on their shoulders is immense, and much beyond what human strength can
support. All the details of executive duty are confided to them; they
have not to busy themselves with a petty routine, but with a complete
social system which is being taken to pieces, while another is
reconstructed in its place.--They are in possession of four milliards of
ecclesiastical property, real and personal, and soon there will be two
and a half milliards of property belonging to the emigrants, which must
be sequestered, valued, managed, inventoried, divided, sold, and the
proceeds received. They have seven or eight thousand monks and thirty
thousand nuns to displace, install, sanction, and provide for. They have
forty-six thousand ecclesiastics, bishops, canons, curés, and vicars,
to dispossess, replace, often by force, and later on to expel, intern,
imprison, and support. They are obliged to discuss, trace out, teach
and make public new territorial boundaries, those of the commune, of the
district and of the department. They have to convoke, lodge, and protect
the numerous primary and secondary Assemblies, to supervise their
operations, which sometimes last for weeks. They must install those
elected by them, justices of the peace, officers of the National Guard,
judges, public prosecutors, curés, bishops, district and departmental
administrators. They are to form new lists of tax-payers, apportion
amongst themselves, according to a new system of impost, entirely
new real and personal taxes, decide on claims, appoint an assessor,
regularly audit his accounts and verify his books, aid him with force,
use force in the collection of the excise and salt duties, which being
reduced, equalized, and transformed in vain by the National Assembly,
afford no returns in spite of its decrees. They are obliged to find the
funds for dressing, equipping, and arming the National Guard, to step in
between it and the military commanders, and to maintain concord between
its diverse battalions. They have to protect forests from pillage,
communal land from being invaded, to maintain the octroi, to protect
former functionaries, ecclesiastics, and nobles, suspected and
threatened, and, above all, to provide, no matter how, provisions for
the commune which lacks food, and consequently, to raise subscriptions,
negotiate purchases at a distance and even abroad, organize escorts,
indemnify bakers, supply the market every week notwithstanding
the dearth, the insecurity of roads, and the resistance of
cultivators.--Even an absolute chief; sent from a distance and from
high place, the most energetic and expert possible, supported by the
best-disciplined and most obedient troops, would scarcely succeed in
such an undertaking; and there is instead only a municipality which has
neither the authority, the means, the experience, the capacity, nor the
will.
In the country, says an orator in the tribune,[2321] "the municipal
officers, in twenty thousand out of forty thousand municipalities, do
not know how to read or write." The curé, in effect, is excluded from
such offices by law, and, save in La Vendée and the noble is excluded by
public opinion. Besides, in many of the provinces, nothing but patois
is spoken.[2322] French, especially the philosophic and abstract
phraseology of the new laws and proclamations, remains gibberish
to their inhabitants. They cannot possibly understand and apply the
complicated decrees and fine-spun instructions which reach them from
Paris. They hurry off to the towns, get the duties of the office imposed
on them explained and commented on in detail, try to comprehend, imagine
they do, and then, the following week, come back again without having
understood anything, either the mode of keeping state registers,
the distinction between feudal rights which are abolished and those
retained, the regulations they should enforce in cases of election,
the limits which the law imposes as to their powers and subordination.
Nothing of all this finds its way into their rude, untrained brains;
instead of a peasant who has just left his oxen, there is needed here a
legal adept aided by a trained clerk.--Prudential considerations must
be added to their ignorance. They do not wish to make enemies for
themselves in their commune, and they abstain from any positive action,
especially in all tax matters. Nine months after the decree on the
patriotic contribution, "twenty-eight thousand municipalities are
overdue, not having (yet) returned either rolls or estimates."[2323] At
the end of January, 1792, "out of forty thousand nine hundred and eleven
municipalities, only five thousand four hundred and forty-eight have
deposited their registers; two thousand five hundred and eighty rolls
only are definitive and in process of collection. A large number have
not even begun their sectional statements."[2324]--It is much worse
when, thinking that they do understand it, they undertake to do their
work. In their minds, incapable of abstraction, the law is transformed
and deformed by extraordinary interpretations. We shall see what it
becomes when it is brought to bear on feudal dues, on the forests, on
communal rights, on the circulation of corn, on the taxes on provisions,
on the supervision of the aristocrats, and on the protection of persons
and property. According to them, it authorizes and invites them to do
by force, and at once, whatever they need or desire for the time
being.--The municipal officers of the large boroughs and towns, more
acute and often able to comprehend the decrees, are scarcely in a
better condition to carry them out effectively. They are undoubtedly
intelligent, inspired by the best disposition, and zealous for the
public welfare. During the first two years of the Revolution it is, on
the whole, the best informed and most liberal portion of the bourgeoisie
which, in the department as in the district, undertakes the management
of affairs. Almost all are men of the law, advocates, notaries, and
attorneys, with a small number of the old privileged class imbued
with the same spirit, a canon at Besançon, a gentleman at Nîmes. Their
intentions are of the very best; they love order and liberty, they give
their time and their money, they hold permanent sessions and accomplish
an incredible amount of work, and they often voluntarily expose
themselves to great danger.--But they are bourgeois philosophers, and,
in this latter particular, similar to their deputies in the National
Assembly, and, with this twofold character, as incapable as their
deputies of governing a disintegrated nation. In this twofold character
they are ill-disposed towards the ancient régime, hostile to Catholicism
and feudal rights, unfavorable to the clergy and the nobility, inclined
to extend the bearing and exaggerate the rigor of recent decrees,
partisans of the Rights of Man, and, therefore, humanitarians and
optimists, disposed to excuse the misdeeds of the people, hesitating,
tardy and often timid in the face of an outbreak--in short, admirable
writers, exhorters, and reformers, but good for nothing when it comes to
breaking heads and risking their own bones. They have not been brought
up in such a way as to become men of action in a single day. Up to
this time they have always lived as passive administrators, as quiet
individuals, as studious men and clerks, domesticated, conversational,
and polished, to whom words concealed facts, and who, on their evening
promenade, warmly discussed important principles of government, without
any consciousness of the practical machinery which, with a police-system
for its ultimate wheel, rendered themselves, their promenade, and their
conversation perfectly secure. They are not imbued with that sentiment
of social danger which produces the veritable chief; the man who
subordinates the emotions of pity to the exigencies of the public
service. They are not aware that it is better to mow down a hundred
conscientious citizens rather than let them hang a culprit without
a trial. Repression, in their hands, is neither prompt, rigid, nor
constant. They continue to be in the Hôtel-de-Ville what they were
when they went into it, so many jurists and scribes, fruitful in
proclamations, reports, and correspondence. Such is wholly their role,
and, if any amongst them, with more energy, desires to depart from it,
he has no hold on the commune which, according to the Constitution, he
has to direct, and on that armed force which is entrusted to him with a
view to insure the observance of the laws.
To insure respect for authority, indeed, it must not spring up on the
spot and under the hands of its subordinates. It loses its prestige and
independence when those who create it are precisely those who have to
submit to it. For, in submitting to it, they remember that they have
created it. This or that candidate among them who has but lately
solicited their suffrages is now a magistrate who issues orders, and
this sudden transformation is their work. It is with difficulty that
they pass from the role of sovereign electors to that of docile subjects
of the administration, and recognize a commander in one of their own
creatures.[2325] On the contrary, they will submit to his control only
in their own fashion, reserving to themselves in practice the powers the
right to which they have conferred on him.
"We gave him his place, and he must do as we want him to do."
Such popular reasoning is the most natural in the world. It is as
applicable to the municipal officer wearing his scarf as to the officer
in the National Guard wearing his epaulettes; the former as well as
the latter being conferred by the arbitrary voice of the electors, and
always seeming to them a gift which is revocable at their pleasure. The
superior always, and more particularly in times of danger or of great
public excitement, seems, if directly appointed by those whom he
commands, to be their clerk.--Such is municipal authority at this epoch,
intermittent, uncertain, and weak; and all the weaker because the sword,
whose hilt the men of the Hôtel-de-Ville seem to hold, does not always
leave its scabbard at their bidding. They alone are empowered to summon
the National Guard, but it does not depend on them, and it is not at
their disposal. To obtain its support it is needful that its independent
chiefs should be willing to respond to their requisition; that the men
should willingly obey their elected officers; that these improvised
soldiers should consent to quit their plow, their stores, their
workshops and offices, to lose their day, to patrol the streets at
night, to be pelted with stones, to fire on a riotous crowd whose
enmities and prejudices they often share. Undoubtedly, they will fire on
some occasions, but generally they will remain quiet, with their arms
at rest; and, at last, they will grow weary of a trying, dangerous, and
constant service, which is disagreeable to them, and for which they are
not fitted. They will not answer the summons, or, if they do, they will
come too late, and in too small a number. In this event, the regulars
who are sent for, will do as they do and remain quiet, following their
example, while the municipal magistrate, into whose hands the sword has
glided, will be able to do no more than make grievous reports, to his
superiors of the department or district, concerning the popular violence
of which he is a powerless witness.--In other cases, and especially in
the country, his condition is worse. The National Guard, preceded by its
drums, will come and take him off to the town hall to authorize by his
presence, and to legalize by his orders, the outrages that it is about
to commit. He marches along seized by the collar, and affixes his
signature at the point of the bayonet. In this case not only is his
instrument taken away from him, but it is turned against of holding it
by the hilt, he feels the point: the armed force which he ought to make
use of makes use of him.
IV.--On Universal Suffrage.
The National Guard as electors.--Its great power.--Its
important task.--The work imposed on active citizens.--They
avoid it.
Behold, then, the true sovereign, the elector, both National Guard and
voter. They are the kings designed by the Constitution; there he is,
in every hierarchical stage, with his suffrage, with which to delegate
authority, and his gun to assure its exercise.--Through his free
choice he creates all local powers, intermediary, central, legislative,
administrative, ecclesiastical, and judiciary. He appoints directly, and
in the primary assemblies, the mayor, the municipal board, the public
prosecutor and council of the commune, the justice of the peace and
his assessors, and the electors of the second degree. Indirectly, and
through these elected electors, he appoints the administrators and
procureurs-syndics of both district and department, the civil and
criminal judges, the public prosecutor, bishops, and priests, the
members of the National Assembly and jurors of the higher National
Court[2326]. All these commissions which he issues are of short date,
the principal ones, those of municipal officer, elector, and deputy,
having but two years to run; at the end of this brief term their
recipients are again subject to his vote, in order that, if he is
displeased with them, he may replace them by others. He must not be
fettered in his choice; in every well-conducted establishment the
legitimate proprietor must be free easily and frequently to renew his
staff of clerks. He is the only one in whom confidence can be placed,
and, for greater security, all arms are given up to him. When his
clerks wish to employ force he is the one to place it at their disposal.
Whatever he desired as elector he executes as National Guard. On two
occasions he interferes, both times in a decisive manner; and his
control over the legal powers is irresistible because these are born out
of his vote and are obeyed only through his support.--But these rights
are, at the same time, burdens. The Constitution describes him as an
"active citizen," and this he eminently is or should be, since public
action begins and ends with him, since everything depends on his
zeal and capacity, since the machine is good and only works well
in proportion to his discernment, punctuality, calmness, firmness,
discipline at the polls, and in the ranks. The law requires his
services incessantly day and night, in body and mind, as gendarme and as
elector.--How burdensome this service of gendarme must be, can be judged
by the number of riots. How burdensome that of elector must be, the list
of elections will show.
In February, March, April, and May, 1789, there are prolonged parish
meetings, for the purpose of choosing electors and writing out
grievances, also bailiwick meetings of still longer duration to choose
deputies and draw up the memorial. During the months of July and August,
1789, there are spontaneous gatherings to elect or confirm the municipal
bodies; other spontaneous meetings by which the militia is formed and
officered; and then, following these, constant meetings of this same
militia to fuse themselves into a National Guard, to renew officers and
appoint deputies to the federative assemblies. In December, 1789, and
January, 1790, there are primary meetings, to elect municipal officers
and their councils. In May, 1790, there are primary and secondary
meetings, to appoint district and departmental administrators. In
October, 1790, there are primary meetings, to elect the justice of the
peace and his assessors, also secondary meetings, to elect the district
courts. In November, 1790, there are primary meetings, to renew
one-half of the municipal bodies. In February and March, 1791, there
are secondary meetings, to nominate the bishop and curés. In June, July,
August, September, 1791, there are primary and secondary meetings,
to renew one-half of the district and departmental administrators, to
nominate the president, the public prosecutor, and the clerk of the
criminal court, and to choose deputies. In November, 1791, there are
primary meetings to renew one-half of the municipal council. Observe
that many of these elections drag along because the voters lack
experience, because the formalities are complicated, and because
opinions are divided. In August and September, 1791, at Tours, they are
prolonged for thirteen days;[2327] at Troyes, in January, 1790, instead
of three days they last for three weeks; at Paris, in September and
October, 1791, only for the purpose of choosing deputies, they last
for thirty-seven days; in many places their proceedings are contested,
annulled, and begun over again. To these universal gatherings, which
put all France in motion, we must add the local gatherings by which a
commune approves or gainsays its municipal officers, makes claims on the
department, on the King, or on the Assembly, demands the maintenance
of its parish priest, the provisioning of its market, the arrival
or dispatch of a military detachment,--and think of all that these
meetings, petitions, and nominations presuppose in the way of
preparatory committees and preliminary meetings and debates! Every
public representation begins with rehearsals in secret session. In the
choice of a candidate, and, above all, of a list of candidates; in
the appointment in each commune of from three to twenty-one municipal
officers, and from six to forty-two notables; in the selection of twelve
district administrators and thirty-six departmental administrators,
especially as the list must be of a double length and contain twice
as many officers as there are places to fill, immediate agreement is
impossible. In every important election the electors are sure to be in
a state of agitation a month beforehand, while four weeks of discussion
and caucus is not too much to give to inquiries about candidates, and to
canvassing voters. Let us add, accordingly, this long preface to each
of the elections, so long and so often repeated, and now sum up the
troubles and disturbances, all this loss of time, all the labor which
the process demands. Each convocation of the primary assemblies, summons
to the town-hall or principal town of the canton, for one or for several
days, about three million five hundred thousand electors of the first
degree. Each convocation of the assemblies of the second class compels
the attendance and sojourn at the principal town of the department, and
again in the principal town of the district, of about three hundred and
fifty thousand elected electors. Each revision or re-election in the
National Guard gathers together on the public square, or subjects to
roll-call at the town-hall, three or four millions of National
Guards. Each federation, after exacting the same gathering or the same
roll-call, sends delegates by hundreds of thousands to the principal
towns of the districts and departments, and tens of thousands to
Paris.--The powers thus instituted at the cost of so great an effort,
require an equal effort to make them work; one branch alone of the
administration[2328] keeps 2,988 officials busy in the departments,
6,950 in the districts, 1,175,000 in the communes--in all, nearly one
million two hundred thousand administrators, whose places, as we have
seen above, are no sinecures. Never did a political machine require so
prodigious an expenditure of force to set it up and keep it in motion.
In the United States, where it is now (around 1875) deranged by its own
action, it has been estimated that, to meet the intentions of the law
and keep each wheel in its proper place, it would be necessary for each
citizen to give one whole day in each week, or on-sixth of his time,
to public business. In France, under the newly adopted system, where
disorder is universal, where the duty of National Guard is added to and
complicates that of elector and administrator, I estimate that two days
would be necessary. This is what the Constitution comes to, this is its
essential and supreme requirement: each active citizen has to give up
one-third of his time to public affairs.
Now, these twelve hundred thousand administrators and three or four
million electors and National Guards, are just the men in France who
have the least leisure. The class of active citizens, indeed, comprises
about all the men who labor with their hands or with their heads.
The law exempts only domestics devoted to personal service or common
laborers who, possessing no property or income, earn less than
twenty-one sous a day. Every journeyman-miller, the smallest farmer,
every village proprietor of a cottage or of a vegetable-garden, any
ordinary workman, votes at the primary meetings, and may become a
municipal officer. Again, if he pays ten francs a year direct tax, if he
is a farmer or yeomen on any property which brings him in four hundred
francs, if his rent is one hundred and fifty francs, he may become an
elected elector and an administrator of the district or department.
According to this standard the eligible are innumerable; in Doubs, in
1790,[2329] they form two-thirds of the active citizens. Thus, the
way to office is open to all, or almost all, and the law has taken no
precaution whatever to reserve or provide places for the elite, who
could best fill them. On the contrary, the nobles, the ecclesiastical
dignitaries, the members of the parliaments, the grand functionaries of
the ancient regime, the upper class of the bourgeoisie, almost all the
rich who possess leisure, are practically excluded from the elections
by violence, and from the various offices by public opinion: they
soon retire into private life, and, through discouragement or disgust,
through monarchical or religious scruples, abandon entirely a public
career.--The burden of the new system falls, accordingly, on the most
occupied portion of the community: on merchants, manufacturers, agents
of the law, employees, shopkeepers, artisans, and cultivators. They
are the people who must give up one-third of their time already
appropriated, neglect private for public business, leave their harvests,
their bench, their shop, or their briefs to escort convoys and patrol
the highways, to run off to the principal town of the canton, district,
or department, and stay and sit there in the town-hall,[2330] subject
to a deluge of phrases and papers, conscious that they are forced to
gratuitous drudgery, and that this drudgery is of little advantage to
the public.--For the first six months they do it with good grace; their
zeal in penning memorials, in providing themselves with arms against
"brigands," and in suppressing taxes, rents, and tithes, is active
enough. But now that this much is obtained or extorted, decreed as a
right, or accomplished in fact, they must not be further disturbed. They
need the whole of their time: they have their crops to get in, their
customers to serve, their orders to give, their books to make up, their
credits to adjust, all which are urgent matters, and neither ought to be
neglected or interrupted. Under the lash of necessity and of the crisis
they have put their backs to it, and, if we take their word for it, they
hauled the public cart out of the mud; but they had no idea of putting
themselves permanently in harness to drag it along themselves. Confined
as this class has been for centuries to private life, each has his own
wheelbarrow to trundle along, and it is for this, before all and above
all, that he holds himself responsible. From the beginning of the year
1790 the returns of the votes taken show that as many are absent as
present; at Besançon there are only nine hundred and fifty-nine voters
out of thirty-two hundred inscribed; four months after this more than
one-half of the electors fail to come to the polls;[2331] and throughout
France, even at Paris, the indifference to voting keeps on increasing.
Puppets of such an administration as that of Louis XV. and Louis XVI. do
not become Florentine or Athenian citizens in a single night. The hearts
and heads of three or four millions of men are not suddenly endowed with
faculties and habits which render them capable of diverting one-third of
their energies to work which is new, disproportionate, gratuitous, and
supererogatory.--A fallacy of monstrous duplicity lies at the basis
of the political theories of the day and of those which were
invented during the following ten years. Arbitrarily, and without any
examination, a certain weight and resistance are attributed to the human
metal employed. It is found on trial to have ten times less resistance
and twenty times more weight than was supposed.
V.--The Ruling Minority.
The restless minority.--Its elements.--The clubs.--Their
ascendancy.--How they interpret the Rights of Man.--Their
usurpations and violence.
In default of the majority, who shirk their responsibilities, it is the
minority which does the work and assumes the power. The majority having
resigned, the minority becomes sovereign, and public business, abandoned
by the hesitating, weak, and absent multitude, falls into the hands of
the resolute, energetic, ever-present few who find the leisure and
the disposition to assume the responsibility. In a system in which all
offices are elective, and in which elections are frequent, politics
becomes a profession for those who subordinate their private interests
to it, and who find it of personal advantage; every village contains
five or six men of this class, every borough twenty or thirty, every
town its hundreds and Paris its many thousands.[2332] These are
veritable active citizens They alone give all their time and attention
to public matters, correspond with the newspapers and with the deputies
at Paris, receive and spread abroad the party watchword on every
important question, hold caucuses, get up meetings, make motions, draw
up addresses, overlook, rebuke, or denounce the local magistrates, form
themselves into committees, publish and push candidates, and go into
the suburbs and the country to canvass for votes. They hold the power
in recompense for their labor, for they manage the elections, and are
elected to office or provided with places by the successful candidates.
There is a prodigious number of these offices and places, not only those
of officers of the National Guard and the administrators of the commune,
the district, and the department, whose duties are gratuitous,
or little short of it, but a quantity of others which are
paid,[2333]--eighty-three bishops, seven hundred and fifty deputies,
four hundred criminal judges, three thousand and seven civil judges,
five thousand justices of the peace, twenty thousand assessors forty
thousand communal collectors, forty-six thousand curés, without counting
the accessory or insignificant places which exist by tens and hundreds
of thousands, from secretaries, clerks, bailiffs and notaries, to
gendarmes, constables, office-clerks, beadles, grave-diggers, and
keepers of sequestered goods. The pasture is vast for the ambitious; it
is not small for the needy, and they seize upon it. Such is the rule in
pure democracies: hence the swarm of politicians in the United States.
When the law incessantly calls all citizens to political action, there
are only a few who devote themselves to it; these become expert in this
particular work, and, consequently, preponderant. But they must be paid
for their trouble, and the election secures to them their places because
they manage the elections.
Two sorts of men furnish the recruits for this dominant minority: on
the one hand the enthusiasts, and on the other those who have no social
position. Towards the end of 1789, moderate people, who are minding
their own business, retire into privacy, and are daily less disposed to
show themselves. The public square is occupied by others who, through
zeal and political passion, abandon their pursuits, and by those who,
finding themselves hampered in their social sphere, or repelled from
ordinary circles, were merely awaiting a new opening to take a fresh
start. In these utopian and revolutionary times, there is no lack of
either class. Flung out by handfuls, the dogma of popular sovereignty
falls like a seed scattered around, to end up vegetating in heated
brains, in the narrow and rash minds which, once possessed by an
idea, adhere to it and are mastered by it. It falls amongst a class of
reasoners who, starting from a principle, dash forward like a horse
who has had blinders put on. This is especially the case with the legal
class, whose profession accustoms them to deductions; nor less with the
village attorney, the unfrocked monk, the "intruding" and excommunicated
curé, and above all, the journalist and the local orator, who, for
the first time in his life, finds that he has an audience, applause,
influence and a future before him. These are the only people who can do
the complicated and constant work which the new Constitution calls for;
for they are the only men whose desires are unlimited, whose dreams are
coherent, whose doctrine is explicit, whose enthusiasm is contagious,
who cherish no scruples, and whose presumption is unbounded. Thus has
the rigid will been wrought and tempered within them, the inward spring
of energy which, being daily more tightly wound up, urges them on to
propaganda and to action.--During the second half of the year 1790 we
see them everywhere following the example of the Paris Jacobins, styling
themselves friends of the Constitution, and grouping themselves together
in popular associations. Each town and village gives birth to a club of
patriots who regularly every evening, or several times a week, meet "for
the purpose of co-operating for the safety of the commonwealth."[2334]
This is a new and spontaneous organ,[2335] an cancer and a parasite,
which develops itself in the social body alongside of its legal
organizations. Its growth insensibly increases, attracting to itself the
substance of the others, employing them for its own ends, substituting
itself for them, acting by and for itself alone, a sort of omnivorous
outgrowth the encroachment of which is irresistible, not only because
circumstances and the working of the Constitution nourish it, but also
because its germ, deposited at a great depth, is a living portion of the
Constitution itself.
For, placed at the head of the Constitution, as well as of the decrees
which are attached to it, stands the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
According to this, and by the avowal of the legislators themselves,
there are two parts to be distinguished in the law, the one superior,
eternal, inviolable, which is the self-evident principle, and the other
inferior, temporary, and open to discussion, which comprehends more or
less exact or erroneous applications of this principle. No application
of the law is valid if it derogates from the principle. No institution
or authority is entitled to obedience if it is opposed to the rights
which it aims to guarantee. These sacred rights, anterior to all
society, take precedence of every social convention, and whenever we
would know if a legal order is legitimate, we have merely to ascertain
if it is in conformity with natural right. Let us, accordingly, in every
doubtful or difficult case, refer to this philosophic gospel, to
this incontestable catechism, this primordial creed proclaimed by the
National Assembly.--The National Assembly itself invites us to do so.
For it announces that
"ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man are the sole
causes of public misfortune, and of the corruption of governments."
It declares that
"the object of every political association is the preservation of
natural and imprescriptible rights."
It enumerates them, "in order that the acts of legislative power and
the acts of executive power may at once be compared with the purpose
of every political institution." It desires "that every member of the
social body should have its declaration constantly in mind."--Thus we
are told to control all acts of application by the principle, and
also we are provided with the rule by which we may and should accord,
measure, or even refuse our submission to, deference for, and toleration
of established institutions and legal authority.
What are these superior rights, and, in case of dispute, who will decide
as arbitrator?--There is nothing here like the precise declarations
of the American Constitution,[2336] those positive prescriptions which
serve to sustain a judicial appeal, those express prohibitions which
prevent beforehand certain species of laws from being passed, which
prescribe limits to public powers, which mark out the province not to be
invaded by the State because it is reserved to the individual.
On the contrary, in the declaration of the national Assembly, most of
the articles are abstract dogmas,[2337] metaphysical definitions, more
or less literary axioms, that is to say, more or less false, now vague
and now contradictory, open to various interpretations and to opposite
constructions, These are good for platform display but bad in practice,
mere stage effect, a sort of pompous standard, useless and heavy, which,
hoisted in front of the Constitutional house and shaken every day
by violent hands, cannot fail soon to tumble on the heads of passers
by.[2338]--Nothing is done to ward off this visible danger. There is
nothing here like that Supreme Court which, in the United States, guards
the Constitution even against its Congress, and which, in the name of
the Constitution, actually invalidates a law, even when it has passed
through all formalities and been voted on by all the powers;
which listens to the complaints of the individual affected by an
unconstitutional law; which stays the sheriff's or collector's hand
raised against him, and which above their heads gives judgment on his
interests and wrongs. Ill-defined and discordant laws are proclaimed
without any provision being made for their interpretation, application
or sanction. No means are taken to have them specially expounded. No
district tribunal is assigned to consider the claims which grow out of
them, to put an end to litigation legally, peacefully, on a last appeal,
and through a final decision which becomes a precedent and fixes the
loose sense of the text. All this is made the duty of everybody, that is
to say of those who are disposed to charge themselves with it,--in other
words, the active minority in council assembled.--Thus, in each town
or village it is the local club which, by the authorization of the
legislator himself, becomes the champion, judge, interpreter and
administrator of the rights of man, and which, in the name of these
superior rights, may protest or rebel, as it seems best, not only
against the legitimate acts of legal powers, but also against the
authentic text of the Constitution and the Laws.[2339]
Consider, indeed, these rights as they are proclaimed, along with
the commentary of the speaker who expounds them at the club before an
audience of heated and daring spirits, or in the street to the rude
and fanatical multitude. Every article in the Declaration is a dagger
pointed at human society, and the handle has only to be pressed to
make the blade enter the flesh.[2340] Among "these natural and
imprescriptible rights" the legislator has placed "resistance to
oppression." We are oppressed: let us resist and take up arms. According
to this legislator, "society has the right to bring every public agent
of the Administration to account." Let us away to the Hôtel-de-Ville,
and interrogate our lukewarm or suspected magistrates, and watch their
sessions to see if they prosecute priests and disarm the aristocrats;
let us stop their intrigues against the people; let us force these
slow clerks to hasten their steps.--According to this legislator
"all citizens have the right to take part in person, or through their
representatives, in the formation of the law." There must thus be no
more electors privileged by their payment of a three-franc tax. Down
with the new aristocracy of active citizens! Let us restore to the
two millions of proletarians the right of suffrage, of which the
Constitution has unjustly defrauded them!--According to this legislator,
"men are born and remain free, and equal in their rights." Consequently,
let no one be excluded from the National Guard; let everybody, even
the pauper, have some kind of weapon, a pike or gun, to defend his
freedom!--In the very terms of the Declaration, "the law is the
expression of the universal will." Listen to these clamors in the open
streets, to these petitions flowing in from the towns on all sides;
behold the universal will, the living law which abolishes the written
law! On the strength of this the leader of a few clubs in Paris are to
depose the King, to violate the Legislative Assembly and decimate the
National Convention.--In other terms, the turbulent, factious minority
is to supplant the sovereign nation, and henceforth there is nothing to
hinder it from doing what it pleases just when it pleases. The operation
of the Constitution has given to it the reality of power, while the
preamble of the Constitution clothes it with the semblance of right.
VI.--Summary of the work of the Constituent Assembly.
Such is the work of the Constituent Assembly. In several of its laws,
especially those which relate to private interests, in the institution
of civil regulations, in the penal and rural codes,[2341] in the
first attempts at, and the promise of, a uniform civil code, in the
enunciation of a few simple regulations regarding taxation, procedure,
and administration, it planted good seed. But in all that relates to
political institutions and social organization its proceedings are those
of an academy of Utopians, and not those of practical legislators.--On
the sick body entrusted to it, it performed amputations which were as
useless as they were excessive, and applied bandages as inadequate as
they were injurious. With the exception of two or three restrictions
admitted inadvertently, and the maintenance of the show of royalty, also
the obligation of a small electoral qualification, it carried out its
principle to the end, the principle of Rousseau. It deliberately refused
to consider man as he really was under its own eyes, and persisted
in seeing nothing in him but the abstract being created in books.
Consequently, with the blindness and obstinacy characteristic of a
speculative surgeon, it destroyed, in the society submitted to its
scalpel and its theories, not only the tumors, the enlargements, and the
inflamed parts of the organs, but also the organs themselves, and even
the vital governing centers around which cells arrange themselves to
recompose an injured organ. That is, the Assembly destroyed on the one
hand the time-honored, spontaneous, and lasting societies formed by
geographical position, history, common occupations and interests, and
on the other, those natural chiefs whose name, repute, education,
independence, and earnestness designated them as the best qualified to
occupy high positions. In one direction it despoils and permits the
ruin and proscription of the superior class, the nobles, the members of
Parliament, and the upper middle class. In another it dispossesses and
breaks up all historic or natural corporations, religious congregations,
clerical bodies, provinces, parliaments, societies of art and of all
other professions and pursuits. This done, every tie or bond which
holds men together is found to be severed; all subordination and every
graduated scale of rank have disappeared. There is no longer rank and
file, or commander-in-chief. Nothing remains but individual particles,
26 millions of equal and disconnected atoms. Never was so much
disintegrated matter, less capable of resistance, offered to hands
undertaking to mold it. Harshness and violence will be sufficient to
ensure success. These brutal hands are ready for the work, and the
Assembly which has reduced the material to powder has likewise
provided the mortar and pestle. As awkward in destruction as it is in
construction, it invents for the restoration of order in a society which
is turned upside down a machine which would, of itself, create
disorder in a tranquil society. The most absolute and most concentrated
government would not be strong enough to effect without disturbance a
similar equalization of ranks, the same dismemberment of associations,
and the same displacement of property. No social transformation can
be peacefully accomplished without a well-commanded army, obedient and
everywhere present, as was the case in the emancipation of the Russian
serfs by Emperor Alexander. The new Constitution,[2342] on the contrary,
reduces the King to the position of an honorary president, suspected
and called in question by a disorganized State. Between him and the
legislative body it interposes nothing but sources of conflict, and
suppresses all means of concord. The monarch has no hold whatever on the
administrative departments which he must direct; the mutual independence
of the powers, from the center to the extremities of the State,
everywhere produces indifference, negligence, and disobedience between
the injunctions issued and their execution. France is a federation of
forty thousand municipal sovereignties, in which the authority of legal
magistrates varies according to the caprice of active citizens. These
active citizens, too heavily loaded, shy away from the performance
of public duty; in which a minority of fanatics and ambitious men
monopolize the right to speak, to vote, all influence, the power and
all action. They justify their multiple ursurpations, their unbridled
despotism, and their increasing encroachments by the Declaration of
the Rights of Man. The masterpiece[2343] of ideal abstractions and
of practical absurdities is accomplished. In accordance with the
Constitution spontaneous anarchy becomes legalized anarchy. The latter
is perfect; nothing finer of the kind has been seen since the ninth
century.
*****
[Footnote 2301: The name for the dreaded secret Royal warrant of arrest.
(SR.)]
[Footnote 2302: The initiative rests with the King on one point: war
cannot be decreed by the Assembly except on his formal and preliminary
proposition. This exception was secured only after a violent struggle
and a supreme effort by Mirabeau.]
[Footnote 2303: Speech by Lanjuinais, November 7, 1789. "We determined
on the separation of the powers. Why, then, should the proposal he made
to us to unite the legislative power with the executive power in the
persons of the ministers?"]
[Footnote 2304: See the attendance of the Ministers before the
Legislative Assembly.]
[Footnote 2305: "Any society in which the separation of the powers
is not clearly defined has no constitution." (Declaration of Rights,
article XVI.)--This principle is borrowed from a text by Montesquieu,
also from the American Constitution. In the rest the theory of Rousseau
is followed.]
[Footnote 2306: Mercure de France, an expression by Mallet du Pan.]
[Footnote 2307: Constitution of 1791, ch. II. articles 5, 6, 7.--Decree
of September 25--October 6, 1791, section III. articles, 8 to 25.]
[Footnote 2308: Speeches by Barnave and Roederer in the constituent
Assembly.--Speeches by Barnave and Duport in the Jacobin Club.]
[Footnote 2309: Principal texts. (Duvergier, "Collection des Lois et
Decrets.")--Laws on municipal and administrative organization, December
14 and 22, 1789; August 12-20, 1790; March 12, 1791. On the municipal
organization of Paris, May 21st, June 27, 1790.--Laws on the
organization of the Judiciary, August 16-24, 1790; September 16-29,
1791; September 29, October 21, 1791.--Laws on military organization,
September 23, October 29, 1790; January 16, 1791; July 27, 28,
1791--Laws on the financial organization, November 14-24,.1790; November
23, 1790; March 17, 1791; September 26, October 2, 1791.]
[Footnote 2310: The removal of such managerial authority has since the
second World war taken place inside the United Nations and other Western
public administrations and seems to be the aim of much communist trade
union effort. The result has everywhere been added cost and decreased
efficiency. (SR.)]
[Footnote 2311: This principle has been introduced in Western
educational systems when clever self-appointed psychologists told
parents and teacher alike that they could and should not punish their
children but only talk and explain to them. (SR.)]
[Footnote 2312: This description fits the staff regulations of the
United Nations secretariat in which I served for 32 years. (SR.)]
[Footnote 2313: Decrees of December 14 and December 22, 1789: "In
municipalities reduced to three members (communes below five hundred
inhabitants), all executive functions shall belong to the mayor alone."]
[Footnote 2314: Could it be that Lenin took note of this and had it
this translated in Russian and made use of it in his and later in
Stalin's schools for international revolutionaries. It would in any
case have weakened the Bourgeois Capitalist countries. In any case such
measures have been introduced both in the international organizations
and in most Western Democratic Governments after World War II. (SR.)]
[Footnote 2315: This was in the United Nations called 'Rotation' and
made the administration of missions and forces difficult, expensive and
inefficient. This rotation was also used in the Indian and other armies
in order to prevent the officers to reach an understanding or achieve
any power over the troops under their command. (SR.)]
[Footnote 2316: Laws of September 23--October 29, 1790; January 16,
1791. (Titles II. And VII.)--Cf. the legal prescriptions in relation
to the military tribunals. In every prosecuting or judicial jury
one-seventh of the sworn members are taken from the non-commissioned
officers, and one-seventh from the soldiers, and again, according to the
rank of the accused, the number of those of the same rank is doubled.]
[Footnote 2317: Law of July 28th, August 12, 1791.]
[Footnote 2318: Laws of November 24, 1789 (article 52), August 10-14,
1789.--Instruction of August 10-20, 1790; § 8--Law of October 21,
November 21, 1789.]
[Footnote 2319: Laws of November 14 and 23, 1790; January 13th,
September 26th, October 9, 1792.]
[Footnote 2320: Albert Babeau, I. 327 (Féte of the Federation, July 14,
1790).--"Archives Nationales," F7, 3215 (May 17,1791, Deliberation of
the council-general of the commune of Brest. May 17 and 19, Letters of
the directory of the district).--Mercure, March 5, 1791. "Mesdames
are stopped until the return of the two deputies, whom the Republic
of Arnay-le-Duc has sent to the representatives of the nation to
demonstrate to them the necessity of keeping the king's aunts in the
kingdom."]
[Footnote 2321: Moniteur, X. 132. Speech by M. Labergerie, November 8,
1791.]
[Footnote 2322: At Montauban, in the intendant's salon, the ladies of
the place spoke patois only, the grandmother of the gentleman who has
informed me of this fact did not understand any other language.]
[Footnote 2323: Moniteur, V.163, sitting of July 18, 1791. Speech by M.
Lecoulteux, reporter.]
[Footnote 2324: Moniteur, XI. 283, sitting of February 2, 1792. Speech
by Cambon: "They go away thinking that they understand what is explained
to them, but return the following day to obtain fresh explanations. The
attorneys refuse to give the municipalities any assistance, stating that
they know nothing about these matters."]
[Footnote 2325: The same may happen when a subordinate is promoted to be
placed in charge of his or her former equals and colleagues. This is why
it is often preferably to transfer someone who is recognized as being of
superior talent whenever a promotions is to take place. (SR.)]
[Footnote 2326: Law of May 11-15, 1791.]
[Footnote 2327: Minutes of the meeting of the Electoral Assembly of the
Department of Indre-et-Loire (1791, printed).]
[Footnote 2328: De Ferrières, I. 367.]
[Footnote 2329: Suzay, I, 191 (21,711 are eligible out of 32,288
inscribed citizens).]
[Footnote 2330: Official report of the Electoral Assembly of the
Department of Indre-et-Loire, Aug. 27, 1791. "A member of the Assembly
made a motion that all the members composing it should be indemnified
for the expenses which would be incurred by their absence from home and
the long sojourn they had to make in the town where the Assembly was
held. He remarked that the inhabitants of the country were those who
suffered the most, their labor being their sole riches; that if no
attention was paid to this demand, they would be obliged, in spite of
their patriotism, to withdraw and abandon their important mission; that
the electoral assemblies would then be deserted, or would be composed of
those whose resources permitted them to make this sacrifice."]
[Footnote 2331: Sauzay, I. 147, 192.]
[Footnote 2332: For the detail of these figures, see vol. II. Book IV.]
[Footnote 2333: De Ferrières, I. 367. Cf. The various laws above
mentioned.]
[Footnote 2334: Constant, "Histoire d'un Club Jacobin en Province"
(Fontainebleau) p.15. (Procés-verbaux of the founding of the clubs of
Moret, Thomery, Nemours, and Montereau.)]
[Footnote 2335: Later to change and become socialist and communist
parties everywhere. (SR.)]
[Footnote 2336: Cf. The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776
(except the first phrase, which is a catchword thrown out for the
European philosophers).--Jefferson proposed a Declaration of Rights for
the Constitution of March 4, 1789, but it was refused. They were content
to add to it the eleven amendments which set forth the fundamental
rights of the citizen.]
[Footnote 2337: Article I. "Men are born and remain free and equal in
rights common to all. Social distinctions are founded solely on public
utility." The first phrase condemns the hereditary royalty which is
sanctioned by the Constitution. The second phrase can be used to
legitimate hereditary monarchy and an aristocracy.--Articles 10 and 11
bear upon the manifestations of religious convictions and on freedom of
speech and of the press. By virtue of these two articles worship,
speech, and the press may be made subject to the most repressive
restrictions, etc.]
[Footnote 2338: The International Bill of Human Rights of 1948 is quite
different from the one approved in 1789. In 1948 there is no more any
mention of any "right to resistance to oppression", there is a softening
of the position on the right of property and new rights, to free
education, to a country, to rest and leisure, to a high standard of
health and to an adequate standard of living have been introduced.
(SR.)]
[Footnote 2339: Stalin and his successors organized such a system of
"clubs" world-wide which even today remain active as "protectors" of the
environment, refugees, prisoners, animals and the environment. (SR.)]
[Footnote 2340: Buchez and Roux, XI. 237. (Speech by Malouet in relation
to the revision, August 5, 1791.) "You constantly tempt the people with
sovereignty without giving them the immediate use of it."]
[Footnote 2341: Decrees of September 25--October 6, 1791; September
28--October 6, 1791.]
[Footnote 2342: Impartial contemporaries, those well qualified to judge,
agree as to the absurdity of the Constitution. "The Constitution was a
veritable monster. There was too much of monarchy in it for a republic,
and too much of a republic for a monarchy. The King was a side-dish, un
hors d'oeuvre, everywhere present in appearance but without any actual
power." (Dumont, 339.) "It is a general and almost universal conviction
that this Constitution is inexecutable. The makers of it to a man
condemn it." (G. Morris, September 30, 1791.) "Every day proves more
clearly that their new Constitution is good for nothing." (ibid.
December 27, 1791.) Cf. The sensible and prophetic speech made by
Malouet (August 5, 1791, Buchez and Roux, XI. 237).]
[Footnote 2343: Taine's vivid description is likely to have encouraged
any radical revolutionary having the luck to read his explicit
description of how to proceed with the destruction of a naïve corrupt
capitalist, bourgeois society. (SR.)]
BOOK THIRD. THE APPLICATION OF THE CONSTITUTION. [3101]
CHAPTER I.
I.--The Federations.
Popular application of philosophic theory.--Idyllic
celebration of the Contrat-Social.--The two strata of the
human mind.--Permanent disorder.
If there ever was an Utopia which seemed capable of realization, or,
what is still more to the purpose, was really applied, converted into a
fact, fully established, it is that of Rousseau, in 1789 and during the
three following years. For, not only are his principles embodied in the
laws, and the Constitution throughout animated with his spirit, but it
seems as if the nation looked upon his ideological gambols, his abstract
fiction, as serious. This fiction it carried out in every particular. A
social contract, at one spontaneous and practical, an immense
gathering of men associating together freely for the first time for the
recognition of their respective rights, forming a specific compact,
and binding themselves by a solemn oath: such is the social recipe
prescribed by the philosophers, and which is carried out to the letter.
Moreover, as this recipe is esteemed infallible, the imagination is
worked upon and the sensibilities of the day are brought into play.
It is admitted that men, on again becoming equals, have again become
brothers.[3102] A sudden and amazing harmony of all volitions and
all intelligences will restore the golden age on earth. It is proper,
accordingly, to regard the social contract as a festival, an affecting,
sublime idyll, in which, from one end of France to the other, all, hand
in hand, should assemble and swear to the new compact, with song, with
dance, with tears of joy, with shouts of gladness, the worthy beginning
of public felicity. With unanimous assent, indeed, the idyll is
performed as if according to a written program.
On the 29th of November, 1789, at Etoile, near Valence, the federations
began.[3103] Twelve thousand National Guards, from the two banks of the
Rhône, promise "to remain for ever united, to insure the circulation of
grain, and to maintain the laws passed by the National Assembly." On the
13th of December, at Montélimart, six thousand men, the representatives
of 27 000 other men, take a similar oath and confederate themselves with
the foregoing.--Upon this the excitement spreads from month to month
and from province to province. Fourteen towns of the bailiwicks of
Franche-Comté form a patriotic league. At Pontivy, Brittany enters into
federal relations with Anjou. One thousand National Guards of Vivarais
and Languedoc send their delegates to Voute. 48 000 in the Vosges send
their deputies to Epinal. During February, March, April, and May, 1790,
in Alsace, Champagne, Dauphiny, Orléanais, Touraine, Lyonnais, and
Provence, there is the same spectacle. At Draguignan eight thousand
National Guards take the oath in the presence of 20 000 spectators. At
Lyons 50 000 men, delegates of more than 500 000 others take the civic
oath.--But local unions are not sufficient to complete the organization
of France; a general union of all Frenchmen must take place. Many of the
various National Guards have already written to Paris for the purpose of
affiliating themselves with the National Guard there; and, one the 5th
of June, the Parisian municipal body having proposed it, the Assembly
decrees the universal federation. It is to take place on the 14th
of July, everywhere on the same day, both at the center and at the
extremities of the kingdom. There is to be one in the principal town
of each district and of each department, and one in the capital. To
the latter each body of the National Guards is to send deputies in
the proportion of one man to every two hundred; and each regiment one
officer, one non-commissioned officer, and four privates. Fourteen
thousand representatives of the National Guard of the provinces appear
on the Champ de Mars, the theater of the festival; also eleven to twelve
thousand representatives of the land and marine forces, besides
the National Guard of Paris, and sixty thousand spectators on the
surrounding slopes, with a still greater crowd on the heights of
Chaillot and of Passy. All rise to their feet and swear fidelity to the
nation, to the law, to the King and to the new Constitution. When the
report of the cannon is heard which announces the taking of the oath,
those of the Parisians who have remained at home, men, women, and
children, raise their hands in the direction of the Champ de Mars
and likewise make their affirmation. In every principal town of every
district, department, and commune in France there is the same oath on
the same day. Never was there a more perfect social compact heard of.
Here, for the first time in the world, everybody beholds a veritable
legitimate society, for it is founded on free pledges, on solemn
stipulations, and on actual consent. They possess the authentic act and
the dated official report of it.[3104]
There is still something more--the time and the occasion betoken a union
of all hearts. The barriers which have hitherto separated men from each
other are all removed and without effort. Provincial antagonisms are
now to cease: the confederates of Brittany and Anjou write that they
no longer desire to be Angevins and Bretons, but simply Frenchmen. All
religious discords are to come to an end: at Saint-Jean-du-Gard, near
Alais, the Catholic curé and the Protestant pastor embrace each other at
the altar; the pastor occupies the best seat in the church, and at the
Protestant meeting-house the curé has the place of honor, and listens to
the sermon of the pastor.[3105] Distinctions of rank and condition will
no longer exist; at Saint-Andéol "the honor of taking the oath in the
name of the people is conferred on two old men, one ninety-three and
the other ninety-four years of age, one a noble and a colonel of the
National Guard, and the other a simple peasant." At Paris, two hundred
thousand persons of all conditions, ages, and sexes, officers and
soldiers, monks and actors, school-boys and masters, dandies and
ragamuffins, elegant ladies and fishwives, workmen of every class and
the peasants from the vicinity, all flocked to the Champ de Mars to dig
the earth which was not ready, and in a week, trundling wheelbarrows and
handling the pick-ax as equals and comrades, all voluntarily yoked in
the same service, converted a flat surface into a valley between two
hills.--At Strasbourg, General Luckner, commander-in-chief, worked a
whole afternoon in his shirt-sleeves just like the commonest laborer.
The confederates are fed, housed, and have their expenses paid
everywhere on all the roads. At Paris the publicans and keepers of
furnished houses lower their prices of their own accord, and do not
think of robbing their new guests. "The districts," moreover, "feast the
provincials to their heart's content.[3106] There are meals every day
for from twelve to fifteen hundred people." Provincials and Parisians,
soldiers and bourgeois, seated and mingled together, drink each other's
health and embrace. The soldiers, especially, and the inferior officers
are surrounded, welcomed, and entertained to such an extent that they
lose their heads, their health, and more besides. One "old trooper, who
had been over fifty years in the service, died on the way home, used up
with cordials and excess of pleasure." In short, the joy is excessive,
as it should be on the great day when the wish of an entire century
is accomplished.--Behold ideal felicity, as displayed in the books
and illustrations of the time! The natural man buried underneath an
artificial civilization is disinterred, and again appears as in early
days, as in Tahiti, as in philosophic and literary pastorals, as in
bucolic and mythological operas, confiding, affectionate, and happy.
"The sight of all these beings again restored to the sweet sentiments of
primitive brotherhood is an exquisite delight almost too great for the
soul to support," and the Frenchman, more light-hearted and far more
childlike than he is to-day, gives himself up unrestrainedly to his
social, sympathetic, and generous instincts. Whatever the imagination
of the day offers him to increase his emotions, all the classical,
rhetorical, and dramatic material at his command, are employed for
the embellishment of his festival. Already wildly enthusiastic, he
is anxious to increase his enthusiasm.--At Lyons, the fifty thousand
confederates from the south range themselves in line of battle around an
artificial rock, fifty feet high, covered with shrubs, and surmounted by
a Temple of Concord in which stands a huge statue of Liberty; the
steps of the rock are decked with flags, and a solemn mass precedes the
administration of the oath.--At Paris, an alter dedicated to the nation
is erected in the middle of the Champ de Mars, which is transformed
into a colossal circus. The regular troops and the federations of the
departments stand in position around it, the King being in front
with the Queen and the dauphin, while near them are the princes and
princesses in a gallery, and the members of the National Assembly in
an amphitheater; two hundred priests, draped in their albs and with
tricolored belts, officiate around Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun; three
hundred drums and twelve hundred musicians all play at once; forty piece
of cannon are discharged at one volley, and four hundred thousand cheers
go up as if from one threat. Never was such an effort made to intoxicate
the senses and strain the nerves beyond their powers of endurance!--The
moral machine is made to vibrate to the same and even to a greater
extent. For more than a year past, harangues, proclamations, addresses,
newspapers and events have daily added one degree more to the pressure.
On this occasion, thousands of speeches, multiplied by myriads of
newspapers, carry the enthusiasm to the highest pitch. Declamation foams
and rolls along in a steady stream of rhetoric everywhere throughout
France.[3107] In this state of excitement the difference between
magniloquence and sincerity, between the false and the true, between
show and substance, is no longer distinguishable. The Federation becomes
an opera which is seriously played in the open street--children have
parts assigned them in it; it occurs to no one that they are puppets,
and that the words taken for an expression of the heart are simply
memorized speeches that have been put into their mouths. At Besançon,
on the return of the confederates, hundreds of "youthful citizens" from
twelve to fourteen years of age,[3108] in the national uniform, "with
sword in hand," march up to the standard of Liberty. Three little girls
from eleven to thirteen years old and two little boy of nine years
each pronounce "a discourse full of fire and breathing nothing but
patriotism;" after which, a young lady of fourteen, raising her voice
and pointing to the flag, harangues in turn the crowd, the deputies, the
National Guard, the mayor, and the commander of the troops, the scene
ending with a ball. This is the universal finale--men and women,
children and adults, common people and men of the world, chiefs and
subordinates, all, everywhere, frisk about as in the last act of a
pastoral drama. At Paris,--writes an eye-witness, "I saw chevaliers of
Saint-Louis and chaplains dancing in the street with people belonging
to their department."[3109] At the Champ de Mars, on the day of the
Federation, notwithstanding that rain was falling in torrents, "the
first arrivals began to dance, and those who came after them, joining
in, formed a circle which soon spread over a portion of the Champ
de Mars. . . .Three hundred thousand spectators kept time with their
hands." On the following days dancing is kept up on the Champ de Mars
and in the streets, and there is drinking and carousing; "there was
a ball with refreshments at the Corn-Exchange, and on the site of the
Bastille."--At Tours, where fifty-two detachments from the neighboring
provinces are collected, about four o'clock in the afternoon,[3110]
through an irresistible outburst of insane gaiety, "the officers,
inferior officers, and soldiers, pell-mell, race through the streets,
some with saber in hand and others dancing and shouting 'Vive le Roi!'
'Vive la Nation!' flinging up their hats and compelling every one
they met to join in the dance. One of the canons of the cathedral, who
happens to be passing quietly along, has a grenadier's cap put on his
head," and is dragged into the circle, and after him two monks; "they
are often embraced," and then allowed to depart. The carriages of the
mayor and the Marquise de Montausier arrive; people mount up behind,
get inside, and seat themselves in front, as many as can find room,
and force the coachmen to parade through the principal streets in this
fashion. There is no malice in it, nothing but sport and the overflow of
spirits. "Nobody was maltreated or insulted, although almost every one
was drunk."--Nevertheless, there is one bad symptom: the soldiers of
the Anjou regiment leave their barracks the following day and "pass
the whole night abroad, no one being able to hinder them." And there is
another of still graver aspect; at Orleans, after the companies of
the National Militia had danced on the square in the evening, "a large
number of volunteers marched in procession through the town with
drums, shouting out with all their might that the aristocracy must be
destroyed, and that priests and aristocrats should be strung up to the
lamp post. They enter a suspected coffee-house, drive out the inmates
with insults, lay hands on a gentleman who is supposed not to have cried
out as correctly and as lustily as themselves, and come near to hanging
him.[3111]--Such is the fruit of the philosophy and the attitudes of the
eighteenth century. Men believed that, for the organization of a
perfect society and the permanent establishment of freedom, justice, and
happiness on earth, an inspiration of sentiments and an act of the will
would suffice. The inspiration came and the act was fulfilled; they have
been carried away, delighted, affected and out of their minds. Now comes
the reaction, when they have to fall back upon themselves. The effort
has succeeded in accomplishing all that it could accomplish, namely, a
deluge of emotional demonstrations and slogans, a verbal and not a real
contract ostentatious fraternity skin-deep, a well-meaning masquerade,
an outpouring of feeling evaporating through its own pageantry--in
short, an agreeable carnival of a day's duration.
The reason is that in the human mind there are two strata. One
superficial, of which men are conscious, the other deep down, of which
they are unconscious.[3112] The former unstable and vacillating like
shifting sand, the latter stable and fixed like a solid rock, to which
their caprices and agitation never descend. The latter alone determines
the general inclination of the soil, the main current of human activity
necessarily following the bent thus prepared for it.--Certainly embraces
have been interchanged and oaths have been taken; but after, as before
the ceremony, men are just what many centuries of administrative
thralldom and one century of political literature have made them. Their
ignorance and presumption, their prejudices, hatreds, and distrusts,
their inveterate intellectual and emotional habits are still preserved.
They are human, and their stomachs need to be filled daily. They have
imagination, and, if bread be scarce, they fear that they may not get
enough of it. They prefer to keep their money rather than to give
it away. For this reason they spurn the claims which the State and
individuals have upon them as much as possible. They avoid paying their
debts. They willingly lay their hands on public property which is badly
protected; finally they are disposed to regard gendarmes and proprietors
as detrimental, and all the more so because this has been repeated to
them over and over again, day after day, for a whole year.--On the other
hand there is no change in the situation of things. They are ever living
in a disorganized community, under an impracticable constitution, the
passions which sap public order being only the more stimulated by the
semblance of fraternity under which they seemed to be allayed. Men
cannot be persuaded with impunity that the millennium has come, for
they will want to enjoy it immediately, and will tolerate no deception
practiced on their expectations. In this violent state, fired by
boundless expectations, all their whims appear reasonable and all
their opinions rational. They are no longer able to find faults with
or control themselves. In their brain, overflowing with emotions and
enthusiasm, there is no room but for one intense, absorbing, fixed idea.
Each is confident and over-confident in his own opinion; all become
impassioned, imperious, and intractable. Having assumed that all
obstacles are taken out of the way, they grow indignant at each obstacle
they actually encounter. Whatever it may be, they shatter it on the
instant, and their over-excited imagination covers with the fine name of
patriotism their natural appetite for despotism and domination.
France, accordingly, in the three years which follow the taking of the
Bastille, presents a strange spectacle. In the words we find charity
and in the laws symmetry; while the actual events present a spectacle of
disorder and violence. Afar, is the reign of philosophy; close up is the
chaos of the Carlovingian era.
"Foreigners," remarks an observer,[3113] "are not aware that, with a
great extension of political rights, the liberty of the individual is in
law reduced to nothing, while in practice it is subject to the caprice
of sixty thousand constitutional assemblies; that no citizen enjoys any
protection against the annoyances of these popular assemblies; that,
according to the opinions which they entertain of persons and things,
they act in one place in one way and in another place in another way.
Here, a department, acting for itself and without referring elsewhere,
puts an embargo on vessels, while another orders the expulsion of a
military detachment essential for the security of places devastated
by ruffians; and the minister, who responds to the demands of those
interested, replies: 'Such are the orders of the department.' Elsewhere
are administrative bodies which, the moment the Assembly decrees relief
of consciences and the freedom of nonjuring priests, order the latter
out of their homes within 24 hours. Always in advance of or lagging
behind the laws; alternately bold and cowardly; daring all things when
seconded by public license, and daring nothing to repress it; eager to
abuse their momentary authority against the weak in order to acquire
titles to popularity in the future; incapable of maintaining order
except at the expense of public safety and tranquility; entangled in
the reins of their new and complex administration, adding the fury of
passion to incapacity and inexperience; such are, for the most part,
the men sprung from nothing, void of ideas and drunk with pretension,
on whom now rests responsibility for public powers and resources, the
interest of security, and the foundations of the power of government.
In all sections of the nation, in every branch of the administration, in
every report, we detect the confusion of authorities, the uncertainty
of obedience, the dissolution of all restraints, the absence of all
resources, the deplorable complication of enervated springs, without any
of the means of real power, and, for their sole support, laws which,
in supposing France to be peopled with men without vices or passions,
abandon humanity to its primitive state of independence."
A few months after this, in the beginning of 1792, Malouet sums up all
in one phrase:
"It is the Government of Algiers without the Dey."
II.--Independence of the municipalities.
The causes of their initiative.--Sentiment of danger.
--Issy-l'Evêque in 1789.--Exalted pride.--Brittany in 1790.
--Usurpations of the municipalities.--Capture of the
citadels.--Violence increased against their commanders.
--Stoppage of convoys.--Powerlessness of the Directories and
the ministers.--Marseilles in 1790.
Things could not work otherwise. For, before the 6th of October, and the
King's captivity in Paris, the Government had already been destroyed.
Now, through the successive decrees of the Assembly, it is legally done
away with, and each local group is left to itself.--The intendants have
fled, military commanders are not obeyed, the bailiwicks dare hold no
courts, the parliaments are suspended, and seven months elapse before
the district and department administrations are elected, a year before
the new judgeships are instituted, while afterwards, as well as before,
the real power is in the hands of the communes.--The commune must arm
itself, appoint its own chiefs, provide its own supplies, protect itself
against brigands, and feed its own poor. It has to sell its national
property, install the constitutional priest, and, amidst so many eager
passions and injured interest, accomplish the transformation by which
a new society replaces the ancient one. It alone has to ward off the
perpetual and constantly reviving dangers which assail it or which it
imagines. These are great, and it exaggerates them. It is inexperienced
and alarmed. It is not surprising that, in the exercise of its
extemporized power, it should pass beyond its natural or legal limit,
and without being aware of it, overstep the metaphysical line which the
Constitution defines between its rights and the rights of the State.
Neither hunger, fear, rage, nor any of the popular passions can wait;
there is no time to refer to Paris. Action is necessary, immediate
action, and, with the means at hand, they must save themselves as well
as they can. This or that mayor of a village is soon to find himself a
general and a legislator. This or that petty town is to give itself
a charter like Laon or Vezelay in the twelfth century. "On the 6th
of October, 1789,[3114] near Autun, the market-town of Issy-l'Evêque
declares itself an independent State. The parish assembly is convoked
by the priest, M. Carion, who is appointed member of the administrative
committee and of the new military staff. In full session he secures the
adoption of a complete code, political, judiciary, penal and military,
consisting of sixty articles. Nothing is overlooked; we find ordinances
concerning
"the town police, the laying out of streets and public squares,
the repairs of prisons, the road taxes and price of grain, the
administration of justice, fines, confiscations, and the diet of the
National Guards."
He is a provincial Solon,[3115] zealous for the public welfare, and a
man of executive power, he expounds his ordinances from the pulpit, and
threatens the refractory. He passes decrees and renders judgments in the
town-hall: outside the town limits, at the head of the National Guard,
saber in hand, he will enforce his own decisions. He causes it to be
decided that, on the written order of the committee, every citizen may
be imprisoned. He imposes and collects taxes; he has boundary walls
torn down; he goes in person to the houses of cultivators and makes
requisitions for grain; he seizes the convoys which have not deposited
their quote in his own richly stored granaries. One day, preceded by
a drummer, he marches outside the walls, makes proclamation of "his
agrarian laws," and proceeds at once to the partition of the territory,
and, by virtue of the ancient communal or church property rights,
to assign to himself a portion of it. All this is done in public and
consciously, the notary and the scrivener being called in to draw up the
official record of his acts; he is satisfied that human society has come
to an end, and that each local group has the right to begin over again
and apply in its own way the Constitution which it has accorded to
itself without reference to anybody else.--This man, undoubtedly, talks
too loudly, an proceeds too quickly; and first the bailiwick, next the
Châtelet, and afterwards the National Assembly temporarily put a stop
to his proceedings; but his principle is a popular one, and the forty
thousand communes of France are about to act like so many distinct
republics, under the sentimental and constantly more powerless
reprimands of the central authority.
Excited and invigorated by a new sentiment, men now abandon themselves
to the proud consciousness of their own power and independence. Nowhere
is greater satisfaction found than among the new local chiefs, the
municipal officers and commanders of the National Guard, for never
before has such supreme authority and such great dignity fallen upon
men previously so submissive and so insignificant.--Formerly the
subordinates of an intendant or sub-delegate, appointed, maintained, and
ill-used by him, kept aloof from transactions of any importance,
unable to defend themselves except by humble protestations against the
aggravation of taxation, concerned with precedence and the conflicts
of etiquette,[3116] plain townspeople or peasants who never dreamt of
interfering in military matters, henceforth become sovereigns in all
military and civil affairs. This or that mayor or syndic of a little
town or parish, a petty bourgeois or villager in a blouse, whom the
intendant or military commander could imprison at will, now orders
a gentleman, a captain of dragoons, to march or stand still, and the
captain stands still or marches at his command. On the same bourgeois
or villager depends the safety of the neighboring chateau, of the large
land-owner and his family, of the prelate, and of all the prominent
personages of the district in order that they may be out of harm's way
he must protect them; they will be pillaged if, in case of insurrection,
he does not send troops and the National Guard to their assistance. It
is he who, lending or refusing public force to the collection of
their rents, gives them or deprives them of the means of living. He
accordingly rules, and on the sole condition of ruling according to the
wishes of his equals, the vociferous multitude, the restless, dominant
mob which has elected him.--In the towns, especially, and notably in the
large towns, the contrast between what he was and what he is immense,
since to the plenitude of his power is added the extent of his
jurisdiction. Judge of the effect on his brain in cities like those of
Marseilles, Bordeaux, Nantes, Rouen and Lyons, where he holds in his
hand the lives and property of eighty or a hundred thousand men. And
the more as, amid the municipal officers of the towns, three-quarters
of them, prosecutors or lawyers, are imbued with the new dogmas, and are
persuaded that in themselves alone, the directly elected of the
people, is vested all legitimate authority. Bewildered by their recent
elevation, distrustful as upstarts, in revolt against all ancient or
rival powers, they are additionally alarmed by their imagination and
ignorance, their minds being vaguely disturbed by the contrast between
their role in the past and their present role: anxious on their own
account, they find no security but in abuse and use of power. The
municipalities, on the strength of the reports emanating from the
coffee-houses, decide that the ministry are traitors. With an obstinacy
of conviction and a boldness of presumption alike extraordinary, they
believe that they have the right to act without and against their
orders, and against the orders of the National Assembly itself, as
if, in the now disintegrated France, each municipality constituted the
nation.
Thus, if the armed force of the country is now obedient to any body, it
is to them and to them alone, and not only the National Guard, but also
the regular troops which, placed under the orders of municipalities by
a decree of the National Assembly,[3117] will comply with no other.
Military commanders in the provinces, after September, 1787, declare
themselves powerless; when they and the municipality give orders, it
is only those of the municipality which the troops recognize. "However
pressing may be the necessity for moving the troops where their
presence is required, they are stopped by the resistance of the village
committee."[3118] "Without any reasonable motive," writes the commander
of the forces in Brittany, "Vannes and Auray made opposition to the
detachment which I thought it prudent to send to Belle-Ile, to replace
another one. . . The Government cannot move without encountering
obstacles. . . . The Minister of War no longer has the direction of the
army. . . . No orders are executed. . . Every one wants to command, and
no one to obey. . . How could the King, the Government, or the Minister
of War send troops where they are wanted if the towns believe that they
have the right to countermand the orders given to the regiments and
change their destination?"-And it is still worse, for, "on the false
supposition of brigands and conspiracies which do not exist,[3119] the
towns and villages make demands on me for arms and even cannon. . . The
whole of Brittany will soon be in a frightful belligerent state on this
account, for, having no real enemies, they will turn their arms against
each other."--This is of no consequence. The panic is an "epidemic."
People are determined to believe in "brigands and enemies." At Nantes,
the assertion is constantly repeated that the Spaniards are going to
land, that the French regiments are going to make an attack, that an
army of brigands is approaching, that the castle is threatened, that
it is threatening, and that it contains too many engines of war. The
commandant of the province writes in vain to the mayor to reassure
him, and to explain to him that "the municipality, being master of
the chateau, is likewise master of its magazine. Why then should it
entertain fear about that which is in its own possession? Why should
any surprise be manifested at an arsenal containing arms and
gunpowder?"--Nothing is of any effect. The chateau is invaded; two
hundred workmen set to work to demolish the fortifications; they listen
only to their fears, and cannot exercise too great precaution. However
inoffensive the citadels may be, they are held to be dangerous; however
accommodating the commanders may be, they are regarded with suspicion.
The people chafe against the bridle, relaxed and slack as it is. It
is broken and cast aside, that it may not be used again when occasion
requires. Each municipal body, each company of the National Guard,
wants to reign on its own plot of ground out of the way of any foreign
control; and this is what is called liberty. Its adversary, therefore,
is the central power. This must be disarmed for fear that it may
interpose. On all sides, with a sure and persistent instinct, through
the capture of fortresses, the pillage of arsenals, the seduction of the
soldiery, and the expulsion of generals, the municipality ensures its
omnipotence by guaranteeing itself beforehand against all repression.
At Brest the municipal authorities insist that a naval officer shall be
surrendered to the people, and on the refusal of the King's lieutenant
to give him up, the permanent committee orders the National Guard to
load its guns.[3120] At Nantes the municipal body refuses to recognize
M. d'Hervilly, sent to take command of a camp, and the towns of the
province write to declare that they will suffer no other than the
federated troops on their territory. At Lille the permanent committee
insists that the military authorities shall place the keys of the town
in its keeping every evening, and, a few months after this, the National
Guard, joined by mutinous soldiers, seize the citadel and the person of
Livarot, its commander. At Toulon the commander of the arsenal, M.
de Rioms, and several naval officers, are put in the dungeon. At
Montpellier the citadel is surprised, and the club writes to the
National Assembly to demand its demolition. At Valence, the commandant,
M. de Voisin, on taking measures of defense, is massacred, and
henceforth the municipality issues all orders to the garrison. At
Bastia, Colonel de Rully falls under a shower of bullets, and the
National Guard takes possession of the citadel and the powder magazine.
These are not passing outbursts: at the end of two years the same
insubordinate spirit is apparent everywhere.[3121] In vain do the
commissioners of the National Assembly seek to transfer the Nassau
regiment from Metz. Sedan refuses to receive it; while Thionville
declares that, if it comes, she will blow up the bridges, and Sarrebuis
threatens, if it approaches, that it will open fire on it. At Caen
neither the municipality nor the directory dares enforce the law which
assigns the castle to the troops of the line; the National Guard refuses
to leave it, and forbids the director of the artillery to inspect the
munitions.--In this state of things a Government subsists in name
but not in fact, for it no longer possesses the means of enforcing
obedience. Each commune arrogates to itself the right of suspending
or preventing the execution of the simplest and most urgent orders.
Arnay-le-Duc, in spite of passports and legal injunctions, persists in
retaining Mesdames; Arcis-sur-Aube retains Necker, and Montigny is about
to retain M. Caillard, Ambassador of France.[3122]--In the month of
June, 1791, a convoy of eighty thousand crowns of six livres sets out
from Paris for Switzerland; this is a repayment by the French Government
to that of Soleure; the date of payment is fixed, the itinerary marked
out; all the necessary documents are provided; it is important that it
should arrive on the day when the bill falls due. But they have
counted without the municipalities and the National Guards. Arrested at
Bar-sur-Aube, it is only at the end of a month, and on a decree of the
National Assembly, that the convoy can resume its march. At Belfort it
is seized again, and it still remains there in the month of November. In
vain has the directory of the Bas-Rhin ordered its release; the Belfort
municipality paid no attention to the order. In vain the same directory
dispatches a commissioner, who is near being cut to pieces. The personal
interference of General Luckner, with the strong arm, is necessary,
before the convoy can pass the frontier, after five months of
delay.[3123] In the month of July 1791, a French vessel on the way from
Rouen to Caudebec, said to be loaded with kegs of gold and silver, is
stopped. On the examination being made, it has a right to leave; its
papers are all correct, and the department enjoins the district to
respect the law. The district, however, replies that it is impossible,
since "all the municipalities on the banks of the Seine have armed
and are awaiting the passing of the vessel," and the National Assembly
itself is obliged to pass a decree that the vessel shall be discharged.
If the rebellion of the small communes is of this stamp, what must be
that of the larger ones?[3124] The departments and districts summon the
municipality in vain; it disobeys or pays no attention to the summons.
"Since the session began," writes the directory of Saône-et-Loire; "the
municipality of Maçon has taken no step in relation to us which has not
been an encroachment. It has not uttered a word, which has not been an
insult. It has not entered upon a deliberation which has not been an
outrage."
"If the regiment of Aunis is not ordered here immediately," writes the
directory of Calvados, "if prompt and efficient measures are not taken
to provide us with an armed force, we shall abandon a post which we can
not longer hold due to insubordination, license, contempt for all the
authorities. We shall in this case be unable to perform the duties which
were imposed upon us."
The directory of the Bouches-du-Rhone, on being attacked, flies before
the bayonets of Marseilles. The members of the directory of Gers, in
conflict with the municipality of Auch, are almost beaten to death. As
to the ministers, who are distrusted by virtue of their office, they are
still less respected than the directories, They are constantly denounced
to the Assembly, while the municipalities send back their dispatches
without deigning to open them,[3125] and, towards the end of 1791, their
increasing powerlessness ends in complete annihilation. We can judge
of this by one example. In the month of December 1791, Limoges is not
allowed to carry away the grain, which it had just purchased in Indre,
a force of sixty horsemen being necessary to protect its transportation.
The directory of Indre at once calls upon the ministers to furnish them
with this small troop.[3126] After trying for three weeks, the minister
replies that it is out of his power; he has knocked at all doors in
vain. "I have pointed out one way," he says, "to the deputies of your
department in the National Assembly, namely, to withdraw the 20th
regiment of cavalry from Orleans, and I have recommended them to broach
the matter to the deputies of Loiret." The answer is still delayed:
the deputies of the two departments have to come to an agreement, for,
otherwise, the minister dares not displace sixty men to protect a convoy
of grain. It is plain enough that there is no longer any executive
power. There is no longer a central authority. There is no longer a
France, but merely so many disintegrated and independent communes, like
Orleans and Limoges, which, through their representatives, carry on
negotiations with each other, one to secure itself from a deficiency of
troops, and the other to secure itself from a want of bread.
Let us consider this general dissolution on the spot, and take up a case
in detail. On the 18th of January 1790, the new municipal authorities
of Marseilles enter upon their duties. As is generally the case, the
majority of the electors have had nothing to do with the balloting.
The mayor, Martin, having been elected by only an eighth of the active
citizens.[3127] If, however, the dominant minority is a small one, it
is resolute and not inclined to stop at trifles. "Scarcely is it
organized,"[3128] when it sends deputies to the King to have him
withdraw his troops from Marseilles. The King, always weak and
accommodating, finally consents; and, the orders to march being
prepared, the municipality is duly advised of them. But the municipality
will tolerate no delay, and immediately "draws up, prints, and issues
a denunciation to the National Assembly" against the commandant and
the two ministers who, according to it, are guilty of having forged or
suppressed the King's orders. In the meantime it equips and fortifies
itself as for a combat. At its first establishment the municipality
broke up the bourgeois guard, which was too great a lover of order, and
organized a National Guard, in which those who have no property are
soon to be admitted. "Daily additions are made to its military
apparatus;[3129] entrenchments and barricades at the Hôtel-de-Ville,
are increasing, the artillery is increased; the town is filled with the
excitement of a military camp in the immediate presence of an enemy."
Thus, in possession of force, it makes use of it, and in the first place
against justice.--A popular insurrection had been suppressed in the
month of August 1789, and the three principal leaders, Rebecqui, Pascal,
and Granet, had been imprisoned in the Chateau d'If. They are the
friends of the municipal authorities, and they must be set free. At
the demand of this body the affair is taken out of the hands of the
grand-prévôt and put into those of the sénéchaussée, the former,
meanwhile, together with his councilors, undergoing punishment for
having performed their duty. The municipality, on its own authority,
forbids them from further exercise of their functions. They are publicly
denounced, "threatened with poniards, the scaffold, and every species of
assassination." [3130] No printer dares publish their defense, for fear
of "municipal annoyances." It is not long before the royal procureur and
a councillor are reduced to seeking refuge in Fort Saint-Jean, while the
grand-prévôt after having resisted a little longer, leaves Marseilles
in order to save his life. As to the three imprisoned men, the municipal
authorities visit them in a body and demand their provisional release.
One of them having made his escape, they refuse to give the commandant
the order for his re-arrest. The other two triumphantly leave the
chateau on the 11th of April, escorted by eight hundred National Guards.
They go, for form's sake, to the prisons of the sénéchaussée but the
next day are set at liberty, and further prosecution ceases. As an
offset to this, M. d'Ambert, colonel in the Royal Marine, guilty of
expressing himself too warmly against the National Guard, although
acquitted by the tribunal before which he was brought, can be set
at liberty only in secret and under the protection of two thousand
soldiers. The populace want to burn the house of the criminal lieutenant
that dared absolve him. The magistrate himself is in danger, and is
forced to take refuge in the house of the military commander.[3131]
Meanwhile, printed and written papers, insulting libels by the municipal
body and the club, the seditious or violent discussions of the district
assemblies, and a lot of pamphlets, are freely distributed among the
people and the soldiers: the latter are purposely stirred up in advance
against their chiefs.--In vain are the officers mild, conciliatory, and
cautious. In vain does the commander-in-chief depart with a portion of
the troops. The object now is to dislodge the regiment occupying
the three forts. The club sets the ball in motion, and, forcibly or
otherwise, the will of the people must be carried out. On the 29th of
April, two actors, supported by fifty volunteers, surprise a sentinel
and get possession of Notre-Dame de la Garde. On the same day,
six thousand National Guards invest the forts of Saint-Jean and
Saint-Nicolas. The municipal authorities, summoned to respect the
fortresses, reply by demanding the opening of the gates to the National
Guard, that it may do duty jointly with the soldiers. The commandants
hesitate, refer to the law, and demand time to consult their superiors.
A second requisition, more urgent, is made; the commandants are held
responsible for the disturbances they provoke by their refusal. If they
resist they are declared promoters of civil war.[3132] They accordingly
yield and sign a capitulation. One among them, the Chevalier de
Beausset, major in Fort Saint-Jean, is opposed to this, and refuses his
signature. On the following day he is seized as he is about to enter the
Hôtel-de-Ville, and massacred, his head being borne about on the end of
a pike, while the band of assassins, the soldiers, and the rabble dance
about and shout over his remains.--" It is a sad accident," writes the
municipality.[3133] How does it happen that, "after having thus far
merited and obtained all praise, a Beausset, whom we were unable to
protect against the decrees of Providence, should sully our laurels?
Having had nothing to do with this tragic affair, it is not for us
to prosecute the authors of it." Moreover, he was "culpable. . ..
rebellious, condemned by public opinion, and Providence itself seems to
have abandoned him to the irrevocable decrees of its vengeance."--As to
the taking of the forts, nothing is more legitimate. "These places were
in the hands of the enemies of the State, while now they are in the
hands of the defenders of the Constitution of the empire. Woe to
whoever would take them from us again, to convert them into a focus of
counter-revolution "--M. de Miran, commandant of the province, has, it
is true, made a demand for them. But, "is it not somewhat pitiable to
see the requisition of a Sieur de Miran, made in the name of the King he
betrays, to surrender to his Majesty's troops places which, henceforth
in our hands, guarantee public security to the nation, to the law, and
to the King?" In vain does the King, at the request of the National
Assembly,[3134] order the municipality to restore the forts to the
commandants, and to make the National Guards leave them. The municipal
authorities become indignant, and resist. According to them the wrong
is all on the side of the commandant and the ministers. It is the
commandants who, "with the threatening equipment of their citadels,
their stores of provisions and of artillery, are disturbers of the
public peace. What does the minister mean by driving the national troops
out of the forts, in order to entrust their guardianship to foreign
troops? His object is apparent in this plan. . . . he wants to kindle
civil war."--"All the misfortunes of Marseilles originate in the secret
under-standing existing between the ministers and the enemies of the
State." The municipal corps is at last obliged to evacuate the forts,
but it is determined not to give them up. The day following that on
which it receives the decree of the National Assembly, it conceives the
design of demolishing them. On the 17th of May, two hundred laborers,
paid in advance, begin the work of destruction. To save appearances the
municipal body betakes itself at eleven o'clock in the morning to the
different localities, and orders them to stop. But, on its departure,
the laborers keep on; and, at six o'clock in the evening, a resolution
is passed that, "to prevent the entire demolition of the citadel, it
is deemed advisable to authorize only that of the part overlooking the
town." On the 18th of May the Jacobin club, at once agent, accomplice,
and councilor of the municipal body, compels private individuals to
contribute something towards defraying the expenses of the demolition.
It "sends round to every house, and to the syndics of all corporations,
exacting their quotas, and making all citizens subscribe a document by
which they appear to sanction the action of the municipal body, and to
express their thanks to it. People had to sign it, pay, and keep silent.
Woe to any one that refused!" On the 20th of May the municipal body
presumes to write to the Assembly, that "this threatening citadel, this
odious monument of a stupendous despotism, is about to disappear." To
justify its disobedience, it takes occasion to remark, "that the love of
country is the most powerful and most enduring of an empire's ramparts."
On the 28th of May it secures the performance in two theaters of a piece
representing the capture of the forts of Marseilles, for the benefit
of the men engaged in their demolition. Meanwhile, it has summoned
the Paris Jacobins to its support; it has proposed to invite the Lyons
federation and all the municipalities of the kingdom to denounce the
minister. It has forced M. de Miran, threatened with death and watched
by a party in ambush on the road, to quit Aix, and then demands his
recall.[3135] Only on the 6th of June does it decide, at the express
command of the National Assembly, to suspend the almost completed
demolition.--Authorities to which obedience is due could not be treated
more insolently. The end, however, is attained; there is no longer a
citadel, and the troops have departed; the regiment commanded by Ernest
alone remains, to be tampered with, insulted, and then sent off. It is
ordered to Aix, and the National Guard of Marseilles will go there to
disarm and disband it. Henceforth the municipal body has full sway. It
"observes only those laws which suit it, makes others to its own liking,
and, in short, governs in the most despotic and arbitrary manner."[3136]
And not only at Marseilles, but throughout the department where, under
no authority but its own, it undertakes armed expeditions and makes
raids and sudden attacks.
III.--Independent Assemblies.
Why they took the initiative.--The people in council.
--Powerlessness of the municipalities.--the violence to which
they are subject.--Aix in 1790.--Government disobeyed and
perverted everywhere.
Were it but possible for the dissolution to stop here! But each commune
is far from being a tranquil little state under the rule of a body
of respected magistrates. The same causes which render municipalities
rebellious against the central authority render individuals rebellious
against local authority. They also feel that they are in danger and
want to provide for their own safety. They also, in virtue of the
Constitution and of circumstances, believe themselves appointed to
save the country. They also consider themselves qualified to judge for
themselves on all points and entitled to carry out their judgments with
their own hands. The shopkeeper, workman or peasant, at once elector and
National Guard, furnished with his vote and a musket, suddenly becomes
the equal and master of his superiors; instead of obeying, he commands,
while all who see him again after some years' absence, find that "in
his demeanor and manner all is changed." "There was great agitation
everywhere,"[3137] says M. de Ségur; "I noticed groups of men talking
earnestly in the streets and on the squares. The sound of the drum
struck my ear in the villages, while I was astonished at the great
number of armed men I encountered in the little towns. On interrogating
various persons among the lower classes they would reply with a proud
look and in a bold and confident tone. I observed everywhere the effect
of those sentiments of equality and liberty which had then become
such violent passions."--Thus exalted in their own eyes they believed
themselves qualified to take the lead in everything, not only in local
affairs, but also in general matters. France is to be governed by them;
by virtue of the Constitution they arrogate to themselves the right,
and, by dint of ignorance, attribute to themselves the capacity, to
govern it. A torrent of new, shapeless, and disproportionate ideas have
taken possession of their brains in the space of a few months. Vast
interests about which they have never thought, have to be considered.
Government, royalty, the church, creeds, foreign powers, internal
and external dangers, what is occurring at Paris and at Coblentz, the
insurrection in the Low Countries, the acts of the cabinets of London,
Vienna, Madrid, Berlin; and, of all this, they inform themselves as they
best can. An officer,[3138] who traverses France at this time, narrates
that at the post-stations they made him wait for horses until he had
"given them details. The peasants stopped my carriage in the middle of
the road and overwhelmed me with questions. At Autun, I was obliged, in
spite of the cold, to talk out of a window opening upon the square and
tell what I knew about the Assembly."--These on-dits are all changed
and amplified in passing from mouth to mouth. They finally become
circumstantial stories adapted to the caliber of the minds they pass
into and to the dominant passion that propagates them. Trace the effect
of these fables in the house of a peasant or fish-woman in an outlying
village or a populous suburb, on brutish or almost brutal minds,
especially when they are lively, heated, and over-excited--the effect
is tremendous. For, in minds of this stamp, belief is at once converted
into action, and into rude and destructive action. It is an acquired
self-control, reflection, and culture which interposes between belief
and action the solicitude for social interests, the observance of forms
and respect for the law. These restraints are all wanting in the new
sovereign. He does not know how to stop and will not suffer himself to
be stopped. Why so many delays when the peril is urgent? What is the use
of observing formalities when the safety of the people is at stake? What
is there sacred in the law when it protects public enemies? What is more
pernicious than passive deference and patient waiting under timid or
blind officials? What can be more just than to do one's self justice
at once and on the spot?--Precipitation and passion, in their eyes,
are both duties and merits. One day "the militia of Lorient decide upon
marching to Versailles and to Paris without considering how they are to
get over the ground or what they will do on their arrival."[3139] Were
the central government within reach they would lay their hands on it.
In default of this they substitute themselves for it on their own
territory, and exercise its functions with a full conviction of right,
principally those of gendarme, judge, and executioner.