_UNIVERSITY EXTENSION MANUALS_
_EDITED BY PROFESSOR KNIGHT_
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
_GENERAL PLAN OF THE SERIES._
_This Series is primarily designed to aid the University Extension
Movement throughout Great Britain and America, and to supply the need
so widely felt by students, of Text-books for study and reference, in
connection with the authorised Courses of Lectures._
_Volumes dealing with separate sections of Literature, Science,
Philosophy, History, and Art have been assigned to representative
literary men, to University Professors, or to Extension Lecturers
connected with Oxford, Cambridge, London, and the Universities of
Scotland and Ireland._
_The Manuals are not intended for purposes of Elementary Education, but
for Students who have made some advance in the subjects dealt with.
The statement of details is meant to illustrate the working of general
laws, and the development of principles; while the historical evolution
of the subject dealt with is kept in view, along with its philosophical
significance._
_The remarkable success which has attended University Extension in
Britain has been partly due to the combination of scientific treatment
with popularity, and to the union of simplicity with thoroughness. This
movement, however, can only reach those resident in the larger centres
of population, while all over the country there are thoughtful persons
who desire the same kind of teaching. It is for them also that this
Series is designed. Its aim is to supply the general reader with the
same kind of teaching as is given in the Lectures, and to reflect the
spirit which has characterised the movement, viz. the combination of
principles with facts, and of methods with results._
_The Manuals are also intended to be contributions to the Literature
of the Subjects with which they respectively deal, quite apart from
University Extension; and some of them will be found to meet a general
rather than a special want._
The
French Revolution
BY
CHARLES EDWARD MALLET
_Late of Balliol College, Oxford_
_Lecturer in History on the Staff of the Oxford University Extension_
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET
1893
Oxford
HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
CONTENTS
PAGES
INTRODUCTORY 1-4
CHAPTER I.
THE CONDITION OF FRANCE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 5-27
The old Monarchy in France.--Survivals of free institutions.
--Centralised despotism of the Crown.--The Intendant's
position and powers.--Evils of the system.--The
Government sensitive to criticism but all-pervading.--Class
divisions.--The nobles and their privileges.--The ruined
nobles of the provinces and the rich nobles of the Court.--The
Church, and the great varieties of condition in it.--The
Middle Class, its privileges and exemptions.--Usurpations
and spirit of the guilds.--Position of the poorest class
in town and country.--Peasant owners, farmers and métayers.--Feudal
oppression from which the peasant suffered.--Exactions
of the Government.--Abuses in the system of
taxation.--The Custom-house system and its results.--Increase
of vagrancy and disorder.--Isolation of the labourer.
CHAPTER II.
THE LAST YEARS OF THE ANCIEN RÉGIME 28-54
The intellectual revolt of the eighteenth century.--Repudiation
of authority and dogma.--Rise of the new political
philosophy.--The literary leaders.--Montesquieu.--Voltaire.--Diderot
and the Encyclopaedists.--Defects of their
theory.--Helvetius and Holbach.--The Economists.--Morelly.--Rousseau.
--Reasons for Rousseau's influence.--The
_Contrat Social_, its doctrines and defects.--Universality
of the philosophical and humanitarian spirit in
Europe.--Its effects upon politics and society in France.--Its
effects plainly visible in the Government, in Louis XVI,
Turgot and Necker.--The Government begins to undertake
large reforms.--Progress of Louis' reign.--Marie Antoinette
and Calonne.--The Notables of 1787.--Loménie de Brienne
and the struggle with the Parlements.--Resistance to the
Government.--The Assembly of Vizille.--Recall of Necker,
and summoning of the States-General.--Hesitating policy
of the Government.--Rules for the General Election.--Questions
as to the numbers of the Tiers-État, and as to
the union or separation of the three Orders.--Irresolution
of Necker.
CHAPTER III.
THE EARLY DAYS OF THE REVOLUTION 55-70
Meeting of the States-General.--The Commons insist on
the separation of the three Orders.--Deadlock for six
weeks.--The Commons constitute themselves the National
Assembly on the 17th June.--The Tennis Court Oath.--The
Royal Sitting of the 23rd June.--Ascendency of the
Court party.--Dismissal of Necker.--Rising in Paris and
capture of the Bastille.--Grave disorder in France, and the
two main causes of it.--Various motives of the risings in
the country.--Complete collapse of the regular authorities.
--Spontaneous organisation of the electors.--Unfortunate
policy of the Assembly.--Its inexperience and susceptibility.
--Abstract discussions of July and August.--The 4th
August.--Difficulties of Bailly and Lafayette in Paris.--Fresh
causes of discontent there.--The outbreak of the 5th
October, and its results.
CHAPTER IV.
THE LABOURS OF THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY 71-97
Inclination of the Assembly to follow out its theories
blindly without regard to consequences.--Hopes of a
strong Government frustrated by the decree of the 7th
November.--Results of that decree.--Jealousy of the
Executive.--New system of local government.--Its defects.--Power
concentrated in the new municipalities.--Burdensome
nature of the duties imposed on active citizens.--The
two decrees imposing qualifications for the franchise
and for office.--Judicial reforms.--Military and naval
changes.--The Assembly's determination to make everything
elective.--Church policy.--Confiscation of Church
property.--Civil Constitution of the Clergy.--Criticism of
it.--Consequences of the schism in the Church.--Financial
policy of the Assembly.--Necker's measures.--Increasing
embarrassments of the State.--Origin of the Assignats.--Their
subsequent history and depreciation.--Inadequate
attempts made by the Assembly to balance its income
and expenditure.--Its cowardly finance.--Criticism of its
action.
CHAPTER V.
PARTIES AND POLITICIANS UNDER THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY 98-128
No real party-government in the Assembly.--Gradual formation
of parties.--The Conservative Right and its various
groups.--Maury and Cazalés.--Mounier, Malouet and their
friends.--The party of Reform.--Bailly, Sieyès, Talleyrand,
Lafayette, Mirabeau, and others.--Duport, Barnave and
Lameth.--Robespierre and the extreme Left.--Predominance
of the democratic party outside the Assembly.--The
Cordeliers, the Jacobins and other clubs.--The birth of
modern journalism.--Prominent journalists and newspapers.--Mirabeau
and Barère.--Brissot, Loustallot and
Camille Desmoulins.--Marat and the _Ami du Peuple_.--Royalist
journals.--Mallet du Pan and the _Mercure_.--Important
politicians of this period.--Philippe of Orleans.--Necker.--The
Comte de Provence.--Lafayette.--Mirabeau.--Mirabeau's
exceptional insight and ability.--His
aims and attitude from the first.--His desire to establish a
strong, popular Government.--His vain attempts to win
Lafayette.--His ascendency in the Assembly.--His notes
for the Court and plans for reconciling the Crown with the
Revolution.--Summary of his character.
CHAPTER VI.
THE RISE OF THE JACOBIN PARTY 129-154
The Revolution consists of two separate movements, one
mainly political, the other mainly social.--Pause in the
Revolution in 1791.--Apathy of the majority of voters.--Classes
which had not gained what they expected from the
Revolution.--Distress among the artisans and labourers.--Illogical
position of the Constitutional party.--Causes of
its unpopularity with the poor.--The Jacobin theory.--Its
results in practice.--Its triumph secured by violence.--Various
causes of disorder.--Increase of the influence of
force in politics.--Numbers of the Jacobin party.--Its
complete organisation.--Growth of Jacobin clubs.--Organisation
of the Commune of Paris.--Influence of the active
Sections.--Rise of Robespierre.--His character and policy.--Results
of the King's flight to Varennes.--Attitude of the
Jacobin Club.--The 'Massacre of the Champ de Mars.'--Rally
of the Constitutional party.--Barren results of their
success.--Reviving influence of the Jacobins.--Visible in
the Elections.--Critical state of the Revolution at the end
of 1791.
CHAPTER VII.
THE INFLUENCE OF THE WAR UPON THE REVOLUTION 155-181
Attitude of the European Powers towards the Revolution.--Catherine
of Russia.--Gustavus of Sweden.--Joseph of
Austria.--Frederick William of Prussia.--Spain and England.--Trouble
in Poland and the East.--Accession of
Leopold.--His policy.--The French Emigrants.--Their
activity in Europe.--Condé's Army.--Leopold's views on
French affairs.--The 'august comedy' of Pillnitz.--Meeting
of the Legislative Assembly in Paris.--Appearance of
the Girondist party.--Objects of the Republican minority
in the legislature.--War policy of the Girondists.--Their
leaders.--Decrees of the autumn against emigrants and
priests.--Ministry of Narbonne.--Policy of the Jacobins
with regard to the war.--The Girondists in office.--Declaration
of war.--Its momentous results.--Course of events
down to the 20th June, 1792.--Lafayette's last attempt to
save the Court.--Brunswick's Manifesto.--The 10th August.--Danton
in power.--Advance of the Allies.--The prison
massacres of September.--Responsibility for them.--Battle
of Valmy.--Retreat of the Allies.--General results of the
Revolutionary war.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE FALL OF THE GIRONDE 182-207
The Elections of 1792.--Parties in the Convention.--The
Girondists and their advisers.--Madame Roland.--The part
played by women in the French Revolution.--Difference
between the Girondists and the Jacobins.--Rather one of
conduct than of principle.--No place in the Revolution for
the Girondists as a separate party.--Their only distinctive
characteristics an idealised republicanism and a policy of
war.--Beginning of the struggle between the two parties.--Trial
and death of the King.--Demoralisation of politics.--The
Girondists lose ground, especially in Paris.--The war
after Valmy.--Dumouriez' defeat at Neerwinden.--His
desertion.--Important decrees of the Convention in the
spring of 1793, preparing the instruments of the Terror.--Economic
measures.--Growth of the influence of the
Jacobins.--Rising in La Vendée.--Organisation of the
Jacobin forces.--The Girondists, unprepared but alarmed,
attack the Jacobins in April and May.--Warnings of
Dutard.--State of feeling in Paris.--Arrest of Hébert and
Jacobin rising.--The 31st May and 2nd June.--Dangers of
the Jacobin Government.--Its success on all sides.--Fate
of the Girondists and others.
CHAPTER IX.
THE JACOBINS IN POWER 208-235
The Constitution of '93.--Conflict between Jacobin theory
and Jacobin practice.--The Constitution suspended.--Intimidation
of the Convention.--Services of its Committees
to the cause of reform.--The Revolutionary Government in
Paris and in the provinces.--The Committee of Public
Safety.--Its members, its divisions and its heroic work.--The
Representatives on Mission.--Varied character of
their rule.--Their violence and excesses.--Principles of the
Terrorists.--Influence of the Parisian Commune.--Supremacy
of the State enforced in every relation of life.--The
State, in return for implicit obedience, undertakes to provide
for all its subjects.--Its methods of doing this.--Attempts
to fix prices.--The Maximum ruthlessly enforced.--Ruin
resulting from these arbitrary measures in industry
and trade.--General scarcity of food.--The State regulates
private conduct and family life.--Abolition of the Christian
faith and of the Christian era.--Moral results.--The idealists
of the Terror.--Its practical agents.--Hébert and his
party.--License and cruelty of many leading Terrorists.--General
worthlessness of their subordinates.--Blindness
and self-delusion of the best among them.--Entire failure
of the Terrorist ideal.
CHAPTER X.
THE STRUGGLE OF PARTIES AND THE ASCENDENCY OF ROBESPIERRE 236-260
Ascendency of the party of the Commune.--A second party,
that of the Dantonists, arises.--Danton's attitude.--His
great services to the Revolution.--His weariness of faction
and intrigue.--The third party, represented by the Government
of the day.--Revolt against the Hébertists at the
Jacobin Club.-Headed by Robespierre and Desmoulins.--The
_Vieux Cordelier_.--Collot d'Herbois' return to Paris
in December, 1793, strengthens the Hébertists.--End of
the struggle.--Triumph of the Government and fall of the
two other parties in March, 1794.--Execution of Danton.--Conspicuous
position of Robespierre.--Grounds of his
popularity.--His intense belief in himself.--His genuine
sentiment.--His lack of initiative and disingenuous reserve.--His
incompetence as a practical politician.--His morbid
suspiciousness.--His strength.--His belief in the Terror
and attempts to regulate but not to check it.--The Worship
of the Supreme Being.--The Law of the 22nd Prairial.--Robespierre's
struggle with his colleagues.--Triumph of
the Convention on the 9th Thermidor over Robespierre and
the Commune.
CHAPTER XI.
THE REACTION 261-283
Results of the fall of Robespierre.--Progress of the reaction
against the Terror.--The Mountain, the Right, and the
Thermidorians.--Fréron and the Jeunes Gens.--Closing of
the Jacobin Club.--Arrest of Carrier.--Recall of the proscribed
deputies of the Right.--Measures with regard to
religion.--Arrest of Billaud, Collot and others.--Distress
in Paris.--Breakdown of the economic system of the
Terror.--Survey of Terrorist finance.--Embarrassments
and expenses of the Terrorist Government.--Cambon's
remedial measures.--Republicanisation of the National
Debt.--Decline of the Assignats.--Impending bankruptcy
at the end of 1794.--Amount of Assignats in circulation.--Fresh
issues.--Their rapid decline.--Ruin and distress
resulting.--High prices of food.--General dearth.--The
insurrection of the 12th Germinal.--Measures of the reaction.--The
insurrection of the 1st Prairial.--Suppression of
the Jacobin party and disarming of Paris.--Progress of the
War.--Spirit of the French army.--Representatives on
Mission with it.--Great soldiers in its ranks.--Its reorganisation
by Dubois-Crancé.--Campaign of 1793.--Victories
on the Belgian frontier, on the Rhine and in La Vendée.--The
ten armies of the Republic.--European politics.--Selfish
views of Thugut, the Austrian minister.--Jealousy
between Austria and Prussia.--Outbreak of the Polish
revolt.--Victories of the French in Belgium and Holland.--
Peace of Bâle.--Prospects of a general peace and of a
Royalist restoration.--The reaction checked.--Death of
the Dauphin.--The Quiberon Expedition.--The White
Terror.--The Constitution of the Year III.--The decrees
of Fructidor.--The insurrection of the 13th Vendémiaire.--Establishment
of the Directory.--Conclusion.
TABLE OF DATES 285-290
APPENDIX OF BOOKS 291-293
INDEX 295-307
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
INTRODUCTORY
I have not attempted in this small volume to write a history of the
French Revolution. The events of that dramatic narrative have been
sketched by many hands and are to be found in a hundred histories. They
hardly need retelling now. I have rather endeavoured, while taking
for granted some knowledge of the story, to supply what handbooks
generally have not space to give, and to collect in a convenient form
some of the information, the suggestions and ideas which are to be
found in larger books of comment and enquiry. Works like those of M. de
Tocqueville, M. Taine, M. Michelet, M. Louis Blanc, and Professor Von
Sybel are not always easily obtained. Their cost and their length alike
render them inaccessible to those whom time and necessity compel to be
superficial students. I have therefore tried to summarise to a certain
extent what these and other writers tell us; to dwell on some economic
and political aspects of French society before the Revolution; to
explain the more obvious reasons why the Revolution came; to show why
the men who made it, failed, in spite of all their fine enthusiasm,
to attain the liberty which they so ardently desired, or to found the
new order which they hoped to see in France; to describe how, by what
arts and accidents, and owing to what deeper causes, an inconspicuous
minority gradually grew into a victorious party, and assumed the
direction of events; to point out in what way external circumstances
kept the revolutionary fever up, and forced the Revolution forward,
when the necessity for its advance seemed to many to be over, and its
own authors wished it to pause; and to make clearer, if I could, to
others, what has always been to me the mystery of the time, the real
character and aims of the men who grasped the supreme power in 1793-4,
who held it with such a combination of energy and folly, of heroism and
crime, and who proceeded, through anarchy and terror, to experiment how
social misery could be extinguished and universal felicity attained, by
drastic philosophic remedies, applied by despots and enforced by death.
History offers no problem of more surpassing interest, and none more
perplexing or obscure.
I am not conscious of approaching the subject with a bias in favour of
any party. I have no cause to plead for or against any individual or
group of men. I have tried to read all sides, and to allow for those
deep-rooted prejudices which seem to make most Frenchmen incapable of
judging the event. But when, on the information before me, the facts
seem clear, I have not hesitated to praise, or censure, or condemn.
I will only add that I have considered very carefully the judgments
which I have expressed, though I cannot hope that they will recommend
themselves to all alike.
Books of this kind cannot well lay claim to much originality, and I
do not pretend to have kept pace with the constantly accumulating
literature, which the French press produces on this question every
year. I have used freely the works of such modern writers as M. de
Tocqueville, Mr. John Morley, Mr. Morse Stephens, and others, and my
obligations to them are plain. On M. Taine's great work, too, I have
drawn largely, and while allowing for bias in the author, and while
fully admitting that M. Taine's method tends to destroy one's sense
of proportion, and in some degree to give a blurred and exaggerated
impression of the facts, still I cannot question the weight and value
of the mass of information which he has collected, and no one can
fairly overlook the lessons which it tells. Besides these books, I
think I may say that I have read and consulted most of the materials
in histories, memoirs, biographies, and elsewhere, which the many
well-known French writers on the subject have supplied, and I have paid
particular attention to the voluminous histories of M. Louis Blanc
and of M. Mortimer-Ternaux, to the correspondence of Mirabeau and La
Marck, to the memoirs and writings of Bailly, Ferrières, Mallet du Pan,
Madame Roland, and M. de Pontécoulant, to the biographies of the great
Jacobin leaders, especially those by M. Hamel and M. Robinet, and to
the valuable and important works of M. Sorel, of Professor Schmidt, and
of Professor Von Sybel. This list is not complete or comprehensive; but
I hope it is enough to justify the opinions which I have formed.
At the end, I have given, in a short appendix, a list of well-known
books upon the period, which may perhaps be of use to students, who
wish to go more fully into the subject for themselves.
CHAPTER I.
THE CONDITION OF FRANCE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
Historians have not yet determined where the French Revolution properly
begins. But even warring schools agree that the object of that great
movement, apart from its accidents and disappointed dreams, was to
destroy the ancient society of Europe, which feudalism had founded
and which time had warped, and to replace it by a more simple social
system, based, as far as possible, on equality of rights. And therefore
time can hardly be misspent in endeavouring to retrace some of the
chief features of the old monarchy of France, at the moment when the
feudal edifice was crumbling, and when the storm was gathering which
was to sweep it away.
It was the pride of the later Bourbon kings to have accomplished
the design, which Louis XI bequeathed to Richelieu, and Richelieu
interpreted for Louis' successors, the substitution of a closely
centralised despotism, for feudal and aristocratic institutions on
the one hand, and for local and national liberties upon the other. By
the middle of the eighteenth century the triumph of this policy was
complete. The relics of the older system, indeed, remained. A multitude
of officials and authorities, with various and conflicting claims,
still covered the country, recalling in their origin sometimes the
customs of the Middle Ages, sometimes the necessities of the Crown,
sometimes the earlier traditions of freedom. Many of the feudal
seigneurs still claimed rights of jurisdiction and police. Cities and
towns still boasted and obeyed their own municipal constitutions. The
peasants of the country side were still summoned to the church-porch by
the village-bell, to take part in the election of parish officials. A
few noblemen still bore the name of governors of provinces. Independent
authorities with ancient titles still pretended to deal with roads
and with finance. The local Parlements, with their hereditary and
independent judges, maintained their dignity as sovereign courts of
justice, preserved the right of debating the edicts of the King,
adopted an attitude of jealous watchfulness towards the Government and
the Church, and exercised considerable administrative powers. In a
few outlying provinces, termed the Pays d'État, and comprising, with
some smaller districts, the ancient fiefs of Languedoc, Burgundy,
Brittany, Artois and Béarn, annual assemblies, representing the nobles,
clergy, and commons of the province, still displayed the theory
of self-government and retained large taxative and administrative
rights. The Church, with its vast resources and strong, corporate
feeling, still, in many matters, asserted its independence of the
State, administered its own affairs, fixed its own taxes, and claimed
to monopolise public education and to guard public morals and their
expression in the Press.
But amid the ruins of older institutions and the confusion of
innumerable conflicting rights, a new system of administration had
gradually grown up and had usurped all real authority in France. At
its head stood the King's Council, with its centre at Versailles. The
Council represented in all departments the monopoly of the State. It
was a supreme court of justice, for it had power to over-rule the
judgments of all ordinary courts. It was a supreme legislature, for the
States-General, the ancient representative Parliament of France, had
not been summoned since the early years of the seventeenth century, and
the local judicial Parlements, though they could discuss the edicts of
the Council, could not in the last resort resist them. It was supreme
in all matters of administration and finance. It governed the country.
It raised and assessed the taxes. In it one over-burdened minister, the
Comptroller-General, assumed responsibility for all home affairs.
Under the Council, and responsible to it alone, there was stationed in
each of the thirty-two provinces or 'generalities' of the kingdom one
all-powerful agent called the Intendant. The Intendant was drawn, not
from the nobility, but from the professional class. He superintended
the collection and apportionment of all taxes which were not farmed
out by the Council to financial companies. He decided in individual
cases what remissions of taxes should be allowed. He was responsible
under the Council for constructing highways and for all great public
works[1]. He enforced the hated duty of the militia service. He
maintained order with the help of the Maréchaussée or mounted police.
He carried out the police regulations of the local authorities and
the more imperious and comprehensive regulations issued from time to
time by the Council. He possessed in exceptional cases large judicial
powers. As the ordinary judges were independent of the Crown, the
Council multiplied extraordinary tribunals and reserved for their
consideration all suits in which the rights of the Crown were even
remotely concerned. In such cases the Intendant acted as judge both
in civil and in criminal matters, and from his judgment an appeal lay
to the Council alone. This practice, once established, was of course
extended and often abused in the interests of power, for the principles
of the ordinary courts, the Intendants confessed, could 'never be
reconciled with those of the Government.'
Besides this, the Intendant was a benefactor too. He repressed
mendicity and arrested vagabonds. He distributed the funds, which,
in the absence of any legal provision for the poor, and in the
abandonment by the seigneurs of the old feudal duty of providing for
their destitute dependents, the Council annually apportioned for the
purpose. He controlled the charitable workshops which the Council
annually set up. In times of scarcity it was he who must find food
for the people, or, if food were not forthcoming, suppress the riots
which the want of it provoked. In the country districts the Intendant
dispensed his lofty patronage to farmers and encouraged agricultural
improvements. In the villages, though the force of ancient custom still
drew the inhabitants to village-meetings, these meetings could not
be held without the Intendants leave; they retained only the academic
privilege of debate; and when they elected their syndic and collector,
they often elected merely the Intendant's nominees. Even in the towns
which possessed municipal freedom, the Intendant constantly interfered
in all matters of importance and in many little matters of detail, and
the burghers protested their eager submission to 'all the commands
of his Greatness.' In each of the provinces of France the Intendant
represented the omnipotence and wielded the authority of Government;
the commands which he received from the Comptroller-General he dictated
in turn to a staff of agents termed Sub-Delegates, and dependent
on him; and these Sub-Delegates, distributed through the different
cantons of the province, carried out their Intendant's orders, assisted
his designs, and were responsible only to their superior, as he was
responsible to the Council at Versailles.
It is not difficult to see the evils of such a system. The excessive
centralisation of the Government and the vast scope of its powers threw
upon the Comptroller-General and his agents a heavy burden of detail.
Reports and documents multiplied. The waste of time and effort was
profuse. 'The administrative formalities,' declared the Council in one
of its minutes, 'lead to infinite delays.' Any little local matter--the
building of a shelter for the poor, the repairing of a corner of the
village church--must be considered by the Minister at Versailles.
No action could be taken until the Sub-Delegate had reported to the
Intendant, the Intendant had reported to the Comptroller-General,
and that harassed official--combining in his single person all the
duties and perplexities which in England are distributed between the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Home Secretary, the Minister of
Agriculture, the President of the Board of Trade, the President of
the Local Government Board and the Chief Commissioner of Works--had
personally attended to the matter, and had transmitted his decision
through the Intendant to the Sub-Delegate again. Moreover, apart from
its vexatious delays, the system was very liable to abuse. The power of
the Government's agents was as extended as the power of the Government
itself. Arrest and imprisonment were counted among their ordinary
weapons. Armed with all the authority of the State, it was no wonder
if they sometimes imitated its arbitrary ways, and failed to separate
their private inclinations and their private grudges from the public
needs.
Yet the action of the central Government in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries seems to have been often hesitating and rarely
deliberately harsh. The letter of the law was often barbarous and
rigid, where its administration was easy and lax. To criticism the
Government was not indisposed to listen. Its intentions were amiable
and were recognised as such. Any man above the rank of the lowest
class could protest, if treated unjustly, and he could generally
make his protest heard. The shadow of an older liberty had not quite
departed from the face of France. It was only the lowest and most
miserable class, which needed the means of resistance most, which had
no means of resisting except by force. But beneficent as were the
aims of the all-pervading State, its influence was blighting. Leaning
always upon their Government, and taught to look to it for initiative,
encouragement, protection in every department of life, the people of
France forgot both the practices of public freedom and the value of
private independence; and as the Bourbon despotism directly paved the
way for revolution by levelling many of those inequalities which save
a State, so it left the vast majority of Frenchmen devoid both of the
political understanding and of the sense of personal responsibility,
which the habit of self-government alone creates.
More fatal, however, to national prosperity, were the deep divisions
which separated classes--divisions maintained and emphasized by
privileges obviously unjust. The nobility, the clergy, the middle
class, each formed a distinct order in the State, with its own defined
rank and prerogatives. The nobles, who have been roughly estimated at
about one hundred and forty thousand persons, formed a separate caste.
All born noble remained noble, and not even younger sons descended
into the ranks of the commons. The nobles owned perhaps a fifth part
of the soil, and they retained the ancient rights attached to it,
which had once been the reward of their feudal obligations, but which
survived when those obligations had long ceased to be obeyed. Fines and
dues, tolls and charges, the sole right of hunting, of shooting, of
fishing, of keeping pigeons and doves, the privilege of maintaining the
seigneurial mill and wine-press, the seigneurial slaughter-house and
oven--helped to support the noble's dignity and to swell his income.
The more his actual power departed, the more he clung to his hereditary
rights. When the Government usurped his place as local ruler, he only
entrenched himself more jealously in his feudal position. He never met
his neighbours, for there were no public concerns to unite them, and
all business was in the Government's hands. He lost all interest in
local affairs. If he were rich, he went to live in Paris or Versailles.
If he were poor, he shut himself up in his country-house, and consoled
himself with the contemplation of his pride. But in return for the
powers of which it stripped him, the Government conferred on the
nobleman privileges which completed his isolation from those around
him. He and he alone could be the companion of his Sovereign. He and he
alone could rise to high place in the Army or the Church. He and his
dependents were exempted from oppressive duties like serving in the
militia or working on the roads. He knew nothing of the terrible burden
of taxation which crippled and oppressed the poor. He was generally
exempted from paying the Taille, the most grievous of all the taxes;
and even those imposts--the Poll-tax and the Vingtièmes--to which he
was subject, were collected from him in a specially indulgent manner.
The greater a man's wealth or station, the better was his chance of
securing easy terms. The Government's agents felt bound to act 'with
marked consideration' in collecting the taxes of people of rank. 'I
settle matters with the Intendants,' said the Duke of Orleans, the
richest man in France, 'and pay just what I please.'
Yet within this privileged order the differences of life were marked.
Before the end of the eighteenth century many of the old families were
ruined, and lived in the narrowest circumstances, upon incomes of a
hundred, of fifty, even of twenty-five pounds a year, rigidly clinging
to the titles and immunities which alone distinguished them from the
poor, driven by necessity to exact from the peasants all that custom
allowed them, and subsisting chiefly on the sinister pomp of caste. In
striking contrast to the ruined nobles of the provinces was the much
smaller and more brilliant body which composed the Court. No nobleman
lived in the country, who could afford to live at Paris or Versailles.
Not to be seen at Court was equivalent to obscurity or disgrace. The
nobles of La Vendée incurred the Government's displeasure by their
obstinate adherence to their country homes and their lamentable
unwillingness to perform their duties about the person of the King. Yet
the nobles of La Vendée were the only part of the French aristocracy,
which in the days of the Revolution died fighting for the Crown.
At Court the leaders of society set the wild example of extravagance.
It is difficult to exaggerate the pomp and profusion of Versailles.
Every prince and princess had a separate establishment with its
dependents multiplied in proportion to its owner's rank. The Queen's
household numbered all but five hundred persons, the Comte d'Artois'
almost seven hundred, the King's a thousand in the civil department
alone[2]. It was the distinction of the Grand Seigneurs in those
days--common minds imagine that it distinguishes their imitators
now--to ignore the value of money. In this respect the King outshone
all the Grand Seigneurs of his Court. Louis XIV spent thirty millions
sterling on a single palace. His successor squandered three millions
on a single mistress. Pensions, sinecures, allowances, were scattered
with a lavish hand. When Necker first took office, the charges on the
pension-list exceeded two millions and a quarter. The Duke of Orleans,
with an income of a quarter of a million, received a large pension from
the Crown, and died nearly six millions in debt. The art of spending
money was one secret of the art of pleasing, and nowhere was the art
of pleasing studied with more finish or success. In the charmed circle
of that dazzling, polished Court, pleasure marched with a stately and
unflagging step. Courtesy ordained that everyone should be agreeable,
witty, light-hearted and well-bred. But the unceasing chase of
pleasure, though attended by excellent graces, banishes all thought
of others while it veils egotism with delight, and the fortunate who
entered there naturally forgot the misery which reigned among the
unfortunate outside[3].
Beside the privileged order of nobility stood the privileged
corporation of the Church. Like the nobles, the Church owned vast
landed estates, which covered about a fifth part of France, and which
in many cases were managed well. Like the nobles, the dignitaries of
the Church retained the ancient feudal rights which had survived from
the days when they governed the country, besides a variety of dues and
charges, and their special prerogative--the tithe. Like the nobles,
they evaded the weight of taxation. The assembly of the clergy, meeting
every five years, negotiated with the Crown its own contributions to
the Exchequer, and obtained numberless concessions from the local
authorities, wherever its interests were touched. Moreover, the Church
still enjoyed political power. No one in France had a legal right
to live outside its pale. It controlled the schools; it kept the
parish registers, on which a man's title to his property and his name
depended; for the sake of Catholic truth it burned its adversaries;
and, through its censorship of the Press, it silenced all assailing
tongues.
Then too, like the nobility, the Church offered many contrasts of
condition. The great prelates who lived at Court maintained with all
the lavishness of laymen the well-bred profusion of the place. Their
wealth rivalled that of princes. The Archbishop of Cambrai was the
feudal suzerain of seventy-five thousand people, lord of the town of
Cambrai, patron of two great abbeys, and a Duke and Count to boot.
The ecclesiastical income enjoyed by M. de Brienne, Archbishop of
Toulouse, besides his ministerial salary and pension, is stated to have
exceeded, according to a modern standard, fifty-four thousand pounds.
The Archbishop of Rouen, apart from his episcopal revenues, drew from
his abbeys twenty thousand pounds a year. The Bishop of Troyes received
penitents in confessionals lined with white satin. M. de Rohan,
hereditary Bishop of Strasbourg, held a splendid Court in his great
palace at Saverne, and exalted the dignity of a prince of the Church
by having all his saucepans made of silver. When one contrasts with
this delicate existence the condition of the vast majority of parish
priests, whose plebeian birth shut on them the door to preferment,
who lived, often in ruined and neglected parsonages, in the abandoned
country districts, with no educated friends about them, dispensing the
meagre charities of the august superiors who could not leave the Court
to visit them, and supporting the lofty pretensions of the Catholic
Church on incomes of forty, of twenty, and of sixteen pounds a year,
one ceases to wonder that the priests abhorred a lot, which 'made even
the stones and beams of their miserable dwellings cry aloud,' and that,
when the day of retribution came, they welcomed the destroyer, and
refused to lift a finger to defend the existing system in the Church of
France.
Apart, however, from the advantages of rank, the middle class had its
privileges and exemptions too. Some enjoyed immunities as servants of
the Government; others, as members of powerful corporations; others,
again, of a lower grade, driven from the country districts by the
exactions of the Government and by the demands of the seigneurs,
who insisted on their tribute while they disdained their company,
took refuge in the towns, and there formed a caste of their own. In
early times, most of the important towns in France had possessed two
governing assemblies, one composed of magistrates and officials, who
owed their offices originally to popular election and afterwards to
purchase from the Crown, the other composed originally of all the
towns-people and afterwards of local 'notables' representing the
different companies and guilds. By the end of the eighteenth century,
however, the popular spirit, which had once given life to all these
institutions, had long died out. The municipal officers bought their
places from the Government, and handed them down from father to son.
The representative assembly had ceased to represent any but the
substantial burghers of the town. What had once been public honours
conferred by the voices of free citizens had everywhere crystallised
into private rights, the prerogative of one class or of a few important
families.
Accordingly, the possessors of these rights were bribed to uphold the
existing order by a thousand little dignities and exemptions, in which
relief from taxation played a large part, and they maintained the
pride of their position by drawing a jealous line between themselves
and the unrepresented artisans below. The guilds, originally created
to foster, still survived to fetter the commerce of the towns. But in
process of time these guilds had been multiplied for every branch of
trade; the privilege of managing them had been in most cases usurped or
bought by a narrow group of members; and the fees and rules which they
imposed tended readily to further class-interests and class-divisions.
All artisans who were not the sons of masters, went by the name of
'strangers,' and found innumerable barriers placed in the way of their
advancement. The passion for place, which to some observers seems
inherent in the French middle class, was sedulously encouraged by
Ministers, who, by multiplying small posts and dignities, filled the
Exchequer, appeased complaints, and won supporters. Each of these
little places carried its special perquisites and distinctions; and
thus, in the minds of thousands, the aspiration to possess some petty
advantage over their neighbours tended to oust the larger aspirations
which might have led to public freedom. In one small town the notables
were divided into thirty-six distinct bodies, with different rights
and degrees. Every tradesman delighted in a special mark of rank. The
owner of a shop sat on a higher seat than his assistants. The tailor
could wear only one buckle to his wig, while the proud apothecary
might boast of three. On one occasion the periwig-makers of La Flèche
ceased working in a body, in order to show their 'well-founded grief
occasioned by the precedence granted to the bakers.' The evils begotten
of caste and privilege could hardly be carried to more ludicrous
extremes.
But while each of the educated classes thus possessed its
distinguishing marks to arm revolution and to point hatred, one class,
the lowest, had nothing but the privileges of its superiors to mark
its position in the State. In the towns the great majority of the
labouring community were excluded by the guild monopolies from any
prospect except that of perpetual subjection. Their wages, both in town
and country, were but little more than half of what they earn to-day,
while the purchasing power which those wages represented was very much
less. And if the outlook in the towns was gloomy, their situation
in the country was infinitely worse. It was there that the people
felt most nearly the relentless assiduity of life. Everyone knows
La Bruyère's picture of the wild-looking peasantry of France, their
faces blackened by want and toil and sun, the slaves of the soil, at
which they laboured with such unconquerable patience, who 'seemed just
capable of speech, and when they stood erect displayed the lineaments
of men.' Their dwellings were often windowless cabins, their clothing
a rough woollen covering, their food buckwheat and chestnuts and the
coarsest bread. And yet these unfortunate beings were in many cases the
owners of the soil they tilled. The passionate love of the land, which
distinguishes the French peasant of our own day, was not taught him by
the Revolution. For generations before it his one object of ambition,
the only aim which made it worth his while to live, had been the hope
of acquiring a portion of the land he worked upon. Living wretchedly,
he yet kept that object steadily in view. For that end he hoarded and
toiled and starved. The impoverished gentry came easily to terms; and
thus an immense number of small holdings sprang up almost imperceptibly
in France, estimated by the genial, observant eyes of Arthur Young to
cover as much as 'one-third of the kingdom.'
By the side of these small properties, which tended to grow smaller
under a process of incessant sub-division, lay the large estates
of the nobles, the clergy, the magistrates and financiers. In some
cases these estates were farmed on a large scale by tenants holding
leases at a money-rent, and in the North these farms were numerous and
answered well. But the backwardness and the want of capital, which
blighted all French agriculture in the eighteenth century, helped to
render farm-leases unpopular, and most large proprietors fell back
on the system of Métayage, or farming at half profits, under which
the landlord supplied and stocked the land, while the labourer gave
his labour, and the profits were shared between the two. In Anjou,
where the landlords resided on their estates, knew their Métayers
personally, and supervised their labours, this system prospered. But in
much the greater part of France the Métayers were left to themselves
by the landlords, and struggled on in the greatest distress, without
enterprise, without capital, often deeply in debt, hardly making
enough to yield them the bare means of subsistence, and loath to
exert themselves to swell the profits, which they had to divide with
a master, who neither knew nor cared for them. 'The Métayer,' says a
compassionate seigneur, 'is kept in an abject state by men who are not
at all inhuman, but whose prejudices ... lead them to regard him as a
different species of being.' Before the outbreak of the Revolution,
serfdom, except in some outlying districts, had been extinguished in
France; but the condition of the Métayer materially was little above
the serf's. In some cases, it is true, he had managed to purchase,
independently of his Métairie, a little plot of land of his own,
which he cultivated with minute and arduous attention; and in certain
districts these plots of ground repaid the toil spent on them, and
taught their owners the self-respect of ownership and the dignity
which independence gives. But, generally speaking, even these small
allotments, numerous as they were, were wretchedly unproductive,
and the Métayers and day-labourers who owned them shared the common
depression of their class.
Apart, however, from his bad farming and the poverty of his land, the
French peasant had worse troubles to encounter. The shadow of feudalism
still lay heavily across his path. Even where he was the owner of the
soil, he held it subject to innumerable dues and charges, from which he
could not escape and which he could not redeem. Whenever the peasant's
property changed hands, the seigneur stepped in to claim his fine. On
the roads and at the bridges the seigneur claimed his tolls. At markets
and fairs the seigneur claimed his dues, and sold to the peasant the
right to sell to others the produce of his farm. Occasionally the
seigneur still claimed the peasant's time and labour for nothing.
Everywhere the rights of the seigneur compelled him to grind his wheat
only at the feudal mill and to crush his grapes only in the feudal
wine-press. And even worse than these claims was the scourge of the
game-laws. The seigneur alone could fish in the stream which flowed
through the peasant's farm. The seigneur alone could shoot the game
which ruined the peasant's crops. The seigneur alone could hunt over
the peasant's land. In the vast Capitaineries, which covered some four
hundred square leagues of territory in France, the deer and big game,
preserved for the sport of princes, wandered unchecked, devouring the
fields and vineyards of the inhabitants, and woe be to the peasant who
dared to interfere with their freedom! Every summer the villagers in
the neighbourhood of Fontainebleau, where the Capitaineries stretched
far, were compelled to organise watch companies and to watch all night
for six months in the year, in order to save their vines and harvests
from destruction. If the peasant dared to dispute any of these rights,
there were the seigneur's courts to overawe him, to weary him out with
incessant litigation, and to teach him that, though he had ceased to be
a serf, the seigneur was his master still. Sometimes all these claims
were sold by an impoverished seigneur to a group of speculators, and
the pity of speculators is necessarily limited by considerations of
gain. When the seigneur had done with the peasant, the emissaries of
the Church stepped in, to take their tithe for spiritual purposes,
and to remind him how much he owed to them for the development of his
intellect and the guardianship of his soul.
But the Crown itself took a prominent part in the spoliation of the
poor. Adopting for public purposes the old feudal institution of the
Corvée, the Government summoned the peasants at certain seasons of
the year to leave their fields, without compensation, in order to
make and repair the highways; and by a peculiar irony, although the
great thoroughfares were thus maintained solely at the peasants'
expense, the roads which the peasants really needed, the cross-roads
in agricultural districts, were left to ruin and neglect. More odious
still were the demands of the militia service. Every unmarried man up
to forty years of age could be called upon for this oppressive duty.
No substitution was allowed. Although for the wealthy the exemptions
were innumerable, for the poorest class no exemption was permitted.
Improvident marriages offered the only means of escape. The approach of
the Government's agent was the signal for panic and disorder, and the
miserable villagers fled for concealment to the woods.
Even more grievous than the Corvée and the militia were the abuses
which pervaded the whole system of taxation. The heaviest of all the
taxes was the terrible burden of the Taille, a direct tax levied
sometimes on property and sometimes on income, falling almost entirely
on the poor--alike on the struggling landowner and on the landless
labourer--assessed without order or method, constantly varying
and constantly increased. Every year in the rural districts some
unfortunate villager was selected to act as collector of the Taille.
He alone had to decide how much each of his neighbours was worth, and
how much he must extort from them to satisfy the Government, and if
his efforts or his calculations failed, his own property and person
were responsible for the amount. The opportunities for abuse in such
a system, for the satisfaction of personal jealousies and grudges,
are as obvious as its unfairness towards those on whom the office was
inflicted. 'The office of collector,' cried Turgot, 'drives to despair
and frequently to ruin all those on whom it is imposed.' In order to
escape the Taille, the peasant strenuously concealed his savings. If,
in spite of his Government, he prospered, he dared do nothing to give
an air of comfort to his home. We find him in one case entreating his
landlord not to tile the roof of his cottage, because such a sign
of prosperity would mean for him an increase of taxation. It was
the object of every man to seem desperately poor. Then besides the
Taille, the peasant had to pay the accessory taxes, which in process
of time had been assimilated with it; the Poll-tax and the Vingtièmes,
imposts imposed by Louis XIV on all alike, but the weight of which the
powerful classes had contrived to shift on to the shoulders of the
weak; the road-tax, when the Corvées were abolished; the tax of the
franc-fief, whenever he happened to own lands which had once been the
lands of nobles; and always, apart from the demands of the Exchequer,
his seigneur's dues and his pastor's tithe. Statistics may sometimes
be misleading, but an able statistician has calculated, upon evidence
which it is difficult to deny, that, allowing for all these direct
charges, the peasant in many parts of France paid away four-fifths of
his income to the Treasury, the seigneur, and the Church, and out of
every hundred francs he earned, retained little more than eighteen
francs himself[4].
But the record of his troubles did not end there. The Gabelle, perhaps
the most exasperating impost ever devised by an empty Exchequer,
compelled all citizens over seven years of age to purchase yearly seven
pounds of salt from the agents of the State. But this salt was reserved
for cooking and eating alone, and if salt for any other purpose were
needed, the agents of the State had the right to make its subjects
purchase more. The whole system of indirect taxation was conceived
in the same spirit as this monument of fiscal folly. The face of the
country was covered by barriers and custom-houses, occupied by an army
of revenue officers, who purchased from the Government the right of
collecting the customs and excise. Twelve hundred leagues of artificial
frontiers separated the various provinces of France, impeded trade, and
played havoc with prices. The small vine-growers were almost ruined by
the excise levied upon wine, which even in those days was conspicuous
for its severity and for the inquisitorial practices of those who
enforced it. Calonne declared that the salt tax alone produced every
year nearly four thousand sentences, of imprisonment, flogging, exile
and the galleys. Under such auspices smuggling multiplied, and the
Government retorted by heavy punishments. Bodies of armed banditti
were organised in disturbed districts, and carried on for years
together a guerilla war against the forces of the Crown. Unemployed
labourers and ruined peasants found a livelihood in swelling the ranks
of disaffection, and in the absence of any poor-law administration,
mendicancy and vagabondage rapidly increased.
The records of the last years of the Ancien Régime are consequently
full of evidence of alarming and growing disorder. Townspeople
complained that the beggars, driven from the country, flocked into the
cities for shelter. The Intendants reported to the Council that the
chief highways of the kingdom were infested with dangerous vagrants.
In vain the Government multiplied its corn-laws and arrests, and
endeavoured to stifle the clamours of indigence by feeding some and by
punishing others. In 1767, fifty thousand beggars were arrested; but
in 1777, the numbers of that unfortunate class had risen to nearly a
million and a quarter. In Paris the census of 1791 declared that out of
a population of six hundred and fifty thousand, over one hundred and
eighteen thousand were without the means of regular subsistence. It is
easy to understand how, pressed by hunger, and pursued by a rigorous
penal code, many of these wandering mendicants crossed the thin line
which separates extreme want from crime, and how, when the Old Monarchy
suddenly collapsed, and when in the search for freedom law was for the
moment lost, this large group of miserable beings, armed with brief
power and long-accumulated hatred, exacted a terrible revenge for the
wrongs of the labouring community in France, from whose ranks they and
their ancestors had been driven by a system politically and socially
unjust.
Such, in the eighteenth century, were some of the conditions of life
in France. Each class lived apart, entrenched in its own chilling
traditions. 'Nobody,' cried Turgot, 'cares for any interest but his
own.' Local patriotism, common intercourse, friendly feeling, no
longer drew men of different ranks together. The sense of citizenship
had generally died out. Below the others the peasant stood alone. His
poverty clung to him as a garment of shame. His commonest impulses
were want and fear. His love of legend made him superstitious. His
ignorance made him credulous, bigoted, suspicious, easily persuaded
to believe in evil. Isolated from the world, conscious of belonging
to an inferior caste, encountering on all sides the privileges of
his masters, and yet with no superior to care for him and no wise
counsellor to guide him, blunted in feeling by long endurance, gentle,
submissive, often gay, but more often brooding on the indignities which
he suffered, and resenting the injustice even more than the hardship
of his lot, he heard and welcomed with passionate illusion the new
doctrine of human dominion, which proclaimed that men were equal,
whatever their station, whatever their distress, and from that moment
the attainment of equality, so easy to imagine, so hard to approach,
became the commanding ideal of the poor.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: It will be understood that in the Pays d'État, the powers
of the Intendants, as regarded taxation and public works, were limited
and controlled by the rights of the local assemblies.]
[Footnote 2: The expenses of the royal table amounted to nearly three
hundred thousand pounds a year.]
[Footnote 3: I have taken all these figures from M. Taine's _Ancien
Régime_, and have reduced them roughly to their equivalents in English
money of our own day. I have, however, throughout calculated the
_livre_ at 10_d._, although Arthur Young puts it as high as 10-1/2_d._;
so that the amounts in the text are, if anything, understated.]
[Footnote 4: One part of the _taille_, that which fell upon the
cultivator, reached the privileged orders indirectly through their
farmers, but even then there were certain exemptions in their favour.
The franc-fief was the tax of one year's revenue levied every twenty
years on non-noble holders of noble lands. The calculation of income
given here I take from the note on the subject contained in the
appendix to M. Taine's volume on the _Ancien Régime_, which is founded
on the _procès-verbaux_ of the provincial assemblies. On an income
of 100 francs, he estimates the _taille_ (with its accessories),
the poll-tax, and the road-tax together, at 42 fr. 15 c.; the two
_vingtièmes_ at 11 fr., the tithe at 14 fr. 28 c., and the feudal dues
at 14 fr. 28 c.; total 81 fr. 71 c.]