The history of the French Revolution is the history of a struggle at the
first instance between the Crown and the nobility on one side and the
Representative Assemblies with armed Paris on the other. Both took to
violence, one to the bayonet and the other to the pike. The pike succeeded
because the bayonet was held with uncertain hands. And then, as is usual
after the victory gained with violence, the popular party was sharply
divided between two sections--the Girondins and the Jacobins. Again there
was an appeal to force. The Girondins asked the provinces to rise in arms,
the Jacobins asked Paris to rise in arms. Paris being nearer and stronger,
the Girondins were defeated and sent to the guillotine--the Jacobins
seized the power. But it did not take them many months to fall out among
themselves. First Robespierre and Danton sent Hebert and Chanmette to the
guillotine, then Robespierre sent Danton to the guillotine. Robespierre in
his turn was guillotined by Collot, Billand and Tallien. These men again
were banished by others to the far-off South America. If there was a
slight difference of views between the Girondins and the Jacobins there
was practically none between the different sections of the Jacobins. The
whole question was which of the various sections was to rule France. Force
gave way to stronger force and at last under Napoleon, France experienced
a despotism similar to if not worse than the despotism of Louis XIV. As
regards liberty there was not more liberty in France under the terrible
Committee of Public Safety, and Napoleon than under Louis XIV or Louis XV.
The law of Prairial was certainly much worse than Lettres de Cachet. And
the people--? On the Pont au Change, on the Place de Greve, in long sheds,
Mercier, at the end of the Revolution, saw working men at their repast.
One's allotment of daily bread had sunk to an ounce and a half. "Plates
containing each three grilled herrings, sprinkled with shorn onions,
wetted with a little vinegar; to this add some morsel of boiled prunes,
and lentils swimming in a clear sauce; at these frogal tables I have seen
them ranged by the hundred; consuming, without bread, their scant messes,
far too moderate for the keenness of their appetite, and the extent of
their stomach." "Seine water," remarks Carlyle grimly--"rushing plenteous
by, will supply the deficiency." One cannot forget the exclamation of
Carlyle in this connection:
"O Man of Toil! Thy struggling and thy daring, these six long years of
insurrection and tribulation, thou hast profited nothing by it, then? Thou
consumest thy herring and water, in the blessed gold-red of evening. O why
was the Earth so beautiful, becrimsoned with dawn and twilight, if man's
dealings with man were to make it a vale of scarcity, of tears, not even
soft tears? Destroying of Bastilles, discomfiting of Brunswicks, fronting
of Principalities and Powers, of Earth and Tophet, all that thou hast
dared and endured,--it was for a Republic of the Saloons? Aristocracy of
Feudal Parchment has passed away with a mighty rushing; and now, by a
natural course, we arrive at Aristocracy of the Moneybag. It is the course
through which all European Societies are, at this hour, travelling.
Apparently a still baser sort of Aristocracy? An infinitely baser the
basest yet known."
Even to-day France is plodding her weary way towards Swaraj.