in its own canton is, according to the Jacobins, a natural right. It
becomes the written law from the day that the National Assembly declares
the country in danger. "From that date," says their most widely read
Journal,[3202] and by the mere fact of that declaration, "the people of
France are assembled and insurgent. They have repossessed themselves of
the sovereign power." Their magistrates, their deputies, all constituted
authorities, return to nothingness, their essential state. And you,
temporary and revocable representatives, "you are nothing but presiding
officers for the people; you have nothing to do but to collect their
votes, and to announce the result when these shall have been cast with
due solemnity."--Nor is this the theory of the Jacobins only; it is also
official theory. The National Assembly approves of the insurrection,
recognizes the Commune, keeps in the background, abdicates as far as
possible, and only remains provisionally in office in order that the
place may not be left vacant. It abstains from exercising power, even
to provide its own successors; it merely "invites" the French people to
organize a national convention; it confesses that it has "no right to
put the exercise of sovereign power under binding rules"; it does no
more than "indicate to citizens" the rules for the elections "to which
it invites them to conform." Meanwhile it is subject to the will of the
sovereign people, then so-called; it dares not resist their crimes; it
interferes with assassins only by entreaties.--Much more; it authorizes
them, either by ministerial signature or counter-signature, to begin
their work elsewhere. Roland has signed Fournier's commission to
Orleans; Danton has sent the circular of Marat over all France. To
reconstruct the departments the council of ministers sends the most
infuriated members of the Commune and the party, Chaumette, Fréron,
Westerman, Auduoin, Huguenin, Momoro, Couthon, Billaud-Varennes,[3204]
and others still more tainted and brutal, who preach the purest Jacobin
doctrine. "They announce openly[3205] that laws no longer exist; that
since the people are sovereign, every one is master; that each fraction
of the nation can take such measures as suit it, in the name of the
country's safety; that they have the right to tax corn, to seize it in
the laborer's fields, to cut off the heads of the farmers who refuse to
bring their grain to market." At Lisieux, agrarian law is preached
by Fufour and Momoro. At Douai, other preachers from Paris say to the
popular club, "Prepare scaffolds; let the walls of the city bristle
with gallows, and hang upon them every man who does not accept our
opinions."--Nothing is more logical, more in conformity with their
principles. The journals, deducing their consequences, explain to
the people the use they ought to make of their reconquered
sovereignty.[3206] "Under the present circumstances, community of
property is the law; everything belongs to everybody." Besides, "an
equalizing of fortunes must be brought about, a leveling, which shall
abolish the vicious principle of the domination of the rich over the
poor." This reform is all the more pressing because "the people,
the real sovereign people, have nearly as many enemies as there are
proprietors, large merchants, financiers, and wealthy men. In a time
of revolution, we must regard all men who have more than enough as the
enemies, secret or avowed, of popular government." Therefore, "let the
people of each commune, before they quit their homes" for the army, "put
all those who are suspected of not loving liberty in a secure place, and
under the safe-keeping of the law; let them be kept shut up until war
is over; let them be guarded with pikes," and let each one of their
guardians receive thirty sous per day.
* As for the partisans of the fallen government, the members of the
Paris directory, "with Roederer and Blondel at their head,"
* as for the general officers, "with Lafayette and d'Affry at their
head,"
* as for "the critical deputies of the Constituent Assembly, with
Barnave and Lameth at their head,"
* as for the Feuillant deputies of the Legislative Assembly, "with
Ramond and Jaucourt at their head,"[3207]
* as for "all those who consented to soil their hands with the profits
of the civil list,"
* as for "the 40,000 hired assassins who were gathered at the palace on
the night of August 9-10,
they are all (say the Jacobins) furious monsters, who ought to be
strangled to the last one. People! you have risen to your feet; stand
firm until not one of these conspirators remains alive. Your humanity
requires you for once to show yourselves inexorable. Strike terror to
the wicked. The proscriptions which we impose on you as a duty, are the
sacred wrath of your country."
There is no mistaking this; it is a tocsin sounding against all the
powers that be, against all social superiority, against priests and
nobles, proprietors, capitalists, the leaders of business and industry;
it is sounding, in short, against the whole élite of France, whether of
old or recent origin. The Jacobins of Paris, by their journals, their
examples, their missionaries, give the signal; and in the provinces
their kindred spirits, imbued with the same principles, only wait the
summons to hurl themselves forward.
II.--In several departments it establishes itself in advance.
An instance of this in the Var.
In many departments[3208] they have forestalled the summons. In the Var,
for example, pillages and proscriptions have begun with the month of
May. According to custom, they first seize upon the castles and the
monasteries, although these have become national property, at one time
alleging as a reason for this that the administration "is too slow
in carrying out sentence against the émigrés," and again, that "the
château, standing on an eminence, weighs upon the inhabitants."[3209]
There is scarcely a village in France that does not contain twoscore
wretches who are always ready to line their pockets, which is just
the number of thieves who thoroughly sacked the château of Montaroux,
carrying off "furniture, produce, clothing, even the jugs and bottles in
the cellar." There are the same doings by the same band at the chateau
of Tournon; the château of Salerne is burned, that of Flagose is pulled
down; the canal of Cabris is destroyed; then the convent of Montrieux,
the châteaux of Grasse, of Canet, of Régusse, of Brovaz, and many
others, all devastated, and the devastations are made "daily."--It is
impossible to suppress this country brigandage. The reigning dogma,
weakening authority in the magistrates' hands, and the clubs, "which
cover the department," have spread the fermentation of anarchy
everywhere. "Administrators, judges, municipal officers, all who are
invested with any authority, and who have the courage to use it in
forcing respect for law, are one by one denounced by public opinion as
enemies of the constitution and of liberty; because, people say, they
talk of nothing but the law, as if they did not know that the will of
the people makes the law, and that we are the people."[3210] This is the
real principle; here, as at Paris, it instantly begets its consequences.
"In many of these clubs nothing is discussed but the plundering of
estates and cutting off the heads of aristocrats. And who are designated
by this infamous title? In the cities, the great traders and rich
proprietors; in the country, those whom we call the bourgeois;
everywhere, all peaceable citizens, the friends of order, who wish to
enjoy, under the shadow of the protecting law, the blessings of the
Constitution. Such was the rage of their denunciations that in one of
these clubs a good and brave peasant was denounced as an aristocrat;
the whole of his aristocracy consisting in his having said to those who
plundered the château of their seigneur, already mentioned, that they
would not enjoy in peace the fruits of their crime."--Here is the
Jacobin programme of Paris in advance, namely, the division of the
French into two classes, the spoliation of one, the despotism of the
other; the destruction of the well-to-do, orderly and honest under the
dictation of those who are not so.
Here, as in Paris, the programme is carried out step by step. At
Beausset, near Toulon, a man named Vidal, captain of the National Guard,
"twice set at liberty by virtue of two consecutive amnesties,"[3211]
punishes not resistance merely, but even murmurs, with death. Two old
men, one of them a notary, the other a turner, having complained of him
to the public prosecutor, the general alarm is beaten, a gathering of
armed men is formed in the street, and the complainants are clubbed,
riddled with balls, and their bodies thrown into a pit. Many of their
friends are wounded, others take to flight; seven houses are sacked,
and the municipality, "either overawed or in complicity," makes no
interference until all is over. There is no way of pursuing the guilty
ones; the foreman of the jury, who goes, escorted by a thousand men, to
hold an inquest, can get no testimony. The municipal officers feign to
have heard nothing, neither the general alarm nor the guns fired under
their windows. The other witnesses say not a word; but they declare,
sotto voce, the reason for their silence. If they should testify, "they
would be sure of being killed as soon as the troops should have gone
away." The foreman of the jury is himself menaced; after remaining
three-quarters of an hour, he finds it prudent to leave the city.--After
this the clubs of Beausset and of the neighborhood, gaining hardihood
from the impotence of the law, break out into incendiary propositions:
"It is announced that after the troops retreat, nineteen houses more
will be sacked; it is proposed to behead all aristocrats, that is to
say, all the land-owners in the country." Many have fled, but their
flight does not satisfy the clubs. Vidal orders those of Beausset who
took refuge in Toulon to return at once; otherwise their houses will
be demolished, and that very day, in fact, by way of warning, several
houses in Beausset, among them that of a notary, are either pulled down
or pillaged from top to bottom; all the riff-raff of the town are at
work, "half-drunken men and women," and, as their object is to rob
and drink, they would like to begin again in the principal town of the
canton.--The club, accordingly, has declared that "Toulon would soon see
a new St. Bartholomew"; it has allies there, and arrangements are made;
each club in the small towns of the vicinity will furnish men, while
all will march under the leadership of the Toulon club. At Toulon, as at
Beausset, the municipality will let things take their course, while the
proceedings complained of by the public prosecutor and the district and
department administrators will be applied to them. They may send reports
to Paris, and denounce patriots to the National Assembly and the King,
if they choose; the club will reply to their scribbling with acts. Their
turn is coming. Lanterns and sabers are also found at Toulon, and the
faction murders them because they have lodged complaints against the
murderers.
III.--Each Jacobin band a dictator in its own neighborhood.
Saint-Afrique during the interregnum.
By what it dared to do when the government still stood on its feet we
may we may imagine what it will do during the interregnum. Facts, then,
as always, furnish the best picture, and, to obtain a knowledge of the
new sovereign, we must first observe him on a limited stage.
On the reception of the news of the 10th of August, the Jacobins of
Saint-Afrique, a small town of the Aveyron,[3212] likewise undertook to
save the country, and, to this end, like their fellows in other boroughs
of the district, they organized themselves into an "Executive Power."
This institution is of an old date, especially in the South; it had
flourished for eighteen months from Lyons to Montpellier, from Agen
to Nîmes; but after the interregnum, its condition is still more
flourishing; it consists of a secret society, the object of which is to
carry out practically the motions and instructions of the club.[3213]
Ordinarily, they work at night, wearing masks or slouched hats, with
long hair falling over the face. A list of their names, each with a
number opposite to it, is kept at the meeting-place of the society. A
triangular club, decked with a red ribbon, serves them both as weapon
and badge; with this club, each member "may go anywhere," and do what
seems good to him. At Saint-Afrique they number about eighty, among whom
must be counted the rascals forming the seventh company of Tarn, staying
in the town; their enrollment in the band is effected by constantly
"preaching pillage to them," and by assuring them that the contents
of the châteaux in the vicinity belong to them.[3214]--Not that
the châteaux excite any fear; most of them are empty; neither in
Saint-Afrique nor in the environs do the men of the ancient régime form
a party; for many months orthodox priests and the nobles have had
to fly, and now the well-to-do people are escaping. The population,
however, is Catholic; many of the shop-keepers, artisans, and farmers
are discontented, and the object now is to make these laggards keep
step.--In the first place, they order women of every condition,
work-girls and servants, to attend mass performed by the sworn curé,
for, if they do not, they will be made acquainted with the cudgel.--In
the second place, all the suspected are disarmed; they enter their
houses during the night in force, unexpectedly, and, besides their gun,
carry off their provisions and money. A certain grocer who persists
in his lukewarmness is visited a second time; seven or eight men, one
evening, break open his door with a stick of timber; he takes refuge on
his roof, dares not descend until the following day at dawn, and
finds that everything in his store has been either stolen or broken
to pieces.[3215] In the third place, there is "punishment of the
ill-disposed." At nine o'clock in the evening a squad knocks at the door
of a distrusted shoemaker; it is opened by his apprentice; six of the
ruffians enter, and one of them, showing a paper, says to the poor
fellow:
"I come on the part of the Executive Power, by which you are condemned
to a beating."
"What for?"
"If you have not done anything wrong, you are thinking about it."[3216]
And so they beat him in the presence of his family. Many others like
him are seized and unmercifully beaten on their own premises.--As to
the expenses of the operation, these must be defrayed by the malevolent.
These, therefore, are taxed according to their occupations; this or that
tanner or dealer in cattle has to pay 36 francs; another, a hatter,
72 francs; otherwise "they will be attended to that very night at nine
o'clock." Nobody is exempt, if he is not one of the band. Poor old men
who have nothing but a five-franc assignat are compelled to give that;
they take from the wife of an unskilled laborer, whose savings consist
of seven sous and a half, the whole of this, exclaiming, "that is good
for three mugs of wine."[3217] When money is not to be had, they
take goods in kind; they make short work of cellars, bee-hives,
clothes-presses, and poultry-yards. They eat, drink, and break,
giving themselves up to it heartily, not only in the town, but in the
neighboring villages. One detachment goes to Brusque, and proceeds so
vigorously that the mayor and syndic-attorney scamper off across the
fields, and dare not return for a couple of days.[3218] At Versol, the
dwelling of the sworn curé, and at Lapeyre, that of the sworn vicar, are
both sacked; the money is stolen and the casks are emptied. In the house
of the curé of Douyre, "furniture, clothes, cabinets, and window-sashes
are destroyed"; they feast on his wine and the contents of his cupboard,
throw away what they could not consume, then go in search of the curé
and his brother, a former Carthusian, shouting that "their heads must
be cut off; and sausage-meat made of the rest of their bodies!" Some of
them, a little shrewder than the others, light on a prize; for example,
a certain Bourguière, a trooper of the line, seized a vineyard belonging
to an old lady, the widow of a physician and former mayor;[3219] he
gathered in its crop, "publicly in broad daylight," for his own
benefit, and warns the proprietress that he will kill her if she makes
a complaint against him, and, as she probably does complain of him, he
obliges her, in the name of the Executive Power, to pay him fifty crowns
damages.--As to the common Jacobin gangsters, their reward, besides food
and drink, is perfect licentiousness. In all houses invaded at eleven
o'clock in the evening. Whilst the father flies, or the husband screams
under the cudgel, one of the villains stations himself at the entrance
with a drawn saber in his hands, and the wife or daughter remains at
the mercy of the others; they seize her by the neck and maintain their
hold.[3220] In vain does she scream for help. "Nobody in Saint-Afrique
dares go outdoors at night"; nobody comes, and, the following day, the
juge-de-paix dares not receive the complaint, because "he is afraid
himself."--Accordingly, on the 23rd of September, the municipal officers
and the town-clerk, who made their rounds, were nearly beaten to death
with clubs and stones; on the 10th of October another municipal officer
was left for dead; a fortnight before this, a lieutenant of volunteers,
M. Mazières, "trying to do his duty, was assassinated in his bed by his
own men." Naturally, nobody dares whisper a word, and, after two months
of this order of things, it may be presumed that at the municipal
elections of the 21st of October, the electors will be docile. In any
event, as a precaution, their notification eight days before, according
to law, is dispensed with; as extra precaution, they are informed that
if they do not vote for the Executive Power, they will have to do with
the triangular cudgel.[3221] Consequently, most of them abstain; in a
town of over 600 active citizens, 40 votes give a majority; Bourgougnon
and Sarrus, the two chiefs of the Executive Power, are elected, one
mayor, and the other syndic-attorney, and henceforth the authority they
seized by force is conferred on them by the law.
IV.--Ordinary practices of the Jacobin dictatorship.
The stationary companies of the clubs.--Their personnel.
--Their leaders.
This is roughly the type of government which spring up in every commune
of France after the 10th of August; the club reigns, but the form
and processes of its dictatorship are different, according to
circumstances.--Sometimes it operates directly through an executive gang
or by lancing an excited mob; sometimes it operates indirectly through
the electoral assembly it has had elected, or through the municipality,
which is its accomplice. If the administrations are Jacobin, it governs
through them. If they are passive, it governs alongside of them. If they
are refractory, it purges them,[3222] or breaks them up,[3223] and, to
put them down, it resorts not only to blows, but even to murder[3224]
and massacre.[3225] Between massacre and threats, all intermediaries
meet, the revolutionary seal being everywhere impressed with
inequalities of relief.
In many places, threats suffice. In regions where the temperament of
the people is cool, and where there is no resistance, it is pointless to
resort to assault and battery. What is the use is killing in a town like
Arras, for instance, where, on the day of the civic oath, the president
of the department, a prudent millionaire, stalks through the streets arm
in arm with Aunty Duchesne, who sells cookies down in a cellar, where,
on election days, the townspeople, through cowardice, elect the club
candidates under the pretense that "rascals and beggars" must be sent
off to Paris to purge the town of them![3226] It would be labor lost to
strike people who grovel so well.[3227] The faction is content to mark
them as mangy curs, to put them in pens, keep them on a leash, and to
annoy them.[3228] It posts at the entrance of the guard-room a list of
inhabitants related to an émigré; it makes domiciliary visits; it draws
up a fancied list of the suspected, on which list all that are rich are
found inscribed. It insults and disarms them; it confines them to the
town; it forbids them to go outside of it even on foot; it orders them
to present themselves daily before its committee of public safety; it
condemns them to pay their taxes for a year in twenty-four hours; it
breaks the seals of their letters; it confiscates, demolishes, and sells
their family tombs in the cemeteries. This is all in order, as is the
religious persecution,
* with the irruption into private chapels where mass is said,
* with blows with gun-stocks and the fist bestowed on the officiating
priest,
* with the obligation of orthodox parents to have their children
baptized by the schismatic curé,
* with the expulsion of nuns, and
* with the pursuit, imprisonment and transportation of unsworn
ecclesiastics.
But if the domination of the club is not always a bloody one, the
judgments are always those of an armed man, who, putting his gun to
his shoulder, aims at the wayfarers whom he has stopped on the road.
Generally they kneel down, tender their purses, and the shot is not
fired. But the gun is cocked, nevertheless, and, to be certain of this,
we have only to look at the shriveled hand grasping the trigger. We are
reminded of those swarms of banditti which infested the country under
the ancient regime;[3229] the double-girdle of smugglers and receivers
embraced within twelve hundred leagues of internal excise-duties, the
poachers abounding on the four hundred leagues of guarded captaincies,
the deserters so numerous that in eight years they amounted to sixty
thousand, the beggars with which the prisons overflowed, the thousands
of thieves and vagabonds thronging the highways, quarry of the police
which the Revolution let loose and armed, and which, in its turn,
from being prey, became the hunters of game. For three years these
strong-armed prowlers have served as the hard-core of local jacqueries;
at the present time they form the staff of the universal jacquerie. At
Nîmes,[3230] the head of the Executive Power is a "dancing-master." The
two leading demagogues of Toulouse are a shoemaker, and an actor who
plays valets.[3231] At Toulon,[3232] the club, more absolute than
any Asiatic despot, is recruited from among the destitute, sailors,
harbor-hands, soldiers, "stray peddlers," while its president,
Sylvestre, sent down from Paris, is a criminal of the lowest degree. At
Rheims,[3233] the principal leader is an unfrocked priest, married to
a nun, aided by a baker, who, an old soldier, came near being hung.
Elsewhere,[3234] it is some deserter tried for robbery; here, a cook
or innkeeper, and there, a former lackey The oracle of Lyons is an
ex-commercial traveler, an emulator of Marat, named Châlier, whose
murderous delirium is complicated with morbid mysticism. The acolytes of
Châlier are a barber, a hair-dresser, an old-clothes dealer, a mustard
and vinegar manufacturer, a cloth-dresser, a silk-worker, a gauze-maker,
while the time is near when authority is to fall into still meaner
hands, those of "the dregs of the female population," who, aided by "a
few bullies," elect "female commissaries," tax food, and for three days
pillage the warehouses.[3235] Avignon has for its masters the Glacière
bandits. Arles is under the yoke of its porters and bargemen. Marseilles
belongs to "a band of wretches spawned out of houses of debauchery,
who recognize neither laws nor magistrates, and ruling the city through
terror."[3236]--It is not surprising that such men, invested with such
power, use it in conformity with their nature, and that the interregnum,
which is their reign, spreads over France a circle of devastations,
robberies, and murders.
V.--The companies of traveling volunteers.
Quality of the recruits.--Election of officers.--Robberies
and murders.
Usually, the stationary band of club members has an auxiliary band of
the same species which roves about. I mean the volunteers, who inspire
more fear and do more harm, because they march in a body and are
armed.[3237] Like their brethren in the ordinary walks of life, many of
them are town and country vagabonds; most of them, living from hand to
mouth, have been attracted by the pay of fifteen sous a day; they
have become soldiers for lack of work and bread.[3238] Each commune,
moreover, having been called upon for its army contingent, "they have
picked up whatever could be found in the towns, all the scamps hanging
around street-corners, men with no pursuit, and, in the country,
wretches and vagabonds of every description; nearly all have been forced
to march by money or drawing lots," and it is probable that the
various administrations thought that "in this way they would purge
France."[3239] To the wretched "bought by the communes," add others
of the same stamp, procured by the rich as substitutes for their
sons.[3240] Thus do they pick over the social dunghill and obtain at a
discount the natural and predestined inmates of houses of correction,
poor-houses and hospitals, with an utter disregard of quality, even
physical, "the halt, the maimed and the blind," the deformed and the
defective, "some too old, and others too young and too feeble to support
the fatigues of war, others so small as to stand a foot lower than their
guns," a large number of boys of sixteen, fourteen, and thirteen; in
short, the reprobate of great cities as we now see him, stunted, puny,
and naturally insolent and insurgent.[3241] "One-third of them are found
unfit for service" on reaching the frontier.[3242]--But, before reaching
the frontier, they act like "pirates" on the road.--The others, with
sounder bodies and better hearts, become, under the discipline of
constant danger, good soldiers at the end of a year. In the mean time,
however, they make no less havoc, for, if they are less disposed to
robbery, they are more fanatical. Nothing is more delicate than the
military organization, owing to the fact that it represents force, and
man is always tempted to abuse force; for any free company of soldiers
to remain inoffensive in a civil community, it must be restrained by
the strongest curbs, which curbs, either within or without, were wholly
wanting with the volunteers of 1792.[3243]
Artisans, peasants, the petty bourgeois class, youthful enthusiasts
stimulated by the prevailing doctrine, they are still much more Jacobin
than patriotic; the dogma of popular sovereignty, like a heady wine,
has turned their inexperienced brains; they are fully persuaded that,
"destined to contend with the enemies of the republic, is an honor which
permits them to exact and to dare all things."[3244] The least among
them believes himself superior to the law, "as formerly a Condé,[3245]"
and he becomes king on a small scale, self-constituted, an autocratic
justiciary and avenger of wrongs, a supporter of patriots and the
scourge of aristocrats, the disposer of lives and property, and, without
delay or formality, taking it upon himself to complete the Revolution on
the spot in every town he passes through.--He is not to be hindered in
all this by his officers. "Having created his chiefs, they are of no
more account to him than any of a man's creations usually are"; far from
being obeyed, the officers are not even respected, "and that comes from
resorting to analogies without considering military talent or moral
superiority."[3246] Through the natural effects of the system of
election, all grades of rank have fallen upon demagogues and blusterers.
"The intriguers, loud-talkers, and especially the great boozers, have
prevailed against the capable."[3247]
Besides, to retain his popularity, the new officer will go to a bar and
drink with his men,[3248] and he must show himself more Jacobin than
they are, from which it follows that, not content with tolerating
their excesses, he provokes them.--Hence, after March, 1792, and even
before,[3249] we see the volunteers behaving in France as in a conquered
country. Sometimes they make domiciliary visits, and break everything to
pieces in the house they visit. Sometimes, they force the re-baptism
of infants by the conventionalist curé, and shoot at the traditional
father. Here, of their own accord, they make arrests; there, they
join in with mutineers and stop grain-boats; elsewhere, they force a
municipality to tax bread; farther on, they burn or sack châteaux, and,
if a mayor happens to inform them that the château now belongs to the
nation and not to an émigré; they reply with "thrusts," and threaten to
cut his throat.[3250] As the 10th of August draws near, the phantom
of authority, which still occasionally imposed on them, completely
vanishes, and "they risk nothing in killing" whoever displeases
them.[3251] Exasperated by the perils they are about to encounter on
the frontier, they begin war in the interior. Provisionally, and as a
precaution, they slaughter probable aristocrats on the way, and treat
the officers, nobles and priests they meet on the road worse than their
club allies. For, on the one hand, being merely on the march, they are
much safer from punishment than local murderers; in a week, lost in
the army, they will not be sought for in camp, and they may slay
with perfect security. On the other hand, as they are strangers and
newcomers, they are not able, like local persons, to identify a person.
So on account of a name, a dress, qualifications, a coffee-house rumor,
or an appearance, however venerable and harmless a man may be, they kill
him, not because they know him, but because they do not know him.
VI.--A tour of France in the cabinet of the Minister of the Interior.
From Carcassonne to Bordeaux.--Bordeaux to Caen.--The north
and the east.--Châlons-sur-Marne to Lyons.--The Comtat and
Provence.--The tone and the responses of the Jacobin
administration.--The programme of the party.
Let us enter the cabinet of Roland, Minister of the Interior, a
fortnight after the opening of the Convention, and suppose him
contemplating, some evening, in miniature, a picture of the state of the
country administered by him. His clerks have placed the correspondence
of the past few weeks on his table, arranged in proper order; his
replies are noted in brief on the margin; he has a map of France before
him, and, placing his finger on the southern section, he moves it along
the great highway across the country. At every stage he recurs to the
paper file of letters, and passing innumerable reports of violence, he
merely gives his attention to the great revolutionary exploits.[3252]
Madame Roland, I imagine, works with her husband, and the couple,
sitting together alone under the lamp, ponder over the doings of the
ferocious brute which they have set free in the provinces the same as in
Paris.
Their eyes go first to the southern extremity of France. There,[3253]
on the canal of the Deux-Mers, at Carcassonne, the population has seized
three boats loaded with grain, demanded provisions, then a lower prices
of bread, then guns and cannon from the magazine, and, lastly, the heads
of the administrators; an inspector-general has been wounded by an axe,
and the syndic-attorney of the department, M. Verdie; massacred.--The
Minister follows with his eye the road from Carcassonne to Bordeaux, and
on the right and on the left he finds traces of blood. At Castres,[3254]
a report is spread that a dealer in grain was trying to raise the price,
whereupon a mob gathers, and, to save the dealer, he is placed in the
guard-house. The volunteers, however, force open the guard-house, and
throw the man out of the first-story window; they then finish him off
with "blows with clubs and weights," drag his body along the street
and cast it into the river.--The evening before, at Clairac,[3255] M.
Lartigue-Langa, an unsworn priest, pursued through the street by a troop
of men and women, who wanted to remove his cassock and set him on an
ass, found refuge, with great difficulty, in his country-house. They
go there for him, however, fetch him back to the public promenade,
and there they kill him. A number of brave fellows who interfered were
charged with incivism, and severely handled. Repression is impossible;
the department writes to the Minister that "at this time it would be
impolitic to follow the matter up." Roland knows that by experience. The
letters in his hands show him that there, as in Paris, murder engenders
murder. M. d'Alespée; a gentleman, has just been assassinated at Nérac;
"all reputable citizens formed around him a rampart with their bodies,"
but the rabble prevailed, and the murderers, "through their obscurity,"
escaped.--The Minister's finger stops at Bordeaux. There the federation
festivities are marked with a triple assassination.[3256] In order to
let this dangerous moment pass by, M. de Langoiran, vicar-general of
the archbishopric, had retired half a league off; in the village of
Cauderan, to the residence of an octogenarian priest, who, like himself;
had never meddled with public matters. On the 15th of July the National
Guards of the village, excited by the speeches of the previous night,
have come to the residence to pick them up, and moreover, a third priest
belonging in the neighborhood. There is nothing to lay to their charge;
neither the municipal officers, nor the justices before whom they are
brought, can avoid declaring them innocent. As a last recourse, they are
conducted to Bordeaux, before the Directory of the department. But it is
getting dark, and the riotous crowd becoming impatient, makes an
attack on them. The octogenarian "receives so many blows that he cannot
recover"; the abbé du Puy is knocked down and dragged along by a rope
attached to his feet; M. de Langoirac's head is cut off, carried about
on a pike, taken to his house and presented to the servant, who is
told that "her master will not come home to supper." The torment of the
priests has lasted from five o'clock in the morning to seven o'clock in
the evening, and the municipal authorities were duly advised; but
they cannot put themselves out of the way to give succor; they are too
seriously occupied in erecting a liberty-pole.
Route from Bordeaux to Caen.--The Minister's finger turns to the north,
and stops at Limoges. The day following the federation has been here
celebrated the same as at Bordeaux.[3257] An unsworn priest, the abbé
Chabrol, assailed by a gang of men and women, is first conducted to
the guard-house and then to the dwelling of the juge-de-paix; for his
protection a warrant of arrest is gotten out, and he is kept under
guard, in sight, by four chasseurs, in one of the rooms. But the
populace are not satisfied with this. In vain do the municipal officers
appeal to it, in vain do the gendarmes interpose themselves between it
and the prisoner; it rushes in upon them and disperses them. Meanwhile,
volleys of stones smash in the windows, and the entrance door yields to
the blows of axes; about thirty of the villains scale the windows, and
pass the priest down like a bale of goods. A few yards off, "struck down
with clubs and other instruments," he draws his last breath, his head
"crushed" by twenty mortal wounds.--Farther up, towards Orleans, Roland
reads the following dispatches, taken from the file for Loiret:[3258]
"Anarchy is at its height," writes one of the districts to the Directory
of the department; "there is no longer recognition of any authority; the
administrators of the district and of the municipalities are insulted,
and are powerless to enforce respect.... Threats of slaughter, of
destroying houses and giving them up to pillage prevail; plans are made
to tear down all the châteaux. The municipal authorities of Achères,
along with many of the inhabitants, have gone to Oison and Chaussy,
where everything is smashed, broken up and carried off On the 16th of
September six armed men went to the house of M. de Vaudeuil and obliged
him to return the sum of 300 francs, for penalties pretended to have
been paid by them. We have been notified that M. Dedeley will be visited
at Achères for the same purpose to-day. M. de Lory has been similarly
threatened... Finally, all those people there say that they want no more
local administrations or tribunals, that the law is in their own hands,
and they will execute it. In this extremity we have decided on the only
safe course, which is to silently accept all the outrages inflicted upon
us. We have not called upon you for protection, for we are well aware
of the embarrassment you labor under."--The best part of the National
Guard, indeed, having been disarmed at the county-town, there is no
longer an armed force to put riots down. Consequently, at this same
date,[3259] the populace, increased by the afflux of "strangers" and
ordinary nomads, hang a corn-inspector, plant his head on the end of a
pike, drag his body through the streets, sack five houses and burn the
furniture of a municipal officer in front of his own door. Thereupon,
the obedient municipality sets the arrested rioters free, and lowers the
price of bread one-sixth. Above the Loire, the dispatches of Orne and
Calvados complete the picture. "Our district," writes a lieutenant of
the gendarmerie,[3260] "is a prey to brigandage... About thirty rascals
have just sacked the château of Dampierre. Calls for men are constantly
made upon us," which we cannot satisfy, "because the call is general
on all sides." The details are curious, and here, notwithstanding the
Minister's familiarity with popular misdeeds, he cannot avoid noting
one extortion of a new species. "The inhabitants of the villages[3261]
collect together, betake themselves to different chateaux, seize the
wives and children of their proprietors, and keep them as bail for
promises of reimbursement which they force the latter to sign, not
merely for feudal taxes, but, again, for expenses to which this taxation
may have given rise," first under the actual proprietor and then under
his predecessors; in the mean time they install themselves on the
premises, demand payments for their time, devastate the buildings on the
place, and sell the furniture.--All this is accompanied with the
usual slaughter. The Directory of the department of Orne advises the
Minister[3262] that "a former noble has been killed (homicide) in the
canton of Sepf, an ex-curé in the town of Bellême, an unsworn priest in
the canton of Putanges, an ex-capuchin in the territory of Alençon." The
same day, at Caen, the syndic-attorney of Calvados, M. Bayeux, a man
of sterling merit, imprisoned by the local Jacobins, has just been
shot down in the street and bayoneted, while the National Assembly was
passing a decree proclaiming his innocence and ordering him to be set at
liberty.[3263]
Route of the East.--At Rouen, in front of the Hôtel-de-ville, the
National Guard, stoned for more than an hour, finally fire a volley
and kill four men; throughout the department violence is committed
in connection with grain, while wheat is stolen or carried off by
force;[3264] but Roland is obliged to restrict himself; he can note only
political disturbances. Besides, he is obliged to hurry up, for murders
abound everywhere. In addition to the turmoil of the army and the
capital,[3265] each department in the vicinity of Paris or near the
frontier furnishes its quota of murders. They take place at Gisors, in
the Eure, at Chantilly, and at Clermont in the Oise, at Saint-Amand in
the Pas-de-Calais, at Cambray in the Nord, at Retel and Charleville in
the Ardennes, at Rheims and at Chalons in the Marne, at Troyes in
the Aube, at Meaux in Seine-et-Marne, and at Versailles in
Seine-et-Oise.[3266]--Roland, I imagine, does not open this file, and
for a good reason; he knows too well how M. de Brissac and M. Delessart,
and the other sixty-three persons killed at Versailles; it was he who
signed Fournier's commission, the commander of the murderers. At this
very moment he is forced to correspond with this villain, to send him
certificates of "zeal and patriotism," and to assign him, over and
above his robberies, 30,000 francs to defray the expenses of the
operation.[3267]--But among the dispatches there are some he cannot
overlook, if he desires to know to what his authority is reduced, in
what contempt all authority is held, how the civil or military rabble
exercises its power, with what promptitude it disposes of the most
illustrious and most useful lives, especially those who have been, or
are now, in command, the Minister perhaps saying to himself that his
turn will come next.
Let us look at the case of M. de la Rochefoucauld. A philanthropist
since he was young, a liberal on entering the Constituent Assembly,
elected president of the Paris department, one of the most persistent,
most generous, and most respected patriots from first to last,--who
better deserved to be spared than? Arrested at Gisors[3268] by order of
the Paris Commune, he left the inn, escorted by the Parisian commissary,
surrounded by the municipal council, twelve gendarmes and one hundred
National Guards; behind him walked his mother, eighty years of age, his
wife following in a carriage; there could be no fear of an escape.
But, for a suspected person, death is more certain than a prison; three
hundred volunteers of the Orne and the Sarthe departments, on their way
through Gisors, collect and cry out: "We must have his head--nothing
shall stop us!" A stone hits M. de la Rochefoucauld on the temple; he
falters, his escort is broken up, and they finish him with clubs and
sabers, while the municipal council "have barely time to drive off the
carriage containing the ladies."--Accordingly, national justice, in the
hands of the volunteers, has its sudden outbursts, its excesses, its
reactions, the effect of which it is not advisable to wait for. For
example, at Cambray,[3269] a division of foot-gendarmerie had just left
the town, and it occurs to them that they had forgotten "to purge the
prison". It returns, seizes the keeper, takes him to the Hôtel-de-ville,
examines the prison register, sets at liberty those whose crimes seem
to it excusable, and provides them with passports. On the other hand, it
kills a former royal procureur, on whom addresses are found tainted
with "aristocratic principles," an unpopular lieutenant-colonel, and a
suspected captain.--However slight or ill-founded a suspicion, so much
the worse for the officer on whom it falls! At Charleville,[3270] two
loads of arms having passed through one gate instead of another, to
avoid a bad road, M. Juchereau, inspector of the manufacture of arms and
commander of the place, is declared a traitor by the volunteers and the
crowd, torn from the hands of the municipal officers, clubbed to the
ground, stamped on, and stabbed. His head, fixed to a pike, is paraded
through Charleville, then into Mézières, where it is thrown into the
river running between the two towns. The body remains, and this the
municipality orders to be interred; but it is not worthy of burial; the
murderers get hold of it, and cast it into the water that it may join
the head. In the meantime the lives of the municipal officers hang by
a single thread. One is seized by the throat; another is knocked out of
his chair and threatened with hanging, a gun is aimed at him and he
is beaten and kicked; subsequently a plot is devised "to cut off their
heads and plunder their houses."
He who disposes of lives, indeed, also disposes of property. Roland
has only to flick through two or three reports to see how patriotism
furnishes a cloak for brutal license and greed. At Coucy, in the
department of Aisne,[3271] the peasantry of seventeen parishes,
assembled for the purpose of furnishing their military quota, rush with
a loud clamor to two houses, the property of M. des Fossés, a former
deputy to the Constituent Assembly, and the two finest in the town; one
of them had been occupied by Henry IV. Some of the municipal officers
who try to interfere are nearly cut to pieces, and the entire municipal
body takes to flight. M. des Fossés, with his two daughters, succeed in
hiding themselves in an obscure corner in the vicinity, and afterwards
in a small tenement offered to them by a humane gardener, and finally,
after great difficulty, they reach Soissons. Of his two houses, "nothing
remains but the walls. Windows, casings, doors, and wainscoting, all
are shattered"; twenty thousand francs of assignats in a portfolio are
destroyed or carried off; the title-deeds of the property are not to be
found, and the damage is estimated at 200,000 francs. The pillage lasted
from seven o'clock in the morning to seven o'clock in the evening, and,
as is always the case, ended in a fête. The plunderers, entering the
cellars, drank "two hogsheads of wine and two casks of brandy; thirty
or forty remained dead drunk, and were taken away with considerable
difficulty." There is no prosecution, no investigation; the new mayor,
who, one month after, makes up his mind to denounce the act, begs the
Minister not to give his name, for, he says, "the agitators in the
council-general of the Commune threaten, with fearful consequences,
whoever is discovered to have written to you."[3272]--Such is the
ever-present menace under which the gentry live, even when veterans
in the service of freedom; Roland, foremost in his files, finds
heartrending letters addressed directly to him, as a last recourse.
Early in 1789, M. de Gouy d'Arcy[3273] was the first to put his pen
to paper in behalf of popular rights. A deputy of the noblesse to the
Constituent Assembly, he is the first to rally to the Third-Estate; when
the liberal minority of the noblesse came and took their seats in the
hall of the Communes, he had already been there eight days, and, for
thirty months, he "invariably seated himself on the side of the 'Left.'"
Senior major-general, and ordered by the Legislative Assembly to
suppress the outbreak of the 6,000 insurgents at Noyon, "he kept his
rigorous orders in his pocket for ten days"; he endured their insults;
he risked his life "to save those of his misguided fellow-citizens, and
he had the good fortune not to spill a drop of blood." Exhausted by so
much labor and effort, almost dying, ordered into the country by his
physicians, "he devoted his income to the relief of poverty"; he planted
on his own domain the first liberty tree that was erected; he furnished
the volunteers with clothes and arms; "instead of a fifth, he yielded
up a third of his revenue under the forced system of taxation." His
children live with him on the property, which has been in the family
four hundred years, and the peasantry call him "their father." No one
could lead a more tranquil or, indeed, a more meritorious existence.
But, being a noble, he is suspected, and a delegate from the Paris
Commune denounces him at Compiègne as having in his house two cannon and
five hundred and fifty muskets. There is at once a domiciliary visit.
Eight hundred men, infantry and cavalry, appear before the chateau
d'Arcy in battle array. He meets them at the door and tenders them the
keys. After a search of six hours, they find twelve fowling pieces and
thirteen rusty pistols, which he has already declared. His disappointed
visitors grumble, break, eat and drink to the extent of 2,000 crowns
damage.[3274] Nevertheless, urged by their leaders they finally retire.
But M. de Gouy has 60,000 francs in rentals which would be so much gain
to the nation if he would emigrate; this must be effected, by expelling
him, and, moreover during his expulsion, they may fill their pockets.
For eight days this matter is discussed in the Compiègne club, in the
bars, in the barracks, and, on the ninth day, 150 volunteers issue from
the town, declaring that they are going to kill M. de Gouy and all who
belong to him. Informed of this, he departs with his family, leaving the
doors of his house wide open. There is a general pillage for five hours;
the mob drink the costly wines, steal the plate, demand horses to
carry their booty away, and promise to return soon and take the owner's
head.--In effect, on the following morning at four o'clock, there is a
new invasion, a new pillage, and, this time, the last one; the servants
escape under a fire of musketry, and M. de Gouy, at the request of the
villagers, whose vineyards are devastated, is obliged to quit that part
of the country.[3275]--There is no need to go through the whole file.
At Houdainville, at the house of M. de Saint-Maurice, at Nointel, on the
estate of the Duc de Bourbon, at Chantilly, on the estate of the Prince
de Condé, at the house of M. de Fitz-James, and elsewhere, a certain
Gauthier, "commandant of the Paris detachment of Searchers, and charged
with the powers of the Committee of Supervision," makes his patriotic
circuit, and Roland knows beforehand of what that consists, namely, a
dragonnade[3276] in regular form on the domains of all nobles, absent or
present.[3277]
Favorite game is still found in the clergy, more vigorously hunted than
the nobles; Roland, charged with the duty of maintaining public order,
asks himself how the lives of inoffensive priests, which the law
recommends to him, can be protected.--At Troyes, at the house of M.
Fardeau, an old non-conformist curé, an altar decked with its sacred
vessels is discovered, and M. Fardeau, arrested, refuses to take the
civic oath. Torn from his prison, and ordered to shout "Vive la Nation!"
he again refuses. On this, a volunteer, borrowing an ax from a baker,
chops off his head, and this head, washed in the river, is borne to
the Hôtel-de-ville.[3278]--At Meaux, a brigade of Parisian gendarmerie
murders seven priests, and, as an extra, six ordinary malefactors in
confinement.[3279] At Rheims, the Parisian volunteers first make way
with the post-master and his clerk, both under suspicion because the
smell of burnt paper had issued from their chimney, and, next, M. de
Montrosier, an old retired officer, which is the opening of the hunt.
Afterwards they fall upon two ecclesiastics with pikes and sabers, whom
their game-beaters have brought in from the country, then on the former
curé of Saint-Jean, and on that of Rilly; their corpses are cut up,
paraded through the streets in portions, and burnt in a bonfire; one
of the wounded priests, the abbé Alexandre, is thrown in still
alive.[3280]--Roland recognizes the men of September, who, exposing
their still bloody pikes, came to his domicile to demand their wages;
wherever the band passes it announces, "in the name of the people," its
"plenary power to spread the example of the capital." Now, as 40,000
unsworn priests are condemned by the decree of August 26 to leave their
departments in a week and France in a fortnight, shall they be allowed
to depart? Eight thousand of them at Rouen, in obedience to the decree,
charter transports, which the riotous population of both sides of the
Seine prevent from leaving. Roland sees in his dispatches that in Rouen,
as elsewhere, they crowd the municipalities for their passports,[3281]
but that these are often refused. Better still, at Troyes; at Meaux, at
Lyons, at Dôle, and in many other towns, the same thing is done as at
Paris; they are confined in particular houses or in prisons, at least,
provisionally, "for fear that they may congregate under the German
eagle"; so that, made rebellious and declared traitors in spite of
themselves, they may still remain in their pens subject to the knife.
As the exportation of specie is prohibited, those who have procured the
necessary coin are robbed of it on the frontier, while others, who fly
at all hazards, tracked like wild boars, or run down like hares, escape
like the bishop of Barral, athwart bayonets, or like the abbé Guillon,
athwart sabers, when they are not struck down, like the abbé Pescheur,
by the blows of a gun-stock.[3282]
It is soon dawn. The files are too numerous and too large; Roland finds
that, out of eighty-three, he can examine but fifty; he must hasten on;
leaving the East, his eyes again turn to the South.--On this side,
too, there are strange sights. On the 2nd of September, at
Châlons-sur-Marne[3283], M. Chanlaire, an octogenarian and deaf, is
returning, with his prayer-book under his arm, from the Mall, to which
he resorted daily to read his prayers. A number of Parisian volunteers
who meet him, seeing that he looks like a devotee, order him to shout,
"Vive la Liberté" Unable to understand them, he makes no reply. They
then seize him by the ears, and, not marching fast enough, they drag him
along; his old ears give way, and, excited by seeing blood, they cut off
his ears and nose, and thus, the poor old man dripping with blood,
they reach the Hôtel-de-Ville. At this sight a notary, posted there as
sentinel, and who is a man of feeling, is horror-stricken and escapes,
while the other National Guards hasten to shut the iron gates. The
Parisians, still dragging along their captive, go to the district and
then to the department bureau "to denounce aristocrats"; on the way
they continue to strike the tottering old man, who falls down; they
then decapitate him, place pieces of his body on pikes, and parade these
about. Meanwhile, in this same town, twenty-two gentlemen; at Beaune,
forty priests and nobles; at Dijon, eighty-three heads of families,
locked up as suspected without evidence or examination, and confined at
their own expense two months under pikes, ask themselves every morning
whether the populace and the volunteers, who shout death cries through
the streets, mean to release them in the same way as in Paris.[3284]--A
trifle is sufficient to provoke a murder. On the 19th of August, at
Auxerre as the National Guard is marching along, three citizens, after
having taken the civic oath, "left the ranks," and, on being called
back, "to make them fall in," one, either impatient or in ill-humor,
"replied with an indecent gesture". The populace, taking it as an
insult, instantly rush at them, and shoving aside the municipal body and
the National Guards, wound one and kill the other two.[3285] A fortnight
after, in the same town, several young ecclesiastics are massacred,
and "the corpse of one of them remains three days on a manure heap,
the relatives not being allowed to bury it." About the same date, in
a village of sabot makers, five leagues from Autun, four ecclesiastics
provided with passports, among them a bishop and his two
grand-vicars, are arrested, then examined, robbed, and murdered by
the peasantry.--Below Autun, especially in the district of Roanne, the
villagers burn the rent-rolls of national property; the volunteers put
property-owners to ransom; both, apart from each other or together, give
themselves up "to every excess and to every sort of iniquity against
those whom they suspect of incivism under pretense of religious
opinions."[3286] However preoccupied or upset Roland's mind may be
by the philosophic generalities with which it is filled, he has long
inspected manufactures in this country; the name of every place is
familiar to him; objects and forms are this time clearly defined to his
arid imagination, and he begins to see things through and beyond mere
words.
Madame Roland rests her finger on Lyons, so familiar to her two years
before; she becomes excited against "the quadruple aristocracy of the
town, petty nobles, priests, heavy merchants, and limbs of the law; in
short, those formerly known as honest folks, according to the insolence
of the ancient régime."[3287] She may now find an aristocracy of another
kind there, that of the gutter. Following the example of Paris, the
Lyons clubbists, led by Charlier, have arranged for a massacre on
a grand scale of the evil-disposed or suspected Another ringleader,
Dodieu, has drawn up a list by name of two hundred aristocrats to be
hung; on the 9th of September, women with pikes, the maniacs of the
suburbs, bands of "the unknown," collected by the central club,[3288]
undertake to clean out the prisons. If the butchery is not equal to that
of Paris, it is because the National Guard, more energetic, interferes
just at the moment when a Parisian emissary, Saint-Charles, reads off
a list of names in the prison of Roanne already taken from the prison
register. But, in other places, it arrives too late.--Eight officers
of the Royal-Pologne regiment, in garrison at Auch, some of them having
been in the service twenty and thirty years, had been compelled to
resign owing to the insubordination of their men; but, at the express
desire of the Minister of War, they had patriotically remained at their
posts, and, in twenty days of laborious marching, they had led their
regiment from Auch to Lyons. Three days after their arrival, seized at
night in their beds, conducted to Pierre-Encize, pelted with stones on
the way, kept in secret confinement, and with frequent and prolonged
examinations, all this merely put their services and their innocence in
stronger light. They are taken from the prison by the Jacobin mob; of
the eight, seven are killed in the street, and four priests along with
them, while the exhibition of their work by the murderers is still more
brazen than at Paris. They parade the heads of the dead all night on the
ends of their pikes; they carry them to the Place des Terreaux into the
coffee-houses; they set them on the tables and derisively offer them
beer; they then light torches, enter the Célestins theater, and,
marching on the stage with their trophies, blending real and mock
tragedy.--The epilogue is both grotesque and horrible. Roland, at the
bottom of the file, finds a letter from his colleague, Danton,[3289] who
begs him to release the officers, murdered three months ago, "for,"
says Danton, "if no charge can be found against them, it would be crying
injustice to keep them longer in irons." Roland's clerk makes a minute
on Danton's letter: "This matter disposed of." At this I imagine the
couple looking at each other in silence. Madame Roland may remember
that, at the beginning of the Revolution, she herself demanded heads,
especially "two illustrious heads," and hoped "that the National
Assembly would formally try them, or that some generous Decius"[3290]
would devote himself to "striking them down."[3291] Her prayers are
granted. The trial is about to begin in the regular way, and the Decius
she has invoked is everywhere found throughout France.
The south-east corner remains, that Provence, described to him by
Barbaroux as the last retreat of philosophy and freedom. Roland follows
the Rhône down with his finger, and on both banks he finds, as he passes
along, the usual characteristic misdeeds.--On the right bank, in Cantal
and in the Gard, "the defenders of the country" fill their pockets at
the expense of taxpayers designated by themselves;[3292] this forced
subscription is called "a voluntary gift." "Poor laborers at Nismes
were taxed 50 francs, others 200, 300, 900, 1,000, under penalty of
devastation and of bad treatment."--In the country near Tarascon the
volunteers, returning to the old-fashioned ways of bandits, brandish the
saber over the mother's head, threaten to smother the aunt in her bed,
hold the child over a deep well, and thus extort from the farmer or
proprietor even as much as 4,000 or 5,000 francs. Generally the
farmer keeps silent, for, in case of complaint, he is sure to have his
buildings burnt and his olive trees cut down.[3293]--On the left bank,
in the Isère, Lieutenant-colonel Spendeler, seized by the populace
of Tullins, was murdered, and then hung by his feet in a tree on the
roadside;[3294]--in the Drôme, the volunteers of Gard forced the
prison at Montélimart and hacked an innocent person to death with a
saber;[3295] in Vaucluse, the pillaging is general and constant. With
all public offices in their hands, and they alone admitted into the
National Guard, the old brigands of Avignon, with the municipality for
their accomplice, sweep the town and raid about the country; in town,
450,000 francs of "voluntary gifts" are handed over to the Glacière
murderers by the friends and relatives of the dead;--in the country,
ransoms of 1,000 and 10,000 francs are imposed on rich cultivators,
to say nothing of the orgies of conquest and the pleasures of despots,
money forcibly obtained in honor of innumerable liberty trees, banquets
at a cost of five or six hundred francs, paid for by extorted
funds, reveling of every sort and unrestrained havoc on the invaded
farms;[3296] in short, the abuse drunken force amusing itself with
brutality and proud of its violence.
Following this long line of murders and robbery, the Minister
reaches Marseilles, and I imagine him stopping at this city some-what
dumbfounded. Not that he is in any way astonished at widespread murders;
undoubtedly he has had received information of them from Aix, Aubagne,
Apt, Brignolles, and Eyguières, while there are a series of them at
Marseilles, one in July, two in August, and two in September;[3297] but
this he must be used to. What disturbs him here is to see the national
bond dissolving; he sees departments breaking away, new, distinct,
independent, complete governments forming on the basis of popular
sovereignty;[3298] publicly and officially, they keep funds raised for
the central government for local uses; they institute penalties against
their inhabitants seeking refuge in France; they organize tribunals,
levy taxes, raise troops, and undertake military expeditions.[3299]
Assembled together to elect representatives to the Convention, the
electors of the Bouches-du-Rhône were, additionally, disposed to
establish throughout the department "the reign of liberty and equality,"
and to this effect they found, says one of them, "an army of 1,200
heroes to purge the districts in which the bourgeois aristocracy still
raises its bold, imprudent head." Consequently, at Sonas, Noves,
St. Remy, Maillane, Eyrages, Graveson, Eyguières, extended over the
territory consisting of the districts of Tarascon, Arles and Salon,
these twelve hundred heroes are authorized to get a living out of
the inhabitants at pleasure, while the rest of the expenses of the
expedition are to be borne "by suspected citizens."[32100] These
expeditions are prolonged six weeks and more; one of them goes outside
of the department, to Monosque, in the Basses-Alpes, and Monosque,
obliged to pay 104,000 francs to its "saviors and fathers," as
an indemnity for traveling expenses, writes to the Minister that,
henceforth, it can no longer meet his impositions.
What kind of improvised sovereigns are these who have instituted
perambulating brigandage? Roland, on this point, has simply to question
his friend Barbaroux, their president and the executive agent of their
decrees. "Nine hundred persons," Barbaroux himself writes, "generally of
slight education, impatiently listening to conservatives, and yielding
all attention to the effervescent, cunning in the diffusion of
calumnies, petty suspicious minds, a few men of integrity but
unenlightened, a few enlightened but cowardly; many of them patriotic,
but without judgment, without philosophy"; in short, a Jacobin club, and
Jacobin to such an extent as to "make the hall ring with applause[32101]
on receiving the news of the September massacre"; in the foremost ranks,
"a crowd of men eager for office and money, eternal informers,
imagining trouble or exaggerating it to obtain for themselves lucrative
commissions;"[32102] in other words, the usual pack of hungry appetites
in full chase.--To really know them, Roland has only to examine the last
file, that of the neighboring departments, and consider their colleagues
in Var. In this great wreck of reason and of integrity, called the
Jacobin Revolution, a few stray waifs still float on the surface; many
of the department administrations are composed of liberals, friends of
order, intelligent men, upright and firm defenders of the law. Such
was the Directory of Var.[32103] To get rid of it the Toulon Jacobins
contrived an ambush worthy of the Borgias and Oliverettos of the
sixteenth century.[32104] On the 28th of July, in the forenoon,
Sylvestre, president of the club, distributed among his trusty men in
the suburbs and purlieus of the town an enormous sack of red caps,
while he posted his squads in convenient places. In the mean time the
municipal body, his accomplices, formally present themselves at the
department bureau, and invite the administrators to join them in
fraternizing with the people. The administrators, suspecting nothing,
accompany them, each arm in arm with a municipal officer or delegate of
the club. They scarcely reach the square when there rushes upon it from
every avenue a troop of red-caps lying in wait. The syndic-attorney,
the vice-president of the department, and two other administrators, are
seized, cut down and hung; another, M. Debaux, succeeding in making his
escape, hides away, scales the ramparts during the night, breaks his
thigh and lies there on the ground; he is discovered the next morning;
a band, led by Jassaud, a harbor-laborer, and by Lemaille, calling him
self "the town hangman," come and raise him up, carry him away in a
barrow, and hang him at the first lamppost. Other bands dispatch the
public prosecutor in the same fashion, a district administrator, and a
merchant, and then, spreading over the country, pillage and slay
among the country houses.--In vain has the commandant of the place, M.
Dumerbion, entreated the municipality to proclaim martial law. Not only
does it refuse, but it enjoins him to order one-half of his troops
back to their barracks. By way of an offset, it sets free a number
of soldiers condemned to the galleys, and all that are confined for
insubordination.--Henceforth every shadow of discipline vanishes,
and, in the following month, murders multiply. M. de Possel, a navy
administrator, is taken from his dwelling, and a rope is passed around
his neck; he is saved just in time by a bombardier, the secretary of
the club. M. Senis, caught in his country-house, is hung on the Place du
Vieux Palais. Desidery, a captain in the navy, the curé of La Valette,
and M. de Sacqui des Thourets, are beheaded in the suburbs, and their
beads are brought into town on the ends of three poles. M. de Flotte
d'Argenson, vice-admiral, a man of Herculean stature, of such a grave
aspect, and so austere that he is nicknamed the "Père Eternel" is
treacherously enticed to the entrance of the Arsenal, where he sees the
lantern already dropping; he seizes a gun, defends himself; yields
to numbers, and after having been slashed with sabers, is hung. M. de
Rochemaure, a major-general of marines, is likewise sabred and hung in
the same manner; a main artery in the neck, severed by the blow of the
saber, spouts blood from the corpse and forms a pool on the pavement;
Barry, one of the executioners, washes his hands in it and sprinkles
the by-standers as if bestowing a blessing on them.--Barry, Lemaille,
Jassaud, Sylvestre, and other leading assassins, the new kings of
Toulon, sufficiently resemble those of Paris. Add to these a certain
Figon, who gives audience in his garret, straightens out social
inequalities, forces the daughters of large farmers to marry poor
republicans, and rich young men to marry prostitutes,[32105] and, taking
the lists furnished by the club or neighboring municipalities, ransoming
all the well-to-do and opulent persons inscribed on them. In order that
the portraiture of the band may be complete, it must be noted that,
on the 23rd of August, it attempted to set free the 1800 convicts; the
latter, not comprehending that they were wanted for political allies,
did not dare sally forth, or, at least, the reliable portion of the
National Guard arrived in time to put their chains on again. But here
its efforts cease, and for more than a year public authority remains
in the hands of a Jacobin faction which, as far as public order is
concerned, does not even have the morals of a convict.
More than once during the course of this long review the Minister must
have flushed with shame; for to the reprimands dispatched by him to
these apathetic administrations, they reply by citing himself as an
example:
"You desire us to denounce the arbitrary arrests to the public
prosecutor; have you denounced those guilty of similar and yet greater
crimes committed at the capital?"[32106]--
From all quarters come the cries of the oppressed appealing to "the
patriot Minister, the sworn enemy of anarchy," to "the good and
incorruptible Minister of the Interior, his only reproach, the common
sense of his wife," and he could only reply with empty phrases and
condolences:
"To lament the events which so grievously distress the province, all
administrations being truly useful when they forestall evils, it being
very sad to be obliged to resort to such remedies, and recommend to them
a more active supervision."[32107]
"To lament and find consolation in the observations made in the letter,"
which announces four murders, but calls attention to the fact that "the
victims immolated are counter-revolutionaries."[32108]
Roland has carried on written dialogues with the village municipalities,
and given lessons in constitutional law to communities of
pot-breakers.[32109]--But, on this territory, he is defeated by his own
principles, while the pure Jacobins read him a lesson in turn; they,
likewise, are able to deduce the consequences of their own creed.
"Brother and Friend, Sir," write those of Rouen, "not to be always at
the feet of the municipality, we have declared ourselves permanent,
deliberative sections of the Commune."[32110]
Let the so-called constituted authorities, the formalists and pedants
of the Executive Council and the Minister of the Interior, look twice
before censuring the exercise of popular sovereignty. This sovereign
raises his voice and drives his clerks back into their holes; spoliation
and murder, all this is just.
"Can you have forgotten that, after the tempest, as you yourself
declared in the height of the storm, it is the nation which saves
itself? Well, sir, this is what we have done.[32111].. What! when
all France was resounding with that long expected proclamation of the
abolition of tyranny, you were willing that the traitors, who strove to
reestablish it, should escape public prosecution! My God, what century
is this in which we find such Ministers!"
Arbitrary taxes, penalties, confiscations, revolutionary expeditions,
nomadic garrisons, pillage, what fault can be found with all that?
"We do not pretend that these are legal methods; but, drawing nearer
to nature, we demand what object the oppressed have in view in invoking
justice. Is it to lag behind and vainly pursue an equitable adjustment
which is rendered fleeting by judicial forms? Correct these abuses or
do not complain of the sovereign people suppressing them in advance....
You, sir, with so many reasons for it, would do well to recall your
insults and redeem the wrongs you have inflicted before we happen to
render them public."... "Citizen Minister, people flatter you; you are
told too often that you are virtuous; the moment this gives you pleasure
you cease to be so.... Discard the astute brigands who surround you,
listen to the people, and remember that a citizen Minister is merely the
executor of the sovereign will of the people."
However narrow Roland's outlook may be, he must finally comprehend that
the innumerable robberies and murders which he has just noted over
are not a thoughtless eruption, a passing crisis of delirium, but a
manifesto of the victorious party, the beginning of an established
system of government. Under this system, write the Marseilles Jacobins,
"to-day, in our happy region, the good rule over the bad, and constitute
a party which allows no contamination; whatever is vicious has gone into
hiding or has been exterminated." The programme is very precise, and
acts form its commentary. This is the programme which the faction,
throughout the interregnum, sets openly before the electors.
*****
[Footnote 3201: Guillon de Montléon, I. 122. Letter of Laussel, dated
Paris, 28th of August, 1792, to the Jacobins of Lyons: "Tell me how many
heads have been cut off at home. It would be infamous to let our enemies
escape." (1792).]
[Footnote 3202: "Les Révolutions de Paris," by Prudhomme, Vol. XIII. pp.
59-63 (14th of July, 3 Decrees of the 10th and 11th of August, 1792.)]
[Footnote 3204: Prudhomme, number of the 15th of September, p.
483.--Mortimer-Ternaux, IV. 430.]
[Footnote 3205: Mortimer-Ternaux. IV. II. Fauchet's report, Nov. 6,
1792.--Ib., IV. 91, 142. Discourse of M. Fockedey, administrator of the
department of the north, and of M. Bailly, deputy de Seine-et-Marne.]
[Footnote 3206: Prudhomme, number of Sept. 1, 1792, pp. 375, 381, 385:
number of Sept. 22, pp. 528-530,--Cf. Guillon de Montléon, I. 144. Here
are some of the principles announced by the Jacobin leaders of Lyons,
Châlier, Laussel, Cusset, Rouillot, etc. "The time has come when this
prophecy must be fulfilled: The rich shall be put in the place of
the poor, and the poor in the place of the rich."--"If a half of their
property be left them the rich will still be happy."--"If the laboring
people of Lyons are destitute of work and of bread, they can profit by
these calamities in helping themselves to wealth in the quarter where
they find it."--"No one who is near a sack of wheat can die of hunger.
Do you wish the word that will buy all that you want? Slay!--or
perish!"]
[Footnote 3207: Prudhomme, number for the 28th of August, 1792, pp.
284-287.]
[Footnote 3208: Cf.. "The French Revolution," I.346. In ten of the
departments the seventh jacquerie continues the sixth without a break.
Among other examples, this letter from the administrators of Tarn, June
18, 1792, may be read ("Archives Nationales," F7, 3271). "Numerous bands
overran both the city (Castres) and the country. They forcibly entered
the houses of the citizens, broke the furniture to pieces, and pillaged
everything that fell into their hands. Girls and women underwent
shameful treatment. Commissioners sent by the district and the
municipality to advocate peace were insulted and menaced. The pillage
was renewed; the home of the citizen was violated." The administrators
add: "In many places the progress made by the constitution was indicated
by the speedy and numerous emigrations of its enemies."]
[Footnote 3209: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3272. Letter of the
administrators of the Var, May 27, 1792.--Letter of the minister,
Duranthon, May 28.--Letter of the commission composing the directory
Oct. 31.]
[Footnote 3210: "Archives Nationales," Letter of the administrators of
Var, May. 27.--The saying is the summary of the revolutionary spirit;
it recurs constantly.--Cf. the Duc de Montpensier, "Mémoires," p. 11.
At Aix one of his guards said to the sans-culotte who were breaking into
the room where he had been placed: "Citizens, by what order do you
enter here? and why have you forced the guard at the door?" One of them.
answered: "By order of the people. Don't you know that the people is
sovereign?"]
[Footnote 3211: "Archives Nationales," letter of the public prosecutor,
May 23.--Letters of the administrators of the department, May 22, and 27
(on the events of the 13th of May at Beausset).]
[Footnote 3212: "Archives Nationales," F7 3193 and 3194. Previous
details may be found in these files. This department is one of those in
which the seventh jacquerie is merely a prolongation of the sixth.--Cf.
F7, 3193. Letter of the royal Commissioner at Milhau, May 5, 1791.
"The situation is getting worse; the administrative bodies continue
powerless and without resources. Most of their members are still unable
to enter upon their duties; while the factions, who still rule, multiply
their excesses in every direction. Another house in the country, near
the town, has been burnt; another broken into, with a destruction of the
furniture and a part of the dinner-service, and doors and windows broken
open and smashed; several houses visited, under the pretense of arms or
powder being concealed in them; all that is found with private persons
and dealers not of the factious party is carried off; tumultuous shouts,
nocturnal assemblages, plots for pillage or burning; disturbances caused
by the sale of grain, searches under this pretext in private granaries,
forced prices at current reductions; forty louis taken from a lady
retired into the country, found in her trunk, which was broken into, and
which, they say, should have been in assignats. The police and municipal
officers witnesses of these outrages, are sometimes forced to sanction
them with their presence; they neither dare suppress them nor punish the
well-known authors of them. Such is a brief statement of the disorders
committed in less than eight days."--In relation specially to
Saint-Afrique. Cf. F7, 3194, the letter, among others, of the department
administrator, march 29, 1792.]
[Footnote 3213: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3193. Extract from the
registers of the clerk of the juge-de-paix of Saint-Afrique, and report
by the department commissioners, Nov. 10, 1792, with the testimony of
the witnesses, forming a document of 115 pages.]
[Footnote 3214: Deposition of Alexis Bro, a volunteer, and three
others.]
[Footnote 3215: Deposition of Pons, a merchant. After this devastation
he is obliged to address a petition to the executive power, asking
permission to remain in the town.]
[Footnote 3216: Deposition of Capdenet, a shoemaker.]
[Footnote 3217: Depositions of Marguerite Galzeng, wife of Guibal a
miller, Pierre Canac and others.]
[Footnote 3218: Depositions of Martin, syndic-attorney of the commune
of Brusque; Aussel, curé of Versol; Martial Aussel, vicar of Lapeyre and
others.]
[Footnote 3219: Deposition of Anne Tourtoulon.]
[Footnote 3220: Depositions of Jeanne Tuffon, of Marianne Terral, of
Marguerite Thomas, of Martin syndic-attorney of the commune of Brusque,
of Virot, of Brassier, and othes. The details are too specific to allow
quotation.]
[Footnote 3221: Depositions of Moursol, wool-carder; Louis Grand,
district-administrator, and others.]
[Footnote 3222: For example, at Limoges, Aug. 16.--Cf. Louis Guibert,
"le Parti Girondin dans la Haute-Vienne," p. 14.]
[Footnote 3223: Paris, "Histoire de Joseph Lebon," I. 60. Restoration of
the Arras municipality. Joseph Lebon is proclaimed mayor Sept. 16.]
[Footnote 3224: For example, at Caen and at Carcassonne.]
[Footnote 3225: For example, at Toulon.]
[Footnote 3226: "Un séjour en France," 19, 29. ("Letters of a Wittness
to the French Revolution," translated by H. Taine.1872)]
[Footnote 3227: Ibid., p. 38: 2M. de M--, who had served for thirty
years gave up his arms to a boy who treated him with the greatest
insolence."]
[Footnote 3228: Paris, Ibid., p. 55 and the following pages.--Albert
Babeau, "Histoire de Troyes," I. 503-515.--Sausay, III. ch. I.]
[Footnote 3229: "The Ancient Régime," 381, 391, 392.]
[Footnote 3230: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3217. Letter of Castanet, an
old gendarme, Aug. 21 1792.]
[Footnote 3231: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3219. Letter of M. Alquier to
the first consul, Pluviôse 18, year VIII.]
[Footnote 3232: Lauvergne, "Histoire du Var," p. 104.]
[Footnote 3233: Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 325, 327.]
[Footnote 3234: "Archives-Nationales," F7, 3271. Letter of the Minister
of Justice, with official reports of the municipality of Rabastens. "The
juge-de-paix of Rabastens was insulted in his place by putting an end
to the proceedings commenced against an old deserter at the head of the
municipality, and tried for robbery. They threatened to stab the judge
if he recommenced the trial. Numerous gangs of vagabonds overrun the
country, pillaging and putting to ransom all owners of property.. . The
people has been led off by a municipal officer, a constitutional curé,
and a brother of sieur Tournal, one of the authors of the evils which
have desolated the Comtat." (March 5, 1792).]
[Footnote 3235: Guillon de Montléon, I. 84, 109, 139, 155, 158,
464.--Ibid., p.441, details concerning Châlier by his companion
Chassagnon.--"Archives Nationales," F7, 3255. Letter by Laussel, Sept.
22, 1792.]
[Footnote 3236: Barbaroux, "Mémoires," 85. Barbaroux is an eye-witness,
for he has just returned to Marseilles and is about to preside over the
electoral assembly of the Bouches-du-Rhône.]
[Footnote 3237: C. Rousset, "Les Volontaires," p. 67.--In his report
of June 27, 1792, Albert Dubayet estimates the number of volunteers at
84,000.]
[Footnote 3238: C. Rousset, "Les Volontaires," 101. Letter of
Kellermann, Aug.23, 1792.--"Un séjour en France," I. 347 and following
pages.--"Archives Nationales," F7, 3214. Letter of an inhabitant of
Nogent-le-Rotrou (Eure). "Out of 8,000 inhabitants one-half require
assistance, and two-thirds of these are in a sad state, having scarcely
straw enough to sleep on."(Dec. 3, 1792).--In his report of June 27,
1792, Albert Dubayet estimates the number of volunteers at 84,000.]
[Footnote 3239: C. Rousset, "Les Volontaires," 106 (Letter of General
Biron, Aug. 23, 1792).--226, Letter of Vezu, major, July 24, 1793.]
[Footnote 3240: C. Rousset, "Les Volontaires," 144 (Letter of a district
administrator of Moulins to General Custines, Jan. 27, 1793).--"Un
séjour en France," p.27: "I am sorry to see that most the volunteers
about to join the army are old men or very young boys."--C. Rousset,
Ibid., 74, 108, 226 (Letter of Biron, Nov. 7, 1792); 105 (Letter of
the commander of Fort Louis, Aug. 7); 127 (Letter of Captain Motmé).
One-third of the 2d battalion of Haute-Saône is composed of children 13
and 14 years old.]
[Footnote 3241: Moniteur, XIII. 742 (Sept. 21). Marshal Lückner and his
aids-de-camp just miss being killed by Parisian volunteers.--"Archives
Nationales," BB, 16703. Letter by Labarrière aide-de-camp of General
Flers, Antwerp, March 19, 1793. On the desertion en masse of gendarmes
from Dumouriez's army, who return to Paris.]
[Footnote 3242: Cf. "L'armée et la garde nationale," by Baron Poisson,
III. 475. "On hostilities being declared (April, 1792), the contingent
of volunteers was fixed at 200,000 men. This second attempt resulted in
nothing but confused and disorderly levies. Owing to the spinelessness
of the volunteer troops it was impossible to continue the war in
Belgium, which allowed the enemy to cross the frontier."--Gouverneur
Morris, so well informed, had already written, under date of Dec.27,
1791: "The national guards, who have turned out as volunteers, are in
many instances that corrupted scum of overgrown population of which
large cities purge themselves, and which, without constitutions to
support the fatigues... of war, have every vice and every disease which
can render them the scourge of their friends and the laughing stock of
their foes."--Buchez et Roux, XXVI. 177. Plan of the administrators of
Hérault, presented to the Convention April 27, 1793. "The composition
of the enlistment should not be concealed. Most of those of which it
is made up are not volunteers; they are not citizens all classes of
society, who, submitting to draft on the ballot, have willingly made
up their minds to go and defend the Republic. The larger part of the
recruits are substitutes who, through the attraction of a large sum,
have concluded to leave their homes."]
[Footnote 3243: C. Rousset, 47. Letter of the directory of Somme, Feb.
26, 1792.]
[Footnote 3244: "Archives Nationales," F 7, 3270. Deliberations of the
council-general of the commune of Roye, Oct. 8, 1792 (in relation to the
violence committed by two divisions of Parisian gendarmerie during their
passage, Oct. 7 and 8).]
[Footnote 3245: Moore, I. 338 (Sept. 8, 1792).--(The Condés were proud
princes from a branch of the royal house of Bourbon. (SR).]
[Footnote 3246: C Rousset, 189 (Letter of the Minister of War, dated at
Dunkirk, April 29, 1793).--Archives Nationales," BB, 16, 703. (Parisian
national guard staff major-general, order of the day, letter of citizen
Férat, commanding at Ostend, to the Minister of War, March 19, 1793):
"Since we have had the gendarmes with us at Ostend there is nothing but
disturbance every day. They attack the officers and volunteers, take the
liberty of pulling off epaulettes and talk only of cutting and slashing,
and declare that they recognize no superior being equals with everybody,
and that they will do as they please. Those who are ordered to arrest
them are chased and attacked with saber cuts and pistols]
[Footnote 3247: C. Rousset, 20 (Letter of General Wimpfen, Dec. 30,
1791).--"Souvenirs" of General Pelleport, pp.7 and 8.]
[Footnote 3248: C. Rousset, 45 (Report of General Wimpfen, Jan. 20,
1792).--Letter of General Biron, Aug. 23, 1792.]
[Footnote 3249: C. Rousset, 47, 48.--"Archives Nationales," F7, 3249.
Official report of the municipality of Saint-Maxence, Jan. 21, 1792.--F
7, 3275. Official report of the municipality of Châtellerault, Dec. 27,
1791.--F7, 3285 and 3286--F7, 3213. Letter of Servan, Minister of War,
to Roland, June 12, 1792: "I frequently receive, as well as yourself
and the Minister of Justice, complaints against the national volunteers.
They commit the most reprehensible offenses daily in places where
they are quartered, and through which they pass on their way to their
destination."--Ibid., Letter of Duranthon, Minister of Justice, May
5: "These occurrences are repeated, under more or less aggravating
circumstances, in all the departments."]
[Footnote 3250: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3193. Official report of the
commissaries of the department of Aveyron, April 4, 1792. "Among the
pillagers and incendiaries of the chateaux of Privesac, Vaureilles,
Péchins, and other threatened mansions, were a number of recruits
who had already taken the road to Rhodez to join their respective
regiments." Nothing remains of the château of Privesac but a heap
of ruins. The houses in the village "are filled to over flowing with
pillaged articles, and the inhabitants have divided the owners' animals
amongst themselves."--Comte de Seilhac, "Scènes et portraits de la
Révolution dans le bas Limousin," P.305. Pillage of the châteaux of
Saint-Jéal and Seilhac, April 12, 1792, by the 3rd battalion of la
Corrèze, commanded by Bellegarde, a former domestic in the château.]
[Footnote 3251: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3270. Deliberation of the
council-general of the commune of Roye, Oct. 8, 1792 (passage of
two divisions of Parisian gendarmes). "The inhabitants and municipal
officers were by turns the sport of their insolence and brutality,
constantly threatened in case of refusal with having their heads cut
off, and seeing the said gendarmes, especially the gunners, with naked
sabers in their hands, always threatening. The citizen mayor especially
was treated most outrageously by the said gunners... forcing him to
dance on the Place d'armes, to which they resorted with violins and
where they remained until midnight, rudely pushing and hauling him
about, treating him as an aristocrat, clapping the red cap on his head,
with constant threats of cutting it off and that of every aristocrat in
the town, a threat they swore to carry out the next day, openly stating,
especially two or three amongst them, that they had massacred the Paris
prisoners on the 2nd of September, and that it cost them nothing to
massacre."]
[Footnote 3252: Summaries, in the order of their date or locality, and
similar to those about to be placed before the reader, sometimes occur
in these files. I pursue the same course as the clerk, in conformity
with Roland's methodical habits.]
[Footnote 3253: Aug. 17, 1792 (Moniteur, XIII, 383, report of M.
Emmery).]
[Footnote 3254: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3271. Letter of the
administrators of Tarn, July 21.]
[Footnote 3255: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3234. Report of the
municipal officers of Clairac, July 20.-Letter of the syndic-attorney of
Lot-et-Garonne, Sept. 16.]
[Footnote 3256: Mercure de France, number for July 28, (letters from
Bordeaux).]
[Footnote 3257: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3275. Letter of the
administrators of Haute-Vienne, July 28 (with official reports).]
[Footnote 3258: '"Archives Nationales," F7, 3223. Letter of the
directory of the district of Neuville to the department-administrators,
Sept 18.]
[Footnote 3259: "Archives Nationales," report of the administrators of
the department and council-general of the commune of Orleans, Sept 16
and 17. (The disarmament had been effected through the decrees of Aug.26
and Sept. 2.)]
[Footnote 3260: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3249. Letter of the
lieutenant of the gendarmerie of Dampierre, Sept 23 (with official
report dated Sept 19).]
[Footnote 3261: "Archives Nationales," draft of a letter by Roland, Oct
4, and others of the same kind.--Letter of the municipal officers of
Ray, Sept 24.--Letter of M. Desdouits, proprietor, Sept 30.--Letter of
the permanent council of Aigle, Oct 1, etc.]
[Footnote 3262: "Archives Nationales," Letter of the administrators of
the Orne department, Sept 7.]
[Footnote 3263: Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 337 (Sept. 6).]
[Footnote 3264: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3265. Letter of the
lieutenant-general of the gendarmerie, Aug. 30.--Official report of
the Rouen municipality on the riot of Aug. 29.--Letters of the
department-administrators, Sept 18 and Oct. 11.--Letter of the same, Oct
13, etc.--Letter of David, cultivator and department administrator Oct
11.]
[Footnote 3265: Albert Babean, "Letters of a deputy of the municipality
of Troyes to the army of Dumuriez," p. 8.--(Sainte-Menehould, Sept. 7,
1792): "Our troops burn with a desire to meet the enemy. The massacre
reported to have taken place in Paris does not discourage them; on the
contrary, they are glad to know that suspected persons in the interior
are got rid of."]
[Footnote 3266: Moore, I.338 (Sept. 4). At Clermont, the murder of a
fish-dealer, killed for insulting the Breton volunteers.--401 (Sept.
7), the son of the post-master at Saint-Amand is killed on suspicion of
communicating with the enemy.--"Archives Nationales," F7; 3249.
Letter of the district-administrators of Senlis, Oct. 31 (Aug. 15). At
Chantilly, M. Pigean is assassinated in the midst of 1,200 persons.--C.
Rousset, p.84 (Sept. 21), lieutenant-colonel Imonnier is assassinated at
Châlons-sur-Marne.--Mortimer-Ternaux, IV. 172. Four Prussian deserters
are murdered at Rethel, Oct. 5, by the Parisian volunteers]
[Footnote 3267: Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 378, 594 and following pages.]
[Footnote 3268: Lacretelle, "Dix années d'épreuves," p. 58. Description
of Liancourt.--"Archives Nationales," F7, 3249. Letter of the
department-administrators of the Eure, Sept. 11 (with official report of
the Gisors municipality, Sept 4).--Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 550.]
[Footnote 3269: "Archives Nationales," F7, 4394. Letter of Roland to the
convention, Oct. 31 (with a copy of the documents sent by the department
of the Nord on the events of Oct. 10 and 11).]
[Footnote 3270: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3191. Official report of the
municipality of Charleville; Sept. 4, and letter, Sept. 6.--Moniteur,
XIII. 742, number for Sept. 21,1792 (letter of Sept. 17, On the Parisian
volunteers of Marshal Lückner's army). "The Parisian volunteers again
threatened to have several heads last evening, among others those of
the marshal and his aids. He had threatened to return some deserters to
their regiments. At this the men exclaimed that the ancient régime no
longer existed, that brothers should not be treated in that way, and
that he general should be arrested. Several of them had already seized
the horse's bridle."]
[Footnote 3271: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3185. Documents relating to
the case of M. de Fossés. (The pillage takes place Sept. 4.)]
[Footnote 3272: Letter of Goulard, mayor of Coucy, Oct. 4.--Letter of
Osselin, notary, Nov. 7. "Threats of setting fire to M. de Fossés' two
remaining farm-houses are made."--Letter of M. de Fossés, Jan. 28, 1793.
He states that he has entered no complaint, and if anybody has done so
for him he is much displeased. "A suit might place me in the greatest
danger, from my knowledge of the state of the public mind in Coucy,
and of what the guilty have done and will do to affect the minds of the
people in the seventeen communes concerned in the devastation."]
[Footnote 3273: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3249 letter of M. de Gouy to
Roland, Sept. 21. (An admirable letter, which, if copied entire,
would show the character of the gentleman of 1789. Lots of heart, many
illusions and much verbosity.) The first attack was made Sept. 4 and the
second on the 13th.]
[Footnote 3274: Most of the domiciliary visits end in similar
damages. For example, ("Archives Nationales," F7, 3265, letter of
the administrators of Seine-Inferieure, Sept. 18, 1792). Visit to
the château de Catteville, Sept. 7, by the national guard of the
neighborhood. "The national guard get drunk, break the furniture to
pieces, and fire repeated volleys at the windows and mirrors; the
château is a complete ruin." The municipal officers on attempting to
interfere are nearly killed.]
[Footnote 3275: The letter ends with the following: "No, never will I
abandon the French soil!" He is guillotined at Paris, Thermidor 5, year
II., as an accomplice in the pretended prison-plot.]
[Footnote 3276: Raid on Protestants under Louis XIV. (SR).]
[Footnote 3277: '"Archives Nationales," Letter of the Oise
administrators, Sept. 12 and 15.--Letter of the syndic-attorney of
the department, Sept. 23.--Letter of the administrators, Sept. 20 (on
Chantilly). "The vast treasures of this domain are being plundered."
In the forest of Hez and in the park belonging to M. de Fitz-James, now
national property, "the finest trees are sold on the spot, cut down, and
carried off."--F7, 3268, Letter of the overseer of the national domains
at Rambouillet, Oct. 31. Woods devastated "at a loss of more than
100,000 crowns since August 10."--"The agitators who preach liberty
to citizens in the rural districts are the very ones who excite the
disorders with which the country is menaced. They provoke the demand for
a partition of property, with all the accompanying threats."]
[Footnote 3278: Albert Babeau, I.504 (Aug.20).]
[Footnote 3279: Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 322 (Sept 4).]
[Footnote 3280: Mortimer-Ternaux, III.325.--"Archives Nationales," F7,
3239. Official report of the municipality of Rheims, Sept 6.]
[Footnote 3281: "Archives Nationales," F7, 4394. Correspondence of the
ministers in 1792 and 1793. Lists presented by Roland to the convention,
on the part of various districts and departments, containing the names
of priests demanding passports to go abroad, those who have gone without
passports, and of sick or aged priests in the department asylums.]
[Footnote 3282: Albert Babeau, I. 515-517. Guillon de Montléon, I. 120.
At Lyons after the 10th of August the unsworn conceal themselves;
the municipality offers them passports; many who come for them are
incarcerated; others receive a passport with a mark on it which serves
for their recognition on the road, and which excites against them the
fury of the volunteers. "A majority of the soldiers filled the air with
their cries of 'Death to kings and priests!' "--Sauzay, III. ch. IX.,
and especially p. 193: "M. Pescheu; while running along the road from
Belfort to Porentruy, is seen by a captain of the volunteers, riding
along the same road with other officers; demanding his gun, he aimed at
M. Pescheur and shot him."]
[Footnote 3283: "Histoire de Chalons-sur-Marne et de ses monuments," by
L. Barbat, pp. 420, 425]
[Footnote 3284: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3207. Letter of the
directory of the Côte d'Or, Aug. 28 and Sept. 26. Address of the Beaune
municipality, Sept. 2. Letter of M. Jean Sallier, Oct. 9: "Allow me
to appeal to you for justice and to interest yourself in behalf of my
brother, myself, and five servants, who on the 14th of September last,
at the order of the municipality of La Roche-en-Bressy, where we have
lived for three years, were arrested by the national guard of Saulieu,
and, first imprisoned here in this town, were on the 18th transferred
to Semur, no reason for our detention being given, and where we have in
vain demanded a trial from the directory of the district, which body,
making no examination or inquiry into our case, sent us on the 25th, at
great expense, to Dijon, where the department has imprisoned us again
without, as before, giving any reason therefore."--The directory of the
department writes "the communes of the towns and of the country arrest
persons suspected by them, and instead of caring for these themselves,
send them to the district"--Such arbitrary imprisonment multiply towards
the end of 1792 and early in 1793. The commissaries of the convention
arrest at Sedan 55 persons in one day: at Nancy, 104 in three weeks; at
Arras, more than 1,000 in two months; in the Jura, 4,000 in two months.
At Lons-le-Saulnier all the nobles with their domestics, at Aix all
the inhabitants of one quarter without exception are put in prison. (De
Sybel, II. 305.)]
[Footnote 3285:"Archives Nationales," F7, 3276. Letters of the
administrators of the Yonne, Aug. 20 and 21.-Ibid., F7, 3255. Letter
of the commissary, Bonnemant, Sept. 22.--Mortimer-Ternaux, III.
338.--Lavalette, "Mémoires," I.100.]
[Footnote 3286: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3,255. Letter of the district
administrator of Roanne, Aug. 18. Fourteen volunteers of the canton
of Néronde betake themselves to Chenevoux, a mansion belonging to M.
Dulieu, a supposed émigré. They exact 200 francs from the keeper of' the
funds of the house under penalty of death, which he gives them.--Letter
of the same. Sept. 1. "Every day repressive means are non-existent.
Juges-de-paix before whom complaints are made dare not report them, nor
try citizens who cause themselves to be feared. Witnesses dare not
give testimony for fear of being maltreated or pillaged by the
criminals."--Letter of the same, Aug. 22.--Official report of the
municipality of Charlieu, Sept. 9, on the destruction of the land
registry books. "We replied that not having the force with which
to oppose them, since they themselves were the force, we would
abstain."--Letter of an officer of the gendarmerie, Sept.9, etc.]
[Footnote 3287: "Lettres autographes de Madame Roland," published by
Madame Bancal des Issarts, p. 5 (June 2, 1790)]
[Footnote 3288: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3245.--Letter of the mayor
and municipal officers of Lyons, Aug. 2.--Letter of the deputy procureur
of the commune, Aug. 29.--Copy of a letter by Dodieu, Aug. 27.
(Roland replies with consternation and says that there must be a
prosecution.)--Official report of the 9th of September, and letter
of the municipality, Sept. 11.--Memorandum of the officers of the
Royal-Pologne regiment, Sept. 7.--Letter of M. Perigny, father-in-law
of one of the officers slain, Sept. 19.--Mortimer-Ternaux, III.
342.--Guillon de Montléon, I. 124.--Balleyder, "Histoire du peuple de
Lyon," 91.]
[Footnote 3289: "Archives Nationales," Letter of Danton, Oct. 3.]
[Footnote 3290: Decius, Roman emperor from 248 to 251 famous for having
persecuted the Christians. He was unable to tolerate their refusal to
join in communal corporate pagan observances. He insisted that they do
so and once they had done it, a Certificate of Sacrifice (libellus), was
issued. (SR).]
[Footnote 3291: "Etude sur Madame Roland," by Dauban, 82. Letter of
Madame Roland to Bosc, July 26, 1798. "You busy yourselves with a
municipality and allow heads to escape which will devise new horrors.
You are mere children; your enthusiasm is merely a straw bonfire! If the
National Assembly does not try two illustrious heads in regular form or
some generous Décius strike them down, you are all lost.--" Ibid.,, May
17, 1790: "Our rural districts are much dissatisfied with the decree on
feudal privileges... A reform is necessary, in which more châteaux must
be burnt. It would not be a serious evil were there not some danger of
the enemies of the Revolution profiting by these discontents to lessen
the confidence of the people in the National Assembly."--Sept. 27, 1790.
"The worst party is successful; it is forgotten that insurrection is
the most sacred of duties when the country is in danger."--Jan.24, 1791.
"The wise man shuts his eyes to the grievances or weaknesses of the
private individual; but the citizen should show no mercy, even to his
father, when the public welfare is at stake."]
[Footnote 3292: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3202. Report of the
commissary, member of the Cantal directory, Oct. 24. On the 16th of
October at Chaudesaigues the volunteers break open a door and then kill
one of their comrades who opposes them, whom the commissary tries to
save. The mayor of the place, in uniform, leads them to the dwellings of
aristocrats, urging them on to pillage; they enter a number of houses by
force and exact wine. The next day at Saint-Urcize they break into
the house of the former curé, devastate or pillage it, and "sell his
furniture to different persons in the neighborhood." The same treatment
is awarded to sieur Vaissier, mayor, and to lady Lavalette; their
cellars are forced open, barrels of wine are taken to the public square,
and drinking takes place from the tap. After this "the volunteers go in
squads into the neighboring parishes and compel the inhabitants to give
them money or effects." The commissary and municipal officers of St.
Urcize who tried to mediate were nearly killed and were saved only
through the efforts of a detachment of regular cavalry. As to the
Jacobin mayor of Chaudesaigues, it was natural that he should preach
pillage; on the sale of the effects of the nuns "he kept all bidders
away, and had things knocked down to him for almost nothing."]
[Footnote 3293: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3217. Letter or Castanet, an
old gendarme, Nîmes, Aug.21.--Letter of M. Griolet, syndic-attorney of
the Gard, Sept. 8: "I beg, sir, that this letter may be considered as
confidential; I pray you do not compromise me. "--Letter of M. Gilles,
juge-de-paix at Rocquemaure, Oct.31 (with official reports).]
[Footnote 3294: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3227. Letter of the municipal
officers of Tullins, Sept. 8.]
[Footnote 3295: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3190. Letter of Danton, Oct.
9.--Memorandum of M. Casimir Audiffret (with documents in support
of it). His son had been locked up by mistake, instead of another
Audiffret, belonging to the Comtat; he was slashed with a saber in
prison Aug.25. Report of the surgeon, Oct. 17: "The wounded man has
two gashes more on the head, one on the left cheek and the right leg is
paralyzed; he has been so roughly treated in carrying him from prison
to prison as to bring on an abscess on the wrist; if he is kept there he
will soon die."]
[Footnote 3296: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3195. Letter of M. Amiel,
president of the bureau of conciliation, Oct. 28.--Letter of
an inhabitant of Avignon, Oct. 7.--Other letters without
signatures.--Letter of M. Gilles, juge-de-paix, Jan. 23, 1793.]
[Footnote 3297: Fabre, "Histoire de Marseilles," II. 478 and following
pages.--"Archives Nationales," F7, 3195. Letter of the Minister of
Justice, M. de Joly (with supporting documents), Aug. 6.--Official
reports of the Marseilles municipality, July 21, 22, 23.--Official
report of the municipality of Aix, Aug. 24.--Letter of the
syndic-attorney of the department (with a letter of the municipality of
Aubagne), Sept. 22, etc., in which M. Jourdan, a ministerial officer, is
accused of "aristocracy." A guard is assigned to him. About midnight the
guard is overcome, he is carried off, and then killed in spite of the
entreaties of his wife and son. The letter of the municipality ends with
the following: "Their lamentations pierced our hearts. But, alas, who
can resist the French people when aroused? We remain, gentlemen, very
cordially yours, the municipal officers of Aubagne."]
[Footnote 3298: This stage of revolution seems to be sought after by the
secret communist revolutionaries arranging for the break-up of formerly
powerful independent states such as Germany, Yougoslavia, India etc.
(SR).]
[Footnote 3299: Moniteur, XIII. 560. Act passed by the administrators
of the Bouches-du-Rhône, Aug. 3, "forbidding special collectors from
henceforth paying taxes with the national treasury."--Ibid., 744. A
report by Roland. The department of Var, having called a meeting of
commissaries at Avignon to provide for the defense of these regions, the
Minister says: "This step, subversive of all government, nullifies the
general regulations of the executive power."--"Archives Nationales,"
F7, 3195. Deliberation of the three administrative bodies assembled at
Marseilles, Nov. 5, 1792.--Petition of Anselme, a citizen of Avignon,
residing in Paris, Dec. 14.--Report of the Saint-Rémy affair, etc.]
[Footnote 32100: "Archives Nationales," CII. I. 32. Official Report
of the Electoral Assembly of Bouches-du-Rhône, Sept. 4. "To defray the
expenses of this expenditure the syndic-attorney of the district of
Tarascon is authorized to draw upon the funds of public registry and
vendor of revenue stamps, and in addition thereto on the collector of
direct taxation. The expenses of this expedition will be borne by
the anti-revolutionary agitators who have made it necessary. A list,
therefore, is to be drawn up and sent to the National Assembly. The
commissioners will be empowered to suspend the district administrations,
municipal officers, and generally all public functionaries who, through
incivism or improper conduct, shall have endangered the public weal.
They may even arrest them as well as suspected citizens. They will
see that the law regarding the disarming of suspected citizens and the
banishment of priests be faithfully executed."--Ibid., F7, 3195. Letter
of Truchement, commissary of the department, Nov. 15.--Memorandum of
the community of Eyguières and letter of the municipality of Eyguières,
Sept. 13.--Letter of M. Jaubert, secretary of the Salon popular club,
Oct. 22: "The department of Bouches-du-Rhône has for a month past been
ravaged by commissions. .. The despotism of one is abolished, and we
now stagger under the much more burdensome yoke of a crowd of
despots."--Situation of the department in September and October, 1792
(with supporting documents).]
[Footnote 32101: Barbaroux, "Mémoires," 89.]
[Footnote 32102: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3196.--Letters and petition
of citizen de Sades, Nov., 1792, Feb.17, 1793, and Ventose 8, year III.:
"Towards the middle of Sept., 1792 (old style), some Marseilles brigands
broke into a house of mine near Apt. Not content with carrying away six
loads of furniture.. they broke the mirrors and wood-work." The damage
is estimated at 80,000 francs. Report of the executive council according
to the official statement of the municipality of Coste. On the 27th
of September Montbrion, commissioner of the administration of the
Bouche-du-Rhône, sends two messengers to fetch the furniture to Apt.
On reaching Apt Montbrion and his colleague Bergier have the vehicles
unloaded, putting the most valuable effects on one cart, which they
appropriate to themselves, and drive away with it to some distance out
of sight, paying the driver out of their own pockets: "No doubt whatever
exists as to the knavery of Montbrion and Bergier; administrators and
commissioners of the administration of the department."--De Sades,
the author of "Justine," pleads his well-known civism and the
ultra-revolutionary petitions drawn up by him in the name of the section
of the Pikes.]
[Footnote 32103: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3272. Read in this file the
entire correspondence of the directory and the public prosecutor.]
[Footnote 32104: Deliberation of the commune of Toulon. July 28
and following days.--That of the three administrative bodies, Sep.
10--Lauvergne, "Histoire du department du Var," 104-137.]
[Footnote 32105: "Mémoires" of Chancelier Pasquier. Vol. I. p. 106.
Librarie Plon, Paris 1893--Pasquier and his wife stopped in Picardy,
brought to Paris by a member of the commune, a small, bandy-legged
fellow formerly a chair-letter in his parish church, imbued with
the doctrines of the day and a determined leveler. At the village of
Saralles they passed the house of M. de Livry, a rich man enjoying an
income of 50,000 francs, and the lover of Saunier, an opera-dancer. "He
is a good fellow," exclaims Pasquier's bandy-legged guardian: "we have
just made hint marry. Look here, we said to him, it is time that to
put a stop to that behavior! Down with prejudice! Marquises and dancers
ought to marry each other. He made her his wife, and it is well he did;
otherwise he would have been done for a long time ago, or caged
behind the Luxembourg walls."--Elsewhere, on passing a chateau being
demolished, the former chair-letter quotes Rousseau: "For every chateau
that falls, twenty cottages rise in its place." His mind was stored with
similar phrases and tirades, uttered by him as the occasion warranted.
This man may be considered as an excellent specimen of the average
Jacobin.]
[Footnote 32106: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3,207. Letter of the
administrators of the Côte d'Or to the Minister, Oct. 6, 1792.]
[Footnote 32107: "Archives Nationales" F7, 3195. Letter of the
administrators of the Bouche-du-Rhône, Oct 29, and the Minister's answer
on the margin.]
[Footnote 32108: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3249. Letter of the
administrators of the Orne, Sept. 7, and the Minister's reply noted on
the margin.]
[Footnote 32109: "Archives Nationales," F', 3,249. Correspondence with
the municipality of Saint-Firmin (Oise). Letter of Roland, Dec. 3: "I
have read the letter addressed to me on the 25th of the past month, and
I cannot conceal from you the pain it gives me to find in it principles
so destructive of all the ties of subordination existing between
constituted authorities, principles so erroneous that should the
communes adopt them every form of government would be impossible and
all society broken up. Can the commune of Saint-Firmin, indeed, have
persuaded itself that it is sovereign, as the letter states? and have
the citizens composing it forgotten that the sovereign is the entire
nation, and not the forty-four thousandth part of it? that Saint-Firmin
is simply a fraction of it, contributing its share to endowing the
deputies of the National Convention, the administrators of departments
and districts with the power of acting for the greatest advantage of
the commune, but which, the moment it elects its own administrators and
agents, can no longer revoke the powers it has bestowed, without a total
subversion of order? etc."--All the documents belonging to this affair
ought to be quoted; there is nothing more instructive or ludicrous, and
especially the style of the secretary-clerk of Saint-Firmin: "We conjure
you to remember that the administrators of the district of Senlis strive
to play the part of the sirens who sought to enchant Ulysses."]
[Footnote 32110: Letter of the central bureau of the Rouen sections,
Aug. 30.]
[Footnote 32111: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3195. Letter of the three
administrative bodies and commissaries of the sections of Marseilles,
Nov. 15, 1792. Letter of the electors of Bouches-du-Rhône, Nov.
28.--(Forms of politeness are omitted at the end of these letters, and
no doubt purposely.) Roland replies (Dec. 31): "While fully admiring the
civism of the brave Marseilles people,... do not fully agree with you on
the exercise of popular Sovereignty." He ends by stating that all
their letters with replies have been transmitted to the deputies of the
Bouches-du-Rhône, and that the latter are in accord with him and will
arrange matters.]
CHAPTER III.
I.--The second stage of the Jacobin conquest.
The importance and multitude of vacant offices.
The second stage of the Jacobin conquest will,[3301] after August 10th
and during the next three months, extend and multiply all vacancies from
the top to the bottom of the hierarchy, for the purpose of filling
them with their own men.--In the first place, the faction (the party)
installs representatives on the summits of public authority which
represent itself alone, seven hundred and forty-nine omnipotent
deputies, in a Convention which, curbed neither by collateral powers nor
by a previously established constitution, disposes at pleasure of the
property, the lives and the consciences of all French people.--Then,
through this barely installed convention, it decrees the complete
renewal[3302] of all administrative and judicial bodies, councils and
directories of departments, councils and communal municipalities, civil,
criminal and commercial tribunals, justices and their assistants in the
lower courts, deputies of the justices, national commissaries of the
civil courts, with secretaries and bailiffs belonging to the various
tribunals and administrations.[3303] The obligation of having practiced
as a lawyer is abolished by the same stroke, so that the first comer, if
he belongs to the club (party) may become a judge without knowing how to
write, and even without being able to read.[3304]--Just before this the
staff of the National Guard, in all towns above fifty thousand souls,
and afterwards in all the towns on the frontier, has again passed
through the electoral sieve.[3305] In like manner, the officers of the
gendarmerie at Paris and throughout France once more undergo an election
by their men. Finally, all post-masters and post-office comptrollers
have to submit to election.--Even better, below or alongside the
elected officials, this administrative purge concerns all non-elective
functionaries and employees, no matter how insignificant their service,
however feeble and indirect their office may be connected with political
matters. This is because tax receivers and assessors, directors and
other agents of rivers and forests, engineers, notaries, attorneys,
clerks and scribes belonging to the administrative branch, are all
subject to dismissal if they do not obtain a certificate of civism from
their municipality. At Troyes, out of fifteen notaries, it is refused
to four,[3306] which leaves four places to be filled by their Jacobin
clerks. At Paris,[3307] "all honest folks, all clerks who are educated,"
are driven out of the navy offices; the war department is getting to be
"a den where everybody on duty wears a red cap, where all thee-and-thou
each other, even the Minister, where four hundred employees, among
which are a number of women, show off in the dirtiest dress, affect
the coolest cynicism, do nothing, and steal on all sides."--Under the
denunciation of the clubs, the broom is applied even at the bottom of
the hierarchical scale, even to secretaries of village councils, to
messengers and call-boys in the towns, to jail-keepers and door-keepers,
to beadles and sextons, to foresters, field-custodians, and others of
this class.[3308] All these persons must be, or appear to be, Jacobin;
otherwise, their place slips away from them, for there is always some
one to covet it, apply for it and take it.--Outside of employees the
sweeping operation reaches the suppliers and contractors; even here
there are the faithful to be provided for, and nowhere is the bait so
important. The State, even in ordinary times, is always the largest of
consumers, and, at this moment, it is expending monthly, merely on
the war, two hundred millions extra. What fish may be caught in such
disturbed waters![3309]--All these lucrative orders as well as all these
remunerated positions are at the disposition of the Jacobins, and they
seize the opportunity; they are the lawful owner, who comes home after a
long absence and gives or withdraws his custom as the pleases, while
he makes a clean sweep in his own household.--The administrative and
judicial services alone number 1,300,000 places, all those in the
treasury department, in that of public works, in that of public
education, and in the Church; all posts in the National Guard and in the
army, from that of commander-in-chief down to a drummer; the whole of
the central or local power, with the vast patronage flowing from this.
Never had such rich spoils been made available to the general public in
one go. Lots will be drawn, apparently, by vote; but it is evident that
the Jacobins have no intention of surrendering their prey to the hazards
of a free ballot; they mean to keep it the way they got it; by force,
and will leave no stone unturned to control the elections.
II.--The elections.
The young and the poor invited to the ballot-box.--Danger of
the Conservatives if candidates.--Their chiefs absent
themselves.--Proportion of absentees at the primary
assemblies.
They begin by paving their way.[3310] A new decree has at once
suppressed the feeble and last legal requirement for impartiality,
integrity and competence of the elector and the eligible candidate. No
more discrimination between active and passive citizens; no longer any
difference between poll tax of an elector of the first degree and that
of the second degree: no electoral poll tax qualification whatever. All
Frenchmen, except domestics, of whom they are distrustful, supposing
them under their employer's influence, may vote at the primary
assemblies, and not longer at the age of twenty-five, but at twenty-one,
which brings to the polls the two most revolutionary groups, on the one
hand the young, and on the other the poor, the latter in great numbers
in these times of unemployment, dearth and poverty, amounting in all
to two millions and a half, and, perhaps, three millions of new
electors.--At Besançon the number of the registered voters is
doubled.[3311]--Thus are the usual clients of the Jacobins admitted
within the electoral boundaries, from which they had hitherto been
excluded,[3312] and, to ensure their coming, their leaders decide that
every elector obliged to travel "shall receive twenty sous mileage,"
besides "three francs per diem during his stay."[3313]
While attracting their supporters they drove their adversaries away. The
political banditry, through which they dominate and terrify France,
has already taken care of that. Many arbitrary arrests and unpunished
murders are a warning to all candidates who do not belong to their
party; and I do not speak about to the nobles or friends of the ancient
regime that have fled or are in prison, but the Constitutionalists and
the Feuillants. Any electoral enterprise on their part would be
madness, almost a suicide. Accordingly, none of them call attention to
themselves. If any outrageous moderate, like Durand de Maillane, appears
on a list, it is because the revolutionaries have adopted him without
knowing him, and because he swears that he hates royalty.[3314] The
others, more honest, do not want to don the popular livery and resort to
club patronage, so they carefully stay away; they know too well that
to do otherwise would mark their heads for pikes and their homes for
pillage. At the very moment of depositing the vote the domains of
several deputies are sacked simply because, "on the comparative lists
of seven calls by name," sent to the departments from Paris by the
Jacobins, their names are found on the right.[3315]--Through an excess
of precaution the Constitutionalists of the Legislative body are kept at
the capital, their passports being refused to them to prevent them from
returning into the provinces and obtaining votes by publicly stating
the truth in relation to the recent revolution.--In the same way, all
conservative journals are suppressed, reduced to silence, or compelled
to become turncoats.--Now, when one has neither the possibility to speak
up nor a candidate which might become one's representative, of what use
is it to vote? And especially, since the primary assemblies are places
of disorder and violence,[3316] patriots alone, in many places, being
admitted,[3317] a conservative being "insulted and overwhelmed with
numbers," and, if he utters an opinion, exposed to danger, also, if he
remains silent, incurring the risk of denunciations, threats, and blows.
To keep in the background, remain on the sidelines, avoid being seen,
and to strive to be forgotten, is the rule under a pasha, and especially
when this pasha is a mob. Hence the absenteeism of the majority; around
the ballot-box there is an enormous void. At Paris, in the election of
mayor and municipal officers, the balloting of October, November and
December collect together only 14,000 out of 160,000 registered voters,
later 10,000, and, later again, only 7,000.[3318] At Besançon, 7,000.
registered voters result in less than 600; there is the same proportion
in other towns, as for example, in Troyes. In like manner, in the rural
cantons, east of Doubs and west of Loire-Inférieure, but one-tenth of
the electors dare exercise their right to vote.[3319] The electoral
source is so exhausted, so often disturbed, and so stopped up as to be
almost dry: in these primary assemblies which, directly or indirectly,
delegate all public powers, and which, in the expression of the common
will, should be full, there are lacking six millions three hundred
thousands electors out of seven millions.[3320]
III.--Composition and tone of the secondary assemblies.
Exclusion of "Feuillant" electors.--Pressure on other
electors.--Persons elected by the conservatives obliged to
resign.--Elections by the Catholics canceled.--Secession of
the Jacobin minorities.--The election of their men made
valid.--Public opinion not in accord with official
selections.