I.--Policy of the Assembly.--State of France at the end of 1791.
Powerlessness of the Law.
If the deputies who, on the 1st of October, 1791, so solemnly and
enthusiastically swore to the Constitution, had been willing to open
their eyes, they would have seen this Constitution constantly violated,
both in its letter and spirit, over the entire territory. As usual, and
through the vanity of authorship, M. Thouret, the last president of
the Constituent Assembly, had, in his final report, hidden disagreeable
truth underneath pompous and delusive phrases; but it was only necessary
to look over the monthly record to see whether, as guaranteed by him,
"the decrees were faithfully executed in all parts of the empire."--"
Where is this faithful execution to be found?" inquires Mallet du
Pan.[2301] "Is it at Toulon, in the midst of the dead and wounded, shot
in the very face of the amazed municipality and Directory? Is it at
Marseilles, where two private individuals are knocked down and massacred
as aristocrats," under the pretext "that they sold to children poisoned
sugar-plums with which to begin a counter-revolution?" Is it at Arles,
"against which 4,000 men from Marseilles, dispatched by the club, are at
this moment marching?" Is it at Bayeux, "where the sieur Fauchet
against whom a warrant for arrest is out, besides being under the ban
of political disability, has just been elected deputy to the Legislative
Assembly?" Is it at Blois, "where the commandant, doomed to death for
having tried to execute these decrees, is forced to send away a loyal
regiment and submit to licentious troops?" Is it at Nîmes, "where the
Dauphiny regiment, on leaving the town by the Minister's orders,
is ordered by the people" and the club "to disobey the Minister and
remain?" Is it in those regiments whose officers, with pistols at their
breasts, are obliged to leave and give place to amateurs? Is it at
Toulouse, "where, at the end of August, the administrative authorities
order all unsworn priests to leave the town in three days, and withdraw
to a distance of four leagues?" Is it in the outskirts of Toulouse,
"where, on the 28th of August, a municipal officer is hung at a
street-lamp after an affray with guns?" Is it at Paris, where, on
the 25th of September, the Irish college, vainly protected by an
international treaty, has just been assailed by the mob; where
Catholics, listening to the orthodox mass, are driven out and dragged
to the authorized mass in the vicinity; where one woman is torn from the
confessional, and another flogged with all their might?[2302]
These troubles, it is said, are transient; on the Constitution being
proclaimed, order will return of itself. Very well, the Constitution
is voted, accepted by the King, proclaimed, and entrusted to the
Legislative Assembly. Let the Legislative Assembly consider what is done
in the first few weeks. In the eight departments that surround
Paris, there are riots on every market-day; farms are invaded and the
cultivators of the soil are ransomed by bands of vagabonds; the mayor
of Melun is riddled with balls and dragged out from the hands of the
mob streaming with blood.[2303] At Belfort, a riot for the purpose of
retaining a convoy of coin, and the commissioner of the Upper-Rhine in
danger of death; at Bouxvillers, owners of property attacked by poor
National Guards, and by the soldiers of Salm-Salm, houses broken into
and cellars pillaged; at Mirecourt, a flock of women beating drums, and,
for three days, holding the Hôtel-de-Ville in a state of siege.----One
day Rochefort is in a state of insurrection, and the workmen of the
harbor compel the municipality to unfurl the red flag.[2304] On the
following day, it is Lille, the people of which, "unwilling to exchange
its money and assignats for paper-rags, called billets de confiance,
gather into mobs and threaten, while a whole garrison is necessary to
prevent an explosion." On the 16th of October, it is Avignon in the
power of bandits, with the abominable butchery of the Glacière. On the
5th of November, at Caen, there are eighty-two gentlemen, townsmen and
artisans, knocked down and dragged to prison, for having offered their
services to the municipality as special constables. On the 14th of
November, at Montpellier, the roughs triumph; eight men and women are
killed in the streets or in their houses, and all conservatives are
disarmed or put to flight. By the end of October, it is a gigantic
column of smoke and flame shooting upward suddenly from week to week and
spreading everywhere, growing, on the other side of the Atlantic, into
civil war in St. Domingo, where wild beasts are let loose against their
keepers; 50,000 blacks take the field, and, at the outset, 1,000 whites
are assassinated, 15,000 Negroes slain, 200 sugar-mills destroyed and
damage done to the amount of 600,000,000; "a colony of itself alone
worth ten provinces, is almost annihilated."[2305] At Paris, Condorcet
is busy writing in his journal that "this news is not reliable, there
being no object in it but to create a French empire beyond the seas for
the King, where there will be masters and slaves." A corporal of the
Paris National Guard, on his own authority, orders the King to remain
indoors, fearing that he may escape, and forbids a sentinel to let
him go out after nine o'clock in the evening;[2306] at the Tuileries,
stump-speakers in the open air denounce aristocrats and priests; at
the Palais-Royal, there is a pandemonium of public lust and incendiary
speeches.[2307] There are centers of riot in all quarters, "as many
robberies as there are quarter-hours, and no robbers punished; no
police; overcrowded courts; more delinquents than there are prisons
to hold them; nearly all the private mansions closed; the annual
consumption in the faubourg St. Germain alone diminished by 250
millions; 20,000 thieves, with branded backs, idling away time in houses
of bad repute, at the theaters, in the Palais-Royal, at the National
Assembly, and in the coffee-houses; thousands of beggars infesting
the streets, crossways, and public squares. Everywhere an image of the
deepest poverty which is not calling for one's pity as it is accompanied
with insolence. Swarms of tattered vendors are offering all sorts of
paper-money, issued by anybody that chose to put it in circulation,
cut up into bits, sold, given, and coming back in rags, fouler than the
miserable creatures who deal in it."[2308] Out of 700,000 inhabitants
there are 100,000 of the poor, of which 60,000 have flocked in from
the departments;[2309] among them are 30,000 needy artisans from the
national workshops, discharged and sent home in the preceding month of
June, but who, returning three months later, are again swallowed up in
the great sink of vagabondage, hurling their floating mass against
the crazy edifice of public authority and furnishing the forces
of sedition.--At Paris, and in the provinces, disobedience exists
throughout the hierarchy. Directories countermand ministerial orders.
Here, municipalities brave the commands of their Directory; there,
communities order around their mayor with a drawn sword. Elsewhere,
soldiers and sailors put their officers under arrest. The accused insult
the judge on the bench and force him to cancel his verdict; mobs tax or
plunder wheat in the market; National Guards prevent its distribution,
or seize it in the storehouses. There is no security for property,
lives, or consciences. The majority of Frenchmen are deprived of their
right to worship in their own faith, and of voting at the elections.
There is no safety, day or night, for the élite of the nation, for
ecclesiastics and the gentry, for army and navy officers, for rich
merchants and large landed proprietors; no protection in the courts, no
income from public funds; denunciations abound, expulsions, banishments
to the interior, attacks on private houses; there is no right of
free assemblage, even to enforce the law under the orders of legal
authorities.[2310] Opposed to this, and in contrast with it, is the
privilege and immunity of a sect formed into a political corporation,
"which extends its filiations over the whole kingdom, and even abroad;
which has its own treasury, its committees, and its by-laws; which rules
the government, which judges justice,"[2311] and which, from the capital
to the hamlet, usurps or directs the administration. Liberty, equality,
and the majesty of the law exist nowhere, except in words. Of the three
thousand decrees given birth to by the Constituent Assembly, the most
lauded, those the best set off by a philosophic baptism, form a mass of
stillborn abortions of which France is the burying-ground. That which
really subsists underneath the false appearances of right, proclaimed
and sworn to over and over again, is, on the one hand, an oppression of
the upper and cultivated classes, from which all the rights of man are
withdrawn, and, on the other hand, the tyranny of the fanatical and
brutal rabble which assumes to itself all the rights of sovereignty.
II.--The Assembly hostile to the oppressed and favoring oppressors.
Decrees against the nobles and clergy.--Amnesty for
deserters, convicts, and bandits.--Anarchical and leveling
maxims.
In vain do the honest men of the Assembly protest against this scandal
and this overthrow. The Assembly, guided and forced by the Jacobins,
will only amend the law to damn the oppressed and to authorize their
oppressors.--Without making any distinction between armed assemblages at
Coblentz, which it had a right to punish, and refugees, three times
as numerous, old men, women and children, so many indifferent and
inoffensive people, not merely nobles but plebeians,[2312] who left the
soil only to escape popular outrages, it confiscates the property of all
emigrants and orders this to be sold.[2313] Through the new restriction
of the passport, those who remain are tied to their domiciles, their
freedom of movement, even in the interior, being subject to the decision
of each Jacobin municipality.[2314] It completes their ruin by depriving
them without indemnity of all income from their real estate, of all
the seignorial rights which the Constituent Assembly had declared to
be legitimate.[2315] It abolishes, as far as it can, their history
and their past, by burning in the public depots their genealogical
titles.[2316]--To all unsworn ecclesiastics, two-thirds of the French
clergy, it withholds bread, the small pension allowed them for food,
which is the ransom of their confiscated possessions;[2317] it declares
them "suspected of revolt against the law and of bad intentions against
the country;" it subjects them to special surveillance; it authorizes
their expulsion without trial by local rulers in case of disturbances;
it decrees that in such cases they shall be banished.[2318] It
suppresses "all secular congregations of men and women ecclesiastic or
laic, even those wholly devoted to hospital service will take away from
600,000 children the means of learning to read and write."[2319] It lays
injunctions on their dress; it places episcopal palaces in the market
for sale, also the buildings still occupied by monks and nuns.[2320]
It welcomes with rounds of applause a married priest who introduces his
wife to the Assembly.--Not only is the Assembly destructive but it
is insulting; the authors of each decree passed by it add to its
thunderbolt the rattling hail of their own abuse and slander.
"Children," says a deputy, "have the poison of aristocracy and
fanaticism injected into them by the congregations."[2321]
"Purge the rural districts of the vermin which is devouring
them!"--"Everybody knows," says Isnard, "that the priest is as cowardly
as he is vindictive... Let these pestiferous fellows be sent back to
Roman and Italian lazarettos.. What religion is that which, in its
nature, is unsocial and rebellious in principle?"
Whether unsworn, whether immigrants actually or in feeling, "large
proprietors, rich merchants, false conservatives,"[2322] are all
outspoken conspirators or concealed enemies. All public disasters are
imputed to them. "The cause of the troubles," says Brissot,[2323] "which
lay waste the colonies, is the infernal vanity of the whites who have
three times violated an engagement which they have three times sworn to
maintain." Scarcity of work and short crops are accounted for through
their cunning malevolence.
"A large number of rich men, "says François de Nantes,[2324] "allow
their property to run down and their fields to lie fallow, so as to
enjoy seeing the suffering of the people."
France is divided into two parties, on the one hand, the aristocracy to
which is attributed every vice, and, on the other hand, the people on
whom is conferred every virtue.[2325]
"The defense of liberty," says Lamarque,[2326] "is basely abandoned
every day by the rich and by the former nobility, who put on the mask of
patriotism only to cheat us. It is not in this class, but only in that
of citizens who are disdainfully called the people, that we find pure
beings, those ardent souls really worthy of liberty."--One step more
and everything will be permitted to the virtuous against the wicked;
if misfortune befalls the aristocrats so much the worse for them. Those
officers who are stoned, M. de la Jaille and others, "wouldn't they do
better not to deserve being sacrificed to popular fury?"[2327] Isnard
exclaims in the tribune, "it is the long-continued immunity enjoyed
by criminals which has rendered the people executioners. Yes, an angry
people, like an angry God, is only too often the terrible supplement
of silent laws."[2328]--In other words crimes are justified and
assassinations still provoked against those who have been assassinated
for the past two years.
By a forced conclusion, if the victims are criminals, their executioners
are honest, and the Assembly, which rigorously proceeds against the
former, reserves all its indulgence for the latter. It reinstates the
numerous deserters who abandoned their flags previous to the 1st of
January, 1789;[2329] it allows them three sous per league mileage, and
brings them back to their homes or to their regiments to become, along
with their brethren whose desertion is more recent, either leaders
or recruits for the mob. It releases from the galleys the forty Swiss
guards of Chateauroux whom their own cantons desired to have kept there;
it permits these "martyrs to Liberty" to promenade the streets of Paris
in a triumphal car;[2330] it admits them to the bar of the house,
and, taking a formal vote on it, extends to them the honors of the
session.[2331] Finally, as if it were their special business to let
loose on the public the most ferocious and foulest of the rabble, it
amnesties Jourdan, Mainvielle, Duprat, and Raphel, fugitive convicts,
jail-birds, the condottieri of all lands assuming the title of "the
brave brigands of Avignon," and who, for eighteen months, have pillaged
and plundered the Comtat[2332]; it stops the trial, almost over, of the
Glacière butchers; it tolerates the return of these as victors,[2333]
and their installation by their own act in the places of the fugitive
magistrates, allowing Avignon to be treated as a conquered city, and,
henceforth, to become their prey and their booty. This is a willful
restoration of the vermin to the social body, and, in this feverish
body, nothing is overlooked that will increase the fever. The most
anarchical and deleterious maxims emanate, like miasma, from the
Assembly benches. The reduction of things to an absolute level is
adopted as a principle; "equality of rights," says Lamarque,[2334] "is
to be maintained only by tending steadily to an equality of fortunes;"
this theory is practically applied on all sides since the proletariat
is pillaging all who own property.--"Let the communal possessions
be partitioned among the citizens of the surrounding villages," says
François de Nantes, "in an inverse ratio to their fortunes, and let
him who has the least inheritance take the largest share in the
divisions."[2335] Conceive the effect of this motion read at evening to
peasants who are at this very moment claiming their lord's forest for
their commune. M. Corneille prohibits any tax to be levied for the
public treasury on the wages of manual labor, because nature, and not
society, gives us the "right to live."[2336] On the other hand, he
confers on the public treasury the right of taking the whole of an
income, because it is society, and not nature, which institutes public
funds; hence, according to him, the poor majority must be relieved of
all taxation, and all taxes must fall on the rich minority. The system
is well-timed and the argument apt for convincing indigent or straitened
tax-payers, namely, the refractory majority, that its taxes are just,
and that it should not refuse to be taxed.--
"Under the reign of liberty," says President Daverhoult,[2337] "the
people have the right to insist not merely on subsistence, but again on
plenty and happiness."[2338]
Accordingly, being in a state of poverty they have been
betrayed.--"Elevated to the height achieved by the French people,"
says another president, "it looks down upon the tempests under its
feet."[2339] The tempest is at hand and bursts over its head. War, like
a black cloud, rises above the horizon, overspreads the sky, thunders
and wraps France filled with explosive materials in a circle of
lightening, and it is the Assembly which, through the greatest of its
mistakes, draws down the bolt on the nation's head.
III.--War.
Disposition of foreign powers.--The King's dislikes.--
Provocation of the Girondins.--Dates and causes of the
rupture
It might have been turned aside with a little prudence. Two principal
grievances were alleged, one by France and the other by the Empire.--On
the one hand, and very justly, France complained of the gathering of
émigré's, which the Emperor and Electors tolerated against it on the
frontier. In the first place, however, a few thousand gentlemen, without
troops or stores, and nearly without money,[2340] were hardly to be
feared, and, besides this, long before the decisive hour came these
troops were dispersed, at once by the Emperor in his own dominions,
and, fifteen days afterwards, by the Elector of Trèves in his
electorate.[2341]--On the other hand, according to treaties, the German
princes, who owned estates in Alsace, made claims for the feudal rights
abolished on their French possessions and the Diet forbade them to
accept the offered indemnity. But, as far as the Diet is concerned,
nothing was easier nor more customary than to let negotiations drag
along, there being no risk or inconvenience attending the suit as,
during the delay, the claimants remained empty-handed.--If, now, behind
the ostensible motives, the real intentions are sought for, it is
certain that, up to January, 1792, the intentions of Austria were
pacific. The grants made to the Comte d'Artois, in the Declaration of
Pilnitz, were merely a court-sprinkling of holy-water, the semblance of
an illusory promise and subject to a European concert of action, that
is to say, annulled beforehand by an indefinite postponement, while this
pretended league of sovereigns is at once "placed by the politicians
in the class of august comedies.[2342]" Far from taking up arms against
"New France" in the name of old France, the emperor Leopold and his
prime minister Kaunitz, were delighted to see the constitution
completed and accepted by the King; it "got them out of an embarrassing
position,"[2343] and Prussia as well. In the running of governments,
political advantage is the great incentive and both powers needed all
their forces in another direction, in Poland. One for retarding, and the
other for accelerating the division of this country, and both, when the
partition took place, to get enough for themselves and prevent
Russia from getting too much.--The sovereigns of Prussia and Austria,
accordingly, did not have any idea of saving Louis XVI, nor of
conducting the émigrés back, nor of conquering French provinces. If
anything was to be expected from them on account of personal ill-will,
there was no fear of their armed intervention.--In France it is not the
King who urges a rupture; he knows too well that the hazards of war
will place him and his dependents in mortal danger. Secretly as well as
publicly, in writing to the émigrés, his wishes are to bring them
back or to restrain them. In his private correspondence he asks of the
European powers not physical but moral aid, the external support of a
congress which will permit moderate men, the partisans of order, all
owners of property, to raise their heads and rally around the throne
and the laws against anarchy. In his ministerial correspondence every
precaution is taken not to touch off or let someone touch off an
explosion. At the critical moment of the discussion[2344] he entreats
the deputies, through M. Delessart, his Minister of Foreign Affairs, to
weigh their words and especially not to send a demand containing a "dead
line." He resists, as far as his passive nature allows him, to the very
last. On being forced to declare war he requires beforehand the signed
advice of all his ministers. He does not utter the fatal words, until
he, "with tears in his eyes" and in the most dire straits, is dragged
on by an Assembly qualifying all caution as treason and which has just
dispatched M. Delessart to appear, under a capital charge, before the
supreme court at Orléans.
It is the Assembly then which launches the disabled ship on the roaring
abysses of an unknown sea, without a rudder and leaking at every seam.
It alone slips the cable which held it in port and which the foreign
powers neither dared nor desired to sever. Here, again, the Girondists
are the leaders and hold the axe; since the last of October they have
grasped it and struck repeated blows.[2345]--As an exception, the
extreme Jacobins, Couthon, Collot d'Herbois, Danton, Robespierre, do
not side with them. Robespierre, who at first proposed to confine the
Emperor "within the circle of Popilius,"[2346] fears the placing of too
great a power in the King's hands, and, growing mistrustful, preaches
distrust.--But the great mass of the party, led by clamorous public
opinion, impels on the timid marching in front. Of the many things of
which knowledge is necessary to conduct successfully such a complex and
delicate affair, they know nothing. They are ignorant about cabinets,
courts, populations, treaties, precedents, timely forms and requisite
style. Their guide and counselor in foreign relations is Brissot
whose pre-eminence is based on their ignorance and who, exalted into
a statesman, becomes for a few months the most conspicuous figure in
Europe.[2347] To whatever extent a European calamity may be attributed
to any one man, this one is to be attributed to him. It is this wretch,
born in a pastry-cook's shop, brought up in an attorney's office,
formerly a police agent at 150 francs per month, once in league with
scandal-mongers and black-mailers,[2348] a penny-a-liner, busybody, and
meddler, who, with the half-information of a nomad, scraps of newspaper
ideas and reading-room lore,[2349] added to his scribblings as a writer
and his club declamation, directs the destinies of France and starts a
war in Europe which is to destroy six millions of lives. In the attic
where his wife is washing his shirts, he enjoys rebuking rulers and, on
the 20th of October, in the tribune,[2350] he begins by insulting thirty
foreign sovereigns. Such keen, intense enjoyment is the stuff on which
the new fanaticism daily feeds itself. Madame Roland herself delights,
with evident complacency, in it, something which can be seen in the two
famous letters in which, with a supercilious tone, she first instructs
the King and next the Pope.[2351] Brissot, at bottom, regards himself as
a Louis XIV, and expressly invites the Jacobins to imitate the haughty
ways of the Great Monarch.[2352]--To the tactlessness of the intruder,
and the touchiness of the parvenu, we can add the rigidity of the
sectarian. The Jacobins, in the name of abstract rights, deny historic
rights; they impose from above, and by force, that truth of which they
are the apostles, and allow themselves every provocation which they
prohibit to others.
"Let us tell Europe," cries Isnard,[2353] "that ten millions of
Frenchmen, armed with the sword, with the pen, with reason, with
eloquence, might, if provoked, change the face of the world and make
tyrants tremble on their thrones of clay."
"Wherever a throne exists," says Hérault de Séchelles, "there is an
enemy."[2354]
"An honest peace between tyranny and liberty," says Brissot, "is
impossible. Our Constitution is an eternal anathema to absolute
monarchs... It places them on trial, it pronounces judgment on them; it
seems to say to each: to-morrow thou have ceased to be or shalt be king
only through the people... War is now a national benefit, and not to
have war is the only calamity to be dreaded." [2355]
"Tell the king," says Gensonné, "that the war is a must, that public
opinion demands it, that the safety of the empire makes it a law."[2356]
"The state we are in," concludes Vergniaud, "is a veritable state of
destruction that may lead us to disgrace and death. So then to arms! to
arms! Citizens, freemen, defend your liberty, confirm the hopes of that
of the human race... Lose not the advantage of your position. Attack
now that there is every sign of complete success... The spirits of past
generations seem to me crowding into this temple to conjure you, in the
name of the evils which slavery had compelled them to endure, to protect
the future generations whose destinies are in your hands! Let this
prayer be granted! Be for the future a new Providence! Ally yourselves
with eternal justice!"[2357]
Among the Marseilles speakers there is no longer any room for serious
discussion. Brissot, in reply to the claim made by the Emperor on behalf
of the princes' property in Alsatia, replies that "the sovereignty of
the people is not bound by the treaties of tyrants."[2358] As to the
gatherings of the émigrés, the Emperor having yielded on this point,
he will yield on the others.[2359] Let him formally renounce all
combinations against France.
"I want war on the 10th of February," says Brissot, "unless we have
received his renunciation."
No explanations; it is satisfaction we want; "to require satisfaction is
to put the Emperor at our mercy."[2360] The Assembly, so eager to start
the quarrel, usurps the King's right to take the first step and formally
declares war, fixing the date.[2361]--The die is now cast.
"They want war," says the Emperor, "and they shall have it."
Austria immediately forms an alliance with Prussia, threatened, like
herself, with revolutionary propaganda.[2362] By sounding the alarm
belles the Jacobins, masters of the Assembly, have succeeded in bringing
about that "monstrous alliance," and, from day to day, this alarm sounds
the louder. One year more, thanks to this policy, and France will have
all Europe for an enemy and as its only friend, the Regency of Algiers,
whose internal system of government is about the same as her own.
IV.--Secret motives of the leaders.
Their control compromised by peace.--Discontent of the rich
and cultivated class.--Formation and increase of the party
of order.--The King and this party reconciled.
Behind their carmagnoles[2363] we can detect a design which they will
avow later on.
"We were always obstructed by the Constitution," Brissot is to say, "and
nothing but war could destroy the Constitution."[2364]
Diplomatic wrongs, consequently, of which they make parade, are simply
pretexts; if they urge war it is for the purpose of overthrowing the
legal order of things which annoys them; their real object is the
conquests of power, a second internal revolution, the application of
their system and a final state of equality.--Concealed behind them is
the most politic and absolute of theorists, a man "whose great art is
the attainment of his ends without showing himself, the preparation of
others for far-sighted views of which they have no suspicion, and that
of speaking but little in public and acting in secret."[2365] This
man is Sieyès, "the leader of everything without seeming to lead
anything."[2366] As infatuated as Rousseau with his own speculations,
but as unscrupulous and as clear-sighted as Macchiavelli in the
selection of practical means, he was, is, and will be, in decisive
moments, the consulting counsel of radical democracy.
"His pride tolerates no superiority. He causes nobility to be abolished
because he is not a noble; because he does not possess all he will
destroy all. His fundamental doctrine for the consolidation of the
Revolution is, that it is indispensable to change religion and to change
the dynasty."
Now, had peace been maintained all this was impossible; moreover the
ascendance of the party was compromised. Entire classes that had adhered
to the party when it launched insurrection against the privileged, broke
loose from it now that insurrection was directed against them; among
thoughtful men and among those with property, most were disgusted
with anarchy, and likewise disgusted with the abettors of it. Many
administrators, magistrates and functionaries recently elected,
loudly complained of their authority being subject to the mob.
Many cultivators, manufacturers and merchants have become silently
exasperated at the fruits of their labor and economy being surrendered
at discretion to robbers and the indigent. It was hard for the
flour-dealers of Etampes not to dare send away their wheat, to be
obliged to supply customers at night, to tremble in their own houses,
and to know that if they went out-doors they risked their lives.[2367]
It was hard for wholesale grocers in Paris to see their warehouses
invaded, their windows smashed, their bags of coffee and boxes of sugar
valued at a low price, parceled out and carried away by old hags or
taken gratis by scamps who ran off and sold them at the other end of
the street.[2368] It was hard in all places for the families of the old
bourgeoisie, for the formerly prominent men in each town and village,
for the eminent in each art, profession or trade, for reputable and
well-to-do people, in short, for the majority of men who had a good roof
over their heads and a good coat on their backs, to undergo the illegal
domination of a crowd led by a few hundred or dozens of stump-speakers
and firebrands.--Already, in the beginning of 1792, this dissatisfaction
was so great as to be denounced in the tribune and in the press.
Isnard[2369] railed against "that multitude of large property-holders,
those opulent merchants, those haughty, wealthy personages who,
advantageously placed in the social amphitheater, are unwilling to
have their seats changed." The bourgeoisie," wrote Pétion,[2370] "that
numerous class free of any anxiety, is separating itself from the
people; it considers itself above them,... they are the sole object
of its distrust. It is everywhere haunted by the one idea that the
revolution is a war between those who have and those who have not."--It
abstains, indeed, from the elections, it keeps away from patriotic
clubs, it demands the restoration of order and the reign of law; it
rallies to itself "the multitude of conservative, timid people, for whom
tranquility is the prime necessity," and especially, which is still more
serious, it charges the disturbances upon their veritable authors. With
suppressed indignation and a mass of undisputed evidence, André Chénier,
a man of feeling, starts up in the midst of the silent crowd and openly
tears off the mask from the Jacobins.[2371] He brings into full light
the daily sophism by which a mob, "some hundreds of idlers gathered in
a garden or at a theater, are impudently called the people." He portrays
those "three or four thousand usurpers of national sovereignty whom
their orators and writers daily intoxicate with grosser incense than any
adulation offered to the worst of despots;" those assemblies where "an
infinitely small number of French appears large, because they are united
and yell;" that Paris club from which honest, industrious, intelligent
people had withdrawn one by one to give place to intriguers in debt, to
persons of tarnished reputations, to the hypocrites of patriotism, to
the lovers of uproar, to abortive talents, to corrupted intellects,
to outcasts of every kind and degree who, unable to manage their own
business, indemnify themselves by managing that of the public. He shows
how, around the central factory and its twelve hundred branches of
insurrection, the twelve hundred affiliated clubs, which, "holding each
other's hands, form a sort of electric chain around all France" and
giving it a shock at every touch from the center; their confederation,
installed and enthroned, is not only as a State within the State,
but rather as a sovereign State in a vassal State; summoning their
administrative bodies to their bar, judicial verdicts set aside through
their intervention, private individuals searched, assessed and condemned
through their verdicts. All this constitutes a steady, systematic
defense of insubordination and revolt; as, "under the name of hoarding
and monopoly, commerce and industry are described as misdemeanors;"
property is unsettled and every rich man rendered suspicious, "talent
and integrity silenced." In short, a public conspiracy made against
society in the very name of society, "while the sacred symbol of liberty
is made use of as a seal" to exempt a few tyrants from punishment. Such
a protest said aloud what most Frenchmen muttered to themselves, and
from month to month, graver excesses exited greater censure.
"Anarchy exists[2372] to a degree scarcely to be paralleled, wrote the
ambassador of the United States. The horror and apprehension, which the
licentious associations have universally inspired, are such that there
is reason to believe that the great mass of the French population would
consider even despotism a blessing, if accompanied with that security
to persons and property, experienced even under the worst governments in
Europe."
Another observer, not less competent,[2373] says:
"it is plain to my eyes that when Louis XVI. finally succumbed, he had
more partisans in France than the year previous, at the time of his
flight to Varennes."
The truth of this, indeed, was frequently verified at the end of 1791
and beginning of 1792, by various investigations.[2374] "Eighteen
thousand officers of every grade, elected by the constitutionalists,
seventy-one department administrations out of eighty-two, most of the
tribunals,[2375] all traders and manufacturers, every chief and a large
portion of the National Guard of Paris," in short, the élite of the
nation, and among citizens generally, the great majority who lived from
day to day were for him, and for the "Right" of the Assembly against
the "Left". If internal trouble had not been complicated by external
difficulties, there would have been a change in opinion, and this
the King expected. In accepting the Constitution, he thought that its
defects would be revealed in practical operation and that they would
lead to a reform. In the mean time he scrupulously observed the
Constitution, and, through interest as well as conscience, kept his oath
to the letter. "The most faithful execution of the Constitution," he
said to one of his ministers, "is the surest way to make the nation
see the changes that ought to be made in it."[2376]--In other words, he
counted on experience, and it is very probable that if there had been
nothing to interfere with experience, his calculations would have
finally chosen between the defenders of order and the instigators of
disorder. It would have decided for the magistrates against the clubs,
for the police against rioters, for the king against the mob. In one or
two years more it would have learned that a restoration of the executive
power was indispensable for securing the execution of the laws; that the
chief of police, with his hands tied, could not do his duty; that it was
undoubtedly wise to give him his orders, but that if he was to be of any
use against knaves and fools, his hands should first be set free.
V.--Effects of the war on the common people.
Its alarms and fury.--The second revolutionary outburst and
its characteristics.--Alliance of the Girondists with the
mob.--The red cap and pikes.--Universal substitution of
government by force for government by law.
Just the contrary with war; the aspect of things changes, and the
alternative is the other way. It is no longer a choice between order and
disorder, but between the new and the old regime, for, behind foreign
opponents on the frontier, there stand the émigrés. The commotion is
terrible, especially amongst the lower classes which mainly bore the
whole weight of the old establishment; among the millions who live by
the sweat of their brow, artisans, small farmers, métayers, day-laborers
and soldiers, also the smugglers of salt and other articles, poachers,
vagabonds, beggars and half-beggars, who, taxed, plundered, and harshly
treated for centuries, have to endure, from father to son, poverty,
oppression and disdain. They know through their own experience the
difference between their late and their present condition. They have
only to fall back on personal knowledge to revive in their imaginations
the enormous royal, ecclesiastical, and seignorial taxes, the direct tax
of eighty-one per cent., the bailiffs in charge, the seizures and the
husbandry service, the inquisition of excise men, of inspectors of the
salt tax, wine tax (rats de cave) and game-keepers, the ravages of wild
birds and of pigeons, the extortions of the collector and his clerk, the
delay and partiality in obtaining justice, the rashness and brutality of
the police, the kicks and cuffs of the constabulary, the poor wretches
gathered like heaps of dirt and filth, the promiscuousness, the
over-crowding, the filth and the starvation of the prisons.[2377] They
have simply to open their eyes to see their immense deliverance; all
direct or indirect taxes for the past two years legally abolished or
practically suppressed, beer at two pennies a pot, wine at six, pigeons
in their meat-safes, game on their turn-spits, the wood of the national
forests in their lofts, the gendarmerie timid, the police absent, in
many places the crops all theirs, the owner not daring to claim his
share, the judge avoiding condemning them, the constable refusing to
serve papers on them, privileges restored in their favor, the public
authorities cringing to the crowds and yielding to their exactions,
remaining quiet or unarmed in the face of their misdeeds, their outrages
excused or tolerated, their superior good sense and deep feeling lauded
in thousands of speeches, the jacket and the blouse considered as
symbols of patriotism, and supremacy in the State claimed for the
sans-culottes[2378] in the name their merits and their virtues.--And now
the overthrow of all this is announced to them, a league against them of
foreign kings, the emigrants in arms, an invasion imminent, the Croats
and Pandours in the field, hordes of mercenaries and barbarians crowding
down on them again to put them in chains.--From the workshop to the
cottage there rolls along a formidable outburst of anger, accompanied
with national songs, denouncing the plots of tyrants and summoning the
people to arms.[2379] This is the second wave of the Revolution, fast
swelling and roaring, less general than the first, since it bears along
with it but little more than the lower class, but higher and much more
destructive.
Not only, indeed, is the mass now launched forth coarse and crude, but
a new sentiment animates it, the force of which is incalculable, that of
plebeian pride, that of the poor man, the subject, who, suddenly
erect after ages of debasement, relishes, far beyond his hopes and
unstintedly, the delights of equality, independence, and dominion.
"Fifteen millions white Negroes," says Mallet du Pan,[2380] worse fed,
more miserable than those of St. Domingo, like them rebelled and freed
from all authority by their revolt, accustomed like them, through thirty
months of license, to ruling over all that is left of their former
masters, proud like them of the restoration of their caste and exulting
in their horny hands. One may imagine their transports of rage on
hearing the trumpet-blast which awakens them, showing them on the
horizon the returning planters, bringing with them new whips and heavier
manacles?--Nothing is more distrustful than such a sentiment in
such breasts--quickly alarmed, ready to strike, ready for any act of
violence, blindly credulous, headlong and easily impelled, not merely
against real enemies on the outside, but at first against imaginary
enemies on the inside,[2381] but also against the King, the ministers,
the gentry, priests, parliamentarians, orthodox Catholics; against all
administrators and magistrates imprudent enough to have appealed to the
law; all manufacturers, merchants, and owners of property who condemn
disorder;the wealthy whose egotism keeps them at home; all those who are
well-off, well-bred and well-dressed.
They are all under suspicion because they have lost by the new regime,
or because they have not adopted its ways.--Such is the colossal brute
which the Girondins introduce into the political arena.[2382] For six
months they shake red flags before its eyes, goad it on, work it up into
a rage and drive it forward by decrees and proclamations,
* against their adversaries and against its keepers,
* against the nobles and the clergy,
* against aristocrats inside France in complicity with those of
Coblentz,
* against "the Austrian committee" the accomplice of Austria,
* against the King, whose caution they transform into treachery,
* against the whole government to which they impute the anarchy they
excite, and the war of which they themselves are the instigators.[2383]
Thus over-excited and topsy-turvy, the proletariat require only arms
and a rallying-point. The Girondins furnish both. Through a striking
coincidence, one which shows that the plan was concerted,[2384] they
start three political engines at the same time. Just at the moment when,
through their deliberate saber-rattling, they made war inevitable, they
invented popular insignia and armed the poor. At the end of January,
1792, almost during one week, they announced their ultimatum to Austria
using a fixed deadline, they adopted the red woolen cap and began the
manufacture of pikes.--It is evident that pikes are of no use in the
open field against cannon and a regular army; accordingly the are
intended for use in the interior and in towns. Let the national-guard
who can pay for his uniform, and the active citizen whose three francs
of direct tax gives him a privilege, own their guns; the stevedore, the
market-porter, the lodger, the passive citizen, whose poverty excludes
them from voting must have their pikes, and, in these insurrectionary
times, a ballot is not worth a good pike wielded by brawny arms.--The
magistrate in his robes may issue any summons he pleases, but it will
be rammed down his throat, and, lest he should be in doubt of this he is
made to know it beforehand. "The Revolution began with pikes and pikes
will finish it."[2385] "Ah," say the regulars of the Tuileries gardens,
"if the good patriots of the Champs de Mars only had had pikes like
these the blue-coats (Lafayette's guards) would not have had such a good
hand!"--"They are to be used everywhere, wherever there are enemies
of the people, to the Château, if any can be found there!" They will
override the veto and make sure that the National Assembly will approve
the good laws. To this purpose, the Faubourg St. Antoine volunteers its
pikes, and, to mark the use made of them, it complains that "efforts
are made to substitute an aristocracy of wealth for the omnipotence
of inherited rank." It demands "severe measures against the rascally
hypocrites who, with the Constitution in their hands, slaughter the
people." It declares that "kings, ministers and a civil list will pass
away, but that the rights of man, national sovereignty and pikes will
not pass away," and, by order of the president, the National Assembly
thanks the petitioners, "for the advice their zeal prompts them to give.
The leaders of the Assembly and the people armed with pikes unite
against the rich, against Constitutionalists, against the government,
and henceforth, the Jacobin extremists march side by side with the
Girondins, both reconciled for the attack but reserved their right to
disagree until after the victory.
"The object of the Girondists[2386] is not a republic in name, but an
actual republic through a reduction of the civil lists to five millions,
through the curtailment of most of the royal prerogatives, through a
change of dynasty of which the new head would be a sort of honorary
president of the republic to which they would assign an executive
council appointed by the Assembly, that is to say, by themselves." As
to the Jacobin extremists we find no principle with them but "that of
a rigorous, absolute application of the Rights of Man. With the aid of
such a charter they aim at changing the laws and public officers every
six months, at extending their leveling process to every constituted
authority, to all legal pre-eminence and to property. The only regime
they long for is the democracy of a contentious rabble... The vilest
instruments, professional agitators, brigands, fanatics, every sort of
wretch, the hardened and armed poverty-stricken, who, in wild disorder"
march to the attack of property and to "universal pillage" in short,
barbarians of town and country "who form their ordinary army and never
leave it inactive one single day."--Under their universal, concerted and
growing usurpation the substance of power melts wholly away in the hand
of the legal authorities; little by little, these are reduced to vain
counterfeits, while from one end of France, to the other, long before
the final collapse, the party, in the provinces as well as at Paris,
substitutes, under the cry of public danger, a government of might for
the government of law.
*****
[Footnote 2301: Mercure de France, September 24, 1791.--Cf. Report of M.
Alquier (session of Sept. 23).]
[Footnote 2302: Mercure de France, Oct. 15, 1792 (the treaty with
England was dated Sep. 26, 1786).--Ibid., Letter of M. Walsh, superior
of the Irish college, to the municipality of Paris. Those who use the
whips, come out of a neighboring grog-shop. The commissary of police,
who arrives with the National Guard, "addresses the people, and promises
them satisfaction," requiring M. Walsh to dismiss all who are in the
chapel, without waiting for the end of the mass.--M. Walsh refers to the
law and to treaties.--The commissary replies that he knows nothing about
treaties, while the commandant of the national guard says to those who
laving the chapel, "In the name of human justice, I order you to
follow me to the church of Saint-Etienne, or I shall abandon you to the
people."]
[Footnote 2303: "The French Revolution," Vol. I. pp.261, 263.--"Archives
Nationales," F7, 3185 and 3186 (numerous documents on the rural
disturbances in Aisne).--Mercure de France, Nov. 5 and 26, Dec. 10,
1791.--Moniteur, X. 426 (Nov.22, 1791).]
[Footnote 2304: Moniteur, X. 449, Nov. 23, 1791. (Official report of
the crew of the Ambuscade, dated Sep. 30). The captain, M. d'Orléans,
stationed at the Windward Islands, is obliged to return to Rochefort and
is detained there on board his ship: "Considering the uncertainty of
his mission, and the fear of being ordered to use the same hostilities
against brethren for which he is already denounced in every club in the
kingdom, the crew has forced the captain to return to France."]
[Footnote 2305: Mercure de France, Dec. 17, address of the colonists to
the king.]
[Footnote 2306: Moniteur, XIII. 200. Report of Sautereau, July 20, on
the affair of Corporal Lebreton. (Nov. 11, 1791).]
[Footnote 2307: Saint Huruge is first tenor. Justine (Sado-machosistic
book by de Sade) makes her appearance in the Palais-Royal about the
middle of 1791. They exhibit two pretended savages there, who, before
a paying audience, revive the customs of Tahiti. ("Souvenirs of
chancelier Pasquier." Ed. Plon, 1893)]
[Footnote 2308: Mercure de France, Nov. 5, 1791.--Buchez et Roux, XII.
338. Report by Pétion, mayor, Dec. 9, 1791. "Every branch of the police
is in a state of complete neglect. The streets are dirty, and full
of rubbish; robbery, and crimes of every kind, are increasing to a
frightful degree." "Correspondance de M. de Staël" (manuscript), Jan.
22, 1792. "As the police is almost worthless, freedom from punishment,
added to poverty, brings on disorder."]
[Footnote 2309: Moniteur, XI. 517 (session of Feb. 29, 1792). Speeches
by de Lacépède and de Mulot.]
[Footnote 2310: Lacretelle, "Dix ans d'Epreuves." "I know no more dismal
and discouraging aspect than the interval between the departure of the
National Assembly, on the 10th August consummated by that of September
2."]
[Footnote 2311: Mercure de France, Sept. 3, 1791, article by Mallet du
Pan.]
[Footnote 2312: Moniteur, XI. 317 (session of Feb. 6, 1792). Speech
by M. Cahier, a minister. "Many of the emigrants belong to the class
formerly called the Third-Estate. No reason for emigrating, on their
part, can be supposed but that of religious anxieties."]
[Footnote 2313: Decree of Nov. 9, 1791. The first decree seems to be
aimed only at the armed gatherings on the frontier. We see, however, by
the debates, that it affects all emigrants. The decrees of Feb. 9 and
March 30, 1792, bear upon all, without exception.--"Correspondance de
Mirabeau et du Comte de la Marck," III. 264 (letter by M. Pellenc, Nov.
12, 1791) "The decree (against the emigrants) was prepared in committee;
it was expected that the emigrants would return, but there was fear of
them. It was feared that the nobles, associated with the unsworn priests
in the rural districts, might add strength to a troublesome resistance.
The decree, as it was passed, seemed to be the most suitable for keeping
the emigrants beyond the frontiers."]
[Footnote 2314: Decree of Feb. 1, 1792.--Moniteur, XI. 412 (session
of Feb. 17). Speech by Goupilleau. "Since the decree of the National
Assembly on passports, emigrations have redoubled." People evidently
escaped from France as from a prison.]
[Footnote 2315: Decrees of June 18 and August 25.]
[Footnote 2316: Decree of June 19.--Moniteur, XIII. 331. "In execution
of the law... there will be burnt, on Tuesday, August 7, on the Place
Vendôme, at 2 o'clock: 1st, 600, more or less, of files of papers,
forming the last of genealogical collections, titles and proofs of
nobility; 2nd, about 200 files, forming part of a work composed of 263
volumes, on the Order of the Holy Ghost."]
[Footnote 2317: Decree of Nov. 29, 1791. (This decree is not in
Duvergier's collection~)--Moniteur, XII. 59, 247 (sessions of April 5
and 28, 1792).]
[Footnote 2318: At the Jacobin Club, Legendre proposes a much a more
expeditious measure for getting rid of the priests. "At Brest, he says,
boats are found which are called Marie-Salopes, so constructed that,
on being loaded with dirt, they go out of the harbor themselves. Let us
have a similar arrangement for priests; but, instead of sending them out
of the harbor, let us send them out to sea, and, if necessary, let them
go down." ("Journal de Amis de la Constitution," number 194, May 15,
1792.)]
[Footnote 2319: Moniteur, XII. 560 (decree of June 3).]
[Footnote 2320: Decrees of July 19 and Aug. 4, completed by those of
Aug. 16 and 19.]
[Footnote 2321: Moniteur, XII. 59, 61 (session of April 3); X. 374
(session of Nov. 13; XII 230), (session of April 26).--The last sentence
quoted was uttered by François de Nantes.]
[Footnote 2322: Moniteur, XI. 43. (session of Jan. 5, speech by
Isnard).]
[Footnote 2323: Moniteur, XI. 356 (session of Feb. 10).]
[Footnote 2324: Moniteur, XI. 230 (session of April 26).]
[Footnote 2325: When I was a child the socialists etc. had substituted
aristocracy with capitalists and today, in France, when the capitalists
have largely disappeared, a great many evils are caused by the
'patronat'. (SR).]
[Footnote 2326: Moniteur (session of June 22).]
[Footnote 2327: The words of Brissot (Patriote Français), number
887.--Letter addressed Jan. 5 to the club of Brest, by Messrs. Cavalier
and Malassis, deputies to the National Assembly: "As to the matter of
the sieur Lajaille, even though we would have taken an interest in him,
that decorated aristocrat only deserved what he got... We shall not
remain idle until all these traitors, these perjurers, whom we have
spared so long, shall be exterminated" (Mercure de France, Feb.
4).--This Jaille affair is one of the most instructive, and the best
supported by documents (Mercure de France, Dec.10 and 17).--"Archives
Nationales," F7, 3215, official report of the district administrators,
and of the municipal officers of Brest, Nov. 27, 1791.--Letter by M. de
Marigny, commissary in the navy, at Brest, Nov. 28.--Letters by M. de
la Jaille, etc.--M. de la Jaille, sent to Brest to take command of the
Dugay-Trouin, arrives there Nov.27. While at dinner, twenty persons
enter the room, and announce to him, "in the name of many others," that
his presence in Brest is causing trouble, that he must leave, and that
"he will not be allowed to take command of a vessel." He replies, that
he will leave the town, as soon as he has finished his dinner. Another
deputation follows, more numerous than the first one, and insists on his
leaving at once; and they act as his escort. He submits, is conducted to
the city gates, and there the escort leaves him. A mob attacks him,
and "his body is covered with contusions. He is rescued, with great
difficulty, by six brave fellows, of whom one is a pork-dealer, sent to
bleed him on the spot. "This insurrection is due to an extra meeting
of 'The Friends of the constitution,' held the evening before in the
theater, to which the public were invited." M. de la Jaille, it must be
stated, is not a proud aristocrat, but a sensible man, in the style of
Florian's and Berquin's heroes. But just pounded to a jelly, he writes
to the president of the "Friends of the Constitution," that, "could he
have flown into the bosom of the club, he would have gladly done so, to
convey to it his grateful feelings. He had accepted his command only at
the solicitation of the Americans in Paris, and of the six commissioners
recently arrived from St. Domingo."--Mercure de France, April 14,
article by Mallet du Pan "I have asked in vain for the vengeance of the
law against the assassins of M. de la Jaille. The names of the authors
of this assault in full daylight, to which thousands can bear witness,
are known to everybody in Brest. Proceedings have been ordered and
begun, but the execution of the orders is suspended. More potent than
the law, the motionnaires, protectors of assassins, frighten or paralyze
its ministrants."]
[Footnote 2328: Mercure de France, Nov. 12 (session of Oct. 31st,
1792).]
[Footnote 2329: Decree of Feb. 8, and others like it, on the details,
as, for instance, that of Feb. 7.]
[Footnote 2330: April 9, at the Jacobin Club, Vergniaud, the president,
welcomes and compliments the convicts of Chateau-vieux.]
[Footnote 2331: Mortimer-Ternaux, book I, vol. I. (especially the
session of April 15).]
[Footnote 2332: Comtat (or comtat Venaisssin) ancient region in France
under papal authority from 1274 to 1791.(SR)]
[Footnote 2333: Moniteur, XII. 335.--Decree of March 20 (the triumphal
entry of Jourdan and his associates belongs to the next month).]
[Footnote 2334: Moniteur, XII. 730 (session of June 23).]
[Footnote 2335: Moniteur, XII. 230 (session of April 12).]
[Footnote 2336: Moniteur. XI. 6, (session of March 6).]
[Footnote 2337: Moniteur, XI. 123, (session of Jan. 14)]
[Footnote 2338: 150 years later these rights were written into the
International Declaration of Human Rights in Paris in 1948. (SR).]
[Footnote 2339: Mercure de France, Dec. 23 (session of Dec. 23), p.98.]
[Footnote 2340: Moniteur, X. 178 (session of Oct. 20, 1791). Information
supplied by the deputies of the Upper and Lower Rhine departments.--M.
Koch says: "An army of émigrés never existed, unless it be a
petty gathering, which took place at Ettenheim, a few leagues from
Strasbourg... (This troop) encamped in tents, but only because it lacked
barracks and houses."--M.--, deputy of the lower Rhine, says: "This
army at Ettenheim is composed of about five or six hundred poorly-clad,
half-paid men, deserters of all nations, sleeping in tents, for lack of
other shelter, and armed with clubs, for lack of fire-arms and deserting
every day, because money is getting scarce. The second army, at Worms,
under the command of a Condé, is composed of three hundred gentlemen,
and as many valets and grooms. I have to add, that the letters which
reach me from Strasbourg, containing extracts of inside information from
Frankfort, Munich, Regensburg, and Vienna, announce the most pacific
intentions on the part of the different courts, since receiving the
notification of the king's submission." The number of armed emigrants
increases, but always remain very small (Moniteur, X. 678, letter of
M. Delatouche, an eyewitness, Dec. 10). "I suppose that the number
of emigrants scattered around on the territories of the grand-duke of
Baden, the bishop of Spires, the electorates, etc., amounts to scarcely
4,000 men."]
[Footnote 2341: Moniteur, X. 418 (session of Nov. 15, 1791). Report by
the minister Delessart. In August, the emperor issued orders against
enlistments, and to send out of the country all Frenchmen under
suspicion; also, in October, to send away the French who formed too
numerous a body at Ath and at Tournay (Now in Belgium).--Buchez et Roux,
XII. 395, demands of the king, Dec. 14,--Ibid., XIII. 15, 16, 19, 52,
complete satisfaction given by the Elector of Trèves, Jan. 1, 1792,
communicated to the Assembly Jan. 6; publication of the elector's orders
in the electorate, Jan. 3. The French envoy reports that they are
fully executed, which news with the documents, are communicated to the
Assembly, on the 8th, 16, and 19th of January.--" Correspondance de
Mirabeau et M. de la Marck," III.287. Letter of M. de Mercy-Argenteau,
Jan. 9, 1792. "The emperor has promised aid to the elector, under the
express stipulation that he should begin by yielding to the demands of
the French, as otherwise no assistance would be given to him in case of
attack."]
[Footnote 2342: Mallet du Pan, "Mémoires," I. 254 (February, 1792).--"
Correspondance de Mirabeau et du M. de la Marck," III. 232 (note of M.
de Bacourt). On the very day and at the moment of signing the treaty at
Pilnitz, at eleven o'clock in the evening, the Emperor Leopold wrote
to his prime minister, M. de Kaunitz, "that the convention which he had
just signed does not really bind him to anything; that it only contains
insignificant declarations, extorted by the Count d'Artois." He ends
by assuring him that "neither himself nor his government is in any way
bound by this instrument."]
[Footnote 2343: Words of M. de Kaunitz, Sept. 4, 1791 ("Recueil," by
Vivenot, I. 242).]
[Footnote 2344: Moniteur, XI. 142 (session of Jan. 17).--Speech by M.
Delessart.--Decree of accusation against him March 10.--Declaration
of war, April 20.--On the real intentions of the King, cf. Malouet,
"Malouet, Mémoires" II. 199-209; Lafayette, "Mémoires," I. 441 (note
3); Bertrand de Molleville, "Mémoires," VI. 22; Governor Morris, II.
242, letter of Oct. 23, 1792.]
[Footnote 2345: Moniteur, X. 172 (session of Oct. 20, 1791). Speech by
Brissot.----Lafayette, I. 441. "It is the Girondists who, at this time,
wanted a war at any price"--Malouet, II. 209. "As Brissot has since
boasted, it was the republican party which wanted war, and which
provoked it by insulting all the powers."]
[Footnote 2346: Buchez et Roux, XII. 402 (session of the Jacobin Club,
Nov. 28, 1791).]
[Footnote 2347: Gustave III., King of Sweden, assassinated by
Ankerstrom, says: "I should like to know what Brissot will say."]
[Footnote 2348: On Brissot's antecedents, cf. Edmond Biré, "La Légende
des Girondins." Personally, Brissot was honest, and remained poor. But
he had passed through a good deal of filth, and bore the marks of it. He
had lent himself to the diffusion of an obscene book, "Le Diable dans un
bénitier," and, in 1783, having received 13,355 francs to found a Lyceum
in London, not only did not found it, but was unable to return the
money.]
[Footnote 2349: Moniteur, XI. 147. Speech by Brissot, Jan. 17. Examples
from whom he borrows authority, Charles XII., Louis XIV., Admiral Blake,
Frederic II., etc.]
[Footnote 2350: Moniteur. X. 174. "This Venetian government, which is
nothing but a farce... Those petty German princes, whose insolence
in the last century despotism crushed out... Geneva, that atom of a
republic...That bishop of Liège, whose yoke bows down a people that
ought to be free... I disdain to speak of other princes... That King
of Sweden, who has only twenty-five millions income, and who spends
two-thirds of it in poor pay for an army of generals and a small number
of discontented soldiers... As to that princess (Catherine II.), whose
dislike of the French constitution is well known, and who is about
as good looking as Elizabeth, she cannot expect greater success than
Elizabeth in the Dutch revolution." (Brissot, in this last passage,
tries to appear at once witty and well read.)]
[Footnote 2351: Letter of Roland to the king, June 10, 1792, and letter
of the executive council to the pope, Nov. 25, 1792. Letter of Madame
Roland to Brissot, Jan. 7, 1791. "Briefly, adieu. Cato's wife need not
gratify herself by complimenting Brutus."]
[Footnote 2352: Buchez et Roux, XII. 410 (meeting of the Jacobin club,
Dec. 10, 1791). "A Louis XIV. declares war against Spain, because his
ambassador had been insulted by the Spanish ambassador. And we, who are
free, might hesitate for an instant!"]
[Footnote 2353: Moniteur, X, 503 (session of Nov.29). The Assembly
orders this speech to be printed and distributed in the departments.]
[Footnote 2354: Moniteur, X. 762 (session of Dec. 28).]
[Footnote 2355: Moniteur, XI. 147, 149 (session of Jan.17); X. 759
(session of Dec. 28).--Already, on the 10th of December, he had declared
at the Jacobin club: "A people that has conquered its freedom, after
ten centuries of slavery, needs war. War is essential to it for its
consolidation." (Buchez et Roux, XII. 410).--On the 17th of January, in
the tribune, he again repeats: "I have only one fear, and that is, that
we may not have war."]
[Footnote 2356: Moniteur, XI. 119 (session of Jan.13). Speech by
Gensonné, in the name of the diplomatic committee, of which he is the
reporter.]
[Footnote 2357: Moniteur, XI. 158 (session of Jan. 18). The Assembly
orders the printing of this speech.]
[Footnote 2358: Moniteur, XI. 760 (session of Dec. 28).]
[Footnote 2359: Moniteur, XI. 149 (session of Jan. 17). Speech by
Brissot.]
[Footnote 2360: Moniteur, XI. 178 (session of Jan.20). Fauchet proposes
the following decree: "All partial treaties actually existent are
declared void. The National Assembly substitutes in their place
alliances with the English, the Anglo-American, the Swiss, Polish, and
Dutch nations, as long as they will be free.. When other nations want
our alliance, they have only to conquer their freedom to have it.
Meanwhile, this will not prevent us from having relations with them, as
with good natured savages... Let us occupy the towns in the neighborhood
which bring our adversaries too near us... Mayence, Coblentz, and Worms
are sufficient"--Ibid.,, p.215 (session of Jan.25). One of the members,
supporting himself with the authority of Gélon, King of Syracuse,
proposes an additional article: "We declare that we will not lay down
our arms until we shall have established the freedom of all peoples."
These stupidities show the mental condition of the Jacobin party.]
[Footnote 2361: The decree is passed Jan. 25. The alliance between
Prussia and Austria takes place Feb. 7 (De Bourgoing, "Histoire
diplomatique de l'Europe pendant la Révolution Française," I. 457).]
[Footnote 2362: Albert Sorel, "La Mission du Comte de Ségur à Berlin"
(published in the Temps, Oct. 15, 1878). Dispatch of M. de Ségur to M.
Delessart, Feb. 24, 1792. "Count Schulemburg repeated to me that they had
no desire whatever to meddle with our constitution. But, said he with
singular animation, we must guard against gangrene. Prussia is, perhaps,
the country which should fear it least; nevertheless, however remote a
gangrened member may be, it is better to it off than risk one's life.
How can you expect to secure tranquility, when thousands of writers
every day... mayors, office-holders, insult kings, and publish that the
Christian religion has always supported despotism, and that we shall be
free only by destroying it, and that all princes must be exterminated
because they are all tyrants?"]
[Footnote 2363: A popular jig of these revolutionary times, danced in
the streets and on the public squares.--TR.]
[Footnote 2364: Buchez et Roux, XXV. 203 (session of April 3, 1793).
Speech by Brissot.--Ibid., XX. 127. "A tous les Républicains de France,
par Brissot," Oct. 24, 1792. "In declaring war, I had in view the
abolition of royalty." He refers, in this connection, to his speech of
Dec. 30, 1791, where he says, "I fear only one thing, and that is, that
we shall not be betrayed. We need treachery, for strong doses of poison
still exist in the heart of France, and heavy explosions are necessary
to clear it out."]
[Footnote 2365: Mallet du Pan, "Mémoires," I. 260 (April, 1792), and I.
439 (July, 1792).]
[Footnote 2366: Any revolutionary leader, from Lenin, through Stalin to
Andropov may confirm the advantage of acting in secret. (SR).]
[Footnote 2367: "The French Revolution," I. 262 and following pages.]
[Footnote 2368: Buchez et Roux, XIII. 92-99 (January, 1792);
(February).--Coral, "Lettres inédites," 33. (One of these days, out of
curiosity, he walked along as far as the Rue des Lombards.) "Witness of
such crying injustice, and indignant at not being able to seize any of
the thieves that were running along the street, loaded with sugar and
coffee to sell again, I suddenly felt a feverish chill over all my
body." (The letter is not dated. The editors conjectures that the year
was 1791. I rather think that it was 1792.)]
[Footnote 2369: Moniteur, XI. 45 and 46 (session of Jan. 5). The whole
of Isnard's speech should be read.]
[Footnote 2370: Buchez et Roux, XIII. 177. Letter by Pétion, Feb. 10.]
[Footnote 2371: Buchez et Roux, XIII. 252. Letter of André Chénier,
in the Journal de Paris, Feb. 26.--Schmidt, "Tableaux de la Révolution
Franaise," I. 76. Reply of the Directory of the Department of the Seine
to a circular by Roland, June 12, 1792. The contrast between the
two classes is here clearly defined. "We have not resorted to those
assemblages of men, most of them foreigners, for the opinion of the
people, among the enemies of labor and repose standing by themselves
and having no part in common interests, already inclined to vice
through idleness, and who prefer the risks of disorder to the honorable
resources of indigence. This class of men, always large in large cities,
is that whose noisy harangues fill the streets, Squares, and public
gardens of the capital, that which excites seditious gatherings, that
which constantly fosters anarchy and contempt for the laws--that, in
fine, whose clamor, far from reflecting public Opinion, indicates the
extreme effort made to prevent the expression of public opinion... We
have studied the opinion of the people of Paris among those useful
and laborious men warmly attached to the State at all points of their
existence through every object of their affection, among owners of
property, tillers of the soil, tradesmen and workers... An inviolable
attachment... to the constitution, and mainly to national Sovereignty,
to political equality and constitutional monarchy, which are its most
important characteristics and their almost unanimous sentiment."]
[Footnote 2372: Governor Morris, letter of June 20, 1792.]
[Footnote 2373: "Souvenirs", by Pasquier (Etienne-Dennis, duc),
chancelier de France. in VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893. Vol. I.
page 84.]
[Footnote 2374: Malouet, II. 203. "Every report that came in from the
provinces announced (to the King and Queen) a perceptible amelioration
of public opinion, which was becoming more and more perverted. That
which reached them was uninfluenced, whilst the opinions of clubs,
taverns, and street-corners gained enormous power, the time being at
hand when there was to be no other power." The figures given above are
by Mallet du Pan, "Mémoires," II. 120.]
[Footnote 2375: Moniteur, XII. 776 (session of June 28). Speech by M.
Lamarque, in a district court: "The incivism of the district courts in
general is well known."]
[Footnote 2376: Bertand de Molleville, "Mémoires," VI. 22.--After having
received the above instructions from the King, Bertrand calls on the
Queen, who makes the same remark: "Do you not think that fidelity to
one's oath is the only plan to pursue?" "Yes, Madame, certainly." "Very
well; rest assured that we shall not waver. Come, M. Bertrand, take
courage; I hope that with firmness, patience, and what comes of that,
all is not yet lost."]
[Footnote 2377: M. de Lavalette, "Mémoires," I. 100.--Lavalette, in the
beginning of September, 1792, enlists as a volunteer and sets out, along
with two friends, carrying his knapsack on his back, dressed in a short
and wearing a forage cap. The following shows the sentiments of the
peasantry: In a village of makers of wooden shoes, near Vermanton (in
the vicinity of Autun), "two days before our arrival a bishop and two
vicars, who were escaping in a carriage, were stopped by them. They
rummaged the vehicle and found some hundreds of francs, and, to avoid
returning these, they thought it best to massacre their unfortunate
owners. This sort of occupation seeming more lucrative to these good
people than the other one, they were on the look-out for all wayfarers."
The three volunteers are stopped by a little hump-backed official and
conducted to the municipality, a sort of market, where their passports
are read and their knapsacks are about to be examined. "We were lost,
when d'Aubonnes, who was very tall jumped on the table... and began
with a volley of imprecations and market slang which took his hearers
by surprise. Soon raising his style, he launched out in patriotic terms,
liberty, sovereignty of the people, with such vehemence and in so loud
a voice, as to suddenly effect a great change and bring down thunders of
applause. But the crazy fellow did not stop there. Ordering Leclerc de
la Ronde imperiously to mount on the table, he addressed the assemblage:
"You shall see whether we are not Paris republicans. Now, sir, say your
republican catechism--'What is God? what are the People? and what is
a King?' His friend, with an air of contrition and in a nasal tone of
voice, twisting himself about like a harlequin, replies: 'God is matter,
the People are the poor, and the King is a lion, a tiger, an elephant
who tears to pieces, devours, and crushes the people down.'"--"They
could no longer restrain themselves. The shouts, cries, and enthusiasm
were unbounded. They embraced the actors, hugged them, and bore them
away. Each strove to carry us home with him, and we had to drink all
round."]
[Footnote 2378: The reader will meet the French expression sans-culottes
again and again in Taine's or any other book about the French
revolution. The nobles wore a kind of breeches terminating under the
knee while tight long stockings, fastened to the trousers, exposed their
calves. The male leg was as important an adornment for the nobles as
it was to be for the women in the 20th Century. The poor, on the other
hand, wore crude long trousers, mostly without a crease, often without
socks or shoes, barefoot in the summer and wooden shoed in the winter.
(SR).]
[Footnote 2379: The song of "Veillons au salut de l'empire" belongs to
the end of 1791. The "Marseillaise" was composed in April, 1792.]
[Footnote 2380: Mercure de France, Nov. 23, 1791.]
[Footnote 2381: Philippe de Ségur, "Mémoires," I. (at Fresnes, a village
situated about seven leagues from Paris, a few days after Sep. 2,
1792). "A band of these demagogues pursued a large farmer of this place,
suspected of royalism and denounced as a monopoliser because he was
rich. These madmen had seized him, and, without any other form of trial,
were about to put an end to him, when my father ran up to them. He
addressed them, and so successfully as to change their rage into a
no less exaggerated enthusiasm for humanity. Animated by their new
transports, they obliged the poor farmer, still pale and trembling, and
whom they were just going to hang on its branches, to drink and dance
along with them around the tree of liberty."]
[Footnote 2382: Lacretelle, "Dix ans d'Epreuves," 78. "The Girondists
wanted to fashion a Roman people out of the dregs of Romulus, and, what
is worse, out of the brigands of the 5th of October."]
[Footnote 2383: These pages must have made a strong impression upon
Lenin when he read them in the National Library in Paris around 1907.
(SR).]
[Footnote 2384: Lafayette, I. 442. "The Girondists sought in the war an
opportunity for attacking with advantage, the constitutionalists of
1791 and their institutions."--Brissot (Address to my constituents). "We
sought in the war an opportunity to set traps for the king, to
expose his bad faith and his relationship with the emigrant
princes."--Moniteur, (session of April 3, 1793). Speech by Brissot: "'I
had told the Jacobins what my opinion was, and had proved to them that
war was the sole means of unveiling the perfidy of Louis XVI. The event
has justified my opinion."--Buchez et Roux, VIII. 60, 216, 217. The
decree of the Legislative Assembly is dated Jan. 25, the first money
voted by a club for the making of pikes is on Jan. 31, and the first
article by Brissot, on the red cap, is on Feb. 6.]
[Footnote 2385: Buchez et Roux, XIII. 217 (proposal of a woman, member
of the club of l'Evêché, Jan. 31, 1792).--Articles in the Gazette
Universelle, Feb.11, and in the Patriote Français, Feb. 13.--Moniteur,
XI. 576 (session of March 6).--Buchez et Roux, XV. (session of June 10).
Petition of 8,000 national guards in Paris: "This faction which stirs
up popular vengeance... which seeks to put the caps of labor in conflict
with the military casques, the pike with the gun, the rustic's dress
with the uniform."]
[Footnote 2386: Mallet du Pan, "Mémoires," II 429 (note of July,
1792).--Mercure de France, March 10, 1792, article by Mallet du Pan.]