physical perturbations which had great influence on the march of events.
Every one is aware, that the excessively rigorous winter of 1788-89 was
the cause of severe sufferings to the people. But it may not be so
generally known, that on the 13th of July, 1788, a fall of hail of
unprecedented size and quantity, in a few hours completely ravaged the
two parallel zones lying between the department of the Charente and the
frontiers of the Pays-Bas, and that in consequence of this frightful
hail, the wheat partly failed, both in the north and in the west of
France, until after the harvest of 1789.
The scarcity was already severely felt, when Bailly on the 15th of July
accepted the appointment of Mayor of Paris. That day, it had been
ascertained, from an examination of the quantity of corn at the Market
Hall and of the private stocks of the bakers, that the supply of grain
and flour would be entirely exhausted in three days. The next day, the
16th of July, all the overseers in the victualling administration had
disappeared. This flight, the natural consequence of the terrible
intimidation that hovered over those who were in any way connected with
the furnishing of provisions, interrupted the operations which had been
commenced, and exposed the city of Paris to famine.
Bailly, a magistrate of only one day's standing, considered that the
multitude understands nothing, hears nothing when bread fails; that a
scarcity, either real or supposed, is the great promoter of riots; that
all classes of the population grant their sympathy to whoever cries, _I
am hungry_; that this lamentable cry soon unites individuals of all
ages, of both sexes, of every condition, in one common sentiment of
blind fury; that no human power could maintain order and tranquillity in
the bosom of a population that dreads the want of food; he therefore
resolved to devote his days and his nights to provisioning the capital;
to deserve, as he himself said, the title of the _Father nourisher of
the Parisians_,--that title of which he showed himself always so proud,
after having painfully gained it.
Bailly day by day recorded in his Memoirs a statement of his actions, of
his anxieties, and of his fears. It may be good for the instruction of
the more fortunate administrators of the present epoch, to insert here a
few lines from the journal of our colleague.
"18th August. Our provisions are very much reduced. Those of the morrow
depend strictly on the arrangements made on the previous evening; and
now amidst this distress, we learn that our flour-wagons have been
stopped at Bourg-la-Reine; that some banditti are pillaging the markets
in the direction of Rouen, that they have seized twenty wagons of flour
that were destined for us; ... that the unfortunate Sauvage was
massacred at Saint Germain-en-Laye; ... that Thomassin escaped with
difficulty from the fury of the populace at Choisy."
By repeating either these literal words, or something equivalent to
them, for every day of distress throughout the year 1789, an exact idea
may be formed of the anxieties that Bailly experienced from the morning
after his installation as mayor. I deceive myself; to complete the
picture we ought also to record the unreflecting and inconsiderate
actions of a multitude of people whose destiny appeared to be, to meddle
with every thing and to spoil every thing. I will not resist the wish to
show one of these self-important men, starving (or very nearly so) the
city of Paris.
"21st August. The store of victuals, Bailly says, was so scanty, that
the lives of the inhabitants of Paris depended on the somewhat
mathematical precision of our arrangements. Having learnt that a barge
with eighteen hundred sacks of flour had arrived at Poissy, I
immediately despatched a hundred wagons from Paris to fetch them. And
behold, in the evening, an officer without powers and without orders,
related before me, that having met some wagons on the Poissy road, he
made them go back, because he did not think that there was a wharf for
any loaded barge on the Seine. It would be difficult for me to describe
the despair and the anger into which this recital threw me. We were
obliged to put sentinels at the bakers' doors!"
The despair and the anger of Bailly were very natural. Even now, after
more than half a century, no one thinks without a shudder of that
obscure individual who, from not believing that a loaded barge could get
up to Poissy, was going, on the 21st August, 1789, to plunge the capital
into bloody disorders.
By means of perseverance, devotedness, and courage, Bailly succeeded in
overcoming all the difficulties that the real scarcity, and the
fictitious one, which was still more redoubtable, caused daily to arise.
He succeeded, but his health from that epoch was deeply injured; his
mind had undergone several of those severe shocks that we can never
entirely recover from. Our colleague said, "when I used to pass the
bakers' shops during the scarcity, and saw them besieged by a crowd, my
heart sunk within me; and even now that abundance has been restored to
us, the sight of one of those shops strikes me with a deep emotion."
The administrative conflicts, the source of which lay in the very bosom
of the Council of the Commune, daily drew from Bailly the following
exclamation, a faithful image of his mind: _I have ceased to be happy_.
The embarrassments that proceeded from external sources touched him
much less, and yet they were far from contemptible. Let us surmount our
repugnance, although a reasonable one; let us cast a firm look on the
sink where the unworthy calumnies were manufactured, of which Bailly was
for some time the object.
Several years before our first revolution, a native of Neufchatel
quitted his mountains, traversed the Jura, and lighted upon Paris.
Without means, without any recognized talent, without eminence of any
sort, repulsive in appearance, of a more than negligent deportment, it
seemed unlikely that he should hope, or even dream, of success; but the
young traveller had been told to have full confidence, although a
celebrated academician had not yet given that singular definition of our
country, "France is the home of foreigners." At all events, the
definition was not erroneous in this instance, for soon after his
arrival, the Neufchatelois was appointed physician to the household of
one of the princes of the royal family, and formed strict intimacies
with the greater part of the powerful people about the court.
This stranger thirsted for literary glory. Amongst his early
productions, a medico-philosophical work figured in three volumes,
relative to the reciprocal influences of the mind and the body. The
author thought he had produced a _chef d'oeuvre_; even Voltaire was
not thought to be above analyzing it suitably; let us hasten to say that
the illustrious old man, yielding to the pressing solicitations of the
Duke de Praslin, one of the most active patrons of the Swiss doctor,
promised to study the work and give his opinion of it.
The author was at the acmé of his wishes. After having pompously
announced that the seat of the soul is in the _meninges_ (cerebral
membrane), could there be any thing to fear from the liberal thinker of
Ferney? He had only forgotten that the patriarch was above all a man of
good taste, and that the book on the body and soul offended all the
proprieties of life. Voltaire's article appeared. He began with this
severe and just lesson--"We should not be prodigal of contempt towards
others, and of esteem for ourselves, to such a degree as will be
revolting to our readers." The end was still more overwhelming. "We see
harlequin everywhere cutting capers to amuse the pit."
Harlequin had received a sufficient dose. Not having succeeded in
literature, he threw himself upon the sciences.
On betaking himself to this new career, the doctor of Neufchatel
attacked Newton. But unluckily his criticisms were directed precisely to
those points wherein optics may vie in evidence with geometry itself.
This time the patron was M. de Maillebois, and the tribunal the Academy
of Sciences.
The Academy pronounced its judgment gravely, without inflicting a word
of ridicule; for example, it did not speak of harlequin; but it did not
therefore remain the less established that the pretended experiments,
intended, it was said, to upset Newton's, on the unequal refrangibility
of variously coloured rays, and the explanation of the rainbow, &c., had
absolutely no scientific value.
Still the author would not allow himself to have been beaten. He even
conceived the possibility of retaliation; and, availing himself of his
intimacy with the Duke de Villeroy, governor of the second city in the
kingdom, he got the Academy of Lyons to propose for competition all the
questions in optics, which for several years past had been the subjects
of its disquisitions; he even furnished the amount of the prize out of
his own pocket, under an assumed name.
The prize so longed for, and so singularly proposed, was not obtained,
however, by the Duke de Villeroy's candidate, but by the astronomer
Flaugergues. From that instant, the pseudo-physicist became the bitter
enemy of the scientific bodies of the whole universe, of whoever bore
the title of an academician. Putting aside all shame, he no longer made
himself known in the field of natural philosophy, merely by imaginary
experiments, or by juggleries; he had recourse to contemptible
practices, with the object of throwing doubt upon the clearest and best
proved principles of science; for example, the metallic needles
discovered by the academician Charles, and which the foreign doctor had
adroitly concealed in a cake of resin, in order to contradict the common
opinion of the electric non-conductibility of that substance.
These details were necessary. I could not avoid characterizing the
journalist who by his daily calumnies contributed most to undermine the
popularity of Bailly. It was requisite besides, once for all, to strip
him in this circle of the epithet of philosopher, with which men of the
world, and even some historians, inconsiderately gratified him. When a
man reveals himself by some brilliant and intelligent works, the public
is pleased to find them united with good qualities of the heart. Nor
should its joy be less hearty on discovering the absence of all
intellectual merit in a man who had before shown himself despicable by
his passions, or his vices, or even only by serious blemishes of
character.
If I have not yet named the enemy of our colleague, if I have contented
myself with recounting his actions, it is in order to avoid as much as I
can the painful feeling that his name must raise here. Judge,
Gentlemen, weigh, my scruples: the furious persecutor of Bailly, of whom
I have been talking to you for some minutes, was Marat.
The revolution of '89 just occurred in time to relieve the abortive
author, physiologist, and physicist from the intolerable position into
which he had been thrown by his inability and his quackery.
As soon as the revolution had assumed a decided movement, great surprise
was occasioned by the sudden transformations excited in the inferior
walks of the political world. Marat was one of the most striking
examples of these hasty changes of principles. The Neufchatel physician
had shown himself a violent adversary to those opinions that occasioned
the convocation of the assembly of Notables, and the national commotion
in '89. At that time democratical institutions had not a more bitter or
more violent censor. Marat liked it to be believed that in quitting
France for England, he fled especially from the spectacle of social
renovation which was odious to him. Yet a month after the taking of the
Bastille, he returned to Paris, established a journal, and from its very
beginning left far behind him, even those who, in the hope of making
themselves remarkable, thought they must push exaggeration to its very
farthest limits. The former connection of Marat with M. de Calonne was
perfectly well known; they remembered these words of Pitt's: "The French
must go through liberty, and then be brought back to their old
government by licence;" the avowed adversaries of revolution testified
by their conduct, by their votes, and even by their imprudent words,
that according to them, _the worst_ was the only means of returning to
what they call _the good_; and yet these instructive comparisons struck
only eight or ten members of our great assemblies, so small a share has
suspicion in the national character, so painful is distrust to French
sincerity. The historians of our troubles themselves have but skimmed
the question that I have just raised--assuredly a very important and
very curious one. In such matters, the part of a prophet is tolerably
hazardous; yet I do not hesitate to predict, that a minute study of the
conduct and of the discourses of Marat, would lead the mind more and
more to those chapters in a treatise on the chase, wherein we see
depicted bad species of falcons and hawks, at first only pursuing the
game by a sign from the master, and for his advantage; but by degrees
taking pleasure in these bloody struggles, and entering on the sport at
last with passion and for their own profit.
Marat took good care not to forget that during a revolution, men,
naturally suspicious, act in their more immediate affairs so as to
render those persons suspected whose duty it is to watch over them. The
Mayor of Paris, the General Commandant of the National Guard, were the
first objects, therefore, at which the pamphleteer aimed. As an
academician, Bailly had an extra claim to his hate.
Among men of Marat's disposition, the wounds of self-love never heal.
Without the hateful passions derived from this source, who would believe
that an individual, whose time was divided between the superintendence
of a daily journal, the drawing up of innumerable placards with which he
covered the walls of Paris, together with the struggles of the
Convention, the disputes not less fierce of the clubs; that an
individual who, besides, had given himself the task of imposing an
Agrarian law on the country, could find time to write the very long
letters against the old official adversaries of his bad experiments, his
absurd theories, his lucubrations devoid both of erudition and of
talent; letters in which the Monges, the Laplaces, the Lavoisiers are
treated with such an entire neglect of justice and of truth, and with
such a cynical spirit, that my respect for this assembly prevents my
quoting a single expression.
It was not then only the Mayor of Paris whom the pretended friend of the
people persecuted; it was also the Academician Bailly. But the
illustrious philosopher, the virtuous magistrate, gave no hold for
positive and decided criminations. The hideous pamphleteer understood
this well; and therefore he adopted vague insinuations, that allowed of
no possible refutation, a method which, we may remark by the way, has
not been without imitators. Marat exclaimed every day: "Let Bailly send
in his accounts!" and the most powerful figure of rhetoric, as Napoleon
said, repetition, finally inspires doubts in a stupid portion of the
public, in some feeble, ignorant, and credulous minds in the Council of
the Commune; and the scrupulous magistrate wished, in fact, to send in
his accounts. Here they are in two lines: Bailly never had the handling
of any public funds. He left the Hôtel de Ville, after having spent
there two thirds of his patrimony. If his functions had been long
protracted, he would have retired completely ruined. Before the Commune
assigned him any salary, the expenses of our colleague in charities
already exceeded 30,000 livres.
That was, Gentlemen, the final result. The details would be more
striking, and the name of Bailly would ennoble them. I could show our
colleague entering only once with his wife, to regulate the furnishing
of the apartments that the Commune assigned him; rejecting all that had
the appearance of luxury or even of elegance; to replace sets of china
by sets of earthenware, new carpets by the half-used ones of M. de
Crosnes, writing tables of mahogany by writing tables of walnut, &c. But
all this would appear an indirect criticism, which is far from my
thoughts. From the same motives, I will not say, that inimical to all
sinecures, of all plurality of appointments, when the functions are not
fulfilled, the Mayor of Paris, since he no longer regularly attended the
meetings of the National Assembly, no longer fingered the pay of a
deputy, and that this was proved, to the great confusion of the idiots,
whose minds had been disturbed by Marat's clamours. Yet I will record
that Bailly refused all that in the incomes of his predecessors had
proceeded from an impure source; as, for example, the allowances from
the lotteries, the amount of which was by his orders constantly paid
into the coffers of the Commune.
You see, Gentlemen, that no trouble was required to show that the
disinterestedness of Bailly was great, enlightened, dictated by virtue,
and that it was at least equal to his other eminent qualities. In the
series of accusations that I have extracted from the pamphlets of that
epoch, there is one, however, as to which, all things considered, I will
not attempt to defend Bailly. He accepted a livery from the city; on
this point no blame was attached to him; but the colours of the livery
were very gaudy. Perhaps the inventors of these bright shades had
imagined, that the insignia of the first magistrate of the metropolis,
in a ceremony, in a crowd, should, like the light from a Pharos, strike
even inattentive eyes. But these explanations regard those who would
make of Bailly a perfectly rational being, a man absolutely faultless;
I, although his admirer, I resign myself to admit that in a laborious
life, strewed with so many rocks, he committed the horrible crime,
unpardonable let it be called, of having accepted from the Commune a
livery of gaudy colours.
Bailly figured in the events of the month of October 1789, only by the
unsuccessful efforts he made at Paris, to arrange with Lafayette how to
prevent a great crowd of women from going to Versailles. When this
crowd, considerably increased, returned on the 6th October very
tumultuously escorting the carriages of the royal family, Bailly
harangued the king at the Barrière de la Conférence. Three days after,
he also complimented the Queen at the Tuileries in the name of the
Municipal Council.
On retiring from the National Assembly, which he then called a Cavern of
Anthropophagi, Lally Tollendal published a letter in which he found
bitter fault with Bailly on account of these discourses. Lally was
angry, recollecting that the day when the king reëntered his capital as
a prisoner, surrounded by a very disrespectful crowd, and preceded by
the heads of his body-guards, had appeared to Bailly a fine day!
If the two heads had been in the procession, Bailly becomes inexcusable;
but the two epochs, or rather hours (to speak more correctly), have been
confounded; the wretched men, who after a conflict with the body-guard,
brought their barbarous trophies to Paris, left Versailles in the
morning; they were arrested and imprisoned, by order of the
municipality, as soon as they had entered the barriers of the capital.
Thus the hideous circumstance reported by Lally was the dream of a wild
imagination.
A GLANCE AT THE POSTHUMOUS MEMOIR OF BAILLY.
Bailly's Memoirs have thus far served me as a guide and check; now that
this resource fails me, let us refer to his posthumous work.
I could only consult those Memoirs as far as they related to the public
or private life of our colleague. Historians may consult them in a more
general point of view. They will find some valuable facts in them,
related without prejudice; ample matter for new and fruitful reflections
on the way in which revolutions are generated, increase, and lead to
catastrophes. Bailly is less positive, less absolute, less slashing,
than the generality of his contemporaries, even respecting those events
in which circumstances assigned to him the principal part to be acted;
hence when he points out some low intrigue, in distinct and categorical
terms, he inspires full confidence.
When the occasion will allow of it, Bailly praises with enthusiasm; a
noble action fills him with joy; he puts it together and relates it with
relish. This disposition of mind is sufficiently rare to deserve
mention.
The day, still far off, when we shall finally recognize that our great
revolution presented, even in the interior, even during the most cruel
epochs, something besides anarchical and sanguinary scenes: the day
when, like the intrepid fishermen in the Gulf of Persia and on the
coasts of Ceylon, a zealous and impartial writer will consent to plunge
head-foremost into the ocean of facts of all sorts, of which our fathers
were witnesses, and exclusively seize the pearls, disdainfully rejecting
the mud,--Bailly's Memoirs will furnish a glorious contingent to this
national work. Two or three quotations will explain my ideas, and will
show, besides, how scrupulously Bailly registered all that could shed
honour on our country.
I will take the first fact from the military annals; a grenadier of the
French Guard saves his commanding officer's life, although the people
thought that they had great reason of complaint against him. "Grenadier,
what is your name?" exclaimed the Duke de Châtelet, full of gratitude.
The soldier replied, "Colonel, my name is that of all my comrades."
I will borrow the second fact from the civil annals: Stephen de
Larivière, one of the electors of Paris, had gone on the 20th of July,
to fetch Berthier de Sauvigny, who had been fatally arrested at
Compiègne, on the false report that the Assembly of the Town Hall wished
to prosecute him as intendant of the army, by which a few days before
the capital had been surrounded. The journey was performed in an open
cabriolet, amidst the insults of a misled population, who imputed to the
prisoner the scarcity and bad quality of the bread. Twenty times, guns,
pistols, sabres, would have put an end to Berthier's life, if, twenty
times, the member of the Commune of Paris had not voluntarily covered
him with his body. When they reached the streets of the capital, the
cabriolet had to penetrate through an immense and compact crowd, whose
exasperation bordered on delirium, and who evidently wished to
perpetrate the utmost extremities; not knowing which of the two
travellers was the Intendant of Paris, they betook themselves to crying
out, "let the prisoner take off his hat!" Berthier obeyed, but Larivière
uncovered his head also at the same instant.
All parties would gain by the production of a work, that I desire to see
most earnestly. For my part, I acknowledge, I should be sorry not to
see in it the answer made to Francis II. by one of the numerous officers
who committed the fault, so honestly acknowledged afterwards,--a fault
that no one would commit now,--that of joining foreigners in arms. The
Austrian prince, after his coronation, attempted, at a review, to induce
our countrymen to admire the good bearing of his troops, and finally
exclaimed, "There are materials wherewith to crush the Sans-culottes."
"That remains to be seen!" instantly answered the émigré officer.
May these quotations lead some able writer to erect a monument still
wanting to the glory of our country! There is in this subject, it seems
to me, enough to inspire legitimate ambition. Did not Plutarch
immortalize himself by preserving noble actions and fine sentiments from
oblivion?
EXAMINATION OF BAILLY'S ADMINISTRATION AS MAYOR.