THE COMMUNE AND THE TERROR.
The fall of the Girondists was the necessary result of their
unfitness to govern France in the midst of war and revolution.
The constitutionalists had been overthrown, because they refused
to recognise that Louis desired the triumph of the invaders. The
Girondists were overthrown because they refused to recognise the
insurrection of August 10 under its real aspect. After that event
it was inevitable that France should for a time be governed by the
minority which, aided by the populace, had swept away the throne
of the weak and incapable King. Not only had the people of France
no attachment to a republican form of government, and therefore no
readiness to move forward actively in support of the Girondists against
the Mountain; but also the great majority of the population, through
dread of reaction in favour of the privileged classes, had no will or
policy of their own. The Girondists had been incapable of evolving a
policy which could rouse enthusiasm in their cause or give confidence
in their guidance. Their ideal republic was fitted for some ideal
nation, not for the French people, torn by factions and involved in war
with half Europe. Yet it was all they had to offer to France, and hence
it happened that when the Commune of Paris rose against them, not an
arm had been raised in their behalf.
If, however, the Girondists had failed in solving the problem of giving
France a government, their ejection from the Convention was none the
less a catastrophe, fraught with most evil consequences. They had put
themselves forward as representatives not merely of the departments
against Paris, but also of principles of individual liberty, of
justice, and of humanity. The Montagnards used the same words, but
meant by them very different things. By the sovereignty of the people
they meant the domination of their own party; by justice and humanity
the sacrifice of the opponents of their own ideas. ‘Others have
sought,’ Vergniaud had said in one of his finest speeches, ‘to complete
the revolution by aid of terror; I would have wished to complete it by
aid of love.’
♦Submission of the Departments.♦
Though in the departments there was no popular movement in favour of
the Girondists, yet they had more supporters there than in the capital.
In Paris all authorities, with the exception of the Convention, were
on the side of the conspirators. In the departments the administrative
bodies, which had all been re-elected since the autumn, resembled
closely in constitution the Convention itself. As a rule, in these
bodies supporters of the Girondists were in a majority, supporters
of the Mountain in a minority. In more than sixty departments
administrative bodies contested the authority of the Convention, and
threatened to resort to arms in favour of the expelled deputies. The
chief centres of resistance were, in the north-west, Rennes and Caen;
in the south-west, Bordeaux. The danger of a general insurrection
seemed greater, owing to the fact that royalists at the same time
were raising the standard of revolt. In the important industrial town
of Lyons they gained the entire direction of affairs. The leaders
of the Jacobins were put to death, and active preparations were
taken to resist by force the authority of the Convention. At Toulon
like dispositions were manifested and the same course was pursued.
In the departments of Ardéche and Lozère royalist conspirators had
already been in arms before the expulsion of the Girondists; while
in La Vendée and Deux Sèvres the peasants since March were in open
rebellion. The task, however, of quelling resistance under these
circumstances was, in reality, less formidable than at first sight
appeared. There could be no alliance between royalist and Girondist
insurgents, and the mere fact that royalists were in arms increased
the reluctance of the population to dispute the authority of the
mutilated Convention. Hence the opposition raised by the supporters
of the Girondists was vacillating and weak. The administrative bodies
could not rely on any class for hearty support. Even amongst the
proscribed deputies themselves union was wanting. While some fled to
Normandy, others remained in Paris, prepared to suffer whatever fate
awaited them rather than bring upon themselves the guilt of exciting
civil war. On the other side, the party victorious in Paris was for
the time thoroughly united, and acted with caution and decision. The
Committee of Public Safety, under Danton’s guidance, sought to pursue
a policy of conciliation, and the supporters of the Commune, aware of
the insecurity of their position, held themselves under restraint.
The charge of socialism and tyranny made by the Girondists was
repudiated by the adoption of a new constitution, based upon individual
liberty and democratic principles. There was indeed not the smallest
intention of putting this constitution in force, but its promulgation
held out promise to the country of a speedy return to normal modes
of government. The phrase ‘The Republic, one and indivisible,’ was
adopted by the Montagnards to signify the national cause, while they
accused the Girondists of seeking to destroy the possibility of defence
against the foreigner by the establishment of a loosely organised
federal state, and even of being in alliance with the enemy, and of
seeking to betray France to England. In the course of a few weeks the
administrative authorities abandoned the attitude of even passive
resistance against the Convention. A few hundred men advancing from
Caen to Paris were defeated at Vernon on the Seine. Bordeaux, starved
out, surrendered at discretion, and thus before the end of August there
were none but royalists who continued to contest the authority of the
Convention.
♦War in La Vendée.♦
The danger of the situation, nevertheless, remained great. The
royalists, both in Lyons and Toulon, held out, and the rebellion in
La Vendée became more formidable every day. In this department the
destructive tendencies dominant in other parts of France were tempered
by strong conservative instincts. No violent feeling of antagonism
existed between nobles and peasants. The nobles lived at home and came
into personal contact with the tenant-farmers. The country was wholly
agricultural; there were few towns and no industries. The peasants,
excessively credulous and superstitious, were easily led by their
priests, and were ready to hazard the loss of whatever advantages the
revolution brought them for the sake of keeping their faith intact.
The attempt to deprive them of the priests to whom they were attached
first rendered them hostile to the revolution. The attempt to carry
out the forced levy of soldiers decreed in March was the immediate
cause of insurrection. For the republic they had no sympathy, and
refused to leave their homes to fight in its defence. A general rising
took place, extending over the whole of La Vendée and part of Deux
Sèvres. The Government, compelled to send every available soldier to
the frontier, was quite unable to cope with the insurgents. Raw and
undisciplined levies, hastily brought together in the neighbouring
departments, were no match for them. The character of the country
was that of an almost impregnable fortress. The interior, called the
Bocage, was hilly, thickly wooded, and intersected by small streams
flowing at the bottom of steep ravines. The villages lay far apart.
Roads and lanes, often impassable for wheels, ran a tortuous course up
and down-hill, between high hedges and forests of furze and broom. On
the sea-coast the country, though flat, was readily defended, being
marshy and cut up by wide ditches. A large portion of the population
were poachers and smugglers, who were skilled marksmen, and the very
men to carry on the guerilla warfare which now arose in every part of
a country so inaccessible to the regular soldier. Defeat told heavily
on the republicans, who lost stores and ammunition, missed their way in
flight, and were cut down one by one by the peasantry. The Vendeans, on
the other hand, if the enemy withstood their first onset, disappeared
by tracks known only to themselves, and returned to their farms and
ploughs, prepared to resume the contest on a more favourable occasion.
In the conduct of a war of this description there was naturally
little method. The insurgent bands sought out the nobles and put them
at their head. The stream of the Sèvre Nantaise divided the country
into two parts, and the leaders on the two sides of the river rarely
attempted concerted action. In the lower district Charette, a noble,
exercised the chief authority. In the upper, two nobles, De Lescure and
Bonchamps, and two peasants, Stofflet and Cathelineau, commanded.
Repeated successes were won by the Vendeans, who fought with all the
ardour inspired by religious enthusiasm, and were ready to follow
their leaders to the death. Priests, always present with the armies,
stimulated their courage, promising to those who fell immediate
entrance into Paradise. One after another the towns lying on the edge
of the disturbed country fell into the insurgents’ possession. In
June Saumur was captured, giving them the passage of a bridge across
the Loire. Cathelineau crossed to the right bank, entered Angers, and
marched against Nantes; while Charette, in Lower Vendée, agreed to
open an attack on the same place from the south. But the peasants,
whose custom it was to disperse after a few days’ service, had neither
inclination nor heart for an expedition directed against a distant
town. Many of those who followed Cathelineau deserted on the way.
Nantes was bravely defended, and the assault repelled (June 29).
Cathelineau received a mortal wound. Charette, south of the Loire,
failed to get possession of the bridge across the river, and the
Vendeans on the north bank dispersed, returning by boats to their own
country.
♦Objects pursued by the Allies.♦
While the Vendeans triumphed in the west, in the east the allies were
victorious. The armies of Coburg and Brunswick mustered 250,000 men.
After the re-conquest of Belgium, Coburg laid siege to the French
fortresses of Condé and Valenciennes. These surrendered in July. About
the same time Mainz was retaken by Brunswick, and had the two generals
advanced, the one from the Scheldt, the other from the Rhine, there was
every probability of their making themselves masters of the capital,
and with the capital, of France. The opportunity, however, was let
slip. The powers had their own separate objects in view, and cared more
for attaining them than for suppressing the revolution.
England designed to extend her maritime dominion and her trade by the
conquest of French colonies and the destruction of the French marine.
A body of English and Hanoverian troops was sent under the Duke of
York to help the Austrians to capture French border fortresses,
and especially to gain possession of the port of Dunkirk, where
the existence of a French naval station had always been an object
of jealousy to English statesmen. The alliance between Austria and
Prussia was fast breaking down. Austria had given her consent to the
acquisition of Polish provinces by Prussia. Prussia, on her side, had
undertaken to support the Austrian plan of exchanging Belgium for
Bavaria. Neither power, however, acted openly or honourably towards the
other. Prussia secretly encouraged opposition to the plan of exchange.
Austria urged Russia to cut Prussia’s share of Poland down to the
smallest possible portion, and to delay her entering into possession of
it. This state of tension was increased when the second partition of
Poland was actually carried out in March and April. In consequence a
change of ministry took place at Vienna. The supporters of the Prussian
alliance were dismissed from office, and Baron Thugut was entrusted
by the Emperor with the sole direction of foreign affairs. It was the
aim of Thugut’s ambition to give to Austria a dominant position on
the continent. The Prussian alliance he regarded in the light of an
impediment to the accomplishment of his schemes, since Prussia was
Austria’s rival in Germany and jealous of Austrian aggrandisement. For
the time he let drop the idea of exchanging Belgium for Bavaria. That
plan could not be carried out without the co-operation of Prussia, and
the chances of Prussia’s co-operation decreased in proportion as she
laid firmer hold on her new acquisitions in Poland. England, moreover,
was unwilling to see Belgium passing out of the Emperor’s possession,
and Thugut was eager to secure the friendship of England, in order
the more effectually to keep Prussia in check. He held it, therefore,
the surer policy to leave the plan in abeyance, and meanwhile to make
conquest of French territory, more especially of Alsace and Lorraine,
which provinces at the making of peace might be disposed of as appeared
most consonant to Austrian interests. The idea of attempting to reach
Paris was, accordingly, not entertained with favour by any of the
powers. England and Austria both wished to operate on the French
frontier, while Prussia did not care to engage deeply in hostilities in
the west while affairs in Poland remained unsettled. It was, besides,
the belief both of generals and diplomatists, that the strife of
factions within France must result in the collapse of all government,
and that in the following year a march to Paris could be effected
without difficulty.
♦Murder of Marat.♦
But while the allies besieged fortresses in Flanders, and operations
lagged on the Rhine, immense exertions were being made within France to
increase the size of the armies, and an iron despotism was established
which placed all the resources of the country at the disposition
of the Government. As the departments one after another submitted,
deputies from the Convention were sent into them to bring them the
more completely under the control of the party which had secured
ascendancy in Paris by the insurrection of June 2 (p. 155). Men who
had espoused the cause of the proscribed deputies were excluded from
office, and were expelled from the clubs, which from this time were
only frequented by ardent supporters of the Mountain. The body of the
population watched the establishment of a ruthless tyranny in their
midst without attempting resistance. The will and the union requisite
for action were both lacking, and the few who dared either by act or
word to venture opposition to the emissaries of the Mountain or of the
Commune of Paris, paid the penalty by loss of liberty if not of life.
Amongst those who had placed faith in the Girondists and their ideals
was a young woman of Normandy, Charlotte Corday. Like them, she had
dreamed of the establishment of a republic founded on the political
virtue and intelligence of the people; and when the mob of Paris rose
and drove with insult from the Convention those who in her eyes were
the heroic defenders of the universal principles of truth and justice,
she bitterly resented the wrong that had been done not only to the men
themselves, but to that France of which she regarded them as the true
representatives. Owing to Marat’s persistent cry for a dictatorship and
for shedding of blood, it was he who, in the departments, was accounted
especially responsible both for the expulsion of the Girondists and
for the tyranny which now began to weigh as heavily upon the whole
country as it had long weighed upon the capital. Incapable as all then
were of comprehending the causes which had brought about the fall of
the Girondists, Charlotte Corday imagined that by putting an end to
this man’s life, she could also put an end to the system of government
which he advocated. Informing her friends that she wished to visit
England, she left Caen and travelled in the diligence to Paris. On
her arrival she purchased a knife, and afterwards obtained entrance
into Marat’s house on the pretext that she brought news which she
desired to communicate to him. She knew that he would be eager to
obtain intelligence of the movements of the Girondist deputies still
in Normandy. Marat was ill at the time, and in a bath when Charlotte
Corday was admitted. She gave him the names of the deputies who were
at Caen. ‘In a few days,’ he said, as he wrote them hastily down, ‘I
will have them all guillotined in Paris.’ As she heard these words she
plunged the knife into his body and killed him on the spot (July 13).
The cry uttered by the murdered man was heard, and Charlotte, who did
not attempt to escape, was captured and conveyed to prison amid the
murmurs of an angry crowd. It had been from the first her intention to
sacrifice her life for the cause of her country, and glorying in her
deed, she met death with stoical indifference. ‘I killed one man,’ she
said, when brought before the revolutionary court, ‘in order to save
the lives of 100,000 others.’
♦Sanguinary tendencies of the Government.♦
Thus perished by the hands of an assassin the man who, since the
revolution began, had persistently maintained that assassination was
a justifiable mode for the accomplishment of political ends. His
murder brought about contrary results to those which the woman who
ignorantly and rashly had flung away her life, hoped by the sacrifice
to effect. Marat had not been the creator of the circumstances which
enabled him to exert influence, and there was no lack of men equally
sanguinary, and equally fanatic, ready to usurp the place left vacant
by his death. He was regarded as a martyr by no small portion of the
working population of Paris. The influence which he had exerted over
them was in reality due, not so much to his exhortations to massacre,
as to the fact that amongst the many writers who had put themselves
forward as the spokesmen of the lower orders, he alone had truly at
heart the destruction of the existing material misery. His murder
excited indignation beyond the comparatively narrow circle of those
who took an active part in political life, while at the same time it
added a new impulse to the growing cry for blood. After the expulsion
of the Girondists, power drifted more and more into the hands of those
who were most violent in language, and who were prepared to be most
violent in act. The more moderate section of the Mountain, composed of
Dantonists and seceders from the Plain, rapidly lost influence. They
were without means by which to exert control over their colleagues,
and were driven to use exaggerated and sanguinary language in order
to escape the charge of being themselves bad patriots and secret
supporters of royalists and federalists. The deputies forming the right
and centre of the Convention kept silence, or ceased to appear in their
seats. The nation remained passive, incapable of resistance. Every day
the Government displayed a more and more ferocious character. It was
cruel, because it was weak in the sense that it had little material
force on which it could rely for support, if its authority were once
disputed. It was cruel also, because it was resolute and fanatic,
determined to maintain itself at whatever cost, and at the same time
under the influence of theories and ideas which could not be carried
into practice except by resort to despotic means and by the destruction
of individual as well as of political liberty.
♦Disorganisation of Government.♦
Despotic as it was, the Government was also exceedingly disorganised,
and this cause rendered it the more sanguinary and aggressive. It
consisted of a number of separate and independent authorities, each
striving for mastery. They were composed in part of the same men, but
in part also of men whose characters, ideas, and aims were often at
variance with each other. The Convention, the Jacobins, the Deputies
in mission, the Committees of Public Safety and General Security,
now commonly called the two Committees of Government, and finally
the Commune of Paris, directed between them the affairs of France.
Of all these authorities the Convention, nominally representative
of France, was the weakest. It had lost the respect alike of the
country and of the populace of Paris, which had so often converted
it into its tool. The contempt in which it was held reacted on the
position of the Mountain, which after the expulsion of the Girondists
was powerless to adopt any measures that gave offence either to the
Commune of Paris or to the Committee of Public Safety, and was equally
powerless to reject measures which either of these bodies desired that
it should adopt. The authority once possessed by the Convention was
now transferred to the Committee of Public Safety, which continued
to gather strength in proportion as the Mountain grew weaker. At
first composed of Dantonists and seceders from the Plain, it became
converted into the organ of the extreme faction which had urged on
the insurrection against the Girondists. In July, Robespierre entered
it with two adherents--Couthon and St. Just. In September were added
Billaud-Varennes and Collot d’Herbois, who were allied with the leaders
of the Commune. On special occasions this Committee consulted in
common with the Committee of General Security, which, however, always
occupied a position subordinate to it. It was now composed of twelve
members, but the five men just named were those who directed the
general action of the Government. In the persons of Robespierre and his
supporters the Committee represented the Jacobins; in the persons of
Billaud and Collot it represented the Commune; and so complete did the
subserviency of the Montagnards become, that although the Committee was
legally subject to re-election every month, they never dared to avail
themselves of this opportunity for naming fresh members in the place of
those who had made themselves their masters.
♦The Commune of Paris.♦
By the side of the Committee of Public Safety, the Commune of Paris
occupied an independent position. Although nominally merely the body
administering the affairs of the capital, it in reality took the lead
in directing the general affairs of France. After it had accomplished
the insurrection against the Girondists, it was the strongest power
in Paris. It had armed bands of ruffians in its pay; the national
guard was under its orders; the revolutionary and civil committees of
the sections were its tools; and, for the time, it had the support of
the populace, which it supplied with bread. The Committee of Public
Safety dared as little as the Mountain risk collision with it. It
forced its supporters into the government offices; sent agents into the
departments; exerted influence over deputies in mission, and compelled
the Convention to appoint ministers and generals of its selection, and
to make laws in accordance with its wishes.
The action of the Commune had for long been mainly directed by two men,
Chaumette and Hébert. They had both been members of the insurrectionary
Commune which had driven Louis from the Tuileries in 1792, and after
its re-election had been ordered by the Convention in the autumn of
the same year, they had reappeared at the Hôtel de Ville, where they
filled the influential position of law officers to the new Commune,
which was made up in part of the same men, and was animated by the
same spirit as its predecessor. Their ascendancy was now signalised
by an extraordinary outburst of cruelty and fanaticism. Not content
with the abolition of political and civil distinctions between man and
man, they sought to destroy all superiorities and to put men socially
and intellectually on the same level. The superiority of wealth was
a special object of their attack. Capitalists, bankers, speculators,
large landowners, were by them and their followers classed along with
federalists, Girondists, nobles, priests, and royalists, as enemies to
the republic. Intellectual superiority and culture became a crime in
their possessors. Equality, in short, was to be produced not by the
raising of the lower, but by the degradation of the higher. If Hébert
demanded the establishment of a primary school in every village, he was
actuated not so much by a regard for the moral and intellectual results
of education as by the wish to make the working classes independent of
the upper. Higher education, more especially classical education, was
decried. Valuable books, statues, and works of art which bore trace
of having been produced under the monarchy, were wantonly destroyed.
Ignorance and rags were put forward as in themselves giving a claim to
respect, and the term ‘sans-culotte,’ ‘the breechless’ (applied to the
poor from their wearing trowsers in place of knee-breeches), was held
synonymous with that of ‘patriot.’ The words ‘Monsieur’ and ‘Madame’
were replaced by ‘citoyen’ and ‘citoyenne,’ and an untidy dress, a
rough manner, and rude language were adopted as symbols of a patriotic
spirit.
Despite the violence and brutality of which they were guilty, neither
the leaders of the Commune, nor yet many of those who followed in
their track or spurred them on, were without enlightened ideas. The
humane philosophy of the century had left its impression, though
it might be but a superficial one, on the hardest and most selfish
natures. Thus, while they sought by terror to destroy the existing
bases of society, Chaumette and Hébert sought also to figure in the
light of philanthropists and guardians of public morality. Acting under
their impulse, the Commune brought forward projects for the reform of
youthful criminals, and for the alleviation of the sufferings of the
sick in hospitals, as well as others of like character, and incessantly
urged on the Convention the suppression of state lotteries, by which
the poor were led to gamble away their sous. Even at their best,
however, the members of the Commune were mainly actuated by personal
motives. They sought to obtain some moral support to their position,
without which it would in the end be impossible for them to retain
power for long. Of their philanthropic schemes, moreover, very few
were carried out in practice. It was the inevitable result of the
conditions under which the Commune had grasped authority, that the
better men should be thrust into the background by the more selfish
and more unscrupulous. Thus Chaumette by the side of Hébert soon sank
into comparative insignificance. For while Chaumette cared for the
accomplishment of ideal aims, Hébert cared alone for the retention
of power by himself, and was entirely indifferent as to the means by
which he secured this end. He was a coarse and low-minded adventurer.
Before the revolution he had been dismissed from an inferior office at
a theatre for dishonest practices. After the revolution began, he had
sought notoriety by the publication of a paper, _Le Père Duchesne_,
written in language coarse even for that time, and advocating atheism.
Around him and the Commune now rallied all the worst ruffians and
scoundrels in Paris. Assassins were appointed to the command of armed
forces, and thieves and rogues were placed on civil and revolutionary
committees which had at their disposition the property and liberty
of their fellow-citizens. In short, so far as the administration was
concerned, the prevailing characteristics of the rule of the Commune
under Hébert’s leadership were anarchy and licence.
♦The Conscription.♦
All authorities were equally interested in preserving France from
invasion, and all concurred in making exertions to put soldiers in the
field, and to provide them with the necessary arms and supplies. The
Convention had at once to find forces to besiege the still revolted
towns of Lyons and Toulon, to suppress the rebellious Vendeans in
the east, to fight the Spaniards in the Pyrenees, the Piedmontese
in the Alps, the English and Austrians in the Netherlands, and the
Austrians and the Prussians on the Rhine. None of the usual motives
which cause men to shrink from adopting extraordinary measures were
felt by the existing rulers of France. To recruit the armies, they
resorted to a conscription. All citizens between the ages of eighteen
and twenty-five were called on to serve in person. Urged on by the
Commune, the Convention further decreed a levy of the whole male
population capable of bearing arms (August 23). Such a measure was of
course impracticable, but it enabled the deputies in mission to bring
together large bodies of men to act against Lyons and Toulon, and to
hold in check the insurgent Vendeans.
♦Maximum laws.♦
Between July and October laws were passed fixing prices and carrying
out the economical system long since demanded in the streets. A small
minority, however, alone of those who were willing to adopt them,
regarded them as economically good. Their framers had in reality
ulterior objects in view. The Hébertists desired to ruin the upper
commercial classes. The Montagnards, as a body, hoped to avert a State
bankruptcy by maintaining the value of the assignats in spite of new
issues, and to provide for the armies by putting at the disposition of
the Government the entire resources of the country--its revenue, its
capital, its stock, and its labour. In the spring a decree had been
passed fixing a maximum price for corn, but variable in the different
departments (p. 152). A maximum price for corn and meal was now fixed
without variation for the whole republic. Neither article might be
sold except at fairs and markets, and the trade in both was put under
the supervision of the municipal bodies. Nearly all articles of
consumption, many manufactured articles, and most raw materials, were
also subjected to a maximum price, which was fixed in each department
at the price that the article sold at in 1790, with the addition of a
third as much again (September 17). In order to prevent wholesale or
retail dealers from keeping back goods from sale, they were required
to expose over their shop doors a list of all articles that they had
in stock, and even private individuals were prohibited from laying in
stores. The practice of supplying the army through contractors was
entirely abandoned. Corn, cloth, butter, flour, meat, fodder, cattle,
carts, horses, vessels, and, in a word, all raw materials, manufactured
articles, or live stock immediately or remotely connected with the
service of the armies, were put in requisition, which meant that their
owners were compelled to sell to the Government at the maximum price,
and to take in payment assignats at their nominal value. Exactly the
same course was pursued with regard to labour. A maximum was fixed for
wages, the most the workman might demand being the wage he received in
1790, with the addition of half as much again. Workmen, like goods,
were then put in requisition, and employed by thousands in making of
arms, building of ships, repairing of roads, and other services of
the same character. In every transaction the State thus gained at the
expense of individuals, since the assignats, in which all payments were
made, were now worth only 33 per cent. of their nominal value.
Together with the requisition and maximum laws were passed others,
which had for their direct object the suppression of speculation on the
fluctuation in prices and in the value of the paper money. Capitalists,
bankers, merchants engaged in foreign commerce, and speculators of
every description, were denounced as aristocrats and enemies of
their country, and in order the more effectually to suppress their
transactions, the idea was entertained of breaking off commercial
and financial relations between France and foreign countries. It
was rendered a capital offence to refuse to accept assignats in
payment of goods, or to offer or accept a higher price in them than
in metal money. Financial and commercial companies were dissolved.
The investment of capital in foreign countries was prohibited, the
Exchange closed, the export of nearly all articles of French growth
and manufacture forbidden, and the mere possession of articles grown
or manufactured in Great Britain declared a crime. All the laws here
described were enforced by fines, confiscations, the prison, and the
guillotine. They succeeded in their immediate end. Wherever buying
and selling went on in public the paper money was taken at par, and
the Government was able to go on incessantly increasing the number of
notes in circulation without meeting a corresponding rise in prices.
But this result was only obtained at the cost of the destruction of
private enterprise, the ruin of hundreds of traders and manufacturers,
a lavish waste of the capital of the country, and the infliction of
an enormous amount of suffering. Little foreign trade remained except
what the Government itself carried on, and the only manufactures which
flourished were those of arms and war material. Trade and agriculture
became the most dangerous occupations in which it was possible to
engage.
From a variety of motives all who could pressed into the service of the
State. It was the one means of avoiding the proscription, the surest
means of avoiding imprisonment, the surest means of acquiring wealth.
The Government offices were flooded with incapable clerks. Municipal
officers and administrators, charged with the care and sale of national
property, had abundant opportunities of benefiting themselves and their
relatives at the expense of the State. The multitude of agents who
were employed in making requisitions for the army could, with small
danger of exposure, enrich themselves by extortion and by breach of the
maximum laws.
♦Formation of a revolutionary army.♦
The maximum laws prevented prices from rising in the open market,
but they could not assure abundance. It was possible to search a
tradesman’s cellars, and to force him to offer his existing stock of
goods for sale at a definite price; but it was impossible to make him
continue to carry on his trade at a loss to himself. It was easier
for the farmer than for the tradesman to break the law; but this did
not benefit the inhabitants of towns. The farmer would often choose
to risk his head by concealing his corn or by sending it out of the
country, sooner than send it to Paris or any other large town, where
the maximum law was most rigidly enforced, and its breach attended
with greatest danger to himself. Since the spring the Commune had
been compelled to take upon itself the entire task of providing for
the city’s consumption of bread. Its agents went into the surrounding
departments and purchased all the corn and meal they could obtain,
often giving a higher price than that prescribed by the law; but it was
nevertheless only with extreme difficulty that the necessary provision
was made. In order to maintain popularity with the working classes,
the Commune was, however, compelled to provide that the daily supply
of bread did not fail. It was compelled also to give satisfaction to
that idle and ruffianly portion of the population by aid of which it
was enabled to impose its will upon the Convention and the Committee
of Public Safety. At the demand of the Commune the Convention passed
a law declaring that Paris, like the armies, should be supplied by
requisitions, and ordering the formation of a special paid force, or
so-called ‘revolutionary army,’ of 7,000 men, which was to go into the
departments and compel farmers to part with their corn at the maximum
price. By these means the Commune obtained command of a new force, and
found means of living for the destitute thieves and beggars with whom
the city swarmed. This army was simply a horde of villains, let loose
upon the neighbouring departments, who went from village to village,
plundering, imprisoning, and torturing the inhabitants. Meanwhile,
scarcity increased at Paris to such an extent that to put an end to the
crowding at the bakers’ doors, the Commune ordered that tickets should
be issued by the sections, specifying the number of loaves that each
family in the city was to be suffered to have for its daily consumption.
♦Law of ‘suspected persons.’♦
The maximum laws increased the already large number of those placed
by the Mountain, the Jacobins, and the Commune outside the pale of
citizenship. The farmer, forced to part with his corn at the maximum
price, would henceforth be suspected of ill-will towards the republic,
as much as the speculator, the merchant, and the contractor for the
armies, who, while freedom of contract had prevailed, had made large
profits at the cost either of individuals or of the State. It was,
in fact, impossible that the economical system established by the
laws described should be accepted except through fear alone. The
self-interest of too many thousands operated in the contrary direction.
The very artisan, who thought it fair that the farmer should be forced
to sell his produce at maximum prices, strove, whenever opportunity
occurred, to obtain higher wages than those which the law allotted to
him. As the number of their enemies increased, the Hébertists, aware
of increased danger to themselves, grew fiercer and more sanguinary
in word and act. ‘To be safe,’ said Hébert, ‘you must kill all.’ If
once nobles, royalists, seigneurs, had been the enemies of France,
now Girondists, federalists, speculators, breakers of maximum laws
were placed in the same class. Urged on by the Commune, the Convention
passed a vaguely-worded law empowering the revolutionary committees
throughout France to imprison all nobles, relations of emigrants,
federalists, and other persons ‘suspected’ of ill-will towards the
Republic (September 17). To carry out literally Hébert’s advice, and
kill all such, was impracticable. But it was possible to diffuse
terror on every side, by casting into prison every man and woman who,
by their conduct or even by their looks, expressed disapproval of the
existing order, and by taking the lives of all those who bore names
in any way representative of the past. At the beginning of September
the number of prisoners in Paris was about 1,500; by the end of October
it had risen to 3,000. Deputies could neither be imprisoned nor be
sent before the revolutionary court without the authorisation of
the Convention. Their security was, however, slight. Ever since the
expulsion of the leading Girondists, the imprisonment, now of one,
now of another of their followers had been decreed, so that the right
side was gradually being destroyed. The final blow was given when, on
the demand of the Committee of General Security, the Convention sent
before the revolutionary court twenty-one deputies of the right, and
also the man who had once been known as the Duke of Orleans, but who
now sat in the ranks of the Mountain and styled himself Philip Egalité.
At the same time the Convention ordered the arrest of more than forty
other deputies who had signed protests against the proceedings of June
2 (October 3). The judges and jurymen of the revolutionary court, like
all authorities elected at Paris, were the tools or accomplices of the
Commune and of the Committees of Government. The public prosecutor,
Fouquier Tinville, acted under the instructions of the Committee
of Public Safety. Hitherto the Court had observed the forms of its
institution. Witnesses were called on both sides, and the defence was
fully heard. Between March and October the Court had sentenced to death
sixty-nine persons and acquitted ninety-two. But from this time forms
were less and less regarded, while the number of condemnations rose to
more than sixty a month. The guillotine stood permanently on the Place
de la Révolution.
♦Execution of the Queen.♦
The life of the captive Queen had long been sought for by the
Hébertists. Since the fall of the throne she had been shut off from
all communication with the outer world. She had seen her husband
leave her to die on the scaffold, and her young son had since been
torn from her arms, on the pretext that if he were left with her she
would bring him up to be a tyrant. Her gaolers, whatever their feelings
might be, dared not show her the smallest sign of sympathy. She was
informed of the fate that awaited her by her removal from the Temple
to the Conciergerie, a prison situated on the island in the Seine,
close to the Palais de Justice, where the Revolutionary Court, as
well as other Courts of Justice, sat. When brought before the Court
she replied with firmness to the accusations made against her, and by
her composed and dignified bearing won murmurs of applause from the
hostile crowd, which had gathered to witness how the once haughty Queen
would endure degradation and ignominy. Like other condemned persons,
Marie Antoinette was taken from the Conciergerie to the Place de la
Révolution, seated in a common cart with her arms tied behind her.
History can have little to say in praise of a Queen whose conduct,
during her years of prosperity, had done much to cause that general
disorganisation of society and government, in the midst of which she
perished amongst so many other victims, of whom many had striven for
higher objects, and of whom many were more innocent than herself. But
by her brave endurance of adversity, and the noble and resigned manner
in which she met death, she, like others, atoned for past errors, and
won for her memory respect and sympathy (October 16).
♦Execution of the Girondists.♦
Twenty-one deputies of the right soon followed the Queen to the
scaffold. Amongst them were nine of those deputies whose arrest had
been ordered on June 2, including Vergniaud, Brissot, and Gensonné.
Their trial was cut short through fear lest if they were allowed to
plead their cause they would gain the sympathy of the eager and
excited audience with which the Court was thronged. On their way from
the Conciergerie to the Place de la Révolution they sang together the
already famous song, the Marseillaise, beginning,--
Allons, enfants de la patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé.
After their arrival at the scaffold the song was continued, while each
in turn received the blow of the fatal knife, and did not cease until
the head of the last had fallen.
From this time a number of victims, some distinguished, others obscure,
belonging to all parties, went every week to end their lives at the
Place de la Révolution. Amongst them were the late King’s sister,
the gentle and pious Madame Elizabeth; the former Mayor of Paris,
the grey-haired Bailly; the youthful Barnave, Mirabeau’s rival for
popularity in the Constituent Assembly; Philip Egalité, who could not
atone for the crime of his birth, although he had voted for the death
of Louis; and Madame Roland, the friend and inspirer of the Girondists,
condemned for plotting against the unity and indivisibility of the
republic. Her husband, the former Minister of the Interior, who had
been in hiding at Rouen, was found lying in a field, stabbed to death
by his own hand, soon after the news of her condemnation reached him.
♦Worship of Reason.♦
Those who were prepared to shed blood like water, and had, in their own
words, put terror on the order of the day, recognised no limitations to
their power. All, however, were not prepared to adopt the same course
of action. The Hébertists, following the atheistic and materialistic
doctrines which had been circulated by Diderot and other philosophers
of the same school, denied the existence of a personal God and the
immortality of the soul. Theists and sceptics, the followers of
Rousseau and of Voltaire, regarded the Catholic faith as pernicious
and degrading; but various reasons restrained them from attempting
its suppression. They held in theory the principles of religious
toleration; they believed that the Catholic faith would necessarily
lose influence as knowledge became more diffused; they were alive
to the danger of exciting the peasantry against the revolution by
depriving them of the rites to which they were accustomed. Hébert and
Chaumette entertained no such scruples. They were active propagandists,
eager to avail themselves of the power of the State in order to impose
a new form of worship on Catholic France. Unlike Marat and Robespierre,
Hébert from the beginning of the revolution had exhibited equal
hostility towards the hard-working and poorly-paid curé, whose parents
were peasants, as towards the titled and wealthy bishop who belonged to
the caste of the nobility; and he now exhibited equal hostility towards
the constitutional priest who had accepted the work of the revolution,
as towards the nonjuror who sought to excite reaction in favour of
royalty. Morality and reason as displayed by man were declared alone
fit for veneration, and the worship to take the place of the Catholic
ritual was to be one which, refusing to recognise a spiritual world
beyond the sphere of human knowledge, glorified human nature and
material objects. The people, said Chaumette, shall be our God; we need
no other. We want, said Hébert, no other religion than that of nature;
no other temple than that of reason; no other worship than that of
liberty, equality, and fraternity. By the orders of the Commune the
suppression of the Catholic worship was begun. Constitutional priests
were encouraged to marry and to abdicate their functions, and those who
refused were imprisoned. The exercise of the Catholic worship, either
in the streets or in the churches, was prohibited. Even burial rites
were changed. Every sign of mourning was abolished, and the black pall
was replaced by a tricolour cloth.
These things were done by the Commune on its sole authority, but the
Convention offered no opposition. The voices of Catholics were silent
through fear. Forty bishops and curés had seats in the House. But of
these the bravest had been proscribed with the Girondists. If few
deputies professed atheism, those who were theists and sceptics saw
not without gratification the suppression of the Catholic worship
by other hands than their own. Urged on by the Commune the Assembly
adopted a new calendar, which was in reality incompatible with the
maintenance of the Catholic Church as a State institution. The year
was divided into twelve months of thirty days each and five odd days;
each of the months into three weeks of ten days each. The months
were named after the seasons, the Frosty, the Rainy, and the like.
The year I. began on September 22, 1792, the day of the proclamation
of the republic. Hostility towards Catholicism was yet more plainly
evinced by the adoption of a new law, which treated the constitutional
clergy as enemies of the revolution. Not only were nonjurors to be
immediately transported to the West Coast of Africa, and if taken
in hiding in France to be put to death, but constitutional priests
were made subject to transportation to the same place at the pleasure
of the administrative authorities. Willingly or unwillingly the
Convention was dragged in the wake of the Commune, and had to give
official recognition to the new worship. Gobel, the Archbishop of
Paris, attended by his chaplains and curés, was brought before the
Assembly to make public resignation of his office. Several bishops
and curés, who were deputies, rose and followed his example. One man
alone, a Montagnard, Grégoire, the constitutional Bishop of Blois had
the courage to protest and to declare his intention of maintaining his
post (November 7). From day to day revellers, masquerading in priestly
vestments and laden with church plate, visited the Convention, there
to deposit their spoils and to denounce as impostors the maintainers
of Catholic doctrines. Finally, a festival in honour of Reason was
celebrated in the Church of Notre Dame. A mountain of painted wood was
erected in the choir, on which was seated a woman representing Reason,
dressed in white, with a pike in her hand and a red cap on her head.
All the civic authorities attended the ceremony. A procession, carrying
this representative of Reason in its midst, marched to the Convention
to the sound of music, and upon the demand of the municipal officers
it was decreed that the Church of Notre Dame should thenceforth be
converted into the Temple of Reason (November 10). From this time the
churches of Paris were either closed or used as meeting-places, where
disorderly crowds from time to time assembled to hear speeches made and
songs sung in honour of Liberty and of Reason.
♦Destruction of the Vendean army.♦
While these strange scenes were being enacted in Paris, war on the
frontiers, and war in the interior of France continued to be waged as
fiercely as before. The allies, when they deferred invasion till the
next campaign, had made the error of rendering no assistance to the
royalist insurgents within France. England sent no aid to the Vendeans;
Austria none to Lyons. Accordingly, in October, Lyons surrendered.
Toulon, by admitting an English and Spanish fleet into its harbour,
was enabled to lengthen out till the end of the year its isolated and
hopeless resistance. In La Vendée the war on both sides was conducted
with extreme ferocity. The Convention adopted a decree, brought in by
the Committee of Public Safety, which ordered the generals to burn the
forests and insurgent villages, to seize the corn and cattle, and to
make prisoners of the women and children (August 1). The intention was
to burn and starve the country out. But the undisciplined republican
levies were repelled whenever they sought to make their way into
the interior. The generals were incompetent and authority divided.
The Commune, the Committee of Public Safety, and the Mountain, were
severally represented by a number of agents and deputies in mission,
who contended with one another for the direction of the war and gave
support to different generals. The situation was at last changed by
the arrival at Nantes of several thousand troops of the line who had
formed the late garrison of Mainz, and who were bound by the terms of
their capitulation not to fight against the allies for a year, but
were not forbidden to fight against French insurgents. Led by one of
their own officers, Kléber, these troops penetrated to the heart of
Upper Vendée, driving before them the largest army the Vendeans ever
brought together. At the same time forces marched from Saumur and
other points to effect a junction with them. The retreating Vendeans
were accompanied by a host of non-combatants, old men, women, and
children, burnt out of their homes or flying for their lives. Forced
back on the Loire, they made a stand at Chollet, but only to experience
fresh defeat. A general flight was effected across the river in boats
(October 20). By this time most of the chiefs were either dead or
dying. La Rochejaquelein, a young noble, and Stofflet, a peasant,
took the command. Compelled always to move onwards through scarcity
of food, the fugitives made their way to Normandy, in the hope of
occupying Granville, a port town, and of receiving aid from England.
But they had no siege pieces, and their repeated attempts to storm the
fortifications failed. Then despair, long since felt by the chiefs,
overtook the whole body. The ranks of the fighting men, incessantly
called on to repel the attacks of the pursuing enemy, were gradually
thinned; there was dearth of food, and the sufferings of the wounded
were intense. The republicans massacred every man, woman, and child
left behind. The peasants forced their officers to lead them back to
their own country. Angers was reached, where was a bridge over the
Loire. But their attempt to force an entrance into the town failed. A
defeat took place outside Le Mans (December 12); the retreat became
a flight. Thousands were killed and made prisoners; a few escaped in
boats; the rest were hunted down and slaughtered on the banks of the
Loire.
♦The Terror in the departments.♦
While this civil war was continuing in the west, scenes similar to
those occurring in Paris occurred simultaneously throughout the
country. The will of the Commune was law in most of the departments of
France. Some of the deputies in mission joined the Hébertist faction,
and their colleagues followed in their train, not daring to venture
collision with them. Men, in fact, adopted the language then in vogue,
and acted cruelly, instigated by fear lest if they showed clemency
they would offer a handle which their enemies would use to compass the
ruin of themselves and their families. The deputies in mission, so
long as they found protection in Paris, exercised uncontrolled powers
over the properties and lives of their fellow-citizens. They imposed
fines and taxes, set aside laws, created criminal offences, and erected
criminal courts. Many decrees of the Convention merely extended to the
whole country measures already in force in different departments. As
instruments the deputies had at their service the municipalities, which
were reconstituted over and over again; the clubs, from which they
drove all who were not prepared slavishly to applaud their actions;
and, finally, the revolutionary committees, to which they delegated
the same arbitrary powers that they themselves exercised. These
committees, of which there was one established in every district and
every populous commune, were, as a rule, formed of the most fanatic,
the most cowardly, and the most worthless men whom the neighbourhood
produced. Many thousand persons were at their bidding flung into prison
on the merest pretext or without any motive at all being given. One
would be imprisoned because he was related to an emigrant, another
because he was a fanatic, a third because he was an egotist, a fourth
because he had done nothing for the revolution, a fifth because he had
100_l._ or 50_l._ a year. Persons of both sexes, of every age and rank,
were involved in the same proscription. Taxes were assessed at random.
Those who could not or would not pay the sum demanded were imprisoned
and their revenues confiscated. Persons in possession of metal money
were made to exchange it for assignats. In every third department at
least executions continually took place. There were no less than 178
extraordinary or revolutionary courts of one and another kind. Many
observed no forms whatever, and passed several hundred judgments in
a single sitting. So small was the control exercised by the central
Government, that the Committee of Public Safety was in ignorance of
the existence of some of these courts or of the number of persons
punished by their decrees. The Catholic religion was proscribed. Before
the worship of Reason was established at Paris, Hébertist deputies
were confiscating the plate of churches, prohibiting the exercise of
Catholic rites, and making bonfires of religious books and relics.
Constitutional priests were imprisoned and guillotined by the score.
Between one and two thousand married and abjured their faith. The
observance of Sunday was prohibited. On the first days of the new weeks
of ten days, feasts in honour of Reason, of Equality, of Liberty, and
the like, were held in the churches, from which none remained absent
without risk of being classed in the category of suspected persons.
In every department property was confiscated, many persons imprisoned,
and lives taken. But the amount of suffering inflicted and blood shed
in any one department, nevertheless, depended in some degree on the
character of the deputy in mission, and on the part that had been
taken by the department after the expulsion of the Girondists. The
Government had the support of a small number of men who, if fanatics,
were nevertheless honest in believing that, whatever its excesses, it
alone could save France from conquest, and who endeavoured to make
use of their authority, not for personal or selfish ends, but for the
public good, as they understood the term. Such men might be cruel;
but if so, it was with a motive, not through cowardice, or the mere
pleasure taken by the tyrant in making his power felt. St. Just, in
Alsace, took from the citizens of Strasburg their coats, their beds,
their boots, or whatever else he wanted to supply the wants of the
soldiers. The municipal officers were commanded to provide 10,000 pairs
of boots in the course of twenty-four hours. ‘Take,’ the youthful
dictator wrote to them, ‘the boots off the feet of the aristocrats.’
In Auvergne, Couthon, while he exercised a grinding tyranny, aspired
to win the attachment of the population. He obtained State grants
for the embellishment of Clermont, his native town, established a
manufactory of arms to give employment to destitute workmen, founded
a college in the interests of education, and let out of prison a
number of peasant farmers. But men of the description of St. Just and
Couthon were rare. Far more often deputies in mission sought to enrich
themselves, and closed their eyes to the greed and rapacity of their
agents. At Bordeaux, under the presidency of the cowardly Tallien,
the rich man who could offer a sufficiently large bribe to his judges
escaped with his life: the poor man went to the scaffold. In the
departments where the Hébertists ruled most licence and most shedding
of blood were invariably to be met with. Following the example set in
Paris, they established revolutionary armies, which were charged with
collecting taxes and bringing in corn, and which made havoc of the
country through which they passed. Men of weak and violent character,
suddenly risen to power, developed into tyrants capable of the most
atrocious crimes, and with hearts apparently destitute of all feelings
of justice and humanity. The prisons at Nantes were crowded with
persons dying from disease and starvation, the wrecks of the Vendean
army. In place of sending these victims of civil war back to their own
country, the deputy Carrier caused them to be placed on rafts, which
were afterwards sunk in the Loire, a process of execution twelve times
adopted. On the great industrial town of Lyons savage vengeance was
taken. Persons of every condition of life--manufacturers, shopkeepers,
and artisans--condemned by military commissioners, were shot in batches
of two or three hundred at a time. Whole streets and squares were
blown up by gunpowder; an immense amount of property was plundered and
destroyed. According to the reckoning of the two deputies on whom the
immediate responsibility rested, Collot and Fouché, in five months the
population was reduced from 130,000 to 80,000 souls. The punishment
inflicted on Toulon, when at last it surrendered in December, was
hardly less atrocious.
♦Terrorists few in number.♦
The men who approved these acts and took part in them formed but an
exceedingly small minority in the departments--in some districts
so small that they might be counted on the fingers. In parts of
Brittany fugitive Vendeans, in the neighbourhood of Bordeaux fugitive
Girondists, remained in safe hiding, because there was no one who
cared to betray them. In the Basses Pyrénées, up till the autumn of
1793, revolutionary laws had remained unenforced, and a noble, elected
in 1790, was still mayor of Pau. The judges of the ordinary courts,
though at peril of their lives, refused to condemn their neighbours
to death. The mass of municipal and administrative officers only
took part in revolutionary measures under compulsion. A small knot
of men, cowards, ruffians, fanatics, and fortune-hunters, gathered
round the deputy in mission, directed the action of the clubs, sat in
the revolutionary committees, and were judges in the revolutionary
courts. Peasants and artisans gave as little active support to the
Terror as the nobles or the bourgeoisie. The peasants, having freed
themselves from feudal duties, became conservative. The requisitions
for the armies and the corn maximum were incessant causes of irritation
to them. The maximum of wages irritated artisans. Both classes were
alienated by the suppression of the Catholic worship. The Hébertists
vainly strove to acquire support by holding up the rich to reprobation,
and by undertaking to give provision to the poor, and to provide
labour for them. They succeeded in ruining the rich, but failed to
benefit the poor. The main object, with a view to which their whole
conduct was regulated, was to lay hands on all the wealth which tyranny
and brutality could bring within their grasp; and of the spoils the
larger part stayed, if not in their own hands, in the hands of their
agents--the smaller was spent in the public service, and a bare
pittance was left for providing bread and alms for the destitute.
Thus, in 133 districts, where 1,400,000_l._ were admittedly raised in
revolutionary taxes, a year afterwards only 430,000_l._ were accounted
for. Material want was far greater than in the capital. In Lyons,
Bordeaux, and many other places the inhabitants were put on rations,
and a few ounces of bad bread were daily doled out per head.