spectators take notice of it. In general "they fight,[4269] snatch bread
out of each other's hands; those who cannot get any forcing whoever gets
a loaf weighing four pounds to share it in small pieces. The women yell
frightfully.... Children sent by their parents are beaten," while the
weak are pitched into the gutter. "In distributing the meanest portions
of food[4270] it is force which decides," the strength of loins and
arms; "a number of women this morning came near losing their lives in
trying to get four ounces of butter.--More sensitive and more violent
than men, "they do not, or will not, listen to reason,[4271] they pounce
down like harpies" on the market wagons; they thrash the drivers, strew
the vegetables and butter on the ground, tumble over each other and are
suffocated through the impetuosity of the assault; some, "trampled upon,
almost crushed, are carried off half dead." Everybody for himself. Empty
stomachs feel that, to get anything, it is important to get ahead, not
to await for the distribution, the unloading or even the arrival of
the supplies.--"A boat laden with wine having been signaled, the crowd
rushed on board to pillage it and the boat sunk," probably along with a
good many of its invaders.[4272] Other gatherings at the barriers
stop the peasants' wagons and take their produce before they reach the
markets. Outside the barriers, children and women throw stones at the
milkmen, forcing them to get down from their carts and distribute milk
on the spot. Still further out, one or two leagues off on the highways,
gangs from Paris go at night to intercept and seize the supplies
intended for Paris. "This morning," says a watchman, "all the Faubourg
St. Antoine scattered itself along the Vincennes road and pillaged
whatever was on the way to the city; some paid, while others carried off
without paying.... The unfortunate peasants swore that they would not
fetch anything more," the dearth thus increasing through the efforts to
escape it.
In vain the government makes its requisitions for Paris as if in a
state of siege, and fixes the quantity of grain on paper which
each department, district, canton, and commune, must send to the
capital.--Naturally, each department, district, canton and commune
strives to retain its own supplies, for charity begins at home.[4273]
Especially in a village, the mayor and members of a municipality,
themselves cultivators, are lukewarm when the commune is to be starved
for the benefit of the capital. They declare a less return of grain
than there really is; they allege reasons and pretexts. They mystify or
suborn the commissioner on provisions, who is a stranger, incompetent
and needy; they make him drink and eat, and, now and then, fill his
pocket book. He slips over the accounts, he gives the village receipts
on furnishing three-quarters or a half of the demand, often in spoilt or
mixed grain or poor flour, while those who have no rusty wheat get it
of their neighbors. Instead of parting with a hundred quintals they part
with fifty, while the quantity of grain in the Paris markets is not
only insufficient, but the grain blackens or sprouts and the flour grows
musty. In vain the government makes clerks and depositaries of butchers
and grocers, allowing them five or ten per cent. profit on retail sales
of the food it supplies them with at wholesale, and thus creates in
Paris, at the expense of all France, an artificial drop in prices.
Naturally, the bread[4274] which, thanks to the State, costs three sous
in Paris, is furtively carried out of Paris into the suburbs, where six
sous are obtained for it. There is the same furtive leakage for other
food furnished by the State on the same conditions to other dealers; the
tax is a burden which forces them to go outside their shops. Food finds
its level like water, not alone outside of Paris, but in Paris itself.
* Naturally, "the grocers peddle their goods" secretly, "sugar, candles,
soap, butter, dried vegetables, meat pies and the rest," amongst private
houses, in which these articles are bought at any price.
* Naturally, the butcher keeps his large pieces of beef and choice
morsels for the large eating houses, and for rich customers who pay him
whatever profit he asks.
* Naturally, whoever is in authority, or has the power, uses it to
supply himself first, largely, and in preference; we have seen the
levies of the revolutionary committees, superintendents and agents; as
soon as rations are allotted to all mouths, each potentate will have
several rations delivered for his mouth alone; in the meantime[4275] the
patriots who guard the barriers appropriate all provisions that arrive,
and the next morning, should any scolding appear in the orders of the
day, it is but slight.
Such are the two results of the system: not only is the food which is
supplied to Paris scant and poor, but the regular consumers of it, those
who take their turn to get it, obtain but a small portion, and that
the worst.[4276] A certain inspector, on going to the corn market for
a sample of flour, writes "that it cannot be called flour;[4277] it is
ground bran," and not a nutritive substance; the bakers are forced to
take it, the markets containing for the most part no other supply than
this flour."--Again, three weeks later, "Food is still very scarce and
poor in quality. The bread is disagreeable to the taste and produces
maladies with which many citizens are suffering, like dysentery and
other inflammatory ailments." The same report, three months later during
the month of Nivôse: "Complaints are constantly made of the poor quality
of flour, which, it is said, makes a good many people ill; it causes
severe pain in the intestines, accompanied with a slow fever.--During
Ventôse, "the scarcity of every article is extremely great,"[4278]
especially of meat. Some women in the Place Maubert, pass six hours in
a line waiting for it, and do not get the quarter of a pound; in many
stalls there is none at all, not "an ounce" being obtainable to make
broth for the sick. Workmen do not get it in their shops and do without
their soup; they live on "bread and salted herrings." A great many
people groan over "not having eaten bread for a fortnight;" women say
that "they have not had a dish of meat and vegetables (pot au feu) for
a month." Meanwhile "vegetables are astonishingly scarce and excessively
dear.... two sous for a miserable carrot, and as much for two small
leeks." Out of two thousand women who wait at the central market for a
distribution of beans, only six hundred receive any. Potatoes increase
in price in one week from two to three francs a bushel, and oatmeal and
ground peas triple in price. "The grocers have no more brown sugar,
even for the sick," and sell candles and soap only by the half pound.--A
fortnight later candles are wholly wanting in certain quarters, except
in the section storehouse, which is almost empty, each person being
allowed only one. A good many households go to rest at sundown for lack
of lights and do not cook any dinner for lack of coal. Eggs, especially,
are "honored as invisible divinities," while the absent butter "is a
god."[4279] "If this lasts," say the workmen, "we shall have to cut each
other's throats, since there is nothing left to live on."[4280] "Sick
women,[4281] children in their cradles, lie outstretched in the sun," in
the very heart of Paris, in rue Vivienne, on the Pont-Royal, and remain
there "late in the night, demanding alms of the passers-by." "One is
constantly stopped by beggars of both sexes, most of them healthy and
strong," begging, they say, for lack of work. Without counting
the feeble and the infirm who are unable to stand in a line, whose
sufferings are visible, who gradually waste away and die without
a murmur at home, "one encounters in the streets and markets" only
famished and eager visages, "an immense crowd of citizens running
and dashing against each other," crying out and weeping, "everywhere
presenting an image of despair."[4282]
V. Revolutionary Remedies.
Revolutionary remedies.--Rigor against the refractory.
--Decrees and orders rendering the State the only depositary
and distributor of food.--Efforts made to establish a
conscription of labor.--Discouragement of the Peasant.--He
refuses to cultivate.--Decrees and orders compelling him to
harvest.--His stubbornness.--Cultivators imprisoned by
thousands.--The Convention is obliged to set them at
liberty.--Fortunate circumstances which save France from
extreme famine.
This penury only exists, say the Jacobins, because the laws against
monopoly, and sales above the "maximum" prices are not being obeyed to
the letter of the law. The egoism of the cultivator and the cupidity of
dealers are not restrained by fear and delinquents escape too frequently
from the legal penalty. Let us enforce this penalty rigorously; let us
increase the punishment against them and their instruments; let us
screw up the machine and give them a new wrench. A new estimate and
verification of the food supply takes place, domiciliary searches,
seizures of special stores regarded as too ample,[4283] limited rations
for each consumer, a common and obligatory mess table for all prisoners,
brown, égalité bread, mostly of bran, for every mouth that can chew,
prohibition of the making of any other kind, confiscation of boulters
and sieves,[4284] the "individual," personal responsibility of every
administrator who allows the people he directs to resist or escape
providing the demanded supplies, the sequestration of his property,
imprisonment, fines, the pillory and the guillotine to hurry up
requisitions, or stop free trading,--every terrifying method is driven
to the utmost against the farmers and cultivators of the soil.
After April, 1794,[4285] crowds of this class are found filling the
prisons to overflowing; the Revolution has struck them also. They stroll
about in the court yard, and wander through the corridors with a sad,
stupefied expression, no longer comprehending the way things are going
on in the world. In vain are efforts made to explain to them that
"their crops are national property and that they are simply its
depositaries;"[4286] never had this new principle entered into, nor will
it enter, their rude brains; always, through habit and instinct, will
they work against it.--Let them be spared the temptation. Let us (the
Jacobins) relieve them from, and, in fact, take their crops; let the
State in France become the sole depositary and distributor of grain;
let it solely buy and sell grain at a fixed rate. Consequently, at
Paris,[4287] the Committee of Public Safety first puts "in requisition
all the oats that can be found in the Republic; every holder of oats
is required to deposit his stock on hand within eight days, in the
storehouse indicated by the district administration "at the maximum"
price; otherwise he is "a 'suspect' and must be punished as such." In
the meantime, through still more comprehensive orders issued in the
provinces, Paganel in the department of Tarn, and Dartigoyte in those
of Gers and the Upper-Garonne,[4288] enjoin each commune to establish
public granaries. "All citizens are ordered to bring in whatever produce
they possess in grain, flour, wheat, maslin, rye, barley, oats, millet,
buckwheat" at the "maximum" rate. Nobody shall keep on hand more than
one month's supply, fifty pounds of flour or wheat for each person;
in this way, the State, which holds in its hands the keys of the
storehouses, may "carry out the salutary equalization of provisions"
between department and department, district and district, commune and
commune, individual and individual. A storekeeper will look after each
of these well filled granaries; the municipality will itself deliver
rations and, moreover, "take suitable steps to see that beans and
vegetables, as they mature, be economically distributed under its
supervision," at so much per head, and always at the rate of the
"maximum." Otherwise, dismissal, imprisonment and prosecution "in the
extraordinary criminal tribunal. "-This being accomplished, and the
fruits of labor duly allotted, there remains only the allotment of labor
itself. To effect this, Maignet,[4289] in Vaucluse, and in the Bouches
du Rhône, prescribes for each municipality the immediate formation
of two lists, one of day laborers and the other of proprietors. "All
proprietors in need of a cultivator by the day," are to appear and ask
for one at the municipality, which will assign the applicant as many as
he wants, "in order on the list," with a card for himself and numbers
for the designated parties. The laborer who does not enter his name
on the list, or who exacts more than the "maximum" wages, is to be
sentenced to the pillory with two years in irons. The same sentence with
the addition of a fine of three hundred livres, is for every proprietor
who employs any laborer not on the list or who pays more than the
"maximum rate of wages.
After this, nothing more is necessary, in practice, than to
* draw up and keep in sight the new registries of names and figures
made by the members of thirty thousand municipal boards, who cannot keep
accounts and who scarcely know how to read and write;
* build a vast public granary, or put in requisition three or four barns
in each commune, in which half dried and mixed grain may rot;
* pay two hundred thousand incorruptible storekeepers and measurers
who will not divert anything from the depots for their friends or
themselves;
* add to the thirty five thousand employees of the Committee on
Provisions,[4290] five hundred thousand municipal scribes disposed
to quit their trades or ploughs for the purpose of making daily
distributions gratuitously; but more precisely, to maintain four or five
millions of perfect gendarmes, one in each family, living with it, to
help along the purchases, sales and transactions of each day and to
verify at night the contents of the locker.
In short, to set one half of the French people as spies on the other
half.--These are the conditions which secure the production and
distribution of food, and which suffice for the institution throughout
France of a conscription of labor and the captivity of grain.
Unfortunately, the peasant does not understand this theory, but he
understands business; he makes close calculations, and the
positive, patent, vulgar facts on which he reasons lead to other
conclusions:[4291]
"In Messidor last they took all my last years' oats, at fourteen francs
in assignats, and, in Thermidor, they are going to take all this year's
oats, at eleven francs in assignats. At this rate I shall not sow at
all. Besides, I do not need any for myself, as they have taken my horses
for the army wagons. To raise rye and wheat, as much of it as formerly,
is also working at a loss; I will raise no more than the little I want
for myself, and again, I suppose that this will be put in requisition,
even my supplies for the year! I had rather let my fields lie fallow.
Just see now, they are taking all the live three months' pigs! Luckily,
I killed mine be forehand and it is now in the pork barrel. But they are
going to claim all salt provisions like the rest. The new grabbers
are worse than the old ones. Six months more, and we shall all die
of hunger. It is better to cross one's arms at once and go to prison;
there, at least, we shall be fed and not have to work."
In effect, they allow themselves to be imprisoned, the best of the small
cultivators and proprietors by thousands, and Lindet,[4292] at the head
of the Commission on Provisions, speaks with dismay of the ground being
no longer tilled, of cattle in France being no more abundant than the
year before, and of nothing to be had to cut this year.
For a strange thing has happened, unheard of in Europe, almost
incredible to any one familiar with the French peasant and his love of
work. This field which he has ploughed, manured, harrowed and reaped
with his own hands, its precious crop, the crop that belongs to him and
on which he has feasted his eyes for seven months, now that it is ripe,
he will not take the trouble to gather it; it would be bothering himself
for some one else. As the crop that he sees there is for the government,
let the government defray the final cost of getting it in; let it do the
harvesting, the reaping, the putting it in sheaves, the carting and
the thrashing in the barn.--Thereupon, the representatives on mission
exclaim, each shouting in a louder or lower key, according to his
character.
"Many of the cultivators," writes Dartigoyte,[4293] "affect a supreme
indifference for this splendid crop. One must have seen it, as I have,
to believe how great the neglect of the wheat is in certain parts,
how it is smothered by the grass.... Draft, if the case requires it, a
certain number of inhabitants in this or that commune to work in another
one.... Every man who refuses to work, except on the 'decade' day, must
be punished as an ill-disposed citizen, as a royalist."--
"Generous friends of nature," writes Ferry,[4294] introduce amongst you,
perpetuate around you, the habit of working in common and begin with the
present crop. Do not spare either indolent women or indolent men, those
social parasites, many of whom you doubtless have in your midst. What!
allow lazy men and lazy women where we are! Where should we find a
Republican police?... Immediately on the reception of this present order
the municipal officers of each commune will convoke all citoyennes in
the Temple of the Eternal and urge them, in the name of the law, to
devote themselves to the labors of harvesting. Those women who fail in
this patriotic duty, shall be excluded from the assemblies, from the
national festivals, while all good citoyennes are requested to repel
them from their homes. All good citizens are requested to give to this
rural festivity that sentimental character which befits it."
--And the programme is carried out, here in idyllic shape and there
under compulsion. Around Avignon,[4295] the commanding officer, the
battalions of volunteers, and patriotic ladies, "the wives and daughters
of patriots," inscribe themselves as harvesters. Around Arles, "the
municipality drafts all the inhabitants; patrols are sent into the
country to compel all who are engaged on other work to leave it and do
the harvesting." The Convention, on its side, orders[4296] the
release, "provisionally, of all ploughmen, day-laborers, reapers, and
professional artisans and brewers, in the country and in the market
towns and communes, the population of which is not over twelve hundred
inhabitants, and who are confined as 'suspects.' "--In other terms,
physical necessity has imposed silence on the inept theory; above all
things, the crop must be harvested, and indispensable arms be restored
to the field of labor. The governors of France are compelled to put on
the brake, if only for an instant, at the last moment, at sight of the
yawning abyss, of approaching and actual famine; France was then gliding
into it, and, if not engulfed, it is simply a miracle.
Four fortunate circumstances, at the last hour, concur to keep her
suspended on the hither brink of the precipice.--The winter chances
to be exceptionally mild.[4297] The vegetables which make up for the
absence of bread and meat provide food for April and May, while
the remarkably fine harvest, almost spontaneous, is three weeks in
advance.--Another, and the second piece of good fortune, consists in the
great convoy from America, one hundred and sixteen vessels loaded with
grain, which reached Brest on the 8th of June, 1794, in spite of English
cruisers, thanks to the sacrifice of the fleet that protected it and
which, eight days previously, had succumbed in its behalf. The third
stroke of fortune is the entry of a victorious army into the enemies
country and feeding itself through foreign requisitions, in Belgium,
in the Palatinate and on the frontier provinces of Italy and
Spain.--Finally, most fortunate of all, Robespierre, Saint Just and
Couthon, the Paris commune and the theorist Jacobins, are guillotined
on the 23rd of July, and with them falls despotic socialism. Henceforth,
the Jacobin edifice crumbles, owing to great crevices in its walls. The
"maximum," in fact, is no longer maintained, while the Convention, at
the end of December, 1794, legally abolishes it. The farmers now sell as
they please and at two prices, according as they are paid in assignats
or coin; their hope, confidence and courage are restored; in October and
November, 1794, they voluntarily do their own plowing and planting, and
still more gladly will they gather in their own crops in July, 1795.
Nevertheless, we can judge by the discouragement into which they had
been plunged by four months of the system, the utter prostration into
which they would have fallen had the system lasted an indefinite time.
It is very probable that cultivation at the end of one or two years
would have proved unproductive or have ceased altogether. Already,
subject to every sort of exhortation and threat, the peasant had
remained inert, apparently deaf and insensible, like an overloaded beast
of burden which, so often struck, grows obstinate or sinks down and
refuses to move. It is evident that he would have never stirred again
could Saint-Just, holding him by the throat, have bound him hand and
foot, as he had done at Strasbourg, in the multiplied knots of his
Spartan Utopia. We should have seen what labor and the stagnation
it produces comes to, when managed through State maneuvers by
administrative manikins and humanitarian automatons. This experiment
had been tried in China, in the eleventh century, and according to
principles, long and regularly, by a well manipulated and omnipotent
State, on the most industrious and soberest people in the world, and men
died in myriads like flies. If the French, at the end of 1794 and during
the following years did not die like flies, it was because the Jacobin
system was relaxed too soon.[4298]
VI. Relaxation.
Relaxation of the Revolutionary system after Thermidor.
--Repeal of the Maximum.--New situation of the peasant.--He
begins to cultivation again.--Requisition of grain by the
State.--The cultivator indemnifies himself at the expense of
private persons.--Multiplication and increasing decline of
Assignats. The classes who have to bear the burden.--Famine
and misery during year III, and the first half of year IV.
--In the country.--In the small towns.--In large towns and
cities.
But, if the Jacobin system, in spite of its surviving founders,
gradually relaxes after Thermidor; if the main ligature tied around the
man's neck, broke just as the man was strangling, the others that still
bind him hold him tight, except as they are loosened in places; and, as
it is, some of the straps, terribly stiffened, sink deeper and deeper
into his flesh.--In the first place, the requisitions continue there is
no other way of provisioning the armies and the cities; the gendarme is
always on the road, compelling each village to contribute its portion
of grain, and at the legal rate. The refractory are subject to keepers,
confiscations, fines and imprisonment; they are confined and kept in the
district lock ups "at their own expense," men and women, twenty two on
Pluviôse 17, year III., in the district of Bar-sur-Aube; forty five,
Germinal 7, in the district of Troyes; forty-five, the same day, in the
district of Nogent-sur-Seine, and twenty others, eight days later, in
the same district, in the commune of Traine alone.[4299]--The condition
of the cultivator is certainly not an easy one, while public authority,
aided by the public force, extorts from him all it can at a rate of its
own; moreover, it will soon exact from him one half of his contributions
in kind, and, it must be noted, that at this time, the direct
contributions alone absorb twelve and thirteen sous on the franc of the
revenue. Nevertheless, under this condition, which is that of laborers
in a Muslim country, the French peasant, like the Syrian or Tunisian
peasant, can keep himself alive; for, through the abolition of the
"maximum," private transactions are now free, and, to indemnify himself
on this side, he sells to private individuals and even to towns,[42100]
by agreement, on understood terms, and as dear as he pleases; all the
dearer because through the legal requisitions the towns are half empty,
and there are fewer sacks of grain for a larger number of purchasers;
hence his losses by the government are more than made up by his gains
on private parties; he gains in the end, and that is why he persists in
farming.
The weight, however, of which he relieves himself falls upon the
overburdened buyer, and this weight, already excessive, goes on
increasing, through another effect of the revolutionary institution,
until it becomes ten-fold and even a hundred-fold.--The only money, in
fact, which private individuals possess melts away in their hands,
and, so to say, destroys itself. When the guillotine stops working, the
assignat, losing its official value, falls to its real value. In August,
1794, the loss on it is sixty six per cent., in October, seventy two per
cent., in December, seventy eight per cent., in January, 1795, eighty
one per cent., and after that date the constant issues of enormous
amounts, five hundred millions, then a billion, a billion and a half,
and, finally, two billions a month, hastens its depreciation.[42101]
The greater the depreciation of the assignats the greater the amount the
government is obliged to issue to provide for its expenses, and the more
it issues the more it causes their depreciation, so that the decline
which increases the issue increases the depreciation, until, finally,
the assignat comes down to nothing. On March II, 1795, the louis d'or
brings two hundred and five francs in assignats, May 11, four hundred
francs, June 12, one thousand francs, in the month of October, one
thousand seven hundred francs, November 13, two thousand eight hundred
and fifty francs, November 21 three thousand francs, and six months
later, nineteen thousand francs. Accordingly, an assignat of one hundred
francs is worth in June, 1795, four francs, in August three francs,
in November fifteen sous, in December ten sous, and then five sous.
Naturally, all provisions rise proportionately in price. A pound of
bread in Paris, January 2, 1796, costs fifty francs, a pound of meat
sixty francs, a pound of candles one hundred and eighty francs, a bushel
of potatoes two hundred francs, a bottle of wine one hundred francs.
The reader may imagine, if he can, the distress of people with small
incomes, pensioners and employees, mechanics and artisans in the towns
out of work,[42102] in brief, all who have nothing but a small package
of assignats to live on, and who have nothing to do, whose indispensable
wants are not directly supplied by the labor of their own hands in
producing wine, candles, meat, potatoes and bread.
Immediately after the abolition of the "maximum,"[42103] the cry of
hunger increases. From month to month its accents become more painful
and vehement in proportion to the increased dearness of provisions,
especially in the summer of 1795, as the harvesting draws near, when
the granaries, filled by the crop of 1794, are getting empty. And these
hungering cries go up by millions: for a good many of the departments in
France do not produce sufficient grain for home consumption, this
being the case in fertile wheat departments, and likewise in certain
districts; cries also go up from the large and small towns, while in
each village numbers of peasants fast because they have no land
to provide them with food, or because they lack strength, health,
employment and wages. "For a fortnight past," writes a municipal body in
Seine-et-Marne,[42104] "at least two hundred citizens in our commune are
without bread, grain and flour; they have had no other food than bran
and vegetables. We see with sorrow children deprived of nourishment,
their nurses without milk, unable to suckle them; old men falling down
through inanition, and young men in the fields too weak to stand up to
their work." And other communes in the district "are about in the same
condition." The same spectacle is visible throughout the Ile-de-France,
Normandy, and in Picardy. Around Dieppe, in the country,[42105]
entire communes support themselves on herbs and bran. "Citizen
representatives," write the administrators, "we can no longer maintain
ourselves. Our fellow citizens reproach us with having despoiled them of
their grain in favor of the large communes."--"All means of subsistence
are exhausted," writes the district of Louviers;[42106] "we are reduced
here for a month past to eating bran bread and boiled herbs, and even
this rude food is getting scarce. Bear in mind that we have seventy-one
thousand people to govern, at this very time subject to all the horrors
of famine, a large number of them having already perished, some with
hunger and others with diseases engendered by the poor food they live
on. "--In the Caen district,[42107] "the unripe peas, horse peas, beans,
and green barley and rye are attacked;" mothers and children go after
these in the fields in default of other food; "other vegetables in the
gardens are already consumed; furniture, the comforts of the well to do
class, have become the prey of the farming egoist; having nothing more
to sell they consequently have nothing with which to obtain a morsel of
bread."
"It is impossible," writes the representative on mission, "to wait for
the crop without further aid. As long as bran lasted the people ate
that; none can now be found and despair is at its height. I have not
seen the sun since I came. The harvest will be a month behind. What
shall we do? What will become of us?"--"In Picardy," writes the Beauvais
district, "the great majority of people in the rural communes search the
woods" to find mushrooms, berries and wild fruits.[42108] "They think
themselves lucky," says the Bapaume district, "if they can get a share
of the food of animals." "In many communes," the district of Vervier
reports, "the inhabitants are reduced to living on herbage." "Many
families, entire communes," reports the Laon commissary, "have been
without bread two or three months and live on bran or herbs.... Mothers
of families, children, old men, pregnant women, come to the (members of
the) Directory for bread and often faint in their arms.
And yet, great as the famine is in the country it is worse in the towns;
and the proof of it is that the starving people flock into the country
to find whatever they can to live on, no matter how, and, generally
speaking, in vain.--"Three quarters of our fellow citizens," writes
the Rozoy municipality,[42109] "are forced to quit work and overrun the
country here and there, among the farmers, to obtain bread for specie,
and with more entreaty than the poorest wretches; for the most part,
they return with tears in their eyes at not being able to find, not
merely a bushel of wheat, but a pound of bread." "Yesterday," writes
the Montreuil-sur-Mer municipality,[42110] "more than two hundred of
our citizens set out to beg in the country," and, when they get nothing,
they steal. "Bands of brigands[42111] spread through the country and
pillage all dwellings anywise remote. ... Grain, flour, bread, cattle,
poultry, stuffs, etc., all come in play. Our terrified shepherds are
no longer willing to sleep in their sheep pens and are leaving us." The
most timid dig Carrots at night or, during the day, gather dandelions;
but their town stomachs cannot digest this food. "Lately," writes the
procureur--syndic of Saint-Germain,[42112] "the corpse of a father of a
family, found in the fields with his mouth still filled with the grass
he had striven to chew, exasperates and arouses the spirit of the poor
creatures awaiting a similar fate."
What then, do people in the towns do in order to survive?--In small
towns or scattered villages, each municipality, using what gendarmes it
has, makes legal requisitions in its vicinity, and sometimes the commune
obtains from the government a charitable gift of wheat, oats, rice or
assignats. But the quantity of grain it receives is so small, one asks
how it is that, after two months, six months or a year of such a system,
that half of the inhabitants are not in the grave yard. I suppose that
many of them live on what they raise in their gardens, or on their small
farms; others are helped by their relations, neighbors and companions;
in any event, it is clear that the human body is very resistant, and a
few mouthfuls suffice to keep it going a long time.--At Ervy,[42113]
in Aube, "not a grain of wheat has been brought in the last two market
days." "To morrow,[42114] Prairial 25, in Bapaume, the main town of the
district, there will be only two bushels of flour left (for food of
any sort)." "At Boulogne-sur-Mer, for the past ten days, there has been
distributed to each person only three pounds of bad barley, or maslin,
without knowing whether we can again distribute this miserable ration
next decade." Out of sixteen hundred inhabitants in Brionne, "twelve
hundred and sixty[42115] are reduced to the small portion of wheat they
receive at the market, and which, unfortunately, for too long a time,
has been reduced from eight to three ounces of wheat for each person,
every eight days." For three months past, in Seine et Marne,[42116]
in "the commune of Meaux, that of Laferté, Lagny, Daumartin, and other
principal towns of the canton, they have had only half a pound per
head, for each day, of bad bread." In Seine et Oise, "citizens of the
neighborhood of Paris and even of Versailles[42117] state that they
are reduced to four ounces of bread." At Saint-Denis,[42118] with a
population of six thousand, "a large part of the inhabitants, worn
out with suffering, betake themselves to the charity depots. Workmen,
especially, cannot do their work for lack of food. A good many women,
mothers and nurses, have been found in their houses unconscious, without
any sign of life in them, and many have died with their infants at their
breasts." Even in a larger and less forsaken town, Saint-Germain,[42119]
the misery surpasses all that one can imagine. "Half-a-pound of flour
for each inhabitant," not daily, but at long intervals; "bread at
fifteen and sixteen francs the pound and all other provisions at
the same rate; a people which is sinking, losing hope and perishing.
Yesterday, for the fête of the 9th of Thermidor, not a sign of
rejoicing; on the contrary, symptoms of general and profound depression,
tottering specters in the streets, mournful shrieks of ravaging hunger
or shouts of rage, almost every one, driven to the last extremity of
misery, welcoming death as a boon."
Such is the aspect of these huge artificial agglomerations, where the
soil, made sterile by habitation, bears only stones, and where twenty,
thirty, fifty and a hundred thousand suffering stomachs have to obtain
from ten, twenty and thirty leagues off their first and last mouthful of
food. Within these close pens long lines of human sheep huddle together
every day bleating and trembling around almost empty troughs, and
only through extraordinary efforts do the shepherds daily succeed
in providing them with a little nourishment. The central government,
strenuously appealed to, enlarges or defines the circle of their
requisitions; it authorizes them to borrow, to tax themselves; it lends
or gives to them millions of assignats;[42120] frequently, in cases
of extreme want, it allows them to take so much grain or rice from its
storehouses, for a week's supply.--But, in truth, this sort of life is
not living, it is only not dying. For one half, and more than one half
of the inhabitants simply subsist on rations of bread obtained by long
waiting for it at the end of a string of people and delivered at
a reduced price. What rations and what bread!"It seems," says the
municipality of Troyes, "that[42121] the country has anathematized the
towns. Formerly, the finest grain was brought to market; the farmer kept
the inferior quality and consumed it at home. Now it is the reverse,
and this is carried still further, for, not only do we receive no wheat
whatever, but the farmers give us sprouted barley and rye, which they
reserve for our commune; the farmer who has none arranges with those who
have, so as to buy it and deliver it in town, and sell his good wheat
elsewhere. Half a pound per day and per head, in Pluviôse, to the
thirteen thousand or fourteen thousand indigent in Troyes; then a
quarter of a pound, and, finally, two ounces with a little rice and some
dried vegetables, "which feeble resource is going to fail us."[42122]
Half a pound in Pluviôse, to the twenty thousand needy in Amiens, which
ration is only nominal, for "it often happens that each individual gets
only four ounces, while the distribution has repeatedly failed three
days in succession,'' and this continues. Six months later, Fructidor
7, Amiens has but sixty nine quintals of flour in its market storehouse,
"an insufficient quantity for distribution this very day; to morrow, it
will be impossible to make any distribution at all, and the day after
to morrow the needy population of this commune will be brought down
to absolute famine."--"Complete desperation! There are already "many
suicides."[42123] At other times, rage predominates and there are riots.
At Evreux,[42124] Germinal 21, a riot breaks out, owing to the delivery
of only two pounds of flour per head and per week, and because three
days before, only a pound and a half was delivered. There is a riot at
Dieppe,[42125] Prairial 14 and 15, because "the people are reduced here
to three or four ounces of bread." There is another at Vervins, Prairial
9, because the municipality which obtains bread at a cost of seven and
eight francs a pound, raises the price from twenty-five to fifty
sous. At Lille, an insurrection breaks out Messidor 4, because the
municipality, paying nine francs for bread, can give it to the poor only
for about twenty and thirty sous.--Lyons, during the month of Nivôse,
remains without bread "for five full days."[42126] At Chartres,
Thermidor 15,[42127] the distribution of bread for a month is only eight
ounces a day, and there is not enough to keep this up until the 20th of
Thermidor. On the fifteenth of Fructidor, La Rochelle writes that "its
public distributions, reduced to seven or eight ounces of bread, are on
the point of failing entirely." For four months, at Painboeuf, the ration
is but the quarter of a pound of bread.[42128] And the same at Nantes,
which has eighty-two thousand inhabitants and swarms with the wretched;
"the distribution never exceeded four ounces a day," and that only
for the past year. The same at Rouen, which contains sixty thousand
inhabitants; and, in addition, within the past fortnight the
distribution has failed three times. In other reports, those who are
well-off suffer more than the indigent because they take no part in the
communal distribution, "all resources for obtaining food being, so
to say, interdicted to them."--Five ounces of bread per diem for four
months is the allowance to the forty thousand inhabitants of Caen
and its district.[42129] A great many in the town, as well as in the
country, live on bran and wild herbs." At the end of Prairial, "there is
not a bushel of grain in the town storehouses, while the requisitions,
enforced in the most rigorous and imposing style, produce nothing or
next to nothing." Misery augments from week to week: "it is impossible
to form any idea of it; the people of Caen live on brown bread and the
blood of cattle. ... Every countenance bears traces of the famine...
Faces are of livid hue.... It is impossible to await the new crop, until
the end of Fructidor."--Such are the exclamations everywhere. The object
now, indeed, is to cross the narrowest and most terrible defile; a
fortnight more of absolute fasting and hundreds of thousands of lives
would be sacrificed.[42130] At this moment the government half opens the
doors of its storehouses; it lends a few sacks of flour on condition
of re-payment,--for example, at Cherbourg a few hundreds of quintals
of oats; by means of oat bread, the poor can subsist until the coming
harvest. But above all, it doubles its guard and shows its bayonets.
At Nancy, a traveler sees[42131] "more than three thousand persons
soliciting in vain for a few pounds of flour." They are dispersed with
the butt-ends of muskets.--Thus are the peasantry taught patriotism and
the townspeople patience. Physical constraint exercised on all in the
name of all; this is the only procedure which an arbitrary socialism can
resort to for the distribution of food and to discipline starvation.
VII. Misery at Paris.
Famine and misery at Paris.--Steps taken by the government
to feed the capital.--Monthly cost to the Treasury.--Cold
and hunger in the winter of 1794-1795.--Quality of the
bread.--Daily rations diminished.--Suffering, especially of
the populace.--Excessive physical suffering, despair,
suicides, and deaths from exhaustion in 1795.--Government
dinners and suppers.--Number of lives lost through want and
war.--Socialism as applied, and its effects on comfort,
well-being and mortality.
Anything that a totalitarian government may do to ensure that the
capital is supplied with food is undertaken and carried out by this
one, for here is its seat, and one more degree of dearth in Paris
would overthrow it. Each week, on reading the daily reports of its
agents,[42132] it finds itself on the verge of explosion; twice, in
Germinal and Prairial, a popular outbreak does overthrow it for a few
hours, and, if it maintains itself, it is on the condition of
either giving the needy a piece of bread or the hope of getting it.
Consequently, military posts are spaced out around Paris, up to eighteen
leagues off, on all the highways; permanent patrols in correspondence
with each other to urge on the wagoners and draft relays of horses
on the spot. Escorts dispatched from Paris to meet convoys;[42133]
requisition "all the carts and all the horses whatever to effect
transportation in preference to any other work or service." All communes
traversed by a highway are ordered to put rubble and manure on the bad
spots and cover the whole way with a layer of soil, so that the horses
may drag their loads in spite of the slippery road. The national agents
are ordered to draft the necessary number of men to break the ice
around the water-mills.[42134] A requisition is made for "all the
barley throughout the length and breadth of the Republic, "this must be
utilized to produce "the mixture for making bread," while the brewers
are forbidden to use barley in the manufacture of beer; the starch
makers are forbidden to convert potatoes into starch, with penalty of
death against all offenders "as destroyers of alimentary produce;" the
breweries and starch-factories[42135] are to be closed until further
notice. Paris must have grain, no matter of what kind, no matter how,
and at any cost, not merely in the following week, but to-morrow, this
very day, because hunger chews and swallows everything, and it will not
wait.--Once the grain is obtained, a price must be fixed which people
can pay. Now, the difference between the selling and cost price is
enormous; it keeps on increasing as the assignat declines and it is
the government which pays this. "You furnish bread at three sous,"
said Dubois-Crancé, Floréal 16, year III,[42136] "and it costs you four
francs. Paris consumes 8,000 quintals of meal daily, which expenditure
alone amounts to 1,200 millions per annum." Seven months later, when
a bag of flour brings 13,000 francs, the same expenditure reaches
546 millions per month.--Under the ancient régime, Paris, although
overgrown, continued to be an useful organism; if it absorbed much, it
elaborated more; its productiveness compensated for what it consumed,
and, every year, instead of exhausting the public treasury it poured
77 millions into it. The new régime has converted it into a monstrous
canker in the very heart of France, a devouring parasite which, through
its six hundred thousand leeches, drains its surroundings for a distance
of forty leagues, consumes one-half the annual revenue of the State,
and yet still remains emaciated in spite of the sacrifices made by the
treasury it depletes and the exhaustion of the provinces which supply it
with food.
Always the same alimentary system, the same long lines of people waiting
at, and before, dawn in every quarter of Paris, in the dark, for a long
time, and often to no purpose, subject to the brutalities of the strong
and the outrages of the licentious! On the 9th of Thermidor, the daily
trot of the multitude in quest of food has lasted uninterruptedly for
seventeen months, accompanied with outrages of the worst kind because
there is less terror and less submissiveness, with more obstinacy
because provisions at free sale are dearer, with greater privation
because the ration distributed is smaller, and with more sombre despair
because each household, having consumed its stores, has nothing of its
own to make up for the insufficiencies of public charity.--And to cap
it all, the winter of 1794-1795 is so cold[42137] that the Seine freezes
and people cross the Loire on foot. Rafts no longer arrive and, to
obtain fire-wood, it is necessary "to cut down trees at Boulogne,
Vincennes, Verrières, St. Cloud, Meudon and two other forests in the
vicinity." Fuel costs "four hundred francs per cord of wood, forty sous
for a bushel of charcoal, twenty sous for a small basket. The needy are
seen in the streets sawing the wood of their bedsteads to cook with and
to keep from freezing." On the resumption of transportation by water
amongst the cakes of ice "rafts are sold as fast as the raftsmen can
haul the wood out of the water, the people being obliged to pass three
nights at the landing to get it, each in turn according to his number."
"On Pluviôse 3 at least two thousand persons are at the Louviers
landing," each with his card allowing him four sticks at fifteen sous
each. Naturally, there is pulling, hauling, tumult and a rush; "the
dealers take to flight for fear, and the inspectors come near being
murdered;" they get away along with the police commissioner and
"the public helps itself." Likewise, the following day, there is "an
abominable pillage;" the gendarmes and soldiers placed there to maintain
order, "make a rush for the wood and carry it away together with the
crowd." Bear in mind that on this day the thermometer is sixteen degrees
below zero, that one hundred, two hundred other lines of people likewise
stand waiting at the doors of bakers and butchers, enduring the same
cold, and that they have already endured it and will yet endure it a
month and more. Words are wanting to describe the sufferings of these
long lines of motionless beings, during the night, at daybreak, standing
there five or six hours, with the blast driving through their rags and
their feet freezing.--Ventôse is beginning, and the ration of bread is
reduced to a pound and a half;[42138] Ventôse ends, and the ration of
bread, kept at a pound and a half for the three hundred and twenty-four
laborers, falls to one pound; in fact, a great many get none at all,
many only a half and a quarter of a pound. Germinal follows and the
Committee of Public Safety, finding that its magazines are giving out,
limits all rations to a quarter of a pound. Thereupon, on the 12th
of Germinal, an insurrection of workmen and women breaks out; the
Convention is invaded and liberated by military force. Paris is declared
in a state of siege and the government, again in the saddle, tightens
the reins. Thenceforth, the ration of meat served out every four or five
days, is a quarter of a pound; bread averages every day, sometimes
five, sometimes six and sometimes seven ounces, at long intervals eight
ounces, often three, two and one ounce and a half, or even none at all;
while this bread, black and "making mischief," becomes more and more
worthless and detestable.[42139] People who are well off live on
potatoes, but only for them, for, in the middle of Germinal, these cost
fifteen francs the bushel and, towards the end, twenty francs; towards
the end of Messidor, forty-five francs; in the first month of the
Directory, one hundred and eighty francs, and then two hundred
and eighty-four francs, whilst other produce goes up at the same
rates.--After the abolition of the "maximum" the evil springs not from
a lack of provisions, but from their dearness: the shops are well
supplied. Whoever comes with a full purse gets what he wants[42140]: The
former rich, the property owners and large capitalists, may eat on the
condition that they hand their bundles of assignats over, that they
withdrawing their last louis from its hiding-place, that they sell
their jewelry, clocks, furniture and clothes. And the nouveaux rich,
the speculators, the suppliers, the happy and extravagant robbers, spend
four hundred, one thousand, three thousand, then five thousand francs
for their dinner, and revel in the great eating establishments on fine
wines and exquisite cheer: the burden of the scarcity is transferred to
other shoulders.--At present, the class which suffers, and which suffers
beyond all bounds of patience is, together with employees and people
with small incomes,[42141] the crowd of workmen, the City plebeians, the
low Parisian populace
* which lives from day to day,
* which is Jacobin at heart,
* which made the Revolution in order to better itself,
* which finds itself worse off,
* which gets up one insurrection more on the 1st of Prairial,
* which forcibly enters the Tuileries yelling "Bread and the
Constitution of '93,"
* which installs itself as sovereign in the Convention,
* which murders the Representative Féraud,
* which decrees a return to Terror, but which, put down by the National
Guard, disarmed and forced back into lasting obedience, has only to
submit to the consequences of its own outrages, the socialism it has
itself instituted and the economical system it itself has organized.
Because the workers of Paris have been usurpers and tyrants they are
now beggars. Owing to the ruin brought on proprietors and capitalists by
them, individuals can no longer employ them. Owing to the ruin they
have brought on the Treasury, the State can provide them with only the
semblance of charity, and hence, while all are compelled to go hungry, a
great many die, and many commit suicide.
* On Germinal 6th, "Section of the Observatory,"[42142] at the
distribution, "forty-one persons had been without bread; several
pregnant women desired immediate confinement so as to destroy their
infants; others asked for knives to stab themselves."
* On Germinal 8th," a large number of persons who had passed the night
at the doors of the bakeries were obliged to leave without getting any
bread."
* On Germinal 24th, "the police commissioner of the Arsenal section
states that many become ill for lack of food, and that he buries quite
a number.... The same day, he has heard of five or six citizens, who,
finding themselves without bread, and unable to get other food, throw
themselves into the Seine."
* Germinal 27, "the women say that they feel so furious and are in such
despair on account of hunger and want that they must inevitably commit
some act of violence.... In the section of 'Les Amis de la Patrie,' one
half have no bread.... Three persons tumbled down through weakness on
the Boulevard du Temple."
* Floréal 2, "most of the workmen in the 'République' section are
leaving Paris on account of the scarcity of bread."
* Floréal 5, "eighteen out of twenty-four inspectors state that patience
is exhausted and that things are coming to an end."
* Floréal 14, "the distribution is always unsatisfactory on account of
the four-ounce ration; two thirds of the citizens do without it. One
woman, on seeing the excitement of her husband and her four children who
had been without bread for two days, trailed through the gutter tearing
her hair and striking her head; she then got up in a state of fury and
attempted to drown herself."
* Floréal 20, "all exclaim that they cannot live on three ounces of
bread, and, again, of such bad quality. Mothers and pregnant women fall
down with weakness."
* Floréal 21, "the inspectors state that they encounter many persons in
the streets who have fallen through feebleness and inanition."
* Floréal 23, "a citoyenne who had no bread for her child tied it to her
side and jumped into the river. Yesterday, an individual named Mottez,
in despair through want, cut his throat."
* Floréal 25, "several persons, deprived of any means of existence,
gave up in complete discouragement, and fell down with weakness and
exhaustion.... In the 'Gravilliers' section, two men were found dead
with inanition.... The peace officers report the decease of several
citizens; one cut his throat, while another was found dead in his bed."
Floréal 28, "numbers of people sink down for lack of something to eat;
yesterday, a man was found dead and others exhausted through want."
* Prairial 24, "Inspector Laignier states that the indigent are
compelled to seek nourishment in the piles of garbage on the corners."
* Messidor 1,[42143] "the said Picard fell through weakness at ten
o'clock in the morning in the rue de la Loi, and was only brought to
at seven o'clock in the evening; he was carried to the hospital on a
hand-barrow."
* Messidor 11, "There is a report that the number of people trying to
drown themselves is so great that the nets at St. Cloud scarcely suffice
to drag them out of the water."
* Messidor 19, "A man was found on the corner of a street just dead with
hunger."
* Messidor 27, "At four o'clock in the afternoon, Place Maubert, a man
named Marcelin, employed in the Jardin des Plantes, fell down through
starvation and died while assistance was being given to him." On the
previous evening, the anniversary of the taking of the Bastille, a
laborer on the Pont-au-Change, says "I have eaten nothing all day.
''Another replies: "I have not been home because I have nothing to give
to my wife and children, dying with hunger." About the same date, a
friend of Mallet-Dupan writes to him "that he is daily witness to people
amongst the lower classes dying of inanition in the streets; others, and
principally women, have nothing but garbage to live on, scraps of refuse
vegetables and the blood running out of the slaughter houses. Laborers,
generally, work on short time on account of their lack of strength and
of their exhaustion for want of food."[42144]--
Thus ends the rule of the Convention. Well has it looked out for the
interests of the poor! According to the reports of its own inspectors,
"famished stomachs on all sides cry vengeance, beat to arms and sound
the tocsin of alarm[42145].... Those who have to dwell daily on the
sacrifices they make to keep themselves alive declare that there is
no hope except in death." Are they going to be relieved by the new
government which the Convention imposes on them with thunders of
artillery and in which it perpetuates itself?[42146]--
* Brumaire 28, "Most of the workmen in the 'Temple' and 'Gravilliers'
sections have done no work for want of bread."
* Brumaire 24, "Citizens of all classes refuse to mount guard because
they have nothing to eat."
* Brumaire 25, "In the 'Gravilliers' section the women say that
they have sold all that they possessed, while others, in the
'Faubourg-Antoine' section, declare that it would be better to be shot
down."
* Brumaire 30, "A woman beside herself came and asked a baker to kill
her children as she had nothing to give them to eat."
* Frimaire 1, 2, 3, and 4, "In many of the sections bread is given out
only in the evening, in others at one o'clock in the morning, and of
very poor quality.... Several sections yesterday had no bread."
* Frimaire 7, the inspectors declare that "the hospitals soon will not
be vast enough to hold the sick and the wretched."
* Frimaire 14, At the central market a woman nursing her child sunk down
with inanition." A few days before this, "a man fell down from weakness,
on his way to Bourg l'Abbé."
"All our reports," say the district administrators, "resound with
shrieks of despair." People are infatuated; "it seems to us that a crazy
spirit prevails universally, we often encounter people in the street
who, although alone, gesticulate and talk to themselves aloud." "How
many times," writes a Swiss traveller,[42147] who lived in Paris during
the latter half of 1795, "how often have I chanced to encounter men
sinking through starvation, scarcely able to stand up against a post,
or else down on the ground and unable to get up for want of strength!"
A journalist states that he saw "within ten minutes, along the street,
seven poor creatures fall on account of hunger, a child die on its
mother's breast which was dry of milk, and a woman struggling with a dog
near a sewer to get a bone away from him."[42148] Meissner never leaves
his hotel without filling his pockets with pieces of the national bread.
"This bread," he says, "which the poor would formerly have despised,
I found accepted with the liveliest gratitude, and by well educated
persons;" the lady who contended with the dog for the bone was a former
nun, without either parents or friends and everywhere repulsed." "I
still hear with a shudder," says Meissner, "the weak, melancholy voice
of a well-dressed woman who stopped me in the rue du Bac, to tell me in
accents indicative both of shame and despair: 'Ah, Sir, do help me! I am
not an outcast. I have some talent--you may have seen some of my works
in the salon. I have had nothing to eat for two days and I am crazy for
want of food.'" Again, in June, 1796, the inspectors state that despair
and despondency have reached the highest point, only one cry being
heard-misery!.... Our reports all teem with groans and complaints.. ..
Pallor and suffering are stamped on all faces.... Each day presents a
sadder and more melancholy aspect." And repeatedly,[42149] they sum up
their scattered observations in a general statement:
* "A mournful silence, the deepest distress on every countenance;
* the most intense hatred of the government in general developed in all
conversations;
* contempt for all existing authority;
* an insolent luxuriousness, insulting to the wretchedness of the poor
rentiers who expire with hunger in their garrets, no longer possessing
the courage to crawl to the Treasury and get the wherewithal to prolong
their misery for a few days;
* the worthy father of a family daily deciding what article of furniture
he will sell to make up for what is lacking in his wages that he may buy
a half-pound of bread;
* every sort of provision increasing in price sixty times an hour;
* the smallest business dependent on the fall of assignats;
* intriguers of all parties overthrowing each other only to get offices;
* the intoxicated soldier boasting of the services he has rendered
and is to render, and abandoning himself shamelessly to every sort of
debauchery;
* commercial houses transformed into dens of thieves;
* rascals become traders and traders become rascals; the most sordid
cupidity and a mortal egoism--such is the picture presented by
Paris."[42150]
One group is wanting in this picture, that of the governors who preside
over this wretchedness, which group remains in the background; one might
say that it was so designed and composed by some great artist, a lover
of contrasts, an inexorable logician, whose invisible hand traces human
character unvaryingly, and whose mournful irony unfailingly depicts
side by side, in strong relief, the grotesqueness of folly and the
seriousness of death. How many perished on account of this misery?
Probably more than a million persons.[42151]--
Try to take in at a glance the extraordinary spectacle presented on
twenty-six thousand square leagues of territory:
* The immense multitude of the starving in town and country,
* the long lines of women for three years waiting for bread in all the
cities,
* this or that town of twenty-three thousand souls in which one-third of
the population dies in the hospitals in three months,
* the crowds of paupers at the poor-houses,
* the file of poor wretches entering and the file of coffins going out,
* the asylums deprived of their property, overcrowded with the sick,
unable to feed the multitude of foundlings pining away in their cradles
the very first week, their little faces in wrinkles like those of old
men,
* the malady of want aggravating all other maladies, the long suffering
of a persistent vitality amidst pain and which refuses to succumb, the
final death-rattle in a garret or in a ditch.
Contrast this with this the small, powerful, triumphant group of
Jacobins which, having understood how to place themselves in the good
places, is determined to stay there at any cost.--About ten o'clock in
the morning,[42152] Cambacérès, president of the Committee of Public
Safety, is seen entering its hall in the Pavillon de l'Egalité. He is
a large, cautious and shrewd personage who will, later on, become
arch-chancellor of the Empire and famous for his epicurean inventions
and other peculiar tastes revived from antiquity. Scarcely seated, he
orders an ample pat-au-feu to be placed on the chimney hearth and, on
the table, "fine wine and fine white bread; three articles," says a
guest, "not to be found elsewhere in all Paris." Between twelve and two
o'clock, his colleagues enter the room in turn, take a plate of soup
and a slice of meat, swallow some wine, and then proceed, each to his
bureau, to receive his coterie, giving this one an office and compelling
another to pay up, looking all the time after his own special interests.
At this moment, especially, towards the close of the Convention, there
are no public interests, all interests being private and personal.--In
the mean time, the deputy in charge of provisions, Roux de la Haute
Marne, an unfrocked Benedictine, formerly a terrorist in the provinces,
subsequently the protégé and employee of Fouché, with whom he is to be
associated in the police department, keeps the throng of women in
check which daily resorts to the Tuileries to beg for bread. He is well
adapted for this duty, being tall, chubby, ornamental, and with vigorous
lungs. He has taken his office in the right place, in the attic of the
palace, at the top of long, narrow and steep stairs, so that the line
of women stretching up between the two walls, piled one above the other,
necessarily becomes immovable. With the exception of the two or three at
the front, no one has her hands free to grab the haranguer by the throat
and close the oratorical stop-cock. He can spout his tirades accordingly
with impunity, and for an indefinite time. On one occasion, his sonorous
jabber rattles away uninterruptedly from the top to the bottom of the
staircase, from nine o'clock in the morning to five o'clock in the
afternoon. Under such a voluble shower, his hearers become weary and end
by going home.--About nine or ten o'clock in the evening, the Committee
of Public Safety reassembles, but not to discuss business. Danton and La
Révellière preach in vain; each is too egoistic and too worn-out; they
let the rein slacken on Cambacérès. As to him, he would rather keep
quiet and drag the cart no longer; but there are two things necessary
which he must provide for on pain of death.--"It will not do," says he
in plaintive tones, "to keep on printing the assignats at night which we
want for the next day. If that lasts, ma foi, we run the risk of being
strung up at a lantern...Go and find Hourier-Eloi, as he has charge of
the finances, and tell him that we entreat him to keep us a-going for
a fortnight or eighteen days longer, when the executive Directory will
come in and do what it pleases." "But food--shall we have enough for
to-morrow?
"Aha, I don't know--I'll send for our colleague Roux, who will post us
on that point." Roux enters, the official spokesman, the fat, jovial
tamer of the popular dog. "Well, Roux, how do we stand about supplying
Paris with food?" "The supply, citizen President, is just as abundant as
ever, two ounces per head,--at least for most of the sections." "Go to
the devil with your abundant supply! You'll have our heads off!" All
remain silent, for this possible dénouement sets them to thinking. Then,
one of them exclaims: "President, are there any refreshments provided
for us? After working so hard for so many days we need something to
strengthen us!" "Why, yes; there is a good calf's-tongue, a large
turbot, a large piece of pie and some other things." They cheer up,
begin to eat and drink champagne, and indulge in drolleries. About
eleven or twelve o'clock the members of other Committees come in;
signatures are affixed to their various decrees, on trust, without
reading them over. They, in their turn, sit down at the table and the
conclave of sovereign bellies digests without giving itself further
trouble about the millions of stomachs that are empty.
*****
[Footnote 4201: On the other more complicated functions, such as the
maintenance of roads, canals, harbors, public buildings, lighting,
cleanliness, hygiene, superior secondary and primary education,
hospitals, and other asylums, highway security, the suppression of
robbery and kindred crimes, the destruction of wolves, etc., see
Rocquam, "Etat de la France au 18 Brumaire," and the "Statistiques des
Departements," published by the prefets, from years IX. to XIII.--These
branches of the service were almost entirely overthrown; the reader will
see the practical results of their suppression in the documents referred
to.]
[Footnote 4202: "St. John de Crêvecoeur," by Robert de Crêvecoeur, p.216.
(Letter of Mdlle. de Gouves, July, 1800.) "We are negotiating for the
payment of, at least, the arrearages since 1789 on the Arras property."
(M. de Gouves and his sisters had not emigrated, and yet they had had no
income from their property for ten years.)]
[Footnote 4203: Cf. "The Revolution," vol. I., 254-261, 311-352; vol.
II., 234-272.]
[Footnote 4204: Cf. "The Revolution," II., 273-276.]
[Footnote 4205: Buchez et Roux, XXII., 178. (Speech by Robespierre in
the Convention, December 2, 1792.)--Mallet-Dupan, "Mémoires." I., 400.
About the same date, "a deputation from the department of Gard expressly
demands a sum of two hundred and fifty millions, as indemnity to the
cultivator, for grain which it calls national property."--This fearful
sum of two hundred and fifty millions, they add, is only a fictive
advance, placing at its disposal real and purely national wealth, not
belonging in full ownership to any distinct member of the social body
any more than the pernicious metals minted as current coin."]
[Footnote 4206: Buchez et Roux, XXVI., 95. (Declaration of Rights
presented in the Jacobin Club, April 21, 1793.)]
[Footnote 4207: Decrees in every commune establishing a tax on the rich
in order to render the price of bread proportionate to wages, also in
each large city to raise an army of paid sans-culottes, that will keep
aristocrats under their pikes, April 5-7.--Decree ordering the forced
loan of a billion on the rich, May 20-25--Buchez et Roux, XXV., 156.
(Speech by Charles, March 27.--Gorsas, "Courrier des Départements," No.
for May I5, 1793. (Speech by Simon in the club at Annecy.)--Speech by
Guffroy at Chartres, and of Chalier and associates at Lyons, etc.]
[Footnote 4208: Report by Minister Claviéres, February 1, 1793, p.
27.--Cf. Report of M. de Montesquiou, September 9, 1791, p. 47. "During
the first twenty-six months of the Revolution the taxes brought in three
hundred and fifty-six millions less than they should naturally have
done."--There is the same deficit in the receipts of the towns,
especially on account of the abolition of the octroi. Paris, under this
head, loses ten millions per annum.]
[Footnote 4209: Report by Cambon, Pluviôse 3, year III. "The Revolution
and the war have cost in four years five thousand three hundred and
fifty millions above the ordinary expenses." (Cambon, in his estimates,
purposely exaggerates ordinary expenses of the monarchy. According to
Necker's budget, the expenditure in 1759 was fixed at five hundred and
thirty-one millions and not, as Cambon states, seven hundred millions.
This raises the expenses of the Revolution and of the war to seven
thousand one hundred and twenty-one millions for the four and a half
years, and hence to one thousand five hundred and eighty-one millions
per annum, that is to say, to triple the ordinary expenses.) The
expenses of the cities are therefore exaggerated like those of the State
and for the same reasons.]
[Footnote 4210: Schmidt, "Pariser Zustände," I. 93, 96. "During the
first half of the year 1789 there were seventeen thousand men at twenty
sous a day in the national workshops at Montmartre. In 1790, there were
nineteen thousand. In 1791, thirty-one thousand costing sixty thousand
francs a day. In 1790, the State expends seventy-five millions for
maintaining the price of bread in Paris at eleven sous for four
pounds.--Ibid., 113. During the first six months of 1793 the State pays
the Paris bakers about seventy-five thousand francs a day to keep bread
at three sous the pound.]
[Footnote 4211: Ibid. I., 139-144.]
[Footnote 4212: Decree of September 27, 1790. "The circulation of
assignats shall not extend beyond one billion two hundred millions....
Those which are paid in shall be destroyed and there shall be no other
creation or emission of them, without a decree of the Corps Legislatif,
always subject to this condition that they shall not exceed the value
of the national possessions nor obtain a circulation above one billion two
hundred millions.]
[Footnote 4213: Schmidt, ibid., I., 104, 138, 144.]
[Footnote 4214: Felix Rocquam, "L'Etat de la France au 18 Brumaire,"
p.240. (Report by Lacuée, year IX.--Reports by préfets under the
Consulate (Reports of Laumont, préfet of the Lower-Rhine, year X.;
of Coichen, préfet of the Moselle, year XI., etc.)--Schmidt, Pariser
Zustände," III., 205. ("The rate of interest during the Revolution was
from four to five per cent. per month; in 1796 from six to eight per
cent. per month, the lowest rate being two per cent. per month with
security.")]
[Footnote 4215: Arthur Young, "Voyage en France," II., 360. (Fr.
translation.) "I regard Bordeaux as richer and more commercial than any
city in England except London."]
[Footnote 4216: Ibid., II., 357. The statistics of exports in France
in 1787 give three hundred and forty-nine millions, and imports three
hundred and forty millions (leaving out Lorraine. Alsace, the three
Evéchés and the West Indies).-Ibid., 360. In 1786 the importations from
the West Indies amounted to one hundred and seventy-four millions, of
which St. Domingo furnished one hundred and thirty-one millions; the
exports to the West Indies amounted to sixty-four millions, of which St.
Domingo had forty-four millions. These exchanges were effected by
five hundred and sixty-nine vessels carrying one hundred and sixty-two
thousand tons, of which Bordeaux provided two hundred and forty-six
vessels, carrying seventy-five thousand tons.--On the ruin of
manufactures cf. the reports of préfets in the year X., with details
from each department.--Arthur Young (II., 444) states that the
Revolution affected manufactures more seriously than any other branch of
industry.]
[Footnote 4217: Reports of préfets. (Orme, year IX.) "The purchasers
have speculated on the profits for the time being, and have exhausted
their resources. Many of them have destroyed all the plantations, all
the enclosures and even the fruit trees."--Felix Rocquam, ibid., 116.
(Report by Fourcroy on Brittany.) "The condition of rural structures
everywhere demands considerable capital. But no advances, based on any
lasting state of things, can be made."--Ibid., 236. (Report of Lacuée
on the departments around Paris.) "The doubtful owners of national
possessions cultivate badly and let things largely go to ruin."]
[Footnote 4218: Reports by préfets, years X. and XI. In general,
the effect of the partition of communal possessions was disastrous,
especially pasture and mountain grounds.--(Doubs.) "The partition of the
communal property has contributed, in all the communes, rather to
the complete ruin of the poor than to any amelioration of their
fate."--(Lozére.) "The partition of the communal property by the law
of June 10, 1792, has proved very injurious to cultivation." These
partitions were numerous. (Moselle.) "Out of six hundred and eighty-six
communes, one hundred and seven have divided per capitum, five hundred
and seventy-nine by families, and one hundred and nineteen have remained
intact."]
[Footnote 4219: Ibid. (Moselle.) Births largely increase in 1792. "But
this is an exceptional year. All kinds of abuses, paper-money, the
non-payment of taxes and claims, the partition in the communes, the sale
for nothing of national possessions, has spread so much comfort among
the people that the poorer classes, who are the most numerous, have had
no dread of increasing their families, to which they hope some day to
leave their fields and render them happy."]
[Footnote 4220: Mallet-Dupan, "Memoires," II., 29. (February 1, 1794.)
"The late crop in France was generally good, and, in some provinces, it
was above the average... I have seen the statements of two returns
made from twenty-seven departments; they declare an excess of fifteen,
twenty, thirty and thirty-five thousand bushels of grain. There is no
real dearth."]
[Footnote 4221: Schmidt, ibid., I., 110, and following pages.--Buchez
et Roux, XX., 416. (Speeches of Lequinio, November 27, 1792.)--Moniteur,
XVII., 2. (Letter by Clement, Puy-de-Dome, June 15, 1793.) "For the past
fifteen days bread has been worth sixteen and eighteen sous the pound.
There is the most frightful distress in our mountains. The government
distributes one-eighth of a bushel to each person, everybody being
obliged to wait two days to take his turn. One woman was smothered and
several were wounded."]
[Footnote 4222: Cf. "La Revolution," I., 208; II., 294, 205,
230.--Buchez et Roux, XX., 431. (Report of Lecointe-Puyraveau, Nov. 30,
1792.) (Mobs of four, five and six thousand men in the departments of
Eure-et-Loire, Eure, Orme, Calvados, Indre-et-Loire, Loiret, and Sarthe
cut down the prices of produce. The three delegates of the Convention
disposed to interfere have their lives saved only on condition of
announcing the rate dictated to them.--Ibid., 409. (Letter of Roland,
Nov.27, 1792.)--XXI., 198. (Another letter by Roland, Dec. 6,
1792.) "All convoys are stopped at Lissy, la Ferté, Milan, la
Ferté-sous-Jouarre... Carts loaded with wheat going to Paris have been
forced to go back near Lonjumeau and near Meaux."]
[Footnote 4223: Archives Nationales, F. 7, 3265. (Letter of David,
cultivator, and administrator of the department of Seine-Inférieure,
Oct.11, 1792; letter of the special committee of Rouen, Oct.22; letter
of the delegates of the executive power, Oct.20, etc.) "Reports from all
quarters state that the farmers who drive to market are considered and
treated in their parishes as aristocrats..... Each department keeps to
itself: they mutually repel each other."]
[Footnote 4224: Buchez et Roux, XX., 409. (Letter of Roland, Nov. 271
1792.) "The circulation of grain has for a long time encountered
the greatest obstacles; scarcely a citizen now dares to do that
business."--Ibid., 417. (Speech by Lequinio.) "The monopoly of wheat
by land-owners and farmers is almost universal. Fright is the cause of
it.... And where does this fear come from? From the general agitation,
and threats, with the bad treatment in many places of the farmers,
land-owners and traffickers in wheat known as bladiers."--Decrees of
Sep.16, 1792, and May 4, 1793.]
[Footnote 4225: Buchez et Roux, XIX. (Report by Cambon, Sep.22, 1792.)
"The taxes no longer reach the public treasury, because they are used
for purchasing grain in the departments." Ibid., XIX., 29. (Speech by
Cambon, Oct.12, 1792.) "You can bear witness in your departments to the
sacrifices which well-to-do people have been obliged to make in helping
the poor class. In many of the towns extra taxes have been laid for the
purchase of grain and for a thousand other helpful measures."]
[Footnote 4226: Buchez et Roux, XX., 409. (Letter of Roland, Nov.29,
1792)--XXI., 199. (Deliberations of the provisional executive council,
Sep. 3, 1792.)--Dauban, "La Demagogie en 1793," p. 64. (Diary kept by
Beaulieu.) Ibid., 152.)]
[Footnote 4227: Schmidt, I., 110-130.--Decrees against the export of
coin or ingots, Sep. 5 and 15, 1792.-Decree on stocks or bonds payable
to bearer, Aug.14, 1792.]
[Footnote 4228: We might today call this sentiment a desire to acquire
and retain. (Sentiment of acquisiton). (SR.)]
[Footnote 4229: Taine's remark in a footnote. (SR.)]
[Footnote 4230: Archives Nationales, D., 55, I., file 2. (Letter by
Joifroy, national agent in the district of Bar-sur-Aube, Germinal 5,
year III.) "Most of the farmers, to escape the requisition, have sold
their horses and replaced them with oxen."--Memoirs (in ms.) of M.
Dufort de Cheverney (communicated by M. Robert de Crévecoeur). In June,
1793, "the requisitions fall like hail, every week, on wheat, hay,
straw, oats, etc.," all at prices fixed by the contractors, who make
deductions, postpone and pay with difficulty. Then come requisitions for
hogs. "This was depriving all the country folks of what they lived
on." As the requisitions called for live hogs, there was a hog St.
Bartholomew. Everybody killed his pig and salted it down." (Environs
of Blois.) In relation to refusing to gather in crops, see further
on.--Dauban, "Paris in 1794, p.229. (Ventose 24, general orders by
Henriot.) "Citizen Guillon being on duty outside the walls, saw with
sorrow that citizens were cutting their wheat to feed rabbits with."]
[Footnote 4231: Decree of Messidor 23, year II., on the consolidation
with the national domain of the assets and liabilities of hospitals and
other charitable institutions. (See reports of prefets on the effect of
this law, on the ruin of the hospitals, on the misery of the sick, of
foundlings and the infirm, from years IX. to XIII.)--Decrees of August
8 and 12, 1793, and July 24, 1794, on academies and literary
societies.--Decree of August 24, 1793, P 29, on the assets and
liabilities of communes.]
[Footnote 4232: Schmidt, I., 144. (Two billions September 27, 1793;
one billion four hundred millions June 19, 1794.)--Decree of August 24,
September 13, 1793, on the conversion of title-deeds and the formation
of the Grand Ledger.--Decrees of July 31, August 30 and September 5,
on calling in the assignats à face royale.--Decrees of August 1 and
September 5, 1793, on the refusal to accept assignats at par.]
[Footnote 4233: Archives Nationales, F.7, 4421. (Documents on the
revolutionary taxes organized at Troyes, Brumaire 11, year II.) Three
hundred and seventy-three persons are taxed, especially manufacturers,
merchants and land-owners; the minimum of the tax is one hundred francs,
the maximum fifty thousand francs, the total being one million seven
hundred and sixty-two thousand seven hundred francs. Seventy-six
petitions attached to the papers show exactly the situation of things in
relation to trade, manufactures and property, the state of fortunes and
credit of the upper and lower bourgeois class.]
[Footnote 4234: Mallet-Dupan, "Mémoires," II., 17. "I have seen the
thirty-second list of émigrés at Marseilles, merely of those whose
possessions have been confiscated and sold; there are twelve thousand
of them, and the lists were not finished."--Reports of préfets. (Var by
Fanchet, year IX.) "The emigration of 1793 throws upon Leghorn and
the whole Italian coast a very large number of Marseilles and Toulon
traders. These men, generally industrious, have established (there) more
than one hundred and sixty soap factories and opened a market for the
oil of this region. This event may be likened to the Revocation of the
Edict of Nantes."--Cf. the reports on the departments of the Rhône,
Aude, Lot and Garonne, Lower Pyrenees, Orme, etc.]
[Footnote 4235: Archives des Affaires Étrangères, vol. 332. (Letter of
Désgranges, Bordeaux, Brumaire 12, year II.) "Nobody here talks about
trade any more than if it had never existed."]
[Footnote 4236: Dr. Jaïn, "Choix de documents et lettres privées
trouvees dans des papiers de famille," p.144. (Letter of Gédëon
Jaïn, banker at Paris, November 18, 1793.) "Business carried on with
difficulty and at a great risk occasion frequent and serious losses,
credit and resources being almost nothing."]
[Footnote 4237: Archives Nationales, F.7, 2475. (Letters of Thullier,
procureur-syndic of the Paris department, September 7 and 10,
1793.--Report by a member of the Piques section, September 8 and 10,
1793.--Cf. the petitions of traders and lawyers imprisoned at Troyes,
Strasbourg, Bordeaux, etc.--Archives Nationales, AF.,II., 271. Letter
of Francastel: "At least three thousand monopolist aristocrats have been
arrested at Nantes.... and this is not the last purification."]
[Footnote 4238: Decrees of May 4, 15, 19, 20 and 23, and of August 30,
1793.--Decrees of July 26, August 15, September II, 1793, and February
24, 1794.--Camille Boursier, "Essai sur la Terreur en Anjou," p.
254. (Letter of Buissart to his friend Maximilian Robespierre, Arras,
Pluviose 14, year II.) "we are dying with starvation in the midst of
abundance; I think that the mercantile aristocracy ought to be killed
out like the nobles and priests. The communes, with the help of a
storehouse of food and goods must alone be allowed to trade. This idea,
well carried out, can be realized; then, the benefits of trade will turn
to the advantage of the Republic, that is to say, to the advantage of
buyer and seller."]
[Footnote 4239: Archives Nationales, AF., II., 49. (Documents on the
levy of revolutionary taxes, Belfort, Brumaire 30, year II.) "Verneur,
sr., taxed at ten thousand livres, for having withheld goods deposited
with him by his sister, in order to save them from the coming taxation."
Campardon I., 292. (Judgments of the revolutionary commission at
Strasbourg.)--"The head-clerk in Hecht's apothecary shop is accused of
selling two ounces of rhubarb and manna at fifty-four sous; Hecht, the
proprietor, is condemned to a fine of fifteen thousand livres. Madeleine
Meyer, at Rosheim, a retailer, is accused of selling a candle for ten
sous and is condemned to a fine of one thousand livres, payable in three
days. Braun, butcher and bar-keeper, accused of having sold a glass of
wine for twenty sous, is condemned to a fine of forty thousand francs,
to be imprisoned until this is paid, and to exposure in the pillory
before his own house for four hours, with this inscription: debaser
of the national currency."--"Recueil de Pieces, etc., at Strasbourg,"
(supplement, pp. 21, 30, 64). "Marie Ursule Schnellen and Marie
Schultzmann, servant, accused of monopolising milk. The former is
sentenced to the pillory for one day under a placard, monopoliser of
milk, and to hold in one hand the money and, in the other, the milk-pot;
the other, a servant with citizen Benner. ... he, the said Benner,
is sentenced to a fine of three hundred livres, payable in three
days."--"Dorothy Franz, convicted of having sold two heads of salad at
twenty sous, and of thus having depreciated the value of assignats, is
sentenced to a fine of three thousand livres, imprisonment for six weeks
and exposure in the pillory for two hours."--Ibid., I., 18. "A grocer,
accused of having sold sugar-candy at lower than the rate, although not
comprised in the list, is sentenced to one hundred thousand livres fine
and imprisonment until peace is declared."--Orders by Saint-Just and
Lebas, Nivose 3, year II. "The criminal court of the department of the
Lower-Rhine is ordered to destroy the house of any one convicted of
having made sales below the rates fixed by the maximum," consequently,
the house of one Schauer, a furrier, is torn down, Nivose 7.]
[Footnote 4240: Archives des Affaires Étrangères, vol. 322. (Letter by
Haupt, Belfort, Brumaire 3, year II.) "On my arrival here, I found the
law of the maximum promulgated and in operation... (but) the necessary
steps have not been taken to prevent a new monopoly by the country
people, who have flocked in to the shops of the dealers, carried off all
their goods and created a factitious dearth."]
[Footnote 4241: Archives Nationales, F.7, 4421. (Petitions of merchants
and shop-keepers at Troyes in relation to the revolutionary tax,
especially of hatters, linen, cotton and woollen manufacturers, weavers
and grocers. There is generally a loss of one-half, and sometimes of
three-fourths of the purchase money.)]
[Footnote 4242: Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol.330. (Letter of
Brutus, Marseilles, Nivose 6, year II.) "Since the maximum everything is
wanting at Marseilles."--Ibid. (Letter by Soligny and Gosse, Thionville,
Nivose 5, year II.) "No peasant is willing to bring anything to
market... They go off six leagues to get a better price and thus the
communes which they once supplied are famishing.. According as they are
paid in specie or assignats the difference often amounts to two hundred
per cent., and nearly always to one hundred per cent."--"Un Sejour en
France," pp. 188-189.--Archives Nationales, D.. P I., file 2. (Letter of
Representative Albert, Germinal 19, year II., and of Joffroy,
national agent, district of Bar-sur-Aube, Germinal 5, year III.
"The municipalities have always got themselves exempted from the
requisitions, which all fall on the farmers and proprietors unable to
satisfy them.... The allotment among the tax-payers is made with
the most revolting inequality.... Partiality through connections of
relatives and of friendship."]
[Footnote 4243: Decrees of September 29, 1793 (articles 8 and 9); of
May 4 and 20, and June 26, 1794.--Archives Nationales, AF., II., 68-72.
(Orders of the Committee of Public Safety, Prairial 26, year II.) "The
horses and wagons of coal peddlers, the drivers accustomed to taking
to Paris by law a portion of the supply of coal used in baking in the
department of Seine-et-Marne, are drafted until the 1st of Brumaire
next, for the transportation of coal to Paris. During this time they
cannot be drafted for any other service." (A good many orders in
relation to provisions and articles of prime necessity may be found in
these files, mostly in the handwriting of Robert Lindet.)]
[Footnote 4244: Cf. "The Revolution," II., 69.--Dauban, "Paris en
1794." (Report by Pouvoyeur, March 15, 1794.) "A report has been long
circulated that all the aged were to be slaughtered; there is not a
place where this falsehood is not uttered."]
[Footnote 4245: Archives Nationales, F.7, 4435, file 10, letters of
Collot d'Herbois, Brumaire 17 and 19, year II.--De Martel, "Fouché,"
340, 341. Letters of Collot d'Herbois, November 7 and 9, 1793.]
[Footnote 4246: De Martel, ibid., 462. (Proclamation by Javogues,
Pluviose 13, year II.)]
[Footnote 4247: Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol. 330. (Letter of
Brutus, political agent, Nivôse 6.)]
[Footnote 4248: Archives Nationales, AF., II., 116. (Orders of Taillefer
and Marat-Valette, and Deliberations of the Directory of Lot, Brumaire
20, year II.)]
[Footnote 4249: Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol. 331. (Letter of
the agent Bertrand, Frimaire 3.)]
[Footnote 4250: Ibid., vol. 1332. (Letter of the agent Chépy, Brumaire
2.)]
[Footnote 4251: Ibid., vol.1411. (Letter of Blessmann and Hauser,
Brumaire 30.)--Ibid. (Letter of Haupt, Belfort, Brumaire 29.) "I believe
that Marat's advice should be followed here and a hundred scaffolds be
erected; there are not guillotines enough to cut off the heads of the
monopolists. I shall do what I can to have the pleasure of seeing one of
these damned bastards play hot cockles."]
[Footnote 4252: Ibid., vol.333. (Letter of Garrigues, Pluviôse 16.)]
[Footnote 4253: "Souvenirs et Journal d'un Bourgeois d'Evreux,"
pp.83-85. (June and July, 1794.)--Ibid., at Nantes.--Dauban, "Paris en
1794," p.194, March 4.]
[Footnote 4254: Archives des Affaires étrangères, vols. 331 and 332.
(Letters of Désgranges, Frimaire 3 and 8 and 10.) "Many of the peasants
have eaten no bread for a fortnight. Most of them no longer work."
Buchez et Roux, XVIII., 346. (Session of the convention, Brumaire 14,
Speech by Legendre.)]
[Footnote 4255: Moniteur, xix., 671. (Speech by Tallien, March 12,
1794.) Buchez et Roux, XXXII., 423. (Letter of Jullien, June 15, 1794.)]
[Footnote 4256: Archives Nationales, AF., II., 111. (Letters of Michaud,
Chateauroux, Pluviôse 18 and 19, year II.)]
[Footnote 4257: Dauban, "Paris en 1794," 410, 492, 498. (Letters frora
the national agent of the district of Sancoins, Thermidor 9, year II.;
from the Directory of Allier, Thermidor 9; from the national agent of
the district of Villefort, Thermidor 9.)--Gouverneur Morris, April 10,
1794, says in a letter to Washington that the famine in many places is
extremely severe. Men really die of starvation who have the means to buy
bread if they could only get it.]
[Footnote 4258: Volney, "Voyage en Orient," II., 344. "When
Constantinople lacks food twenty provinces are starved for its supply."]
[Footnote 4259: Archives Nationales, AF., II, 46, 68. (Decree of
committee of Public Safety.) The Treasury pays over to the city of Paris
for subsistence, on Aug. 2, 1793, two millions, August 14, three, and
September 2nd, one million; September 8, 16, and 23, one million each,
and so on.... Between August 7, 1793 and Germinal '9, year II., the
Treasury paid over to Paris, thirty one millions.]
[Footnote 4260: Ibid, AF., II., 68. Decrees of Brumaire 14, Nivôse 7 and
Germinal 22 on the departments assigned to the supply of Paris. Buchez
et Roux, XXVIII., 489. (Speech by Danton in Jacobin club, Aug.28, '793.)
"I constantly asserted that it was necessary to give all to the mayor of
Paris if he exacted it to feed its inhabitants.. .. Let us sacrifice one
hundred and ten millions and save Paris and through it, the Republic."]
[Footnote 4261: Archives des Affaires étrangères, vols. 1410 and 1411.
Reports of June 20 and 21, 1793, July 21, 22, 28, 29 and 31, and every
day of the months of August and September, 1793. Schmidt, "Tableaux de
la Revolution Française," vol. II., passim--Dauban, "Paris in 1794,"
(especially throughout Ventôse, year II.).--Archives Nationales, F.7,
31167. (Reports for Nivôse, year II.)]
[Footnote 4262: Dauban, "Paris en 1794,". (Report of Ventôse 2.)]
[Footnote 4263: Mercier, "Paris Pendant la Revolution," I., 355.]
[Footnote 4264: Archives des Affaires étrangères, 141 I. (Reports of
August 1 and 2, 1763.) "At one o'clock in the morning, we were surprised
to find men and women lying along the sides of the houses patiently
waiting for the shops to open."--Dauban, 231. (Report of Ventôse 24.) To
obtain the lights of a hog, at the slaughter house near the Jardin des
Plantes, at the rate of three francs ten sous, instead of thirty sous as
formerly, women "were lying on the ground with little baskets by their
side and waiting four and five hours."]
[Footnote 4265: Archives Nationales, F.7, 31167. (Reports of Nivôse 9
and 28.) "The streets of Paris are always abominable; they are certainly
afraid to use those brooms." Dauban, 120. (Ventôse 9.) "The rue St.
Anne is blocked up with manure. In that part of it near the Rue Louvois,
heaps of this stretch along the walls for the past fortnight."]
[Footnote 4266: Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol.1411. (Reports of
August 9, 1793.) Mercier, I., 353.--Dauban, 530. (Reports of Fructidor
27, year II. "There are always great gatherings at the coal depots. They
begin at midnight. one, two o'clock in the morning. Many of the habitués
take advantage of the obscurity and commit all sorts of indecencies."]
[Footnote 4267: Schmidt, "Tableaux de la Revolution Française,"
II., 155. (Reports of Ventôse 25.)--Dauban, 188. (Reports of Ventôse
19).--Ibid., (Reports of Ventôse 2.) Ibid., 126. (Reports of Ventôse
10.)--Archives Nationales, F. 7, 31167. (Reports of Nivôse 28, year II.)
The women "denounce the butchers and pork sellers who pay no attention
to the maximum law, giving only the poorest meat to the poor." Ibid.,
(Reports of Nivôse 6.) "It is frightful to see what the butchers give
the people."]
[Footnote 4268: Mercier, 363. "The women struggled with all their might
against the men and contracted the habit of swearing. The last on the
row knew how to worm themselves up to the head of it." Buchez et Roux,
XXVIII., 364. ("Journal de la Montague," July 28, 1793. "One citizen was
killed on Sunday, July 21, one of the Gravilliers (club) in trying
to hold on to a six pound loaf of bread which he had just secured for
himself and family. Another had a cut on his arm the same day in the Rue
Froid-Manteau. A pregnant woman was wounded and her child died in her
womb."]
[Footnote 4269: Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol.1410. (Reports of
August 6 and 7, 1793.)]
[Footnote 4270: Dauban, 144. (Reports of Ventôse 19.)]
[Footnote 4271: Dauban, 199. (Reports of Ventôse 19.)--Dauban, "La
Demagogie en 1793," p. 470. "Scarcely had the peasants arrived when
harpies in women's clothes attacked them and carried off their goods....
Yesterday, a peasant was beaten for wanting to sell his food at the
'maximum' rate." (October 19, 1793.)--Dauban, "Paris en 1794," 144,
173, 199. (Reports of Ventôse 13, 17 and 19.)--Archives des Affaires
étrangères, vol. 1410. (Reports of June 26 and 27, 1793.) Wagons and
boats are pillaged for candles and soap.]
[Footnote 4272: Dauban, 45. (Reports of Pluviôse 17.) 222. (Reports of
Ventôse 23.)--160. (Reports of Ventôse 15.)--340. (Reports of Germinal
28.)--87. (Reports of Ventôse 5.)]
[Footnote 4273: Archives Nationales, AF., II., 116. (Order of Paganel,
Castres, Pluviôse 6 and 7, year II. "The steps taken to obtain returns
of food have not fulfilled the object.... The statements made are either
false or inexact.") Cf., for details, the correspondence of the other
representatives on mission.--Dauban," Paris en 1794." 190. (Speech by
Fouquier-Tinville in the Convention, Ventôse 19.) "The mayor of Pont St.
Maxence has dared to say that 'when Paris sends us sugar we will then
see about letting her have our eggs and butter.'"]
[Footnote 4274: Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol. 1411. (Reports
of August 7 and 8, 1793.) "Seven thousand five hundred pounds of bread,
about to be taken out, have been stopped at the barriers."--Dauban, 45.
(Orders of the day. Pluviôse 17.) Lamps are set up at all the posts,
"especially at la Greve and Passy, so as to light up the river and
see that no eatables pass outside."--Mercier, I., 355.--Dauban, 181.
(Reports of Ventôse 18.)--210. (Reports of Ventôse 21.)--190. Speech by
Fouquier, Ventôse 19.) "The butchers in Paris who cannot sell above the
maximum carry the meat they buy to the Sèvres butchers and sell it at
any price they please. "--257. (Reports of Ventôse 27.) "You see, about
ten o'clock in the evening, aristocrats and other egoists coming to
the dealers who supply Egalité's mansion (the Duke of Orleans) and
buy chickens and turkeys which they carefully conceal under their
overcoats."]
[Footnote 4275: Dauban, 255. (Orders of the day by Henriot, Ventôse 27.)
"I have to request my brethren in arms not to take any rations whatever.
This little deprivation will silence the malevolent who seek every
opportunity to humble us."--Ibid.,359. "On Floreal 29, between five and
six o'clock in the morning, a patrol of about fifteen men of the Bonnet
Rouge section, commanded by a sort of commissary, stop subsistences on
the Orleans road and take them to their section."]
[Footnote 4276: Dauban, 341. (Letter of the Commissioner on
Subsistences, Germinal 23.) "The supplies are stolen under the people's
eyes, or what they get is of inferior quality." The commissioner is
surprised to find that, having provided so much, so little reaches the
consumers.]
[Footnote 4277: Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol.1411. (Reports
of August 11-12 and 31, and Sept. 1, 1793.)--Archives Nationales, F. 7,
31167.) (Reports of Nivôse 7 and 12, year II.)]
[Footnote 4278: Dauban, "Paris" en 1794, 60, 68, 69, 71, 82, 93, 216,
231.--Schmidt, "Tableaux de Paris," 187, 190.--Archives Nationales, F.
7, 31167. (Report of Leharivel, Nivôse 7.)--The gunsmiths employed by
the government likewise state that they have for a long time had nothing
to eat but bread and cheese.]
[Footnote 4279: Dauban, 231. (Report of Perriére, Ventôse 24.) "Butter
of which they make a god."]
[Footnote 4280: Ibid., 68. (Report of Ventôse 2.)]
[Footnote 4281: Archives Nationales, F.7, 31167. (Report of Nivôse
28.)--Dauban, 144. (Report of Nivôse 14.)]
[Footnote 4282: Dauban, 81. (Report of Latour-Lamontagne, Ventôse 4.)]
[Footnote 4283: "Souvenirs et Journal d'un Bourgeois d'Evreux," 83.
"Friday, June 15, 1794, a proclamation is made that all who have any
provisions in their houses, wheat, barley, rye, flour and even bread,
must declare them within twenty four hours under penalty of being
regarded as an enemy of the country and declared 'suspect,' put under
arrest and tried by the courts."--Schmidt, "Tableaux de la Revolution
Française," II.. 214. A seizure is made at Passy of two pigs and forty
pounds of butter, six bushels of beans, etc., in the domicile of
citizen Lucet who had laid in supplies for sixteen persons of his own
household.]
[Footnote 4284: Archives Nationales, AF., II., 68. Orders of the
Committee of Public Safety, Pluviôse 23, referring to the law of
Brumaire 25, forbidding the extraction of more than fifteen pounds of
bran from a quintal of flour. Order directing the removal of bolters
from bakeries and mills; he who keeps or conceals these on his property
"shall be treated as 'suspect' and put under arrest until peace is
declared."--Berryat Saint Prix, 357, 362. At Toulouse, three persons are
condemned to death for monopoly. At Montpelier, a baker, two dealers
and a merchant are guillotined for having invoiced, concealed and kept a
certain quantity of gingerbread cakes intended solely for consumption by
anti-revolutionaries.]
[Footnote 4285: "Un Séjour en France," (April 22, 1794).]
[Footnote 4286: Ludovic Sciout, IV., 236. (Proclamation of the
representatives on mission in Finisterre.) "Magistrates of the people
tell all farmers and owners of land that their crops belong to the
nation and that they are simply its depositaries." Archives Nationales,
AF., II., 92. (Orders by Bô, representative in Cautal, Pluviôse 8.)
"Whereas, as all citizens in a Republic form one family.... all those
who refuse to assist their brethren and neighbors under the specious
pretext that they have not sufficient supplies must be regarded as
'suspect' citizens."]
[Footnote 4287: Archives Nationales, AF., II., 68. (Orders of the
Committee of Public Safety, Prairial 28.) The maximum price is fourteen
francs the quintal; after Messidor 30, it is not to be more than eleven
francs.]
[Footnote 4288: Ibid., AF., II., 116 and 106, orders of Paganel,
Castres, Pluviôse 6 and 7. Orders of Dartigoyte, Floréal 23, 25, and
29.]
[Footnote 4289: Ibid., AF., II., 147. (Orders of Maignet, Avignon,
Prairial 2.)]
[Footnote 4290: Moniteur, XXIII., 397 (Speech by Dubois-Crancé, May
5, 1795.) "The Committee on Commerce (and Supplies) had thirty-five
thousand employees in its service."]
[Footnote 4291: Archives Nationales, AF., II., 68. (Orders of the
Committee of Public Safety, Prairial 28.) Decret of Messidor 8, year II.
"All kinds of grain and the hay of the present crop are required by the
government." A new estimate is made, each farmer being obliged to state
the amount of his crop; verification, confiscation in case of inaccurate
declarations, and orders to thrash out the sheaves.--Dauban, 490.
(Letter of the national agent of Villefort, Thermidor 19.) Calculations
and the reasoning of farmers with a view to avoid sowing and planting:
"Not so much on account of the lack of hands as not to ruin oneself by
sowing and raising an expensive crop which, they say, affords them
small returns when they sell their grain at so low a price." Archives
Nationales, AF., II. 106. (Letter of the national agent in Gers and
Haute-Garonne, Floréal 25.) "They say here, that as soon as the crop is
gathered, all the grain will be taken away, without leaving anything to
live on. It is stated that all salt provisions are going to be taken and
the agriculturists reduced to the horrors of a famine."]
[Footnote 4292: Moniteur, XXII., 21. (Speech by Lindet, September 7,
1794.) "We have long feared that the ground would not be tilled, that
the meadows would be covered with cattle while the proprietors and
farmers were kept in prison." Archives Nationales, D., P I, No. I.
(Letter from the district of Bar-sur-Seine, Ventôse 14, year III.) "The
'maximum' causes the concealment of grain. The quit-claims ruined the
consumers and rendered them desperate. How many wretches, indeed, have
been arrested,--attacked, confiscated, fined and ruined for having
gone off fifteen or twenty leagues to get grain with which to feed their
wives and children?"]
[Footnote 4293: AF., II., 106. (Circular by Dartigoyte, Floréal
25.) "You must apply this rule, that is, make the municipal officers
responsible for the non cultivation of the soil." "If any citizen
allows himself a different kind of bread, other than that which all the
cultivators and laborers in the commune use, I shall have him brought
before the courts conjointly with the municipality as being the first
culprit guilty of having tolerated it... Reduce, if necessary, three
fourths of the bread allowed to non laboring citizens because muscadins
and muscadines: have resources and, besides, lead an idle life."]
[Footnote 4294: AF., II., III. (Letters of Ferry, Bourges, Messidor 23,
to his "brethren in the popular club," and "to the citoyennes (women) of
Indre-et-Cher.")]
[Footnote 4295: Moniteur, XXI., 171. (Letter from Avignon, Messidor 9,
and letter of the Jacobins of Arles.]
[Footnote 4296: Moniteur, XXI., 184. (Decree of Messidor 21.)]
[Footnote 4297: Gouverneur Morris. (correspondence with Washington.
Letters of March 27 and April 10, 1794.) He says that there is no record
of such an early spring. Rye has headed out and clover is in flower. It
is astonishing to see apricots in April as large as pigeons' eggs.
In the south, where the dearth is most severe, he has good reason to
believe that the ground is supplying the inhabitants with food. A frost
like that of the year before in the month of May (1793) would help the
famine more than all the armies and fleets in Europe.]
[Footnote 4298: Stalin was to test the system and prove Taine right.
(SR.)]
[Footnote 4299: Archives Nationales, AF., II., 73. (Letter by the
Directory of Calvados, Prairial 26, year III.) "We have not a grain
of wheat in store, and the prisons are full of cultivators." Archives
Nationales, D., p 1, file No.3. (Warrants of arrest issued by
Representative Albert, Pluviôse 19, year III., Germinal 7 and 16.)
On the details of the difficulties and annoyances attending the
requisitions, cf. this file and the five preceding or following files.
(Letter of the National agent, district of Nogent-sur-Seine, Germinal
13.) "I have had summoned before the district court a great many
cultivators and proprietors who are in arrears in furnishing the
requisitions made on them by their respective municipalities.... A large
majority declared that they were unable to furnish in full even if their
seed were taken. The court ordered the confiscation of the said grain
with a fine equal to the value of the quantity demanded of those called
upon.. It is now my duty to execute the sentence. But, I must observe to
you, that if you do not reduce the fine, many of them will be reduced
to despair. Hence I await your answer so that I may act accordingly."
(Another letter from the same agent, Germinal 9.) "It is impossible
to supply the market of Villarceaux; seven communes under requisition
prevented it through the district of Sozannes which constantly keeps
an armed force there to carry grain away as soon as thrashed."--It is
interesting to remark the inquisitorial sentimentality of the official
agents and the low stage of culture. (Proces verbal of the Magincourt
municipality, Ventôse 7.) Of course I am obliged to correct the spelling
so as to render it intelligible. The said Croiset, gendarme, went with
the national agent into the houses of citizens in arrears, of whom,
amongst those in arrears, nobody refused but Jean Mauchin, whom we could
not keep from talking against him, seeing that he is wholly egoist and
only wants for himself. He declared to us that, if, the day before his
harvesting he had any left, he would share it with the citizens that
needed it.. .. Alas, yes, how could one refrain from shutting up such
an egoist who wants only for himself to the detriment of his fellow
citizens? A proof of the truth is that he feeds in his house three dogs,
at least one hundred and fifty chickens and even pigeons, which uses
up a lot of grain, enough to hinder the satisfaction of all the
requisitions. He might do without dogs, as his court is enclosed he
might likewise content himself with thirty chickens and then be able
to satisfy the requisitions." This document is signed "Bertrand,
Agen."--Mauchin, on the strength of it, is incarcerated at Troyes "at
his own expense."]
[Footnote 42100: Ibid. Letter from the district of Bar sur Seine,
Ventôse 14, year III. Since the abolition of the "maximum," "the
inhabitants travel thirty and forty leagues to purchase wheat." (Letter
from the municipality of Troyes, Ventôse 15.) "According to the price
of grain, which we keep on buying, by agreement, bread will cost fifteen
sous (the pound) next decade."]