THE EARLY DAYS OF THE REVOLUTION.
On the 5th May, 1789, the States-General were opened by Louis at
Versailles. From the first the Government betrayed its helplessness,
and its total inability to appreciate the situation. The Commons'
deputies had come to Versailles for the most part with the largest
expectations. They were fully alive to existing evils. They were full
of schemes and ideals of reform. They foresaw, and were willing to
foresee, no obstacles. They were prepared to transform the country; and
they confidently expected, under the guidance of a benevolent King and
of a liberal and experienced Minister, to begin without delay the work
of national regeneration. But from the outset they encountered a series
of checks and disillusionments, which increased in gravity as time went
on. They found that the Government, instead of taking the lead with
vigour, met them with no definite proposals for reform, and with little
but vague philanthropic intentions over and above its desire to restore
the finances. They found that the King and his advisers had not even
made up their minds as to the constitution of the new Parliament, and
could not bring themselves to decide whether the three orders were to
sit and vote together or apart. They found themselves in an atmosphere
new to most of them, set to do work new to all, conscious in their own
minds that a new era had begun and that they must assert themselves to
mark it, but yet accustomed from immemorial habit to regard the nobles
as their superiors, the King as their master, and the Government as
irresistibly strong.
Accordingly, at first, the attitude of the Commons was one of great
embarrassment. They had as yet no recognised leaders of their own, and
the Ministers, to whom they looked for leadership, were silent and
appeared to be as much perplexed as themselves. On one point only they
were clearly resolved and determined to yield to no pressure. They
insisted that the deputies of the nobles and clergy should join them,
and should form one chamber with themselves. On their side, the nobles
and clergy refused to listen to this innovation. The Commons steadily
rejected a compromise, and on that point the deadlock arose. Instead
of the States-General setting to work to repair the finances and to
carry reforms, six weeks went by, occupied only with this preliminary
quarrel, while all the time the excitement in Paris and in the country
deepened, the conflict of class interests became more apparent and
acute, and the reactionary courtiers rejoiced at the fiasco and
used their influence to widen the breach. The Commons, growing more
confident as they felt their strength, and as they realised the power
of the forces behind them, held their ground, disregarded the pressure
and the innumerable, little, social slights, to which they were daily
exposed at Versailles, and became more and more pronounced in their
policy of self-assertion; and the Government revealed more strikingly
than ever, alike to the States-General and to the public, its entire
lack of purpose and resolve.
At last, after six weeks of waiting, the Commons took matters into
their own hands, and from that moment events moved fast. On the 17th
June, the deputies of the Tiers-État resolved on a momentous step, and
on the motion of Sieyès, constituted themselves alone the National
Assembly of France. The Government, alarmed at this usurpation of
power, determined to reassert its authority and, while offering a large
programme of reform, to insist on the separation of the three orders.
On the 20th, the Commons found themselves excluded from their hall,
and their sittings consequently interrupted; but they persevered in
the policy which they had adopted, and adjourning simultaneously to
the Tennis Court, swore solemnly never to separate till they had given
a constitution to France. On the 23rd, the King came down in state to
the Assembly Hall, and while offering large concessions, annulled the
resolutions of the Commons. But the Commons, inspired by the courageous
words of Mirabeau, rejected the programme which Louis had laid before
them, adhered to their resolutions, and defied the Crown. Within a few
days, the nobles and the clergy were requested by Louis to abandon the
struggle, and the union of the three orders was complete.
But the Court party bitterly resented the usurpation of the Commons.
The disorder in Paris was increasing fast. Necker held ostentatiously
aloof from his colleagues. The King, distressed and embarrassed,
suffered himself to be persuaded by the haughtier spirits at Court,
helped by the direct influence of the Queen, to make an attempt to
recover the authority which he had allowed to slip from his grasp.
The old Maréchal de Broglie, a veteran of the Seven Years' War, was
summoned to the royal counsels. Great masses of troops, composed
chiefly of Swiss and German regiments in the service of France, were
concentrated, in spite of the protests of the Assembly, around Paris
and Versailles. On the 11th July, Necker and three other Ministers
were dismissed, and their places in the Government filled by decided
adherents of the reactionary party. On the 12th, the news reached
Paris, and the people, scared, famished and indignant, burst into
revolt. On the 14th, that revolt culminated in the decisive movement
which destroyed the Bastille, which shattered the plans of the Court
party, and which completed the triumph of the Revolution and the
humiliation of the Crown.
'With the 14th July,' said a wise and enlightened witness of the time,
'the terror began.' The rising in Paris was the signal for the first
general outbreak of violent disorder in France, which proved that the
distressed classes had taken the law into their own hands, and that
the Government was utterly unable to cope with or control them. The
strongest motive for disorder was unquestionably material want. For
many years past, the condition of the poorer peasants and labourers,
both in the towns and in the country side, had been almost intolerable,
and in 1789, the chronic distress of this large class reached an acute
stage. In 1788, a severe drought had been followed, on the eve of the
harvest, by a hail-storm of extraordinary violence and extent, which
had destroyed the crops for sixty leagues round Paris. That, in turn,
had been followed by the severest winter known for eighty years, which
had completed the ruin which the drought and the storm had begun. The
consequence was that, in the spring and summer of 1789, the price of
bread rose as in a siege, and on all sides the cry of famine spread.
From all parts of France, in the spring of 1789, came the same alarming
rumours of scarcity and distress. From all parts of France, in the
months preceding the capture of the Bastille, came the same reports of
disturbances and riots occasioned by the want of food. Discontented
peasants, unemployed labourers, rapidly reduced to criminals by hunger,
passed from patient misery to despair, and broke out into resistance.
Compromised or defeated in the country, they took refuge in the towns;
and thus, in April and May, observers noticed that 'frightful numbers
of ill-clad men of sinister appearance,' many of them foreigners, all
more or less destitute and dangerous, were pouring into Paris, where
already bread was exorbitantly dear, and where already the number of
unemployed and paupers bore a dangerous proportion to the population of
the city.
The trouble caused by the scarcity of food was stimulated by another
motive second to it only in importance--the feverish excitement of
political hope. Depressed and ignorant as they were, the labouring
class in France had, nevertheless, grasped the idea that in some vague
way the meeting of the States-General marked an era in their lives,
and was somehow or other destined to ease the intolerable burden of
their lot. With them political freedom and constitutional reform took
the immediate shape of food, work, and relief from feudalism and
taxation. Once the idea had been implanted in them, their restless
anticipations rapidly increased. Every week of delay rendered them
less manageable. Every check experienced by the Assembly was a spur
to their impatience. Every step taken by the Government to assert its
authority or to overawe the reformers filled them with indignation,
suspicion and panic. In the poorer districts of Paris, and especially
in the gardens of the Palais Royal--the headquarters of Bohemians,
idlers, mischief-makers, crowds--the political excitement of the time
found expression in perpetual demonstrations, not unmixed with rioting
and outbreaks. The regular authorities of the city, unused to the
spectacle, looked on, unable to control it. The police force of Paris
under the Ancien Régime was so small as to be practically useless. The
garrison, formed of the Gardes Françaises, who were responsible for
the maintenance of order, sympathised with the citizens, who spared no
hospitality or flatteries to gain them, and finally, mutinying against
their officers, went over to the popular side. The other regiments in
the neighbourhood showed a marked inclination to follow the example of
the Gardes Françaises. The Government, deserted by its own agents, drew
back; and the spirit of disorder, produced by the desire for food and
the desire for freedom, obtained the mastery of Paris, and took command
of the Revolution too.
The example set by Paris was immediately followed in the provinces. At
Strasbourg, Lyons, Dijon, Troyes, Besançon, Rouen, Caen, all over the
country, spontaneous risings occurred, directed against the authorities
or practices of the Ancien Régime, and often accompanied by violence
and bloodshed. The people, stimulated by the pressure of famine and
by the feverish excitement of the time, and believing that the hour
of their deliverance had come, determined to deliver themselves. In
different places the outbreak took a hundred different forms. In
garrison cities the people, imitating the Parisians, attacked the
nearest fortress or castle, and, as in Paris, the troops generally
fraternised with the assailants. In some quarters popular indignation
was directed against the tax-offices and custom-houses, in some against
the local magistrates, in some against the tithes, in some against
the newly-introduced machinery, in some against the Jews, in most
against corn-dealers and all concerned in trafficking in grain. In the
towns the distressed workmen rose against the bourgeois, and against
the unjust economic system, which had long rendered their condition
unbearable. In the country districts the peasants rose against the
iniquities of feudalism, and burned the monasteries and châteaux, where
the court-rolls, the records of their hated liabilities, were kept. No
doubt, with the desire to redress abuses there mingled, in the minds
of an ignorant and embittered peasantry, a great deal of ferocity and
crime. In many places indiscriminate war was declared against all kinds
of property, and the outbreak took the form of a struggle between rich
and poor. But the most notable features of the revolutionary movement
were, first, its universality, and secondly, the powerlessness of the
authorities to confront or to suppress it. Everywhere the agents of the
administration collapsed. The Intendants, the law-courts, the police,
completely paralysed, abdicated or disappeared, and the inhabitants of
town and country alike, recognising the helplessness of the Government,
gave way to an inevitable panic.
The consequence was that the months of July and August were signalised
by a sense of insecurity amounting to terror. The wildest rumours
pervaded the country, and the most extraordinary instances are found
of places where the people, panic-stricken by some vague, unfounded
report of the approach of brigands, who had no existence out of their
imagination, rushed to arms or fled into concealment to protect
themselves against their own alarm. One result of the 'great fear'
was that volunteer forces of citizens, interested in restoring order,
sprang up on all sides, in imitation of the National Guard just
organised in Paris, to which they were destined before long to be
assimilated; and these volunteer forces, though sometimes used by the
bourgeois to repress the movements and to maintain the subjection
of the labouring class, were still invaluable in restoring peace.
Moreover, in place of the authorities of the Ancien Régime, there
sprang up, to exercise the duties of administration, informal municipal
committees composed of electors, which, usurping the powers abdicated
by the Government, rapidly organised themselves, secured the obedience
of their fellow-citizens, and set to work, as best they could, to
reconstruct the administration of the country. The rapidity and skill
with which these municipal committees and their volunteer forces
organised themselves, clearly illustrate the readiness of the provinces
to act on their own initiative and to take over the responsibilities of
the Revolution, and show how completely the people of France at first
kept pace with, if they did not outstrip, their leaders in Paris and
Versailles.
The most obvious and the wisest course for the National Assembly to
adopt, would have been to legalise as rapidly as possible the changes
so suddenly effected, and to set to work without delay to organise
the new administrative system. After the 14th July, the King had
completely surrendered, and the Assembly had only to act in order
to be obeyed. The task before it was, it is true, difficult and
almost endless. It was imperatively necessary to restore order. But
it was also imperatively necessary--and this the Assembly did not
see--to construct, as quickly as it could be done, some form of local
government, to replace the old order which had disappeared. It was
imperative to provide by some means for the necessities of the revenue,
until a permanent financial system could be organised, in place of
the old taxes which people would no longer pay. It was imperative to
take steps to convince, not only the bourgeois and the peasants, but
the distressed artisans in the towns as well, that the Assembly was
alive to the urgent necessities of the moment, had a real grasp of the
situation of affairs, and would do all that could be done to protect
their interests, and to save them from the starvation which they
imminently feared. These were the measures which Mirabeau urged upon
his colleagues, but unfortunately, there were few men in the Assembly
who possessed the gift of practical statesmanship, which genius, lit by
experience, had conferred on Mirabeau.
The character of that famous Assembly, read in its own day by the
critical but far-seeing eyes of Burke, has excited the wonder of
posterity. Its most notable feature was its want of practical
experience. Among the upper clergy and the nobles, there were, it is
true, certain deputies, who from their position had obtained some
knowledge of affairs, but these men were liable to be distrusted by
their colleagues, because the moderation which their experience taught
them, obviously coincided with their interests. Among the Commons
there were not a dozen men who had held important administrative
posts. There was only one deputy, Malouet, who had held the great
office of Intendant, and was in consequence really familiar with the
working of the old administrative system. The great majority of the
deputies of the Commons consisted of lawyers of little celebrity, who
brought to the Assembly all the facility of expression, but little of
the utilitarian caution, which in England is associated with their
profession. The place of experience, in the case of most members of
the Assembly, was taken by a large imagination, a boundless optimism,
a vast store of philosophic tags and democratic phrases, a fatal
fluency of speech, a fine belief in logic, an academic disregard of
the rude facts of practical existence. Never was any body of men so
much inspired by hope and confidence, so full of honourable enthusiasm,
so convinced of its own ability, or so fixed in its honest desire, to
regenerate the world.
Accordingly, the early history of the Assembly is marked by a series
of strange scenes, only possible in a nation with whom extreme
versatility of temperament takes the place of humour, illustrating the
susceptibility, the emotion, the feverish excitement, the liability
of the whole body to act on the impulse of the moment, regardless of
what the consequences might be. A happy phrase, a witty saying, a
burst of declamation, would carry it off its feet, and settle the fate
of a division. The prodigious quantity of written rhetoric declaimed
from the tribune wasted a prodigious quantity of time, but there was
always an audience ready to applaud it. The debates were conducted
with very little order. The entire absence of method in the Chamber
often frustrated the business-like work done by its committees. In
vain Mirabeau urged his colleagues to adopt the procedure of the
English House of Commons. The French people, newly emancipated,
disdained the example of any other nation. In the great halls at Paris
and Versailles, where the Assembly successively sat, the process of
legislation continued to be attended by a constant clatter of talk and
movement, interrupted by noisy shouts and gestures, by obstruction and
personal abuse, and aggravated by the presence in the galleries of
large numbers of strangers, whom at first the Assembly welcomed, and
whose turbulence it afterwards vainly attempted to control. The noisy
demonstrations in the Strangers' Gallery encouraged extreme speeches
and proposals, shouted down unpopular orators, and gradually organised
a species of mob-rule. The occupants of the galleries ultimately
became one of the greatest dangers and defects of the Assembly. By
the intimidation which they practised, not only inside its walls,
but outside in the streets as well, they daunted and terrorised even
brave men; and before long they forced into silence or flight many
politicians, whose influence would have been valuable to the cause of
moderation and good sense.
These facts ought not to be forgotten when one is considering the
action of the Assembly, for they help to explain the slowness of its
procedure, and illustrate the inexperience which was its besetting,
but inevitable, fault. Moreover, during the months of July and
August, the Assembly was probably still amazed at its own success,
and had scarcely realised its own omnipotence. Most of the deputies
of the majority, although anxious for reform, had no very definite
opinions, and as yet the machinery of political parties and political
principles did not exist among them. The consequence was that instead
of acting with vigour and precision, they gave themselves up to general
discussions. They imagined that men already in rebellion, clamouring
for food and for a fair opportunity to earn it, would be satisfied
by reiterated assurances that they were equal, sovereign, free; and
proceeded to debate, for weeks together, the Declaration of the Rights
of Man. From that subject they passed at length to consider the bases
of the new constitution, and in the month of September two important
constitutional questions were decided. The Assembly rejected by an
overwhelming majority the proposal for dividing the future Parliament
into two Houses on the English model, and resolved that there should
be only one Chamber in the constitution which they were beginning
to create. Secondly, jealous of the royal authority, and misled by
unstatesmanlike counsels, the Assembly determined, against the wiser
voice of Mirabeau, that the King should have, not an absolute, but
only a suspensive veto on the laws passed by the future Parliament; in
other words, that he should not be able to reject any measure which
the Chamber approved, but might refuse his sanction to it until time
or agitation compelled him to yield. Once only, in these early weeks,
did the Assembly come near to the questions which were really agitating
France, when, on the night of the 4th August, horrified by the report
of its own committee, it gave way to the impulse of the moment, and
abolished in a series of reckless resolutions all feudal survivals,
serfdom, tithes, all exemptions from taxes, and every other exclusive
privilege existing in the kingdom. And yet, unwise as the Assembly's
conduct seems to us, and incapable as it unquestionably proved, nothing
can be clearer than the uprightness of intention, which governed it as
a whole in these early days, and the earnest enthusiasm for humanity
and justice, which dictated its policy and distended its debates.
But while the Assembly debated, Paris starved. The victory of the
14th July had done little for the Parisians, and the disorder which
had accompanied it, and which had broken out afresh, a week later,
in the murder of the detested Intendant Foulon, had not by any means
ceased. Three days after the fall of the Bastille, the King had come
to Paris, to be publicly reconciled with his subjects, and Bailly and
Lafayette had been informally elected, the one Mayor of Paris, the
other Commander-in-chief of the new National Guard. Lafayette at once
set to work to form the National Guard of Paris into a civic army of
thirty thousand men, and incorporated the Gardes Françaises with them
as a paid battalion. He spared no pains to attach the force to his own
person; and it seems clear that he designed to use it, not only to
maintain order in the interests of the middle class, and to keep down
the large discontented element which swarmed in the city, but also as a
political instrument, to direct the Revolution in accordance with his
own views. But even with this force behind him, Lafayette found that
order was exceedingly difficult to keep; while Bailly, for his part,
was overwhelmed with anxiety, working day and night with troublesome
subordinates to supply the capital with bread, which daily became
dearer and harder to obtain.
Meantime the causes which led to disturbance were steadily increasing
rather than diminishing. The emigration of the aristocrats had begun.
Paris, always a city of luxury, and depending largely on the sale
of luxuries for her support, found herself deserted by the Court,
the rich, the travelling public, by the great spending class to
whose expensive wants she ministered, and whom the disorders of July
had driven away. Thousands of journeymen tailors, shoemakers and
hair-dressers, thrown out of work, thousands of domestic servants,
thrown out of places, thousands of makers of lace and fans, of
carriages and upholstery, of jewellery and nick-nacks, thrown out
of employment by the cessation of their trades, began to gather and
demonstrate in different quarters of the city. Beggars from the country
and deserters from the army continued to pour in, to fraternise with
the people, to join in the exciting politics of the Palais Royal, to
add to the pressure upon the food supply. In vain the new municipal
authorities opened relief works at Montmartre, and sold grain to
the bakers at a heavy loss. The discontent became more general and
threatening. The oratory of the Palais Royal, which followed with
intense keenness the debates of the Assembly, and which was almost
ready to take arms on behalf of the suspensive veto, increased in
vehemence. The suspiciousness and distrust of the Court--suggested,
it may be, by emissaries of the Duke of Orleans--which had so largely
contributed to the outbreak in July, revived in full force as September
went by. The Parisians knew or suspected that one party at Court was
constantly urging the King to retire further from Paris. They believed
that their troubles would never end until they had the King and the
Assembly in their midst. And when, at the end of September, the
Government, acting probably in the interests of order, brought up the
Flanders regiment to Versailles, and the courtiers made the arrival
of the troops the occasion for a great royalist demonstration, the
excitement in the capital broke bounds again, and the extraordinary
march of the women to Versailles effected the capture of the King.
The events of the 5th and 6th October need no description. Their
origin is a mystery still. But their result was most important. The
royal family and the National Assembly were removed to Paris, and were
thenceforward kept in Paris, as hostages in the hands of the strongest
party. The fortunes of Paris became decisive of the fortunes of the
Revolution in France. But the democratic forces, which had won the
day, did not reap the fruits of the victory. The advantage of the
movement fell entirely to the party which represented the views and
formed the following of Lafayette, the party of middle class reformers,
who, by securing the person of the King, finally baffled the forces
of reaction, and obtained the control of the Revolution themselves.
It was this party which had organised the National Guard. Now that it
was triumphant, it honestly wished to consolidate, in its own fashion,
liberty and order. But, unfortunately, the charge is with some justice
made against it, that, consciously or unconsciously, it did not care
for the interests of the class below it, by whose assistance it had
achieved its triumph, and by whom it was destined in its turn to be
overthrown. The leader of this party was Lafayette; and the more the
records of those two days are examined, the more difficult is it to
resist the conclusion that Lafayette's action all through them was
calculated to promote his own advantage, and that his intention was
to use the forces of revolution just enough to frighten the King into
submission, then to appear upon the scene as his deliverer, and to
turn the King's submission to account. In that intention Lafayette
succeeded, and the events of the 5th and 6th October made his views and
his authority for a time the dominant influence in the State.