character? For what precise reason was it made, and what did it effect?
The revolution was not made, as some have supposed, in order to destroy
the authority of religious belief. In spite of appearances, it was
essentially a social and political revolution; and within the circle of
social and political institutions it did not tend to perpetuate and give
stability to disorder, or--as one of its chief adversaries has said--to
methodise anarchy.
However radical the revolution may have been, its innovations were, in
fact, much less than have been commonly supposed, as I shall show
hereafter. What may truly be said is that it entirely destroyed, or is
still destroying--for it is not at an end--every part of the ancient
state of society that owed its origin to aristocratic and feudal
institutions.
But why, we may ask, did this revolution, which was imminent throughout
Europe, break out in France rather than elsewhere? And why did it
display certain characteristics which have appeared nowhere else, or, at
least, have appeared only in part?
One circumstance excites at first sight surprise. The revolution, whose
peculiar object it was, as we have seen, everywhere to abolish the
remnant of the institutions of the Middle Ages, did not break out in the
countries in which these institutions, still in better preservation,
caused the people most to feel their constraint and their rigour, but,
on the contrary, in the countries where their effects were least felt;
so that the burden seemed most intolerable where it was in reality least
heavy.
In no part of Germany, for instance, at the close of the eighteenth
century, was serfdom as yet completely abolished. Nothing of the kind
had existed in France for a long period of time. The peasant came, and
went, and bought and sold, and dealt and laboured as he pleased. The
last traces of serfdom could only be detected in one or two of the
eastern provinces annexed to France by conquest; everywhere else the
institution had disappeared. The French peasant had not only ceased to
be a serf; he had become an owner of land.
It has long been believed that the subdivision of landed property in
France dates from the revolution of 1789, and was only the result of
that revolution. The contrary is demonstrable by all the evidence.
The number of landed proprietors at that time amounted to one-half,
frequently to two-thirds, of their present number. Now, all these small
landowners were, in reality, ill at ease in the cultivation of their
property, and had to bear many charges, or easements, on the land which
they could not shake off.
Although what is termed in France the old régime is still very near to
us, few persons can now give an accurate answer to the question--How
were the rural districts of France administered before 1789?
In the eighteenth century all the affairs of the parish were managed by
a certain number of parochial officers, who were no longer the agents of
the manor or domain, and whom the lord no longer selected. Some of these
persons were nominated by the intendant of the province, others were
elected by the peasants themselves. The duty of these authorities was to
assess the taxes, to repair the church, to build schools, to convoke and
preside over the vestry or parochial meeting. They attended to the
property of the parish, and determined the application of it; they sued,
and were sued, in its name. Not only the lord of the domain no longer
conducted the administration of the small local affairs, but he did not
even superintend it. All the parish officers were under the government
or control of the central power, as we shall show in a subsequent
chapter. Nay, more; the seigneur had almost ceased to act as the
representative of the crown in the parish, or as the channel of
communication between the king and his subjects.
If we quit the parish, and examine the constitution of the larger rural
districts, we shall find the same state of things. Nowhere did the
nobles conduct public business either in their collective or their
individual capacity. This was peculiar to France.
Of all the peculiar rights of the French nobility, the political element
had disappeared; the pecuniary element alone remained, in some instances
largely increased.
_II.---A Shadow of Democracy_
Picture to yourself a French peasant of the eighteenth century. Take him
as he is described in the documents--so passionately enamoured of the
soil that he will spend all his savings to purchase it, and to purchase
it at any price. To complete his purchase he must first pay a tax, not
to the government, but to other landowners of the neighbourhood, as
unconnected as himself with the administration of public affairs, and
hardly more influential than he is. He possesses it at last; his heart
is buried in it with the seeds he sows. This little nook of ground,
which is his own in this vast universe, fills him with pride and
independence. But again these neighbours call him from his furrow, and
compel him to come to work for them without wages. He tries to defend
his young crops from their game; again they prevent him. As he crosses
the river they wait for his passage to levy a toll. He finds them at the
market, where they sell him the right of selling his own produce; and
when, on his return home, he wants to use the remainder of his wheat for
his own sustenance--of that wheat which was planted by his own hands,
and has grown under his eyes--he cannot touch it till he has ground it
at the mill and baked it at the bakehouse of these same men. A portion
of his little property is paid away in quit-rents to them also, and
these dues can neither be extinguished nor redeemed.
The lord, when deprived of his former power, considered himself
liberated from his former obligations; and no local authority, no
council, no provincial or parochial association had taken his place. No
single being was any longer compelled by law to take care of the poor in
the rural districts, and the central government had boldly undertaken to
provide for their wants by its own resources.
Every year the king's council assigned to each province certain funds
derived from the general produce of the taxes, which the intendant
distributed.
Sometimes the king's council insisted upon compelling individuals to
prosper, whether they would or no. The ordinances constraining artisans
to use certain methods and manufacture certain articles are innumerable;
and, as the intendants had not time to superintend the application of
all these regulations, there were inspectors general of manufactures,
who visited in the provinces to insist on their fulfilment.
So completely had the government already changed its duty as a sovereign
into that of a guardian.
In France municipal freedom outlived the feudal system. Long after the
landlords were no longer the rulers of the country districts, the towns
still retained the right of self-government.
In most instances the government of the towns was vested in two
assemblies. All the great towns were thus governed, and some of the
small ones. The first of these assemblies was composed of municipal
officers, more of less numerous according to the place. These municipal
officers never received any stipend, but they were remunerated by
exemptions from taxation and by privileges.
The second assembly, which was termed the general assembly, elected the
corporation, wherever it was still subject to election, and always
continued to take a part in the principal concerns of the town.
If we turn from the towns to the villages, we meet with different powers
and different forms of government.
In the eighteenth century the number and the name of the parochial
officers varied in the different provinces of France. In most of the
parishes they were, in the eighteenth century, reduced to two
persons--the one named the "collector," the other most commonly named
the "syndic." Generally, these parochial officers were either elected,
or supposed to be so; but they had everywhere become the instruments of
the state rather than the representatives of the community. The
collector levied the _taille_, or common tax, under the direct orders of
the intendant. The syndic, placed under the daily direction of the
sub-delegate of the intendant, represented that personage in all matters
relating to public order or affecting the government. He became the
principal agent of the government in relation to military service, to
the public works of the state, and to the execution of the general laws
of the kingdom.
Down to the revolution the rural parishes of France had preserved in
their government something of that democratic aspect which they had
acquired in the Middle Ages. The democratic assembly of the parish could
express its desires, but it had no more power to execute its will than
the corporate bodies in the towns. It could not speak until its mouth
had been opened, for the meeting could not be held without the express
permission of the intendant, and, to use the expression of those times,
which adapted language to the fact, "_under his good pleasure_."
_III.--The Ruin of the Nobility_
If we carefully examine the state of society in France before the
revolution, we may see that in each province men of various classes,
those, at least, who were placed above the common people grew to
resemble each other more and more, in spite of differences of rank.
Time, which had perpetuated, and, in many respects, aggravated the
privileges interposed between two classes of men, had powerfully
contributed to render them alike in all other respects.
For several centuries the French nobility had grown gradually poorer and
poorer. "Spite of its privileges, the nobility is ruined and wasted day
by day, and the middle classes get possession of the large fortunes,"
wrote a nobleman in a melancholy strain in 1755-Yet the laws by which
the estates of the nobility were protected still remained the same,
nothing appeared to be changed in their economical condition.
Nevertheless, the more they lost their power the poorer they everywhere
became in exactly the same proportion.
The non-noble classes alone seemed to inherit all the wealth which the
nobility had lost; they fattened, as is were, upon its substance. Yet
there were no laws to prevent the middle class from ruining themselves,
or to assist them in acquiring riches; nevertheless, they incessantly
increased their wealth--in many instances they had become as rich, and
often richer, than the nobles. Nay, more, their wealth was of the same
kind, for, though dwelling in the towns, they were often country
landowners, and sometimes they even bought seignorial estates.
Let us now look at the other side of the picture, and we shall see that
these same Frenchmen, who had so many points of resemblance among
themselves, were, nevertheless, more completely isolated from each other
than perhaps the inhabitants of any other country, or than had ever been
the case before in France.
The fact is, that as by degrees the general liberties of the country
were finally destroyed, involving the local liberties in their ruin, the
burgess and the noble ceased to come into contact with public life.
The system of creating new nobles, far from lessening the hatred of the
_roturier_ to the nobleman, increased it beyond measure; it was
envenomed by all the envy with which the new noble was looked upon by
his former equals. For this reason the _tiers état,_ in all their
complaints, always displayed more irritation against the newly ennobled
than against the old nobility.
In the eighteenth century the French peasantry could no longer be preyed
upon by petty feudal despots. They were seldom the object of violence on
the part of the government; they enjoyed civil liberty, and were owners
of a portion of the soil. But all the other classes of society stood
aloof from this class, and perhaps in no other part of the world had the
peasantry ever lived so entirely alone. The effects of this novel and
singular kind of oppression deserve a very attentive consideration.
This state of things did not exist in an equal degree among any other of
the civilised nations of Europe, and even in France it was comparatively
recent. The peasantry of the fourteenth century were at once oppressed
and more relieved. The aristocracy sometimes tyrannised over them, but
never forsook them.
In the eighteenth century a French village was a community of persons,
all of whom were poor, ignorant, and coarse; its magistrates were as
rude and as contemned as the people; its syndic could not read; its
collector could not record in his own handwriting the accounts on which
the income of his neighbour and himself depended.
Not only had the former lord of the manor lost the right of governing
this community, but he had brought himself to consider it a sort of
degradation to take any part in the government of it. The central power
of the state alone took any care of the matter, and as that power was
very remote, and had as yet nothing to fear from the inhabitants of the
villages, the only care it took of them was to extract revenue.
A further burden was added. The roads began to be repaired by forced
labour only--that is to say, exclusively at the expense of the
peasantry. This expedient for making roads without paying for them was
thought so ingenious that in 1737 a circular of the Comptroller-General
Orry established it throughout France.
Nothing can better demonstrate the melancholy fate of the rural
population; the progress of society, which enriches all the other
classes, drives them to despair, and civilisation itself turns against
that class alone.
The system of forced labour, by becoming a royal right, was gradually
extended to almost all public works. In 1719 I find it was employed to
build barracks. "Parishes are to send their best workmen," said the
ordinance, "and all other works are to give way to this." The same
forced service was used to escort convicts to the galleys and beggars to
the workhouse; it had to cart the baggage of troops as often as they
changed their quarters--a burthen which was very onerous at a time when
each regiment carried heavy baggage after it. Many carts and oxen had to
be collected for the purpose.
_IV.--Reform and Destruction Inevitable_
One further factor, and that the most important, remains to be noted:
the universal discredit into which every form of religious belief had
fallen, at the end of the eighteenth century, and which exercised
without any doubt the greatest influence upon the whole of the French
Revolution; it stamped its character.
Irreligion had produced an enormous public evil. The religious laws
having been abolished at the same time that the civil laws were
overthrown, the minds of men were entirely upset; they no longer knew
either to what to cling or where to stop. And thus arose a hitherto
unknown species of revolutionists, who carried their boldness to a pitch
of madness, who were surprised by no novelty and arrested by no scruple,
and who never hesitated to put any design whatever into execution. Nor
must it be supposed that these new beings have been the isolated and
ephemeral creation of a moment, and destined to pass away as that moment
passed. They have since formed a race of beings which has perpetuated
itself, and spread into all the civilised parts of the world, everywhere
preserving the same physiognomy, the same character.
From the moment when the forces I have described, and the added loss of
religion, matured, I believe that this radical revolution, which was to
confound in common ruin all that was worst and all that was best in the
institutions and condition of France, became inevitable. A people so
ill-prepared to act for themselves could not undertake a universal and
simultaneous reform without a universal destruction.
One last element must be remembered before we conclude. As the common
people of France had not appeared for one single moment on the theatre
of public affairs for upwards of 140 years, no one any longer imagined
that they could ever again resume their position. They appeared
unconscious, and were therefore believed to be deaf. Accordingly, those
who began to take an interest in their condition talked about them in
their presence just as if they had not been there. It seemed as if these
remarks could only be heard by those who were placed above the common
people, and that the only danger to be apprehended was that they might
not be fully understood by the upper classes.
The very men who had most to fear from the fury of the people declaimed
loudly in their presence on the cruel injustice under which the people
had always suffered. They pointed out to each other the monstrous vices
of those institutions which had weighed most heavily upon the lower
orders; they employed all their powers of rhetoric in depicting the
miseries of the people and their ill-paid labour; and thus they
infuriated while they endeavoured to relieve them.
Such was the attitude of the French nation on the eve of the revolution,
but when I consider this nation in itself it strikes me as more
extraordinary than any event in its own annals. Was there ever any
nation on the face of the earth so full of contrasts and so extreme in
all its actions; more swayed by sensations, less by principles; led
therefore always to do either worse or better than was expected of it,
sometimes below the common level of humanity, sometimes greatly above
it--a people so unalterable in its leading instincts that its likeness
may still be recognised in descriptions written two or three thousand
years ago, but at the same time so mutable in its daily thoughts and in
its tastes as to become a spectacle and an amazement to itself, and to
be as much surprised as the rest of the world at the sight of what it
has done--a people beyond all others the child of home and the slave of
habit, when left to itself; but when once torn against its will from the
native hearth and from its daily pursuits, ready to go to the end of the
world and to dare all things.
Such a nation could alone give birth to a revolution so sudden, so
radical, so impetuous in its course, and yet so full of reactions, of
contradictory incidents and of contrary examples. Without the reasons I
have related the French would never have made the revolution; but it
must be confessed that all these reasons united would not have sufficed
to account for such a revolution anywhere else but in France.
* * * * *
FRANÇOIS MIGNET
History of the French Revolution
François Auguste Alexis Mignet was born at Aix, in Provence,
on May 8, 1796, and began life at the Bar. It soon became
apparent that his true vocation was history, and in 1818 he
left his native town for Paris, where he became attached to
the "Courier Français," in the meantime delivering with
considerable success a series of lectures on modern history at
the Athénée. Mignet may be said to be the first great
specialist to devote himself to the study of particular
periods of French history. His "History of the French
Revolution, from 1789 to 1814," published in 1824, is a
strikingly sane and lucid arrangement of facts that came into
his hands in chaotic masses. Eminently concise, exact, and
clear, it is the first complete account by one other than an
actor in the great drama. Mignet was elected to the French
Academy in 1836, and afterwards published a series of masterly
studies dealing with the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
among which are "Antonio Perez and Philip II.," and "The
History of Mary, Queen of Scots," and also biographies of
Franklin and Charles V. He died on March 24, 1884.
_I.--The Last Resort of the Throne_
I am about to take a rapid review of the history of the French
Revolution, which began the era of new societies in Europe, as the
English revolution had begun the era of new governments.
Louis XVI. ascended the throne on May 11, 1774. Finances, whose
deficiencies neither the restorative ministry of Cardinal de Fleury, nor
the bankrupt ministry of the Abbé Terray had been able to make good,
authority disregarded, an imperious public opinion; such were the
difficulties which the new reign inherited from its predecessors. And in
choosing, on his accession to the throne, Maurepas as prime minister,
Louis XVI. eminently contributed to the irresolute character of his
reign. On the death of Maurepas the queen took his place with Louis
XVI., and inherited all his influence over him. Maurepas, mistrusting
court ministers, had always chosen popular ministers; it is true he did
not support them; but if good was not brought about, at least evil did
not increase. After his death, court ministers succeeded the popular
ministers, and by their faults rendered the crisis inevitable which
others had endeavoured to prevent by their reforms. This difference of
choice is very remarkable; this it was which, by the change of men,
brought on the change of the system of administration. _The revolution
dates front this epoch;_ the abandonment of reforms and the return of
disorders hastened its approach and augmented its fury.
After the failure of the queen's minister the States-General had become
the only means of government, and the last resources of the throne. The
king, on August 8, 1788, fixed the opening for May 1, 1789. Necker, the
popular minister of finance, was recalled, and prepared everything for
the election of deputies and the holding of the States.
A religious ceremony preceded their installation. The king, his family,
his ministers, the deputies of the three orders, went in procession from
the Church of Nôtre Dame to that of St. Louis, to hear the opening mass.
The royal sitting took place the following day in the Salle des Menus.
Galleries, arranged in the form of an amphitheatre, were filled with
spectators. The deputies were summoned, and introduced according to the
order established in 1614. The clergy were conducted to the right, the
nobility to the left, and the commons in front of the throne at the end
of the hall. The deputations from Dauphiné, from Crépy-en-Valois, to
which the Duke of Orleans belonged, and from Provence, were received
with loud applause. Necker was also received on his entrance with
general enthusiasm.
Barentin, keeper of the seals, spoke next after the king. His speech
displayed little knowledge of the wishes of the nation, or it sought
openly to combat them. The dissatisfied assembly looked to M. Necker,
from whom it expected different language.
The court, so far from wishing to organise the States-General, sought to
annul them. No efforts were spared to keep the nobility and clergy
separate from and in opposition to the commons; but on May 6, the day
after the opening of the States, the nobility and clergy repaired to
their respective chambers, and constituted themselves. The Third Estate
being, on account of its double representation, the most numerous order,
had the Hall of the States allotted to it, and there awaited the two
other orders; it considered its situation as provisional, its members as
presumptive deputies, and adopted a system of inactivity till the other
orders should unite with it. Then a memorable struggle began, the issue
of which was to decide whether the revolution should be effected or
stopped.
The commons, having finished the verification of their own powers of
membership on June 17, on the motion of Sieyès, constituted themselves
the National Assembly, and refused to recognise the other two orders
till they submitted, and changed the assembly of the States into an
assembly of the people.
It was decided that the king should go in state to the Assembly, annul
its decrees, command the separation of the orders as constitutive of the
monarchy, and himself fix the reforms to be effected by the
States-General. It was feared that the majority of the clergy would
recognise the Assembly by uniting with it; and to prevent so decided a
step, instead of hastening the royal sittings, they and the government
closed the Hall of the States, in order to suspend the Assembly till the
day of that royal session.