The General Overturn.
Of the King’s Court, for the present, there is almost nothing
whatever to be said. Silent, deserted are these halls; Royalty
languishes forsaken of its war-god and all its hopes, till once
the Œil-de-Bœuf rally again. The sceptre is departed from King
Louis; is gone over to the _Salles des Menus_, to the Paris
Townhall, or one knows not whither. In the July days, while all
ears were yet deafened by the crash of the Bastille, and
Ministers and Princes were scattered to the four winds, it seemed
as if the very Valets had grown heavy of hearing. Besenval, also
in flight towards Infinite Space, but hovering a little at
Versailles, was addressing his Majesty personally for an Order
about post-horses; when, lo, “the Valet in waiting places himself
familiarly between his Majesty and me,” stretching out his rascal
neck to learn what it was! His Majesty, in sudden choler, whirled
round; made a clutch at the tongs: “I gently prevented him; he
grasped my hand in thankfulness; and I noticed tears in his
eyes.”[207]
Poor King; for French Kings also are men! Louis Fourteenth
himself once clutched the tongs, and even smote with them; but
then it was at Louvois, and Dame Maintenon ran up.—The Queen sits
weeping in her inner apartments, surrounded by weak women: she is
“at the height of unpopularity;” universally regarded as the evil
genius of France. Her friends and familiar counsellors have all
fled; and fled, surely, on the foolishest errand. The Château
Polignac still frowns aloft, on its “bold and enormous” cubical
rock, amid the blooming champaigns, amid the blue girdling
mountains of Auvergne:[208] but no Duke and Duchess Polignac look
forth from it; they have fled, they have “met Necker at Bale;”
they shall not return. That France should see her Nobles resist
the Irresistible, Inevitable, with the face of angry men, was
unhappy, not unexpected: but with the face and sense of pettish
children? This was her peculiarity. They understood nothing;
would understand nothing. Does not, at this hour, a new Polignac,
first-born of these Two, sit reflective in the Castle of
Ham;[209] in an astonishment he will never recover from; the most
confused of existing mortals?
King Louis has his new Ministry: mere Popularities; Old-President
Pompignan; Necker, coming back in triumph; and other such.[210]
But what will it avail him? As was said, the sceptre, all but the
wooden gilt sceptre, has departed elsewhither. Volition,
determination is not in this man: only innocence, indolence;
dependence on all persons but himself, on all circumstances but
the circumstances he were lord of. So troublous internally is our
Versailles and its work. Beautiful, if seen from afar,
resplendent like a Sun; seen near at hand, a mere
Sun’s-Atmosphere, hiding darkness, confused ferment of ruin!
But over France, there goes on the indisputablest “destruction of
formulas;” transaction of realities that follow therefrom. So
many millions of persons, all gyved, and nigh strangled, with
formulas; whose Life nevertheless, at least the digestion and
hunger of it, was real enough! Heaven has at length sent an
abundant harvest; but what profits it the poor man, when Earth
with her formulas interposes? Industry, in these times of
Insurrection, must needs lie dormant; capital, as usual, not
circulating, but stagnating timorously in nooks. The poor man is
short of work, is therefore short of money; nay even had he
money, bread is not to be bought for it. Were it plotting of
Aristocrats, plotting of d’Orléans; were it Brigands,
preternatural terror, and the clang of Phoebus Apollo’s silver
bow,—enough, the markets are scarce of grain, plentiful only in
tumult. Farmers seem lazy to thresh;—being either “bribed;” or
needing no bribe, with prices ever rising, with perhaps rent
itself no longer so pressing. Neither, what is singular, do
municipal enactments, “That along with so many measures of wheat
you shall sell so many of rye,” and other the like, much mend the
matter. Dragoons with drawn swords stand ranked among the
corn-sacks, often more dragoons than sacks.[211] Meal-mobs
abound; growing into mobs of a still darker quality.
Starvation has been known among the French Commonalty before
this; known and familiar. Did we not see them, in the year 1775,
presenting, in sallow faces, in wretchedness and raggedness,
their Petition of Grievances; and, for answer, getting a
brand-new Gallows forty feet high? Hunger and Darkness, through
long years! For look back on that earlier Paris Riot, when a
Great Personage, worn out by debauchery, was believed to be in
want of Blood-baths; and Mothers, in worn raiment, yet with
living hearts under it, “filled the public places” with their
wild Rachel-cries,—stilled also by the Gallows. Twenty years ago,
the Friend of Men (preaching to the deaf) described the Limousin
Peasants as wearing a pain-stricken (_souffre-douleur_) look, a
look _past_ complaint, “as if the oppression of the great were
like the hail and the thunder, a thing irremediable, the
ordinance of Nature.”[212] And now, if in some great hour, the
shock of a falling Bastille should awaken you; and it were found
to be the ordinance of Art merely; and remediable, reversible!
Or has the Reader forgotten that “flood of savages,” which, in
sight of the same Friend of Men, descended from the mountains at
Mont d’Or? Lank-haired haggard faces; shapes rawboned, in high
sabots; in woollen jupes, with leather girdles studded with
copper-nails! They rocked from foot to foot, and beat time with
their elbows too, as the quarrel and battle which was not long in
beginning went on; shouting fiercely; the lank faces distorted
into the similitude of a cruel laugh. For they were darkened and
hardened: long had they been the prey of excise-men and tax-men;
of “clerks with the cold spurt of their pen.” It was the fixed
prophecy of our old Marquis, which no man would listen to, that
“such Government by Blind-man’s-buff, stumbling along too far,
would end by the General Overturn, the _Culbute Générale!_”
No man would listen, each went his thoughtless way;—and Time and
Destiny also travelled on. The Government by Blind-man’s-buff,
stumbling along, has reached the precipice inevitable for it.
Dull Drudgery, driven on, by clerks with the cold dastard spurt
of their pen, has been driven—into a Communion of Drudges! For
now, moreover, there have come the strangest confused tidings; by
Paris Journals with their paper wings; or still more portentous,
where no Journals are,[213] by rumour and conjecture: Oppression
_not_ inevitable; a Bastille prostrate, and the Constitution fast
getting ready! Which Constitution, if it be something and not
nothing, what can it be but bread to eat?
The Traveller, “walking up hill bridle in hand,” overtakes “a
poor woman;” the image, as such commonly are, of drudgery and
scarcity; “looking sixty years of age, though she is not yet
twenty-eight.” They have seven children, her poor drudge and she:
a farm, with one cow, which helps to make the children soup; also
one little horse, or garron. They have rents and quit-rents, Hens
to pay to this Seigneur, Oat-sacks to that; King’s taxes,
Statute-labour, Church-taxes, taxes enough;—and think the times
inexpressible. She has heard that some_where_, in some manner,
some_thing_ is to be done for the poor: ‘God send it soon; for
the dues and taxes crush us down (_nous écrasent_)!’[214]
Fair prophecies are spoken, but they are not fulfilled. There
have been Notables, Assemblages, turnings out and comings in.
Intriguing and manœuvring; Parliamentary eloquence and arguing,
Greek meeting Greek in high places, has long gone on; yet still
bread comes not. The harvest is reaped and garnered; yet still we
have no bread. Urged by despair and by hope, what can Drudgery
do, but rise, as predicted, and produce the General Overturn?
Fancy, then, some Five full-grown Millions of such gaunt figures,
with their haggard faces (_figures hâves_); in woollen jupes,
with copper-studded leather girths, and high sabots,—starting up
to ask, as in forest-roarings, their washed Upper-Classes, after
long unreviewed centuries, virtually this question: How have ye
treated us; how have ye taught us, fed us, and led us, while we
toiled for you? The answer can be read in flames, over the
nightly summer sky. _This_ is the feeding and leading we have had
of you: EMPTINESS,—of pocket, of stomach, of head, and of heart.
Behold there is _nothing in us;_ nothing but what Nature gives
her wild children of the desert: Ferocity and Appetite; Strength
grounded on Hunger. Did ye mark among your Rights of Man, that
man was not to die of starvation, while there was bread reaped by
him? It is among the Mights of Man.
Seventy-two Châteaus have flamed aloft in the Maconnais and
Beaujolais alone: this seems the centre of the conflagration; but
it has spread over Dauphiné, Alsace, the Lyonnais; the whole
South-East is in a blaze. All over the North, from Rouen to Metz,
disorder is abroad: smugglers of salt go openly in armed bands:
the barriers of towns are burnt; toll-gatherers, tax-gatherers,
official persons put to flight. “It was thought,” says Young,
“the people, from hunger, would revolt;” and we see they have
done it. Desperate Lackalls, long prowling aimless, now finding
hope in desperation itself, everywhere form a nucleus. They ring
the Church bell by way of tocsin: and the Parish turns out to the
work.[215] Ferocity, atrocity; hunger and revenge: such work as
we can imagine!
Ill stands it now with the Seigneur, who, for example, “has
walled up the only Fountain of the Township;” who has ridden high
on his _chartier_ and parchments; who has preserved Game not
wisely but too well. Churches also, and Canonries, are sacked,
without mercy; which have shorn the flock too close, forgetting
to feed it. Wo to the land over which Sansculottism, in its day
of vengeance, tramps roughshod,—shod in sabots! Highbred
Seigneurs, with their delicate women and little ones, had to “fly
half-naked,” under cloud of night; glad to escape the flames, and
even worse. You meet them at the _tables-d’hôte_ of inns; making
wise reflections or foolish that “rank is destroyed;” uncertain
whither they shall now wend.[216] The _métayer_ will find it
convenient to be slack in paying rent. As for the Tax-gatherer,
he, long hunting as a biped of prey, may now get hunted as one;
his Majesty’s Exchequer will not “fill up the Deficit,” this
season: it is the notion of many that a Patriot Majesty, being
the Restorer of French Liberty, has abolished most taxes, though,
for their private ends, some men make a secret of it.
Where this will end? In the Abyss, one may prophecy; whither all
Delusions are, at all moments, travelling; where this Delusion
has now arrived. For if there be a Faith, from of old, it is
this, as we often repeat, that no Lie can live for ever. The very
Truth has to change its vesture, from time to time; and be born
again. But all Lies have sentence of death written down against
them, and Heaven’s Chancery itself; and, slowly or fast, advance
incessantly towards their hour. “The sign of a Grand Seigneur
being landlord,” says the vehement plain-spoken Arthur Young,
“are wastes, _landes_, deserts, ling: go to his residence, you
will find it in the middle of a forest, peopled with deer, wild
boars and wolves. The fields are scenes of pitiable management,
as the houses are of misery. To see so many millions of hands,
that would be industrious, all idle and starving: Oh, if I were
legislator of France, for one day, I would make these great lords
skip again!”[217] O Arthur, thou now actually beholdest them
_skip;_—wilt thou grow to grumble at that too?
For long years and generations it lasted, but the time came.
Featherbrain, whom no reasoning and no pleading could touch, the
glare of the firebrand had to illuminate: there remained but that
method. Consider it, look at it! The widow is gathering nettles
for her children’s dinner; a perfumed Seigneur, delicately
lounging in the Œil-de-Bœuf, has an alchemy whereby he will
extract from her the third nettle, and name it Rent and Law: such
an arrangement must end. Ought it? But, O most fearful is _such_
an ending! Let those, to whom God, in His great mercy, has
granted time and space, prepare another and milder one.
To some it is a matter of wonder that the Seigneurs did not do
something to help themselves; say, combine, and arm: for there
were a “hundred and fifty thousand of them,” all violent enough.
Unhappily, a hundred and fifty thousand, scattered over wide
Provinces, divided by mutual ill-will, cannot combine. The
highest Seigneurs, as we have seen, had already emigrated,—with a
view of putting France to the blush. Neither are arms now the
peculiar property of Seigneurs; but of every mortal who has ten
shillings, wherewith to buy a secondhand firelock.
Besides, those starving Peasants, after all, have not four feet
and claws, that you could keep them down permanently in that
manner. They are not even of black colour; they are mere Unwashed
Seigneurs; and a Seigneur too has human bowels!—The Seigneurs did
what they could; enrolled in National Guards; fled, with shrieks,
complaining to Heaven and Earth. One Seigneur, famed Memmay of
Quincey, near Vesoul, invited all the rustics of his
neighbourhood to a banquet; blew up his Château and them with
gunpowder; and instantaneously vanished, no man yet knows
whither.[218] Some half dozen years after, he came back; and
demonstrated that it was by accident.
Nor are the authorities idle: though unluckily, all Authorities,
Municipalities and such like, are in the uncertain transitionary
state; getting regenerated from old Monarchic to new Democratic;
no Official yet knows clearly what he is. Nevertheless, Mayors
old or new do gather _Marechaussées_, National Guards, Troops of
the line; justice, of the most summary sort, is not wanting. The
Electoral Committee of Macon, though but a Committee, goes the
length of hanging, for its own behoof, as many as twenty. The
Prévôt of Dauphiné traverses the country “with a movable column,”
with tipstaves, gallows-ropes; for gallows any tree will serve,
and suspend its culprit, or “thirteen” culprits.
Unhappy country! How is the fair gold-and-green of the ripe
bright Year defaced with horrid blackness: black ashes of
Châteaus, black bodies of gibetted Men! Industry has ceased in
it; not sounds of the hammer and saw, but of the tocsin and
alarm-drum. The sceptre has departed, _whither_ one knows
not;—breaking itself in pieces: here impotent, there tyrannous.
National Guards are unskilful, and of doubtful purpose; Soldiers
are inclined to mutiny: there is danger that they two may
quarrel, danger that they may _agree_. Strasburg has seen riots:
a Townhall torn to shreds, its archives scattered white on the
winds; drunk soldiers embracing drunk citizens for three days,
and Mayor Dietrich and Marshal Rochambeau reduced nigh to
desperation.[219]
Through the middle of all which phenomena, is seen, on his
triumphant transit, “escorted,” through Béfort for instance, “by
fifty National Horsemen and all the military music of the
place,”—M. Necker, returning from Bale! Glorious as the meridian;
though poor Necker himself partly guesses whither it is
leading.[220] One highest culminating day, at the Paris Townhall;
with immortal vivats, with wife and daughter kneeling publicly to
kiss his hand; with Besenval’s pardon granted,—but indeed revoked
before sunset: one highest day, but then lower days, and ever
lower, down even to lowest! Such magic is in a name; and in the
want of a name. Like some enchanted Mambrino’s Helmet, essential
to victory, comes this “Saviour of France;” beshouted,
becymballed by the world:—alas, so soon, to be _dis_enchanted, to
be pitched shamefully over the lists as a Barber’s Bason! Gibbon
“could wish to shew him” (in this ejected, Barber’s-Bason state)
to any man of solidity, who were minded to have the soul burnt
out of him, and become a _caput mortuum_, by Ambition,
unsuccessful or successful.[221]
Another small phasis we add, and no more: how, in the Autumn
months, our sharp-tempered Arthur has been “pestered for some
days past,” by shot, lead-drops and slugs, “rattling five or six
times into my chaise and about my ears;” all the mob of the
country gone out to kill game![222] It is even so. On the Cliffs
of Dover, over all the Marches of France, there appear, this
autumn, two Signs on the Earth: emigrant flights of French
Seigneurs; emigrant winged flights of French Game! Finished, one
may say, or as good as finished, is the Preservation of Game on
this Earth; completed for endless Time. What part it had to play
in the History of Civilisation is played _plaudite; exeat!_
In this manner does Sansculottism blaze up, illustrating many
things;—producing, among the rest, as we saw, on the Fourth of
August, that semi-miraculous Night of Pentecost in the National
Assembly; semi miraculous, which had its causes, and its effects.
Feudalism is struck dead; not on parchment only, and by ink; but
in very fact, by fire; say, by self-combustion. This
conflagration of the South-East will abate; will be got
scattered, to the West, or elsewhither: extinguish it will not,
till the _fuel_ be all done.