CHAPTER IV. THE DEPARTMENTS.

I.--Provence in 1792.--Early supremacy of the Jacobins in Marseilles.

Composition of the party.--The club and the municipality.

--Expulsion of the "Earnest" regiment.

Should you like to see the revolutionary tree when, for the first time,

it came fully into leaf, it is in the department of the Bouches-du-Rhône

you have to look. Nowhere else had it been so precocious, nowhere were

local circumstances and native temperament so well adapted to enhance

its growth.--"A blistering sky, an excessive climate, an arid soil,

rocks,... savage rivers, torrential or dry or overburdened," blinding

dust, nerves upset by steady northern blasts or by the intermittent

gusts of the sirocco. A sensual race choleric and impetuous, with no

intellectual or moral ballast, in which the mixture of Celt and Latin

has destroyed the humane suavity of the Celt and the serious earnestness

of the Roman; "complete, tough, powerful, and restless men,"[2401] and

yet gay, spontaneous, eloquent, dupes of their own bombast, suddenly

carried away by a flow of words and superficial enthusiasm. Their

principal city numbering 120,000 souls, in which commercial and maritime

risks foster innovating and adventurous spirits; in which the sight of

suddenly-acquired fortunes expended on sensual enjoyments constantly

undermines all stability of Character; in which politics, like

speculation, is a lottery offering its prizes to audacity; besides all

this, a free port and a rendezvous for lawless nomads, disreputable

people, without steady trade,[2402] scoundrels, and blackguards, who,

like uprooted, decaying seaweed, drift from coast to coast around the

entire circle of the Mediterranean sea; a veritable sink filled with the

dregs of twenty corrupt and semi-barbarous civilizations, where the scum

of crime cast forth from the prisons of Genoa, Piedmont, Sicily, indeed,

of all Italy, of Spain, of the Archipelago, and of Barbary,3 accumulates

and ferments.2 No wonder that, in such a time the reign of the mob

should be established there sooner than elsewhere.[2403]--After many an

explosion, this reign is inaugurated August 17, 1790, by the removal of

M. Lieutaud, a sort of bourgeois, moderate Lafayette, who commands the

National Guard. Around him rally a majority of the population, all men

"honest or not, who have anything to lose."[2404] After he is driven

out, then proscribed, then imprisoned, they resign themselves, and

Marseilles belongs to the low class, to 40,000 destitute and rogues led

by the club.

The better to ensure their empire, the municipality, one month after the

expulsion of M. Lieutaud, declared every citizen "active" who had any

trade or profession[2405]; the consequence is that vagabonds attend

the meetings of the sections in contempt of constitutional law. The

consequence, was that property-owners and commercial men withdrew, which

was wise on their part, for the usual demagogic machinery is set in

motion without delay. "Each section-assembly is composed of a dozen

factious spirits, members of the club, who drive out honest people

by displaying cudgels and bayonets. The deliberations are prepared

beforehand at the club, in concert with the municipality, and woe to him

who refuses to adopt them at the meeting! They go so far as to threaten

citizens who wish to make any remarks with instant burial in the cellars

under the churches."[2406] The argument proved irresistible: "the

majority of honest people are so frightened and so timid" that not one

of them dare attend these meetings, unless protected by public force.

"More than 80,000 inhabitants do not sleep peacefully," while all

the political rights are vested in "five or six hundred individuals,"

legally disqualified. Behind them marches the armed rabble, "the horde

of brigands without a country,"[2407] always ready for plundering,

murder, and hanging. In front of them march the local authorities, who,

elected through their influence, carry on the administration under their

guidance. Patrons and clients, members of the club and its satellites,

they form a league which plays the part of a sovereign State,

scarcely recognizing, even in words, the authority of the central

government.[2408] The decree by which the National Assembly gives

full power to the Commissioners to re-establish order is denounced as

plébécide; these conscientious and cautious moderators are qualified

as "dictators"; they are denounced in circular letters to all the

municipalities of the department, and to all Jacobin clubs throughout

the kingdom;[2409] the club is somewhat disposed to go to Aix to cut off

their heads and send them in a trunk to the president of the National

Assembly, with a threat that the same penalty awaits himself and all the

deputies if they do not revoke their recent decrees. A few days after

this, four sections draw up an act before a notary, stating the measures

they had taken towards sending an army of 6,000 men from Marseilles to

Aix, to get rid of the three intruders. The commissioners dare not enter

Marseilles, where "gibbets are ready for them, and a price set on their

heads." It is as much as they can do to rescue from the faction M.

Lieutaud and his friends, who, accused of lése-nation, confined without

a shadow of proof, treated like mad dogs, put in chains,[2410] shut up

in privies and holes, and obliged to drink their own urine for lack of

water, impelled by despair to the brink of suicide, barely escape murder

a dozen times in the courtroom and in prison.[2411] Against the decree

of the National Assembly ordering their release, the municipality makes

reclamations, contrives delays, resists, and finally stirs up its usual

instruments. Just as the prisoners are about to be released a crowd of

"armed persons without uniform or officer," constantly increased "by

vagabonds and foreigners," gathers on the heights overlooking the Palais

de Justice, and makes ready to fire on M. Lieutaud. Summoned to proclaim

martial law, the municipality refuses, declaring that "the general

detestation of the accused is too manifest"; it demands the return of

the Swiss regiment to its barracks, and that the prisoners remain where

they are; the only thing which it grants them is a secret permission

to escape, as if they were guilty; they, accordingly, steal away

clandestinely and in disguise.[2412]--The Swiss regiment, however,

which prevents the magistrates from violating the law, must pay for its

insolence, and, as it is incorruptible, they decide to drive it out of

the town. For four months the municipality multiplies against it every

kind of annoyance,[2413] and, on the 16th of October, 1791, the Jacobins

provoke a row in the theater against its officers. The same night,

outside the theater, four of these are attacked by armed bands; the

post to which they retreat is nearly taken by assault; they are led to

a prison for safety, and there they still remain five days afterwards,

"although their innocence is admitted." Meanwhile, to ensure "public

tranquility," the municipality has required the commander of the post

to immediately replace the Swiss Guard with National Guards on all the

military posts; the latter yields to force, while the useless regiment,

insulted and threatened, has nothing to do but to pack off.[2414]

This being done, the new municipality, still more Jacobin than the old

one,[2415] separates Marseilles from France, erects the city into

a marauding republican government, gets up expeditions, levies

contributions, forms alliances, and undertakes an armed conquest of the

department.

II.--The expedition to Aix.

The town of Marseilles send an expedition to Aix.--The

regiment is disarmed.--The Directory driven out.--Pressure

on the new Directory.

The first thing is to lay its hand on the district capital, Aix, where

the Swiss regiment is stationed in garrison and where the superior

authorities are installed. This operation is the more necessary inasmuch

as the Directory of the department loudly commends the loyalty of the

Swiss Guard and takes occasion to remind the Marseilles municipality

of the respect due to the law. Such remonstrance is an insult, and the

municipality, in a haughty tone, calls upon the Directory to avow or

disavow its letter; "if you did not write it, it is a foul report which

it is our duty to examine into, and if you did, it is a declaration

of war made by you against Marseilles."[2416] The Directory, in polite

terms and with great circumspection, affirms both its right and its

utterance, and remarks that "the prorata list of taxes of Marseilles for

1791 is not yet reported;" that the municipality is much more concerned

with saving the State than with paying its contribution and, in short,

it maintains its censure.--If it will not bend it must break, and on the

4th of February, 1792, the municipality sends Barbaroux, its secretary,

to Paris, that he may mitigate the outrages they are preparing. During

the night of the 25-26, the drums beat the general alarm, and three or

four thousand men gather and march to Aix with six pieces of cannon. As

a precaution they pretend to have no leaders, no captains or lieutenants

or even corporals; to quote them, all are equal, all volunteers, each

being summoned by the other; in this fashion, as all are responsible, no

one is.[2417] They reach Aix at eleven o'clock in the forenoon, find a

gate open through the connivance of those in league with them among the

populace of the town and its suburbs, and summon the municipality

to surrender the sentinels. In the mean time their emissaries have

announced in the neighboring villages that the town was menaced by the

Swiss regiment; consequently four hundred men from Aubagne arrive in

haste, while from hour to hour the National Guards from the surrounding

villages likewise rush in. The streets are full of armed men; shouts

arise and the tumult increases; the municipal body, in the universal

panic, loses its wits. This body is afraid of a nocturnal fight "between

troops of the line, citizens, National Guards and armed strangers, no

one being able to recognize one another or know who is an enemy." It

sends back a detachment of three hundred and fifty Swiss Guards, which

the Directory had ordered to its support, and consigns the regiment to

its quarters.--At this the Directory takes to flight. Military sentinels

of all kinds are disarmed while the Marseilles throng, turning its

advantages to account, announces to the municipality at two o'clock in

the morning that, "allow it or not" it is going to attack the barracks

immediately; in fact, cannon are planted, a few shots are fired, a

sentinel killed, and the hemmed-in regiment is compelled to evacuate the

town, the men without their guns and the officers without their swords.

Their arms are stolen, the people seize the suspected, the street-lamp

is hauled down and the noose is made ready. Cayol, the flower-girl,

is hung. The municipality, with great difficulty, saves one man who is

already lifted by the rope two feet from the ground, and obtains for

three others "a temporary refuge" in prison.

Henceforth there is no authority at the department headquarters,

or rather it has changed hands. Another Directory, more pliable, is

installed in the place of the fugitive Directory. Of the thirty-six

administrators who form the Council only twelve are present at the

election. Of the nine elected only six consent to sit, while often

only three are found at its sessions, which three, to recruit their

colleagues, are obliged to pay them.[2418] Hence, notwithstanding their

position is the best in the department, they are worse treated and more

unfortunate than their servants outside. The delegates of the club, with

the municipal officers of Marseilles seated alongside of them, oblige

them either to keep silent, or to utter what they dictate to them.[2419]

"Our arms are tied," writes one of them, "we are wholly under the yoke"

of these intruders. "We have twice in succession seen more than three

hundred men, many of them with guns and pistols, enter the hall and

threaten us with death if we refused them what they asked. We have seen

infuriate motionnaires, nearly all belonging to Avignon, mount the desks

of the Directory, harangue their comrades and excite them to rioting and

crime. "You must decide between life or death," they exclaimed to us,

"you have only a quarter of an hour to choose." "National guards have

offered their sabers through the windows, left open on account of the

extreme heat, to those around us and made signs to them to cut our

throats."--Thus fashioned, reduced and drilled, the Directory is simply

an instrument in the hands of the Marseilles demagogues. Camoïn, Bertin

and Rebecqui, the worst agitators and usurpers, rule there without

control. Rebecqui and Bertin, appointed delegates in connection with

matters in Arles, have themselves empowered to call for defensive

troops; they immediately demand them for attack, to which the Directory

vainly remonstrates; they declare to it that "not being under its

inspection, it has no authority over them; being independent of it, they

have no orders to receive from it nor to render to it any account of

their conduct." So much the worse for the Directory on attempting to

revoke their powers. Bertin informs its vice-president that, if it

dares do this he will cut off his head. They reply to the Minister's

observations with the utmost insolence.[2420] They glory in the boldness

of the stroke and prepare another, their march on Aix being only the

first halt in the long-meditated campaign which involves the possession

of Arles.

III.--The Constitutionalists of Arles.

The Marseilles expedition against Arles.--Excesses committed

by them in the town and its vicinity.--Invasion of "Apt,"

the club and its volunteers.

No city, indeed, is more odious to them.--For two years, led or pushed

on by its mayor, M. d'Antonelle, it has marched along with them or

been dragged along in their wake. D'Antonelle, an ultra-revolutionary,

repeatedly visited and personally encouraged the bandits of Avignon. To

supply them with cannon and ammunition he stripped the Tour St. Louis of

its artillery, at the risk of abandoning the mouths of the Rhone to the

Barbary pirates.[2421] In concert with his allies of the Comtat, the

Marseilles club, and his henchmen from the neighboring boroughs, he

rules in Arles "by terror." Three hundred men recruited in the vicinity

of the Mint, artisans or sailors with strong arms and rough hands, serve

him as satellites. On the 6th of June 1791, they drive away, on

their own authority, the unsworn priests, who had taken refuge in the

town.[2422]--At this, however, the "property-owners and decent people,"

much more numerous and for a long time highly indignant, raise their

heads; twelve hundred of them assemble in the church of Saint-Honorat,

swore to maintain the constitution and public order,"[2423] and then

moved to the (Jacobin) club, where, in their quality of national guards

and active citizens and in conformity with its by-laws, they were

admitted en masse. At the same time, acting in concert with the

municipality, they reorganize the National Guard and form new companies,

the effect of which is to put an end to the Mint gang, thus depriving

the faction of all its strength. Thenceforth, without violence or

illegal acts, the majority of the club, as well as of the National

Guard, consists of constitutional monarchists, the elections of

November, 1791, giving to the partisans of order nearly all the

administrative offices of the commune and of the district. M. Loys,

a physician and a man of energy, is elected mayor in the place of M.

d'Antonelle; he is known as able to suppress a riot, "holding martial

law in one hand, and his saber in the other."--This is too much; so

Marseilles feel compelled to bring Arles under control "to atone for

the disgrace of having founded it."[2424] In this land of ancient cities

political hostility is embittered with old municipal grudges, similar

to those of Thebes against Platoee, of Rome against Veii, of Florence

against Pisa. The Guelphs of Marseilles brooded over the one idea of

crushing the Ghibellins of Arles.--Already, in the electoral assembly of

November, 1791, M. d'Antonelle, the president, had invited the communes

of the department to take up arms against this anti-jacobin city.[2425]

Six hundred Marseilles volunteers set out on the instant, install

themselves at Salon, seize the syndic-attorney of the hostile district,

and refuse to give him up, this being an advance-guard of 4,000 men

promised by the forty or fifty clubs of the party.[2426] To arrest their

operations requires the orders of the three commissioners, resolutions

passed by the Directory still intact, royal proclamations, a decree of

the Constituent Assembly, the firmness of the still loyal troops and the

firmer stand taken by the Arlesians who, putting down an insurrection of

the Mint band, had repaired their ramparts, cut away their bridges

and mounted guard with their guns loaded.[2427] But it is only a

postponement. Now that the commissioners have gone, and the king's

authority a phantom, now that the last loyal regiment is disarmed,

the terrified Directory recast and obeying like a servant, with

the Legislative Assembly allowing everywhere the oppression of the

Constitutionalists by the Jacobins, a fresh Jacobin expedition may be

started against the Constitutionalists with impunity. Accordingly, on

the 23rd of March, 1792, the Marseilles army of 4,500 men sets out on

its march with nineteen pieces of cannon.

In vain the commissioners of the neighboring departments, sent by the

Minister, represent to them that Arles submits, that she has laid

down her arms, and that the town is now garrisoned with troops of the

line;--the Marseilles army requires the withdrawal of this garrison.--In

vain the garrison departs. Rebecqui and his acolytes reply that "nothing

will divert them from their enterprise; they cannot defer to anybody's

decision but their own in relation to any precaution tending to ensure

the safety of the southern departments."--In vain the Minister renews

his injunctions and counter-orders. The Directory replies with a

flagrant falsehood, stating that it is ignorant of the affair

and refuses to give the government any assistance.--In vain M. de

Wittgenstein, commander-in-chief in the south, offers his services to

the Directory to repel the invaders. The Directory forbids him to take

his troops into the territory of the department.[2428]--Meanwhile, on

the 29th of March, the Marseilles army effects a breach with its cannon

in the walls of defenseless Arles; its fortifications are demolished

and a tax of 1,400,000 francs is levied on the owners of property.

In contempt of the National Assembly's decree the Mint bandits, the

longshoremen, the whole of the lowest class again take up their arms and

lord it over the disarmed population. Although "the King's commissioner

and most of the judges have fled, jury examinations are instituted

against absentees," the juries consisting of the members of the Mint

band.[2429] The conquerors imprison, smite and slaughter as they please.

Countless peaceable individuals are struck down and mauled, dragged to

prison and many of them are mortally wounded. An old soldier, eighty

years of age, retired to his country home three months earlier, dies

after twenty days' confinement in a dungeon, from a blow received in the

stomach by a rifle butt; women are flogged. "All citizens that with

an interest in law and order," nearly five thousand families, have

emigrated; their houses in town and in the country are pillaged, while

in the surrounding boroughs, along the road leading from Arles to

Marseilles, the villains forming the hard core of the Marseilles army,

rove about and gorge themselves as in a vanquished country.[2430]

They eat and drink voraciously, force the closets, carry off linen and

food, steal horses and valuables, smash the furniture, tear up books,

and burn papers.[2431] All this is only the appropriate punishment of

the aristocrats. Moreover, it is no more than right that patriots should

be indemnified for their toil, and a few blows too many are not out

of place in securing the rule of the right party.--For example, on the

false report of order being disturbed at Château-Renard, Bertin and

Rebecqui send off a detachment of men, while the municipal body in

uniform, followed by the National Guard, with music and flags, comes

forth to meet and salute it. Without uttering a word of warning, the

Marseilles troop falls upon the cortège, strikes down the flags, disarms

the National Guard, tears the epaulettes off the officers' shoulders,

drags the mayor to the ground by his scarf, pursues the counselors,

sword in hand, puts the mayor and syndic-attorney in arrest, and, during

the night, sacks four dwellings, the whole under the direction of

three Jacobins of the place under indictment for recent crimes or

misdemeanors. Henceforth at Château-Renard they will look twice before

subjecting patriots to indictment.[2432]--At Vélaux "the country house

of the late seignior is sacked, and everything is carried away, even

to the tiles and window-glass." A troop of two hundred men "overrun the

village, levy contributions, and put all citizens who are well-off under

bonds for considerable sums." Camoïn, the Marseille chief, one of the

new department administrators, who is in the neighborhood, lays his

hand on everything that is fit to be taken, and, a few days after this,

30,000 francs are found in his carpet-bag.-Taught by the example others

follow and the commotion spreads. In every borough or petty town the

club profits by these acts to satiate its ambition its greed, and its

hatred. That of Apt appeals to its neighbors, whereupon 1,500 National

Guards of Gordes, St. Saturnin, Gouls and Lacoste, with a thousand women

and children armed with clubs and scythes, arrive one morning before

the town. On being asked by whose orders they come in this fashion,

they reply, "by the orders which their patriotism has given them."--"The

fanatics," or partisans of the sworn priests, "are the cause of their

journey": they therefore "want lodgings at the expense of the fanatics

only." The three day's occupation results for the latter and for the

town in a cost of 20,000 livres.[2433] They begin by breaking everything

in the church of the Récollets, and wall up its doors. They then expel

unsworn ecclesiastics from the town, and disarm their partisans. The

club of Apt, which is the sole authority, remains in session three days:

"the municipal bodies in the vicinity appear before it, apologize for

themselves, protest their civism, and ask as a favor that no detachment

be sent to their places. Individuals are sent for to be interrogated";

several are proscribed, among whom are administrators, members of the

court, and the syndic-attorney. A number of citizens have fled;--the

town is purged, while the same purging is pursued in numbers of places

in and out of the district.[2434] It is, indeed, attractive business.

It empties the purses of the ill-disposed, and fills the stomachs of

patriots; it is agreeable to be well entertained, and especially at the

expense of one's adversaries; the Jacobin is quite content to save the

country through a round of feastings. Moreover, he has the satisfaction

of playing king among his neighbors, and not only do they feed him for

doing them this service, but, again, they pay him for it.[2435]--All

this is enlivening, and the expedition, which is a "sabbath," ends in

a carnival. Of the two Marseilles divisions, one, led back to Aix, sets

down to "a grand patriotic feast," and then dances fandangoes, of which

"the principal one is led off by the mayor and commandant";[2436] the

other makes its entry into Avignon the same day, with still greater pomp

and jollity.

IV.--The Jacobins of Avignon.

How they obtain recruits.--Their robberies in the Comtat.

--The Avignon municipality in flight or in prison.--Murder of

Lécuyer and the Glacière massacre.--Entry of the murderers,

supported by their Marseilles allies.--Jacobin dictatorship

in Vaucluse and the Buches-du-Rhône.

Nowhere else in France was there another nest of brigands like it: not

that a great misery might have produced a more savage uprising; on the

contrary, the Comtat, before the Revolution, was a land of plenty.

There was no taxation by the Pope; the taxes were very light, and were

expended on the spot. "For one or two pennies, one here could have meat,

bread, and wine."[2437] But, under the mild and corrupt administration

of the Italian legates, the country had become "the safe asylum of all

the rogues in France, Italy, and Genoa, who by means of a trifling sum

paid to the Pope's agents, obtained protection and immunity." Smugglers

and receivers of stolen goods abounded here in order to break through

the lines of the French customs. "Bands of robbers and assassins were

formed, which the vigorous measures of the parliaments of Aix and

Grenoble could not wholly extirpate. Idlers, libertines, professional

gamblers,"[2438] kept-cicisbeos, schemers, parasites, and adventurers,

mingle with men with branded shoulders, the veterans "of vice and crime,

"the scapegraces of the Toulon and Marseilles galleys." Ferocity here is

hidden in debauchery, like a serpent hidden in its own slime, here

all that is required is some chance event and this bad place will be

transformed into a death trap.

The Jacobin leaders, Tournal, Rovère, the two Duprats, the two

Mainvielles, and Lécuyer, readily obtain recruits in this sink.--They

begin, aided by the rabble of the town and of its suburbs, peasants

enemies of the octroi, vagabonds opposed to order of any kind, porters

and watermen armed with scythes, turnspits and clubs, by exciting seven

or eight riots. Then they drive off the legate, force the Councils to

resign, hang the chiefs of the National Guard and of the conservative

party,[2439] and take possession of the municipal offices.--After this

their band increases to the dimensions of an army, which, with license

for its countersign and pillage for its pay, is the same as that of

Tilly and Wallenstein, "a veritable roving Sodom, at which the ancient

city would have stood aghast." Out of 3,000 men, only 200 belong in

Avignon; the rest are composed of French deserters, smugglers, fugitives

from justice, vagrant foreigners, marauders and criminals, who, scenting

a prey, come from afar, and even from Paris;[2440] along with them march

the women belonging to them, still more base and bloodthirsty. In order

to make it perfectly plain that with them murder and robbery are the

order of the day, they massacred their first general, Patrix, guilty

of having released a prisoner, and elected in his place an old highway

tramp named Jourdan, condemned to death by the court at Valence, but who

had escaped on the eve of his execution, and who bore the nickname of

Coupe-tête, because he is said to have cut off the heads at Versailles

of two of the King's guards.[2441]--Under such a commander the troop

increases until it forms a body of five or six thousand men, which

stops people in the streets and forcibly enrolls them; they are called

Mandrins, which is severe for Mandrin,[2442] because their war is

not merely on public persons and property, as his was, but on the

possessions, the proprieties, and the lives of private individuals. One

detachment alone, at one time, extorts in Cavaillon 25,000 francs, in

Baume 12,000, in Aubignon 15,000, in Pioline 4,800, while Caumont is

taxed 2,000 francs a week. At Sarrians, where the mayor gives them the

keys, they pillage houses from top to bottom, carry off their plunder in

carts, set fire, violate and slay with all the refinements of torture of

so many Hurons. An old lady of eighty, and a paralytic, is shot at arms

length, and left weltering in her blood in the midst of the flames. A

child five years of age is cut in two, its mother decapitated, and its

sister mutilated; they cut off the ears of the curé, set them on his

brow like a cockade, and then cut his throat, along with that of a pig,

and tear out the two hearts and dance around them.[2443] After this,

for fifty days around Carpentras, to which they lay siege in vain, the

unprovoked, cruel instincts of the chauffeurs manifested at a later

date, the ancient cannibalistic desires which sometimes reappear in

convicts, and the perverted and over-strained sensuality found in

maniacs, have full play.

On beholding the monster it has nourished, Avignon, in alarm, utters

cries of distress.[2444] But the brute, which feels its strength, turns

against its former abettors, shows its teeth, and exacts its daily

food. Ruined or not, Avignon must furnish its quota. "In the electoral

assembly, Mainvielle the younger, elected elector, although he is only

twenty-two, draws two pistols from his belt and struts around with a

threatening air."[2445] Duprat, the president, the better to master his

colleagues, proposes to them to leave Avignon and go to Sorgues, which

they refuse to do; upon this he orders cannon to be brought, promises to

pay those who will accompany him, drags along the timid, and denounces

the rest before an upper national court, of which he himself has

designated the members. Twenty of the electors thus denounced are

condemned and proscribed; Duprat threatens to enter by force and have

them executed on the spot, and, under his leadership, the army of

Mandrins advances against Avignon.--Its progress is arrested, and, for

two months, restrained by the two mediating commissioners for France;

they reduce its numbers, and it is on the point of being disbanded, when

the brute again boldly seizes its prey, about to make its escape. On the

21st of August, Jourdan, with his herd of miscreants, obtains possession

of the palace. The municipal body is driven out, the mayor escapes in

disguise, Tissot, the secretary, is cut down, four municipal officers

and forty other persons are thrown into prison, while a number of houses

belonging to the fugitives and to priests are pillaged, and thus supply

the bandits with their first financial returns.[2446]--Then begins the

great fiscal operation which is going to fill their pockets. Five front

men, chosen by Duprat and his associates, compose, with Lécuyer as

secretary, a provisional municipal body, which, taxing the town 300,000

francs and suppressing the convents, offers the spoils of the churches

for sale. The bells are taken down, and the hammers of the workmen

engaged in breaking them to pieces are heard all day long. A strong-box

full of plate, diamonds, and gold crosses, left with the director of the

Mont-de-Piété, on deposit, is taken and carried off to the commune; a

report is spread that the valuables pawned by the poor had been stolen

by the municipality, and that those "robbers had already sent away

eighteen trunks full of them." Upon this the women, exasperated at the

bare walls of the churches, together with the laborers in want of work

or bread, all the common class, become furious, assemble of their own

accord in the church of the Cordeliers, summon Lécuyer to appear before

them, drag him from the pulpit and massacre him.[2447]

This time there seems to be an end of the brigand party, for the entire

town, the populace and the better class, are against them, while the

peasants in the country shoot them down wherever they come across

them.--Terror, however, supplies the place of numbers, and, with the 350

hired killers bravos still left to them, the extreme Jacobins undertake

to overcome a city of 30,000 souls. Mainvielle the elder, dragging along

two cannon, arrives with a patrol, fires at random into the already

semi-abandoned church, and kills two men. Duprat assembles about thirty

of the towns-people, imprisoned by him on the 31st of August, and,

in addition to these, about forty artisans belonging to the Catholic

brotherhoods, porters, bakers, coopers, and day-laborers, two peasants,

a beggar, a few women seized haphazard and on vague denunciations, one

of them, "because she spoke ill of Madame Mainvielle." Jourdan supplies

the executioners; the apothecary Mende, brother-in-law of Duprat, plies

them with liquor, while a clerk of Tournal, the newsman, bids them

"kill all, so that there shall be no witnesses left." Whereupon, at the

reiterated orders of Mainvielle, Tournal, Duprat, and Jourdan, with a

complications of hilarious lewdness,[2448] the massacre develops itself

on the 16th of October and following days, during sixty-six hours, the

victims being a couple of priests, three children, an old man of eighty,

thirteen women, two of whom are pregnant, in all, sixty-one persons,

with their throats slit or knocked out and then cast one on top of each

other into the Glacière hole, a mother on the body of her infant, a son

on the body of his father, all finished off with rocks, the hole being

filled up with stones and covered over with quicklime on account of

the smell.[2449] In the meantime about a hundred more, killed in the

streets, are pitched into the Sorgues canal; five hundred families make

their escape. The ousted bandits return in a body, while the assassins

who are at the head of them, enthroned by murder, organize for the

benefit of their new band a legal system of brigandage, against which

nobody defends himself.[2450]

These are the friends of the Jacobins of Arles and Marseilles, the

respectable men whom M. d'Antonelle has come to address in the cathedral

at Avignon.[2451] These are the pure patriots, who, with their hands in

the till and their feet in gore, caught in the act by a French army, the

mask torn off through a scrupulous investigation, universally condemned

by the emancipated electors, also by the deliberate verdict of the new

mediating commissioners,[2452] are included in the amnesty proclaimed

by the Legislative Assembly a month before their last crime.--But the

sovereigns of the Bouches-du-Rhône do not regard the release of

their friends and allies as a pardon: something more than pardon and

forgetfulness must be awarded to the murderers of the Glacière. On the

29th of April, 1792, Rebecqui and Bertin, the vanquishers of Arles,

enter Avignon[2453] along with a cortége, at the head of which are from

thirty to forty of the principal murderers whom the Legislative Assembly

itself had ordered to be recommitted to prison, Duprat, Mainvielle,

Toumal, Mende, then Jourdan in the uniform of a commanding general

crowned with laurel and seated on a white horse, and, lastly, the dames

Duprat, Mainvielle and Tournal, in dashing style, standing on a sort of

triumphal chariot; during the procession the cry is heard, "The Glacière

will be full this time!"--On their approach the public functionaries

fly; twelve hundred persons abandon the town. Forthwith each terrorist,

under the protection of the Marseilles bayonets, resumes his office,

like a man at the head of his household. Raphel, the former judge, along

with his clerk, both with warrants of arrest against them, publicly

officiate, while the relatives of the poor victims slain on the 16th of

October, and the witnesses that appeared on the trial, are threatened in

the streets; one of them is killed, and Jourdan, king of the department

for an entire year, begins over again on a grand scale, at the head

of the National Guard, and afterwards of the police body, the same

performance which, on a small scale, he pursued under the ancient

régime, when, with a dozen "armed and mounted" brigands, he traversed

the highways, forced open lonely houses at night, and, in one château

alone, stole 24,000 francs.

V.--The other departments.

Uniform process of the Jacobin conquest.--Preconceived

formation of a Jacobin State.

The Jacobin conquest takes place like this: already in during April,

1792, through acts of violence almost equal to those we have just

described, it spreads over more than twenty departments and, to a

smaller degree, over the other sixty.[2454] The composition of the

parties is the same everywhere. On one side are the irresponsible of all

conditions,

"squanderers who, having consumed their own inheritance, cannot tolerate

that of another, men without property to whom disorder is a door open to

wealth and public office, the envious, the ungrateful whose obligations

to their benefactors the revolution cancels, the hot-headed, all those

enthusiastic innovators who preach reason with a dagger in their hand,

the poor, the brutal and the wretched of the lower class who, possessed

by one leading anarchical idea, one example of immunity, with the law

dumb and the sword in the scabbard, are stimulated to dare all things

On the other side are the steady-going, peaceable class, minding their

own business, upper and lower middle class in mind and spirit,

"weakened by being used to security and wealth, surprised at any

unforeseen disturbance and trying to find their way, isolated from

each other by diversity of interests, opposing only tact and caution to

persevering audacity in defiance of legitimate means, unable either to

make up their mind or to remain inactive, perplexed over sacrifices just

at the time when the enemy is going to render it impossible to make any

in the future, in a word, bringing weakness and egoism to bear against

the liberated passions, great poverty and hardened immorality."[2455]

The issue of the conflict is everywhere the same. In each town or canton

an aggressive squad of unscrupulous fanatics and resolute adventurers

imposes its rule over a sheep-like majority which, accustomed to the

regularity of an old civilization, dares neither disturb order for the

sake of putting and end to disorder, or get together a mob to put down

another mob. Everywhere the Jacobin principle is the same.

"Your system," says one of the department Directories to them,[2456]

"is to act imperturbably on all occasions, even after a constitution is

established, and the limitations to power are fixed, as if the empire

would always be in a state of insurrection, as if you were granted a

dictatorship essential for the city's salvation, as if you were given

such full power in the name of public safety."

Everywhere are Jacobin tactics the same. At the outset they assume to

have a monopoly of patriotism and, through the brutal destruction of

other associations, they are the only visible organ of public opinion.

Their voice, accordingly, seems to be the voice of the people; their

control is established on that of the legal authorities; they have taken

the lead through persistent and irresistible misdeeds; their crimes are

consecrated by exemption from punishment.

"Among officials and agents, good or bad, constituted or not

constituted, that alone governs which is inviolable. Now the club, for a

long time, has been too much accustomed to domineering, to annoying,

to persecuting, to wreaking vengeance, for any local administration to

regard it in any other light than as inviolable."[2457]

They accordingly govern and their indirect influence is promptly

transformed into direct authority.--Voting alone, or almost alone,

in the primary meetings, which are deserted or under constraint, the

Jacobins easily choose the municipal body and the officers of the

National Guard.[2458] After this, through the mayor, who is their tool

or their accomplice, they have the legal right to launch or arrest the

entire armed force and they avail themselves of it.--Two obstacles still

stand in their way. One the one hand, however conciliatory or timid

the Directory of the district or department may be, elected as it is by

electors of the second degree, it usually contains a fair proportion

of well-informed men, comfortably off, interested in keeping order, and

less inclined than the municipality to put up with gross violations of

the law. Consequently the Jacobins denounce it to the National

Assembly as an unpatriotic and anti-revolutionary center of "bourgeois

aristocracy." Sometimes, as at Brest,[2459] they shamefully disobey

orders which are perfectly legal and proper, often repeated and strictly

formal; afterward, still more shamefully, they demand of the Minister

if, "placed in the cruel alternative of giving offense to the hierarchy

of powers, or of leaving the commonwealth in danger, they ought to

hesitate." Sometimes, as at Arras, they impose themselves illegally on

the Directory in session and browbeat it so insolently as to make it

a point of honor with the latter to solicit its own suspension.[2460]

Sometimes, as a Figeac, they summon an administrator to their bar, keep

him standing three-quarters of an hour, seize his papers and oblige him,

for fear of something worse, to leave the town.[2461] Sometimes, as at

Auch, they invade the Directory's chambers, seize the administrators by

the throat, pound them with their fists and clubs, drag the president

by the hair, and, after a good deal of trouble, grant him his

life.[2462]--On the other hand, the gendarmerie and the troops brought

for the suppression of riots, are always in the way of those who stir

up the rioters. Consequently, they expel, corrupt and, especially purify

the gendarmerie together with the troops. At Cahors they drive out a

sergeant of the gendarmerie, "alleging that he keeps company with

none but aristocrats."[2463] At Toulouse, without mentioning the

lieutenant-colonel, whose life they threaten by anonymous letters and

oblige to leave the town, they transfer the whole corps to another

district under the pretense that "its principles are adverse to the

Constitution."[2464] At Auch, and at Rennes, through the insubordination

which they provoke among the men, they exhort resignations from their

officers. At Perpignan, by means of a riot which they foment, they

seize, beat and drag to prison, the commandant and staff whom

they accuse "of wanting to bombard the town with five pounds of

powder."[2465]--Meanwhile, through the jacquerie, which they let loose

from the Dordogne to Aveyron, from Cantal to the Pyrenees and the

Var, under the pretence of punishing the relatives of émigrés and the

abettors of unsworn priests, they create an army of their own made up

of robbers and the destitute who, in anticipation of the exploits of the

coming revolutionary army, freely kill, burn, pillage, hold to ransom

and prey at large on the defenseless flock of proprietors of every class

and degree.[2466]

In this operation each club has its neighbors for allies, offering

to them or receiving from them offers of men and money. That of Caen

tenders its assistance to the Bayeux association for expelling unsworn

priests, and to help the patriots of the place "to rid themselves of the

tyranny of their administrators."[2467] That of Besançon declares the

three administrative bodies of Strasbourg "unworthy of the confidence

with which they have been honored," and openly enters into a league

with all the clubs of the Upper and Lower Rhine, to set free a Jacobin

arrested as a fomenter of insurrections.[2468] Those of the Puy-de-Dôme

and neighboring departments depute to and establish at Clermont

a central club of direction and propaganda.[2469] Those of the

Bouches-du-Rhône treat with the commissioners of the departments of

Drôme, Gard, and Hérault, to watch the Spanish frontier, and send

delegates of their own to see the state of the fortifications of

Figuières.[2470]--There is no recourse to the criminal tribunals. In

forty departments, these are not yet installed, in the forty-three

others, they are cowed, silent, or lack money and men to enforce their

decisions.[2471]

Such is the foundation of the Jacobin State, a confederation of twelve

hundred oligarchies, which maneuver their proletariat clients in

obedience to the word of command dispatched from Paris. It is a

complete, organized, active State, with its central government, its

active force, its official journal, its regular correspondence, its

declared policy, its established authority, and its representative

and local agents; the latter are actual administrators alongside of

administrations which are abolished, or athwart administrations which

are brought under subjection.--In vain do the latest ministers, good

clerks and honest men, try to fulfill their duties; their injunctions

and remonstrances are only so much waste paper.[2472] They resign in

despair, declaring that,

"in this overthrow of all order,... in the present weakness of the

public forces, and in the degradation of the constituted authorities,...

it is impossible for them to maintain the life and energy of the vast

body, the members of which are paralyzed."--

When the roots of a tree are laid bare, it is easy to cut it down; now

that the Jacobins have severed them, a push on the trunk suffices to

bring the tree to the ground.

*****

[Footnote 2401: De Loménie, "Les Mirabeaus," I. 11. (Letter of the

Marquis de Mirabeau).]

[Footnote 2402: "Archives Nationales," F7, 7171, No. 7915. Report on the

situation in Marseilles, by Miollis, commissioner of the Directory in

the department, year V. Nivôse 15. "A good many strangers from France

and Italy are attracted there by the lust of gain, a love of pleasure,

the want of work, a desire to escape from the effects of ill conduct. ..

Individuals of both sexes and of every age, with no ties of country or

kindred, with no profession, no opinions, pressed by daily necessities

that are multiplied by debauched habit, seeking to indulge these without

too much effort, the means for this being formerly found in the many

manual operations of commerce, gone astray during the Revolution and,

subsequently, scared of the dominant party, accustomed unfortunately at

that time to receiving pay for taking part in political strife, and now

reduced to living on almost gratuitous distributions of food, to

dealing in small wares, to the menial occupations which chance rarely

presents--in short, to swindling. Such is what the observer finds in

that portion of the population of Marseilles most in sight; eager

to profit by whatever occurs, easily won over, active through its

necessities, flocking everywhere, and appearing very numerous... The

patriot Escalon had twenty rations a day; Féri, the journalist, had six;

etc... Civil officers and district commissioners still belong, for the

most part, to that class of men which the Revolution had accustomed

to live without work, to making those who shared their principles

the beneficiaries of the nation's favors, and finally, to receiving

contributions from gambling halls and brothels. These commissioners give

notice to their protégés, even the crooks, when warrants against them

are to be enforced."]

[Footnote 2403: Blanc-Gilly, "Réveil d'alarme d'un député de Marseilles"

(cited in the Memoirs" of Barbaroux, 40, 41). Blanc-Gilly must have been

acquainted with these characters, inasmuch as he made use of them in the

August riot, 1789, and for which he was indicted.--Cf. Fabre "Histoire

de Marseilles," II. 422.]

[Footnote 2404: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3197. Correspondence of

Messrs. Debourge, Gay, and Lafitte, commissioners sent to Provence to

restore order in accordance with an act of the National Assembly. Letter

of May 10, 1791. Letter of May 10. 1791, and passim.]

[Footnote 2405: Mayor Martin, says Juste, was a sort of Pétion, weak and

vain.--Barbaroux, clerk of the municipality, is the principal opponent

of M. Lieutaud.--The municipal decree referred to is dated Sept. 10,

1790.]

[Footnote 2406: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3197. Letters of three

commissioners, April 13, 17, 18, and May 10, 1791.]

[Footnote 2407: Blanc-Gilly, "Réveil d'Alarme." Ibid., "Every time that

the national guard marched outside the city walls, the horde of homeless

brigands never failed to close up in their rear and carry devastation

wherever they went."]

[Footnote 2408: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3197. Correspondence of

the three commissioners, letter of May 10,1791. "The municipality of

Marseilles obeys only the decrees it pleases, and for eighteen months

has not paid a cent into the city treasury.-Proclamation of April

13.--Letters of April 13 and 18.]

[Footnote 2409: "Archives Nationales," letter of the municipal officers

of Marseilles to the minister, June 11, 1791.--They demand the recall

of the three commissioners, one of their arguments being as follows:

"In China, every mandarin against whom public opinion is excited is

dismissed from his place; he is regarded as an ignorant instructor, who

is incapable of gaining the love of children for their parent."]

[Footnote 2410: "Archives Nationales," letter of the commissioners,

May 25, 1791. "It is evident, on recording the proceedings at Aix

and Marseilles, that only the accusers and the judges were

guilty."--Petition of the prisoners, Feb. 1. "The municipality, in

despair of our innocence and not knowing how to justify its conduct,

is trying to buy up witnesses. They say openly that it is better to

sacrifice one innocent man than disgrace a whole body. Such ale the

speeches of the sieur Rebecqui, leading man, and of Madame Elliou, wife

of a municipal officer, in the house of the sieur Rousset."]

[Footnote 2411: Letter of M. Lieutaud to the commissioners, May 11 and

18, 1791. "If I have not fallen under the assassin's dagger I owe my

preservation to your strict orders and to the good behavior of the

national guard and the regular troops... At the hearing of the case

today, the prosecutor on the part of the commune ventured to threaten

the court with popular opinion and its avenging fury... The people,

stirred up against us, and brought there, shouted, 'Let us seize

Lieutaud and take him there by force and if he will not go up the steps,

we will cut his head off!' The hall leading to the courtroom and the

stairways were filled with barefooted vagabonds."--Letter of Cabrol,

commander of the national guard, and of the municipal officers to the

commissioners, May 21. That picket-guard of fifty men on the great

square, is it not rather the cause of a riot than the means of

preventing one? A requisition to send four national guards inside the

prison, to remain there day and night, is it not insulting citizen

soldiers, whose function it is to see that the laws are maintained, and

not to do jail duty?"]

[Footnote 2412: Letter of M. d'Olivier, lieutenant-colonel of the Ernest

regiment, May 28.--Extracts from the papers of the secretary to

the municipality, May 28 (Barbaroux is the clerk).--Letter of the

commissions, May 29]

[Footnote 2413: Letter of the commissioners, June 29.]

[Footnote 2414: Letter of M. Laroque-Dourdan, naval commander at

Marseilles, Oct. 18, 1791. (in relation to the departure of the Swiss

regiment).]

[Footnote 2415: The elections are held on the 13th of November, 1791.

Martin, the former mayor, showed timidity, and Mouraille was elected in

his place.]

[Footnote 2416: "Archives Nationales." F 7 3197. Letter (printed) of

the Directory to the Minister of War, Jan. 4, 1792.--Letter of the

municipality of Marseilles to the Directory, Jan. 4, and the Directory's

reply.--Barbaroux, "Mémoires," 19.--Here we see the part played by

Barbaroux at Marseilles. Guadet played a similar part at Bordeaux.

This early political period is essential for a comprehension of the

Girondists.]

[Footnote 2417: "Archives Nationales." F7, 3195. Official report of the

municipality of Aix (on the events of Feb. 26). March 1st.--Letter of

M. Villardy, president of the directory, dated Avignon, March 10. (He

barely escaped assassination at Aix.)--Ibid., F7,3196. Report of the

district administrators of Arles, Feb. 28 (according to private letters

from Aix and Marseilles).--Barbaroux, "Mémoires" (collection of Berville

and Barrière), 106. (Narrative of M. Watteville, major in the Ernest

regiment. Ibid., 108) (Report from M. de Barbentane, commanding general).

These two documents show the liberalism, want of vigor, and the

usual indecision of the superior authorities, especially the military

authorities--Mercure de France, March 24, 1792 (letters from Aix).]

[Footnote 2418: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3196. Dispatches of the

new Directory to the Minister, March 24 and April 4, 1792. "Since the

departure of the Directory, our administrative assembly is composed of

only six members, notwithstanding our repeated summons to every member

of the Council... Only three members of the Council consent to act

with us; the reason is a lack of pecuniary means." The new Directory,

consequently, passes a resolution to indemnify members of the Council.

This, indeed, is contrary to a royal proclamation of Jan. 15; but "this

proclamation was wrested from the King, on account of his firm faith.

You must be aware that, in a free nation, the influence of a citizen on

his government must not be estimated by his fortune; such a principle

is false, and destructive of equality of rights. We trust that the King

will consent to revoke his proclamation."]

[Footnote 2419: Ib., Letters of Borelly, vice-president of the

Directory, to the Minister, April 10, 17, and 30, 1792.--Letter from

another administrator, March 10. "They absolutely want us to march

against Arles, and to force us to give the order."--Ibid., F7, 3195.

Letters from Aix, March 12 and 16, addressed to M. Verdet.]

[Footnote 2420: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3195. Letter of the

administrators of the department Council to the Minister, March 10,

"The Council of the administration is surprised, sir, at the fa1se

impressions given you of the city of Marseilles; it should be regarded

as the patriotic buckler of the department... If the people of Paris did

not wait for orders to destroy the Bastille and begin the Revolution,

can you wonder that in this fiery climate the impatience of good

citizens should make them anticipate legal orders, and that they cannot

comply with the slow forms of justice when their personal safety and the

safety of the country is in peril?"]

[Footnote 2421: "Archives Nationales." F7, 3197. Dispatches of the three

commissioners, passim, and especially those of May 11, June 10 and

19, 1791 (on affairs in Arles). "The property-owners were a long time

subject to oppression. A few of the factions maintained a reign of

terror over honest folks, who trembled in secret."]

[Footnote 2422: Ibid., Dispatch of the commissioners, June 19: "One of

the Mint gang causes notes to be publicly distributed (addressed to the

unsworn) in these words: 'If you don't "piss-off" you will have to deal

with the gang from the Mint.'"]

[Footnote 2423: "Archives Nationales." F7, 3198. Narration (printed)

of what occurred at Arles, June 9 and 10, 1791.--Dispatch of M. Ripert,

royal commissioner, Aug. 5, 1791.--F 7, 3197. Dispatch of the three

commissioners, June 19. "Since then, many of the farm laborers have

taken the same oath. It is this class of citizens which most eagerly

desires a return to order. "--Other dispatches to the same effect, Oct.

24 and 29, and Dec. 14, 1791.--Cf. "The French Revolution," I. 301,

302.]

[Footnote 2424: "Archives Nationales." F7, 3196. Dispatch of the members

of the Directory of Arles and the municipal officers to the Minister,

March 3, 1792 (with a printed diatribe of the Marseilles municipality)]

[Footnote 2425: Ibid., F7, 3198. Dispatches of the procureur--syndic of

the department to the Minister, Aix, Sept. 14, 15, 20, and 23, 1791.

The electoral assembly declared itself permanent, the constitutional

authorities being fettered and unrecognized.--Dispatch of the members

of the military bureau and correspondence with the Minister, Arles,

Sept.17, 1791.]

[Footnote 2426: Ibid., Dispatch of the commandant of the Marseilles

detachment to the Directory of the department, Sept. 22, 1791: "I feel

that our proceedings are not exactly legal, but I thought it prudent to

acquiesce in the general desire of the battalion."]

[Footnote 2427: "Archives Nationales." Official report of the municipal

officers of Arles on the insurrection of the Mint band, Sept. 2,

1791.--Dispatch of Ripert, royal commissioner, Oct. 2 and 8.--Letter of

M. d'Antonelle, to the Friends of the Constitution, Sept.22. "I cannot

believe in the counter-orders with which we are threatened. Such a

decision in the present crisis would be too inhuman and dangerous. Our

co-workers, who have had the courage to devote themselves to the

new law, would be deprived of their bread and shelter... The king's

proclamation has all the appearance of having been hastily prepared, and

every sign of having been secured unawares."]

[Footnote 2428: De Dampmartin (an eye-witness), II. 60-70.--" Archives

Nationales," F7, 3196.--Dispatch of the two delegated commissioners to

the Minister, Nimes, March 25, 1792.--Letter of M. Wittgenstein to the

Directory of the Bouche-du--Rhône, April 4, 1792.--Reply and act

passed by the Directory, April 5.--Report of Bertin and Rebecqui to the

administrators of the department, April 3.--Moniteur, XII. 379. Report

of the Minister of the Interior to the National Assembly, April 4.]

[Footnote 2429: Moniteur, XII. 408 (session of May 16). Petition of M.

Fossin, deputy from Arles.--"Archives Nationales," F7, 3196. Petition

of the Arlesians to the Minister, June 28.--Despatches of M. Lombard,

provisional royal commissioner, Arles, July 6 and 10. "Neither persons

nor property have been respected for three months by those who wear the

mask of patriotism."]

[Footnote 2430: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3196. Letter of M. Borelly,

vice-president of the Directory, to the Minister, Aix, April 30, 1792.

"The course pursued by the sieur: Bertin and Rébecqui is the cause of

all the disorders committed in these unhappy districts... Their sole

object is to levy contributions, as they did at Aries, to enrich

themselves and render the Comtat-Venaisson desolate."]

[Footnote 2431: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3196. Deposition of one of

the keepers of the sieur Coye, a proprietor at Mouriez-les-Baux, April

4.--Petition of Peyre, notary at Maussane, April 7.--Statement by

Manson, a resident of Mouriez-les-Baux, March 27.--Petition of Andrieu,

March 30.--Letter of the municipality of Maussane, April 4: "They watch

for a favorable opportunity to devastate property and especially country

villas."]

[Footnote 2432: "Archives Nationales," Claim of the national guard

presented to the district administrators of Tarascon by the national

guard of Château-Renard, April 6.--Petition of Juliat d'Eyguières,

district administrator of Tarascon, April 2 (in relation to

a requisition of 30,000 francs by Camoïn on the commune of

Eyguières).--Letter of M. Borelly, April 30. "Bertin and Rébecqui

have openly protected the infamous Camoïn, and have set him free.

"--Moniteur, XII. 408. Petition of M. Fossin, deputy from Arles.]

[Footnote 2433: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3195. Dispatch of M. Mérard,

royal commissioner at the district court of Apt, Apt, March 15, 1792

(with official report of the Apt municipality and debates of the

district, March 13).--Letter of M. Guillebert, syndic-attorney of

the district March 5.. (He has fled. )--Dispatches of the district

Directory, March 23 and 28. "It must not be supposed for a moment that

either the court or the juge-de-paix will take the least notice of this

circumstance. One step in this direction would, in a week, bring 10,000

men on our hands."]

[Footnote 2434: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3195. Letter of the district

Directory of Apt, March 28. "On the 26th of March 600 armed men,

belonging to the communes of Apt, Viens, Rustrel, etc. betook themselves

to St.-Martin-de-Castillon and, under the pretense of restoring

order, taxed the inhabitants, lodging and feeding themselves at their

charge"--The expeditions extend even to the neighboring departments, one

of them March 23, going to Sault, near Forcalquier, in the Upper-Alps.]

[Footnote 2435: Ib., F7, 3195. On the demand of a number of petitioning

soldiers who went to Aries on the 22d of March, 1792, the department

administration passes an act (September, 1793) granting them each

forty-five francs indemnity. There are 1,916 of them, which makes

86,200 francs "assessed on the goods and property of individuals for the

authors, abettors, and those guilty of the disturbances occasioned by

the party of Chiffonists in the commune of Arles." The municipality of

Aries designates fifty-one individuals, who pay the 86,200 livres,

plus 2,785 francs exchange, and 300 francs for the cost of sojourn and

delays.--Petition of the ransomed, Nov.21, 1792.]

[Footnote 2436: Ib., F7, 3165. Official report of the Directory on the

events which occurred in Aix, April 27, 28, and 29, 1792.]

[Footnote 2437: Michelet, "Histoire de la Révolution Française," III.56

(according to the narratives of aged peasants).--Mercure de France,

April 30, 1791 (letter from an inhabitant of the Comtat).--All public

dues put together (octrois and interest on the debt) did not go beyond

800,000 francs for 126,684 inhabitants. On the contrary, united

with France, it would pay 3,793,000 francs.--André, "Histoire de la

Révolution Avignonaise," I. 61.--The Comtat possessed representative

institutions, an armed general assembly, composed of three bishops,

the elected representative of the nobility, and thirteen consuls of

the leading towns.--Mercure de France, Oct. 15, 1791 (letter from an

inhabitant of the Comtat).--There were no bodies of militia in the

Comtat; the privileges of nobles were of little account. Nobody had the

exclusive right to hunt or fish, while people without property could own

guns and hunt anywhere.]

[Footnote 2438: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3272. Letter of M. Pelet de

la Lozère, prefect of Vaucluse; to the Minister, year VIII. Germinal

30.--Ibid., DXXIV. 3. Letter of M. Mulot, one of the mediating

commissioners, to the Minister, Oct. 10, 1791. "What a country you have

sent me to! It is the land of duplicity. Italianism has struck its roots

deep here, and I fear that they are very hardy."]

[Footnote 2439: The details of these occurrences may be found in André

and in Soulier, "Histoire de la Révolution Avignonaise." The murder of

their seven principal opponents, gentlemen, priests and artisans,

took place June 11, 1790.--"Archives Nationales," DXXIV. 3. The

starting-point of the riots is the hostility of the Jansenist Camus,

deputy to the Constituent Assembly. Several letters, the first from

April, 1790, may be found in this file, addressed to him from the

leading Jacobins of Avignon, Mainvielle, Raphel, Richard, and the rest,

and among others the following (3 July, 1790): "Do not abandon your work,

we entreat you. You, sir, were the first to inspire us with a desire to

be free and to demand our right to unite with a generous nation, from

which we have been severed by fraud."--As to the political means and

enticements, these are always the same. Cf., for instance, this letter

of a protégé, in Avignon, of Camus, addressed to him July 13, 1791: "I

have just obtained from the commune the use of a room inside the Palace,

where I can carry on my tavern business.. My fortune is based on your

kindness... what a distance between you and myself!"]

[Footnote 2440: "Archives Nationales," DXXIV. 3. Report on the events of

Oct.10, 1791.--Ibid., F7, 3197. Letter of the three commissioners to the

municipality of Avignon, April 21, and to the Minister, May 14, 1791.

"The deputies of Orange certify that there were at least 500 French

deserters in the Avignon army. "--In the same reports, May 21 and June

8: "It is not to be admitted that enrolled brigands should establish in

a small territory, surrounded by France on all sides, the most dangerous

school of brigandage that ever disgraced or preyed upon this human

species. "--Letter of M. Villardy, president of the Directory of

the Bouches-du-Rhône May 21. "More than two millions of the national

property is exposed to pillage and total destruction by the new Mandrins

who devastate this unfortunate country. "--Letter of Méglé, recruiting

sergeant of the La Mark regiment, arrested along with two of his

comrades. "The corps of Mandrins which arrested us set us at liberty...

We were arrested because we refused to join them, and on our refusal we

were daily threatened with the gallows."]

[Footnote 2441: Mortimer-Ternaux, I. 379 (note on Jourdan, by Faure,

deputy).--Barbaroux, "Mémoires"(Ed. Dauban), 392. "After the death of

Patrix a general had to be elected. Nobody wanted the place in an army

that had just shown so great a lack of discipline. Jourdan arose and

declared that as far as he was concerned, he was ready to accept

the position. No reply was made. He nominated himself, and asked the

soldiers if they wanted him for general. A drunkard is likely to please

other drunkards; they applauded him, and he was thus proclaimed."]

[Footnote 2442: After a famous brigand in Dauphiny, named Mandrin.--TR.

Mandrin, (Louis) (Saint Étienne-de--Saint-Geoirs, Isère,

1724--Valence, 1755). French smuggler who, after 1750, was active over

an enormous territory with the support of the population; hunted down

by the army, caught, condemned to death to be broken alive on the wheel.

See also Taine's explanation in Ancient Régime page 356 app. (SR).]

[Footnote 2443: Cf. André, passim, and Soulier, passim.--Mercure de

France, June 4, 1791.--"Archives Nationales," F7, 3197. Letter of Madame

de Gabrielli, March 14, 1791. (Her house is pillaged Jan. 10, and she

and her maid escape by the roof.)--Report of the municipal officers of

Tarascon, May 22. "The troop which has entered the district pillages

everything it can lay its hands on."--Letter of the syndic-attorney of

Orange, May 22. "Last Wednesday, a little girl ten years of age, on her

way from Châteauneuf to Courtheson, was violated by one on of them, and

the poor child is almost dead. "--Dispatch of the three commissioners to

the Minister, May 21. "It is now fully proved by men who are perfectly

reliable that the pretended patriots, said to have acted so gloriously

at Sarrians, are cannibals equally execrated both at Avignon and

Carpentras."]

[Footnote 2444: "Archives Nationales," letter of the Directory of

the Bouches-du-Rhône, May 21, 1791.--Deliberations of the Avignon

municipality, associated with the notables and the military committee,

May 15: "The enormous expense attending the pay and food for the

detachments.. .forced contributions... What is most revolting is that

those who are charged with the duty arbitrarily tax the inhabitants,

according as they arc deemed bad or good patriots... The municipality,

the military committee, and the club of the Friends of the Constitution

dared to make a protest; the proscription against them is their reward

for their attachment to the French constitution.]

[Footnote 2445: Letter of M. Boulet, formerly physician in the French

military hospitals and member of the electoral assembly, May 21.]

[Footnote 2446: "Archives Nationales," DXXIv. 16-23, No.3. Narrative of

what took place yesterday, August 21, in the town of Avignon.--Letters

by the mayor, Richard, and two others, Aug. 21.--Letter to the president

of the National Assembly, Aug.22 (with five signatures, in the name of

200 families that had taken refuge in the Ile de la Bartelasse).]

[Footnote 2447: "Archives Nationales," DXXIV. 3.--Letter of M. Laverne,

for M. Canonge, keeper of the Mont-de-Piété. (The electoral assembly of

Vaucluse and the juge-de-paix had forbidden him to give this box into

any other hands.)--Letters of M. Mulot, mediating commissioner, Gentilly

les Sorgues, Oct. 14, 15, 16, 1791.--Letter of M. Laverne, mayor, and

the municipal officers, Avignon, Jan. 6, 1792.--Statement of events

occurring at Avignon, Oct. 16, 17, and 18 (without a signature, but

written at once on the spot).--Official rapport of the provisional

administrators of Avignon, Oct. 16.--Certified copy of the notice

found posted in Avignon in different places this day, Oct. 16 (probably

written by one of the women of the lower class and showing what the

popular feeling was).--A letter written to M. Mulot, Oct. 13' already

contains this phrase: "Finally, even if they delay stopping their

robberies and pillage, misery and the miserable will still remain

"--Testimony of Joseph Sauton, a chasseur in the paid guard of Avignon,

Oct. 17 (an eye-witness of what passed at the Cordeliers).]

[Footnote 2448: André. II.62. Deposition of la Ratapiole.--Death of the

girl Ayme and of Mesdames Niel et Crouzet.--De Dampmartin, II. 2.]

[Footnote 2449: "Archives Nationales," DXXIV, 3. Report on the events

of Oct. 16: "Two sworn priests were killed, which proves that a

counter-revolution had nothing to do with it,.. Six of the municipal

officers were assassinated. They had been elected according to the terms

of the decree; they were the fruit of the popular will at the outbreak

of the Revolution; they were accordingly patriots."--Buchez et Roux,

XII. 420.--Official report of the Commune of Avignon, on the events of

Oct. 16.]

[Footnote 2450: "Archives Nationales," DXXIV. 3. Dispatch of the civil

Commissioners deputized by France (Messrs. Beauregard, Lecesne, and

Champion) to the Minister Jan. 8, 1792. (A long and admirable letter, in

which the difference between the two parties is exhibited, supported by

facts, in refutation of the calumnies of Duprat. The oppressed party is

composed not of royalists, but of Constitutionalists.)]

[Footnote 2451: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3177. Dispatches of the three

commissioners, April 27, May 4, 18, and 21.]

[Footnote 2452: Three hundred and thirty-five witnesses testified during

the trial.--De Dampmartin, I.266. Entry of the French army into Avignon,

Nov. 16, 1791: "All who were rich, except a very small number, had

taken flight or perished. The best houses were all empty or

closed."----Elections for a new municipality were held Nov.26, 1791. Out

of 2,287 active citizens Mayor Levieux de Laverne obtains 2,227

votes, while the municipal officer lowest on the list 1,800. All are

Constitutionalists and conservatives.]

[Footnote 2453: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3196. Official report of

Augier and Fabre, administrators of the Bouches-du-Rhône, Avignon, May

11, 1792.--Moniteur, XII. 313. Report of the Minister of Justice, May

5.--XII. 324. Petition of forty inhabitants of Avignon, May 7.--XII

334. Official report of Pinet, commissioner of the Drôme, sent to

Avignon.--XII. 354 Report of M. Chassaignac and other papers, May

10.--XI. 741 Letter of the civil commissioners, also of the Avignon

municipality, March 23.]

[Footnote 2454: "The French Revolution," vol. I. pp. 344-352, on the

sixth jacquerie, everywhere managed by the Jacobins. Two or three traits

show its spirit and course of action. ("Archives Nationales," F7, 3202.

Letter of the Directory of the district of Aurillac, March 27, 1792,

with official reports.) "On the 20th of March, about forty brigands,

calling themselves patriots and friends of the constitution, force

honest and worthy but very poor citizens in nine or ten of the houses of

Capelle-Viscamp to give them money, generally five francs each person,

and sometimes ten, twenty, and forty francs." Others tear down or

pillage the châteaux of Rouesque, Rode, Marcolès, and Vitrac and drag

the municipal officers along with them. "We, the mayor and municipal

officers of the parish of Vitrac, held a meeting yesterday, March 22,

following the example of our neighboring parishes on the occasion of the

demolition of the châteaux. We marched at the head of our national guard

and that of Salvetat to the said châteaux. We began by hoisting the

national flag and to demolish... The national guard of Boisset, eating

and drinking without stint, entered the château and behaved in the most

brutal manner; for whatever they found in their way, whether clocks,

mirrors, doors, closets, and finally documents, all were made way

with. They even sent off forty of the men to a patriotic village in the

vicinity. They forced the inmates of every house to give them money, and

those who refused were threatened with death." Besides this the national

guard of Boisset carried off the furniture of the château.--There is

something burlesque in the conflicts of the municipalities with the

Jacobin expeditions (letter of the municipal officers of Cottines to the

Directory of St. Louis, March 26). "We are very glad to inform you that

there is a crowd in our parish, amongst which are many belonging to

neighboring parishes; and that they have visited the house of sieur

Tossy and a sum of money of which we do not know the amount is demanded,

and that they will not leave without that sum so that they cam have

something to live on, these people being assembled solely to maintain

the constitution and give greater éclat to the law."]

[Footnote 2455: Mercure de France, numbers for Jan. 1 and 14, 1792

(articles by Mallet du Pan).--" Archives Nationales," F7, 3185, 3186.

Letter of the president of the district of Laon (Aisne) to the Minister,

Feb. 8, 1792: "With respect to the nobles and priests, any mention of

them as trying to sow discord among us indicates a desire to spread

fear. All they ask is tranquility and the regular payment of their

pensions."--De Dampmartin, II. 63 (on the evacuation of Arles, April,

1792). On the illegal approach of the Marseilles army, M. de Dampmartin,

military commander, orders the Arlesians to rise in a body. Nobody comes

forward. Wives hide away their husbands' guns in the night. Only one

hundred volunteers are found to act with the regular troops.]

[Footnote 2456: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3224. Speech of M.

Saint-Amans, vice-president of the Directory of Lot-et-Garonne,

to the mayor of Tonneins, April 20 and the letter of the

syndic-attorney-general to M. Roland, minister, April 22: "According

to the principles of the mayor of Tonneins, all resistance to him

is aristocratic, his doctrine being that all property-owners are

aristocrats. You can readily perceive, sir, that he is not one

of them."--Dubois, formerly a Benedictine and now a Protestant

minister.--Act of the Directory against the municipality of Tonneins,

April 13. The latter appeals to the Legislative Assembly. The mayor and

one of the municipal counselors appear in its name (May 19) at the bar

of the Assembly.]

[Footnote 2457: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3198. Letter of M. Debourges,

one of the three commissioners sent by the National Assembly and the

king, Nov. 2, 1791 (apropos of the Marseilles club). "This club has

quite recently obtained from the Directory of the department, on the

most contemptible allegation, an order requiring of M. de Coincy,

lieutenant-general at Toulon, to send the admirable Ernest regiment out

of Marseilles, and M. de Coincy has yielded."]

[Footnote 2458: For instance (Guillon de Montléon, "Mémoires pour servir

à l'histoire de Lyon," I. 109), the general in command of the national

guard of this large town in 1792 is Juillard, a poor silk-weaver of the

faubourg of the Grande Côte, a former soldier.]

[Footnote 2459: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3215, affair of Plabennec

(very curious, showing the tyrannical spirit of the Jacobins and the

good disposition at bottom of the Catholic peasantry)--The commune of

Brest dispatches against that of Plabennec 400 men, with two cannon and

commissioners chosen by the club.--Many documents, among them: Petition

of 150 active citizens of Brest, May 16, 1791. Deliberations of the

council-general and commune of Brest, May 17. Letter of the Directory of

the district, May 17 (very eloquent). Deliberations of the municipality

of Plabennec, May 20. Letter of the municipality of Brest to the

minister, May 21. Deliberations of the department Directory, June 13.]

[Footnote 2460: Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 376 (session of the Directory

of the Pas-du-Calais, July 4, 1792). The petition, signed by 127

inhabitants of Arras, is presented to the Directory by Robespierre

the younger and Geoffroy. The administrators are treated as impostors,

conspirators, etc., while the president, listening to these refinements,

says to his colleagues: "Gentlemen, let us sit down; we can attend to

insults sitting as well as standing."]

[Footnote 2461: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3223. Letter of M. Valéry,

syndic-attorney of the department, April 4, 1792.]

[Footnote 2462: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3220. Extract from the

deliberations of the department Directory and letter to the king,

Jan.28, 1792.--Letter of M. Lafiteau, president of the Directory,

Jan. 30. (The mob is composed of from five to six hundred persons. The

president is wounded on the forehead by a sword-cut and obliged to leave

the town.) Feb. 20, following this, a deputy of the department denounces

the Directory as unpatriotic.]

[Footnote 2463: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3223. Letter of M. de Riolle,

colonel of the gendarmerie, Jan. 19, 1792.--"One hundred members of the

club Friends of Liberty" come and request the brigadier's discharge.

On the following day, after a meeting of the same club, "four hundred

persons move to the barracks to send off or exterminate the brigadier."]

[Footnote 2464: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3219. Letter of M. Sainfal,

Toulouse, March 4, 1792.--Letter of the department Directory, March 14.]

[Footnote 2465: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3229. Letter of M. de

Narbonne, minister, to his colleague M. Cahier, Feb. 3, 1792.--"The

municipality of Auch has persuaded the under-officers and soldiers

of the 1st battalion that their chiefs were making preparation to

withdraw."--The same with the municipality and club of the Navarreins.

"All the officers except three have been obliged to leave and send in

their resignations."--F7, 3225. The same to the same, March 8.--The

municipality of Rennes orders the arrest of Col. de Savignac, and four

other officers. Mercure de France, Feb. 18, 1792. De Dampmartin, I. 230;

II. 70 (affairs of Landau, Lauterbourg, and Avignon).]

[Footnote 2466: "'The French Revolution," I. 344 and following

pages. Many other facts could be added to those cited in this

volume.--"Archives Nationales," F7, 3219. Letter of M. Neil,

administrator of Haute-Garonne, Feb. 27, 1792. "The constitutional

priests and the club of the canton of Montestruc suggested to the

inhabitants that all the abettors of unsworn priests and of aristocrats

should be put to ransom and laid under contribution."--Cf. 7, 3193,

(Aveyron), F7, 3271 (Tarn), etc.]

[Footnote 2467: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3200. Letter of the

syndic-attorney of Bayeux, May 14, 1792, and letter of the Bayeux

Directory, May 21. "The dubs should be schools of patriotism; they have

become the terror of it. If this scandalous struggle against the law and

legitimate authority does not soon cease liberty, a constitution, and

safeguards for the French people will no longer exist"]

[Footnote 2468: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3253. Letter, of the

Directory of the Bas-Rhin, April 26, 1792, and of Dietrich, Mayor

of Strasbourg, May 8. (The Strasbourg club had publicly invited

the citizens to take up arms, "to vigorously pursue priests and

administrators." )--Letter of the Besançon club to M. Dietrich, May 3.

"If the constitution depended on the patriotism or the perfidy of a few

magistrates in one department, like that of the Bas-Rhin, for instance,

we might pay you some attention, and all the freemen of the empire would

then stoop to crush you. "--Therefore the Jacobin clubs of the Upper and

Lower Rhine send three deputies to the Paris club.]

[Footnote 2469: Moniteur, XII. 558, May 19, 1792. "Letter addressed

through patriotic journalists to all clubs of the Friends of

the Constitution by the patriotic central society, formed at

Clermont-Ferrand." (there is the same centralization between Lyons and

Bordeaux.)]

[Footnote 2470: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3198. Report of Commissioners

Bertin and Rebecqui, April 3, 1792.--Cf. Dumouriez, book II. ch. V. The

club at Nantes wants to send commissioners to inspect the foundries of

the Ile d'Indrette.]

[Footnote 2471: Moniteur, X. 420. Report of M. Cahier, Minister of the

Interior, Feb. 18, 1792. "In all the departments freedom of worship has

been more or less violated... Those who hold power are cited before

the tribunals of the people as their enemies."--On the radical and

increasing powerlessness of the King and his ministers, Cf. Moniteur,

XI. 11 (Dec. 31, 1791).--Letter of the Minister of Finances.--XII. 200

(April 23, 1792), report of the Minister of the Interior.--XIII. 53

(July 4, 1792), letter of the Minister of Justice.]

[Footnote 2472: Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 369. Letter of the Directory of

the Basses-Pyrénées, June 25, 1792.--"Archives Nationales," F7, 3200.

Letter of the Directory of Calvados to the Minister of the Interior,

Aug. 3. "We are not agents of the king or his ministers."--Moniteur,

XIII. 103. Declaration of M. de Joly, minister, in the name of his

colleagues (session of July 10, 1792).]