The Whiff of Grapeshot.
In fact, what can be more natural, one may say inevitable, as a
Post-Sansculottic transitionary state, than even this? Confused
wreck of a Republic of the Poverties, which ended in Reign of
Terror, is arranging itself into such composure as it can.
Evangel of Jean-Jacques, and most other Evangels, becoming
incredible, what is there for it but return to the old Evangel of
Mammon? _Contrat-Social_ is true or untrue, Brotherhood is
Brotherhood or Death; but money always will buy money’s worth: in
the wreck of human dubitations, this remains indubitable, that
Pleasure is pleasant. Aristocracy of Feudal Parchment has passed
away with a mighty rushing; and now, by a natural course, we
arrive at Aristocracy of the Moneybag. It is the course through
which all European Societies are at this hour travelling.
Apparently a still baser sort of Aristocracy? An infinitely
baser; the basest yet known!
In which however there is this advantage, that, like Anarchy
itself, it cannot continue. Hast thou considered how Thought is
stronger than Artillery-parks, and (were it fifty years after
death and martyrdom, or were it two thousand years) writes and
unwrites Acts of Parliament, removes mountains; models the World
like soft clay? Also how the beginning of all Thought, worth the
name, is Love; and the wise head never yet was, without first the
generous heart? The Heavens cease not their bounty: they send us
generous hearts into every generation. And now what generous
heart can pretend to itself, or be hoodwinked into believing,
that Loyalty to the Moneybag is a noble Loyalty? Mammon, cries
the generous heart out of all ages and countries, is the basest
of known Gods, even of known Devils. In him what glory is there,
that ye should worship him? No glory discernable; not even
terror: at best, detestability, ill-matched with
despicability!—Generous hearts, discerning, on this hand,
widespread Wretchedness, dark without and within, moistening its
ounce-and-half of bread with tears; and on that hand, mere Balls
in fleshcoloured drawers, and inane or foul glitter of such
sort,—cannot but ejaculate, cannot but announce: Too much, O
divine Mammon; somewhat too much!—The voice of these, once
announcing itself, carries _fiat_ and _pereat_ in it, for all
things here below.
Meanwhile, we will hate Anarchy as Death, which it is; and the
things worse than Anarchy shall be hated _more._ Surely Peace
alone is fruitful. Anarchy is destruction: a burning up, say, of
Shams and Insupportabilities; but which leaves Vacancy behind.
Know this also, that out of a world of Unwise nothing but an
Unwisdom can be made. Arrange it, Constitution-build it, sift it
through Ballot-Boxes as thou wilt, it is and remains an
Unwisdom,—the new prey of new quacks and unclean things, the
latter end of it slightly better than the beginning. Who can
bring a wise thing out of men unwise? Not one. And so Vacancy and
general Abolition having come for this France, what can Anarchy
do more? Let there be Order, were it under the Soldier’s Sword;
let there be Peace, that the bounty of the Heavens be not spilt;
that what of Wisdom they do send us bring fruit in its season!—It
remains to be seen how the quellers of Sansculottism were
themselves quelled, and sacred right of Insurrection was blown
away by gunpowder: wherewith this singular eventful History
called _French Revolution_ ends.
The Convention, driven such a course by wild wind, wild tide, and
steerage and non-steerage, these three years, has become weary of
its own existence, sees all men weary of it; and wishes heartily
to finish. To the last, it has to strive with contradictions: it
is now getting fast ready with a Constitution, yet knows no
peace. Sieyes, we say, is making the Constitution once more; has
as good as made it. Warned by experience, the great Architect
alters much, admits much. Distinction of Active and Passive
Citizen, that is, Money-qualification for Electors: nay Two
Chambers, “Council of Ancients,” as well as “Council of Five
Hundred;” to that conclusion have we come! In a like spirit,
eschewing that fatal self-denying ordinance of your Old
Constituents, we enact not only that actual Convention Members
are re-eligible, but that Two-thirds of them must be re-elected.
The Active Citizen Electors shall for this time have free choice
of only One-third of their National Assembly. Such enactment, of
Two-thirds to be re-elected, we append to our Constitution; we
submit our Constitution to the Townships of France, and say,
Accept _both_, or reject both. Unsavoury as this appendix may be,
the Townships, by overwhelming majority, accept and ratify. With
Directory of Five; with Two good Chambers, double-majority of
them nominated by ourselves, one hopes this Constitution may
prove final. _March_ it will; for the legs of it, the re-elected
Two-thirds, are already there, able to march. Sieyes looks at his
Paper Fabric with just pride.
But now see how the contumacious Sections, Lepelletier foremost,
kick against the pricks! Is it not manifest infraction of one’s
Elective Franchise, Rights of Man, and Sovereignty of the People,
this appendix of re-electing _your_ Two-thirds? Greedy tyrants
who would perpetuate yourselves!—For the truth is, victory over
Saint-Antoine, and long right of Insurrection, has spoiled these
men. Nay spoiled all men. Consider too how each man was free to
hope what he liked; and now there is to be no hope, there is to
be fruition, fruition of _this_.
In men spoiled by long right of Insurrection, what confused
ferments will rise, tongues once begun wagging! Journalists
declaim, your Lacretelles, Laharpes; Orators spout. There is
Royalism traceable in it, and Jacobinism. On the West Frontier,
in deep secrecy, Pichegru, durst he trust his Army, is treating
with Condé: in these Sections, there spout wolves in sheep’s
clothing, masked Emigrants and Royalists![781] All men, as we
say, had hoped, each that the Election would do something for his
own side: and now there is no Election, or only the third of one.
Black is united with white against this clause of the Two-thirds;
all the Unruly of France, who see their trade thereby near
ending.
Section Lepelletier, after Addresses enough, finds that such
clause is a manifest infraction; that it, Lepelletier, for one,
will simply not conform thereto; and invites all other free
Sections to join it, “in central Committee,” in resistance to
oppression.[782] The Sections join it, nearly all; strong with
their Forty Thousand fighting men. The Convention therefore may
look to itself! Lepelletier, on this 12th day of Vendémiaire, 4th
of October 1795, is sitting in open contravention, in its Convent
of Filles Saint-Thomas, Rue Vivienne, with guns primed. The
Convention has some Five Thousand regular troops at hand;
Generals in abundance; and a Fifteen Hundred of miscellaneous
persecuted Ultra-Jacobins, whom in this crisis it has hastily got
together and armed, under the title _Patriots of Eighty-nine_.
Strong in Law, it sends its General Menou to disarm Lepelletier.
General Menou marches accordingly, with due summons and
demonstration; with no result. General Menou, about eight in the
evening, finds that he is standing ranked in the Rue Vivienne,
emitting vain summonses; with primed guns pointed out of every
window at him; and that he cannot disarm Lepelletier. He has to
return, with whole skin, but without success; and be thrown into
arrest as “a traitor.” Whereupon the whole Forty Thousand join
this Lepelletier which cannot be vanquished: to what hand shall a
quaking Convention now turn? Our poor Convention, after such
voyaging, just entering harbour, so to speak, has _struck on the
bar;_—and labours there frightfully, with breakers roaring round
it, Forty thousand of them, like to wash it, and its Sieyes Cargo
and the whole future of France, into the deep! Yet one last time,
it struggles, ready to perish.
Some call for Barras to be made Commandant; he conquered in
Thermidor. Some, what is more to the purpose, bethink them of the
Citizen Buonaparte, unemployed Artillery Officer, who took
Toulon. A man of head, a man of action: Barras is named
Commandant’s-Cloak; this young Artillery Officer is named
Commandant. He was in the Gallery at the moment, and heard it; he
withdrew, some half hour, to consider with himself: after a half
hour of grim compressed considering, to be or not to be, he
answers _Yea_.
And now, a man of head being at the centre of it, the whole
matter gets vital. Swift, to Camp of Sablons; to secure the
Artillery, there are not twenty men guarding it! A swift
Adjutant, Murat is the name of him, gallops; gets thither some
minutes within time, for Lepelletier was also on march that way:
the Cannon are ours. And now beset this post, and beset that;
rapid and firm: at Wicket of the Louvre, in Cul de Sac Dauphin,
in Rue Saint-Honoré, from Pont Neuf all along the north Quays,
southward to Pont _ci-devant_ Royal,—rank round the Sanctuary of
the Tuileries, a ring of steel discipline; let every gunner have
his match burning, and all men stand to their arms!
Thus there is Permanent-session through night; and thus at
sunrise of the morrow, there is seen sacred Insurrection once
again: vessel of State labouring on the bar; and tumultuous sea
all round her, beating _générale_, arming and sounding,—not
ringing tocsin, for we have left no tocsin but our own in the
Pavilion of Unity. It is an imminence of shipwreck, for the whole
world to gaze at. Frightfully she labours, that poor ship, within
cable-length of port; huge peril for her. However, she has a man
at the helm. Insurgent messages, received, and not received;
messenger admitted blindfolded; counsel and counter-counsel: the
poor ship labours!—Vendémiaire 13th, year 4: curious enough, of
all days, it is the Fifth day of October, anniversary of that
Menad-march, six years ago; by sacred right of Insurrection we
are got thus far.
Lepelletier has seized the Church of Saint-Roch; has seized the
Pont Neuf, our piquet there retreating without fire. Stray shots
fall from Lepelletier; rattle down on the very Tuileries
staircase. On the other hand, women advance dishevelled,
shrieking, Peace; Lepelletier behind them waving its hat in sign
that we shall fraternise. Steady! The Artillery Officer is steady
as bronze; can be quick as lightning. He sends eight hundred
muskets with ball-cartridges to the Convention itself; honourable
Members shall act with these in case of extremity: whereat they
look grave enough. Four of the afternoon is struck.[783]
Lepelletier, making nothing by messengers, by fraternity or
hat-waving, bursts out, along the Southern Quai Voltaire, along
streets, and passages, treble-quick, in huge veritable onslaught!
Whereupon, thou bronze Artillery Officer—? ‘Fire!’ say the bronze
lips. Roar and again roar, continual, volcano-like, goes his
great gun, in the Cul de Sac Dauphin against the Church of
Saint-Roch; go his great guns on the Pont Royal; go all his great
guns;—blow to air some two hundred men, mainly about the Church
of Saint-Roch! Lepelletier cannot stand such horse-play; no
Sectioner can stand it; the Forty-thousand yield on all sides,
scour towards covert. “Some hundred or so of them gathered both
Theatre de la République; but,” says he, “a few shells dislodged
them. It was all finished at six.”
The Ship is _over_ the bar, then; free she bounds shoreward,—amid
shouting and vivats! Citoyen Buonaparte is “named General of the
Interior, by acclamation;” quelled Sections have to disarm in
such humour as they may; sacred right of Insurrection is gone for
ever! The Sieyes Constitution can disembark itself, and begin
marching. The miraculous Convention Ship has got to land;—and is
there, shall we figuratively say, changed, as Epic Ships are
wont, into a kind of _Sea Nymph_, never to sail more; to roam the
waste Azure, a Miracle in History!
“It is false,” says Napoleon, “that we fired first with blank
charge; it had been a waste of life to do that.” Most false: the
firing was with sharp and sharpest shot: to all men it was plain
that here was no sport; the rabbets and plinths of Saint-Roch
Church show splintered by it, to this hour.—Singular: in old
Broglie’s time, six years ago, this Whiff of Grapeshot was
promised; but it could not be given then, could not have profited
then. Now, however, the time is come for it, and the man; and
behold, you have it; and the thing we specifically call _French
Revolution_ is blown into space by it, and become a thing that
was!—