Through this anticipated purge the assemblies of the first degree find

themselves, for the most part, Jacobin; consequently the electors of

the second degree, appointed by them, are for the most part, Jacobin; in

many departments, their assembly becomes the most anarchical, the most

turbulent, and the most usurping of all the clubs. Here there is only

shouting, denunciations, oath-taking, incendiary motions, cheering

which carry all questions, furious speeches by Parisian commissaries,

by delegates from the local club, by passing Federates, and by female

wretches demanding arms.[3321] The Pas-de-Calais assemblage sets free

and applauds a woman imprisoned for having beaten a drum in a mob. The

Paris assembly fraternizes with the Versailles slaughterers and the

assassins of the mayor of Etampes. The assembly of the Bouches-du-Rhône

gives a certificate o virtue to Jourdan, the Glacière murderer. The

assembly of Seine-et-Marne applauds the proposal to cast a cannon which

might contain the head of Louis XVI. for a cannon-ball to be fired

at the enemy.--It is not surprising that an electoral body without

self-respect should respect nothing, and practice self-mutilation under

the pretext of purification.[3322] The object of the despotic majority

was to reign at once, without any contest, on its own authority, and to

expel all offensive electors. At Paris, in the Aisne, in Haute-Loire, in

Ille-et-Vilaine, in Maine-et-Loire, it excludes as unworthy the

members of old Feuillants and monarchical clubs, and the signers of

Constitutionalist protests. In Hérault it cancels the elections in

the canton of Servian, because the elected men, it says, are "mad

aristocrats." In Orne it drives away an old Constituent, Goupil de

Préfeln, because he voted for the revision, also, his son-in-law,

because he is his son-in-law. In the Bouches-du-Rhône, where the canton

of Seignon, by mistake or through routine, swore "to maintain the

constitution of the kingdom," it sets aside these retrograde elected

representatives, commences proceedings against the "crime committed,"

and sends troops against Noves because the Noves elector, a justice who

is denounced and in peril, has escaped from the electoral den.--After

the purification of persons it proceeds to the purification of

sentiments. At Paris, and in at least nine departments,[3323] and in

contempt of the law, is suppresses the secret ballot, the last refuge of

timid conservatives, and imposes on each elector a verbal public vote,

loud and clear, on his name being called; that is to say, if he does

not vote as he ought to, he risks the gallows.[3324] Nothing could more

surely convert hesitation and indecision into good sense, while, in

many a place, still more powerful machinery is violently opposed to

the elections. At Paris the elections are carried on in the midst of

atrocities, under the pikes of the butchers, and con ducted by their

instigators. At Meaux and at Rheims the electors in session were within

hearing of the screeches of the murdered priests. At Rheims the butchers

themselves ordered the electoral assembly to elect their candidates,

Drouet, the famous post-master, and Armonville, a tipsy wool-carder,

upon which one-half of the assembly withdrew, while the two candidates

of the assassins are elected. At Lyons, two days after the massacre, the

Jacobin commander writes to the Minister: "Yesterday's catastrophe puts

the aristocrats to flight, and ensures us the majority in Lyons."[3325]

From universal suffrage thus subjected to so much sifting, submitted to

such heavy pressure, heated and refined in the revolutionary alembic,

those who control it obtain all they want, a concentrated extract, the

quintessence of the Jacobin spirit.

And yet, should this extract not seem to them sufficiently strong,

wherever they are sovereign, they throw it away and begin over again. At

Paris,[3326] by means of a purifying and surplus ballot, the new Council

of the Commune undertakes the expulsion of its lukewarm members, while

d'Ormesson, the mayor elect of the moderates, is assailed with so

many threats that, on the verge of his installation, he resigns. At

Lyons,[3327] another moderate, Nivière-Chol, twice elected, and, by

9,000 out of 11,000 votes, is twice compelled to abandon his place;

after him, Gilibert, the physician, who, supported by the same voters,

is about to obtain the majority, is seized suddenly and cast into

prison; even in prison, he is elected; the clubbists confine him

there more rigidly, and do not let him out even after extorting

his resignation.--Elsewhere in the rural cantons, for example, in

Franche-Comté,[3328] a number of elections are canceled when the person

elected happens to be a Catholic. The Jacobin minority frequently

secede, meet in a tavern, elect their mayor or justice of the peace, and

the validity of his election is secured because he is a patriot; so much

the worse for that of the majority, whose more numerous votes are null

because given by "fanatics."--The response of universal suffrage

thus appealed to cannot be other than that which is framed for

it. Indisputable facts are to show to what extent this response is

compulsive or perverted, what a distance there is between an official

choice and public opinion, how the elections give a contrary meaning to

popular sentiment. The departments of Deux-Sèvres, Maine-et-Loire,

la Vendée, Loire-Infèrieure, Morbihan, and Finistère, send only

anti-Catholic republicans to the Convention, while these same

departments are to become the inexhaustible nursery of the great

catholic and royalist insurrection. Three regicides out of four deputies

represent Lozère, where, six months later, thirty thousand peasants

are to march under the Royal white banner. Six regicides out of nine

deputies represent la Vendée, which is going to rise from one end of it

to the other in the name of the King.[3329]

IV.--Composition of the National Convention.

Number of Montagnards at the start.--Opinions and sentiments

of the deputies of the Plain.--The Gironde.--Ascendancy of

the Girondins in the Convention.--Their intellectual

character.--Their principles.--The plan of their

Constitution.--Their fanaticism.--Their sincerity, culture

and tastes.--How they differ from pure Jacobins.--How they

comprehend popular sovereignty.--Their stipulations with

regard to the initiative of individuals and of groups.--

Weakness of philosophic thought and of parliamentary

authority in times of anarchy.

However vigorous the electoral pressure may have been, the voting

machine has not provided the expected results. At the opening of the

session, out of 749 deputies, only about fifty[3330] are found to

approve of the Commune, nearly all of the elected in places where, as

at Rheims and Paris, terror has the elector by the throat, "under the

clubs, axes, daggers, and bludgeons of the butchers."[3331] But where

the physical impressions of murder have not been so tangible and

impressive, some sense of decency has prevented too glaring elections.

The inclination to vote for well-known names could not wholly be

arrested; seventy-seven former members of the Constituent Assembly, and

one hundred and eighty-six of the previous Legislative Assembly enter

the Convention, and the practical knowledge which many of these have

of government business has given them some insights. In short,

the consciences of six hundred and fifty deputies are only in part

perverted.

They are all, unquestionably, decided republicans, enemies of tradition,

apostles of reason, and trained in deductive politics; only on these

conditions could they be elected. Every candidate is supposed to possess

the Jacobin faith, or, at least, to recite the revolutionary creed. The

Convention, consequently, at its opening session votes unanimously, with

cheers and enthusiasm, the abolition of royalty, and three months later

it pronounces, by a large majority, Louis XVI.,

"guilty of conspiring against the liberty of the nation, and of assaults

on the general welfare of the State."[3332]

Nevertheless, social habitudes still subsist under political prejudices.

A man who is born in and lives for a long time in an old community, is,

through this alone, marked with its imprint; the customs to which he

conforms have crystallized in him in the shape of sentiments: if it is

well-regulated and civilized, he has involuntarily arrived at respect

for property and for human life, and, in most characters, this respect

has taken very deep root. A theory, even if adopted, does not wholly

succeed in destroying this respect; only in rare instances is it

successful, when it encounters coarse and defective natures; to

take full hold, it is necessary that it should fall on the scattered

inheritors of former destructive appetites, on those hopelessly

degenerate souls in which the passions of an anterior date are

slumbering; then only does its malevolence fully appear, for it rouses

the ferocious or plundering instincts of the barbarian, the raider, the

inquisitor, and the pasha. On the contrary, with the greatest number,

do what it will, integrity and humanity always remain powerful motives.

Nearly all these legislators, who originate in the middle class, are at

bottom, irrespective of a momentary delusion, what they always have been

up to now, advocates, attorneys, merchants, priests, or physicians

of the ancient regime, and what they will become later on, docile

administrators or zealous functionaries of Napoleon's empire,[3333] that

is to say, ordinary civilized persons belonging to the eighteenth and

nineteenth centuries, sufficiently honest in private life to have a

desire to be equally so in public life.--Hence their horror of anarchy,

of Marat,[3334] and of the September butchers and robbers. Three days

after their assembling together they vote, "almost unanimously,"

the preparation of a law "against the instigators of murder and

assassination." "Almost unanimously," they desire to raise a guard,

recruited in the 83 departments, against the armed bands of Paris and

the Commune. Pétition is elected as their first president by "almost the

totality of suffrages." Roland who has just read his report to them, is

greeted with the "loudest" applause from nearly the "entire" Assembly.

In short they are for the ideal republic against actual brigands. This

accounts for their ranging themselves around those upright and sincere

deputies, who, in the two preceding Assemblies or alongside of them,

were the ablest defenders of both principles and humanity, around

Buzot, Lanjuinais, Pétition, and Rabaut-Saint-Etienne; around Brissot,

Vergniaud, Guadet, Gensonné, Isnard, and Condorcet; around Roland,

Louvet, Barbaroux, and the five hundred deputies of the "Plain,"[3335]

marching in one body under the leadership of the 180 Girondists who now

form the "Right."[3336]

These latter, among the republicans, are the most sincere and have the

most faith; for they have long been such, after much thought, study and

as a matter of principle. Nearly all of them are well-read educated men,

reasoners, philosophers, disciples of Diderot or of Rousseau, satisfied

that absolute truth had been revealed by their masters, thoroughly

imbued with the Encyclopédie[3337] or the Contrat Social, the same as

the Puritans formerly were with the Bible.[3338] At the age when

the mind is maturing, and fondly clings to general ideas,[3339] they

embraced the theory and aimed at a reconstruction of society according

to abstract principles. They have accordingly set to work as pure

logicians, rigorously applying the superficial and false system of

analysis then in vogue.[3340] They have formed for themselves an idea of

man in general, the same in all times and ages, an extract or minimum of

man; they have pondered over several thousands of or millions of these

abstract mortals, erected their imaginary wills into primordial rights,

and drawn up in anticipation the chimerical contract which is to

regulate their impossible union. There are to be no more privileges, no

more heredity, no qualifications of any kind; all are to be electors,

all eligible and all of equal members of the sovereignty; all powers are

to be of short date, and conferred through election; there must be

but one assembly, elected and entirely renewed annually, one executive

council elected and one-half renewed annually, a national treasury-board

elected and one-third renewed annually; all local administrations and

tribunals must be elected; a referendum to the people, the electoral

body endowed with the initiative, a constant appeal to the sovereignty,

which, always consulted and always active, will manifest its will not

alone by the choice of its mandatories but, again, through "the censure"

which it will apply to the laws--such is the Constitution they forge for

themselves.[3341] "The English Constitution," says Condorcet, "is

made for the rich, that of America for citizens well-off; the French

Constitution should be made for all men."--It is, for this reason, the

only legitimate one; every institution that deviates from it is opposed

to natural rights and, therefore, fit only to be put down.-This is what

the Girondists have done during the Legislative sessions; we know

how they, armed with the illusions[3342] of their new philosophy and

triumphing through a rigid, rash and hasty reason, have

* persecuted Catholic consciences,

* violated feudal property,

* encroached on the legal authority of the King,

* persecuted the remains of the ancient regime,

* tolerated crimes committed by the crowds,

* even plunged France into an European war,

* armed even the paupers,

* caused the overthrow of all government.--

As far as his Utopia is concerned, the Girondist is a sectarian, and he

knows no scruples.

* Little does he care that nine out of ten electors do not vote: he

regards himself as the authorized representative of all ten.

* Little does he care whether the great majority of Frenchmen favor the

Constitution of 1791; it is his business to impose on them his own.

* Little does he care whether his former opponents, King, émigrés,

unsworn ecclesiastics, are honorable men or at least excusable; he will

launch against them every rigorous legal proceeding, transportation,

confiscation, civil death and physical death.[3343]

In his own eyes he is the justiciary, and his investiture is bestowed

upon him by eternal right. There is no human infatuation so pernicious

to man as that of absolute right; nothing is better calculated for

the destruction in him of the hereditary accumulation of moral

conceptions.--Within the narrow bounds of their creed, however,

the Girondins are sincere and consistent. They are masters of their

formulae; they know how to deduce consequences from them; they believe

in them the same as a surveyor in his theorems, and a theologian in

the articles of his faith; they are anxious to apply them, to devise

a constitution, to establish a regular government, to emerge from a

barbarous state, to put an end to fighting in the street, to pillaging,

to murders, to the sway of brutal force and of naked arms.

The disorder, mover, so repugnant to them as logicians is still more

repugnant to them as cultivated, polished men. They have a sense of what

is proper,[3344] of becoming ways, and their tastes are even refined.

They are not familiar with, nor do they desire to imitate, the

rude manners of Danton, his coarse language, his oaths, and his low

associations with the people. They have not, like Robespierre, gone to

lodge with a master joiner, to live him and eat with his family. Unlike

Pache, Minister of War, no one among them "feels honored" by "going down

to dine with his porter," and by sending his daughters to the club to

give a fraternal kiss to drunken Jacobins.[3345] At Madame Roland's

house there is a salon, although it is stiff and pedantic; Barbaroux

send verses to a marchioness, who, after the 2nd of June, elopes with

him to Caen.[3346] Condorcet has lived in high society, while his wife,

a former canoness, possess the charms, the repose, the instruction, and

the elegance of an accomplished woman. Men of this stamp cannot endure

close alongside of them the inept and gross dictatorship of an armed

rabble. In providing for the public treasury they require regular taxes

and not tyrannical confiscations.[3347] To repress the malevolent they

propose "punishment and not banishment."[3348] In all State trials

they oppose irregular courts, and strive to maintain for those under

indictment some of the usual safeguards.[3349] On declaring the King

guilty they hesitate in pronouncing the sentence of death, and try to

lighten their responsibility by appealing to the people. The line "laws

and not blood," was a line which, causing a stir in a play of the day,

presented in a nutshell their political ideas. And, naturally, the law,

especially Republican law, is the law of all; once enacted, nobody,

no citizen, no city, no party, can refuse to obey it without being

criminal. It is monstrous that one city should arrogate to itself the

privilege of ruling the nation; Paris, like other departments, should be

reduced to its on-eighty-third proportion of influence. It is monstrous

that, in a capital of 700,000 souls, five or six thousand radical

Jacobins should oppress the sections and alone elect their candidates;

in the sections and at the polls, all citizens, at least all

republicans, should enjoy an equal and free vote. It is monstrous that

the principle of popular sovereignty should be used to cover up attacks

against popular sovereignty, that, under the pretense of saving the

State, the first that comes along may kill whom he pleases, that, on

the pretext that they are resisting oppression, each mob should have the

"Right" to put the government down.--Hence, this militant "Right" must

be pacified, enclosed within legal boundaries, and subjected to a fixed

process.[3350] Should any individual desire a law, a reform or a public

measure, let him state his on paper over his own signature and that of

fifty other citizens of the same primary assembly; then the proposition

must be submitted to his own primary assembly; then in case it obtains a

majority, to the primary assemblies of his arrondissement; then, in case

of a majority, to the primary assemblies of his department; then, in

case of a majority, to all the primary assemblies of the nation, so

that after a second verdict of the same assemblies twice consulted, the

Legislative body, yielding to the majority of primary suffrages, may

dissolve and a new Legislative body, in which all old members shall be

declared ineligible, take its place.--This is the final expression and

the master idea, of the theory. Condorcet, its able constructor, has

outdone himself. Impossible to design on paper a more ingenious or

complicated mechanism. The Girondists, in the closing article of this

faultless constitution, believe that they have discovered a way to

muzzle the beast and allow the sovereign people to fully assert their

rights.

As if, with some kind of constitution and especially with this one,

one could muzzle the beast! As if it was in the mood to crane the

neck allowing them to put the muzzle on! Robespierre, on behalf of the

Jacobins, counters with a clause radically opposed to the one drafted by

Condorcet[3351]:

"To submit 'the right to resist oppression' to legal formalities is

the ultimate refinement of tyranny... When a government violates the

people's rights, a general insurrection of the people, as well as

portions of the people, is the most sacred of duties."

Political orthodoxy, close reasoning, and oratorical talent are,

however, no weapon against this ever-muttering insurrection.

"Our philosophers," says a good observer,[3352] "want to attain their

ends by persuasion; which is equivalent to saying that battles may be

won by eloquence, fine speeches, and plans of constitution. Very soon,

according to them,.. if will suffice to carry complete copies of

Macchiavelli, Rousseau and Montesquieu into battle instead of cannon,

it never occurring to them that these authors, like their works, never

were, and never will be, anything but fools when put up against a

cut-throat provided with a good sword."

The parliamentary landscape has fallen away; things have returned to

a state of nature, that is, to a state of war, and one is no longer

concerned with debate but with brute force. To be in the right, to

convince the convention, to obtain majorities, to pass decrees, would be

appropriate in ordinary times, under a government provided with an armed

force and a regular administration, by which, from the summits of

public authority, the decrees of a majority descend through submissive

functionaries to a sympathetic and obedient population. But, in times of

anarchy, and above all, in the den of the Commune, in Paris, such as

the 10th of August and the 2nd of September made it, all this is of no

account.

V.--The Jacobins forming alone the Sovereign People.

Opinion in Paris.--The majority of the population

constitutional.--The new régime unpopular.--Scarcity and

high cost of food.--Catholic customs obstructed.--Universal

and increasing discontent.--Aversion or indifference to the

Girondins.--Political resignation of the majority.--Modern

customs incompatible with pure democracy.--Men of property

and income, manufacturers and tradesmen, keep aloof.

--Dissension, timidity, and feebleness of the Conservatives.

--The Jacobins alone form the sovereign people.

And it is of no account because, first of all, in this great city

of Paris the Girondists are isolated, and have no group of zealous

partisans to depend upon. For, if the large majority is opposed to their

adversaries, that is not in their favor, it having secretly, at heart,

remained "Constitutionalists."[3353] "I would make myself master of

Paris," says a professional observer, "in ten days without striking a

blow if I had but six thousand men, and one of Lafayette's stable-boys

to command them." Lafayette, indeed, since the departure or concealment

of the royalists, represents the old, fixed, and innermost opinion

of the capital. Paris submits to the Girondists as well as to the

Montagnards as usurpers; the mass of the public regards them with

ill-will, and not only the bourgeoisie, but likewise the majority of the

people loathe the established government.

Work is scarce and food is dear; brandy has tripled in price; only four

hundred oxen are brought in at the Poissy market instead of seven or

eight thousand; the butchers declare that there will be no meat in Paris

next week except for the sick.[3354] To obtain a small ration of bread

it is necessary to wait five or six hours in a line at the baker's

shops, and,[3355] as is customary, workmen and housekeepers impute all

this to the government. This government, which so poorly provides for

its needs, offends them yet more in their deepest feelings, in the

habits most dear to them, in their faith and worship. The common people,

even at Paris, is still at this time very religious, much more so than

at the present day. When the priest bearing the Host passes along the

street, the crowd "gathers from all sides, men, women, and children,

young and old, and fall on their knees in worship."[3356] The day on

which the relics of saint Leu are borne in procession through the Rue

St. Martin, "everybody kneels; I did not see a man," says a careful

observer, "that did not take off his hat. At the guard-house of the

Mauconseil section, the entire company presented arms." At the same time

the "citoyennes around the markets talked with each other to know if

there was any way of decking houses with tapestry."[3357] The following

week they compel the revolutionary committee of Saint-Eustache[3358]

to authorize another procession, and again each one kneels: "everybody

approved of the ceremony, no one, that I heard of; making any objection.

This is a striking picture.... I saw repentance, I saw the parallel each

is forced to draw between the actual state of things and the former

one. I saw what a privation the people had to endure in the loss of that

which, formerly, was the most imposing of all church ceremonies. People

of all ranks and ages were deeply affected and humble, and many had

tears in their eyes." Now, in this respect, the Girondists, by virtue of

being philosophers, are more iconoclastic, more intolerant than any

one, and there is no reason for preferring them to their adversaries. At

bottom, the government installed by the recent electoral comedy, for

the major portion of the Parisians, has no authority but the fact of

its existence; people put up with it because there is no other, fully

recognizing its worthlessness;[3359] it is a government of strangers, of

interlopers, of bunglers, of cantankerous, weak and violent persons. The

Convention has no hold either on the people or on the bourgeois class,

and in proportion as it glides more rapidly down the revolutionary hill,

it breaks one by one the ties with which it is still connected to the

undecided.

In a reign of eight months the Convention has alienated public

opinion entirely. "Almost all who have property of any kind are

conservative,"[3360] and all the conservatives are against it. "The

gendarmes here openly speak up against the Revolution, even up to the

revolutionary tribunal, whose judgments they loudly condemn. All the old

soldiers detest the actual order of things."[3361]--The volunteers "who

come back from the army appear angry at putting the King to death, and

on that account they would flay all the Jacobins."[3362]--No party in

the Convention escapes this universal disaffection and growing aversion.

"If the question of guillotining the members of the Convention could be

put to an open vote, it would be carried against them by a majority of

nineteen-twentieths,"[3363] which, in fact, is about the proportion of

electors who, through fright or disgust, keep away from the polls. Let

the "Right" or the "Left" of the Convention be victors or vanquished,

that is a matter which concerns them; the public at large does not enter

into the discussions of its conquerors, and no longer cares for either

Gironde or "Mountain." Its old grievances always revive "against the

Vergniauds, Guadets" and company;[3364] it does not like them, and has

no confidence in them, and will let them be crushed without helping

them. The infuriates may expel the Thirty-Two, if they choose, and put

them under lock and key. "There is nothing the aristocracy (meaning

by this, owners of property, merchants, bankers, the rich, and the

well-to-do), desire so much as to see them guillotined."[3365] 'Even the

inferior aristocracy (meaning petty tradesmen and head-workmen) take

no more interest in their fate than if they were so many escaped wild

beasts... again caught and put in their cages."[3366] "Guadet, Pétion,

Brissot, would not find thirty persons in Paris who would take their

part, or even take the first step to save them."[3367]

Apart from all this, it makes little difference whether the majority has

any preferences; its sympathies, if it has any, will never be other

than platonic. It no longer counts for anything in either camp, it has

withdrawn from the battle-field, it is now simply the stakes of the

conflict, the prey and the booty of the winner. For, unable or unwilling

to comply with the political system imposed on it, it is self-condemned

to utter powerlessness. This system is the direct government of the

people by the people, with all that ensues, permanence of the section

assemblies, club debates in public, uproar in the galleries, motions in

the open air, mobs and manifestations in the streets; nothing is less

attractive and more impracticable to civilized and busy people. In our

modern communities, work, the family, and social intercourse absorb

nearly all our time; hence, such a system suits only the idle and

rough outcasts who feel at home there; the others refuse to enter an

environment expressly set up for singles, orphans, unskilled persons,

living in lodgings, foul-mouthed, lacking the sense of smell, with a

gift of the gab, robust arms, tough hide, solid haunches, expert in

hustling, and with whom blows replace arguments.[3368]--After the

September massacres, and on the opening of the barriers, a number of

proprietors and persons living on their incomes, not alone the suspected

but those who thought they might become so, escaped from Paris, and,

during the following months, the emigration increases along with the

danger. Towards December rumor has it that lists have been made up of

former Feuillants; "we are assured that during the past eight days more

than fourteen thousand persons have left the capital."[3369] According

to the report of the Minister himself;[3370] "many who are independent

in fortune and position abandon a city where the renewal of proscription

is talked of daily."--" Grass grows in the finest streets," writes

a deputy, "while the silence of the grave reigns in the Thébaïdes

(isolated villas) of the faubourg Saint-Germain."--As to the

conservatives who remain, they confine themselves to private life, from

which it follows that, in the political balance, those present are of no

more account than the absentees. At the municipal elections in October,

November, and December, out of 160,000 registered voters, there are at

first 144,000, then 150,000, and finally 153,000 who stay away from

the polls; these, certainly, and for a much better reason, do not show

themselves at the assemblies of their sections. Commonly, out of three

or four thousand citizens, only fifty or sixty attend; one of these,

called a general assembly, which signifies the will of the people to the

Convention, is composed of twenty-five voters.[3371] Accordingly, what

would a sensible man, a friend of order, do in these dens of fanatics?

He stays at home, as on stormy days; he lets the shower of words spend

itself, not caring to be spattered in the gutter of nonsense which

carries off the filth of this district.

If he leaves his house at all he goes out for a walk, the same as in

old times, to indulge the tastes he had under the old régime, those of

a talkative, curious on-looker and friendly stroller, of a Parisian safe

in his well run town. "Yesterday evening," writes a man who feels the

coming Reign of Terror, "I took my stand in the middle of the right

alley of the Champs-Elysées;[3372] it was thronged with--who do you

think? Would you believe it, with moderates, aristocrats, owners of

property, and very pretty women, elegantly dressed, seeking the caresses

of the balmy spring breeze! It was a charming sight. All were gay and

smiling. I was the only one that was not so... I withdrew hastily, and,

on passing through the Tuileries garden, I saw a repetition of what I

had seen before, forty thousand wealthy people scattered here and there,

almost as many as Paris contains."--These are evidently the sheep ready

for the slaughter-house. They no longer think of defense, they have

abandoned their posts to the sans-culottes, "they refuse all civil and

military functions,"[3373] they avoid doing duty in the National Guard

and instead pay their substitutes. In short, they withdraw from a game

which, in 1789, they desired to play without understanding it, and in

which, since the end of 1791, they have always burnt their fingers. The

cards may be handed over to others, especially as the cards are dirty

and the players fling them in each others' faces; as for themselves they

are spectators, they have no other ambitions.--"Leave them their old

enjoyments,[3374] leave them the pleasure of going and coming throughout

the kingdom; but do not force them to take part in the war. Subject them

to the heaviest taxation and they will not complain; nobody will even

know that they exist, while the most serious question that disturbs them

in their thoughtful days is, can one amuse one's self as much under a

republican form of government as under the ancient régime?" They hope,

perhaps, to escape under cover of inoffensive neutrality. Is it likely

that the victor, whoever he is, will regard people as enemies who

are resigned to his rule before-hand? "A dandy[3375] alongside of me

remarked, yesterday morning, 'They will not take my arms away, for I

never had any.' Alas,' I replied to him, 'don't make a boast of it, for

you may find forty thousand simpletons in Paris that would say the same

thing, and, indeed, it is not at all to the credit of Paris.'"--Such is

the blindness or self-complacency of the city dweller who, having always

lived under a good police, is unwilling to change his habits, and is not

aware that the time has come for him to turn fighting man in his turn.

The manufacturers, the merchants and the man living on his income

are even less disposed than the independent gentleman, to give up his

private affairs for public affairs. His business will not wait for him,

he being confined to his office, store or counting-room. For example,

"the wine-dealers[3376] are nearly all aristocrats in the sense of this

word at this period," but "never were their sales so great as during

the insurrections of the people and in revolutionary days." Hence the

impossibility of obtaining their services in those days. "They are seen

on their premises very active, with three or four of their assistants,"

and turn a deaf ear to every appeal. "How can we leave when custom is so

good? People must have their wants supplied. Who will attend to them

if I and the waiters should go away?"--There are other causes of

their weakness. All grades in the National Guard and all places in the

municipality having been given up to the Jacobin extremists, they have

no chiefs: the Girondists are incapable of rallying them, while Garat,

the Minister, is unwilling to employ them. Moreover, they are divided

amongst themselves, no one having any confidence in the other, "it being

necessary to chain them together to have anything accomplished."[3377]

Besides this, the remembrance of September weighs upon their spirits

like a nightmare.--All this converts people into a timid flock, ready to

scamper at the slightest alarm. "In the Contrat Social section," says

an officer of the National Guard, "one-third of those who are able to

defend the section are off in the country; another third are hiding away

in their houses, and the other third dare not do anything."[3378]

"If, out of fifty thousand moderates, you can collect together three

thousand, I shall be very much astonished. And if; out of these three

thousand, five hundred only are found to agree, and have courage enough

to express their opinion, I shall be still more astonished. The latter,

for instance, must expect to be Septemberized!"[3379] This they know,

and hence they keep silent and bend beneath the yoke. "What, indeed,

would the majority of the sections do when it is demonstrated that a

dozen raving maniacs at the head of a sans-culottes section puts the

other forty-seven sections of Paris to flight?"--Through this desertion

of the state and themselves, they surrender in advance, and, in this

great city, as formerly in ancient Athens and Rome, we see alongside of

an immense population of subjects without any rights, a small despotic

oligarchy in itself composing the sovereign people.[3380]

VI.--Composition of the party.

Its numbers and quality decline.--The Underlings.--Idle and

dissipated workmen.--The suburban rabble.--Bandits and

blackguards.--Prostitutes.--The September actors.

Not that this minority has been on the increase since the 10th of

August, quite the reverse.--On the 19th of November, 1792, its candidate

for the office of Mayor of Paris, Lhuillier, obtains only 4,896

votes.[3381] On the 18th of June, 1793, its candidate for the command of

the National Guard, Henriot, will secure but 4,573 votes; to ensure his

election it will be necessary to cancel the election twice, impose the

open vote, and relieve voters from showing their section tickets,

which will permit the trusty to vote successively in other quarters and

apparently double their number by allowing each to vote two or three

times.[3382] Putting all together, there are not six thousand

Jacobins in Paris, all of them sans-culottes and partisans of the

"Mountain."[3383] Ordinarily, in a section assembly, they number "ten

or fifteen," at most "thirty or forty," "organized into a permanent

tyrannical board."... "The rest listen and raise their hands

mechanically."... "Three or four hundred Visionaries, whose devotion

is as frank as it is stupid, and two or three hundred more to whom the

result of the last revolution did not bring the places and honors they

too evidently relied on," form the entire staff of the party; "these are

the clamorers of the sections and of the groups, the only ones who

have clearly declared themselves against order, the apostles of a new

sedition, scathed or ruined men who need disturbance to keep alive,"

while under these comes the train of Marat, vile women, worthless

wretches, and "paid shouters at three francs a day."[3384]

To this must be added that the quality of the factious is still more

reduced than their number. Plenty of honest men, small tradesmen, wine

dealers, cook-shop keepers, clerks, who, on the 10th of August, were

against the Court, are now against the Commune.[3385] The September

affair, probably, disgusted them, and they were not disposed to

recommence the massacres. A workman named Gonchon, for example, the

usual spokesman of the faubourg Saint-Antoine, an upright man, sincere

and disinterested, supports Roland, and, very soon, at Lyons, seeing how

things are with his own eyes, he is to loyally endorse the revolt of

the moderates against the Maratists.[3386] "The respectable class of the

arts, says observers, "is gradually leaving the faction to join the sane

party."[3387] "Now that water-carriers, porters and the like storm the

loudest in the sections, it is plain to all eyes that the gangrene

of disgust has reached the fruit-sellers, tailors, shoe-makers, bar

owners," and others of that class.[3388]--Towards the end, "butchers of

both classes, high and low, are aristocratized."--In the same way, "the

women in the markets, except a few who are paid and whose husbands are

Jacobins, curse and swear, fume, fret and storm." "This morning," says

a merchant, "four or five of them were here; they no longer insist

on being called citoyennes; they declare that they "spit on the

republic."[3389]--The only remaining patriot females are from the lowest

of the low class, the harpies who pillage shops as much through envy

as through necessity, "boat-women, embittered by hard labor,[3390]...

jealous of the grocer's wife, better dressed than herself, as the latter

was of the wives of the attorney and counselor, as these were of those

of the financier and noble. The woman of the people thinks she cannot do

too much to lower the grocer's wife to her own level."

Thus reduced to its dregs through the withdrawal of its tolerably honest

recruits, the faction now comprises none but the scum of the populace,

first, "subordinate workmen who look upon the downfall of their

employers with a certain satisfaction," then, the small retailers, the

old-clothes dealers, plasterers, "those who offer second-hand coats

for sale on the fringes of the market, fourth-rate cooks who, at

the cemetery of the Innocents, sell meat and beans under umbrella

tops,"[3391] next, domestics highly pleased with now being masters of

their masters, kitchen helpers, grooms, lackeys, janitors, every species

of valet, who, in contempt of the law, voted at the elections[3392] and

at the Jacobin club form a group of "silly people" satisfied "that they

were universal geographers because they had ridden post once or twice,"

and that they were politicians "because they had read 'The Four Sons of

Aymon.'"[3393]--But, in this mud, spouting and spreading around in

broad daylight, it is the ordinary scum of great cities which forms the

grossest flux, the outcasts of every trade and profession, dissipated

workmen of all kinds, the irregular and marauding troops of the social

army, the class which, "discharged from La Pitié, run through a career

of disorder and end in Bicêtre."[3394] "From La Pitié to Bicêtre" is a

well known popular adage. Men of this stamp are without any principle

whatever. If they have fifty francs they live on fifty, and if they have

only five they live on five; spending everything, they are always out of

pocket and save nothing. This is the class that took the Bastille,[3395]

got up the 10th of August, etc. It is the same class which filled the

galleries in the Assembly with all sorts of characters, filling up

the groups," and, during all this time it never did a stroke of work.

Consequently, "a wife who owns a watch, ear-rings, finger-rings, any

jewels, first takes them to the pawnbrokers where they end up being

sold. At this period many of these people owe the butcher, the baker,

the wine-dealer, etc.; nobody trusts them any more. They have ceased to

love their wives, and their children cry for food, while the father is

at the Jacobin club or at the Tuileries. Many of them have abandoned

their position and trade," while, either through "indolence" or

consciousness "of their incapacity,"... "they would with a kind of

sadness see this trade come back to life." That of a political gossip,

of a paid claqueur, is more agreeable, and such is the opinion of

all the idlers, summoned by the bugle to work on the camps around

Paris.----Here,[3396] eight thousand men are paid forty sous a day "to

do nothing"; "the workmen come along at eight, nine and ten o'clock in

the morning. If they remain after roll-call... they merely trundle about

a few wheelbarrow loads of dirt. Others play cards all day, and most

of them leave at three or four o'clock, after dinner. On asking the

inspectors about this they reply that they are not strong enough to

enforce discipline, and are not disposed to have their throats slit."

Whereupon, on the Convention decreeing piece-work, the pretended workers

fall back on their equality, remind it that they had risen on the 10th

of August, and wish to massacre the commissioners. It is not until the

2nd of November that they are finally dismissed with an allowance of

three sous per league mileage for those of the departments. Enough,

however, remain in Paris to increase immeasurably the troop of drones

which, accustomed to consuming the store of honey, think they have a

right to be paid by the public for buzzing around the State.

As a rear-guard, they have "the rabble of the suburbs of Paris,

which flocks in at every tap of the drum because it hopes to make

something."[3397] As advance-guard they have "brigands," while the front

ranks contain "all the robbers in Paris, which the faction has enrolled

in its party to use when required;" the second ranks are made up of "a

number of former domestics, the bullies of gambling-houses and of houses

of ill-fame, all the vilest class."[3398]--Naturally, lost women form a

part of the crowd "Citoyennes," Henriot says, addressing the prostitutes

of the Palais-Royal, whom he has assembled in its garden, "citoyennes,

are you good republicans?" "Yes, general, yes!" "Have you, by chance,

any refractory priest, any Austrian, any Prussian, concealed in your

apartments?" "Fie, fie! We have nobody but sans-culottes!"[3399]--Along

with these are the thieves and prostitutes out of the Châtelet and

Conciergerie, set at liberty and then enlisted by the September

slaughterers, under the command of an old hag named Rose Lacombe,[33100]

forming the usual audience of the Convention; on important days, seven

or eight hundred of these may be counted, sometimes two thousand,

stationed at the entrance and in the galleries, from nine o'clock in the

morning.[33101]--Male and female, "this anti-social vermin"[33102] thus

crawls around at the sessions of the Assembly, the Commune, the Jacobin

club, the revolutionary tribunal, the sections and one may imagine the

physiognomies it offers to view. "It would seem," says a deputy,[33103]

"as if every sink in Paris and other great cities had been scoured to

find whatever was foul, the most hideous, and the most infected....

Ugly, cadaverous features, black or bronzed, surmounted with tufts

of greasy hair, and with eyes sunken half-way into the head.... They

belched forth with their nauseous breath the grossest insults amidst

sharp cries like those of carnivorous animals." Among them there can be

distinguished "the September murderers, whom" says an observer[33104]

in a position to know them, "I can compare to nothing but lazy tigers

licking their paws, growling and trying to find a few more drops of

blood just spilled, awaiting a fresh supply." Far from hiding away they

strut about and show themselves. One of them, Petit-Mamain, son of an

innkeeper at Bordeaux and a former soldier, "with a pale, wrinkled face,

sharp eyes and bold air, wearing a scimitar at his side and pistols at

his belt," promenades the Palais-Royal[33105] "accompanied or followed

at a distance by others of the same species," and "taking part in every

conversation." "It was me," he says, "who ripped open La Lamballe and

tore her heart out.... All I have to regret is that the massacre

was such a short one. But we shall have it over again. Only wait

a fortnight!" and, thereupon, he calls out his own name in

defiance.--Another, who has no need of stating his well-known name,

Maillard, president of the Abbaye massacres, has his head-quarters at

the café Chrétien,[33106] Rue Favart, from which, guzzling drams of

brandy, "he dispatches his mustached men, sixty-eight cutthroats, the

terror of the surrounding region;" we see them in coffee-houses and

in the foyers of the theaters "drawing their huge sabers," and telling

inoffensive people: "I am Mr. so and so; if you look at me with contempt

I'll cut you down!--A few months more and, under the command of one

of Henriot's aids, a squad of this band will rob and toast (chauffer)

peasants in the environment of Corbeil and Meaux.[33107] In the

meantime, even in Paris, they toast, rob, and rape on grand occasions.

On the 25th and 26th of February, 1793,[33108] they pillage wholesale

and retail groceries, "save those belonging to Jacobins," in the Rue des

Lombards, Rue des Cinq-Diamants, Rue Beaurepaire, Rue Montmartre, in

the Ile Saint-Louis, on the Port-au-Blé, before the Hôtel-de-ville, Rue

Saint-Jacques, in short, twelve hundred of them, not alone articles of

prime necessity, soap and candles, but again, sugar, brandy, cinnamon,

vanilla, indigo and tea. "In the Rue de la Bourdonnaie, a number of

persons came out with loaves of sugar they had not paid for and which

they re-sold." The affair was arranged beforehand, the same as on the

5th of October, 1789; among the women are seen "several men in disguise

who did not even take the precaution of shaving," and in many places,

thanks to the confusion, they heartily abandon themselves to it. With

his feet in the fire or a pistol at his head, the master of the house

is compelled to give them "gold, money, assignats and jewels," only too

glad if his wife and daughters are not raped before his eyes as in a

town taken by assault.

VII. The Jacobin Chieftains.

The make up of the rulers.--The nature and scope of their

intellect.--The political views of M. Saule.

Such are the politicians who, after the last months of the year 1792,

rule over Paris, and, through Paris, over the whole of France, five

thousand brutes and blackguards with two thousand hussies, just about

the number a good police force would expel from the city, were it

important to give the capital a cleaning out;[33109] they too, were

convinced of their rights, all the more ardent in their revolutionary

faith, because the creed converts their vices into virtues, and

transforms their misdeeds into public services.[33110] They are the

actual sovereign people, this is why we should try to unravel their

innermost thoughts. If we truly are to comprehend the past events we

must discern the spontaneous feelings moving them on the trial of the

King, the defeat of Neerwinden, at the defection of Dumouriez, on the

insurrection in La Vendée, at the accusation of Marat, the arrest of

Hébert, and each of the dangers which in turn fall on their heads. For,

this is not borrowed emotion; it does not descend from above; they are

not a trusty army of disciplined soldiers, but a suspicious accumulation

of temporary adherents. To command them requires obedience to them,

their leaders always remaining their tool. However popular and firmly

established a chief may seem to be, he is there only for a short

time, at all times subject to their approval as the bullhorn for their

passions and the purveyor to their appetites.[33111] Such was Pétion in

July, 1792, and such is Marat since the days of September. "One Marat

more or less (which will soon be seen) would not change the course

of events."[33112]--"But one only would remain,[33113] Chaumette, for

instance; one would suffice to lead the horde," because it is the horde

itself which leads. "Its attachment will always be awarded to whoever

shows a disposition to follow it the closest in its outrages without in

any respect caring for its former leaders... Its liking for Marat and

Robespierre is not so great as for those who will exclaim, Let us kill,

let us plunder!" Let the leader of the day stop following the current of

the day, and he will be crushed as an obstacle or cast off as a piece of

wreckage.--Judge if they are willing to be entangled in the spider's

web which the Girondins put in their way. Instead of the metaphysical

constitution with which the Girondins confront them, they have one in

their own head ready made, simple to the last point, adapted to their

capacity and their instincts. The reader will call to mind one of their

chiefs, whom we have already met, M. Saule, "a stout, stunted little

old man, drunk all his life, formerly an upholsterer, then a peddler of

quackeries in the shape of four-penny boxes of hangman's grease, to

cure pains in the loins,[33114] afterwards chief of the claque in the

galleries of the Constituent Assembly and driven out for rascality,

restored under the Legislative Assembly, and, under the protection of a

groom of the Court, favored with a spot near the Assembly door, to

set up a patriotic coffee-shop, then awarded six hundred francs as a

recompense, provided with national quarters, appointed inspector of the

tribunes, a regulator of public opinion, and now "one of the madcaps

of the Corn-market." Such a man is typical, an average specimen of his

party, not only in education, character and conduct, but, again, in

ambition, principles, logic and success. "He swore that he would make

his fortune, and he did it. His constant cry was that nobles and priests

should be put down, and we no longer have either. He has constantly

shouted against the civil list, and the civil list has been suppressed.

At last, lodged in the house belonging to Louis XVI., he told him to his

face that his head ought to be struck off, and the head of Louis XVI.

has fallen."--Here, in a nutshell, is the history and the portrait

of all the others; it is not surprising that genuine Jacobins see the

Revolution in the same way as M. Saule,[33115]

* when, for them, the sole legitimate Constitution is the definitive

establishment of their omnipotence;

* when they designate as order and justice the boundless despotism they

exercise over property and life;

* when their instinct, as narrow and violent as that of a Turkish bey,

comprises only extreme and destructive measures, arrests, deportations,

confiscations, executions, all of which is done with head erect, with

delight as if a patriotic duty, by right of a moral priesthood, in the

name of the people, either directly and tumultuously with their

own hands, or indirectly and legally by the hands of their docile

representatives.

This is the sum of their political system, from which nothing will

detach them; for they are anchored fast to it with the full weight and

with every hold upon it that characterizes their immorality, ignorance

and folly. Through the hypocritical glitter of compulsory parades, their

one fixed idea imposes itself on the orator that he may utter it in

tirades, on the legislator that he may put it into decrees, on the

administrator that he may put it in practice, and, from their opening

campaign up to their final victory, they will tolerate but one

variation, and this variation is trifling. In September, 1792, they

declare by their acts:

"Those whose opinions are opposed to ours will be assassinated, and

their gold, jewels and pocketbooks will belong to us."

In November, 1793, they are to declare through the official inauguration

of the revolutionary government:

"those whose opinions differ from ours will be guillotined and we shall

be their heirs."[33116]

Between this program, which is supported by the Jacobin population

and the program of the Girondins which the majority in the Convention

supports, between Condorcet's Constitution and the summary articles

of M. Saule, it is easy to see which will prevail. "These Parisian

blackguards," says a Girondist, "take us for their valets![33117] Let a

valet contradict his master and he is sure to lose his place. From the

first day, when the Convention in a body traversed the streets to begin

its sessions, certain significant expressions enabled it to see into

what hands it had fallen:

"Why should so many folks come here to govern France," says a bystander,

"haven't we enough in Paris?"[33118]

*****

[Footnote 3301: Any contempory Western reader take notice!! The proof

of any Jacobin or Socialist or Communist take-over, surreptitious or

open-handed, lies in their take-over of the important posts in politics,

the judicial system, the media and the administration. They may be years

in doing this, placing convinced or controlled men and women, first in

the faculties, later in career post, so that they, 30 years later, have

their people on all leading posts; or they may do it all at once, like

the Jacobins in France, Lenin in Russia or Stalin in the conquered

territories after the second world war. (SR).]

[Footnote 3302: Duvergier, "Collection des lois et décrets," decrees

of Sept. 22 and Oct. 19, 1792. The electoral assemblies and clubs had

already proceeded in many places to renew on their own authority the

decree rendering their appointments valid.]

[Footnote 3303: The necessity of placing Jacobins everywhere is well

shown in the following letter: "Please designate by a cross, on the

margin of the jury-panel for your district, those Jacobins that it will

do to put on the list of 200 for the next quarter. We require patriots."

(Letter from the attorney-general of Doubs, Dec. 23, 1792. Sauzay, III.

220.)]

[Footnote 3304: Pétion, "Mémoires" (Ed. Dauban), p. 118: "The justice

who accompanied me was very talkative, but could not speak a word of

French. He told me that he had been a stone-cutter before he became a

justice, having taken this office on patriotic grounds. He wanted to

draw up a statement and give me a guard of two gendarmes; he did not

know how, so I dictated to him what to say; but my patience was severely

taxed by his incredibly slow writing."]

[Footnote 3305: Decrees of July 6, Aug. 15 and 20, Sept. 26, 1792.]

[Footnote 3306: Decree of Nov. 1, 1792.--Albert Babeau, II. 14, 39, 40.]

[Footnote 3307: Dumouriez, III. 309, 355.--Miot de Melito, "Mémoires,"

I.31, 33.--Gouverneur Morris, letter of Feb. 14, 1793: "The state of

disorganization appears to be irremediable. The venality is such

that, if there be no traitors, it is because the enemy have not common

sense."]

[Footnote 3308: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3268. Letter of the municipal

officers of Rambouillet, Oct. 3, 1792. They denounce a petition of the

Jacobins of the town, who strive to deprive forty foresters of their

places, nearly all with families, "on account of their once having been

in the pay of a perjured king."--Arnault ("Souvenirs d'un sexagénaire"),

II. 15. He resigns a small place he had in the assignate manufacture,

because, he says, "the most insignificant place being sought for, he

found himself exposed to every kind of denunciation."]

[Footnote 3309: Dumouriez, III. 339.--Meillan, "Mémoires," 27. "Eight

days after his installation as Minister of War, Beurnonville confessed

to me that he had been offered sums to the amount of 500,000 francs

to lend himself to embezzlements." He tries to sweep out the vermin of

stealing employees, and is forthwith denounced by Marat.--Barbaroux,

"Mémoires" (Ed. Dauban). (Letter of Feb. 5, 1793.) "I found the Minister

of the Interior in tears at the obstinacy of Vieilz, who wanted him to

violate the law of Oct. 12, 1791 (on promotion)." Vieilz had been in the

service only four months, instead of five years, as the law required,

and the Minister did not dare to make an enemy of a man of so much

influence in the clubs. Buchez et Roux, XXVIII.19 ("Publication des

pièces relatives au 31 Mai," at Caen, by Bergoing, June 28, 1793): "My

friend learned that the place had been given to another, who had paid

50 louis to the deputy.--The places in the bureaus, the armies, the

administrations and commissions are estimated at 9,000. The deputies

of the Mountain have exclusive disposal of them and set their price

on them, the rates being almost publicly stated." The number greatly

increases during the following year (Mallet du Pan, II.56, March, 1794).

"The public employees at the capital alone amount to 35,000."]

[Footnote 3310: Decree of Aug. 11, 12, 1792.]

[Footnote 3311: Sauzay, III. 45. The number increases from 3,200 to

7,000.]

[Footnote 3312: Durand-Maillane, "Mémoires," p. 30: "This proceeding

converted the French proletariat, which had no property or tenacity,

into the dominant party at electoral assemblages.... The various clubs

established in France (were) then masters of the elections." In the

Bouches-du-Rhône "400 electors in Marseilles, one-sixth of whom had

not the income of a silver marc, despotically controlled our Electoral

Assembly. Not a voice was allowed to be raised against them... Only

those were elected whom Barbaroux designated."]

[Footnote 3313: Decree of Aug. 11, 12, "Archives Nationales," CII. 58

to 76. Official report of the Electoral Assembly of the Rhône-et-Loire,

held at Saint-Etienne. The electors of Saint-Etienne demand remuneration

the same as the others, considering that they gave their time in the

same way. Granted.]

[Footnote 3314: "Archives Nationales," CII. 1 to 32. Official report

of the Electoral Assembly of the Bouches-du-Rhône, speech by

Durand-Maillane: "Could I in the National Convention be otherwise than I

have been in relation to the former Louis XVI., who, after his flight

on the 22d of June, appeared to me unworthy of the throne? Can I do

otherwise than abhor royalty, after so many of our regal crimes?"]

[Footnote 3315: Moniteur, XIII. 623, session of Sept. 8, speech by

Larivière.--"Archives Nationales," CII., 1 to 83. (The official reports

make frequent mention of the dispatch of this comparative lists, and

the Jacobins who send it request the Electoral Assembly to have it read

forthwith.)]

[Footnote 3316: Rétif de la Bretonne, "Les Nuits de Paris," Night X. p.

301: "As soon as the primary assemblies had been set up, the plotters

began to work, electors were nominated, and through the vicious system

adopted in the sections, an uproar made it out for a majority of

voices."--Cf. Schmidt, "Tableaux de la Révolution Française," I. 98.

Letter of Damour, vice-president of the section of the Théatre-Français,

Oct.29.--" Un Séjour en France," p.29: "The primary assemblies have

already begun in this department (Pas-de-Calais). We happened to enter a

church, where we found young Robespierre haranguing an audience as small

in point of number as it was in that of respectability. They applauded

vigorously as if to make up for their other shortcomings."]

[Footnote 3317: Albert Babeau, I. 518. At Troyes, Aug.26, the

revolutionaries in most of the sections have it decided that the

relations of an émigré, designated as hostages and the signers of

royalist addresses, shall not be entitled to vote: "The sovereign people

in their primary assembly may admit among its members only pure citizens

against whom there is not the slightest reproach" (resolution of the

Madeleine section).--Sauzay, III. 47, 49 and following pages. At Quinsy,

Aug. 26, Lout, working the Chattily furnaces, along with a hundred of

his men armed with clubs, keeps away from the ballot-box the electors

of the commune of Courcelles, "suspected of incivisme. "--" Archives

Nationales," F7, 3217. Letters of Gilles, justice an the canton of

Roquemaure (Gard), Oct. 31, 1792, and Jan. 23, 1793, on the electoral

proceedings employed in this canton: Dutour, president of the club, left

his chair to support the motion for "lanterning" the grumpy and all the

false patriots... On the 4th of November "he forced contributions

by threatening to cut off heads and destroy houses." He was elected

juge-de-paix.--Another, Magère, "approved of the motion for setting up

a gallows, provided that it was not placed in front of his windows, and

stated openly in the club that if people followed the law they would

never accomplish anything to be remembered." He was elected member of

the department directory.--A third, Fournier, "wrote that the gifts

which citizens made to save their lives were voluntary gifts." He is

made a department councilor. "Peaceable citizens are storing their

furniture in safe places in order to take to flight... There is no

security in France; the epithet of aristocrat, of Feuillant, of moderate

affixed to the most honest citizen's name is enough to make him an

object of spoliation and to expose him to losing his life... I insist

on regarding the false idea which is current in relation to popular

sovereignty as the principal cause of the existing anarchy."]

[Footnote 3318: Schmidt, "Pariser Zustande," I. 50 and following

pages.--Mortimer-Ternaux, V. 95. 109, 117, 129. (Ballot of Oct. 4,

14,137 voters; Oct. 22, 14,006; Nov.19, 10,223, Dec. 6, 7062.)]

[Footnote 3319: Sauzay, III. 45, 46, 221.--Albert Babeau, I.

517.--Lallié, "Le district de Machecoul," 225.--Cf. in the above the

history of the elections 'of Saint-Affrique: out of more than 600

registered electors the mayor and syndic-attorney are elected by forty

votes.--The plebiscite of September, 1795, on the constitution of the

year III. calls out only 958,000 voters. Repugnance to voting still

exists. "Ninety times out of a hundred, on asking: 'Citizen, how did the

Electoral Assembly of your canton go off?' they would reply (in patois):

'Me, citizen? why should I go there? They have a good deal of trouble

in getting along together.' Or, 'What would you? Only a few will come;

honest people will stay at home!'" (Meissner, "Voyage à Paris," towards

the end of 1795.)]

[Footnote 3320: Stalin easily found a remedy. He obliged all to vote and

falsified the count so that 99% now voted for him and his men. (SR).]

[Footnote 3321: "Archives Nationales," CII. 1 to 76, passim, especially

the official reports of the assemblies of the Bouches-du-Rhône,

Hérault and Paris. Speech by Barbaroux to the Electoral Assembly of the

Bouches-du-Rhône: "Brothers and friends, liberty will perish if you do

not elect men to the National Convention whose hearts are filled with

hatred of royalty... Mine is the soul of a freeman; ever since my fourth

year it has been nourished on hatred to kings. I will relieve France

from this detestable race, or I will die in the attempt. Before I leave

you I will sign my own death-warrant, I will designate what I love most,

I will show you all my possessions, I will lay a dagger on the table

which shall pierce my heart if ever for an instant I prove false to the

cause of the people!" (session of Sept. 3).--Guillon de Montléon, I,

135.]

[Footnote 3322: Durand-Maillane, I.33. In the Electoral Assembly of the

Bouches-du-Rhône "there was a desire to kill an elector suspected of

aristocracy."]

[Footnote 3323: Mortimer-Ternaux, IV. 52. "Archives Nationales," CII. I

to 32.--Official report of the Electora1 Assembly of Bouches-du-Rhône.

Speech by Pierre Bayle, Sept. 3: "That man is not free who tries to

conceal his conscience in the shadow of a vote. The Romans openly

elected their tribunes... Who amongst us would reject so wise a measure?

The galleries of the National Assembly have had as much to do

with fostering the Revolution as the bayonets of patriots. "--In

Seine-et-Marne the Assembly at first decided for the secret vote; at the

request of the Paris commissaries, Ronsin and Lacroix, it rescinds its

decision and adopts voting aloud and by call.]

[Footnote 3324: Barbaroux, "Mémoires," 379: "One day, on proceeding

to the elections, tumultuous shouts break out: 'That is an

anti-revolutionary from Arles, hang him!' An Arlesian had, indeed,

been arrested on the square, brought into the Assembly, and they were

lowering the lantern to run him up."]

[Footnote 3325: Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 338.--De Sybel, "Histoire de

l'Europe pendant la Révolution Française" (Dosquet's translation), I.

525. (Correspondence of the army of the South, letter by Charles de

Hesse, commanding the regular troops at Lyons.)]

[Footnote 3326: Mortimer-Ternaux, V.101, 122 and following pages.]

[Footnote 3327: Guillon de Montléon, I. 172, 196 and following pages.]

[Footnote 3328: Sauzay, III. 220 and following pages.--Albert Babeau,

II. 15. At Troyes, two mayors elected refuse in turn. At the third

ballot in this town of from 32,000 to 35,000 souls, the mayor-elect

obtains 400 out of 555 votes.]

[Footnote 3329: Moniteur, XV. 184 to 233 (the roll-call of those who

voted for the death of Louis XVI).--Dumouriez, II. 73 (Dumouriez reaches

Paris Feb. 2, 1793, after visiting the coasts of Dunkirk and Antwerp):

"All through Picardy, Artois, and maritime Flanders Dumouriez found the

people in consternation at the tragic end of Louis XVI. He noticed that

the very name of Jacobin excited horror as well as fear."]

[Footnote 3330: This number, so important, is verified by the following

passages:--Moniteur, session of Dec. 39, 1792. Speech by Birotteau:

"Fifty members against 690... About twenty former nobles, fifteen or

twenty priests, and a dozen September judges (want to prevail against)

700 deputies."--Ibid., 851 (Dec.26, on the motion to defer the trial

of the king): "About fifty voices, with energy, No! no!"--Ibid., 865,

(Dec.27, a violent speech by Lequinio, applauded by the extreme "Left"

and the galleries; the president calls them to order): "The

applause continues of about fifty members of the extreme 'Left.'

"--Mortimer-Ternaux, VI. 557. (Address by Tallien to the Parisians,

Dec.23, against the banishment of the Duke of Orleans): "To-morrow,

under the vain pretext of another measure of general safety, the 60 or

80 members who on account of their courageous and inflexible adherence

to principles are offensive to the Brissotine faction, will be driven

out."--Moniteur, XV. 74 (Jan. 6). Robespierre, addressing Roland, utters

this expression: "the factious ministers." "Cries of Order! A vote

of censure! To the Abbaye/ 'Is the honest minister whom all France

esteems,' says a member, 'to be treated in this way?'--Shouts of

laughter greet the exclamation from about sixty members."--Ibid.,

XV. 114. (Jan. 11). Denunciation of the party of anarchists by Buzot.

Garnier replies to him: "You calumniate Paris; you preach civil war!"

"Yes! yes! 'exclaim about sixty members.--Buchez et Roux, XXIV. 368

(Feb. 26). The question is whether Marat shall be indicted. "Murmurs

from the extreme left, about a dozen members noisily demanding the order

of the day."]

[Footnote 3331: Mercier, "Le nouveau Paris," II. 200.]

[Footnote 3332: Buchez et Roux, XIX. 17. XXVIII. 168.--The king is

declared guilty by 683 votes; 37 abstain from voting, as judges; of

these 37, 26, either as individuals or legislators, declare the king

guilty. None of the other 11 declare him innocent.]

[Footnote 3333: "Dictionnaire biographique," by Eymery, 1807 (4 vols).

The situation of the conventionists who survive the Revolution may

here be ascertained. Most of them will become civil or criminal

judges, prefects, commissaries of police, heads of bureaus, post-office

employees, or registry clerks, collectors, review-inspectors, etc. The

following is the proportion of regicides among those thus in office: Out

of 23 prefects 21 voted for the king'' death; 42 out of 43 magistrates

voted for it, the 43rd being ill at the time of the sentence. Of 5

senators 4 voted for his death, and 14 deputies out of 16. Out of 36

other functionaries of various kinds 35 voted for death. Among the

remaining regicides we again find 2 councillors of state, 4

diplomatic agents and consuls, 2 generals, 2 receiver-generals, 1

commissary-general of the police, 1 minister in the cabinet of King

Joseph, the minister of police, and the arch-chancellor of the empire.]

[Footnote 3334: Buchez et Roux, XIX, 97, session of Sept. 25, 1792.

Marat states: "'I have many personal enemies in this assembly.' 'All!

all!' exclaim the entire Assembly, indignantly rising."--Ibid., XIX. 9,

49, 63, 338.]

[Footnote 3335: "Right" and "Left", only refers to the right and left

wings of the hemicycles of the hall in which the Assembly meets. The

Plain and the Mountain refer to the same Assembly but here to those on

the lower or the upper benches.(SR).]

[Footnote 3336: Meillan, "Mémoires," 20.--Buchez et Roux, XXVI. Session

of April 15, 1793. Denunciation of the Twenty-two Girondists by

the sections of Paris: Royer-Fonfrède regrets "that his name is not

inscribed on this honorable list. 'And all of us--all! All!' exclaim

three-quarters of the Assembly, rising from their seats."]

[Footnote 3337: The Philosophe Denis Diderot (1713-84) was largely

responsible for the 28 volume Encyclopédie (1751-729, which incorporated

the latest knowledge and progressive ideas, and which helped spread

the ideas of the Enlightenment in France and in other parts of Europe.

(Guinness Encyclopedia).]

[Footnote 3338: "Archives Nationales," A.F. 45. Letter of Thomas Paine

to Danton, May 6, 1792 (in English). "I do not know better men or better

patriots." This letter, compared with the speeches or publications

of the day, produces a singular impression through its practical good

sense. This Anglo-American, however radical he may be, relies on nothing

but experience and example in his political discussions.]

[Footnote 3339: Cf. The memoirs of Buzot, Barbaroux, Louvet, Madame

Roland, etc.]

[Footnote 3340: And for some incomprehensible reason still in fashion at

the end of the 20th Century. (SR).]

[Footnote 3341: Buchez et Roux, XXIV. 102. (Plan drawn up by Condorcet,

and reported in the name of the Committee on the Constitution, April 15

and 16, 1793.) Condorcet adds to this a report of his own, of which he

publishes and abstract in the Chronique de Paris.]

[Footnote 3342: Buchez et Roux, XXIV. 102. Condorcet's abstract contains

the following extraordinary sentence: "In all free countries the

influence of the populace is feared with reason; but give all men the

same rights and there will be no populace."]

[Footnote 3343: Cf. Edmond Biré. "La Légende des Girondins," on the part

of the Girondists in all these odious measures.]

[Footnote 3344: These traits are well defined in the charges of

the popular party against them made by Fabre d'Eglantine. Maillan,

"Mémoires," 323. (Speech of Fabre d'Eglantine at the Jacobin Club in

relation to the address of the commune, demanding the expulsion of the

Twenty-Two.) "You have often taken the people to task; you have even

sometimes tried to flatter them; but there was about this flattery that

aristocratic air of coldness and dislike which could deceive nobody.

Your ways of a bourgeois patrician are always perceptible in your words

and acts; you never wanted to mix with the people. Here is your doctrine

in few words: after the people have served in revolutions they must

return to dust, be of no account, and allow themselves to be led by

those who know more than they and who are willing to take the trouble to

lead them. You, Brissot, and especially you, Pétion, you have received

us formally, haughtily, and with reserve. You extend to us one finger,

but you never grasp the whole hand. You have not even refused yourselves

that keen delight of the ambitious, insolence and disdain."]

[Footnote 3345: Buzot, "Mémoires," 78.]

[Footnote 3346: Edmond Biré, "La légende des Girondins." (Inedited

fragments of the memoirs of Pétion and Barbaroux, quoted by Vatel in

"Charlotte Corday and the Girondists," III. 472, 478.)]

[Footnote 3347: Buchez et Roux, XXVI. A financial plan offered by the

department of Hérault adopted by Cambon and rejected by the Girondists.]

[Footnote 3348: Buchez et Roux, XXV. Speech by Vergniaud (April 10),

pp. 376, 377, 378. "An effort is made to accomplish the Revolution by

terror. I would accomplish it through love."]

[Footnote 3349: Maillan, 22.]

[Footnote 3350: Buchez et Roux, XXIV. 109. Plan of a constitution

presented by Condorcet. Declaration of rights, article 32. "In every

free government the mode of resistance to different acts of oppression

should be regulated by law."--Ibid., 136. Title VIII. Of the

Constitution "De la Censure des lois."]

[Footnote 3351: Buchez et Roux, 93. Session of the Jacobin Club, April

21, 1793.]

[Footnote 3352: Schmidt, "Tableaux de la révolution Française," II.4

(Report of Dutard, June 6, 1793.)--The mental traits of the Jacobins

form a contrast and are fully visible in the following speeches: "We

desire despotically a popular constitution." (Address of the Paris

Jacobin Club to the clubs in the departments, Jan. 7, 1793.)--Buchez

et Roux, XXIII. 288--Ibid., 274. (Speech by Legros in the Jacobin Club,

Jan. 1.) "Patriots are not counted; they go by weight... One patriot in

a scale weights more than 100,000 aristocrats. One Jacobin weights

more than 10,000 Feuillants. One republican weights more than 100,000

monarchists. One patriot of the Mountain weights more than 100,000

Brissotins. Hence I conclude that the convention should not be stopped

by the large number of votes against the death-sentence of Louis XVI.,

(and that) even (if there should be) but a minority of the nation

desiring Capet's death."--"Applauded." (I am obliged to correct the last

sentence, as it would otherwise be obscure.)]

[Footnote 3353: Buzot, "Mémoires," 33: "The majority of French people

yearned after royalty and the Constitution of 1790. This was the

strongest feeling, and especially at Paris.. This people is only

republican because it is threatened by the guillotine.. All its desires,

all its hopes incline to the constitution of 1791."--Schmidt, I. 232

(Dutard, May 16). Dutard, an old advocate and friend of Garat, is one

of those rare men who see facts behind words; clear-sighted, energetic,

active, abounding in practical counsels, and deserving of a better chief

than Garat.]

[Footnote 3354: Schmidt, ibid., I. 173, 179 (May 1, 1793).]

[Footnote 3355: "La Démagogie à en Paris en 1793," p.152. Dauban

("Diurnal de Beaulieu," April 17).--"Archives Nationales," AF II. 45

(report by the police, May 20). "The dearness of supplies is the leading

cause of agitation and complaints."--(Ib., May 24). "The calm which now

appear to prevail in Paris will soon be disturbed if the prices of the

prime necessities of life do not shortly diminish."--(Ibid., May 25).

"Complaints against dear food increase daily end this circumstance looks

as if it might become one of the motives of forthcoming events."]

[Footnote 3356: Schmidt, I. 198 (Dutard, May 9).]

[Footnote 3357: Schmidt, I. 350; II. 6 (Dutard, May 30, June 7 and 8).]

[Footnote 3358: Durand-Maillane,100: "The Girondist party was yet more

impious than Robespierre."--A deputy having demanded that mention

should be made of the Supreme Being in the preamble of the constitution,

Vergniaud replied: "We have no more to do with Numa's nymph than

with Mahomet's pigeon; reason is sufficient to give France a good

constitution."--Buchez et Roux, XIII. 444. Robespierre having spoken of

the Emperor Leopold's death as a stroke of Providence, Guadet replies

that he sees "no sense in that idea," and blames Robespierre for

"endeavoring to return the people to slavery of superstition."--Ibid.,

XXVI. 63 (session of April 19, 1793). Speech by Vergniaud against

article IX of the Declaration of Rights, which states that "all men are

free to worship as they please." This article, says Vergniaud, "is a

result of the despotism and superstition under which we have so long

languished."--Salle: "I ask the Convention to draw up an article by

which each citizen, whatever his form of worship, shall bind himself

to submit to the law "--Lanjuinais, who often ranked along with the

Girondists, is a Catholic and confirmed Gallican.]

[Footnote 3359: Schmidt, I. 347 (Dutard, May 30). "What do I now behold?

A discontented people hating the Convention, all its administrators, and

the actual state of things generally."]

[Footnote 3360: Schmidt, I. 278. (Dutard, May 23).]

[Footnote 3361: Schmidt, I. 216 (Dutard, May 13).]

[Footnote 3362: Schmidt, I. 240 (Dutard, May 17).]

[Footnote 3363: Schmidt, I. 217 (Dutard, May 13).]

[Footnote 3364: Schmidt, I. 163 (Dutard, April 30).]

[Footnote 3365: Schmidt, II. 377 (Dutard, June 13). Cf. Ibid., II. 80.

(Dutard, June 21): "If the guillotining of the Thirty-Two were

subject to a roll call, and the vote a secret one I declare to you no

respectable man would fail to hasten in from the country to give his

vote and that none of those now in Paris would fail to betake themselves

to their section."]

[Footnote 3366: Schmidt, II. 35 (Dutard, June 13). On the sense of these

two words, inferior aristocracy, Cf. All of Dutard's reports and those

of other observers in the employ of Garat.]

[Footnote 3367: Schmidt, II. 37 (Dutard, June 13).]

[Footnote 3368: Schmidt, I. 328 (Perrière, May 28): "Intelligent men

and property-owners abandoned the section assemblies and handed them to

others as these were places where the workman's fist prevailed against

the speaker's tongue."--Moniteur. XV. 114 (session of Jan. 11, speech by

Buzot). "There is not a man in this town who owns anything, that is not

afraid of being insulted and struck in his section if he dares raise

his voice against the ruling power... The permanent assemblies of Paris

consist of a small number of men who have succeeded in keeping other

citizens away."--Schmidt, I. 235 (Dutard, May 28): "Another plan

would be to drill young men in the use of the staff. One must be a

sans-culotte, must live with sans-culottes, to discover the value of

expedients of this kind. There is nothing the sans-culotte fears as

much as a truncheon. A number of young men lately carried them in their

trousers, and everybody trembled as they passed. I wished that the

fashion were general."]

[Footnote 3369: Moniteur, XV. 95 (Letter of Charles Villette, deputy).]

[Footnote 3370: Moniteur, XV. 179 (Letter of Roland, Jan. 11. 1793).]

[Footnote 3371: Moniteur, XV. 66, session of Jan. 5, speech of the

mayor of Paris; (Chambon)--Ib., XV 114, session of Jan. 14, speech by

Buzot;----Ib., XV. 136, session of Jan. 13. Speech by a deputation of

Federates.--Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 91 (Letter of Gadolle to Roland,

October, 1792).--XXI. 417 (Dec. 20, article by Marat): "Boredom and

disgust have emptied the assemblies."--Schmidt, II, 69 (Dutard, June

18).]

[Footnote 3372: Schmidt, I. 203. (Dutard, May 10). The engravings

published during the early period of the Revolution and under the

directory exhibit this scene perfectly (cabinet des estampes, Paris).]

[Footnote 3373: Moniteur, XV. 67 (session of Jan. 5, 1793). Speech by

the mayor of Paris.]

[Footnote 3374: Schmidt, I. 378 (Blanc, June 12).]

[Footnote 3375: Schmidt, II. 5 (Dutard, June 5).]

[Footnote 3376: Schmidt, II. (Dutard, June 11)--Ibid., II. (Dutard, June

i8): "I should like to visit with you," if it were possible, "the 3,000

or 4,000 wine-dealers, and the equally numerous places of refreshment in

Paris; you would find the 15,000 clerks they employ constantly busy. If

we should then go to the offices of the 114 notaries, we should again

find two-thirds of these gentlemen in their caps and red slippers, also

very much engaged. We might then, again, go to the 200 or 300

printing establishments, where we should find 4,000 or 5,000 editors,

compositors, clerks, and porters all conservatized because they no

longer earn what they did before; and some because they have made a

fortune."--The incompatibility between modern life and direct democratic

rule strikes one at every step, owing to modern life being carried out

under other conditions than those which characterized life in ancient

times. For modern life these conditions are, the magnitude of States,

the division of labor, the suppression of slavery and the requirements

of personal comforts and prosperity. Neither the Girondists nor the

Montagnards, who aimed to revive Athenian and Spartan ways, comprehended

the precisely opposite conditions on which Athens and Sparta

flourished.]

[Footnote 3377: Schmidt, I. 207 (Dutard, May 10).]

[Footnote 3378: Schmidt, II. 79 (Dutard, June 19).]

[Footnote 3379: Schmidt, II.70 (Dutard, June 10).]

[Footnote 3380: Lenin must have felt encouraged by reading these lines

which can only have increase his disdain for the "capitalist" and

bourgeoisie. (SR).]

[Footnote 3381: Mortimer-Ternaux, V. 101.]

[Footnote 3382: Meillan, 54.--Raffet, Henriot's competitor and denounced

as an aristocrat, had at first the most votes, 4,953 against 4,578. At

the last ballot, out of about 15,000 he still has 5,900 against 9,087

for Henriot.--Mortimer-Ternaux, VIII. 31: "The electors had to vote

thirty at a time. All who dared give their votes to Raffet were

marked with a red cross on the roll-call, followed by the epithet of

anti-revolutionary."]

[Footnote 3383: Schmidt, II. 37 (Dutard, June 13): "Marat and others

have a party of from 4,000 to 6,000 men, who would do anything to

rescue them."--Meillan, 155 (depositions taken by the Commission of

the Twelve): Laforet has stated that there were 6,000 sans-culottes to

massacre objectionable deputies at the first signal.--Schmidt, II, 87

(Dutard, June 24): "I know that there are not in all Paris 3,000 decided

revolutionaries."]

[Footnote 3384: Moniteur, XV. 114, session of Jan. 11, speech by

Buzot.--Ibid., 136, session of Jan. 13, speech of the Federates of

Finisterre.--Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 80, 81, 87, 91, 93 (Letter of

Gadolle to Roland, October 1792).--Schmidt, I. 207 (Dutard, May 10,

1793).]

[Footnote 3385: Schmidt, II. 37 (Dutard, May 10, 1793).]

[Footnote 3386: Mortimer-Ternaux, IV. 269 (petition presented by

Gonchon.)--"Archives Nationales," AF, II 43. Letters of Gonchon to the

Minister Garat, (May 31, June 1, June 3, 1793). These are very odd and

naive. He addresses the Minister Garat: "Citizen Garra."]

[Footnote 3387: Schmidt, I, 254 (Dutard, May 19).--Moniteur, XIV. 522

(Letter addressed to Roland number for Nov. 21, 1792): "The sections

(are) composed of, or at least frequented, nineteen-twentieth of them,

by the lowest class, both in manners and information."]

[Footnote 3388: Schmidt, II. 39 (Dutard, June 13).]

[Footnote 3389: Schmidt, II.87 (Dutard, June 14). The expression of

these fish-women is still coarser.]

[Footnote 3390: Rétif de la Bretonne ("Bibliographie de ses oeuvres, par

Jacob," 287).--(On the pillage of shops, Feb.25 and 26, 1793).]

[Footnote 3391: Schmidt, II. 61; I. 265 (Dutard, May 21 and June 17).]

[Footnote 3392: Schmidt, I.96 (Letter of citizen Lauchou to the

president of the Convention, Oct. 11, 1792).--II. 37 (Dutard, June 13).

Statement of a wigmaker's wife: "They are a vile set, the servants.

Some of them come here every day. They chatter away and say all sorts of

horrible things about their masters. They are all just alike. Nobody is

crazier than they are. I knew that some of them had received benefits

from their masters, and others who were:still being kindly treated; but

nothing stopped them."]

[Footnote 3393: Schmidt, I. 246 (Dutard, May 18).--Grégoire, "Mémoires,"

I. 387. The mental and moral decline of the party is well shown in the

new composition of the Jacobin Club after September, 1792: "I went back

there," says Grégoire in September, 1792 (after a year's absence), "and

found it unrecognizable; no opinions could be expressed there other than

those of the Paris section... I did not set foot there again; (it was)

a factious disreputable drinking place."--Buchez et Roux, XXVI. 214

(session of April 30,1793, speech by Buzot). "Behold that once famous

club. But. thirty of its founders remain there; you find there none but

men steeped in debt and crime."]

[Footnote 3394: Schmidt, I. 189 (Dutard, May 6).]

[Footnote 3395: Cf. Rétif de la Bretonne, "Nuits de Paris," vol. XVI.

(July 12, 1789). At this date Rétif is in the Palais-Roya1, where "since

the 13th of June numerous meetings have been held and motions made... I

found there none but brutal fellows with keen eyes, preparing themselves

for plunder rather than for liberty."]

[Footnote 3396: Mortimer-Ternaux, V.226 and following pages (address of

the sans-culottes section, Sept. 25).--"Archives Nationales," F7, 146

(address of the Roule section, Sept. 23). In relation to the threatening

tone of those at work on the camp, the petitioners add: "Such was the

language of the workshops in 1789 and 1790."]

[Footnote 3397: Schmidt, II.12 (Dutard, June 7): "During a few days

past I have seen men from Neuilly, Versailles, and Saint-Germain staying

here, attracted by the scent."]

[Footnote 3398: Schmidt, I.254 (Dutard, May 19).--At this date robbers

swarm in Paris; Mayor Chambon, in his report to the Convention, himself

admits it (Moniteur, XV. 67, session of Jan. 5, 1793).]

[Footnote 3399: De Concourt, "La Société Française pendant 'a

Révolution." (According to the "Courrier de l'Egalité," Jul. 1793).]

[Footnote 33100: Buzot, 72.]

[Footnote 33101: Moore, Nov.10, 1792 (according to an article in the

Chronique de Paris). 'The day Robespierre made his "apology," "the

galleries contained from seven to eight hundred women, and two hundred

men at most. Robespierre is a priest who has his congregation of

devotees."----Mortimer-Ternaux, VII. 562 (letter of the deputy Michel,

May 20, 1793): "Two or three thousand women, organized and drilled

by the Fraternal Society in session at the Jacobin Club, began their

uproar. which lasted until 6 o'clock, when the house adjourned. Most of

these creatures are prostitutes."]

[Footnote 33102: An expression of Gadol's in his letter to Roland.]

[Footnote 33103: Buzot, 57.]

[Footnote 33104: Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 80 (Letter of Gadolle to

Roland).]

[Footnote 33105: Beaulieu, "Essais," I. 108 (an eye-witness).--Schmidt,

II. 15. Report by Perrières, June 8.]

[Footnote 33106: Beaulieu, "Essais," I. 100. "Maillard died, his stomach

eaten away by brandy" (April 15, 1794).--Alexandre Sorel, "Stanislas

Maillard," pp. 32 to 42. Report of Fabre d'Eglantine on Maillard, Dec.

17, 1793. A decree subjecting him to indictment along with Ronsin and

Vincent, Maillard publishes his apology, in which we see that he was

already active in the Rue Favart before the 31st of May. "I am one of

the members of that meeting of true patriots and I am proud of it, for

it is there that the spark of that sacred insurrection of the 31st of

May was kindled."]

[Footnote 33107: Alexandre Sorel, ibid. (denunciation of the

circumstance by Lecointre, Dec.14, 1793 accompanied with official

reports of the justices).--"Archives Nationales," F7, 3268 (letter of

the directory of Corbeil to the Minister, with official report, Nov.

28,1792). On the 26th of November eight or ten armed men, foot-soldiers,

and others on horseback, entered the farm-house of a man named Ruelle,

in the commune of Lisse. They dealt him two blows with their sabers,

then put a bag over his head, kicked him in the face, tormented him, and

almost smothered his wife and two women servants, to make him give up

his money. A carter was shot with a pistol in the shoulder and twice

struck with a saber; the hands about the premises were tied and bound

like so many cattle. Finally the bandits went away, carrying with them

silver plate, a watch, rings, laces, two guns, etc.]

[Footnote 33108: Moniteur, XV. 565.--Buchez et Roux, XXIV. 335 and

following pages.--Rétif de la Bretonne, "Nuits de Paris," VIII. 460. (an

eye witness). The last of these details are given by him.]

[Footnote 33109: Cf. Ed. Fleury, "Baboeuf;" pp.139 and 150. Through a

striking coincidence the party staff is still of the same order in 1796.

Baboeuf estimates his adherents in Paris as "4,000 revolutionaries,

1,500 members of the former authorities, and 1,000 bourgeois gunners,"

besides soldiers, prisoners, and a police force. He also recruited a

good many prostitutes. The men who come to him are workmen who pretend

to have arsouillé in the Revolution and who are ready to repeat the

job, provided it is "for the purpose of killing those rich rascals, the

monopolizers, merchants, informers, and panachés at the Luxembourg."

(Letter of the agent of the Bonne-Nouvelle section, April 13, 1796.)]

[Footnote 33110: The proportion, composition and spirit of the party

are everywhere the same, especially at Lyons (Guillon de Montléon,

"Mémoires," and Balleydier, "Histoire du peuple de Lyon,". passim);

at Toulon (Lauvergne, "Histoire du department du Var"); at Marseilles,

Bordeaux, Toulouse, Strasbourg, Besançon, etc.--At Bordeaux (Riouffe,

"Mémoires," 23) "it consisted wholly of vagabonds, Savoyards, Biscayans,

even Germans,..brokers, and water-carriers, who had become so powerful

that they arrested the rich, and so well-off that they traveled by post"

Riouffe adds: "When I read this passage in the Conciergerie men from

every corner of the republic exclaimed in one voice: 'It is the same in

all the communes!'"--Cf. Durand-Maillane, "Mémoires," 67: "This people,

thus qualified, since the suppression of the silver marc has been the

most vicious and most depraved in the community."--Dumouriez, II. 51.

"The Jacobins, taken for the most part, from the most abject and most

brutal of the nation, unable to furnish men of sufficient dignity for

offices, have degraded offices to their own level... They are drunken,

barbarous Helots that have taken the places of the Spartans."--The sign

of their advent is the expulsion of the liberals and of the refined of

1789. ("Archives Nationales," F7, 4434, No.6. Letter of Richard to

the committee on Public Safety, Ventôse 3, year II.). During the

proconsulate of Baudot at Toulouse "almost all the patriots of 1789 were

excluded from the popular club they had founded; an immense number were

admitted whose patriotism reached only as far back as the 10th of

August 1792, if it even went so far as the 31st of last May. It is an

established fact that out of more than 1,000 persons who now compose the

club there are not fifty whose patriotism as far back as the beginning

of the Revolution."]

[Footnote 33111: Any tribune taking command of a mob of brutes is well

advised to understand Taine's analysis. One might think Hitler had read

Taine pr somebody who had learned from his wisdom, somewhat like the

Devil who had read the Bible. See page 208, The Secret of Ruling the

Masses, in Rauschning's book, "Hitler Speaks". (SR).]

[Footnote 33112: Roederer, "Chronique des cinquante jours."]

[Footnote 33113: Schmidt, I. 246 (Dutard, May 18).]

[Footnote 33114: Schmidt, I. 215 (Dutard, May 25).]

[Footnote 33115: Buchez et Roux, XXV. 156 (extract from the Patriote

Français, March 30, 1793).Speech by Chasles at the Jacobin Club, March

27: "We have announced to our fellow-citizens in the country that by

means of the war-tax the poor could be fed by the rich, and that they

would find in the purses of those egoists the wherewithal to live

on." Ibid., 269. Speech by Rose Lacombe: "Let us make sure of the

aristocrats; let us force them to meet the enemies which Dumouriez is

bringing against Paris. Let us give them to understand that if they

prove treacherous their wives and children shall have their throats cut,

and that we will burn their houses.. I do not want patriots to leave the

city; I want them to guard Paris. And if we are beaten, the first man

who hesitates to apply the torch, let him be stabbed at once. I want

all the owners of property who have grabbed everything and excited

the people's anger, to kill the tyrants themselves or else be killed."

Applause--April 3.:--Ibid., 302 (in the Convention, April

8): "Marat demands that 100,000 relatives and friends of the émigrés be

seized as hostages for the safety of the commissioners in the hands of

the enemy."--Cf. Balleydier, 117, 122. At Lyons, Jan. 26, 1793, Challier

addresses the central club: "Sans-culottes, rejoice! the blood of the

royal tiger has flowed in sight of his den! But full justice is not

yet done to the people There are still 500 among you deserving of the

tyrant's fate!"--He proposes on the 5th of February a revolutionary

tribunal for trying arrested persons in a revolutionary manner. "It

is the only way to force it (the Revolution) on royal and aristocratic

factionists, the only rational way to avenge the sovereignty of the

brave sans-culottes, who belong only to us."----Hydens, a national

commissioner adds: "Let 25,000,000 of Frenchmen perish a hundred times

over rather than one single indivisible Republic!"]

[Footnote 33116: Mallet du Pan, the last expression.]

[Footnote 33117: Buzot, 64.]

[Footnote 33118: Michelet, IV. 6 (according to an oral statement by

Daunou).--Buchez et Roux, 101 (Letter of Louvet to Roland): "At the

moment of the presentation of their petition against armed force

(departmental) by the so-called commissioners of the 48 sections of

Paris, I heard Santerre say in a loud tone to those around him,

somewhat in these words: 'You see, now, these deputies are not up to the

Revolution... That all comes from fifty, a hundred two hundred leagues

off; they don't understand one word you say!'"]

CHAPTER IV. PRECARIOUS SITUATION OF A CENTRAL GOVERNMENT LOCKED UP

WITHIN A LOCAL JURISDICTION.

"Citizen Danton," wrote the deputy Thomas Paine,[3401] "the danger,

every day increasing, is of a rupture between Paris and departments.

The departments did not send their deputies to Paris to be insulted, and

every insult shown to them is an insult to the department that elected

them. I see but one effective plan to prevent this rupture taking place,

and that is to fix the residence of the Convention and of the future

assemblies at a distance from Paris.... I saw, during the American

Revolution, the exceeding inconvenience that arose from having the

government of Congress within the limits of any municipal jurisdiction.

Congress first resided in Philadelphia, and, after a residence of four

years, it found it necessary to leave it. It then adjourned to the State

of Jersey. It afterwards removed to New York. It again removed from

New York to Philadelphia, and, after experiencing in every one of these

places the great inconvenience of a government within a government,

it formed the project of building a town not within the limits of any

municipal jurisdiction for the future residence of Congress. In every

one of the places where Congress resided, the municipal authority

privately or publicly opposed itself to the authority of Congress, and

the people of each of those places expected more attention from Congress

than their equal share with the other States amounted to. The same thing

now takes place in France, but in a greater excess."

Danton knew all this, and he is sufficiently clear-headed to comprehend

the danger; but the furrow is laid out, traced, and by himself.

Since the 10th of August Paris holds France down while a handful of

revolutionaries tyrannize Paris.[3402]

I.--Jacobin advantages.

Their sway in the section assemblies.--Maintenance,

re-election and completion of the Commune.--Its new chiefs,

Chaumette, Hébert and Pache.--The National Guard recast.

--Jacobins elected officers and sub-officers.--The paid band

of roughs.--Public and secret funds of the party.

Owing to the composition and the holding of the section assemblies,

the original source of power has remained Jacobin, and has become of a

darker and darker hue; accordingly, the electoral processes which, under

the legislative body, had fashioned the usurping Commune of the 10th of

August, are perpetuated and aggravated under the Convention.[3403] "In

nearly all the sections[3404] it is the sans-culottes who occupy the

chair, arrange things inside the chamber, place the sentinels and

provide the censors and auditors. Five or six spies, familiar with the

section, and paid forty sous a day, remain during the session, and ready

to undertake any enterprise. These same individuals will take orders

from one Committee of Surveillance to another,.. so that if the

sans-culottes of one section are not strong enough they may call in

those of a neighboring section."--In such assemblies the elections are

decided beforehand, and we see how the faction keeps forcibly in its

hands, or obtains by force, every elective position. The Council of

the Commune, in spite of the hostile inclinations of the Legislative

Assembly and the Convention, succeeds at first in maintaining itself

four months; then, in December,[3405] when it is at last compelled

to break up, it reappears through the authorization of the suffrage,

reinforced and completed by its own class, with three chiefs, a

syndic-attorney, a deputy and a mayor, all three authors or abettors of

the September massacre; with Chaumette, Anaxagoras, so-called, once a

cabin-boy, then a clerk, always in debt, a windbag, and given to drink;

Hébert, called "Père Duchesne," which states about all that is necessary

for him; Pache, a subaltern busy-body, a bland, smooth-faced intriguer,

who, with his simple air and seeming worth, pushes himself up to

the head of the War Department, where he used all its resources for

pillaging, and who, born in a door-keeper's lodgings, returns there,

either through craft or inclination, to take his dinner.--The Jacobins,

with the civil power in their hands, also grab the military power.

Immediately after the 10th of August,[3406] the National Guard is

reorganized and distributed in as many battalions as there are sections,

each battalion thus becoming "a section in arms"; by this we may judge

its composition, and the kind of rabble-rousers they select as officers

and non-commissioned officers. "The title of National Guard," writes a

deputy, "can no longer be given to the lot of pikemen and substitutes,

mixed with a few bourgeois, who, since the 10th of August, maintain the

military service in Paris." There are, indeed, 110,000 names on paper;

when called out on important occasions, all who are registered may

respond, if not disarmed, but, in general, almost all stay at home and

pay a sans-culotte to mount guard in their place. In fact, there is

for the daily service only a hired reserve in each section, about one

hundred men, always the same individuals. This makes in Paris a band of

four or five thousand roughs, in which the squads may be distinguished

which have already been seen in September: Maillard and his 68 men at

the Abbaye, Gauthier and his 40 men at Chantilly, Audouin, the Sapper

of the Carmelites," and his 350 men in the suburbs of Paris, Fournier,

Lazowski and their 1,500 men at Orleans and Versailles.[3407] As to the

pay of these and that of their civil auxiliaries, the faction is not

troubled about that; for, along with power, it has seized money. To

say nothing of its rapine in September,[3408] and without including

the lucrative offices at its disposition, four hundred of these being

distributed by Pache alone, and four hundred more by Chaumette,[3409]

the Commune has 850,000 francs per month for its military police. Other

bleedings at the Treasury cause more public money to flow into the

pockets of its clients. One million per month supports the idle workmen

which fife and drum have collected together to form the camp around

Paris. Five millions of francs protect the petty tradesmen of the

capital against the depreciation in value of certificates of credit.

Twelve thousand francs a day keep down the price of bread for the Paris

poor.[3410] To these regularly allowed subsidies add the funds which

are diverted or extorted. On one side, in the War Department, Pache, its

accomplice before becoming its mayor, organizes a steady stream of waste

and theft; in three months he succeeds in bringing about a deficiency

of 130,000,000, "without vouchers."[3411] On another side, the Duke of

Orleans, become Philippe-Egalité, dragged along by the men once in his

pay, with a rope around his neck and almost strangled, has to pay out

more than ever, even down to the very depths of his purse; to save his

own life he consents to vote for the King's death, besides resigning

himself to other sacrifices;[3412] it is probable that a large portion

of his 74,000,000 of indebtedness at his death is due to all this.--Thus

in possession of civil and military offices, of arms and money, the

faction, masters of Paris, has nothing to do but master the isolated

Convention, and this it invests on all sides.[3413]

II.--Its parliamentary recruits.

Their characters and minds.--Saint-Just.--Violence of the

minority in the Convention.--Pressure of the galleries.

--Menaces of the streets.

Through the elections, the Jacobin advance-guard of fifty deputies

is already posted there; while, owing to the fascination it has

to excitable and despotic natures, to brutal temperaments, narrow,

disjointed minds, weak imaginations, doubtful honesty, and old religious

or social rancor, it succeeds in doubling this number at the end of six

months.[3414] On the benches of the extreme "Left," around Robespierre,

Danton and Marat, the original nucleus of the September faction, sit

men of their stamp, first, the corrupt, like Chabot, Tallien and Barras,

wretches like Fouché, Guffroy and Javogues, crazy enthusiasts like

David, savage maniacs like Carrier, paltry simpletons like Joseph Lebon,

common fanatics like Levasseur, Baubot, Jeanbon-Saint-André, Romme and

Lebas. Add also, and especially, the future iron-handed representatives,

uncouth, authoritarian, and narrow-minded, excellent troopers for a

political militia, Bourbotte, Duquesnoy, Rewbell, and Bentabole, "a lot

of ignorant bastards," said Danton,[3415] "without any common sense, and

patriotic only when drunk. Marat is nothing but a bawler. Legendre is

fit for nothing but to cut up his meat. The rest are good for little

else than voting by either sitting down or standing up, but they are

cold blooded and have broad shoulders." From amongst these energetic

nonentities we see ascending a young monster, with calm, handsome

features, Saint-Just. He is a kind of precocious Sylla, 25 years old

and a new-comer, who springs at once from the ranks and, by dint of

atrocities, obtains a prominent position.[3416] Six years before this he

began life by a domestic robbery; on a visit to his mother, he left

the house during the night, carrying off the plate and jewels, which he

squandered while living in a lodging house in the Rue Fromenteau, in the

center of Parisian prostitution;[3417] on the strength of this, and at

the demand of his friends, he is shut up in a house of correction

for six months. On returning to his lodgings he occupied himself with

writing an obscene poem in the style of La Pucelle and then, through a

fit of rage resembling a spasm, he plunged headlong into the Revolution.

He possessed a "blood calcified by study," a colossal pride, an unhinged

conscience, a pompous, gloomy imagination haunted with the bloody

recollections of Rome and Sparta, an intelligence so warped and

twisted as to be comfortable only among excessive paradoxes, shameless

sophistry, and devastating lies.[3418] All these dangerous ingredients

which, mingled in the crucible of suppressed, concentrated ambition,

long and silently boiling within him, have led to a constant defiance,

a determined callousness, an automatic rigidity, and to the summary

politics of the Utopian dictator and exterminator.--It is plain that

such a minority will not obey parliamentary rules, and, rather than

yield to the majority that it will introduce into the debate boos and

hisses, insults, threats, and scuffles with daggers, pistols, sabers and

even the "blunder busses" of a veritable combat.

"Vile intriguers, calumniators, scoundrels, monsters, assassins,

blackguards, fools and hogs," such are the usual terms in which they

address each other, and these form the least of their outrages.[3419]

The president, at certain sessions, is obliged three times to put on his

hat and, at last, breaks his bell. They insult him, force him to leave

his seat and demand that "he be removed.' Bazire tries to snatch a

declaration presented by him "out of his hands." Bourdon, from the

department of Oise, cries out to him that if he "dares to read it

he will assassinate him."[3420] The chamber "has become an arena of

gladiators."[3421] Sometimes the entire "Mountain" darts from its

benches on the left, while a similar human wave rolls down from those on

the right; both clash in the center of the room amidst furious screams

and shouts; in one of these hubbubs one of the "Mountain" having drawn a

pistol the Girondist Duperret draws his sword.[3422] After the middle

of December prominent members of the "Right," constantly persecuted,

threatened and outraged," reduced to "being out every night, are

compelled to carry arms in self-defense,"[3423] and, after the King's

execution, "almost all" bring them to the sessions of the Convention.

Any day, indeed, they may look for the final attack, and they are not

disposed to die unavenged: during the night of March 9, finding that

they are only forty-three, they agree to launch themselves in a body "at

the first hostile movement, against their adversaries and kill as many

as possible" before perishing.[3424]

It is a desperate resource, but the only one. For, besides the madmen

belonging to the Convention, they have against them the madmen in

the galleries, and these likewise are September murderers. The vilest

Jacobin rabble purposely takes its stand near them, at first in the old

Riding-school, and then in the new hall in the Tuileries. They see above

and in a circle around them drilled adversaries, eight or nine hundred

heads packed "in the great gallery at the bottom, under a deep and

silent vault," and, besides these, on the sides, a thousand or fifteen

hundred more, two immense tribunes completely filled.[3425] The

galleries of the Constituent and Legislative Assemblies, compared with

these, were calm. Nothing is more disgraceful to the Convention, writes

a foreign spectator,[3426] than the insolence of the audience. One of

the regulations prohibits, indeed, any mark of approval or disapproval,

"but it is violated every day, and nobody is ever punished for this

delinquency." The majority in vain expresses its indignation at this

"gang of hired ruffians," who beset and oppress it, while at the very

time that it utters its complaints, it endures and tolerates it.

"The struggle is frightful," says a deputy,[3427] "screams, murmurs,

stampings, shouts... The foulest insults were launched from the

galleries." "For a long time," says another, "no one can speak here

without obtaining their permission."[3428] The day that Buzot obtains

the floor to speak against Marat, "they break out furiously, yelling,

stamping, and threatening";[3429] every time that Buzot tries to begin

his voice is drowned in the clamor, while he remains half an hour in

the tribune without completing a sentence. On the calls of the House,

especially, their cries resemble those of the excited crowd at a Spanish

bull-fight, with their eager eyes and heaving breasts, watching the

contest between the bull and the picadores; every time that a deputy

votes against the death of the King or for an appeal to the people,

there are the "vociferations of cannibals," and "interminable yells"

every time that one votes for the indictment of Marat. "I declare," say

deputies in the tribune, "that I am not free here; I declare that I am

forced to debate under the knife."[3430] Charles Villette is told at

the entrance that "if he does not vote for the King's death he will

be massacred."--And these are not empty threats. On the 10th of March,

awaiting the promised riot, "the tribunes, duly advised,... had already

loaded their pistols."[3431] In the month of May, the tattered women

hired for the purpose, under the title of "Ladies of the Fraternity,"

formed a club, came daily early in the morning to mount guard, with arms

in their hands, in the corridors of the Convention; they tear up all

tickets given to men or women not of their band; they take possession

of all the seats, show pistols and daggers, and declare that "eighteen

hundred heads must be knocked off to make things go on right."

Behind these two first rows of assailants is a third, much more compact,

the more fearful because it is undefined and obscure, namely, the vague

multitude forming the anarchical set, scattered throughout Paris, and

always ready to renew the 10th of August and 2nd of September against

the obstinate majority. Incendiary motions and demands for riots come

incessantly from the Commune, and Jacobin, Cordeliers, and l'Evêché

clubs; from the assemblies of the sections and groups stationed at the

Tuileries and in the streets. "Yesterday," writes the president of the

Tuileries section,[3433] "at the same moment, at various points about

Paris, the Rue du Bac, at the Marais, in the Church of St. Eustache, at

the Palace of the Revolution, on the Feuillants terrace, scoundrels were

preaching pillage and assassination."--On the following day, again on

the Feuillants terrace, that is to say, right under the windows of the

Convention, "they urge the assassination of Louvel for having denounced

Robespierre. "--Minister Roland writes: "I hear of nothing but

conspiracy and plans to murder."--Three weeks later, for several days,

"an up-rising is announced in Paris";[3434] the Minister is warned that

"alarm guns would be fired," while the heads are designated beforehand

on which this ever muttering insurrection will burst. In the following

month, in spite of the recent precise law, "the electoral assembly

prints and circulates gratis the list of members of the Feuillants and

Sainte-Chapelle clubs; it likewise orders the printing and circulation

of the list of the eight thousand, and of the twenty thousand, as well

as of the clubs of 1789 and of Montaigu."[3435] In January, "hawkers cry

through the streets a list of the aristocrats and royalists who voted

for an appeal to the people."[3436] Some of the appelants are singled

out by name through placards; Thibaut, bishop of Cantal, while reading

the poster on the wall relating to him, hears some one along side of him

say: "I should like to know that bishop of Cantal; I would make bread

tasteless to him." Roughs point out certain deputies leaving the

Assembly, and exclaim: "Those are the beggars to cut up!"--From week

to week signs of insurrection increase and multiply, like flashes of

lightning in a coming tempest. On the 1st of January, "it is rumored

that the barriers are to be closed at night, and that domiciliary visits

are going to begin again."[3437] On the 7th of January, on the motion of

the Gravilliers section, the Commune demands of the Minister of War 132

cannon stored at Saint Denis, to divide among the sections. On the

15th of January the same section proposes to the other forty-seven to

appoint, as on the 10th of August, special commissaries to meet at

the Evêché and watch over public safety. That same day, to prevent the

Convention from misunderstanding the object of these proceedings, it is

openly stated in the tribunes that the cannon brought to Paris "are for

another 10th of August against that body." The same day, military force

has to be employed to prevent bandits from going to the prisons "to

renew the massacres." On the 28th of January the Palais-Royal, the

resort of the pleasure-seeking, is surrounded by Santerre, at eight

o'clock in the evening, and "about six thousand men, found without a

certificate of civism," are arrested, subject to the decision one by one

of their section.--Not only does the lightning flash, but already the

bolt descends in isolated places.[3438] On the 31st of December a man

named Louvain, formerly denounced by Marat as Lafayette's agent, is

slain in the faubourg St. Antoine, and his corpse dragged through the

streets to the Morgue. On the 25th of February, the grocer shops are

pillaged at the instigation of Marat, with the connivance or sanction of

the Commune. On the 9th of March the printing establishment of Gorsas

is sacked by two hundred men armed with sabers and pistols. The same

evening and on the next morning the riot extends to the Convention

itself; "the committee of the Jacobin club summons every section in

Paris to arms to "get rid" of the appelant deputies and the ministers;

the Cordeliers club requests the Parisian authorities "to take

sovereignty into their own hands and place the treacherous deputies

under arrest"; Fournier, Varlet, and Champion ask the Commune "to

declare itself in insurrection and close the barriers"; all the

approaches to the Convention are occupied by the "dictators of

massacre," Pétion[3439] and Beurnonville being recognized on their

passing, pursued and in danger of death, while furious mobs gather on

the Feuillants terrace "to award popular judgment," "to cut off heads"

and "send them into the departments."--Luckily, it rains, which always

cools down popular effervescence. Kervélegan, a deputy from Finistère,

who escapes, finds means of sending to the other end of the faubourg St.

Marceau for a battalion of volunteers from Brest that had arrived a few

days before, and who were still loyal; these come in time and save the

Convention.--Thus does the majority live under the triple pressure of

the "Mountain," the galleries and the outside populace, and from month

to month, especially after March 10, the pressure gets to be worse and

worse.

III. Physical fear and moral cowardice.

Defection among the majority.--Effect of physical fear.

--Effect of moral cowardice.--Effect of political necessity.

--Internal weakness of the Girondins.--Accomplices in

principle of the Montagnards.

Month by month the majority relents under this pressure.--Some are

simply overcome by physical fear. On the King's trial, at the third call

of the House, as the deputies on the upper benches voted one by one

for his death, the deputy alongside Daunou "showed in a most energetic

manner his disapproval of this." On his turn coming, "the galleries,

which had undoubtedly noticed his attitude," burst out in such violent

threats that for some minutes his voice could not be heard; "silence

was at length restored, and he voted--death."[3440]--Others, like

Durand-Maillane, "warned by Robespierre that the strongest party is the

safest," say to themselves "that it is prudent, and necessary not to

annoy the people in their furor," make up their minds "to keep aloof

shielded by their silence and insignificance."[3441] Among the five

hundred deputies of the Plain, many are of this stamp. They begin to be

called "the Marsh Frogs." In six months they settle down of themselves

into so many silent onlookers, or, rather, homicidal puppets, "whose

hearts, shrunk through fear, rise in their throats"[3442] every time

that Robespierre looks at them. Long before the fall of the Girondists,

"downcast at the present state of things, and no longer finding any

inspiration in their heart," their faces already disclosing "the pallor

of fear or the resignation of despair.[3443] Cambacérès hedges to find

shelter in his Committee on Legislation.[3444] Barrère, born a valet,

and a valet ready for anything, places his southern mode of doing things

at the service of the probable majority, up to the time of devoting his

cruel rhetoric to the service of the dominant minority. Sièyes, after

casting his vote for death, maintains an obstinate silence, as much

through disgust as through prudence:

"What does my glass of wine matter in this torrent of booze?"[3445]

Many, even among the Girondists, use sophistry to color their

concessions in their own eyes. Some among these "think that they enjoy

some degree of popularity, and fear that this will be compromised.[3446]

Again, they put forth the pretext of the necessity of maintaining one's

influence for important occasions. Occasionally, they affect to say, or

say it in good faith, Let them (the extravagant) keep on, they will find

each other out and use themselves up."--Frequently, the motives alleged

are scandalous or grotesque. According to Barbaroux, immediate execution

must be voted, because that is the best way to exculpate the Gironde

and shut the mouths of their Jacobin calumniators.[3447] According to

Berlier, it is essential to vote death for, why vote for exile? Louis

XVI. would be torn to pieces before reaching the frontier.[3448]--On the

eve of the verdict, Vergniaud says to M. de Ségur: "I vote Death? It

is an insult to suppose me capable of such a disgraceful act!" And, "he

sets forth the frightful iniquity of such a course, its uselessness, and

even its danger." "I would rather stand alone in my opinion than vote

Death!"[3449] The next day, having voted Death, he excuses himself by

saying "that he did not think he ought to put the life of one man in

the scale against the public welfare."[3450] Fifteen or twenty deputies,

influenced by his example, voted as he did, which was enough to turn the

majority.[3451] The same weakness is found at other decisive moments.

Charged with the denunciation of the conspiracy of the 10th of March,

Vergniaud attributes it to the aristocrats, and admits to Louvet that

"he did not wish to name the real conspirators for fear of embittering

violent men already pushing things to excess."[3452] The truth is, the

Girondists, as formerly the Constitutionalists, are too civilized for

their adversaries, and submit to force for lack of resolution to employ

it themselves.

"To put down the faction," says one of them,[3453] "can be done only by

cutting its throat, which, perhaps, would not be difficult to do. All

Paris is as weary as we are of its yoke, and if we had any liking for

or knowledge how to deal with insurrections, we could soon throw it off.

But how can we make men adopt such necessary atrocious measures when

they are criticizing their adversaries for taking these? And yet they

would have saved the country." Consequently, incapable of action, able

only to talk, reduced to protests, to barring the way to revolutionary

decrees, to making appeals to the department against Paris, they stand

as an obstacle to all the practical people who are heartily engaged in

the brunt of the action.--"There is no doubt that Carnot is as honest

as they are, as honest as a fanatic spectator can be."[3454] Cambon,

undoubtedly with as much integrity as Roland, spoke as loudly up as he

against the 2nd of September, the Commune, and anarchy.[3455]--But,

to Carnot and Cambon, who pass their nights, one in establishing his

budgets, and the other in studying his military maps, they require,

first of all, a government which will provide them with money and with

soldiers, and, therefore, an unscrupulous and unanimous Convention;

that is to say, there being no other expedient, a Convention under

compulsion, i.e. a Convention purged of troublesome some, dissentient

speakers;[3456] in other words, the dictatorship of the Parisian

proletariat. After the 15th of December, 1792, Cambon completely accepts

this, and even erects the dictatorship of the proletariat into

an European system. From that time[3457] he preaches universal

sans-culotterie, a form of government in which the poor will rule and

the rich will pay, in short, the restoration of privileges in an inverse

sense. The later expression of Siéyès which has already come true: the

problem is no longer how to apply the principles of the Revolution,

but the salvation of its men. Faced with this more and more distressing

imperative, many of undecided deputies go with the tide, letting

the Montagnards have their own way and separate themselves from the

Girondists.

And, what is graver still, the Girondists, apart from all these

defections, are untrue to themselves. Not only are they ignorant of how

to draw a line, of how to form themselves into a compact body: not only

"is the very idea of a collective proceeding repulsive, each member

desiring to keep himself independent. and act as he thinks best,"[3458]

make motions without consulting others, and vote as the occasion calls

for against his party, but, through its abstract principle, they are in

accord with their adversaries, and, on the fatal declivity whereon their

honorable and humane instincts still retain them, this common dogma,

like a concealed weight, causes them to sink lower and lower down, even

into the bottomless pit, where the State, according to the formula of

Jean Jacques, omnipotent, philosophic, anti-Catholic, anti-Christian,

despotic, leveling, intolerant, and propagandist, seizes education,

levels fortunes, persecutes the Church, oppresses consciences, crushes

out the individual, and, by military foice, imposes its structures

abroad.[3459] Basically, apart from the Jacobin excess of brutality and

of precipitation, the Girondists, setting out from the same principles

as the Jacobin "Mountain," march forward to the same end along with

them. Hence the effect of ideological prejudice on them in weakening

their moral attitudes. Secretly, in their hearts, revolutionary desires

conspire with those of their enemies, and, on many occasions, make them

betray themselves.--Through these devices and multiplied weaknesses,

on the one hand, the majority diminishes so as to present but 279 votes

against 228.[3460] And, on the other hand, through frequent failures,

it surrenders to the besiegers one by one every commanding post of the

public citadel. Now, at the first attack, nothing remains but to fly, or

to beg for mercy.

IV. Jacobin victory over Girondin majority.

Principal decrees of the Girondist majority.--Arms and means

of attack surrendered by it to its adversaries.

The Convention had voted, on principle, for the establishment of

a military departmental guard, but, owing to the opposition of the

Montagnards, it fails to put the principle into operation.--For six

months it is protected, and, on the 10th of March, saved, through the

spontaneous aid of provincial federates, but, far from organizing these

passing auxiliaries into a permanent body of faithful defenders, it

allows them to be dispersed or corrupted by Pache and the Jacobins.--It

passes decrees frequently for the punishment of the abettors of the

September crime, but, on their menacing petition, the trials are

indefinitely postponed.[3461]--It has summoned to its bar Fournier,

Lazowski, Deffieux, and other leaders, who, on the 10th of March, were

disposed to throw it out of the windows, but, on making their impudent

apology, it sends them away acquitted, free, and ready to begin over

again.[3462] At the War Department it raises up in turn two cunning

Jacobins, Pache and Bouchotte, who are to work against it unceasingly.

At the Department of the Interior it allows the fall of its firmest

support, Roland, and appoints Garat in his place, an ideologist, whose

mind, composed of glittering generalities, with a character made up

of contradictory inclinations, fritters itself away in reticences,

in falsehoods and in half-way treachery, under the burden of his too

onerous duties.--It votes the murder of the King, which places an

insurmountable barrier of blood between it and all honest persons.--It

plunges the nation into a war in behalf of principles,[3463] and excites

an European league against France, which league, in transferring the

perils arising from the September crime to the frontier, permanently

establishes the September régime in the interior.--It forges in advance

the vilest instruments of the forthcoming Reign of Terror,

* through the decree which establishes the revolutionary tribune, with

Fouquier-Tinville as public prosecutor, and the obligation for each

juryman to utter his verdict aloud;[3464]

* through the decree condemning every émigré to civil death, and the

confiscation of his property "of either sex," even a simple fugitive,

even returned within six months;[3465]

* through the decree which "outlaws aristocrats and enemies of the

Revolution";[3466]