Brigands and Jalès.
We shall have War, then; and on what terms! With an Executive
“pretending,” really with less and less deceptiveness now, “to be
dead;” casting even a wishful eye towards the enemy: on such
terms we shall have War.
Public Functionary in vigorous action there is none; if it be not
Rivarol with his Staff of Genius and Two hundred and eighty
Applauders. The Public Service lies waste: the very tax-gatherer
has forgotten his cunning: in this and the other Provincial Board
of Management (_Directoire de Départment_) it is found advisable
to _retain_ what Taxes you can gather, to pay your own inevitable
expenditures. Our Revenue is Assignats; emission on emission of
Paper-money. And the Army; our Three grand Armies, of Rochambeau,
of Lückner, of Lafayette? Lean, disconsolate hover these Three
grand Armies, watching the Frontiers there; three Flights of
long-necked Cranes in moulting time;—wretched, disobedient,
disorganised; who never saw fire; the old Generals and Officers
gone across the Rhine. War-minister Narbonne, he of the
rose-coloured Reports, solicits recruitments, equipments, money,
always money; threatens, since he can get none,—to “take his
sword,” which belongs to himself, and go serve his country with
that.[441]
The question of questions is: What shall be done? Shall we, with
a desperate defiance which Fortune sometimes favours, draw the
sword at once, in the face of this in-rushing world of Emigration
and Obscurantism; or wait, and temporise and diplomatise, till,
if possible, our resources mature themselves a little? And yet
again are our resources growing towards maturity; or growing the
_other_ way? Dubious: the ablest Patriots are divided; Brissot
and his Brissotins, or Girondins, in the Legislative, cry aloud
for the former defiant plan; Robespierre, in the Jacobins, pleads
as loud for the latter dilatory one: with responses, even with
mutual reprimands; distracting the Mother of Patriotism. Consider
also what agitated Breakfasts there may be at Madame d’Udon’s in
the Place Vendôme! The alarm of all men is great. Help, ye
Patriots; and O at least agree; for the hour presses. Frost was
not yet gone, when in that “tolerably handsome apartment of the
Castle of Niort,” there arrived a Letter: General Dumouriez must
to Paris. It is War-minister Narbonne that writes; the General
shall give counsel about many things.[442] In the month of
February 1792, Brissotin friends welcome their Dumouriez
_Polymetis_,—comparable really to an antique Ulysses in modern
costume; quick, elastic, shifty, insuppressible, a
“many-counselled man.”
Let the Reader fancy this fair France with a whole Cimmerian
Europe girdling her, rolling in on her; black, to burst in red
thunder of War; fair France herself hand-shackled and
foot-shackled in the weltering complexities of this Social
Clothing, or Constitution, which they have made for her; a France
that, in such Constitution, cannot march! And Hunger too; and
plotting Aristocrats, and excommunicating Dissident Priests: “The
man Lebrun by name” urging his black _wiski_, visible to the eye:
and, still more terrible in his invisibility, Engineer Goguelat,
with Queen’s cipher, riding and running!
The excommunicatory Priests give new trouble in the Maine and
Loire; La Vendée, nor Cathelineau the wool-dealer, has not ceased
grumbling and rumbling. Nay behold Jalès itself once more: how
often does that real-imaginary Camp of the Fiend require to be
extinguished! For near two years now, it has waned faint and
again waxed bright, in the bewildered soul of Patriotism:
actually, if Patriotism knew it, one of the most surprising
products of Nature working with Art. Royalist Seigneurs, under
this or the other pretext, assemble the simple people of these
Cevennes Mountains; men not unused to revolt, and with heart for
fighting, could their poor heads be got persuaded. The Royalist
Seigneur harangues; harping mainly on the religious string: ‘True
Priests maltreated, false Priests intruded, Protestants (once
dragooned) now triumphing, things sacred given to the dogs;’ and
so produces, from the pious Mountaineer throat, rough growlings.
‘Shall we not testify, then, ye brave hearts of the Cevennes;
march to the rescue? Holy Religion; duty to God and King?’ ‘_Si
fait, si fait_, Just so, just so,’ answer the brave hearts
always: ‘_Mais il y a de bien bonnes choses dans la Révolution_,
But there are many good things in the Revolution too!’—And so the
matter, cajole as we may, will only turn on its axis, not stir
from the spot, and remains theatrical merely.[443]
Nevertheless deepen your cajolery, harp quick and quicker, ye
Royalist Seigneurs; with a dead-lift effort you may bring it to
that. In the month of June next, this _Camp of Jalès_ will step
forth as a theatricality suddenly become real; Two thousand
strong, and with the boast that it is Seventy thousand: most
strange to see; with flags flying, bayonets fixed; with
Proclamation, and d’Artois Commission of civil war! Let some
Rebecqui, or other the like hot-clear Patriot; let some
“Lieutenant-Colonel Aubry,” if Rebecqui is busy elsewhere, raise
instantaneous National Guards, and disperse and dissolve it; and
blow the Old Castle asunder,[444] that so, if possible, we hear
of it no more!
In the Months of February and March, it is recorded, the terror,
especially of rural France, had risen even to the transcendental
pitch: not far from madness. In Town and Hamlet is rumour; of
war, massacre: that Austrians, Aristocrats, above all, that _The
Brigands_ are close by. Men quit their houses and huts; rush
fugitive, shrieking, with wife and child, they know not whither.
Such a terror, the eye-witnesses say, never fell on a Nation; nor
shall again fall, even in Reigns of Terror expressly so-called.
The Countries of the Loire, all the Central and South-East
regions, start up distracted, “simultaneously as by an electric
shock;”—for indeed grain too gets scarcer and scarcer. “The
people barricade the entrances of Towns, pile stones in the upper
stories, the women prepare boiling water; from moment to moment,
expecting the attack. In the Country, the alarm-bell rings
incessant: troops of peasants, gathered by it, scour the
highways, seeking an imaginary enemy. They are armed mostly with
scythes stuck in wood; and, arriving in wild troops at the
barricaded Towns, are themselves sometimes taken for
Brigands.”[445]
So rushes old France: old France is rushing _down_. What the end
will be is known to no mortal; that the end is near all mortals
may know.