and nearly
all the grenadiers of the Filles-Saint-Thomas, who served as the
King's escort to the Assembly, it is reduced to a few gentlemen, 750
Swiss, and about a hundred National Guards; the others, on learning
that the King is going, consider their services at an end and
disperse.[87] -- All seems to be over in the sacrifice of royalty.
Louis XVI. imagines that the Assembly, at the worst, will suspend him
from his functions, and that he will return to the Tuileries as a
private individual.  On leaving the palace, indeed, he orders his
valet to keep up the service until he himself returns from the
National Assembly.[88]

He did not count on the exigencies, blindness and disorders of the
riot. Threatened by the Jacobin gunners remaining with their artillery
in the inside courts, the gatekeepers open the gates. The insurgents
rush in, fraternise with the gunners, reach the vestibule, ascend the
grand staircase, and summon the Swiss to surrender.[89] -- These show
no hostile spirit; many of them, as a mark of good humor, throw
packets of cartridges out of the windows; some even go so far as to
let themselves be embraced and led away. The regiment, however,
faithful to its orders, will not yield to force.[90]  "We are Swiss,"
replies the sergeant, Blaser; "the Swiss do not part with their arms
but with their lives. We think that we do not merit such an insult.
If the regiment is no longer wanted, let it be legally discharged.
But we will not leave our post, nor will we let our arms be taken from
us." The two bodies of troops remain facing each other on the
staircase for three-quarters of an hour, almost intermingled, one
silent and the other excited, turbulent, and active, with all the
ardor and lack of discipline peculiar to a popular gathering, each
insurgent striving apart, and in his own way, to corrupt, intimidate,
or constrain the Swiss Guards. Granier, of Marseilles, at the head of
the staircase, holds two of them at arms' length, trying in a friendly
manner to draw them down.[91]  At the foot of the staircase the crowd
is shouting and threatening; lighter men, armed with boat-hooks,
harpoon the sentinels by their shoulder-straps, and pull down four or
five, like so many fishes, amid shouts of laughter. -- Just at this
moment a pistol goes off; nobody being able to tell which party fired
it.[92] The Swiss, firing from above, clean out the vestibule and the
courts, rush down into the square and seize the cannon; the insurgents
scatter and fly out of range. The bravest, nevertheless, rally behind
the entrances of the houses on the Carrousel, throw cartridges into
the courts of the small buildings and set them on fire.  During
another half-hour, under the dense smoke of the first discharge and of
the burning buildings, both sides fire haphazard, while the Swiss, far
from giving way, have scarcely lost a few men, when a messenger from
the King arrives, M. d'Hervilly, who orders in his name the firing to
cease, and the men to return to their barracks.

Slowly and regularly they form in line and retire along the broad
alley of the garden.  At the sight of these foreigners, however, in
red coats, who had just fired on Frenchmen, the guns of the battalion
stationed on the terraces go off of their own accord, and the Swiss
column divides in two.  One body of 250 men turns to the right,
reaches the Assembly, lays down its arms at the King's order, and
allows itself to be shut up in the Feuillants church. The others are
annihilated on crossing the garden, or cut down on the Place Louis XV.
by the mounted gendarmerie.  No quarter is given. The warfare is that
of a mob, not civilized war, but primitive war, that of barbarians. In
the abandoned palace into which the insurgents entered five minutes
after the departure of the garrison,[93] they kill the wounded, the
two Swiss surgeons attending to them,[94] the Swiss who had not fired
a gun, and who, in the balcony on the side of the garden, "cast off
their cartridge-boxes, sabers, coats, and hats, and shout: 'Friends,
we are with you, we are Frenchmen, we belong to the nation!'"[95]
They kill the Swiss, armed or unarmed, who remain at their posts in
the apartments. They kill the Swiss gate-keepers in their boxes. They
kill everybody in the kitchens, from the head cook down to the pot
boys.[96]  The women barely escape. Madame Campan, on her knees,
seized by the back, sees an uplifted saber about to fall on her, when
a voice from the foot of the staircase calls out: "What are you doing
there? The women are not to be killed!" "Get up, you hussy, the nation
forgives you! " -- To make up for this the nation helps itself and
indulges itself to its heart's content in the palace which now belongs
to it.  Some honest persons do, indeed, carry money and valuables to
the National Assembly, but others pillage and destroy all that they
can.[97] They shatter mirrors, break furniture to pieces, and throw
clocks out of the window; they shout the Marseilles hymn, which one of
the National Guards accompanies on a harpsichord,[98] and descend to
the cellars, where they gorge themselves.  "For more than a
fortnight," says an eye witness,[99] "one walked on fragments of
bottles." In the garden, especially, "it might be said that they had
tried to pave the walks with broken glass." -- Porters are seen seated
on the throne in the coronation robes; a trollop occupies the Queen's
bed; it is a carnival in which unbridled base and cruel instincts find
plenty of good forage and abundant litter. Runaways come back after
the victory and stab the dead with their pikes. Nicely dressed
prostitutes fooling around with naked corpses.[100]  And, as the
destroyers enjoy their work, they are not disposed to be disturbed in
it. In the courts of the Carrousel, where 1800 feet of building are
burning, the firemen try four times to extinguish the fire; "they are
shot at, and threatened with being pitched into the flames,"[101]
while petitioners appear at the bar of the Assembly, and announce in a
threatening tone that the Tuileries are blazing, and shall blaze until
the dethronement becomes a law.

The poor Assembly, become Girondist through its late mutilation,
strives in vain to arrest the downhill course of things, and maintain,
as it has just sworn to do, "the constituted authorities";[102] it
strives, at least, to put Louis XVI. in the Luxembourg palace, to
appoint a tutor for the Dauphin, to keep the ministers temporarily in
office, and to save all prisoners, and those who walk the streets.
Equally captive, and nearly as prostrate as the King himself; the
Assembly merely serves as a recording office for the popular will,
that very morning furnishing evidence of the value which the armed
commonalty attaches to its decrees.  That morning murders were
committed at its door, in contempt of its safe conduct; at eight
o'clock Suleau and three others, wrested from their guards, are cut
down under its windows. In the afternoon, from sixty to eighty of the
unarmed Swiss still remaining in the church of the Feuillants are
taken out to be sent to the Hôtel-de-ville, and massacred on the way
at the Place de Grève. Another detachment, conducted to the section of
the Roule, is likewise disposed of in the same way.[103]  Carle, at
the head of the gendarmerie, is called out of the Assembly and
assassinated on the Place Vendôme, and his head is carried about on a
pike. The founder of the old monarchical club, M. de Clermont-
Tonnerre, withdrawn from public life for two years past, and quietly
passing along the streets, is recognized, dragged through the gutter
and cut to pieces. -- After such warnings (murder and pillage) the
Assembly can only obey, and, as usual, conceal its submission beneath
sonorous words. If the dictatorial committee, self-imposed at the
Hôtel-de-ville, still condescends to keep it alive, it is owing to a
new investiture,[104] and by declaring to it that it must not meddle
with its doings now or in the future. Let it confine itself to its
function, that of rendering decrees made by the faction. Accordingly,
like fruit falling from a tree vigorously shaken, these decrees rattle
down, one after another, into the hands that await them,[105]



1. the suspension of the King,

2. the convoking of a national convention,

3. electors and the eligible exempted from all property
qualifications,

4. an indemnity for displaced electors,

5. the term of Assemblies left to the decision of the electors,[106]

6. the removal and arrest of the late ministers,

7. the re-appointment of Servan, Clavières and Roland,

8. Danton as Minister of Justice,

9. the recognition of the usurping Commune,

10. Santerre confirmed in his new rank,

11. the municipalities empowered to look after general safety,

12. the arrest of suspicious persons confided to all well-disposed
citizens,[107]

13. domiciliary visits prescribed for the discovery of arms and
ammunition,[108]

14. all the justices of Paris to be re-elected by those within their
jurisdiction,

15. all officers of the gendarmerie subject to re-election by their
soldiers,[109]

16. thirty sous per diem for the Marseilles troops from the day of
their arrival,

17. a court-martial against the Swiss,

18. a tribunal for the dispatch of justice against the vanquished of
August 10, and a quantity of other decrees of a still more important
bearing:

19. the suspension of the commissioners appointed to enforce the
execution of the law in civil and criminal courts,[110]

20. the release of all persons accused or condemned for military
insubordination, for press offenses and pillaging of grain,[111]

21. the partition of communal possessions,[112]

22. the confiscation and sale of property belonging to émigrés,[113]

23. the relegation of their fathers, mothers, wives and children into
the interior,

24. the banishment or transportation of unsworn ecclesiastics,[114]

25. the establishment of easy divorce at two months' notice and on
demand of one of the parties,[115]





in short, every measure is taken which tend to disturb property, break
up the family, persecute conscience, suspend the law, pervert justice,
and rehabilitate crime. laws are promulgated to deliver:



* the judicial system,

* the full control of the nation,

* the selection of the members of the future omnipotent Assembly,

* in short, the entire government,



to an autocratic, violent minority, which, having risked all to grab
the dictatorship, dares all to keep it.[116]







VIII.

State of Paris in the Interregnum. -- The mass of the population. --
Subaltern Jacobins. --  The Jacobin leaders.

Let us stop a moment to contemplate this great city and its new
rulers. -- From afar, Paris seems a club of 700,000 fanatics,
vociferating and deliberating on the public squares; near by, it is
nothing of the sort. The slime, on rising from the bottom, has become
the surface, and given its color to the stream; but the human stream
flows in its ordinary channel, and, under this turbid exterior,
remains about the same as it was before. It is a city of people like
ourselves, governed, busy, and fond of amusement. To the great
majority, even in revolutionary times, private life, too complex and
absorbing, leaves but an insignificant corner for public affairs.
Through routine and through necessity, manufacturing, display of
wares, selling, purchasing, keeping accounts, trades, and professions,
continue as usual. The clerk goes to his office, the workman to his
shop, the artisan to his loft, the merchant to his warehouse, the
professional to his cabinet, and the official to his duty;[117] they
are devoted, first of all, to their pursuits, to their daily bread, to
the discharge of their obligations, to their own advancement, to their
families, and to their pleasures; to provide for these things the day
is not too long. Politics only briefly distract them, and then rather
out of curiosity, like a play one applauds or hisses in his seat
without stepping upon the stage. --  "The declaration that the country
is in danger," says many eye witnesses,[118] "has made no change in
the physiognomy of Paris. There are the same amusements, the same
gossip. . . .  The theaters are full as usual. The wine-shops and
places of diversion overflow with the people, National Guards, and
soldiers. . . .  The fashionable world enjoys its pleasure-parties," -
"The day after the decree, the effect of the ceremony, so skillfully
managed, is very slight. "The National Guard in the procession, writes
a patriotic journalist,[119] "first shows indifference and even
boredom"; it is exasperated with night watches and patrol duty; they
probably tell each others that in parading for the nation, one finds
no time to work for one's self. -- A few days after this the manifesto
of the Duke of Brunswick "produces no sensation whatever. People laugh
at it. Only the newspapers and their readers are familiar with it. . .
. The mass know nothing about it. Nobody fears the coalition nor
foreign troops."[120] -- On the 10th of August, outside the theater of
the combat, all is quiet in Paris. People walk about and chat in the
streets as usual."[121] -- On the 19th of August, Moore, the
Englishman,[122] sees, with astonishment, the heedless crowd filling
the Champs Elysées, the various diversions, the air of a fête, the
countless small shops in which refreshments are sold accompanied with
songs and music, and the quantities of pantomimes and marionettes.
"Are these people as happy as they seem to be?" he asks of a Frenchman
along with him. -- "They are as jolly as gods!" -- "Do you think the
Duke of Brunswick is ever in their heads?" --  "Monsieur, you may be
sure of this, that the Duke of Brunswick is the last man they think
of."

Such is the unconcern or light-heartedness of the gross, egoistic
mass, otherwise busy, and always passive under any government whatever
it may be, a veritable flock of sheep, allowing government to do as it
pleases, provided it does not hinder it from browsing and capering as
it chooses. --  As to the men of sensibility who love their country,
they are still less troublesome, for they are gone or going (to the
army), often at the rate of a thousand and even two thousand a day,
ten thousand in the last week of July,[123] fifteen thousand in the
first two weeks of September,[124] in all perhaps 40,000 volunteers
furnished by the capital alone and who, with their fellows
proportionate in number supplied by the departments, are to be the
salvation of France. -- Through this departure of the worthy, and this
passivity of the flock, Paris belongs to the fanatics among the
population. "These are the sans-culottes," wrote the patriotic Palloy,
"the scum and riffraff of Paris, and I glory in belonging to that
class which has put down the so-called honest folks."[125]  -- "Three
thousand workmen," says the Girondist Soulavie, later, "made the
Revolution of the 10th of August, against the kingdom of the
Feuillants, the majority of the capital and against the Legislative
Assembly."[126] Workmen, day laborers, and petty shop-keepers, not
counting women, common vagabonds and regular bandits, form, indeed,
one-twentieth of the adult male population of the city, about 9,000
spread over all sections of Paris, the only ones to vote and act in
the midst of universal stupor and indifference. --  We find in the Rue
de Seine, for example, seven of them, Lacaille, keeper of a roasting-
shop; Philippe, "a cattle-breeder, who leads around she-asses for
consumptives," now president of the section, and soon to become one of
the Abbaye butchers; Guérard, "a Rouen river-man who has abandoned the
navigation of the Seine on a large scale and keeps a skiff, in which
he ferries people over the river from the Pont du Louvre to the Quai
Mazarin," and four characters of the same stamp. Their energy,
however, replaces their lack of education and numerical inferiority.
One day, Guérard, on passing M. Hua, the deputy, tells him in the way
of a warning, "You big rascal, you were lucky to have other people
with you. If you had been alone, I would have capsized my boat, and
had the pleasure of drowning a blasted aristocrat!" These are the
"matadors of the quarter".[127] --  Their ignorance does not trouble
them; on the contrary, they take pride in coarseness and vulgarity.
One of the ordinary speechmakers of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine,
Gouchon, a designer for calicos, comes to the bar of the Assembly, "in
the name of the men of July 14 and Augusts 10," to glorify the
political reign of brutal incapacity; according to him, it is more
enlightened than that of the cultivated:[128]"those great geniuses
graced with the fine title of Constitutionalists are forced to do
justice to men who never studied the art of governing elsewhere than
in the book of experience. . . . Consulting customs and not
principles, these clever people have for a long period been busy with
the political balance of things; we have found it without looking for
it in the heart of man: Form a government which will place the poor
above their feeble resources and the rich below their means, and the
balance will be perfect." [129]

This is more than clear, their declared purpose is a complete
leveling, not alone of political rights, but, again, and especially,
of conditions and fortunes; they promise themselves "absolute
equality, real equality," and, still better, "the magistracy and all
government powers."[130] France belongs to them, if they are bold
enough to seize hold of it. -- And, on the other hand, should they
miss their prey, they feel themselves lost, for the Brunswick
manifesto,[131] which had made no impression on the public, remains
deeply impressed in their minds. They apply its threats to themselves,
while their imagination, as usual, translates it into a specific
legend:[132] all the inhabitants of Paris are to be led out on the
plain of Saint-Denis, and there decimated; previous to this, the most
notorious patriots will be singled out together with forty or fifty
market-women and broken on the wheel. Already, on the 11th of August,
a rumor is current that 800 men of the late royal guards are ready to
make a descent on Paris;[133] that very day the dwelling of
Beaumarchais is ransacked for seven hours;[134] the walls are pierced,
the privies sounded, and the garden dug down to the rock. The same
search is repeated in the adjoining house. The women are especially
"enraged at not finding anything," and wish to renew the attempt,
swearing that they will discover where things are hidden in ten
minutes. The nightmare is evidently too much for these unballasted
minds. They break down under the weight of their accidental kingship,
their inflamed pride, extravagant desires, and intense and silent
fears which form in them that morbid and evil concoction which, in
democracy as well as in a monarchy, fashions a Nero.[135]

Their leaders, who are even more upset, conceited, and despotic, have
no scruples holding them back, for the most noteworthy are corrupt,
acting alone or as leaders.  Of the three chiefs of the old
municipality, Pétion, the mayor, actually in semi-retirement, but
verbally respected, is set aside and considered as an old decoration.
The other two remain active and in office, Manuel,[136] the syndic-
attorney, son of a porter, a loud-talking, untalented bohemian, stole
the private correspondence of Mirabeau from a public depository,
falsified it, and sold it for his own benefit. Danton,[137] Manuel's
deputy, faithless in two ways, receives the King's money to prevent
the riot, and makes use of it to urge it on. -- Varlet, "that
extraordinary speech-maker, led such a foul and prodigal life as to
bring his mother in sorrow to the grave; afterwards he spent what was
left, and soon had nothing."[138] -- Others not only lacked honor but
even common honesty. Carra, with a seat in the secret Directory of the
Federates, and who drew up the plan of the insurrection, had been
condemned by the Mâcon tribunals to two years' imprisonment for theft
and burglary.[139] Westermann, who led the attacking column, had stolen
a silver dish, with a coat of arms on it, from Jean Creux, keeper of a
restaurant, rue des Poules, and was twice sent away from Paris for
swindling.[140] Panis, chief of the Committee of Supervision,[141] was
turned out of the Treasury Department, where his uncle was a sub
cashier, in 1774, for robbery.  His colleague, Sergent, appropriates
to himself "three gold watches, an agate ring, and other jewels," left
with him on deposit.[142]  "Breaking seals, false charges, breaches of
trust," embezzlements, are familiar transactions. In their hands piles
of silver plate and 1,100,000 francs in gold are to disappear.[143]
Among the members of the new Commune, Huguenin, the president, a clerk
at the barriers, is a brazen embezzler.[144] Rossignol, a journeyman
jeweller, implicated in an assassination, is at this moment subject to
judicial prosecution.[145]  Hébert, a journalistic garbage bag,
formerly check-taker in a theatre, is turned away from the Variétés
for larceny.[146] Among men of action, Fournier, the American,
Lazowski, and Maillard are not only murderers, but likewise
robbers,[147] while, by their side, arises the future general of the
Paris National Guard, Henriot, at first a domestic in the family of an
attorney who turned him out for theft, then a tax-clerk, again turned
adrift for theft, and, finally, a police spy, and still incarcerated
in the Bicêtre prison for another theft, and, at last, a battalion
officer, and one of the September executioners.[148] - Simultaneously
with the bandits and rascals, monstrous maniacs come out of their
holes. De Sades,[149] who lived the life of "Justine" before he wrote
it, and whom the Revolution delivered from the Bastille, is secretary
of the section of the Place Vendôme.  Marat, the homicidal monomaniac,
constitutes himself, after the 23rd  of August, official journalist at
the Hôtel-de-ville, political advisor and consciousness of the new
Commune, and the obsessive plan, which he preaches for three years, is
merely an instant and direct wholesale butchery.

"Give me," said he to Barbaroux,[150] "two hundred Neapolitans armed
with daggers, and with only a hand-kerchief on their left arms for a
buckler, and I will overrun France and build the Revolution."

According to him it is necessary to do away with 260,000 men "on
humane grounds," for, unless this is done, there is no safety for the
rest.

 "The National Assembly may still save France; let it decree that all
aristocrats shall wear a blue ribbon, and the moment that three of
them are seen in company, let them be hung."

Another way would be

"to lay in wait in dark streets and at corners for the royalists and
Feuillants, and cut their throats. Should ten patriots happen to be
killed among a hundred men, what does it matter? It is only ninety for
ten, which prevents mistakes. Fall upon those who own carriages,
employ valets, wear silk coats, or go to the theatres. You may be sure
that they are aristocrats."

The Jacobin proletariat has obviously found the leadership that suits
them.  They will get on with each other without difficulty. In order
that this spontaneous massacre may become an administrative measure,
the Neros of the gutter have but to await the word of command from the
Neros of the Hôtel-de-ville.
_________________________________________________________________________

Notes:

[1]An expression of Lafayette's in his address to the Assembly.

[2]Lafayette, "Mémoires," I. 452. -- Malouet (II. 213) states that
there were seventy.

[3]Cf., for example, "Archives Nationales," A.F. II.116. Petition of
228 notables of Montargis.

[4] Petition of the 20,000, so-called, presented by Messrs. Guillaume
and Dupont de Nemours. - Cf.. Mortimer-Ternaux, I. 278. -- According
to Buchez et Roux, the petition containing only 7,411 names.

[5] Mortimer-Ternaux, I.277.

[6] Moniteur, XIII. 89. The act (July 7) is drawn up with admirable
precision and force. On comparing it with the vague, turgid
exaggerations of their adversaries, it seems to  measure the
intellectual distance between the two parties.

[7] 339 against 224 -- Rœderer ("Chronique des cinquante jours,"
p.79). "A strong current of opinion by a majority of the inhabitants
of Paris sets in  favor of the King." - C. Desmoulins; "That class of
petty traders and shopkeepers, who are more afraid of the
revolutionaries than of so many Uhlans. . . "

[8] Mortimer-Ternaux, I. 236. Letter of Rœderer to the president of
the National Assembly, June 25. "Mr. President, I have the honor to
inform the Assembly that an armed mob is marching towards the
Château."

[9] Mortimer-Ternaux, I. 245, 246. - II. 81, 131, 148, 170.

[10] The murder of M. Duhamel, sub-lieutenant of the national guard.

[11] Letter of Vergniaud and Guadet to the painter Boze (in the
"Mémoires de Dumouriez"). -- Rœderer, "Chronique des cinquante jours,"
295. -- Bertrand de Molleville, "Mémoires," III. 29.

[12] Moniteur, XIII. 155 (session of July 16). -- Mortimer-Ternaux,
II. 69. "Favored by you," says Manuel, "all citizens are entitled to
visit the first functionary of the nation. . . The prince's dwelling
should be open, like a church. Fear of the people is an insult to the
people. If Louis XVI. possessed the soul of a Marcus Aurelius, he
would have descended into his gardens and tried to console a hundred
thousand beings, on account of the slowness of the Revolution. . .
Never had there been fewer thieves in the Tuileries than on that day;
for the courtiers had fled. . .The red cap was an honor to Louis XVI.s
head, and ought to be his crown."  At this solemn moment the
fraternization of the king with the people took place, and "the next
day the same king betrayed, calumniated, and disgraced the people!"
Manuel's rigmarole surpasses all that can be imagined. "After this
there arises in the panelings of the Louvre, at the confluence of the
civil list, another channel, which leads through the shades below to
Pétion's dungeon. . . The department, in dealing a blow at the
municipality, explains how, at the banquet of the Law, it represents
the Law in the form of a crocodile, etc."

[13] Moniteur, XIII. 93 (session of July 9); --  27 (session of July
2).

[14] Moniteur, XII. 751 (session of June 24); XIII.33 (session of July
3).

[15] Moniteur, XIII. 224 (session of July 23). Two unsworn priests had
just been massacred at  Bordeaux and their heads carried through the
streets on pikes. Ducos adds: "Since the executive power has put its
veto on laws repressing fanaticism, popular executions begin to be
repeated. If the courts do not render justice, etc." -- Ibid., XIII.
301 (session of July 31).

[16] Moniteur, XIII. 72 (session of July 7). The king's speech to the
Assembly after the Lamourette kiss. "I confess to you, M. President,
that I was very anxious for the deputation to arrive, that I might
hasten to the Assembly."

[17] Moniteur, XIII. 313 (session of Aug. 3). The declaration read in
the king's name must be weighed sentence by sentence; it sums up his
conduct with perfect exactness and thus ends: "What  are personal
dangers to a king, from whom they would take the love of his people?
This is what affects me most. The day will come, perhaps, when the
people will know how much I prize its welfare, how much this has
always been my concern and my first need. What sorrows would disappear
at the slightest sign of its return!"

[18] Moniteur, XIII.  33, 56 bis 85,  97 (sessions of July 3, 5, 6 and
9).

[19] Moniteur, XIII.  26, 170, 273 (sessions of July 12, 17, 28). -
Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 122 (session of  July 23): Addresses of the
municipal council of Marseilles, of the federates, of the Angers
petitioners, of the Charente volunteers, etc. "A hereditary monarchy
is opposed to the Rights of Man. Pass the act of dethronement and
France is saved. . . Be brave, let the sword of the law fall on a
perjured functionary and conspirator! Lafayette is the most
contemptible, the guiltiest, . . . the most infamous of the assassins
of the people," etc.

[20] Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 126. -- Bertrand de Molleville, III. 294.

[21] Moniteur, XIII.  325 (session of Aug. 3).

[22] Moniteur, XII. 738; XII. 340.

[23] Moniteur, XIII. 170, 171, 187, 208, 335 (sessions of July 17, 18,
and 23, and Aug. 5).

[24] Moniteur, XIII. 187 (session of July 18). "The galleries applaud.
The Assembly murmurs." -- 208 (July 21). "Murmuring, shouts, and cries
of Down with the speaker! from the galleries. The president calls the
house to order five times, but always fruitlessly." -- 224 (July 23).
"The galleries applaud; long continued murmurs are heard in the
Assembly."

[25] Buzot, "Mémoires" (Ed. Dauban, 83 and 84). "The majority of the
French people yearned for royalty and the constitution of 1790. . . It
was at Paris particularly that this desire governed the general plan,
the discussion of it being the least feared in special conversations
and in private society. There were only a few noble-minded, superior
men that were worthy of being republicans. . . The rest desired the
constitution of 1791, and spoke of the republicans only as one speaks
of very honest maniacs."

[26] Duvergier, "Collection des lois et décrets," May 29, 1792; July
15, 16, and 18; July 6-20.

[27] Moniteur, XIII. 25 (session of July 1). Petition of 150 active
citizens of the Bonne-Nouvelle section.

[28] Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 194. Buchez et Roux, XVI. 253. The decree
of dismissal was not passed until the 12th of August, but after the
31St of July the municipality demanded it and during the following
days several Jacobin grenadiers go to the National Assembly, trample
on their bearskin hats and put on the red cap of liberty.

[29] Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 192 (municipal action of Aug. 5).

[30] Decree of July 2.

[31] Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 129. -- Buchez et Roux, XV. 458. According
to the report of the Minister of War, read the 30th of July, at the
evening session, 5,314 department federates left Paris between July 14
and 30. Pétion wrote that the levy of federates then in Paris amounted
to 2,960, "of which 2,032 were getting ready to go to the camp at
Soissons." -- A comparison of these figures leads to the approximate
number that I have adopted

[32] Buchez et Roux, XVI. 120, 133 (session of the Jacobins, Aug. 6).
The federates "resolved to watch the Château, each taking a place in
the battalions respectively of the sections in which they lodge, and
many incorporated themselves with the battalions of the faubourg St
Antoine."

[33] Mercure de France, April 14, 1793.-- " The Revolution," I. p.
332.

[34] Barbaroux, "Mémoires," 37-40. -- Lauront-Lautard, "Marseilles
depuis 1789 jusqu'à 1815," I. 134. "The mayor, Mourdeille," who had
recruited them, "was perhaps very glad to get rid of them." -- On the
composition of this group and on the previous rôle of Rebecqui, see
chapter VI.

[35] Buchez et Roux, XVI. 197 and following pages. -- Mortimer-
Ternaux, II. 148 (the grenadiers numbered only 166). -- Moniteur,
XIII. 310 (session of Aug. 1). Address of the grenadiers:  "They swore
on their honor that they did not draw their swords until after being
threatened for a quarter of an hour, then insulted and humiliated,
until forced to defend their lives against a troop of brigands armed
with pistols, and some of them with carbines." -- " The reading of
this memorandum is often interrupted by hooting from the galleries, in
spite of the president's orders." -- Hooting again, when they file out
of the chamber.

[36] The lack of men of action greatly embarrassed the Jacobin party.
("Correspondance de Mirabeau et du Comte de la Marck,2 II. 326.)
Letter of M. de Montmorin, July 13, 1792. On the disposition of the
people of Paris, wearied and worn out "to excess."  "They will take no
side, either for or against the king. . . They no longer stir for any
purpose; riots are wholly factitious. This is so right that they are
obliged to bring men from the South to get them up. Nearly all of
those who forced the gates of the Tuileries, or rather, who got inside
of them on the 20th of June, were outsiders or onlookers, got together
at the sight of such a lot of pikes and red caps, etc. The cowards ran
at the slightest indication of presenting arms, which was done by a
portion of the national guard on the arrival of a deputation from the
National Assembly, their leaders being obliged to encourage them by
telling them that they were not to be fired at."

[37] Buchez et Roux, XVI. 447. "Chronique des cinquante jours," by
Rœderer.

[38] Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 378.-127  Jacobins of Arras, led by
Geoffroy and young Robespierre, declare to the Directory that they
mean to come to its meetings and follow its deliberations. "It is time
that the master should keep his eye on his agents." The Directory,
therefore, resigns (July 4, 1792). - Ibid., 462 (report of Leroux,
municipal officer). The Paris municipal council, on the night of
August 9-10 deliberates under threats of death and the furious shouts
of the galleries.

[39] Duvergier's "Collection of Laws and Decrees," July 4, 5-8, 11-12,
25-28. -- Buchez et Roux, XVI. 250. The section of the Theatre
Français (of which Danton is president and Chaumette and Momoro
secretaries) thus interpret the declaration of the country being in
danger. "After a declaration of the country being in danger by the
representatives of the people, it is natural that the people itself
should take back its sovereign supervision."

[40]  Schmidt, "Tableaux de la Révolution," I. 99-100. Report to
Roland, Oct. 29, 1792.

[41]  Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 199. - Buchez et Roux, XVI. 320. -
Moniteur, XIII. 336 (session of Aug. 5). Speech by Collot d'Herbois.

[42] Moniteur, XI. 20, session of Feb. 4. At this meeting Gorguereau,
reporter of the committee on legislation, had already stated that "The
authors of these multiplied addresses seem to command rather than
demand. . . It is ever the same sections or the same individuals who
deceive you in bringing to you their own false testimony for that of
the capital." - "Down with the reporter!  From the galleries." -
Ibid.,  XIII. 93, session of July 11. M. Gastelier: "Addresses in the
name of the people are constantly read to you, which are not even the
voice of one section. We have seen the same individual coming three
times a week to demand something in the name of sovereignty." (Shouts
of down! down! in the galleries. Ibid., 208, session of July 21. M.
Dumolard: "You must distinguish between the people of Paris and these
subaltern intriguers . . . these habitual oracles of the cafés and
public squares, whose equivocal existence has for a long time occupied
the attention and claimed the supervision of the police." (Down with
the speaker! murmurs and hooting in the galleries).-Mortimer-Ternaux,
II. 398. Protests of the arsenal section, read by Lavoisier (the
chemist):  "The caprice of a knot of citizens (thus) becomes the
desire of an immense population."

[43] Buchez et Roux, XVI. 251. - Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 239 and 243.
The central bureau is first opened in "the building of the Saint-
Esprit, in the second story, near the passage communicating with the
common dwelling." Afterwards the commissioners of the section occupy
another room in the Hôtel-de-ville, nearly joining the throne-room,
where the municipal council is holding its sessions. During the night
of August 9-10 both councils sit four hours simultaneously within a
few steps of each other.

[44] Robespierre, "Seventh letter to his constituents," says: "The
sections. . . have been busy for more than a fortnight getting ready
for the last Revolution."

[45] Robespierre, "Seventh letter to his constituents" -- Malouet, II.
233,  234. -- Rœderer, "Chronique des cinquante jours."

[46] Moniteur, XIII. 318, 319. The petition is drawn up apparently by
people who are beside themselves. "If we did not rely on you, I would
not answer for the excesses to which our despair would carry us! We
would bring on ourselves all the horrors of civil war, provided we
could, on dying, drag along with us some of our cowardly assassins!" -
- The representatives, it must be noted, talk in the same vein. La
Source exclaims: "The members here, like yourselves, call for
vengeance!" - Thuriot: "The crime is atrocious!"

[47]  Taine is describing a basic trait of human nature, something we
see again and again whether our ancestors attacked small, harmless
neighboring nations,  witches, renegades, Jews, or religious people of
another faith .(SR).

[48] Buchez et Roux, XIX 93, session of Sept. 23, 1792. Speech by
Panis: "Many worthy citizens would like to have judicial proof; but
political proofs satisfy us" -- Towards the end of July the Minister
of the Interior had invited Pétion to send two municipal officers to
examine the Tuileries; but this the council refused to do, so as to
keep up the excitement.

[49] Mallet du Pan, "Mémoires," 303. Letter of Malouet, June 29. --
Bertrand de Molleville, "Mémoires," II. 301. -- Hua, 148. -- Weber,
II. 208. -- Madame Campan, "Mémoires," II. 188. Already, at the end of
1791, the king was told that he was liable to be poisoned by the
pastry-cook of the palace, a Jacobin. For three or four months the
bread and pastry he ate were secretly purchased in other places. On
the 14th of July, 1792, his attendants, on account of the threats
against his life, put a breastplate on him under his coat.

[50] member of the 1789 Constituent Assembly. (SR).

[51] Moniteur, VIII. 271, 278. A deputy, excusing his assailants,
pretends that d'Ésprémesnil urged the people to enter the Tuileries
garden. It is scarcely necessary to state that during the Constituent
Assembly d'Espréménil was one of the most conspicuous members of the
extreme "Right." - Duc de Gaëte, "Mémoires," I. 18.

[52] Lafayette, "Mémoires," I. 465.

[53] Moniteur, XIII. 327, -- Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 176.

[54] Moniteur, XIII. 340. -- The style of these petitions is highly
instructive. We see in them the state of mind and degree of education
of the petitioners: sometimes a half-educated writer attempting to
reason in the vein of the Contrat Social; sometimes, a schoolboy
spouting the tirades of Raynal; and sometimes, the corner letter-
writer putting together the expressions forming his stock in trade.

[55] Carra, "Précis historique sur l'origine et les véritables auteurs
de l'insurrection du 10 Août." -- Barbaroux, "Mémoires, 49. The
executive directory, appointed by the central committee of the
confederates, held its first meeting in a wine-shop, the Soleil d'or,
on the square of the Bastille; the second at the Cadran bleu, on the
boulevard; the third in Antoine's room, who then lodged in the same
house with Robespierre. Camille Desmoulins was present at this latter
meeting. Santerre, Westermann, Fournier the American, and Lazowski
were the principal members of this Directory. Another insurrectionary
plan was drawn up on the 30th of July in a wine-shop at Charenton by
Barbaroux, Rebecqui, Pierre Bayle, Heron, and Fournier the American. -
Cf. J. Claretie, "Camille Desmoulins," p. 192.  Desmoulins wrote, a
little before the 10th of August: "If the National Assembly thinks
that it cannot save the country, let it declare then, that, according
to the Constitution, and like the Romans, it hands this over to each
citizen. Let the tocsin be rung forthwith, the whole nation assembled,
and every man, as at Rome, be invested with the power of putting to
death all well-known conspirators!"

[56] Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 182. Decision of the Quinze-Vingt Section,
Aug. 4. - Buchez et Roux, XVI. 402-410. History of Quinze-Vingt
Section.

[57] Moniteur. XIII. 367, session of Aug. 8. - Ibid., 369 and
following pages. Session of Aug. 9. Letters and speeches of maltreated
deputies.

[58] Moniteur, 371. Speech of M. Girardin: "I am convinced that most
of those who insulted me were foreigners." -- Ibid., 370. Letter of M.
Frouvières: "Many of the citizens, coming out of their shops,
exclaimed: How can they insult the deputies in this way? Run away! run
off!" -- M. Jolivet, that evening attending a meeting of the Jacobin
Club, states "that the Jacobin tribunes were far from sharing in this
frenzy." He heard "one individual in these tribunes exclaim, on the
proposal to put the dwellings of the deputies on the list, that it was
outrageous." -- Countless other details show the small number and
character of the factions. - Ibid., 374. Speech of Aubert-Dubacet: "I
saw men dressed in the coats of the national guard, with countenances
betraying everything that is most vile in wickedness." There are "a
great many evil-disposed persons among the federates."

[59] Moniteur, XIII. 170 (letter of M. de Joly, Minister of Justice).
- Ibid.,  371, declaration of M. Jolivet. - Buchez et Roux, XVI. 370
(session of the Jacobin Club, Aug. 8, at evening). Speech by
Goupilleau.

[60]  One may imagine with what satisfaction Lenin, must have read
this description agreeing: "Yes, open voting by a named and identified
count, that is how a leader best can control any assembly." (SR).

[61] Moniteur,  XIII. 37o. - Cf. Ibid., the letter of M. Chapron. --
Ibid., 372. Speech by M. A. Vaublanc. -- Moore, "Journal during a
Residence in France," I. 25 (Aug. 10). The impudence of the people in
the galleries was intolerable. There was "a loud and universal peal of
laughter from all the galleries" on the reading of a letter, in which
a deputy wrote that he was threatened with decapitation. -- " Fifty
members were shouting at the same time; the most boisterous night I
ever was witness to in the House of Commons was calmness itself
alongside of this."

[62] Moniteur, Ibid., p. 371. - Lafayette, I. 467. "On the 9th of
August, as can be seen in the unmutilated editions of the Logographe,
the Assembly, almost to a man, arose and declared that it was not
free." Ibid., 478.  "On the 9th of August the Assembly had passed a
decree declaring that it was not free. This decree was torn up on the
10th. But it is no that it was passed."

[63] Moniteur, XIII. 370, 374, 375. Speech by Rœderer, letter of M. de
Joly, and speech by Pétion.

[64]  Mathieu Dumas, "Mémoires," II. 461.

[65] "Chronique des cinquante jours," by Rœderer. - Mortimer-Ternaux,
II. 260. - Buchez et Roux, XVI. 458. - Towards half-past seven in the
morning there were only from sixty to eighty members present.
(Testimony of two of the Ministers who leave the Assembly.)

[66] Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 205. At the ballot of July 12, not counting
members on leave of absence or delegated elsewhere, and the dead not
replaced, there were already twenty-seven not answering the call,
while after that date three others resigned. -- Buchez et Roux, XVIL
340 (session of Sept. 2, 1792). Hérault de Séchelles is elected
president by 248 out of 257 voters. -- Hua, 164 (after Aug. 10). "We
attended the meetings of the House simply to show that we had not
given them up. We took no part in the discussions, and on the vote
being taken, standing or sitting, we remained in our seats. This was
the only protest we could make."

[67] Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 229, 233, 417 and following pages. M.
Mortimer-Ternaux is the first to expose, with documents to support him
and critical discussion, the formation of the revolutionary commune. -
The six sections referred to are the Lombards, Gravilliers,
Mauconseil, Gobelins, Théatre-Français, and Faubourg Poissonnière.

[68]  For instance, the Enfants Rouges, Louvre, Observatoire,
Fontaine-Grenelle, Faubourg Saint-Denis, and Thermes de Julien..

[69] For example, at the sections of Montreuil, Popincourt, and Roi de
Sicile..

[70]  For example, Ponceau, Invalides, Sainte-Geneviève.

[71]  Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 240.

[72] Mortimer-Ternaux, 446 (list of the commissioners who took their
seats before 9 o'clock in the morning). "Le Tableau général des
Commisaires des 48 sections qui ont composé le conseil général de la
Commune de Paris, le 10 Août, 1792," it must be noted, was not
published until three or four months later, with all the essential
falsifications. It may be found in Buchez et Roux, XVI. 450. --
"Relation de l'abbé Sicard." "At that time a lot of scoundrels, after
the general meeting of the sections was over, passed acts in the name
of the whole assemblage and had them executed, utterly unknown to
those who had done this, or by those who were the unfortunate victims
of these proceedings " (supported by documents).

[73] Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 270, 273. (The official report of Mandat's
examination contains five false statements, either through omission or
substitution.)

[74] Claretie, "Camille Desmoulins," p.467 (notes of Topino-Lebrun on
Danton's trial). Danton, in the pleadings, says: "I left at 1 o'clock
in the morning. I was at the revolutionary commune and pronounced
sentence of death on Mandet, who had orders to fire op the people."
Danton in the same place says: "I had planned the 10th of August."  It
is very certain that from 1 to 7 o'clock in the morning (when Mandat
was killed) he was the principal leader of the insurrectional commune.
Nobody was so potent, so overbearing, so well endowed physically for
the control of such a conventicle as Danton. Besides, among the new-
comers he was the best known and with the most influence through his
position as deputy of the syndic-attorney. Hence his prestige after
the victory and appointment as Minister of Justice. His hierarchical
superior, the syndic-attorney Manuel, who was there also and signed
his name, showed himself undoubtedly the pitiful fellow he was, an
affected, crazy, ridiculous loud-talker. For this reason he was
allowed to remain syndic-attorney as a tool and servant. -- Beaulieu,
"Essais sur la Révolution Française," III. 454. "Rossignal boasted of
having committed this assassination himself."

[75] "Pièces intéressantes pour l'histoire," by Pétion, 1793. "I
desired the insurrection, but I trembled for fear that it might not
succeed. My position was a critical one. I had to do my duty as a
citizen without sacrificing that of a magistrate; externals had to be
preserved without derogating from forms. The plan was to confine me in
my own house; but they forgot or delayed to carry this out. Who do you
think repeatedly sent to urge the execution of this measure? Myself;
yes, myself!"

[76] In "Histoire de la Révolution Française" by Ferrand & Lamarque,
Cavaillés, Paris 1851, vol. II. Page 225 we may read the following
footnote: "This very evening, a young artillery lieutenant observed,
from a window of a house in the rue de l'Echelle, the preparations
which were being undertaken in the château des Tuileries: that was
Napoleon Bonaparte. "-Well, right, asked the deputy Pozze di Borgo,
his compatriot, what do you think of what is going on? This evening
they will attack the château. Do you think the people will succeed? -
I don't know, answered the future emperor, but what I can assure you
is that if they gave me the command of two Swiss battalions and one
hundred good horsemen, I should repel the insurgents in a manner which
would for ever rid them of any desire to return." (SR)

[77] Napoleon, at this moment, was at the Carrousel, in the house of
Bourrienne's brother. "I could see conveniently," he says, "all that
took place during the day. . . The king had at least as many troops in
his defense as the Convention since had on the 13th Vendémaire, while
the enemies of the latter were much more formidable and better
disciplined. The greater part of the national guard showed that they
favored the king; this justice must be done to it." (It might be
helpful to some readers to know that when Napoleon refers to the 13th
Vendémaire, (5th Oct. 1795) that was when he, as a young officer was
given the task to defend the Convention against a royalist uprising.
He was quick-witted and got hold of some guns in time, loaded them
with grape-shot, placed them in front of the Parisian church of Saint-
Roch and completely eliminated the superior royalist force. SR.)

[78] Official report of Leroux. On the side of the garden, along the
terrace by the river, and then on the return were "a few shouts of
Vive le roi! many for Vive la nation! Vivent les sans-culottes! Down
with the king! Down with the veto! Down with the old porker! etc. --
But I can certify that these insults were all uttered between the
Pont-Turnant and the parterre, and by about a dozen men, among which
were five or six gunners following the king, the same as flies follow
an animal they are bent on tormenting."

[79] Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 223, 273 -- Letter of Bonnaud, chief of
the Sainte-Marguerite battalion: "I cannot avoid marching at their
head under any pretext . . . Never will I violate the Constitution
unless I am forced to." -- The Gravilliers section and that of the
Faubourg Poissonnière cashiered their officers and elected others.

[80] Mortimer-Ternaux, IV. 342. Speech of Fabre d'Eglantine at the
Jacobin Club, Nov. 5, 1792. "Let it be loudly proclaimed that these
are the same men who captured the Tuileries, broke into the prisons of
the Abbaye, of Orleans and of Versailles."

[81] In this respect the riot of the Champ-de-Mars (July 17, 1791),
the only one that was suppressed, is very instructive: "As the militia
would not as usual ground their arms on receiving the word of command
from the mob, this last began, according to custom, to pelt them with
stones. To be deprived of their Sunday recreational activities, to be
marching through the streets under a scorching sun, and then be remain
standing like fools on a public holiday, to be knocked out with
bricks, was a little more than they had patience to bear so that,
without waiting for an order, they fired and killed a dozen or two of
the raggamuffins. The rest of the brave chaps bolted. If the militia
had waited for orders they might, I fancy, have been all knocked down
before they received any. . .  Lafayette was very near being killed in
the morning; but the pistol failed to go off at his breast. The
assassin was immediately secured, but he arranged to be let free"
(Gouverneur Morris, letter of July 20, 1791). Likewise, on the 29th of
August, 1792, at Rouen, the national guard, defending the Hôtel-de-
ville, is pelted with stones more than an hour while many are wounded.
The magistrates make every concession and try every expedient, the
mayor reading the riot act five or six times. Finally the national
guard, forced into it, exclaim: "If you do not allow us to repel force
with force we shall leave." They fire and four persons are killed and
two wounded, and the crowd breaks up. ("Archives Nationales," F7,
2265, official report of the Rouen municipality, Aug. 29; addresses of
the municipality, Aug. 28; letter of the lieutenant-colonel of the
gendarmerie, Aug. 30, etc.).

[82] Official report of Leroux. -- "Chronique des cinquante jours," by
Rœderer. -- "Détails particuliers sur la journée du 10 Aout," by a
bourgeois of Paris, an eye-witness (1822).

[83] Barbaroux, "Mémoires," 69. "Everything betokened victory for the
court if the king had never left his post . . . If he had shown
himself, if he had mounted on horseback the battalions of Paris would
have declared for him."

[84] "Révolution de Paris," number for Aug. 11, 1792. "The 10th of
August, 1792, is still more horrible than the 24th of August, 1572,
and Louis XVI. a greater monster than Charles IX. " -- "Thousands of
torches were found in cellars, apparently placed there to burn down
Paris at a signal from this modern Nero." In the number for Aug.18:
"The place for Louis Nero and for Medicis Antoinette is not in the
towers of the Temple; their heads should have fallen from the
guillotine on the night of the 10th of August." (Special details of a
plan of the king to massacre all patriot deputies, and intimidate
Paris with a grand pillaging and by keeping the guillotine constantly
at work.)  "That crowned ogre and his Austrian panther."

[85] Narrative of the Minister Joly (written four days after the
event). The king departs about half-past eight. -- Cf. Madame Campan,
"Mémoires," and Moniteur, XIII. 378.

[86] Révolution de Paris," number for Aug. 18. On his way a sans-
culotte steps out in front of the rows and tries to prevent the king
from proceeding. The officer of the guard argues with him, upon which
he extends his hand to the king, exclaiming: "Touch that hand,
bastard, and you have shaken the hand of an honest man! But I have no
intention that your bitch of a wife goes with you to the Assembly; we
don't want that whore."  -- "Louis XVI," says Prudhomme, "kept on his
way without being upset by the with this noble impulse." -- I regard
this as a masterpiece of Jacobin interpretation.

[87] Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 311, 325. The king, at the foot of the
staircase, had asked Rœderer: "what will become of the persons
remaining above? "Sire," he replies, "they seem to be in plain dress.
Those who have swords have merely to take them off, follow you and
leave by the garden." A certain number of gentlemen, indeed, do so,
and thus depart while others escape by the opposite side through the
gallery of the Louvre.

[88] Mathon de la Varenne, "Histoire particulière," etc., 108.
(Testimony of the valet-de-chambre Lorimier de Chamilly, with whom
Mathon was imprisoned in the prison of La Force.

[89] De Lavalette, "Mémoires," I. 81. "We there found the grand
staircase barred by a sort of beam placed across it, and defended by
several Swiss officers, who were civilly disputing its passage with
about fifty mad fellows, whose odd dress very much resembled that of
the brigands in our melodramas. They were intoxicated, while their
coarse language and queer imprecations indicated the town of
Marseilles, which had belched them forth."

[90] Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 314, 317 (questioning of M. de Diesbach).
"Their orders were not to fire until the word was given, and not
before the national guard had set the example."

[91] Buchez et Roux, XVI, 443. Narration by Pétion. - Peltier,
"Histoire du 10 août.

[92] M. de Nicolay wrote the following day, the 11th of August: "The
federates fired first, which was followed by a sharp volley from the
château windows." (Le Comte de Fersen et la cour de France. II. 347.)

[93] Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 491. The abandonment of the Tuileries is
proved by the small loss of the assailants. (List of the wounded
belonging to the Marseilles corps and of the killed and wounded of the
Brest corps, drawn up Oct. 16, 1792. -- Statement of the aid granted
to wounded Parisians, to widows, to orphans, and to the aged, October,
1792, and then 1794.) -- The total amounts to 74 dead and 54 severely
wounded The two corps in the hottest of the fight were the Marseilles
band, which lost 22 dead and 14 wounded, and the Bretons, who lost 2
dead and 5 wounded. The sections that suffered the most were the
Quinze-Vingts (4 dead and 4 wounded), the Faubourg-Montmartre (3
dead), the Lombards (4 wounded), and the Gravilliers (3 wounded). --
Out of twenty-one sections reported, seven declare that they did not
lose a man. -- The Swiss regiment, on the contrary, lost 760 men and
26 officers.

[94] Napoleon's narrative.

[95] Pétion's account.

[96] Prudhomme's "Révolution de Paris," XIII. 236 and 237. -
Barbaroux, 73. - Madame Campan, II. 250.

[97] Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 258. -- Moore, I. 59. Some of the robbers
are killed.  Moore saw one of them thrown down the grand staircase.

[98] Michelet, III. 289.

[99] Mercier, "Le Nouveau Paris," II. 108. -- "The Comte de Fersen et
la Cour de France," II. 348. (Letter of Sainte-Foix, Aug. 11). "The
cellars were broken open and more than 10,000 bottles of wine of which
I saw the fragments in the court, so intoxicated the people that I
made haste to put an end to an investigation imprudently begun amidst
2,000 sots with naked swords, handled by them very carelessly."

[100] Napoleon's narrative. -- Memoirs of Barbaroux.

[101] Moniteur, XIII. 387.  -- Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 340.

[102] Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 303. Words of the president Vergniaud on
receiving Louis XVI. - Ibid. 340, 342, 350.

[103] Mortimer-Ternaux, 356, 357.

[104] Mortimer-Ternaux, 337. Speech of Huguenin, president of the
Commune, at the bar of the National Assembly: "The people by whom we
are sent to you have instructed us to declare to you that they invest
you anew with its confidence; but they at the same time instruct us to
declare to you that, as judge of the extraordinary measures to which
they have been driven by necessity and resistance to oppression, they
k now no other authority than the French people, your sovereign and
ours, assembled in its primary meetings."

[105] Duvergier, "Collection des lois et décrets," (between Aug. 10
and Sept. 20).

[106] Duvergier, "Collection des lois et décrets," Aug. 11-12. "The
natgional Assembly considering that it has not the right  to subject
sovereignty in the formation of a national Convention to imperative
regulations, . . .  invites citizens to conform to the following
rules."

[107]  August 11 (article 8)

[108] Aug. 10-12 and Aug. 28.

[109]  Ibid.,  Aug. 10, Aug. 13. - Cf. Moniteur, XIII. 399 (session of
Aug. 12).

[110] Ibid.,  Aug. 18.

[111]  Aug. 23 and Sep. 3. After the 11th of August the Assembly
passes a decree releasing Saint-Huruge and annulling the warrant
against Antoine.

[112]  Ibid.,  Aug. 14.

[113]  Ibid., Aug. 14. Decree for dividing the property of the émigrés
into lots of from two to four arpents,  in order to "multiply small
proprietors." --  Ibid., Sept. 2. Other decrees against the  émigrés
and their relations, Aug. 14, 23, 30, and Sept. 5 and 9.

[114]  Ibid.,  Aug. 26. Other decrees against the ecclesiastics or the
property of the church, Aug. 17, 18, 19, and Sept. 9 and 19.

[115]  Ibid., Sept. 20.

[116]  Imagine the impression these last lines may have upon any
ardent, ambitious and arrogant young man who, like Lenin in 1907,
would have read this between 1893 and 1962, date of the last English
reprinting of Taine's once widely know work. They summed up both what
had to be done and who would be the primary beneficiaries of the
revolution. Lenin, Hitler, Mussolini and countless other young hopeful
political men. Read it once more and ask yourself if much of this
program has not been more or less surreptitiously carried out in most
western countries after the second world war? (SR).

[117] Malouet, II. 241.

[118] Mercure de France, July 21, 1792.

[119]  "Révolutions de Paris," XIII. 137.

[120] Mallet du Pan. "Mémoires," I. 322. Letters to Mallet du Pan.
Aug. 4 and following days.

[121] Buchez et Roux, XVI. 446. Pétion's narrative. -- Arnault,
"Souvenirs d'un sexagénaire," I. 342. (An eye-witness on the 10th of
August.) "The massacre extended but little beyond the Carrousel, and
did not cross the Seine. Everywhere else I found a population as quiet
as if nothing had happened. Inside the city the people scarcely
manifested any surprise; dancing went on in the public gardens. In the
Marais, where I lived then, there was only a suspicion of the
occurrence, the same as at Saint-Germain; it was said that something
was going on in Paris, and the evening newspaper was impatiently
looked for to know what it was."

[122] Moore, I. 122. -- The same thing is observable at other crises
in the Revolution. On the 6th of October, 1789 (Sainte-Beuve,
"Causeries du Lundi," XII. 461), Sénac de Meilhan at an evening
reception hears the following conversations: "'Did you see the king
pass?' asks one. 'No, I was at the theater.' 'Did Molé play?' -- 'As
for myself; I was obliged to stay in the Tuileries; there was no way
of getting out before 9 o'clock.'  'You saw the king pass then?'  'I
could not see very well; it was dark.' -- Another says: 'It must have
taken six hours for him to come from Versailles.' -- Others coolly add
a few details. -- To continue: 'Will you take a hand at whist?' 'I
will play after supper, which is just ready.' Cannon are heard, and
then a few whisperings, and a transient moment of depression,. 'The
king is leaving the Hôtel-de-ville.  They must be very tired.'  Supper
is taken and there are snatches of conversation. They play trente et
quarante and while walking about watching the game and their cards
they do some talking: 'What a horrid affair!' while some speak
together briefly and in a low tone of voice. The clock strikes two and
they all leave or go to bed. -- These people seem to you insensible.
Very well; there is not one of them who would not accept death at the
king's feet." -- On the 23d of June, 1791, at the news of the king's
arrest at Varennes, "the Bois de Boulogne and the Champs Elysées were
filled with people talking in a frivolous way about the most serious
matters, while young men are seen, pronouncing sentences of death in
their frolics with courtesans." (Mercure de France, July 9, 1791. It
begins with a little piece entitled Dépit d'un Amant.) - See ch. XI.
for the sentiment of the population in May and June, 1793.

[123] Moniteur, XIII. 290 (July 29) and 278 (July 30).

[124] "Archives Nationales," F7, 145. Letter of Santerre to the
Minister of the Interior, Sept. 16, 1792, with the daily list of all
the men that have left Paris between the3rd and 15th of September, the
total amounting to 18,635, of which 15,504 are volunteers. Other
letters from the same, indicating subsequent departures: Sept. 17,
1,071 men; none the following days until Sept. 21, 243; 22nd 150; up
to the 26th, 813; on Oct. 1st, 113; 2nd and 3rd, 1,088 ; 4th,  1620;
16th, 196, etc. -- I believe that amongst those who leave, some are
passing through Paris coming from the provinces; this prevents an
exact calculation of the number of Parisian volunteers. M. de
Lavalette, himself a volunteer, says 60,000; but he furnishes not
proofs of this.

[125] Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 362.

[126] Soulavie, "Vie privée du Maréchal duc de Richelieu," IX.  384. -
- "One can scarcely comprehend," says Lafayette, (Mémoires," I. 454),
"how the Jacobin minority and a gang of pretended Marseilles men could
render themselves masters of Paris, while almost the whole of the
40,000 citizens forming the national guard desired the Constitution."

[127]  Hua, 169.

[128]  Moniteur,  XIII. 437. (session of Aug. 16, the applause
reiterated and the speech ordered to be printed).

[129]  These words should cause society to change resulting in a
leveling of incomes through proportional taxation and aids of all
kinds throughout the industrialized world. Nobody could ever imagine
the immense wealth which was to be produced by the efficient industry
of the 20th century. (SR).

[130] Rœderer, "Œuvres Complètes." VIII 477. "The club orators
displayed France to the proletariat as a sure prey if they would seize
hold of it."

[131]  This manifesto, was drafted for the Duke of Brunswick-
Lunebourg, the general commanding the combined Prussian and Austrian
forces, by the French émigré Marquis de Limon. It  threatened the
French and especially the Paris population with unspecified "rigors of
war" should it have the temerity to resist or to harm the King and his
family. It was signed in Koblenz, Germany on 25 August 1792 and
published in royalist newspapers 3 days later in Paris.(SR).

[132] Moore's Journal," I. 303-309.

[133] "Archives Nationales," 474, 426. Section of Gravilliers, letter
of Charles Chemin, commissary, to Santerre, and deposition of
Ilingray, cavalryman of the national gendarmerie, Aug. 11.

[134] Beaumarchais, "Œuvres complètes," letter of Aug. 12, 1792. --
This very interesting letter shows how mobs are composed at this
epoch. A small gang of regular brigands and thieves plot together some
enterprise, to which is added a frightened, infatuated crowd, which
may become ferocious, but which remains honest.

[135] The words of Hobbes applied by Rœderer to the democracy of 1792:
"In democratia tot possent esse Nerones quot sunt oratores qui populo
adulantur; simul et plures sunt in democratia, et quotidie novi
suboriuntur."



[136] Lucas de Montigny, "Mémoires de Mirabeau,"  II. 231 and
following pages. -- The preface affixed by Manuel to his edition (of
Mirabeau's letters) is a masterpiece of nonsense and impertinence. --
Peltier, "Histoire du 10 Aout," II. 205. -- Manuel "came out of a
little shop at Montargis and hawked about obscene tracts in the upper
stories of Paris. He got hold of Mirabeau's letters in the drawers of
the public department and sold them for 2,000 crowns." (testimony of
Boquillon, juge-de~paix).

[137] Lafayette, "Mémoires,"  I. 467, 471. "The queen had 50,000
crowns put into Danton's  hands a short time before these terrible
days." -- " The court had Danton under pay for two years, employing
him as a spy on the Jacobins." -- " Correspondance de Mirabeau et du
Comte de la Marck," III. 82.  Letter from Mirabeau, March 10, 1791:
"Danton received yesterday 30,000 livres". -- Other testimony,
Bertrand de Molleville, I. 354, II. 288. --  Brissot, IV. 193 -- .
Miot de Melito, "Mémoires," I. 40, 42. Miot was present at the
conversations which took place between Danton, Legendre, etc., at the
table of Desforges, Minister of Foreign Affairs. "Danton made no
concealment of his love of pleasure and money, and laughed at all
conscientious and delicate scruples." -- " Legendre could not say
enough in praise of Danton in speaking of his talents as a public man;
but he loudly censured his habits and cxpensive tastes, and never
joined him in any of his odious speculations." -- The opposite thesis
has been maintained by Robinet and Bougeart in their articles on
Danton. The discussion would require too much space. The important
points are as follows:

Danton, a barrister in the royal council in March, 1787, loses about
10,000 francs on the refund of his charge. In his marriage-contract
dated June, 1787, he admits 12,000 francs patrimony in lands and
houses, while his wife brings him only 20,000 francs dowry. From 1787
to 1791 he could not earn much, being in constant attendance at the
Cordeliers club and devoted to politics; Lacretelle saw him in the
riots of 1788.  He left at his death about 85,000 francs in national
property bought in 1791. Besides, he probably held property and
valuables under third parties, who kept them after his death. (De
Martel, "Types Révolutionnaires," 2d part, p.139. Investigations of
Blache at Choisy-sur-Seine, where a certain Fauvel seems to have been
Danton's assumed name.) -- See on this question, "Avocats aux conseils
du Roi," by Emil Bos, pp.513-520. According to accounts proved by M.
Bos, it follows that Danton, at the end of 1791, was in debt to the
amount of 53,000 francs; this is the hole stopped by the court. On the
other side, Danton before the Revolution signs himself Danton even in
authentic writing, which is an usurpation of nobility and at that time
subject to the penalty of the galleys. -- The double-faced infidelity
in question must have been frequent, for their leaders were anything
else but sensitive. On the 7th of August Madame Elizabeth tells M. de
Montmorin that the insurrection would not take place; that Pétion and
Santerre were concerned in it, and that they had received 750,000
francs to prevent it and bring over the Marseilles troop to the king's
side (Malouet, II. 223). -- There is no doubt that Santerre, in using
the king's money against the king, thought he was acting
patriotically. Money is at the bottom of every riot, to pay for drink
and to stimulate subordinate agents.

[138] Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 92. Letter of Gadolle to Roland,
October, 1792, according to a narrative by one of the teachers in the
college d'Harcourt, in which Varlet was placed.

[139] Buchez et Roux, XIII. 254.

[140] "C. Desmoulins," by Claretie, 238 (in 1786 and in 1775). "The
inquest still exists, unfortunately it is convincing." -- Westermann
was accused of these acts in December, 1792, by the section of the
Lombards, "proofs in hand." -- Gouverneur Morris, so well informed,
writes to Washington, Jan. 10, 1793: The retreat of the King of
Prussia "was worth to Westermann about 10,000 pounds. . . The council
. . . exerted against him a prosecution for old affairs of no higher
rank than petty larceny."

[141] "Archives Nationales," F7, 4434 (papers of the committee of
general safety). Note on Panis, with full details and references to
the occurrence.

[142]  "Révolutions de Paris," No.177 (session of the council-general
at the Hotel-de-ville, Nov. 8, 1792, report of the committee of
surveillance). Sergent admits, except as to one of the watches, that
he intended to pay for the said object the price they would have
brought. It was noticed, as he said this, that he had on his finger
the agate ring that was claimed."

[143] Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 638; III. 500 and following pages; IV.
132. -- Cf. II. 451.

[144] Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 456.

[145] Buchez et Roux, XVI. 138, 140 (testimony of Mathon de la
Varenne, who was engaged in the case).

[146] "Dictionnaire biographique," by Eymery (Leipsic, 1807), article
HÉBERT.

[147] Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 484, 601. Cf. letter of the
representative Cavaignac, Ibid., 399.

[148] "Dictionnaire biographique," article HENRIOT.-The lives of many
of these subordinate leaders are well done. Cf. "Stanislas Maillard,"
by AL Sorel; "Le Patriote Palloy," by V Fournel.

[149] Granier de Cassagnac, "Histoire des Girondins," 409. - "Archives
Nationales," F7 3196. Letters of de Sades on the sacking of his house
near Apt, with supporting document and proofs of his civism; among
others a petition drawn up by him in the name of the Pique section and
read at the Convention year II. brumaire 25.  "Legislators, the reign
of philosophy has at last annihilated that of imposture. . . The
worship of a Jewish slave of the Romans is not adapted to the
descendants of Scœvola. The general prosperity which is certain to
proceed from individual happiness will spread to the farthest regions
of the universe and everywhere the dreaded hydra of ultramontane
superstition, chased by the combined lights of reason and virtue, no
longer finding a refuge in the hateful haunts of a dying aristocracy,
will perish at her side in despair at finally beholding on this earth
the triumph of philosophy!"

[150] Barbaroux, "Mémoires," 57, 59. The latter months of the
legislative assembly.







BOOK THIRD. THE SECOND STAGE OF THE CONQUEST.

CHAPTER I.

I.

Government by gangs in times of anarchy. - Case where anarchy is
recent and suddenly brought on. -- The band that succeeds the fallen
government and its administrative tools.

The worst feature of anarchy is not so much the absence of the
overthrown government as the rise of new governments of an inferior
grade. In every state which breaks up, new groups will form to conquer
and become sovereign: it was so in Gaul on the fall of the Roman
empire, also under the latest of Charlemagne's successors; the same
state of things exists now (1875) in Rumania and in Mexico.
Adventurers, gangsters, corrupted or downgraded men, social outcasts,
men overwhelmed with debts and lost to honor, vagabonds, deserters,
dissolute troopers, born enemies of work, of subordination, and of the
law, unite to break the worm-eaten barriers which still surround the
sheep-like masses; and as they are unscrupulous, they slaughter on all
occasions. On this foundation their authority rests; each in turn
reigns in its own area, and their government, in keeping with its
brutal masters, consists in robbery and murder; nothing else can be
looked for from barbarians and brigands.

But never are they so dangerous as when, in a great State recently
fallen, a sudden revolution places the central power in their hands;
for they then regard themselves as the legitimate inheritors of the
shattered government, and, under this title, they undertake to manage
the commonwealth. Now in times of anarchy the ruling power does not
proceed from above, but from below; and the chiefs, therefore, who
would remain such, are obliged to follow the blind impulsion of their
flock.[1] Hence the important and dominant personage, the one whose
ideas prevail, the veritable successor of Richelieu and of Louis XIV.
is here the subordinate Jacobin, the pillar of the club, the maker of
motions, the street rioter, Panis Sergent, Hébert, Varlet, Henriot,
Maillard, Fournier, Lazowski, or, still lower in the scale, the
Marseilles "rough," the Faubourg gunner, the drinking market-porter
who elaborates his political conceptions in the interval between his
hiccups.[2] --  For information he has the rumors circulating in the
streets which tell of a traitor to each house, and for confirmed
knowledge the club slogans inciting him to rule over the vast machine.
A machinery so vast and complicated, a whole assembly of entangled
services ramifying in innumerable offices, with so much apparatus of
special import, so delicate as to require constant adaptation to
changing circumstances, diplomacy, finances, justice, army
administration -- all this surpasses his limited comprehension; a
bottle cannot be made to contain the bulk of a hogshead.[3]  In his
narrow brain, perverted and turned topsy-turvy by the disproportionate
notions put into it, only one idea suited to his gross instincts and
aptitudes finds a place there, and that is the desire to kill his
enemies; and these are also the State's enemies, however open or
concealed, present or future, probable or even possible. He carries
this savagery and bewilderment into politics, and hence the evil
arising from his government. Simply a brigand, he would have murdered
only to rob, and his murders would have been restricted. As
representing the State, he undertakes wholesale massacres, of which he
has the means ready at hand. --  For he has not yet had time enough to
take apart the old administrative implements; at all events the minor
wheels, gendarmes, jailers, employees, book-keepers, and accountants,
are always in their places and under control. There can be no
resistance on the part of those arrested; accustomed to the protection
of the laws and to peaceable ways and times, they have never relied on
defending themselves nor ever could imagine that any one could be so
summarily slain. As to the mass, rendered incapable of any effort of
its own by ancient centralization, it remains inert and passive and
lets things go their own way. -- Hence, during many long, successive
days, without being hurried or impeded, with official papers quite
correct and accounts in perfect order, a massacre can be carried out
with the same impunity and as methodically as cleaning the streets or
clubbing stray dogs.[4]



II.

The development of the ideas of killings in the mass of the party. --
The morning after August 10. -- The tribunal of August 17. --  The
funereal fête of August 27. --  The prison plot.

Let us trace the progress of the homicidal idea in the mass of the
party. It lies at the very bottom of the revolutionary creed. Collot
d'Herbois, two months after this, aptly says in the Jacobin tribune:
"The second of September is the great article in the credo  of our
freedom."[5] It is peculiar to the Jacobin to consider himself as a
legitimate sovereign, and to treat his adversaries not as
belligerents, but as criminals. They are guilty of lèse- nation; they
are outlaws, fit to be killed at all times and places, and deserve
extinction, even when no longer able or in a condition do any harm. --
Consequently, on the 10th of August the Swiss Guards, who do not fire
a gun and who surrender, the wounded lying on the ground, their
surgeons, the palace domestics, are killed; and worse still, persons
like M. de Clermont-Tonnerre who pass quietly along the street.  All
this is now called in official phraseology the justice of the people.
-- On the 11th the Swiss Guards, collected in the Feuillants building,
come near being massacred; the mob on the outside of it demand their
heads;[6] "it conceives the project of visiting all the prisons in
Paris to take out the prisoners and administer prompt justice on
them." - On the 12th in the markets "diverse groups of the low class
call Pétion a scoundrel," because "he saved the Swiss in the Palais
Bourbon"; accordingly, "he and the Swiss must be hung to-day."-In
these minds turned topsy-turvy the actual, palpable truth gives way to
its opposite; "the attack was not begun by them; the order to sound
the tocsin came from the palace; it is the palace which was besieging
the nation, and not the nation which was besieging  the palace."[7]
The vanquished "are the assassins of the people," caught in the act;
and on the 14th of August the Federates demand a court-martial "to
avenge the death of their comrades."[8]  And even a court-martial will
not answer.  "It is not sufficient to mete out punishment for crimes
committed on the 10th of August, but the vengeance of the people must
be extended to all conspirators;" to that "Lafayette, who probably was
not in Paris, but who may have been there;" to all the ministers,
generals, judges, and other officials guilty of maintaining legal
order wherever it had been maintained, and of not having recognized
the Jacobin government before it came into being. Let them be brought
before, not the ordinary courts, which are not to be trusted because
they belong to the defunct régime, but before a specially organized
tribunal, a sort of "chambre ardente,"[9] elected by the sections,
that is to say, by a Jacobin minority. These improvised judges must
give judgment on conviction, without appeal; there must be no
preliminary examinations, no interval of time between arrest and
execution, no dilatory and protective formalities. And above all, the
Assembly must be expeditious in passing the decree; "otherwise," it is
informed by a delegate from the Commune,[10] "the tocsin will be rung
at midnight and the general alarm sounded; for the people are tired of
waiting to be avenged. Look out lest they do themselves justice! -- A
moment later, new threats and with an advanced deadline. "If the
juries are not ready to act in two or three hours great misfortunes
will overtake Paris."



Even if the new tribunal,  set up on the spot, is quick, guillotining
three innocent persons in five days; it does not move fast enough.  On
the 23rd of August one of the sections declares to the Commune in
furious language that the people themselves, "wearied and indignant"
with so many delays, mean to force open the prisons and massacre the
inmates.[11] -- Not only do the sections harass the judges, but they
force the accused into their presence: a deputation from the Commune
and the Federates summons the Assembly " to transfer the criminals at
Orleans to Paris to undergo the penalty of their heinous crimes".
"Otherwise," says the speaker, "we will not answer for the vengeance
of the people."[12] And in a still more imperative manner:

"You have heard and you know that insurrection is a sacred duty," a
sacred duty towards and against all: towards the Assembly if it
refuses, and towards the tribunal if it acquits. They dash at their
prey contrary to all legislative and judicial formalities, like a kite
across the web of a spider, while nothing detach them from their fixed
ideas.  On the acquittal of M. Luce de Montmorin[13] the gross
audience, mistaking him for his cousin the former minister of Louis
XVI., break out in murmurs.  The president tries to enforce silence,
which increases the uproar, and M. de Montmorin is in danger.  On this
the president, discovering a side issue, announces that one of the
jurors is related to the accused, and that in such a case a new jury
must be impaneled and a new trial take place; that the matter will be
inquired into, and meanwhile the prisoner will be returned to the
Conciergerie prison. Thereupon he takes M. de Montmorin by the arm and
leads him out of the court-room, amidst the yells of the audience and
not without risks to himself; in the outside court a soldier of the
National Guard strikes at him with a saber, and the following day the
court is obliged to authorize eight delegates from the audience to go
and see with their own eyes that M. de Montmorin is really in prison.

At the moment of his acquittal a tragic remark is heard:

"You discharge him to-day and in two weeks he will cut our throats!"

Fear is evidently an adjunct of hatred. The Jacobin rabble is vaguely
conscious of their inferior numbers, of their usurpation, of their
danger, which increases in proportion as Brunswick draws near.  They
feel that they live above a mine, and if the mine should explode! --
Since they think that their adversaries are scoundrels they feel they
are capable of a dirty trick, of a plot, of a massacre. As they
themselves have never behaved in any other way, they cannot conceive
anything else. Through an inevitable inversion of thought, they impute
to others the murderous intentions obscurely wrought out in the dark
recesses of their own disturbed brains. -- On the 27th of August,
after the funeral procession gotten up by Sergent expressly to excite
popular resentment, their suspicions, at once specific and guided,
begin to take the form of certainty. Ten "commemorative" banners,[14]
each borne by a volunteer on horseback, have paraded before all eyes
the long list of massacres "by the court and its agents":

1. the massacre at Nancy,

2. the massacre at Nîmes,

3. the massacre at Montauban,

4. the massacre at Avignon,

5. the massacre at La Chapelle,

6. the massacre at Carpentras,

7. the massacre of the Champ de Mars, etc.

Faced with such displays, doubts and misgivings are out of the
question. To the women in the galleries, to the frequenters of the
clubs, and to pikemen in the suburbs it is from now beyond any doubt
proved that the aristocrats are habitual killers.

And on the other side there is another sign equally alarming "This
lugubrious ceremony, which ought to inspire by turns both reflection
and indignation, . . . did not generally produce that effect." The
National Guard in uniform, who came "apparently to make up for not
appearing on the day of action," did not behave themselves with civic
propriety, but, on the contrary, put on "an air of inattention and
even of noisy gaiety"; they come out of curiosity, like so many
Parisian onlookers, and are much more numerous than the sans-culottes
with their pikes.[15]  The latter could count themselves and plainly
see that they are just a minority, and a very small one, and that
their rage finds no echo. The organizers and their stooges are the
only ones to call for speedy sentencing and for death-penalties. A
foreigner, a good observer, who questions the shop-keepers of whom he
makes purchases, the tradesmen he knows, and the company he finds in
the coffee-houses, writes that he never had "seen any symptom of a
sanguinary disposition except in the galleries of the National
Assembly and at the Jacobin Club,"  but then the galleries are full of
paid "applauders,'1 especially "females, who are more noisy and to be
had cheaper than males." At the Jacobin Club are "the leaders, who
dread a turnaround or who have resentments to gratify[16]": thus the
only enragés are the leaders and the populace of the suburbs. -- Lost
in the crowd of this vast city, in the face of a National Guard still
armed and three times their own number, confronting an indifferent or
discontented bourgeoisie, the patriots are alarmed. In this state of
anxiety a feverish imagination, exasperated by the waiting,
involuntarily gives birth to imaginings passionately accepted as
truths. All that is now required is an incident in order to put the
final touch to complete the legend, the germ of which has unwittingly
grown in their minds.

On the 1st of September a poor wagoner, Jean Julien,[17] condemned to
twelve years in irons, has been exposed in the pillory. After two
hours he becomes furious, probably on account of the jeers of the
bystanders. With the coarseness of people of his kind he has vented
his impotent rage by abuse, he has unbuttoned and exposed himself to
the public, and has naturally chosen expressions which would appear
most offensive to the people looking at him:

"Hurrah for the King! Hurrah for the Queen! Hurra for Lafayette!  To
hell with the nation!"

It is also natural that he missed being torn to pieces.  He was at
once led away to the Conciergerie prison, and sentenced on the spot to
be guillotined as soon as possible, for being a promoter of sedition
in connection with the conspiracy of August the 10th. -- The
conspiracy, accordingly, is still in existence.  It is so declared by
the tribunal, which makes no declaration without evidence. Jean Julien
has certainly confessed; now what has he revealed? -- On the following
day, like a crop of poisonous mushrooms, the growth of a single night,
the story obtains general credence.  "Jean Julien has declared that
all the prisons in Paris thought as he did, that there would soon be
fine times, that the prisoners were armed, and that as soon as the
volunteers cleared out they would be let loose on all Paris."[18] The
streets are full of anxious faces.  "One says that Verdun had been
betrayed like Longwy.  Others shook their heads and said it was the
traitors within Paris and not the declared enemies on the frontier
that were to be feared."[19] On the following day the story grows:
"There are royalist officers and soldiers hidden away in Paris and in
the outskirts. They are going to open the prisons, arm the prisoners,
set the King and his family free, put the patriots in Paris to death,
also the wives and children of those in the army. . . Isn't it natural
for men to look after the safety of their wives and children, and to
use the only efficient means to arrest the assassin's dagger."[20] --
The working-class inferno has been stirred up, now it's up to the
contractors of public revolt to fan and direct the flames.



III.  Terror is their Salvation.

Rise of the homicidal idea among the leaders. -- Their situation. --
The powers they seize. -- Their pillage. -- The risks they run --
Terror is their rescue.

They have been fanning the flames for a long time. Already, on the
11th of August, the new Commune had announced, in a proclamation,[21]
that "the guilty should perish on the scaffold," while its threatening
deputations force the national Assembly into the immediate institution
of a bloody tribunal. Carried into power by brutal force, it must
perish if it does not maintain itself, and this can be done only
through terror. - Let us pause and consider this unusual situation.
Installed in the Hôtel-de-ville by a nightly surprise attack, about
one hundred strangers, delegated by a party which thinks or asserts
itself to be the peoples' delegates, have overthrown one of the two
great powers of the State, mangled and enslaved the other, and now
rule in a capital of 700,000 souls, by the grace of eight or ten
thousand fanatics and cut-throats. Never did a radical change promote
men from so low a point and raise so high! The basest of newspaper
scribblers, penny-a-liners out of the gutters, bar-room oracles,
unfrocked monks and priests, the refuse of the literary guild, of the
bar, and of the clergy, carpenters, turners, grocers, locksmiths,
shoemakers, common laborers, many with no profession at all, strolling
politicians and [22]public brawlers, who, like the sellers of
counterfeit wares, have speculated for the past three years on popular
credulity. There were among them a number of men in bad repute, of
doubtful honesty or of proven dishonesty, who, in their youth led
shiftless lives. They are still besmirched with old slime,  they were
put outside the pale of useful labor by their vices, driven out of
inferior stations even into prohibited occupations, bruised by the
perilous leap, with consciences distorted like the muscles of a tight-
rope dancer. Were it not for the Revolution, they would still grovel
in their native filth, awaiting prison or forced labor to which they
were destined. Can one imagine their growing intoxication as they
drink deep draughts from the bottomless cup of absolute power? -- For
it is absolute power which they demand and which they exercise.[23]
Raised by a special delegation above the regular authorities, they put
up with these only as subordinates, and tolerate none among them who
may become their rivals. Consequently, they reduce the Legislative
body simply to the function of editor and herald of their decrees;
they have forced the new department electors to "abjure their title,"
to confine themselves to tax assessments, while they lay their
ignorant hands daily on every other service, on the finances, the
army, supplies, the administration, justice, at the risk of breaking
the administrative wheels or of interrupting their action.

One day they summon the Minister of War before them, or, for lack of
one, his chief clerk; another day they keep the whole body of
officials in his department in arrest for two hours, under the pretext
of finding a suspected printer.[24] At one time they affix seals on
the funds devoted to extraordinary expenses; at another time they do
away with the commission on supplies; at another they meddle with the
course of justice, either to aggravate proceedings or to impede the
execution of sentences rendered.[25] There is no principle, no law, no
regulation, no verdict, no public man or establishment that is not
subject to the risk of their arbitrariness. -- And, as they have laid
hands on power, they do the same with money. Not only do they extort
from the Assembly 850,000 francs a months, with arrears from the 1st
of January, 1792, more than six millions in all, to defray the
expenses of their military police, which means to pay their bands,[26]
but again, "invested with the municipal scarf," they seize, "in the
public establishment belonging to the nation, all furniture, and
whatever is of most value." "In one building alone, they carry off the
value of 100,000 crowns."[27] Elsewhere, in the hands of the treasurer
of the civil list, they appropriate to themselves, a box of jewels,
other precious objects, and 340, 000 francs.[28] Their commissioners
bring in from Chantilly three wagons each drawn by three horses
"loaded with the spoils of M. de Condé," and they undertake "removing
the contents of the houses of the émigrés."[29] They confiscate in the
churches of Paris "the crucifixes, music-stands, bells, railings, and
every object in bronze or of iron, chandeliers, cups, vases,
reliquaries, statues, every article of plate," as well "on the altars
as in the sacristies,"[30] and we can imagine the enormous booty
obtained; to cart away the silver plate belonging to the single church
of Madeleine-de-la-ville required a vehicle drawn by four horses. --
Now they use all this money, so freely seized, as freely as they do
power itself. One fills his pockets in the Tuileries without the
slightest concern; another, in the Garde-Meuble, rummages secretaries,
and carries off a wardrobe with its contents.[31]  We have already
seen that in the depositories of the Commune "most of the seals are
broken," that enormous sums in plate, in jewels, in gold and silver
coin have disappeared.  Future inquests and accounts will charge on
the Committee of Supervision, "abstractions, dilapidations, and
embezzlements," in short, "a mass of violations and breaches of
trust."-- When one is king, one easily mistakes the money-drawer of
the State for the drawer in which one keeps one's own money.

Unfortunately, this full possession of public power and the public
funds holds only by a slender thread. Let the evicted and outraged
majority dare, as subsequently at Lyons, Marseilles, and Toulon, to
Return to the section assemblies and revoke the false mandate which
they have arrogated to themselves through fraud and force, and, on the
instance, they again become, through the sovereign will of the people,
and by virtue of their own deed, what they really are, usurpers,
extortioners, and robbers, there is no middle course for them between
a dictatorship and the galleys. -- The mind, before such an
alternative, unless extraordinarily well-balanced, loses its
equilibrium; they have no difficulty in deluding themselves with the
idea that the State is menaced in their persons, and, in postulating
the rule, that all is allowable for them, even massacre. Has not
Bazire stated in the tribune that, against the enemies of the nation,
"all means are fair justifiable? Has not another deputy, Jean Debry,
proposed the formation of a body of 1,200 volunteers, who "will
sacrifice themselves," as formerly the assassins of the Old Man of the
Mountain, in "attacking tyrants, hand to hand, individually," as well
as generals?[32] Have we not seen Merlin de Thionville insisting that
"the wives and children of the émigrés should be kept as hostages,"
and declared responsible, or, in other words, ready for slaughter if
their relatives continue their attacks?[33]

That is all that is left to do, since all the other measures have
proved insufficient. -- In vain has the Commune decreed the arrest of
journalists belonging to the opposite party, and distributed their
printing machinery amongst patriotic printers.[34] In vain has it
declared the members of the Sainte-Chapelle club, the National Guards
who have sworn allegiance to Lafayette, the signers of the petition of
8,000, and of that of 20,000, disqualified for any service
whatever.[35]  In vain has it multiplied domiciliary visits, even to
the residence and carriages of the Venetian ambassador.  In vain,
through insulting and repeated examinations, does it keep at its bar,
under the hootings and death-cries of its tribunes, the most honorable
and most illustrious men, Lavoisier, Dupont de Nemours, the eminent
surgeon Desault, the most harmless and most refined ladies, Madame de
Tourzel, Mademoiselle de Tourzel, and the Princesse de Lamballe.[36]
In vain, after a profusion of arrests during twenty days, it envelopes
all Paris inside one cast of its net for a nocturnal search[37]during
which,

1. the barriers are closed and doubly guarded,

2. sentinels are on the quays and boats stationed on the Seine to
prevent escape by water,

3. the city is divided beforehand into circumscriptions, and for each
section, a list of suspected persons,

4. the circulation of vehicles is stopped,

5. every citizen is ordered to stay at home,

6. the silence of death reigns after six o'clock in the evening, and
then,

7.  in each street, a patrol of sixty pikemen, seven hundred squads of
sans-culottes, all working at the same time, and with their usual
brutality,

8. doors are burst in with pile drivers,

9. wardrobes are picked by locksmiths,

10. walls are sounded by masons,

11. cellars are searched even to digging in the ground,

12. papers are seized,

13. arms are confiscated,

14. three thousand persons are arrested and led off;[38] priests, old
men, the infirm, the sick.

The action lasts from ten in the evening to five o'clock in the
morning, the same as in a city taken by assault, the screams of women
rudely treated, the cries of prisoners compelled to march, the oaths
of the guards, cursing and drinking at each grog-shop; never was there
such an universal, methodical execution, so well calculated to
suppress all inclination for resistance in the silence of general
stupefaction.

And yet, at this very moment, there are those who act in good faith in
the sections and in the Assembly, and who rebel at being under such
masters. A deputation from the Lombards section, and another from the
Corn-market, come to the Assembly and protest against the Commune's
usurpations.[39]  Choudieu, the Montagnard, denounces its blatant
corrupt practices.  Cambon, a stern financier, will no longer consent
to have his accounts tampered with by thieving tricksters.[40] The
Assembly at last seems to have recovered itself. It extends its
protection to Géray, the journalist, against whom the new pashas had
issued a warrant; it summons to its own bar the signers of the
warrant, and orders them to confine themselves in future to the exact
limits of the law which they transgress.  Better still, it dissolves
the interloping Council, and substitutes for it ninety-six delegates,
to be elected by the sections in twenty-four hours.  And, even still
better, it orders an account to be rendered within two days of the
objects it has seized, and the return of all gold or silver articles
to the Treasury.  Quashed, and summoned to disgorge their booty, the
autocrats of the Hôtel-de-ville come in vain to the Assembly in force
on the following day[41] to extort from it a repeal of its decrees;
the Assembly, in spite of their threats and those of their satellites,
stands its ground. -- So much the worse for the stubborn; if they are
not disposed to regard the flash of the saber, they will feel its
sharp edge and point. The Commune, on the motion of Manuel, decides
that, so long as public danger continues, they will stay where they
are; it adopts an address by Robespierre to "restore sovereign power
to the people," which means to fill the streets with armed bands;[42]
it collects together its brigands by giving them the ownership of all
that they stole on the 10th of August.[43] The session, prolonged into
the night, does not terminate until one o'clock in the morning. Sunday
has come and there is no time to lose, for, in a few hours, the
sections, by virtue of the decree of the National Assembly, and
following the example of the Temple section the evening before, may
revoke the pretended representatives at the Hôtel-de-ville. To remain
at the Hôtel-de-ville, and to be elected to the convention, demands on
the part of the leaders some striking action, and this they require
that very day. -- That day is the second of September.



IV.

Date of the determination of this. --  The actors and their parts. -
Marat. --  Danton. - The Commune. --  Its co-operators. --  Harmony of
dispositions and readiness of operation.

Since the 23rd of August their resolution is taken.[44]  They have
arranged in their minds a plan of the massacre, and each one, little
by little, spontaneously, according to his aptitudes, takes the part
that suits him or is assigned to him.

Marat, foremost among them all, is the proposer and preacher of the
operation, which, for him, is a perfectly natural one. It is the
epitome of his political system: a dictator or tribune, with full
power to slay, and with no other power but that; a good master
executioner, responsible, and "tied hand and foot"; this is his
program for a government since July the 14th, 1789, and he does not
blush at it: "so much the worse for those who are not on a level with
it!"[45]  He appreciated the character of the Revolution from the
first, not through genius, but sympathetically, he himself being
equally as one-sided and monstrous; crazy with suspicion and beset
with a homicidal mania for the past three years, reduced to one idea
through mental impoverishment, that of murder, having lost the faculty
for even the lowest order of reasoning, the poorest of journalists,
save for pikemen and Billingsgate market-women, so monotonous in his
constant paroxysms that the regular reading of his journal is like
listening to hoarse cries from the cells of a madhouse.[46]  From the
19th of August he excites people to attack the prisons. "The wisest
and best course to pursue," he says, "is to go armed to the Abbaye,
drag out the traitors, especially the Swiss officers and their
accomplices, and put them to the sword. What folly it is to give them
a trial! That is already done. You have massacred the soldiers, why
should you spare the officers, ten times guiltier?" -- Also, two days
later, his brain teeming with an executioner's fancies, insisting that
"the soldiers deserved a thousand deaths. As to the officers, they
should be drawn and quartered, like Louis Capet and his tools of the
Manège."[47] -- On the strength of this the Commune adopts him as its
official editor, assigns him a tribune in its assembly room, entrusts
him to report its acts, and soon puts him on its supervisory or
executive committee.

A fanatic of this stamp, however, is good for nothing but as a
mouthpiece or instigator; he may, at best, figure in the end among the
subordinate managers. -- The chief of the enterprise,[48] Danton, is
of another species, and of another stature, a veritable leader of men:
Through his past career and actual position, through his popular
cynicism, ways and language, through his capacity for taking the
initiative and for command, through his excessive corporeal and
intellectual vigor, through his physical ascendancy due to his ardent,
absorbing will, he is well calculated for his terrible office. -- He
alone of the Commune has become Minister, and there is no one but him
to shelter the violations of the Commune under the protection or under
the passivity of the central authority. -- He alone of the Commune and
of the ministry is able to push things through and harmonize action in
the pell-mell of the revolutionary chaos; both in the councils of the
ministry which he governs, as he formerly governed at the Hôtel-de
ville.  In the constant uproar of incoherent discussions,[49] athwart
"propositions ex abrupto,  among shouts, swearing, and the going and
coming of questioning petitioners," he is seen mastering his new
colleagues with his "stentorian voice, his gestures of an athlete, his
fearful threats," taking upon himself their duties, dictating to them
what and whom he chooses, "fetching in commissions already drawn up,"
taking charge of everything, "making propositions, arrests, and
proclamations, issuing brevets," and drawing millions out of the
public treasury, casting a sop to his dogs in the Cordeliers and the
Commune, "to one 20,000 francs, and to another 10,000," "for the
Revolution, and on account of their patriotism," -- such is a summary
report of his doings. Thus gorged, the pack of hungry "brawlers" and
grasping intriguers, the whole serviceable force of the sections and
of the clubs, is in his hands. One is strong in times of anarchy at
the head of such a herd. Indeed, during the months of August and
September, Danton was king, and, later on, he may well say of the 2d
of September, as he did of the 10th of August, "I did it!"[50]

Not that he is naturally vindictive or sanguinary: on the contrary,
with a butcher's temperament, he has a man's heart, and, at the risk
of compromising himself, against the wills of Marat and Robespierre,
he will, by-and-by, save his political adversaries, Duport, Brissot,
and the Girondists, the old party of the " Right. "[51] Not that he is
blinded by fear, enmities, or the theory; furious as a clubbist, he
has the clear-sightedness of the politician; he is not the dupe of the
sonorous phrases he utters, he knows the value of the rogues he
employs;[52] he has no illusions about men or things, about other
people or about himself; if he slays, it is with a full consciousness
of what he is doing, of his party, of the situation, of the
revolution, while the crude expressions which, in the tones of his
bull's voice, he flings out as he passes along, are but a vivid
statement of the precise truth "We are the rabble! We spring from the
gutters!" With the normal principles of mankind, "we should soon get
back into them. We can only rule through fear!"[53] "The Parisians are
so many j . . .  f . . . ; a river of blood must flow between them and
the émigrés."[54]  The tocsin about to be rung is not a signal of
alarm, but a charge on the enemies of the country. . . What is
necessary to overcome them?  Boldness, boldness, always boldness![55]
I have brought my mother here, seventy years of age; I have sent for
my children, and they came last night. Before the Prussians enter
Paris, I want my family to die with me. Let twenty thousand torches be
applied, and Paris instantly reduced to ashes!"[56] "We must maintain
ourselves in Paris at all hazards. Republicans are in an extreme
minority, and, for fighting, we can rely only on them. The rest of
France is devoted to royalty. The royalists must be terrified!"[57] --
It is he who, on the 28th of August, obtains from the Assembly the
great domiciliary visit, by which the Commune fills the prisons. It is
he who, on the 2d of September, to paralyze the resistance of honest
people, causes the penalty of death to be decreed against whoever,
"directly or indirectly shall, in any manner whatsoever, refuse to
execute, or who shall interfere with the orders issued, or with the
measures of the executive power."  It is he who, on that day, informs
the journalist Prudhomme of the pretended prison plot, and who, the
second day after, sends his secretary, Camille Desmoulins, to falsify
the report of the massacres,[58]  It is he who, on the 3rd of
September, at the office of the Minister of Justice, before the
battalion officers and the heads of the service, before Lacroix,
president of the Assembly, and Pétion, mayor of Paris, before
Clavières, Servan, Monge, Lebrun, and the entire Executive Council,
except Roland, reduces at one stroke the head men of the government to
the position of passive accomplices, replying to a man of feeling, who
rises to stay the slaughter, "Sit down -- it was necessary!"[59]  It
is he who, the same day, dispatches the circular, countersigned by
him, by which the Committee of Supervision announces the massacre, and
invites "their brethren of the departments" to follow the example of
Paris.[60]  It is he who, on the 10th of September, "not as Minister
of Justice, but as Minister of the People," is to congratulate and
thank the slaughterers of Versailles.[61] -- After the 10th of August,
through Billaud-Varennes, his former secretary, through Fabre
d'Eglantine, his Keeper of the Seals, through Tallien, secretary of
the Commune and his most trusty henchman, he is present at all
deliberations in the Hôtel-de-ville, and, at the last hour, is careful
to put on the Committee of Supervision one of his own men, the head
clerk, Desforges.[62] -- Not only was the reaping-machine constructed
under his own eye, and with his assent, but, again, when it is put in
motion, he holds the handle, so as to guide the scythe.

He is right; if he did not sometimes put on the brake, it would go to
pieces through its own action.  Introduced into the Committee as
professor of political blood-letting, Marat, stubbornly following out
a fixed idea, cuts down deep, much below the designated line; warrants
of arrest were already out against thirty deputies, Brissot's papers
were rummaged, Roland's house was surrounded, while Duport, seized in
a neighboring department,  is deposed in the slaughterhouse. The
latter is saved with the utmost difficulty; many a blow is necessary
before he can be wrested from the maniac who had seized him.  With a
surgeon like Marat, and medics like the four or five hundred leaders
of the Commune and of the sections, it is not essential to guide the
knife; it is a foregone conclusion that the amputation will be
extensive.  Their names speak for themselves: in the Commune, Manuel,
the syndic-attorney;  and his two deputies Hébert and Billaud-
Varennes, Huguenin, Lhuillier, M.-J. Chénier, Audoin, Léonard Bourdon,
Boula and Truchon, presidents in succession. In the Commune and the
sections, Panis, Sergent, Tallien, Rossignol, Chaumette, Fabre
d'Eglantine, Pache, Hassenfratz, the cobbler Simon, and the printer
Momoro. From the National Guard,  the commanding-general, Santerre,
and the battalion commander Henriot, and, lower down, the common herd
of district demagogues, Danton's, Hébert's, or Robespierre's side
kicks, guillotined later on with their file-leaders, in brief, the
flower of the future terrorists.[63] - Today they are taking their
first steps in blood, each with their own attitude and motives:


* Chénier denounced as a member of the Sainte-Chapelle club, in danger
because he is among the suspected;[64]

* Manuel, poor, excitable, bewildered, carried away, and afterwards
shuddering at the sight of his own work;

* Santerre, a fine circumspect figure-head, who, on the 2nd of
September, under pretense of watching the baggage, climbs on the seat
of a landau standing on the street, where he remains a couple of
hours, to avoid doing his duty as commanding-general;[65]

* Panis, president of the Committee of Supervision, a good
subordinate, his born disciple and bootlicker, an admirer of
Robespierre's whom he proposes for the dictatorship, as well as of
Marat, whom he extols as a prophet;[66]

* Henriot, Hébert, and Rossignol, simple evil-doers in uniform or in
their scarves;

* Collot d'Herbois, a stage poetaster, whose theatrical imagination
delights in a combination of melodramatic horrors;[67]

* Billaud-Varennes, a former oratorian monk, irascible and gloomy, as
cool before a murder as an inquisitor at an auto-da-fé;

finally, the wily Robespierre, pushing others without committing
himself, never signing his name, giving no orders, haranguing a great
deal, always advising, showing himself everywhere, getting ready to
reign, and suddenly, at the last moment, pouncing like a cat on his
prey, and trying to slaughter his rivals, the Girondists.[68]

Up to this time, in slaughtering or having it done, it was always as
insurrectionists in the street; now, it is in places of imprisonment,
as magistrates and functionaries, according to the registers of a
lock-up, after proofs of identity and on snap judgments, by paid
executioners, in the name of public security, methodically, and in
cool blood, almost with the same regularity as subsequently under "the
revolutionary government." September, indeed, is the beginning of it,
a summary and a model; they will not do it differently or better than
during the best days of the guillotine.  Only, as they are as yet
poorly supplied with tools, they are obliged to use pikes instead of
the guillotine, and, as decency has not entirely disappeared, the
chiefs conceal themselves behind maneuvers.  Nevertheless, we can
track them, take them in the act, and we have their signatures; they
planned commanded, and conducted the operation.  On the 30th of
August, the Commune decided that the sections should try accused
persons, and, on the 2nd  of September, five trusted sections reply to
it by resolving that the accused shall be murdered.69 The same day,
September 2, Marat takes his place on the Committee of Supervision.
The same day, September 2, Panis and Sergent sign the commissions of
"their comrades," Maillard and associates, for the Abbaye, and "order
them to judge," that is to say, kill the prisoners.[70]  The same and
the following days, at La Force, three members of the Commune, Hébert,
Monneuse, and Rossignol, preside in turn over the assassin court.[71]
The same day, a commissar of the Committee of Supervision comes and
demands a dozen men of the Sans-Culottes section to help massacre the
priests of Saint Firmin.[72] The same day, a  commissar of the Commune
visits the different prisons during the slaughter, and finds that
"things are going on well in all of them."[73] The same day, at five
o'clock in the afternoon, BillaudVarennes, deputy-attorney for the
Commune, "in his well-known puce-colored coat and black perruque,"
walking over the corpses, says to the Abbaye butchers: "Fellow-
citizens, you are immolating your enemies, you are performing your
duty."  He returns during the night, highly commends them, and
confirms the  promise of the "agreed wages." On the following any at
noon, he again returns, congratulates them more warmly, allows each
one twenty francs, and urges them to keep on.[74] -- In the mean time,
Santerre, summoned to the general staff headquarters by Roland,
hypocritically deplores his voluntary inability, and persists in not
giving the orders, without which the National Guard cannot move.[75]
At the sections, the presidents, Chénier, Ceyrat, Boula, Momoro,
Collot d'Herbois, dispatch or take their victims back under pikes. At
the Commune, the council-general votes 12,000 francs, to be taken from
the dead, to defray the expenses of the operation.[76] In the
Committee of Supervision, Marat sends off dispatches to spread murder
through the departments. -- It is evident that the leaders and their
subordinates are unanimous, each at his post and in the service he
performs; through the spontaneous co-operation of the whole party, the
command from above meets the impulse from below;[77] both unite in a
common murderous  disposition, the work being done with the more
precision in proportion to its being easily done. -- Jailers have
received orders to open the prison doors, and give themselves no
concern. Through an excess of precaution, the knives and forks of the
prisoners have been taken away from them.[78]  One by one, on their
names being called, they will march out like oxen in a slaughter-
house, while about twenty butchers to each prison, from to two to
three hundred in all,[79] will suffice to do the work.



V.  Abasement and Stupor.

Common workers. -- Their numbers. -- Their condition. -- Their
sentiments.-- Effect of murder on the murderers. --  Their
degradation. -- Their insensibility.

Two kinds of men make up the recruits, and it is especially on their
crude brains that we have to admire the effect of the revolutionary
dogma.

First, there are the Federates of the South, lusty fellows, former
soldiers or old bandits, deserters, bohemians, and scoundrels of all
lands and from every source, who, after finishing their work at
Marseilles and Avignon, have come to Paris to begin over again.
"Triple nom de Dieu!" exclaims one of them, "I didn't come a hundred
and eighty leagues to restrain myself from sticking a hundred and
eighty heads on the end of my pike!"[80] Accordingly, they form in
themselves a special, permanent, resident body, allowing no one to
divert them from their adopted occupation.  "They turn a deaf ear to
the excitements of spurious patriotism";[81] they are not going to be
sent off to the frontier. Their post is at the capital; they have
sworn "to defend liberty"; neither before nor after September make
them deviate from this end. When, after having drawn money on every
treasury and under every pretext, they at last consent to leave Paris,
it is only on the condition that they return to Marseilles. Their
operations are limited to the interior of France, and only against
political adversaries.  But their zeal in this field is only the
greater; it is their band which, first of all, takes the twenty-four
priests from the town hall, and, on the way, begins the massacre with
their own hands.[82]

Then there are the "enragés" of the Paris proletariat, a few of them
clerks or shopkeepers, most of them artisans of all the trades;
locksmiths, masons, butchers, wheelwrights, tailors, shoemakers,
waggoners, especially dockers working in the harbor, market-porters,
and, above all, journeymen and apprentices of all kinds, in short,
manual workers on the bottom of the social ladder.[83]  Among these we
find beasts of prey, murderers by instinct, or simple robbers.[84]
Others who, like one of the disciples of Abbé Sicard, whom he loves
and venerates, confess that they never stirred except under
constraint.[85]  Others are simple machines, who let themselves be
driven: for instance the local forwarding agent, a good sort of man,
but who, dragged along, plied with liquor, and then made crazy, kills
twenty priests for his share, and dies at the end of the month, still
drinking, unable to sleep, frothing at the mouth and trembling in
every limb.[86]  And finally the few, who, with good intentions, are
carried away by the bloody whirlwind, and, struck by the grace of
Revolution, become converted to the religion of murder. One of them a
certain Grapin, deputized by his section to save two prisoners, seats
himself alongside of Maillard, sits in judgment at his side during
sixty-three hours, and demands a certificate from him.[87] The
majority, however, entertain the same opinions as the cook, who, after
taking the Bastille, finding himself on the spot and having cut off M.
de Launay's head, regards it as a "patriotic" action, and deems
himself worthy of a "medal for having destroyed a monster." These
people are not common criminals, but well-disposed persons living in
the vicinity, who, seeing a public service established in their
neighborhood,[88] issue from their homes to give a hand; their degree
of  probity is about the same as we find nowadays among people of the
same condition in life.

At the outset, especially, no one considers filling his pockets. At
the Abbaye prison, they come honorably and place on the table in the
room of the civil committee the purses and jewels of the dead.[89]  If
they appropriate anything to themselves, it is shoes to cover their
naked feet, and then only after asking permission. As to pay, all
rough work deserves it, and, moreover, between them and their
recruiters, the answer is obvious. With nothing but their own hands to
rely on, they cannot work for nothing,[90]  and, as the work is hard,
they ought to be paid double time. They require six francs a day,
besides their meals and as much wine as they want.  One caterer alone
furnished the men at the Abbaye with 346 pints:[91] when working
incessantly day and night with a task like that of sewer-cleaners and
miners, nothing else will keep their courage up. -- Food and wages
must be paid for by the nation; the work is done for the nation, and,
naturally, on interposing formalities, they get out of temper and
betake themselves to Roland, to the City treasurer, to the section
committees, to the Committee of Supervision,[92] murmuring,
threatening, and showing their bloody pikes. That is the evidence of
having done their work well. They boast of it to Pétion, impress upon
him how "just and attentive" they were,[93] their discernment, the
time given to the work, so many days and so many hours; they ask only
for what is "due to them"; when the treasurer, on paying them, demands
their names, they give them without the slightest hesitation. Those
who escort a dismissed prisoner; masons, hairdressers, federates,
require no recompense but "something to drink"; "we do not carry on
this business for money," they say; "here is your friend; he promised
us a glass of brandy, which we will take and then go back to our
work."[94] -- Outside of their business they possess the expansive
cordiality and ready sensitivity of the Parisian workman.  At the
Abbaye, a federate,[95] on learning that the prisoners had been kept
without water for twenty-six hours, wanted to "exterminate" the
turnkey for his negligence, and would have done it if "the prisoners
themselves had not pleaded for him."  On the acquittal of a prisoner,
the guards and the butchers, everybody, embraces him with enthusiasm;
Weber is greeted again and again for more than a hundred yards; they
cheer to excess. Each wants to escort the prisoner; the cab of Mathon
de la Varenne is invaded; "they perch themselves on the driver's seat,
at the doors, on top, and behind."[96] - A few even display strange
fits of tact.  Two of the butchers, still covered with blood, who lead
the chevalier de Bertrand home, insist on going up stairs with him to
witness the joy of his family; after their terrible task they need the
relaxation of tender emotion.  On entering, they wait discreetly in
the drawing-room until the ladies have been prepared; the happiness of
which they are witnesses melts them; they remain some time, refuse
money, expressing their gratitude and depart.[97] -- Still more
extraordinary are the vestiges of innate politeness.  A market-porter
desirous of embracing a discharged prisoner, first asks his
permission.  Old "hags," who had just clapped their hands at the
slaughtering, stop the guards "violently" as they hurry Weber along,
in white silk stockings, across pools of blood: "Hey, guard, look out,
you are making Monsieur walk in the gutter!"[98] In short, they
display the permanent qualities of their race and class; they seem to
be neither above nor below the average of their brethren,  Most of
them, probably, would never have done anything very monstrous had a
rigid police, like that which maintains order in ordinary times, kept
them in their shops or at home in their lodgings or in their tap-
rooms.

But, in their own eyes, they are so many kings; "sovereignty is
committed to their hands,"[99] their powers are unlimited; whoever
doubts this is a traitor, and is properly punished; he must be put out
of the way; while, for royal councillors, they take maniacs and
rascals, who, through monomania or calculation, have preach all that
to them: just like a Negro king surrounded by white slave-dealers, who
urge him into raids, and by black sorcerers, who prompt him to
massacre.  How could such a man with such guides, and in such an
office, be retarded by the formalities of justice, or by the
distinctions of equity?  Equity and justice are the elaborate products
of civilization, while he is merely a political savage. In vain are
the innocent recommended to his mercy!

"Look here, citizen,[100] do you, too, want to put us to sleep?
Suppose that those cursed Prussian and Austrian beggars were in Paris,
would they pick out the guilty? Wouldn't they strike right and left,
the same as the Swiss did on the 10th of August? Very well, I can't
make speeches, but I don't put anybody to sleep.  I say, I am the
father of a family --  I have a wife and five children that I mean to
leave here for the section to look after, while I go and fight the
enemy.  But I have no intention that while I am gone these villains
here in prison, and other villains who would come and let them out,
should cut the throats of my wife and children. I have three boys who
I hope will some day be more useful to their country than those
rascals you want to save.  Anyhow, all that can be done is to let 'em
out and give them arms, and we will fight 'em on an equal footing.
Whether I die here or on the frontiers, scoundrels would kill me all
the same, and I will sell my life dearly. But, whether it is done by
me or by someone else, the prison shall be cleaned out of those cursed
beggars, there, now!"  At this a general cry is heard: "He's right! No
mercy!  Let us go in!"

All that the crowd assent to is an improvised tribunal, the reading of
the jailer's register, and prompt judgment; condemnation and slaughter
must follow, according to the famous Commune, which simplifies things
-- There is another simplification still more formidable, which is the
condemnation and slaughter by categories. Any title suffices, Swiss,
priest, officer, or servant of the King, "the 'worms' on the civil
list"; wherever a lot of priests or Swiss are found, it is not worth
while to have a trial, the throats of the lot can be slit. -- Reduced
to this, the operation is adapted to the operators; the arms of the
new sovereign are as strong as his mind is weak, and, through an
inevitable adaptation, he degrades his work to the level of his
faculties.

His work, in its turn, degrades and perverts him.  No man, and
especially a man of the people, rendered pacific by an old
civilization, can, with impunity, become at one stroke both sovereign
and executioner. In vain does he work himself up against the condemned
and heap insults on them to augment his fury;[101] I he is dimly
conscious of committing a great crime, and his soul, like that of
Macbeth, "is full of scorpions." Through a terrible tightening up, he
hardens himself against the inborn, hereditary impulses of humanity;
these resist while he becomes exasperated, and, to stifle them, there
is no other way but to "gorge himself on horrors,"[102] by adding
murder to murder.  For murder, especially as he practices it, that is
to say, with a naked sword on defense-less people, introduces into his
animal and moral machine two extraordinary and disproportionate
emotions which unsettle it, on the one hand, a sensation of
omnipotence exercised uncontrolled, unimpeded, without danger, on
human life, on throbbing flesh[103] and, on the other hand, an
interest in bloody and diversified death, accompanied with an ever new
series of contortions and exclamations;[104] formerly, in the Roman
circus, one could not tear one's self away from it; the spectacle once
seen, the spectator always returned to see it again. Just at this time
each prison court is a circus, and what makes it worse is that the
spectators are likewise actors.-- Thus, for them, two fiery liquids
mingle together in one draught. To moral intoxication is added
physical intoxication, wine in profusion, bumpers at every pause,
revelry over corpses; and we see rising out of this unnatural creature
the demon of Dante, at once brutal and refined, not merely a
destroyer, but, again, an executioner, instigator and calculator of
suffering, and radiant and joyous over the evil it accomplishes.

They are merry; they dance around each new corpse, and sing the
carmagnole;[105] they arouse the people of the quarter "to amuse
them," and that they may have their share of "the fine fête."[106]
Benches are arranged for "gentlemen" and others for "ladies": the
latter, with greater curiosity, are additionally anxious to
contemplate at their ease "the aristocrats" already slain;
consequently, lights are required, and one is placed on the breast of
each corpse. -- Meanwhile, the slaughter continues, and is carried to
perfection. A butcher at the Abbaye[107] complains that "the
aristocrats die too quick, and that those only who strike first have
the pleasure of it"; henceforth they are to be struck with the backs
of the swords only, and made to run between two rows of their
butchers, like soldiers formerly running a gauntlet.  If there happens
to be well-known person, it is agreed to take more care in prolonging
the torment. At La Force, the Federates who come for M. de Rulhières
swear "with frightful imprecations that they will cut the head of
anyone daring to end his sufferings with a thrust of his pike"; the
first thing is to strip him naked, and then, for half an hour, with
the flat of their sabers, they cut and slash him until he drips with
blood and is "skinned to his entrails." -- All the monstrous instincts
who grovels chained up in the dregs of the human heart, not only
cruelty with its bared fangs,[108] but also the slimier desires, unite
in fury against women whose noble or infamous repute makes them
conspicuous; against Madame de Lamballe, the Queen's friend; against
Madame Desrues, widow of the famous poisoner; against the flower-girl
of the Palais-Royal, who, two years before, had mutilated her lover, a
French guardsman, in a fit of jealousy. Ferocity here is associated
with lewdness to add debasement to torture, while life is violated
through outrages on modesty.  In Madame de Lamballe, killed too
quickly, the libidinous butchers could outrage only a corpse, but for
the widow,[109] and especially the flower-girl, they revive, like so
many Neros, the fire-circle of the Iroquois.[110] -- From the Iroquois
to the cannibal, the gulf is small, and some of them jump across it.
At the Abbaye, an old soldier named Damiens, buries his saber in the
side of the adjutant-general la Leu, thrusts his hand into the
opening, tears out the heart "and puts it to his mouth as if to eat
it"; "the blood," says an eye-witness, "trickled from his mouth and
formed a sort of mustache for him."[111] At La Force, Madame de
Lamballe is carved up. What Charlot, the wig-maker, who carried her
head did, I to it, should not be described. I merely state that
another wretch, in the Rue Saint-Antoine, bore off her heart and "ate
it."[112]

They kill and they drink, and drink and kill again. Weariness comes
and stupor begins.  One of them, a wheelwright's apprentice, has
dispatched sixteen for his share; another "has labored so hard at this
merchandise as to leave the blade of his saber sticking in it"; "I was
more tired," says a Federate, "with two hours pulling limbs to pieces,
right and left, than any mason who for two days has been plastering a
wall."[113]  The first excitement is gone, and now they strike
automatically.[114] Some of them fall asleep stretched out on benches.
Others, huddled together, sleep off the fumes of their wine, removed
on one side.  The exhalation from the carnage is so strong that the
president of the civil committee faints in his chair,[115] the fumes
of the tavern blending with those from the charnel-house. A heavy,
dull state of torpor gradually overcomes their clouded brains, the
last glimmerings of reason dying out one by one, like the smoky lights
on the already cold breasts of the corpses lying around them. Through
the stupor spreading over the faces of butchers and cannibals, we see
appearing that of the idiot.  It is the revolutionary idiot, in which
all conceptions, save two, have vanished, two fixed, rudimentary, and
mechanical ideas, one destruction and the other that of public safety.
With no others in his empty head, these blend together through an
irresistible attraction, and the effect proceeding from their contact
may be imagined. "Is there anything else to do? "asks one of these
butchers in the deserted court. --  "If there is no more to do," reply
a couple of women at the gate, "you will have to think of
something,"[116] and, naturally, this is done.

As the prisons are to be cleaned out, it is as well to clean them all
out, and do it at once. After the Swiss, priests, the aristocrats, and
the "white-skinned gentlemen," there remain convicts and those
confined through the ordinary channels of justice, robbers, assassins,
and those sentenced to the galleys in the Conciergerie, in the
Châtelet, and in the Tour St. Bernard, with branded women, vagabonds,
old beggars, and boys confined in Bicêtre and the Salpétrière. They
are good for nothing, cost something to feed,[117] and, probably,
cherish evil designs. At the Salpétrière, for example, the wife of
Desrues, the poisoner, is, assuredly, like himself, "cunning, wicked,
and capable of anything"; she must be furious at being in prison; if
she could, she would set fire to Paris; she must have said so; she did
say it[118] -- one more sweep of the broom.-- This time, as the job is
more foul, the broom is wielded by fouler hands; among those who seize
the handle are the frequenters of jails. The butchers at the Abbaye
prison, especially towards the close, had already committed
thefts;[119] here, at the Châtelet and the Conciergerie prisons, they
carry away "everything which seems to them suitable," even to the
clothes of the dead, prison sheets and coverlids, even the small
savings of the jailers, and, besides this, they enlist their cronies.
"Out of 36 prisoners set free, many were assassins and robbers, the
killers attached them to their group. There were also 75 women,
confined in part for larceny, who promised to faithfully serve their
liberators."  Later on, indeed, these are to become, at the Jacobin
and Cordeliers clubs, the tricoteuses (knitters) who fill their
tribunes.[120] -- At the Salpétrière prison, "all the pimps of Paris,
former spies, . . . libertines, the rascals of France and all Europe,
prepare beforehand for the operation," and rape alternates with
massacre.[121] -- Thus far, at least, slaughter has been seasoned with
robbery, and the grossness of eating and drinking; at Bicétre,
however, it is crude butchery, the carnivorous instinct alone
satisfying itself. Among other prisoners are 43 youths of the lowest
class, from 17 to 19 years of age, placed there for correction by
their parents, or by those to whom they are bound;[122] one need only
look at them to see that they are genuine Parisian scamps, the
apprentices of vice and misery, the future recruits for the reigning
band, and these the band falls on, beating them to death with clubs.
At this age life is tenacious, and, no life being harder to take, it
requires extra efforts to dispatch them. "In that corner," said a
jailer, "they made a mountain of their bodies. The next day, when they
were to be buried, the sight was enough to break one's heart. One of
them looked as if he were sleeping like one of God's angels, but the
rest were horribly mutilated."[123] -- Here, man has sunk below
himself, down into the lowest strata of the animal kingdom, lower that
the wolf; for wolves do not strangle their young.



VI. Jacobin Massacre.

Effect of the massacre on the public. --  General dejection and the
dissolution of society. --  The ascendancy of the Jacobins assured in
Paris. --  The men of September upheld in the Commune and elected to
the Convention.

There are six days and five nights of uninterrupted butchery,[124] 171
murders at the Abbaye, 169 at La Force, 223 at the Châtelet, 328 at
the Consciergerie, 73 at the Tour-Saint-Bernard, 120 at the
Carmelites, 79 at Saint Firmin, 170 at Bicêtre, 35 at the Salpétrière;
among the dead,[125] 250 priests, 3 bishops or archbishops, general
officers, magistrates, one former minister, one royal princess,
belonging to the best names in France, and, on the other side, one
Negro, several working class women, kids, convicts, and poor old men:
What man now, little or big, does not feel himself threatened? -- And
all the more because the band has grown larger. Fournier, Lazowski,
and Bécard, the chiefs of robbers and assassins, return from Orleans
with fifteen hundred cut-throats.[126]  One the way they kill M. de
Brissac, M. de Lessart, and 42 others accused of lése-nation, whom
they wrested from their judges' hands, and then, by the way of
surplus, "following the example of Paris," twenty-one prisoners taken
from the Versailles prisons.  At Paris the Minister of Justice thanks
them, the Commune congratulates them, and the sections feast them and
embrace them.[127] -- Can anybody doubt that they were ready to begin
again? Can a step be taken in or out of Paris without being subject to
their oppression or encountering their despotism? Should one leave the
city, sentinels of their species are posted at the barriers and on the
section committees in continuous session. Malouet, led before that of
Roule,[128] sees before him a pandemonium of fanatics, at least a
hundred individuals in the same room, the suspected, those denouncing
them, collaborators, attendants, a long, green table in the center,
covered with swords and daggers, with the committee around it, "twenty
patriots with their shirt sleeves rolled up, some holding pistols and
others pens," signing warrants of arrest, "quarreling with and
threatening each other, all talking at once, and shouting: Traitor! --
Conspirator! -- Off to prison with him! -- Guillotine him! -- and
behind these, a crowd of spectators, pell-mell , yelling, and
gesticulating" like wild beasts pressed against each other in the same
cage, showing their teeth and trying to spring at each other. "One of
the most excited, brandishing his saber in order to strike an
antagonist, stopped on seeing me, and exclaimed, 'There's Malouet!' --
The other, however, less occupied with me than with his enemy, took
advantage of the opportunity, and with a blow of his club, knocked him
down."  Malouet had a close shave, in Paris escapes take place by such
accidents. -- If one remains in the city, one is beset with lugubrious
fears by,

1. the hurrying step of squads of men in each street, leading the
suspected to prison or before the committee;

2. around each prison the crowds that have come "to see the
disasters";

3. in the court of the Abaye the cry of the auctioneer selling the
clothes of the dead;

4. the rumbling of carts on the pavement bearing away 1,300 corpses;

5. the songs of the women mounted aloft on the carts, beating time on
the naked bodies.[129]

Is there a man who, after one of these encounters, does not see
himself in imagination before the green table of the section
committee, after this, in prison with sabers over his head, and then
in the cart in the midst of the bloody pile?

Courage falters before a vision like this. All the journals approve,
palliate, or keep silent; nobody dares offer resistance.[130] Property
as well as lives belong to whoever wants to take them. At the
barriers, at the markets, on the boulevard of the Temple, thieves,
decked with the tricolor ribbon, stop people as they pass along, seize
whatever they carry, and, under the pretext that jewels should be
deposited on the altars of Patriotism, take purses, watches, rings,
and other articles, so rudely that women who are not quick enough,
have the lobes of their ears torn in unhooking their earrings[131].
Others, installed in the cellars of the Tuileries, sell the nation's
wine and oil for their own profit. Others, again, given their liberty
eight days before by the people, scent out a bigger job by finding
their way into the Garde-meuble and stealing diamonds to the value of
thirty millions.[132]

Like a man struck on the head with a mallet, Paris, felled to the
ground, lets things go; the authors of the massacre have fully
attained their ends. The faction has fast hold of power, and will
maintain its hold. Neither in the Legislative Assembly nor in the
Convention will the aims of the Girondins be successful against its
tenacious usurpation. It has proved by a striking example that it is
capable of anything, and boasts of it; it is still armed, it stands
there ever prepared and anonymous on its murderous basis, with its
speedy modes of operation, its own group of fanatical agents and
bravos, with Maillard and Fournier, with its cannon and its pikes. All
that does not live within it lives only through its favor from day to
day, through its good will. Everybody knows that. The Assembly no
longer thinks of dislodging people who meet decrees of expulsion with
massacre; it is no longer a question of auditing their accounts, or of
keeping them within the confines of the law. Their dictatorship is not
to be disputed, and their purification continue. From four to five
hundred new prisoners, arrested within eleven days, by order of the
municipality, by the sections, and by this or that individual Jacobin,
are crowded into cells still dripping with blood, and the report is
spread that, on the 20th of September, the prisons will be emptied by
a second massacre.[133] --  Let the Convention, if it pleases,
pompously install itself as sovereign, and grind out decrees -- it
makes no difference; regular or irregular, the government still
marches on in the hands of those who hold the sword.[134]  The
Jacobins, through sudden terror, have maintained their illegal
authority; through a prolongation of terror they are going to
establish their legal authority. A forced suffrage is going to put
them in office at the Hôtel-de-ville, in the tribunals, in the
National Guard, in the sections, and in the various administrations,
while they have already elected to the Convention, Marat, Danton,
Fabre d'Eglantine, Camille Desmoulins, Manuel, Billaud-Varennes,
Panis, Sergent, Collot d'Herbois, Robespierre, Legendre, Osselin,
Fréron, David, Robert, Lavicourterie, in short, the instigators,
leaders and accomplices of the massacre.[135]  Nothing that could
force or falsify voting is omitted.[136]  In the first place the
presence of the people is imposed on the electoral assembly, and, to
this end, it is transferred to the large hall of the Jacobin club,
under the pressure of the Jacobin galleries. As a second precaution,
every opponent is excluded from voting, every Constitutionalist, every
former member of the monarchical club, of the Feuillants, and of the
Sainte-Chapelle club, of the Feuillants, and of the Sainte-Chapelle
club, every signer of the petition of the 20,000 , or of that of the
8,000, and, on the sections protesting against this, their protest is
thrown out on the ground of its being the fruit of "an intrigue."
Finally, at each balloting, each elector's vote is called out, which
ensures the right vote beforehand, the warnings he has received being
very explicit.[137]  On the 2nd of September, during the first meeting
of the electoral body, held at the bishop's palace, the Marseilles
troop, 500 yards away, came and took the twenty-four priests from the
town-hall, and, on the way, hacked them to pieces on the Pont-Neuf.
Throughout the evening and all night the agents of the municipality
carried on their work at the Abbaye, at the Carmelites, and at La
Force, and, on the 3rd of September, on the electoral assembly
transferring itself to the Jacobin club, it passed over the Pont-au-
Change between two rows of corpses, which the slaughterers had brought
there from the Châtelet and the Conciergerie prisons.
___________________________________________________________________

Notes:

[1] 'Thierry, son of Clovis, unwilling to take part in an expedition
of his brothers into Burgundy, was told by his men: "If thou art
unwilling to march into Burgundy with thy brothers, we will leave thee
and follow them in thy place."-- Clotaire, another of his sons,
disposed to make peace with the Saxons, "the angry Francs rush upon
him, revile him, and threaten to kill him if he declines to accompany
them. Upon which he puts himself at their head."

[2] Social condition and degree of culture are often indicated
orthographically. -- Granier de Cassagnac, II. .480. Bécard,
commanding the expedition which brought back the prisoners from
Orleans, signs himself: "Bécard, commandant congointement aveque M.
Fournier generalle. " -- "Archives Nationales," F7, 4426.  Letter of
Chemin, commissioner of the Gravilliers section, to Santerre, Aug.11,
1792.  "Mois Charles Chemin commissaire . . .  fait part à Monsieur
Santaire générale de la troupe parisiene que le nommé Hingray
cavaliers de la gendarmeris nationalle . . me délarés qu'ille sestes
trouvés aux jourduis 11 aoux avec une home attachés à la cours aux
Equris; quille lui aves dis quiere 800 home a peupres des sidevant
garde du roy étes tous près a fondre sure Paris pour donaire du sécour
a naux rébelle et a signer avec moi la presante."

[3] On the 19th of March, 1871, I met in the Rue de Varennes a man
with two guns on his shoulder who had taken part in the pillage of the
Ecole d'Etat-major and was on his way home. I said to him: "But this
is civil war, and you will let the Prussians in Paris."-  "I'd rather
have the Prussians than Thiers. Thiers is Prussian on the inside!"

[4]  Today, 115 years after these words were written, we have seen
others, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao Tse Tung, etc following in
the Jacobin's footsteps. Nobles, Bourgeois, Jews and other
undesirables have been methodically put away. The sheeplike majority
did not read Taine or did not profit from his warnings while most of
the great tyrants learned from him or from the events he described
(SR.)

[5] Moniteur, Nov. 14, 1792.

[6]  "Archives Nationales," F7, 4426. Letter of the police
administrators, Aug. 11. Declaration of Delaunay, Aug. 12.

[7]  Buchez et Roux, XVII. 59 (session of Aug. 12) Speech by Leprieur
at the bar of the house.

[8]  Buchez et Roux, XVII. 47. - Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 31. Speech by
Robespierre at the bar of the Assembly in the name of the commune,
Aug. 15.

[9]  Brissot, in his report on Robespierre's petition. - The names of
the principal judges elected show its character: Fouquier-Tinville,
Osselin, Coffinhal.

[10]  Buchez et Roux, XVII.91 (Aug. 17).

[11] Stated by Pétion in his speech (Moniteur,  Nov. 10, 1792).

[12] Buchez et Roux, XVII. 116 (session of Aug. 23).

[13] Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 461. - Moore, I. 273 (Aug. 31).

[14] Buchez et Roux, XVII. 267 (article by Prudhomme in the
"Révolutions de Paris").

[15] "Les Révolutions de Paris," Ibid., "A number of sans-culottes
were there with their pikes; but these were largely outnumbered by the
multitude of uniforms of the various battalions." --  Moore, Aug, 31:
"At present the inhabitants of the faubourgs Saint-Antoine and Saint-
Marceau are all that is felt of the sovereign people in Paris."

[16] More, Aug. 26.

[17] Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 471. Indictment against Jean-Julien. -- In
referring to M. Mortimer-Ternaux we do so because, like a true critic,
he cites authentic and frequently unedited documents.

[18] Rétif de la Bretonne, "les Nuits de Paris," 11th night, p. 372.

[19] Moore, Sept. 2.

[20] Moore, Sept. 3. -- Buchez et Roux, XVI. 159 (narrative by
Tallien).-- Official report of the Paris commune, Sept. 4 (in the
collection of Barrière and Berville, the volume entitled "Mémoires sur
les journées de Septembre"). The commune adopts and expands the fable,
probably invented by it. Prudhomme well says that the story of the
prison plot, so scandalously circulated during the Reign of Terror,
appears for the first time on the 2d of September. The same report was
spread through the rural districts. At Gennevilliers, a peasant while
lamenting the massacres, said to Malouet: "It is, too, a terrible
thing for the aristocrats to want to kill all the people by blowing up
the city" (Malouet, II. 244).

[21] Official reports of the commune, Aug. 11.

[22] Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 446. List of the section commissioners
sitting at the Hôtel-de-ville,  Aug. 10, before 9 o'clock in the
morning.

[23] Official reports of the commune, Aug. 21. "Considering that, to
ensure public safety and liberty, the council-general of the commune
required all the power delegated to it by the people,  at the time it
was compelled to resume the exercise of its rights," sends a
deputation to the National Assembly to insist that "the new department
be converted, pure and simple, into a tax-commissioners' office." --
Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 25. Speech of Robespierre in the name of the
commune: "After the people have saved the country, after decreeing a
National Convention to replace you, what remains for you to do but to
gratify their wishes? . . . The people, forced to see to its own
salvation, has provided for this through its delegates. . . It is
essential that those chosen by itself for its magistrates should enjoy
the plenary powers befitting the sovereign."

[24] Official reports of the commune, Aug. 10. - Mortimer-Ternaux,
III. 155. Letter of the Minister Servan, Aug. 30.-Ibid., 149.-- Ibid.,
148. The commission on supplies having been broken up by the commune,
Roland, the Minister of the Interior, begs the Assembly to act
promptly, for "he will no longer be responsible for the supplies of
Paris."

[25] Official reports of the commune, Aug. 21. A resolution requiring
that, on trials for lésé-nation, those who appear for the defendants
should be provided with a certificate of their integrity, issued by
their assembled section, and that the interviews between them and the
accused be public. - Ibid., Aug.17, a resolution to suspend the
execution of the two assassins of mayor Simonneau, condemned to death
by the tribunal of Seine-et-Oise.

[26] Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 11. Decree of Aug.11.

[27] Prudhomme, "Révolutions de Paris" (number for Sep. 22).. Report
by Roland to the National Assembly (Sept. 16, at 9 o'clock in the
morning).

[28] Madame Roland, "Mémoires," II. 414 (Ed. Barrière et Berville).
Report by Roland Oct. 29. The seizure in question tool place Aug.27.

[29] Mémoirs sur les journées de Septembre" (Ed. Barrière et Berville,
pp. 307-322). List of sums paid by the treasurer of the commune. --
See, on the prolongation of this plundering, Roland's report, Oct. 29,
of money, plate, and assignats taken from the Senlis Hospital (Sept.
13), the Hotel de Coigny emptied, and sale of furniture in the Hotel
d'Egmont, etc.

[30] Official reports of the commune, Aug. 17 and 20. -- List of sums
paid by the treasurer of the commune, p. 321. -- On the 28th of August
a "Saint-Roch in silver is brought to the bar of the National
Assembly.

[31] Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 150, 161, 511. -- Report by Roland, Oct.
29. P. 414.

[32]  Moniteur.514, 542 (sessions of Aug. 23 and 26).

[33] Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 99 (sessions of Aug.15 and 23). "Procès-
verbaux de la Commune," Aug. 18, a resolution to obtain a law
authorizing the commune "to collect together with wives and children
of the émigrés in places of security, and to make use of the former
convents for this purpose."

[34] Procès-verbaux de la Commune," Aug. 12. - Ibid., Aug. 18. Not
being able to find M. Geoffrey, the journalist, the commune "passes a
resolution that seals be affixed to Madame Geoffroy's domicile and
that she be placed in arrest until her husband appears to release
her."

[35] Procès-verbaux de la Commune." Aug.17 and 18. Another resolution,
again demanding of the National Assembly a list of the signers for
publication.

[36] Procès-verbaux de la Commune," Aug. 18, 19, 20. -- On the 20th of
August the commune summons before it and examines the Venetian
Ambassador. "A citizen claims to be heard against the ambassador, and
states that several carriages went out of Paris in his name. The name
of this citizen is Chevalier, a horse-shoer's assistant . . . The
Council decrees that honorable mention be made of the affidavits
brought forward in the accusation." On the tone of these examinations
read Weber ("Mémoires," II. 245), who narrates his own.

[37] Buchez et Roux, XVII. 215. Narration by Peltier. -- In spite of
the orders of the National Assembly the affair is repeated on the
following day, and it lasts from the 19th to the 31st of August, in
the evening. -- Moore, Aug.31. The stupid, sheep-like vanity of the
bourgeois enlisted as a gendarme for the sans-culottes is here well
depicted. The keeper of the Hôtel Meurice, where Moore and Lord
Lauderdale put up, was on guard and on the chase the night before: "He
talked a good deal of the fatigue he had undergone, and hinted a
little of the dangers to which he had been exposed in the course of
this severe duty. Being asked if he had been successful in his search
after suspected persons --'Yes my lord, infinitely; our battalion
arrested four priests.' He could not have looked more lofty if he had
taken the Duke of Brunswick,"

[38] According to Rœderer, the number arrested amounted to from 5,000
to 6,000 persons.

[39] Mortimer-Ternaux, III.147, 148, Aug.28 and 29. - Ibid., 176.
Other sections complain of the Commune with some bitterness. -- Buchez
et Roux, XVII.  358. -- "Procès-verbaux de la Commune," Sept. 1. "The
section of the Temple sends a deputation which declares that by virtue
of a decree of the National Assembly it withdraws its powers entrusted
to the commissioners elected by it to the council-general."

[40] Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 154 (session of Aug. 30).

[41] Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 171 (session of Aug. 31). -- Ibid., 208. -
- On the following day, Sept. 1, at the instigation of Danton, Thuriot
obtains from the National Assembly an ambiguous decree which seems to
allow the members of the commune to keep their places, provisionally
at least, at the Hotel-de-ville.

[42] "Procès-verbaux de la Commune," Sept. 1.

[43] "Procès-verbaux de la Commune," Sept. 1. "It is resolved that
whatever effects fell into the hands of the citizens who fought for
liberty and equality on the 10th of August shall remain in their
possession; M. Tallien, secretary-general, is therefore authorized to
return a gold watch to M. Lecomte, a gendarme."

[44] Four circumstances, simultaneous and in full agreement with each
other, indicate this date:
1. On the 23d of August the council-general resolves "that a tribune
shall be arranged in the chamber for a journalist (M. Marat), whose
duty it shall be to conduct a journal giving the acts passed and what
goes on in the commune" ("Procès-verbaux de la Commune," Aug.23)
2.  On the same day, "on the motion of a member with a view to
separate the prisoners of lése-nation from those of the nurse's
hospital and others of the same stamp in the different prisons, the
council has adopted this measure" (Granier de Cassagnac, II. 100).
3. The same day the commune applauds the deputies of a section, which
"in warm terms" denounce before it the tardiness of justice and
declare to it that the people will "immolate" the prisoners in their
prisons (Moniteur, Nov. 10, 1793, Narrative of Pétion).
The same day it sends a deputation to the Assembly to order a transfer
of the Orleans prisoners to Paris (Buchez et Roux, XVII. 116). The
next day, in spite of the prohibitions of the Assembly, It sends
Fournier and his band to Orleans (Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 364), and
each knows beforehand that Fournier is commissioned to kill them on
the way. (Balleydier, "Histoire politique et militaire du people de
Lyon," I.79. Letter of Laussel, dated at Paris, Aug.28): "Our
volunteers are at Orleans for the past two or three days to bring the
anti-revolutionary prisoners here, who are treated too well there." On
the day of Fournier's departure (Aug. 24) Moore observes in the Palais
Royal and at the Tuileries "a greater number than usual of stump-
speakers of the populace, hired for the purpose of inspiring the
people with a horror of monarchy."

[45] Moniteur, Sept. 25,1792, speech by Marat in the Convention.

[46] See his two journals, "L'Ami du people" and the "Journal de la
Républic Française," especially for July and October 1792. -- The
number for August 16 is headed: "Development of the vile plot of the
court to destroy all patriots with fire and sword." -- That of August
19: "The infamous conscript Fathers of the Circus, betraying the
people and trying to delay the conviction of traitors until Mottié
arrives, is marching with his army on Paris to destroy all patriots!"
-- That of Aug. 21: "The rotters of the Assembly, the perfidious
accomplices of Mottié arranging for flight . . . The conscript
Fathers, the assassins of patriots at Nancy, the Champ de Mars and in
the Tuileries, etc." -- All this was yelled out daily every morning by
those who hawked these journals through the streets.

[47] Ami du Peuple, Aug.19 and 21.

[48] "Lettres autographs de Madame Roland," published by Madame Bancal
des Issarts, Sept. 9. "Danton leads all; Robespierre is his puppet;
Marat holds his torch and dagger."

[49] Madame Roland "Mémoires," II. 19 (note by Roland). - Ibid., 21,
23, 24. Monge says: "Danton wants to have it so; if I refuse he will
denounce me to the Commune and at the Cordeliers, and have me hung."
Fournier's commission to Orleans was all in order,  Roland probably
having signed it unawares, like those of the commissioners sent into
the departments by the executive council (Cf. Mortimer-Ternaux, III.
368.)

[50] The person who gives me the following had it from the king, Louis
Philippe, then an officer in Kellerman's corps:

On the evening of the battle of Valmy the young officer is sent to
Paris to carry the news. On his arrival (Sept. 22 or 23. 1792) he
learns that he is removed from his post and appointed governor of
Strasbourg. He goes to Servan's house, Minister of War, and at first
they refuse to let him in. Servan is unwell and in bed, with the
ministers in his room. The young man states that he comes from the
army and is the bearer of dispatches. He is admitted, and finds,
indeed, Servan in bed with various personages around him, and he
announces the victory. -- They question him and he gives the details.
-- He then complains of having been displaced, and, stating that he is
too young to command with any authority at Strasbourg, requests to he
reinstated with the army in the field. "Impossible," replies Servan;
"your place is given to another." Thereupon one of the personages
present, with a peculiar visage and a rough voice, takes him aside and
says to him: "Servan is a fool! Come and see me to-morrow and I will
arrange the matter." "Who are you?" "I am Danton, the Minister of
Justice." -- The next day he calls on Danton, who tells him: "It is
all right; you shall have your post back -- not under Kellerman,
however, but under Dumouriez; are you content?" The young man,
delighted, thanks him. Danton resumes: "Let me give you one piece of
advice before you go: You have talent and will succeed. But get rid of
one fault . You talk too much. You have been in Paris twenty-four
hours, and already you have repeatedly criticized the affair of
September. I know this; I have been informed of it" "But that was a
massacre; how can one help calling it horrible?" "I did it," replies
Danton, "The Parisians are all so many j--- f---. A river of blood had
to flow between them and the émigrés.. You are too young to understand
these matters. Return to the army; it is the only place nowadays for a
young man like you and of your rank. You have a future before you; but
mind this -- keep your mouth shut!"

[51] Hua, 167.. Narrative by his guest, the physician Lambry, an
intimate friend of Danton ultra-fanatical and member of a committee in
which the question came up whether the members of the "Right" should
likewise be put out of the way. "Danton had energetically repelled
this sanguinary proposal.  'Everybody knows,' he said, 'that I do not
shrink from a criminal act when necessary; but I disdain to commit a
useless one."'

[52]  Mortimer-Ternaux, Iv. 437. Danton exclaims, in relation to the
hot-headed commissioners sent by him into the department: "Eh! damn
it, do you suppose that we would send you young ladies?"

[53]  Philippe de Ségur, "Mémoires,"I.12. Danton, in a conversation
with his father, a few weeks after the 2nd of September.

[54]  See above, narrative of the king, louis Philippe.

[55]  Buchez et Roux, xvii. 347. The words of Danton in the National
Assembly, Sept. 2nd  a little before two o'clock, just as the tocsin
and cannon gave the signal of alarm agreed upon. Already on the 31st
of August, Tailien, his faithful ally, had told the National Assembly:
"We have arrested the priests who make so much trouble. They are in
confinement in a certain domicile, and in a few days the soil of
liberty will be purged of their presence."

[56]  Meillan, "Mémoires," 325 (Ed. Barrière et Berville). Speech by
Fabre d'Eglantine at the Jacobin Club, sent around among the
affiliated clubs, May 1, 1793.

[57]  Robinet, "Procès des Dantonistes," 39, 45 (words of Danton in
the committee on general defense). - Madame Roland, 2Mémoires," II.
30. On the 2nd of September Grandpré ordered to report to the Minister
of the Interior on the state of the prisons, waits for Danton as he
leaves the council and tells him his fears. "Danton, irritated by the
description, exclaims in his bellowing way, suiting his word to the
action. 'I don't give a damn about the prisoners! Let them take care
of themselves! And he proceeded on in an angry mood. This took place
in the second ante-room, in the presence of twenty persons." -
Arnault, II. 101. About the time of the September massacres "Danton,
in the presence of one of my friends, replied to someone that urged
him to use his authority in stopping the spilling of blood: 'Isn't it
time for the people to take their revenge?' "

[58] Prudhomme, "Crimes de la Révolution," iv. 90. On the 2nd of
September, at the alarm given by the tocsin and cannon, Prudhomme
calls on Danton at his house for information. Danton gives him the
agreed story and adds: "The people, who are now aroused and know what
to do, want to administer justice themselves on the nasty imprisoned
persons.  -- Camille Desmoulins enters: "Look here," says Danton,
"Prudhomme has come to ask what is going to be done?"  -- "Didn't you
tell him that the innocent would not be confounded with the guilty?
All those that are demanded by their Sections will be given up." --
On the 4th, Desmoulins calls at the office of the journal and says to
the editors: "Well, everything has gone off in the most perfect order.
The people even set free a good many aristocrats against whom there
was no direct proof. I trust that you will state all this exactly,
because the Journal des Révolutions is the compass of public opinion."

[59] Prudhomme, "Crimes de la Révolution," IV. 123. According to the
statements of Théophile Mandar, vice-president of a section, witness
and actor in the scene; he authorizes Prudhomme to mention his name. -
- Afterwards, in the next room, Mandar proposes to Pétion and
Robespierre to attend the Assembly the next day and protest against
the massacre; if necessary, the Assembly may appoint a director for
one day. "Take care not to do that," replied Robespierre; "Brissot
would be the dictator." -- Pétion says nothing. "The ministers were in
perfect agreement to let the massacres continue."

[60] Madame Roland, II. 37. -- "Angers et le départment de Maine-et-
Loire de 1787 à 1830," by Blordier Langlois. Appended to the circular
was a printed address bearing the title of Compte rendu au peuple
souverain,  "countersigned by the Minister of Justice and with the
Minister's seal on the package," and addressed to the Jacobin Clubs of
the departments, that they, too, might preach massacre.

[61] Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 391, 398. --  Warned by Alquier,
president of the criminal court of Versailles, of the danger to which
the Orleans prisoners were exposed, Danton replied: "What is that to
you? That affair does not concern you. Mind your own business, and do
not meddle with things outside of it!" --  "But, Monsieur, the law
says that prisoners must be protected."--  "What do you care? Some
among them are great criminals, and nobody knows yet how the people
will regard them and how far their indignation will carry them."
Alquier wished to pursue the matter, but Danton turned his back on him

[62] Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 217

[63] Madame Roland, "Lettres autographes, etc.," Sept. 5, 1792. "We
are here under the knives of Marat and Robespierre. These fellows are
striving to excite the people and turn them against the National
Assembly and the council. They have organized a Star Chamber and they
have a small army under pay, aided by what they found or stole in the
palace and elsewhere, or by supplies purchased by Danton, who is
underhandedly the chieftain of this horde." -- Dusaulx, "Mémoires,"
441. "On the following day (Sept. 3) I went to see one of the most
estimated personalities at this epoch. 'You know,' said I to him,
'what is going on?' --  'Very well; but keep quiet; it will soon be
over. A little more blood is still necessary.' --  I saw others who
explained themselves much more definitely. " -- Mortimer-Ternaux, II.
445.

[64] Madame Roland, "Lettres autographes, etc.," Sept. 5, 1792. "We
are here under the knives of Marat and Robespierre. These fellows are
striving to excite the people and turn them against the National
Assembly and the council. They have organized a Star Chamber and they
have a small army under pay, aided by what they found or stole in the
palace and elsewhere, or by supplies purchased by Danton, who is
underhandedly the chieftain of this horde." -- Dusaulx, "Mémoires,"
441. "On the following day (Sept. 3) I went to see one of the most
estimated personalities at this epoch. 'You know,' said I to him,
'what is going on?' --  'Very well; but keep quiet; it will soon be
over. A little more blood is still necessary.' --  I saw others who
explained themselves much more definitely. " -- Mortimer-Ternaux, II.
445.

[65] Madame de Staël, "Considérations sur la Révolution Française,"
3rd  part, ch. X.

[66] Prudhomme, "Les Révolutions de Paris" (number for Sept. 22). At
one of the last sessions of the commune "M. Panis spoke of Marat as of
a prophet, another Siméon Stylite. 'Marat,' said he, 'remained six
weeks sitting on one thigh in a dungeon.' " - Barbaroux, 64.

[67] Weber, II. 348. Collot dwells at length, "in cool-blooded
gaiety," on the murder of Madame de Lamballe and on the abominations
to which her corpse was subjected. "He added, with a sigh of regret,
that if he had been consulted he would have had the head of Madame de
Lamballe served in a covered dish for the queen's supper."

[68] On the part played by Robespierre and his presence constantly at
the Commune see Granier de Cassagnac, II. 55. -- Mortimer-Ternaux,
III. 205. Speech by Robespierre at the commune, Sept. 1: "No one dares
name the traitors. Well, I give their names for the safety of the
people: I denounce the libertycide Brissot, the Girondist factionists,
the rascally commission of the Twenty-One in the National Assembly; I
denounce them for having sold France to Brunswick, and for having
taken in advance the reward for their dastardly act." On the 2nd of
September he repeats his denunciation, and consequently on that day
warrants are issued by the committee of supervision against thirty
deputies and against Brissot and Roland (Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 216,
247).

[69] "Procès-verbaux de la Commune," Aug. 30. - Mortimer-Ternaux, III.
217 (resolutions of  the sections Poissonnière and Luxembourg). --
Granier de Cassagnac, II. 104 (adhesion of the sections Mauconseil,
Louvre, and Quinze-Vingt).

[70] Granier de Cassagnac, II. 156.

[71] Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 265. -- Granier de Cassagnac, XII. 402.
(The other five judges were also members of the commune.)

[72] Granier de Cassagnac, II. 313. Register of the General Assembly
of the sans-culottes, section, Sept. 2. --  "Mémoires sur les journées
de Septembre," 151 (declaration of Jourdan).

[73] "Mémoires sur les journées de Septembre," narrative of Abbé
Sicard, 111.

[74]  Buchez et Roux, XVIII. 109, 178. ("La vérite tout entière," by
Méhée, Jr.) - Narrative of Abbé Sicard, 132, 134.

[75]  Granier de Cassagnac, II. 92, 93. - On the presence and
complicity of Santerre.  Ibid,  89-99.

[76]  Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 277 and 299 (Sept. 3). - Granier de
Cassagnac, II. 257. A commissary of the section of the Quatre-Nations
states in his report that "the section authorized them to pay expenses
out of the affair." - Declaration of Jourdan, 151. - Lavalette,
"Mémoires," I. 91. The initiative of the commune is further proved by
the following detail: "Towards five o'clock (Sept. 2) city officials
on horseback, carrying a flag, rode through the streets crying: 'To
arms! To arms!' They added: 'The enemy is coming; you are all lost;
the city will be burnt and given up to pillage. Have no fear of the
traitors or conspirators behind your backs. They are in the hands of
the patriots, and before you leave the thunderbolt of national justice
will fall on them!" - Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 105. Letter of Chevalier
Saint-Dizier, member of the first committee of supervision, Sept. 10.
"Marat, Duplain, Fréron, etc., generally do no more in their
supervision of things than wreak private vengeance. . . Marat states
openly that 40,000 heads must still be knocked off to ensure the
success of the revolution."

[77] Buchez et Roux, XVIII. 146. "Ma Résurrection," by Mathon de la
Varenne. "The evening before half-intoxicated women said publicly on
the Feuillants terrace: 'To-morrow is the day when their souls will be
turned inside out in the prisons."

[78] "Mémoires sur les journées de Septembre. Mon agonie," by Journiac
de Saint-Méard. -- Madame de la Fausse-Landry, 72. The 29th of August
she obtained permission to join her uncle in prison: "M. Sergent and
others told me that I was acting imprudently; that the prisons were
not safe."

[79] Granier de Cassagnac, -- II. 27. According to Roch Marcandier
their number "did not exceed 300." According to Louvet there were
"200, and perhaps not that number." According to Brissot, the
massacres were committed by about "a hundred unknown brigands." --
Pétion, at La Force (Ibid., 75), on September 6, finds only about a
dozen executioners. According to Madame Roland (II. 35), "there were
not fifteen at the Abbaye." Lavalette the first day finds only about
fifty killers at the La Force prison.

[80] Mathon de la Varenne,  ibid., 137.

[81] Buchez et Roux, XVII. 183 (session of the Jacobin Club, Aug. 27).
Speech by a federate from Tarn. - Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 126.

[82] Sicard, 80. -- Méhée, 187. -- Weber, II. 279. -- Cf., in Journiac
de Saint-Méard, his conversation with a Provençal. -- Rétif de la
Bretonne, "Les Nuits de Paris," 375.  "About 2 o'clock in the morning
(Sept. 3) I heard a troop of cannibals passing under my window, none
of whom appeared to have the Parisian accent; they were all
strangers."

[83] Granier de Cassagnac, II. 164, 502. -- Mortimer-Ternaux, III.
530. -- Maillard's assessors at the Abbaye were a watchmaker living in
the Rue Childebert, a fruit-dealer in the Rue Mazarine, a keeper of a
public house in the Rue du Four-Saint-Germain, a journeyman hatter in
the Rue Sainte-Marguerite, and two others whose occupation is not
mentioned. -- On the composition of the tribunal at La Force, Cf.
Journiac de Saint-Méard, 120, and Weber, II. 261.

[84] Granier de Cassagnac, II. 507 (on Damiens), 513 (on L'empereur).
-- Meillan, 388 (on Laforet and his wife, old-clothes dealers on the
Quai du Louvre, who on the 31st of May prepare for a second blow, and
calculate this time on having for their share the pillaging of fifty
houses).

[85] Sicard, 98

[86] De Ferrières (Ed. Berville et Barrière), III. 486. -- Rétif de la
Bretonne, 381. At the end of the Rue des Ballets a prisoner had just
been killed, while the next one slipped through the railing and
escaped. "A man not belonging to the butchers, but one of those
thoughtless machines of which there are so many, interposed his pike
and stopped him. . . The poor fellow was arrested by his pursuers and
massacred. The pikeman coolly said to us: 'I couldn't know they wanted
to kill him.'"

[87] Granier de Cassagnac, II. 511.

[88] The judges and slaughterers at the Abbaye, discovered in the
trial of the year IV., almost all lived in the neighborhood, in the
rues Dauphine, de Nevers, Guégénaud, de Bussy, Childebert, Taranne, de
l'Egoût, du Vieux Colombier, de l'Echaudé-Saint-Benoit, du Four-Saint-
Germain, etc.

[89] Sicard, 86, 87, 101. -- Jourdan, 123. "The president of the
committee of supervision replied to me that these were very honest
persons; that on the previous evening or the evening before that, one
of them, in a shirt and wooden shoes, presented himself before their
committee all covered with blood, bringing with him in his hat twenty-
five louis in gold, which he had found on the person of a man he had
killed." -- Another instance of probity may be found in the "Procès-
verbaux du conseil-général de la Commune de Versailles," 367, 371. --
On the following day, Sept. 3,  robberies commence and go on
increasing.

[90] Méhée, 179. "'Would you believe that I have earned only twenty-
four francs?' said a baker's boy armed with a club. 'I killed more
than forty for my share.'"

[91] Granier de Cassagnac. II. 153. -- Cf. Ibid., 202-209, details on
the meals of the workmen and on the more delicate repast of Maillard
and his assistants.

[92] Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 175-176. - Granier de Cassagnac. II. 84. -
- Jourdan, 222. -- Méhée, 179. "At midnight they came back swearing,
cursing, and foaming with rage, threatening to cut the throats of the
committee in a body if they were not instantly paid."

[93] Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 320. Speech by Pétion on the charges
preferred against Robespierre.

[94] Mathon de la Varenne, 156. -- Journiac de Saint-Méard, 129. -
Moore, 267.

[95] Journiac de Saint-Méard, 115.

[96] Weber, II. 265. -- Journiac de Saint-Méard, 129. -- Mathon de la
Varenne, 155.

[97] Moore, 267. -- Cf. Malouet, II. 240. Malouet, on the evening of
Sept. 1, was at his sister-in-law's; there is a domiciliary visit at
midnight; she faints on hearing the patrol mount the stairs.  "I
begged them not to enter the drawing-room, so as not to disturb the
poor sufferer. The sight of a woman in a swoon and pleasing in
appearance affected them, and they at once withdrew, leaving me alone
with her." -- Beaulieu, "Essais," I. 108. (Regarding the two Abbaye
butchers he meets in the house of Journiac-de-Saint-Méard, and who
chat with him while issuing him with a safe-conduct): "What struck me
was to detect generous sentiments through their ferocity, those of men
determined to protect any one whose cause they adopted."

[98] Weber, II. 265, 348.

[99] Sicard, 101. Billaud-Varennes, addressing the slaughterers. -
Ibid.75. "Greater power," replied a member of the committee of
supervision, "what are you thinking of? To give you greater power
would be limiting those you have already. Have you forgotten that you
are sovereigns? That the sovereignty of the people is confided to you,
and that you are now in full exercise of it?"

[100] Méhée, 171.

[101] Sicard, 81. At the beginning the Marseilles men themselves were
averse to striking the disarmed, and exclaimed to the crowd: "Here,
take our swords and pikes and kill the monsters!"

[102] Macbeth by Shakespeare: "I have supped full with horrors."

[103] Observe children drowning a dog or killing a snake. Tenacity of
life irritates them, as if it were a rebellion against their
despotism, the effect of which is to render them only the more violent
against their victim.

[104] One may recall to mind the effect of bull-fights, also the
irresistible fascination which Saint-Augustin experienced on first
hearing the death-cry of a gladiator in the amphitheater.

[105] Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 131. Trial of the September actors; the
judge's summing up. "The third and forty-sixth witnesses stated that
they saw Monneuse (member of the commune) go to and come from la
Force, express his delight at those sad events that had just occurred,
acting very immorally in relation thereto, adding that there was
violin playing in his presence, and that his colleague danced." -
Sicard, 88.

[106] Sicard, 87, 91. This expression by a wine-merchant, who wants
the custom of the murderers. - Granier de Cassagnac, II. 197-200. The
original bills for wine, straw, and lights have been found.

[107] Sicard, 91. - Maton de la Varenne, 150.

[108] Mathon de la Varenne, 154. A man from the suburbs said to him
(Mathon is an advocate):

"All right, Monsieur Fine-skin; I shall treat myself to a glass of
your blood

[109] Rétif de la Bretonne, "Les Nuits de Paris," 9th night, p.388.
"She screamed horribly, whilst the brigands amused themselves with
their disgraceful acts. Her body even after death was not exempt.
These people had heard that she had been beautiful."

[110] Prudhomme, "Les Révolutions de Paris," number for Sept. 8, 1792.
"The people subjected the flower-girl of the Palais-Royal to the law
of retaliation." - Granier de Cassagnac, II. 329. According to the
bulletin of the revolutionary tribunal, number for Sept. 3. --
Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 291. Deposition of the caretaker's office of
the Conciergerie prison. -- Buchez et Roux, XVII.198.  "Histoire des
hommes de proi," by Roch Marcandier.

[111] Mortimer-Ternaux III, 257. Trial of the September murderers;
deposition of Roussel. - Ib., 628.

[112] Deposition of the woman Millet, ibid.,  63. -- Weber, II. 350. -
- Roch Marcandier, 197, 198. - Rétif de la Bretonne, 381.

[113] Deposition of the woman Millet, ibid.,  63. -- Weber, II. 350. -
- Roch Marcandier, 197, 198. - Rétif de la Bretonne, 381.

[114] On this mechanical and murderous action Cf: Dusaulx, "Mémoires,"
440. He addresses the bystanders in favor of the prisoners, and,
affected by his words, they hold out their hands to him. "But before
this the executioners had struck me on the cheeks with the points of
their pikes, from which hung pieces of flesh. Others wanted to cut off
my head, which would have been done if two gendarmes had not kept them
back."

[115] Jourdan, 219.

[116] Méhée, 179.

[117] Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 558. The same idea is found among the
federates and Parisians composing the company of the Egalité, which
brought the Orleans prisoners to Versailles and then murdered them.
They explain their conduct by saying that they "hoped to put an end to
the excessive expenditure to which the French empire was subject
through the  prolonged detention of conspirators."

[118] Rétif de la Bretonne, 388.

[119] Méhée, 177.

[120] Prudhomme, "Les Crimes de la Révolution." III. 272.

[121] Rétif de la Bretonne, 388. There were two sorts of women at the
Salpétrière, those who were banded and young girls brought in the
prison. Hence the two alternatives.

[122] Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 295. See list of names, ages, and
occupations.

[123] Barthélemy Maurice, "Histoire politique and anecdotique des
prisons de la Seine," 329.

[124] Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 295. See list of names, ages, and
occupations.

[125] The Encyclopedia "QUID" (ROBERT LAFONT, PARIS 1998) advises us
that the number of victims killed with "cold steel and clubs" etc
total 1395 persons. the total number of French victims due to the
Revolution is considered to be between 600 000 and 800 000 dead. (SR)

[126]  Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 399, 592, 602-606. - "Procès-verbal des
8, 9, 10 Septembre, extrait des registres de la municipalité de
Versailles." (In the "Mémoires sur les journées de Septembre"), p. 358
and following pages. - Granier de Cassagnac, II. 483. Bonnet's exploit
at Orleans, pointed out to Fournier, Sept. I. Fournier replies: "In
God's name, I am not to be ordered; when the bloody beggars have had
their heads cut off the trial may be held later!"

[127] Roch Marcandier, 210. Speech by Lazowski to the section of
Finistère, fauborg Saint-Marceau. Lazowski had, in addition, set free
the assassins of the mayor of  Etampes, and laid their manacles on the
bureau table.

[128] Malouet, II. 243 (Sept. 2). - Moniteur, XIII. 48 (session of
Sept. 27, 1792). We see in the speech of Panis that analogous scenes
took place in the committee of supervision. "Imagine our situation. We
were surrounded by citizens irritated against the treachery of the
court. We were told: 'Here is an aristocrat who is going to fly; you
must stop him, or your yourselves are traitors!' Pistols were pointed
at us and we found ourselves obliged to sign warrants, not so much for
our own safety as for that of the persons denounced."

[129] Granier de Cassagnac, II. 258. - Prudhomme, "Les Crimes de la
Révolution," III. 272. - Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 631. - De Ferrière,
III. 391. - (The expression quoted was recorded by Rétif de la
Bretonne.)

[130]  That is how to do it, must any anarchist or hopeful
revolutionary have thought, upon reading Taine's livid description.-
But also: "Do not let the bourgeois read this, it might scare them and
make our task more difficult."  (SR).

[131] Moniteur, XIII. 698, 698 (numbers for Sept. 15 and 16). Ibid.,
Letter of Roland, 701; of Pétion, 711. - Buchez et Roux, XVIII. 33.
34. - Prudhomme's journal contains an engraving of this subject (Sept.
14) -  "An Englishman admitted to the bar of the house denounces to
the National Assembly a robbery committed in a house occupied by him
at Chaillot by two bailiffs and their satellites. The robbery
consisted of twelve louis, five guineas, five thousand pounds in
assignats, and several other objects." The courts before which he
appeared did not dare take up his case (Buchez et Roux, XVII. P. 1,
Sept. 18).

[132] Buchez et Roux, XVII. 461. - Prudhomme, "Les Révolutions de
Paris," number for Sept. 22, 1792.

[133] Moniteur,  XIII. 711 (session of Sept. 16). Letter of Roland to
the National Assembly. - Buchez et Roux, XVIII. 42. --  Moniteur,
XIII. 731 (session of Sept. 17). Speech by Pétion: "Yesterday there
was some talk of again visiting the prisons, and particularly the
Conciergerie."

[134]  Perhaps Mao read this and later coined his famous slogan "that
all political power emanates from the barrels of guns." (SR).

[135] "Archives Nationales," II. 58 to 76. Official reports of the
Paris electoral assembly. - Robespierre is elected the twelfth (Sept.
5), then Danton and Collot d'Herbois (Sept. 6) then Manuel and
Billaud-Varennes (Sept. 7), next C. Desmoulins (Sept. 8), Marat (Sept.
9) etc. - Mortimer-Ternaux, IV. 35 (act passed by the commune at the
instigation of Robespierre for the regulation of electoral
operations). - Louvet, "Mémoires." Louvet, in the electoral assembly
asks to be heard on the candidacy of Marat, but is unsuccessful. "On
going out I was surrounded by those men with big clubs and sabers by
whom the future dictator was always attended, Robespierre's body-
guard. They threatened me and told me in very concise terms: 'Before
long you shall have your turn. This is the freedom of that assembly in
which one declared his vote under a dagger pointed at him."'

[136] In reading this all socialist and communists and other potential
manipulators of democracy would have taken and will continue to take
note. Once the hidden combination can manage to invest all the
different, in theory opponent, parties with their own men, an eternal
control by a hidden mafia can now take place. (SR).

[137]  Such procedures set a precedence for 200 years of 'guided
democracy' in many trade unions and elsewhere. (SR).




CHAPTER II.

THE DEPARTMENTS .- THE EPEDEMIC AND CONTAGIOUS CHARACTER OF THE
REVOLUTIONARY DISEASE.



In the departments, it is by hundreds that we enumerate days like the
20th of June, August 10, September 2. The body has its epidemic, its
contagious diseases; the mind has the same; the revolutionary malady
is one of them. It appears throughout the country at the same time;
each infected point infects others. In each city, in each borough, the
club is a Center of inflammation which disorganizes the sound parts;
and the example of each disorganized Center spreads afar like
contagious fumes.[1] Everywhere the same fever, delirium, and
convulsions mark the presence of the same virus. That virus is the
Jacobin dogma. By virtue of the Jacobin dogma, theft, usurpation,
murder, take on the guise of political philosophy, and the gravest
crimes against persons, against public or private property, become
legitimate; for they are the acts of the legitimate supreme power, the
power that has the public welfare in its keeping.

I. The Sovereignty of the People..

Its principle is the Jacobin dogma of the sovereignty of the people. -
- The new right is officially proclaimed. -- Public statement of the
new régime. -- Its object, its opponents, its methods. -- Its
extension from Paris to the provinces.-

That each Jacobin band should be invested with the local dictatorship
in its own canton is, according to the Jacobins, a natural right. It
becomes the written law from the day that the National Assembly
declares the country in danger. "From that date," says their most
widely read Journal,[2] and by the mere fact of that declaration, "the
people of France are assembled and insurgent. They have repossessed
themselves of the sovereign power."  Their magistrates, their
deputies, all constituted authorities, return to nothingness, their
essential state. And you, temporary and revocable representatives,
"you are nothing but presiding officers for the people; you have
nothing to do but to collect their votes, and to announce the result
when these shall have been cast with due solemnity." -- Nor is this
the theory of the Jacobins only; it is also official theory. The
National Assembly approves of the insurrection, recognizes the
Commune, keeps in the background, abdicates as far as possible, and
only remains provisionally in office in order that the place may not
be left vacant. It abstains from exercising power, even to provide its
own successors; it merely "invites" the French people to organize a
national convention; it confesses that it has "no right to put the
exercise of sovereign power under binding rules"; it does no more than
"indicate to citizens" the rules for the elections "to which it
invites them to conform."[3] Meanwhile it is subject to the will of
the sovereign people, then so-called; it dares not resist their
crimes; it interferes with assassins only by entreaties. -- Much more;
it authorizes them, either by ministerial signature or counter-
signature, to begin their work elsewhere. Roland has signed Fournier's
commission to Orleans; Danton has sent the circular of Marat over all
France. To reconstruct the departments the council of ministers sends
the most infuriated members of the Commune and the party, Chaumette,
Fréron, Westerman, Auduoin, Huguenin, Momoro, Couthon, Billaud-
Varennes,[4] and others still more tainted and brutal, who preach the
purest Jacobin doctrine. "They announce openly[5] that laws no longer
exist; that since the people are sovereign, every one is master; that
each fraction of the nation can take such measures as suit it, in the
name of the country's safety; that they have the right to tax corn, to
seize it in the laborer's fields, to cut off the heads of the farmers
who refuse to bring their grain to market."  At Lisieux, agrarian law
is preached by Fufour and Momoro.  At Douai, other preachers from
Paris say to the popular club, "Prepare scaffolds; let the walls of
the city bristle with gallows, and hang upon them every man who does
not accept our opinions." -- Nothing is more logical, more in
conformity with their principles. The journals, deducing their
consequences, explain to the people the use they ought to make of
their reconquered sovereignty.[6] "Under the present circumstances,
community of property is the law; everything belongs to everybody."
Besides, "an equalizing of fortunes must be brought about, a leveling,
which shall abolish the vicious principle of the domination of the
rich over the poor." This reform is all the more pressing because "the
people, the real sovereign people, have nearly as many enemies as
there are proprietors, large merchants, financiers, and wealthy men.
In a time of revolution, we must regard all men who have more than
enough as the enemies, secret or avowed, of popular government."
Therefore, "let the people of each commune, before they quit their
homes" for the army, "put all those who are suspected of not loving
liberty in a secure place, and under the safe-keeping of the law; let
them be kept shut up until war is over; let them be guarded with
pikes," and let each one of their guardians receive thirty sous per
day.

* As for the partisans of the fallen government, the members of the
Paris directory, "with Roederer and Blondel at their head,"

* as for the general officers, "with Lafayette and d'Affry at their
head,"

* as for "the critical deputies of the Constituent Assembly, with
Barnave and Lameth at their head,"

* as for the Feuillant deputies of the Legislative Assembly, "with
Ramond and Jaucourt at their head,"[7]

* as for "all those who consented to soil their hands with the profits
of the civil list,"

* as for "the 40,000 hired assassins who were gathered at the palace
on the night of August 9-10,

they are all (say the Jacobins)furious monsters, who ought to be
strangled to the last one. People! you have risen to your feet; stand
firm until not one of these conspirators remains alive. Your humanity
requires you for once to show yourselves inexorable. Strike terror to
the wicked. The proscriptions which we impose on you as a duty, are
the sacred wrath of your country."

There is no mistaking this; it is a tocsin sounding against all the
powers that be, against all social superiority, against priests and
nobles, proprietors, capitalists, the leaders of business and
industry; it is sounding, in short, against the whole élite of France,
whether of old or recent origin.  The Jacobins of Paris, by their
journals, their examples, their missionaries, give the signal; and in
the provinces their kindred spirits, imbued with the same principles,
only wait the summons to hurl themselves forward.



II.

In several departments it establishes itself in advance.   An instance
of this in the Var.

In many departments[8] they have forestalled the summons. In the Var,
for example, pillages and proscriptions have begun with the month of
May. According to custom, they first seize upon the castles and the
monasteries, although these have become national property, at one time
alleging as a reason for this that the administration "is too slow in
carrying out sentence against the émigrés," and again, that "the
château, standing on an eminence, weighs upon the inhabitants."[9]
There is scarcely a village in France that does not contain twoscore
wretches who are always ready to line their pockets, which is just the
number of thieves who thoroughly sacked the château of Montaroux,
carrying off "furniture, produce, clothing, even the jugs and bottles
in the cellar." There are the same doings by the same band at the
chateau of Tournon; the château of Salerne is burned, that of Flagose
is pulled down; the canal of Cabris is destroyed; then the convent of
Montrieux, the châteaux of Grasse, of Canet, of Régusse, of Brovaz,
and many others, all devastated, and the devastations are made
"daily." -- It is impossible to suppress this country brigandage. The
reigning dogma, weakening authority in the magistrates' hands, and the
clubs, "which cover the department," have spread the fermentation of
anarchy everywhere. "Administrators, judges, municipal officers, all
who are invested with any authority, and who have the courage to use
it in forcing respect for law, are one by one denounced by public
opinion as enemies of the constitution and of liberty; because,
people say, they talk of nothing but the law, as if they did not know
that the will of the people makes the law, and that we are the
people."[10] This is the real principle; here, as at Paris, it
instantly begets its consequences.  "In many of these clubs nothing is
discussed but the plundering of estates and cutting off the heads of
aristocrats. And who are designated by this infamous title? In the
cities, the great traders and rich proprietors; in the country, those
whom we call the bourgeois; everywhere, all peaceable citizens, the
friends of order, who wish to enjoy, under the shadow of the
protecting law, the blessings of the Constitution.  Such was the rage
of their denunciations that in one of these clubs a good and brave
peasant was denounced as an aristocrat; the whole of his aristocracy
consisting in his having said to those who plundered the château of
their seigneur, already mentioned, that they would not enjoy in peace
the fruits of their crime." -- Here is the Jacobin programme of Paris
in advance, namely, the division of the French into two classes, the
spoliation of one, the despotism of the other; the destruction of the
well-to-do, orderly and honest under the dictation of those who are
not so.

Here, as in Paris, the programme is carried out step by step. At
Beausset, near Toulon, a man named Vidal, captain of the National
Guard, "twice set at liberty by virtue of two consecutive
amnesties,"[11] punishes not resistance merely, but even murmurs, with
death. Two old men, one of them a notary, the other a turner, having
complained of him to the public prosecutor, the general alarm is
beaten, a gathering of armed men is formed in the street, and the
complainants are clubbed, riddled with balls, and their bodies thrown
into a pit.  Many of their friends are wounded, others take to flight;
seven houses are sacked, and the municipality, "either overawed or in
complicity," makes no interference until all is over. There is no way
of pursuing the guilty ones; the foreman of the jury, who goes,
escorted by a thousand men, to hold an inquest, can get no testimony.
The municipal officers feign to have heard nothing, neither the
general alarm nor the guns fired under their windows. The other
witnesses say not a word; but they declare, sotto voce, the reason for
their silence.  If they should testify, "they would be sure of being
killed as soon as the troops should have gone away." The foreman of
the jury is himself menaced; after remaining three-quarters of an
hour, he finds it prudent to leave the city. -- After this the clubs
of Beausset and of the neighborhood, gaining hardihood from the
impotence of the law, break out into incendiary propositions: "It is
announced that after the troops retreat, nineteen houses more will be
sacked; it is proposed to behead all aristocrats, that is to say, all
the land-owners in the country."  Many have fled, but their flight
does not satisfy the clubs. Vidal orders those of Beausset who took
refuge in Toulon to return at once; otherwise their houses will be
demolished, and that very day, in fact, by way of warning, several
houses in Beausset, among them that of a notary, are either pulled
down or pillaged from top to bottom; all the riff-raff of the town are
at work, "half-drunken men and women," and, as their object is to rob
and drink, they would like to begin again in the principal town of the
canton. -- The club, accordingly, has declared that "Toulon would soon
see a new St. Bartholomew"; it has allies there, and arrangements are
made; each club in the small towns of the vicinity will furnish men,
while all will march under the leadership of the Toulon club. At
Toulon, as at Beausset, the municipality will let things take their
course, while the proceedings complained of by the public prosecutor
and the district and department administrators will be applied to
them. They may send reports to Paris, and denounce patriots to the
National Assembly and the King, if they choose; the club will reply to
their scribbling with acts. Their turn is coming.  Lanterns and sabers
are also found at Toulon, and the faction murders them because they
have lodged complaints against the murderers.



III.

Each Jacobin band a dictator in its own neighborhood. -Saint-Afrique
during the interregnum.

By what it dared to do when the government still stood on its feet we
may we may imagine what it will do during the interregnum. Facts,
then, as always, furnish the best picture, and, to obtain a knowledge
of the new sovereign, we must first observe him on a limited stage.

On the reception of the news of the 10th of August, the Jacobins of
Saint-Afrique, a small town of the Aveyron,[12] likewise undertook to
save the country, and, to this end, like their fellows in other
boroughs of the district, they organized themselves into an "Executive
Power." This institution is of an old date, especially in the South;
it had flourished for eighteen months from Lyons to Montpellier, from
Agen to Nîmes; but after the interregnum, its condition is still more
flourishing; it consists of a secret society, the object of which is
to carry out practically the motions and instructions of the club.[13]
Ordinarily, they work at night, wearing masks or slouched hats, with
long hair falling over the face.  A list of their names, each with a
number opposite to it, is kept at the meeting-place of the society. A
triangular club, decked with a red ribbon, serves them both as weapon
and badge; with this club, each member "may go anywhere," and do what
seems good to him. At Saint-Afrique they number about eighty, among
whom must be counted the rascals forming the seventh company of Tarn,
staying in the town; their enrollment in the band is effected by
constantly "preaching pillage to them," and by assuring them that the
contents of the châteaux in the vicinity belong to them.[14] -- Not
that the châteaux excite any fear; most of them are empty; neither in
Saint-Afrique nor in the environs do the men of the ancient régime
form a party; for many months orthodox priests and the nobles have had
to fly, and now the well-to-do people are escaping. The population,
however, is Catholic; many of the shop-keepers, artisans, and farmers
are discontented, and the object now is to make these laggards keep
step. -- In the first place, they order women of every condition,
work-girls and servants, to attend mass performed by the sworn curé,
for, if they do not, they will be made acquainted with the cudgel. --
In the second place, all the suspected are disarmed; they enter their
houses during the night in force, unexpectedly, and, besides their
gun, carry off their provisions and money. A certain grocer who
persists in his lukewarmness is visited a second time; seven or eight
men, one evening, break open his door with a stick of timber; he takes
refuge on his roof, dares not descend until the following day at dawn,
and finds that everything in his store has been either stolen or
broken to pieces.[15] In the third place, there is "punishment of the
ill-disposed."  At nine o'clock in the evening a squad knocks at the
door of a distrusted shoemaker; it is opened by his apprentice; six of
the ruffians enter, and one of them, showing a paper, says to the poor
fellow:

 "I come on the part of the Executive Power, by which you are
condemned to a beating."

 "What for?"

 "If you have not done anything wrong, you are thinking about it."[16]

And so they beat him in the presence of his family. Many others like
him are seized and unmercifully beaten on their own premises. -- As to
the expenses of the operation, these must be defrayed by the
malevolent. These, therefore, are taxed according to their
occupations; this or that tanner or dealer in cattle has to pay 36
francs; another, a hatter, 72 francs; otherwise "they will be attended
to that very night at nine o'clock."  Nobody is exempt, if he is not
one of the band.  Poor old men who have nothing but a five-franc
assignat are compelled to give that; they take from the wife of an
unskilled laborer, whose savings consist of seven sous and a half, the
whole of this, exclaiming, "that is good for three mugs of wine."[17]
When money is not to be had, they take goods in kind; they make short
work of cellars, bee-hives, clothes-presses, and poultry-yards. They
eat, drink, and break, giving themselves up to it heartily, not only
in the town, but in the neighboring villages.  One detachment goes to
Brusque, and proceeds so vigorously that the mayor and syndic-attorney
scamper off across the fields, and dare not return for a couple of
days.[18] At Versol, the dwelling of the sworn curé, and at Lapeyre,
that of the sworn vicar, are both sacked; the money is stolen and the
casks are emptied.  In the house of the curé of Douyre, "furniture,
clothes, cabinets, and window-sashes are destroyed"; they feast on his
wine and the contents of his cupboard, throw away what they could not
consume, then go in search of the curé and his brother, a former
Carthusian, shouting that "their heads must be cut off; and sausage-
meat made of the rest of their bodies!" Some of them, a little
shrewder than the others, light on a prize; for example, a certain
Bourguière, a trooper of the line, seized a vineyard belonging to an
old lady, the widow of a physician and former mayor;[19] he gathered
in its crop, "publicly in broad daylight," for his own benefit, and
warns the proprietress that he will kill her if she makes a complaint
against him, and, as she probably does complain of him, he obliges
her, in the name of the Executive Power, to pay him fifty crowns
damages. -- As to the common Jacobin gangsters, their reward, besides
food and drink, is perfect licentiousness. In all houses invaded at
eleven o'clock in the evening. Whilst the father flies, or the husband
screams under the cudgel, one of the villains stations himself at the
entrance with a drawn saber in his hands, and the wife or daughter
remains at the mercy of the others; they seize her by the neck and
maintain their hold.[20] In vain does she scream for help. "Nobody in
Saint-Afrique dares go outdoors at night"; nobody comes, and, the
following day, the juge-de-paix dares not receive the complaint,
because "he is afraid himself." -- Accordingly, on the 23rd of
September, the municipal officers and the town-clerk, who made their
rounds, were nearly beaten to death with clubs and stones; on the 10th
of October another municipal officer was left for dead; a fortnight
before this, a lieutenant of volunteers, M. Mazières, "trying to do
his duty, was assassinated in his bed by his own men." Naturally,
nobody dares whisper a word, and, after two months of this order of
things, it may be presumed that at the municipal elections of the 21st
of October, the electors will be docile.  In any event, as a
precaution, their notification eight days before, according to law, is
dispensed with; as extra precaution, they are informed that if they do
not vote for the Executive Power, they will have to do with the
triangular cudgel.[21]  Consequently, most of them abstain; in a town
of over 600 active citizens, 40 votes give a majority; Bourgougnon and
Sarrus, the two chiefs of the Executive Power, are elected, one mayor,
and the other syndic-attorney, and henceforth the authority they
seized by force is conferred on them by the law.

IV.

Ordinary practices of the Jacobin dictatorship. - The stationary
companies of the clubs. - Their personnel. - Their leaders.

This is roughly the type of government which spring up in every
commune of France after the 10th of August; the club reigns, but the
form and processes of its dictatorship are different, according to
circumstances. -- Sometimes it operates directly through an executive
gang or by lancing an excited mob; sometimes it operates indirectly
through the electoral assembly it has had elected, or through the
municipality, which is its accomplice. If the administrations are
Jacobin, it governs through them.  If they are passive, it governs
alongside of them.  If they are refractory, it purges them,[22] or
breaks them up,[23] and, to put them down, it resorts not only to
blows, but even to murder[24] and massacre.[25] Between massacre and
threats, all intermediaries meet, the revolutionary seal being
everywhere impressed with inequalities of relief.

In many places, threats suffice. In regions where the temperament of
the people is cool, and where there is no resistance, it is pointless
to resort to assault and battery. What is the use is killing in a town
like Arras, for instance, where, on the day of the civic oath, the
president of the department, a prudent millionaire, stalks through the
streets arm in arm with Aunty Duchesne, who sells cookies down in a
cellar, where, on election days, the townspeople, through cowardice,
elect the club candidates under the pretense that "rascals and
beggars" must be sent off to Paris to purge the town of them![26] It
would be labor lost to strike people who grovel so well.[27] The
faction is content to mark them as mangy curs, to put them in pens,
keep them on a leash, and to annoy them.[28]  It posts at the entrance
of the guard-room a list of inhabitants related to an émigré; it makes
domiciliary visits; it draws up a fancied list of the suspected, on
which list all that are rich are found inscribed.  It insults and
disarms them; it confines them to the town; it forbids them to go
outside of it even on foot; it orders them to present themselves daily
before its committee of public safety; it condemns them to pay their
taxes for a year in twenty-four hours; it breaks the seals of their
letters; it confiscates, demolishes, and sells their family tombs in
the cemeteries. This is all in order, as is the religious persecution,

* with the irruption into private chapels where mass is said,

* with blows with gun-stocks and the fist bestowed on the officiating
priest,

* with the obligation of orthodox parents to have their children
baptized by the schismatic curé,

* with the expulsion of nuns, and

* with the pursuit, imprisonment and transportation of unsworn
ecclesiastics.

But if the domination of the club is not always a bloody one, the
judgments are always those of an armed man, who, putting his gun to
his shoulder, aims at the wayfarers whom he has stopped on the road.
Generally they kneel down, tender their purses, and the shot is not
fired.  But the gun is cocked, nevertheless, and, to be certain of
this, we have only to look at the shriveled hand grasping the trigger.
We are reminded of those swarms of banditti which infested the country
under the ancient regime;[29] the double-girdle of smugglers and
receivers embraced within twelve hundred leagues of internal excise-
duties, the poachers abounding on the four hundred leagues of guarded
captaincies, the deserters so numerous that in eight years they
amounted to sixty thousand, the beggars with which the prisons
overflowed, the thousands of thieves and vagabonds thronging the
highways, quarry of the police which the Revolution let loose and
armed, and which, in its turn, from being prey, became the hunters of
game. For three years these strong-armed prowlers have served as the
hard-core of local jacqueries; at the present time they form the staff
of the universal jacquerie. At Nîmes,[30] the head of the Executive
Power is a "dancing-master." The two leading demagogues of Toulouse
are a shoemaker, and an actor who plays valets.[31] At Toulon,[32] the
club, more absolute than any Asiatic despot, is recruited from among
the destitute, sailors, harbor-hands, soldiers, "stray peddlers,"
while its president, Sylvestre, sent down from Paris, is a criminal of
the lowest degree. At Rheims,[33] the principal leader is an unfrocked
priest, married to a nun, aided by a baker, who, an old soldier, came
near being hung.  Elsewhere,[34] it is some deserter tried for
robbery; here, a cook or innkeeper, and there, a former lackey The
oracle of Lyons is an ex-commercial traveler, an emulator of Marat,
named Châlier, whose murderous delirium is complicated with morbid
mysticism.  The acolytes of Châlier are a barber, a hair-dresser, an
old-clothes dealer, a mustard and vinegar manufacturer, a cloth-
dresser, a silk-worker, a gauze-maker, while the time is near when
authority is to fall into still meaner hands, those of "the dregs of
the female population," who, aided by "a few bullies," elect " female
commissaries," tax food, and for three days pillage the
warehouses.[35] Avignon has for its masters the Glacière bandits.
Arles is under the yoke of its porters and bargemen.  Marseilles
belongs to "a band of wretches spawned out of houses of debauchery,
who recognize neither laws nor magistrates, and ruling the city
through terror."[36] -- It is not surprising that such men, invested
with such power, use it in conformity with their nature, and that the
interregnum, which is their reign, spreads over France a circle of
devastations, robberies, and murders.

V.

The companies of traveling volunteers. -- Quality of the recruits.--
Election of officers. -Robberies and murders.

Usually, the stationary band of club members has an auxiliary band of
the same species which roves about.  I mean the volunteers, who
inspire more fear and do more harm, because they march in a body and
are armed.[37] Like their brethren in the ordinary walks of life, many
of them are town and country vagabonds; most of them, living from hand
to mouth, have been attracted by the pay of fifteen sous a day; they
have become soldiers for lack of work and bread.[38]  Each commune,
moreover, having been called upon for its army contingent, "they have
picked up whatever could be found in the towns, all the scamps hanging
around street-corners, men with no pursuit, and, in the country,
wretches and vagabonds of every description; nearly all have been
forced to march by money or drawing lots," and it is probable that the
various administrations thought that "in this way they would purge
France."[39] To the wretched "bought by the communes," add others of
the same stamp, procured by the rich as substitutes for their
sons.[40]  Thus do they pick over the social dunghill and obtain at a
discount the natural and predestined inmates of houses of correction,
poor-houses and hospitals, with an utter disregard of quality, even
physical, "the halt, the maimed and the blind," the deformed and the
defective, "some too old, and others too young and too feeble to
support the fatigues of war, others so small as to stand a foot lower
than their guns," a large number of boys of sixteen, fourteen, and
thirteen; in short, the reprobate of great cities as we now see him,
stunted, puny, and naturally insolent and insurgent.[41] "One-third of
them are found unfit for service" on reaching the frontier.[42] --
But, before reaching the frontier, they act like "pirates" on the
road. -- The others, with sounder bodies and better hearts, become,
under the discipline of constant danger, good soldiers at the end of a
year.  In the mean time, however, they make no less havoc, for, if
they are less disposed to robbery, they are more fanatical.  Nothing
is more delicate than the military organization, owing to the fact
that it represents force, and man is always tempted to abuse force;
for any free company of soldiers to remain inoffensive in a civil
community, it must be restrained by the strongest curbs, which curbs,
either within or without, were wholly wanting with the volunteers of
1792.[43]

Artisans, peasants, the petty bourgeois class, youthful enthusiasts
stimulated by the prevailing doctrine, they are still much more
Jacobin than patriotic; the dogma of popular sovereignty, like a heady
wine, has turned their inexperienced brains; they are fully persuaded
that, "destined to contend with the enemies of the republic, is an
honor which permits them to exact and to dare all things."[44] The
least among them believes himself superior to the law, "as formerly a
Condé,[45]" and he becomes king on a small scale, self-constituted, an
autocratic justiciary and avenger of wrongs, a supporter of patriots
and the scourge of aristocrats, the disposer of lives and property,
and, without delay or formality, taking it upon himself to complete
the Revolution on the spot in every town he passes through. -- He is
not to be hindered in all this by his officers.  "Having created his
chiefs, they are of no more account to him than any of a man's
creations usually are"; far from being obeyed, the officers are not
even respected, "and that comes from resorting to analogies without
considering military talent or moral superiority."[46] Through the
natural effects of the system of election, all grades of rank have
fallen upon demagogues and blusterers.

 "The intriguers, loud-talkers, and especially the great boozers, have
prevailed against the capable."[47]

Besides, to retain his popularity, the new officer will go to a bar
and drink with his men,[48] and he must show himself more Jacobin than
they are, from which it follows that, not content with tolerating
their excesses, he provokes them. -- Hence, after March, 1792, and
even before,[49] we see the volunteers behaving in France as in a
conquered country.  Sometimes they make domiciliary visits, and break
everything to pieces in the house they visit.  Sometimes, they force
the re-baptism of infants by the conventionalist curé, and shoot at
the traditional father.  Here, of their own accord, they make arrests;
there, they join in with mutineers and stop grain-boats; elsewhere,
they force a municipality to tax bread; farther on, they burn or sack
châteaux, and, if a mayor happens to inform them that the château now
belongs to the nation and not to an émigré; they reply with "thrusts,"
and threaten to cut his throat.[50] As the 10th of August draws near,
the phantom of authority, which still occasionally imposed on them,
completely vanishes, and "they risk nothing in killing" whoever
displeases them.[51]  Exasperated by the perils they are about to
encounter on the frontier, they begin war in the interior.
Provisionally, and as a precaution, they slaughter probable
aristocrats on the way, and treat the officers, nobles and priests
they meet on the road worse than their club allies. For, on the one
hand, being merely on the march, they are much safer from punishment
than local murderers; in a week, lost in the army, they will not be
sought for in camp, and they may slay with perfect security. On the
other hand, as they are strangers and newcomers, they are not able,
like local persons, to identify a person. So on account of  a name, a
dress, qualifications, a coffee-house rumor, or an appearance, however
venerable and harmless a man may be, they kill him, not because they
know him, but because they do not know him.

VI.

A tour of France in the cabinet of the Minister of the Interior. --
From Carcassonne to Bordeaux.--  Bordeaux to Caen. -- The north and
the east. -- Châlons-sur-Marne to Lyons. --  The Comtat and Provence.
-- The tone and the responses of the Jacobin administration. -- The
programme of the party.

Let us enter the cabinet of Roland, Minister of the Interior, a
fortnight after the opening of the Convention, and suppose him
contemplating, some evening, in miniature, a picture of the state of
the country administered by him.  His clerks have placed the
correspondence of the past few weeks on his table, arranged in proper
order; his replies are noted in brief on the margin; he has a map of
France before him, and, placing his finger on the southern section, he
moves it along the great highway across the country. At every stage he
recurs to the paper file of letters, and passing innumerable reports
of violence, he merely gives his attention to the great revolutionary
exploits.[52] Madame Roland, I imagine, works with her husband, and
the couple, sitting together alone under the lamp, ponder over the
doings of the ferocious brute which they have set free in the
provinces the same as in Paris.

Their eyes go first to the southern extremity of France. There,[53] on
the canal of the Deux-Mers, at Carcassonne, the population has seized
three boats loaded with grain, demanded provisions, then a lower
prices of bread, then guns and cannon from the magazine, and, lastly,
the heads of the administrators; an inspector-general has been wounded
by an axe, and the syndic-attorney of the department, M. Verdie;
massacred. --  The Minister follows with his eye the road from
Carcassonne to Bordeaux, and on the right and on the left he finds
traces of blood. At Castres,[54] a report is spread that a dealer in
grain was trying to raise the price, whereupon a mob gathers, and, to
save the dealer, he is placed in the guard-house. The volunteers,
however, force open the guard-house, and throw the man out of the
first-story window; they then finish him off with "blows with clubs
and weights," drag his body along the street and cast it into the
river. -- The evening before, at Clairac,[55] M. Lartigue-Langa, an
unsworn priest, pursued through the street by a troop of men and
women, who wanted to remove his cassock and set him on an ass, found
refuge, with great difficulty, in his country-house. They go there for
him, however, fetch him back to the public promenade, and there they
kill him. A number of brave fellows who interfered were charged with
incivism, and severely handled.  Repression is impossible; the
department writes to the Minister that "at this time it would be
impolitic to follow the matter up." Roland knows that by experience.
The letters in his hands show him that there, as in Paris, murder
engenders murder. M. d'Alespée; a gentleman, has just been
assassinated at Nérac; "all reputable citizens formed around him a
rampart with their bodies," but the rabble prevailed, and the
murderers, "through their obscurity," escaped. -- The Minister's
finger stops at Bordeaux.  There the federation festivities are marked
with a triple assassination.[56] In order to let this dangerous moment
pass by, M. de Langoiran, vicar-general of the archbishopric, had
retired half a league off; in the village of Cauderan, to the
residence of an octogenarian priest, who, like himself; had never
meddled with public matters. On the 15th of July the National Guards
of the village, excited by the speeches of the previous night, have
come to the residence to pick them up, and moreover, a third priest
belonging in the neighborhood.  There is nothing to lay to their
charge; neither the municipal officers, nor the justices before whom
they are brought, can avoid declaring them innocent.  As a last
recourse, they are conducted to Bordeaux, before the Directory of the
department.  But it is getting dark, and the riotous crowd becoming
impatient, makes an attack on them.  The octogenarian "receives so
many blows that he cannot recover"; the abbé du Puy is knocked down
and dragged along by a rope attached to his feet; M. de Langoirac's
head is cut off, carried about on a pike, taken to his house and
presented to the servant, who is told that "her master will not come
home to supper." The torment of the priests has lasted from five
o'clock in the morning to seven o'clock in the evening, and the
municipal authorities were duly advised; but they cannot put
themselves out of the way to give succor; they are too seriously
occupied in erecting a liberty-pole.

Route from Bordeaux to Caen. -- The Minister's finger turns to the
north, and stops at Limoges.  The day following the federation has
been here celebrated the same as at Bordeaux.[57] An unsworn priest,
the abbé Chabrol, assailed by a gang of men and women, is first
conducted to the guard-house and then to the dwelling of the juge-de-
paix; for his protection a warrant of arrest is gotten out, and he is
kept under guard, in sight, by four chasseurs, in one of the rooms.
But the populace are not satisfied with this.  In vain do the
municipal officers appeal to it, in vain do the gendarmes interpose
themselves between it and the prisoner; it rushes in upon them and
disperses them.  Meanwhile, volleys of stones smash in the windows,
and the entrance door yields to the blows of axes; about thirty of the
villains scale the windows, and pass the priest down like a bale of
goods. A few yards off, "struck down with clubs and other
instruments," he draws his last breath, his head "crushed" by twenty
mortal wounds. -- Farther up, towards Orleans, Roland reads the
following dispatches, taken from the file for Loiret:[58] "Anarchy is
at its height," writes one of the districts to the Directory of the
department; "there is no longer recognition of any authority; the
administrators of the district and of the municipalities are insulted,
and are powerless to enforce respect.  .  .  . Threats of slaughter,
of destroying houses and giving them up to pillage prevail; plans are
made to tear down all the châteaux.  The municipal authorities of
Achères, along with many of the inhabitants, have gone to Oison and
Chaussy, where everything is smashed, broken up and carried off  On
the 16th of September six armed men went to the house of M. de
Vaudeuil and obliged him to return the sum of 300 francs, for
penalties pretended to have been paid by them.  We have been notified
that M. Dedeley will be visited at Achères for the same purpose to-
day.  M. de Lory has been similarly threatened. . .    Finally, all
those people there say that they want no more local administrations or
tribunals, that the law is in their own hands, and they will execute
it.  In this extremity we have decided on the only safe course, which
is to silently accept all the outrages inflicted upon us. We have not
called upon you for protection, for we are well aware of the
embarrassment you labor under." -- The best part of the National
Guard, indeed, having been disarmed at the county-town, there is no
longer an armed force to put riots down.  Consequently, at this same
date,[59] the populace, increased by the afflux of "strangers" and
ordinary nomads, hang a corn-inspector, plant his head on the end of a
pike, drag his body through the streets, sack five houses and burn the
furniture of a municipal officer in front of his own door. Thereupon,
the obedient municipality sets the arrested rioters free, and lowers
the price of bread one-sixth.  Above the Loire, the dispatches of Orne
and Calvados complete the picture.  "Our district," writes a
lieutenant of the gendarmerie,[60] "is a prey to brigandage. . . About
thirty rascals have just sacked the château of Dampierre.  Calls for
men are constantly made upon us," which we cannot satisfy, "because
the call is general on all sides." The details are curious, and here,
notwithstanding the Minister's familiarity with popular misdeeds, he
cannot avoid noting one extortion of a new species.  "The inhabitants
of the villages[61] collect together, betake themselves to different
chateaux, seize the wives and children of their proprietors, and keep
them as bail for promises of reimbursement which they force the latter
to sign, not merely for feudal taxes, but, again, for expenses to
which this taxation may have given rise," first under the actual
proprietor and then under his predecessors; in the mean time they
install themselves on the premises, demand payments for their time,
devastate the buildings on the place, and sell the furniture. --  All
this is accompanied with the usual slaughter. The Directory of the
department of Orne advises the Minister[62] that "a former noble has
been killed (homicide) in the canton of Sepf, an ex-curé in the town
of Bellême, an unsworn priest in the canton of Putanges, an ex-
capuchin in the territory of Alençon." The same day, at Caen, the
syndic-attorney of Calvados, M. Bayeux, a man of sterling merit,
imprisoned by the local Jacobins, has just been shot down in the
street and bayoneted, while the National Assembly was passing a decree
proclaiming his innocence and ordering him to be set at liberty.[63]

Route of the East. -- At Rouen, in front of the Hôtel-de-ville, the
National Guard, stoned for more than an hour, finally fire a volley
and kill four men; throughout the department violence is committed in
connection with grain, while wheat is stolen or carried off by
force;[64] but Roland is obliged to restrict himself; he can note only
political disturbances. Besides, he is obliged to hurry up, for
murders abound everywhere. In addition to the turmoil of the army and
the capital,[65] each department in the vicinity of Paris or near the
frontier furnishes its quota of murders. They take place at Gisors, in
the Eure, at Chantilly, and at Clermont in the Oise, at Saint-Amand in
the Pas-de-Calais, at Cambray in the Nord, at Retel and Charleville in
the Ardennes, at Rheims and at Chalons in the Marne, at Troyes in the
Aube, at Meaux in Seine-et-Marne, and at Versailles in Seine-et-
Oise.[66] -- Roland, I imagine, does not open this file, and for a
good reason; he knows too well how M. de Brissac and M. Delessart, and
the other sixty-three persons killed at Versailles; it was he who
signed Fournier's commission, the commander of the murderers. At this
very moment he is forced to correspond with this villain, to send him
certificates of "zeal and patriotism," and to assign him, over and
above his robberies, 30,000 francs to defray the expenses of the
operation.[67] -- But among the dispatches there are some he cannot
overlook, if he desires to know to what his authority is reduced, in
what contempt all authority is held, how the civil or military rabble
exercises its power, with what promptitude it disposes of the most
illustrious and most useful lives, especially those who have been, or
are now, in command, the Minister perhaps saying to himself that his
turn will come next.

Let us look at the case of M. de la Rochefoucauld. A philanthropist
since he was young, a liberal on entering the Constituent Assembly,
elected president of the Paris department, one of the most persistent,
most generous, and most respected patriots from first to last, -- who
better deserved to be spared than?  Arrested at Gisors[68] by order of
the Paris Commune, he left the inn, escorted by the Parisian
commissary, surrounded by the municipal council, twelve gendarmes and
one hundred National Guards; behind him walked his mother, eighty
years of age, his wife following in a carriage; there could be no fear
of an escape.  But, for a suspected person, death is more certain than
a prison; three hundred volunteers of the Orne and the Sarthe
departments, on their way through Gisors, collect and cry out: "We
must have his head -- nothing shall stop us!" A stone hits M. de la
Rochefoucauld on the temple; he falters, his escort is broken up, and
they finish him with clubs and sabers, while the municipal council
"have barely time to drive off the carriage containing the ladies." --
Accordingly, national justice, in the hands of the volunteers, has its
sudden outbursts, its excesses, its reactions, the effect of which it
is not advisable to wait for.  For example, at Cambray,[69] a division
of foot-gendarmerie had just left the town, and it occurs to them that
they had forgotten "to purge the prison". It returns, seizes the
keeper, takes him to the Hôtel-de-ville, examines the prison register,
sets at liberty those whose crimes seem to it excusable, and provides
them with passports. On the other hand, it kills a former royal
procureur, on whom addresses are found tainted with "aristocratic
principles," an unpopular lieutenant-colonel, and a suspected captain.
-- However slight or ill-founded a suspicion, so much the worse for
the officer on whom it falls! At Charleville,[70] two loads of arms
having passed through one gate instead of another, to avoid a bad
road, M. Juchereau, inspector of the manufacture of arms and commander
of the place, is declared a traitor by the volunteers and the crowd,
torn from the hands of the municipal officers, clubbed to the ground,
stamped on, and stabbed. His head, fixed to a pike, is paraded through
Charleville, then into Mézières, where it is thrown into the river
running between the two towns.  The body remains, and this the
municipality orders to be interred; but it is not worthy of burial;
the murderers get hold of it, and cast it into the water that it may
join the head.  In the meantime the lives of the municipal officers
hang by a single thread.  One is seized by the throat; another is
knocked out of his chair and threatened with hanging, a gun is aimed
at him and he is beaten and kicked; subsequently a plot is devised "to
cut off their heads and plunder their houses."

He who disposes of lives, indeed, also disposes of property. Roland
has only to flick through two or three reports to see how patriotism
furnishes a cloak for brutal license and greed.  At Coucy, in the
department of Aisne,[71] the peasantry of seventeen parishes,
assembled for the purpose of furnishing their military quota, rush
with a loud clamor to two houses, the property of M. des Fossés, a
former deputy to the Constituent Assembly, and the two finest in the
town; one of them had been occupied by Henry IV.  Some of the
municipal officers who try to interfere are nearly cut to pieces, and
the entire municipal body takes to flight.  M. des Fossés, with his
two daughters, succeed in hiding themselves in an obscure corner in
the vicinity, and afterwards in a small tenement offered to them by a
humane gardener, and finally, after great difficulty, they reach
Soissons. Of his two houses, "nothing remains but the walls. Windows,
casings, doors, and wainscoting, all are shattered"; twenty thousand
francs of assignats in a portfolio are destroyed or carried off; the
title-deeds of the property are not to be found, and the damage is
estimated at 200,000 francs. The pillage lasted from seven o'clock in
the morning to seven o'clock in the evening, and, as is always the
case, ended in a fête. The plunderers, entering the cellars, drank
"two hogsheads of wine and two casks of brandy; thirty or forty
remained dead drunk, and were taken away with considerable
difficulty." There is no prosecution, no investigation; the new mayor,
who, one month after, makes up his mind to denounce the act, begs the
Minister not to give his name, for, he says, "the agitators in the
council-general of the Commune threaten, with fearful consequences,
whoever is discovered to have written to you."[72]  -- Such is the
ever-present menace under which the gentry live, even when veterans in
the service of freedom; Roland, foremost in his files, finds
heartrending letters addressed directly to him, as a last recourse.
Early in 1789, M. de Gouy d'Arcy[73] was the first to put his pen to
paper in behalf of popular rights. A deputy of the noblesse to the
Constituent Assembly, he is the first to rally to the Third-Estate;
when the liberal minority of the noblesse came and took their seats in
the hall of the Communes, he had already been there eight days, and,
for thirty months, he "invariably seated himself on the side of the
'Left.'"  Senior major-general, and ordered by the Legislative
Assembly to suppress the outbreak of the 6,000 insurgents at Noyon,
"he kept his rigorous orders in his pocket for ten days"; he endured
their insults; he risked his life "to save those of his misguided
fellow-citizens, and he had the good fortune not to spill a drop of
blood."  Exhausted by so much labor and effort, almost dying, ordered
into the country by his physicians, "he devoted his income to the
relief of poverty"; he planted on his own domain the first liberty
tree that was erected; he furnished the volunteers with clothes and
arms; "instead of a fifth, he yielded up a third of his revenue under
the forced system of taxation."  His children live with him on the
property, which has been in the family four hundred years, and the
peasantry call him "their father."  No one could lead a more tranquil
or, indeed, a more meritorious existence.  But, being a noble, he is
suspected, and a delegate from the Paris Commune denounces him at
Compiègne as having in his house two cannon and five hundred and fifty
muskets. There is at once a domiciliary visit.  Eight hundred men,
infantry and cavalry, appear before the chateau d'Arcy in battle
array.  He meets them at the door and tenders them the keys. After a
search of six hours, they find twelve fowling pieces and thirteen
rusty pistols, which he has already declared.  His disappointed
visitors grumble, break, eat and drink to the extent of 2,000 crowns
damage.[74]  Nevertheless, urged by their leaders they finally retire.
But M. de Gouy has 60,000 francs in rentals which would be so much
gain to the nation if he would emigrate; this must be effected, by
expelling him, and, moreover during his expulsion, they may fill their
pockets.  For eight days this matter is discussed in the Compiègne
club, in the bars, in the barracks, and, on the ninth day, 150
volunteers issue from the town, declaring that they are going to kill
M. de Gouy and all who belong to him.  Informed of this, he departs
with his family, leaving the doors of his house wide open. There is a
general pillage for five hours; the mob drink the costly wines, steal
the plate, demand horses to carry their booty away, and promise to
return soon and take the owner's head. -- In effect, on the following
morning at four o'clock, there is a new invasion, a new pillage, and,
this time, the last one; the servants escape under a fire of musketry,
and M. de Gouy, at the request of the villagers, whose vineyards are
devastated, is obliged to quit that part of the country.[75] -- There
is no need to go through the whole file. At Houdainville, at the house
of M. de Saint-Maurice, at Nointel, on the estate of the Duc de
Bourbon, at Chantilly, on the estate of the Prince de Condé, at the
house of M. de Fitz-James, and elsewhere, a certain Gauthier,
"commandant of the Paris detachment of Searchers, and charged with the
powers of the Committee of Supervision," makes his patriotic circuit,
and Roland knows beforehand of what that consists, namely, a
dragonnade[76] in regular form on the domains of all nobles, absent or
present.[77]

Favorite game is still found in the clergy, more vigorously hunted
than the nobles; Roland, charged with the duty of maintaining public
order, asks himself how the lives of inoffensive priests, which the
law recommends to him, can be protected. -- At Troyes, at the house of
M. Fardeau, an old non-conformist curé, an altar decked with its
sacred vessels is discovered, and M. Fardeau, arrested, refuses to
take the civic oath. Torn from his prison, and ordered to shout "Vive
la Nation!" he again refuses. On this, a volunteer, borrowing an ax
from a baker, chops off his head, and this head, washed in the river,
is borne to the Hôtel-de-ville.[78] -- At Meaux, a brigade of Parisian
gendarmerie murders seven priests, and, as an extra, six ordinary
malefactors in confinement.[79] At Rheims, the Parisian volunteers
first make way with the post-master and his clerk, both under
suspicion because the smell of burnt paper had issued from their
chimney, and, next, M. de Montrosier, an old retired officer, which is
the opening of the hunt. Afterwards they fall upon two ecclesiastics
with pikes and sabers, whom their game-beaters have brought in from
the country, then on the former curé of Saint-Jean, and on that of
Rilly; their corpses are cut up, paraded through the streets in
portions, and burnt in a bonfire; one of the wounded priests, the abbé
Alexandre, is thrown in still alive.[80] -- Roland recognizes the men
of September, who, exposing their still bloody pikes, came to his
domicile to demand their wages; wherever the band passes it announces,
"in the name of the people," its "plenary power to spread the example
of the capital."  Now, as 40,000 unsworn priests are condemned by the
decree of August 26 to leave their departments in a week and France in
a fortnight, shall they be allowed to depart?  Eight thousand of them
at Rouen, in obedience to the decree, charter transports, which the
riotous population of both sides of the Seine prevent from leaving.
Roland sees in his dispatches that in Rouen, as elsewhere, they crowd
the municipalities for their passports,[81] but that these are often
refused. Better still, at Troyes; at Meaux, at Lyons, at Dôle, and in
many other towns, the same thing is done as at Paris; they are
confined in particular houses or in prisons, at least, provisionally,
"for fear that they may congregate under the German eagle"; so that,
made rebellious and declared traitors in spite of themselves, they may
still remain in their pens subject to the knife.  As the exportation
of specie is prohibited, those who have procured the necessary coin
are robbed of it on the frontier, while others, who fly at all
hazards, tracked like wild boars, or run down like hares, escape like
the bishop of Barral, athwart bayonets, or like the abbé Guillon,
athwart sabers, when they are not struck down, like the abbé Pescheur,
by the blows of a gun-stock.[82]

It is soon dawn. The files are too numerous and too large; Roland
finds that, out of eighty-three, he can examine but fifty; he must
hasten on; leaving the East, his eyes again turn to the South. -- On
this side, too, there are strange sights.  On the 2nd  of September,
at Châlons-sur-Marne[83], M. Chanlaire, an octogenarian and deaf, is
returning, with his prayer-book under his arm, from the Mall, to which
he resorted daily to read his prayers.  A number of Parisian
volunteers who meet him, seeing that he looks like a devotee, order
him to shout, "Vive la Liberté"  Unable to understand them, he makes
no reply. They then seize him by the ears, and, not marching fast
enough, they drag him along; his old ears give way, and, excited by
seeing blood, they cut off his ears and nose, and thus, the poor old
man dripping with blood, they reach the Hôtel-de-Ville.  At this sight
a notary, posted there as sentinel, and who is a man of feeling, is
horror-stricken and escapes, while the other National Guards hasten to
shut the iron gates.  The Parisians, still dragging along their
captive, go to the district and then to the department bureau "to
denounce aristocrats"; on the way they continue to strike the
tottering old man, who falls down; they then decapitate him, place
pieces of his body on pikes, and parade these about.  Meanwhile, in
this same town, twenty-two gentlemen; at Beaune, forty priests and
nobles; at Dijon, eighty-three heads of families, locked up as
suspected without evidence or examination, and confined at their own
expense two months under pikes, ask themselves every morning whether
the populace and the volunteers, who shout death cries through the
streets, mean to release them in the same way as in Paris.[84] -- A
trifle is sufficient to provoke a murder.  On the 19th of August, at
Auxerre as the National Guard is marching along, three citizens, after
having taken the civic oath, "left the ranks," and, on being called
back, "to make them fall in," one, either impatient or in ill-humor,
"replied with an indecent gesture". The populace, taking it as an
insult, instantly rush at them, and shoving aside the municipal body
and the National Guards, wound one and kill the other two.[85]  A
fortnight after, in the same town, several young ecclesiastics are
massacred, and "the corpse of one of them remains three days on a
manure heap, the relatives not being allowed to bury it."  About the
same date, in a village of sabot makers, five leagues from Autun, four
ecclesiastics provided with passports, among them a bishop and his two
grand-vicars, are arrested, then examined, robbed, and murdered by the
peasantry. --Below Autun, especially in the district of Roanne, the
villagers burn the rent-rolls of national property; the volunteers put
property-owners to ransom; both, apart from each other or together,
give themselves up "to every excess and to every sort of iniquity
against those whom they suspect of incivism under pretense of
religious opinions."[86] However preoccupied or upset Roland's mind
may be by the philosophic generalities with which it is filled, he has
long inspected manufactures in this country; the name of every place
is familiar to him; objects and forms are this time clearly defined to
his arid imagination, and he begins to see things through and beyond
mere words.

Madame Roland rests her finger on Lyons, so familiar to her two years
before; she becomes excited against "the quadruple aristocracy of the
town, petty nobles, priests, heavy merchants, and limbs of the law; in
short, those formerly known as honest folks, according to the
insolence of the ancient régime."[87] She may now find an aristocracy
of another kind there, that of the gutter. Following the example of
Paris, the Lyons clubbists, led by Charlier, have arranged for a
massacre on a grand scale of the evil-disposed or suspected Another
ringleader, Dodieu, has drawn up a list by name of two hundred
aristocrats to he hung; on the 9th of September, women with pikes, the
maniacs of the suburbs, bands of "the unknown," collected by the
central club,[88] undertake to clean out the prisons.  If the butchery
is not equal to that of Paris, it is because the National Guard, more
energetic, interferes just at the moment when a Parisian emissary,
Saint-Charles, reads off a list of names in the prison of Roanne
already taken from the prison register.  But, in other places, it
arrives too late. --  Eight officers of the Royal-Pologne regiment, in
garrison at Auch, some of them having been in the service twenty and
thirty years, had been compelled to resign owing to the
insubordination of their men; but, at the express desire of the
Minister of War, they had patriotically remained at their posts, and,
in twenty days of laborious marching, they had led their regiment from
Auch to Lyons.  Three days after their arrival, seized at night in
their beds, conducted to Pierre-Encize, pelted with stones on the way,
kept in secret confinement, and with frequent and prolonged
examinations, all this merely put their services and their innocence
in stronger light.  They are taken from the prison by the Jacobin mob;
of the eight, seven are killed in the street, and four priests along
with them, while the exhibition of their work by the murderers is
still more brazen than at Paris. They parade the heads of the dead all
night on the ends of their pikes; they carry them to the Place des
Terreaux into the coffee-houses; they set them on the tables and
derisively offer them beer; they then light torches, enter the
Célestins theater, and, marching on the stage with their trophies,
blending real and mock tragedy. -- The epilogue is both grotesque and
horrible.  Roland, at the bottom of the file, finds a letter from his
colleague, Danton,[89] who begs him to release the officers, murdered
three months ago, "for," says Danton, "if no charge can be found
against them, it would be crying injustice to keep them longer in
irons."  Roland's clerk makes a minute on Danton's letter: "This
matter disposed of." At this I imagine the couple looking at each
other in silence.  Madame Roland may remember that, at the beginning
of the Revolution, she herself demanded heads, especially "two
illustrious heads," and hoped "that the National Assembly would
formally try them, or that some generous Decius"[90] would devote
himself to "striking them down."[91] Her prayers are granted. The
trial is about to begin in the regular way, and the Decius she has
invoked is everywhere found throughout France.

The south-east corner remains, that Provence, described to him by
Barbaroux as the last retreat of philosophy and freedom. Roland
follows the Rhône down with his finger, and on both banks he finds, as
he passes along, the usual characteristic misdeeds. -  On the right
bank, in Cantal and in the Gard, "the defenders of the country" fill
their pockets at the expense of taxpayers designated by
themselves;[92] this forced subscription is called "a voluntary gift."
"Poor laborers at Nismes were taxed 50 francs, others 200, 300, 900,
1,000, under penalty of devastation and of bad treatment." -- In the
country near Tarascon the volunteers, returning to the old-fashioned
ways of bandits, brandish the saber over the mother's head, threaten
to smother the aunt in her bed, hold the child over a deep well, and
thus extort from the farmer or proprietor even as much as 4,000 or
5,000 francs. Generally the farmer keeps silent, for, in case of
complaint, he is sure to have his buildings burnt and his olive trees
cut down.[93] -  On the left bank, in the Isère, Lieutenant-colonel
Spendeler, seized by the populace of Tullins, was murdered, and then
hung by his feet in a tree on the roadside;[94]--  in the Drôme, the
volunteers of Gard forced the prison at Montélimart and hacked an
innocent person to death with a saber;[95] in Vaucluse, the pillaging
is general and constant.  With all public offices in their hands, and
they alone admitted into the National Guard, the old brigands of
Avignon, with the municipality for their accomplice, sweep the town
and raid about the country; in town, 450,000 francs of "voluntary
gifts" are handed over to the Glacière murderers by the friends and
relatives of the dead; -- in the country, ransoms of 1,000 and 10,000
francs are imposed on rich cultivators, to say nothing of the orgies
of conquest and the pleasures of despots, money forcibly obtained in
honor of innumerable liberty trees, banquets at a cost of five or six
hundred francs, paid for by extorted funds, reveling of every sort and
unrestrained havoc on the invaded farms;[96] in short, the abuse
drunken force amusing itself with brutality and proud of its violence.

Following this long line of murders and robbery, the Minister reaches
Marseilles, and I imagine him stopping at this city some-what
dumbfounded.  Not that he is in any way astonished at widespread
murders; undoubtedly he has had received information of them from Aix,
Aubagne, Apt, Brignolles, and Eyguières, while there are a series of
them at Marseilles, one in July, two in August, and two in
September;[97] but this he must be used to.  What disturbs him here is
to see the national bond dissolving; he sees departments breaking
away, new, distinct, independent, complete governments forming on the
basis of popular sovereignty;[98] publicly and officially, they keep
funds raised for the central government for local uses; they institute
penalties against their inhabitants seeking refuge in France; they
organize tribunals, levy taxes, raise troops, and undertake military
expeditions.[99]  Assembled together to elect representatives to the
Convention, the electors of the Bouches-du-Rhône were, additionally,
disposed to establish throughout the department "the reign of liberty
and equality," and to this effect they found, says one of them, "an
army of 1,200 heroes to purge the districts in which the bourgeois
aristocracy still raises its bold, imprudent head."  Consequently, at
Sonas, Noves, St. Remy, Maillane, Eyrages, Graveson, Eyguières,
extended over the territory consisting of the districts of Tarascon,
Arles and Salon, these twelve hundred heroes are authorized to get a
living out of the inhabitants at pleasure, while the rest of the
expenses of the expedition are to be borne "by suspected
citizens."[100] These expeditions are prolonged six weeks and more;
one of them goes outside of the department, to Monosque, in the
Basses-Alpes, and Monosque, obliged to pay 104,000 francs to its
"saviors and fathers," as an indemnity for traveling expenses, writes
to the Minister that, henceforth, it can no longer meet his
impositions.

What kind of improvised sovereigns are these who have instituted
perambulating brigandage?  Roland, on this point, has simply to
question his friend Barbaroux, their president and the executive agent
of their decrees.  "Nine hundred persons," Barbaroux himself writes,
"generally of slight education, impatiently listening to
conservatives, and yielding all attention to the effervescent, cunning
in the diffusion of calumnies, petty suspicious minds, a few men of
integrity but unenlightened, a few enlightened but cowardly; many of
them patriotic, but without judgment, without philosophy"; in short, a
Jacobin club, and Jacobin to such an extent as to "make the hall ring
with applause[101] on receiving the news of the September massacre";
in the foremost ranks, "a crowd of men eager for office and money,
eternal informers, imagining trouble or exaggerating it to obtain for
themselves lucrative commissions;"[102] in other words, the usual pack
of hungry appetites in full chase. - To really know them, Roland has
only to examine the last file, that of the neighboring departments,
and consider their colleagues in Var.  In this great wreck of reason
and of integrity, called the Jacobin Revolution, a few stray waifs
still float on the surface; many of the department administrations are
composed of liberals, friends of order, intelligent men, upright and
firm defenders of the law.  Such was the Directory of Var.[103] To get
rid of it the Toulon Jacobins contrived an ambush worthy of the
Borgias and Oliverettos of the sixteenth century.[104] On the 28th of
July, in the forenoon, Sylvestre, president of the club, distributed
among his trusty men in the suburbs and purlieus of the town an
enormous sack of red caps, while he posted his squads in convenient
places.  In the mean time the municipal body, his accomplices,
formally present themselves at the department bureau, and invite the
administrators to join them in fraternizing with the people.  The
administrators, suspecting nothing, accompany them, each arm in arm
with a municipal officer or delegate of the club.  They scarcely reach
the square when there rushes upon it from every avenue a troop of red-
caps lying in wait. The syndic-attorney, the vice-president of the
department, and two other administrators, are seized, cut down and
hung; another, M. Debaux, succeeding in making his escape, hides away,
scales the ramparts during the night, breaks his thigh and lies there
on the ground; he is discovered the next morning; a band, led by
Jassaud, a harbor-laborer, and by Lemaille, calling him self  "the
town hangman," come and raise him up, carry him away in a barrow, and
hang him at the first lamppost.  Other bands dispatch the public
prosecutor in the same fashion, a district administrator, and a
merchant, and then, spreading over the country, pillage and slay among
the country houses. -- In vain has the commandant of the place, M.
Dumerbion, entreated the municipality to proclaim martial law.  Not
only does it refuse, but it enjoins him to order one-half of his
troops back to their barracks. By way of an offset, it sets free a
number of soldiers condemned to the galleys, and all that are confined
for insubordination. -- Henceforth every shadow of discipline
vanishes, and, in the following month, murders multiply.  M. de
Possel, a navy administrator, is taken from his dwelling, and a rope
is passed around his neck; he is saved just in time by a bombardier,
the secretary of the club.  M. Senis, caught in his country-house, is
hung on the Place du Vieux Palais.  Desidery, a captain in the navy,
the curé of La Valette, and M. de Sacqui des Thourets, are beheaded in
the suburbs, and their beads are brought into town on the ends of
three poles.  M. de Flotte d'Argenson, vice-admiral, a man of
Herculean stature, of such a grave aspect, and so austere that he is
nicknamed the "Père Eternel" is treacherously enticed to the entrance
of the Arsenal, where he sees the lantern already dropping; he seizes
a gun, defends himself; yields to numbers, and after having been
slashed with sabers, is hung. M. de Rochemaure, a major-general of
marines, is likewise sabred and hung in the same manner; a main artery
in the neck, severed by the blow of the saber, spouts blood from the
corpse and forms a pool on the pavement; Barry, one of the
executioners, washes his hands in it and sprinkles the by-standers as
if bestowing a blessing on them. -- Barry, Lemaille, Jassaud,
Sylvestre, and other leading assassins, the new kings of Toulon,
sufficiently resemble those of Paris.  Add to these a certain Figon,
who gives audience in his garret, straightens out social inequalities,
forces the daughters of large farmers to marry poor republicans, and
rich young men to marry prostitutes,[105] and, taking the lists
furnished by the club or neighboring municipalities, ransoming all the
well-to-do and opulent persons inscribed on them.  In order that the
portraiture of the band may be complete, it must be noted that, on the
23rd of August, it attempted to set free the 1800 convicts; the
latter, not comprehending that they were wanted for political allies,
did not dare sally forth, or, at least, the reliable portion of the
National Guard arrived in time to put their chains on again.  But here
its efforts cease, and for more than a year public authority remains
in the hands of a Jacobin faction which, as far as public order is
concerned, does not even have the morals of a convict.

More than once during the course of this long review the Minister must
have flushed with shame; for to the reprimands dispatched by him to
these apathetic administrations, they reply by citing himself as an
example:

"You desire us to denounce the arbitrary arrests to the public
prosecutor; have you denounced those guilty of similar and yet greater
crimes committed at the capital? "[106] -

From all quarters come the cries of the oppressed appealing to "the
patriot Minister, the sworn enemy of anarchy," to "the good and
incorruptible Minister of the Interior, his only reproach, the common
sense of his wife," and he could only reply with empty phrases and
condolences:

 "To lament the events which so grievously distress the province, all
administrations being truly useful when they forestall evils, it being
very sad to be obliged to resort to such remedies, and recommend to
them a more active supervision."[107]



 "To lament and find consolation in the observations made in the
letter," which announces four murders, but calls attention to the fact
that "the victims immolated are counter-revolutionaries."[108]

Roland has carried on written dialogues with the village
municipalities, and given lessons in constitutional law to communities
of pot-breakers.[109] --  But, on this territory, he is defeated by
his own principles, while the pure Jacobins read him a lesson in turn;
they, likewise, are able to deduce the consequences of their own
creed.

 "Brother and Friend, Sir," write those of Rouen, "not to be always at
the feet of the municipality, we have declared ourselves permanent,
deliberative sections of the Commune."[110]

Let the so-called constituted authorities, the formalists and pedants
of the Executive Council and the Minister of the Interior, look twice
before censuring the exercise of popular sovereignty. This sovereign
raises his voice and drives his clerks back into their holes;
spoliation and murder, all this is just.

 "Can you have forgotten that, after the tempest, as you yourself
declared in the height of the storm, it is the nation which saves
itself? Well, sir, this is what we have done.[111] .  .    What! when
all France was resounding with that long expected proclamation of the
abolition of tyranny, you were willing that the traitors, who strove
to reestablish it, should escape public prosecution! My God, what
century is this in which we find such Ministers!"

Arbitrary taxes, penalties, confiscations, revolutionary expeditions,
nomadic garrisons, pillage, what fault can be found with all that?

"We do not pretend that these are legal methods; but, drawing nearer
to nature, we demand what object the oppressed have in view in
invoking justice.  Is it to lag behind and vainly pursue an equitable
adjustment which is rendered fleeting by judicial forms? Correct these
abuses or do not complain of the sovereign people suppressing them in
advance. . .  .  You, sir, with so many reasons for it, would do well
to recall your insults and redeem the wrongs you have inflicted before
we happen to render them public." .  .  . "Citizen Minister, people
flatter you; you are told too often that you are virtuous; the moment
this gives you pleasure you cease to be so.  .  . .  Discard the
astute brigands who surround you, listen to the people, and remember
that a citizen Minister is merely the executor of the sovereign will
of the people."

However narrow Roland's outlook may be, he must finally comprehend
that the innumerable robberies and murders which he has just noted
over are not a thoughtless eruption, a passing crisis of delirium, but
a manifesto of the victorious party, the beginning of an established
system of government.  Under this system, write the Marseilles
Jacobins,

"to-day, in our happy region, the good rule over the bad, and
constitute a party which allows no contamination; whatever is vicious
has gone into hiding or has been exterminated."-

The programme is very precise, and acts form its commentary. This is
the programme which the faction, throughout the interregnum, sets
openly before the electors.
_____________________________________________________________________

Notes:

[1] Guillon de Montléon, I. 122. Letter of Laussel, dated Paris, 28th
of August, 1792, to the Jacobins of Lyons: "Tell me how many heads
have been cut off at home. It would be infamous to let our enemies
escape."
1792).


[2]  "Les Révolutions de Paris," by Prudhomme, Vol. XIII. pp. 59-63
(14th of July, 3  Decrees of the 10th and 11th of August, 1792.

[4]  Prudhomme, number of the 15th of September, p. 483. - Mortimer-
Ternaux, IV. 430.

[5]  Mortimer-Ternaux. IV. II. Fauchet's report, Nov. 6, 1792. - Ib.,
IV. 91, 142. Discourse of M. Fockedey, administrator of the department
of the north, and of M. Bailly, deputy de Seine-et-Marne.

[6] Prudhomme, number of Sept. 1, 1792, pp. 375, 381, 385: number of
Sept. 22, pp. 528-530, -Cf. Guillon de Montléon, I. 144. Here are some
of the principles announced by the Jacobin leaders of Lyons, Châlier,
Laussel, Cusset, Rouillot, etc. "The time has come when this prophecy
must be fulfilled: The rich shall be put in the place of the poor, and
the poor in the place of the rich." - If a half of their property be
left them the rich will still be happy." - "If the laboring people of
Lyons are destitute of work and of bread, they can profit by these
calamities in helping themselves to wealth in the quarter where they
find it." - "No one who is near a sack of wheat can die of hunger. Do
you wish the word that will buy all that you want? Slay! - or perish!"

[7] Prudhomme, number for the 28th of August, 1792, pp. 284-287.

[8] Cf.. "The French Revolution," I.346. In ten of the departments the
seventh jacquerie continues the sixth without a break. Among other
examples, this letter from the administrators of Tarn, June 18, 1792,
may be read ("Archives Nationales," F7, 3271). "Numerous bands overran
both the city (Castres) and the country. They forcibly entered the
houses of the citizens, broke the furniture to pieces, and pillaged
everything that fell into their hands. Girls and women underwent
shameful treatment. Commissioners sent by the district and the
municipality to advocate peace were insulted and menaced. The pillage
was renewed; the home of the citizen was violated." The administrators
add: "In many places the progress made by the constitution was
indicated by the speedy and numerous emigrations of its enemies."

[9]  "Archives Nationales," F7, 3272. Letter of the administrators of
the Var, May 27, 1792. --Letter of the minister, Duranthon, May 28.--
Letter of the commission composing the directory Oct. 31.

[10] "Archives Nationales," Letter of the administrators of Var, May.
27.-- The saying is the summary of the revolutionary spirit; it recurs
constantly. --  Cf. the Duc de Montpensier, "Mémoires," p. 11. At Aix
one of his guards said to the sans-culotte who were breaking into the
room where he had been placed: "Citizens, by what order do you enter
here? and why have you forced the guard at the door?" One of them.
answered: "By order of the people. Don't you know that the people is
sovereign?"

[11] "Archives Nationales," letter of the public prosecutor, May 23. -
Letters of the administrators of the department, May 22, and 27 (on
the events of the 13th of May at Beausset).

[12] "Archives Nationales," F7  3193 and 3194. Previous details may be
found in these files. This department is one of those in which the
seventh jacquerie is merely a prolongation of the sixth. -Cf. F7,
3193. Letter of the royal Commissioner at Milhau, May 5, 1791.

"The situation is getting worse; the administrative bodies continue
powerless and without resources. Most of their members are still
unable to enter upon their duties; while the factions, who still rule,
multiply their excesses in every direction. Another house in the
country, near the town, has been burnt; another broken into, with a
destruction of the furniture and a part of the dinner-service, and
doors and windows broken open and smashed; several houses visited,
under the pretense of arms or powder being concealed in them; all that
is found with private persons and dealers not of the factious party is
carried off; tumultuous shouts, nocturnal assemblages, plots for
pillage or burning; disturbances caused by the sale of grain, searches
under this pretext in private granaries, forced prices at current
reductions; forty  louis taken from a lady retired into the country,
found in her trunk, which was broken into, and which, they say, should
have been in assignats. The police and municipal officers witnesses of
these outrages, are sometimes forced to sanction them with their
presence; they neither dare suppress them nor punish the well-known
authors of them. Such is a brief statement of the disorders committed
in less than eight days." - In relation specially to Saint-Afrique.
Cf. F7, 3194, the letter, among others, of the department
administrator, march 29, 1792.

[13] "Archives Nationales," F7,  3193.  Extract from the registers of
the clerk of the juge-de-paix  of Saint-Afrique, and report by the
department commissioners, Nov.  10, 1792, with the testimony of the
witnesses, forming a document of 115 pages.

[14] Deposition of Alexis Bro, a volunteer, and three others.

[15] Deposition of Pons, a merchant. After this devastation he is
obliged to address a petition to the executive power, asking
permission to remain in the town.

[16] Deposition of Capdenet, a shoemaker.

[17] Depositions of Marguerite Galzeng, wife of Guibal a miller,
Pierre Canac and others.

[18] Depositions of Martin, syndic-attorney of the commune of Brusque;
Aussel, curé of Versol; Martial Aussel, vicar of Lapeyre and others.

[19] Deposition of Anne Tourtoulon.

[20] Depositions of Jeanne Tuffon, of Marianne Terral, of Marguerite
Thomas, of Martin syndic-attorney of the commune of Brusque, of Virot,
of Brassier, and othes.  The details are too specific to allow
quotation.

[21] Depositions ,of Moursol, wool-carder; Louis Grand, district-
administrator, and others.

[22] For example, at Limoges, Aug. 16. - Cf. Louis Guibert, "le Parti
Girondin dans la Haute-Vienne," p. 14.

[23]  Paris, "Histoire de Joseph Lebon," I. 60. Restoration of the
Arras municipality. Joseph Lebon is proclaimed mayor Sept. 16.

[24] For example, at Caen and at Carcassonne.

[25] For example, at Toulon.

[26] "Un séjour en France," 19, 29. ("Letters of a Wittness to the
French Revolution," translated by H. Taine.1872)

[27]  Ibid.,  p. 38: 2M. de M ---, who had served for thirty years
gave up his arms to a boy who treated him with the greatest
insolence."

[28]  Paris, Ibid.,  p. 55 and the following pages. - Albert Babeau,
"Histoire de Troyes," I. 503-515. - Sausay, III. ch. I.

[29] "The Ancient Régime," 381, 391, 392.

[30]  "Archives Nationales," F7, 3217. Letter of Castanet, an old
gendarme, Aug. 21 1792.

[31] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3219. Letter of M. Alquier to the
first consul, Pluviôse 18, year VIII.

[32]  Lauvergne, "Histoire du Var," p. 104.

[33]  Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 325, 327.

[34]  "Archives-Nationales," F7, 3271. Letter of the Minister of
Justice, with official reports of the municipality of Rabastens. "The
juge-de-paix  of Rabastens was insulted in his place by putting an end
to the proceedings commenced against an old deserter at the head of
the municipality, and tried for robbery. They threatened to stab the
judge if he recommenced the trial. Numerous gangs of vagabonds overrun
the country, pillaging and putting to ransom all owners of property. .
. The people has been led off by a municipal officer, a constitutional
curé, and a brother of sieur Tournal, one of the authors of the evils
which have desolated the Comtat." (March 5, 1792).

[35] Guillon de Montléon, I. 84, 109, 139, 155, 158, 464. -- Ibid.,
p.441, details concerning Châlier by his companion Chassagnon. --
"Archives Nationales," F7, 3255.  Letter by Laussel, Sept. 22, 1792.

[36] Barbaroux, "Mémoires," 85. Barbaroux is an eye-witness, for he
has just returned to Marseilles and is about to preside over the
electoral assembly of the Bouches-du-Rhône.

[37] C. Rousset, "Les Volontaires," p. 67. -- In his report of June
27, 1792, Albert Dubayet estimates the number of volunteers at 84,000.

[38] C. Rousset, "Les Volontaires," 101. Letter of Kellermann, Aug.23,
1792. -- " Un séjour en France," I. 347 and following pages. --
"Archives Nationales," F7, 3214. Letter of an inhabitant of Nogent-le-
Rotrou (Eure). "Out of 8,000 inhabitants one-half require assistance,
and two-thirds of these are in a sad state, having scarcely straw
enough to sleep on.(Dec. 3, 1792). -- In his report of June 27, 1792,
Albert Dubayet estimates the number of volunteers at 84,000.

[39] C. Rousset, "Les Volontaires," 106 (Letter of General Biron, Aug.
23, 1792).- -- 226, Letter of Vezu, major, July 24, 1793.

[40] C. Rousset, "Les Volontaires," 144 (Letter of a district
administrator of Moulins to General Custines, Jan. 27, 1793).-- "Un
séjour en France," p.27: "I am sorry to see that most the volunteers
about to join the army are old men or very young boys." -- C. Rousset,
Ibid., 74, 108, 226 (Letter of Biron, Nov. 7, 1792); 105 (Letter of
the commander of Fort Louis, Aug. 7); 127 (Letter of Captain Motmé).
One-third of the 2d battalion of Haute-Saône is composed of children
13 and 14 years old.

[41] Moniteur, XIII. 742 (Sept. 21). Marshal Lückner and his aids-de-
camp just miss being killed by Parisian volunteers. -- Archives
Nationales," BB, 16703. Letter by Labarrière aide-de-camp of General
Flers, Antwerp, March 19, 1793.  On the desertion en masse of
gendarmes from Dumouriez's army, who return to Paris.

[42] Cf. "L'armée et la garde nationale," by Baron Poisson, III. 475.
"On hostilities being declared (April, 1792), the contingent of
volunteers was fixed at 200,000 men. This second attempt resulted in
nothing but confused and disorderly levies. Owing to the spinelessness
of the volunteer troops it was impossible to continue the war in
Belgium, which allowed the enemy to cross the frontier." -- Gouverneur
Morris, so well informed, had already written, under date of Dec.27,
1791: "The national guards, who have turned out as volunteers, are in
many instances that corrupted scum of overgrown population of which
large cities purge themselves, and which, without constitutions to
support the fatigues.. . of war, have every vice and every disease
which can render them the scourge of their friends and the laughing
stock of their foes." -- Buchez et Roux, XXVI. 177. Plan of the
administrators of Hérault, presented to the Convention April 27, 1793.
"The composition of the enlistment should not be concealed. Most of
those of which it is made up are not volunteers; they are not citizens
all classes of society, who, submitting to draft on the ballot, have
willingly made up their minds to go and defend the Republic.  The
larger part of the recruits are substitutes who, through the
attraction of a large sum, have concluded to leave their homes."

[43] C. Rousset, 47. Letter of the directory of Somme, Feb. 26, 1792.

[44] "Archives Nationales," F 7, 3270. Deliberations of the council-
general of the commune of Roye, Oct. 8, 1792 (in relation to the
violence committed by two divisions of Parisian gendarmerie during
their passage, Oct. 7 and 8).

[45] Moore, I. 338 (Sept. 8, 1792).  - (The Condés were proud princes
from a branch of the royal house of Bourbon. (SR).

[46] C Rousset, 189 (Letter of the Minister of War, dated at Dunkirk,
April 29, 1793). -- Archives Nationales," BB, 16, 703. (Parisian
national guard staff major-general, order of the day, letter of
citizen Férat, commanding at Ostend, to the Minister of War, March 19,
1793): "Since we have had the gendarmes with us at Ostend there is
nothing but disturbance every day. They attack the officers and
volunteers, take the liberty of pulling off epaulettes and talk only
of cutting and slashing, and declare that they recognize no superior
being equals with everybody, and that they will do as they please.
Those who are ordered to arrest them are chased and attacked with
saber cuts and pistols

[47] C. Rousset, 20 (Letter of General Wimpfen, Dec. 30, 1791). --
"Souvenirs" of General Pelleport, pp.7 and 8.

[48] C. Rousset, 45 (Report of General Wimpfen, Jan. 20, I792). -
Letter of General Biron, Aug. 23, 1792.

[49] C. Rousset, 47, 48. -- "Archives Nationales," F7, 3249.  Official
report of the municipality of Saint-Maxence, Jan. 21, 1792. -- F 7,
3275.  Official report of the municipality of Châtellerault, Dec. 27,
1791. -- F7, 3285 and 3286 -- F7, 3213.  Letter of Servan, Minister of
War, to Roland, June 12, 1792: "I frequently receive, as well as
yourself and the Minister of Justice, complaints against the national
volunteers.  They commit the most reprehensible offenses daily in
places where they are quartered, and through which they pass on their
way to their destination." - Ibid., Letter of Duranthon, Minister of
Justice, May 5: "These occurrences are repeated, under more or less
aggravating circumstances, in all the departments."

[50]  "Archives Nationales," F7, 3193.  Official report of the
commissaries of the department of Aveyron, April 4, 1792.  "Among the
pillagers and incendiaries of the chateaux of Privesac, Vaureilles,
Péchins, and other threatened mansions, were a number of recruits who
had already taken the road to Rhodez to join their respective
regiments." Nothing remains of the château of Privesac but a heap of
ruins.  The houses in the village "are filled to over flowing with
pillaged articles, and the inhabitants have divided the owners'
animals amongst themselves." -- Comte de Seilhac, "Scènes et portraits
de la Révolution dans le bas Limousin," P.305.  Pillage of the
châteaux of Saint-Jéal and Seilhac, April 12, 1792, by the 3rd
battalion of la Corrèze, commanded by Bellegarde, a former domestic in
the château.

[51] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3270.  Deliberation of the council-
general of the commune of Roye, Oct. 8, 1792 (passage of two divisions
of Parisian gendarmes).  "The inhabitants and municipal officers were
by turns the sport of their insolence and brutality, constantly
threatened in case of refusal with having their heads cut off, and
seeing the said gendarmes, especially the gunners, with naked sabers
in their hands, always threatening. The citizen mayor especially was
treated most outrageously by the said gunners . . . forcing him to
dance on the Place d'armes, to which they resorted with violins and
where they remained until midnight, rudely pushing and hauling him
about, treating him as an aristocrat, clapping the red cap on his
head, with constant threats of cutting it off and that of every
aristocrat in the town, a threat they swore to carry out the next day,
openly stating, especially two or three amongst them, that they had
massacred the Paris prisoners on the 2nd  of September, and that it
cost them nothing to massacre."

[52] Summaries, in the order of their date or locality, and similar to
those about to be placed before the reader, sometimes occur in these
files. I pursue the same course as the clerk, in conformity with
Roland's methodical habits.

[53] Aug. 17, 1792 (Moniteur, XIII, 383, report of M. Emmery).

[54] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3271. Letter of the administrators of
Tarn, July 21.

[55] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3234. Report of the municipal officers
of Clairac, July 20.-Letter of the syndic-attorney of Lot-et-Garonne,
Sept. 16.

[56]  Mercure de France,  number for July 28, (letters from Bordeaux).

[57] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3275. Letter of the administrators of
Haute-Vienne, July 28 (with official reports).

[58] '"Archives Nationales," F7, 3223.  Letter of the directory of the
district of  Neuville to the department-administrators, Sept 18.

[59] "Archives Nationales," report of the administrators of the
department and council-general of the commune of Orleans, Sept 16 and
17. (The disarmament had been effected through the decrees of Aug.26
and Sept. 2.)

[60] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3249. Letter of the lieutenant of the
gendarmerie of Dampierre, Sept 23 (with official report dated Sept
19).

[61] "Archives Nationales," draft of a letter by Roland, Oct 4, and
others of the same kind. --Letter of the municipal officers of Ray,
Sept 24. -- Letter of M. Desdouits, proprietor, Sept 30. -- Letter of
the permanent council of Aigle, Oct 1, etc.

[62] "Archives Nationales," Letter of the administrators of the Orne
department, Sept 7.

[63] Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 337 (Sept. 6).

[64] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3265. Letter of the lieutenant-general
of the gendarmerie, Aug. 30. -- Official report of the Rouen
municipality on the riot of Aug. 29. -- Letters of the department-
administrators, Sept 18 and Oct. 11. -- Letter of the same, Oct 13,
etc. -- Letter of David, cultivator and department administrator Oct
11.

[65] Albert Babean, "Letters of a deputy of the municipality of Troyes
to the army of Dumuriez," p. 8. -- (Sainte-Menehould, Sept. 7, 1792):
"Our troops burn with a desire to meet the enemy. The massacre
reported to have taken place in Paris does not discourage them; on the
contrary, they are glad to know that suspected persons in the interior
are got rid of."

[66] Moore, I.338 (Sept. 4). At Clermont, the murder of a fish-dealer,
killed for insulting the Breton volunteers. -- 401 (Sept. 7), the son
of the post-master at Saint-Amand is killed on suspicion of
communicating with the enemy. -- "Archives Nationales," F7; 3249.
Letter of the district-administrators of Senlis, Oct. 31 (Aug. 15). At
Chantilly, M. Pigean is assassinated in the midst of 1,200 persons. --
C. Rousset, p.84 (Sept. 21), lieutenant-colonel Imonnier is
assassinated at Châlons-sur-Marne. - Mortimer-Ternaux, IV. 172. Four
Prussian deserters are murdered at Rethel, Oct. 5, by the Parisian
volunteers

[67] Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 378, 594 and following pages.

[68] Lacretelle, "Dix années d'épreuves," p. 58. Description of
Liancourt. - "Archives Nationales,"  F7, 3249. Letter of the
department-administrators of the Eure, Sept. 11 (with official report
of the Gisors municipality, Sept 4). - Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 550.

[69] Archives Nationales," F7, 4394. Letter of Roland to the
convention, Oct. 31 (with a copy of the documents sent by the
department of the Nord on the events of Oct. 10 and 11).

[70] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3191. Official report of the
municipality of Charleville; Sept. 4, and letter, Sept. 6.-- Moniteur,
XIII. 742, number for Sept. 21,1792 (letter of Sept. 17, On the
Parisian volunteers of Marshal Lückner's army). "The Parisian
volunteers again threatened to have several heads last evening, among
others those of the marshal and his aids. He had threatened to return
some deserters to their regiments. At this the men exclaimed that the
ancient régime no longer existed, that brothers should not be treated
in that way, and that he general should be arrested. Severa1 of them
had already seized the horse's bridle."

[71] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3185. Documents relating to the case
of M. de Fossés. (The pillage takes place Sept. 4.)

[72] Letter of Goulard, mayor of Coucy, Oct. 4. -- Letter of Osselin,
notary, Nov. 7. "Threats of setting fire to M. de Fossés'  two
remaining farm-houses are made." -- Letter of M. de Fossés, Jan. 28,
1793. He states that he has entered no complaint, and if anybody has
done so for him he is much displeased. "A suit might place me in the
greatest danger, from my knowledge of the state of the public mind in
Coucy, and of what the guilty have done and will do to affect the
minds of the people in the seventeen communes concerned in the
devastation."

[73] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3249 letter of M. de Gouy to Roland,
Sept. 21. (An admirable letter, which, if copied entire, would show
the character of the gentleman of 1789. Lots of heart, many illusions
and much verbosity.) The first attack was made Sept. 4 and the second
on the 13th.

[74] Most of the domiciliary visits end in similar damages. For
example, ("Archives Nationales," F7, 3265, letter of the
administrators of Seine-Inferieure, Sept. 18, 1792). Visit to the
château de Catteville, Sept. 7, by the national guard of the
neighborhood. "The national guard get drunk, break the furniture to
pieces, and fire repeated volleys at the windows and mirrors; the
château is a complete ruin." The municipal officers on attempting to
interfere are nearly killed.

[75] The letter ends with the following: "No, never will I abandon the
French soil!" He is guillotined at Paris, Thermidor 5, year II., as an
accomplice in the pretended prison-plot.

[76]  Raid on Protestants under Louis XIV. (SR).

[77] '"Archives Nationales," Letter of the Oise administrators, Sept.
12 and 15. -- Letter of the syndic-attorney of the department, Sept.
23. -- Letter of the administrators, Sept. 20 (on Chantilly). "The
vast treasures of this domain are being plundered." In the forest of
Hez and in the park belonging to M. de Fitz-James, now national
property, "the finest trees are sold on the spot, cut down, and
carried off." - F7, 3268, Letter of the overseer of the national
domains at Rambouillet, Oct. 31. Woods devastated "at a loss of more
than 100,000 crowns since August 10." -- "The agitators who preach
liberty to citizens in the rural districts are the very ones who
excite the disorders with which the country is menaced. They provoke
the demand for a partition of property, with all the accompanying
threats."

[78] Albert Babeau, I.504 (Aug.20).

[79] Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 322 (Sept 4).

[80] Mortimer-Ternaux, III.325. -"Archives Nationales," F7, 3239.
Official report of the municipality of Rheims, Sept 6.

[81] "Archives Nationales," F7, 4394. Correspondence of the ministers
in 1792 and 1793. Lists presented by Roland to the convention, on the
part of various districts and departments, containing the names of
priests demanding passports to go abroad, those who have gone without
passports, and of sick or aged priests in the department asylums.

[82] Albert Babeau, I. 515-517. Guillon de Montléon, I. 120. At Lyons
after the 10th of August the unsworn conceal themselves; the
municipality offers them passports; many who come for them are
incarcerated; others receive a passport with a mark on it which serves
for their recognition on the road, and which excites against them the
fury of the volunteers. "A majority of the soldiers filled the air
with their cries of 'Death to kings and priests!' " -- Sauzay, III.
ch. IX., and especially p. 193: "M. Pescheu; while running along the
road from Belfort to Porentruy, is seen by a captain of the
volunteers, riding along the same road with other officers; demanding
his gun, he aimed at M. Pescheur and shot him."

[83] "Histoire de Chalons-sur-Marne et de ses monuments," by L.
Barbat, pp. 420, 425

[84] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3207. Letter of the directory of the
Côte d'Or, Aug. 28 and Sept. 26. Address of the Beaune municipality,
Sept. 2. Letter of M. Jean Sallier, Oct. 9: "Allow me to appeal to you
for justice and to interest yourself in behalf of my brother, myself,
and five servants, who on the 14th of September last, at the order of
the municipality of La Roche-en-Bressy, where we have lived for three
years, were arrested by the national guard of Saulieu, and, first
imprisoned here in this town, were on the 18th transferred to Semur,
no reason for our detention being given, and where we have in vain
demanded a trial from the directory of the district, which body,
making no examination or inquiry into our case, sent us on the 25th,
at great expense, to Dijon, where the department has imprisoned us
again without, as before, giving any reason therefore." -- The
directory of the department writes "the communes of the towns and of
the country arrest persons suspected by them, and instead of caring
for these themselves, send them to the district" -- Such arbitrary
imprisonment multiply towards the end of 1792 and early in 1793. The
commissaries of the convention arrest at Sedan 55 persons in one day:
at Nancy, 104 in three weeks; at Arras, more than 1,000 in two months;
in the Jura, 4,000 in two months. At Lons-le-Saulnier all the nobles
with their domestics, at Aix all the inhabitants of one quarter
without exception are put in prison. (De Sybel, II. 305.)

[85]"Archives Nationales," F7, 3276. Letters of the administrators of
the Yonne, Aug. 20 and 21 .-Ibid.,  F7, 3255. Letter of the
commissary, Bonnemant, Sept. 22. -- Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 338. --
Lavalette, "Mémoires," I.100.

[86] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3,255. Letter of the district
administrator of Roanne, Aug. 18. Fourteen volunteers of the canton of
Néronde betake themselves to Chenevoux, a mansion belonging to M.
Dulieu, a supposed émigré. They exact 200 francs from the keeper of'
the funds of the house under penalty of death, which he gives them. --
Letter of the same. Sept. 1. "Every day repressive means are non-
existent. Juges-de-paix  before whom complaints are made dare not
report them, nor try citizens who cause themselves to be feared.
Witnesses dare not give testimony for fear of being maltreated or
pillaged by the criminals." -- Letter of the same, Aug. 22. --
Official report of the municipality of Charlieu, Sept. 9, on the
destruction of the land registry books. "We replied that not having
the force with which to oppose them, since they themselves were the
force, we would abstain." --  Letter of an officer of the gendarmerie,
Sept.9, etc.

[87] "Lettres autographes de Madame Roland," published by Madame
Bancal des Issarts, p. 5 (June 2, 1790)

[88] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3245. -- Letter of the mayor and
municipal officers of Lyons, Aug. 2. -- Letter of the deputy procureur
of the commune, Aug. 29. -- Copy of a letter by Dodieu, Aug. 27.
(Roland replies with consternation and says that there must be a
prosecution.) -- Official report of the 9th of September, and letter
of the municipality, Sept. 11. -- Memorandum of the officers of the
Royal-Pologne regiment, Sept. 7. -- Letter of M. Perigny, father-in-
law of one of the officers slain, Sept. 19. -- Mortimer-Ternaux, III.
342. - Guillon de Montléon, I. 124. - Balleyder, "Histoire du peuple
de Lyon," 91.

[89] "Archives Nationales," Letter of Danton, Oct. 3.

[90] Decius, Roman emperor from 248 to 251 famous for having
persecuted the Christians. He was unable to tolerate their refusal to
join in communal corporate pagan observances. He insisted that they do
so and once they had done it, a Certificate of Sacrifice (libellus),
was issued. (SR).

[91]  "Etude sur Madame Roland," by Dauban, 82. Letter of Madame
Roland to Bosc, July 26, 1798.  "You busy yourselves with a
municipality and allow heads to escape which will devise new horrors.
You are mere children; your enthusiasm is merely a straw bonfire! If
the National Assembly does not try two illustrious heads in regular
form or some generous Décius strike them down, you are all lost. -- "
Ibid.,, May 17, 1790: "Our rural districts are much dissatisfied with
the decree on feudal privileges . . . A reform is necessary, in which
more châteaux must be burnt. It would not be a serious evil were there
not some danger of the enemies of the Revolution profiting by these
discontents to lessen the confidence of the people in the National
Assembly." -- Sept. 27, 1790. "The worst party is successful; it is
forgotten that insurrection is the most sacred of duties when the
country is in danger." -- Jan.24, 1791. "The wise man shuts his eyes
to the grievances or weaknesses of the private individual; but the
citizen should show no mercy, even to his father, when the public
welfare is at stake."

[92] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3202. Report of the commissary, member
of the Cantal directory, Oct. 24. On the 16th of October at
Chaudesaigues the volunteers break open a door and then kill one of
their comrades who opposes them, whom the commissary tries to save.
The mayor of the place, in uniform, leads them to the dwellings of
aristocrats, urging them on to pillage; they enter a number of houses
by force and exact wine. The next day at Saint-Urcize they break into
the house of the former curé, devastate or pillage it, and "sell his
furniture to different persons in the neighborhood." The same
treatment is awarded to sieur Vaissier, mayor, and to lady Lavalette;
their cellars are forced open, barrels of wine are taken to the public
square, and drinking takes place from the tap. After this "the
volunteers go in squads into the neighboring parishes and compel the
inhabitants to give them money or effects." The commissary and
municipal officers of St. Urcize who tried to mediate were nearly
killed and were saved only through the efforts of a detachment of
regular cavalry. As to the Jacobin mayor of Chaudesaigues, it was
natural that he should preach pillage; on the sale of the effects of
the nuns "he kept all bidders away, and had things knocked down to him
for almost nothing."

[93] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3217. Letter or Castanet, an old
gendarme, Nîmes, Aug.21. -- Letter of M. Griolet, syndic-attorney of
the Gard, Sept. 8: "I beg, sir, that this letter may he considered as
confidential; I pray you do not compromise me. " -- Letter of M.
Gilles, juge-de-paix at Rocquemaure, Oct.31 (with official reports).

[94] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3227. Letter of the municipal officers
of Tullins, Sept. 8.

[95] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3190. Letter of Danton, Oct. 9. --
Memorandum of M. Casimir Audiffret (with documents in support of it).
His son had been locked up by mistake, instead of another Audiffret,
belonging to the Comtat; he was slashed with a saber in prison Aug.25.
Report of the surgeon, Oct. 17: "The wounded man has two gashes more
on the head, one on the left cheek and the right leg is paralyzed; he
has been so roughly treated in carrying him from prison to prison as
to bring on an abscess on the wrist; if he is kept there he will soon
die."

[96]  "Archives Nationales," F7, 3195. Letter of M. Amiel, president
of the bureau of conciliation, Oct. 28. -- Letter of an inhabitant of
Avignon, Oct. 7. -- Other letters without signatures. -- Letter of M.
Gilles, juge-de-paix, Jan. 23, 1793.

[97] Fabre, "Histoire de Marseilles," II. 478 and following pages. --
"Archives Nationales," F7, 3195. Letter of the Minister of Justice, M.
de Joly (with supporting documents), Aug. 6. -- Official reports of
the Marseilles  municipality, July 21, 22, 23. -- Official report of
the municipality of Aix, Aug. 24. -- Letter of the syndic-attorney of
the department (with a letter of the municipality of Aubagne), Sept.
22, etc., in which M. Jourdan, a ministerial officer, is accused of
"aristocracy." A guard is assigned to him. About midnight the guard is
overcome, he is carried off, and then killed in spite of the
entreaties of his wife and son. The letter of the municipality ends
with the following: "Their lamentations pierced our hearts. But, alas,
who can resist the French people when aroused? We remain, gentlemen,
very cordially yours, the municipal officers of Aubagne."

[98] This stage of revolution seems to be sought after by the secret
communist revolutionaries arranging for the break-up of formerly
powerful independent states such as Germany, Yougoslavia, India etc.
(SR).

[99] Moniteur, XIII. 560. Act passed by the administrators of the
Bouches-du-Rhône, Aug. 3, "forbidding special collectors from
henceforth paying taxes with the national treasury." -Ibid., 744. A
report by Roland. The department of Var, having called a meeting of
commissaries at Avignon to provide for the defense of these regions,
the Minister says: "This step, subversive of all government, nullifies
the general regulations of the executive power." -- "Archives
Nationales," F7, 3195. Deliberation of the three administrative bodies
assembled at Marseilles, Nov. 5, 1792. -- Petition of Anselme, a
citizen of Avignon, residing in Paris, Dec. 14. - Report of the Saint-
Rémy affair, etc.

[100] "Archives Nationales," CII. I. 32. Official Report of the
Electoral Assembly of Bouches-du-Rhône, Sept. 4. "To defray the
expenses of this expenditure the syndic-attorney of the district of
Tarascon is authorized to draw upon the funds of public registry and
vendor of revenue stamps, and in addition thereto on the collector of
direct taxation. The expenses of this expedition will be borne by the
anti-revolutionary agitators who have made it necessary. A list,
therefore, is to be drawn up and sent to the National Assembly. The
commissioners will be empowered to suspend the district
administrations, municipal officers, and generally all public
functionaries who, through incivism  or improper conduct, shall have
endangered the public weal. They may even arrest them as well as
suspected citizens. They will see that the law regarding the disarming
of suspected citizens and the banishment of priests be faithfully
executed." - Ibid., F7, 3195. Letter of Truchement, commissary of the
department, Nov. 15. -- Memorandum of the community of Eyguières and
letter of the municipality of Eyguières, Sept. 13. -- Letter of M.
Jaubert, secretary of the Salon popular club, Oct. 22: "The department
of Bouches-du-Rhône has for a month past been ravaged by commissions.
. . The despotism of one is abolished, and we now stagger under the
much more burdensome yoke of a crowd of despots." -- Situation of the
department in September and October, 1792 (with supporting documents).

[101] Barbaroux, "Mémoires," 89.

[102] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3196 .-- Letters and petition of
citizen de Sades, Nov., 1792,  Feb.17, 1793, and Ventose 8, year III.:
"Towards the middle of Sept., 1792 (old style), some Marseilles
brigands broke into a house of mine near Apt. Not content with
carrying away six loads of furniture .  . they broke the mirrors and
wood-work." The damage is estimated at 80,000 francs. Report of the
executive council according to the official statement of the
municipality of Coste. On the 27th of September Montbrion,
commissioner of the administration of the Bouche-du-Rhône, sends two
messengers to fetch the furniture to Apt. On reaching Apt Montbrion
and his colleague Bergier have the vehicles unloaded, putting the most
valuable effects on one cart, which they appropriate to themselves,
and drive away with it to some distance out of sight, paying the
driver out of their own pockets: "No doubt whatever exists as to the
knavery of Montbrion and Bergier; administrators and commissioners of
the administration of the department." -- De Sades, the author of
"Justine," pleads his well-known civism and the ultra-revolutionary
petitions drawn up by him in the name of the section of the Pikes.

[103] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3272. Read in this file the entire
correspondence of the directory and the public prosecutor.

[104] Deliberation of the commune of Toulon. July 28 and following
days. -- That of the three administrative bodies, Sep. 10 --
Lauvergne, "Histoire du department du Var," 104-137.

[105] "Mémoires" of Chancelier Pasquier. Vol. I. p. 106. Librarie
Plon,  Paris 1893 - Pasquier and his wife stopped in Picardy, brought
to Paris by a member of the commune, a small, bandy-legged fellow
formerly a chair-letter in his parish church, imbued with the
doctrines of the day and a determined leveler. At the village of
Saralles they passed the house of M. de Livry, a rich man enjoying an
income of 50,000 francs, and the lover of Saunier, an opera-dancer.
"He is a good fellow," exclaims Pasquier's bandy-legged guardian: "we
have just made hint marry. Look here, we said to him, it is time that
to put a stop to that behavior! Down with prejudice! Marquises and
dancers ought to marry each other. He made her his wife, and it is
well he did; otherwise he would have been done for a long time ago, or
caged behind the Luxembourg walls." - Elsewhere, on passing a chateau
being demolished, the former chair-letter quotes Rousseau: "For every
chateau that falls, twenty cottages rise in its place." His mind was
stored with similar phrases and tirades, uttered by him as the
occasion warranted. This man may be considered as an excellent
specimen of the average Jacobin.

[106] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3,207. Letter of the administrators
of the Côte d'Or to the Minister, Oct. 6, 1792.

[107]  "Archives Nationales" F7, 3195.  Letter of the administrators
of the Bouche-du-Rhône, Oct 29, and the Minister's answer on the
margin.

[108]  "Archives Nationales," F7, 3249.  Letter of the administrators
of the Orne, Sept. 7, and the Minister's reply noted on the margin.

[109] "Archives Nationales," F', 3,249. Correspondence with the
municipality of Saint-Firmin (Oise). Letter of Roland, Dec. 3: "I have
read the letter addressed to me on the 25th of the past month, and I
cannot conceal from you the pain it gives me to find in it principles
so destructive of all the ties of subordination existing between
constituted authorities, principles so erroneous that should the
communes adopt them every form of government would be impossible and
all society broken up. Can the commune of Saint-Firmin,  indeed, have
persuaded itself that it is sovereign, as the letter states? and have
the citizens composing it forgotten that the sovereign is the entire
nation, and not the forty-four thousandth part of it? that Saint-
Firmin is simply a fraction of it, contributing its share to endowing
the deputies of the National Convention, the administrators of
departments and districts with the power of acting for the greatest
advantage of the commune, but which, the moment it elects its own
administrators and agents, can no longer revoke the powers it has
bestowed, without a total subversion of order? etc." -- All the
documents belonging to this affair ought to be quoted; there is
nothing more instructive or ludicrous, and especially the style of the
secretary-clerk of Saint-Firmin:  "We conjure you to remember that the
administrators of the district of Senlis strive to play the part of
the sirens who sought to enchant Ulysses."

[110] Letter of the central bureau of the Rouen sections, Aug. 30.

[111] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3195. Letter of the three
administrative bodies and commissaries of the sections of Marseilles,
Nov. 15, 1792. Letter of the electors of Bouches-du-Rhône, Nov. 28. --
(Forms of politeness are omitted at the end of these letters, and no
doubt purposely.) Roland replies (Dec. 31): "While fully admiring the
civism of the brave Marseilles people, . . . do not fully agree with
you on the exercise of popular Sovereignty." He ends by stating that
all their letters with replies have been transmitted to the deputies
of the Bouches-du-Rhône, and that the latter are in accord with him
and will arrange matters.



CHAPTER III.

I.

The second stage of the Jacobin conquest. -- The importance and
multitude of vacant offices.

The second stage of the Jacobin conquest will,[1] after August 10th
and during the next three months, extend and multiply all vacancies
from the top to the bottom of the hierarchy, for the purpose of
filling them with their own men. -- In the first place, the faction
(the party) installs representatives on the summits of public
authority which represent itself alone, seven hundred and forty-nine
omnipotent deputies, in a Convention which, curbed neither by
collateral powers nor by a previously established constitution,
disposes at pleasure of the property, the lives and the consciences of
all French people. --  Then, through this barely installed convention,
it decrees the complete renewal[2] of all administrative and judicial
bodies, councils and directories of departments, councils and communal
municipalities, civil, criminal and commercial tribunals, justices and
their assistants in the lower courts, deputies of the justices,
national commissaries of the civil courts, with secretaries and
bailiffs belonging to the various tribunals and administrations.[3]
The obligation of having practiced as a lawyer is abolished by the
same stroke, so that the first comer, if he belongs to the club
(party) may become a judge without knowing how to write, and even
without being able to read.[4] --  Just before this the staff of the
National Guard, in all towns above fifty thousand souls, and
afterwards in all the towns on the frontier, has again passed through
the electoral sieve.[5] In like manner, the officers of the
gendarmerie at Paris and throughout France once more undergo an
election by their men. Finally, all post-masters and post-office
comptrollers have to submit to election. --  Even better, below or
alongside the elected officials, this administrative purge concerns
all non-elective functionaries and employees, no matter how
insignificant their service, however feeble and indirect their office
may be connected with political matters. This is because tax receivers
and assessors, directors and other agents of rivers and forests,
engineers, notaries, attorneys, clerks and scribes belonging to the
administrative branch, are all subject to dismissal if they do not
obtain a certificate of civism from their municipality. At Troyes, out
of fifteen notaries, it is refused to four,[6] which leaves four
places to be filled by their Jacobin clerks. At Paris,[7] "all honest
folks, all clerks who are educated," are driven out of the navy
offices; the war department is getting to be "a den where everybody on
duty wears a red cap, where all thee-and-thou each other, even the
Minister, where four hundred employees, among which are a number of
women, show off in the dirtiest dress, affect the coolest cynicism, do
nothing, and steal on all sides." -- Under the denunciation of the
clubs, the broom is applied even at the bottom of the hierarchical
scale, even to secretaries of village councils, to messengers and
call-boys in the towns, to jail-keepers and door-keepers, to beadles
and sextons, to foresters, field-custodians, and others of this
class.[8]  All these persons must be, or appear to be, Jacobin;
otherwise, their place slips away from them, for there is always some
one to covet it, apply for it and take it. --  Outside of employees
the sweeping operation reaches the suppliers and contractors; even
here there are the faithful to be provided for, and nowhere is the
bait so important. The State, even in ordinary times, is always the
largest of consumers, and, at this moment, it is expending monthly,
merely on the war, two hundred millions extra. What fish may be caught
in such disturbed waters![9]  -- All these lucrative orders as well as
all these remunerated positions are at the disposition of the
Jacobins, and they seize the opportunity; they are the lawful owner,
who comes home after a long absence and gives or withdraws his custom
as the pleases, while he makes a clean sweep in his own household. --
The administrative and judicial services alone number 1,300,000
places, all those in the treasury department, in that of public works,
in that of public education, and in the Church; all posts in the
National Guard and in the army, from that of commander-in-chief down
to a drummer; the whole of the central or local power, with the vast
patronage flowing from this. Never had such rich spoils been made
available to the general public in one go. Lots will be drawn,
apparently, by vote; but it is evident that the Jacobins have no
intention of surrendering their prey to the hazards of a free ballot;
they mean to keep it the way they got it; by force, and will leave no
stone unturned to control the elections.

II.

The elections. -- The young and the poor invited to the ballot-box.--
Danger of the Conservatives if candidates. - -Their chiefs absent
themselves. -- Proportion of absentees at the primary assemblies.

They begin by paving their way.[10] A new decree has at once
suppressed the feeble and last legal requirement for impartiality,
integrity and competence of the elector and the eligible candidate. No
more discrimination between active and passive citizens; no longer any
difference between  poll tax of an elector of the first degree and
that of the second degree: no electoral poll tax qualification
whatever. All Frenchmen, except domestics, of whom they are
distrustful, supposing them under their employer's influence, may vote
at the primary assemblies, and not longer at the age of twenty-five,
but at twenty-one, which brings to the polls the two most
revolutionary groups, on the one hand the young, and on the other the
poor, the latter in great numbers in these times of unemployment,
dearth and poverty, amounting in all to two millions and a half, and,
perhaps, three millions of new electors. - At Besançon the number of
the registered voters is doubled.[11] -- Thus are the usual clients of
the Jacobins admitted within the electoral boundaries, from which they
had hitherto been excluded,[12] and, to ensure their coming, their
leaders decide that every elector obliged to travel "shall receive
twenty sous mileage," besides "three francs per diem during his
stay."[13]

While  attracting their supporters they drove their adversaries away.
The political banditry, through which they dominate and terrify
France, has already taken care of that. Many arbitrary arrests and
unpunished murders are a warning to all candidates who do not belong
to their party; and I do not speak about to the nobles or friends of
the ancient regime that have fled or are in prison, but the
Constitutionalists and the Feuillants. Any electoral enterprise on
their part would be madness, almost a suicide. Accordingly, none of
them call attention to themselves. If any outrageous moderate, like
Durand de Maillane, appears on a list, it is because the
revolutionaries have adopted him without knowing him, and because he
swears that he hates  royalty.[14] The others, more honest,  do not
want to don the popular livery and resort to club patronage, so they
carefully stay away; they know too well that to do otherwise would
mark their heads for pikes and their homes for pillage. At the very
moment of depositing the vote the domains of several deputies are
sacked simply because, "on the comparative lists of seven calls by
name," sent to the departments from Paris by the Jacobins, their names
are found on the right.[15] -- Through an excess of precaution the
Constitutionalists of the Legislative body are kept at the capital,
their passports being refused to them to prevent them from returning
into the provinces and obtaining votes by publicly stating the truth
in relation to the recent revolution. -- In the same way, all
conservative journals are suppressed, reduced to silence, or compelled
to become turncoats. -- Now, when one has neither the possibility to
speak up nor a candidate which might become one's representative, of
what use is it to vote?  And especially, since the primary assemblies
are places of disorder and violence,[16] patriots alone, in many
places, being admitted,[17] a conservative being "insulted and
overwhelmed with numbers," and, if he utters an opinion, exposed to
danger, also, if he remains silent, incurring the risk of
denunciations, threats, and blows. To keep in the background, remain
on the sidelines, avoid being seen, and to strive to be forgotten, is
the rule under a pasha, and especially when this pasha is a mob. Hence
the absenteeism of the majority; around the ballot-box there is an
enormous void. At Paris, in the election of mayor and municipal
officers, the balloting of October, November and December collect
together only 14,000 out of 160,000 registered voters, later 10,000,
and, later again, only 7,000.[18]  At Besançon, 7,000. registered
voters result in less than 600; there is the same proportion in other
towns, as for example, in Troyes. In like manner, in the rural
cantons, east of Doubs and west of Loire-Inférieure, but one-tenth of
the electors dare exercise their right to vote.[19]  The electoral
source is so exhausted, so often disturbed, and so stopped up as to be
almost dry: in these primary assemblies which, directly or indirectly,
delegate all public powers, and which, in the expression of the common
will, should be full, there are lacking six millions three hundred
thousands electors out of seven millions.[20]

III.

Composition and tone of the secondary assemblies. - Exclusion of
"Feuillant" electors. - Pressure on other electors.- Persons elected
by the conservatives obliged to resign. - Elections by the Catholics
canceled. - Secession of the Jacobin minorities. - The election of
their men made valid. - Public opinion not in accord with official
selections.

Through this anticipated purge the assemblies of the first degree find
themselves, for the most part, Jacobin; consequently the electors of
the second degree, appointed by them, are for the most part, Jacobin;
in many departments, their assembly becomes the most anarchical, the
most turbulent, and the most usurping of all the clubs. Here there is
only shouting, denunciations, oath-taking, incendiary motions,
cheering which carry all questions, furious speeches by Parisian
commissaries, by delegates from the local club, by passing Federates,
and by female wretches demanding arms.[21]  The Pas-de-Calais
assemblage sets free and applauds a woman imprisoned for having beaten
a drum in a mob. The Paris assembly fraternizes with the Versailles
slaughterers and the assassins of the mayor of Etampes. The assembly
of the Bouches-du-Rhône gives a certificate o virtue to Jourdan, the
Glacière murderer. The assembly of Seine-et-Marne applauds the
proposal to cast a cannon which might contain the head of Louis XVI.
for a cannon-ball to be fired at the enemy. -- It is not surprising
that an electoral body without self-respect should respect nothing,
and practice self-mutilation under the pretext of purification.[22]
The object of the despotic majority was to reign at once, without any
contest, on its own authority, and to expel all offensive electors. At
Paris, in the Aisne, in Haute-Loire, in Ille-et-Vilaine, in Maine-et-
Loire, it excludes as unworthy the members of old Feuillants and
monarchical clubs, and the signers of Constitutionalist protests. In
Hérault it cancels the elections in the canton of Servian, because the
elected men, it says, are "mad aristocrats." In Orne it drives away an
old Constituent, Goupil de Préfeln, because he voted for the revision,
also, his son-in-law, because he is his son-in-law.  In the Bouches-
du-Rhône, where the canton of Seignon, by mistake or through routine,
swore "to maintain the constitution of the kingdom," it sets aside
these retrograde elected representatives, commences proceedings
against the "crime committed," and sends troops against Noves because
the Noves elector, a justice who is denounced and in peril, has
escaped from the electoral den. --   After the purification of persons
it proceeds to the purification of sentiments. At Paris, and in at
least nine departments,[23] and in contempt of the law, is suppresses
the secret ballot, the last refuge of timid conservatives, and imposes
on each elector a verbal public vote, loud and clear, on his name
being called; that is to say, if he does not vote as he ought to, he
risks the gallows.[24] Nothing could more surely convert hesitation
and indecision into good sense, while, in many a place, still more
powerful machinery is violently opposed to the elections. At Paris the
elections are carried on in the midst of atrocities, under the pikes
of the butchers, and con ducted by their instigators. At Meaux and at
Rheims the electors in session were within hearing of the screeches of
the murdered priests. At Rheims the butchers themselves ordered the
electoral assembly to elect their candidates, Drouet, the famous post-
master, and Armonville, a tipsy wool-carder, upon which one-half of
the assembly withdrew, while the two candidates of the assassins are
elected. At Lyons, two days after the massacre, the Jacobin commander
writes to the Minister: "Yesterday's catastrophe puts the aristocrats
to flight, and ensures us the majority in Lyons."[25]  From universal
suffrage thus subjected to so much sifting, submitted to such heavy
pressure, heated and refined in the revolutionary alembic, those who
control it obtain all they want, a concentrated extract, the
quintessence of the Jacobin spirit.

And yet, should this extract not seem to them sufficiently strong,
wherever they are sovereign, they throw it away and begin over again.
At Paris,[26] by means of a purifying and surplus ballot, the new
Council of the Commune undertakes the expulsion of its lukewarm
members, while d'Ormesson, the mayor elect of the moderates, is
assailed with so many threats that, on the verge of his installation,
he resigns. At Lyons,[27] another moderate, Nivière-Chol, twice
elected, and, by 9,000 out of 11,000 votes, is twice compelled to
abandon his place; after him, Gilibert, the physician, who, supported
by the same voters, is about to obtain the majority, is seized
suddenly and cast into prison; even in prison, he is elected; the
clubbists confine him there more rigidly, and do not let him out even
after extorting his resignation. -- Elsewhere in the rural cantons,
for example, in Franche-Comté,[28] a number of elections are canceled
when the person elected happens to be a Catholic.  The Jacobin
minority frequently secede, meet in a tavern, elect their mayor or
justice of the peace, and the validity of his election is secured
because he is a patriot; so much the worse for that of the majority,
whose more numerous votes are null because given by "fanatics." -- The
response of universal suffrage thus appealed to cannot be other than
that which is framed for it.  Indisputable facts are to show to what
extent this response is compulsive or perverted, what a distance there
is between an official choice and public opinion, how the elections
give a contrary meaning to popular sentiment.  The departments of
Deux-Sèvres, Maine-et-Loire, la Vendée, Loire-Infèrieure, Morbihan,
and Finistère, send only anti-Catholic republicans to the Convention,
while these same departments are to become the inexhaustible nursery
of the great catholic and royalist insurrection. Three regicides out
of four deputies represent Lozère, where, six months later, thirty
thousand peasants are to march under the Royal white banner.  Six
regicides out of nine deputies represent la Vendée, which is going to
rise from one end of it to the other in the name of the King.[29]

IV.

Composition of the National Convention. - Number of Montagnards at the
start. - Opinions and sentiments of the deputies of the Plain. - The
Gironde. - Ascendancy of the Girondins in the Convention. - Their
intellectual character. - Their principles. - The plan of their
Constitution. - Their fanaticism. - Their sincerity, culture and
tastes. - How they differ from pure Jacobins. - How they comprehend
popular sovereignty. - Their stipulations with regard to the
initiative of individuals and of groups. - Weakness of philosophic
thought and of parliamentary authority in times of anarchy.

However vigorous the electoral pressure may have been, the voting
machine has not provided the expected results. At the opening of the
session, out of 749 deputies, only about fifty[30] are found to
approve of the Commune, nearly all of the elected in places where, as
at Rheims and Paris, terror has the elector by the throat, "under the
clubs, axes, daggers, and bludgeons of the butchers."[31] But where
the physical impressions of murder have not been so tangible and
impressive, some sense of decency has prevented too glaring elections.
The inclination to vote for well-known names could not wholly be
arrested; seventy-seven former members of the Constituent Assembly,
and one hundred and eighty-six of the previous Legislative Assembly
enter the Convention, and the practical knowledge which many of these
have of government business has given them some insights.  In short,
the consciences of six hundred and fifty deputies are only in part
perverted.

They are all, unquestionably, decided republicans, enemies of
tradition, apostles of reason, and trained in deductive politics;
only on these conditions could they be elected. Every candidate is
supposed to possess the Jacobin faith, or, at least, to recite the
revolutionary creed. The Convention, consequently, at its opening
session votes unanimously, with cheers and enthusiasm, the abolition
of royalty, and three months later it pronounces, by a large majority,
Louis XVI.,

"guilty of conspiring against the liberty of the nation, and of
assaults on

  the general welfare of the State."[32]

Nevertheless, social habitudes still subsist under political
prejudices. A man who is born in and lives for a long time in an old
community, is, through this alone, marked with its imprint; the
customs to which he conforms have crystallized in him in the shape of
sentiments: if it is well-regulated and civilized, he has
involuntarily arrived at respect for property and for human life, and,
in most characters, this respect has taken very deep root. A theory,
even if adopted, does not wholly succeed in destroying this respect;
only in rare instances is it successful, when it encounters coarse and
defective natures; to take full hold, it is necessary that it should
fall on the scattered inheritors of former destructive appetites, on
those hopelessly degenerate souls in which the passions of an anterior
date are slumbering; then only does its malevolence fully appear, for
it rouses the ferocious or plundering instincts of the barbarian, the
raider, the inquisitor, and the pasha. On the contrary, with the
greatest number, do what it will, integrity and humanity always remain
powerful motives. Nearly all these legislators, who originate in the
middle class, are at bottom, irrespective of a momentary delusion,
what they always have been up to now, advocates, attorneys, merchants,
priests, or physicians of the ancient regime, and what they will
become later on, docile administrators or zealous functionaries of
Napoleon's empire,[33] that is to say, ordinary civilized persons
belonging to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, sufficiently
honest in private life to have a desire to be equally so in public
life. --  Hence their horror of anarchy, of Marat,[34] and of the
September butchers and robbers. Three days after their assembling
together they vote, "almost unanimously," the preparation of a law
"against the instigators of murder and assassination."  "Almost
unanimously," they desire to raise a guard, recruited in the 83
departments, against the armed bands of Paris and the Commune.
Pétition is elected as their first president by "almost the totality
of suffrages." Roland who has just read his report to them, is greeted
with the "loudest" applause from nearly the "entire" Assembly. In
short they are for the ideal republic against actual brigands. This
accounts for their ranging themselves around those upright and sincere
deputies, who, in the two preceding Assemblies or alongside of them,
were the ablest defenders of both principles and humanity, around
Buzot, Lanjuinais, Pétition, and Rabaut-Saint-Etienne; around Brissot,
Vergniaud, Guadet, Gensonné, Isnard, and Condorcet; around Roland,
Louvet, Barbaroux, and the five hundred deputies of the "Plain,"[35]
marching in one body under the leadership of the 180 Girondists who
now form the "Right."[36]

These latter, among the republicans, are the most sincere and have the
most faith; for they have long been such, after much thought, study
and as a matter of principle. Nearly all of them are well-read
educated men, reasoners, philosophers, disciples of Diderot or of
Rousseau, satisfied that absolute truth had been revealed by their
masters, thoroughly imbued with the Encyclopédie[37] or the Contrat
Social, the same as the Puritans formerly were with the Bible.[38]  At
the age when the mind is maturing, and fondly clings to general
ideas,[39] they embraced the theory and aimed at a reconstruction of
society according to abstract principles. They have accordingly set to
work as pure logicians, rigorously applying the superficial and false
system of analysis then in vogue.[40]  They have formed for themselves
an idea of man in general, the same in all times and ages, an extract
or minimum of man; they have pondered over several thousands of or
millions of these abstract mortals, erected their imaginary wills into
primordial rights, and drawn up in anticipation the chimerical
contract which is to regulate their impossible union.  There are to be
no more privileges, no more heredity, no qualifications of any kind;
all are to be electors, all eligible and all of equal members of the
sovereignty; all powers are to be of short date, and conferred through
election; there must be but one assembly, elected and entirely renewed
annually, one executive council elected and one-half renewed annually,
a national treasury-board elected and one-third renewed annually; all
local administrations and tribunals must be elected; a referendum to
the people, the electoral body endowed with the initiative, a constant
appeal to the sovereignty, which, always consulted and always active,
will manifest its will not alone by the choice of its mandatories but,
again, through "the censure" which it will apply to the laws -- such
is the Constitution they forge for themselves.[41]  "The English
Constitution," says Condorcet, "is made for the rich, that of America
for citizens well-off; the French Constitution should be made for all
men." - It is, for this reason, the only legitimate one; every
institution that deviates from it is opposed to natural rights and,
therefore, fit only to be put down.-This is what the Girondists have
done during the Legislative sessions; we know how they, armed with the
illusions[42] of their new philosophy and triumphing through a rigid,
rash and hasty reason, have

* persecuted Catholic consciences,

* violated feudal property,

* encroached on the legal authority of the King,

* persecuted the remains of the ancient regime,

* tolerated crimes committed by the crowds,

* even plunged France into an European war,

* armed even the paupers,

* caused the overthrow of all government. -

As far as his Utopia is concerned, the Girondist is a sectarian, and
he knows no scruples.

* Little does he care that nine out of ten electors do not vote:  he
regards himself as the authorized representative of all ten.

* Little does he care whether the great majority of Frenchmen favor
the Constitution of 1791; it is his business to impose on them his
own.

* Little does he care whether his former opponents, King, émigrés,
unsworn ecclesiastics, are honorable men or at least excusable; he
will launch against them every rigorous legal proceeding,
transportation, confiscation, civil death and physical death.[43]

In his own eyes he is the justiciary, and his investiture is bestowed
upon him by eternal right. There is no human infatuation so pernicious
to man as that of absolute right; nothing is better calculated for the
destruction in him of the hereditary accumulation of moral
conceptions. --  Within the narrow bounds of their creed, however, the
Girondins are sincere and consistent. They are masters of their
formulae; they know how to deduce consequences from them; they believe
in them the same as a surveyor in his theorems, and a theologian in
the articles of his faith; they are anxious to apply them, to devise a
constitution, to establish a regular government, to emerge from a
barbarous state, to put an end to fighting in the street, to
pillaging, to murders, to the sway of brutal force and of naked arms.

The disorder, mover, so repugnant to them as logicians is still more
repugnant to them as cultivated, polished men. They have a sense of
what is proper,[44] of becoming ways, and their tastes are even
refined. They are not familiar with, nor do they desire to imitate,
the rude manners of Danton, his coarse language, his oaths, and his
low associations with the people. They have not, like Robespierre,
gone to lodge with a master joiner, to live him and eat with his
family. Unlike Pache, Minister of War, no one among them "feels
honored" by "going down to dine with his porter," and by sending his
daughters to the club to give a fraternal kiss to drunken
Jacobins.[45]  At Madame Roland's house there is a salon, although it
is stiff and pedantic; Barbaroux send verses to a marchioness, who,
after the 2nd of June, elopes with him to Caen.[46]  Condorcet has
lived in high society, while his wife, a former canoness, possess the
charms, the repose, the instruction, and the elegance of an
accomplished woman.  Men of this stamp cannot endure close alongside
of them the inept and gross dictatorship of an armed rabble. In
providing for the public treasury they require regular taxes and not
tyrannical confiscations.[47] To repress the malevolent they propose
"punishment and not banishment."[48]  In all State trials they oppose
irregular courts, and strive to maintain for those under indictment
some of the usual safeguards.[49] On declaring the King guilty they
hesitate in pronouncing the sentence of death, and try to lighten
their responsibility by appealing to the people. The line "laws and
not blood," was a line which, causing a stir in a play of the day,
presented in a nutshell their political ideas. And, naturally, the
law, especially Republican law, is the law of all; once enacted,
nobody, no citizen, no city, no party, can refuse to obey it without
being criminal. It is monstrous that one city should arrogate to
itself the privilege of ruling the nation; Paris, like other
departments, should be reduced to its on-eighty-third proportion of
influence. It is monstrous that, in a capital of 700,000 souls, five
or six thousand radical Jacobins should oppress the sections and alone
elect their candidates; in the sections and at the polls, all
citizens, at least all republicans, should enjoy an equal and free
vote. It is monstrous that the principle of popular sovereignty should
be used to cover up attacks against popular sovereignty, that, under
the pretense of saving the State, the first that comes along may kill
whom he pleases, that, on the pretext that they are resisting
oppression, each mob should have the "Right" to put the government
down. -- Hence, this militant "Right" must be pacified, enclosed
within legal boundaries, and subjected to a fixed process.[50] Should
any individual desire a law, a reform or a public measure, let him
state his on paper over his own signature and that of fifty other
citizens of the same primary assembly; then the proposition must be
submitted to his own primary assembly; then in case it obtains a
majority, to the primary assemblies of his arrondissement;  then, in
case of a majority, to the primary assemblies of his department; then,
in case of a majority, to all the primary assemblies of the nation, so
that after a second verdict of the same assemblies twice consulted,
the Legislative body, yielding to the majority of primary suffrages,
may dissolve and a new Legislative body, in which all old members
shall be declared ineligible, take its place. -- This is the final
expression and the master idea, of the theory. Condorcet, its able
constructor, has outdone himself. Impossible to design on paper a more
ingenious or complicated mechanism. The Girondists, in the closing
article of this faultless constitution, believe that they have
discovered a way to muzzle the beast and allow the sovereign people to
fully assert their rights.

As if, with some kind of constitution and especially with this one,
one could muzzle the beast!  As if it was in the mood to crane the
neck allowing them to put the muzzle on! Robespierre, on behalf of the
Jacobins, counters with a clause radically opposed to the one drafted
by Condorcet[51]:

" To submit 'the right to resist oppression' to legal formalities is
the ultimate refinement of tyranny. . . When a government violates the
people's rights, a general insurrection of the people, as well as
portions of the people, is the most sacred of duties."

Political orthodoxy, close reasoning, and oratorical talent are,
however, no weapon against this ever-muttering insurrection.

"Our philosophers," says a good observer,[52] "want to attain their
ends by persuasion; which is equivalent to saying that battles may be
won by eloquence, fine speeches, and plans of constitution. Very soon,
according to them, . . . .  if will suffice to carry complete copies
of Macchiavelli, Rousseau and Montesquieu into battle instead of
cannon, it never occurring to them that these authors, like their
works, never were, and never will be, anything but fools when put up
against a cut-throat provided with a good sword."

The parliamentary landscape has fallen away; things have returned to a
state of nature, that is, to a state of war, and one is no longer
concerned with debate but with brute force. To be in the right, to
convince the convention, to obtain majorities, to pass decrees, would
be appropriate in ordinary times, under a government provided with an
armed force and a regular administration, by which, from the summits
of public authority, the decrees of a majority descend through
submissive functionaries to a sympathetic and obedient population.
But, in times of anarchy, and above all, in the den of the Commune, in
Paris, such as the 10th of August and the 2nd of September made it,
all this is of no account.


V. The Jacobins forming alone the Sovereign People.

Opinion in Paris. -- The majority of the population constitutional. --
The new régime unpopular. -- Scarcity and high cost of food. -
Catholic customs obstructed. -Universal and increasing discontent. --
Aversion or indifference to the Girondins. -- Political resignation of
the majority. -- Modern customs incompatible with pure democracy. --
Men of property and income, manufacturers and tradesmen, keep aloof. -
- Dissension, timidity,  and feebleness of the Conservatives. -- The
Jacobins alone form the sovereign people.

And it is of no account because, first of all, in this great city of
Paris the Girondists are isolated, and have no group of zealous
partisans to depend upon. For, if the large majority is opposed to
their adversaries, that is not in their favor, it having secretly, at
heart, remained "Constitutionalists."[53]  "I would make myself master
of Paris," says a professional observer, "in ten days without striking
a blow  if I had but six thousand men, and one of Lafayette's stable-
boys to command them." Lafayette, indeed, since the departure or
concealment of the royalists, represents the old, fixed, and innermost
opinion of the capital.  Paris submits to the Girondists as well as to
the Montagnards as usurpers; the mass of the public regards them with
ill-will, and not only the bourgeoisie, but likewise the majority of
the people loathe the established government.

Work is scarce and food is dear; brandy has tripled in price; only
four hundred oxen are brought in at the Poissy market instead of seven
or eight thousand; the butchers declare that there will be no meat in
Paris next week except for the sick.[54]  To obtain a small ration of
bread it is necessary to wait five or six hours in a line at the
baker's shops, and,[55] as is customary, workmen and housekeepers
impute all this to the government. This government, which so poorly
provides for its needs, offends them yet more in their deepest
feelings, in the habits most dear to them, in their faith and worship.
The common people, even at Paris, is still at this time very
religious, much more so than at the present day. When the priest
bearing the Host passes along the street, the crowd "gathers from all
sides, men, women, and children, young and old, and fall on their
knees in worship."[56]  The day on which the relics of saint Leu are
borne in procession through the Rue St. Martin, "everybody kneels; I
did not see a man," says a careful observer, "that did not take off
his hat.  At the guard-house of the Mauconseil section, the entire
company presented arms." At the same time the "citoyennes around the
markets talked with each other to know if there was any way of decking
houses with tapestry."[57] The following week they compel the
revolutionary committee of Saint-Eustache[58] to authorize another
procession, and again each one kneels: "everybody approved of the
ceremony, no one, that I heard of; making any objection. This is a
striking picture. . . .  I saw repentance, I saw the parallel each is
forced to draw between the actual state of things and the former one.
I saw what a privation the people had to endure in the loss of that
which, formerly, was the most imposing of all church ceremonies.
People of all ranks and ages were deeply affected and humble, and many
had tears in their eyes."  Now, in this respect, the Girondists, by
virtue of being philosophers, are more iconoclastic, more intolerant
than any one, and there is no reason for preferring them to their
adversaries. At bottom, the government installed by the recent
electoral comedy, for the major portion of the Parisians, has no
authority but the fact of its existence; people put up with it because
there is no other, fully recognizing its worthlessness;[59] it is a
government of strangers, of interlopers, of bunglers, of cantankerous,
weak and violent persons.   The Convention has no hold either on the
people or on the bourgeois class, and in proportion as it glides more
rapidly down the revolutionary hill, it breaks one by one the ties
with which it is still connected to the undecided.

In a reign of eight months the Convention has alienated public opinion
entirely. "Almost all who have property of any kind are
conservative,"[60] and all the conservatives are against it. "The
gendarmes here openly speak up against the Revolution, even up to the
revolutionary tribunal, whose judgments they loudly condemn. All the
old soldiers detest the actual order of things."[61] -- The volunteers
"who come back from the army appear angry at putting the King to
death, and on that account they would flay all the Jacobins."[62] --
No party in the Convention escapes this universal disaffection and
growing aversion. "If the question of guillotining the members of the
Convention could be put to an open vote, it would be carried against
them by a majority of nineteen-twentieths,"[63] which, in fact, is
about the proportion of electors who, through fright or disgust, keep
away from the polls. Let the "Right" or the "Left" of the Convention
be victors or vanquished, that is a matter which concerns them; the
public at large does not enter into the discussions of its conquerors,
and no longer cares for either Gironde or "Mountain." Its old
grievances always revive "against the Vergniauds, Guadets" and
company;[64] it does not like them, and has no confidence in them, and
will let them be crushed without helping them. The infuriates may
expel the Thirty-Two, if they choose, and put them under lock and key.
"There is nothing the aristocracy (meaning by this, owners of
property, merchants, bankers, the rich, and the well-to-do), desire so
much as to see them guillotined."[65] 'Even the inferior aristocracy
(meaning petty tradesmen and head-workmen) take no more interest in
their fate than if they were so many escaped wild beasts  .  .  .
again caught and put in their cages."[66] "Guadet, Pétion, Brissot,
would not find thirty persons in Paris who would take their part, or
even take the first step to save them."[67]

Apart from all this, it makes little difference whether the majority
has any preferences; its sympathies, if it has any, will never be
other than platonic. It no longer counts for anything in either camp,
it has withdrawn from the battle-field, it is now simply the stakes of
the conflict, the prey and the booty of the winner. For, unable or
unwilling to comply with the political system imposed on it, it is
self-condemned to utter powerlessness.  This system is the direct
government of the people by the people, with all that ensues,
permanence of the section assemblies, club debates in public, uproar
in the galleries, motions in the open air, mobs and manifestations in
the streets; nothing is less attractive and more impracticable to
civilized and busy people. In our modern communities, work, the
family, and social intercourse absorb nearly all our time; hence, such
a system suits only the idle and rough outcasts who feel at home
there; the others refuse to enter an environment expressly set up for
singles, orphans, unskilled persons, living in lodgings, foul-mouthed,
lacking the sense of smell, with a gift of the gab, robust arms, tough
hide, solid haunches, expert in hustling, and with whom blows replace
arguments.[68] --  After the September massacres, and on the opening
of the barriers, a number of proprietors and persons living on their
incomes, not alone the suspected but those who thought they might
become so, escaped from Paris, and, during the following months, the
emigration increases along with the danger. Towards December rumor has
it that lists have been made up of former Feuillants; "we are assured
that during the past eight days more than fourteen thousand persons
have left the capital."[69] According to the report of the Minister
himself;[70] "many who are independent in fortune and position abandon
a city where the renewal of proscription is talked of daily." -- "
Grass grows in the finest streets," writes a deputy, "while the
silence of the grave reigns in the Thébaïdes (isolated villas) of the
faubourg Saint-Germain." -- As to the conservatives who remain, they
confine themselves to private life, from which it follows that, in the
political balance, those present are of no more account than the
absentees. At the municipal elections in October, November, and
December, out of 160,000 registered voters, there are at first
144,000, then 150,000, and finally 153,000 who stay away from the
polls; these, certainly, and for a much better reason, do not show
themselves at the assemblies of their sections. Commonly, out of three
or four thousand citizens, only fifty or sixty attend; one of these,
called a general assembly, which signifies the will of the people to
the Convention, is composed of twenty-five voters.[71]  Accordingly,
what would a sensible man, a friend of order, do in these dens of
fanatics? He stays at home, as on stormy days; he lets the shower of
words spend itself, not caring to be spattered in the gutter of
nonsense which carries off the filth of this district.

If he leaves his house at all he goes out for a walk, the same as in
old times, to indulge the tastes he had under the old régime, those of
a talkative, curious on-looker and friendly stroller, of a Parisian
safe in his well run town.  "Yesterday evening," writes a man who
feels the coming Reign of Terror, "I took my stand in the middle of
the right alley of the Champs-Elysées;[72] it was thronged with -- who
do you think? Would you believe it, with  moderates, aristocrats,
owners of property, and very pretty women, elegantly dressed, seeking
the caresses of the balmy spring breeze! It was a charming sight. All
were gay and smiling.  I was the only one that was not so. . . I
withdrew hastily, and, on passing through the Tuileries garden, I saw
a repetition of what I had seen before, forty thousand wealthy people
scattered here and there, almost as many as Paris contains." -- These
are evidently the sheep ready for the slaughter-house. They no longer
think of defense, they have abandoned their posts to the sans-
culottes, "they refuse all civil and military functions,"[73] they
avoid doing duty in the National Guard and instead pay their
substitutes. In short, they withdraw from a game which, in 1789, they
desired to play without understanding it, and in which, since the end
of 1791, they have always burnt their fingers. The cards may be handed
over to others, especially as the cards are dirty and the players
fling them in each others' faces; as for themselves they are
spectators, they have no other ambitions. -- "Leave them their old
enjoyments,[74] leave them the pleasure of going and coming throughout
the kingdom; but do not force them to take part in the war. Subject
them to the heaviest taxation and they will not complain; nobody will
even know that they exist, while the most serious question that
disturbs them in their thoughtful days is, can one amuse one's self as
much under a republican form of government as under the ancient
régime?" They hope, perhaps, to escape under cover of inoffensive
neutrality. Is it likely that the victor, whoever he is, will regard
people as enemies who are resigned to his rule before-hand? "A
dandy[75] alongside of me remarked, yesterday morning, 'They will not
take my arms away, for I never had any.' Alas,' I replied to him,
'don't make a boast of it, for you may find forty thousand simpletons
in Paris that would say the same thing, and, indeed, it is not at all
to the credit of Paris.'" -- Such is the blindness or self-complacency
of the city dweller who, having always lived under a good police, is
unwilling to change his habits, and is not aware that the time has
come for him to turn fighting man in his turn.

The manufacturers, the merchants and the man living on his income are
even less disposed than the independent gentleman, to give up his
private affairs for public affairs. His business will not wait for
him, he being confined to his office, store or counting-room. For
example, "the wine-dealers[76] are nearly all aristocrats in the sense
of this word at this period," but "never were their sales so great as
during the insurrections of the people and in revolutionary days."
Hence the impossibility of obtaining their services in those days.
"They are seen on their premises very active, with three or four of
their assistants," and turn a deaf ear to every appeal. "How can we
leave when custom is so good? People must have their wants supplied.
Who will attend to them if I and the waiters should go away? " --
There are other causes of their weakness. All grades in the National
Guard and all places in the municipality having been given up to the
Jacobin extremists, they have no chiefs: the Girondists are incapable
of rallying them, while Garat, the Minister, is unwilling to employ
them. Moreover, they are divided amongst themselves, no one having any
confidence in the other, "it being necessary to chain them together to
have anything accomplished."[77] Besides this, the remembrance of
September weighs upon their spirits like a nightmare. -- All this
converts people into a timid flock, ready to scamper at the slightest
alarm.  "In the Contrat Social section," says an officer of the
National Guard, "one-third of those who are able to defend the section
are off in the country; another third are hiding away in their houses,
and the other third dare not do anything."[78]  "If, out of fifty
thousand moderates, you can collect together three thousand, I shall
be very much astonished. And if; out of these three thousand, five
hundred only are found to agree, and have courage enough to express
their opinion, I shall be still more astonished.  The latter, for
instance, must expect to be Septemberized!"[79]  This they know, and
hence they keep silent and bend beneath the yoke. "What, indeed, would
the majority of the sections do when it is demonstrated that a dozen
raving maniacs at the head of a sans-culottes section puts the other
forty-seven sections of Paris to flight? " -- Through this desertion
of the state and themselves, they surrender in advance, and, in this
great city, as formerly in ancient Athens and Rome, we see alongside
of an immense population of subjects without any rights, a small
despotic oligarchy in itself composing the sovereign people.[80]


VI.

Composition of the party. -- Its numbers and quality decline. -- The
Underlings. -- Idle and dissipated workmen. -- The suburban rabble. --
Bandits and blackguards. -- Prostitutes. -- The September actors.

Not that this minority has been on the increase since the 10th of
August, quite the reverse. -- On the 19th of November, 1792, its
candidate for the office of Mayor of Paris, Lhuillier, obtains only
4,896 votes.[81]  On the 18th of June, 1793, its candidate for the
command of the National Guard, Henriot, will secure but 4,573 votes;
to ensure his election it will be necessary to cancel the election
twice, impose the open vote, and relieve voters from showing their
section tickets, which will permit the trusty to vote successively in
other quarters and apparently double their number by allowing each to
vote two or three times.[82]  Putting all together, there are not six
thousand Jacobins in Paris, all of them sans-culottes and partisans of
the "Mountain."[83] Ordinarily, in a section assembly, they number
"ten or fifteen," at most "thirty or forty," "organized into a
permanent tyrannical board." . . . "The rest listen and raise their
hands mechanically." . . . "Three or four hundred Visionaries, whose
devotion is as frank as it is stupid, and two or three hundred more to
whom the result of the last revolution did not bring the places and
honors they too evidently relied on," form the entire staff of the
party; "these are the clamorers of the sections and of the groups, the
only ones who have clearly declared themselves against order, the
apostles of a new sedition, scathed or ruined men who need disturbance
to keep alive," while under these comes the train of Marat, vile
women, worthless wretches, and "paid shouters at three francs a
day."[84]



To this must be added that the quality of the factious is still more
reduced than their number. Plenty of honest men, small tradesmen, wine
dealers, cook-shop keepers, clerks, who, on the 10th of August, were
against the Court, are now against the Commune.[85] The September
affair, probably, disgusted them, and they were not disposed to
recommence the massacres. A workman named Gonchon, for example, the
usual spokesman of the faubourg SaintAntoine, an upright man, sincere
and disinterested, supports Roland, and, very soon, at Lyons, seeing
how things are with his own eyes, he is to loyally endorse the revolt
of the moderates against the Maratists.[86]   "The respectable class
of the arts, says observers, " is gradually leaving the faction to
join the sane party."[87] "Now that water-carriers, porters and the
like storm the loudest in the sections, it is plain to all eyes that
the gangrene of disgust has reached the fruit-sellers, tailors, shoe-
makers, bar owners," and others of that class.[88]  -- Towards the
end, "butchers of both classes, high and low, are aristocratized." --
In the same way, "the women in the markets, except a few who are paid
and whose husbands are Jacobins, curse and swear, fume, fret and
storm." "This morning," says a merchant, "four or five of them were
here; they no longer insist on being called citoyennes; they declare
that they "spit on the republic."[89] - The only remaining patriot
females are from the lowest of the low class, the harpies who pillage
shops as much through envy as through necessity, "boat-women,
embittered by hard labor,[90] . . . jealous of the grocer's wife,
better dressed than herself, as the latter was of the wives of the
attorney and counselor, as these were of those of the financier and
noble. The woman of the people thinks she cannot do too much to lower
the grocer's wife to her own level."



Thus reduced to its dregs through the withdrawal of its tolerably
honest recruits, the faction now comprises none but the scum of the
populace, first, "subordinate workmen who look upon the downfall of
their employers with a certain satisfaction," then, the small
retailers, the old-clothes dealers, plasterers, "those who offer
second-hand coats for sale on the fringes of the market, fourth-rate
cooks who, at the cemetery of the Innocents, sell meat and beans under
umbrella tops,"[91] next, domestics highly pleased with now being
masters of their masters, kitchen helpers, grooms, lackeys, janitors,
every species of valet, who, in contempt of the law, voted at the
elections[92] and at the Jacobin club form a group of "silly people"
satisfied "that they were universal geographers because they had
ridden post once or twice," and that they were politicians "because
they had read 'The Four Sons of Aymon.'"[93] -- But, in this mud,
spouting and spreading around in broad daylight, it is the ordinary
scum of great cities which forms the grossest flux, the outcasts of
every trade and profession, dissipated workmen of all kinds, the
irregular and marauding troops of the social army, the class which,
"discharged from La Pitié, run through a career of disorder and end in
Bicêtre."[94]  "From La Pitié to Bicêtre" is a well known popular
adage.  Men of this stamp are without any principle whatever. If they
have fifty francs they live on fifty, and if they have only five they
live on five; spending everything, they are always out of pocket and
save nothing. This is the class that took the Bastille,[95] got up the
10th of August, etc.  It is the same class which filled the galleries
in the Assembly with all sorts of characters, filling up the groups,"
and, during all this time it never did a stroke of work. Consequently,
"a wife who owns a watch, ear-rings, finger-rings, any jewels, first
takes them to the pawnbrokers where they end up being sold. At this
period many of these people owe the butcher, the baker, the wine-
dealer, etc.; nobody trusts them any more. They have ceased to love
their wives, and their children cry for food, while the father is at
the Jacobin club or at the Tuileries.  Many of them have abandoned
their position and trade," while, either through "indolence" or
consciousness "of their incapacity," . . .  "they would with a kind of
sadness see this trade come back to life." That of a political gossip,
of a paid claqueur, is more agreeable, and such is the opinion of all
the idlers, summoned by the bugle to work on the camps around Paris. -
- Here,[96] eight thousand men are paid forty sous a day "to do
nothing"; "the workmen come along at eight, nine and ten o'clock in
the morning.  If they remain after roll-call . . . they merely trundle
about a few wheelbarrow loads of dirt. Others play cards all day, and
most of them leave at three or four o'clock, after dinner.  On asking
the inspectors about this they reply that they are not strong enough
to enforce discipline, and are not disposed to have their throats
slit." Whereupon, on the Convention decreeing piece-work, the
pretended workers fall back on their equality, remind it that they had
risen on the 10th of August, and wish to massacre the commissioners.
It is not until the 2nd  of November that they are finally dismissed
with an allowance of three sous per league mileage for those of the
departments.  Enough, however, remain in Paris to increase
immeasurably the troop of drones which, accustomed to consuming the
store of honey, think they have a right to be paid by the public for
buzzing around the State.

As a rear-guard, they have "the rabble of the suburbs of Paris, which
flocks in at every tap of the drum because it hopes to make
something."[97] As advance-guard they have "brigands," while the front
ranks contain "all the robbers in Paris, which the faction has
enrolled in its party to use when required;" the second ranks are made
up of "a number of former domestics, the bullies of gambling-houses
and of houses of ill-fame, all the vilest class."[98] -- Naturally,
lost women form a part of the crowd "Citoyennes," Henriot says,
addressing the prostitutes of the Palais-Royal, whom he has assembled
in its garden, "citoyennes, are you good republicans?"  "Yes, general,
yes!"  "Have you, by chance, any refractory priest, any Austrian, any
Prussian, concealed in your apartments?"  "Fie, fie! We have nobody
but sans-culottes! "[99] -- Along with these are the thieves and
prostitutes out of the Châtelet and Conciergerie, set at liberty and
then enlisted by the September slaughterers, under the command of an
old hag named Rose Lacombe,[100] forming the usual audience of the
Convention; on important days, seven or eight hundred of these may be
counted, sometimes two thousand, stationed at the entrance and in the
galleries, from nine o'clock in the morning.[101] -- Male and female,
"this anti-social vermin "102thus crawls around at the sessions of the
Assembly, the Commune, the Jacobin club, the revolutionary tribunal,
the sections and one may imagine the physiognomies it offers to view.
"It would seem," says a deputy,[103] "as if every sink in Paris and
other great cities had been scoured to find whatever was foul, the
most hideous, and the most infected. . . . Ugly, cadaverous features,
black or bronzed, surmounted with tufts of greasy hair, and with eyes
sunken half-way into the head. . . . They belched forth with their
nauseous breath the grossest insults amidst sharp cries like those of
carnivorous animals."  Among them there can be distinguished "the
September murderers, whom" says an observer[104] in a position to know
them, "I can compare to nothing but lazy tigers licking their paws,
growling and trying to find a few more drops of blood just spilled,
awaiting a fresh supply." Far from hiding away they strut about and
show themselves. One of them, Petit-Mamain, son of an innkeeper at
Bordeaux and a former soldier, "with a pale, wrinkled face, sharp eyes
and bold air, wearing a scimitar at his side and pistols at his belt,"
promenades the Palais-Royal[105] "accompanied or followed at a
distance by others of the same species," and "taking part in every
conversation."  "It was me," he says, "who ripped open La Lamballe and
tore her heart out. . . . All I have to regret is that the massacre
was such a short one.  But we shall have it over again. Only wait a
fortnight!" and, thereupon, he calls out his own name in defiance. --
Another, who has no need of stating his well-known name, Maillard,
president of the Abbaye massacres, has his head-quarters at the café
Chrétien,[106] Rue Favart, from which, guzzling drams of brandy, "he
dispatches his mustached men, sixty-eight cutthroats, the terror of
the surrounding region;" we see them in coffee-houses and in the
foyers of the theaters "drawing their huge sabers," and telling
inoffensive people: "I am Mr. so and so; if you look at me with
contempt I'll cut you down!  -- A few months more and, under the
command of one of Henriot's aids, a squad of this band will rob and
toast (chauffer) peasants in the environment of Corbeil and
Meaux.[107] In the meantime, even in Paris, they toast, rob, and rape
on grand occasions.  On the 25th and 26th of February, 1793,[108] they
pillage wholesale and retail groceries, "save those belonging to
Jacobins," in the Rue des Lombards, Rue des Cinq-Diamants, Rue
Beaurepaire, Rue Montmartre, in the Ile Saint-Louis, on the Port-au-
Blé, before the Hôtel-de-ville, Rue Saint-Jacques, in short, twelve
hundred of them, not alone articles of prime necessity, soap and
candles, but again, sugar, brandy, cinnamon, vanilla, indigo and tea.
"In the Rue de la Bourdonnaie, a number of persons came out with
loaves of sugar they had not paid for and which they re-sold." The
affair was arranged beforehand, the same as on the 5th of October,
1789; among the women are seen "several men in disguise who did not
even take the precaution of shaving," and in many places, thanks to
the confusion, they heartily abandon themselves to it. With his feet
in the fire or a pistol at his head, the master of the house is
compelled to give them "gold, money, assignats and jewels," only too
glad if his wife and daughters are not raped before his eyes as in a
town taken by assault.



VII. The Jacobin Chieftains.

The make up of the rulers. -- The nature and scope of their intellect.
-- The political views of M. Saule.

Such are the politicians who, after the last months of the year 1792,
rule over Paris, and, through Paris, over the whole of France, five
thousand brutes and blackguards with two thousand hussies, just about
the number a good police force would expel from the city, were it
important to give the capital a cleaning out;[109]  they too, were
convinced of their rights, all the more ardent in their revolutionary
faith, because the creed converts their vices into virtues, and
transforms their misdeeds into public services.[110]  They are the
actual sovereign people, this is why we should try to unravel their
innermost thoughts.  If we truly are to comprehend the past events we
must discern the spontaneous feelings moving them on the trial of the
King, the defeat of Neerwinden, at the defection of Dumouriez, on the
insurrection in La Vendée, at the accusation of Marat, the arrest of
Hébert, and each of the dangers which in turn fall on their heads.
For, this is not borrowed emotion; it does not descend from above;
they are not a trusty army of disciplined soldiers, but a suspicious
accumulation of temporary adherents. To command them requires
obedience to them,  their leaders always remaining their tool. However
popular and firmly established a chief may seem to be, he is there
only for a short time, at all times subject to their approval as the
bullhorn for their passions and the purveyor to their appetites.[111]
Such was Pétion in July, 1792, and such is Marat since the days of
September. "One Marat more or less (which will soon be seen) would not
change the course of events."[112] -- "But one only would remain,[113]
Chaumette, for instance; one would suffice to lead the horde," because
it is the horde itself which leads. "Its attachment will always be
awarded to whoever shows a disposition to follow it the closest in its
outrages without in any respect caring for its former leaders. . .
Its liking for Marat and Robespierre is not so great as for those who
will exclaim, Let us kill, let us plunder!" Let the leader of the day
stop following the current of the day, and he will be crushed as an
obstacle or cast off as a piece of wreckage. -- Judge if they are
willing to be entangled in the spider's web which the Girondins put in
their way. Instead of the metaphysical constitution with which the
Girondins confront them, they have one in their own head ready made,
simple to the last point, adapted to their capacity and their
instincts. The reader will call to mind one of their chiefs, whom we
have already met, M. Saule, "a stout, stunted little old man, drunk
all his life, formerly an upholsterer, then a peddler of quackeries in
the shape of four-penny boxes of hangman's grease, to cure pains in
the loins,[114] afterwards chief of the claque in the galleries of the
Constituent Assembly and driven out for rascality, restored under the
Legislative Assembly, and, under the protection of a groom of the
Court, favored with a spot near the Assembly door, to set up a
patriotic coffee-shop, then awarded six hundred francs as a
recompense, provided with national quarters, appointed inspector of
the tribunes, a regulator of public opinion, and now "one of the
madcaps of the Corn-market." Such a man is typical, an average
specimen of his party, not only in education, character and conduct,
but, again, in ambition, principles, logic and success. "He swore that
he would make his fortune, and he did it. His constant cry was that
nobles and priests should be put down, and we no longer have either.
He has constantly shouted against the civil list, and the civil list
has been suppressed. At last, lodged in the house belonging to Louis
XVI., he told him to his face that his head ought to be struck off,
and the head of Louis XVI. has fallen." -- Here, in a nutshell, is the
history and the portrait of all the others; it is not surprising that
genuine Jacobins see the Revolution in the same way as M. Saule,[115]

* when, for them, the sole legitimate Constitution is the definitive
establishment of their omnipotence;

* when they designate as order and justice the boundless despotism
they exercise over property and life;

* when their instinct, as narrow and violent as that of a Turkish bey,
comprises only extreme and destructive measures, arrests,
deportations, confiscations, executions, all of which is done with
head erect, with delight as if a patriotic duty, by right of a moral
priesthood, in the name of the people, either directly and
tumultuously with their own hands, or indirectly and legally by the
hands of their docile representatives.

This is the sum of their political system, from which nothing will
detach them; for they are anchored fast to it with the full weight and
with every hold upon it that characterizes their immorality, ignorance
and folly. Through the hypocritical glitter of compulsory parades,
their one fixed idea imposes itself on the orator that he may utter it
in tirades, on the legislator that he may put it into decrees, on the
administrator that he may put it in practice, and, from their opening
campaign up to their final victory, they will tolerate but one
variation, and this variation is trifling. In September, 1792, they
declare by their acts:

"Those whose opinions are opposed to ours will be assassinated, and
their gold, jewels and pocketbooks will belong to us."

In November, 1793, they are to declare through the official
inauguration of the revolutionary government:

"those whose opinions differ from ours will be guillotined and we
shall be their heirs."[116]

 Between this program, which is supported by the Jacobin population
and the program of the Girondins which the majority in the Convention
supports, between Condorcet's Constitution and the summary articles of
M. Saule, it is easy to see which will prevail. "These Parisian
blackguards," says a Girondist, "take us for their valets![117] Let a
valet contradict his master and he is sure to lose his place. From the
first day, when the Convention in a body traversed the streets to
begin its sessions, certain significant expressions enabled it to see
into what hands it had fallen:

"Why should so many folks come here to govern France," says a
bystander, "haven't we enough in Paris?"[118]

________________________________________________________________

Notes:

[1]  Any contempory Western reader take notice ! ! The proof of any
Jacobin or Socialist or Communist take-over, surreptitious or open-
handed, lies in their take-over of the important posts in politics,
the judicial system, the media and the administration. They may be
years in doing this, placing convinced or controlled men and women,
first in the faculties, later in career post, so that they, 30 years
later, have their people on all leading posts; or they may do it all
at once, like the Jacobins in France, Lenin in Russia  or Stalin in
the conquered territories after the second world war. (SR).

[2] Duvergier, "Collection des lois et décrets," decrees of Sept. 22
and Oct. 19, 1792. The electoral assemblies and clubs had already
proceeded in many places to renew on their own authority the decree
rendering their appointments valid.

[3] The necessity of placing Jacobins everywhere is well shown in the
following letter: "Please designate by a cross, on the margin of the
jury-panel for your district, those Jacobins that it will do to put on
the list of 200 for the next quarter. We require patriots." (Letter
from the attorney-general of Doubs, Dec. 23, 1792. Sauzay, III. 220.)

[4] Pétion, "Mémoires" (Ed. Dauban), p. 118: "The justice who
accompanied me was very talkative, but could not speak a word of
French. He told me that he had been a stone-cutter before he became a
justice, having taken this office on patriotic grounds. He wanted to
draw up a statement and give me a guard of two gendarmes; he did not
know how, so I dictated to him what to say; but my patience was
severely taxed by his incredibly slow writing.

[5]  Decrees of July 6, Aug. 15 and 20, Sept. 26, 1792.

[6] Decree of Nov. 1, 1792.-- Albert Babeau, II. 14, 39, 40.

[7] Dumouriez, III. 309, 355. -- Miot de Melito, "Mémoires," I.31,
33.-- Gouverneur Morris, letter of Feb. 14, 1793: "The state of
disorganization appears to be irremediable. The venality is such that,
if there be no traitors, it is because the enemy have not common
sense."

[8] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3268. Letter of the municipal officers
of Rambouillet, Oct. 3, 1792. They denounce a petition of the Jacobins
of the town, who strive to deprive forty foresters of their places,
nearly all with families, 'on account of their once having been in the
pay of a perjured king." -- Arnault ("Souvenirs d'un sexagénaire"),
II. 15. He resigns a small place he had in the assignate manufacture,
because, he says, "the most insignificant place being sought for, he
found himself exposed to every kind of denunciation."

[9] Dumouriez, III. 339. --  Meillan, "Mémoires," 27. "Eight days
after his installation as Minister of War, Beurnonville confessed to
me that he had been offered sums to the amount of 500,000 francs to
lend himself to embezzlements." He tries to sweep out the vermin of
stealing employees, and is forthwith denounced by Marat. -- Barbaroux,
"Mémoires" (Ed. Dauban). (Letter of Feb. 5, 1793.) "I found the
Minister of the Interior in tears at the obstinacy of Vieilz, who
wanted him to violate the law of Oct. 12, 1791 (on promotion)." Vieilz
had been in the service only four months, instead of five years, as
the law required, and the Minister did not dare to make an enemy of a
man of so much influence in the clubs. Buchez et Roux, XXVIII.19
("Publication des pièces relatives au 31 Mai," at Caen, by Bergoing,
June 28, 1793): "My friend learned that the place had been given to
another, who had paid 50 louis to the deputy. -- The places in the
bureaus, the armies, the administrations and commissions are estimated
at 9,000. The deputies of the Mountain have exclusive disposal of them
and set their price on them, the rates being almost publicly stated."
The number greatly increases during the following year (Mallet du Pan,
II.56, March, 1794). "The public employees at the capital alone amount
to 35,000."

[10] Decree of Aug. 11, 12, 1792.

[11] Sauzay, III. 45. The number increases from 3,200 to 7,000.

[12] Durand-Maillane, "Mémoires," p. 30: "This proceeding converted
the French proletariat, which had no property or tenacity, into the
dominant party at electoral assemblages.. . .  The various clubs
established in France (were) then masters of the elections." In the
Bouches-du-Rhône "400 electors in Marseilles, one-sixth of whom had
not the income of a silver marc, despotically controlled our Electoral
Assembly. Not a voice was allowed to be raised against them. . . Only
those were elected whom Barbaroux designated."

[13]  Decree of Aug. 11, 12, "Archives Nationales," CII. 58 to 76.
Official report of the Electoral Assembly of the Rhône-et-Loire, held
at Saint-Etienne. The electors of Saint-Etienne demand remuneration
the same as the others, considering that they gave their time in the
same way. Granted.

[14] "Archives Nationales," CII. 1 to 32. Official report of the
Electoral Assembly of the Bouches-du-Rhône, speech by Durand-Maillane:
"Could I in the National Convention be otherwise than I have been in
relation to the former Louis XVI., who, after his flight on the 22d of
June, appeared to me unworthy of the throne? Can I do otherwise than
abhor royalty, after so many of our regal crimes?"

[15] Moniteur, XIII. 623, session of Sept. 8, speech by Larivière. -
"Archives Nationales," CII., 1 to 83. (The official reports make
frequent mention of the dispatch of this comparative lists, and the
Jacobins who send it request the Electoral Assembly to have it read
forthwith.)

[16] Rétif de la Bretonne, "Les Nuits de Paris," Night X. p. 301: "As
soon as the primary assemblies had been set up, the plotters began to
work, electors were nominated, and through the vicious system adopted
in the sections, an uproar made it out for a majority of voices.  --
Cf. Schmidt, "Tableaux de la Révolution Française," I. 98. Letter of
Damour, vice-president of the section of the Théatre-Français, Oct.29.
-- " Un Séjour en France," p.29:  "The primary assemblies have already
begun in this department (Pas-de-Calais). We happened to enter a
church, where we found young Robespierre haranguing an audience as
small in point of number as it was in that of respectability. They
applauded vigorously as if to make up for their other shortcomings."

[17] Albert Babeau, I. 518. At Troyes, Aug.26, the revolutionaries in
most of the sections have it decided that the relations of an émigré,
designated as hostages and the signers of royalist addresses, shall
not be entitled to vote: "The sovereign people in their primary
assembly may admit among its members only pure citizens against whom
there is not the slightest reproach" (resolution of the Madeleine
section). -- Sauzay, III. 47, 49 and following pages. At Quinsy, Aug.
26, Lout, working the Chattily furnaces, along with a hundred of his
men armed with clubs, keeps away from the ballot-box the electors of
the commune of Courcelles, "suspected of incivisme. " -- " Archives
Nationales," F7, 3217.  Letters of Gilles, justice an the canton of
Roquemaure (Gard), Oct. 31, 1792, and Jan. 23, 1793, on the electoral
proceedings employed in this canton: Dutour, president of the club,
left his chair to support the motion for "lanterning" the grumpy and
all the false patriots. . . On the 4th  of November "he forced
contributions by threatening to cut off heads and destroy houses." He
was elected juge-de-paix.  -- Another, Magère, "approved of the motion
for setting up a gallows, provided that it was not placed in front of
his windows, and stated openly in the club that if people followed the
law they would never accomplish anything to be remembered." He was
elected member of the department directory. -- A third, Fournier,
"wrote that the gifts which citizens made to save their lives were
voluntary gifts." He is made a department councilor. "Peaceable
citizens are storing their furniture in safe places in order to take
to flight . . .  There is no security in France; the epithet of
aristocrat, of Feuillant, of moderate affixed to the most honest
citizen's name is enough to make him an object of spoliation and to
expose him to losing his life. . . I insist on regarding the false
idea which is current in relation to popular sovereignty as the
principal cause of the existing anarchy."

[18] Schmidt, "Pariser Zustande," I. 50 and following pages. --
Mortimer-Ternaux, V. 95. 109, 117, 129. (Ballot of Oct. 4, 14,137
voters; Oct. 22, 14,006;  Nov.19,  10,223, Dec. 6, 7062.)

[19] Sauzay, III. 45, 46, 221. -- Albert Babeau, I. 517. -- Lallié,
"Le district de Machecoul, 225. -- Cf. in the above the history of the
elections 'of Saint-Affrique: out of more than 600 registered electors
the mayor and syndic-attorney are elected by forty votes. -- The
plebiscite of September, 1795, on the constitution of the year III.
calls out only 958,000 voters. Repugnance to voting still exists.
"Ninety times out of a hundred, on asking: 'Citizen, how did the
Electoral Assembly of your canton go off?' they would reply (in
patois): 'Me, citizen? why should I go there? They have a good deal of
trouble in getting along together.' Or, 'What would you? Only a few
will come; honest people will stay at home!'" (Meissner, "Voyage à
Paris," towards the end of 1795.)

[20]  Stalin easily found a remedy. He obliged all to vote and
falsified the count so that 99% now voted for him and his men. (SR).

[21] " Archives Nationales," CII. 1 to 76, passim, especially the
official reports of the assemblies of the Bouches-du-Rhône, Hérault
and Paris. Speech by Barbaroux to the Electoral Assembly of the
Bouches-du-Rhône: "Brothers and friends, liberty will perish if you do
not elect men to the National Convention whose hearts are filled with
hatred of royalty. . . Mine is the soul of a freeman; ever since my
fourth year it has been nourished on hatred to kings. I will relieve
France from this detestable race, or I will die in the attempt. Before
I leave you I will sign my own death-warrant, I will designate what I
love most, I will show you all my possessions, I will lay a dagger on
the table which shall pierce my heart if ever for an instant I prove
false to the cause of the people!" (session of Sept. 3). - Guillon de
Montléon, I, 135.

[22] Durand-Maillane, I.33. In the Electoral Assembly of the Bouches-
du-Rhône "there was a desire to kill an elector suspected of
aristocracy."

[23] Mortimer-Ternaux, IV. 52. "Archives Nationales," CII. I to 32. --
Official report of the Electora1 Assembly of Bouches-du-Rhône. Speech
by Pierre Bayle, Sept. 3: "That man is not free who tries to conceal
his conscience in the shadow of a vote. The Romans openly elected
their tribunes. . . Who amongst us would reject so wise a measure? The
galleries of the National Assembly have had as much to do with
fostering the Revolution as the bayonets of patriots. " -- In Seine-
et-Marne the Assembly at first decided for the secret vote; at the
request of the Paris commissaries, Ronsin and Lacroix, it rescinds its
decision and adopts voting aloud and by call.

[24] Barbaroux, "Mémoires," 379: "One day, on proceeding to the
elections, tumultuous shouts break out: 'That is an anti-revolutionary
from Arles, hang him!' An Arlesian had, indeed, been arrested on the
square, brought into the Assembly, and they were lowering the lantern
to run him up."

[25] Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 338. -- De Sybel, "Histoire de l'Europe
pendant la Révolution Française" (Dosquet's translation), I. 525.
(Correspondence of the army of the South, letter by Charles de Hesse,
commanding the regular troops at Lyons.)

[26] Mortimer-Ternaux, V.101, 122 and following pages.

[27] Guillon de Montléon, I. 172, 196 and following pages.

[28] Sauzay, III. 220 and following pages. -- Albert Babeau, II. 15.
At Troyes, two mayors elected refuse in turn. At the third ballot in
this town of from 32,000 to 35,000 souls, the mayor-elect obtains 400
out of 555 votes.

[29] Moniteur, XV. 184 to 233 (the roll-call of those who voted for
the death of Louis XVI).--Dumouriez, II. 73 (Dumouriez reaches Paris
Feb. 2, 1793, after visiting the coasts of Dunkirk and Antwerp): "All
through Picardy, Artois, and maritime Flanders Dumouriez found the
people in consternation at the tragic end of Louis XVI. He noticed
that the very name of Jacobin excited horror as well as fear."

[30] This number, so important, is verified by the following passages:
-- Moniteur, session of Dec. 39, 1792. Speech by Birotteau: "Fifty
members against 690. . . About twenty former nobles, fifteen or twenty
priests, and a dozen September judges (want to prevail against) 700
deputies." -- Ibid., 851 (Dec.26, on the motion to defer the trial of
the king): "About fifty voices, with energy, No! no! " -- Ibid., 865,
(Dec.27, a violent speech by Lequinio, applauded by the extreme "Left"
and the galleries; the president calls them to order): "The applause
continues of about fifty members of the extreme 'Left.' " -- Mortimer-
Ternaux, VI. 557. (Address by Tallien to the Parisians, Dec.23,
against the banishment of the Duke of Orleans): "To-morrow, under the
vain pretext of another measure of general safety, the 60 or 80
members who on account of their courageous and inflexible adherence to
principles are offensive to the Brissotine faction, will be driven
out." -- Moniteur, XV. 74 (Jan. 6). Robespierre, addressing Roland,
utters this expression: "the factious ministers." "Cries of Order! A
vote of censure!  To the Abbaye/ 'Is the honest minister whom all
France esteems,' says a member, 'to be treated in this way?' -- Shouts
of laughter greet the exclamation from about sixty members." -- Ibid.,
XV. 114. (Jan. 11). Denunciation of the party of anarchists by Buzot.
Garnier replies to him: "You calumniate Paris; you preach civil war!"
"Yes! yes! 'exclaim about sixty members. -- Buchez et Roux, XXIV. 368
(Feb. 26). The question is whether Marat shall be indicted.  "Murmurs
from the extreme left, about a dozen members noisily demanding the
order of the day."

[31]  Mercier, "Le nouveau Paris," II. 200.

[32] Buchez et Roux, XIX. 17. XXVIII. 168. - The king is declared
guilty by 683 votes; 37 abstain from voting, as judges; of these 37,
26, either as individuals or legislators, declare the king guilty.
None of the other 11 declare him innocent.

[33] "Dictionnaire biographique," by Eymery, 1807 (4 vols). The
situation of the conventionists who survive the Revolution may here be
ascertained. Most of them will become civil or criminal judges,
prefects, commissaries of police, heads of bureaus, post-office
employees, or registry clerks, collectors, review-inspectors, etc. The
following is the proportion of regicides among those thus in office:
Out of 23 prefects 21 voted for the king'' death; 42 out of 43
magistrates voted for it, the 43rd being ill at the time of the
sentence. Of 5 senators 4 voted for his death, and 14 deputies out of
16. Out of 36 other functionaries of various kinds 35 voted for death.
Among the remaining regicides we again find 2 councillors of state, 4
diplomatic agents and consuls, 2 generals, 2 receiver-generals, 1
commissary-general of the police, 1 minister in the cabinet of King
Joseph, the minister of police, and the arch-chancellor of the empire.

[34] Buchez et Roux, XIX, 97, session of Sept. 25, 1792. Marat states:
" 'I have many personal enemies in this assembly.' 'All! all!' exclaim
the entire Assembly, indignantly rising." - Ibid., XIX. 9, 49, 63,
338.

[35]  "Right" and "Left", only refers to the right and left wings of
the hemicycles of the hall in which the Assembly meets. The Plain and
the Mountain refer to the same Assembly but here to those on the lower
or the upper benches.(SR).

[36] Meillan, "Mémoires," 20. - Buchez et Roux, XXVI. Session of April
15, 1793. Denunciation of the Twenty-two Girondists by the sections of
Paris: Royer-Fonfrède regrets "that his name is not inscribed on this
honorable list. 'And all of us - all! All!' exclaim three-quarters of
the Assembly, rising from their seats."

[37] The Philosophe Denis Diderot (1713-84) was largely responsible
for the 28 volume Encyclopédie (1751-729, which incorporated the
latest knowledge and progressive ideas, and which helped spread the
ideas of the Enlightenment in France and in other parts of Europe.
(Guinness Encyclopedia).

[38]  "Archives Nationales," A.F. 45. Letter of Thomas Paine to
Danton, May 6, 1792 (in English). "I do not know better men or better
patriots." This letter, compared with the speeches or publications of
the day, produces a singular impression through its practical good
sense. This Anglo-American, however radical he may be, relies on
nothing but experience and example in his political discussions.

[39]  Cf. The memoirs of Buzot, Barbaroux, Louvet, Madame Roland, etc.

[40]  And for some incomprehensible reason still in fashion at the end
of the 20th Century. (SR).

[41] Buchez et Roux, XXIV. 102.  (Plan drawn up by Condorcet, and
reported in the name of the Committee on the Constitution, April 15
and 16, 1793.) Condorcet adds to this a report of his own, of which he
publishes and abstract in the Chronique de Paris.

[42] Buchez et Roux, XXIV. 102. Condorcet's abstract contains the
following extraordinary sentence: "In all free countries the influence
of the populace is feared with reason; but give all men the same
rights and there will be no populace."

[43] Cf. Edmond Biré. "La Légende des Girondins," on the part of the
Girondists in all these odious measures.

[44]  These traits are well defined in the charges of the popular
party against them made by Fabre d'Eglantine. Maillan, "Mémoires,"
323. (Speech of Fabre d'Eglantine at the Jacobin Club in relation to
the address of the commune, demanding the expulsion of the Twenty-
Two.) "You have often taken the people to task; you have even
sometimes tried to flatter them; but there was about this flattery
that aristocratic air of coldness and dislike which could deceive
nobody. Your  ways of a bourgeois patrician are always perceptible in
your words and acts;  you never wanted to mix with the people. Here is
your doctrine in few words: after the people have served in
revolutions they must return to dust, be of no account, and allow
themselves to be led by those who know more than they and who are
willing to take the trouble to lead them. You, Brissot, and especially
you, Pétion, you have received us formally, haughtily, and with
reserve. You extend to us one finger, but you never grasp the whole
hand. You have not even refused yourselves that keen delight of the
ambitious, insolence and disdain."

[45] Buzot, "Mémoires," 78.

[46]  Edmond Biré, "La légende des Girondins." (Inedited fragments of
the memoirs of Pétion and Barbaroux, quoted by Vatel in "Charlotte
Corday and the Girondists," III. 472, 478.)

[47] Buchez et Roux, XXVI. A financial plan offered by the department
of Hérault adopted by Cambon and rejected by the Girondists.

[48] Buchez et Roux, XXV. Speech by Vergniaud (April 10), pp. 376,
377, 378. "An effort is made to accomplish the Revolution by terror. I
would accomplish it through love."

[49] Maillan, 22.

[50]  Buchez et Roux, XXIV. 109. Plan of a constitution presented by
Condorcet. Declaration of rights, article 32. "In every free
government the mode of resistance to different acts of oppression
should be regulated by law." - Ibid., 136. Title VIII. Of the
Constitution "De la Censure des lois."

[51] Buchez et Roux, 93. Session of the Jacobin Club, April 21, 1793.

[52] Schmidt, "Tableaux de la révolution Française," II.4 (Report of
Dutard, June 6, 1793.) - The mental traits of the Jacobins form a
contrast and are fully visible in the following speeches: "We desire
despotically  a popular constitution." (Address of the Paris Jacobin
Club to the clubs in the departments, Jan. 7, 1793.) - Buchez et Roux,
XXIII. 288 - Ibid., 274. (Speech by Legros in the Jacobin Club, Jan.
1.) "Patriots are not counted; they go by weight. . .  One patriot in
a scale weights more than 100,000 aristocrats. One Jacobin weights
more than 10,000 Feuillants. One republican weights more than 100,000
monarchists. One patriot of the Mountain weights more than 100,000
Brissotins. Hence I conclude that the convention should not be stopped
by the large number of votes against the death-sentence of Louis XVI.,
(and that) even (if there should be) but a minority of the nation
desiring Capet's death." - "Applauded." (I am obliged to correct the
last sentence, as it would otherwise be obscure.)

[53] Buzot, "Mémoires," 33: "The majority of French people yearned
after royalty and the Constitution of 1790. This was the strongest
feeling, and especially at Paris . . This people is only republican
because it is threatened by the guillotine. .   All its desires, all
its hopes incline to the constitution of 1791."---Schmidt, I. 232
(Dutard, May 16). Dutard, an old advocate and friend of Garat, is one
of those rare men who see facts behind words; clear-sighted,
energetic, active, abounding in practical counsels, and deserving of a
better chief than Garat.

[54] Schmidt, ibid., I. 173, 179 (May 1, 1793).

[55] "La Démagogie à en Paris en 1793," p.152. Dauban ("Diurnal de
Beaulieu," April 17). - "Archives Nationales," AF II. 45 (report by
the police, May 20). "The dearness of supplies is the leading cause of
agitation and complaints." -- (Ib., May 24). "The calm which now
appear to prevail in Paris will soon be disturbed if the prices of the
prime necessities of life do not shortly diminish."  -- (Ibid., May
25). "Complaints against dear food increase daily end this
circumstance looks as if it might become one of the motives of
forthcoming events.

[56] Schmidt, I. 198 (Dutard, May 9).

[57] Schmidt, I. 350; II. 6 (Dutard, May 30, June 7 and 8).

[58] Durand-Maillane,100: "The Girondist party was yet more impious
than Robespierre." -- A deputy having demanded that mention should be
made of the Supreme Being in the preamble of the constitution,
Vergniaud replied: "We have no more to do with Numa's nymph than with
Mahomet's pigeon; reason is sufficient to give France a good
constitution." -- Buchez et Roux, XIII. 444. Robespierre having spoken
of the Emperor Leopold's death as a stroke of Providence, Guadet
replies that he sees "no sense in that idea," and blames Robespierre
for "endeavoring to return the people to slavery of superstition." -
Ibid., XXVI. 63 (session of April 19, 1793). Speech by Vergniaud
against article IX of the Declaration of Rights, which states that
"all men are free to worship as they please." This article, says
Vergniaud, "is a result of the despotism and superstition under which
we have so long languished." -- Salle : "I ask the Convention to draw
up an article by which each citizen, whatever his form of worship,
shall bind himself to submit to the law " - Lanjuinais, who often
ranked along with the Girondists, is a Catholic and confirmed
Gallican.

[59]  Schmidt, I. 347 (Dutard, May 30). "What do I now behold? A
discontented people hating the Convention, all its administrators, and
the actual state of things generally."

[60] Schmidt, I. 278. (Dutard, May 23).

[61] Schmidt, I. 216 (Dutard, May 13).

[62] Schmidt, I. 240 (Dutard, May 17).

[63] Schmidt, I. 217 (Dutard, May 13).

[64] Schmidt, I. 163 (Dutard, April 30).

[65] Schmidt, II. 377 (Dutard, June 13). Cf. Ibid., II. 80. (Dutard,
June 21):   "If the guillotining of the Thirty-Two were subject to a
roll call, and the vote a secret one I declare to you no respectable
man would fail to hasten in from the country to give his vote and that
none of those now in Paris would fail to betake themselves to their
section."

[66] Schmidt, II. 35 (Dutard, June 13). On the sense of these two
words,  inferior aristocracy,  Cf. All of Dutard's reports and those
of other observers in the employ of Garat.

[67]  Schmidt, II. 37 (Dutard, June 13).

[68] Schmidt, I. 328 (Perrière, May 28): "Intelligent men and
property-owners abandoned the section assemblies and handed them to
others as these were places where the workman's fist prevailed against
the speaker's tongue." - Moniteur.  XV. 114 (session of Jan. 11,
speech by Buzot). "There is not a man in this town who owns anything,
that is not afraid of being insulted and struck in his section if he
dares raise his voice against the ruling power. . . The permanent
assemblies of Paris consist of a small number of men who have
succeeded in keeping other citizens away." - Schmidt, I. 235 (Dutard,
May 28): "Another plan would be to drill young men in the use of the
staff. One must be a sans-culotte,  must live with sans-culottes,  to
discover the value of expedients of this kind. There is nothing the
sans-culotte  fears as much as a truncheon. A number of young men
lately carried them in their trousers, and everybody trembled as they
passed. I wished that the fashion were general."

[69] Moniteur, XV. 95  (Letter of Charles Villette, deputy).

[70] Moniteur, XV. 179 (Letter of Roland, Jan. 11. 1793).

[71] Moniteur, XV. 66, session of Jan. 5, speech of the mayor of
Paris; (Chambon) - Ib., XV 114, session of Jan. 14, speech by Buzot; -
- Ib., XV. 136, session of Jan. 13. Speech by a deputation of
Federates. - Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 91 (Letter of Gadolle to Roland,
October, 1792). -- XXI. 417 (Dec. 20, article by Marat): " Boredom and
disgust have emptied the assemblies. --  Schmidt, II, 69 (Dutard, June
18).

[72] Schmidt, I. 203. (Dutard, May 10). The engravings published
during the early period of the Revolution and under the directory
exhibit this scene perfectly (cabinet des estampes, Paris).

[73] Moniteur,  XV. 67 (session of Jan. 5, 1793). Speech by the mayor
of Paris.

[74] Schmidt, I. 378 (Blanc, June 12).

[75]  Schmidt, II. 5 (Dutard, June 5).

[76] Schmidt, II. (Dutard, June 11) -- Ibid., II. (Dutard, June i8):
"I should like to visit with you," if it were possible, "the 3,000 or
4,000 wine-dealers, and the equally numerous places of refreshment in
Paris; you would find the 15,000 clerks they employ constantly busy.
If we should then go to the offices of the 114 notaries, we should
again find two-thirds of these gentlemen in their caps and red
slippers, also very much engaged. We might then, again, go to the 200
or 300 printing establishments, where we should find 4,000 or 5,000
editors, compositors, clerks, and porters all conservatized because
they no longer earn what they did before; and some because they have
made a fortune." -- The incompatibility between modern life and direct
democratic rule strikes one at every step, owing to modern life being
carried out under other conditions than those which characterized life
in ancient times. For modern life these conditions are, the magnitude
of States, the division of labor, the suppression of slavery and the
requirements of personal comforts and prosperity. Neither the
Girondists nor the Montagnards, who aimed to revive Athenian and
Spartan ways, comprehended the precisely opposite conditions on which
Athens and Sparta flourished.

[77] Schmidt, I. 207 (Dutard, May 10).

[78] Schmidt, II. 79 (Dutard, June 19).

[79] Schmidt, II.70 (Dutard, June 10).

[80]  Lenin must have felt encouraged by reading these lines which can
only have increase his disdain for the "capitalist" and bourgeoisie.
(SR).

[81] Mortimer-Ternaux, V. 101.

[82] Meillan, 54. -- Raffet, Henriot's competitor and denounced as an
aristocrat, had at first the most votes, 4,953 against 4,578.  At the
last ballot, out of about 15,000 he still has 5,900 against 9,087 for
Henriot. -- Mortimer-Ternaux, VIII. 31: "The electors had to vote
thirty at a time. All who dared give their votes to Raffet were marked
with a red cross on the roll-call, followed by the epithet of anti-
revolutionary."

[83] Schmidt, II. 37 (Dutard, June 13): "Marat and others have a party
of from 4,000 to 6,000 men, who would do anything to rescue them." --
Meillan, 155 (depositions taken by the Commission of the Twelve):
Laforet has stated that there were 6,000 sans-culottes to massacre
objectionable deputies at the first signal. -- Schmidt, II, 87
(Dutard, June 24): "I know that there are not in all Paris 3,000
decided revolutionaries."

[84] Moniteur,  XV. 114, session of Jan. 11, speech by Buzot. --
Ibid., 136, session of Jan. 13, speech of the Federates of Finisterre.
- Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 80, 81, 87, 91, 93 (Letter of Gadolle to
Roland, October 1792). - Schmidt, I. 207 (Dutard, May 10, 1793).

[85] Schmidt, II. 37 (Dutard, May 10, 1793).

[86] Mortimer-Ternaux, IV. 269 (petition presented by Gonchon.) -
"Archives Nationales, AF, II 43. Letters of Gonchon to the Minister
Garat, May 31, June 1, June 3, 1793). These are very odd and naive. He
addresses the Minister Garat: "Citizen Garra."

[87] Schmidt, I, 254 (Dutard, May 19). - Moniteur, XIV. 522 (Letter
addressed to Roland number for Nov. 21, 1792): "The sections (are)
composed of, or at least frequented, nineteen-twentieth of them, by
the lowest class, both in manners and information."

[88] Schmidt, II. 39 (Dutard, June 13).

[89] Schmidt, II.87 (Dutard, June 14). The expression of these fish-
women is still coarser.

[90] Rétif de la Bretonne ("Bibliographie de ses oeuvres, par Jacob,
287). -- (On the pillage of shops, Feb.25 and 26, 1793).

[91] Schmidt, II. 61; I. 265 (Dutard, May 21 and June 17).

[92] Schmidt, I.96 (Letter of citizen Lauchou to the president of the
Convention, Oct. 11, 1792). - II. 37 (Dutard, June 13). Statement of a
wigmaker's wife: "They are a vile set, the servants. Some of them come
here every day. They chatter away and say all sorts of horrible things
about their masters. They are all just alike. Nobody is crazier than
they are. I knew that some of them had received benefits from their
masters, and others who were :still being kindly treated; but nothing
stopped them."

[93] Schmidt, I. 246 (Dutard, May 18). -- Grégoire, "Mémoires," I.
387. The mental and moral decline of the party is well shown in the
new composition of the Jacobin Club after September, 1792: "I went
back there," says Grégoire in September, 1792 (after a year's
absence), "and found it unrecognizable; no opinions could be expressed
there other than those of the Paris section . . . I did not set foot
there again; (it was) a factious disreputable drinking place." --
Buchez et Roux, XXVI. 214 (session of April 30,1793, speech by Buzot).
"Behold that once famous club. But. thirty of its founders remain
there; you find there none but men steeped in debt and crime."

[94] Schmidt, I. 189 (Dutard, May 6).

[95] Cf. Rétif de la Bretonne, "Nuits de Paris," vol. XVI. (July 12,
1789). At this date Rétif is in the Palais-Roya1, where "since the
13th of June numerous meetings have been held and motions made. . . I
found there none but brutal fellows with keen eyes, preparing
themselves for plunder rather than for liberty."

[96] Mortimer-Ternaux, V.226 and following pages (address of the sans-
culottes section, Sept. 25). -- "Archives Nationales," F7, 146
(address of the Roule section, Sept. 23). In relation to the
threatening tone of those at work on the camp, the petitioners add:
"Such was the language of the workshops in 1789 and 1790."

[97] Schmidt, II.12 (Dutard, June 7): "During a few days past I have
seen men from Neuilly, Versailles, and Saint-Germain staying here,
attracted by the scent."

[98 Schmidt, I.254  (Dutard, May 19) .-- At this date robbers swarm in
Paris; Mayor Chambon, in his report to the Convention, himself admits
it (Moniteur, XV. 67, session of Jan. 5, 1793).

[99] De Concourt, "La Société Française pendant 'a Révolution."
(According to the" Courrier de l'Egalité, Jul. 1793).

[100] Buzot, 72.

[101] Moore, Nov.10, 1792 (according to an article in the Chronique de
Paris). 'The day Robespierre made his "apology," "the galleries
contained from seven to eight hundred women, and two hundred men at
most. Robespierre is a priest who has his congregation of devotees." -
- Mortimer-Ternaux, VII. 562 (letter of the deputy Michel, May 20,
1793): "Two or three thousand women, organized and drilled by the
Fraternal Society in session at the Jacobin Club, began their uproar.
which lasted until 6 o'clock,  when the house adjourned. Most of these
creatures are prostitutes."

[102] An expression of Gadol's in his letter to Roland.

[103] Buzot, 57.

[104] Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 80 (Letter of Gadolle to Roland).

[105] Beaulieu, "Essais," I. 108 (an eye-witness). - Schmidt, II. 15.
Report by Perrières, June 8.

[106] Beaulieu, "Essais," I. 100. "Maillard died, his stomach eaten
away by brandy" (April 15, 1794). - Alexandre Sorel, "Stanislas
Maillard," pp. 32 to 42. Report of Fabre d'Eglantine on Maillard, Dec.
17, 1793. A decree subjecting him to indictment along with Ronsin and
Vincent, Maillard publishes his apology, in which we see that he was
already active in the Rue Favart before the 31st of May. "I am one of
the members of that meeting of true patriots and I am proud of it, for
it is there that the spark of that sacred insurrection of the 31st of
May was kindled."

[107] Alexandre Sorel, ibid. (denunciation of the circumstance by
Lecointre, Dec.14, 1793 accompanied with official reports of the
justices). -- "Archives Nationales," F7, 3268 (letter of the directory
of Corbeil to the Minister, with official report, Nov. 28,1792). On
the 26th of November eight or ten armed men, foot-soldiers, and others
on horseback, entered the farm-house of a man named Ruelle, in the
commune of Lisse. They dealt him two blows with their sabers, then put
a bag over his head, kicked him in the face, tormented him, and almost
smothered his wife and two women servants, to make him give up his
money. A carter was shot with a pistol in the shoulder and twice
struck with a saber; the hands about the premises were tied and bound
like so many cattle. Finally the bandits went away, carrying with them
silver plate, a watch, rings, laces, two guns, etc.

[108] Moniteur, XV. 565. -- Buchez et Roux, XXIV. 335 and following
pages. - Rétif de la Bretonne, "Nuits de Paris,"  VIII. 460. (an eye
witness). The last of these details are given by him.

[109] Cf. Ed. Fleury, "Baboeuf;" pp.139 and 150. Through a striking
coincidence the party staff is still of the same order in 1796.
Baboeuf estimates his adherents in Paris as "4,000 revolutionaries,
1,500 members of the former authorities, and 1,000 bourgeois gunners,"
besides soldiers, prisoners, and a police force. He also recruited a
good many prostitutes. The men who come to him are workmen who pretend
to have arsouillé109  in the Revolution and who are ready to repeat
the job, provided it is for the purpose of killing those rich rascals,
the monopolizers, merchants, informers, and panachés at the
Luxembourg." (Letter of the agent of the Bonne-Nouvelle section, April
13, 1796.)

[110] The proportion, composition and spirit of the party are
everywhere the same, especially at Lyons (Guillon de Montléon,
"Mémoires," and Balleydier, "Histoire du peuple de Lyon,". passim); at
Toulon (Lauvergne, "Histoire du department du Var"); at Marseilles,
Bordeaux, Toulouse, Strasbourg, Besançon, etc. -- At Bordeaux
(Riouffe, "Mémoires," 23) "it consisted wholly of vagabonds,
Savoyards, Biscayans, even Germans, . .brokers, and water-carriers,
who had become so powerful that they arrested the rich, and so well-
off that they traveled by post" Riouffe adds: "When I read this
passage in the Conciergerie men from every corner of the republic
exclaimed in one voice: 'It is the same in all the communes!'" -- Cf.
Durand-Maillane, "Mémoires," 67: "This people, thus qualified, since
the suppression of the silver marc has been the most vicious and most
depraved in the community." - Dumouriez, II. 51. "The Jacobins, taken
for the most part, from the most abject and most brutal of the nation,
unable to furnish men of sufficient dignity for offices, have degraded
offices to their own level. . .  They are drunken, barbarous Helots
that have taken the places of the Spartans." -- The sign of their
advent is the expulsion of the liberals and of the refined of 1789.
("Archives Nationales," F7, 4434, No.6. Letter of Richard to the
committee on Public Safety, Ventôse 3, year II.). During the
proconsulate of Baudot at Toulouse "almost all the patriots of 1789
were excluded from the popular club they had founded; an immense
number were admitted whose patriotism reached only as far back as the
10th of August 1792, if it even went so far as the 31st of last May.
It is an established fact that out of more than 1,000 persons who now
compose the club there are not fifty whose patriotism as far back as
the beginning of the Revolution."

[111]  Any tribune taking command of a mob of brutes is well advised
to understand Taine's analysis. One might think Hitler had read Taine
pr somebody who had learned from his wisdom, somewhat like the Devil
who had read the Bible. See page 208, The Secret of Ruling the Masses,
in Rauschning's book, "Hitler Speaks". (SR).

[112] Rœderer, "Chronique des cinquante jours."

[113] Schmidt, I. 246 (Dutard, May 18).

[114] Schmidt, I. 215 (Dutard, May 25).

[115] Buchez et Roux, XXV. 156 (extract from the Patriote Français,
March 30, 1793).Speech by Chasles at the Jacobin Club, March 27: "We
have announced to our fellow-citizens in the country that by means of
the war-tax the poor could be fed by the rich, and that they would
find in the purses of those egoists the wherewithal to live on."
Ibid., 269.  Speech by Rose Lacombe: "Let us make sure of the
aristocrats; let us force them to meet the enemies which Dumouriez is
bringing against Paris. Let us give them to understand that if they
prove treacherous their wives and children shall have their throats
cut, and that we will burn their houses. .   I do not want patriots to
leave the city; I want them to guard Paris. And if we are beaten, the
first man who hesitates to apply the torch, let him be stabbed at
once.  I want all the owners of property who have grabbed everything
and excited the people's anger, to kill the tyrants themselves or else
be killed." [Applause -- April 3.] - Ibid., 302 (in the Convention,
April 8): "Marat demands that 100,000 relatives and friends of the
émigrés be seized as hostages for the safety of the commissioners in
the hands of the enemy." -- Cf. Balleydier, 117, 122. At Lyons, Jan.
26, 1793, Challier addresses the central club: "Sans-culottes,
rejoice! the blood of the royal tiger has flowed in sight of his den!
But full justice is not yet done to the people  There are still 500
among you deserving of the tyrant's fate! " -- He proposes on the 5th
of February a revolutionary tribunal for trying arrested persons in a
revolutionary manner. "It is the only way to force it (the Revolution)
on royal and aristocratic factionists, the only rational way to avenge
the sovereignty of the brave sans-culottes, who belong only to us."  -
- Hydens, a national commissioner adds: "Let 25,000,000 of Frenchmen
perish a hundred times over rather than one single indivisible
Republic!"

[116] Mallet du Pan, the last expression.

[117] Buzot, 64.

[118] Michelet, IV. 6 (according to an oral statement by Daunou). --
Buchez et Roux, 101 (Letter of Louvet to Roland): "At the moment of
the presentation of their petition against armed force (departmental)
by the so-called commissioners of the 48 sections of Paris, I heard
Santerre say in a loud tone to those around him, somewhat in these
words: 'You see, now, these deputies are not up to the Revolution. . .
That all comes from fifty, a hundred two hundred leagues off; they
don't understand one word you say!'"



CHAPTER IV.

PRECARIOUS SITUATION OF A CENTRAL GOVERNMENT LOCKED UP WITHIN A LOCAL
JURISDICTION.

 "Citizen Danton," wrote the deputy Thomas Paine,[1] "the danger,
every day increasing, is of a rupture between Paris and departments.
The departments did not send their deputies to Paris to be insulted,
and every insult shown to them is an insult to the department that
elected them. I see but one effective plan to prevent this rupture
taking place, and that is to fix the residence of the Convention and
of the future assemblies at a distance from Paris. . . . I saw, during
the American Revolution, the exceeding inconvenience that arose from
having the government of Congress within the limits of any municipal
jurisdiction. Congress first resided in Philadelphia, and, after a
residence of four years, it found it necessary to leave it. It then
adjourned to the State of Jersey. It afterwards removed to New York.
It again removed from New York to Philadelphia, and, after
experiencing in every one of these places the great inconvenience of a
government within a government, it formed the project of building a
town not within the limits of any municipal jurisdiction for the
future residence of Congress. In every one of the places where
Congress resided, the municipal authority privately or publicly
opposed itself to the authority of Congress, and the people of each of
those places expected more attention from Congress than their equal
share with the other States amounted to. The same thing now takes
place in France, but in a greater excess."

Danton knew all this, and he is sufficiently clear-headed to
comprehend the danger; but the furrow is laid out, traced, and by
himself. Since the 10th of August Paris holds France down while a
handful of revolutionaries tyrannize Paris.[2]


I.

Jacobin advantages. -- Their sway in the section assemblies. --
Maintenance, re-election and completion of the Commune.--  Its new
chiefs, Chaumette, Hébert and Pache. -- The National Guard recast. --
Jacobins elected officers and sub-officers.-- The paid band of roughs.
-- Public and secret funds of the party.

Owing to the composition and the holding of the section assemblies,
the original  source of power has remained Jacobin, and has become of
a darker and darker hue; accordingly, the electoral processes which,
under the legislative body, had fashioned the usurping Commune of the
10th of August, are perpetuated and aggravated under the
Convention.[3] "In nearly all the sections[4] it is the sans-culottes
who occupy the chair, arrange things inside the chamber, place the
sentinels and provide the censors and auditors. Five or six spies,
familiar with the section, and paid forty sous a day, remain during
the session, and ready to undertake any enterprise. These same
individuals will take orders from one Committee of Surveillance to
another, . . so that if the sans-culottes of one section are not
strong enough they may call in those of a neighboring section." -- In
such assemblies the elections are decided beforehand, and we see how
the faction keeps forcibly in its hands, or obtains by force, every
elective position. The Council of the Commune, in spite of the hostile
inclinations of the Legislative Assembly and the Convention, succeeds
at first in maintaining itself four months; then, in December,[5] when
it is at last compelled to break up, it reappears through the
authorization of the suffrage, reinforced and completed by its own
class, with three chiefs, a syndic-attorney, a deputy and a mayor, all
three authors or abettors of the September massacre; with Chaumette,
Anaxagoras, so-called, once a cabin-boy, then a clerk, always in debt,
a windbag, and given to drink; Hébert, called "Père Duchesne," which
states about all that is necessary for him; Pache, a subaltern busy-
body, a bland, smooth-faced intriguer, who, with his simple air and
seeming worth, pushes himself up to the head of the War Department,
where he used all its resources for pillaging, and who, born in a
door-keeper's lodgings, returns there, either through craft or
inclination, to take his dinner. -- The Jacobins, with the civil power
in their hands, also grab the military power. Immediately after the
10th of August,[6] the National Guard is reorganized and distributed
in as many battalions as there are sections, each battalion thus
becoming "a section in arms"; by this we may judge its composition,
and the kind of rabble-rousers they select as officers and non-
commissioned officers. "The title of National Guard," writes a deputy,
"can no longer be given to the lot of pikemen and substitutes, mixed
with a few bourgeois, who, since the 10th of August, maintain the
military service in Paris." There are, indeed, 110,000 names on paper;
when called out on important occasions, all who are registered may
respond, if not disarmed, but, in general, almost all stay at home and
pay a sans-culotte to mount guard in their place.  In fact, there is
for the daily service only a hired reserve in each section, about one
hundred men, always the same individuals. This makes in Paris a band
of four or five thousand roughs, in which the squads may be
distinguished which have already been seen in September:  Maillard and
his 68 men at the Abbaye, Gauthier and his 40 men at Chantilly,
Audouin, the Sapper of the Carmelites," and his 350 men in the suburbs
of Paris, Fournier, Lazowski and their 1,500 men at Orleans and
Versailles.[7]  As to the pay of these and that of their civil
auxiliaries, the faction is not troubled about that; for, along with
power, it has seized money. To say nothing of its rapine in
September,[8] and without including the lucrative offices at its
disposition, four hundred of these being distributed by Pache alone,
and four hundred more by Chaumette,[9] the Commune has 850,000 francs
per month for its military police. Other bleedings at the Treasury
cause more public money to flow into the pockets of its clients.  One
million per month supports the idle workmen which fife and drum have
collected together to form the camp around Paris.  Five millions of
francs protect the petty tradesmen of the capital against the
depreciation in value of certificates of credit. Twelve thousand
francs a day keep down the price of bread for the Paris poor.[10]  To
these regularly allowed subsidies add the funds which are diverted or
extorted.  On one side, in the War Department, Pache, its accomplice
before becoming its mayor, organizes a steady stream of waste and
theft; in three months he succeeds in bringing about a deficiency of
130,000,000, "without vouchers."[11]  On another side, the Duke of
Orleans, become Philippe-Egalité, dragged along by the men once in his
pay, with a rope around his neck and almost strangled, has to pay out
more than ever, even down to the very depths of his purse; to save his
own life he consents to vote for the King's death, besides resigning
himself to other sacrifices;[12] it is probable that a large portion
of his 74,000,000 of indebtedness at his death is due to all this. --
Thus in possession of civil and military offices, of arms and money,
the faction, masters of Paris, has nothing to do but master the
isolated Convention, and this it invests on all sides.[13]


II.

Its parliamentary recruits. -- Their characters and minds. --  Saint-
Just. -- Violence of the minority in the Convention. -- Pressure of
the galleries. --  Menaces of the streets.

Through the elections, the Jacobin advance-guard of fifty deputies is
already posted there; while, owing to the fascination it has to
excitable and despotic natures, to brutal temperaments, narrow,
disjointed minds, weak imaginations, doubtful honesty, and old
religious or social rancor, it succeeds in doubling this number at the
end of six months.[14]  On the benches of the extreme "Left," around
Robespierre, Danton and Marat, the original nucleus of the September
faction, sit men of their stamp, first, the corrupt, like Chabot,
Tallien and Barras, wretches like Fouché, Guffroy and Javogues, crazy
enthusiasts like David, savage maniacs like Carrier, paltry simpletons
like Joseph Lebon, common fanatics like Levasseur, Baubot, Jeanbon-
Saint-André, Romme and Lebas. Add also, and especially, the future
iron-handed representatives, uncouth, authoritarian, and narrow-
minded, excellent troopers for a political militia, Bourbotte,
Duquesnoy, Rewbell, and Bentabole, "a lot of ignorant bastards," said
Danton,[15] "without any common sense, and patriotic only when drunk.
Marat is nothing but a bawler.  Legendre is fit for nothing but to cut
up his meat. The rest are good for little else than voting by either
sitting down or standing up, but they are cold blooded and have broad
shoulders." From amongst these energetic nonentities we see ascending
a young monster, with calm, handsome features, Saint-Just. He is a
kind of precocious Sylla, 25 years old and a new-comer, who springs at
once from the ranks and, by dint of atrocities, obtains a prominent
position.[16]  Six years before this he began life by a domestic
robbery; on a visit to his mother, he left the house during the night,
carrying off the plate and jewels, which he squandered while living in
a lodging house in the Rue Fromenteau, in the center of Parisian
prostitution;[17] on the strength of this, and at the demand of his
friends, he is shut up in a house of correction for six months.  On
returning to his lodgings he occupied himself with writing an obscene
poem in the style of La Pucelle and then, through a fit of rage
resembling a spasm, he plunged headlong into the Revolution. He
possessed a "blood calcified by study," a colossal pride, an unhinged
conscience, a pompous, gloomy imagination haunted with the bloody
recollections of Rome and Sparta, an intelligence so warped and
twisted as to be comfortable only among excessive paradoxes, shameless
sophistry, and devastating lies.[18]  All these dangerous ingredients
which, mingled in the crucible of suppressed, concentrated ambition,
long and silently boiling within him, have led to a constant defiance,
a determined callousness, an automatic rigidity, and to the summary
politics of the Utopian dictator and exterminator.  -- It is plain
that such a minority will not obey parliamentary rules, and, rather
than yield to the majority that it will introduce into the debate boos
and hisses, insults, threats, and scuffles with daggers, pistols,
sabers and even the "blunder busses" of a veritable combat.

"Vile intriguers, calumniators, scoundrels, monsters, assassins,
blackguards, fools and hogs," such are the usual terms in which they
address each other, and these form the least of their outrages.[19]
The president, at certain sessions, is obliged three times to put on
his hat and, at last, breaks his bell. They insult him, force him to
leave his seat and demand that "he be removed.' Bazire tries to snatch
a declaration presented by him "out of his hands." Bourdon, from the
department of Oise, cries out to him that if he "dares to read it he
will assassinate him."[20] The chamber "has become an arena of
gladiators."[21] Sometimes the entire "Mountain" darts from its
benches on the left, while a similar human wave rolls down from those
on the right; both clash in the center of the room amidst furious
screams and shouts; in one of these hubbubs one of the "Mountain"
having drawn a pistol the Girondist Duperret draws his sword.[22]
After the middle of December prominent members of the "Right,"
constantly persecuted, threatened and outraged," reduced to "being out
every night, are compelled to carry arms in self-defense,"[23] and,
after the King's execution, "almost all" bring them to the sessions of
the Convention. Any day, indeed, they may look for the final attack,
and they are not disposed to die unavenged: during the night of March
9, finding that they are only forty-three, they agree to launch
themselves in a body "at the first hostile movement, against their
adversaries and kill as many as possible" before perishing.[24]

It is a desperate resource, but the only one. For, besides the madmen
belonging to the Convention, they have against them the madmen in the
galleries, and these likewise are September murderers. The vilest
Jacobin rabble purposely takes its stand near them, at first in the
old Riding-school, and then in the new hall in the Tuileries. They see
above and in a circle around them drilled adversaries, eight or nine
hundred heads packed "in the great gallery at the bottom, under a deep
and silent vault," and, besides these, on the sides, a thousand or
fifteen hundred more, two immense tribunes completely filled.[25]  The
galleries of the Constituent and Legislative Assemblies, compared with
these, were calm.  Nothing is more disgraceful to the Convention,
writes a foreign spectator,[26] than the insolence of the audience.
One of the regulations prohibits, indeed, any mark of approval or
disapproval, "but it is violated every day, and nobody is ever
punished for this delinquency."  The majority in vain expresses its
indignation at this "gang of hired ruffians," who beset and oppress
it, while at the very time that it utters its complaints, it endures
and tolerates it. "The struggle is frightful," says a deputy,[27]
"screams, murmurs, stampings, shouts.  .  .  The foulest insults were
launched from the galleries." "For a long time," says another, "no one
can speak here without obtaining their permission."[28] The day that
Buzot obtains the floor to speak against Marat, "they break out
furiously, yelling, stamping, and threatening";[29] every time that
Buzot tries to begin his voice is drowned in the clamor, while he
remains half an hour in the tribune without completing a sentence.  On
the calls of the House, especially, their cries resemble those of the
excited crowd at a Spanish bull-fight, with their eager eyes and
heaving breasts, watching the contest between the bull and the
picadores; every time that a deputy votes against the death of the
King or for an appeal to the people, there are the "vociferations of
cannibals," and "interminable yells" every time that one votes for the
indictment of Marat. "I declare," say deputies in the tribune, "that I
am not free here; I declare that I am forced to debate under the
knife."[30] Charles Villette is told at the entrance that "if he does
not vote for the King's death he will be massacred." -- And these are
not empty threats. On the 10th of March, awaiting the promised riot,
"the tribunes, duly advised, . . . had already loaded their
pistols."[31]  In the month of May, the tattered women hired for the
purpose, under the title of "Ladies of the Fraternity," formed a club,
came daily early in the morning to mount guard, with arms in their
hands, in the corridors of the Convention; they tear up all tickets
given to men or women not of their band; they take possession of all
the seats, show pistols and daggers, and declare that "eighteen
hundred heads must be knocked off to make things go on right."[32]

Behind these two first rows of assailants is a third, much more
compact, the more fearful because it is undefined and obscure, namely,
the vague multitude forming the anarchical set, scattered throughout
Paris, and always ready to renew the 10th of August and 2nd of
September against the obstinate majority.  Incendiary motions and
demands for riots come incessantly from the Commune, and Jacobin,
Cordeliers, and l'Evêché clubs; from the assemblies of the sections
and groups stationed at the Tuileries and in the streets.
"Yesterday," writes the president of the Tuileries section,[33] "at
the same moment, at various points about Paris, the Rue du Bac, at the
Marais, in the Church of St. Eustache, at the Palace of the
Revolution, on the Feuillants terrace, scoundrels were preaching
pillage and assassination."  -- On the following day, again on the
Feuillants terrace, that is to say, right under the windows of the
Convention, "they urge the assassination of Louvel for having
denounced Robespierre. " -- Minister Roland writes: "I hear of nothing
but conspiracy and plans to murder." -- Three weeks later, for several
days, "an up-rising is announced in Paris";[34] the Minister is warned
that "alarm guns would be fired," while the heads are designated
beforehand on which this ever muttering insurrection will burst. In
the following month, in spite of the recent precise law, "the
electoral assembly prints and circulates gratis the list of members of
the Feuillants and Sainte-Chapelle clubs; it likewise orders the
printing and circulation of the list of the eight thousand, and of the
twenty thousand, as well as of the clubs of 1789 and of Montaigu."[35]
In January, "hawkers cry through the streets a list of the aristocrats
and royalists who voted for an appeal to the people."[36]  Some of the
appelants are singled out by name through placards; Thibaut, bishop of
Cantal, while reading the poster on the wall relating to him, hears
some one along side of him say: "I should like to know that bishop of
Cantal; I would make bread tasteless to him." Roughs point out certain
deputies leaving the Assembly, and exclaim: "Those are the beggars to
cut up!" -- From week to week signs of insurrection increase and
multiply, like flashes of lightning in a coming tempest. On the 1st of
January, "it is rumored that the barriers are to be closed at night,
and that domiciliary visits are going to begin again."[37] On the 7th
of January, on the motion of the Gravilliers section, the Commune
demands of the Minister of War 132 cannon stored at Saint Denis, to
divide among the sections.  On the 15th of January the same section
proposes to the other forty-seven to appoint, as on the 10th of
August, special commissaries to meet at the Evêché and watch over
public safety.  That same day, to prevent the Convention from
misunderstanding the object of these proceedings, it is openly stated
in the tribunes that the cannon brought to Paris "are for another 10th
of August against that body." The same day, military force has to be
employed to prevent bandits from going to the prisons "to renew the
massacres." On the 28th of January the Palais-Royal, the resort of the
pleasure-seeking, is surrounded by Santerre, at eight o'clock in the
evening, and "about six thousand men, found without a certificate of
civism," are arrested, subject to the decision one by one of their
section. -- Not only does the lightning flash, but already the bolt
descends in isolated places.[38]   On the 31st of December a man named
Louvain, formerly denounced by Marat as Lafayette's agent, is slain in
the faubourg St. Antoine, and his corpse dragged through the streets
to the Morgue.  On the 25th of February, the grocer shops are pillaged
at the instigation of Marat, with the connivance or sanction of the
Commune.  On the 9th of March the printing establishment of Gorsas is
sacked by two hundred men armed with sabers and pistols. The same
evening and on the next morning the riot extends to the Convention
itself; "the committee of the Jacobin club summons every section in
Paris to arms to "get rid" of the appelant deputies and the ministers;
the Cordeliers club requests the Parisian authorities "to take
sovereignty into their own hands and place the treacherous deputies
under arrest"; Fournier, Varlet, and Champion ask the Commune "to
declare itself in insurrection and close the barriers"; all the
approaches to the Convention are occupied by the "dictators of
massacre," Pétion[39] and Beurnonville being recognized on their
passing, pursued and in danger of death, while furious mobs gather on
the Feuillants terrace "to award popular judgment," "to cut off heads"
and "send them into the departments." -- Luckily, it rains, which
always cools down popular effervescence. Kervélegan, a deputy from
Finistère, who escapes, finds means of sending to the other end of the
faubourg St. Marceau for a battalion of volunteers from Brest that had
arrived a few days before, and who were still loyal; these come in
time and save the Convention. -- Thus does the majority live under the
triple pressure of the "Mountain," the galleries and the outside
populace, and from month to month, especially after March 10, the
pressure gets to be worse and worse.



III.   Physical fear and moral cowardice.

Defection among the majority. -- Effect of physical fear. --  Effect
of moral cowardice. -- Effect of political necessity. --  Internal
weakness of the Girondins. --  Accomplices in principle of the
Montagnards.

Month by month the majority relents under this pressure. -- Some are
simply overcome by physical fear.  On the King's trial, at the third
call of the House, as the deputies on the upper benches voted one by
one for his death, the deputy alongside Daunou "showed in a most
energetic manner his disapproval of this."  On his turn coming, "the
galleries, which had undoubtedly noticed his attitude," burst out in
such violent threats that for some minutes his voice could not be
heard; "silence was at length restored, and he voted -- death."[40] --
Others, like Durand-Maillane, "warned by Robespierre that the
strongest party is the safest," say to themselves "that it is prudent,
and necessary not to annoy the people in their furor," make up their
minds "to keep aloof shielded by their silence and
insignificance."[41] Among the five hundred deputies of the Plain,
many are of this stamp. They begin to be called "the Marsh Frogs."  In
six months they settle down of themselves into so many silent
onlookers, or, rather, homicidal puppets, "whose hearts, shrunk
through fear, rise in their throats"[42] every time that Robespierre
looks at them.  Long before the fall of the Girondists, "downcast at
the present state of things, and no longer finding any inspiration in
their heart," their faces already disclosing "the pallor of fear or
the resignation of despair.[43] Cambacérès hedges to find shelter in
his Committee on Legislation.[44] Barrère, born a valet, and a valet
ready for anything, places his southern mode of doing things at the
service of the probable majority, up to the time of devoting his cruel
rhetoric to the service of the dominant minority.  Sièyes, after
casting his vote for death, maintains an obstinate silence, as much
through disgust as through prudence:

"What does my glass of wine matter in this torrent of booze?"[45]

Many, even among the Girondists, use sophistry to color their
concessions in their own eyes. Some among these "think that they enjoy
some degree of popularity, and fear that this will be compromised.[46]
Again, they put forth the pretext of the necessity of maintaining
one's influence for important occasions.  Occasionally, they affect to
say, or say it in good faith, Let them (the extravagant) keep on, they
will find each other out and use themselves up." -- Frequently, the
motives alleged are scandalous or grotesque. According to Barbaroux,
immediate execution must be voted, because that is the best way to
exculpate the Gironde and shut the mouths of their Jacobin
calumniators.[47] According to Berlier, it is essential to vote death
for, why vote for exile? Louis XVI. would be torn to pieces before
reaching the frontier.[48] -- On the eve of the verdict, Vergniaud
says to M. de Ségur: "I vote Death? It is an insult to suppose me
capable of such a disgraceful act!" And, "he sets forth the frightful
iniquity of such a course, its uselessness, and even its danger." "I
would rather stand alone in my opinion than vote Death!"[49]  The next
day, having voted Death, he excuses himself by saying "that he did not
think he ought to put the life of one man in the scale against the
public welfare."[50]  Fifteen or twenty deputies, influenced by his
example, voted as he did, which was  enough to turn the majority.[51]
The same weakness is found at other decisive moments. Charged with the
denunciation of the conspiracy of the 10th of March, Vergniaud
attributes it to the aristocrats, and admits to Louvet that "he did
not wish to name the real conspirators for fear of embittering violent
men already pushing things to excess."[52] The truth is, the
Girondists, as formerly the Constitutionalists, are too civilized for
their adversaries, and submit to force for lack of resolution to
employ it themselves.

"To put down the faction," says one of them,[53] "can be done only by
cutting its throat, which, perhaps, would not be difficult to do. All
Paris is as weary as we are of its yoke, and if we had any liking for
or knowledge how to deal with insurrections, we could soon throw it
off. But how can we make men adopt such necessary atrocious measures
when they are criticizing their adversaries for taking these? And yet
they would have saved the country." Consequently, incapable of action,
able only to talk, reduced to protests, to barring the way to
revolutionary decrees, to making appeals to the department against
Paris, they stand as an obstacle to all the practical people who are
heartily engaged in the brunt of the action.  --  "There is no doubt
that Carnot is as honest as they are, as honest as a fanatic spectator
can be."[54] Cambon, undoubtedly with as much integrity as Roland,
spoke as loudly up as he against the 2nd  of September, the Commune,
and anarchy.[55] -- But, to Carnot and Cambon, who pass their nights,
one in establishing his budgets, and the other in studying his
military maps, they require, first of all, a government which will
provide them with money and with soldiers, and, therefore, an
unscrupulous and unanimous Convention ; that is to say, there being no
other expedient, a Convention under compulsion, i.e. a Convention
purged of troublesome some, dissentient speakers;[56] in other words,
the dictatorship of the Parisian proletariat. After the 15th of
December, 1792, Cambon completely accepts this, and even erects the
dictatorship of the proletariat into an European system. From that
time[57] he preaches universal sans-culotterie, a form of government
in which the poor will rule and the rich will pay, in short, the
restoration of privileges in an inverse sense. The later expression of
Siéyès which has already come true:  the problem is no longer how to
apply the principles of the Revolution, but the salvation of its men.
Faced with this more and more distressing imperative, many of
undecided deputies go with the tide, letting the Montagnards have
their own way and separate themselves from the Girondists.

And, what is graver still, the Girondists, apart from all these
defections, are untrue to themselves. Not only are they ignorant of
how to draw a line, of how to form themselves into a compact body: not
only "is the very idea of a collective proceeding repulsive, each
member desiring to keep himself independent. and act as he thinks
best,"[58] make motions without consulting others, and vote as the
occasion calls for against his party, but, through its abstract
principle, they are in accord with their adversaries, and, on the
fatal declivity whereon their honorable and humane instincts still
retain them, this common dogma, like a concealed weight, causes them
to sink lower and lower down, even into the bottomless pit, where the
State, according to the formula of Jean Jacques, omnipotent,
philosophic, anti-Catholic, anti-Christian, despotic, leveling,
intolerant, and propagandist, seizes education, levels fortunes,
persecutes the Church, oppresses consciences, crushes out the
individual, and, by military foice, imposes its structures abroad.[59]
Basically, apart from the Jacobin excess of brutality and of
precipitation, the Girondists, setting out from the same principles as
the Jacobin "Mountain," march forward to the same end along with them.
Hence the effect of ideological prejudice on them in weakening their
moral attitudes. Secretly, in their hearts, revolutionary desires
conspire with those of their enemies, and, on many occasions, make
them betray themselves. -- Through these devices and multiplied
weaknesses, on the one hand, the majority diminishes so as to present
but 279 votes against 228.[60]  And, on the other hand, through
frequent failures, it surrenders to the besiegers one by one every
commanding post of the public citadel. Now, at the first attack,
nothing remains but to fly, or to beg for mercy.



IV.  Jacobin victory over Girondin majority.

Principal decrees of the Girondist majority. -- Arms and means of
attack surrendered by it to its adversaries.

The Convention had voted, on principle, for the establishment of a
military departmental guard, but, owing to the opposition of the
Montagnards,  it fails to put the principle into operation. -- For six
months it is protected, and, on the 10th of March, saved, through the
spontaneous aid of provincial federates, but, far from organizing
these passing auxiliaries into a permanent body of faithful defenders,
it allows them to be dispersed or corrupted by Pache and the Jacobins.
-- It passes decrees frequently for the punishment of the abettors of
the September crime, but, on their menacing petition, the trials are
indefinitely postponed.[61] -- It has summoned to its bar Fournier,
Lazowski, Deffieux, and other leaders, who, on the 10th of March, were
disposed to throw it out of the windows, but, on making their impudent
apology, it sends them away acquitted, free, and ready to begin over
again.[62] At the War Department it raises up in turn two cunning
Jacobins, Pache and Bouchotte, who are to work against it unceasingly.
At the Department of the Interior it allows the fall of its firmest
support, Roland, and appoints Garat in his place, an ideologist, whose
mind, composed of glittering generalities, with a character made up of
contradictory inclinations, fritters itself away in reticences, in
falsehoods and in half-way treachery, under the burden of his too
onerous duties. -- It votes the murder of the King, which places an
insurmountable barrier of blood between it and all honest persons. --
It plunges the nation into a war in behalf of principles,[63] and
excites an European league against France, which league, in
transferring the perils arising from the September crime to the
frontier, permanently establishes the September régime in the
interior. -- It forges in advance the vilest instruments of the
forthcoming Reign of Terror,

* through the decree which establishes the revolutionary tribune, with
Fouquier-Tinville as public prosecutor, and the obligation for each
juryman to utter his verdict aloud;[64]

* through the decree condemning every émigré to civil death, and the
confiscation of his property "of either sex," even a simple fugitive,
even returned within six months;[65]

*  through the decree which "outlaws aristocrats and enemies of the
Revolution";[66]

* through the decree which, in each commune, establishes a tax on the
wealth of the commune in order to adapt the price of bread to
wages;[67]

* through the decree which subjects every bag of grain to declaration
and to the maximum (price conrol);[68]

* through the decree which awards six years in irons for any traffic
in the currency;[69]

*  through the decree which orders a forced loan of a billion,
extorted from the rich;[70]

* through the decree which raises in each town a paid army of sans-
culottes "to hold aristocrats under their pikes "[71]  and at last,

* through the decree which, instituting the Committee of Public
Safety,[72] fashions a central motor to set these sharp scythes agoing
and mow down fortunes and lives with the utmost rapidity. -

To these engines of general destruction it adds one more, which is
special and operates against itself.  Not only does it furnish its
rivals of the Commune with the millions they need to pay their bands;
not only does it advance to the different sections,[73] in the form of
a loan, the hundreds of thousands of francs which are needed to
satisfy the thirst of their yelpers; but again, at the end of March,
just at the moment when it happens to escape the first Jacobin
invasion, it provides for the election by each section of a Committee
of Supervision, authorized to make domiciliary visits and to disarm
the suspected;[74] it allows this committee to make arrests and
inflict special taxes; to facilitate its operations it orders a list
of the inmates of each house, legibly "stating names, surnames, ages
and professions," to be affixed to the entrance,[75] a copy of which
must be left with the committee, and which is subject to its control.

To end the matter, it submits itself; and, "regardless of the
inviolability of a representative of the French nation,"[76] it
decides that, in case of political denunciation, its own members may
be brought to trial.



V.    Jacobin violence against the people.

Committees of Supervision after March 28, 1793. - The régime of August
and September, 1792, revived. - Disarmament. - Certificates of civism.
- Forced enlistment. - Forced loans. - Use made of the sums raised. -
Vain resistance of the population. - Manifestations by young men
repressed. - Violence and victory of the Jacobins in the assemblies of
the sections.

"I seem to hear you," writes a sarcastic observer,[77] "addressing the
(Jacobin) faction in these terms:

 'Now, look here, we have the means, but we are not disposed to make
use of them against you; it would be unfair to attack you unarmed.
Public power emanates from two sources, legal authority and armed
force. Now we will at once create committees of supervision, of which
you shall appoint the heads, for the reason that, with a whip of this
kind, you can lash every honest man in Paris, and thus regulate public
opinion.  We will do more than this, because our sacrifice is not yet
complete; we are disposed to make you a present of our armed force,
with authority to disarm anybody that you may suspect. As far as we
are concerned, we are ready to surrender even our pocketknives,[78]
and remain apart, content with our virtues and talents. -- But mind
what you are about. Should you be so ungrateful as to attack our
sacred persons, we shall find avengers in the departments.'

 'What good will the departments do you, let loose against each other,
after you are out of the way?' " (was the imaginary Jacobin reply!)

No summary could be more exact nor any prediction more accurately
based.  Henceforth, and by virtue of the Convention's own decrees, not
only have the Jacobins the whole of the executive power in their
hands, as this is found in civilized countries, but likewise the
discretionary power of the antique tyrant or modern pasha, that
arbitrary, strong arm which, singling out the individual, falls upon
him and takes from him his arms, his freedom, and his money. After the
28th of March, we see in Paris a resumption of the system which,
instituted by the 10th of August, was completed by the 2nd  of
September.  In the morning, drums beat to arms; at noon, the barriers
are shut, the bridges and passages guarded, and sentinels stand on the
corners of the streets; no one is allowed "to pass outside the limits
of his section," or circulate within them without showing his
certificate of civism; houses are invested, numbers of persons are
arrested,[79] and, during the succeeding months, this operation is
carried on under the sway of the Committee of Supervision. Now, this
Committee, in almost all the sections, "is made up of sans-culottes,"
not fathers of families, men of judgment and experience, people living
a long time in the quarter, but "strangers, or young men trying to be
something,"[80] ambitious underlings, ignorant daredevils, despotic
intruders, fierce, touchy and inexperienced inquisitors".

The first thing is the disarmament of the suspected.  "It is enough
that any citizen shall be denounced, and that the case is made known
to the Committee";[81] or that his certificate of civism is less than
one month old,[82] to make a delegate, accompanied by ten armed men,
search his house.  In the section of the Réunion alone, on the first
day, 57 denounced persons are thus disarmed for "acts of incivism or
expressions adverse to the Republic," not merely lawyers, notaries,
architects, and other prominent men, but petty tradesmen and shop-
keepers, hatters, dyers, locksmiths, mechanics, gilders, and bar-
keepers.  One section; in defiance of the law, adds to these in block
the signers of the petition of the eight thousand and that of the
twenty thousand. "Through such schemes," says an observer,[83] "all
the guns in Paris, numbering more than a hundred thousand, pass into
the hands of the faction.  None remain for its adversaries, even in
the gunshops; for, through an ordinance of the Commune, no one may
purchase a gun without a certificate issued by the Committee of
Supervision of the section.[84] -- On the other hand, owing to the
power of granting or refusing certificates of civism, each Committee,
on its own authority, interposes barriers as it pleases in all
directions, public or private, to every inhabitant within its bounds.
It is impossible for any person who has not obtained his
certificate[85] to have a passport for traveling, although a
tradesman; no public employee, no clerk of the administration,
advocate or notary can keep his place without it; no one can go out of
Paris or return late at night.  If one goes out to take a walk, there
is danger of being arrested and brought back between two soldiers to
the committee of the section; if one stays at home, it is with the
chance of being inspected as a harbourer of priests or nobles. Any
Parisian opening his windows in the morning may find his house
surrounded by a company of carmagnoles, if he has not the
indispensable certificate in his pocket.[86]  In the eyes of a Jacobin
committee, there is no civism but in Jacobinism, and we can imagine
whether this patent would be willingly conferred on opponents, or even
on the lukewarm; what examinations they would have to undergo; what
questions they would be obliged to answer; how many goings and
comings, solicitations, appearances and waitings would be imposed on
them; with what persistency it would excite delay, and with what
satisfaction it would be refused. Buzot presented himself four times
at the Committee of Quatre-Nations to obtain a certificate for his
domestic, and failed to get it.[87]  There is another still more
effective expedient for keeping the ill-disposed in check The
committee of each section, aided by a member of the Commune,[88]
designates the twelve thousand men drafted for the expedition into La
Vendée, and picks them by name, one by one, as it may select them; the
effect of this is to purge Paris of twelve thousand anti-Jacobins, and
tranquilize the section assemblies, where opposition is often
objectionable.  To this end the committee selects first, and gives the
preference to, the clerks of lawyers and notaries, those of banking-
houses, the administration, and of merchants, the unmarried in all
offices and counting-rooms, in short, all the Parisian middle class
bachelors, of which there are more than twenty-five thousand.[89] The
ordinance stipulates that one out of two should be taken, undoubtedly
those with the poorest reputation with the Committee, this proceeding
will silence the others and prevent them from speaking up in their
sections.[90]

While one hand clutches the collar, the other rummages the pocket. The
Committee of Supervision of each section, always aided by a member of
the Commune,[91] designates all persons in easy circumstances,
estimates their incomes as it pleases, or according to common report,
and sends them an order to pay a particular sum in proportion to their
surplus, and according to a progressive tax. The allowance which is
exempt for the head of a family is 1,500 francs per annum, besides
1,000 francs for his wife and 1,000 francs for each child; if the
excess is over 15,000 or 20,000 francs, they assess it 5,000 francs;
if more than 40,000 or 50,000 francs, they assess it 20,000; in no
case may the surplus retained exceed 30,000 francs; all above this
amount goes to the State. The first third of this sudden contribution
to the public funds is required in forty-eight hours, the second in a
fortnight, and the remaining third in a month, under serious
penalties.  If the tax happens to be exaggerated, if an income is
uncertain or imaginary, if receipts are yet to come in, if there is no
ready money, if; like Francœur, the opera manager, a man "has nothing
but debts," so much the worse.  "In case of refusal," writes the
section of Bon-Conseil, "his personal and real property shall be sold
by the revolutionary committee, and his person declared
suspected."[92] -- Even this is simply an installment on account:

"There is no desire on the part of the Committee at the present moment
to demand more than a portion of your surplus," that which rest will
be taken later. Desfieux, the bankrupt,[93] has already, in the
tribune of the Jacobin club, estimated the fortunes of one hundred of
the wealthiest notaries and financiers in Paris at 640,000,000 francs;
the municipality sent a list of their names to the sections to have it
completed; if only one-tenth was taken from them, it would amount to
64,000,000, which "big sponges," thoroughly squeezed, would disgorge a
much larger amount.

"The richest of Frenchmen," says Robespierre, "should not have more
than 3,000 francs a year."[94]

The contributions of "these gentlemen" suffice to arm the sans-
culottes, "remunerate artisans for their attendance in the section
meetings, and support laborers without work."[95]  Already through the
sovereign virtue of summary requisitions, everything is spoil;
carriage-horses are seized in their stables, while vehicles belonging
to aged ladies, mostly widows, and the last of the berlins and elegant
carriages still remaining in Paris, are taken out of the livery-
stables.[96]

With such powers used in this way, the section makes the most of the
old deep-seated enmity of the poor against the rich;[97] it secures
the firm loyalty of the needy and of vagabonds; thanks to the vigorous
arms of its active clients, it completely overcomes the feeble,
transient, poorly-contrived resistance which the National Convention
and the Parisian population still oppose to its rule.

On the 13th of April Marat, accused three months before and daily
becoming bolder in his fractiousness, is finally indicted through a
decree of the incensed majority;[98] on the 24th he appears before the
revolutionary tribunal. But the revolutionary tribunal, like other
newly organized institutions, is composed of pure Jacobins, and,
moreover, the party has taken its precautions.  Marat, for his escort
to the court-room has "the municipal commissaries, envoys from the
various sections, delegates from all the patriotic clubs"; besides
these, "a multitude of good patriots" fill the hall beforehand; "early
in the morning the other chambers of the Palais de Justice, the
corridors, the courts and adjacent streets" overflow with "sans-
culottes ready to avenge any outrage that may be perpetrated on their
favorite defender."[99]  Naturally, excessively conceited, he speaks
not like an accused, but "as an apostle and martyr." He is overwhelmed
with applause, unanimously acquitted, crowned with laurel, borne in
triumph to the Convention, where he thunders a song of victory, while
the Girondist majority is obliged to suffer his presence awaiting to
be subjected to their banishments. -- Equally as impotent as the
moderates of the Legislative Assembly are the moderates in the street
who recover themselves only again to be felled to the ground. On the
4th and 5th of May, five or six hundred young fellows, well-dressed
and without arms, have assembled in the Champs-Elysées and at the
Luxembourg to protest against the ordinance of the Commune, which
drafts them for the expedition to La Vendée;[100] they shout, "Vive la
Republique! Vive la Loi!  Down with anarchists! Send Marat, Danton and
Robespierre to the Devil!" Naturally, Santerre's paid guard disperses
these young sparks; about a thousand are arrested, and henceforth the
rest will be careful not to make any open demonstration on the public
thoroughfares. -- Again, for lack of something better to do, we see
them frequently returning to the section assemblies, especially early
in May; they find themselves in a majority, and enter on discussions
against Jacobin tyranny; at the Bon-Conseil section, and at those of
Marseilles and l'Unité, Lhuillier is hooted at, Marat threatened, and
Chaumette denounced.[101] -- But these are only flashes in the pan; to
be firmly in charge in these permanent assemblies, the moderates, like
the sans-culottes, would have to be in constant attendance, and use
their fists every night.  Unfortunately, the young men of 1793 have
not yet arrived at that painful experience, that implacable hate, that
athletic ruggedness which is to sustain them in 1795. "After one
evening, in which the seats everywhere were broken "[102] on the backs
of the contestants, they falter, and never recover themselves, the
professional roughs, at the end of a fortnight, being victorious all
along the line. -- The better to put resistance down, the roughs form
a special league amongst themselves, and go around from section to
section to give each other help.[103]  Under the title of a
deputation, under the pretext of preventing disturbance, a troop of
sturdy fellows, dispatched by the neighboring section, arrives at the
meeting, and suddenly transforms the minority into a majority, or
controls the vote by force of clamor. Sometimes, at a late hour, when
the hall is nearly empty, they declare themselves a general meeting,
and about twenty or thirty will cancel the discussions of the day. At
other times, being, through the municipality, in possession of the
police, they summon an armed force to their aid, and oblige the
refractory to decamp. And, as examples are necessary to secure perfect
silence, the fifteen or twenty who have formed themselves into a full
meeting, with the five or six who form the Committee of Supervision,
issue warrants of arrest against the most prominent of their
opponents. The vice-president of the Bon-Conseil section, and the
juge-de-paix of the Unité section, learn in prison that it is
dangerous to present to the Convention an address against anarchists
or sign a debate against Chaumette.[104] -- Towards the end of May, in
the section assemblies, nobody dares open his mouth against a Jacobin
motion; often, even, there are none present but Jacobins; for example,
at the Gravilliers, they have driven out all not of their band, and
henceforth no "intriguer"[105] is imprudent enough to present himself
there. -- Having become the sovereign People assembled in Council,
with full power to

* disarm,

* put on the index,

* displace,

* tax,

* send off to the army, and

* imprison whoever gives them umbrage,

they are able now, with the municipality at their back and as guides,
to turn the armament which they have obtained from the Convention
against it, attack the Girondists in their last refuge, and possess
themselves of the only fort not yet surrendered.



VI.   Jacobin tactics.

Jacobin tactics to constrain the Convention. - Petition of April 15
against the Girondins. - Means employed to obtain signatures. - The
Convention declares the petition calumnious. - The commission of
Twelve and the arrest of Hébert. - Plans for massacres. - Intervention
of the Mountain leaders.

To conquer the last bastion of the Girondists all they have to do is
simultaneously in all sections to do what they used to do separately
in each section: substituting themselves, by fraud and by force, for
the Veritable people, they are able to conjure up before the
Convention the phantom of popular disapproval. -- From the
municipality, holding its sessions at the Hôtel-de-ville, and from the
conventicle established at the Evêché, emissaries are sent forth who
present the same formal communication in writing at the same time in
every section in Paris.[106] "Here is a petition for signatures." --
"Read it." -- "But that is unnecessary -- it is already adopted by a
majority of the sections." --  This lie is accepted by some and
several sign in good faith without reading it. In others they read it
and refuse to sign it; in others, again, it is read and they pass to
the order of the day. What happens? The plotters and ringleaders
remain behind until all conscientious citizens have withdrawn; then,
masters of the debate, they decide that the petition must be signed,
and they accordingly affix their signatures. The next day, on the
arrival of citizens at the section, the petition is handed to them for
their names, and the debate of the previous evening is advanced
against them. If they offer any remarks, they are met with these
terrifying words:

Sign, or no certificate of civism!

And, as if approving this threat, several of the sections which are
mastered by those who draw up the lists of proscriptions, decide that
the certificates of civism must be renewed, new ones being refused to
those refusing to sign the petition. They do not rest content with
these moves; men armed with pikes are posted in the streets to force
the signatures of those who pass."[107] -- The whole weight of
municipal authority has been publicly cast into the scale.
"Commissaries of the Commune, accompanied by municipal secretaries,
with tables, inkstands, paper and registers, promenade about Paris
preceded by drums and a body of militia." From time to time, they make
"a solemn halt," and declaim against Brissot, Vergniaud, Guadet, and
then "demand and obtain signatures."[108]-- Thus extorted and borne to
the Convention by the mayor, in the name of the council-general of the
Commune and of the thirty-five sections, the imperious petition
denounces twenty-two Girondists as traitors, and insolently demands
their expulsion. -- Another day it is found that a similar summons and
similarly presented, in the name of the forty-eight sections, is
authorized only by thirteen or fourteen.[109] -- Sometimes the
political parade is still more incautious. Pretended deputies of the
Faubourg St. Antoine appear before the Convention and assert the
revolutionary program. "If you do not adopt it," they say, "we will
declare ourselves in a state of insurrection; there are 40,000 men at
the door."[110] The truth is, "about fifty bandits, scarcely known in
the Faubourg," and led by a former upholsterer, now a commissary of
police, "have gathered together on their route" all they could find in
the workshops "and in the stores," the multitude packed into the Place
Vendôme not knowing what was demanded in their name.[111] --  These
dummy tumults are, however, useful; they show the Convention its
master, and prepare the way for a more efficient invasion. The day
Marat was acquitted, the whole of his sewer, male and female, came
along with him; under pretext of parading before the Convention, they
invaded the hall, scattered themselves over the benches and steps,
and, supported by the galleries, installed anew in the tribune, amidst
a tempest of applause and of tumult, the usual promoter of
insurrection, pillage and assassination.[112] - And yet, however
energetic and however persistent  the pressure, the Convention, which
has yielded on so many points, will not consent to mutilate itself. It
pronounces the petition presented against the Twenty-two calumnious;
it institutes a special commission of twelve members to search the
papers of the Commune and the sections for legal proofs of the plot
openly and steadily maintained by the Jacobins against the national
representation; Mayor Pache is summoned to the bar of the house;
warrants of arrest are issued against Hébert, Dobsen and Varlet. --
Since popular manifestations have not answered the purpose, and the
Convention, instead of obeying, is rebellious, nothing is left but to
employ force.

"Since the 10th of March," says Vergniaud, in the tribune,[113]
"murder is openly and unceasingly fomented against you." -- "It is a
terrible time," says an observer, "strongly resembling that preceding
the 2nd of September."[114] -- That same evening, at the Jacobin club,
a member proposes to "exterminate the scoundrels before leaving.  "I
have studied the Convention," he says[115] "it is composed in part of
scoundrels who ought to be punished. All the supporters of Dumouriez
and the other conspirators should be put out of the way; fire the
alarm gun and close the barriers!" The following forenoon, "all the
walls in Paris are covered with posters," calling on the Parisians to
"hurry up and slit the throats of the statesmen."[116] -- " We must do
something to put an end to this!" is the slogan of the sans-culottes.
-- The following week, at the Jacobin club, as elsewhere, "immediate
insurrection is the order of the day. . . . What we formerly called
the sacred enthusiasm of freedom and patriotism, is now metamorphosed
into the fury of an excited populace, which can no longer be regulated
or disciplined except by force. There is not one of these scoundrels
who would not accept a counter-revolution, provided they could be
allowed to crush and stamp on the most noted conservatives.[117] . .
.  The conclusion is that the day, the hour, the minute that the
faction believes that it can usefully and without risk bring into play
all the brigands in Paris,[118] then the insurrection will undoubtedly
take place." Already the plan of the massacre is under consideration
by the lowest class of fanatics at the mayoralty, the Evêché, and the
Jacobin club.[119]

Some isolated house is to be selected, with a suite of three rooms on
the ground floor, and a small court in the rear; the twenty-two
Girondists are to be caught in the night and brought to this
slaughter-house arranged beforehand; each in turn is to be passed
along to the last room, where he is to be killed and his body tumbled
into a hole dug in the middle of the court, and then the whole covered
over with quick-lime; it will be supposed that they have emigrated,
and, to establish the fact, false correspondence will be printed.[120]
A member of the Committee on the Municipal Police declares that the
plan is feasible:

"We will Septemberize(kill) them -- not we ourselves, but men who are
ready, and who will be well paid for it."

The Montagnards present Léonard Bourdon and Legendre, make no
objection.  The latter simply remarks that the Girondists should not
be seized in the Convention; outside the Convention "they are
scoundrels whose death would save the Republic," and the act is
lawful; he would like to see "with them every rascal on the 'black'
side perish without interfering." -- Several, instead of 22 deputies,
demand 30 or 32, and some 300; the suspected of each district may be
added, while ten or a dozen proscription lists are already made out.
Through a clean sweep, executed the same night, at the same hour, they
may be conducted to the Carmelites, near the Luxembourg, and, "if
there is not room enough there," to Bicêtre; here, "they will
disappear from the surface of the globe."[121] Certain leaders desired
to entrust the purification of Paris to the sagacity of popular
instinct. "In loose and disconnected phrases" they address the people:
"Rouse yourselves, and act according to your inclinations, as my
indications might only startle those you should strike down and
thereby allow them to escape!" Varlet proposes, on the contrary,  a
plan of public safety, very full and explicit, in fifteen articles:

 "Sweep away the deputies of the 'Plain,' and other deputies of the
Constituent and Legislative Assemblies, all nobles, priests,
pettifoggers, etc.; exterminate the whole of that race, and the
Bourbons, too, with entire suppression of the Ministers."

Hébert, for his part, alluding to the Girondists, writes in his
gazette that "the last hour of their death is going to strike," and
that, "when their foul blood shall have been spilled, aristocratic
brawlers will return to their holes, the same as on the 10th of
August. "Naturally, the professional slaughterers are notified. A
certain Laforet, an old-clothes dealer on the Quai-du-Louvre, who,
with his wife, had already distinguished themselves on the 2nd of
September, reckons that "there are in Paris 6,000 sans-culottes ready
to massacre at the first sign all dangerous deputies, and eight
thousand petitioners," undoubtedly those who, in the several sections,
signed the addresses to the Convention against the Commune. -- Another
"Septemberizer,"[122] commanding the battalion of the Jardin des
Plantes, Henriot, on meeting a gang of men working on the wharves,
exclaims in his rough voice:

"Good morning, my good fellows, we shall need you soon, and at better
work. You won't have wood to carry in your carts -- you'll have to
carry dead bodies."

 "All right," replies one of the hands, half tipsy, "we'll do it as we
did the 2nd  of September.  We'll turn a penny by it." -

Cheynard, a locksmith and machinist at the mint, is manufacturing
daggers, and the women of the tribunes are already supplied with two
hundred of them." -

Finally, on the 29th of May, Hébert proposes, in the Jacobin
club,[123] "to pounce down on the Commission of Twelve," and another
Jacobin declares that "those who have usurped dictatorial power,"
meaning by that the Girondists, "are outlawed."

All this is extreme, clumsily done, useless and dangerous, or, at
least, premature, and the chiefs of the "Mountain," Danton,
Robespierre, and Marat himself; better informed and less shortsighted,
are well aware that brutal murder would be revolting to the already
half-aroused departments.[124]  The legislative machinery is not to be
shattered, but made use of; it must be employed against itself to
effect the required injury; in this way the operation at a distance
will appear legal, and, garnished with the usual high-flown speeches,
impose on the provincial mind.[125] From the 3rd of April,
Robespierre, in the Jacobin club, always circumspect and considerate,
had limited and defined in advance the coming insurrection. "Let all
good citizens," he says, "meet in their sections, and come and force
us to place the disloyal deputies under arrest."  Nothing can be more
moderate, and, if they refer to principles, nothing can be more
correct.  The people always reserves the right to cooperate with its
mandatories, which right it practices daily in the galleries. Through
extreme precaution, which well describes the man,[126] Robespierre
refuses to go any further in his interference. "I am incapable of
advising the people what steps to take for its salvation.  That is not
given to one man alone. I, who am exhausted by four years of
revolution, and by the heart-rending spectacle of the triumph of
tyranny, am not thus favored. . . . I, who am wasted by a slow fever,
and, above all by the fever of patriotism. As I have said, there
remains for me no other duty to fulfill at the present moment."
What's more, he enjoins the municipality "to unite with the people,
and form a close alliance with it." -- In other words, the blow must
be struck by the Commune, the "Mountain" must appear to have nothing
to do with it. But, "it is privy to the secret";[127] its chiefs pull
the wires which set the brutal dancing-jacks in motion on the public
trestles of the Hôtel-de-ville.  Danton and Lacroix wrote in the
bureau of the Committee of "Public Safety," the insolent summons which
the procureur of the Commune is to read to the Convention on the 31st
of May, and, during seven days of crisis, Danton, Robespierre and
Marat are the counselors, directors and moderators of all proceedings,
and lead, push on or restrain their stooges of the insurrection within
the limits of this program.



VII.  The central Jacobin committee in power.

The 27th day of May. - The central revolutionary committee. - The
municipal body displaced and then restored. - Henriot, commanding
general. -

It is a tragicomic drama in three acts, each winding up with a coup de
théâtre, always the same and always foreseen. Legendre, one of the
principal stage hands, has taken care to announce beforehand that,

"If this lasts any longer," said he, at the Cordeliers club,[128] "if
the 'Mountain' remains quiet any longer, I shall call in the people,
and tell the galleries to come down and take part with us in the
deliberations."

At first, on the 27th of May, in relation to the arrest of Hébert and
his companions, the "Mountain," supported by the galleries, becomes
furious.[129]  In vain does the majority again and again demonstrate
its numerical superiority. "We shall resist," says Danton, "so long as
there are a hundred true citizens to help us." --  "President,"
exclaims Marat to Isnard,  you are a tyrant!  a despicable tyrant!" --
"I demand," says Couthon, "that the President be impeached!" --  "Off
with the President to the Abbaye!" -- The "Mountain" has decided that
he shall not preside; it springs from the benches and rushes at him,
shouts "death to him," becomes hoarse with its vociferations, and
compels him to leave the chair through weariness and exhaustion. It
drives out his successor, Fonfrède, in the same manner, and ends by
putting Hérault-Séchelles, one of its own accomplices, in the chair.
-- Meanwhile, at the entrance of the Convention, "the regulations have
been violated"; a crowd of armed men "have spread through the passages
and obstructed the approaches"; the deputies, Meillan, Chiappe and
Lydon, on attempting to leave, are arrested, Lydon being stopped "by
the point of a saber at his breast,"[130] while the leaders on the
inside encourage, protect and justify their trusty aids outdoors. --
Marat, with his usual audacity, on learning that Raffet, the
commandant, was clearing the passages, comes to him "with a pistol in
his hand and puts him under arrest,"[131] on the ground that the
people and its sacred rights of petition and the petitioners must be
respected. There are "five or six hundred, almost all of them
armed,"[132] stationed for three hours at the doors of the hall; at
the last moment, two other troops, dispatched by the Gravilliers and
Croix-Rouge sections, arrive and bring them their final afflux. Thus
strengthened, they spring over the benches assigned to them, spread
through the hall, and mingle with the deputies who still remain in
their seats. It is after midnight; many of the representatives, worn
out with fatigue and disgust, have left; Pétion, Lasource, and a few
others, who wish to get in, "cannot penetrate the threatening crowd."
To compensate themselves, and in the places of the absent, the
petitioners, constituting themselves representatives of France, vote
with the "Mountain," while the Jacobin president, far from turning
them out, himself invites them "to set aside all obstacles prejudicial
to the welfare of the people.." In this gesticulating crowd, in the
half-light of smoky lamps, amidst the uproar of the galleries, it is
difficult to hear well what motion is put to vote; it is not easy to
see who rises or sits down, and two decrees pass, or seem to pass, one
releasing Hébert and his accomplices, and the other revoking the
commission of the Twelve.[133] Forthwith the messengers who await the
issue run out and carry the good news to the Hôtel-de-ville, the
Commune celebrating its triumph with an explosion of applause.

The next morning, however, notwithstanding the terrors of a call of
the House and the fury of the "Mountain," the majority, as a defensive
stroke, revokes the decree by which it is disarmed, while a new decree
maintains the commission of the Twelve; the operation, accordingly, is
to be done over again, but not the whole of it; for Hébert and the
others imprisoned remain at liberty, while the majority, which,
through a sense of propriety or the instinct of self-preservation, had
again placed its sentinels on the outposts, consents, either through
weakness or hopes of conciliation, to let the prisoners remain free.
The result is they have had the worst of the fight. Their adversaries,
accordingly, are encouraged, and at once renew the attack, their
tactics, very simple, being those which have already proved so
successful on the 10th of August.

The matter now in hand is to invoke against the derived and
provisional rights of the government, the superior and inalienable
right of the people; also, to substitute for legal authority, which,
in its nature, is limited, revolutionary power, which, in its essence,
is absolute. To this end the section of the City, under the vice-
presidency of Maillard, the "Septemberizer," invites the other forty-
seven sections each to elect two commissaries, with "unlimited
powers." In thirty-three sections, purged, terrified, or deserted, the
Jacobins, alone, or almost alone,[134] elect the most determined of
their band, particularly strangers and rascals, in all sixty-six
commissaries, who, on the evening of the 29th, meet at the Evêché, and
select nine from their midst to form, under the presidency of Dobsen,
a central and revolutionary executive committee.  These nine persons
are entirely unknown;[135] all are obscure subordinates,[136] mere
puppets and manikins; eight days later, on finishing their
performance, when they are no longer needed, they will be withdrawn
behind the scenes. In the mean time they pass for the mandatories of
the popular sovereign, with full power in all directions, because he
has delegated his omnipotence to them, and the sole power, because
their investiture is the most recent; under this sanction, they stalk
around somewhat like supernumeraries at the Opera, dressed in purple
and gold, representing a conclave of cardinals or the Diet of the Holy
Empire.  Never has the political drama degenerated into such an
impudent farce! -- On the 31st, at half-past six in the morning,
Dobsen and his bullies present themselves at the council-general of
the Commune, tender their credentials, and make known to it its
deposition. The Council, with edifying complacency, accepts the fiat
and leaves the department.  With no less grateful readiness Dobsen
summons it back, and reinstates it in all its functions, in the name
of the people, and declares that it merits the esteem of the
country.[137]  At the same time another demagogue, Varlet, performs
the same ceremony with the Council of the department, and both bodies,
consecrated by a new baptism, join the sixty-six commissaries to share
the dictatorship. -- What could be more legitimate? The Convention
would err in making any opposition:

"It was elected merely to condemn the tyrant and to frame a
constitution; the sovereign people has invested it with no other
power;[138] accordingly, the other acts, its warrants of arrest, are
simply usurpations and despotism. Paris, moreover, represents France
better than it does, for Paris is "the extract of all the departments,
the mirror of opinion,"[139] the advance-guard of patriotism.
"Remember the 10th of August;[140]  previous to that time, the
opinions in the Republic were divided; but, scarcely had you struck
the decisive blow when all subsided into silence. Have no fear of the
departments; with a little terror and a few instructions, we shall
turn all minds in our favor." Grumblers persist in demanding the
convocation of primary assemblies. "Was not the 10th of August
necessary? Did not the departments then endorse what Paris did? They
will do so this time. It is Paris which saved them."[141]

Consequently, the new government places Henriot, a reliable man, and
one of the September slaughterers, in full command of the armed force;
then, through a violation by law declared as a capital offense, it
orders the alarm gun to be fired; then, on the other hand, it beats a
general call to arms, sounds the tocsin and closes the barriers; the
post office managers are put in arrest, and letters are intercepted
and opened; the order is given to disarm the suspected and hand their
arms over to patriots; "forty sous a day are allowed to citizens with
small means while under arms."[142]  Notice is given without fail the
preceding evening to the trusty men of the quarter; accordingly, early
in the morning, the Committee of Supervision has already selected from
the Jacobin sections "the most needy companies in order to arm those
the most worthy of combating for liberty," while all its guns are
distributed "to the good republican workmen." [143] -- From hour to
hour as the day advances, we see in the refractory sections all
authority passing over to the side of force; at the Finistère, Butte-
des-Moulins, Lombards, Fraternité, and Marais[144] sections, the
encouraged sans-culottes obtain the ascendancy, nullify the
deliberations of the moderates, and, in the afternoon, their delegates
go and take the oath at the Hôtel-de-ville.

Meanwhile the Commune, dragging behind it the semblance of popular
unanimity, besieges the Convention with multiplied and threatening
petitions. As on the 27th of May, the petitioners invade the hall, and
"mix in fraternally with the members of the 'Left."' Forthwith, on the
motion of Levasseur, the "Mountain," "confident of its place being
well guarded," leaves it and passes over to the "Right."[145]  Invaded
in its turn, the "Right" refuses to join in the deliberations;
Vergniaud demands that "the Assembly join the armed force on the
square, and put itself under its protection"; he and his friends leave
the hall, and the decapitated majority falls back upon its usual
hesitating course. All is hubbub and uproar around it. In the hall the
clamors of the "Mountain," the petitioners, and the galleries, seem
like the constant roar of a tempest. Outside, twenty or thirty
thousand men will probably clash in the streets;[146] the battalion of
Butte-des-Moulins, with detachments sent by neighboring sections, is
entrenched in the Palais-Royal, and Henriot, spreading the report that
the rich sections of the center have displayed the white cockade, send
against it the sans-culottes of the faubourgs Saint-Antoine and Saint-
Marceau; cannon are pointed on both sides. -- These loaded cannon must
not be discharged; the signal of civil war must not be given; it is
simply necessary "to forestall the consequences of a movement which
could be only disastrous to liberty,"[147] and it is important to
ensure public order. The majority, accordingly, think that it is
acting courageously in refusing to the Commune the arrest of the
Twenty-two, and of the Ministers, Lebrun and Clavière; in exchange for
this it consents to suppress its commission of Twelve; it confirms the
act of the Commune which allows forty sous a day to the workmen under
arms; it declares freedom of entry into its tribunes, and, thanking
all the sections, those who defended as well as those who attacked it,
it maintains the National Guard on permanent call, announces a general
federation for the 10th of August following, and goes off to
fraternize with the battalions in the PalaisRoyal, in battle array
against each other through the calumnies of the Commune, and which,
set right at the last moment, now embrace instead of cutting each
other's throats.

This time, again, the advantage is on the side of the Commune.  Not
only have many of its requirements been converted into decrees, but
again, its revolutionary baptism remains in full force; its executive
committee is tacitly recognized, the new government performs its
functions, its usurpations are endorsed, its general, Henriot, keeps
command of the entire armed force, and all its dictatorial measures
are carried out without let or hindrance. -- There is another reason
why they should be maintained and aggravated.  "Your victory is only
half-won," writes Hébert in his Père Duchesne, "all those bastards of
intriguers still live! " --  On the evening of the 31st of May the
Commune issues warrants of arrest against the ministers Clavière and
Lebrun, and against Roland and his wife.  That same evening and
throughout the following day and night, and again the day after, the
Committees of Supervision of the forty-eight sections, according to
instructions from the Hôtel-de-ville[148] study the lists of their
quarters,[149] add new names to these, and send commissaries to disarm
and arrest the suspected. Whoever has spoken against revolutionary
committees, or disapproved of the assaults of the 31st of May, or not
openly shown himself on the 10th of August, or voted on the wrong side
in the old Legislative Assembly, might be arrested. It is a general,
simultaneous raid; in all the streets we see nothing but people seized
and under escort sent to prison, or put before the section committee.
"Anti-patriotic" journalists are arrested first of all, the entire
impression of their journals being additionally confiscated, and the
journal suppressed; the printing-rooms of Gorsas are sacked, seals
placed on his presses,[150] and Prudhomme himself is locked up. All
resistance is overcome in the Contrat-Social, Fraternity, Marais and
Marseilles sections, leaving the Commune free, as far as the street is
concerned, to recommence its attack on the Convention. "Lists of sans-
culottes workmen" have been drawn up in each section, and six francs a
head is allowed them, payable by the Convention, as indemnity for
their temporary suspension from work;[151]  this is a premium offered
to voters, and as nothing is more potent than cash in hand, Pache
provides the funds by diverting 150,000 francs intended for the
colonists in San Domingo; the whole day on the 2nd  of June, trusted
men go about among the ranks distributing five-franc assignats.[152]
Vehicles loaded with supplies accompany each battalion, the better to
keep the men under arms;[153] the stomach needs filling up, and a pint
of wine is excellent for strengthening patriotic sentiment.  Henriot
has ordered back from Courbevoie the battalions of volunteers which a
few days before had been enlisted for La Vendée,[154] crooked
adventurers and looters, later known as "the heroes of the 500
francs." Besides these he has under his thumb Rosenthal's hussars, a
body of German veterans who do not understand French, and will remain
deaf to any legal summons.  Finally, he surrounds the Convention with
a circle of picked sans-culottes, especially the artillerists, the
best of Jacobins,[155] who drag along with them the most formidable
park of artillery, 163 cannons, with grates and charcoal to heat the
balls. The Tuileries is thus encircled by bands of roughs and
fanatics; the National Guard, five or six times as many,[156] brought
out "to give an appearance of a popular movement to the proceedings of
five or six thousand bandits," cannot come to the aid of the
Convention, it being stationed out of reach, beyond the Pont Tournant,
which is raised, and behind the wooden fence separating the Carrousel
from the palace.  Kept in its position by its orders, merely serving
as a stationary piece of scenery, employed against itself unbeknown to
itself,[157] it can do no more than let the factionists act who serve
as its advanced guard. -- Early in the morning the vestibules, stairs
and passages in the hall of the convention have been invaded by the
frequenters of the galleries and the women under pay. The commandant
of the post, with his officers, have been confined by "men with
moustaches," armed with sabers and pistols; the legal guard has been
replaced with an extraordinary guard,[158] and the deputies are
prisoners.  If one of them is obliged to go out for a moment, it is
under the supervision of four fusiliers, "who conduct him, wait for
him, and bring him back."[159]  Others, in trying to look out the
windows, are aimed at; the venerable Dussaulx is struck, and Boissy
d'Anglas, seized by the throat, returns with his cravat and shirt all
in shreds.  For six hours by the clock the Convention is under arrest,
and when the decree is passed, ordering the removal of the armed force
bearing upon it, Henriot replies to the officer who notifies him of
it: "Tell your damned president that he and his Assembly may go to
hell. If he don't surrender the Twenty-two in an hour, I'll send him
there!"[160]

In the hall the majority, abandoned by its recognized guides and its
favorite spokesmen, grows more and more feeble from hour to hour.
Brissot, Pétion, Guadet, Gensonné, Buzot, Salle, Grangeneuve, and
others, two-thirds of the Twenty-two, kept away by their friends,
remain at home.[161]  Vergniaud, who had come, remains silent, and
then leaves; the "Mountain," probably, gaining by his absence, allows
him to pass out. Four other Girondists who remain in the Assembly to
the end, Isnard, Dussaulx, Lauthenas, and Fauchet, consent to resign;
when the generals give up their swords, the soldiers soon lay down
their arms.  Lanjuinais, alone, who is not a Girondist, but a Catholic
and Breton, speaks like a man against this outrageous attack on the
nation's representatives They rush at him and assail him in the
tribune; the butcher, Legendre, simulating "the cleaver's blow," cries
out to him, "Come down or I'll knock you down! A group of Montagnards
spring forward to help Legendre, and one of them claps a pistol to his
throat;[162] he clings fast to the tribune and strives in vain, for
his party around him are losing courage. -- At this moment Barrère,
remarkable for expedients, proposes to the Convention to adjourn, and
hold the session "amidst the armed force that will afford it
protection."[163] All other things failing, the majority avails itself
of this last straw. It rises in a body, in spite of the vociferations
in the galleries, descends the great staircase, and proceeds to the
entrance of the Carrousel. There the Montagnard president, Hérault-
Séchelles, reads the decree of Henriot, which enjoins him to withdraw,
and he officially and correctly summons him in the usual way. But a
large number of the Montagnards have followed the majority, and are
there to encourage the insurrection; Danton takes Henriot's hand and
tells him, in a low voice, "Go ahead, don't be afraid; we want to show
that the Assembly is free, be firm."[164] At this the tall bedizened
gawky recovers his assurance, and in his husky voice, he addresses the
president: "Hérault, the people have not come here to listen to big
words. You are a good patriot . . . Do you promise on your head that
the Twenty-two shall be given up in twenty-four hours?" --  "No." --
"Then, in that case, I am not responsible. To arms, cannoneers, make
your guns ready!" The cannoneers take their lighted matches, "the
cavalry draw their sabers, and the infantry aim at the deputies."[165]
Forced back on this side, the unhappy Convention turns to the left,
passes through the archway, follows the broad avenue through the
garden, and advances to the Pont-Tournant to find an outlet. There is
no outlet; the bridge is raised, and everywhere the barrier of pikes
and bayonets remains impenetrable; shouts of  "Vive la Montagne! vive
Marat! To the guillotine with Brissot, Vergniaud, Guadet and Gensonné!
Away with bad blood!" greet the deputies on all sides, and the
Convention, similar to a flock of sheep, in vain turns round and round
in its pen. At this moment, to get them back into the fold, Marat,
like a barking dog, runs up as fast as his short legs will allow,
followed by his troop of tatterdemalions, and exclaims: "Let all loyal
deputies return to their posts!" With bowed heads, they mechanically
return to the hall; it is immediately closed, and they are once more
in confinement. To assist them in their deliberations a crowd of the
well-disposed entered pell-mell along with them. To watch them and
hurry on the matter, the sans-culottes, with fixed bayonets,
gesticulate and threaten them from the galleries. Outside and inside,
necessity, with its iron hand, has seized them and holds them fast.
There is a dead silence. Couthon, a paralytic, tries to stand up; his
friends carry him in their arms to the tribune; an intimate friend of
Robespierre's, he is a grave and important personage; he sits down,
and in his mild tone of voice, he speaks: "Citizens, all members of
the Convention must now be satisfied of their freedom. . . . You are
now aware that there is no restraint on your deliberations."[166]

The comedy is at an end. Even in Molière there is none like it. The
sentimental cripple in the tribune winds up by demanding that the
Twenty-two, the Twelve, and the Ministers, Clavière and Lebrun be
placed in arrest.  Nobody opposes the motion,[167] "because physical
necessities begin to be felt, and an impression of terror pervades the
Assembly." Several say to themselves, "Well, after all, those who are
proscribed will be as well off at home, where they will be safe. . . .
It is better to put up with a lesser evil than encounter a greater
one." Another exclaims: "It is better not to vote than to betray one's
trust." The salvo being found, all consciences are easy. Two-thirds of
the Assembly declare that they will no longer take part in the
discussions, hold aloof; and remain in their seats at each calling of
the vote. With the exception of about fifty members of the "Right,"
who rise on the side of the Girondists, the "Mountain," whose forces
are increased by the insurgents and amateurs sitting fraternally in
its midst, alone votes for, and finally passes the decree. -- Now that
the Convention has mutilated itself; it is check-mated, and is about
to become a governing machine in the service of a clique; the Jacobin
conquest is completed, and in the hands of the victors, the grand
operations of the guillotine are going to commence.



VIII. Right or Wrong, my Country.

Character of the new governors. - Why France accepted them.

Let us observe them at this decisive moment. I doubt if any such
contrast ever presented itself in any country or in any age. - Through
a series of purifications in an inverse sense, the faction has become
reduced to its dregs; nothing remains of the vast surging wave of 1789
but its froth and its slime; the rest has been cast off or has
withdrawn to one side; at first the highest class, the clergy, the
nobles, and the parliamentarians; next the middle class of traders,
manufacturers, and the bourgeois; and finally the best of the inferior
class, small proprietors, farmers,[168] and master-workmen --  in
short, the prominent in every pursuit, profession, state, or
occupation, whoever possesses capital, a revenue, an establishment,
respectability, public esteem, education and mental and moral culture.
The party in June, 1793, is composed of little more than unreliable
workmen, town and country vagabonds, the habitués of hospices[169],
sluts of the gutter, degraded and dangerous persons,[170] the
déclassé, the corrupt, the perverted, the maniacs of all sorts. In
Paris, from which they command the rest of France, their troop, an
insignificant minority, is recruited from that refuse of humanity
infesting all capitals, amongst the epileptic and scrofulous rabble
which, heirs of vitiated blood and, further degrading this by its
misconduct, introduces into civilization the degeneracy, imbecility,
and infatuations of shattered temperaments, retrograde instincts, and
deformed brains.[171]  What it did with the powers of the State is
narrated by three or four contemporary witnesses; we see it face to
face, in itself, and in its chiefs, we contemplate the true nature of
the men of action and of enterprise who have led the last attack and
who represent it the best.

Since the 2nd of June "nearly one-half of the deputies in the
Convention refrain from taking any part in its deliberations; more
than one hundred and fifty have even fled or disappeared[172]";  the
silent, the fugitives, the incarcerated, and the convicted, all this
has been accomplished by the party.  On the evening of June 2nd its
bosom friend, its conscience, the filthy monstrosity, charlatan,
monomaniac and murderer, who regularly every morning, effuses his
political poison into its bosom, Marat, has at last obtained the
discretionary powers craved by him for the last four years, that of
Marius and Sylla, that of Octavius, Antony, and Lepidus;  the power of
adding or removing names from lists of proscription:

 "while the reading was going on he indicated cancellations or
additions, the secretary effacing or adding names as he suggested
them, without any consultation whatever with the Assembly."[173]

At the Hôtel-de-ville on the 3rd of June, in the Salle de la Reine,
Pétion and Guadet, under arrest, see with their own eyes this Central
Committee which has just started the insurrection, and which through
its singular delegation sits enthroned over all other established
authorities.

 "They were snoring,[174] some stretched out on the benches and others
leaning on the tables with their elbows,  some were barefoot others
were wearing their shoes slipshod like slippers; almost all were dirty
and poorly clad; their clothes were unbuttoned, their hair uncombed,
and their faces frightful; they wore pistols in their belts, and
sabers, with scarves turned into shoulder-straps. Bottles, bits of
bread, fragments of meat and bones lay strewn around on the floor, and
smell was rotten."

It looks like a tapestry of a middle age battle field.  The chief of
the band here is not Chaumette, who has legal qualms,[175] nor Pache,
who cunningly tacks under his mask of Swiss phlegm, but Hébert,
another Marat, yet more brutal and depraved, and who profits by the
opportunity to "put more coal into the furnace of his Père Duchesne,"
striking off 600,000 copies of it, pocketing 135,000 francs for the
numbers sent to the armies, and gaining seventy-five per cent on the
contract.[176]  -- In the street the active body of supporters
consists of two bands, one military and other civil, the former
composed of roughs who are soon to furnish the revolutionary army.
"This army,[177] considered to be a recent institution, has actually
existed since 1789. The agents of the Duke of Orleans formed its first
nucleus. It grew, became organized, had officers appointed to it,
mustering points, orders of the day, and a peculiar slang. . .  .  All
the revolutions were carried out by its aid; it gave impetus to
popular violence wherever it did not appear en masse. On the 12th of
July, 1789, it had Necker's bust carried in public and the theaters
closed; on the 5th of October it started the populace off to
Versailles; on the 20th of April, 1791, it caused the king's arrest in
the court of the Tuileries. . . Led by Westermann and Fournier, it
formed the central battalion in the attack of August 10, 1792; it
carried out the September massacres; it protected the Maratists on the
31st of May, 1793, . . .  its composition is in keeping with its
exploits and its functions. It contains the most determined
scoundrels, the brigands of Avignon, the scum of Marseilles, Brabant,
Liège, Switzerland and the shores of Genoa." Through a careful
sifting,[178] it is to be inspected, strengthened, aggravated, and
converted into a legal body of Janissaries on triple pay; once
"enlarged with idle hairdressers, unemployed lackeys,  designers of
mad schemes, and other scoundrels unable to earn their keep in an
honest manner," it will supply the detachments needed for garrison at
Bordeaux, Lyons, Dijon and Nantes, still leaving "ten thousand of
these Mamelukes to keep down the capital."

The civilian body of supporters comprises, first, those who haunt the
sections, and are about to receive 40 sous for attending each meeting;
next; the troop of figure-heads who, in other public places, are to
represent the people, about 1,000 bawlers and claqueurs, "two-thirds
of which are women." "While I was free," says Beaulieu,[179] "I
closely observed their movements. It was a magic-lantern constantly in
operation. They traveled to and from the Convention to the
Revolutionary Tribunal, and from this to the Jacobin Club, or to the
Commune, which held its meetings in the evening. . . .  They scarcely
took time for their natural requirements; they were often seen dining
and supping at their posts when some action or an important murder was
in the offing.  Henriot, the commander-in-chief of both hordes, was at
one time a swindler, then a police-informer, then imprisoned at
Bicêtre for robbery, and then one of the September murderers. His
military bearing and popularity are due to parading the streets in the
uniform of a general, and appearing in humbug performances; he is the
type of a swaggerer, always drunk or soaked with brandy. A blockhead,
with a beery voice, blinking eyes, and a face distorted by nervous
twitching, he possesses all the external characteristics of his
employment. In talking, he vociferates like men with the scurvy; his
voice is sepulchral, and when he stops talking his features come to
rest only after repeated agitations; he blinks three times, after
which his face recovers its equilibrium."[180]

 Marat, Hébert, and Henriot, the maniac, the thief and the brute. Were
it not for the dagger of Charlotte Corday,[181] it is probable that
this trio, master of the press and of the armed force, aided by
Jacques Roux, Leclerc, Vincent, Ronsin, and other madmen of the slums,
would have put aside Danton, suppressed Robespierre, and governed
France.  Such are the counselors, the favorites, and the leaders of
the ruling revolutionary class; did one not know what  was to occur
during the next fourteen months, one might form an idea of its
government from the quality of these men.

And yet, such as this government is, France accepts or submits to it.
In fact, Lyons, Marseilles, Toulon, Nîmes, Bordeaux, Caen, and other
cities, feeling the knife at their throats,[182] turn aside the stroke
with a movement of horror. They rise against their local Jacobins; but
it is nothing more than an instinctive movement. They do not think of
forming States within the State, as the "Mountain" pretends that they
do, nor of usurping the central authority, as the "Mountain" actually
does. Lyons cries, "Long live the Republic, one and indivisible,"
receives with honor the commissioners of the Convention, permits
convoys of arms and horses destined for the army of the Alps to pass.
To excite a revolt there, requires the insane demands of Parisian
despotism just as it requires the brutal persistence of religious
persecution to render the province of la Vendée insurgent. Without the
prolonged oppression that weighs down consciences, and the danger to
life always imminent, no city or province would have attempted
secession. Even under this government of inquisitors and butchers no
community, save those of Lyons and La Vendée, makes any sustained
effort to break up the State, withdraw from it and live by itself. The
national sheaf has been too strongly bound together by secular
centralization. One's country exists; and when that country is in
danger, when the armed stranger attacks the frontier, one follows the
flag-bearer, whoever he may be, whether usurper, adventurer,
blackguard, or cut-throat, provided only that he marches in the van
and holds the banner with a firm hand.[183]  To tear that flag from
him, to contest his pretended right, to expel him and replace him by
another, would be a complete destruction of the common weal. Brave men
sacrifice their own repugnance for the sake of the common good; in
order to serve France, they serve her unworthy government. In the
committee of war, the engineering and staff officers who give their
days to the study of military maps, think of nothing else than of
knowing it thoroughly; one of them, d'Arcon, "managed the raising of
the siege of Dunkirk, and of the blockade of Maubeuge;[184] nobody
excels him in penetration, in practical knowledge, in quick perception
and in imagination; it is a spirit of flame, a brain compact of
resources. I speak of him, says Mallet du Pan, "from an intimate
acquaintance of ten years. He is no more a revolutionnaire than I am."
Carnot[185] does even more than this: he gives up his honor when, with
his colleagues on the Committee of Public Safety, Billaud-Varennes,
Couthon, Saint-Just, Robespierre, he puts his name to decrees which
are assassinations. A similar devotion brings recruits into the armies
by hundreds of thousands, bourgeois[186]  and peasants, from the
volunteers of 1791 to the levies of 1793; and the latter class fight
not only for France, but also, and more than all, for the Revolution.
For, now that the sword is drawn, the mutual and growing exasperation
leaves only the extreme parties in the field. Since the 10th of
August, and more especially since the 21st of January, it has no
longer been a question how to deal with the ancient regime, of cutting
away its dead portions or its troublesome thorns, of accommodating it
to modern requirements, of establishing civil equality, a limited
monarchy, a parliamentary government. The question is how to escape
conquest by armed force to avert the military executions of
Brunswick,[187] the vengeance of the proscribed émigrés,  the
restoration and the aggravation of the old feudal and fiscal order of
things. Both through their traditions and their experience, the mass
of the country people hate this ancient order, and with all the
accumulated hatred which an unceasing and secular spoliation has
caused. Irrespective of costs, the rural masses will never again
suffer the tax-collector among them, nor the excise man in the cellar,
nor the fiscal agent on the frontier. For them the ancient regime is
nothing more than these things; and, in fact, they have paid no taxes,
or scarcely any, since the beginning of the Revolution. On this matter
the people's idea is fixed, positive, unalterable; and as soon as they
perceive in the distant future the possible re-establishment of the
taille, the tithe, and the seignorial rights, they choose their side;
they will fight to the death. --  As to the artisans and lesser
bourgeois, their spur is the magnificent prospect of careers, to which
the doors are thrown open, of unbounded advancement, of promotion
offered to merit; more than all, their illusions are still intact.

Camped out there, facing the enemy, those noble ideals, which in the
hands of the Parisian demagogues had turned into sanguinary harlots,
remain pure and virginal  in the minds of the soldiers and their
officers. Liberty, equality, the rights of man, the reign of reason --
all these vague and sublime images moved before their eyes when they
climbed the escarpment of Jemmapes under a storm of grapeshot, or when
they wintered, with naked feet, among the snows of the Vosges. These
ideas, in descending from heaven to earth, were not dishonored and
distorted under their feet, they did not see them transformed in their
hands to frightful caricatures. These men are not pillars of clubs,
nor brawlers in the sections, nor the inquisitors of a committee, nor
hired informers, nor providers for the scaffold. Apart from the
sabbath revolutionaire, brought back to earth by their danger, and
having understood the inequality of talents and the need for
discipline, they do the work of men; they suffer, they fast, they face
bullets, they are conscious of their generosity and their sacrifices;
they are heroes, and they look upon themselves as liberators.[188]
They are proud of this. According to an astute observer[189] who knew
their survivors,

 "many of them believed that the French alone were reasonable beings.
. . In our eyes the people in the rest of Europe, who were fighting to
keep their chains, were only pitiable imbeciles or knaves sold to the
despots who were attacking us. Pitt and Cobourg seemed to us the
chiefs of these knaves and the personification of all the treachery
and stupidity in the world. . .  In 1794 our inmost, serious sentiment
was wholly contained in this idea:  to be useful to our country;  all
other things, our clothes, our food, advancement, were poor ephemeral
details. As society did not exist, there was no such thing for us as
social success, that leading element in the character of our nation.
Our only gatherings were national festivals, moving ceremonies which
nourished in us the love of our country. In the streets our eyes
filled with tears when we saw an inscription in honor of the young
drummer, Barra. . .  This sentiment was the only religion we
had."[190]

But it was a religion. When the heart of a nation is so high it will
deliver itself, in spite of its rulers, whatever their excesses may
be, whatever their crimes; for the nation atones for their follies by
its courage; it hides their crimes beneath its great achievements.

_______________________________________________________________________

Notes:



[1] "Archives Nationales," AF II, 45, May 6, 1793 (in English).

[2] Moore, II. 185 (October 20). "It is evident that all the
departments of France are in theory allowed to have an equal share in
the government; yet in fact the single  department of Paris has the
whole power of the government." Through the pressure of the mob Paris
makes the law for the Convention and for all France. - Ibid., II. 534
(during the king's trial). "All the departments of France, including
that of Paris, are in reality often obliged to submit to the clamorous
tyranny of a set of hired ruffians in the tribunes who usurp the name
and functions of the sovereign people, and, secretly direct by a few
demagogues, govern this unhappy nation." Cf. Ibid., II. (Nov. 13).

[3]  Schmidt, I. 96. Letter of Lauchou to the president of the
Convention, Oct. 11, 1792: "The section of 1792 on its own authority
decreed on the 5th of this month that all persons in a menial service
could be allowed to vote in our primary assemblies . . . It would be
well for the National Convention to convince the inhabitants of Paris
that they alone do not constitute the entire republic. However absurd
this idea may be, it is gaining ground every day." - Ibid., Letter of
Damour, vice-president of the Pantheon section, Oct. 29: "The citizen
Paris . . .  has said that when the law is in conflict with general
opinion no attention must be paid to it. . . These disturbers of the
public peace who desire to monopolize all places, either in the
municipality or elsewhere, are themselves the cause of the greatest
tumult."

[4] Schmidt, I. 223 (report by Dutard, May 14).

[5] Mortimer-Ternaux, VI. 117; VII. 59 (balloting of Dec. 2 and 4). In
most of these and the following elections the number of voters is but
one-twentieth of those registered. Chaumette is elected in his section
by 53 votes; Hébert by 56; Gency, a master-cooper, by 34; Lechenard, a
tailor, by 39; Douce, a building-hand, by 24. -- Pache is elected
mayor Feb. 15, 1793, by 11,881 votes, out of 160,000 registered.

[6] Buchez et Roux, XVII. 101. (Decree of Aug. 19, 1792). - Mortimer-
Ternaux, IV. 223. - Beaulieu, "Essais," III. 454.  "The National Guard
ceased to exist after the 10th of August." -- Buzot, 454. -- Schmidt,
I. 533 (Dutard, May 29). "It is certain that the armed forces of Paris
is nonexistent."

[7] Beaulieu, Ibid.,  IV. 6. -- "Archives Nationales," F7, 3249
(Oise). -- Letters of the Oise administrators, Aug. 24, Sept. 12 and
20, 1792. Letters of the administrators of the district of Clermont,
Sept. 14, etc.

[8] Cf. above, ch. IX.-"Archives Nationales," F7, 3249. Letter of the
administrators of  the district of Senlis, Oct. 31, 1792. Two of the
administrators of the Senlis hospital were arrested by Paris
commissaries and conducted "before the pretended Committee of Public
Safety in Paris, with all that they possessed in money, jewels, and
assignats." The same commissaries carry off two of the hospital
sisters of charity, with all the silver plate in the establishment;
the sisters are released, but the plate is not returned. --  Buchez et
Roux, XXVI. 209 (Patriote Français). Session of April 30, 1793, the
final report of the commission appointed to examine the accounts of
the old Committee of Supervision: " Panis and Sergent are convicted of
breaking seals." . . .  "67,580 francs found in Septenil's domicile
have disappeared, as well as many articles of value."

[9] Schmidt, I, 270.

[10] Mortimer-Ternaux, IV. 221 to 229, 242 to 260; VI. 43 to 52.

[11] De Sybel, "Histoire de l'Europe pendant la Révolution Française,"
II 76. -- Madame Roland, II.152. "It was not only impossible to make
out the accounts, but to imagine where 130,000,000 had gone. . . The
day he was dismissed he made sixty appointments, . . . from his son-
in-law, who, a vicar, was made a director at 19,000 francs salary, to
his hair-dresser, a young scapegrace of nineteen, whom he makes a
commissary of war" . . "It was proved that he paid in full regiments
that were actually reduced to a few men. -- Meillan, 20.  "The faction
became the master of Paris through hired brigands, aided by the
millions placed at its disposition by the municipality, under the
pretext of ensuring supplies."

[12] See in the "Memoirs of Mme. Elliot," the particulars of this
vote. -- Beaulieu, I.445. "I saw a placard signed by Marat posted on
the corners of the streets, stating that he had demanded 15,000 francs
of the Duke of Orleans as compensation for what he had done for him.
Gouverneur Morris, I. 260 (Letter of Dec. 21, 1792). The galleries
force the Convention to revoke its decree against the expulsion of the
Bourbons. -- On the 22nd  of December the sections present a petition
in the same sense, while there is a sort of riot in the suburbs in
favor of Philippe-Egalité.

[13] Schmidt, I. 246 (Dutard, May 13). "The Convention cannot count in
all Paris thirty persons ready to side with them.

[14] Buchez et Roux, XXV. 463. On the call of the houses, April 13,
1793, ninety-two deputies vote for Marat.

[15] Prudhomme, "Crimes de la Révolution," V. 133. Conversation with
Danton, December, 1792. -- De Barante, III.123. The same conversation,
probably after another verbal tradition. -- I am obliged to substitute
less coarse terms for those of the quotation.

[16] He is the first speaker on the part of the "Mountain" in the
king's trial, and at once becomes president of the Jacobin Club. His
speech against Louis XVI. is significant. " "Louis is another
Catiline." He should be executed, first as traitor taken in the act,
and next as king; that is to say, as a natural enemy and wild beast
taken in a net.

[17] Vatel, "Charlotte Corday and the Girondists," I. preface, CXLI.
(with all the documents, the letters of Madame de Saint-Just, the
examination on the 6th of October, 1786, etc.)  The articles stolen
consisted of six pieces of plate, a fine ring, gold-mounted pistols,
packets of silver lace, etc.-- The youth declares that he is "about to
enter the Comte d'Artois' regiment of guards until he is old enough to
enter the king's guards." He also had an idea of entering the
Oratoire.

[18] Cf. his upeech against the king, hishis report on Danton, on the
Girondists, etc. If the reader would comprehend Saint-Just's character
he has only to read his letter to d'Aubigny, July 20, 1792: "Since I
came here I am consumed with a republican fury, which is wasting me
away. . . It is unfortunate that I cannot remain in Paris. I feel
something within me which tells me that I shall float on the waves of
this century. . . You dastards, you have not appreciated me! My renown
will yet blaze forth and cast yours in the shade. Wretches that you
are, you call me a thief, a villain, because I can give you no money.
Tear my heart out of my body and eat it, and you will become what you
are not now -- great!"

[19] Buchez et Roux, XXIV. 296, 363; XXV. 323; XXVII. 144, 145. --
Moniteur, XIV 80 (terms employed by Danton, David, Legendre, and
Marat).

[20] Moniteur, XV. 74. -- Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 254, 257, sessions of
Jan. 6 and May 27.

[21] Moniteur, XIV. 851. (Session of Dec.26, 1792. Speech by Julien.)

[22] Moniteur, XIV. 768 (session of Dec. 16). The president says: "I
have called Calon to order three times, and three times has he
resisted. " -- Vergnieud declares that "The majority of the Assembly
is under the yoke of a seditious minority." - Ibid, XIV. 851, 853, 865
(session of Dec. 26 and 27). -- Buchez et Roux, XXV. 396 (session of
April 11.)

[23] Louvet, 72

[24] Meillan,  24: "We were for some time all armed with sabres,
pistols, and blunderbusses." -- Moore, II. 235 (October, 1792). A
number of deputies already at this date carried sword canes and
pocket-pistols.

[25] Dauban, "La Demagogie en 1793," p.101. Description of the hall by
Prudhomme, with illustrations. - Ibid., 199. Letter of Brissot to his
constituents: "The brigands and the bacchantes have found their way
into the new hall. - According to Prudhomme the galleries hold 1,400
persons in all, and according to Dulaure, 20,000 or 3,000.

[26] Moore, I.44 (Oct. 10), and II. 534.

[27] Moniteur. XIV. 795. Speech by Lanjuinais, Dec. 19, 1792.

[28] Buchez et Roux, XX. 5, 396. Speech by Duperret, session of April
11, 1793.

[29] Dauban, 143. Letter of Valazé, April 14. -- Cf. Moniteur, XIV.
746, session of Dec. 14. - Ibid., 800, session of Dec. 20. - Ibid.,
853, session of Dec. 26.

[30] Speech by Salles. -- Lanjuinais also says: "One seems to
deliberate here in a free Convention; but it is only under the dagger
and cannon of the factions." - Moniteur. XV. 180, session of Jan. 16.
Speech by N----, deputy, its delivery insisted on by Charles Vilette.

[31] Meillan, 24.

32 "Archives Nationales," AF, II.45. Police reports, May 16, 18, 19.
"There is fear of a bloody scene the first day." -- Buchez et Roux,
XXVII. 125. Report of Gamon inspector of the Convention hall.

[33] Moniteur, XIV. 362 (Nov. 1, 1792).- Ibid., 387, session of Nov.
4. Speech by Royer and Gorsas.-Ibid., 382. Letter by Roland, Nov. 5.

[34] Moniteur, XIV. 699. Letter of Roland, Nov. 28.

[35] Moniteur, XIV. 697, number for Dec. 11.

[36] Moniteur, XV. 180, session of Jan. 16. Speech by Lehardy, Hugues,
and Thibaut. -- Meillan, 14: "A line of separation between the two
sides of the Assembly was then traced. Several deputies which the
faction wished to put out of the way had voted for death (of the
king). Almost all of these were down on the list of those in favor of
the appeal to the people, which was the basis preferred. We were then
known as appellants."

[37] Moniteur,  XV. 8. Speech by Rabaut-Saint-Ètienne. -- Buchez et
Roux, XXIII 24. Mortimer-Ternaux, V. 418. - Moniteur, XV.180, session
of Jan. 16. -- Buchez et Roux, XXIV. 292. -- Moniteur, XV. 182. Letter
of the mayor of Paris, Jan. 16. - Ibid., 179. Letter of Roland, Jan.
16. -- Buchez et Roux, XXIV. 448. Report by Santerre.

[38] Buchez et Roux, XXV. 23 to 26. -- Mortimer-Ternaux, VI. 184
(Manifesto of the central committee, March 9, 2 o'clock in the
morning).-Ibid. 193. Narrative of Fournier at the bar of the
Convention, March 12. -- Report of the mayor of Paris, March 10. --
Report of the Minister of Justice, March 13. -- Meillan, 24. --
Louvet, 72, 74.

[39] Pétion, "Mémoires," 106 (Ed. Dauban): "How many times I heard,
'You rascal, we'll have your head!' And I have no doubt that they
often planned my assassination."

[40] Taillandier, "Documents biographiques," on Daunou (Narrative by
Daunou),p. 38. -- Doulcet de Pontécoulant, "Mémoires," I. 139: "It was
then that the 'Mountain' used all the means of intimidation it knew so
well how to bring into play, filling the galleries with its
satellites, who shouted out to each other the name of each deputy as
he stepped up to the president's table to give his vote, and yelling
savagely at every one who did not vote for immediate and unconditional
death. - Carnot, "Mémoires," I.293. Carnot voted for the death of the
king; yet afterward he avowed that "Louis XVI. would have been saved,
if the Convention had not held its deliberations under the dagger."

[41] Durand-Maillane, 35, 38, 57.

[42] An expression by Dussaulx, in his "Fragments pour servir à
l'histoire de la Convention."

[43] Madame Roland, "Mémoires," ed. Barrière et Berville, II. 52. -
(Note by Roland.)

[44] Moniteur, XV, 187. Cambacérès votes: "Louis has incurred the
penalties established in the penal code against conspirators. . . The
execution to be postponed until hostilities cease. In case of invasion
of the French territory by the enemies of the republic, the decree to
be enforced." -- On Barrère, see Macaulay's crushing article in
"Biographical Essays."

[45] Sainte-Beuve, "Causeries du Lundi," V. 209. ("Sièyes," according
to his unpublished manuscripts.)

[46] Madame Roland, II.56. Note by Roland.

[47] Mortimer-Ternaux, V. 476.

[48] Mortimer-Ternaux,  V. 513.

[49] Comte de Ségur, "Mémoires." I. 13.

[50] Harmand de la Meuse (member of the Convention), "Anecdotes
relative à la Révolution," 83, 85.

[51] Meissner, 148, Voyage à Paris" (last months of 1795).. Testimony
of the regicide Audrein.

[52] Louvet, 775.

[53] Meillan, 16.

[54] Remark by M. Guirot ("Mémoires"), II. 73.

[55] Moniteur,  XIV. 432, session of Nov. 10, 1792. Speech by Cambon:
"That is the reason why I shall always detest the 2nd of September;
for never will I approve of assassinations." In the same speech he
justifies the Girondists against any reproach of federalism.

[56] "Le Maréchal Davoust," by Madame de Bocqueville. Letter of
Davoust, battalion officer, June 2, 1793: "We are animated with the
spirit of Lepelletier,  which is all that need be said with respect to
our opinions and what we will do in the coming crisis, in which,
perhaps, a faction will try to plunge us anew into a civil war between
the departments and Paris. Perfidious eloquence. . . conservative
Tartufes."

[57] Moniteur, XIV. 738. Report by Cambon, Dec. 15.  "On the way
French generals are to act in countries occupied by the armies of the
republic." This important document is a true manifesto of the
Revolution. -- Buchez et Roux, XXVII 140, session of May 20, and XXVI.
177, session of April 27, speech by Cambon: "The department of Hérau1t
says to this or that individual: 'You are rich; your opinions cause us
expenditure . . I mean to fix you to the Revolution in spite of
yourself. You shall lend your fortune to the republic, and when
liberty is established the republic will return your capital to you. -
"I should like, then, following the example of the department of
Hérault, that the Convention should organize a civic loan of one
billion, to be supplied by egoists and the indifferent. - Decree of
May 20, "passed almost unanimously. A forced loan of one billion shall
be made on wealthy citizens."

[58] Meillan. 100.

[59] Speech by Ducos, March 20. "We must choose between domestic
education and liberty. So long as the poor and the rich are not
brought close together through a common education, in vain will your
laws proclaim sacred equality! " -- Rabaut-Saint-Étienne: "In every
township a national temple will be erected, in which every Sunday its
municipal officers will give moral instruction to the assembled
citizens. This instruction will be drawn from books approved of by the
legislative body, and followed by hymns also approved of by the
legislative. A catechism, as simple as it is short, drawn up by the
legislative body, shall be taught and every boy will know it by
heart." -- On the sentiments of the Girondists in relation to
Christianity, see chapters V. and XI. of this volume. -- On the means
for equalizing the fortunes, see articles by Rabaut-Saint-Étienne
(Buchez et Roux, XXIII. 467). - Ibid., XXIV. 475 (March 7-11) decree
abolishing the testamentary right. -- Condorcet, in his "Tableau des
progrés de l'Esprit humain," assigns the leveling of conditions as the
purpose of society. -- On propaganda abroad, read the report by Cambon
(Dec. 15). This report is nearly unanimously accepted, and Buzot
exacerbates it by adding an amendment

[60] Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 287, session of May 28, vote on the
maintenance of the Commission of Twelve.

[61] Moniteur. XV. 395, session of Feb. 8, 1793.

[62] Decrees of March 13 and 14.

[63] Moore, II. 44 (October 1792). Danton declares in the tribune that
"the Convention should be a committee of instruction for kings
throughout the universe." On which Moore remarks that this is
equivalent to declaring war against all Europe except Switzerland. -
Mallet du Pan, "Considerations sur la Revolution de France," p.37: "In
a letter which chance has brought to my notice, Brissot wrote to one
of his minister-generals towards the close of last year: 'The four
quarters of Europe must be set on fire; that is our salvation.'"

[64] Duvergier, "Collection des lois et décrets." Decree of March 10-
12. Title I. articles 4, 12, 13; title II. articles 2, 3. Add to this
the decree of March 29-31, establishing the penalty of death against
whoever composes or prints documents favoring the re-establishment of
royalty.

[65] Ib., Decree of March 28 - April 5 (article 6). - Cf. the decrees
of March 18-22, and April 23-24.

[66] Decree of March 27-30.

[67] Decree of April 5-7.

[68] Decree of May 4. (A law fixing the highest price at which grain
shall be sold. TR.)

[69]  Decree of April 11-16 (bearing on the reduction in value of the
legal currency. -TR).

[70] Decree of May 20-25.

[71] Decree of April 5-7. Words used by Danton in the course of the
debate.

[72]  Decree of April 5-11.

[73]  Decrees of May 13, 16, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, and 29, June 1.

[74]  Decrees of March 21-23 and March 26-30.

[75] Decrees of March 29-31.

[76]  Decree of April 1-5.

[77] Schmidt, I. 232. Report by Dutard, May 10.

[78]  "Archives Nationales," F7, 2401 to 2505. Records of the section
debates in Paris. -- Many of these begin March 28, 1793, and contain
the deliberations of revolutionary committees; for example, F7, 2475,
the section of the Pikes or of the Place Vendôme. We see by the
official reports dated March 28 and the following days that the
suspected were deprived all weapons, even the smallest, every species
of swordcane, including dress-swords with steel or silver handles.

[79] Buchez et Roux, XXV. 157. -- "Archives Nationales," F7, 2494,
section of the Réunion, official report, March 28.

[80] Schmidt, I. 223 (Dutard, May 14). --  Ibid., 224. "If the
Convention allows committees of supervision to exercise its authority,
I will not give it eight days." - Meillan, 111: "Almost all the
section agitators were strangers" --"Archives Nationales," F7, 3294
and 3297, records of debate in the committees of supervision belonging
to the sections of the Réunion and Droits de l'Homme. Quality of mind
and education are both indicated by orthography. For instance: "Le dit
jour et an  que déçus." - "Orloger." - "Lecture d'une lettre du comité
de surté général de la convention qui invite le comité à se
transporter de suites chez le citoyen Louis Féline rue Baubourg, à
leffets de faire perquisition chez lui et dans tout ces papiers, et
que ceux qui paraîtrons suspect lon y metes les selés."

[81] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3294. Section of the Réunion, official
report. March 28.

[82] Buchez et Roux, XXV. 168. An ordinance of the commune, March 27.

[83] Schmidt, I.223. Report by Dutard, May 14.

[84] Buchez et Roux, XXV. 167.  Ordinance of May 27. XXXVII. 151.
Ordinance of May 20.

[85] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3294. See in particular, the official
reports of the month of April. -- Buchez et Roux, XXV. 149, and XXVI.
342. (ordinances of the Commune, March 27 and May 2).

[86] Buchez et Roux, XXVI. 402 (article from the Patriote Français,
May 8). "Arrests are nultiplied lately to a frightful extent. The
mayoralty overflows with prisoners. Nobody has any idea of the
insolence and harshness with which citizens are treated. Slaughter and
a Saint-Bartholomew are all that are talked of. " -- Meillan, 55. "Let
anybody in any assemblage or club express any opinion not in unison
with municipal views, and he is sure to be arrested the following
night. " -- Gouverneur Morris, March 29, 1793. "Yesterday I was
arrested in the street and conducted to the section of Butte-des-
Moulins. . . Armed men came to my house yesterday. " -- Reply of the
minister Lebrun, April 3.  "Domiciliary visits were a general measure
from which no house in Paris was exempt."

[87] Buchez et Roux, XXVI. 384. Speech by Buzot, session of May 8.

[88] Buchez et Roux, XXVI. 332. Ordinance of the commune, May 1.

[89] Schmidt, I. 216. Report by Dutard, May 13.

[90] Schmidt, I.301. "In our sections the best class of citizens are
still afraid of imprisonment or of being disarmed. Nobody talks
freely." -- The Lyons revolutionaries make the same calculation
("Archives Nationales," AF, II. 43). Letter addressed to the
representatives of the people by the administrators of the department
of the Rhône, June 4, 1793. The revolutionary committee "designated
for La Vendée those citizens who were most comfortably off or those it
hated, whilst conditional enlistment with the privilege of remaining
in the department were granted only to those in favor of
disorganization."-- Cf. Guillon de Montléon, I. 235.

[91] Buchez et Roux, XXVI. 399. Ordinance of the commune, May 3, on a
forced loan of twelve millions, article 6. "The revolutionary
committees will regard the apportionment 'lists simply as guides,
without regarding them as a basis of action." -- Article 14. "The
personal and real property of those who have not conformed to the
patriotic draft will be seized and sold at the suit of the
revolutionary committees, and their persons declared suspected."

[92] Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 17 (Patriote Français, number for May 14).
Francœur is taxed at 3,600 francs. -- The same process at Lyons
(Balleydier, 174, and Guillon de Montléon, I. 238). The authorized tax
by the commissaries of the convention amounted to six millions. The
revolutionary committee levied thirty and forty millions, payable in
twenty-four hours on warrants without delay (May 13 and 14). Many
persons are taxed from 80,000 to 100,000 francs, the text of the
requisitions conveying ironically a hostile spirit.

[93] Buchez et Roux, XXVI. 463, session of the Jacobin Club, May 11.

[94] Meillan, 17.

[95] Buchez et Roux, XXVI. 463, session of the Jacobin club, May11.
Speech by Hassenfratz. - Ibid.,  455, session of the Jacobin club, May
10, speech by Robespierre. "The rich are all anti-revolutionaries;
only beggars and the people can save the country." - Ibid. N----:
"Revolutionary battalions should be maintained in the department at
the expense of the rich, who are cowards." -Ibid.,  XXVII. 317.
Petition of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, May 11. -- Schmidt, I. 315
(Report by Dutard, May 13). "There is no recruiting in the faubourgs,
because people there know that they are more wanted here than in La
Vendée. They let the rich go and fight. They watch things here, and
trust nobody but themselves to guard Paris."

[96]  "Archives Nationales," F7, 2494. Section of the Réunion,
official reports of May 15 and 16. -- Buchez et Roux, XXV. 167,
ordance of the commune, March 27.

[97] Schmidt, I.327. Report of Perriére, May 28. "Our group itself
seemed to governed by nothing but hatred of the rich by the poor. One
must be a dull observer not to see by a thousand symptoms that these
two natural enemies stand in battle array, only awaiting the signal or
the opportunity."

[98] Buchez et Roux, XXV. 460.  The papers examined by the accusers
are the numbers of Marat's journal of the 5th of January and of the
25th of February. The article which provoked the decree is his
"Address to the National Convention," pp. 446 and 450.

[99] Buchez et Roux, XXVI. 149; Narrative by Marat,114. Bulletin of
the revolutionary tribunal, session of the Convention.

[100] Buchez et Roux, XXVI. 358, article in the Chronique de Paris;
358, article by Marat. - Schmidt, I. 184. Report by Dutard, May 5. --
Paris, Histoire de Joseph Lebon," I. 81. Letter by Robespierre, Jr.,
May 7.

[101] Buchez et Roux, XXV. 240 and 246. Protest of the Mail section,
of the electoral body of the Arsenal, Marais, Gravelliers, and Arcis
sections. (The Convention, session of April 2; the commune, session of
April 2.) -- XXVI. 358 Protests of the sections of Bon-Conseil and the
Unité, (May 5). -- XXVII. 71. Defeat of the anarchists in the section
of Butté-des-Moulins. "A great many sections openly show a
determination to put anarchy down." (Patriote Français, May 15). -
Ibid., 137. Protests of the Panthéon Français, Piques, Mail, and
several other sections (Patriote Français, May 19). - Ibid., 175.
Protest of the Fraternité section (session of the Convention, May 23).

[102] Schmidt, I. 189. Dutard, May 6.

[103] Mortimer-Ternaux, VII. 218. Official report of the reunion of
the two sections of the Lombards and Bon-Conseil (April 12), "by which
the two said sections promise and swear union, aid, fraternity, and
mutual help, in case the aristocracy are disposed to destroy liberty."
-- "Consequently," says the Bon-Conseil section, "many of the citizens
of the Lombards section, justly alarmed at the disturbances occasioned
by the evil-disposed, came and proffered their assistance." --
Adhesion of the section of Les Amis de la Patrie. -- Buchez et Roux,
XXVII. 138. (Article of the Patriote Français, May 19): "This
brigandage is called assembly of combined sections." -- Ibid., 236,
May 26, session of the commune. "Deputations of the Montreuil, Quinze-
Vingts and Droits de l'Homme sections came to the assistance of the
Arsenal patriots; the aristocrats took to flight, leaving their hats
behind them." -- Schmidt, I. 213, 313 (Dutard, May 13 and 27). Violent
treatment of the moderates in the Bon-Conseil and Arsenal sections;
"struck with chairs, several persons wounded, one captain carried off
on a bench; the gutter-jumpers and dumpy shopkeepers cleared out,
leaving the sans-culottes masters of the field." -- Meillan,  111. --
Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 237, session of the Jacobin club, May 26. "In
the section of Butte-des-Moulins the patriots, finding they were not
in force, seized the chairs and drove the aristocrats out."

[104] Buchez et Roux, 78, XXVII. On the juge-de-paix Roux, carried off
at night and imprisoned. April 16. - Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 220, on
the vice-president Sagnier, May 10. - Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 231, May
26, on the five citizens of the Unité section arrested by the
revolutionary committee of the section "for having spoken against
Robespierre and Marat."

[105] Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 154. Speech of Léonard Bourdon to the
Jacobins, May 20.

[106] Buchez et Roux, XXVI. 3. Address drawn up by the commissaries of
the 48 sections approved of by 35 sections, also by the commune, and
presented to the Convention April 15. - Others have preceded it, like
pilot ballons. - Ibid., XXV. 319. Petition of the Bon-Conseil, Alpril
8. - XXV. 320. Petition of the section of the Halleau-Blé, April 10.

[107] Buchez et Roux, XXVL 83. Speech by Vergniaud to the convention,
session of April 20. "These facts  are accepted. Nobody can contradict
them. More than 10,000 witnesses would confirm them." -- There are the
same proceedings at Lyons Jan.13, 1792, against the petition far an
appeal to the people (Guillon de Montléon, I.145, 155). The official
report of the Jacobins claims that the petition obtained 40,215
signatures. "The petition was first signed by about 200 clubbists, who
pretended to be the people. . . They spread the report among the
people that all who would not sign the address would be blacklisted or
proscribed. That's why they had desks set up in all the public
squares, and seized by the arm all who came, and forced them to sign.
As this approach did not prove fruitful they made children ten years
of age, women, and ignorant rustics put down their name." They were
told that the object was to put down the price of bread. "I swear to
you that this address is the work a hundred persons at most; the great
majority of the citizens of Lyons desire to avail themselves of their
own sovereignty in the judgment of Louis." (Letter of David of Lyons
to the president of the convention, Jan. 16.)

[108] "Fragment," by Lanjuinais (in the memoirs of Durand-Maillane, p.
297).

[109] Meillan, 113.

[110] Buchez et Roux, XXVI. 3!9 (May 12). - Meillan, 113.

[111] Buchez et Roux, XVI. 327. On being informed of this the crowd
sent new deputies, the latter stating in relation to the others: "We
do not recognise them."

[112] Buchez et Roux, XXVI. 143.

[113] Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 175, May 23.

[114] Schmidt, I. 212. Report of Dutard, May 13. - I. 218.  "A plot is
really under way, and many heads are singled out." (Terrasson, May
13.)

[115] Buchez et Roux, XXVII 9. Speech of Guadet to the Convention, May
14.

[116] Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 2. Patriote Français, May 13.

[117] Schmidt, I 242. Report of Dutard, May 18. - Also 245.

[118] Schmidt, I 254. Report of Dutard, May 19.

[119] Bergoeing, Chatry, Dubosq, "Pièces recueillies par la Commission
des Douze et publiées à Caen." June 28, 1793 (in the "Mémoires" of
Meillan, pp. 176-198). Attempts at murder had already occurred.
"Lanjuinais came near being killed. Many of the deputies were insulted
and threatened. The armed force joins with the malefactors; we have
accordingly no means of repression." (Mortimer-Ternaux, VII.562,
letter of the deputy Michel to his constituents, May 20.)

[120] Bergoeing, "Pièces, etc." -- Meillan, pp. 39 and 40. -- The
depositions are all made by eye witnesses. The propositions for the
massacre were made in the meetings at the town-hall, May 19, 20 and
21, and at the Cordeliers club May 22 and 23.

[121] The Jacobins at Lyons plot the same thing (Guilion de Montléon,
248). Chalier says to the club: "We shall not fail to have 300 noted
heads. Get hold of the members of the department, the presidents and
secretaries of the sections, and let us make a bundle of them for the
guillotine; we will wash our hands in their blood." Thereupon, on the
night of May 28 the revolutionary municipality seize the arsenal and
plant cannon on the Hôtel-de-ville. The Lyons sections, however, more
energetic than those of Paris, take, up arms and after a terrible
fight they get possession of the Hôtel-de-ville. The moral difference
between the two parties is very marked in Gonchon's letters.
("Archives Nationales," AF, II. 43. letters of Gonchon to Garat, May
31, June 1 and 3.) "Keep up the courage of the Convention. It need not
be afraid. The citizens of Lyons have covered themselves with glory.
They displayed the greatest courage in every fight that took place in
various quarters of the town, and the greatest magnanimity to their
enemies, who behaved most villainously." The municipal body had sent a
flag of truce, pretending to negotiate, and then treacherously opened
fire with its cannon on the columns of the sections, and cast the
wounded into the river. The citizens of Lyons, so often slandered,
will be the first to have set an example of true republican character.
Find me a similar instance, if you can, in the history of revolutions:
being victorious and yet not then to have shed a drop of blood!" They
cared for the wounded, and raised a subscription for the widows and
orphans of the dead, without distinction of party. Cf. Lauvergue,
"Histoire du Var," 175. The same occurs at Toulon (insurrection of the
moderates, July 12 and 13, 1793). -- At Toulon, as at Lyons, there was
no murder after the victory; only regular trials and the execution of
two or three assassins whose crimes were legally proved.

[122] Schmidt, I. 335. Report of Perrière, May 29.

[123] Bergoeing, "Pièces, etc.", p. 195. - Buchez et Roux, XXVII 296.

[124] The insurrection at Lyons took place on May 29. On the 2nd of
June it is announced in the Convention that the insurgent army of
Lozère, more than 30,000 strong, has taken Marvejols, and is about to
take Mende (Buchez et Roux XXVII. 387).-- A threatening address from
Bordeaux (May 14) and from thirty-two sections in Marseilles (May 25)
against the Jacobins (Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 3. 214). - Cf. Robinet in
"Le procès des Dantonistes, 303, 305.

[125] Mortimer-Ternaux, VII 38.

[126] Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 297, session of the Jacobins, May 29.

[127] Barrère, "Mémoires," II. 91, 94. As untruthful as Barrère is,
here his testimony may be accepted. I see no reason why he should
state what is not true; he was well informed, as he belonged to the
Committee of Public Safety. His statements, besides, on the complicity
d the Mountain and on the rôle of Danton are confirmed by the whole
mass of facts. - Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 200 (speech by Danton in the
Convention, June 13). "Without the canon of the 31st of May, without
the insurrection the conspirators would have triumphed; they would
have given us the law. Let the crime of that insurrection be on our
heads! That insurrection - I myself demanded it! . . . I demand a
declaration by the Convention, that without the insurrection of May
31, liberty would be no more! "-- Ibid., 220. Speech by Leclerc at the
Cordeliers club, June 27: "Was it not Legendre who rendered abortive
our wise measures, so often taken, to exterminate our enemies?  He and
Danton it was, who, through their culpable resistance, reduced us to
the moderation of the 31st of May, Legendre and Danton are the men who
opposed the revolutionary steps which we had taken on those great days
to crush out all the aristocrats in Paris!"

[128] Schmidt, I. 244. Report by Dutard, May 18.

[129] Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 253 and following pages, session of May
27. - Mortimer-Ternaux, VII. 294. -- Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 9
("Précis rapide" by Gorsas).

[130] Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 258. Meillan, 43.

[131] Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 259 (words of Raffet).

[132] Meillan, 44. -- Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 267, 280.

[133] Meillan, 44.  Placed opposite the president, within ten paces of
him, with my eyes constantly fixed on him, because in the horrible din
which disgraced the Assembly we could have no other compass to steer
by, I can testify that I neither saw nor heard the decree put to
vote."-- Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 278. Speech by Osselin, session of May
28: "I presented the decree as drawn up to the secretaries for their
signatures this morning. One of them, after reading it, observed to me
that the last article had not been decreed, but that the preceding
articles had been." - Mortimer-Ternaux, VII. 562. Letter of the deputy
Michel. May 29. "The guards were forced, and the sanctuary of the law
invested from about four to ten hours, so that nobody could leave the
hall even for the most urgent purposes.

[134] Mortimer-Ternaux, VII. 308. Extract from the official reports of
the patriotic club of Butte-des-Moulins, May 30. "Considering that the
majority of the section, known for incivism and its antirevolutionary
spirit, would decline this election or would elect commissaries not
enjoying the confidence of patriots," . . the patriotic club takes
upon itself the duty of electing the two commissaries demanded.

[135] Durand-Maillan, 297.  "Fragment," by Lanjuinais. "Seven
strangers, seven outside agents, Desfieux, Proly, Pereyra, Dubuisson,
Gusman, the two brothers Frey, etc., were set up by the commune as an
insurrectionary committee." Most of them are vile fellows, as is the
case with Varlet, Dobsen, Hassenfratz, Rousselin, Desfieux, Gusman,
etc.

[136] Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 156. "We, members of the revolutionary
commission, citizens Clémence, of the Bon-Conseil section; Dunouy, of
the Sans-culottes section; Bonin, of the section of Les Marchés,
Auvray of  the section of Mont-Blanc; Séguy, of the section of Butte-
des-Moulins; Moissard, of Grenelle; Berot, canton d'Issy; Rousselin,
section of the Unité; Marchand, section of Mont-Blanc; Grespin,
section of Gravilliers." They resign on the 6th of June. -- The
commission, at first composed of nine members, ends in comprising
eleven (Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 316, official reports of the commune.
May 31.) then 25 (Speech by Pache to the Committee of Public Safety,
June 1.)

[137] Buchez et Roux XXVII. 306. Official reports of the commune, May
31. - Ibid., 316. Mortimer-Ternaux, VII. 319.

[138] Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 274 Speech by Hassenfratz to the Jacobin
Club, May 27.

[139] Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 346 (speech by Lhuillier in the
Convention, May 31).

[140] Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 302, session of the Convention, May 30.
Words uttered by Hassenfratz, Varlet, and Chabot, and denounced by
Lanjuinais.

[141] Madame Roland, "Appel à l'impartiale postérité." Conversation of
Madam Roland on the evening of May 31on the Place du Carrusel with an
artillerist.

[142] Buchez et Roux, 307-323. Official reports of the commune, May
31.

[143] "Archives Nationales," F7, 2494, register of the revolutionary
committee of the Réunion section, official report of May 31, 6 o'clock
in the morning.

[144] Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 335, session of the Convention, May 31.
Petition presented by the commissaries in the name of forty-eight
sections; their credentials show that they are not at first authorized
by more than twenty-six sections.

[145] Buchez et Roux, 347, 348. Mortimer-Ternaux, VII. 350 (third
dispatch of the Hôtel-de-ville delegates, present at the session):
"The National Assembly was not able to accept the above important
measures. . . until the perturbators of the Assembly, known under the
title of the 'Right,' did themselves the justice to perceive that they
were not worthy of taking part in them; they evacuated the Assembly,
after the great gesticulations and imprecations, to which you know
they are liable."

[146] Dauban, "La Demagogie en 1793." Diary of Beaulieu, May 31. -
Declaration of Henriot, Germinal 4, year III. - Buchez et Roux,
XXVIII. 351

[147] Mortimer-Ternaux, VII. 565. Letter of the deputy Loiseau, June
5.

[148] Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 352 to 360, 368 to 377. Official reports
of the commune, June 1 and 2.  Proclamation of the revolutionary
committee, June 1. "Your delegates have ordered the arrest of all
suspected persons concealing themselves in the sections of Paris. This
arrest is in progress in all quarters."

[149] "Archives Nationales," F7, 2494.  Section of the Réunion,
official report, June 1.-- Ibid., June 2. Citizen Robin is arrested on
the 2nd of June, "for having manifested opinions contrary to the
sovereignty of the people in the National Assembly." The same day a
proclamation is made on the territory of the section by a deputation
of the commune, accompanied by one member and two drummers, "tending
(tendantes) to make known to the people that the country will be saved
by awaiting (en atendans) with courage the decree which is to be
rendered to prevent traitors (les traitre) from longer sitting in the
senate house." --  Ibid., June 4. The committee decides that it will
add new members to its number, but they will be taken only from all
"good sans-culote;  no notary, no notary's clerk, no lawyers nor their
clerks, no banker nor rich landlord" being admissible, unless he gives
evidence of unmistakable civism since 1789. --Cf. F7, 2497 (section of
the Droits de l'Homme), F7, 2484 (section of the Halle-au-blé), the
resemblance in orthography and in their acts; the registry of the
Piques section (F7, 2475) is one of the most interesting; here may be
found the details of the appearance of the ministers before it; the
committee that examines them does not even spell their names
correctly, "Clavier" being often written for Clavière, and "Goyer" for
Gohier.

[150] Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 19.

[151] Buchez et Roux, XXVII.357. Official reports of the commune, June
1.

[152] Meillan, 307. -- "Fragment," by Lanuinais. - "Diurnal," of
Beaulieu, June 2. - Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 399 (speech by Barère).

[153] Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 357. Official reports of the commune,
June 1.

[154] Meillan, 53, 58, 307. Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 14 (Précis, by
Gordas).

[155] Buchez et Roux, XXVII 359. Official reports of the commune, June
1. "One member of the Council stated that on going to the Beaurepaire
section he was not well received; that the president of this section
spoke uncivilly to him and took him for an imaginary municipalist;
that he was threatened with the lock-up, and that his liberty was
solely due to the brave citizens of the Sans-culottes section and the
gunners of the Beaurepaire section  who went with him." --
Preparations for the investment began on the 1st of June. ("Archives
Nationales," F7, 2497, official reports of the Droits de l'Homme
section, June 1.) Orders of Henriot to the commandant of the section
to send "400 homme et la compagnie de canonier avec le 2 pièces de
canon au Carouzel le long des Thuilerie plasse de la Révolution."

[156] "Lanjuinais states 100,000 men, Meillan 50,000; the deputies of
the Somme say 60,000, but without any evidence. Judging by various
indications I should put the number much lower, on account of the
disarmament and absentees: say 30,000 men, the same as May 31.

[157] Mortimer-Ternaux, VII. 566. Letter of the deputy Loiseau: "I
passed through the whole of one battalion; the men all said that they
did not know why the movement was made, that only their officers
knew." (June 1.)

[158] Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 400. Session of the Convention, June 2. -
- XXVIII. 43 (report by Saladin).

[159] Mortimer-Ternaux, VII. 392. Official report of the Jacobin Club,
June 2  "The deputies were so surrounded as not to be able to go out
even for special purposes." --  Ibid., 568 Letter of the deputy
Loiseau.

[160] Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 44. Report by Saladin. --  Meillan, 237.
-- Mortimer-Ternaux  VII. 547. Declaration of the deputies of the
Somme.

[161] Meillan, 52. -- Pétion, "Mémoires," 109 (Edition Dauban). --
Lanjuinais ("Fragment") --  "Nearly all those called Girondists
thought it best to stay away." -- Letter of Vergniaud June 3 (in the
Republican Français, June 5, 1793). "I left the Assembly yesterday
between 1 and 2 o'clock."

[162] Lanjuinais, "Fragment," 299.

[163] Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 400.

[164] Robinet, "Le Procès de Danton," 169. Words of Danton (according
to the  notes of a juryman, Topino-Lebrun).

[165] Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 44. Report by Saladin. - Meillan, 59. -
Lanjuinais, 308, 310.

[166] Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 401

[167] Mortimer-Ternaux, VII. 569. Letter of the deputy Loiseau. -
Meillan, 62.

[168] Buchez et Roux, XXVI. 341. Speech by Chasles in the Convention,
May 2: "The farmers . . .  are nearly all aristocrats."

[169] Or workhouses, see Taine: "Notes on England" page 214: "It is an
English principle that the indigent, by giving up their freedom, have
a right to be supported. Society pays the cost, but shuts them up and
sets them to work. As this condition is repugnant to them, they avoid
the workhouse as much as possible."  Similar institutions existed in
France before the revolution. (SR).

[170] Sieyès (quoted by Barante, "Histoire de la Convention," III.
169) thus describes it: "The fake people, the deadliest enemy which
the French people ever had, blocked incessantly the approaches to the
Convention . . .  At the entrance or exit of the Convention the
astonished spectator thought that a new invasion of barbarian hordes
had suddenly occurred, a new irruption of voracious, sanguinary
harpies, flocking there to seize hold of the revolution as if it were
the natural prey of their species."

[171] Gouverneur Morris, II. 241. Letter of Oct. 23, 1792. "The
populace - something, thank God, that is unknown in America"" --  He
often insists on this essential characteristic of the French
Revolution. - On this ever-present class, see the accurate and
complete work well supported by facts, of  Dr. Lombrose, "L'Uomo
delinquente."

[172] Mortimer-Ternaux, VII. Letter of the deputy Laplaigne, July 6.

[173]  Meillan, 51. - Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 356. Official report of
the commune, session of June 1. In the afternoon Marat comes to the
commune, harrangues the council, and gives the insurrection the last
impetus. It is plain that he was chief actor on both these days (June
1 and 2).

[174]  Pétion, 116.

[175] Schmidt, I. 370. - Mortimer-Ternaux, VII. 391. Letter of
Marchand, member of the Central Committee. "I saw Chaumette do
everything he could to hinder this glorious revolution, . . .
exclaim, shed tears, and tear his hair." - Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 46.
According to Saladin, Chaumette went so far as to demand Hébert's
arrest.

[176] Mortimer-Ternaux, VII. 300. - Cf. "Le vieux Cordelier," by C.
Desmoulins, No. 5.

[177] Mallet du Pan, II. 52. (March 8, 1794). - The titular general of
the revolutionary army was Ronsin. "Previous to the Revolution he was
a seedy author earning his living and reputation by working for the
boulevard stalls. . . One day a person informed him that his staff
'was behaving very badly, acting tyrannically in the most outrageous
manner at the theaters and everywhere else, striking women and tearing
their bonnets to pieces. Your men commit rape, pillage, and massacre."
To which he replied; 'Well, what shall I do? I know that they are a
lot of ruffians as well as you do; but those are the follows I need
for my revolutionary army. Find me honest people, if you can, that
will do that business.'" (Prudhomme, "Crimes de la Révolution," V.
130.)

[178]  Buchez et Roux, XXIX. 152.

[179]  Beaulieu, "Essais sur la Révolution," V. 200.

[180] Schmidt, II. 85. Report of Dutard, June 24 (on the review of the
previous evening) 2A sort of low-class artisan who seemed to me to
have been a soldier. . .  Apparently he had associated only with
disorderly men; I am sure that he would be found fond of gaming, wine,
women, and everything that denotes a bad character."

[181] Charlotte de Corday d'Armont, 1768 to 1793. Young French girl
who knifed Marat in his bath. Adherent of the Revolution, she
considered Marat as being responsible for the elimination of the
Girondists and the establishment of the terror. She was guillotined.
(SR.)

[182] Lauvergne, "Histoire de la Révolution dans le département du
Var," 176. At Toulon "the spirit of counter-revolution was nothing
else than the sentiment of self-preservation." It was the same thing
at Lyons. (Nolhac, "Souvenir de trois année de la Révolution à Lyon,"
p. 14.)

[183]  Gouverneur Morris, II. 395. Letter of Jan. 21, 1794. "Admitting
what has been asserted by persons in a situation to know the truth and
deeply interested to prove the contrary, it is an undoubted truth that
ninety-nine-hundredths are opposed to all ideas of a dismemberment,
and will fight to prevent it.

[184]  Mallet du Pan, II. 44.

[185] Carnot,  Lazare, Nicolas, 1753-1823, military engineer and
mathematician,  member of the committee of public safety, organized
the armies of the republic and their offensive tactics. (SR).

[186] Among other documents, the following letter will show the
quality of these recruits, especially of the recruits of 1791, who
were much the best men. (Letter from the municipal officers of Dorat,
December 28, 1792, "Archives Nationales," F7, 3275.) "The commune of
Dorat is made up of three classes of citizens: The richest class,
composed of persons confirmed in the prejudices of the ancient régime,
has been disarmed. The second, composed of well-to-do people, fills
the administrative positions. It is against them that the fury of the
turbulent is aimed; but those of this class who could make resistance
have gone to fight the enemy abroad.  The third class, and the most
numerous, is made up in part of the seditious and in part of laborers,
who, not daring to mix in the revolt, content themselves with coveting
the tax on grain." - Toulongeon, "Histoire de France depuis la
Révolution," IV. 94. "Do not degrade a nation by ascribing base
motives to it and a servile fear. Every one, on the contrary, felt
himself infused by an exalted instinct for the public welfare." -
Gouvion Saint-Cyr, "Mémoires," I. 56: A young man would have blushed
to remain at home when the independence of the nation was threatened.
Each one quitted his studies or his profession.

[187] Gouvion-Saint-Cyr, 26. "The manifesto of Brunswick assigns to
France more than a hundred battalions, which, within three weeks, were
raised, armed, and put in the field."

[188]  In respect of these sentiments, cf. Gouvion Saint-Cyr,
"Mémoires, and Fervel, "Campagnes de la Révolution Française dans les
Pyrénées orientales."

[189] Stendhal, Memoires sur Napoléon.

[190]  Gouvion-Saint-Cyr, "Memoires," p.43. "Patriotism made up for
everything; it alone gave us victory; it supplied our most pressing
needs."