THE CONSTITUTION.
♦Results of movement of October 6.♦
The movement of October 6 was not, like the rising of July 14,
unpremeditated. The scarcity of bread had been made use of by agitators
to suggest to the populace the idea of bringing the King to Paris.
Their object was to place both the King and the Assembly immediately
under the influence of the capital. To the Duke of Orleans at the
time was ascribed the intention of driving the royal family from
Versailles, and obtaining for himself, if not the throne, a regency.
The Duke, unprincipled and of mean capacity, was incompetent, if he
had the ambition, to play a prominent part in the revolution. The
possession of great wealth assured him hangers-on and partisans, but
he was generally despised, and no man of any standing ever openly
espoused his cause. Deputies of the centre and left, as well as the
municipality and Lafayette, regarded the residence of the court at
Paris as security against attempts to raise civil war by the removal
of the King and the division of the Assembly. From this time the royal
family was in fact in the keeping of Lafayette, whose troops composed
the palace guard. The court could see nothing in the event but one more
act of popular violence, which must before long cause reaction. After
the fall of the Bastille, the King’s brother, the Count of Artois, had
left France. Many court nobles, including deputies of the reactionary
right, now took the same course, with full expectation of shortly
returning and finding the old order of things restored. Two leaders
of the right centre, Mounier and Lally-Tollendal, quitted the capital
on the plea that their lives were in danger, and that the Assembly
was not free. It was true that those who took the lead in defending
unpopular opinions were subject to menace and insult, but it was not
true that deputies sitting on the right were precluded from taking part
in the debates or voting according to their pleasure. On the contrary,
if the galleries were often noisy and abusive, bishops and nobles found
opportunities not only of replying at length to their opponents, but
also of obstructing proceedings for hours by mere clamour. The ordinary
form of voting, which was simply by rising and sitting, prevented the
frequent publication of division lists. Much important work, in which
all could take part in safety, was done in private committees, and
drafts of laws prepared in them were often adopted by the Assembly with
little alteration. The withdrawal of deputies only helped to complete
the disorganisation of an already divided minority.
♦The Jacobins.♦
While the right side of the Assembly, in consequence of desertions,
disorganisation, and intimidation, became constantly less able to
exert influence over the centre, the left acquired new sources of
strength. With the object of concerting common action, a few deputies
used to meet in a building in the Rue St. Honoré, belonging to some
Dominican friars, who were commonly called Jacobins, because the church
of St. Jacques had been assigned to them when, in the thirteenth
century, they first arrived in Paris. In this building was organised
a debating club, entitled by its founders the Society of the Friends
of the Constitution, but which acquired celebrity under the name of
the Jacobins. All deputies of the left joined it, as well as many
persons who were not members of the Assembly, amongst whom were the
most radical politicians and journalists of Paris. Whatever questions
were debated in the Assembly were at the same time debated in the
club, where democratic opinion was more pronounced, and put forward
with less reserve. Barnave was in the club a more popular orator
than Mirabeau, and Robespierre, who could hardly obtain a hearing in
the Assembly, was listened to with attention and applause. Thus the
existence of the Jacobins gave organisation to the more democratic
party at a time when organisation was nowhere else to be found.
[Illustration: FRANCE IN DEPARTMENTS 1790
_Longmans, Green & Co., London, New York, Bombay, Calcutta & Madras_.]
♦The Constitution.♦
Under the influences above described, fear of reaction, belief
in theory, and desire for popularity, the Assembly completed the
constitution and carried reform into every department of the state.
Its work was based on principles of uniformity, decentralisation, and
the sovereignty of the people, and whatever institutions clashed with
these were swept away. The old division of the territory by provinces
was abandoned, and France was divided into eighty-three departments,
all as nearly as possible of the same extent, and named after
geographical features, such as rivers and mountains. The eighty-three
departments were subdivided into 374 districts. In every department
was an elected administrative body for the management of its affairs;
in every district an elected administrative body, subordinate to the
administration of the department, for the management of affairs special
to the district. These bodies were composed each of a general council
and a permanent executive, styled the directory. In every district
the former divisions, called communes, were left unaltered. Of these
communes there were no less than 44,000 in France, some being large
towns, whilst others were mere villages. The local affairs of these
communes were placed under the direction of municipalities. The members
of these municipalities were elected by all men inhabiting the commune
twenty-five years old, and paying yearly in direct taxes, according to
a reformed system of taxation, a sum varying from eighteen pence to two
shillings, the value of three days’ labour. Manhood suffrage would
have given 6,000,000 voters, while this qualification limited their
number to about 4,300,000 only. Persons qualified to vote were required
to serve in the national guard, and were called active citizens, whilst
those disqualified were known as passive citizens. For the election
of the administrative bodies of the district and the department, as
well as of deputies to the legislature, the system adopted was by two
degrees. There were many primary assemblies, consisting of all active
citizens in each department, each of which chose a certain number
of electors, who in turn elected the administrative bodies of the
districts and of the department, as well as the deputies who were to
represent the department in the legislature. The qualification for
being a member of a municipality, or of any administrative body, was
the payment yearly in direct taxes of a sum varying from six to eight
shillings. A special and higher qualification was required for sitting
in the legislature--the payment in direct taxes of a marc, in value
nearly fifty shillings.
♦Judicial reform.♦
The new administrative divisions served as judicial divisions also.
The old courts, including the parliaments, were one after another
abolished. Each district was divided into cantons, and the primary
assemblies in each canton elected judges, called justices of the peace
(_juges de paix_), for the trial of petty causes. Every district
had a civil, every department a criminal court, of which the judges
were respectively elected by the electors of the district and the
department. Persons belonging to any branch of the legal profession
were eligible as judges, who were elected for six years only. Much
directly remedial legislation accompanied this new framework. Procedure
was rendered more favourable to the accused. Trial by jury on the
English system was adopted in criminal cases, every department having
its grand jury. Securities were taken against arbitrary arrest
and imprisonment, and the law was made the same for all, without
distinction of persons. A new penal code was drawn up which contrasted
most favourably with the criminal law in force in other countries.
Heresy and magic were no longer recognised as crimes. Torture was
abolished, and the punishment of death confined to four or five
offences.
♦Church property appropriated by the State.♦
Economical and financial reforms were also effected. Internal custom
houses were removed, monopolies and trade restrictions abolished.
The Assembly, however, trod here with more cautious steps than when
effecting constitutional and administrative reforms. The tariff of
export and import duties was modified, but fear of injuring French
industries prevented the adoption of free trade principles in
regulating the commercial relations between France and other countries.
The restoration of the finances in the midst of revolution was not a
work to be easily accomplished. The Assembly delayed to abolish the
old taxes until a new system of taxation was organised, but meanwhile
thousands refused to pay them, and the revenue proportionately
decreased. To meet the expenses of government Necker was compelled
to borrow, and in the autumn of 1789 the State debt reached about
43,750,000_l._ To prevent its increase and to meet the claims of
creditors, the Assembly had resource to Church property. By the
abolition of tithes on August 4, a revenue of 5,818,750_l._ passed
into the hands of landed proprietors and agriculturists. The Church,
however, remained possessed of property valued at a capital of more
than 100,000,000_l._, bringing in a revenue of about 3,500,000_l._ All
this property was declared to be at the service of the State, which
undertook henceforth to provide for the clergy. Crown lands and Church
lands to the value of 17,500,000_l._ were offered for sale, and state
paper money to the same amount issued in the form of notes of the value
of 44_l._, bearing a forced currency and called assignats, which were
to be used in payment of state creditors, and were to be received back
by the state from purchasers of the land so offered for sale, and thus
to be gradually withdrawn from circulation and destroyed.
The upper clergy, supported by the nobles, vehemently opposed these
measures, which entirely altered the status of the clergy. The clergy
regarded themselves as administrators of property for Church purposes,
and as independent of state influence; whereas they would henceforth be
brought into close dependence on the state and lose the social position
which wealth and independence gave them. The Abbé Maury accused the
Assembly of interfering with the rights of property, and of being
guilty of an act of spoliation. But the supporters of the new laws
formed an overwhelming majority. Sceptics and theists, Jansenists who
sought to reform the Church in accordance with the primitive usages of
Christianity, lawyers who were merely following the legal traditions
of the old monarchy in arguing that the state interest was paramount,
informed the bishops that the clergy were not proprietors, but merely
administrators of national property, who were justly deprived of a
trust which they had executed ill. By the sale of Church lands the
Assembly designed not merely to restore the finances, but by motives
of self-interest to bind thousands to the work of revolution by
indissoluble ties, since every purchaser of Church lands, every holder
of assignats, every state creditor, would have a direct interest in the
maintenance of the new order.
♦Civil constitution of the clergy.♦
The laws for the appropriation and sale of Church property were
followed by laws for the reform of the Church. Monasteries and
nunneries were suppressed, the existing inmates being pensioned and
left at liberty to return to the world or live in such houses as were
assigned to them. A special code, entitled the ‘Civil Constitution of
the Clergy,’ undertook to carry out in the Church what had been already
done for the state. The old diocesan and parochial divisions were
abandoned. Every department was made a bishopric, and the boundaries of
the parishes were changed according to convenience. Bishops were to be
elected by all the electors of the department, curés by the electors of
each district. Bishops were to signify their election to the Pope, but
not to seek confirmation of their appointments at his hands. Chapters
and ecclesiastical courts were abolished, and in exercising his
functions each bishop was to be assisted by an ecclesiastical council,
composed of chaplains selected amongst the curés of the diocese. The
incomes of bishops were lowered, and those of curés raised. The whole
expense of the establishment was estimated at nearly 3,000,000_l._
♦Federation, July 14, 1790.♦
It was only by degrees that these changes were carried out. The
municipalities and other administrative bodies were elected during
the spring of 1790, the new judges not till the autumn, while the
Civil Constitution of the Clergy came into force in the summer of
the same year. An enormous strain was laid upon the patriotism and
intelligence of the country. Active citizens were incessantly called
upon to give time and thought to public affairs, by taking part in
elections and serving in the national guard; while there were more
than a million of unpaid administrative and municipal officers charged
with important duties and great responsibility. All the local business
of the departments devolved on them, the maintenance of roads and
bridges, the police regulations, the care of hospitals, the imposition
and collection of taxes, the sale of national property, and generally
the carrying out of the decrees of the Assembly. Nevertheless, the
country responded with admirable energy. Men believed that a new era
of freedom and prosperity was about to open, and numbers came forward
who unsparingly devoted time and money in discharge of civic duties,
arduous and often dangerous. During the spring all over France the
inhabitants of different villages, towns, and provinces met together
to hold federations, or feasts of union, in honour of the new
constitution. On July 14, the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille,
a federation for the whole of France, at which the King presided, was
held at Paris. Every department sent its deputation of national guards,
who came to the number of 15,000 men. An altar was raised in the middle
of the Champ de Mars, where Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun, said mass, and
blessed the banners of the departments. The thousands assembled swore
with one voice to be faithful to the nation, the law, and the King.
Louis, from his throne, took an oath to maintain the constitution,
and the air resounded with shouts of ‘Long live the King.’ The
Parisians entertained the visitors, and the day closed amid general
lightheartedness and rejoicing. The Bastille was already razed to the
ground, and crowds came to dance on the place where it had stood.
♦The nobles and the revolution.♦
The joy and enthusiasm exhibited at the festival of the federation was
a genuine expression of desire for union entertained by the main and
best part of the population, but this desire rested on no substantial
basis. As the Assembly continued its work divisions multiplied, party
spirit increased in violence, and the country, in place of enjoying
order and settled government, drifted further in the direction of
anarchy. The upper nobility did not conceal its detestation of the
work of the revolution, or its expectation that the whole would
be reversed. Most great nobles left the country, and establishing
themselves at Coblentz or Turin proscribed all who took part in the
revolution, threatened invasion, and called on foreign powers to
restore the King to his rights by force. Those who remained in France
assumed an attitude of scornful defiance, and by protests and intrigues
sought to stir up hatred against the Assembly, and to bring it into
contempt with the country. The lower nobles, if in some way losers,
would have greatly gained by the revolution if it had proceeded no
further; but various causes induced them to declare against it. The
Assembly made no efforts to conciliate them, and a decree abolishing
titles and armorial bearings had deeply hurt the pride of the whole
order (June 9). By many it was held a point of honour to remain true to
their caste; and, in fact, those who gave support to the revolutionary
laws were placed under a social ban. Many nobles quitted the country
with their families, owing to the insecurity of their lives. Those
who were arming on the frontiers brought on all who belonged to their
order the suspicion of being their accomplices. The peasantry needed
no incentive to turn upon the seigneurs. Although the Assembly had
abolished the feudal rights of a servile origin, and those which
represented sovereignty, it maintained, until compensation was made to
the owners, all dues presumed to have had their origin in agreement,
and to represent the price paid for the possession of land. The
arrangement was just, and, if it had been feasible, would have been
of advantage to almost everyone interested. But to effect it a strong
government was required, and France was in the midst of revolution.
The peasants, in whose minds all feudal rights were inextricably bound
up together, refused to recognise legal distinctions between them.
The machinery, moreover, provided by the Assembly for effecting
enfranchisement, in place of being speedy and simple, was complicated
and in many cases practically inoperative. Hence the relations between
peasants and seigneurs, as the revolution advanced, grew more and
more embittered. While the owners of the dues threatened suits, their
debtors resorted to violence. Scenes similar to those witnessed in the
east in 1789 now occurred over a large portion of the country. Again
and again, in 1790 and 1791, in the centre, in La Marche and Limousin,
further south in Perigord and Rouergue, in the west in Bretagne, as
well as in the east in Lyonnais, Alsace, Franche-Comté, and Champagne,
peasants and vagabonds went about the country in bands, burning
country-houses and title-deeds, and murdering those who attempted
resistance.
♦Weakness of the Central Government.♦
The central government, whose duty it was to protect life and property,
was impotent even to attempt the restoration of order. The Assembly,
through fear that the King would use authority for the undoing of its
work, had left him without means of enforcing obedience to the laws.
His only agents were the administrative bodies, and he had no means
of compelling them to perform their duties. The highest authority in
reality rested with the administrative bodies which were lowest in the
hierarchical scale--namely, with the municipalities. Of these there
were no less than 44,000, each acting independently of the other,
and though, according to the constitution, bound to carry out the
instructions of the directories of districts and departments, able to
disregard them with impunity. For the maintenance of order a Riot Act
had been passed, but that the King might not take advantage of it for
the suppression of constitutional rights, the municipalities alone had
been empowered to put it in force. Sometimes municipal officers were
unable, sometimes unwilling, to call out the national guard for the
forcible dispersion of rioters. In towns the bourgeoisie served on the
national guard, and there was no want of educated men to hold office.
But in rural districts there were no inhabitants except a few nobles
and curés and an unlettered peasantry. In hundreds of instances the
mayor and his colleagues could neither read nor write, spoke only their
own patois, and were incapable even of understanding the laws that
they were required to enforce. National guards, in place of protecting
the noble and his family from harm, took part with their neighbours
in destroying their dwelling, and in maltreating all whom interest or
prejudice incited them to regard as conspirators against the revolution.
♦Mutinies in the army.♦
Though troops of the line could be called out by municipalities to aid
in the enforcement of the Riot Act, their presence was in towns but an
additional cause of disorder. Class feeling was strongly pronounced
in the army, and the men turned upon their officers, accusing them of
extortion and oppression. All over the country, wherever regiments
were quartered, troops mutinied, demanding milder discipline and
higher pay, forming councils, seizing military chests, and compelling
officers to render account of the sums that passed through their hands.
These frequent mutinies alarmed men who closed their eyes to outrages
committed by peasants. Supported by a large majority in the Assembly,
the Marquis of Bouillé suppressed with heavy loss of life a serious
mutiny that broke out in a Swiss regiment, Châteauvieux, stationed at
Nancy (August 31). Reforms were afterwards effected both in army and
navy. The pay of the men was raised, and juries composed of both men
and officers instituted for the trial of military offences.
♦Schism in the Church.♦
The upper clergy, like the nobles, were alienated from the
revolution by the fusion of the three orders in one chamber, and by
the appropriation of Church property, and the civil constitution of
the clergy, were rendered irreconcilable enemies. They accused the
Assembly of seeking to destroy the Catholic religion, and denounced
the civil constitution as unlawful interference with matters of
Church government and discipline, which, as being matters of faith,
were beyond the cognisance of the state. But these attempts to excite
hostility against the Assembly had little success. The great body
of the nation had its interests far too closely bound up with the
revolution to be tempted into a crusade against it. The peasantry had
no quarrel with ecclesiastical changes which affected neither eyes nor
ears. The civil constitution itself did but reform the Church on the
basis laid down in the _cahiers_. It was only in the south where the
existence of Protestants excited religious rivalry, and the population
was most fanatic and intolerant, that the work of the Assembly met
with any serious resistance. At Perpignon, Tarn, Toulouse, and other
towns, the election of administrative bodies and the closing of the
monasteries gave rise to rioting and loss of life; while at Nimes,
where Protestants formed a third of the inhabitants, the streets for
three days ran with blood. Amongst the lower clergy there was small
disposition to follow the lead of their ecclesiastical superiors. The
state, which had appropriated church property, had improved their
material condition, and raised their position within the Church. Of
the monks, two-thirds elected to abandon monastic life. Nevertheless,
the arguments employed against recognition of the civil constitution
disturbed the minds of the curés, and the enforcement by the Assembly
of an oath as a condition for holding any benefice or office, placed
in the hands of the bishops, who had been driven by the loss of their
revenues into unappeasable hostility to the revolution, an arm of which
they were not slow to avail themselves, and by which they created a
schism within the Church (November 27). This oath engaged the taker
to be faithful to the nation, the law, and the King, and to maintain
the constitution. The object which the Assembly had in view was to
replace bishops who refused to take part in carrying out the new laws
by men attached to the revolution. The fact, however, that the oath
might be interpreted to imply acknowledgment of the lawfulness of
the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, the provisions of which were
inconsistent with the Papal system, was left out of account. The Pope
declared that those who had taken it were schismatics, and cut off from
communion with the Church. Passive acceptance of the civil constitution
was, therefore, no longer possible to the curés. Of 138 bishops and
archbishops only four took the oath, and two-thirds of the secular
clergy refused it. Many members of the regular orders, however, took
it, so that in the end about 60,000 ecclesiastics, or half of the
clergy of France, accepted the new arrangements.
By the imposition of this oath discord was aroused in every department.
The Assembly granted nonjurors a pension, and allowed them to
officiate in parish churches. The result was that in two-thirds of
the parishes of France there were two ministers, nominally of the
same persuasion, struggling, the one to gain, the other to maintain,
influence over the flock. The constitutional priest represented the
nonjuror, or former incumbent, as a plotter against the laws and the
constitution; the latter represented the intruder as a schismatic,
incapable of administering any sacrament, so that persons married or
children baptised by him were in reality neither married nor baptised.
Here nonjurors were regarded as enemies to the State; there the
constitutional clergy as enemies to religion; and whichever side
was the stronger proceeded to acts of violence against the other.
Generally, in the north of France, the nonjurors had comparatively
small influence; and it was only in certain provinces, where they had
the support of the peasantry--in Poitou, Auvergne, Alsace, and parts
of Artois, Franche-Comté, Champagne, Languedoc, and Bretagne--that any
large portion of the population exhibited zeal in their behalf.
Bold and radical reformers as the makers of the constitution proved
themselves, monarchical sentiment and distrust of the political
capacity of some million and a half of their countrymen had caused
them at times to shrink from carrying out fully Rousseau’s theory of
the sovereignty of the people. Hence, while their work was on one side
attacked by the party of reaction, on the other it was decried by the
extreme left, as being in contradiction to the principles which the
Assembly had itself proclaimed in the Declaration of Rights. Outside
the Assembly these views were even more strongly expressed. ♦Brissot.♦
One of the most noted journalists of the time, Brissot, combined
with ultra-democratic tendencies a firm belief in the advantages of
individual liberty, and was a zealous exponent of opinions subsequently
known as Girondist. His ideal form of government, which he aspired
to see established in France, was a democratic republic, where no
civil or political distinctions existed between man and man; where
habits of local government and obedience to the law allowed, without
detriment to public order, the action of the central government to
be barely visible; where principles of free trade, liberty of the
press, and religious toleration were carried systematically out; where
education, respect for labour, simple and virtuous habits of life
prevailed amongst all classes. On the ground that vice and corruption
readily found footing in large towns, Brissot was averse to the capital
exercising political ascendancy over the country. ‘Without private
morality,’ he said, ‘no public morality, no public spirit, and no
liberty.’ The goal here pointed out was truly Utopian as compared with
the actual condition of things in France. Nevertheless, Brissot was
credulous enough to believe that, owing to the beneficial influences
of general education and free institutions, its attainment would be
possible in the course of some twenty or thirty years.
♦Desmoulins.♦
In Camille Desmoulins the levelling principles of the revolution found
their ablest advocate. He belonged to the lower section of the middle
class; and, while speaking in the name of the people, gave expression
to the intense jealousy with which men in his position of life regarded
claims of property or of birth to political or social distinction.
Young, naive, and enthusiastic, Desmoulins was incapable of throwing
dust in his own eyes or in the eyes of others, and from the first
avowed that even the form of monarchical government was incompatible
with the principles that his party held. Since, however, the Assembly
ordained that France was to have a king, he expressed his readiness
to take off his hat when Louis passed by, but he refused to recognise
Marie Antoinette as Queen, and only made mention of her as the King’s
wife. Desmoulins was no precisian like Brissot, and did not concern
himself with the moral disposition of his fellow-countrymen. When
attacking men whom he designated as ‘reactionaries’ and ‘aristocrats,’
without heed of consequences, he made use of every arm which served
his end--irony, calumny, and gross exaggeration. The prevailing state
of anarchy he made light of. Rousseau had said that the people were by
nature merciful and forgiving, and his disciples palliated acts of
ferocity on the score of ignorance and misery. Was it to be expected,
Desmoulins asked, that after centuries of debasement liberty could be
obtained without a little blood-letting?
♦Marat.♦
Marat, a writer of a third type--called, after the title of his
journal, the ‘People’s Friend’--had no faith in any of the distinctive
principles of the time. He did not believe in the goodness of human
nature, nor in reason as the main lever by which to reconstitute
society and government, nor in the political capacity of his
countrymen, and was as ready to throw suspicion on the people’s
nominees as Brissot on the integrity of men put in office by the
King. He did not regard either commercial or individual liberty as
necessarily calculated to increase the happiness and prosperity of
the masses. The goal to which he pointed was a shadowy one of a
democratic state, where mediocrity ruled, and government provided that
the working-classes lacked neither labour nor bread. His means were
the re-establishment of absolute power and the use of force. Since
officials were corrupt, the upper classes seeking power merely for
selfish ends, the people ignorant and easily deceived, Marat proposed
to invest a dictator with authority to establish genuine equality by
crushing under foot the possessors of wealth and talent. As, however,
there appeared no probability of the adoption of this plan, he filled
the pages of his journal with incentives to murder and insurrection,
advising the people to secure their happiness by rising and killing
their enemies in a body. Some thousands of heads laid low, the true era
of freedom and prosperity would open.
♦Sources of influence of ultra-democrats.♦
Besides Brissot, Desmoulins, and Marat, there were a number of other
writers who in words declared their loyalty to the constitution,
while they excited discontent against it, called in question the
patriotism and good faith of all who did not agree with themselves,
and rendered harder the task of maintaining order. They had different
aims and different views of life, but on certain points they were
all agreed, and for the time the points of agreement alone came into
prominence. With one voice they cast bitter reproaches on the Assembly
for dividing Frenchmen into active and passive citizens, denying the
suffrage to the latter, and excluding them from the national guard.
So, again, they denounced the royal veto on decrees, on the ground
that it subjected the will of the sovereign people to the will of
the king. They condemned the Riot Act, and attacked the Assembly
whenever sanction was given to the employment of military force against
rioters. When the mutiny at Nancy was suppressed in blood, a loud
cry of indignation was raised against Lafayette and other deputies
who on that occasion abandoned the popular side. The ultra-democrats
formed undoubtedly but a minority of the population. The majority of
Frenchmen were content with the constitution, and had no desire to make
more radical changes than those already accomplished. Many causes,
however, enabled the ultra-democrats to exercise influence quite out
of proportion to their numerical strength. It was not merely that
the Government was weak, but also that there was no cohesion between
classes, and that there was no class capable of leading the nation by
obtaining its entire confidence. Suspicion of the nobles was so strong
that they were already nearly in the position of a proscribed class.
The bourgeoisie had not the habit even of administering local affairs,
and was itself regarded with suspicion by the class beneath it. The
people, both ignorant and discontented, regarded those men who were
for the time in office as responsible for their misery. If corn and
bread were dear, the municipal officer who would not lower their price
was denounced as an aristocrat, and his life was threatened. Men of
the middle class, engaged in professional and other pursuits, withdrew
in large numbers from political life. The ultra-democrats, active,
united, and unscrupulous, were therefore able, although a minority, to
put themselves forward as representatives of France, and gradually to
engross the direction of affairs in their own hands.
♦Influence exercised by Jacobin clubs.♦
In the National Assembly which represented France as it was in 1789,
the party did not, as has been seen, number more than from twenty to
thirty, but its weakness in the Assembly was fully atoned for by its
strength in the Jacobins. This society had developed into a political
organ which was none the less powerful because its authority was
not recognised by the laws. During 1790 and 1791 Jacobin clubs were
established in most provincial towns, and even in mere villages. They
were generally affiliated to the head or mother society at Paris, with
which they maintained a regular correspondence. Thus, at a time when
all other bonds of cohesion had been destroyed or had fallen away,
there was rising into existence over France, outside the constitution,
a network of authorities, directed from a common centre in Paris.
The clubs, in fact, perpetually interfered with the administrative
bodies, tendering advice which often assumed the form of dictation
or intimidation, and were always able, if they pleased, to get up
demonstrations in favour of their own views. They represented that
spirit of distrust which was everywhere felt and seemed to pervade the
very air men breathed; and if more moderate politicians disapproved
the violent language often used in them, and their assumptions of
administrative authority, they did not desire their suppression, for
the reason that their fear of danger from this source was less than
their fear of the triumph of reactionists and the undoing of the work
of the revolution.
In September 1790, the ministry had been dissolved in consequence of
attacks made on it by the Jacobins of Paris. Necker, painfully alive
to his loss of popularity, left the country unregretted (September),
and his colleagues, alarmed at the charges brought against them,
shortly afterwards resigned. Louis after this put men in office known
to be opposed to the restoration of the old order, but they possessed
as little influence on the Assembly as their predecessors. The right
refused them support, because they did not belong to the party of
reaction; and the left, because their attachment to the existing
constitution was called in question.
♦Commune of Paris.♦
Besides the Jacobin Club, other machinery existed at Paris by aid of
which the ultra-democrats were gradually paving the way for their
own advent to power. In September 1790, the commune of Paris was
reorganised in accordance with a special law, being divided into 48
sections, each of which had its primary assembly, composed of active
citizens. Out of a population of 800,000, 84,000 were entitled to vote.
Each of the 48 primary assemblies, commonly known as the sections, had
a permanent committee, whose business it was to execute the orders
of the municipality, and to carry out police regulations within the
section. The municipality itself, of which Bailly was re-elected mayor,
consisted of a general council of 96 and an executive of 44 members.
It did its best to maintain order and support the constitution. Its
position, however, was a difficult one. Work was scarce, crime rife,
the prisons crowded. Liberty of speech and of the press was on all
sides abused. There were no laws by which political agitation, though
it took the form of treason to the constitution, could be legally
suppressed. In the sections, owing to the withdrawal into private
life of men of moderate views, the ultra-democrats were often able to
obtain the upper hand. The permanent committees, in place of obeying
the municipality, sometimes disputed authority with it or took an
independent course of their own. All the 48 primary assemblies were
entitled to meet whenever eight of their number made the demand in
legal form. In the poorer sections agitators, by unceasing hostile
criticism, undermined amongst the lower classes the popularity of
the Assembly, of the municipality, of Lafayette, and of the national
guard. Amongst many popular clubs, founded in different parts of Paris,
the _Cordeliers_ south of the Seine acquired special notoriety. Here
presided Danton, an orator distinguished among his fellows by the zeal
and energy which he flung into the contest with the municipality.
♦Mirabeau’s policy and death.♦
As the revolution thus ran its course, and the ultra democratic
party, with the populace behind it, threatened by its activity and
unscrupulousness in time to make itself entire master of the political
arena, the stronger had become Mirabeau’s desire to enter the ministry
and direct the counsels of the King. From entrance into the council he
was, however, for the time hopelessly debarred. To nip his ambition in
the bud, Necker and his colleagues, shortly after the King’s arrival
in Paris, had instigated the Assembly to decree that no deputy should
be a minister. In the spring of 1790 the King and Queen were induced
to enter into secret communication with the great orator. He tendered
them advice in a written form, and the King in return for his services
made him monthly payments. But Mirabeau soon experienced that except in
trivial matters his advice was never followed. He demanded a far fuller
and more generous acceptance of the principles of the revolution than
it was possible for Louis to give. He accepted as absolute gain, both
for the King and the nation, the fall of the parliaments, the abolition
of privileges, the destruction of the orders of nobles and clergy,
and the freeing of land and labour. Unceasingly he urged and implored
Louis to win the confidence of the nation by turning his back wholly
on the past, and separating the cause of the crown from that of the
upper orders. ‘To accomplish a reaction,’ he wrote, ‘you must destroy
at a blow a whole generation or make blank the memories of twenty-five
millions of men.’ Mirabeau accepted also as the noblest fruits of the
revolution freedom of worship, freedom of the press, and the freedom
of the individual from arbitrary treatment in property and person. But
while detesting government that was arbitrary, or which went astray
through want of means to test public opinion, Mirabeau had little
faith in the wisdom of collective bodies of men, or in the political
intelligence of the middle and lower classes, of whom he believed that,
in the long run, the one would sell political liberty for order, the
other for bread. He, therefore, looked to the King to be the guide and
leader of the nation. His belief was that if only the existing barriers
of distrust were broken down, the middle-class, relieved from fear
of reaction in favour of the nobility and the Church, would readily
assent to the establishment of a strong executive and the repeal of
the decrees making administrative bodies independent of the central
government, and excluding ministers from the legislature. He had,
moreover, the penetration to see that the abolition of aristocratic
institutions, and the parcelling out of the country into equal
divisions, without historical traditions, were measures destructive of
variety and vigour in the national life, and thereby favourable to the
exercise of power by the crown. Unless the course that he advised were
followed he predicted the fall of the throne. ‘The mob,’ he repeatedly
said of the King and Queen, ‘will trample on their corpses.’ In despair
of getting the existing Assembly to repeal its decrees, Mirabeau
advised the King to quit Paris, and after doing all in his power to win
the middle-class to his side to make, if necessary, an appeal to arms.
While, however, he was urging such projects on Louis his naturally
strong constitution, overtaxed by his exertions, broke down, and he
died at the age of forty-two (April 2, 1791). It is wrong to regard
Mirabeau as having been false to his principles because he entered into
a pecuniary transaction with the King. He was a monarchist before 1789,
and he died one in 1791. But the low moral elevation of his character
vitiated his judgment, and increased the difficulties in his path.
By taking money of the King he was precluded from the possibility of
obtaining his confidence. Louis and Marie Antoinette never regarded him
otherwise than as a dangerous demagogue bought over. The distrust in
which his fellow deputies held him was not without justification. He
was quite unscrupulous as to what means he employed to gain his ends,
and did not hesitate to speak words in direct opposition to his real
opinion, nor to support measures which he deemed injurious, in order
to lower the Assembly in the opinion of the country, and increase the
possibility of bringing about a reaction in the royal favour. It is
difficult to doubt that his intense mortification at being excluded
from the ministry made him more ready to countenance the idea of civil
war.
Although long before his death ultra-democrats had accused Mirabeau of
playing a double game, they could not prove the truth of their words,
and to the last the great orator retained his popularity amongst the
people. His remains were interred in the Panthéon, a large church lately
built on the south side of the Seine, which the Assembly had reserved
for the special burial-place of Frenchmen who by their services had
won the honour and gratitude of their country. A vast crowd formed his
funeral procession. A lady, annoyed by the dust, complained of the
municipality for neglecting to water the boulevard. ‘Madam,’ replied a
fishwoman, ‘they reckoned on our tears.’ Whether true or not, the story
bears witness to the feelings of the time.
♦Position of Constitutionalists.♦
When Mirabeau died a significant change of temper was drawing over the
Assembly. As the framers of the constitution approached its completion
the truth began to press home on them that its stability was imperilled
by the continuance of disorder. They saw taxes refused, administrative
bodies pursuing whatever course was right in their own eyes, peasants
pillaging corn, street mobs persecuting nonjurors, soldiers refusing
obedience to officers, their own popularity waning, clubs usurping
authority, ultra-democratic journals discrediting the constitution,
and incessantly urging on the people the duty of insurrection. Now
that a free constitution was established, and reform effected in every
branch of the public service, justification for this state of things
from their point of view vanished. Lafayette, Barnave, the Lameths, and
other deputies of the left, who in 1790 had purposely sought to render
the executive weak, in 1791 began to fear lest they had overshot their
mark. Yet for them to change their course was no easy matter. They
still sought for popular support, and clung to the principles on which
the constitution of which they had themselves been the authors was
based. Fear of reaction, moreover, still weighed heavily on them. The
reactionary press, in coarse and violent language condemned the entire
work of the Assembly, and threatened with the axe or the gallows
all who from the opening of the States had at any time given support
to revolutionary principles. Such threats were not without meaning
at a time when emigrants were collecting in armed bands at Basel and
Coblentz, threatening invasion; and the King’s brother, the Count of
Artois, was calling on foreign powers to restore by force of arms the
authority of the throne.
The primary assemblies for the election of the constitutional
legislature were already meeting, when an event took place which
brought into clearer light the relations existing between all parties.