CHAPTER III. THE RULERS. (continued).

I. The Central Government Administration.

The administrative body at Paris.--Composition of the group

out of which it was recruited.--Deterioration of this

group.--Weeding-out of the Section Assemblies.--Weeding out

of the popular clubs.--Pressure of the government.

To provide these local sovereigns with the subordinate lieutenants and

agents which they require, we have the local Jacobin population, and we

have seen the composition of the recruits,[3301]

* the distressed and the perverted of every class and degree, especially

the lowest,

* the castaways,

* envious and resentful subordinates,

* small shopkeepers in debt,

* the migrating, high-living workers,

* barflies,

* vagrants,

* men of the gutters,

* street-walkers,

--in short, every species of "anti-social vermin," male and

female,[3302] including a few honest crack-brains into which the

fashionable theory had freely found its way; the rest, and by far

the largest number, are veritable beasts of prey, speculating on the

established order of things and adopting the revolutionary faith only

because it provides food for their appetites.--In Paris, they number

five or six thousand, and, after Thermidor, there is about the same

number, the same appetites rallying them around the same dogma,[3303]

levelers and terrorists, "some because they are poor, others because

they have broken off the habit of working at their trade," furious with

"the scoundrels who own a coach house, against the rich and the hoarders

of objects of prime necessity." Many of them "having soiled themselves

during the Revolution, ready to do it again provided the rich rascals,

monopolists and merchants can all be killed," all "frequenters of

popular clubs who think themselves philosophers, although most of

them are unable to read," at the head of them the remnant of the most

notorious political bandits,

* the famous post-master, Drouet, who, in the tribune at the Convention,

declared himself a "brigand,"[3304]

* Javogues, the robber of Montbrison and the "Nero of Ain,"

* the drunkard Casset, formerly a silk-worker and later the pasha of

Thionville,

* Bertrand, the friend of Charlier, the ex-mayor and executioner of

Lyons,

* Darthé, ex-secretary of Lebon and the executioner at Arras,

* Rossignol and nine other Septembriseurs of the Abbaye and the

Carmelites, and, finally, the great apostle of despotic communism,

* Babeuf, who, sentenced to twenty years in irons for the falsification

of public contracts, and as needy as he is vicious, rambles about Paris

airing his disappointed ambitions and empty pockets along with the

swaggering crew who, if not striving to reach the throne by a new

massacre,[3305] tramp through the streets slipshod, for lack of money

"to redeem a pair of boots at the shoemakers," or to sell some snuff-box

their last resource, for a morning dram.[3306]

In this class we see the governing rabble fully and distinctly.

Separated from its forced adherents and the official robots who serve it

as they would any other power, it stands out pure and unalloyed by

any neutral influx; we recognize here the permanent residue, the deep,

settled slime of the social sewer. It is to this sink of vice and

ignorance that the revolutionary government betakes itself for its

staff-officers and its administrative bodies.

Nowhere else could they be found. For the daily task imposed upon them,

and which must be done by them, is robbery and murder; excepting the

pure fanatics, who are few in number, only brutes and blackguards

have the aptitudes and tastes for such business. In Paris, as in the

provinces, it is from the clubs or popular associations in which they

congregate, that they are sought for.--Each section of Paris contains

one of these clubs, in all forty-eight, rallied around the central club

in the Rue St. Honoré, forty-eight district alliances of professional

rioters and brawlers, the rebels and blackguards of the social army, all

the men and women incapable of devoting themselves to a regular life and

useful labor,[3307] especially those who, on the 31st of May and 2nd of

June, had aided the Paris Commune and the "Mountain" in violating the

Convention. They recognize each other by this sign that, "each would

be hung in case of a counter-revolution,"[3308] laying it down "as an

incontestable fact that, should a single aristocrat be spared, all of

them would mount the scaffold."[3309] They are naturally wary and they

stick together: in their clique "everything is done on the basis of good

fellowship;"[3310] no one is admitted except on the condition of having

proved his qualifications "on the 10th of August and 31st of May."[3311]

And, as they have made their way into the Commune and into the

revolutionary committees behind victorious leaders, they are able,

through the certificates of civism which these arbitrarily grant or

refuse, to exclude, not only from political life but, again, from civil

life, whoever is not of their party.

"See," writes one of Danton's correspondents,[3312] "the sort of persons

who easily obtain these certificates,--the Ronsins, the Jourdans, the

Maillards, the Vincents, all bankrupts, keepers of gambling-hells and

cut-throats. Ask these individuals whether they have paid the patriotic

contribution, whether they regularly pay the usual taxes, whether they

give to the poor of their sections, to the volunteer soldiers, etc.;

whether they mount guard or see it regularly done, whether they have

made a loyal declaration for the forced loan. You will find that they

have not.... The Commune issues certificates of civism to its satellites

and refuses them to the best citizens."

The monopoly is obvious; they make no attempt to conceal it; six weeks

later,[3313] it becomes official: several revolutionary committees

decide not to grant certificates of civism to citizens who are not

members of a popular club." And strict exclusion goes on increasing

from month to month. Old certificates are canceled and new ones imposed,

which new certificates have new formalities added to them, a larger

number of endorsers being required and certain kinds of guarantees

being rejected; there is greater strictness in relation to the requisite

securities and qualifications; the candidate is put off until fuller

information can be obtained about him; he is rejected at the slightest

suspicion:[3314] he is only too fortunate if he is tolerated in the

Republic as a passive subject, if he is content to be taxed and taxed

when they please, and if he is not sent to join the "suspects" in

prison; whoever does not belong to the band does not belong to the

community.

Amongst themselves and in their popular club it is worse, for

"the eagerness to get any office leads to every one denouncing each

other; "[3315]

consequently, at the Jacobin club in the rue St. Honoré, and in the

branch clubs of the quarter, there is constant purging, and always in

the same sense, until the faction is cleansed of all honest or passable

alloy and only a minority remains, which has its own way at every

balloting. One of them announces that, in his club, eighty doubtful

members have already been gotten rid of; another that, in his club,

one hundred are going to be excluded.[3316] On Ventose 23, in the

"Bon-Conseil" club, most of the members examined are rejected: "they

are so strict that a man who cannot show that he acted energetically in

critical times, cannot form part of the assembly; he is set aside for

a mere trifle." On Ventôse 13, in the same club, "out of twenty-six

examined, seven only are admitted; one citizen, a tobacco dealer, aged

sixty-eight, who has always performed his duty, is rejected for having

called the president Monsieur, and for having spoken in the tribune

bareheaded; two members, after this, insisted on his being a Moderate,

which is enough to keep him out." Those who remain, consist of the

most restless and most loquacious, the most eager for office, the

self-mutilated club being thus reduced to a nucleus of charlatans and

scoundrels.

To these spontaneous eliminations through which the club deteriorates,

add the constant pressure through which the Committee of Public Safety

frightens and degrades it. The lower the revolutionary government sinks,

and the more it concentrates its power, the more servile and sanguinary

do its agents and employees become. It strikes right and left as

a warning; it imprisons or decapitates the turbulent among its own

clients, the secondary demagogues who are impatient at not being

principal demagogues, the bold who think of striking a fresh blow in

the streets, Jacques Roux, Vincent, Momoro, Hébert, leaders of the

Cordeliers club and of the Commune. After these, the indulgent who

are disposed to exercise some discernment or moderation in terrorism,

Camille Desmoulins, Danton and their adherents; and lastly, many others

who are more or less doubtful, compromised or compromising, wearied or

eccentric, from Maillard to Chaumette, from Antonelle to Chabot, from

Westermann to Clootz. Each of the proscribed has a gang of followers,

and suddenly the whole gang are obliged to do a volte-face; those who

were able to show initiative, grovel, while those who could show mercy,

become hardened. Henceforth, amongst the subaltern Jacobins, the roots

of independence, humanity, and loyalty, hard to extirpate even in an

ignoble and cruel nature, are eradicated even to the last fiber,

the revolutionary staff, already so debased, becoming more and

more degraded, until it is worthy of the office assigned to it. The

confidants of Hébert, those who listen to Chaumette, the comrades of

Westermann, the officers of Ronsin, the faithful readers of Camille,

the admirers and devotees of Danton, all are bound to publicly repudiate

their incarcerated friend or leader and approve of the decree which

sends him to the scaffold, to applaud his calumniators, to overwhelm

him on trial: this or that judge or juryman, who is one of Danton's

partisans, is obliged to stifle a defense of him, and, knowing him to be

innocent, pronounce him guilty; one who had often dined with Desmoulins

is not only to guillotine him, but, in addition to this, to guillotine

his young widow. Moreover, in the revolutionary committees, at the

Commune, in the offices of the Committee of General Safety, in the

bureau of the Central Police, at the headquarters of the armed force, at

the revolutionary Tribunal, the service to which they are compelled to

do becomes daily more onerous and more repulsive. To denounce neighbors,

to arrest colleagues, to go and seize innocent persons, known to be

such, in their beds, to select in the prisons the thirty or forty

unfortunates who form the daily food of the guillotine, to "amalgamate"

them haphazard, to try them and condemn them in a lot, to escort

octogenarian women and girls of sixteen to the scaffold, even under

the knife-blade, to see heads dropping and bodies swinging, to contrive

means for getting rid of a multitude of corpses, and for removing the

too-visible stains of blood. Of what species do the beings consist, who

can accept such a task, and perform it day after day, with the prospect

of doing it indefinitely? Fouquier-Tinville himself succumbs. One

evening, on his way to the Committee of Public Safety, "he feels unwell"

on the Pont-Neuf and exclaims: "I think I see the ghosts of the

dead following us, especially those of the patriots I have had

guillotined!"[3317] And at another time: "I would rather plow the ground

than be public prosecutor. If I could, I would resign."--The government,

as the system becomes aggravated, is forced to descend lower still that

it may find suitable instruments; it finds them now only in the lowest

depths: in Germinal, to renew the Commune, in Floréal, to renew the

ministries, in Prairial, to re-compose the revolutionary Tribunal,

month after month, purging and re-constituting the committees of

each quarter[3318] of the city. In vain does Robespierre, writing

and re-writing his secret lists, try to find men able to maintain

the system; he always falls back on the same names, those of unknown

persons, illiterate, about a hundred knaves or fools with four or five

second-class despots or fanatics among them, as malevolent and as narrow

as himself.--The purifying crucible has been used too often and for too

long a time; it has overheated; what was sound, or nearly so, in the

elements of the primitive fluid has been forcibly evaporated; the rest

has fermented and become acid; nothing remains in the bottom of the

vessel but the lees of stupidity and wickedness, their concentrated and

corrosive dregs.

II. Subaltern Jacobins.

Quality of subaltern leaders.--How they rule in the section

assemblies.--How they seize and hold office.

Such are the subordinate sovereigns[3319] who in Paris, during 14 months

dispose as they please, of fortunes, liberties and lives.--And first,

in the section assemblies, which still maintain a semblance of popular

sovereignty, they rule despotically and uncontested.--

"A dozen or fifteen men wearing a red cap,[3320] well-informed or not,

claim the exclusive right of speaking and acting, and if any other

citizen with honest motives happens to propose measures which he thinks

proper, and which really are so, no attention is paid to these measures,

or, if it is, it is only to show the members composing the assemblage

of how little account they are. These measures are accordingly rejected,

solely because they are not presented by one of the men in a red cap, or

by somebody like themselves, initiated in the mysteries of the section."

"Sometimes," says one of the leaders,[3321] "we find only ten members of

the club at the general assembly of the section; but there are enough

of us to intimidate the rest. Should any citizen of the section make a

proposition we do not like, we rise and shout that he is an schemer,

or a signer (of former constitutional petitions). In this way we impose

silence on those who are not in line with the club."--

Since September, 1793, operation is all the easier because the majority,

is now composed of beasts of burden, ruled with an iron hand.

"When something has to be effected that depends on intrigue or on

private interest,[3322] the motion is always put by one of the members

of the Revolutionary Committee of the section, or by one of those

fanatical patriots who join in with the Committee, and otherwise act

as its spies. Immediately the ignorant men, to whom Danton has allowed

forty sous for each meeting, and who, from now on crowd an assembly,

where they never came before, welcome the proposition with loud

applause, shouting and demanding a vote, and the act is passed

unanimously, notwithstanding the contrary opinions of all well-informed

and honest citizens. Should any one dare make an objection, he would run

the risk of imprisonment as a suspect,[3323] after being treated as an

aristocrat or federalist, or at least, refused a certificate of civism,

( a serious matter) if he had the misfortune to need one, did his

survival depend on this, either as employee or pensioner."--In the

Maison-Commune section, most of the auditory are masons, "excellent

patriots," says one of the clubbists of the quarter:[3324] they

always vote on our side; we make them do what we want." Numbers of

day-laborers, cab-drivers, cartmen and workmen of every class, thus earn

their forty sous, and have no idea that anything else might be demanded

from them. On entering the hall, when the meeting opens, they write down

their names, after which they go out "to take a drink," without thinking

themselves obliged to listen to the rigmarole of the orators; towards

the end, they come back, make all the noise that is required of them

with their lungs, feet and hands, and then go and "take back their card

and get their money."[3325]--With paid applauders of this stamp, they

soon get the better of any opponents, or, rather, all opposition is

suppressed beforehand. "The best citizens keep silent" in the section

assemblies, or "stay away;" these are simply "gambling-shops" where

"the most absurd, the most unjust, the most impolitic of resolutions are

passed at every moment.[3326] Moreover, citizens are ruined there by the

unlimited sectional expenditure, which exceeds the usual taxation and

the communal expenses, already very heavy. At one time, some carpenter

or locksmith, member of the Revolutionary Committee, wants to construct,

enlarge or decorate a hall, and it is necessary to agree with him.

Again, a poor speech is made, full of exaggeration and political

extravagance, of which three, four, five and six thousand impressions

are ordered to be printed. Then, to cap the climax, following the

example of the Commune, no accounts are rendered, or, if this is done

for form's sake, no fault must be found with them, under penalty of

suspicion, etc."--The twelve leaders, proprietors and distributors of

civism, have only to agree amongst themselves to share the profits, each

according to his appetite; henceforth, cupidity and vanity are free

to sacrifice the common weal, under cover of the common interest.--The

pasture is vast and it is at the disposal of the leaders. In one of his

orders of the day, Henriot says:[3327]

"I am very glad to announce to my brethren in arms that all the

positions are at the disposal of the government. The actual government,

which is revolutionary, whose intentions are pure, and which merely

desires the happiness of all,.... will search everywhere, even into the

attics for virtuous men,.... poor and genuine sans-culottes." And

there is enough to satisfy them thirty-five thousand places of public

employment in the capital alone:[3328] it is a rich mine; already,

before the month of May, 1793, "the Jacobin club boasted of having

placed nine thousand agents in the administration,"[3329] and since

the 2nd of June, "virtuous men, poor, genuine sans-culottes," arrive

in crowds from "their garrets," dens and hired rooms, each to grab his

share.--They besiege and install themselves by hundreds the ancient

offices in the War, Navy and Public-Works departments, in the Treasury

and Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Here they rule, constantly denouncing

all the remaining, able employees thus creating vacancies in order to

fill them.[3330] Then there are twenty new administrative departments

which they keep for themselves: commissioners of the first confiscation

of national property, commissioners of national property arising

from emigrants and the convicted, commissioners of conscripted

carriage-horses, commissioners on clothing, commissioners on the

collecting and manufacturing of saltpeter, commissioners on monopolies,

civil-commissioners in each of the forty-eight sections, commissioners

on propagandas in the departments, Commissioners on provisions, and many

others. Fifteen hundred places are counted in the single department of

subsistence in Paris,[3331] and all are salaried. Here, already, are

a number of desirable offices.--Some are for the lowest rabble, two

hundred, at twenty sous a day, paid to "stump-speakers," employed to

direct opinion in the Palais-Royal, also among the Tuileries groups,

as well as in the tribunes of the Convention and of the

Hôtel-de-Ville;[3332] two hundred more at four hundred francs per annum,

to waiters in coffee-houses, gambling-saloons and hotels, for watching

foreigners and customers; hundreds of places at two, three, and five

francs a day with meals, for the guardians of seals, and for garrisoning

the domiciles of "suspects"; thousands, with premiums, pay, and full

license, for brigands who, under Ronsin, compose the revolutionary army,

and for the gunners, paid guard and gendarmes of Henriot.--The principal

posts, however, are those which subject lives and freedom to the

discretion of those who occupy them: for, through this more than

regal power, they possess all other power, and such is that of the men

composing the forty-eight revolutionary committees, the bureaus of the

Committee of General Security and of the Commune, and the staff-officers

of the armed force. They are the prime-movers and active incentives

of the system of Terror, all picked Jacobins and tested by repeated

selection, all designated or approved by the Central Club, which claims

for itself the monopoly of patriotism, and which, erected into a supreme

council of the party, issues no patent of orthodoxy except to its own

henchmen.[3333]

They immediately assume the tone and arrogance of dictatorship. " Pride

has reached its highest point:[3334]... One who, yesterday, had no post

and was amiable and honest, has become haughty and insolent because,

deceived by appearances, his fellow-citizens have elected him

commissioner, or given him some employment or other." Henceforth, he

behaves like a Turkish agha amongst infidels, and, in command, carries

things out with a high hand.--On the 20th of Vendémiaire, year II., "in

the middle of the night," the committee of the Piques section summons

M. Bélanger, the architect. He is notified that his house is wanted

immediately for a new Bastille.--"But, said he, 'I own no other, and it

is occupied by several tenants; it is decorated with models of art, and

is fit only for that purpose.'--'Your house or you go to prison!'--'But

I shall be obliged to indemnify my tenants.'--'Either your house or

you go to prison; as to indemnities, we have vacant lodgings for your

tenants, as well as for yourself, in (the prisons of) La Force, or

Sainte-Pélagie.' Twelve sentinels on the post start off at once and take

possession of the premises; the owner is allowed six hours to move

out and is forbidden, henceforth, to return; the bureaus, to which he

appeals, interpret his obedience as 'tacit adhesion,' and, very soon, he

himself is locked up."[3335]--Administrative tools that cut so sharply

need the greatest care, and, from time to time, they are carefully

oiled:[3336] on the 20th of July, 1793, two thousand francs are given to

each of the forty-eight committees, and eight thousand francs to General

Henriot, "for expenses in watching anti-revolutionary maneuvers;" on the

7th of August, fifty thousand francs "to indemnify the less successful

members of the forty-eight committees;" three hundred thousand francs

to Gen. Henriot "for thwarting conspiracies and securing the triumph of

liberty;" fifty thousand francs to the mayor, "for detecting the plots

of the malevolent;" on the 10th of September, forty thousand francs

to the mayor, president and procureur-syndic of the department, "for

measures of security;" on the 13th of September, three hundred thousand

francs to the mayor "for preventing the attempts of the malevolent;" on

the 15th of November, one hundred thousand francs to the popular

clubs, "because these are essential to the propagation of sound

principles."--Moreover, besides gratuities and a fixed salary, there

are the gratifications and perquisites belonging to the office.[3337]

Henriot appoints his comrades on the staff of paid spies and

denunciators, and, naturally, they take advantage of their position

to fill their pockets; under the pretext of incivism, they multiply

domiciliary visits, make the master of the house ransom himself, or

steal what suits them on the premises.[3338]--In the Commune, and on the

revolutionary-committees, every extortion can be, and is, practiced.

"I know," says Quevremont, "two citizens who have been put in prison,

without being told why, and, at the end of three weeks or a month,

let out and do you know how? By paying, one of them, fifteen thousand

livres, and the other, twenty-five thousand.... Gambron, at La Force,

pays one thousand five hundred livres a month for a room not to live

amongst lice, and besides this, he had to pay a bribe of two thousand

livres on entering. This happened to many others who, again, dared not

speak of it, except in a whisper."[3339]

Woe to the imprudent who, never concerning themselves with public

affairs, and relying on their innocence, discard the officious broker

and fail to pay up at once! Brichard, the notary, having refused or

tendered too late, the hundred thousand crowns demanded of him, is to

put his head "at the red window."--And I omit ordinary rapine, the vast

field open to extortion through innumerable inventories, sequestrations

and adjudications, through the enormities of contractors, through

hastily executed purchases and deliveries, through the waste of two

or three millions given weekly by the government to the Commune for

supplies for the capital, through the requisitions of grain which give

fifteen hundred men of the revolutionary army an opportunity to clean

out all the neighboring farms, as far as Corbeil and Meaux, and benefit

by this after the fashion of the chauffeurs.[3340]--With such a staff,

these anonymous thefts cannot surprise us. Babeuf, the falsifier of

public contracts, is secretary for provisions to the Commune; Maillard,

the Abbaye Septembriseur, receives eight thousand francs for his

direction, in the forty-eight sections, of the ninety-six observers and

leaders of public opinion; Chrétien, whose smoking-shop serves as the

rendezvous of rowdies, becomes a juryman at eighteen francs a day in the

revolutionary Tribunal, and leads his section with uplifted saber;[3341]

De Sade, professor of crimes, is now the oracle of his quarter, and, in

the name of the Piques Section, he reads addresses to the Convention.

III. A Revolutionary Committee.

A Minister of Foreign Affairs.--A General in command.--The

Paris Commune.--A Revolutionary Committee.

Let us examine some of these figures closely: the nearer they are to the

eye and foremost in position, the more the importance of the duty brings

into light the unworthiness of the potentate.--There is already one of

them, whom we have seen in passing, Buchot, twice noticed by Robespierre

under his own hand as "a man of probity, energetic and capable of

fulfilling the most important functions,"[3342] appointed by the

Committee of Public Safety "Commissioner on External Relations," that is

to say, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and kept in this important position

for nearly six months. He is a school-master from the Jura,[3343]

recently disembarked from his small town and whose "ignorance, low

habits and stupidity surpass anything that can be imagined... The chief

clerks have nothing to do with him; he neither sees nor asks for them.

He is never found in his office, and when it is indispensable to ask for

his signature on any legislative matter, the sole act to which he has

reduced his functions, they are compelled to go and force it from him in

the Café Hardy, where he usually passes his days." It must be borne

in mind that he is envious and spiteful, avenging himself for his

incapacity on those whose competency makes him sensible of his

incompetence; he denounces them as Moderates, and, at last, succeeds in

having a warrant of arrest issued against his four chief clerks; on the

morning of Thermidor 9, with a wicked leer, he himself carries the news

to one of them, M. Miot. Unfortunately for him, after Thermidor, he is

turned out and M. Miot is put in his place. With diplomatic politeness,

the latter calls on his predecessor and "expresses to him the usual

compliments." Buchot, insensible to compliments, immediately thinks

of the substantial, and the first thing he asks for is to keep

provisionally his apartment in the ministry. On this being granted, he

expresses his thanks and tells M. Miot that it was very well to appoint

him, but "for myself, it is very disagreeable. I have been obliged to

come to Paris and quit my post in the provinces, and now they leave me

in the street." Thereupon, with astounding impudence, he asks the man

whom he wished to guillotine to give him a place as ministerial clerk.

M. Miot tries to make him understand that for a former minister to

descend so low would be improper. Buchot regards such delicacy as

strange, and, seeing M. Miot's embarrassment, he ends by saying: "If you

don't find me fit for a clerk, I shall be content with the place of a

servant." This estimate of himself shows his proper value.

The other, whom we have also met before, and who is already known by

his acts,[3344] general in Paris of the entire armed force,

commander-in-chief of one hundred and ten thousand men, is that former

servant or under-clerk of the procureur Formey, who, dismissed by

his employer for robbery, shut up in Bicêtre, by turns a runner and

announcer for a traveling show, barrier-clerk and September assassin,

has purged the Convention on the 2nd of June--in short, the famous

Henriot, and now simply a brute and a sot. In this latter capacity,

spared on the trial of the Hébertists, he is kept as a tool, for the

reason, doubtless, that he is narrow, coarse and manageable, more

compromised than anybody else, good for any job, without the slightest

chance of becoming independent, unemployed in the army,[3345] having

no prestige with true soldiers, a general for street parade and an

interloper and lower than the lowest of the mob; his mansion, his box at

the Opera-Comique, his horses, his importance at festivals and reviews,

and, above all, his orgies make him perfectly content.--Every

evening, in full uniform, escorted by his aides-de-camp, he gallops to

Choisy-sur-Seine, where, in the domicile of a flatterer named Fauvel,

along with some of Robespierre's confederates or the local demagogues,

he revels. They toss off the wines of the Duc de Coigny, smash

the glasses, plates and bottles, betake themselves to neighboring

dance-rooms and kick up a row, bursting in doors, and breaking benches

and chairs to pieces--in short, they have a good time.--The next

morning, having slept himself sober, he dictates his orders for the day,

veritable masterpieces in which the silliness, imbecility and credulity

of a numskull, the sentimentality of the drunkard, the clap-trap of

a mountebank and the tirades of a cheap philosopher form an unique

compound, at once sickening and irritating, like the fiery, pungent

mixtures of cheap bars, which suit his audience better because they

contain the biting, mawkish ingredients that compose the adulterated

brandy of the Revolution.--He is posted on foreign maneuvers, and

enlarges upon the true reasons for the famine: "A lot of bread has been

lately found in the privies: the Pitts and Cobourgs and other rascals

who want to enslave justice and reason, and assassinate philosophy, must

be called to account for this. Headquarters, etc."[3346] He has

theories on religions and preaches civic modesty to all dissenters: "The

ministers and sectaries of every form of worship are requested not to

practice any further religious ceremonies outside their temples. Every

good sectarian will see the propriety of observing this order. The

interior of a temple is large enough for paying one's homage to the

Eternal, who requires no rites that are repulsive to every thinking man.

The wise agree that a pure heart is the sublimest homage that Divinity

can desire. Headquarters, etc."--He sighs for the universal idyllic

state, and invokes the suppression of the armed force:

"I beg my fellow-citizens, who are led to the criminal courts out of

curiosity, to act as their own police; this is a task which every good

citizen should fulfill wherever he happens to be. In a free country,

justice should not be secured by pikes and bayonets, but through reason

and philosophy. These must maintain a watchful eye over society; these

must purify it and proscribe thieves and evil-doers. Each individual

must bring his small philosophic portion with him and, with these

small portions, compose a rational totality that will turn out to be of

benefit and to the welfare of all. Oh, for the time when functionaries

shall be rare, when the wicked shall be overthrown, when the law shall

become the sole functionary in society! Headquarters, etc. "--Every

morning, he preaches in the same pontifical strain. Imagine the

scene--Henriot's levee at head-quarters, and a writing table, with,

perhaps, a bottle of brandy on it; on one side of the table, the rascal

who, while buckling on his belt or drawing on his boots, softens his

husky voice, and, with his nervous twitchings, flounders through his

humanitarian homily; on the other side the mute, uneasy secretary, who

may probably be able to spell, but who dares not materially change the

grotesque phraseology of his master.

The Commune which employs the commanding-general is of about the same

alloy, for, in the municipal sword, the blade and hilt, forged together

in the Jacobin shop, are composed of the same base metal.--Fifty-six,

out of eighty-eight members, whose qualifications and occupations are

known, are decidedly illiterate, or nearly so, their education being

rudimentary, or none at all.[3347] Some of them are petty clerks,

counter-jumpers and common scribblers, one among them being a public

writer; others are small shopkeepers, pastry-cooks, mercers, hosiers,

fruit-sellers and wine-dealers; yet others are simple mechanics or

even laborers, carpenters, joiners, cabinet-makers, locksmiths,

and especially three tailors, four hair-dressers, two masons, two

shoemakers, one cobbler, one gardener; one stone-cutter, one paver,

one office-runner, and one domestic. Among the thirty-two who are

instructed, one alone has any reputation, Paris, professor at the

University and the assistant of Abbé Delille. Only one, Dumetz, an

old engineer, steady, moderate and attending to the supplies, seems a

competent and useful workman. The rest, collected from amongst the mass

of unknown demagogues, are six art-apprentices or bad painters, six

business-agents or ex-lawyers, seven second or third-rate merchants, one

teacher, one surgeon, one unfrocked married priest, all of whom, under

the political direction of Mayor Fleuriot-Lescot and Payen, the national

agent, bring to the general council no administrative ability, but the

faculty for verbal argumentation, along with the requisite amount of

talk and scribbling indispensable to a deliberative assembly. And it is

curious to see them in session. Toward the end of September, 1793,[3348]

one of the veterans of liberal philosophy and political economy,

belonging to the French Academy and ruined by the Revolution, the old

Abbé Morellet, needs a certificate of civism, to enable him to

obtain payment of the small pension of one thousand francs, which the

Constituent Assembly had voted him in recompense for his writings; the

Commune, desiring information about this, selects three of its body

to inquire into it. Morellet naturally takes the preliminary steps. He

first writes "a very humble, very civic note," to the president of the

General Council, Lubin Jr., formerly an art-apprentice who had abandoned

art for politics, and is now living with his father a butcher, in the

rue St. Honoré; he calls on this authority, and passes through the

stall, picking his way amongst the slaughterhouse offal; admitted after

some delay, he finds his judge in bed, before whom he pleads his cause.

He then calls upon Bernard, an ex-priest, "built like an incendiary

and ill-looking," and respectfully bows to the lady of the house,

"a tolerably young woman, but very ugly and very dirty." Finally, he

carries his ten or a dozen volumes to the most important of the three

examiners, Vialard, "ex-ladies' hair-dresser;" the latter is almost

a colleague, "for," says he, "I have always liked technicians, having

presented to the Academy of Sciences a top which I invented myself."

Nobody, however, had seen the petitioner in the streets on the 10th of

August, nor on the 2nd of September, nor on the 31st of May; how can a

certificate of civism be granted after such evidences of lukewarmness?

Morellet, not disheartened, awaits the all-powerful hair-dresser at the

Hôtel-de-Ville, and accosts him frequently as he passes along. He,

"with greater haughtiness and distraction than the most unapproachable

Minister of War would show to an infantry lieutenant," scarcely listens

to him and walks on; he goes in and takes his seat, and Morellet, much

against his will, has to be present at ten or twelve of these meetings.

What strange meetings, to which patriotic deputations, volunteers and

amateurs come in turn to declaim and sing; where the president, Lubin,

"decorated with his scarf," shouts the Marseilles Hymn five or six

times, "Ca Ira," and other songs of several stanzas, set to tunes of

the Comic Opera, and always "out of time, displaying the voice, airs

and songs of an exquisite Leander.. . I really believe that, at the

last meeting, he sung alone in this manner three quarters of an hour

at different times, the assembly repeating the last line of the

verse."--"How odd!" exclaims a common woman alongside of Morellet, "how

droll, passing all their time here, singing in that fashion! Is that

what they come here for?"--Not alone for that: after the circus-parade

is over, the ordinary haranguers, and especially the hair-dresser, come

and propose measures for murder "in infuriate language and with fiery

gesticulation." Such are the good speakers[3349] and men for show. The

others, who remain silent, and hardly know to write, act and do the

rough work. A certain Chalaudon, member of the Commune,[3350] is one of

this kind, president of the Revolutionary Committee of the section

of "L'Homme armé," and probably an excellent man-hunter; for "the

government committees assigned to him the duty of watching the right

bank of the Seine, and, with extraordinary powers conferred on him, he

rules from his back shop one half of Paris. Woe to those he has reason

to complain of, those who have withdrawn from, or not given him, their

custom! Sovereign of his quarter up to Thermidor 10, his denunciations

are death-warrants. Some of the streets, especially that of Grand

Chantier, he "depopulates." And this Marais exterminator is a "cobbler,"

a colleague in leather, as well as in the Commune, of Simon the

shoemaker, the preceptor and murderer of the young Dauphin.

Still lower down than this admirable municipal body, let us try

to imagine, from at least one complete example, the forty-eight

revolutionary committees who supply it with hands.--There is one of them

of which we know all the members, where the governing class, under full

headway, can be studied on the spot and in action.[3351] This consists

of the underworld, nomadic class which is revolutionary only through

its appetites; no theory and no convictions animate it; during the first

three years of the Revolution it pays no attention to, or cares for,

public matters; if, since the 10th of August, and especially since the

2nd of June, it takes any account of these, it is to get a living and

gorge itself with plunder.--Out of eighteen members, simultaneously

or in succession, of the "Bonnet Rouge," fourteen, before the 10th

of August and especially since the 2nd of June, are unknown in this

quarter, and had taken no part in the Revolution. The most prominent

among these are three painters, heraldic, carriage and miniature,

evidently ruined and idle on account of the Revolution, a candle-dealer,

a vinegar-dealer, a manufacturer of saltpeter, and a locksmith; while of

these seven personages, four have additionally enhanced the dignity

of their calling by vending tickets for small lotteries, acting as

pawnbrokers or as keepers of a biribi[3352] saloon. Seated along with

these are two upper-class domestics, a hack-driver, an ex-gendarme

dismissed from the corps, a cobbler on the street corner, a runner on

errands who was once a carter's boy, and another who, two months before

this, was a scavenger's apprentice, the latter penniless and in tatters

before he became one of the Committee, and since that, well clad, lodged

and furnished. Finally, a former dealer in lottery-tickets, himself a

counterfeiter by his own admission, and a jail-bird. Four others have

been dismissed from their places for dishonesty or swindling, three are

known drunkards, two are not even Frenchmen, while the ring-leader,

the man of brains of this select company is, as usual, a seedy, used-up

lawyer, the ex-notary Pigeot, and expelled from his professional body

on account of bankruptcy. He is probably the author of the following

speculation: After the month of September, 1793, the Committee, freely

arresting whomsoever it pleased in the quarter, and even outside of it,

makes a haul of "three hundred heads of families" in four months, with

whom it fills the old barracks it occupies in the rue de Sèvres. In

this confined and unhealthy tenement, more than one hundred and twenty

prisoners are huddled together, sometimes ten in one room, two in the

same bed, and, for their keeping, they pay three hundred francs a day.

As sixty-two francs of this charge are verified, there is of this sum,

(not counting other extortions or concessions which are not official),

two hundred and thirty-eight francs profit daily for these 'honest'

contractors. Accordingly, they live freely and have "the most

magnificent dinners" in their assembly chamber; the contribution of ten

or twelve francs apiece is "nothing" for them.--But, in this opulent St.

Germain quarter, so many rich and noble men and women form a herd

which must be conveniently stalled, so as to be the more easily milked.

Consequently, toward the end of March, 1794, the Committee, to increase

its business and fill up the pen, hires a large house on the corner of

the boulevard possessing a court and a garden, where the high society of

the quarter is assigned lodgings of two rooms each, at twelve francs a

day, which gives one hundred and fifty thousand livres per annum,

and, as the rent is twenty-four hundred francs, the Committee gain one

hundred and forty-seven thousand six hundred livres by the operation;

we must add to this twenty sorts of profit in money and other

matters--taxes on the articles consumed and on supplies of every

description, charges on the dispatch and receipt of correspondence and

other gratuities, such as ransoms and fees. A penned-up herd refuses

nothing to its keepers,[3353] and this one less than any other; for

if this herd is plundered it is preserved, its keepers finding it too

lucrative to send it to the slaughter-house. During the last six months

of Terror, but two out of the one hundred and sixty boarders of the

"Bonnet Rouge" Committee are withdrawn from the establishment and handed

over to the guillotine. It is only on the 7th and 8th of Thermidor that

the Committee of Public Safety, having undertaken to empty the prisons,

breaks in upon the precious herd and disturbs the well-laid scheme,

so admirably managed.--It was only too well managed, for it excited

jealousy; three months after Thermidor, the "Bonnet Rouge" committee

is denounced and condemned; ten are sentenced to twenty years in

irons, with the pillory in addition, and, among others, the clever

notary,[3354] amidst the jeering and insults of the crowd.--And yet

these are not the worst; their cupidity had mollified their ferocity.

Others, less adroit in robbing, show greater cruelty in murdering. In

any event, in the provinces as well as in Paris, in the revolutionary

committees paid three francs a day for each member, the quality of

one or the other of the officials is about the same. According to the

pay-lists which Barère keeps, there are twenty-one thousand five hundred

of these committees in France.[3355]

IV. Provincial Administration.

The administrative staff in the provinces.--Jacobinism less

in the departmental towns than in Paris.--Less in the

country than in the towns.--The Revolutionary Committees in

the small communes.--Municipal bodies lukewarm in the

villages.--Jacobins too numerous in bourgs and small towns.

--Unreliable or hampered as agents when belonging to the

administrative bodies of large or moderate-sized towns.

--Deficiency of locally recruited staff.

Had the laws of March 21 and September 5, 1793, been strictly enforced,

there would, instead of 21,500 have been 45,000 of these revolutionary

committees. They would have been composed of 540,000 members costing

the public 591 millions per year.[3356] This would have made the regular

administrative body, already twice as numerous and twice as costly

as under the ancient régime, an extra corps expending, "simply in

surveillance," one hundred millions more than the entire taxation of

the country, the greatness of which had excited the people against the

ancient régime.--Happily, the poisonous and monstrous fungal growth was

only able to achieve half its intended size; neither the Jacobin seed

nor the bad atmosphere it required to make it spread could be found

anywhere. "The people of the provinces," says a contemporary,[3357] "are

not up to the level of the Revolution; it opposes old habits and

customs and the resistance of inertia to innovations which it does not

understand." "The plowman is an estimable man," writes a missionary

representative, "but he is generally a poor patriot."[3358] Actually,

there is on the one hand, less of human sediment in the departmental

towns than in the great Parisian sink, and, on the other hand, the rural

population, preserved from intellectual miasmas, better resists

social epidemics than the urban population. Less infested with vicious

adventurers, less fruitful in disordered intellects, the provinces

supply a corps of inquisitors and terrorists with greater difficulty.

And first, in the thousands of communes which have less than five

hundred inhabitants,[3359] in many other villages of greater population,

but scattered[3360] and purely agricultural, especially in those in

which patois is spoken, there is a scarcity of suitable subjects for a

revolutionary committee. People make use of their hands too much;

horny hands do not write every day; nobody desires to take up a pen,

especially to keep a register that may be preserved and some day or

other prove compromising. It is already a difficult matter to recruit

a municipal council, to find a mayor, the two additional municipal

officers, and the national agent which the law requires; in the small

communes, these are the only agents of the revolutionary government, and

I fancy that, in most cases, their Jacobin fervor is moderate. Municipal

officer, national agent or mayor, the real peasant of that day belongs

to no party, neither royalist nor republican;[3361] his ideas are

rare, too transient and too sluggish, to enable him to form a political

opinion. All he comprehends of the Revolution is that which nettles him,

or that which he sees every day around him, with his own eyes; to him

'93 and '94 are and will remain "the time of bad paper (money) and great

fright," and nothing more.[3362] Patient in his habits., he submits to

the new as he did to the ancient régime, bearing the load put on his

shoulders, and stooping down for fear of a heavier one. He is often

mayor or national agent in spite of himself; he has been obliged to take

the place and would gladly throw the burden off. For, as times go, it

is onerous; if he executes decrees and orders, he is certain to make

enemies; if he does not execute them, he is sure to be imprisoned; he

had better remain, or go back home "Gros-Jean," as he was before. But he

has no choice; the appointment being once made and confirmed, he cannot

decline, nor resign, under penalty of being a "suspect;" he must be the

hammer in order not to become the anvil. Whether he is a wine-grower,

miller, ploughman or quarry-man, he acts reluctantly, "submitting a

petition for resignation," as soon as the Terror diminishes, on the

ground that "he writes badly," that "he knows nothing whatever about law

and is unable to enforce it;" that "he has to support himself with his

own hands;" that "he has a family to provide for, and is obliged to

drive his own cart" or vehicle; in short, entreating that he "may be

relieved of his charge."[3363]--These involuntary recruits are evidently

nothing more than common laborers; if they drag along the revolutionary

cart they do it like their horses, because they are pressed into the

service.

Above the small communes, in the large villages possessing a

revolutionary committee, and also in certain bourgs, the horses in

harness often pretend to draw and do not, for fear of crushing some

one.--At this epoch, a straggling village, especially when isolated, in

an out-of-the-way place and on no highway, is a small world in itself,

much more secluded than now-a-days, much less accessible to Parisian

verbiage and outside pressure; local opinion here preponderates;

neighbors support each other; they would shrink from denouncing a worthy

man whom they had known for twenty years; the moral sway of honest

folks suffices for keeping down "blackguards."[3364] If the mayor is

republican, it is only in words, perhaps for self-protection, to

protect his commune, and because one must howl along with the other

wolves.---Moreover, in other bourgs, and in the small towns, the

fanatics and rascals are not sufficiently numerous to fill all the

offices, and, in order to fill the vacancies, those who are not

good Jacobins have been pushed forward or admitted into the new

administrative corps, lukewarm, indifferent, timid or needy men, who

take the place as an asylum or ask for it as a means of subsistence.

"Citizens," one of the recruits, more or less under restraint, writes

later on,[3365] "I was put on the Committee of Surveillance of Aignay by

force, and installed by force." Three or four madmen on it ruled, and

if one held any discussion with them, "it was always threats.... Always

trembling, always afraid,--that is the way I passed eight months doing

duty in that miserable place."--Finally, in medium-sized or large

towns, the dead-lock produced by collective dismissals, the pell-mell

of improvised appointments, and the sudden renewal of an entire set of

officials, threw into the administration, willingly or not, a lot of

pretended Jacobins who, at heart, are Girondists or Feuillantists,

but who, having been excessively long-winded, are assigned offices on

account of their stump-speeches, and who thenceforth sit alongside

of the worst Jacobins, in the worst employment. "Members of the Feurs

Revolutionary Committee--those who make that objection to me," wrote a

lawyer in Clermont,[3366] "are persuaded that those only who secluded

themselves, felt the Terror. They are not aware, perhaps, that nobody

felt it more than those who were compelled to execute its decrees.

Remember that the handwriting of Couthon which designated some citizen

for an office also conveyed a threat, and in case of refusal, of being

declared 'suspect,' a threat which promised in perspective the loss

of liberty and the sequestration of property! Was I free, then, to

refuse?"--Once installed, the man must act, and many of those who do

act let their repugnance be seen in spite of themselves: at best, they

cannot be got to do more than mechanical service.

"Before going to court," says a judge at Cambray, "I swallowed a big

glass

of spirits to give me strength enough to preside."

He leaves his house with no other intention than to finish the job, and,

the sentence once pronounced, to return home, shut himself up, and close

his eyes and ears.

"I had to pronounce judgment according to the jury's declaration--what

could I do?"[3367]

Nothing, but remain blind and deaf: "I drank. I tried to ignore

everything, even the names of the accused."--It is plain enough that,

in the local official body, there are too many agents who are weak, not

zealous, without any push, unreliable, or even secretly hostile; these

must be replaced by others who are energetic and reliable, and the

latter must be taken wherever they can be found.[3368] This reservoir

in each department or district is the Jacobin nursery of the principal

town; from this, they are sent into the bourgs and communes of the

conscription. The central Jacobin nursery for France is in Paris, from

whence they are dispatched to the towns and departments.

V. Jacobins sent to the Provinces.

Importation of a staff of strangers.--Paris Jacobins sent

into the provinces.--Jacobins of enthusiastic towns deported

to moderate ones.--The Jacobins of a district headquarters

spread through the district.--Resistance of public opinion.

--Distribution and small number of really Jacobin agents.

Consequently, swarms of Jacobin locusts spread from Paris out over

the provinces, and from the local country-towns over the surrounding

country.--In this cloud of destructive insects, there are various

figures of different sizes: in the front rank, are the representatives

on mission, who are to take command in the departments; in the second

rank, "the political agents," who, assigned the duty of watching the

neighboring frontier, take upon themselves the additional duty of

leading the popular club of the town they reside in, or of urging on

its administrative body.[3369] Besides that, there issue from the Paris

headquarters in the rue St. Honoré, select sans-culottes who, authorized

or delegated by the Committee of Public Safety, proceed to Lyons,

Marseilles, Bordeaux, Tonnerre, Rochefort and elsewhere, to act as

missionaries among the too inert population, or form the committees

of action and the tribunals of extermination that are recruited with

difficulty on the spot.[3370]--Sometimes also, when a town has a bad

record, the popular club of a sounder-minded city sends its delegates

there, to bring it into line; thus, four deputies of the Metz club

arrive without notice in Belfort, catechize their brethren, associate

with them on the local Revolutionary Committee, and, suddenly, without

consulting the municipality, or any other legal authority, draw up

a list of "moderates, fanatics and egoists," on whom they impose an

extraordinary tax of one hundred and thirty-six thousand six hundred and

seventeen livres;[3371] in like manner, sixty delegates from the club

of Côte-d'Or, Haute-Marne, Vosges, Moselle, Saone-et-Loire and

Mont-Terrible, all "tempered by the white heat of Pére Duchesne,"

proceed to Strasbourg at the summons of the representatives, where,

under the title of "propagandists," they are to regenerate the town.--At

the same time, in each department, the Jacobins of the principal town

are found scattered along the high ways, that they may inspect their

domain and govern their subjects. Sometimes, it is the representative

on mission, who, personally, along with twenty "hairy devils," makes

his round and shows off his traveling dictatorship; again, it is his

secretary or delegate who, in his place and in his name, comes to a

second-class town and draws up his documents.[3372] At another time, it

is "a committee of investigation and propaganda" which, "chosen by

the club and provided with full powers," comes, in the name of the

representatives, to work up for a month all the communes of the

district.[3373] Again, finally, it is the revolutionary committee of

the principal town, which," declared central for the whole

department,"[3374] delegates one or the other of its members to

go outside the walls, and purge and recompose suspected

municipalities.--Thus does Jacobinism descend and spread itself, story

after story, from the Parisian center to the smallest and remotest

commune: throughout provincial France, whether colorless or of uncertain

color, the imposed or imported administration imposes its red stigma.

But the stamp is only superficial; for the sans-culottes, naturally, are

not disposed to confer offices on any but men of their sort, while in

the provinces, especially in the rural districts, such men are rare. As

one of the representatives says: there is a "dearth of subjects."--At

Mâcon, Javogues tries in vain;[3375] he finds in the club only

"disguised federalists;" the people, he says, "will not open their

eyes it seems to me that this blindness is due to the physique of the

country, which is very rich." Naturally, he storms and dismisses; but,

even in the revolutionary committee, none but dubious candidates are

presented to him for selection; he does not know how to manage in order

to renew the local authorities. "They play into each others' hands," and

he ends by threatening to transfer the public institutions of the

town elsewhere, if they persist in proposing to him none but bad

patriots.--At Strasbourg,[3376] Couturier, and Dentzel, on mission,

report that: "owing to an unexampled coalition among all the capable

citizens, obstinately refusing to take the office of mayor, in order,

by this course, to clog the wheels, and subject the representatives to

repeated and indecent refusals," he is compelled to appoint a young

man, not of legal age, and a stranger in the department.--At Marseilles,

write the agents,[3377] "in spite of every effort and our ardent desire

to republicanize the Marseilles people, our pains and fatigues are

nearly all fruitless.... Public spirit among owners of property,

mechanics and journey-men is everywhere detestable.... The number of

discontented seems to increase from day to day. All the communes in Var,

and most of those in this department are against us.... they constitute

a race to be destroyed, a country to be colonized anew....

"I repeat it, the only way to work out the Revolution in the federalized

departments, and especially in this one, is to deport all the indigenous

population who are able to bear arms, scatter them through the armies

and put garrisons in their places, which, again, will have to be changed

from time to time."--At the other extremity of the territory, in Alsace,

"republican sentiments are still in the cradle; fanaticism is extreme

and incredible; the spirit of the inhabitants in general is in no

respect revolutionary... Nothing but the revolutionary army and the

venerated guillotine will cure them of their conceited aristocracy. The

execution of the laws depends on striking off the heads of the guilty,

for nearly all the rural municipalities are composed only of the rich,

of clerks of former bailiffs, almost always devoted to the ancient

régime."[3378]--And in the rest of France, the population, less

refractory, is not more Jacobin; here where the people appear "humble

and submissive" as in Lyons and Bordeaux, the inspectors report that

it is wholly owing to terror;[3379] there, where opinion seems

enthusiastic, as at Rochefort and Grenoble, they report that it is

"artificial heat."[3380] At Rochefort, zeal is maintained only "by the

presence of five or six Parisian Jacobins." At Grenoble, Chépy, the

political agent and president of the club, writes that "he is knocked

up, worn out, and exhausted, in trying to keep up public spirit and

maintain it on a level with events," but he is "conscious that, if he

should leave, all would crumble."--There are none other than Moderates

at Brest, at Lille, at Dunkirk; if this or that department, the Nord,

for instance, hastened to accept the "Montagnard" constitution, it is

only a pretense: "an infinitely small portion of the population answered

for the rest."[3381]--At Belfort, where "from one thousand to twelve

hundred fathers of families alone are counted," writes the agent,[3382]

"one popular club of thirty or forty members, at the most, maintains and

enforces the love of liberty."--In Arras, "out of three or four hundred

members composing the popular club" the weeding-out of 1793 has spared

but "sixty-three, one tenth of whom are absent."[3383] At Toulouse, "out

of about fourteen hundred members" who form the club, only three or four

hundred remain after the weeding-out of 1793,[3384] "mere machines,

for the most part," and "whom ten or a dozen intriguers lead as they

please."--The same state of things exists elsewhere, a dozen or two

determined Jacobins-twenty-two at Troyes, twenty-one at Grenoble, ten

at Bordeaux, seven at Poitiers, as many at Dijon-constitute the active

staff of a large town:[3385] the whole number might sit around one

table.--The Jacobins, straining as they do to swell their numbers, only

scatter their band; careful as they are in making their selections, they

only limit their number. They remain what they always have been, a

small feudality of brigands superposed on conquered France.[3386] If

the terror they spread around multiplies their serfs, the horror they

inspire diminishes their proselytes, while their minority remains

insignificant because, for their collaborators, they can have only those

just like themselves.

VI. Quality of staff thus formed.

Quality of staff thus formed.--Social state of the agents.

--Their unfitness and bad conduct.--The administrators in

Seine-et-Marne.--Drunkenness and feasting.--Committees and

Municipalities in the Côte-d'Or.--Waste and extortions.

--Traffickers in favors at Bordeaux.--Seal breakers at Lyons.

--Monopolizers of national possessions.--Sales of personal

property.--Embezzlements and Frauds.-A procès-verbal in the

office of the mayor of Strasbourg.--Sales of real-estate.

--Commissioners on declarations at Toulouse.--The

administrative staff and clubs of buyers in Provence.--The

Revolutionary Committee of Nantes.

But when we regard the final and last set of officials of the

revolutionary government closely, in the provinces as well as at Paris,

we find among them we hardly anyone who is noteworthy except in vice,

dishonesty and misconduct, or, at the very least, in stupidity and

grossness.--First, as is indicated by their name, they all must be, and

nearly all are, sans-culottes, that is to say, men who live from day to

day on their daily earnings, possessing no income from capital, confined

to subordinate places, to petty trading, to manual services, lodged

or encamped on the lowest steps of the social ladder, and therefore

requiring pay to enable them to attend to public business;[3387] it is

on this account that decrees and orders allow them wages of three,

five, six, ten, and even eighteen francs a day.--At Grenoble, the

representatives form the municipal body and the revolutionary committee,

along with two health-officers, three glovers, two farmers, one

tobacco-merchant, one perfumer, one grocer, one belt-maker, one

innkeeper, one joiner, one shoemaker, one mason, while the official

order by which they are installed, appoints "Teyssière, licoriste,"

national agent.[3388]--At Troyes,[3389] among the men in authority we

find a confectioner, a weaver, a journeyman-weaver, a hatter, a hosier,

a grocer, a carpenter, a dancing-master, and a policeman, while the

mayor, Gachez, formerly a private soldier in the regiment of Vexin, was,

when appointed, a school-teacher in the vicinity.--At Toulouse,[3390]

a man named Terrain, a pâté dealer, is installed as president of the

administration; the revolutionary committee is presided over by Pio,

a journeyman-barber; the inspiration, "the soul of the club," is a

concierge, that of the prison.--The last and most significant trait is

found at Rochefort,[3391] where the president of the popular club is the

executioner.--If such persons form the select body of officials in the

large towns, what must they be in the small ones, in the bourgs and

in the villages?" Everywhere they are of the meanest"[3392] cartmen,

sabot--(wooden shoe) makers, thatchers, stone-cutters, dealers in

rabbit-skins, day laborers, unemployed craftsmen, many without any

pursuit, or mere vagabonds who had already participated in riots or

jacqueries, bar flies, having given up work and designated for a public

career only by their irregular habits and incompetence to follow

a private career.--Even in the large towns, it is evident that

discretionary power has fallen into the hands of nearly raw barbarians;

one has only to note in the old documents, at the Archives, the

orthography and style of the committees empowered to grant or refuse

civic cards, and draw up reports on the opinions and pursuits of

prisoners. "His opinions appear insipid (Ces opignons paroisse

insipide)[3393].... He is married with no children." (Il est marie cent

(sans) enfants).... Her profession is wife of Paillot-Montabert, she is

living on her income, his relations are with a woman we pay no

attention to; we presume her opinions are like her husband's."[3394] The

handwriting, unfortunately, cannot be represented here, being that of a

child five years old.[3395]

"As stupid as they are immoral,"[3396] says Representative Albert,

of the Jacobins he finds in office at Troyes. Low, indeed, as their

condition may be, their feeling and intelligence are yet lower because,

in their professions or occupations, they are the refuse instead of

the élite, and, especially on this account, they are turned out after

Thermidor, some, it is true, as Terrorists, but the larger number as

either dolts, scandalous or crazy, simply intruders, or mere valets.--At

Rheims, the president of the district is[3397] "a former bailiff, on

familiar terms with the spies of the Robespierre régime, acting in

concert with them, but without being their accomplice, possessing none

of the requisite qualities for administration." Another administrator

is likewise "a former bailiff, without means, negligent in the

highest degree and a confirmed drunkard." Alongside of these sit "a

horse-dealer, without any means, more fit for shady dealings than

governing, moreover a drunkard, a dyer, lacking judgment, open to all

sorts of influences, pushed ahead by the Jacobin faction, and having

used power in the most arbitrary manner, rather, perhaps, through

ignorance than through cruelty, a shoemaker, entirely uninstructed,

knowing only how to sign his name," and others of the same character. In

the Tribunal, a judge is noted as

"true in principle, but whom poverty and want of resources have driven

to every excess, a turncoat according to circumstances in order to get

a place, associated with the leaders in order to keep the place, and

yet not without sensibility, having, perhaps, acted criminally merely to

keep himself and his family alive."

In the municipal body, the majority is composed of an incompetent lot,

some of them being journeymen-spinners or thread twisters, and others

second-hand dealers or shopkeepers, "incapable," "without means," with a

few crack-brains among them: one, "his brain being crazed, absolutely

of no account, anarchist and Jacobin;" another, "very dangerous through

lack of judgment, a Jacobin, over-excited;" a third, "an instrument of

tyranny, a man of blood capable of every vice, having assumed the

name of Mutius Scoevola, of recognized depravity and unable to

write."--Similarly, in the Aube districts, we find some of the heads

feverish with the prevailing epidemic, for instance, at Nogent,

the national agent, Delaporte, "who has the words 'guillotine' and

'revolutionary tribunal' always on his lips, and who declares that if

he were the government he would imprison doctor, surgeon and lawyer,

who delights in finding people guilty and says that he is never content

except when he gets three pounds' weight of denunciations a day." But,

apart from these madcaps, most of the administrators or judges are

either people wholly unworthy of their offices, because they are

"inept," "too uneducated," "good for nothing," "too little familiar

with administrative forms," "too little accustomed to judicial action,"

"without information," "too busy with their own affairs," "unable to

read or write," or, because "they have no delicacy," are "violent,"

"agitators," "knaves," "without public esteem," and more or less

dishonest and despised.[3398]--As an example a fellow from Paris, who

was at first at Troyes, a baker's apprentice,[3399] and afterwards a

dancing-master; then he appeared at the Club, making headway, doubtless,

through his Parisian chatter, until he stood first and soon became a

member of the district. Appointed an officer in the sixth battalion of

Aube, he behaved in such a manner in Vendée that, on his return, "his

brethren in arms" broke up the banner presented to him, "declaring him

unworthy of such an honor, because he cowardly fled before the enemy."

Nevertheless, after a short plunge, he came back to the surface and,

thanks to his civil compeers, was reinstated in his administrative

functions; during the Terror, he was intimate with all the Terrorists,

being one of the important men of Troyes.--The mayor of the town,

Gachez, an old soldier and ex-schoolmaster, is of the same stuff as

this baker's apprentice. He, likewise, was a Vendéan hero; only, he was

unable to distinguish himself as much as he liked, for, after enlisting,

he failed to march; having pocketed the bounty of three hundred livres,

he discovered that he had infirmities and, getting himself invalidated,

he served the nation in a civil capacity. "His own partisans admit that

he is a drunkard and that he has committed forgery." Some months after

Thermidor he is sentenced to eight years imprisonment and put in the

pillory for this crime. Hence, "almost the entire commune is against

him; the women in the streets jeer him, and the eight sections meet

together to request his withdrawal." But Representative Bô reports that

he is every way entitled to remain, being a true Jacobin, an admirable

terrorist and "the only sans-culotte mayor which the commune of Troyes

has to be proud of."[33100]

It would be awarding too much honor to men of this stamp, to suppose

that they had convictions or principles; they were governed by

animosities and especially by their appetites,[33101] to satiate which

they[33102] made the most of their offices.--At Troyes, "all provisions

and foodstuffs are drawn upon to supply the table of the twenty-four"

sans-culottes[33103] to whom Bô entrusted the duty of weeding-out the

popular club; before the organization of "this regenerating nucleus"

the revolutionary committee, presided over by Rousselin, the civil

commissioner, carried on its "gluttony" in the Petit-Louvre

tavern, "passing nights bozing" and in the preparation of lists of

suspects.[33104] In the neighboring provinces of Dijon, Beaune, Semur

and Aignayle-Duc, the heads of the municipality and of the club always

meet in taverns and bars. At Dijon, we see "the ten or twelve Hercules

of patriotism traversing the town, each with a chalice under his

arm:"[33105] this is their drinking-cup; each has to bring his own

to the Montagnard inn; there, they imbibe copiously, frequently, and

between two glasses of wine "declare who are outlaws." At Aignay-le-Duc,

a small town with only half a dozen patriots "the majority of whom can

scarcely write, most of them poor, burdened with families, and living

without doing anything, never quit the bars, where, night and day,

they revel;" their chief, a financial ex-procureur, now "concierge,

archivist, secretary and president of the popular club," holds municipal

council in the tavern. "Should they go out it was to chase female

aristocrats," and one of them declares "that if the half of Aignay were

slaughtered the other half would be all the better for it."--There

is nothing like drinking to excite ferocity to the highest pitch. At

Strasbourg the sixty mustachioed propagandist lodged in the college in

which they are settled fixtures, have a cook provided for them by the

town, and they revel day and night "on the choice provisions put

in requisition," "on wines destined to the defenders of the

country."[33106] It is, undoubtedly, when coming out from one of these

orgies that they proceed, sword in hand, to the popular club,[33107]

vote and force others to vote "death to all prisoners confined in the

Seminary to the number of seven hundred, of every age and of both sexes,

without any preliminary trial." For a man to become a good cut-throat,

he must first get intoxicated;[33108] such was the course pursued

in Paris by those who did the work in September: the revolutionary

government being an organized, prolonged and permanent Septembrisade,

most of its agents are obliged to drink hard.[33109]--For the same

reasons when the opportunity, as well as the temptation, to steal,

presents itself, they steal.--At first, during six months, and up to the

decree assigning them pay, the revolutionary committees "take their pay

themselves;"[33110] they then add to their legal salary of three and

five francs a day about what they please: for it is they who assess the

extraordinary taxes, and often, as at Montbrison, "without making any

list or record of collections." On Frimaire 16, year II., the financial

committee reports that "the collection and application of extraordinary

taxes is unknown to the government; that it was impossible to supervise

them, the National treasury having received no sums whatever arising

from these taxes."[33111] Two years after, four years after, the

accounts of revolutionary taxation of forced loans, and of pretended

voluntary gifts, still form a bottomless pit; out of forty billions of

accounts rendered to the National Treasury only twenty are found to be

verified; the rest are irregular and worthless. Besides, in many cases,

not only is the voucher worthless or not forthcoming, but, again, it

is proved that the sums collected disappeared wholly or in part. At

Villefranche, out of one hundred and thirty-eight thousand francs

collected, the collector of the district deposited but forty-two

thousand; at Baugency, out of more than five hundred thousand francs

collected, there were only fifty thousand deposited; at la Réole, out

of at least five hundred thousand francs collected, there were but

twenty-two thousand six hundred and fifty deposited. "The rest,"

says the collector at Villefranche, "were wasted by the Committee

of Surveillance." "The tax-collectors," writes the national-agent at

Orleans, "after having employed terror gave themselves up to orgies and

are now building palaces."[33112]--As to the expenses which they claim,

they almost always consist of "indemnities to members of revolutionary

committees, to patriots, and to defray the cost of patriotic missions,"

to maintaining and repairing the meeting-rooms of the popular clubs, to

military expeditions, and to succoring the poor, so that three or four

hundred millions in gold or silver, extorted before the end of 1793,

hundreds of millions of assignats extorted in 1793 and 1794, in short,

almost the entire product of the total extraordinary taxation[33113]

was consumed on the spot and by the sans-culottes. Seated at the

public banqueting table they help themselves first, and help themselves

copiously.

A second windfall, equally gross. Enjoying the right to dispose

arbitrarily of fortunes, liberties and lives, they can traffic in these,

while no traffic can be more advantageous, both for buyers and sellers.

Any man who is rich or well-off, in other words, every man who is likely

to be taxed, imprisoned or guillotined, gladly consents "to compound,"

to redeem himself and those who belong to him. If he is prudent, he

pays, before the tax, so as not to be over-taxed; he pays, after the

tax, to obtain a diminution or delays; he pays to be admitted into the

popular club. When danger draws near he pays to obtain or renew his

certificate of civism, not to be declared "suspect," not to be

denounced as a conspirator. After being denounced, he pays to be allowed

imprisonment at home rather than in the jail, to be allowed imprisonment

in the jail rather than in the general prison, to be well treated if he

gets into this, to have time to get together his proofs in evidence,

to have his record (dossier) placed and kept at the bottom of the file

among the clerk's registers, to avoid being inscribed on the next batch

of cases in the revolutionary Tribunal. There is not one of these favors

that is not precious; consequently, ransoms without number are tendered,

while the rascals[33114] who swarm on the revolutionary committees, need

but open their hands to fill their pockets. They run very little risk,

for they are held in check only by their own kind, or are not checked at

all. In any large town, two of them suffice for the issue of a warrant

of arrest save a reference to the Committee within twenty-four hours,

with the certainty that their colleagues will kindly return the

favor.[33115] Moreover, the clever ones know how to protect themselves

beforehand. For example, at Bordeaux, where one of these clandestine

markets had been set up, M. Jean Davilliers, one of the partners in a

large commercial house, is under arrest in his own house, guarded by

four sans-culottes; on the 8th of Brumaire, he is taken aside and

told "that he is in danger if he does not come forward and meet

the indispensable requirements of the Revolution in its secret

expenditures." An important figure, Lemoal, member of the revolutionary

committee and administrator of the district, had spoken of these

requirements and thought that M. Davilliers should contribute the sum of

one hundred and fifty thousand livres. Upon this, a knock at the door

is heard; Lemoal enters and all present slip out of the room, and Lemoal

pronounces these words only: "Do you consent?"--"But I cannot thus

dispose of my partners' property."--"Then you will go to prison." At

this threat the poor man yields and gives his note to Lemoal at twenty

days, payable to bearer, for one hundred and fifty thousand livres, and,

at the end of a fortnight, by dint of pushing his claims, obtains his

freedom. Thereupon, Lemoal thinks the matter over, and deems it prudent

to cover up his private extortion by a public one. Accordingly, he sends

for M. Davilliers: "It is now essential for you to openly contribute

one hundred and fifty thousand livres more for the necessities of the

Republic. I will introduce you to the representatives to whom you should

make the offer." The chicken being officially plucked in this way,

nobody would suppose that it had been first privately plucked, and,

moreover, the inquisitive, if there were any, would be thrown off

the scent by the confusion arising from two sums of equal amount. M.

Davilliers begs to be allowed to consult his partners, and, as they are

not in prison, they refuse. Lemoal, on his side, is anxious to receive

the money for his note, while poor Davilliers, "struck with terror by

nocturnal arrests," and seeing that Lemoal is always on the top of the

ladder, concludes to pay; at first, he gives him thirty thousand livres,

and next, the charges, amounting in all to forty-one thousand livres,

when, being at the end of his resources, he begs and entreats to have

his note returned to him. Lemoal, on this, considering the chicken as

entirely stripped, becomes mollified, and tears off in presence of his

debtor "the signature in full of the note," and, along with this, his

own receipts for partial payments underneath. But he carefully preserves

the note itself, for, thus mutilated, it will show, if necessary, that

he had not received anything, and that, through patriotism, he had

undoubtedly wished to force a contribution from a merchant, but,

finding him insolvent, had humanely canceled the written

obligation.[33116]--Such are the precautions taken in this business.

Others, less shrewd, rob more openly, among others the mayor, the seven

members of the military commission surnamed "the seven mortal sins,"

and especially their president, Lacombe, who, by promising releases,

extracts from eight or nine captives three hundred and fifty-nine

thousand six hundred livres.[33117] "Through such schemes," writes

a rigid Jacobin,[33118] "many of those who had been declared outlaws

returned to Bordeaux by paying; of the number who thus redeemed their

lives, some did not deserve to lose it, but, nevertheless, they were

threatened with execution if they did not consent to everything. But

material proofs of this are hard to obtain. These men now keep silent,

for fear, through open denunciation, of sharing in the penalty of the

traffickers in justice, and being unwilling to expose (anew) the life

they have preserved." In short, the plucked pigeon is mute, so as not

to attract attention, as well as to avoid the knife; and all the more,

because those who pluck him hold on to the knife and might, should he

cry out, dispatch him with the more celerity. Even if he makes no noise,

they sometimes dispatch him so as to stifle in advance any possible

outcry, which happened to the Duc du Chatelet and others. There is but

one mode of self-preservation[33119] and that is, "to settle with such

masters by installments, to pay them monthly, like wet nurses, on a

scale proportionate to the activity of the guillotine."--In any event,

the pirates are not disturbed, for the trade in lives and liberties

leaves no trace behind it, and is carried on with impunity for two

years, from one end of France to the other, according to a tacit

understanding between sellers and buyers.

There is a third windfall, not less large, but carried on in more

open sunshine and therefore still more enticing.--Once the "suspect is

incarcerated, whatever he brings to prison along with him, whatever

he leaves behind him at home, becomes plunder; for, with the

incompleteness, haste and irregularity of papers,[33120] with the lack

of surveillance and known connivance, the vultures, great and small,

could freely use their beaks and talons.--At Toulouse, as in Paris and

elsewhere, commissioners take from prisoners every object of value and,

accordingly, in many cases, all gold, silver, assignats, and jewelry,

which, confiscated for the Treasury, stop half-way in the hands of those

who make the seizure.[33121] At Poitiers, the seven scoundrels who

form the ruling oligarchy, admit, after Thermidor, that they stole the

effects of arrested parties.[33122] At Orange, "Citoyenne Riot," wife of

the public prosecutor, and "citoyennes Fernex and Ragot," wives of two

judges, come in person to the record-office to make selections from the

spoils of the accused, taking for their wardrobe silver shoe-buckles,

laces and fine linen.[33123]--But all that the accused, the imprisoned

and fugitives can take with them, amounts to but little in comparison

with what they leave at home, that is to say, under sequestration. All

the religious or seignorial chateaux and mansions in France are in

this plight, along with their furniture, and likewise most of the fine

bourgeois mansions, together with a large number of minor residences,

well-furnished and supplied through provincial economy; besides these,

nearly every warehouse and store belonging to large manufacturers and

leading commercial houses; all this forms colossal spoil, such as was

never seen before, consisting of objects one likes to possess, gathered

in vast lots, which lots are distributed by hundreds of thousands over

the twenty-six thousand square miles of territory. There are no owners

for this property but the nation, an indeterminate, invisible personage;

no barrier other than so many seals exists between the spoils and the

despoilers, that is to say, so many strips of paper held fast by two

ill-applied and indistinct stamps. Bear in mind, too, that the guardians

of the spoil are the sans-culottes who have made a conquest of it; that

they are poor; that such a profusion of useful or precious objects makes

them feel the bareness of their homes all the more; that their wives

would like to lay in a stock of furniture; moreover, has it not held

out to them from the beginning of the Revolution, that "forty-thousand

mansions, palaces and chateaux, two-thirds of the property of France,

would be the reward of their valor?"[33124] At this very moment, does

not the representative on mission authorize their greed? Are not Albitte

and Collot d'Herbois at Lyons, Fouché at Nevers, Javogues at Montbrison,

proclaiming that the possessions of anti-revolutionaries and a surplus

of riches form "the patrimony of the sans-culottes?"[33125] Do they not

read in the proclamations of Monestier,[33126] that the peasants "before

leaving home may survey and measure off the immense estates of their

seigneurs, choose, for example, on their return, whatever they want

to add to their farm.. .. tacking on a bit of field or rabbit-warren

belonging to the former count or marquis?" Why not take a portion of

his furniture, any of his beds or clothes-presses--It is not surprising

that, after this, the slip of paper which protects sequestrated

furniture and confiscated merchandise should be ripped off by gross and

greedy hands! When, after Thermidor, the master returns to his own roof

it is generally to an empty house; in this or that habitation in the

Morvan,[33127] the removal of the furniture is so complete that a bin

turned upside down serves for a table and chairs, when the family sit

down to their first meal.

In the towns the embezzlements are often more brazenly carried out than

in the country. At Valenciennes, the Jacobin chiefs of the

municipality are known under the title of "seal-breakers and patriotic

robbers."[33128] At Lyons, the Maratists, who dub themselves "the

friends of Chalier," are, according to the Jacobins' own admission,

"brigands, thieves and rascals."[33129] They compose, to the number

of three or four hundred, the thirty-two revolutionary committees; one

hundred and fifty of leaders, "all of them administrators," form the

popular club; in this town of one hundred and twenty thousand souls they

number, as they themselves state, three thousand, and they firmly rely

on "sharing with each other the wealth of Lyons. This huge cake belongs

to them; they do not allow that strangers, Parisians, should have a

slice,[33130] and they intend to eat the whole of it, at discretion,

without control, even to the last crumb. As to their mode of operations,

it consists in "selling justice, in trading on denunciations, in holding

under sequestration at least four thousand households," in putting seals

everywhere on dwellings and warehouses, in not summoning interested

parties who might watch their proceedings, in expelling women, children

and servants who might testify to their robberies, in not drawing up

inventories, in installing themselves as "guardians at five francs a

day," themselves or their boon companions, and in "general squandering,

in league with the administrators." It is impossible to stay their

hands or repress them, even for the representatives. Take them in the

act,[33131] and you must shut your eyes or they will all shout at the

oppression of patriots; they do this systematically so that nobody may

be followed up.

We passed an order forbidding any authority to remove seals without our

consent, and, in spite of the prohibition, they broke into a storehouse

under sequestration,.... forced the locks and pillaged, under our own

eyes, the very house we occupy. And who are these devastators? Two

commissioners of the Committee who emptied the storehouse without our

warrant, and even without having any power from the Committee."--It is

a sack in due form, and day after day; it began on the 10th of October,

1793; it continued after, without interruption, and we have just seen

that, on Floréal 28, year II., that is to say, April 26, 1794, after one

hundred and twenty-three days, it is still maintained.

The last mad scramble and the most extensive of all.--In spite of the

subterfuges of its agents, the Republic, having stolen immensely, and

although robbed in its turn, could still hold on to a great deal; and

first, to articles of furniture which could not be easily abstracted,

to large lots of merchandise, also to the vast spoil of the palaces,

chateaux and churches; next, and above all, to real estate, fixtures and

buildings. To meet its expenses it put all that up for sale, and whoever

wants anything has only to come forward as a buyer, the last bidder

becoming the legal owner and at a cheap rate. The wood cut down in one

year very often pays for a whole forest.[33132] Sometimes a chateau can

be paid for by a sale of the iron-railings of the park, or the lead

on the roof.--Here are found chances for a good many bargains, and

especially with objects of art. "The titles alone of the articles

carried off, destroyed or injured, would fill volumes."[33133] On the

one hand, the commissioners on inventories and adjudications, "having

to turn a penny on the proceeds of sales," throw on the market all

they can, "avoiding reserving" objects of public utility and sending

collections and libraries to auction with a view to get their

percentages. On the other hand, nearly all these commissioners are

brokers or second-hand dealers who alone know the value of rarities,

and openly depreciate them in order to buy them in themselves, "and thus

ensure for themselves exorbitant profits." In certain cases the official

guardians and purchasers who are on the look-out take the precaution

to disfigure "precious articles" so as to have them bought by their

substitutes and accomplices: "for instance, they convert sets of books

into odd volumes, and take machines to pieces; the tube and object-glass

of a telescope are separated, which pieces the rogues who have bought

them cheap know how to put together again." Often, in spite of the

seals, they take in advance antiques, pieces of jewelry, medals,

enamels and engraved stones;" nothing is easier, for "even in Paris in

Thermidor, year II., agents of the municipality use anything with which

to make a stamp, buttons, and even large pennies, so that whoever has

a sou can remove and re-stamp the seals as he pleases;" having been

successful, "they screen their thefts by substituting cut pebbles

and counterfeit stones for real ones." Finally, at the auction sales,

"fearing the honesty or competition of intelligent judges, they offer

money (to these) to stay away from the sales; one case is cited where

they have knocked a prospective bidder down." In the meantime, at the

club, they shout with all their might; this, with the protection of a

member of the municipality or of the Revolutionary Committee, shelters

them from all suspicion. As for the protector, he gets his share without

coming out into the light. Accuse, if you dare, a republican functionary

who secretly, or even openly, profits by these larcenies; he will show

clean hands.--Such is the incorruptible patriot, the only one of his

species, whom the representatives discover at Strasbourg, and whom they

appoint mayor at once. On the 10th of Vendémiaire, year III.,[33134]

there is found "in his apartments" a superb and complete assortment of

ecclesiastical objects, "forty-nine copes and chasubles, silk or satin,

covered with gold or silver; fifty-four palles of the same description;"

a quantity of "reliquaries, vases and spoons, censers, laces, silver and

gold fringe, thirty-two pieces of silk," etc. None of these fine things

belong to him; they are the property of citizen Mouet, his father. This

prudent parent, taking his word for it, "deposited them for safe keeping

in his son's house during the month of June, 1792 (old style);"--could a

good son refuse his father such a slight favor? It is very certain that,

in '93 and '94, during the young man's municipal dictatorship, the

elder did not pay the Strasbourg Jew brokers too much, and that they did

business in an off-hand way. By what right could a son and magistrate

prevent his father, a free individual, from looking after "his own

affairs" and buying according to trade principles, as cheap as he could?

If such are the profits on the sale of personal property, what must they

be on the sale of real estate?--It is on this traffic that the fortunes

of the clever terrorists are founded. It accounts for the "colossal

wealth peaceably enjoyed," after Thermidor, of the well-known "thieves"

who, before Thermidor, were so many "little Robespierres," each in his

own canton, "the patriots" who, around Orleans, "built palaces," who,

"exclusives" at Valenciennes, "having wasted both public and private

funds, possess the houses and property of emigrants, knocked down to

them at a hundred times less than their value."[33135] On this side,

their outstretched fingers shamelessly clutch all they can get hold of;

for the obligation of each arrested party to declare his name, quality

and fortune, as it now is and was before the Revolution, gives local

cupidity a known, sure, direct and palpable object.--At Toulouse, says a

prisoner,[33136] "the details and value of an object were taken down as

if for a succession," while the commissioners who drew up the statement,

"our assassins, proceeded, beforehand and almost under our eyes, to take

their share, disputing with each other on the choice and suitableness

of each object, comparing the cost of adjudication with the means of

lessening it, discussing the certain profits of selling again and of the

transfer, and consuming in advance the pickings arising from sales and

leases."--In Provence, where things are more advanced and corruption

is greater than elsewhere, where the purport and aims of the Revolution

were comprehended at the start, it is still worse. Nowhere did Jacobin

rulers display their real character more openly, and nowhere, from

1789 to 1799, was this character so well maintained. At Toulon, the

demagogues in the year V., as in the year II., are[33137] "former

workmen and clerks in the Arsenal who had become 'bosses' by acting as

informers and through terrorism, getting property for nothing, or at an

insignificant price, and plotting sales of national possessions, petty

traders from all quarters with stocks of goods acquired in all sorts of

ways, through robberies, through purchases of stolen goods from servants

and employees in the civil, war and navy departments, and through

abandoned or bought-up claims; in a word, men who, having run away from

other communes, pass their days in coffee-houses and their nights in

houses of ill-fame."--At Draguignan, Brignolles, Vidauban, Fréjus,

at Marseilles, after Thermidor, the intermittent returns to Terrorism

always restore the same quarries of the justiciary and the police to

office.[33138] "Artisans, once useful, but now tired of working,

and whom the profession of paid clubbists, idle guardians," and paid

laborers "has totally demoralized," scoundrels in league with each

other and making money out of whatever they can lay their hands on,

like thieves at a fair, habitually living at the expense of the public,

"bestowing the favors of the nation on those who share their principles,

harboring and aiding many who are under the ban of the law and calling

themselves model patriots,[33139] that is, in the pay of gambling hells

and houses of prostitution."--In the rural districts, the old bands

"consisting of hordes of homeless brigands" who worked so well during

the anarchy of the Constituent and Legislative assemblies, form anew

during the anarchy of the Directory; they make their appearance in the

vicinity of Apt "commencing with petty robberies and then, strong in

the impunity and title of sans-culottes, break into farm-houses, rob and

massacre the inmates, strip travelers, put to ransom all who happen

to cross their path, force open and pillage houses in the commune of

Gorges, stop women in the streets, tear off their rings and crosses,"

and attack the hospital, sacking it from top to bottom, while the

town and military officers, just like them, allow them to go

on.[33140]--Judge by this of their performances in the time of

Robespierre, when the vendors and administrators of the national

possessions exercised undisputed control. Everywhere, at that time,

in the departments of Var, Bouches-du-Rhône, and Vaucluse, "a club of

would-be patriots" had long prepared the way for their exactions. It

had "paid appraisers for depreciating whatever was put up for sale,

and false names for concealing real purchasers; "a person not of their

clique, was excluded from the auction-room; if he persisted in coming in

they would, at one time, put him under contribution for the privilege

of bidding," and, at another time, make him promise not to bid above the

price fixed by the league, while, to acquire the domain, they paid him

a bonus. Consequently, "national property" was given away "for

almost nothing," the swindlers who acquired it never being without a

satisfactory warrant for this in their own eyes. Into whose hands could

the property of anti-revolutionists better fall than into those of

patriots? According to Marat, the martyr apostle and canonised saint of

the Revolution, what is the object of the Revolution but to give to

the lowly the fortunes of the great?[33141] In all national sales

everywhere, in guarding sequestrations, in all revolutionary ransoms,

taxes, loans and seizures, the same excellent argument prevails;

nowhere, in printed documents or in manuscripts, do I find any

revolutionary committee which is at once terrorist and honest. Only,

it is rare to find specific and individual details regarding all the

members of the same committee.--Here, however, is one case, where, owing

to the lucky accident of an examination given in detail, one can observe

in one nest, every variety of the species and of its appetites, the

dozen or fifteen types of the Jacobin hornet, each abstracting what

suits him from whatever he lights on, each indulging in his favorite

sort of rapine.--At Nantes, "Pinard, the great purveyor of the

Committee,[33142] orders everything that each member needs for his daily

use to be carried to his house."--"Gallou takes oil and brandy,"

and especially "several barrels from citizen Bissonneau's

house."--"Durassier makes domiciliary visits and exacts contributions;"

among others "he compels citizen Lemoine to pay twenty-five hundred

livres, to save him from imprisonment."--"Naud affixes and removes

seals in the houses of the incarcerated, makes nocturnal visits to

the dwellings of the accused and takes what suits him."--"Grandmaison

appropriates plate under sequestration, and Bachelier plate given as

a present."--"Joly superintends executions and takes all he can find,

plate, jewelry, precious objects."--"Bolognié forces the return of a

bond of twenty thousand livres already paid to him."--Perrochaux demands

of citoyenne Ollemard-Dudan "fifty thousand livres, to prevent her

imprisonment," and confiscates for his own benefit sixty thousand

livres worth of tobacco, in the house of the widow Daigneau-Mallet,

who, claiming it back, is led off by him to prison under the pretext of

interceding for her.--Chaux frightens off by terrorism his competitors

at auction sales, has all the small farms on the Baroissière domain

knocked down to him, and exclaims concerning a place which suits him: "I

know how to get it! I'll have the owner arrested. He'll be very glad

to let me have his ground to get out of prison.' "--The collection is

complete, and gathered on a table, it offers specimens which can be

found scattered all over France.

VII. The Armed Forces.

The Armed Force, the National Guard and the Gendarmerie.

--Its purgation and composition.--The Revolutionary Armies in

Paris and in the departments.--Quality of the recruits.

--Their employment.--Their expeditions into the countryside

and the towns.--Their exploits in the vicinity of Paris and

Lyons.--The company of Maratists, the American Hussars and

the German Legion at Nantes.--General character of the

Revolutionary government and of the administrative staff of

the Reign of Terror.

The last manipulators of the system remain, the hands which seize, the

armed force which takes bodily hold of men and things.--The first who

are employed for this purpose are the National Guard and the ordinary

gendarmerie. Since 1790, these bodies are of course constantly weeded

out until only fanatics and robots are left;[33143] nevertheless,

the weeding-out continues as the system develops itself. At

Strasbourg,[33144] on Brumaire 14, the representatives have dismissed,

arrested and sent to Dijon the entire staff of the National Guard

to serve as hostages until peace is secured; three days afterwards,

considering that the cavalry of the town had been mounted and equipped

at its own expense, they deem it aristocratic, bourgeois, and "suspect,"

and seize the horses and put the officers in arrest.--At Troyes,

Rousselin, "National civil commissioner," dismisses, for the same

reason, and with not less dispatch, all of the gendarmes at one stroke,

except four, and "puts under requisition their horses, fully

equipped, also their arms, so as to at once mount well known and tried

sans-culottes." On principle, the poor sans-culottes, who are true at

heart and in dress, alone have the right to bear arms, and should a

bourgeois be on duty he must have only a pike, care being taken to take

it away from him the moment he finishes his rounds.[33145]

But, alongside of the usual armed force, there is still another, much

better selected and more effective, the reserve gendarmerie, a special,

and, at the same time, movable and resident body, that is to say, the

"revolutionary army," which, after September 5, 1793, the government

had raised in Paris and in most of the large towns.--That of Paris,

comprising six thousand men, with twelve hundred cannoneers, sends

detachments into the provinces--two thousand men to Lyons, and two

hundred to Troyes;[33146] Ysabeau and Tallien have at Bordeaux a corps

of three thousand men; Salicetti, Albitte and Gasparin, one of two

thousand men at Marseilles; Ysoré and Duquesnoy, one of one thousand men

at Lille; Javogues, one of twelve hundred at Montbrison. Others,

less numerous, ranging from six hundred down to two hundred men,

hold Moulins, Grenoble, Besançon, Belfort, Bourg, Dijon, Strasbourg,

Toulouse, Auch and Nantes.[33147] When, on March 27, 1794, the Committee

of Public Safety, threatened by Hébert, has them disbanded for being

Hébertists, in any of them are to remain at least as a nucleus, under

various forms and names, either as kept by the local administration

under the title of "paid guards,"[33148] or as disbanded soldiers,

loitering about and doing nothing, getting themselves assigned posts of

rank in the National Guard of their town on account of their exploits;

in this way they keep themselves in service, which is indispensable,

for it is through these that the régime is established and lasts. "The

revolutionary army,[33149] say the orders and decrees promulgated, "is

intended to repress anti-revolutionaries, to execute, whenever it is

found necessary, revolutionary laws and measures for public safety,"

that is to say, "to guard those who are shut up, arrest 'suspects,'

demolish chateaux, pull down belfries, ransack vestries for gold and

silver objects, seize fine horses and carriages," and especially "to

seek for private stores and monopolies," in short, to exercise manual

constraint and strike every one on the spot with physical terror.--We

readily see what sort of soldiers the revolutionary army is composed of.

Naturally, as it is recruited by voluntary enlistment, and all

candidates have passed the purifying scrutiny of the clubs, it comprises

none but ultra-Jacobins. Naturally, the pay being forty sous a day, it

comprises none but the very lowest class. Naturally, as the work is as

loathsome as it is atrocious, it comprises but few others[33150] than

those out of employment and reduced to an enlistment to get a living,

"hairdressers without customers, lackeys without places, vagabonds,

wretches unable to earn a living by honest labor," "thick and hard

hitters" who have acquired the habit of bullying, knocking down and

keeping honest folks under their pikes, a gang of confirmed scoundrels

making public brigandage a cloak for private brigandage, inhabitants of

the slums glad to bring down their former superiors into the mud, and

themselves take precedence and strut about in order to prove by their

arrogance and self-display that they, in their turn, are princes.--"Take

a horse, the nation pays for it!"[33151] said the sans-culottes

of Bordeaux to their comrades in the street, who, "in a splendid

procession," of three carriages, each drawn by six horses, escorted by

a body on horseback, behind, in front, and each side, conducting Riouffe

and two other "suspects" to the Réole prison. The commander of the squad

who guards prisoners on the way to Paris, and who "starves them along

the road to speculate on them," is an ex-cook of Agen, having become

a gendarme; he makes them travel forty leagues extra, "purposely to

glorify himself," and "let all Agen see that he has government money to

spend, and that he can put citizens in irons." Accordingly, in Agen, "he

keeps constantly and needlessly inspecting the vehicle," winking at

the spectators, "more triumphant than if he had made a dozen Austrians

prisoners and brought them along himself." At last, to show the crowd in

the street the importance of his capture, he summons two blacksmiths

to come out and rivet, on the legs of each prisoner, a cross-bar

cannon-ball weighing eighty pounds.[33152] The more display these

henchmen make of their brutality, the greater they think themselves. At

Belfort, a patriot of the club dies, and a civic interment takes place;

a detachment of the revolutionary army joins the procession; the men are

armed with axes; on reaching the cemetery, the better to celebrate the

funeral, "they cut down all the crosses (over the graves) and make

a bonfire of them, while the carmagnole ends this ever memorable

day."[33153]--Sometimes the scene, theatrical and played by the light

of flambeaux, makes the actors think that they have performed an

extraordinary and meritorious action, "that they have saved the

country." "This very night," writes the agent at Bordeaux,[33154] nearly

three thousand men have been engaged in an important undertaking, with

the members of the Revolutionary Committee and of the municipality at

the head of it. They visited every wholesale dealer's store in town and

in the Faubourg des Chartrons, taking possession of their letter-books,

sealing up their desks, arresting the merchants and putting them in

the Seminiare.... Woe to the guilty!"--If the prompt confinement of an

entire class of individuals is a fine thing for a town, the seizure of

a whole town itself is still more imposing. Leaving Marseilles with

a small army,[33155] commanded by two sans-culottes, they surround

Martigne and enter it as if it were a mill. The catch is superb; in this

town of five thousand souls there are only seventeen patriots; the

rest are Federalists or Moderates. Hence a general disarmament

and domiciliary visits. The conquerors depart, carrying off every

able-bodied boy, "five hundred lads subject to the conscription, and

leave in the town a company of sans-culottes to enforce obedience."

It is certain that obedience will be maintained and that the garrison,

joined to the seventeen patriots, will do as they like with their

conquest.

In effect, all, both bodies and goods, are at their disposal, and they

consequently begin with the surrounding countryside, entering private

houses to get at their stores, also the farmhouses to have the grain

threshed, in order to verify the declarations of their owners and see if

these are correct: if the grain is not threshed out at once it will be

done summarily and confiscated, while the owner will be sentenced

to twelve months in irons; if the declaration is not correct, he is

condemned as a monopolist and punished with death. Armed with this

order,[33156] each band takes the field and gathers together not only

grain, but supplies of every description. "That of Grenoble, the agent

writes,[33157] does wonderfully; in one little commune alone, four

hundred measures of wheat, twelve hundred eggs, and six hundred pounds

of butter had been found. All this was quickly on the way to Grenoble."

In the vicinity of Paris, the forerunners of the throng, provided "with

pitchforks and bayonets, rush to the farms, take oxen out of their

stalls, grab sheep and chickens, burn the barns, and sell their booty

to speculators."[33158] "Bacon, eggs, butter and chickens--the peasants

surrender whatever is demanded of them, and thenceforth have nothing

that they can take to market. They curse the Republic which has brought

war and famine on them, and nevertheless they do what they are told:

on being addressed, 'Citizen peasant, I require of you on peril of your

head,'... it is not possible to refuse."[33159]--Accordingly, they are

only too glad to be let off so cheaply. On Brumaire 19, about seven

o'clock in the evening, at Tigery, near Corbeil, twenty-five men "with

sabers and pistols in their belts, most of them in the uniform of the

National Guards and calling themselves the revolutionary army," enter

the house of Gibbon, an old ploughman, seventy-one years of age, while

fifty others guard all egress from it, so that the expedition may not

be interfered with. Turlot, captain, and aid-de-camp to General Henriot,

wants to know where the master of the house is.--"In his bed," is the

reply.--"Wake him up."--The old man rises.--Give up your arms."--His

wife hands over a fowling-piece, the only arm on the premises. The band

immediately falls on the poor man, "strikes him down, ties his hands,

and puts a sack over his head," and the same thing is done to his wife

and to eight male and two female servants. "Now, give us the keys of

your closets;" they want to be sure that there are no fleur-de-lys or

other illegal articles. They search the old man's pockets, take his

keys, and, to dispatch business, break into the chests and seize or

carry off all the plate, "twenty-six table-dishes, three soup-ladles,

three goblets, two snuff-boxes, forty counters, two watches, another

gold watch and a gold cross." "We will draw up a procès-verbal of all

this at our leisure in Meaux. Now, where's your silver? If you don't say

where it is, the guillotine is outside and I will be your executioner."

The old man yields and merely requests to be untied. But it is better

to keep him bound, "so as to make him 'sing.'" They carry him into the

kitchen and "put his feet into a heated brazier." He shouts with pain,

and indicates another chest which they break open and then carry off

what they find there, "seventy-two francs in coin and five or six

thousand livres in assignats, which Gibbon had just received for the

requisitions made on him for corn." Next, they break open the cellar

doors, set a cask of vinegar running, carry wine upstairs, eat the

family meal, get drunk and, at last, clear out, leaving Gibbon with his

feet burnt, and garroted, as well as the other eleven members of his

household, quite certain that there will be no pursuit.[33160]--In the

towns, especially in federalist districts, however, these robberies are

complicated with other assaults. At Lyons, whilst the regular troops

are lodged in barracks, the revolutionary army is billeted on the

householders, two thousand vile, sanguinary blackguards from Paris, and

whom their general, Ronsin himself, calls "scoundrels and brigands,"

alleging, in excuse for this, that "honest folks cannot be found for

such business." How they treat their host, his wife and his daughters

may be imagined; contemporaries glide over these occurrences and,

through decency or disgust, avoid giving details.[33161] Some simply use

brutal force; others get rid of a troublesome husband by the guillotine;

in the most exceptional cases they bring their wenches along with them,

while the housekeeper has to arouse herself at one o'clock at night and

light a fire for the officer who comes in with the jolly company.--And

yet, there are others still worse, for the worst attract each other. We

have seen the revolutionary committee at Nantes, also the representative

on mission in the same city; nowhere did the revolutionary Sabbat rage

so furiously, and nowhere was there such a traffic in human lives. With

such band-leaders as Carrier and his tools on the Committee, one may be

sure that the instrumentalists will be worthy.