The Election.
Up, then, and be doing! The royal signal-word flies through
France, as through vast forests the rushing of a mighty wind. At
Parish Churches, in Townhalls, and every House of Convocation; by
Bailliages, by Seneschalsies, in whatsoever form men convene;
there, with confusion enough, are Primary Assemblies forming. To
elect your Electors; such is the form prescribed: then to draw up
your “Writ of Plaints and Grievances (_Cahier de plaintes et
doléances_),” of which latter there is no lack.
With such virtue works this Royal January Edict; as it rolls
rapidly, in its leathern mails, along these frostbound highways,
towards all the four winds. Like some _fiat_, or magic
spell-word;—which such things do resemble! For always, as it
sounds out “at the market-cross,” accompanied with trumpet-blast;
presided by Bailli, Seneschal, or other minor Functionary, with
beef-eaters; or, in country churches is droned forth after
sermon, “_au prône des messes paroissales;_” and is registered,
posted and let fly over all the world,—you behold how this
multitudinous French People, so long simmering and buzzing in
eager expectancy, begins heaping and shaping itself into organic
groups. Which organic groups, again, hold smaller organic
grouplets: the inarticulate buzzing becomes articulate speaking
and acting. By Primary Assembly, and then by Secondary; by
“successive elections,” and infinite elaboration and scrutiny,
according to prescribed process—shall the genuine “Plaints and
Grievances” be at length got to paper; shall the fit National
Representative be at length laid hold of.
How the whole People shakes itself, as if it had one life; and,
in thousand-voiced rumour, announces that it is awake, suddenly
out of long death-sleep, and will thenceforth sleep no more! The
long looked-for has come at last; wondrous news, of Victory,
Deliverance, Enfranchisement, sounds magical through every heart.
To the proud strong man it has come; whose strong hands shall no
more be gyved; to whom boundless unconquered continents lie
disclosed. The weary day-drudge has heard of it; the beggar with
his crusts moistened in tears. What! To us also has hope reached;
down even to us? Hunger and hardship are not to be eternal? The
bread we extorted from the rugged glebe, and, with the toil of
our sinews, reaped and ground, and kneaded into loaves, was not
wholly for another, then; but we also shall eat of it, and be
filled? Glorious news (answer the prudent elders), but all-too
unlikely!—Thus, at any rate, may the lower people, who pay no
money-taxes and have no right to vote,[117] assiduously crowd
round those that do; and most Halls of Assembly, within doors and
without, seem animated enough.
Paris, alone of Towns, is to have Representatives; the number of
them twenty. Paris is divided into Sixty Districts; each of which
(assembled in some church, or the like) is choosing two Electors.
Official deputations pass from District to District, for all is
inexperience as yet, and there is endless consulting. The streets
swarm strangely with busy crowds, pacific yet restless and
loquacious; at intervals, is seen the gleam of military muskets;
especially about the Palais, where Parlement, once more on duty,
sits querulous, almost tremulous.
Busy is the French world! In those great days, what poorest
speculative craftsman but will leave his workshop; if not to
vote, yet to assist in voting? On all highways is a rustling and
bustling. Over the wide surface of France, ever and anon, through
the spring months, as the Sower casts his corn abroad upon the
furrows, sounds of congregating and dispersing; of crowds in
deliberation, acclamation, voting by ballot and by voice,—rise
discrepant towards the ear of Heaven. To which political
phenomena add this economical one, that Trade is stagnant, and
also Bread getting dear; for before the rigorous winter there
was, as we said, a rigorous summer, with drought, and on the 13th
of July with destructive hail. What a fearful day! all cried
while that tempest fell. Alas, the next anniversary of it will be
a worse.[118] Under such aspects is France electing National
Representatives.
The incidents and specialties of these Elections belong not to
Universal, but to Local or Parish History: for which reason let
not the new troubles of Grenoble or Besancon; the bloodshed on
the streets of Rennes, and consequent march thither of the Breton
“Young Men” with Manifesto by their “Mothers, Sisters and
Sweethearts;”[119] nor suchlike, detain us here. It is the same
sad history everywhere; with superficial variations. A reinstated
Parlement (as at Besancon), which stands astonished at this
Behemoth of a States-General it had itself evoked, starts
forward, with more or less audacity, to fix a thorn in its nose;
and, alas, is instantaneously struck down, and hurled quite
out,—for the new popular force can use not only arguments but
brickbats! Or else, and perhaps combined with this, it is an
order of Noblesse (as in Brittany), which will beforehand tie up
the Third Estate, that it harm not the old privileges. In which
act of tying up, never so skilfully set about, there is likewise
no possibility of prospering; but the Behemoth-Briareus snaps
your cords like green rushes. Tie up? Alas, Messieurs! And then,
as for your chivalry rapiers, valour and wager-of-battle, think
one moment, how can that answer? The plebeian heart too has red
life in it, which changes not to paleness at glance even of you;
and “the six hundred Breton gentlemen assembled in arms, for
seventy-two hours, in the Cordeliers’ Cloister, at Rennes,”—have
to come out again, _wiser_ than they entered. For the Nantes
Youth, the Angers Youth, all Brittany was astir; “mothers,
sisters and sweethearts” shrieking after them, _March!_ The
Breton Noblesse must even let the mad world have its way.[120]
In other Provinces, the Noblesse, with equal goodwill, finds it
better to stick to Protests, to well-redacted “_Cahiers_ of
grievances,” and satirical writings and speeches. Such is
partially their course in Provence; whither indeed Gabriel Honoré
Riquetti Comte de Mirabeau has rushed down from Paris, to speak a
word in season. In Provence, the Privileged, backed by their Aix
Parlement, discover that such novelties, enjoined though they be
by Royal Edict, tend to National detriment; and what is still
more indisputable, “to impair the dignity of the Noblesse.”
Whereupon Mirabeau protesting aloud, this same Noblesse, amid
huge tumult within doors and without, flatly determines to expel
him from their Assembly. No other method, not even that of
successive duels, would answer with him, the obstreperous
fierce-glaring man. Expelled he accordingly is.
“In all countries, in all times,” exclaims he departing, “the
Aristocrats have implacably pursued every friend of the People;
and with tenfold implacability, if such a one were himself born
of the Aristocracy. It was thus that the last of the Gracchi
perished, by the hands of the Patricians. But he, being struck
with the mortal stab, flung dust towards heaven, and called on
the Avenging Deities; and from this dust there was born
Marius,—Marius not so illustrious for exterminating the Cimbri,
as for overturning in Rome the tyranny of the Nobles.”[121]
Casting up _which_ new curious handful of dust (through the
Printing-press), to breed what it can and may, Mirabeau stalks
forth into the Third Estate.
That he now, to ingratiate himself with this Third Estate,
“opened a cloth-shop in Marseilles,” and for moments became a
furnishing tailor, or even the fable that he did so, is to us
always among the pleasant memorabilities of this era. Stranger
Clothier never wielded the ell-wand, and rent webs for men, or
fractional parts of men. The _Fils Adoptif_ is indignant at such
disparaging fable,[122]—which nevertheless was widely believed in
those days.[123] But indeed, if Achilles, in the heroic ages,
killed mutton, why should not Mirabeau, in the unheroic ones,
measure broadcloth?
More authentic are his triumph-progresses through that disturbed
district, with mob jubilee, flaming torches, “windows hired for
two louis,” and voluntary guard of a hundred men. He is Deputy
Elect, both of Aix and of Marseilles; but will prefer Aix. He has
opened his far-sounding voice, the depths of his far-sounding
soul; he can quell (such virtue is in a spoken word) the
pride-tumults of the rich, the hunger-tumults of the poor; and
wild multitudes move under him, as under the moon do billows of
the sea: he has become a world compeller, and ruler over men.
One other incident and specialty we note; with how different an
interest! It is of the Parlement of Paris; which starts forward,
like the others (only with less audacity, seeing better how it
lay), to nose-ring that Behemoth of a States-General. Worthy
Doctor Guillotin, respectable practitioner in Paris, has drawn up
his little “Plan of a _Cahier of doléances_;”—as had he not,
having the wish and gift, the clearest liberty to do? He is
getting the people to sign it; whereupon the surly Parlement
summons him to give an account of himself. He goes; but with all
Paris at his heels; which floods the outer courts, and copiously
signs the _Cahier_ even there, while the Doctor is giving account
of himself within! The Parlement cannot too soon dismiss
Guillotin, with compliments; to be borne home shoulder-high.[124]
This respectable Guillotin we hope to behold once more, and
perhaps only once; the Parlement not even once, but let it be
engulphed unseen by us.
Meanwhile such things, cheering as they are, tend little to cheer
the national creditor, or indeed the creditor of any kind. In the
midst of universal portentous doubt, what certainty can seem so
certain as money in the purse, and the wisdom of keeping it
there? Trading Speculation, Commerce of all kinds, has as far as
possible come to a dead pause; and the hand of the industrious
lies idle in his bosom. Frightful enough, when now the rigour of
seasons has also done its part, and to scarcity of work is added
scarcity of food! In the opening spring, there come rumours of
forestalment, there come King’s Edicts, Petitions of bakers
against millers; and at length, in the month of April—troops of
ragged Lackalls, and fierce cries of starvation! These are the
thrice-famed _Brigands:_ an actual existing quotity of persons:
who, long reflected and reverberated through so many millions of
heads, as in concave multiplying mirrors, become a whole Brigand
World; and, like a kind of Supernatural Machinery wondrously move
the Epos of the Revolution. The Brigands are here: the Brigands
are there; the Brigands are coming! Not otherwise sounded the
clang of Phoebus Apollo’s silver bow, scattering pestilence and
pale terror; for this clang too was of the imagination;
preternatural; and it too walked in formless immeasurability,
_having made itself like to the Night_ (νυκτὶ ἐοικώς.)!
But remark at least, for the first time, the singular empire of
Suspicion, in those lands, in those days. If poor famishing men
shall, prior to death, gather in groups and crowds, as the poor
fieldfares and plovers do in bitter weather, were it but that
they may chirp mournfully together, and misery look in the eyes
of misery; if famishing men (what famishing fieldfares cannot do)
should discover, once congregated, that they need not die while
food is in the land, since they are many, and with empty wallets
have right hands: in all this, what need were there of
Preternatural Machinery? To most people none; but not to French
people, in a time of Revolution. These Brigands (as Turgot’s also
were, fourteen years ago) have all been set on; enlisted, though
without tuck of drum,—by Aristocrats, by Democrats, by D’Orléans,
D’Artois, and enemies of the public weal. Nay Historians, to this
day, will prove it by one argument: these Brigands pretending to
have no victual, nevertheless contrive to drink, nay, have been
seen drunk.[125] An unexampled fact! But on the whole, may we not
predict that a people, with such a width of Credulity and of
Incredulity (the proper union of which makes Suspicion, and
indeed unreason generally), will see Shapes enough of Immortals
fighting in its battle-ranks, and never want for Epical
Machinery?
Be this as it may, the Brigands are clearly got to Paris, in
considerable multitudes:[126] with sallow faces, lank hair (the
true enthusiast complexion), with sooty rags; and also with large
clubs, which they smite angrily against the pavement! These
mingle in the Election tumult; would fain sign Guillotin’s
_Cahier_, or any _Cahier_ or Petition whatsoever, could they but
write. Their enthusiast complexion, the smiting of their sticks
bodes little good to any one; least of all to rich
master-manufacturers of the Suburb Saint-Antoine, with whose
workmen they consort.