THE GREAT FRENCH REVOLUTION PROCLAIMS THE PRINCIPLES OF LIBERTY,
FRATERNITY AND EQUALITY UNTO ALL THE PEOPLE OF THE EARTH
BEFORE we talk about a revolution it is just as well that we explain
just what this word means. In the terms of a great Russian writer (and
Russians ought to know what they are talking about in this field) a
revolution is "a swift overthrow, in a few years, of institutions
which have taken centuries to root in the soil, and seem so fixed and
immovable that even the most ardent reformers hardly dare to attack them
in their writings. It is the fall, the crumbling away in a brief
period, of all that up to that time has composed the essence of social,
religious, political and economic life in a nation."
Such a revolution took place in France in the eighteenth century when
the old civilisation of the country had grown stale. The king in the
days of Louis XIV had become EVERYTHING and was the state. The Nobility,
formerly the civil servant of the federal state, found itself without
any duties and became a social ornament of the royal court.
This French state of the eighteenth century, however, cost incredible
sums of money. This money had to be produced in the form of taxes.
Unfortunately the kings of France had not been strong enough to force
the nobility and the clergy to pay their share of these taxes. Hence
the taxes were paid entirely by the agricultural population. But the
peasants living in dreary hovels, no longer in intimate contact with
their former landlords, but victims of cruel and incompetent land
agents, were going from bad to worse. Why should they work and exert
themselves? Increased returns upon their land merely meant more taxes
and nothing for themselves and therefore they neglected their fields as
much as they dared.
Hence we have a king who wanders in empty splendour through the vast
halls of his palaces, habitually followed by hungry office seekers, all
of whom live upon the revenue obtained from peasants who are no better
than the beasts of the fields. It is not a pleasant picture, but it
is not exaggerated. There was, however, another side to the so-called
"Ancien Regime" which we must keep in mind.
A wealthy middle class, closely connected with the nobility (by the
usual process of the rich banker's daughter marrying the poor baron's
son) and a court composed of all the most entertaining people of
France, had brought the polite art of graceful living to its highest
development. As the best brains of the country were not allowed to
occupy themselves with questions of political economics, they spent
their idle hours upon the discussion of abstract ideas.
As fashions in modes of thought and personal behaviour are quite as
likely to run to extremes as fashion in dress, it was natural that the
most artificial society of that day should take a tremendous interest
in what they considered "the simple life." The king and the queen, the
absolute and unquestioned proprietors of this country galled France,
together with all its colonies and dependencies, went to live in funny
little country houses all dressed up as milk-maids and stable-boys and
played at being shepherds in a happy vale of ancient Hellas. Around
them, their courtiers danced attendance, their court-musicians composed
lovely minuets, their court barbers devised more and more elaborate and
costly headgear, until from sheer boredom and lack of real jobs, this
whole artificial world of Versailles (the great show place which Louis
XIV had built far away from his noisy and restless city) talked of
nothing but those subjects which were furthest removed from their own
lives, just as a man who is starving will talk of nothing except food.
When Voltaire, the courageous old philosopher, playwright, historian and
novelist, and the great enemy of all religious and political tyranny,
began to throw his bombs of criticism at everything connected with the
Established Order of Things, the whole French world applauded him and
his theatrical pieces played to standing room only. When Jean
Jacques Rousseau waxed sentimental about primitive man and gave his
contemporaries delightful descriptions of the happiness of the original
inhabitants of this planet, (about whom he knew as little as he
did about the children, upon whose education he was the recognised
authority,) all France read his "Social Contract" and this society in
which the king and the state were one, wept bitter tears when they
heard Rousseau's appeal for a return to the blessed days when the real
sovereignty had lain in the hands of the people and when the king had
been merely the servant of his people.
When Montesquieu published his "Persian Letters" in which two
distinguished Persian travellers turn the whole existing society of
France topsy-turvy and poke fun at everything from the king down to
the lowest of his six hundred pastry cooks, the book immediately went
through four editions and assured the writer thousands of readers for
his famous discussion of the "Spirit of the Laws" in which the noble
Baron compared the excellent English system with the backward system of
France and advocated instead of an absolute monarchy the establishment
of a state in which the Executive, the Legislative and the Judicial
powers should be in separate hands and should work independently of each
other. When Lebreton, the Parisian book-seller, announced that Messieurs
Diderot, d'Alembert, Turgot and a score of other distinguished writers
were going to publish an Encyclopaedia which was to contain "all the new
ideas and the new science and the new knowledge," the response from
the side of the public was most satisfactory, and when after twenty-two
years the last of the twenty-eight volumes had been finished, the
somewhat belated interference of the police could not repress the
enthusiasm with which French society received this most important but
very dangerous contribution to the discussions of the day.
Here, let me give you a little warning. When you read a novel about
the French revolution or see a play or a movie, you will easily get the
impression that the Revolution was the work of the rabble from the
Paris slums. It was nothing of the kind. The mob appears often upon the
revolutionary stage, but invariably at the instigation and under the
leadership of those middle-class professional men who used the hungry
multitude as an efficient ally in their warfare upon the king and
his court. But the fundamental ideas which caused the revolution were
invented by a few brilliant minds, and they were at first introduced
into the charming drawing-rooms of the "Ancien Regime" to provide
amiable diversion for the much-bored ladies and gentlemen of his
Majesty's court. These pleasant but careless people played with the
dangerous fireworks of social criticism until the sparks fell through
the cracks of the floor, which was old and rotten just like the rest of
the building. Those sparks unfortunately landed in the basement where
age-old rubbish lay in great confusion. Then there was a cry of fire.
But the owner of the house who was interested in everything except the
management of his property, did not know how to put the small blaze
out. The flame spread rapidly and the entire edifice was consumed by the
conflagration, which we call the Great French Revolution.
For the sake of convenience, we can divide the French Revolution into
two parts. From 1789 to 1791 there was a more or less orderly attempt to
introduce a constitutional monarchy. This failed, partly through lack
of good faith and stupidity on the part of the monarch himself, partly
through circumstances over which nobody had any control.
From 1792 to 1799 there was a Republic and a first effort to establish
a democratic form of government. But the actual outbreak of violence had
been preceded by many years of unrest and many sincere but ineffectual
attempts at reform.
When France had a debt of 4000 million francs and the treasury was
always empty and there was not a single thing upon which new taxes could
be levied, even good King Louis (who was an expert locksmith and a great
hunter but a very poor statesman) felt vaguely that something ought to
be done. Therefore he called for Turgot, to be his Minister of Finance.
Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de l'Aulne, a man in the early
sixties, a splendid representative of the fast disappearing class of
landed gentry, had been a successful governor of a province and was
an amateur political economist of great ability. He did his best.
Unfortunately, he could not perform miracles. As it was impossible to
squeeze more taxes out of the ragged peasants, it was necessary to get
the necessary funds from the nobility and clergy who had never paid a
centime. This made Turgot the best hated man at the court of Versailles.
Furthermore he was obliged to face the enmity of Marie Antoinette, the
queen, who was against everybody who dared to mention the word "economy"
within her hearing. Soon Turgot was called an "unpractical visionary"
and a "theoretical-professor" and then of course his position became
untenable. In the year 1776 he was forced to resign.
After the "professor" there came a man of Practical Business Sense. He
was an industrious Swiss by the name of Necker who had made himself rich
as a grain speculator and the partner in an international banking house.
His ambitious wife had pushed him into the government service that she
might establish a position for her daughter who afterwards as the
wife of the Swedish minister in Paris, Baron de Stael, became a famous
literary figure of the early nineteenth century.
Necker set to work with a fine display of zeal just as Turgot had done.
In 1781 he published a careful review of the French finances. The king
understood nothing of this "Compte Rendu." He had just sent troops to
America to help the colonists against their common enemies, the English.
This expedition proved to be unexpectedly expensive and Necker was
asked to find the necessary funds. When instead of producing revenue, he
published more figures and made statistics and began to use the dreary
warning about "necessary economies" his days were numbered. In the year
1781 he was dismissed as an incompetent servant.
After the Professor and the Practical Business Man came the delightful
type of financier who will guarantee everybody 100 per cent. per month
on their money if only they will trust his own infallible system.
He was Charles Alexandre de Calonne, a pushing official, who had made
his career both by his industry and his complete lack of honesty and
scruples. He found the country heavily indebted, but he was a clever
man, willing to oblige everybody, and he invented a quick remedy. He
paid the old debts by contracting new ones. This method is not new. The
result since time immemorial has been disastrous. In less than three
years more than 800,000,000 francs had been added to the French debt by
this charming Minister of Finance who never worried and smilingly signed
his name to every demand that was made by His Majesty and by his lovely
Queen, who had learned the habit of spending during the days of her
youth in Vienna.
At last even the Parliament of Paris (a high court of justice and not
a legislative body) although by no means lacking in loyalty to their
sovereign, decided that something must be done. Calonne wanted to borrow
another 80,000,000 francs. It had been a bad year for the crops and
the misery and hunger in the country districts were terrible. Unless
something sensible were done, France would go bankrupt. The King as
always was unaware of the seriousness of the situation. Would it not be
a good idea to consult the representatives of the people? Since 1614
no Estates General had been called together. In view of the threatening
panic there was a demand that the Estates be convened. Louis XVI
however, who never could take a decision, refused to go as far as that.
To pacify the popular clamour he called together a meeting of the
Notables in the year 1787. This merely meant a gathering of the best
families who discussed what could and should be done, without touching
their feudal and clerical privilege of tax-exemption. It is unreasonable
to expect that a certain class of society shall commit political and
economic suicide for the benefit of another group of fellow-citizens.
The 127 Notables obstinately refused to surrender a single one of their
ancient rights. The crowd in the street, being now exceedingly hungry,
demanded that Necker, in whom they had confidence, be reappointed. The
Notables said "No." The crowd in the street began to smash windows and
do other unseemly things. The Notables fled. Calonne was dismissed.
A new colourless Minister of Finance, the Cardinal Lomenie de Brienne,
was appointed and Louis, driven by the violent threats of his starving
subjects, agreed to call together the old Estates General as "soon as
practicable." This vague promise of course satisfied no one.
No such severe winter had been experienced for almost a century. The
crops had been either destroyed by floods or had been frozen to death in
the fields. All the olive trees of the Provence had been killed. Private
charity tried to do some-thing but could accomplish little for eighteen
million starving people. Everywhere bread riots occurred. A generation
before these would have been put down by the army. But the work of
the new philosophical school had begun to bear fruit. People began to
understand that a shotgun is no effective remedy for a hungry stomach
and even the soldiers (who came from among the people) were no longer
to be depended upon. It was absolutely necessary that the king should
do something definite to regain the popular goodwill, but again he
hesitated.
Here and there in the provinces, little independent Republics were
established by followers of the new school. The cry of "no taxation
without representation" (the slogan of the American rebels a quarter of
a century before) was heard among the faithful middle classes. France
was threatened with general anarchy. To appease the people and to
increase the royal popularity, the government unexpectedly suspended the
former very strict form of censorship of books. At once a flood of
ink descended upon France. Everybody, high or low, criticised and was
criticised. More than 2000 pamphlets were published. Lomenie de Brienne
was swept away by a storm of abuse. Necker was hastily called back to
placate, as best he could, the nation-wide unrest. Immediately the stock
market went up thirty per cent. And by common consent, people suspended
judgment for a little while longer. In May of 1789 the Estates General
were to assemble and then the wisdom of the entire nation would speedily
solve the difficult problem of recreating the kingdom of France into a
healthy and happy state.
This prevailing idea, that the combined wisdom of the people would be
able to solve all difficulties, proved disastrous. It lamed all personal
effort during many important months. Instead of keeping the government
in his own hands at this critical moment, Necker allowed everything to
drift. Hence there was a new outbreak of the acrimonious debate upon the
best ways to reform the old kingdom. Everywhere the power of the police
weakened. The people of the Paris suburbs, under the leadership of
professional agitators, gradually began to discover their strength, and
commenced to play the role which was to be theirs all through the years
of the great unrest, when they acted as the brute force which was used
by the actual leaders of the Revolution to secure those things which
could not be obtained in a legitimate fashion.
As a sop to the peasants and the middle class, Necker de-cided that they
should be allowed a double representation in the Estates General. Upon
this subject, the Abbe Sieyes then wrote a famous pamphlet, "To what
does the Third Estate Amount?" in which he came to the conclusion that
the Third Estate (a name given to the middle class) ought to amount to
everything, that it had not amounted to anything in the past, and that
it now desired to amount to something. He expressed the sentiment of the
great majority of the people who had the best interests of the country
at heart.
Finally the elections took place under the worst conditions imaginable.
When they were over, 308 clergymen, 285 noblemen and 621 representatives
of the Third Estate packed their trunks to go to Versailles. The Third
Estate was obliged to carry additional luggage. This consisted of
voluminous reports called "cahiers" in which the many complaints and
grievances of their constituents had been written down. The stage was
set for the great final act that was to save France.
The Estates General came together on May 5th, 1789. The king was in a
bad humour. The Clergy and the Nobility let it be known that they were
unwilling to give up a single one of their privileges. The king ordered
the three groups of representatives to meet in different rooms and
discuss their grievances separately. The Third Estate refused to obey
the royal command. They took a solemn oath to that effect in a squash
court (hastily put in order for the purpose of this illegal meeting) on
the 20th of June, 1789. They insisted that all three Estates, Nobility,
Clergy and Third Estate, should meet together and so informed His
Majesty. The king gave in.
As the "National Assembly," the Estates General began to discuss
the state of the French kingdom. The King got angry. Then again he
hesitated. He said that he would never surrender his absolute power.
Then he went hunting, forgot all about the cares of the state and when
he returned from the chase he gave in. For it was the royal habit to
do the right thing at the wrong time in the wrong way. When the people
clamoured for A, the king scolded them and gave them nothing. Then, when
the Palace was surrounded by a howling multitude of poor people, the
king surrendered and gave his subjects what they had asked for. By this
time, however, the people wanted A plus B. The comedy was repeated. When
the king signed his name to the Royal Decree which granted his beloved
subjects A and B they were threatening to kill the entire royal family
unless they received A plus B plus C. And so on, through the whole
alphabet and up to the scaffold.
Unfortunately the king was always just one letter behind. He never
understood this. Even when he laid his head under the guillotine, he
felt that he was a much-abused man who had received a most unwarrantable
treatment at the hands of people whom he had loved to the best of his
limited ability.
Historical "ifs," as I have often warned you, are never of any value. It
is very easy for us to say that the monarchy might have been saved "if"
Louis had been a man of greater energy and less kindness of heart. But
the king was not alone. Even "if" he had possessed the ruthless strength
of Napoleon, his career during these difficult days might have been
easily ruined by his wife who was the daughter of Maria Theresa of
Austria and who possessed all the characteristic virtues and vices of a
young girl who had been brought up at the most autocratic and mediaeval
court of that age.
She decided that some action must be taken and planned a
counter-revolution. Necker was suddenly dismissed and loyal troops
were called to Paris. The people, when they heard of this, stormed the
fortress of the Bastille prison, and on the fourteenth of July of
the year 1789, they destroyed this familiar but much-hated symbol of
Autocratic Power which had long since ceased to be a political prison
and was now used as the city lock-up for pickpockets and second-story
men. Many of the nobles took the hint and left the country. But the king
as usual did nothing. He had been hunting on the day of the fall of the
Bastille and he had shot several deer and felt very much pleased.
The National Assembly now set to work and on the 4th of August, with
the noise of the Parisian multitude in their ears, they abolished all
privileges. This was followed on the 27th of August by the "Declaration
of the Rights of Man," the famous preamble to the first French
constitution. So far so good, but the court had apparently not yet
learned its lesson. There was a wide-spread suspicion that the king was
again trying to interfere with these reforms and as a result, on the 5th
of October, there was a second riot in Paris. It spread to Versailles
and the people were not pacified until they had brought the king back to
his palace in Paris. They did not trust him in Versailles. They liked to
have him where they could watch him and control his correspondence with
his relatives in Vienna and Madrid and the other courts of Europe.
In the Assembly meanwhile, Mirabeau, a nobleman who had become leader of
the Third Estate, was beginning to put order into chaos. But before he
could save the position of the king he died, on the 2nd of April of the
year 1791. The king, who now began to fear for his own life, tried to
escape on the 21st of June. He was recognised from his picture on
a coin, was stopped near the village of Varennes by members of the
National Guard, and was brought back to Paris.
In September of 1791, the first constitution of France was accepted, and
the members of the National Assembly went home. On the first of October
of 1791, the legislative assembly came together to continue the work of
the National Assembly. In this new gathering of popular representatives
there were many extremely revolutionary elements. The boldest among
these were known as the Jacobins, after the old Jacobin cloister in
which they held their political meetings. These young men (most of them
belonging to the professional classes) made very violent speeches and
when the newspapers carried these orations to Berlin and Vienna, the
King of Prussia and the Emperor decided that they must do something
to save their good brother and sister. They were very busy just then
dividing the kingdom of Poland, where rival political factions had
caused such a state of disorder that the country was at the mercy of
anybody who wanted to take a couple of provinces. But they managed to
send an army to invade France and deliver the king.
Then a terrible panic of fear swept throughout the land of France. All
the pent-up hatred of years of hunger and suffering came to a horrible
climax. The mob of Paris stormed the palace of the Tuilleries. The
faithful Swiss bodyguards tried to defend their master, but Louis,
unable to make up his mind, gave order to "cease firing" just when the
crowd was retiring. The people, drunk with blood and noise and cheap
wine, murdered the Swiss to the last man, then invaded the palace, and
went after Louis who had escaped into the meeting hall of the Assembly,
where he was immediately suspended of his office, and from where he was
taken as a prisoner to the old castle of the Temple.
But the armies of Austria and Prussia continued their advance and the
panic changed into hysteria and turned men and women into wild beasts.
In the first week of September of the year 1792, the crowd broke
into the jails and murdered all the prisoners. The government did not
interfere. The Jacobins, headed by Danton, knew that this crisis meant
either the success or the failure of the revolution, and that only
the most brutal audacity could save them. The Legislative Assembly was
closed and on the 21st of September of the year 1792, a new National
Convention came together. It was a body composed almost entirely of
extreme revolutionists. The king was formally accused of high treason
and was brought before the Convention. He was found guilty and by a
vote of 361 to 360 (the extra vote being that of his cousin the Duke of
Orleans) he was condemned to death. On the 21st of January of the year
1793, he quietly and with much dignity suffered himself to be taken to
the scaffold. He had never understood what all the shooting and the fuss
had been about. And he had been too proud to ask questions.
Then the Jacobins turned against the more moderate element in the
convention, the Girondists, called after their southern district, the
Gironde. A special revolutionary tribunal was instituted and twenty-one
of the leading Girondists were condemned to death. The others committed
suicide. They were capable and honest men but too philosophical and too
moderate to survive during these frightful years.
In October of the year 1793 the Constitution was suspended by the
Jacobins "until peace should have been declared." All power was placed
in the hands of a small committee of Public Safety, with Danton
and Robespierre as its leaders. The Christian religion and the old
chronology were abolished. The "Age of Reason" (of which Thomas Paine
had written so eloquently during the American Revolution) had come and
with it the "Terror" which for more than a year killed good and bad and
indifferent people at the rate of seventy or eighty a day.
The autocratic rule of the King had been destroyed. It was succeeded
by the tyranny of a few people who had such a passionate love for
democratic virtue that they felt compelled to kill all those who
disagreed with them. France was turned into a slaughter house. Everybody
suspected everybody else. No one felt safe. Out of sheer fear, a
few members of the old Convention, who knew that they were the next
candidates for the scaffold, finally turned against Robespierre, who
had already decapitated most of his former colleagues. Robespierre,
"the only true and pure Democrat," tried to kill himself but failed His
shattered jaw was hastily bandaged and he was dragged to the guillotine.
On the 27th of July, of the year 1794 (the 9th Thermidor of the year
II, according to the strange chronology of the revolution), the reign of
Terror came to an end, and all Paris danced with joy.
The dangerous position of France, however, made it necessary that the
government remain in the hands of a few strong men, until the many
enemies of the revolution should have been driven from the soil of the
French fatherland. While the half-clad and half-starved revolutionary
armies fought their desperate battles of the Rhine and Italy and
Belgium and Egypt, and defeated every one of the enemies of the Great
Revolution, five Directors were appointed, and they ruled France for
four years. Then the power was vested in the hands of a successful
general by the name of Napoleon Bonaparte, who became "First Consul"
of France in the year 1799. And during the next fifteen years, the
old European continent became the laboratory of a number of political
experiments, the like of which the world had never seen before.