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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume
+2 (of 6), by Hippolyte A. Taine
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6)
+       The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3)
+
+Author: Hippolyte A. Taine
+
+Annotator: Svend Rom
+
+Translator: John Durand, 1880
+
+Posting Date: June 18, 2008 [EBook #2578]
+Release Date: April, 2001
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRENCH REVOLUTION V1 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Svend Rom
+
+
+
+
+
+THE ORIGINS OF CONTEMPORARY FRANCE, VOLUME 2
+
+THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, VOLUME 1.
+
+
+by Hippolyte A. Taine
+
+
+
+CONTENTS:
+
+ANARCHY
+
+PREFACE
+
+BOOK FIRST. Spontaneous Anarchy.
+
+CHAPTER I. The Beginnings of Anarchy
+
+CHAPTER II. Paris up to the 14th of July
+
+CHAPTER III. Anarchy from July 14th to October 6th, 1789
+
+CHAPTER IV. PARIS
+
+BOOK SECOND. The constituent Assembly, and the Result of its Labors
+
+CHAPTER I. The Constituent Assembly
+
+CHAPTER II. The Damage
+
+CHAPTER III. The Constructions--The Constitution of 1791.
+
+BOOK THIRD. The Application of the Constitution
+
+CHAPTER I. The Federations
+
+CHAPTER II. Sovereignty of Unrestrained Passions
+
+CHAPTER III. Development of the ruling Passion
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+This second part of "Les Origines de la France Contemporaine" will
+consist of two volumes.--Popular insurrections and the laws of the
+Constituent Assembly end in destroying all government in France; this
+forms the subject of the present volume.--A party arises around
+an extreme doctrine, grabs control of the government, and rules in
+conformity with its doctrine. This will form the subject of the second
+volume.
+
+A third volume would be required to criticize and evaluate the source
+material. I lack the necessary space: I merely state the rule that I
+have observed. The trustworthiest testimony will always be that of an
+eyewitness, especially
+
+* When this witness is an honorable, attentive, and intelligent man,
+
+* When he is writing on the spot, at the moment, and under the dictate
+of the facts themselves,
+
+* When it is obvious that his sole object is to preserve or furnish
+information,
+
+* When his work instead of a piece of polemics planned for the needs
+of a cause, or a passage of eloquence arranged for popular effect is a
+legal deposition, a secret report, a confidential dispatch, a private
+letter, or a personal memento.
+
+The nearer a document approaches this type, the more it merits
+confidence, and supplies superior material.--I have found many of
+this kind in the national archives, principally in the manuscript
+correspondence of ministers, intendants, sub-delegates, magistrates, and
+other functionaries; of military commanders, officers in the army,
+and gendarmerie; of royal commissioners, and of the Assembly; of
+administrators of departments, districts, and municipalities, besides
+persons in private life who address the King, the National Assembly, or
+the ministry. Among these are men of every rank, profession, education,
+and party. They are distributed by hundreds and thousands over the
+whole surface of the territory. They write apart, without being able to
+consult each other, and without even knowing each other. No one is so
+well placed for collecting and transmitting accurate information. None
+of them seek literary effect, or even imagine that what they write will
+ever be published. They draw up their statements at once, under the
+direct impression of local events. Testimony of this character, of the
+highest order, and at first hand, provides the means by which all other
+testimony ought to be verified.--The footnotes at the bottom of the
+pages indicate the condition, office, name, and address of those
+decisive witnesses. For greater certainty I have transcribed as often as
+possible their own words. In this way the reader, confronting the texts,
+can interpret them for himself, and form his own opinions; he will have
+the same documents as myself for arriving at his conclusions, and, if he
+is pleased to do so, he may conclude otherwise. As for allusions, if he
+finds any, he himself will have introduced them, and if he applies them
+he is alone responsible for them. To my mind, the past has features of
+its own, and the portrait here presented resembles only the France of
+the past. I have drawn it without concerning myself with the discussions
+of the day; I have written as if my subject were the revolutions of
+Florence or Athens. This is history, and nothing more, and, if I may
+fully express myself, I esteem my vocation of historian too highly to
+make a cloak of it for the concealment of another. (December 1877).
+
+
+*****
+
+
+
+
+BOOK FIRST. SPONTANEOUS ANARCHY.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. THE BEGINNINGS OF ANARCHY.
+
+
+
+
+I.--Dearth the first cause.
+
+     Bad crops. The winter of 1788 and 1789.--High price and poor
+     quality of bread.--In the provinces.--At Paris.
+
+During the night of July 14-15, 1789, the Duc de la
+Rochefoucauld-Liancourt caused Louis XVI to be aroused to inform him of
+the taking of the Bastille. "It is a revolt, then?" exclaimed the King.
+"Sire!" replied the Duke; "it is a revolution!" The event was even more
+serious. Not only had power slipped from the hands of the King, but also
+it had not fallen into those of the Assembly. It now lay on the
+ground, ready to the hands of the unchained populace, the violent and
+over-excited crowd, the mobs, which picked it up like some weapon that
+had been thrown away in the street. In fact, there was no longer any
+government; the artificial structure of human society was giving way
+entirely; things were returning to a state of nature. This was not a
+revolution, but a dissolution.
+
+Two causes excite and maintain the universal upheaval. The first one is
+food shortages and dearth, which being constant, lasting for ten years,
+and aggravated by the very disturbances which it excites, bids fair to
+inflame the popular passions to madness, and change the whole course of
+the Revolution into a series of spasmodic stumbles.
+
+When a stream is brimful, a slight rise suffices to cause an overflow.
+So was it with the extreme distress of the eighteenth century. A poor
+man, who finds it difficult to live when bread is cheap, sees death
+staring him in the face when it is dear. In this state of suffering the
+animal instinct revolts, and the universal obedience which constitutes
+public peace depends on a degree more or less of dryness or damp, heat
+or cold. In 1788, a year of severe drought, the crops had been poor. In
+addition to this, on the eve of the harvest,[1101] a terrible hail-storm
+burst over the region around Paris, from Normandy to Champagne,
+devastating sixty leagues of the most fertile territory, and causing
+damage to the amount of one hundred millions of francs. Winter came on,
+the severest that had been seen since 1709. At the close of December the
+Seine was frozen over from Paris to Havre, while the thermometer stood
+at 180 below zero. A third of the olive-trees died in Provence, and the
+rest suffered to such an extent that they were considered incapable of
+bearing fruit for two years to come. The same disaster befell Languedoc.
+In Vivarais, and in the Cevennes, whole forests of chestnuts had
+perished, along with all the grain and grass crops on the uplands. On
+the plain the Rhone remained in a state of overflow for two months.
+After the spring of 1789 the famine spread everywhere, and it increased
+from month to month like a rising flood. In vain did the Government
+order the farmers, proprietors, and corn-dealers to keep the markets
+supplied. In vain did it double the bounty on imports, resort to all
+sorts of expedients, involve itself in debt, and expend over forty
+millions of francs to furnish France with wheat. In vain do individuals,
+princes, noblemen, bishops, chapters, and communities multiply their
+charities. The Archbishop of Paris incurring a debt of 400,000 livres,
+one rich man distributing 40,000 francs the morning after the hailstorm,
+and a convent of Bernardines feeding twelve hundred poor persons for six
+weeks[1102]. But it had been too devastating. Neither public measures
+nor private charity could meet the overwhelming need. In Normandy, where
+the last commercial treaty had ruined the manufacture of linen and
+of lace trimmings, forty thousand workmen were out of work. In many
+parishes one-fourth of the population[1103] are beggars. Here, "nearly
+all the inhabitants, not excepting the farmers and landowners, are
+eating barley bread and drinking water;" there, "many poor creatures
+have to eat oat bread, and others soaked bran, which has caused the
+death of several children."--"Above all," writes the Rouen Parliament,
+"let help be sent to a perishing people. . .. Sire, most of your
+subjects are unable to pay the price of bread, and what bread is given
+to those who do buy it "--Arthur Young,[1104] who was traveling through
+France at this time, heard of nothing but the high cost of bread and the
+distress of the people. At Troyes bread costs four sous a pound--that is
+to say, eight sous of the present day; and unemployed artisans flock
+to the relief works, where they can earn only twelve sous a day. In
+Lorraine, according to the testimony of all observers, "the people are
+half dead with hunger." In Paris the number of paupers has been trebled;
+there are thirty thousand in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine alone. Around
+Paris there is a short supply of grain, or it is spoilt[1105]. In the
+beginning of July, at Montereau, the market is empty. "The bakers could
+not have baked" if the police officers had not increased the price of
+bread to five sous per pound; the rye and barley which the intendant
+is able to send "are of the worst possible quality, rotten and in a
+condition to produce dangerous diseases. Nevertheless, most of the small
+consumers are reduced to the hard necessity of using this spoilt grain."
+At Villeneuve-le-Roi, writes the mayor, "the rye of the two lots last
+sent is so black and poor that it cannot be retailed without wheat." At
+Sens the barley "tastes musty" to such an extent that buyers of it throw
+the detestable bread, which it makes in the face of the sub-delegate. At
+Chevreuse the barley has sprouted and smells bad; the "poor wretches,"
+says an employee, "must be hard pressed with hunger to put up with it."
+At Fontainebleau "the barley, half eaten away, produces more bran than
+flour, and to make bread of it, one is obliged to work it over several
+times." This bread, such as it is, is an object of savage greed; "it
+has come to this, that it is impossible to distribute it except through
+wickets." And those who thus obtain their ration, "are often attacked on
+the road and robbed of it by the more vigorous of the famished people."
+At Nangis "the magistrates prohibit the same person from buying more
+than two bushels in the same market." In short, provisions are so
+scarce that there is a difficulty in feeding the soldiers; the minister
+dispatches two letters one after another to order the cutting down
+of 250,000 bushels of rye before the harvest[1106]. Paris thus, in
+a perfect state of tranquility, appears like a famished city put on
+rations at the end of a long siege, and the dearth will not be greater
+nor the food worse in December 1870, than in July 1789.
+
+"The nearer the 14th of July approached," says an eyewitness,[1107] "the
+more did the dearth increase. Every baker's shop was surrounded by a
+crowd, to which bread was distributed with the most grudging economy.
+This bread was generally blackish, earthy, and bitter, producing
+inflammation of the throat and pain in the bowels. I have seen flour of
+detestable quality at the military school and at other depots. I have
+seen portions of it yellow in color, with an offensive smell; some
+forming blocks so hard that they had to be broken into fragments
+by repeated blows of a hatchet. For my own part, wearied with the
+difficulty of procuring this poor bread, and disgusted with that offered
+to me at the tables d'h�te, I avoided this kind of food altogether. In
+the evening I went to the Caf� du Caveau, where, fortunately, they
+were kind enough to reserve for me two of those rolls which are called
+flutes, and this is the only bread I have eaten for a week at a time."
+
+But this resource is only for the rich. As for the people, to get bread
+fit for dogs, they must stand in a line for hours. And here they fight
+for it; "they snatch food from one another." There is no more work to
+be had; "the work-rooms are deserted;" often, after waiting a whole
+day, the workman returns home empty-handed. When he does bring back a
+four-pound loaf it costs him 3 francs 12 sous; that is, 12 sous for the
+bread, and 3 francs for the lost day. In this long line of unemployed,
+excited men, swaying to and fro before the shop-door, dark thoughts are
+fermenting: "if the bakers find no flour to-night to bake with, we shall
+have nothing to eat to-morrow." An appalling idea;--in presence of which
+the whole power of the Government is not too strong; for to keep order
+in the midst of famine nothing avails but the sight of an armed force,
+palpable and threatening. Under Louis XIV and Louis XV there had been
+even greater hunger and misery; but the outbreaks, which were roughly
+and promptly put down, were only partial and passing disorders. Some
+rioters were at once hung, and others were sent to the galleys. The
+peasant or the workman, convinced of his impotence, at once returned to
+his stall or his plow. When a wall is too high one does not even think
+of scaling it.--But now the wall is cracking--all its custodians, the
+clergy, the nobles, the Third-Estate, men of letters, the politicians,
+and even the Government itself, making the breach wider. The wretched,
+for the first time, discover an issue: they dash through it, at first
+in driblets, then in a mass, and rebellion becomes as universal as
+resignation was in the past.
+
+
+
+
+II.--Expectations the second cause
+
+     Separation and laxity of the administrative forces.--
+     Investigations of local assemblies. --The people become
+     aware of their condition.--Convocation of the States-
+     General.--Hope is born. The coincidence of early Assemblies
+     with early difficulties.
+
+It is just through this breach that hope steals like a beam of light,
+and gradually finds its way down to the depths below. For the last fifty
+years it has been rising, and its rays, which first illuminated the
+upper class in their splendid apartments in the first story, and next
+the middle class in their entresol and on the ground floor. They have
+now for two years penetrated to the cellars where the people toil, and
+even to the deep sinks and obscure corners where rogues and vagabonds
+and malefactors, a foul and swarming herd, crowd and hide themselves
+from the persecution of the law.--To the first two provincial assemblies
+instituted by Necker in 1778 and 1779, Lom�nie de Brienne has in 1787
+just added nineteen others; under each of these are assemblies of the
+arrondissement, under each assembly of the arrondissement are parish
+assemblies[1108]. Thus the whole machinery of administration has been
+changed. It is the new assemblies which assess the taxes and superintend
+their collection; which determine upon and direct all public works; and
+which form the court of final appeal in regard to matters in dispute.
+The intendant, the sub-delegate, the elected representative[1109], thus
+lose three-quarters of their authority. Conflicts arise, consequently,
+between rival powers whose frontiers are not clearly defined; command
+shifts about, and obedience is diminished. The subject no longer feels
+on his shoulders the commanding weight of the one hand which, without
+possibility of interference or resistance, held him in, urged him
+forward, and made him move on. Meanwhile, in each assembly of the
+parish arrondissement, and even of the province, plebeians,
+"husband-men,"[1110] and often common farmers, sit by the side of lords
+and prelates. They listen to and remember the vast figure of the taxes
+which are paid exclusively, or almost exclusively, by them--the taille
+and its accessories, the poll-tax and road dues, and assuredly on their
+return home they talk all this over with their neighbor. These figures
+are all printed; the village attorney discusses the matter with his
+clients, the artisans and rustics, on Sunday as they leave the mass,
+or in the evening in the large public room of the tavern. These little
+gatherings, moreover, are sanctioned, encouraged by the powers above.
+In the earliest days of 1788 the provincial assemblies order a board
+of inquiry to be held by the syndics and inhabitants of each parish.
+Knowledge is wanted in detail of their grievances. What part of the
+revenue is chargeable to each impost? What must the cultivator pay and
+how much does he suffer? How many privileged persons there are in the
+parish, what is the amount of their fortune, are they residents, and
+what their exemptions amount to? In replying, the attorney who holds the
+pen, names and points out with his finger each privileged individual,
+criticizes his way of living, and estimates his fortune, calculates the
+injury done to the village by his immunities, inveighs against the taxes
+and the tax-collectors. On leaving these assemblies the villager broods
+over what he has just heard. He sees his grievances no longer singly as
+before, but in mass, and coupled with the enormity of evils under which
+his fellows suffer. Besides this, they begin to disentangle the causes
+of their misery: the King is good--why then do his collectors take so
+much of our money? This or that canon or nobleman is not unkind--why
+then do they make us pay in their place?--Imagine that a sudden gleam of
+reason should allow a beast of burden to comprehend the contrast between
+the species of horse and mankind. Imagine, if you can, what its first
+ideas would be in relation to the coachmen and drivers who bridle
+and whip it and again in relation to the good-natured travelers and
+sensitive ladies who pity it, but who to the weight of the vehicle add
+their own and that of their luggage.
+
+Likewise, in the mind of the peasant, athwart his perplexed brooding, a
+new idea, slowly, little by little, is unfolded:--that of an oppressed
+multitude of which he makes one, a vast herd scattered far beyond the
+visible horizon, everywhere ill used, starved, and fleeced. Towards the
+end of 1788 we begin to detect in the correspondence of the intendants
+and military commandants the dull universal muttering of coming
+wrath. Men's characters seem to change; they become suspicious and
+restive.--And just at this moment, the Government, dropping the reins,
+calls upon them to direct themselves.[1111]. In the month of November
+1787, the King declared that he would convoke the States-General. On the
+5th of July 1788, he calls for memoranda (des m�moires) on this subject
+from every competent person and body. On the 8th of August he fixes the
+date of the session. On the 5th of October he convokes the notables,
+in order to consider the subject with them. On the 27th of December he
+grants a double representation to the Third-Estate, because "its cause
+is allied with generous sentiments, and it will always obtain the
+support of public opinion." The same day he introduces into the
+electoral assemblies of the clergy a majority of cur�s[1112], "because
+good and useful pastors are daily and closely associated with the
+indigence and relief of the people," from which it follows "that they
+are much more familiar with their sufferings" and necessities. On
+the 24th January 1789, he prescribes the procedure and method of the
+meetings. After the 7th of February writs of summons are sent out one
+after the other. Eight days after, each parish assembly begins to draw
+up its memorial of grievances, and becomes excited over the detailed
+enumeration of all the miseries which it sets down in writing.--All
+these appeals and all these acts are so many strokes, which reverberate,
+in the popular imagination. "It is the desire of His Majesty," says the
+order issued, "that every one, from the extremities of his kingdom, and
+from the most obscure of its hamlets, should be certain of his wishes
+and protests reaching him." Thus, it is all quite true: there can be
+no mistake about it, the thing is sure. The people are invited to speak
+out, they are summoned, and they are consulted. There is a disposition
+to relieve them; henceforth their misery shall be less; better times
+are coming. This is all they know about it. A few month after, in
+July,[1113] the only answer a peasant girl can make to Arthur Young is,
+"something was to be done by some great folks for such poor ones, but
+she did not know who nor how." The thing is too complicated, beyond the
+reach of a stupefied and mechanical brain.--One idea alone emerges, the
+hope of immediate relief. The persuasion that one is entitled to it, the
+resolution to aid it with every possible means. Consequently, an anxious
+waiting, a ready fervor, a tension of the will simply due to the waiting
+for the opportunity to let go and take off like a irresistible arrow
+towards the unknown end which will reveal itself all of a sudden. Hunger
+is to mark this sudden target out for them.
+
+The market must be supplied with wheat; the farmers and land-owners must
+bring it; wholesale buyers, whether the Government or individuals, must
+not be allowed to send it elsewhere. The wheat must be sold at a low
+price; the price must be cut down and fixed, so that the baker can sell
+bread at two sous the pound. Grain, flour, wine, salt, and provisions
+must pay no more duties. Seignorial dues and claims, ecclesiastical
+tithes, and royal or municipal taxes must no longer exist. On the
+strength of this idea disturbances broke out on all sides in March,
+April, and May. Contemporaries "do not know what to think of such
+a scourge;[1114] they cannot comprehend how such a vast number of
+criminals, without visible leaders, agree amongst themselves everywhere
+to commit the same excesses just at the time when the States-General are
+going to begin their sittings." The reason is that, under the ancient
+r�gime, the conflagration was smoldering in a closed chamber; the great
+door is suddenly opened, the air enters, and immediately the flame
+breaks out.
+
+
+
+
+III.--The provinces during the first six months of 1789
+
+     Effects of the famine.
+
+At first there are only intermittent, isolated fires, which are
+extinguished or go out of themselves; but, a moment after, in the same
+place, or very near it, the sparks again appear. Their number, like
+their recurrence, shows the vastness, depth, and heat of the combustible
+matter, which is about to explode. In the four months, which precede the
+taking of the Bastille, over three hundred outbreaks may be counted in
+France. They take place from month to month and from week to week, in
+Poitou, Brittany, Touraine, Orl�anais, Normandy, Ile-de-France, Picardy,
+Champagne, Alsace, Burgundy, Nivernais, Auvergne, Languedoc, and
+Provence. On the 28th of May the parliament of Rouen announces robberies
+of grain, "violent and bloody tumults, in which men on both sides have
+fallen," throughout the province, at Caen, Saint-L�, Mortain, Granville,
+Evreux, Bernay, Pont-Andemer, Elboeuf; Louviers, and in other sections
+besides. On the 20th of April Baron de Bezenval, military commander
+in the Central Provinces, writes: "I once more lay before M. Necker a
+picture of the frightful condition of Touraine and of Orl�anais. Every
+letter I receive from these two provinces is the narrative of three
+or four riots, which are put down with difficulty by the troops and
+constabulary,"[1115]--and throughout the whole extent of the kingdom a
+similar state of things is seen. The women, as is natural, are generally
+at the head of these outbreaks. It is they who, at Montlh�ry, rip open
+the sacks of grain with their scissors. On learning each week, on market
+day that the price of a loaf of bread advances three, four, or seven
+sous, they break out into shrieks of rage: at this rate for bread, with
+the small salaries of the men, and when work fails,[1116] how can a
+family be fed? Crowds gather around the sacks of flour and the doors of
+the bakers. Amidst outcries and reproaches some one in the crowd makes a
+push; the proprietor or dealer is hustled and knocked down. The shop
+is invaded, the commodity is in the hands of the buyers and of the
+famished, each one grabbing for himself, pay or no pay, and running
+away with the booty.--Sometimes a party is made up beforehand[1117]
+At Bray-sur-Seine, on the 1st of May, the villagers for four leagues
+around, armed with stones, knives, and cudgels, to the number of four
+thousand, compel the metayers and farmers, who have brought grain with
+them, to sell it at 3 livres, instead of 4 livres 10 sous the bushel.
+They threaten to do the same thing on the following market-day: but the
+farmers do not return, the storehouse remains empty. Now soldiers must
+be at hand, or the inhabitants of Bray will be pillaged. At Bagnols, in
+Languedoc, on the 1st and 2nd of April, the peasants, armed with cudgels
+and assembled by tap of drum, "traverse the town, threatening to burn
+and destroy everything if flour and money are not given to them."
+They go to private houses for grain, divide it amongst themselves at a
+reduced price, "promising to pay when the next crop comes round," and
+force the Consuls to put bread at two sous the pound, and to increase
+the day's wages four sous.--Indeed this is now the regular thing; it is
+not the people who obey the authorities, but the authorities who obey
+the people. Consuls, sheriffs, mayors, municipal officers, town-clerks,
+become confused and hesitating in the face of this huge clamor; they
+feel that they are likely to be trodden under foot or thrown out of the
+windows. Others, with more firmness, being aware that a riotous crowd
+is mad, and having scruples to spill blood; yield for the time being,
+hoping that at the next market-day there will be more soldiers
+and better precautions taken. At Amiens, "after a very violent
+outbreak,"[1118] they decide to take the wheat belonging to the Jacobin
+monks, and, protected by the troops, to sell it to the people at a third
+below its value. At Nantes, where the town hall is attacked, they are
+forced to lower the price of bread one sou per pound. At Angoul�me, to
+avoid a recourse to arms, they request the Comte d'Artois to renounce
+his dues on flour for two months, reduce the price of bread, and
+compensate the bakers. At Cette they are so maltreated they let
+everything take its course; the people sack their dwellings and get the
+upper hand; they announce by sound of trumpet that all their demands are
+granted. On other occasions, the mob dispenses with their services and
+acts for itself. If there happens to be no grain on the market-place,
+the people go after it wherever they can find it--to proprietors and
+farmers who are unable to bring it for fear of pillage; to convents,
+which by royal edict are obliged always to have one year's crop in
+store; to granaries where the Government keeps its supplies; and to
+convoys which are dispatched by the intendants to the relief of famished
+towns. Each for himself--so much the worse for his neighbor. The
+inhabitants of Foug�res beat and drive out those who come from Ern�e
+to buy in their market; a similar violence is shown at Vitr� to the
+in-habitants of Maine.[1119] At Sainte-L�onard the people stop the grain
+started for Limoges; at Bost that intended for Aurillac; at Saint-Didier
+that ordered for Moulins; and at Tournus that dispatched to Macon. In
+vain are escorts added to the convoys; troops of men and women, armed
+with hatchets and guns, put themselves in ambush in the woods along the
+road, and seize the horses by their bridles; the saber has to be used to
+secure any advance. In vain are arguments and kind words offered, "and
+in vain even is wheat offered for money; they refuse, shouting out that
+the convoy shall not go on." They have taken a stubborn stand, their
+resolution being that of a bull planted in the middle of the road and
+lowering his horns. Since the wheat is in the district, it is theirs;
+whoever carries it off or withholds it is a robber. This fixed idea
+cannot be driven out of their minds. At Chant-nay, near Mans,[1120]
+they prevent a miller from carrying that which he had just bought to
+his mill. At Montdragon, in Languedoc, they stone a dealer in the act of
+sending his last wagon load elsewhere. At Thiers, workmen go in force
+to gather wheat in the fields; a proprietor with whom some is found
+is nearly killed; they drink wine in the cellars, and leave the taps
+running. At Nevers, the bakers not having put bread on their counters
+for four days, the mob force the granaries of private persons, of
+dealers and religious communities. "The frightened corn-dealers part
+with their grain at any price; most of it is stolen in the face of the
+guards," and, in the tumult of these searches of homes, a number of
+houses are sacked.--In these days woe to all who are concerned in the
+acquisition, commerce, and manipulation of grain! Popular imagination
+requires living beings to who it may impute its misfortunes, and on whom
+it may gratify its resentments. To it, all such persons are monopolists,
+and, at any rate, public enemies. Near Angers the Benedictine
+establishment is invaded, and its fields and woods are devastated.[1121]
+At Amiens "the people are arranging to pillage and perhaps burn the
+houses of two merchants, who have built labor-saving mills." Restrained
+by the soldiers, they confine themselves to breaking windows; but other
+"groups come to destroy or plunder the houses of two or three persons
+whom they suspect of being monopolists." At Nantes, a sieur Geslin,
+being deputized by the people to inspect a house, and finding no wheat,
+a shout is set up that he is a receiver, an accomplice! The crowd rush
+at him, and he is wounded and almost cut in pieces.--It is very evident
+that there is no more security in France; property, even life, is in
+danger. The primary possession, food, is violated in hundreds of places,
+and is everywhere menaced and precarious. The local officials everywhere
+call for aid, declare the constabulary incompetent, and demand
+regular troops. And mark how public authority, everywhere inadequate,
+disorganized, and tottering, finds stirred up against it not only the
+blind madness of hunger, but, in addition, the evil instincts which
+profit by every disorder and the inveterate lusts which every political
+commotion frees from restraint.
+
+
+
+
+IV.--Intervention of ruffians and vagabonds.
+
+We have seen how numerous the smugglers, dealers in contraband salt,
+poachers, vagabonds, beggars, and escaped convicts[1122] have become,
+and how a year of famine increases the number. All are so many recruits
+for the mobs, and whether in a disturbance or by means of a disturbance
+each one of them fills his pouch. Around Caux,[1123] even up to the
+environs of Rouen, at Roncherolles, Qu�vrevilly, Pr�aux, Saint-Jacques,
+and in the entire surrounding neighborhood bands of armed bandits force
+their way into the houses, particularly the parsonages, and lay their
+hands on whatever they please. To the south of Chartres "three or four
+hundred woodcutters, from the forests of Bell�me, chop away everything
+that opposes them, and force grain to be given up to them at their own
+price." In the vicinity of �tampes, fifteen bandits enter the
+farmhouses at night and put the farmer to ransom, threatening him with
+a conflagration. In Cambr�sis they pillage the abbeys of Vauchelles, of
+Verger, and of Guillemans, the ch�teau of the Marquis de Besselard, the
+estate of M. Doisy, two farms, the wagons of wheat passing along the
+road to Saint-Quentin, and, besides this, seven farms in Picardy.
+"The seat of this revolt is in some villages bordering on Picardy and
+Cambr�sis, familiar with smuggling operations and to the license of
+that pursuit." The peasants allow themselves to be enticed away by the
+bandits. Man slips rapidly down the incline of dishonesty; one who
+is half-honest, and takes part in a riot inadvertently or in spite of
+himself; repeats the act, allured on by impunity or by gain. In fact,
+"it is not dire necessity which impels them;" they make a speculation of
+cupidity, a new sort of illicit trade. An old soldier, saber in hand, a
+forest-keeper, and "about eight persons sufficiently lax, put themselves
+at the head of four or five hundred men, go off each day to three or
+four villages. Here they force everybody who has any wheat to give it
+to them at 24 livres," and even at 18 livres, the sack. Those among the
+band, who say that they have no money, carry away their portion without
+payment. Others, after having paid what they please, re-sell at a
+profit, which amounts to even 45 livres the sack. This is a good
+business, and one in which greed takes poverty for its accomplice. At
+the next harvest the temptation will be similar: "they have threatened
+to come and do our harvesting for us, and also to take our cattle and
+sell the meat in the villages at the rate of two sous the pound."--In
+every important insurrection there are similar evil-does and vagabonds,
+enemies to the law, savage, prowling desperadoes, who, like wolves, roam
+about wherever they scent a prey. It is they who serve as the directors
+and executioners of public or private malice. Near Uz�s twenty-five
+masked men, with guns and clubs, enter the house of a notary, fire a
+pistol at him, beat him, wreck the premises, and burn his registers
+along with the title-deeds and papers which he has in keeping for the
+Count de Rouvres. Seven of them are arrested, but the people are on
+their side, and fall on the constabulary and free them.[1124]--They
+are known by their acts, by their love of destruction for the sake of
+destruction, by their foreign accent, by their savage faces and their
+rags. Some of them come from Paris to Rouen, and, for four days, the
+town is at their mercy.[1125] The stores are forced open, train wagons
+are discharged, wheat is wasted, and convents and seminaries are put to
+ransom. They invade the dwelling of the attorney-general, who has begun
+proceedings against them, and want to tear him to pieces. They break his
+mirrors and his furniture, leave the premises laden with booty, and go
+into the town and its outskirts to pillage the manufactories and break
+up or burn all the machinery.--Henceforth these constitute the new
+leaders: for in every mob it is the boldest and least scrupulous
+who march ahead and set the example in destruction. The example is
+contagious: the beginning was the craving for bread, the end is murder
+and arson; the savagery which is unchained adding its unlimited violence
+to the limited revolt of necessity.
+
+
+
+
+V.--Effect on the Population of the New Ideas.
+
+Bad as it is, this savagery might, perhaps, have been overcome, in spite
+of the dearth and of the brigands; but what renders it irresistible is
+the belief of its being authorized, and that by those whose duty it is
+to repress it. Here and there words and actions of a brutal frankness
+break forth, and reveal beyond the somber present a more threatening
+future--After the 9th of January, 1789, among the mob which attacks the
+H�tel-de-Ville and besieges the bakers' shops of Nantes, "shouts of Vive
+la Libert�![1126] mingled with those of Vive le Roi! are heard." A
+few months later, around Plo�rmel, the peasants refuse to pay tithes,
+alleging that the memorial of their seneschal's court demands their
+abolition. In Alsace, after March, there is the same refusal "in many
+places;" many of the communities even maintain that they will pay no
+more taxes until their deputies to the States-General shall have fixed
+the precise amount of the public contributions. In Is�re it is decided,
+by proceedings, printed and published, that "personal dues" shall no
+longer be paid, while the landowners who are affected by this dare
+not prosecute in the tribunals. At Lyons, the people have come to the
+conclusion "that all levies of taxes are to cease," and, on the 29th of
+June, on hearing of the meeting of the three orders, "astonished by the
+illuminations and signs of public rejoicing," they believe that the good
+time has come." They think of forcing the delivery of meat to them at
+four sous the pound, and wine at the same rate. The publicans insinuate
+to them the prospective abolition of octrois.[1127] and that, meanwhile,
+the King, in favor of the re-assembling of the three orders, has granted
+three days' freedom from all duties at Paris, and that Lyons ought
+to enjoy the same privilege." Upon this the crowd, rushing off to
+the barriers, to the gates of Sainte-Claire and Perrache, and to the
+Guilloti�re bridge, burn or demolish the bureaux, destroy the registers,
+sack the lodgings of the clerks, carry off the money and pillage the
+wine on hand in the depot. In the mean time a rumor has circulated all
+round through the country that there is free entrance into the town for
+all provisions. During the following days the peasantry stream in with
+enormous files of wagons loaded with wine and drawn by several oxen, so
+that, in spite of the re-established guard, it is necessary to let them
+enter all day without paying the dues. It is only on the 7th of July
+that these can again be collected.--The same thing occurs in the
+southern provinces, where the principal imposts are levied on
+provisions. There also the collections are suspended in the name of
+public authority. At Agde,[1128] "the people, considering the so-called
+will of the King as to equality of classes, are foolish enough to think
+that they are everything and can do everything." Thus do they interpret
+in their own way and in their own terms the double representation
+accorded to the Third-Estate. They threaten the town, consequently, with
+general pillage if the prices of all provisions are not reduced, and if
+the duties of the province on wine, fish, and meat are not suppressed.
+They also wish to nominate consuls who have sprung up out of their
+body." The bishop, the lord of the manor, the mayor and the notables,
+against whom they forcibly stir up the peasantry in the country, are
+obliged to proclaim by sound of trumpet that their demands shall be
+granted. Three days afterwards they exact a diminution of one-half of
+the tax on grinding, and go in quest of the bishop who owns the mills.
+The prelate, who is ill, sinks down in the street and seats himself on
+a stone; they compel him forthwith to sign an act of renunciation,
+and hence "his mill, valued at 15,000 livres, is reduced to 7,500
+livres."--At Limoux, under the pretext of searching for grain, they
+enter the houses of the comptroller and tax contractors, carry off their
+registers, and throw them into the water along with the furniture of
+their clerks.--In Provence it is worse; for most unjustly, and through
+inconceivable imprudence, the taxes of the towns are all levied on
+flour. It is therefore to this impost that the dearness of bread is
+directly attributed. Hence the fiscal agent becomes a manifest enemy,
+and revolts on account of hunger are transformed into insurrections
+against the State.
+
+
+
+
+VI.--The first jacquerie in Province
+
+     Feebleness or ineffectiveness of repressive measures.
+
+Here, again, political novelties are the spark that ignites the mass
+of gunpowder. Everywhere, the uprising of the people takes place on
+the very day on which the electoral assembly meets. From forty to
+fifty riots occur in the provinces in less than a fortnight. Popular
+imagination, like that of a child, goes straight to its mark. The
+reforms having been announced, people think them accomplished and, to
+make sure of them, steps are at once taken to carry them out. Now
+that we are to have relief, let us relieve ourselves. "This is not an
+isolated riot as usual," writes the commander of the troops;[1129]
+"here the faction is united and governed by uniform principles; the same
+errors are diffused through all minds. . . . . The principles impressed
+on the people are that the King desires equality. No more bishops
+or lords, no more distinctions of rank, no tithes, and no seignorial
+privileges. Thus, these misguided people fancy that they are exercising
+their rights, and obeying the will of the King."--The effect of sonorous
+phrases is apparent. The people have been told that the States-General
+were to bring about the "regeneration of the kingdom" The inference is
+"that the date of their assembly was to be one of an entire and absolute
+change of conditions and fortunes." Hence, "the insurrection against the
+nobles and the clergy is as active as it is widespread." "In many
+places it was distinctly announced that there was a sort of war declared
+against landowners and property," and "in the towns as well as in the
+rural districts the people persist in declaring that they will pay
+nothing, neither taxes, duties, nor debts."--Naturally, the first
+assault is against the piqu�t, or flour-tax. At Aix, Marseilles, Toulon,
+and in more than forty towns and market-villages, this is summarily
+abolished; at Aupt and at Luc nothing remains of the weighing-house but
+the four walls. At Marseilles the home of the slaughter-house contractor
+and at Brignolles that of the director of the leather excise, are
+sacked. The determination is "to purge the land of excise-men. "--This
+is only a beginning; bread and other provisions must become cheap, and
+that without delay. At Arles, the Corporation of sailors, presided over
+by M. de Barras, consul, had just elected its representatives. By way of
+conclusion to the meeting, they pass a resolution insisting that M. de
+Barras should reduce the price of all comestibles. On his refusal, they
+"open the window, exclaiming, 'We hold him, and we have only to throw
+him into the street for the rest to pick him up.'" Compliance is
+inevitable. The resolution is proclaimed by the town-criers, and at each
+article which is reduced in price the crowd shout, "Vive le Roi, vive M.
+Barras!"--One must yield to brute force. But the inconvenience is great
+for, through the suppression of the flour-tax, the towns have no longer
+a revenue. On the other hand, as they are obliged to indemnify the
+butchers and bakers, Toulon, for instance, incurs a debt of 2,500 livres
+a day.
+
+In this state of disorder, woe to those who are under suspicion of
+having contributed, directly or indirectly, to the evils, which the
+people endure! At Toulon a demand is made for the head of the mayor, who
+signs the tax-list, and of the keeper of the records. They are trodden
+under foot, and their houses are ransacked. At Manosque, the Bishop
+of Sisteron, who is visiting the seminary, is accused of favoring
+a monopolist. On his way to his carriage, on foot, he is hooted and
+menaced. He is first pelted with mud, and then with stones. The consuls
+in attendance, and the sub-delegate, who come to his assistance, are
+mauled and repulsed. Meanwhile, some of the most furious begin, before
+his eyes, "to dig a ditch to bury him in." Protected by five or six
+brave fellows, amidst a volley of stones, and wounded on the head and
+on many parts of his body, he succeeds in reaching his carriage. He is
+finally only saved because the horses, which are likewise stoned, run
+away. Foreigners, Italians, bandits, are mingled with the peasants and
+artisans, and expressions are heard and acts are seen which indicate a
+jacquerie.[1130] "The most excited said to the bishop, 'we are poor and
+you are rich, and we mean to have all your property.'"[1131] Elsewhere,
+"the seditious mob exacts contributions from all people in good
+circumstances. At Brignolles, thirteen houses are pillaged from top to
+bottom, and thirty others partly half.--At Aupt, M. de Montferrat, in
+defending himself, is killed and "hacked to pieces."--At La Seyne, the
+mob, led by a peasant, assembles by beat of drum. Some women fetch a
+bier, and set it down before the house of a leading bourgeois, telling
+him to prepare for death, and that "they will have the honor of burying
+him." He escapes; his house is pillaged, as well as the bureau of
+the flour-tax. The following day, the chief of the band "obliges the
+principal inhabitants to give him a sum of money to indemnify, as he
+states it, the peasants who have abandoned their work," and devoted the
+day to serving the public.--At Peinier, the Pr�sident de Peinier, an
+octogenarian, is "besieged in his chateau by a band of a hundred and
+fifty artisans and peasants," who bring with them a consul and a notary.
+Aided by these two functionaries, they force the president "to pass an
+act by which he renounces his seignorial rights of every description
+"--At Sollier they destroy the mills belonging to M. de Forbin-Janson.
+They sack the house of his business agent, pillage the ch�teau, and
+demolish the roof, chapel, altar, railings, and escutcheons. They enter
+the cellars, stave in the casks, and carry away everything that can
+be carried, "the transportation taking two days;" all of which cause
+damages of a hundred thousand crowns to the marquis.--At Riez they
+surround the episcopal palace with fagots, threatening to burn it, "and
+compromise with the bishop on a promise of fifty thousand livres," and
+want him to burn his archives.--In short, the sedition is social for it
+singles out for attack all that profit by, or stand at the head of, the
+established order of things.
+
+Seeing them act in this way, one would say that the theory of the
+Contrat-Social had been instilled into them. They treat magistrates as
+domestics, promulgate laws, and conduct themselves like sovereigns.
+They exercise public power, and establish, summarily, arbitrarily,
+and brutally, whatever they think to be in conformity with natural
+right.--At Peinier they exact a second electoral assembly, and, for
+themselves, the right of suffrage.--At Saint-Maximin they themselves
+elect new consuls and officers of justice.--At Solliez they oblige the
+judge's lieutenant to give in his resignation, and they break his
+staff of office.--At Barjols "they use consuls and judges as their town
+servants, announcing that they are masters and that they will themselves
+administer justice."--In fact, they do administer it, as they understand
+it--that is to say, through many exactions and robberies! One man has
+wheat; he must share it with him who has none. Another has money;
+he must give it to him who has not enough to buy bread with. On this
+principle, at Barjols, they tax the Ursulin nuns 1,800 livres, carry off
+fifty loads of wheat from the Chapter, eighteen from one poor artisan,
+and forty from another, and constrain canons and beneficiaries to give
+acquittances to their farmers. Then, from house to house, with club
+in hand, they oblige some to hand over money, others to abandon their
+claims on their debtors, "one to desist from criminal proceedings,
+another to nullify a decree obtained, a third to reimburse the expenses
+of a lawsuit gained years before, a father to give his consent to the
+marriage of his son."--All their grievances are brought to mind, and we
+all know the tenacity of a peasant's memory. Having become the master,
+he redresses wrongs, and especially those of which he thinks himself the
+object. There must be a general restitution; and first, of the feudal
+dues which have been collected. They take of M. de Montmeyan's business
+agent all the money he has as compensation for that received by him
+during fifteen years as a notary. A former consul of Brignolles had, in
+1775, inflicted penalties to the amount of 1,500 or 1,800 francs, which
+had been given to the poor; this sum is taken from his strong box.
+Moreover, if consuls and law officers are wrongdoers, the title deeds,
+rent-rolls, and other documents by which they do their business
+are still worse. To the fire with all old writings--not only office
+registers, but also, at Hy�res, all the papers in the town hall and
+those of the principal notary.--In the matter of papers none are
+good but new ones--those which convey some discharge, quittance, or
+obligation to the advantage of the people. At Brignolles the owners of
+the gristmills are constrained to execute a contract of sale by which
+they convey their mills to the commune in consideration of 5,000 francs
+per annum, payable in ten years without interest--an arrangement which
+ruins them. On seeing the contract signed the peasants shout and cheer,
+and so great is their faith in this piece of stamped paper that they at
+once cause a mass of thanksgiving to be celebrated in the Cordeliers.
+Formidable omens these! Which mark the inward purpose, the determined
+will, and the coming deeds of this rising power. If it prevails, its
+first work will be to destroy all ancient documents, all title deeds,
+rent-rolls, contracts, and claims to which force compels it to submit.
+By force likewise it will draw up others to its own advantage, and the
+scribes who do it will be its own deputies and administrators whom it
+holds in its rude grasp.
+
+Those who are in high places are not alarmed; they even find that there
+is some good in the revolt, inasmuch as it compels the towns to suppress
+unjust taxation.[1132] The new Marseilles guard, formed of young men, is
+allowed to march to Aubagne, "to insist that M. le lieutenant criminel
+and M. l'avocat du Roi release the prisoners." The disobedience of
+Marseilles, which refuses to receive the magistrates sent under letters
+patent to take testimony, is tolerated. And better still, in spite
+of the remonstrances of the parliament of Aix, a general amnesty is
+proclaimed; "no one is excepted but a few of the leaders, to whom is
+allowed the liberty of leaving the kingdom." The mildness of the King
+and of the military authorities is admirable. It is admitted that the
+people are children, that they err only through ignorance, that faith
+must be had in their repentance, and, as soon as they return to order,
+they must be received with paternal effusions.--The truth is, that the
+child is a blind Colossus, exasperated by sufferings. hence whatever it
+takes hold of is shattered--not only the local wheels of the provinces,
+which, if temporarily deranged, may be repaired, but even the incentive
+at the center which puts the rest in motion, and the destruction of
+which will throw the whole machinery into confusion.
+
+
+*****
+
+
+[Footnote 1101: Marmontel, "M�moires," II. 221.--Albert Babeau,
+"Histoire de la R�volution Fran�aise," I. 91, 187. (Letter by Huez Mayor
+of Troyes, July 30, 1788.)--Archives Nationales, H. 1274. (Letter by M.
+de Caraman, April 22, 1789.) H. 942 (Cahier des demandes des Etats de
+Languedoc).--Buchez et Roux, "Histoire Parlementaire," I. 283.]
+
+[Footnote 1102: See "The Ancient R�gime," p.34. Albert Babeau, I. 91.
+(The Bishop of Troyes gives 12,000 francs, and the chapter 6,000, for
+the relief workshops.)]
+
+[Footnote 1103: "The Ancient Regime," 350, 387.--Floquet, "Histoire du
+Parlement de Normandie," VII. 505-518. (Reports of the Parliament of
+Normandy, May 3,1788. Letter from the Parliament to the King, July 15,
+1789.)]
+
+[Footnote 1104: Arthur Young, "Voyages in France," June 29th, July 2nd
+and 18th--" Journal de Paris," January 2, 1789. Letter of the cur� of
+Sainte-Marguerite.]
+
+[Footnote 1105: Buchez and Roux, IV. 79-82. (Letter from the
+intermediary bureau of Montereau, July 9, 1789; from the maire of
+Villeneuve-le-Roi, July 10th; from M. Baudry, July 10th; from M.
+Prioreau, July 11th, etc.)--Montjoie, "Histoire de la R�volution de
+France," 2nd part, ch. XXI, p. 5.]
+
+[Footnote 1106: Roux et Buchez, ibid. "It is very unfortunate," writes
+the Marquis d'Autichamp, "to be obliged to cut down the standing crops
+ready to be gathered in; but it is dangerous to let the troops die of
+hunger."]
+
+[Footnote 1107: Montjoie, "Histoire de la R�volution de France,"
+ch. XXXIX, V, 37.--De Goncourt, "La Soci�t� Fran�aise pendant la
+R�volution," p. 5l3.--Deposition of Maillard (Criminal Inquiry of the
+Ch�telet concerning the events of October 5th and 6th).]
+
+[Footnote 1108: De Tocqueville, "L'Ancien R�gime et la R�volution,"
+272-290. De Lavergne, "Les Assembl�es provinciales," 109. Proc�s-verbaux
+des assembl�es provinciales, passim.]
+
+[Footnote 1109: A magistrate who gives judgment in a lower court in
+cases relative to taxation. These terms are retained because there are
+no equivalents in English. (Tr.)]
+
+[Footnote 1110: "Laboureurs,"--this term, at this epoch, is applied to
+those who till their own land. (Tr.)]
+
+[Footnote 1111: Duvergier. "Collection des lois et d�crets," I. 1 to 23,
+and particularly p. 15.]
+
+[Footnote 1112: Parish priests. (SR.)]
+
+[Footnote 1113: Arthur Young, July 12th, 1789 (in Champagne).]
+
+[Footnote 1114: Montjoie, 1st part, 102.]
+
+[Footnote 1115: Floquet, "Histoire du Parlement de Normandie," VII.
+508.--" Archives Nationales," H. 1453.]
+
+[Footnote 1116: Arthur Young, June 29th (at Nangis).]
+
+[Footnote 1117: "Archives Nationales," H.1453. Letter of the Duc
+de Mortemart, Seigneur of Bray, May 4th; of M. de Ballainvilliers,
+intendant of Languedoc, April 15th.]
+
+[Footnote 1118: "Archives Nationales," H.1453. Letter of the intendant,
+M. d'Agay, April 30th; of the municipal officers of Nantes, January
+9th; of the intendant, M. Meulan d'Ablois, June 22nd; of M. de
+Ballainvilliers, April 15th.]
+
+[Footnote 1119: "Archives Nationales," H. 1453. Letter of the Count de
+Langeron, July 4th; of M. de Meulan d'Ablois, June 5th; "Minutes of
+the meeting of la Mar�chauss�e de Bost," April 29th. Letters of M. de
+Chazerat, May 29th; of M. de Bezenval, June 2nd; of the intendant, M.
+Amelot, April 25th.]
+
+[Footnote 1120: '"Archives Nationales," H.1453. Letter of M. de
+Bezenval, May 27th; of M. de Ballainvilliers, April 25th; of M. de
+Foullonde, April 19th.]
+
+[Footnote 1121: "Archives Nationales," H.1453. Letter of the intendant,
+M. d'Aine, March 12th; of M. d'Agay, April 30th; of M. Amelot, April
+25th; of the municipal authorities of Nantes, January 9th, etc.]
+
+[Footnote 1122: "The Ancient R�gime," pp. 380-389.]
+
+[Footnote 1123: Floquet, VII. 508, (Report of February 27th).--Hippeau,
+"La Gouvernement de Normandie," IV. 377. (Letter of M. Perrot, June
+23rd.)--" Archives Nationales," H. 1453. Letter of M. de Sainte-Suzanne,
+April 29th. Ibid. F7, 3250. Letter of M. de Rochambeau, May 16th Ibid.
+F7, 3250. Letter of the Abb� Duplaquet, Deputy of the Third Estate of
+Saint-Quentin, May 17th. Letter of three husbandmen in the environs of
+Saint-Quentin, May 14th.]
+
+[Footnote 1124: "Archives Nationales," H. 1453. Letter of the Count de
+Perigord, military commandant of Languedoc, April 22nd.]
+
+[Footnote 1125: Floquet, VII. 511 (from the 11th to the 14th July).]
+
+[Footnote 1126: "Archives Nationales," H. 1453. Letter of the municipal
+authorities of Nantes, January 9th; of the sub-delegate of Plo�rmel,
+July 4th; ibid. F7, 2353. Letter of the intermediary commission of
+Alsace, September 8th ibid. F7, 3227. Letter of the intendant, Caze de
+la Bove, June 16th; ibid. H. 1453. Letter of Terray, intendant of Lyons,
+July 4th; of the pr�vot des �chevins, July 5th and 7th.]
+
+[Footnote 1127: (A tax on all goods entering a town. SR.)]
+
+[Footnote 1128: "Archives Nationales," H. 1453. Letter of the mayor and
+councils of Agde, April 21st; of M. de Perigord, April 19th, May 5th.]
+
+[Footnote 1129: "Archives Nationales," H. 1453. Letters of M. de
+Caraman, March 23rd, 26th 27th 28th; of the seneschal Missiessy, March
+24th; of the mayor of Hy�res, March 25th, etc.; ibid. H. 1274; of M. de
+Montmayran, April 2nd; of M. de Caraman, March 18th, April 12th; of
+the intendant, M. de la Tour, April 2nd; of the procureur-g�neral, M.
+d'Antheman, April 17th, and the report of June 15th; of the municipal
+authorities of Toulon, April 11th; of the sub-delegate of Manosque,
+March 14th; of M. de Saint-Tropez, March 21st.--Minutes of the meeting,
+signed by 119 witnesses, of the insurrection at Aix, March 5th, etc.]
+
+[Footnote 1130: An uprising of the peasants. The term is used to
+indicate a country mob in contradistinction to a city or town mob.-Tr.]
+
+[Footnote 1131: "Archives Nationales," H.1274. Letter of M. de la Tour,
+April 2nd (with a detailed memorandum and depositions).]
+
+[Footnote 1132: "Archives Nationales," H. 1274. Letter of M. de Caraman,
+April 22nd:--"One real benefit results from this misfortune. . . The
+well-to-do class is brought to sustain that which exceeded the strength
+of the poor daily laborers. We see the nobles and people in good
+circumstances a little more attentive to the poor peasants: they are now
+habituated to speaking to them with more gentleness." M. de Caraman
+was wounded, as well as his Son, at Aix, and if the Soldiery, who were
+stoned, at length fired on the crowd, he did not give the order.--Ibid,
+letter of M. d'Anth�man, April 17th; of M. de Barentin, June 11th.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. PARIS UP TO THE 14TH OF JULY.
+
+
+
+
+I.--Mob recruits in the vicinity
+
+     Entry of vagabonds.--The number of paupers.
+
+INDEED it is in the center that the convulsive shocks are strongest.
+Nothing is lacking to aggravate the insurrection--neither the liveliest
+provocation to stimulate it, nor the most numerous bands to carry it
+out. The environs of Paris all furnish recruits for it; nowhere are
+there so many miserable wretches, so many of the famished, and so many
+rebellious beings. Robberies of grain take place everywhere--at
+Orleans, at Cosne, at Rambouillet, at Jouy, at Pont-Saint-Maxence, at
+Bray-sur-Seine, at Sens, at Nangis.[1201] Wheat flour is so scarce at
+Meudon, that every purchaser is ordered to buy at the same time an equal
+quantity of barley. At Viroflay, thirty women, with a rear-guard of men,
+stop on the main road vehicles, which they suppose to be loaded with
+grain. At Montlh�ry stones and clubs disperse seven brigades of the
+police. An immense throng of eight thousand persons, women and men,
+provided with bags, fall upon the grain exposed for sale. They force the
+delivery to them of wheat worth 40 francs at 24 francs, pillaging the
+half of it and conveying it off without payment. "The constabulary is
+disheartened," writes the sub-delegate; "the determination of the people
+is wonderful; I am frightened at what I have seen and heard."--After
+the 13th of July, 1788, the day of the hail-storm, despair seized
+the peasantry; well disposed as the proprietors may have been, it was
+impossible to assist them. "Not a workshop is open;[1202] the noblemen
+and the bourgeois, obliged to grant delays in the payment of their
+incomes, can give no work." Accordingly, "the famished people are on
+the point of risking life for life," and, publicly and boldly, they
+seek food wherever it can be found. At Conflans-Saint-Honorine, Eragny,
+Neuville, Chenevi�res, at Cergy, Pontoise, Ile-Adam, Presle, and
+Beaumont, men, women, and children, the hole parish, range the country,
+set snares, and destroy the burrows. "The rumor is current that the
+Government, informed of the damage done by the game to cultivators,
+allows its destruction. . . and really the hares ravaged about a fifth
+of the crop. At first an arrest is made of nine of these poachers; but
+they are released, "taking circumstances into account." Consequently,
+for two months, there is a slaughter on the property of the Prince de
+Conti and of the Ambassador Mercy d'Argenteau; in default of bread
+they eat rabbits.--Along with the abuse of property they are led, by a
+natural impulse, to attack property itself. Near Saint-Denis the woods
+belonging to the abbey are devastated. "The farmers of the neighborhood
+carry away loads of wood, drawn by four and five horses;" the
+inhabitants of the villages of Ville-Parisis, Tremblay, Vert-Galant,
+Villepinte, sell it publicly, and threaten the wood-rangers with a
+beating. On the 15th of June the damage is already estimated at 60,000
+livres.--It makes little difference whether the proprietor has been
+benevolent, like M. de Talaru,[1203] who had supported the poor on his
+estate at Issy the preceding winter. The peasants destroy the dike which
+conducts water to his communal mill; condemned by the parliament to
+restore it, they declare that not only will they not obey. Should M. de
+Talaru try to rebuild it they will return with three hundred armed men,
+and tear it away the second time.
+
+For those who are most compromised Paris is the nearest refuge. For the
+poorest and most exasperated, the door of nomadic life stands wide
+open. Bands rise up around the capital, just as in countries where human
+society has not yet been formed, or has ceased to exist. During the
+first two weeks of May[1204] near Villejuif a band of five or six
+hundred vagabonds strive to force Bic�tre and approach Saint-Cloud. They
+arrive from thirty, forty, and sixty leagues off, from Champagne, from
+Lorraine, from the whole circuit of country devastated by the hailstorm.
+All hover around Paris and are there engulfed as in a sewer, the
+unfortunate along with criminals, some to find work, others to beg and
+to rove about under the injurious prompting of hunger and the rumors
+of the public thoroughfares. During the last days of April,[1205] the
+clerks at the tollhouses note the entrance of "a frightful number of
+poorly clad men of sinister aspect." During the first days of May a
+change in the appearance of the crowd is remarked. There mingle in it
+"a number of foreigners, from all countries, most of them in rags, armed
+with big sticks, and whose very aspect announces what is to be feared
+from them." Already, before this final influx, the public sink is
+full to overflowing. Think of the extraordinary and rapid increase of
+population in Paris, the multitude of artisans brought there by recent
+demolition and constructions. Think of all the craftsmen whom the
+stagnation of manufactures, the augmentation of octrois, the rigor of
+winter, and the dearness of bread have reduced to extreme distress.
+Remember that in 1786 "two hundred thousand persons are counted whose
+property, all told, has not the intrinsic worth of fifty crowns."
+Remember that, from time immemorial, these have been at war with the
+city watchmen. Remember that in 1789 there are twenty thousand poachers
+in the capital and that, to provide them with work, it is found
+necessary to establish national workshops. Remember "that twelve
+thousand are kept uselessly occupied digging on the hill of Montmartre,
+and paid twenty sous per day. Remember that the wharves and quays are
+covered with them, that the H�tel-de-Ville is invested by them, and
+that, around the palace, they seem to be a reproach to the inactivity of
+disarmed justice." Daily they grow bitter and excited around the doors
+of the bakeries, where, kept waiting a long time, they are not sure of
+obtaining bread. You can imagine the fury and the force with which they
+will storm any obstacle to which their attention may be directed.
+
+
+
+
+II. The Press.
+
+     Excitement of the press and of opinion.--The people make
+     their choice.
+
+Such an obstacle has been pointed out to them during the last two years,
+it is the Ministry, the Court, the Government, in short the entire
+ancient r�gime. Whoever protests against it in favor of the people is
+sure to be followed as far, and perhaps even farther, than he chooses
+to lead.--The moment the Parliament of a large city refuses to register
+fiscal edicts it finds a riot at its service. On the 7th of June 1788,
+at Grenoble, tiles rain down on the heads of the soldiery, and the
+military force is powerless. At Rennes, to put down the rebellious city,
+an army and after this a permanent camp of four regiments of infantry
+and two of cavalry, under the command of a Marshal of France, is
+required.[1206]--The following year, when the Parliaments now side
+with the privileged class, the disturbances again begin, but this time
+against the Parliaments. In February 1789, at Besan�on and at Aix, the
+magistrates are hooted at, chased in the streets, besieged in the town
+hall, and obliged to conceal themselves or take to flight.--If such
+is the disposition in the provincial capitals, what must it be in the
+capital of the kingdom? For a start, in the month of August, 1788, after
+the dismissal of Brienne and Lamoignon, the mob, collected on the Place
+Dauphine, constitutes itself judge, burns both ministers in effigy,
+disperses the watch, and resists the troops: no sedition, as bloody as
+this, had been seen for a century. Two days later, the riot bursts out
+a second time; the people are seized with a resolve to go and burn the
+residences of the two ministers and that of Dubois, the lieutenant of
+police.--Clearly a new ferment has been infused among the ignorant and
+brutal masses, and the new ideas are producing their effect. They have
+for a long time imperceptibly been filtering downwards from layer
+to layer After having gained over the aristocracy, the whole of the
+lettered portion of the Third-Estate, the lawyers, the schools, all the
+young, they have insinuated themselves drop by drop and by a thousand
+fissures into the class which supports itself by the labor of its own
+hands. Noblemen, at their toilettes, have scoffed at Christianity, and
+affirmed the rights of man before their valets, hairdressers, purveyors,
+and all those that are in attendance upon them. Men of letters, lawyers,
+and attorneys have repeated, in the bitterest tone, the same diatribes
+and the same theories in the coffee-houses and in the restaurants, on
+the promenades and in all public places. They have spoken out before
+the lower class as if it were not present, and, from all this eloquence
+poured out without precaution, some bubbles besprinkle the brain of the
+artisan, the publican, the messenger, the shopkeeper, and the soldier.
+
+Hence it is that a year suffices to convert mute discontent into
+political passion. From the 5th of July 1787, on the invitation of the
+King, who convokes the States-General and demands advice from everybody,
+both speech and the press alter in tone.[1207] Instead of general
+conversation of a speculative turn there is preaching, with a view
+to practical effect, sudden, radical, and close at hand, preaching as
+shrill and thrilling as the blast of a trumpet. Revolutionary pamphlets
+appear in quick succession: "Qu'est-ce que le Tiers?" by Siey�s;
+"M�moire pour le Peuple Fran�ais," by Cerutti; "Considerations sur les
+Int�r�ts des Tiers-Etat," by Rabtau Saint-Etienne; "Ma P�tition," by
+Target; "Les Droits des Etats-g�n�raux," by M. d'Entraigues, and, a
+little later, "La France libre," par Camille Desmoulins, and others by
+hundreds and thousands.[1208] All of which are repeated and amplified
+in the electoral assemblies, where new-made citizens come to declaim and
+increase their own excitement.[1209] The unanimous, universal and daily
+shout rolls along from echo to echo, into barracks and into faubourgs,
+into markets, workshops, and garrets. In the month of February, 1789,
+Necker avows "that obedience is not to be found anywhere, and that
+even the troops are not to be relied on." In the month of May, the
+fisherwomen, and next the greengrocers, of the town market halls come to
+recommend the interests of the people to the bodies of electors, and to
+sing rhymes in honor of the Third-Estate. In the month of June pamphlets
+are in all hands; "even lackeys are poring over them at the gates
+of hotels." In the month of July, as the King is signing an order, a
+patriotic valet becomes alarmed and reads it over his shoulder.--There
+is no illusion here; it is not merely the bourgeoisie which ranges
+itself against the legal authorities and against the established regime.
+It is the entire people as well. The craftsmen, the shopkeepers and
+the domestics, workmen of every kind and degree, the mob underneath the
+people, the vagabonds, street rovers, and beggars, the whole multitude,
+which, bound down by anxiety for its daily bread, had never lifted
+its eyes to look at the great social order of which it is the lowest
+stratum, and the whole weight of which it bears.
+
+
+
+
+III.--The R�veillon affair.
+
+Suddenly the people stirs, and the superposed scaffolding totters. It
+is the movement of a brute nature exasperated by want and maddened
+by suspicion.--Have paid hands, which are invisible goaded it on from
+beneath? Contemporaries are convinced of this, and it is probably the
+case.[1210] But the uproar made around the suffering brute would alone
+suffice to make it shy, and explain its arousal.--On the 21st of April
+the Electoral Assemblies have begun in Paris; there is one in each
+quarter, one for the clergy, one for the nobles, and one for the
+Third-Estate. Every day, for almost a month, files of electors are seen
+passing along the streets. Those of the first degree continue to meet
+after having nominated those of the second: the nation must needs
+watch its mandatories and maintain its imprescriptible rights. If this
+exercise of their rights has been delegated to them, they still belong
+to the nation, and it reserves to itself the privilege of interposing
+when it pleases. A pretension of this kind travels fast; immediately
+after the Third-Estate of the Assemblies it reaches the Third-Estate
+of the streets. Nothing is more natural than the desire to lead one's
+leaders: the first time any dissatisfaction occurs, they lay hands on
+those who halt and make them march on as directed. On a Saturday,
+April 25th,[1211] a rumor is current that R�veillon, an elector
+and manufacturer of wall-paper, Rue Saint-Antoine, and Lerat, a
+commissioner, have "spoken badly" at the Electoral Assembly of
+Sainte-Marguerite. To speak badly means to speak badly of the people.
+What has R�veillon said? Nobody knows, but popular imagination with
+its terrible powers of invention and precision, readily fabricates or
+welcomes a murderous phrase. He said that "a working-man with a wife and
+children could live on fifteen sous a day." Such a man is a traitor, and
+must be disposed of at once; "all his belongings must be put to fire and
+sword." The rumor, it must be noted, is false.[1212] R�veillon pays
+his poorest workman twenty-five sous a day, he provides work for three
+hundred and fifty, and, in spite of a dull season the previous winter,
+he kept all on at the same rate of wages. He himself was once a workman,
+and obtained a medal for his inventions, and is benevolent and respected
+by all respectable persons.--All this avails nothing; bands of vagabonds
+and foreigners, who have just passed through the barriers, do not
+look so closely into matters, while the Journeymen, the carters, the
+cobblers, the masons, the braziers, and the stone-cutters whom they
+go to solicit in their lodgings are just as ignorant as they are. When
+irritation has accumulated, it breaks out haphazardly.
+
+Just at this time the clergy of Paris renounce their privileges in way
+of imposts,[1213] and the people, taking friends for adversaries, add in
+their invectives the name of the clergy to that of R�veillon. During
+the whole of the day, and also during the leisure of Sunday, the
+fermentation increases; on Monday the 27th, another day of idleness and
+drunkenness, the bands begin to move. Certain witnesses encounter one of
+these in the Rue Saint-S�v�rin, "armed with clubs," and so numerous as
+to bar the passage. "Shops and doors are closed on all sides, and the
+people cry out, 'There's the revolt!'" The seditious crowd belch out
+curses and invectives against the clergy, "and, catching sight of an
+abb�, shout 'Priest!'" Another band parades an effigy of R�veillon
+decorated with the ribbon of the order of St. Michael, which undergoes
+the parody of a sentence and is burnt on the Place de Gr�ve, after which
+they threaten his house. Driven back by the guard, they invade that of
+a manufacturer of saltpeter, who is his friend, and burn and smash his
+effects and furniture.[1214] It is only towards midnight that the crowd
+is dispersed and the insurrection is supposed to have ended. On the
+following day it begins again with greater violence; for, besides the
+ordinary stimulants of misery[1215] and the craving for license, they
+have a new stimulant in the idea of a cause to defend, the conviction
+that they are fighting "for the Third-Estate." In a cause like this each
+one should help himself; and all should help each other. "We should be
+lost," one of them exclaimed, "if we did not sustain each other." Strong
+in this belief, they sent deputations three times into the Faubourg
+Saint-Marceau to obtain recruits, and on their way, with uplifted clubs
+they enrol, willingly or unwillingly, all they encounter. Others, at the
+gate of Saint-Antoine, arrest people who are returning from the races,
+demanding of them if they are for the nobles or for the Third-Estate,
+and force women to descend from their vehicles and to cry "Vive le
+Tiers-Etat "[1216]. Meanwhile the crowd has increased before R�veillon's
+dwelling; the thirty men on guard are unable to resist; the house
+is invaded and sacked from top to bottom; the furniture, provisions,
+clothing, registers, wagons, even the poultry in the back-yard, all
+is cast into blazing bonfires lighted in three different places; five
+hundred louis d'or, the ready money, and the silver plate are stolen.
+Several roam through the cellars, drink liquor or varnish at haphazard
+until they fall down dead drunk or expire in convulsions. Against
+this howling horde, a corps of the watch, mounted and on foot, is seen
+approaching;[1217] also a hundred cavalry of the "Royal Croats," the
+French Guards, and later on the Swiss Guards. "Tiles and chimneys are
+rained down on the soldiers," who fire back four files at a time. The
+rioters, drunk with brandy and rage, defend themselves desperately
+for several hours; more than two hundred are killed, and nearly three
+hundred are wounded; they are only put down by cannon, while the mob
+keeps active until far into the night.--Towards eight in the evening, in
+the rue Vieille-du-Temple, the Paris Guard continue to make charges in
+order to protect the doors which the miscreants try to force. Two doors
+are forced at half-past eleven o'clock in the Rue Saintonge and in the
+Rue de Bretagne, that of a pork-dealer and that of a baker. Even to
+this last wave of the outbreak which is subsiding we can distinguish the
+elements which have produced the insurrection, and which are about
+to produce the Revolution.--Starvation is one of these: in the Rue de
+Bretagne the band robbing the baker's shop carries bread off to the
+women staying at the corner of the Rue Saintonge.--Brigandage is
+another: in the middle of the night M. du Ch�telet's spies, gliding
+alongside of a ditch, "see a group of ruffians" assembled beyond the
+Barri�re du Tr�ne, their leader, mounted on a little knoll, urging them
+to begin again; and the following days, on the highways, vagabonds are
+saying to each other, "We can do no more at Paris, because they are
+too sharp on the look-out; let us go to Lyons!" There are, finally, the
+patriots: on the evening of the insurrection, between the Pont-au-Change
+and the Pont-Marie, the half-naked ragamuffins, besmeared with dirt,
+bearing along their hand-barrows, are fully alive to their cause; they
+beg alms in a loud tone of voice, and stretch out their hats to the
+passers, saying, "Take pity on this poor Third-Estate!"--The starving,
+the ruffians, and the patriots, all form one body, and henceforth
+misery, crime, and public spirit unite to provide an ever-ready
+insurrection for the agitators who desire to raise one.
+
+
+
+
+IV.--The Palais-Royal.
+
+But the agitators are already in permanent session. The Palais-Royal is
+an open-air club where, all day and even far into the night, one excites
+the other and urges on the crowd to blows. In this enclosure, protected
+by the privileges of the House of Orleans, the police dare not enter.
+Speech is free, and the public who avail themselves of this freedom seem
+purposely chosen to abuse it.--The public and the place are adapted to
+each other.[1218] The Palais-Royal, the center of prostitution, of
+play, of idleness, and of pamphlets, attracts the whole of that uprooted
+population which floats about in a great city, and which, without
+occupation or home, lives only for curiosity or for pleasure--the
+frequenters of the coffee-houses, the runners for gambling halls,
+adventurers, and social outcasts, the runaway children or forlorn
+hopefuls of literature, arts, and the bar, attorneys' clerks, students
+of the institutions of higher learning, the curious, loungers,
+strangers, and the occupants of furnished lodgings, these amounting,
+it is said, to forty thousand in Paris. They fill the garden and the
+galleries; "one would hardly find here one of what were called the
+"Six Bodies,"[1219] a bourgeois settled down and occupied with his
+own affairs, a man whom business and family cares render serious and
+influential. There is no place here for industrious and orderly bees; it
+is the rendezvous of political and literary drones. They flock into it
+from every quarter of Paris, and the tumultuous, buzzing swarm covers
+the ground like an overturned hive. "Ten thousand people," writes Arthur
+Young,[1220] "have been all this day in the Palais-Royal;" the press
+is so great that an apple thrown from a balcony on the moving floor of
+heads would not reach the ground. The condition of these heads may
+be imagined; they are emptier of ballast than any in France, the
+most inflated with speculative ideas, the most excitable and the most
+excited. In this pell-mell of improvised politicians no one knows who
+is speaking; nobody is responsible for what he says. Each is there as
+in the theater, unknown among the unknown, requiring sensational
+impressions and strong emotions, a prey to the contagion of the passions
+around him, borne along in the whirl of sounding phrases, of ready-made
+news, growing rumors, and other exaggerations by which fanatics keep
+outdoing each other. There are shouting, tears, applause, stamping and
+clapping, as at the performance of a tragedy; one or another individual
+becomes so inflamed and hoarse that he dies on the spot with fever and
+exhaustion. In vain has Arthur Young been accustomed to the tumult of
+political liberty; he is dumb-founded at what he sees.[1221] According
+to him, the excitement is "incredible. . . . We think sometimes that
+Debrett's or Stockdale's shops at London are crowded; but they are mere
+deserts compared to Desenne's and some others here, in which one can
+scarcely squeeze from the door to the counter. . . . Every hour produces
+its pamphlet; 13 came out to-day, 16 yesterday, and 92 last week. 95% of
+these productions are in favor of liberty;" and by liberty is meant the
+extinction of privileges, numerical sovereignty, the application of
+the Contrat-Social, "The Republic", and even more besides, a universal
+leveling, permanent anarchy, and even the jacquerie. Camille Desmoulins,
+one of the orators, commonly there, announces it and urges it in precise
+terms:
+
+"Now that the animal is in the trap, let him be battered to death...
+Never will the victors have a richer prey. Forty thousand palaces,
+mansions, and ch�teaux, two-fifth of the property of France, will be
+the recompense of valor. Those who pretend to be the conquerors will be
+conquered in turn. The nation shall be purged."
+
+Here, in advance, is the program of the Reign of Terror.
+
+Now all this is not only read, but declaimed, amplified, and turned
+to practical account. In front of the coffee-houses "those who have
+stentorian lungs relieve each other every evening."[1222] "They get
+up on a chair or a table, they read the strongest articles on current
+affairs, . . . the eagerness with which they are heard, and the thunder
+of applause they receive for every sentiment of more than common
+hardiness or violence against the present Government, cannot easily
+be imagined." "Three days ago a child of four years, well taught and
+intelligent, was promenaded around the garden, in broad daylight, at
+least twenty times, borne on the shoulders of a street porter, crying
+out, 'Verdict of the French people: Polignac exiled one hundred leagues
+from Paris; Cond� the same; Conti the same; Artois the same; the
+Queen,--I dare not write it.'" A hall made of boards in the middle of
+the Palais-Royal is always full, especially of young men, who carry
+on their deliberations in parliamentary fashion: in the evening the
+president invites the spectators to come forward and sign motions
+passed during the day, and of which the originals are placed in the Caf�
+Foy.[1223] They count on their fingers the enemies of the country; "and
+first two Royal Highnesses (Monsieur and the Count d'Artois), three Most
+Serene Highnesses (the Prince de Cond�, Duc de Bourbon, and the Prince
+de Conti), one favorite (Madame de Polignac), MM. de Vandreuil, de la
+Tr�moille, du Ch�telet, de Villedeuil, de Barentin, de la Galaisi�re,
+Vidaud de la Tour, Berthier, Foulon, and also M. Linguet." Placards are
+posted demanding the pillory on the Pont-Neuf for the Abbe� Maury.
+One speaker proposes "to burn the house of M. d'Espr�m�nil, his wife,
+children and furniture, and himself: this is passed unanimously."--No
+opposition is tolerated. One of those present having manifested some
+horror at such sanguinary motions, "is seized by the collar, obliged to
+kneel down, to make an apology, and to kiss the ground. The punishment
+inflicted on children is given to him; he is ducked repeatedly in one of
+the fountain-basins, after which they him over to the mob, who roll him
+in the mud." On the following day an ecclesiastic is trodden under foot,
+and flung from hand to hand. A few days after, on the 22nd of June,
+there are two similar events. The sovereign mob exercises all the
+functions of sovereign authority, with those of the legislator those of
+the judge, and those of the judge with those of the executioner.--Its
+idols are sacred; if any one fails to show them respect he is guilty of
+l�se-majest�, and at once punished. In the first week of July, an abb�
+who speaks ill of Necker is flogged; a woman who insults the bust of
+Necker is stripped by the fishwomen, and beaten until she is covered
+with blood. War is declared against suspicious uniforms. "On the
+appearance of a hussar," writes Desmoulins, "they shout, 'There goes
+Punch!' and the stone-cutters fling stones at him. Last night two
+officers of the hussars, MM. de Sombreuil and de Polignac, came to the
+Palais-Royal. . . chairs were flung at them, and they would have been
+knocked down if they had not run away. The day before yesterday they
+seized a spy of the police and gave him a ducking in the fountain. They
+ran him down like a stag, hustled him, pelted him with stones, struck
+him with canes, forced one of his eyes out of its socket, and finally,
+in spite of his entreaties and cries for mercy, plunged him a second
+time in the fountain. His torments lasted from noon until half-past
+five o'clock, and he had about ten thousand executioners."--Consider
+the effect of such a focal center at a time like this. A new power has
+sprung up alongside the legal powers, a legislature of the highways
+and public squares, anonymous, irresponsible, without restraint. It
+is driven onward by coffeehouse theories, by strong emotions and
+the vehemence of mountebanks, while the bare arms which have just
+accomplished the work of destruction in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, form
+its bodyguard and ministerial cabinet.
+
+
+
+
+V.--Popular mobs become a political force.
+
+     Pressure on the Assembly.--Defection of the soldiery.
+
+This is the dictatorship of a mob, and its proceedings, conforming to
+its nature, consist in acts of violence, wherever it finds resistance,
+it strikes.--The people of Versailles, in the streets and at the
+doors of the Assembly, daily "come and insult those whom they call
+aristocrats."[1224] On Monday, June 22nd, "d'Espr�m�nil barely escapes
+being knocked down; the Abb� Maury. . . owes his escape to the strength
+of a cur�, who takes him up in his arms and tosses him into the carriage
+of the Archbishop of Arles." On the 23rd, "the Archbishop of Paris and
+the Keeper of the Seals are hooted, railed at, scoffed at, and derided,
+until they almost sink with shame and rage." So formidable is the
+tempest of rage with which they are greeted, that Passeret, the King's
+secretary, who accompanies the minister, dies of the excitement that
+very day. On the 24th, the Bishop of Beauvais is almost knocked down by
+a stone striking him on the head. On the 25th, the Archbishop of Paris
+is saved only by the speed of his horses, the multitude pursuing him and
+pelting him with stones. His mansion is besieged, the windows are all
+shattered, and, notwithstanding the intervention of the French Guards,
+the peril is so great that he is obliged to promise that he will join
+the deputies of the Third-Estate. This is the way in which the rude hand
+of the people effects a reunion of the Orders. It bears as heavily on
+its own representatives as on its adversaries. "Although our hall was
+closed to the public," says Bailly, "there were always more than six
+hundred spectators."[1225] These were not respectful and silent, but
+active and noisy, mingling with the deputies, raising their hands to
+vote in all cases, taking part in the deliberations, by their applause
+and hisses: a collateral Assembly which often imposes its own will on
+the other. They take note of and put down the names of their opponents,
+transmit them to the chair-bearers in attendance at the entrance of
+the hall, and from them to the mob waiting for the departure of the
+deputies, these names are from now considered as the names of public
+enemies.[1226] Lists are made out and printed, and, at the Palais-Royal
+in the evening, they become the lists of the proscribed.--It is under
+this brutal pressure that many decrees are passed, and, amongst them,
+that by which the commons declare themselves the National Assembly
+and assume supreme power. The night before, Malouet had proposed to
+ascertain, by a preliminary vote, on which side the majority was. In an
+instant all those against had gathered around him to the number of three
+hundred. "Upon which a mans springs out from the galleries, falls upon
+him and takes him by the collar exclaiming, 'Hold your tongue, you false
+citizen!'" Malouet is released and the guard comes forward, "but terror
+has spread through the hall, threats are uttered against opponents, and
+the next day we were only ninety." Moreover, the lists of their names
+had been circulated; some of them, deputies from Paris, went to see
+Bailly that very evening. One amongst them, "a very honest man and good
+patriot," had been told that his house was to be set on fire. Now his
+wife had just given birth to a child, and the slightest tumult
+before the house would have been fatal. Such arguments are decisive.
+Consequently, three days afterwards, at the Tennis-court, but one
+deputy, Martin d'Auch, dares to write the word "opposing" after his
+name. Insulted by many of colleagues, "at once denounced to the people
+who had collected at the entrance of the building, he is obliged to
+escape by a side door to avoid being cut to pieces," and, for several
+days, to keep away from the meetings.[1227]--Owing to this intervention
+of the galleries the radical minority, numbering about thirty,[1228]
+lead the majority, and they do not allow them to free themselves.--On
+the 28th of May, Malouet, having demanded a secret session to discuss
+the conciliatory measures which the King had proposed, the galleries
+hoot at him, and a deputy, M. Bourche, addresses him in very plain
+terms. "You must know, sir, that we are deliberating here in the
+presence of our masters, and that we must account to them for our
+opinions." This is the doctrine of the Contrat-Social. Through timidity,
+fear of the Court and of the privileged class, through optimism and
+faith in human nature, through enthusiasm and the necessity of adhering
+to previous actions, the deputies, who are novices, provincial, and
+given up to theories, neither dare nor know how to escape from the
+tyranny of the prevailing dogma.--Henceforth it becomes the law. All
+the Assemblies, the Constituent, the Legislative, the Convention,[1229]
+submit to it entirely. The public in the galleries is the admitted
+representatives of the people, under the same title, and even under
+a higher title, than the deputies. Now, this public is that of the
+Palais-Royal, consisting of strangers, idlers, lovers of novelties,
+Paris romancers, leaders of the coffee-houses, the future pillars of the
+clubs, in short, the wild enthusiasts among the middle-class, just as
+the crowd which threatens doors and throws stones is recruited from
+among the wild enthusiasts of the lowest class. Thus by an involuntary
+selection, the faction which constitutes itself a public power is
+composed of nothing but violent minds and violent hands. Spontaneously
+and without previous concert dangerous fanatics are joined with
+dangerous brutes, and in the increasing discord between the legal
+authorities this is the illegal league which is certain to overthrow
+all.
+
+When a commanding general sits in council with his staff-officers and
+his counselors, and discusses the plan of a campaign, the chief public
+interest is that discipline should remain intact, and that intruders,
+soldiers, or menials, should not throw the weight of their turbulence
+and thoughtlessness into the scales which have to be cautiously
+and firmly held by their chiefs. This was the express demand of the
+Government;[1230] but the demand was not regarded; and against the
+persistent usurpation of the multitude nothing is left to it but the
+employment of force. But force itself is slipping from its hands, while
+growing disobedience, like a contagion, after having gained the people
+is spreading among the troops.--From the 23rd of June,[1231] two
+companies of the French Guards refused to do duty. Confined to their
+barracks, they on the 27th break out, and henceforth "they are seen
+every evening entering the Palais-Royal, marching in double file." They
+know the place well; it is the general rendezvous of the abandoned women
+whose lovers and parasites they are.[1232] "The patriots all gather
+around them, treat them to ice cream and wine, and debauch them in the
+face of their officers."--To this, moreover, must be added the fact that
+their colonel, M. du Ch�telet, has long been odious to them, that he has
+fatigued them with forced drills, worried them and diminished the number
+of their sergeants; that he suppressed the school for the education of
+the children of their musicians; that he uses the stick in punishing the
+men, and picks quarrels with them about their appearance, their board,
+and their clothing. This regiment is lost to discipline: a secret
+society has been formed in it, and the soldiers have pledged themselves
+to their ensigns not to act against the National Assembly. Thus the
+confederation between them and the Palais-Royal is established.--On the
+30th of June, eleven of their leaders, taken off to the Abbaye, write to
+claim their assistance. A young man mounts a chair in front of the Caf�
+Foy and reads their letter aloud; a band sets out on the instant, forces
+the gate with a sledge-hammer and iron bars, brings back the prisoners
+in triumph, gives them a feast in the garden and mounts guard around
+them to prevent their being re-taken.--When disorders of this kind go
+unpunished, order cannot be maintained; in fact, on the morning of the
+14th of July, five out of six battalions had deserted.--As to the other
+corps, they are no better and are also seduced. "Yesterday," Desmoulins
+writes, "the artillery regiment followed the example of the French
+Guards, overpowering the sentinels and coming over to mingle with
+the patriots in the Palais-Royal. . .. We see nothing but the rabble
+attaching themselves to soldiers whom they chance to encounter. 'Allons,
+Vive le Tiers-Etat!' and they lead them off to a tavern to drink the
+health of the Commons." Dragoons tell the officers who are marching
+them to Versailles: "We obey you, but you may tell the ministers on our
+arrival that if we are ordered to use the least violence against our
+fellow-citizens, the first shot shall be for you." At the Invalides
+twenty men, ordered to remove the cocks and ramrods from the guns stored
+in a threatened arsenal, devote six hours to rendering twenty guns
+useless; their object is to keep them intact for plunder and for the
+arming of the people.
+
+In short, the largest portion of the army has deserted. However kind
+a superior officer might be, the fact of his being a superior officer
+secures for him the treatment of an enemy. The governor, "M. de
+Sombreuil, against whom these people could utter no reproach," will soon
+see his artillerists point their guns at his apartment, and will just
+escape being hung on the iron-railings by their own hands. Thus the
+force which is brought forward to suppress insurrection only serves to
+furnish it with recruits. And even worse, for the display of arms
+that was relied on to restrain the mob, furnished the instigation to
+rebellion.
+
+
+
+
+VI.--July 13th and 14th 1789.
+
+The fatal moment has arrived; it is no longer a government which falls
+that it may give way to another; it is all government which ceases to
+exist in order to make way for an intermittent despotism, for factions
+blindly impelled on by enthusiasm, credulity, misery, and fear.[1233]
+Like a tame elephant suddenly become wild again, the mob throws off it
+ordinary driver, and the new guides who it tolerates perched on its neck
+are there simply for show. In future it will move along as it pleases,
+freed from control, and abandoned to its own feelings, instincts, and
+appetites.--Apparently, there was no desire to do more than anticipate
+its aberrations. The King has forbidden all violence; the commanders
+order the troops not to fire;[1234] but the excited and wild animal
+takes all precautions for insults; in future, it intends to be its own
+conductor, and, to begin, it treads its guides under foot.--On the 12th
+of July, near noon,[1235] on the news of the dismissal of Necker, a cry
+of rage arises in the Palais-Royal; Camille Desmoulins, mounted on
+a table, announces that the Court meditates "a St. Bartholomew of
+patriots." The crowd embrace him, adopt the green cockade which he has
+proposed, and oblige the dancing-saloons and theaters to close in sign
+of mourning: they hurry off to the residence of Curtius, and take the
+busts of the Duke of Orleans and of Necker and carry them about in
+triumph.--Meanwhile, the dragoons of the Prince de Lambesc, drawn up on
+the Place Louis-Quinze, find a barricade of chairs at the entrance
+of the Tuileries, and are greeted with a shower of stones and
+bottles.[1236] Elsewhere, on the Boulevard, before the H�tel
+Montmorency, some of the French Guards, escaped from their barracks,
+fired on a loyal detachment of the "Royal Allemand."--The alarm bell is
+sounding on all sides, the shops where arms are sold are pillaged,
+and the H�tel-de-Ville is invaded; fifteen or sixteen well-disposed
+electors, who meet there, order the districts to be assembled and
+armed.--The new sovereign, the people in arms and in the street, has
+declared himself.
+
+The dregs of society at once come to the surface. During the night
+between the 12th and 13th of July,[1237] "all the barriers, from the
+Faubourg Saint-Antoine to the Faubourg Saint-Honor�, besides those of
+the Faubourgs Saint-Marcel and Saint-Jacques, are forced and set on
+fire." There is no longer an octroi; the city is without a revenue just
+at the moment when it is obliged to make the heaviest expenditures; but
+this is of no consequence to the mob, which, above all things, wants
+to have cheap wine. "Ruffians, armed with pikes and sticks, proceed
+in several parties to give up to pillage the houses of those who are
+regarded as enemies to the public welfare." "They go from door to door
+crying, 'Arms and bread!' During this fearful night, the bourgeoisie
+kept themselves shut up, each trembling at home for himself and those
+belonging to him." On the following day, the 13th, the capital appears
+to be given up to bandits and the lowest of the low. One of the
+bands hews down the gate of the Lazarists, destroys the library and
+clothes-presses, the pictures, the windows and laboratory, and rushes
+to the cellars; where it staves in the casks and gets drunk: twenty-four
+hours after this, about thirty of them are found dead and dying, drowned
+in wine, men and women, one of these being at the point of childbirth.
+In front of the house[1238] the street is full of the wreckage, and of
+ruffians who hold in their hands, "some, eatables, others a jug, forcing
+the passers-by to drink, and pouring out wine to all comers. Wine
+runs down into the gutter, and the scent of it fills the air;" it is a
+drinking bout: meanwhile they carry away the grain and flour which the
+monks kept on hand according to law, fifty-two loads of it being
+taken to the market. Another troop comes to La Force, to deliver those
+imprisoned for debt; a third breaks into the Garde Meuble, carrying away
+valuable arms and armour. Mobs assemble before the hotel of Madame de
+Breteuil and the Palais-Bourbon, which they intend to ransack, in order
+to punish their proprietors. M. de Crosne, one of the most liberal and
+most respected men of Paris, but, unfortunately for himself a lieutenant
+of the police, is pursued, escaping with difficulty, and his hotel is
+sacked.--During the night between the 13th and 14th of May, the baker's
+shops and the wine shops are pillaged; "men of the vilest class, armed
+with guns, pikes, and turnspits, make people open their doors and give
+them something to eat and drink, as well as money and arms." Vagrants,
+ragged men, several of them "almost naked," and "most of them armed
+like savages, and of hideous appearance;" they are "such as one does not
+remember to have seen in broad daylight;" many of them are strangers,
+come from nobody knows where.[1239] It is stated that there were
+50,000 of them, and that they had taken possession of the principal
+guard-houses.
+
+During these two days and nights, says Bailly, "Paris ran the risk of
+being pillaged, and was only saved from the marauders by the National
+Guard." Already, in the open street,[1240] "these creatures tore off
+women's shoes and earrings," and the robbers were beginning to have
+full sway.--Fortunately the militia organized itself and the principal
+inhabitants and gentlemen enrolled themselves; 48,000 men are formed
+into battalions and companies; the bourgeoisie buy guns of the vagabonds
+for three livres apiece, and sabers or pistols for twelve sous. At last,
+some of the offenders are hung on the spot, and others disarmed, and
+the insurrection again becomes political. But, whatever its object, it
+remains always wild, because it is in the hands of the mob. Dusaulx, its
+panegyrist, confesses[1241] that "he thought he was witnessing the total
+dissolution of society." There is no leader, no management. The electors
+who have converted themselves into the representatives of Paris seem to
+command the crowd, but it is the crowd which commands them. One of them,
+Legrand, to save the H�tel-de-Ville, has no other resource but to send
+for six barrels of gun-powder, and to declare to the assailants that
+he is about to blow everything into the air. The commandant whom they
+themselves have chosen, M. de Salles, has twenty bayonets at his breast
+during a quarter of an hour, and, more than once, the whole committee is
+near being massacred. Let the reader imagine, on the premises where the
+discussions are going on, and petitions are being made, "a concourse of
+fifteen hundred men pressed by a hundred thousand others who are forcing
+an entrance," the wainscoting cracking, the benches upset one over
+another, the enclosure of the bureau pushed back against the president's
+chair, a tumult such as to bring to mind 'the day of judgment," the
+death-shrieks, songs, yells, and "people beside themselves, for the most
+part not knowing where they are nor what they want."--Each district
+is also a petty center, while the Palais-Royal is the main center.
+Propositions, "accusations, and deputations travel to and fro from one
+to the other, along with the human torrent which is obstructed or rushes
+ahead with no other guide than its own inclination and the chances
+of the way. One wave gathers here and another there, their strategy
+consisting in pushing and in being pushed. Yet, their entrance is
+effected only because they are let in. If they get into the Invalides it
+is owing to the connivance of the soldiers.--At the Bastille, firearms
+are discharged from ten in the morning to five in the evening against
+walls forty feet high and thirty feet thick, and it is by chance that
+one of their shots reaches an invalid on the towers. They are treated
+the same as children whom one wishes to hurt as little as possible. The
+governor, on the first summons to surrender, orders the cannon to be
+withdrawn from the embrasures; he makes the garrison swear not to fire
+if it is not attacked; he invites the first of the deputations to lunch;
+he allows the messenger dispatched from the H�tel-de-Ville to inspect
+the fortress; he receives several discharges without returning them, and
+lets the first bridge be carried without firing a shot.[1242] When, at
+length, he does fire, it is at the last extremity, to defend the second
+bridge, and after having notified the assailants that he is going to do
+so. In short, his forbearance and patience are excessive, in conformity
+with the humanity of the times. The people, in turn, are infatuated
+with the novel sensations of attack and resistance, with the smell of
+gunpowder, with the excitement of the contest; all they can think of
+doing is to rush against the mass of stone, their expedients being on a
+level with their tactics. A brewer fancies that he can set fire to this
+block of masonry by pumping over it spikenard and poppy-seed oil mixed
+with phosphorus. A young carpenter, who has some archaeological notions,
+proposes to construct a catapult. Some of them think that they have
+seized the governor's daughter, and want to burn her in order to make
+the father surrender. Others set fire to a projecting mass of buildings
+filled with straw, and thus close up the passage. "The Bastille was not
+taken by main force," says the brave Elie, one of the combatants; "it
+surrendered before even it was attacked,"[1243] by capitulation, on
+the promise that no harm should be done to anybody. The garrison, being
+perfectly secure, had no longer the heart to fire on human beings while
+themselves risking nothing,[1244] and, on the other hand, they were
+unnerved by the sight of the immense crowd. Eight or nine hundred
+men only[1245] were concerned in the attack, most of them workmen or
+shopkeepers belonging to the faubourg, tailors, wheelwrights, mercers
+and wine-dealers, mixed with the French Guards. The Place de la
+Bastille, however, and all the streets in the vicinity, were crowded
+with the curious who came to witness the sight; "among them," says
+a witness,[1246] "were a number of fashionable women of very good
+appearance, who had left their carriages at some distance." To the
+hundred and twenty men of the garrison looking down from their parapets
+it seemed as though all Paris had come out against them. It is they,
+also, who lower the drawbridge an introduce the enemy: everybody has
+lost his head, the besieged as well as the besiegers, the latter more
+completely because they are intoxicated with the sense of victory.
+Scarcely have they entered when they begin the work of destruction, and
+the latest arrivals shoot at random those that come earlier; "each
+one fires without heeding where or on whom his shot tells." Sudden
+omnipotence and the liberty to kill are a wine too strong for human
+nature; giddiness is the result; men see red, and their frenzy ends in
+ferocity.
+
+For the peculiarity of a popular insurrection is that nobody obeys
+anybody; the bad passions are free as well as the generous ones; heroes
+are unable to restrain assassins. Elie, who is the first to enter the
+fortress, Cholat, Hulin, the brave fellows who are in advance, the
+French Guards who are cognizant of the laws of war, try to keep their
+word of honor; but the crowd pressing on behind them know not whom to
+strike, and they strike at random. They spare the Swiss soldiers who
+have fired at them, and who, in their blue smocks, seem to them to
+be prisoners; on the other hand, by way of compensation, they fall
+furiously on the invalides who opened the gates to them; the man who
+prevented the governor from blowing up the fortress has his wrist
+severed by the blow of a saber, is twice pierced with a sword and is
+hung, and the hand which had saved one of the districts of Paris is
+promenaded through the streets in triumph. The officers are dragged
+along and five of them are killed, with three soldiers, on the spot, or
+on the way. During the long hours of firing, the murderous instinct has
+become aroused, and the wish to kill, changed into a fixed idea,
+spreads afar among the crowd which has hitherto remained inactive. It is
+convinced by its own clamor; a hue and cry is all that it now needs; the
+moment one strikes, all want to strike. "Those who had no arms," says
+an officer, "threw stones at me;[1247] the women ground their teeth and
+shook their fists at me. Two of my men had already been assassinated
+behind me. I finally got to within some hundreds of paces of the
+H�tel-de-Ville, amidst a general cry that I should be hung, when a head,
+stuck on a pike, was presented to me to look at, while at. the same
+moment I was told that it was that of M. de Launay," the governor.--The
+latter, on going out, had received the cut of a sword on his right
+shoulder; on reaching the Rue Saint-Antoine "everybody pulled his hair
+out and struck him." Under the arcade of Saint-Jean he was already
+"severely wounded." Around him, some said, "his head ought to be struck
+off;" others, "let him be hung;" and others, "he ought to be tied to
+a horse's tail." Then, in despair, and wishing to put an end to his
+torments, he cried out, "Kill me," and, in struggling, kicked one of the
+men who held him in the lower abdomen. On the instant he is pierced with
+bayonets, dragged in the gutter, and, striking his corpse, they exclaim,
+"He's a scurvy wretch (galeux) and a monster who has betrayed us; the
+nation demands his head to exhibit to the public," and the man who
+was kicked is asked to cut it off.--This man, an unemployed cook, a
+simpleton who "went to the Bastille to see what was going on," thinks
+that as it is the general opinion, the act is patriotic, and even
+believes that he "deserves a medal for destroying a monster." Taking a
+saber which is lent to him, he strikes the bare neck, but the dull
+saber not doing its work, he takes a small black-handled knife from his
+pocket, and, "as in his capacity of cook he knows how to cut meat," he
+finishes the operation successfully. Then, placing the head on the end
+of a three-pronged pitchfork, and accompanied by over two hundred
+armed men, "not counting the mob," he marches along, and, in the Rue
+Saint-Honor�, he has two inscriptions attached to the head, to indicate
+without mistake whose head it is.--They grow merry over it: after filing
+alongside of the Palais-Royal, the procession arrives at the Pont-Neuf,
+where, before the statue of Henry IV., they bow the head three times,
+saying, "Salute thy master!"--This is the last joke: it is to be found
+in every triumph, and inside the butcher, we find the rogue.
+
+
+
+
+VII.--Murders of Foulon and Berthier.
+
+Meanwhile, at the Palais-Royal, other buffoons, who with the levity of
+gossips sport with lives as freely as with words, have drawn u. During
+the night between the 13th and 14th of July, a list of proscriptions,
+copies of which are hawked about. Care is taken to address one of
+them to each of the persons designated, the Comte d'Artois, Marshal
+de Broglie, the Prince de Lambesc, Baron de Bezenval, MM. de Breteuil,
+Foulon, Berthier, Maury, d'Espr�m�nil, Lef�vre d'Am�court, and others
+besides.[1248] A reward is promised to whoever will bring their heads to
+the Caf� de Caveau. Here are names for the unchained multitude; all
+that now is necessary is that some band should encounter a man who is
+denounced; he will go as far as the lamppost at the street corner, but
+not beyond it.--Throughout the day of the 14th, this improvised tribunal
+holds a permanent session, and follows up its decisions with its
+actions. M. de Flesselles, provost of the merchants and president of
+the electors at the H�tel-de-Ville, having shown himself somewhat
+lukewarm,[1249] the Palais-Royal declares him a traitor and sends him
+off to be hung. On the way a young man fells him with a pistol-shot,
+others fall upon his body, while his head, borne upon a pike, goes to
+join that of M. de Launay.--Equally deadly accusations and of equally
+speedy execution float in the air and from every direction. "On the
+slightest pretext," says an elector, "they denounced to us those whom
+they thought opposed to the Revolution, which already signified the same
+as enemies of the State. Without any investigation, there was only talk
+of the seizure of their persons, the ruin of their homes, and the razing
+of their houses. One young man exclaimed: 'Follow me at once, let us
+start off at once to Bezenval's!'"--Their brains are so frightened, and
+their minds so distrustful, that at every step in the streets "one's
+name has to be given, one's profession declared, one's residence, and
+one's intentions. . .. One can neither enter nor leave Paris without
+being suspected of treason." The Prince de Montbarrey, advocate of the
+new ideas, and his wife, are stopped in their carriage at the barrier,
+and are on the point of being cut to pieces. A deputy of the nobles, on
+his way to the National Assembly, is seized in his cab and conducted to
+the Place de Gr�ve; the corpse of M. de Launay is shown to him, and he
+is told that he is to be treated in the same fashion.--Every life hangs
+by a thread, and, on the following days, when the King had sent away
+his troops, dismissed his Ministers, recalled Necker, and granted
+everything, the danger remains just as great. The multitude, abandoned
+to the revolutionaries and to itself, continues the same bloody antics,
+while the municipal chiefs[1250] whom it has elected, Bailly, Mayor of
+Paris, and Lafayette, commandant of the National Guard, are obliged to
+use cunning, to implore, to throw themselves between the multitude and
+the unfortunates whom they wish to destroy.
+
+On the 15th of July, in the night, a woman disguised as a man is
+arrested in the court of the H�tel-de-Ville, and so maltreated that she
+faints away; Bailly, in order to save her, is obliged to feign anger
+against her and have her sent immediately to prison. From the 14th to
+the 22nd of July, Lafayette, at the risk of his life, saves with his
+own hand seventeen persons in different quarters.[1251]--On the 22nd of
+July, upon the denunciations which multiply around Paris like trains
+of gunpowder, two administrators of high rank, M. Foulon, Councillor
+of State, and M. Berthier, his son-in-law, are arrested, one near
+Fontainebleau, and the other near Compi�gne. M. Foulon, a strict
+master,[1252] but intelligent and useful, expended sixty thousand francs
+the previous winter on his estate in giving employment to the poor. M.
+Berthier, an industrious and capable man, had officially surveyed
+and valued Ile-de-France, to equalize the taxes, and had reduced the
+overcharged quotas first one-eighth and then a quarter. But both of
+these gentlemen have arranged the details of the camp against which
+Paris has risen; both are publicly proscribed for eight days previously
+by the Palais-Royal, and, with a people frightened by disorder,
+exasperated by hunger, and stupefied by suspicion, an accused person is
+a guilty one.--With regard to Foulon, as with R�veillon, a story is made
+up, coined in the same mint, a sort of currency for popular circulation,
+and which the people itself manufactures by casting into one tragic
+expression the sum of its sufferings and rankling memories:[1253] "He
+said that we were worth no more than his horses; and that if we had no
+bread we had only to eat grass."--The old man of seventy-four is brought
+to Paris, with a truss of hay on his head, a collar of thistles around
+his neck, and his mouth stuffed with hay. In vain does the electoral
+bureau order his imprisonment that he may be saved; the crowd yells out:
+"Sentenced and hung!" and, authoritatively, appoints the judges. In
+vain does Lafayette insist and entreat three times that the judgment be
+regularly rendered, and that the accused be sent to the Abbaye. A new
+wave of people comes up, and one man, "well dressed," cries out: "What
+is the need of a sentence for a man who has been condemned for thirty
+years?" Foulon is carried off; dragged across the square, and hung
+to the lamp post. The cord breaks twice, and twice he falls upon the
+pavement. Re-hung with a fresh cord and then cut down, his head is
+severed from his body and placed on the end of a pike.[1254] Meanwhile,
+Berthier, sent away from Compi�gne by the municipality, afraid to
+keep him in his prison where he was constantly menaced, arrives in a
+cabriolet under escort. The people carry placards around him filled with
+opprobrious epithets; in changing horses they threw hard black bread
+into the carriage, exclaiming, "There, wretch, see the bread you made us
+eat!" On reaching the church of Saint-Merry, a fearful storm of insults
+burst forth against him. He is called a monopolist, "although he had
+never bought or sold a grain of wheat." In the eyes of the multitude,
+who has to explain the evil as caused by some evil-doer, he is the
+author of the famine. Conducted to the Abbaye, his escort is dispersed
+and he is pushed over to the lamp post. Then, seeing that all is lost,
+he snatches a gun from one of his murderers and bravely defends himself.
+A soldier of the "Royal Croats" gives him a cut with his saber across
+the stomach, and another tears out his heart. As the cook, who had cut
+off the head of M. de Launay, happens to be on the spot, they hand him
+the heart to carry while the soldiers take the head, and both go to
+the H�tel-de-Ville to show their trophies to M. de Lafayette. On their
+return to the Palais-Royal, and while they are seated at table in a
+tavern, the people demand these two remains. They throw them out of the
+window and finish their supper, whilst the heart is marched about below
+in a bouquet of white carnations.--Such are the spectacles which this
+garden presents where, a year before, "good society in full dress" came
+on leaving the Opera to chat, often until two o'clock in the morning,
+under the mild light of the moon, listening now to the violin of
+Saint-Georges, and now to the charming voice of Garat.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.--Paris in the hands of the people.
+
+Henceforth it is clear that no one is safe: neither the new militia nor
+the new authorities suffice to enforce respect for the law. "They did
+not dare," says Bailly,[1255] "oppose the people who, eight days before
+this, had taken the Bastille."--In vain, after the last two murders, do
+Bailly and Lafayette indignantly threaten to withdraw; they are forced
+to remain; their protection, such as it is, is all that is left, and, if
+the National Guard is unable to prevent every murder, it prevents some
+of them. People live as they can under the constant expectation of fresh
+popular violence. "To every impartial man," says Malouet, "the Terror
+dates from the 14th of July".--On the 17th, before setting out for
+Paris, the King attends communion and makes his will in anticipation
+of assassination. From the 16th to the 18th, twenty personages of high
+rank, among others most of those on whose heads a price is set by the
+Palais-Royal, leave France: The Count d'Artois, Marshal de Broglie, the
+Princes de Cond�, de Conti, de Lambesc, de Vaudemont, the Countess
+de Polignac, and the Duchesses de Polignac and de Guiche.--The day
+following the two murders, M. de Crosne, M. Doumer, M. Sureau, the most
+zealous and most valuable members of the committee on subsistence, all
+those appointed to make purchases and to take care of the storehouses,
+conceal themselves or fly. On the eve of the two murders, the notaries
+of Paris, being menaced with a riot, had to advance 45,000 francs which
+were promised to the workmen of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine; while the
+public treasury, almost empty, is drained of 30,000 livres per day to
+diminish the cost of bread.--Persons and possessions, great and small,
+private individuals and public functionaries, the Government itself,
+all is in the hands of the mob. "From this moment," says a deputy,[1256]
+"liberty did not exist even in the National Assembly. . . France stood
+dumb before thirty factious persons. The Assembly became in their hands
+a passive instrument, which they forced to serve them in the execution
+of their projects."--They themselves do not lead, although they seem to
+lead. The great brute, which has taken the bit in its mouth, holds on to
+it, and it's plunging becomes more violent. Not only do both spurs which
+maddened it, I mean the desire for innovation and the daily scarcity
+of food, continue to prick it on. But also the political hornets which,
+increasing by thousands, buzz around its ears. And the license in which
+it revels for the first time, joined to the applause lavished upon it,
+urges it forward more violently each day. The insurrection is glorified.
+Not one of the assassins is sought out. It is against the conspiracy of
+Ministers that the Assembly institutes an inquiry. Rewards are bestowed
+upon the conquerors of the Bastille; it is declared that they have saved
+France. All honors are awarded to the people-to their good sense, their
+magnanimity, and their justice. Adoration is paid to this new sovereign:
+he is publicly and officially told, in the Assembly and by the press,
+that he possesses every virtue, all rights and all powers. If he spills
+blood it is inadvertently, on provocation, and always with an infallible
+instinct. Moreover, says a deputy, "this blood, was it so pure?" The
+greater number of people prefers the theories of their books to the
+experience of their eyes; they persist in the idyll, which they have
+fashioned for themselves. At the worst their dream, driven out from the
+present, takes refuge in the future. To-morrow, when the Constitution is
+complete, the people, made happy, will again become wise: let us endure
+the storm, which leads us on to so noble a harbor.
+
+Meanwhile, beyond the King, inert and disarmed, beyond the Assembly,
+disobeyed or submissive, appears the real monarch, the people--that is
+to say, a crowd of a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand individuals
+gathered together at random, on an impulse, on an alarm, suddenly and
+irresistibly made legislators, judges, and executioners. A formidable
+power, undefined and destructive, on which no one has any hold, and
+which, with its mother, howling and misshapen Liberty, sits at the
+threshold of the Revolution like Milton's two specters at the gates of
+Hell.
+
+     . . . Before the gates there sat
+     On either side a formidable shape;
+     The one seem'd woman to the waist, and fair,
+     but ended foul in many a scaly fold
+     Voluminous and vast, a serpent arm'd
+     With mortal sting: about her middle round
+     A cry of hell hounds never ceasing bark'd
+     With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung
+     A hideous peal: yet, when they list, would creep,
+     If aught disturb'd their noise, into her womb,
+     And kennel there; yet there still bark'd and howl'd
+     Within unseen. . .
+     ........the other shape,
+     If shape it might be call'd, that shape had none
+     Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb,
+     Or substance might be call'd that shadow seem'd
+     For each seem'd either: black it stood as night,
+     Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,
+     And shook a dreadful dart; what seem'd his head
+     The likeness of a kingly crown had on.
+
+     The monster moving onward came as fast,
+     With horrid strides; hell trembled as he strode.
+
+
+*****
+
+
+[Footnote 1201: "Archives Nationales," H. 1453. Letter of M.
+Miron, lieutenant de police, April 26th; of M. Joly de Fleury,
+procureur-g�n�ral, May 29th; of MM. Marchais and Berthier, April 18th
+and 27th, March 23rd, April 5th, May 5th.--Arthur Young, June 10th
+and 29th. "Archives Nationales," H. 1453 Letter of the sub-delegate of
+Montlh�ry, April 14th.]
+
+[Footnote 1202: "Archives Nationales," H. 1453. Letter of the
+sub-delegate Gobert, March 17th; of the officers of police, June
+15th:--" On the 12th, 13th, 14th and 15th of March the inhabitants of
+Conflans generally rebelled against the game law in relation to the
+rabbit."]
+
+[Footnote 1203: Montjoie, 2nd part, ch. XXI. p.14 (the first week in
+June). Montjoie is a party man; but he gives dates and details, and his
+testimony, when it is confirmed elsewhere, deserves, to be admitted.]
+
+[Footnote 1204: Montjoie, 1st part, 92-101.--"Archives Nationales,"
+H. 1453. Letter of the officer of police of Saint-Denis: "A good many
+workmen arrive daily from Lorraine as well as from Champagne," which
+increases the prices.]
+
+[Footnote 1205: De Bezenval, "M�moires," I.353. Cf. "The Ancient
+Regime," p.509.--Marmontel, II, 252 and following pages.--De Ferri�res,
+I. 407.]
+
+[Footnote 1206: Arthur Young, September 1st, 1788]
+
+[Footnote 1207: Barr�re, "M�moires," I. 234.]
+
+[Footnote 1208: See, in the National Library, the long catalogue of
+those which have survived.]
+
+[Footnote 1209: Malouet, I. 255. Bailly, I. 43 (May 9th and
+19th).--D'Hezecques, "Souvenirs d'un page de Louis XV." 293.--De
+Bezenval, I. 368.]
+
+[Footnote 1210: Marmontel, II, 249.--Montjoie, 1st part, p. 92.--De
+Bezenval, I. 387: "These spies added that persons were seen exciting the
+tumult and were distributing money."]
+
+[Footnote 1211: "Archives Nationales," Y.11441. Interrogatory of the
+Abb� Roy, May 5th.--Y.11033, Interrogatory (April 28th and May 4th)
+of twenty-three wounded persons brought to the H�tel-Dieu--These two
+documents are of prime importance in presenting the true aspect of the
+insurrection; to these must be added the narrative of M. de Bezenval,
+who was commandant at this time with M. de Ch�telet. Almost all other
+narratives are amplified or falsified through party bias.]
+
+[Footnote 1212: De Ferri�res, vol. III. note A. (justificatory
+explanation by R�veillon).]
+
+[Footnote 1213: Bailly I. 25 (April 26th).]
+
+[Footnote 1214: Hippeau, IV. 377 (Letters of M. Perrot, April 29th).]
+
+[Footnote 1215: Letter to the King by an inhabitant of the Faubourg
+Saint-Antoine--"Do not doubt, sire, that our recent misfortunes are due
+to the dearness of bread"]
+
+[Footnote 1216: Dampmartin, "Ev�nements qui se sont pass�s sous mes
+yeux," etc. I. 25: "We turned back and were held up by small bands of
+scoundrels, who insolently proposed to us to shout 'Vive Necker! Vive
+le Tiers-Etat!'" His two companions were knights of St. Louis, and
+their badges seemed an object of "increasing hatred." "The badge excited
+coarse mutterings, even on the part of persons who appeared superior to
+the agitators."]
+
+[Footnote 1217: Dampmartin, ibid. i. 25: "I was dining this very day at
+the H�tel d'Ecquevilly, in the Rue Saint-Louis." He leaves the house
+on foot and witnesses the disturbance. "Fifteen to Sixteen hundred
+wretches, the excrement of the nation, degraded by shameful vices,
+covered with rags, and gorged with brandy, presented the most disgusting
+and revolting spectacle. More than a hundred thousand persons of
+both sexes and of all ages and conditions interfered greatly with the
+operations of the troops. The firing soon commenced and blood flowed:
+two innocent persons were wounded near me."]
+
+[Footnote 1218: De Goncourt, "La Soci�t� Fran�aise pendant la
+R�volution." Thirty-one gambling-houses are counted here, while a
+pamphlet of the day is entitled "P�tition des deux mill cent filles du
+Palais-Royal."]
+
+[Footnote 1219: Montjoie, 2nd part, 144.--Bailly, II, 130.]
+
+[Footnote 1220: Arthur Young, June 24th, 1789.--Montjoie, 2nd part, 69.]
+
+[Footnote 1221: Arthur Young, June 9th, 24th, and 26th.--"La France
+libre," passim, by C. Desmoulins.]
+
+[Footnote 1222: C. Desmoulins, letters to his father, and Arthur Young,
+June 9th.]
+
+[Footnote 1223: Montjoie, 2nd part, 69, 77, 124, 144. C. Desmoulins,
+letter, of June 24th and the following days.]
+
+[Footnote 1224: Etienne Dumont, "Souvenirs," p.72.--C. Desmoulins,
+letter of; June 24th.--Arthur Young, June 25th.--Buchez and Roux, II.
+28.]
+
+[Footnote 1225: Bailly, I. 227 and 179.--Monnier, "Recherches sur les
+causes," etc. I. 289, 291; II.61;--Malouet, I. 299; II. 10.--"Actes
+des Ap�tres," V.43. (Letter of M. de Guillermy, July 31st,
+1790).--Marmontel, I. 28: "The people came even into the Assembly, to
+encourage their partisans, to select and indicate their victims, and to
+terrify the feeble with the dreadful trial of open balloting."]
+
+[Footnote 1226: Manuscript letters of M. Boull�, deputy, to the
+municipal authorities of Pontivy, from May 1st, 1789, to September 4th,
+1790 (communicated by M. Rosenzweig, archivist at Vannes). June 16th,
+1789: "The crowd gathered around the hall. . . was, during these days,
+from 3,000 to 4,000 persons."]
+
+[Footnote 1227: Letters of M. Boull�, June 23rd. "How sublime the
+moment, that in which we enthusiastically bind ourselves to the country
+by a new oath!. . . . Why should this moment be selected by one of our
+number to dishonor himself? His name is now blasted throughout France.
+And the unfortunate man has children! Suddenly overwhelmed by public
+contempt he leaves, and falls fainting at the door, exclaiming, 'Ah!
+this will be my death!' I do not know what has become of him since. What
+is strange is, he had not behaved badly up to that time, and he voted
+for the Constitution."]
+
+[Footnote 1228: De Ferri�res, I. 168.--Malouet, I. 298 (according to
+him the faction did not number more than ten members),--idem II.
+10.--Dumont, 250.]
+
+[Footnote 1229: "Convention nationale" governed France from 21st
+September 1792 until Oct. 26th 1796. We distinguish between three
+different assemblies, "la Convention Girondine" 1792-93, "the Mountain,"
+1793-94 and "la Thermidorienne," from 1794-1795. (SR).]
+
+[Footnote 1230: Declaration of June 23rd, article 15.]
+
+[Footnote 1231: Montjoie, 2nd part, 118.--C. Desmoulins, letters of June
+24th and the following days. A faithful narrative by M. de Sainte-F�re,
+formerly an officer in the French Guard, p.9.--De Bezenval,
+III, 413.--Buchez and Roux, II. 35.--"Souvenirs", by PASQUIER
+(Etienne-Dennis, duc), chancelier de France. in VI volumes, Librarie
+Plon, Paris 1893..]
+
+[Footnote 1232: Peuchet ("Encyclop�die M�thodique," 1789, quoted by
+Parent Duch�telet): "Almost all of the soldiers of the Guard belong to
+that class (the procurers of public women): many, indeed, only enlist in
+the corps that they may live at the expense of these unfortunates."]
+
+[Footnote 1233: Gouverneur Morris, "Liberty is now the general cry;
+authority is a name and no longer a reality." (Correspondence with
+Washington, July 19th.)]
+
+[Footnote 1234: Bailly. I. 302. "The King was very well-disposed; his
+measures were intended only to preserve order and the public peace. .
+. Du Ch�telet was forced by facts to acquit M. de Bezenval of attempts
+against the people and the country."--Cf. Marmontel, IV. 183; Mounier,
+II, 40.]
+
+[Footnote 1235: Desmoulins, letter of the 16th July. Buchez and Roux,
+II. 83.]
+
+[Footnote 1236: Trial of the Prince de Lambesc (Paris, 1790), with the
+eighty-three depositions and the discussion of the testimony.--It is the
+crowd which began the attack. The troops fired in the air. But one
+man, a sieur Chauvel, was wounded slightly by the Prince de Lambesc.
+(Testimony of M. Carboire, p.84, and of Captain de Reinack, p. 101.) "M.
+le Prince de Lambesc, mounted on a gray horse with a gray saddle without
+holsters or pistols, had scarcely entered the garden when a dozen
+persons jumped at the mane and bridle of his horse and made every effort
+to drag him off. A small man in gray clothes fired at him with a pistol.
+. . . The prince tried hard to free himself, and succeeded by making his
+horse rear up and by flourishing his sword; without, however, up to this
+time, wounding any one. . . . He deposes that he saw the prince strike
+a man on the head with the flat of his saber who was trying to close the
+turning-bridge, which would have cut off the retreat of his troops The
+troops did no more than try to keep off the crowd which assailed them
+with stones, and even with firearms, from the top of the terraces."--The
+man who tried to close the bridge had seized the prince's horse with one
+hand; the wound he received was a scratch about 23 lines long, which was
+dressed and cured with a bandage soaked in brandy. All the details of
+the affair prove that the patience and humanity of the officer, were
+extreme. Nevertheless "on the following day, the 13th, some one posted a
+written placard on the crossing Bussy recommending the citizens of Paris
+to seize the prince and quarter him at once."--(Deposition of M. Cosson,
+p.114.)]
+
+[Footnote 1237: Bailly, I. 3, 6.--Marmontel, IV. 310]
+
+[Footnote 1238: Montjoie, part 3, 86. "I talked with those who guarded
+the ch�teau of the Tuileries. They did not belong to Paris. . . . A
+frightful physiognomy and hideous apparel." Montjoie, not to be trusted
+in many places, merits consultation for little facts of which he was an
+eye-witness.--Morellet, "M�moires," I. 374.--Dusaulx, "L'oeuvre des sept
+jours," 352.--Revue Historique," March, 1876. Interrogatory of Desnot.
+His occupation during the 13th of July (published by Guiffrey).]
+
+[Footnote 1239: Mathieu Dumas, "M�moires," I. 531. "Peaceable people
+fled at the sight of these groups of strange, frantic vagabonds.
+Everybody closed their houses. . .. When I reached home, in the
+Saint-Denis quarter, several of these brigands caused great alarm by
+firing off guns in the air."]
+
+[Footnote 1240: Dusaulx, 379.]
+
+[Footnote 1241: Dusaulx, 359, 360, 361, 288, 336. "In effect their
+entreaties resembled commands, and, more than once, it was impossible to
+resist them."]
+
+[Footnote 1242: Dusaulx, 447 (Deposition of the invalides).--"Revue
+R�trospective," IV. 282 (Narrative of the commander of the thirty-two
+Swiss Guards).]
+
+[Footnote 1243: Marmontel, IV. 317.]
+
+[Footnote 1244: Dusaulx, 454. "The soldiers replied that they would
+accept whatever happened rather than cause the destruction of so great a
+number of their fellow-citizens."]
+
+[Footnote 1245: Dusaulx, 447. The number of combatants, maimed, wounded,
+dead, and living, is 825.--Marmontel, IV. 320. "To the number of
+victors, which has been carried up to 800, people have been added who
+were never near the place."]
+
+[Footnote 1246: "Memoires", by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc,
+1767-1862), chancelier de France. in VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris
+1893. Vol. I. p.52. Pasquier was eye-witness. He leaned against the
+fence of the Beaumarchais garden and looked on, with mademoiselle
+Contat, the actress, at his side, who had left her carriage in the
+Place-Royale.--Marat, "L'ami du peuple," No. 530. "When an unheard-of
+conjunction of circumstances had caused the fall of the badly defended
+walls of the Bastille, under the efforts of a handful of soldiers and
+a troop of unfortunate creatures, most of them Germans and almost all
+provincials, the Parisians presented themselves the fortress, curiosity
+alone having led them there."]
+
+[Footnote 1247: Narrative of the commander of the thirty-two
+Swiss.--Narrative of Cholat, wine-dealer, one of the
+victors.--Examination of Desnot (who cut off the head of M. de Launay).]
+
+[Footnote 1248: Montjoie, part 3, 85.--Dusaulx, 355, 287, 368.]
+
+[Footnote 1249: Nothing more. No Witness states that he had seen the
+pretended note to M. do Launay. According to Dusaulx, he could not have
+had either the time or the means to write it.]
+
+[Footnote 1250: Bailly, II. 32, 74, 88, 90, 95, 108, 117, 137, 158, 174.
+"I gave orders which were neither obeyed nor listened to. . . . They
+gave me to understand that I was not safe." (July 15th.) "In these
+sad times one enemy and one calumnious report sufficed to excite the
+multitude. All who had formerly held power, all who had annoyed or
+restrained the insurrectionists, were sure of being arrested."]
+
+[Footnote 1251: M. de Lafayette, "M�moires," III. 264. Letter of July
+16th, 1789. "I have already saved the lives of six persons whom they
+were hanging in different quarters."]
+
+[Footnote 1252: Poujoulat. "Histoire de la R�volution Fran�aise," p.100
+(with supporting documents). Proc�s-verbaux of the Provincial Assembly,
+lle-de-France (1787), p.127.]
+
+[Footnote 1253: For instance: "He is severe with his peasants."--"He
+gives them no bread, and he wants them then to eat grass." "He wants
+them to eat grass like horses."--"He has said that they could very well
+eat hay, and that they are no better than horses."--The same story is
+found in many of the contemporary jacqueries.]
+
+[Footnote 1254: Bailly, II. 108. "The people, less enlightened and as
+imperious as despots, recognize no positive signs of good administration
+but success."]
+
+[Footnote 1255: Bailly, II, 108, 95.--Malouet, II, 14.]
+
+[Footnote 1256: De Ferri�res, I. 168.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+
+
+I.--Anarchy from July 14th to October 6th, 1789
+
+     Destruction of the Government.--To whom does real power
+     belong?
+
+However bad a particular government may be, there is something still
+worse, and that is the suppression of all government. For, it is owing
+to government that human wills form a harmony instead of chaos.
+It serves society as the brain serves a living being. Incapable,
+inconsiderate, extravagant, engrossing, it often abuses its position,
+overstraining or misleading the body for which it should care, and which
+it should direct. But, taking all things into account, whatever it may
+do, more good than harm is done, for through it the body stands erect,
+marches on and guides its steps. Without it there is no organized
+deliberate action, serviceable to the whole body. In it alone do we find
+the comprehensive views, knowledge of the members of which it consists
+and of their aims, an idea of outward relationships, full and accurate
+information, in short, the superior intelligence which conceives what is
+best for the common interests, and adapts means to ends. If it falters
+and is no longer obeyed, if it is forced and pushed from without by a
+violent pressure, it ceases to control public affairs, and the social
+organization retrogrades by many steps. Through the dissolution of
+society, and the isolation of individuals, each man returns to his
+original feeble state, while power is vested in passing aggregates that
+like whirlwinds spring up from the human dust.--One may divine how this
+power, which the most competent find it difficult to apply properly, is
+exercised by bands of men springing out of nowhere. It is a matter of
+supplies, of their possessions, price and distribution. It is a matter
+of taxes, its proportion, apportionment and collection; of private
+property, its varieties, rights, and limitations It is a problem of
+public authority, its allocation and its limits; of all those delicate
+cogwheels which, working into each other, constitute the great economic,
+social, and political machine. Each band in its own canton lays its
+rude hands on the wheels within its reach. They wrench or break them
+haphazardly, under the impulse of the moment, heedless and indifferent
+to consequences, even when the reaction of to-morrow crushes them in the
+ruin that they cause to day. Thus do unchained Negroes, each pulling and
+hauling his own way, undertake to manage a ship of which they have just
+obtained mastery.--In such a state of things white men are hardly worth
+more than black ones. For, not only is the band, whose aim is violence,
+composed of those who are most destitute, most wildly enthusiastic, and
+most inclined to destructiveness and to license. But also, as this band
+tumultuously carries out its violent action, each individual the most
+brutal, the most irrational, and most corrupt, descends lower than
+himself, even to the darkness, the madness, and the savagery of the
+dregs of society. In fact, a man who in the interchange of blows, would
+resist the excitement of murder, and not use his strength like a
+savage, must be familiar with arms. He must be accustomed to danger, be
+cool-blooded, alive to the sentiment of honor, and above all, sensitive
+to that stern military code which, to the imagination of the soldier,
+ever holds out to him the provost's gibbet to which he is sure to rise,
+should he strike one blow too many. Should all these restraints, inward
+as well as outward, be wanting, the man plunges into insurrection. He is
+a novice in the acts of violence, which he carries out. He has no
+fear of the law, because he abolishes it. The action begun carries him
+further than he intended to go. Peril and resistance exasperate his
+anger. He catches the fever from contact with those who are fevered,
+and follows robbers who have become his comrades.[1301] Add to this
+the clamors, the drunkenness, the spectacle of destruction, the nervous
+tremor of the body strained beyond its powers of endurance, and we
+can comprehend how, from the peasant, the laborer, and the bourgeois,
+pacified and tamed by an old civilization, we see all of a sudden spring
+forth the barbarian. Or still worse, the primitive animal, the grinning,
+sanguinary, wanton baboon, who giggles while he slays, and gambols over
+the ruin he has accomplished. Such is the actual government to which
+France is given up, and after eighteen months' experience, the best
+qualified, most judicious and profoundest observer of the Revolution
+will find nothing to compare it to but the invasion of the Roman Empire
+in the fourth century.[1302] "The Huns, the Heruli, the Vandals, and the
+Goths will come neither from the north nor from the Black Sea; they are
+in our very midst."
+
+
+
+
+II.--The provinces
+
+     Destruction of old Authorities.--Inadequacy of new
+     Authorities
+
+When in a building the principal beam gives way, cracks follow and
+multiply, and the secondary joists fall in one by one for lack of the
+prop, which supported them. In a similar manner the authority of the
+King being broken, all the powers, which he delegated, fall to the
+ground.[1303] Intendants, parliaments, military commands, grand
+provosts, administrative, judicial, and police functionaries in every
+province, and of every branch of the service, who maintain order and
+protect property, taught by the murder of M. de Launey, the imprisonment
+of M. de Besenval, the flight of Marshal de Broglie, the assassinations
+of Foullon and Bertier, know what it costs should they try to perform
+their duties. Should it be forgotten local insurrections intervene, and
+keep them in mind of it.
+
+The officer in command in Burgundy is a prisoner at Dijon, with a
+guard at his door; and he is not allowed to speak with any one without
+permission, and without the presence of witnesses.[1304] The Commandant
+of Caen is besieged in the old palace and capitulates. The Commandant of
+Bordeaux surrenders Ch�teau-Trompette with its guns and equipment. The
+Commandant at Metz, who remains firm, suffers the insults and the orders
+of the populace. The Commandant of Brittany wanders about his province
+"like a vagabond," while at Rennes his people, furniture, and plate are
+kept as pledges. As soon as he sets foot in Normandy he is surrounded,
+and a sentinel is placed at his door.--The Intendant of Besan�on takes
+to flight; that of Rouen sees his dwelling sacked from top to bottom,
+and escapes amid the shouts of a mob demanding his head.--At Rennes, the
+Dean of the Parliament is arrested, maltreated, kept in his room with
+a guard over him, and then, although ill, sent out of the town under an
+escort.--At Strasbourg "thirty-six houses of magistrates are marked
+for pillage."[1305]--At Besan�on, the President of the Parliament is
+constrained to let out of prison the insurgents arrested in a late
+out-break, and to publicly burn the whole of the papers belonging to
+the prosecution.--In Alsace, since the beginning of the troubles, the
+provosts were obliged to fly, the bailiffs and manorial judges hid
+themselves, the forest-inspectors ran away, and the houses of the guards
+were demolished. One man, sixty years of age, is outrageously beaten and
+marched about the village, the people, meanwhile, pulling out his hair;
+nothing remains of his dwelling but the walls and a portion of the roof.
+All his furniture and effects are broken up, burnt or stolen. He is
+forced to sign, along with his wife, an act by which he binds himself
+to refund all penalties inflicted by him, and to abandon all claims
+for damages for the injuries to which he has just been subjected.--In
+Franche-Comt� the authorities dare not condemn delinquents, and the
+police do not arrest them; the military commandant writes that "crimes
+of every kind are on the increase, and that he has no means of punishing
+them." Insubordination is permanent in all the provinces; one of the
+provincial commissions states with sadness:
+
+"When all powers are in confusion and annihilated, when public force
+no longer exists, when all ties are sundered, when every individual
+considers himself relieved from all kinds of obligation, when public
+authority no longer dares make itself felt, and it is a crime to have
+been clothed with it, what can be expected of our efforts to restore
+order?"[1306]
+
+All that remains of this great demolished State is forty thousand
+groups of people, each separated and isolated, in towns and small market
+villages where municipal bodies, elected committees, and improvised
+National Guards strive to prevent the worst excesses.--But these local
+chiefs are novices; they are human, and they are timid. Chosen by
+acclamation they believe in popular rights; in the midst of riots they
+feel themselves in danger. Hence, they generally obey the crowd.
+
+"Rarely," says one of the provincial commissions reports, "do the
+municipal authorities issue a summons; they allow the greatest excesses
+rather than enter upon prosecutions for which, sooner or later, they
+may be held responsible by their fellow-citizens. . . . Municipal bodies
+have no longer the power to resist anything."
+
+Especially in the rural districts the mayor or syndic, who is a farmer,
+makes it his first aim to make no enemies, and would resign his place
+if it were to bring him any "unpleasantness" with it. His rule in
+the towns, and especially in large cities, is almost as lax and more
+precarious, because explosive material is accumulated here to a much
+larger extent, and the municipal officers, in their arm-chairs at the
+town-hall, sit over a mine which may explode at any time. To-morrow,
+perhaps, some resolution passed at a tavern in the suburbs, or some
+incendiary newspaper just received from Paris, will furnish the
+spark.--No other defense against the populace is at hand than the
+sentimental proclamations of the National Assembly, the useless presence
+of troops who stand by and look on, and the uncertain help of a National
+Guard which will arrive too late. Occasionally these townspeople, who
+are now the rulers, utter a cry of distress from under the hands of
+the sovereigns of the street who grasp them by the throat. At
+Puy-en-Velay,[1307] a town of twenty thousand inhabitants, the
+pr�sidial,[1308] the committee of twenty-four commissioners, a body of
+two hundred dragoons, and eight hundred men of the guard of burgesses,
+are "paralyzed, and completely stupefied, by the vile populace. A
+mild treatment only increases its insubordination and insolence." This
+populace proscribes whomsoever it pleases, and six days ago a gibbet,
+erected by its hands, has announced to the new magistrates the fate that
+awaits them.
+
+" What will become of us this winter," they exclaim, "in our
+impoverished country, where bread is not to be had! We shall be the prey
+of wild beasts!"
+
+
+
+
+III.--Public feeling.--Famine
+
+These people, in truth, are hungry, and, since the Revolution, their
+misery has increased. Around Puy-en-Velay the country is laid waste,
+and the soil broken up by a terrible tempest, a fierce hailstorm, and
+a deluge of rain. In the south, the crop proved to be moderate and even
+insufficient.
+
+"To trace a picture of the condition of Languedoc," writes the
+intendant,[1309] "would be to give an account of calamities of every
+description. The panic which prevails in all communities, and which is
+stronger than all laws, stops traffic, and would cause famine even in
+the midst of plenty. Commodities are enormously expensive, and there is
+a lack of cash. Communities are ruined by the enormous outlays to which
+they are exposed: The payment of the deputies to the seneschal's court,
+the establishment of the burgess guards, guardhouses for this militia,
+and the purchase of arms, uniforms, and outlays in forming communes and
+permanent councils. To this must be add the cost of the printing of all
+kinds, and the publication of trivial deliberations. Further the loss
+of time due to disturbances occasioned by these circumstances, and
+the utter stagnation of manufactures and of trade." All these causes
+combined "have reduced Languedoc to the last extremity."--In the Center,
+and in the North, where the crops are good, provisions are not less
+scarce, because wheat is not put in circulation, and is kept concealed.
+
+"For five months," writes the municipal assembly of Louviers,[1310] "not
+a farmer has made his appearance in the markets of this town. Such a
+circumstance was never known before, although, from time to time, high
+prices have prevailed to a considerable extent. On the contrary, the
+markets were always well supplied in proportion to the high price of
+grain."
+
+In vain the municipality orders the surrounding forty-seven parishes to
+provide them with wheat. They pay no attention to the mandate; each for
+himself and each for his own house; the intendant is no longer present
+to compel local interests to give way to public interests.
+
+"In the wheat districts around us," says a letter from one of the
+Burgundy towns, "we cannot rely on being able to make free purchases.
+Special regulations, supported by the civic guard, prevent grain from
+being sent out, and put a stop to its circulation. The adjacent markets
+are of no use to us. Not a sack of grain has been brought into our
+market for about eight months."
+
+At Troyes, bread costs four sous per pound, at Bar-sur-Aube, and in the
+vicinity, four and a half sous per pound. The artisan who is out of work
+now earns twelve sous a day at the relief works, and, on going into the
+country, he sees that the grain crop is good. What conclusion can he
+come to but that the dearth is due to the monopolists, and that, if he
+should die of hunger, it would be because those scoundrels have
+starved him?--By virtue of this reasoning whoever has to do with these
+provisions, whether proprietor, farmer, merchant or administrator, all
+are considered traitors. It is plain that there is a plot against
+the people: the government, the Queen, the clergy, the nobles are all
+parties to it; and likewise the magistrates and the wealthy amongst the
+bourgeoisie and the rich. A rumor is current in the Ile-de-France that
+sacks of flour are thrown into the Seine, and that the cavalry horses
+are purposely made to eat unripe wheat in stalk. In Brittany, it is
+maintained that grain is exported and stored up abroad. In Touraine, it
+is certain that this or that wholesale dealer allows it to sprout in his
+granaries rather than sell it. At Troyes, a story prevails that another
+has poisoned his flour with alum and arsenic, commissioned to do so
+by the bakers.--Conceive the effect of suspicions like these upon a
+suffering multitude! A wave of hatred ascends from the empty stomach to
+the morbid brain. The people are everywhere in quest of their imaginary
+enemies, plunging forward with closed eyes no matter on whom or on what,
+not merely with all the weight of their mass, but with all the energy of
+their fury.
+
+
+
+
+
+IV.--Panic.
+
+     General arming.
+
+From the earliest of these weeks they were already alarmed. Accustomed
+to being led, the human herd is scared at being left to itself; it
+misses its leaders who it has trodden under foot; in throwing off their
+trammels it has deprived itself of their protection. It feels lonely,
+in an unknown country, exposed to dangers of which it is ignorant, and
+against which it is unable to guard itself. Now that the shepherds are
+slain or disarmed, suppose the wolves should unexpectedly appear!--And
+there are wolves--I mean vagabonds and criminals--who have but just
+issued out of the darkness. They have robbed and burned, and are to be
+found at every insurrection. Now that the police force no longer puts
+them down, they show themselves instead of keeping themselves concealed.
+They have only to lie in wait and come forth in a band, and both life
+and property will be at their mercy.--Deep anxiety, a vague feeling of
+dread, spreads through both town and country: towards the end of July
+the panic, like a blinding, suffocating whirl of dusts, suddenly sweeps
+over hundreds of leagues of territory. The brigands are coming! They are
+burning the crops! They are only six leagues off, and then only two--the
+refugees who have run away from the disorder prove it.
+
+On the 28th of July, at Angoul�me,[1311] the alarm bell is heard about
+three o'clock in the afternoon; the drums beat to arms, and cannon are
+mounted on the ramparts. The town has to be put in a state of defense
+against 15,000 bandits who are approaching, and from the walls a cloud
+of dust on the road is discovered with terror. It proves to be the
+post-wagon on its way to Bordeaux. After this the number of brigands
+is reduced to 1,500, but there is no doubt that they are ravaging the
+country. At nine o'clock in the evening 20,000 men are under arms, and
+thus they pass the night, always listening without hearing anything.
+Towards three o'clock in the morning there is another alarm, the church
+bells ringing and the people forming a battle array. They are convinced
+that the brigands have burned Ruffec, Vernenil, La Rochefoucauld, and
+other places. The next day countrymen flock in to give their aid against
+bandits who are still absent. "At nine o'clock," says a witness, "we had
+40,000 men in the town, to whom we showed our gratitude." As the bandits
+do not show themselves, it must be because they are concealed; a hundred
+horsemen, a large number of men on foot, start out to search the forest
+of Bra�onne, and to their great surprise they find nothing. But the
+terror is not allayed; "during the following days a guard is kept
+mounted, and companies are enrolled among the townsmen," while Bordeaux,
+duly informed, dispatches a courier to offer the support of 20,000 men
+and even 30,000. "What is surprising," adds the narrator, is that at ten
+leagues off in the neighborhood, in each parish, a similar disturbance
+took place, and at about the same hour."--All that is required is that a
+girl, returning to the village at night, should meet two men who do
+not belong to the neighborhood. The case is the same in Auvergne. Whole
+parishes, on the strength of this, betake themselves at night to the
+woods, abandoning their houses, and carrying away their furniture; "the
+fugitives trod down and destroyed their own crops; pregnant women were
+injured in the forests, and others lost their wits." Fear lends them
+wings. Two years after this, Madame Campan was shown a rocky peak on
+which a woman had taken refuge, and from which she was obliged to be let
+down with ropes.--The people at last return to their homes, and resume
+their usual routines. But such large masses are not unsettled with
+impunity; a tumult like this is, in itself, a lively source of alarm. As
+the country did rise, it must have been on account of threatened danger
+and if the peril was not due to brigands, it must have come from some
+other quarter. Arthur Young, at Dijon and in Alsace,[1312] hears at the
+public dinner tables that the Queen had formed a plot to undermine the
+National Assembly and to massacre all Paris. Later on he is arrested in
+a village near Clermont, and examined because he is evidently conspiring
+with the Queen and the Comte d'Entraigues to blow up the town and send
+the survivors to the galleys.
+
+No argument, no experience has any effect against the multiplying
+phantoms of an over-excited imagination. Henceforth every commune, and
+every man, provide themselves with arms and keep them ready for use. The
+peasant searches his hoard, and "finds from ten to twelve francs for
+the purchase of a gun." "A national militia is found in the poorest
+village." Burgess guards and companies of volunteers patrol all the
+towns. Military commanders deliver arms, ammunition, and equipment,
+on the requisition of municipal bodies, while, in case of refusal,
+the arsenals are pillaged, and, voluntarily or by force, four
+hundred thousand guns thus pass into the hands of the people in six
+months.[1313] Not content with this they must have cannon. Brest
+having demanded two, every town in Brittany does the same thing;
+their self-esteem is at stake as well as a need of feeling themselves
+strong.--They lack nothing now to render themselves masters. All
+authority, all force, every means of constraint and of intimidation
+is in their hands, and in theirs alone; and these sovereign hands have
+nothing to guide them in this actual interregnum of all legal powers,
+but the wild or murderous suggestions of hunger or distrust.
+
+
+
+
+V.--Attacks on public individuals and public property.
+
+     At Strasbourg.--At Cherbourg.--At Mauberge.--At Rouen.--At
+     Besan�on.--At Troyes.
+
+It would take too much space to recount all the violent acts which were
+committed,--convoys arrested, grain pillaged, millers and corn merchants
+hung, decapitated, slaughtered, farmers called upon under the threats of
+death to give up even the seed reserved for sowing, proprietors ransomed
+and houses sacked.[1314] These outrages, unpunished, tolerated and even
+excused or badly suppressed, are constantly repeated, and are, at first,
+directed against public men and public property. As is commonly the
+case, the rabble head the march and stamp the character of the whole
+insurrection.
+
+On the 19th of July, at Strasbourg, on the news of Necker's return to
+office, it interprets after its own fashion the public joy, which
+it witnesses. Five or six hundred beggars,[1315] their numbers soon
+increased by the petty tradesmen, rush to the town hall, the magistrates
+only having time to fly through a back door. The soldiers, on their
+part, with arms in their hands, allow all these things to go on, while
+several of them spur the assailants on. The windows are dashed to pieces
+under a hailstorm of stones, the doors are forced with iron crowbars,
+and the populace enter amid a burst of acclamations from the spectators.
+Immediately, through every opening in the building, which has a facade
+frontage of eighty feet, "there is a shower of shutters, sashes,
+chairs, tables, sofas, books and papers, and then another of tiles,
+boards, balconies and fragments of wood-work." The public archives are
+thrown to the wind, and the surrounding streets are strewed with them;
+the letters of enfranchisement, the charters of privileges, all the
+authentic acts which, since Louis XIV, have guaranteed the liberties of
+the town, perish in the flames. Some of the rabble in the cellars stave
+in casks of precious wine; fifteen thousand measures of it are lost,
+making a pool five feet deep in which several are drowned. Others,
+loaded with booty, go away under the eyes of the soldiers without
+being arrested. The havoc continues for three days; a number of houses
+belonging to some of the magistrates "are sacked from garret to cellar."
+When the honest citizens at last obtain arms and restore order, they are
+content with the hanging of one of the robbers; although, in order to
+please the people, the magistrates are changed and the price of bread
+and meat is reduced.--It is not surprising that after such tactics, and
+with such rewards, the riot should spread through the neighborhood far
+and near: in fact, starting from Strasbourg it overruns Alsace, while in
+the country as in the city, there are always drunkards and rascals found
+to head it.
+
+No matter where, be it in the East, in the West, or in the North, the
+instigators are always of this stamp. At Cherbourg, on the 21st of
+July,[1316] the two leaders of the riot are "highway robbers," who place
+themselves at the head of women of the suburbs, foreign sailors, the
+populace of the harbor, and it includes soldiers in workmen's smocks.
+They force the delivery of the keys of the grain warehouses, and
+wreck the dwellings of the three richest merchants, also that of M. de
+Garantot, the sub-delegate: "All records and papers are burnt; at M. de
+Garantot's alone the loss is estimated at more than 100,000 crowns at
+least."--The same instinct of destruction prevails everywhere, a sort
+of envious fury against all who possess, command, or enjoy anything.
+At Maubeuge, on the 27th of July, at the very assembly of the
+representatives of the commune,[1317] the rabble interferes directly in
+its usual fashion. A band of nail and gun-makers takes possession of the
+town-hall, and obliges the mayor to reduce the price of bread. Almost
+immediately after this another band follows uttering cries of death,
+and smashes the windows, while the garrison, which has been ordered out,
+quietly contemplates the damage done. Death to the mayor, to all rulers,
+and to all employees! The rioters force open the prisons, set the
+prisoners free, and attack the tax-offices. The octroi offices are
+demolished from top to bottom: they pull down the harbor offices and
+throw the scales and weights into the river. All the custom and
+excise stores are carried off; and the officials are compelled to give
+acquaintances. The houses of the registrar and of the sheriff, that of
+the revenue comptroller, two hundred yards outside the town, are sacked;
+the doors and the windows are smashed, the furniture and linen is torn
+to shreds, and the plate and jewelry is thrown into the wells. The same
+havoc is committed in the mayor's town-house, also in his country-house
+a league off. "Not a window, not a door, not one article or eatable,"
+is preserved; their work, moreover, is conscientiously done, without
+stopping a moment, "from ten in the evening up to ten in the morning on
+the following day." In addition to this the mayor, who has served
+for thirty-four years, resigns his office at the solicitation of the
+well-disposed but terrified people, and leaves the country.--At
+Rouen, after the 24th of July,[1318] a written placard shows, by its
+orthography and its style, what sort of intellects composed it and what
+kind of actions are to follow it:
+
+"Nation, you have here four heads to strike off, those of Pontcarry
+(the first president), Maussion (the intendant), Godard de Belboeuf (the
+attorney-general), and Durand (the attorney of the King in the town).
+Without this we are lost, and if you do not do it, people will take you
+for a heartless nation."
+
+Nothing could be more explicit. The municipal body, however, to whom
+the Parliament denounces this list of proscriptions, replies, with its
+forced optimism, that
+
+"no citizen should consider himself or be considered as proscribed; he
+may and must believe himself to be safe in his own dwelling, satisfied
+that there is not a person in the city who would not fly to his rescue."
+
+This is equal to telling the populace that it is free to do as it
+pleases. On the strength of this the leaders of the riot work on in
+security for ten days. One of them is a man named Jourdain, a lawyer of
+Lisieux, and, like most of his brethren, a demagogue in principles; the
+other is a strolling actor from Paris named Bordier, famous in the part
+of harlequin,[1319] a bully in a house of ill-fame, "a night-rover
+and drunkard, and who, fearing neither God nor devil," has taken up
+patriotism, and comes down into the provinces to play tragedy, and that,
+tragedy in real life. The fifth act begins on the night of the 3rd of
+August, with Bordier and Jourdain as the principal actors, and behind
+them the rabble along with several companies of fresh volunteers. A
+shout is heard, "Death to the monopolists! death to Maussion! we must
+have his head!" They pillage his hotel: many of them become intoxicated
+and fall asleep in his cellar. The revenue offices, the toll-gates of
+the town, the excise office, all buildings in which the royal revenue is
+collected, are wrecked. Immense bonfires are lighted in the streets and
+on the old market square; furniture, clothes, papers, kitchen utensils,
+are all thrown in pell-mell, while carriages are dragged out and tumbled
+into the Seine. It is only when the town-hall is attacked that the
+National Guard, beginning to be alarmed, makes up its mind to seize
+Bordier and some others. The following morning, however, at the shout of
+Carabo, and led by Jourdain, the prison is forced, Bordier set free, and
+the intendant's residence, with its offices, is sacked a second time.
+When, finally, the two rascals are taken and led to the scaffold, the
+populace is so strongly in their favor as to require the pointing of
+loaded cannon on them to keep them down.--At Besan�on,[1320] on the 13th
+of August, the leaders consist of the servant of an exhibitor of
+wild animals, two goal-birds of whom one has already been branded in
+consequence of a riot, and a number of "inhabitants of ill-repute," who,
+towards evening, spread through the town along with the soldiers. The
+gunners insult the officers they meet, seize them by the throat and want
+to throw them into the Doubs. Others go to the house of the commandant,
+M. de Langeron, and demand money of him; on his refusing to give it
+they tear off their cockades and exclaim, "We too belong to the
+Third-Estate!" in other words, that they are the masters: subsequently
+they demand the head of the intendant, M. de Caumartin, forcibly enter
+his dwelling and break up his furniture. On the following day the rabble
+and the soldiers enter the coffee-houses, the convents, and the inns,
+and demand to be served with wine and eatables as much as they want, and
+then, heated by drink, they burn the excise offices, force open several
+prisons, and set free all the smugglers and deserters. To put an end to
+this saturnalia a grand banquet in the open air is suggested, in which
+the National Guard is to fraternize with the whole garrison; but the
+banquet turns into a drinking-bout, entire companies remaining under the
+tables dead drunk; other companies carry away with them four hogsheads
+of wine, and the rest, finding themselves left in the lurch, are
+scattered abroad outside the walls in order to rob the cellars of the
+neighboring villages. The next day, encouraged by the example set them,
+a portion of the garrison, accompanied by a number of workmen, repeat
+the expedition in the country. Finally, after four days of this orgy, to
+prevent Besan�on and its outskirts from being indefinitely treated as a
+conquered country, the burgess guard, in alliance with the soldiers who
+have remained loyal, rebel against the rebellion, go in quest of
+the marauders and hang two of them that same evening.--Such is
+rioting![1321] an irruption of brute force which, turned loose on the
+habitations of men, can do nothing but gorge itself, waste, break,
+destroy, and do damage to itself; and if we follow the details of local
+history, we see how, in these days, similar outbreaks of violence might
+be expected at any time.
+
+At Troyes,[1322] on the 18th of July, a market-day, the peasants refuse
+to pay the entrance duties; the octroi having been suppressed at Paris,
+it ought also to be suppressed at Troyes. The populace, excited by this
+first disorderly act, gather into a mob for the purpose of dividing the
+grain and arms amongst themselves, and the next day the town-hall is
+invested by seven or eight thousand men, armed with clubs and stones.
+The day after, a band, recruited in the surrounding villages, armed
+with flails, shovels, and pitch-forks, enters under the leadership of
+a joiner who marches at the head of it with a drawn saber; fortunately,
+"all the honest folks among the burgesses "immediately form themselves
+into a National Guard, and this first attempt at a Jacquerie is put
+down. But the agitation continues, and false rumors constantly keep
+it up.--On the 29th of July, on the report being circulated that five
+hundred "brigands" had left Paris and were coming to ravage the country,
+the alarm bell sounds in the villages, and the peasants go forth armed.
+Henceforth, a vague idea of some impending danger fills all minds; the
+necessity of defense and of guarding against enemies is maintained.
+The new demagogues avail themselves of this to keep their hold on the
+people, and when the time comes, to use it against their chiefs.--It is
+of no use to assure the people that the latter are patriots; that the
+recently welcomed Necker with enthusiastic shouts; that the priests, the
+monks, and canons were the first to adopt the national cockade; that
+the nobles of the city and its environs are the most liberal in France;
+that, on the 20th of July, the burgess guard saved the town; that
+all the wealthy give to the national workshops; that Mayor Huez, "a
+venerable and honest magistrate," is a benefactor to the poor and to
+the public. All the old leaders are objects of distrust.--On the 8th
+of August, a mob demands the dismissal of the dragoons, arms for
+all volunteers, bread at two sous the pound, and the freedom of all
+prisoners. On the 19th of August the National Guard rejects its old
+officers as aristocrats, and elects new ones. On the 27th of August, the
+crowd invade the town-hall and distribute the arms amongst themselves.
+On the 5th of September, two hundred men, led by Truelle, president of
+the new committee, force the salt depot and have salt delivered to them
+at six sous per pound.--Meanwhile, in the lowest quarters of the city,
+a story is concocted to the effect that if wheat is scarce it is
+because Huez, the mayor, and M. de St. Georges, the old commandant, are
+monopolists, and now they say of Huez what they said five weeks before
+of Foulon, that "he wants to make the people eat hay." The many-headed
+brute growls fiercely and is about to spring. As usual, instead of
+restraining him, they try to manage him.
+
+"You must put your authority aside for a moment," writes the deputy of
+Troyes to the sheriffs," and act towards the people as to a friend; be
+as gentle with them as you would be with your equals, and rest assured
+that they are capable of responding to it."
+
+Thus does Huez act, and he even does more, paying no attention to their
+menaces, refusing to provide for his own safety and almost offering
+himself as a sacrifice.
+
+"I have wronged no one," he exclaimed; "why should any one bear me
+ill-will?"
+
+His sole precaution is to provide something for the unfortunate poor
+when he is gone: he bequeaths in his will 18,000 livres to the poor,
+and, on the eve of his death, sends 100 crowns to the bureau of charity.
+But what avail self-abnegation and beneficence against blind, insane
+rage! On the 9th of September, three loads of flour proving to be
+unsound, the people collect and shout out,
+
+"Down with the flour-dealers! Down with machinery! Down with the mayor!
+Death to the mayor, and let Truelle be put in his place!"
+
+Huez, on leaving his court-room, is knocked down, murdered by kicks and
+blows, throttled, dragged to the reception hall, struck on his head
+with a wooden-shoe and pitched down the grand staircase. The municipal
+officers strive in vain to protect him; a rope is put around his neck
+and they begin to drag him along. A priest, who begs to be allowed at
+least to save his soul, is repulsed and beaten. A woman jumps on
+the prostrate old man, stamps on his face and repeatedly thrusts her
+scissors in his eyes. He is dragged along with the rope around his neck
+up to the Pont de la Selle, and thrown into the neighboring ford, and
+then drawn out, again dragged through the streets and in the gutters,
+with a bunch of hay crammed in his mouth.[1323]
+
+In the meantime, his house as well as that of the lieutenant of police,
+that of the notary Guyot, and that of M. de Saint-Georges, are sacked;
+the pillaging and destruction lasts four hours; at the notary's house,
+six hundred bottles of wine are consumed or carried off; objects of
+value are divided, and the rest, even down to the iron balcony, is
+demolished or broken; the rioters cry out, on leaving, that they have
+still to burn twenty-seven houses, and to take twenty-seven heads. "No
+one at Troyes went to bed that fatal night."--During the succeeding
+days, for nearly two weeks, society seems to be dissolved. Placards
+posted about the streets proscribe municipal officers, canons, divines,
+privileged persons, prominent merchants, and even ladies of charity; the
+latter are so frightened that they throw up their office, while a number
+of persons move off into the country; others barricade themselves in
+their dwellings and only open their doors with saber in hand. Not
+until the 26th does the orderly class rally sufficiently to resume the
+ascendancy and arrest the miscreants.--Such is public life in France
+after the 14th of July: the magistrates in each town feel that they are
+at the mercy of a band of savages and sometimes of cannibals. Those of
+Troyes had just tortured Huez after the fashion of Hurons, while those
+of Caen did worse; Major de Belzance, not less innocent, and under sworn
+protection,[1324] was cut to pieces like Laperouse in the Fiji Islands,
+and a woman ate his heart.
+
+
+
+
+VI.--Taxes are no longer paid.
+
+     Devastation of the Forests.--The new game laws.
+
+It is, under such circumstances, possible to foretell whether taxes come
+in, and whether municipalities that sway about in every popular breeze
+will have the authority to collect the odious revenues.--Towards the end
+of September,[1325] I find a list of thirty-six committees or municipal
+bodies which, within a radius of fifty leagues around Paris, refuse
+to ensure the collection of taxes. One of them tolerates the sale
+of contraband salt, in order not to excite a riot. Another takes the
+precaution to disarm the employees in the excise department. In a
+third the municipal officers were the first to provide themselves with
+contraband salt and contraband tobacco.
+
+At Peronne and at Ham, the order having come to restore the toll-houses,
+the people destroy the soldiers' quarters, conduct all the employees
+to their homes, and order them to leave within twenty-four hours, under
+penalty of death. After twenty months' resistance Paris will end the
+matter by forcing the National Assembly to give in and by obtaining the
+final suppression of its octroi.[1326]--Of all the creditors whose hand
+each one felt on his shoulders, that of the exchequer was the heaviest,
+and now it is the weakest; hence this is the first whose grasp is to
+be shaken off; there is none which is more heartily detested or which
+receives harsher treatment. Especially against collectors of the
+salt-tax, custom-house officers, and excisemen the fury is universal.
+These, everywhere,[1327] are in danger of their lives and are obliged to
+fly. At Falaise, in Normandy, the people threaten to "cut to pieces
+the director of the excise." At Baignes, in Saintonge, his house is
+devastated and his papers and effects are burned; they put a knife to
+the throat of his son, a child six years of age, saying, "Thou must
+perish that there may be no more of thy race." For four hours the clerks
+are on the point of being torn to pieces; through the entreaties of the
+lord of the manor, who sees scythes and sabers aimed at his own
+head, they are released only on the condition that they "abjure
+their employment."--Again, for two months following the taking of
+the Bastille, insurrections break out by hundreds, like a volley
+of musketry, against indirect taxation. From the 23rd of July the
+Intendant of Champagne reports that "the uprising is general in almost
+all the towns under his command." On the following day the Intendant of
+Alen�on writes that, in his province, "the royal dues will no longer be
+paid anywhere." On the 7th of August, M. Necker states to the National
+Assembly that in the two intendants' districts of Caen and Alen�on it
+has been necessary to reduce the price of salt one-half; that "in
+an infinity of places" the collection of the excise is stopped or
+suspended; that the smuggling of salt and tobacco is done by "convoys
+and by open force" in Picardy, in Lorraine, and in the Trois-�v�ch�s;
+that the indirect tax does not come in, that the receivers-general and
+the receivers of the taille are "at bay" and can no longer keep their
+engagements. The public income diminishes from month to month; in the
+social body, the heart, already so feeble, faints; deprived of the
+blood which no longer reaches it, it ceases to propel to the muscles the
+vivifying current which restores their waste and adds to their energy.
+
+"All controlling power is slackened," says Necker, "everything is a prey
+to the passions of individuals." Where is the power to constrain them
+and to secure to the State its dues?--The clergy, the nobles, wealthy
+townsmen, and certain brave artisans and farmers, undoubtedly pay, and
+even sometimes give spontaneously. But in society those who possess
+intelligence, who are in easy circumstances and conscientious, form a
+small select class; the great mass is egotistic, ignorant, and needy,
+and lets its money go only under constraint; there is but one way to
+collect the taxes, and that is to extort them. From time immemorial,
+direct taxes in France have been collected only by bailiffs and
+seizures; which is not surprising, as they take away a full half of the
+net income. Now that the peasants of each village are armed and form
+a band, let the collector come and make seizures if he dare!--"
+Immediately after the decree on the equality of the taxes," writes the
+provincial commission of Alsace,[1328] "the people generally refused
+to make any payments, until those who were exempt and privileged should
+have been inscribed on the local lists." In many places the peasants
+threaten to obtain the reimbursement of their installments, while in
+others they insist that the decree should be retrospective and that the
+new rate-payers should pay for the past year. "No collector dare send an
+official to distrain; none that are sent dare fulfill their mission."--"
+It is not the good bourgeois" of whom there is any fear, "but the rabble
+who make the latter and every one else afraid of them;" resistance and
+disorder everywhere come from "people that have nothing to lose."--Not
+only do they shake off taxation, but they usurp property, and declare
+that, being the Nation, whatever belongs to the Nation belongs to
+them. The forests of Alsace are laid waste, the seignorial as well as
+communal, and wantonly destroyed with the wastefulness of children or
+of maniacs. "In many places, to avoid the trouble of removing the woods,
+they are burnt, and the people content themselves with carrying off the
+ashes."--After the decrees of August 4th, and in spite of the law which
+licenses the proprietor only to hunt on his own grounds, the impulse
+to break the law becomes irresistible. Every man who can procure a gun
+begins operations;[1329] the crops which are still standing are trodden
+under foot, the lordly residences are invaded and the palings are
+scaled; the King himself at Versailles is wakened by shots fired in his
+park. Stags, fawns, deer, wild boars, hares, and rabbits, are slain by
+thousands, cooked with stolen wood, and eaten up on the spot. There is
+a constant discharge of musketry throughout France for more than two
+months, and, as on an American prairie, every living animal belongs to
+him who kills it. At Choiseul, in Champagne, not only are all the hares
+and partridges of the barony exterminated, but the ponds are exhausted
+of fish; the court of the chateau even is entered, to fire on the
+pigeon-house and destroy the pigeons, and then the pigeons and fish, of
+which they have too many, are offered to the proprietor for sale--It
+is "the patriots" of the village with "smugglers and bad characters"
+belonging to the neighborhood who make this expedition; they are seen
+in the front ranks of every act of violence, and it is not difficult
+to foresee that, under their leadership, attacks on public persons
+and public property will be followed by attacks on private persons and
+private property.
+
+
+
+
+VII.--Attack upon private individuals and private property.
+
+     Aristocrats denounced to the people as their enemies.
+     --Effect of news from Paris.--Influence of the village
+     attorneys.--Isolated acts of violence.--A general rising of
+     the peasantry in the east.--War against the castles, feudal
+     estates, and property.--Preparations for other Jacqueries.
+
+Indeed, an outlawed class already exists, they are called "aristocrats."
+This deadly term, applied at first to the nobles and prelates in the
+States-General who declined to take part in the reunion of the three
+orders, is extended so as to embrace all whose titles, offices,
+alliances, and manner of living distinguish them from the multitude.
+That which entitled them to respect is that which marks them out as
+objects of ill-will; while the people, who, though suffering from their
+privileges, did not regard them personally with hatred, are now taught
+to consider them as their enemies. Each, on his own estate, is
+held accountable for the evil designs attributed to his brethren at
+Versailles, and, on the false report of a plot at the center, the
+peasants classify him as one of the conspirators.[1330] Thus does the
+peasant jacquerie commence, and the fanatics who have fanned the flame
+in Paris are to do the same in the provinces. "You wish to know the
+authors of the agitation," writes a sensible man to the committee
+of investigation; "you will find them amongst the deputies of the
+Third-Estate," and especially among the attorneys and advocates. "These
+dispatch incendiary letters to their constituents, which letters
+are received by municipal bodies alike composed of attorneys and of
+advocates.... they are read aloud in the public squares, while copies of
+them are distributed among all the villages. In these villages, if any
+one knows how to read besides the priest and the lord of the manor, it
+is the legal practitioner," the born enemy of the lord of the manor,
+whose place he covets, vain of his oratorical powers, embittered by
+his power, and never failing to blacken everything.[1331] It is highly
+probable that he is the one who composes and circulates the placards
+calling on the people, in the King's name, to resort to violence.--At
+Secondigny, in Poitou, on the 23rd of July,[1332] the laborers in the
+forest receive a letter "which summons them to attack all the country
+gentlemen round about, and to massacre without mercy all those who
+refuse to renounce their privileges.... promising them that not only
+will their crimes go unpunished, but that they will even be rewarded."
+M. Despretz-Montpezat, correspondent of the deputies of the nobles,
+is seized, and dragged with his son to the dwelling of the
+procurator-fiscal, to force him to give his signature; the inhabitants
+are forbidden to render him assistance "on pain of death and fire."
+"Sign," they exclaim, "or we will tear out your heart, and set fire to
+this house!" At this moment the neighboring notary, who is doubtless an
+accomplice, appears with a stamped paper, and says to him, "Monsieur,
+I have just come from Niort, where the Third-Estate has done the same
+thing to all the gentlemen of the town; one, who refused, was cut to
+pieces before our eyes."--"We are compelled to sign renunciations of our
+privileges, and give our assent to one and the same taxation, as if
+the nobles had not already done so." The band gives notice that it will
+proceed in the same fashion with all the chateaux in the vicinity, and
+terror precedes or follows them. "Nobody dares write," M. Despretz
+sends word; "I attempt it at the risk of my life."--Nobles and prelates
+become objects of suspicion everywhere; village committees open their
+letters, and they have to suffer their houses to be searched.[1333] They
+are forced to adopt the new cockade: to be a gentleman, and not wear it,
+is to deserve hanging. At Mamers, in Maine, M. de Beauvoir refuses to
+wear it, and is at the point of being put into the pillory and felled.
+Near La F1�che, M. de Brissac is arrested, and a message is sent
+to Paris to know if he shall be taken there, "or be beheaded in the
+meantime." Two deputies of the nobles, MM. de Montesson and de Vass� who
+had come to ask the consent of their constituents to their joining the
+Third-Estate, are recognized near Mans; their honorable scruples and
+their pledges to the constituents are considered of no importance, nor
+even the step that they are now taking to fulfill them; it suffices that
+they voted against the Third-Estate at Versailles; the populace pursues
+them and breaks up their carriages, and pillages their trunks.--Woe to
+the nobles, especially if they have taken any part in local rule, and
+if they are opposed to popular panics! M. Cureau, deputy-mayor of
+Mans,[1334] had issued orders during the famine, and, having retired to
+his chateau of Nouay, had told the peasants that the announcement of
+the coming of brigands was a false alarm; he thought that it was not
+necessary to sound the alarm bell, and all that was necessary was that
+they should remain quiet. Accordingly he is set down as being in league
+with the brigands, and besides this he is a monopolist, and a buyer of
+standing crops. The peasants lead him off; along with his son-in-law, M.
+de Montesson, to the neighboring village, where there are judges. On the
+way "they dragged their victims on the ground, pummeled them, trampled
+on them, spit in their faces, and besmeared them with filth." M. de
+Montesson is shot, while M. Cureau is killed by degrees; a carpenter
+cuts off the two heads with a double-edged ax, and children bear them
+along to the sound of drums and violins. Meanwhile, the judges of the
+place, brought by force, draw up an official report stating the finding
+of thirty louis and several bills of the Banque d'Escompte in the
+pockets of M. de Cureau, on the discovery of which a shout of triumph is
+set up: this evidence proves that they were going to buy up the standing
+wheat!--Such is the course of popular justice. Now that the Third-Estate
+has become the nation, every mob thinks that it has the right to
+pronounce sentences, which it carries out, on lives and on possessions.
+
+These explosions are isolated in the western, central and southern
+provinces; the conflagration, however, is universal in the east. On a
+strip of ground from thirty to fifty leagues broad, extending from
+the extreme north down to Provence. Alsace, Franche-Comt�, Burgundy,
+M�connais, Beaujolais, Auvergne, Viennois, Dauphiny, the whole of this
+territory resembles a continuous mine which explodes at the same time.
+The first column of flame which shoots up is on the frontiers of Alsace
+and Franche-Comt�, in the vicinity of Belfort and V�soul, a feudal
+district, in which the peasant, over-burdened with taxes, bears the
+heavier yoke with greater impatience. An instinctive argument is going
+on in his mind without his knowing it. "The good Assembly and the good
+King want us to be happy, suppose we help them! They say that the King
+has already relieved us of the taxes, suppose we relieve ourselves
+of paying rents! Down with the nobles! They are no better than the
+tax-collectors!"--On the 16th of July, the chateau of Sancy, belonging
+to the Princesses de Beaufremont, is sacked, and on the 18th those of
+Lure, Bithaine, and Molans.[1335] On the 29th, an accident which occurs
+with some fire-works at a popular festival at the house of M. de Mesmay,
+leads the lower class to believe that the invitation extended to
+them was a trap, and that there was a desire to get rid of them by
+treachery.[1336] Seized with rage they set fire to the chateau, and
+during the following week[1337] destroy three abbeys, ruin eleven
+chateaux and pillage others. "All records are destroyed, the registers
+and court-rolls are carried off; and the deposits violated."--Starting
+from this spot, "the hurricane of insurrection" stretches over the
+whole of Alsace from Huningue to Landau.[1338] The insurgents display
+placards, signed Louis, stating that for a certain lapse of time they
+shall be permitted to exercise justice themselves, and, in Sundgau, a
+well-dressed weaver, decorated with a blue belt, passes for a prince,
+the King's second son. They begin by falling on the Jews, their
+hereditary leeches; they sack their dwellings, divide their money among
+themselves, and hunt them down like so many fallow-deer. At B�le alone,
+it is said that twelve hundred of these unfortunate fugitives arrived
+with their families.--The distance between the Jew creditor and the
+Christian proprietor is not great, and this is soon cleared. Remiremont
+is only saved by a detachment of dragoons. Eight hundred men attack
+the chateau of Uberbr�nn. The abbey of Neubourg is taken by storm. At
+Guebwiller, on the 31st of July, five hundred peasants, subjects of the
+abbey of Murbach, make a descent on the abbot's palace and on the house
+of the canons. Cupboards, chests, beds, windows, mirrors, frames, even
+the tiles of the roof and the hinges of the casements are hacked
+to pieces: "They kindle fires on the beautiful inlaid floors of the
+apartments, and there burn up the library and the title-deeds." The
+abbot's superb carriage is so broken up that not a wheel remains entire.
+"Wine streams through the cellars. One cask of sixteen hundred measures
+is half lost; the plate and the linen are carried off."--Society is
+evidently being overthrown, while with the power, property is changing
+hands.
+
+These are their very words. In Franche-Comte[1339] the inhabitants of
+eight communes come and declare to the Bernardins of Gr�ce-Dieu and of
+Lieu-Croissant "that, being of the Third-Estate, it is time now for the
+people to rule over abbots and monks, considering that the domination
+of the latter has lasted too long," and thereupon they carry off all
+the titles to property and to rentals belonging to the abbey in their
+commune. In Upper Dauphiny, during the destruction of M. de Murat's
+chateau, a man named Ferr�ol struck the furniture with a big stick,
+exclaiming, "Hey, so much for you, Murat; you have been master a good
+while, now it's our turn!"[1340] Those who rifle houses, and steal like
+highway robbers, think that they are defending a cause, and reply to
+the challenge, "Who goes there?" "We are for the brigand
+Third-Estate!"--Everywhere the belief prevails that they are clothed
+with authority, and they conduct themselves like a conquering horde
+under the orders of an absent general. At Remiremont and at Luxeuil
+they produce an edict, stating that "all this brigandage, pillage, and
+destruction" is permitted. In Dauphiny, the leaders of the bands
+say that they possess the King's orders. In Auvergne, "they follow
+imperative orders, being advised that such is his Majesty's will."
+Nowhere do we see that an insurgent village exercises personal vengeance
+against its lord. If the people fire on the nobles they encounter, it is
+not through personal hatred. They are destroying the class, and do not
+pursue individuals. They detest feudal privileges, holders of charters,
+the cursed parchments by virtue of which they are made to pay, but not
+the nobleman who, when he resides at home, is of humane intentions,
+compassionate, and even often beneficent. At Luxeuil, the abbot, who
+is forced with uplifted ax to sign a relinquishment of his seignorial
+rights over twenty-three estates, has dwelt among them for forty-six
+years, and has been wholly devoted to them.[1341] In the canton of
+Cr�mieu, "where the havoc is immense," all the nobles, write the
+municipal officers, are "patriots and benevolent." In Dauphiny, the
+engineers, magistrates, and prelates, whose chateaux are sacked, were
+the first to espouse the cause of the people and of public liberties
+against the ministers. In Auvergne, the peasants themselves "manifest a
+good deal of repugnance to act in this way against such kind masters."
+But it must be done; the only concession which can be made in
+consideration of the kindness which had been extended to them is, not to
+burn the chateau of the ladies of Vanes, who had been so charitable; but
+they burn all their title-deeds, and torture the business agent at three
+different times by fire, to force him to deliver a document which
+he does not possess; they then only withdraw him from the fire
+half-broiled, because the ladies, on their knees, implore mercy for
+him. They are like the soldiers on a campaign who execute orders
+with docility, for which necessity is the only plea, and who, without
+regarding themselves as brigands, commit acts of brigandage.
+
+But here the situation is more tragic, for it is war in the midst of
+peace, a war of the brutal and barbaric multitude against the highly
+cultivated, well-disposed and confiding, who had not anticipated
+anything of the kind, who had not even dreamt of defending themselves,
+and who had no protection. The Comte de Courtivron, with his family,
+was staying at the watering-place of Luxeuil with his uncle, the Abb�
+of Clermont-Tonnerre, an old man of seventy years. On the 19th of July,
+fifty peasants from Fougerolle break into and demolish everything in the
+houses of an usher and a collector of the excise. Thereupon the mayor
+of the place intimates to the nobles and magistrates who are taking the
+waters, that they had better leave the house in twenty-four hours, as
+"he had been advised of an intention to burn the houses in which they
+were staying," and he did not wish to have Luxeuil exposed to this
+danger on account of their presence there. The following day, the guard,
+as obliging as the mayor, allows the band to enter the town and to force
+the abbey: the usual events follow, renunciations are extorted, records
+and cellars are ransacked, plate and other effects are stolen. M. de
+Courtivron escaping with his uncle during the night, the alarm bell
+is sounded and they are pursued, and with difficulty obtain refuge
+in Plombi�res. The bourgeoisie of Plombi�res, however, for fear of
+compromising themselves, oblige them to depart. On the road two hundred
+insurgents threaten to kill their horses and to smash their carriage,
+and they only find safety at last at Porentruy, outside of France.
+On his return, M. de Courtivron is shot at by the band which has just
+pillaged the abbey of Lure, and they shout out at him as he passes,
+"Let's massacre the nobles!" Meanwhile, the chateau of Vauvilliers, to
+which his sick wife had been carried, is devastated from top to bottom;
+the mob search for her everywhere, and she only escapes by hiding
+herself in a hay-loft. Both are anxious to fly into Burgundy, but word
+is sent them that at Dijon "the nobles are blockaded by the people," and
+that, in the country, they threaten to set their houses on fire.--There
+is no asylum to be had, either in their own homes nor in the homes of
+others, nor in places along the roads, fugitives being stopped in all
+the small villages and market-towns. In Dauphiny[1342] "the Abbess of
+St. Pierre de Lyon, one of the nuns, M. de Perrotin, M. de Bellegarde,
+the Marquis de la Tour-du-Pin, and the Chevalier de Moidieu, are
+arrested at Champier by the armed population, led to the C�te
+Saint-Andr�, confined in the town-hall, whence they send to Grenoble
+for assistance," and, to have them released, the Grenoble Committee is
+obliged to send commissioners. Their only refuge is in the large cities,
+where some semblance of a precarious order exists, and in the ranks of
+the City Guards, which march from Lyons, Dijon, and Grenoble, to keep
+the inundation down. Throughout the country scattered chateaux are
+swallowed up by the popular tide, and, as the feudal rights are often in
+plebeian hands, it insensibly rises beyond its first overflow.--There
+is no limit to an insurrection against property. This one extends from
+abbeys and chateaux to the "houses of the bourgeoisie."[1343] The grudge
+at first was confined to the holders of charters; now it is extended to
+all who possess anything. Well-to-do farmers and priests abandon their
+parishes and fly to the towns. Travelers are put to ransom. Thieves,
+robbers, and returned convicts, at the head of armed bands, seize
+whatever they can lay their hands on. Cupidity becomes inflamed by such
+examples; on domains which are deserted and in a state of confusion,
+where there is nothing to indicate a master's presence, all seems to
+lapse to the first comer. A small farmer of the neighborhood has carried
+away wine and returns the following day in search of hay. All the
+furniture of a chateau in Dauphin is removed, even to the hinges of the
+doors, by a large reinforcement of carts.--" It is the war of the
+poor against the rich," says a deputy, "and, on the 3rd of August, the
+Committee on Reports declares to the National Assembly "that no kind of
+property has been spared." In Franche-Comt�, "nearly forty chateaux and
+seignorial mansions have been pillaged or burnt."[1344] From Lancers
+to Gray about three out of five chateaux are sacked. In Dauphin
+twenty-seven are burned or destroyed; five in the small district of
+Viennese, and, besides these, all the monasteries--nine at least in
+Auvergne, seventy-two, it is said, in M�connais and Beaujolais, without
+counting those of Alsace. On the 31st of July, Lally-Tollendal, on
+entering the tribune, has his hands full of letters of distress, with
+a list of thirty-six chateaux burnt, demolished, or pillaged, in one
+province, and the details of still worse violence against persons:[1345]
+
+"in Languedoc, M. de Barras, cut to pieces in the presence of his
+wife who is about to be confined, and who is dead in consequence; in
+Normandy, a paralytic gentleman left on a burning pile and taken off
+from it with his hands burnt; in Franche-Comt�, Madame de Bathilly
+compelled, with an ax over her head, to give up her title-deeds and even
+her estate; Madame de Listenay forced to do the same, with a pitchfork
+at her neck and her two daughters in a swoon at her feet; Comte de
+Montjustin, with his wife, having a pistol at his throat for three
+hours; and both dragged from their carriage to be thrown into a pond,
+where they are saved by a passing regiment of soldiers; Baron de
+Montjustin, one of the twenty-two popular noblemen, suspended for an
+hour in a well, listening to a discussion whether he shall be dropped
+down or whether he should die in some other way; the Chevalier d'Ambly,
+torn from his chateau and dragged naked into the village, placed on a
+dung-heap after having his eyebrows and all his hair pulled out, while
+the crowd kept on dancing around him."
+
+In the midst of a disintegrated society, under the semblance only of a
+government, it is manifest that an invasion is under way, an invasion
+of barbarians which will complete by terror that which it has begun by
+violence, and which, like the invasions of the Normans in the tenth and
+eleventh centuries, ends in the conquest and dispossession of an entire
+class. In vain the National Guard and the other troops that remain loyal
+succeed in stemming the first torrent; in vain does the Assembly hollow
+out a bed for it and strive to bank it in by fixed boundaries. The
+decrees of the 4th of August and the regulations which follow are but so
+many spiders' webs stretched across a torrent. The peasants, moreover,
+putting their own interpretation on the decrees, convert the new laws
+into authority for continuing in their course or beginning over again.
+No more rents, however legitimate, however legal!
+
+"Yesterday,"[1346] writes a gentleman of Auvergne, we were notified
+that the fruit-tithe (perci�res) would no longer be paid, and that the
+example of other provinces was only being followed which no longer, even
+by royal order, pay tithes." In Franche-Comt� "numerous communities
+are satisfied that they no longer owe anything either to the King or to
+their lords. . . . The villages divide amongst themselves the fields and
+woods belonging to the nobles."--
+
+It must be noted that charter-holding and feudal titles are still intact
+in three-fourths of France, that it is the interest of the peasant to
+ensure their disappearance, and that he is always armed. To secure a
+new outbreak of jacqueries, it is only necessary that central control,
+already thrown into disorder, should be withdrawn. This is the work of
+Versailles and of Paris; and there, at Paris as well as at Versailles,
+some, through lack of foresight and infatuation, and others, through
+blindness and indecision--the latter through weakness and the former
+through violence--all are laboring to accomplish it.
+
+
+*****
+
+
+[Footnote 1301: Dusaulx, 374. "I remarked that if there were a few
+among the people at that time who dared commit crime, there were several
+who wished it, and that every one endured it."--" Archives Nationales,"
+DXXIX, 3. (Letter of the municipal authorities of Cr�mieu, Dauphiny,
+November 3, 1789.) "The care taken to lead them first to the cellars
+and to intoxicate them, can alone give a conception of the incredible
+excesses of rage to which they gave themselves up in the sacking and
+burning of the chateaux."]
+
+[Footnote 1302: Mercure de France, January 4, 1792. ("Revue politique de
+l'ann�e 1791," by Mallet du Pan.)]
+
+[Footnote 1303: Albert Babeau, I. 206. (Letter of the deputy Camuzet
+de Belombre, August 22, 1789.) The executive power is absolutely gone
+to-day."--Gouverneur Morris, letter of July 31, 1789: "This country is
+now as near in a state of anarchy as it is possible for a community to
+be without breaking up."]
+
+[Footnote 1304: "Archives Nationales," H. 1453. Letter of M. Amelot,
+July 24th; H. 784, of M. de Langeron, October 16th and 18th.--KK.
+1105. correspondence of M. de Thiard, October 7th and 30th, September
+4th.--Floquet, VII. 527, 555.--Guadet, "Histoire des Girondins" (July
+29, 1789).]
+
+[Footnote 1305: M. de Rochambeau, "M�moires," I. 353 (July
+18th).--Sauzay, "Histoire de la Pers�cution R�volutionnaire dans le
+D�partement de Doubs," I. 128 (July 19th.)--"Archives Nationales," F7,
+3253. (Letter of the deputies of the provincial commission of Alsace,
+September 8th.) D. XXIX. I. note of M. de Latour-du-Pin, October
+28, 1789.--Letter of M. de Langeron, September 3rd; of Breitman,
+garde-marteau, Val Saint-Amarin (Upper Alsace), July 26th.]
+
+[Footnote 1306: L�once de Lavergne, 197. (Letter of the intermediate
+commission of Poitou, the last month in 1789.)--Cf. Brissot (Le patriote
+fran�ais, August, 1789). "General insubordination prevails in the
+provinces because the restraints of executive power are no longer felt.
+What were but lately the guarantees of that power? The intendants,
+tribunals, and the army. The intendants are gone, the tribunals are
+silent, and the army is against the executive power and on the side of
+the people. Liberty is not a nourishment for unprepared stomachs."]
+
+[Footnote 1307: "Archives Nationales," D. XXIX. I. (Letter of the
+clergy, consuls, pr�sidial-councillors and principal merchants of
+Puy-en-Velay, September 16, 1789.)--H. 1453. (letter of the Intendant
+or Alen�on, July 18th). "I must not leave you in ignorance of the
+multiplied outbreaks we have in all parts of my jurisdiction. The
+impunity with which they flatter themselves, because the judges are
+afraid of irritating the people by examples of severity, only emboldens
+them. Mischief-makers, confounded with honest folks, spread false
+reports about particular persons whom they accuse of concealing grain,
+or of not belonging to the Third-Estate, and, under this pretext, they
+pillage their houses, taking whatever they can find, the owners only
+avoiding death by flight."]
+
+[Footnote 1308: A body of magistrates forming one of the lower
+tribunals.]
+
+[Footnote 1309: "Archives Nationales," H. 942. (Observations of M. de
+Ballainvilliers, October 30, 1789.)]
+
+[Footnote 1310: "Archives Nationales," D, XXIX. 1. Letter of the
+municipal assembly of Louviers, the end of August, 1789.--Letter of
+the communal assembly of Saint-Bris (bailiwick of Auxerre),
+September 25th.--Letter of the municipal officers of Ricey-Haut, near
+Bar-sur-Seine, August 25th; of the Chevalier d'Allouville, September
+8th.]
+
+[Footnote 1311: "Archives Nationales," D, XXIX. I. Letter of
+M. Briand-Delessart (Angoul�me, August 1st).--Of M. Bret,
+Lieutenant-General of the provostship of Mardogne, September 5th.--Of
+the Chevalier de Castellas (Auvergue), September 15th (relating to the
+night between the 2nd and 3rd of August).--Madame Campan, II. 65.]
+
+[Footnote 1312: Arthur Young, "Voyages in France," July 24th and 31st,
+August 13th and 19th.]
+
+[Footnote 1313: De Bouill�, 108.--"Archives Nationales," KK. 1105.
+Correspondence of M. deThiard, September 20, 1789 (apropos of one
+hundred guns given to the town of Saint-Brieuc). "They are not of the
+slightest use, but this passion for arms is a temporary epidemic which
+must be allowed to subside of itself. People are determined to believe
+in brigands and in enemies, whereas neither exist."--September 25th,
+"Vanity alone impels them, and the pride of having cannon is their sole
+motive."]
+
+[Footnote 1314: "Archives Nationales," H. 1453. Letters of M. Amelot,
+July 17th and 24th. "Several wealthy private persons of the town
+(Auxonne) have been put to ransom by this band, of which the largest
+portion consists of ruffians."--Letter of nine cultivators of Breteuil
+(Picardy) July 23rd (their granaries were pillaged up to the last grain
+the previous evening). "They threaten to pillage our crops and set our
+barns on fire as soon as they are full. M. Tassard, the notary, has been
+visited in his house by the populace, and his life has been threatened."
+Letter of Moreau, Procureur du Roi at the Senechal's Court at
+Bar-le-Duc, September 15, 1789, D, XXIX, 1. "On the 27th of July the
+people rose and most cruelly assassinated a merchant trading in wheat.
+On the 27th and 28th his house and that of another were sacked," etc.]
+
+[Footnote 1315: Chronicle of Dominick Schmutz ("Revue d'Alsace," V.
+III. 3rd series). These are his own expressions: Gesindel,
+Lumpen-gesindel.--De Rochambeau, "M�moires," I. 353.--Arthur Young (an
+eye-witness), July 21st.--Of Dampmartin (eye-witness), I. 105. M. de
+Rochambeau shows the usual indecision and want of vigor: whilst the mob
+are pillaging houses and throwing things out of the windows, he passes
+in front of his regiments (8,000 men) drawn up for action, and says, "My
+friends, my good friends, you see what is going on. How horrible! Alas!
+these are your papers, your titles and those of your parents." The
+soldiers smile at this sentimental prattle.]
+
+[Footnote 1316: Dumouriez (an eye-witness), book III. ch. 3.--The trial
+was begun and judgment given by twelve lawyers and an assessor, whom the
+people, in arms, had themselves appointed.--Hippeau, IV. 382.]
+
+[Footnote 1317: "Archives Nationales," F7 3248. (Letter of the mayor, M.
+Poussiaude de Thierri, September 11th.)]
+
+[Footnote 1318: Floquet, VII. 551.]
+
+[Footnote 1319: De Goncourt, "La Soci�t� fran�aise pendant la
+R�volution," 37.]
+
+[Footnote 1320: "Archives Nationales," D. XXIX. 1. Letter of the
+officers of the bailiwick of D�le, August 24th.--Sauzay I. 128.]
+
+[Footnote 1321: There is a similar occurrence at Strasbourg, a few days
+after the sacking of the town-hall. The municipality having given each
+man of the garrison twenty sous, the soldiers abandon their post, set
+the prisoners free at the Pont-Couvert, feast publicly in the streets
+with the women taken out of the penitentiary, and force innkeepers and
+the keepers of drinking-places to give up their provisions. The shops
+are all closed, and, for twenty-four hours, the officers are not obeyed.
+(De Dampmartin, I. 105.)]
+
+[Footnote 1322: Albert Babeau, I. 187-273.--Moniteur, II. 379. (Extract
+from the provost's verdict of November 27, 1789.)]
+
+[Footnote 1323: Moniteur, ibid. Picard, the principal murderer,
+confessed "that he had made him suffer a great deal; that the said
+sieur Huez did not die until they came near the Chaudron Inn; that he
+nevertheless intended to make him suffer more by stabbing him in the
+neck at the corner of each street, (and) by contriving it so that he
+might do it often, as long as there was life in him; that the day on
+which M. Huez died yielded him ten francs, together with the neck-buckle
+of M. Hues, found on him when he was arrested in his flight."]
+
+[Footnote 1324: Mercure de France,, September 26, 1789. Letters of the
+officers of the Bourbon regiment and of members of the general committee
+of Caen.--Floquet, VII. 545.]
+
+[Footnote 1325: "Archives Nationales," H. 1453.--Ibid. D. XXIX. I. Note
+of M. de la Tour-du-Pin, October 28th.]
+
+[Footnote 1326: Decree, February 5, 1789, enforced May 1st following.]
+
+[Footnote 1327: "Archives Nationales," D. XXIX. I. Letter of the count
+de Montausier, August 8th, with notes by M. Paulian, director of the
+excise (an admirable letter, modest and liberal, and ending by demanding
+a pardon for people led astray).--H. 1453. Letter of the attorney of the
+election district of Falaise, July 17th, etc.--Moniteur, I. 303, 387,
+505 (sessions of August 7th and 27th and of September 23rd). "The royal
+revenues are diminishing steadily."--Buchez and Roux, III. 219 (session
+of October 24, 1789). Discourse of a deputation from Anjou: "Sixty
+thousand men are armed; the barriers have been destroyed, the clerks'
+horses have been sold by auction; the employees have been told to
+withdraw from the province within eight days. The inhabitants have
+declared that they will not pay taxes so long as the salt-tax exists.]
+
+[Footnote 1328: "Archives Nationales," F7 3253 (Letter of September 8,
+1789).]
+
+[Footnote 1329: Arthur Young, September 30th. "It is being said that
+every rusty gun in Provence is at work, killing all sorts of birds;
+the shot has fallen five or six times in my chaise and about my
+ears."--Beugnot, I.142.--"Archives Nationales," D. XXIX. I. Letter of
+the Chevalier d'Allonville, September 8, 1789 (Near Bar-sur-Aube). "The
+peasants go in armed bands into the woods belonging to the Abbey of
+Trois-Fontaines, which they cut down. They saw up the oaks and transport
+them on wagons to Pont-Saint-Dizier, where they sell them. In other
+places they fish in the ponds and break the embankments."]
+
+[Footnote 1330: "Archives Nationales," D. XXIX. 1. Letter of the
+assessor of the police of Saint-Flour, October 3, 1789. On the 31st
+of July, a rumor is spread that the brigands are coming. On the 1st of
+August the peasants arm themselves. "They amuse themselves by drinking,
+awaiting the arrival of the brigands; the excitement increases to such
+an extent as to make them believe that M. le Comte d'Espinchal had
+arrived in disguise the evening before at Massiac, that he was the
+author of the troubles disturbing the province at this time, and that he
+was concealed in his chateau." On the strength of this shots are fired
+into the windows, and there are searches, etc.]
+
+[Footnote 1331: "Archives Nationales," D, XXIX, I, Letter of Etienne
+Fermier, Naveinne, September 18th (it is possible that the author,
+for the sake of caution, took a fictitious name).--The manuscript
+correspondence of M. Boull�, deputy of Pontivy, to his constituents,
+is a type of this declamatory and incendiary writing.--Letter of the
+consuls, priests, and merchants of Puy-en-Velay, September 16th.--" The
+Ancient R�gime," p. 396.]
+
+[Footnote 1332: "Archives Nationales," D. XXIX. 1. Letter of M.
+Despretz-Montpezat, a former artillery officer, July 24th (with several
+other signatures). On the same day the alarm bell is sounded In fifty
+villages on the rumor spreading that 7,000 brigands, English and Breton,
+were invading the country.]
+
+[Footnote 1333: "Archives Nationales," D. XXIX. I. Letter of
+Briand-Delessart, August 1st (domiciliary visits to the Carmelites
+of Angoul�me where it is pretended that Mme. de Polignac has just
+arrived.--Beugnot, I. 140.--Arthur Young, July 20th, etc.--Buchez and
+Roux, IV. 166. Letter of Mamers, July 24th; of Mans, July 26th.]
+
+[Footnote 1334: Montjoie, ch. LXXII, p. 93 (according to acts of legal
+procedure). There was a soldier in the band who had served under M. de
+Montesson and who wanted to avenge himself for the punishments he had
+undergone in the regiment.]
+
+[Footnote 1335: Mercure de France, August 20th (Letter from V�soul,
+August 13th).]
+
+[Footnote 1336: M. de Memmay proved his innocence later on, and was
+rehabilitated by a public decision after two years' proceedings (session
+of June 4, 1791; Mercure of June 11th).]
+
+[Footnote 1337: Journal des D�bats et D�crets, I. 258. (Letter of the
+municipality of V�soul, July 22nd.--Discourse of M. de Toulougeon, July
+29th.)]
+
+[Footnote 1338: De Rochambeau, "M�moires," I. 353.--"Archives
+Nationales," F7, 3253. (Letter of M. de Rochamheau, August
+4th.)--Chronicle of Schmutz (ibid. ), p. 284. "Archives Nationales," D.
+XXIX. I. (Letter of Mme. Ferrette, of Remiremont, August 9th.)]
+
+[Footnote 1339: Sauzay, I. 180. (Letters of monks, July 22nd and 26th.)]
+
+[Footnote 1340: "Archives Nationales," D. XXIX. I. (Letter of M. de
+Bergeron, attorney to the pr�sidial of Valence, August 28th, with the
+details of the verdict stated.) Official report of the militia of Lyons,
+sent to the president of the National Assembly, August 10th. (Expedition
+to Serri�re, in Dauphiny, July 31st.)]
+
+[Footnote 1341: Letter of the Count of Courtivron, deputy substitute
+(an eye-witness).--"Archives Nationales," D. XXIX. I. Letter of the
+municipal officers of Cr�mieu (Dauphiny), November 3rd. Letter of the
+Vicomte de Carbonni�re (Auvergne), August 3rd.--Arthur Young, July 30th
+(Dijon) says, apropos of a noble family which escaped almost naked
+from its burning chateau, "they were esteemed by the neighbors;
+their virtues ought to have commanded the love of the poor, for whose
+resentment there was no cause."]
+
+[Footnote 1342: "Archives Nationales," XXIX. I. (Letter of the
+commission of the States of Dauphiny, July 31st.)]
+
+[Footnote 1343: "D�sastres du M�connais," by Puthod de la Maison-Rouge
+(August, 1789). "Ravages du M�connais."--Arthur Young, July
+27th.--Buchez and Roux, IV. 215, 214.--Mercure de France, September
+12, 1789. (Letter by a volunteer of Orleans.) "On the 15th of August,
+eighty-eight ruffians, calling themselves reapers, present themselves at
+Bascon, in Beauce, and, the next day, at a chateau in the neighborhood,
+where they demand within an hour the head of the son of the lord of the
+manor, M. Tassin, who can only redeem himself by a contribution of 1,600
+livres and the pillaging of his cellars.]
+
+[Footnote 1344: Letter of the Count de Courtivron.--Arthur Young, July
+31st.--Buchez and Roux, II. 243.--Mercure de France, August 15, 1789
+(sitting of the 8th, discourse of a deputy from Dauphin�.)--Mermet,
+"Histoire de la Ville de Vienne," 445--" Archives Nationales," ibid.
+(Letter of the commission of the States of Dauphiny, July 31st.)--"The
+list of burnt or devastated chateaux is immense." The committee already
+cites sixteen of them.--Puthod de la Maison-Rouge, ibid.: "Were all
+devastated places to be mentioned, it would be necessary to cite the
+whole province" (Letter from M�con). "They have not the less destroyed
+most of the chateaux and bourgeois dwellings, either burning them and or
+else tearing them down."]
+
+[Footnote 1345: Lally-Tollendal, "Second Letter to my Constituents,"
+104.]
+
+[Footnote 1346: Doniol, "La R�volution et la F�odalit�," p.60 (a few
+days after the 4th of August).--"Archives Nationales," H. 784. Letters
+of M. de Langeron, military commander at Besan�on, October 16th and
+18th.--Ibid. , D. XXIX. I. Letter of the same, September 3rd.--Arthur
+Young (in Provence, at the house of Baron de la Tour-d'Aignes). "The
+baron is an enormous sufferer by the Revolution; a great extent of
+country which belonged in absolute right to his ancestors, has been
+granted for quit-rents, ceus, and other feudal payments, so that there
+is no comparison between the lands retained and those thus granted by
+his family. . . . The solid payments which the Assembly have declared
+to be redeemable are every hour falling to nothing, without a shadow
+of recompense. . . The situation of the nobility in this country is
+pitiable; they are under apprehensions that nothing will be left them,
+but simply such houses as the mob allows to stand unburned; that the
+small farmers will retain their farms without paying the landlord his
+half of the produce; and that, in case of such a refusal, there is
+actually neither law nor authority in the country to prevent it. This
+chateau, splendid even in ruins, with the fortune and lives of the
+owners, is at the mercy of an armed rabble."]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. PARIS.
+
+
+
+
+I.--Paris.
+
+     Powerlessness and discords of the authorities.--The people,
+     king.
+
+The powerlessness, indeed, of the heads of the Government, and the
+lack of discipline among all its subordinates, are much greater in the
+capital than in the provinces.--Paris possesses a mayor, Bailly; but
+"from the first day, and in the easiest manner possible,"[1401] his
+municipal council, that is to say, "the assembly of the representatives
+of the commune, has accustomed itself to carry on the government alone,
+overlooking him entirely." There is a central administration, the
+municipal council, presided over by the mayor; but, "at this time,
+authority is everywhere except where the preponderating authority should
+be; the districts have delegated it and at the same time retained it;"
+each of them acts as if it were alone and supreme.--There are secondary
+powers, the district-committees, each with its president, its clerk, its
+offices, and commissioners; but the mobs of the street march on without
+awaiting their orders; while the people, shouting under their" windows,
+impose their will on them;--in short, says Bailly again, "everybody knew
+how to command, but nobody knew how to obey."
+
+"Imagine," writes Loustalot[1402] himself; "a man whose feet, hands, and
+limbs possessed each its own intelligence and will, whose one leg would
+wish to walk when the other one wanted to rest, whose throat would close
+when the stomach demanded food, whose mouth would sing when the eyelids
+were weighed down with sleep; and you will have a striking picture of
+the condition of things in the capital"
+
+There are "sixty Republics"[1403] in Paris; each district is an
+independent, isolated power, which receives no order without criticizing
+it, always in disagreement and often in conflict with the central
+authority or with the other districts. It receives denunciations, orders
+domiciliary visits, sends deputations to the National Assembly, passes
+resolutions, posts its bills, not only in its own quarter but throughout
+the city, and sometimes even extends its jurisdiction outside of Paris.
+Everything comes within its province, and particularly that which
+ought not to do so.--On the 18th of July, the district of
+Petits-Augustins[1404] "decrees in its own name the establishment of
+justices of the peace," under the title of tribunes, and proceeds at
+once to elect its own, nominating the actor Mol�. On the 30th, that of
+the Oratoire annuls the amnesty which the representatives of the commune
+in the H�tel-de-Ville had granted, and orders two of its members to go
+to a distance of thirty leagues to arrest M. de Bezenval. On the 19th of
+August, that of Nazareth issues commissions to seize and bring to Paris
+the arms deposited in strong places. From the beginning each assembly
+sent to the Arsenal in its own name, and "obtained as many cartridges
+and as much powder as it desired." Others claim the right of keeping a
+watchful eye over the H�tel-de-Ville and of reprimanding the National
+Assembly. The Oratoire decides that the representatives of the commune
+shall be invited to deliberate in public. Saint-Nicholas des Champs
+deliberates on the veto and begs the Assembly to suspend its vote.--It
+is a strange spectacle, that of these various authorities each
+contradicting and destroying the other. To-day the H�tel-de-Ville
+appropriates five loads of cloth which have been dispatched by the
+Government, and the district of Saint-Gervais opposes the decision of
+the H�tel-de-Ville. To-morrow Versailles intercepts grain destined
+for Paris, while Paris threatens, if it is not restored, to march on
+Versailles. I omit the incidents that are ridiculous:[1405] anarchy
+in its essence is both tragic and grotesque, and, in this universal
+breaking up of things, the capital, like the kingdom, resembles a
+bear-garden when it does not resemble a Babel.
+
+But behind all these discordant authorities the real sovereign, who is
+the mob, is very soon apparent.--On the 15th of July it undertakes the
+demolition of the Bastille of its own accord, and this popular act is
+sanctioned; for it is necessary that appearances should be kept up;
+even to give orders after the blow is dealt, and to follow when it is
+impossible to lead.[1406] A short time after this the collection of
+the octroi at the barriers is ordered to be resumed; forty armed
+individuals, however, present themselves in their district and say, that
+if guards are placed at the octroi stations, "they will resist force
+with force, and even make use of their cannon."--On the false rumor that
+arms are concealed in the Abbey of Montmartre, the abbess, Madame de
+Montmorency, is accused of treachery, and twenty thousand persons invade
+the monastery.--The commander of the National Guard and the mayor are
+constantly expecting a riot; they hardly dare absent themselves a day
+to attend the King f�te at Versailles. As soon as the multitude can
+assemble in the streets, an explosion is imminent. "On rainy days," says
+Bailly, "I was quite at my ease."--It is under this constant pressure
+that the Government is carried on; and the elect of the people, the most
+esteemed magistrates, those who are in best repute, are at the mercy of
+the throng who clamor at their doors. In the district of St. Roch,[1407]
+after many useless refusals, the General Assembly, notwithstanding all
+the reproaches of its conscience and the resistance of its reason, is
+obliged to open letters addressed to Monsieur, to the Duke of Orleans,
+and to the Ministers of War, of Foreign Affairs, and of the Marine. In
+the committee on subsistence, M. Serreau, who is indispensable and who
+is confirmed by a public proclamation, is denounced, threatened,
+and constrained to leave Paris. M. de la Salle, one of the strongest
+patriots among the nobles, is on the point of being murdered for having
+signed an order for the transport of gunpowder;[1408] the multitude, in
+pursuit of him, attach a rope to the nearest street-lamp, ransack the
+H�tel-de-Ville, force every door, mount into the belfry, and seek for
+the traitor even under the carpet of the bureau and between the legs of
+the electors, and are only stayed in their course by the arrival of the
+National Guard.
+
+The people not only sentence but they execute, and, as is always the
+case, blindly. At Saint-Denis, Chatel, the mayor's lieutenant, whose
+duty it is to distribute flour, had reduced the price of bread at
+his own expense: on the 3rd of August his house is forced open at two
+o'clock in the morning, and he takes refuge in a steeple; the mob follow
+him, cut his throat and drag his head along the streets.--Not only do
+the people execute, but they pardon--and with equal discernment. On the
+11th of August, at Versailles, as a parricide is about to be broken on
+the wheel, the crowd demand his release, fly at the executioner, and set
+the man free.[1409] Veritably this is sovereign power like that of the
+oriental sovereign who arbitrarily awards life or death! A woman who
+protests against this scandalous pardon is seized and comes near being
+hung; for the new monarch considers as a crime whatever is offensive to
+his new majesty. Again, he receives public and humble homage. The
+Prime Minister, on imploring the pardon of M. de Bezenval at the
+H�tel-de-Ville, in the presence of the electors and of the public, has
+put it in appropriate words:
+
+"It is before the most unknown, the obscurest citizen of Paris that I
+prostrate myself; at whose feet I kneel."
+
+A few days before this, at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and at Poissy, the
+deputies of the National Assembly not only kneel down in words, but
+actually, and for a long time, on the pavement in the street, and
+stretch forth their hands, weeping, to save two lives of which only
+one is granted to them.--Behold the monarch by these brilliant signs!
+Already do the young, who are eager imitators of all actions that are
+in fashion, ape them in miniature; during the month which follows the
+murder of Berthier and Foulon, Bailly is informed that the gamins in the
+streets are parading about with the heads of two cats stuck on the ends
+of two poles.[1410]
+
+
+
+
+II.--The distress of the people.
+
+     The dearth and the lack of work.--How men of executive
+     ability are recruited.
+
+A pitiable monarch, whose recognized sovereignty leaves him more
+miserable than he was before! Bread is always scarce, and before the
+baker's doors the row of waiting people does not diminish. In vain
+Bailly passes his nights with the committee on supplies; they are always
+in a state of terrible anxiety. Every morning for two months there is
+only one or two days' supply of flour, and often, in the evening, there
+is not enough for the following morning.[1411] The life of the capital
+depends on a convoy which is ten, fifteen, twenty leagues off; and which
+may never arrive: one convoy of twenty carts is pillaged on the 18th of
+July, on the Rouen road; another, on the 4th of August, in the vicinity
+of Louviers. Were it not for Salis' Swiss regiment, which, from the 14th
+of July to the end of September, marches day and night as an escort,
+not a boat-load of grain would reach Paris from Rouen.[1412]--The
+commissaries charged with making purchases or with supervising the
+expeditions are in danger of their lives. Those who are sent to
+provinces are seized, and a column of four hundred men with cannon has
+to be dispatched to deliver them. The one who is sent to Rouen learns
+that he will be hung if he dares to enter the place. At Mantes a mob
+surrounds his cabriolet, the people regarding whoever comes there for
+the purpose of carrying away grain as a public pest; he escapes with
+difficulty out of a back door and returns on foot to Paris.--From the
+very beginning, according to a universal rule, the fear of a short
+supply helps to augment the famine. Every one lays in a stock for
+several days; on one occasion sixteen loaves of four pounds each are
+found in an old woman's garret. The bakings, consequently, which are
+estimated according to the quantity needed for a single day, become
+inadequate, and the last of those who wait at the bakers' shops for
+bread return home empty-handed.--On the other hand the appropriations
+made by the city and the State to diminish the price of bread simply
+serve to lengthen the rows of those who wait for it; the countrymen
+flock in thither, and return home loaded to their villages. At
+Saint-Denis, bread having been reduced to two sous the pound, none
+is left for the inhabitants. To this constant anxiety add that of
+unemployment. Not only is there no certainty of there being bread at the
+bakers' during the coming week, but many know that they will not have
+money in the coming week with which to buy bread. Now that security has
+disappeared and the rights of property are shaken, work is wanting. The
+rich, deprived of their feudal dues, and, in addition thereto of their
+rents, have reduced their expenditure; many of them, threatened by the
+committee of investigation, exposed to domiciliary visits, and liable to
+be informed against by their servants, have emigrated. In the month of
+September M. Necker laments the delivery of six thousand passports in
+fifteen days to the wealthiest inhabitants. In the month of October
+ladies of high rank, refugees in Rome, send word that their domestics
+should be discharged and their daughters placed in convents. Before the
+end of 1789 there are so many fugitives in Switzerland that a house,
+it is said, brings in more rent than it is worth as capital. With this
+first emigration, which is that of the chief spendthrifts, the Count
+d'Artois, Prince de Conti, Duc de Bourbon, and so many others, the
+opulent foreigners have left, and, at the head of them, the Duchesse
+de l'Infantado, who spent 800,000 livres a year. There are only three
+Englishmen in Paris.
+
+It used to be a city of luxury, it was the European hot-house of costly
+and refined pleasures, but once the glass was broken then the delicate
+plants perish, their lovers leave, and there is no employment now for
+the innumerable hands which cultivated them. Fortunate are they who at
+the relief works obtain a miserable sum by handling a pick-axe! "I saw,"
+says Bailly, "mercers, jewellers, and merchants implore the favor of
+being employed at twenty sous the day." Enumerate, if you can, in one or
+two recognized callings, the hands which are doing nothing:[1413] 1,200
+hair-dressers keep about 6,000 journeymen; 2,000 others follow the same
+calling in private-houses; 6,000 lackeys do but little else than this
+work. The body of tailors is composed of 2,800 masters, who have under
+them 5,000 workmen. "Add to these the number privately employed--the
+refugees in privileged places like the abbeys of Saint-Germain and
+Saint-Marcel, the vast enclosure of the Temple, that of Saint-John the
+Lateran, and the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, and you will find at least
+12,000 persons cutting, fitting, and sewing." How many in these two
+groups are now idle! How many others are walking the streets, such
+as upholsterers, lace-makers, embroiderers, fan-makers, gilders,
+carnage-makers, binders, engravers, and all the other producers of
+Parisian nick-nacks! For those who are still at work how many days are
+lost at the doors of bakers' shops and in patrolling as National
+Guards! Gatherings are formed in spite of the prohibitions of the
+H�tel-de-Ville,[1414] and the crowd openly discuss their miserable
+condition: 3,000 journeymen-tailors near the Colonnade,
+as many journeymen-shoemakers in the Place Louis XV., the
+journeymen-hairdressers in the Champs-Elysees, 4,000 domestics without
+places on the approaches to the Louvre,--and their propositions are on a
+level with their intelligence. Servants demand the expulsion from
+Paris of the Savoyards who enter into competition with them.
+Journeymen-tailors demand that a day's wages be fixed at forty sous, and
+that the old-clothes dealers shall not be allowed to make new ones. The
+journeymen-shoemakers declare that those who make shoes below the fixed
+price shall be driven out of the kingdom. Each of these irritated and
+agitated crowds contains the germ of an outbreak--and, in truth, these
+germs are found on every pavement in Paris: at the relief works, which
+at Montmartre collect 17,000 paupers; in the Market, where the bakers
+want to hang the flour commissioners, and at the doors of the bakers,
+of whom two, on the 14th of September and on the 5th of October, are
+conducted to the lamp post and barely escape with their lives.--In this
+suffering, mendicant crowd, enterprising men become more numerous every
+day: they consist of deserters, and from every regiment; they reach
+Paris in bands, often 250 in one day. There, "caressed and fed to the
+top of their bent,"[1415] having received from the National Assembly
+50 livres each, maintained by the King in the enjoyment of their
+advance-money, entertained by the districts, of which one alone incurs
+a debt of 14,000 livres for wine and sausages furnished to them, "they
+accustom themselves to greater expense," to greater license, and are
+followed by their companions. "During the night of the 31st of July the
+French Guards on duty at Versailles abandon the custody of the King and
+betake themselves to Paris, without their officers, but with their arms
+and baggage," that "they may take part in the cheer which the city of
+Paris extends to their regiment." At the beginning of September, 16,000
+deserters of this stamp are counted.[1416] Now, among those who commit
+murder these are in the first rank; and this is not surprising when we
+take the least account of their antecedents, education, and habits. It
+was a soldier of the "Royal Croat" who tore out the heart of Berthier.
+They were three soldiers of the regiment of Provence who forced the
+house of Chatel at Saint-Denis, and dragged his head through
+the streets. It is Swiss soldiers who, at Passy, knock down the
+commissioners of police with their guns. Their headquarters are at the
+Palais-Royal, amongst women whose instruments they are, and amongst
+agitators from whom they receive the word of command. Henceforth, all
+depends on this word, and we have only to contemplate the new popular
+leaders to know what it will be.
+
+
+
+
+III.--The new popular leaders.
+
+     Their ascendancy.--Their education.--Their sentiments.
+     --Their situation.--Their councils.--Their denunciations.
+
+Administrators and members of district assemblies, agitators of
+barracks, coffee-houses, clubs and public thoroughfares, writers of
+pamphlets, penny-a-liners are multiplying as fast as buzzing insects are
+hatched on a sultry night. After the 14th of July thousands of jobs have
+become available for released ambitions; "attorneys, notaries'
+clerks, artists, merchants, shopkeepers, comedians and especially
+advocates;[1417] each wants to be either an officer, a director, a
+councillor, or a minister of the new reign; while journals, which are
+established by dozens,[1418] form a permanent tribune, where speakers
+come to court the people to their personal advantage." Philosophy,
+fallen into such hands, seems to parody itself; and nothing equals its
+emptiness, unless it be its mischievousness and success. Lawyers, in
+the sixty assembly districts, roll out the high-sounding dogmas of the
+revolutionary catechism. This or that one, passing from the question
+of a party wall to the constitution of empires, becomes the improvised
+legislator, so much the more inexhaustible and the more applauded as
+his flow of words, showered upon his hearers, proves to them that every
+capacity and every right are naturally and legitimately theirs.
+
+"When that man opened his mouth," says a cold-blooded witness, "we were
+sure of being inundated with quotations and maxims, often apropos of
+street lamp posts, or of the stall of a herb-dealer. His stentorian
+voice made the vaults ring; and after he had spoken for two hours,
+and his breath was completely exhausted, the admiring and enthusiastic
+shouts which greeted him amounted almost to frenzy. Thus the orator
+fancied himself a Mirabeau, while the spectators imagined themselves the
+Constituent Assembly, deciding the fate of France."
+
+The journals and pamphlets are written in the same style. Every brain
+is filled with the fumes of conceit and of big words; the leader of the
+crowd is he who raves the most, and he guides the wild enthusiasm which
+he increases.
+
+Let us consider the most popular of these chiefs; they are the green or
+the dry fruit of literature, and of the bar. The newspaper is the
+stall which every morning offers them for sale, and if they suit the
+overexcited public it is simply owing to their acid or bitter flavor.
+Their empty, unpracticed minds are wholly void of political conceptions;
+they have no capacity or practical experience. Desmoulins is twenty-nine
+years of age, Loustalot twenty-seven, and their intellectual ballast
+consists of college reminiscences, souvenirs of the law schools, and the
+common-places picked up in the houses of Raynal and his associates.
+As to Brissot and Marat, who are ostentatious humanitarians, their
+knowledge of France and of foreign countries consists in what they have
+seen through the dormer windows of their garrets, and through utopian
+spectacles. In minds like these, empty or led astray, the Contrat-Social
+could not fail to become a gospel; for it reduces political science to
+a strict application of an elementary axiom which relieves them of all
+study, and hands society over to the caprice of the people, or, in other
+words, delivers it into their own hands.--Hence they demolish all
+that remains of social institutions, and push on equalization until
+everything is brought down to the same level.
+
+"With my principles," writes Desmoulins,[1419] "is associated the
+satisfaction of putting myself where I belong, of showing my strength to
+those who have despised me, of lowering to my level all whom fortune has
+placed above me: my motto is that of all honest people: 'No superiors!'"
+
+Thus, under the great name of Liberty, each vain spirit seeks its
+revenge and finds its nourishment. What is sweeter and more natural than
+to justify passion by theory, to be factious in the belief that this is
+patriotism, and to cloak the interests of ambition with the interests of
+humanity?
+
+Let us picture to ourselves these directors of public opinion as they
+were three months earlier: Desmoulins, a briefless barrister, living in
+furnished lodgings with petty debts, and on a few louis extracted from
+his relations. Loustalot, still more unknown, was admitted the previous
+year to the Parliament of Bordeaux, and has landed at Paris in search of
+a career. Danton, another second-rate lawyer, coming out of a hovel in
+Champagne, borrowed the money to pay his expenses, while his stinted
+household is kept up only by means of a louis which is given to him
+weekly by his father-in-law, who is a coffee-house keeper. Brissot, a
+strolling Bohemian, formerly employee of literary pirates, has roamed
+over the world for fifteen years, without bringing back with him either
+from England or America anything but a coat out at elbows and false
+ideas; and, finally, Marat; a writer that has been hissed, an abortive
+scholar and philosopher, a misrepresenter of his own experiences, caught
+by the natural philosopher Charles in the act of committing a scientific
+fraud, and fallen from the top of his inordinate ambition to the
+subordinate post of doctor in the stables of the Comte d'Artois.--At the
+present time, Danton, President of the Cordeliers, can arrest any one he
+pleases in his district, and his violent gestures and thundering voice
+secure to him, till something better turns up, the government of his
+section of the city. A word of Marat's has just caused Major Belzunce at
+Caen to be assassinated. Desmoulins announces, with a smile of triumph,
+that "a large section of the capital regards him as one among the
+principal instigators of the Revolution, and that many even go so far as
+to say that he is the author of it." Is it to be supposed that, borne so
+high by such a sudden jerk of fortune, they wish to put on the drag and
+again descend? and is it not clear that they will aid with all
+their might the revolt which hoists them towards the loftiest
+summits?--Moreover, the brain reels at a height like this; suddenly
+launched in the air and feeling as if everything was tottering around
+them, they utter exclamations of indignation and terror, they see plots
+on all sides, imagine invisible cords pulling in an opposite direction,
+and they call upon the people to cut them. With the full weight of their
+inexperience, incapacity, and improvidence, of their fears, credulity,
+and dogmatic obstinacy, they urge on popular attacks, and their
+newspaper articles or discourses are all summed up in the following
+phrases:
+
+"Fellow-citizens, you, the people of the lower class, you who listen
+to me, you have enemies in the Court and the aristocracy. The
+H�tel-de-Ville and the National Assembly are your servants. Seize your
+enemies with a strong hand, and hang them, and let your servants know
+that they must quicken their steps!"
+
+Desmoulins styles himself "District-attorney of the gallows,"[1420] and
+if he at all regrets the murders of Foulon and Berthier, it is because
+this too expeditious judgment has allowed the proofs of conspiracy to
+perish, thereby saving a number of traitors: he himself mentions twenty
+of them haphazard, and little does he care whether he makes mistakes.
+
+"We are in the dark, and it is well that faithful dogs should bark, even
+at all who pass by, so that there may be no fear of robbers."
+
+From this time forth Marat[1421] denounces the King, the ministers,
+the administration, the bench, the bar, the financial system and the
+academies, all as "suspicious;" at all events the people only suffer on
+their account.
+
+"The Government is monopolizing grain, to make us to pay through the
+nose for a poisonous bread."
+
+The Government, again, through a new conspiracy is about to blockade
+Paris, so as to starve it with greater ease. Utterances of this kind,
+at such a time, are firebrands thrown upon fear and hunger to kindle
+the flames of rage and cruelty. To this frightened and fasting crowd the
+agitators and newspaper writers continue to repeat that it must act,
+and act alongside of the authorities, and, if need be, against them.
+In other words, We will do as we please; we are the sole legitimate
+masters;
+
+"in a well-constituted government, the people as a body are the real
+sovereign: our delegates are appointed only to execute our orders; what
+right has the clay to rebel against the potter?"
+
+On the strength of such principles, the tumultuous club which occupies
+the Palais-Royal substitutes itself for the Assembly at Versailles.
+Has it not all the titles for this office? The Palais-Royal "saved the
+nation" on the 12th and 13th of July. The Palais-Royal, "through its
+spokesmen and pamphlets," has made everybody and even the soldiers
+"philosophers." It is the house of patriotism, "the rendezvous of the
+select among the patriotic," whether provincials or Parisians, of all
+who possess the right of suffrage, and who cannot or will not exercise
+it in their own district. "It saves time to come to the Palais-Royal.
+There is no need there of appealing to the President for the right to
+speak, or to wait one's time for a couple of hours. The orator proposes
+his motion, and, if it finds supporters, mounts a chair. If he is
+applauded, it is put into proper shape. If he is hissed, he goes away.
+This was the way of the Romans." Behold the veritable National Assembly!
+It is superior to the other semi-feudal affair, encumbered with "six
+hundred deputies of the clergy and nobility," who are so many intruders
+and who "should be sent out into the galleries."--Hence the pure
+Assembly rules the impure Assembly, and "the Caf� Foy lays claim to the
+government of France."
+
+
+
+
+IV.--Intervention by the popular leaders with the Government.
+
+     Their pressure on the Assembly.
+
+On the 30th of July, the harlequin who led the insurrection at Rouen
+having been arrested, "it is openly proposed at the Palais Royal[1422]
+to go in a body and demand his release."--On the 1st of August, Thouret,
+whom the moderate party of the Assembly have just made President, is
+obliged to resign; the Palais-Royal threatens to send a band and murder
+him along with those who voted for him, and lists of proscriptions,
+in which several of the deputies are inscribed, begin to be
+circulated.--From this time forth, on all great questions-the abolition
+of the feudal system, the suppression of tithes, a declaration of the
+rights of man, the dispute about the Chambers, the King's power of
+veto,[1423] the pressure from without inclines the balance: in this
+way the Declaration of Rights, which is rejected in secret session by
+twenty-eight bureaus out of thirty, is forced through by the tribunes in
+a public sitting and passed by a majority.--Just as before the 14th of
+July, and to a still greater extent, two kinds of compulsion influence
+the votes, and it is always the ruling faction which employs both its
+hands to throttle its opponents. On the one hand this faction takes post
+on the galleries in knots composed nearly always of the same persons,
+"five or six hundred permanent actors," who yell according to understood
+signals and at the word of command.[1424] Many of these are French
+Guards, in civilian clothes, and who relieve each other: previously
+they have asked of their favorite deputy "at what hour they must come,
+whether all goes on well, and whether he is satisfied with those fools
+of parsons (calotins) and the aristocrats." Others consist of low women
+under the command of Th�roigne de M�ricourt, a virago courtesan, who
+assigns them their positions and gives them the signal for hooting
+or for applause. Publicly and in full session, on the occasion of the
+debate on the veto, "the deputies are applauded or insulted by the
+galleries according as they utter the word 'suspensive,' or the word
+'indefinite.' "Threats," (says one of them) "circulated; I heard
+them on all sides around me." These threats are repeated on going out:
+"Valets dismissed by their masters, deserters, and women in rags,"
+threaten the refractory with the lamp post, "and thrust their fists in
+their faces. In the hall itself, and much more accurately than before
+the 14th of July, their names are taken down, and the lists, handed
+over to the populace," travel to the Palais-Royal, from where they
+are dispatched in correspondence and in newspapers to the
+provinces.[1425]--Thus we see the second means of compulsion; each
+deputy is answerable for his vote, at Paris, with his own life, and,
+in the province, with those of his family. Members of the former
+Third-Estate avow that they abandon the idea of two Chambers, because
+"they are not disposed to get their wives' and children's throats cut."
+On the 30th of August, Saint-Hurugue, the most noisy of the Palais-Royal
+barkers, marches off to Versailles, at the head of 1,500 men, to
+complete the conversion of the Assembly. This garden club indeed, from
+the heights of its great learning, integrity, and immaculate reputation,
+decides that the ignorant, corrupt, and doubtful deputies must be got
+rid of." That they are such cannot be questioned, because they defend
+the royal sanction; there are over 600 and more, 120 are deputies of the
+communes, who must be expelled to begin with, and then must be brought
+to judgment.[1426] In the meantime they are informed, as well as the
+Bishop of Langres, President of the National Assembly, that "15,000 men
+are ready to light up their chateaux and in particular yours, sir."
+To avoid all mistake, the secretaries of the Assembly are informed
+in writing that '2,000 letters" will be sent into the provinces to
+denounce to the people the conduct of the malignant deputies: "Your
+houses are held as a surety for your opinions: keep this in mind, and
+save yourselves!" At last, on the morning of the 1st of August, five
+deputations from the Palais-Royal, one of them led by Loustalot, march
+in turn to the H�tel-de-Ville, insisting that the drums should be beaten
+and the citizens be called together for the purpose of changing the
+deputies, or their instructions, and of ordering the National Assembly
+to suspend its discussion on the veto until the districts and provinces
+could give expression to their will: the people, in effect, alone being
+sovereign, and alone competent, always has the right to dismiss or
+instruct anew its servants, the deputies. On the following day, August
+2nd, to make matters plainer, new delegates from the same Palais-Royal
+suit gestures to words; they place two fingers on their throats, on
+being introduced before the representatives of the commune, as a hint
+that, if the latter do not obey, they will be hung.
+
+After this it is vain for the National Assembly to make any show of
+indignation, to declare that it despises threats, and to protest its
+independence; the impression is already produced. "More than 300 members
+of the communes," says Mounier, "had decided to support the absolute
+veto." At the end of ten days most of these had gone over, several of
+them through attachment to the King, because they were afraid of "a
+general uprising," and "were not willing to jeopardize the lives of the
+royal family." But concessions like these only provoke fresh extortions.
+The politicians of the street now know by experience the effect of
+brutal violence on legal authority. Emboldened by success and by
+impunity, they reckon up their strength and the weakness of the latter.
+One blow more, and they are undisputed masters. Besides, the issue is
+already apparent to clear-sighted men. When the agitators of the public
+thoroughfares, and the porters at the street-corners, convinced of their
+superior wisdom, impose decrees by the strength of their lungs, of their
+fists, and of their pikes, at that moment experience, knowledge, good
+sense, cool-blood, genius, and judgment, disappear from human affairs,
+and things revert back to chaos. Mirabeau, in favor of the veto for
+life, saw the crowd imploring him with tears in their eyes to change his
+opinion:
+
+"Monsieur le Comte, if the King obtains this veto, what will be the use
+of a National Assembly? We shall all be slaves "[1427]
+
+Outbursts of this description are not to be resisted, and all is lost.
+Already, near the end of September, the remark applies which Mirabeau
+makes to the Comte de la Marck:
+
+"Yes, all is lost; the King and Queen will be swept away, and you will
+see the populace trampling on their lifeless bodies."
+
+Eight days after this, on the 5th and 6th of October, it breaks out
+against both King and Queen, against the National Assembly and the
+Government, against all government present and to come; the violent
+party which rules in Paris obtains possession of the chiefs of France
+to hold them under strict surveillance, and to justify its intermittent
+outrages by one permanent outrage.
+
+
+
+
+V.--The 5th and 6th of October.
+
+Once more, two different currents combine into one torrent to hurry the
+crowd onward to a common end.--On the one hand are the cravings of the
+stomach, and women excited by the famine:
+
+"Now that bread cannot be had in Paris, let us go to Versailles and
+demand it there; once we have the King, Queen, and Dauphin in the midst
+of us, they will be obliged to feed us;" we will bring back "the Baker,
+the Bakeress, and the Baker's boy." --On the other hand, there is
+fanaticism, and men who are pushed on by the need to dominate.
+
+"Now that our chiefs yonder disobey us,--let us go and make them obey us
+forthwith; the King is quibbling over the Constitution and the Rights of
+Man--make him approve them; his guards refuse to wear our cockade--make
+them accept it; they want to carry him off to Metz--make him come to
+Paris, here, under our eyes and in our hands, he, and the lame Assembly
+too, will march straight on, and quickly, whether they like it or not,
+and always on the right road."--Under this confluence of ideas the
+expedition is arranged.[1428] Ten days before this, it is publicly
+alluded to at Versailles. On the 4th of October, at Paris, a woman
+proposes it at the Palais-Royal; Danton roars at the Cordeliers;
+Marat, "alone, makes as much noise as the four trumpets on the Day of
+Judgment." Loustalot writes that a second revolutionary paroxysm is
+necessary." "The day passes," says Desmoulins, "in holding councils at
+the Palais-Royal, and in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, on the ends of
+the bridges, and on the quays... in pulling off the cockades of but one
+color.... These are torn off and trampled under foot with threats of the
+lamp post, in case of fresh offense; a soldier who is trying to
+refasten his, changes his mind on seeing a hundred sticks raised against
+him."[1429] These are the premonitory symptoms of a crisis; a huge ulcer
+has formed in this feverish, suffering body, and it is about to break.
+
+But, as is usually the case, it is a purulent concentration of the most
+poisonous passions and the foulest motives. The vilest of men and
+women were engaged in it. Money was freely distributed. Was it done by
+intriguing subalterns who, playing upon the aspirations of the Duke of
+Orleans, extracted millions from him under the pretext of making him
+lieutenant-general of the kingdom? Or is it due to the fanatics who,
+from the end of April, clubbed together to debauch the soldiery, and
+stir up a body of ruffians for the purpose of leveling and destroying
+everything around them?[1430] There are always Machiavellis of the
+highways and of houses of ill-fame ready to excite the foul and the
+vile of both sexes. On the first day that the Flemish regiment goes into
+garrison at Versailles an attempt is made to corrupt it with money and
+women. Sixty abandoned women are sent from Paris for this purpose, while
+the French Guards come and treat their new comrades. The latter have
+been treated at the Palais-Royal, while three of them, at Versailles,
+exclaim, showing some crown pieces of six livres, "What a pleasure it
+is to go to Paris! one always comes back with money!" In this way,
+resistance is overcome beforehand. As to the attack, women are to be the
+advanced guard, because the soldiers will scruple to fire at them;
+their ranks, however, will be reinforced by a number of men disguised
+as women. On looking closely at them they are easily recognized,
+notwithstanding their rouge, by their badly-shaven beards, and by their
+voices and gait.[1431] No difficulty has been found in obtaining men
+and women among the prostitutes of the Palais-Royal and the military
+deserters who serve them as bullies. It is probable that the former lent
+their lovers the cast-off dresses they had to spare. At night all will
+meet again at the common rendezvous, on the benches of the National
+Assembly, where they are quite as much at home as in their own
+houses.[1432]--In any event, the first band which marches out is of this
+stamp, displaying the finery and the gaiety of the profession; "most of
+them young, dressed in white, with powdered hair and a sprightly air;"
+many of them "laughing, singing, and drinking," as they would do at
+setting out for a picnic in the country. Three or four of them are known
+by name--one brandishing a sword, and another, the notorious Th�roigne.
+Madeleine Chabry Louison, who is selected to address the King, is a
+pretty grisette who sells flowers, and, no doubt, something else, at the
+Palais-Royal. Some appear to belong to the first rank in their calling,
+and to have tact and the manners of society--suppose, for instance,
+that Champfort and Laclos sent their mistresses. To these must be added
+washerwomen, beggars, bare-footed women, and fishwomen, enlisted for
+several days before and paid accordingly. This is the first nucleus,
+and it keeps on growing; for, by compulsion or consent, the
+troop incorporates into it, as it passes along, all the women it
+encounters--seamstresses, portresses, housekeepers, and even respectable
+females, whose dwellings are entered with threats of cutting off
+their hair if they do not fall in. To these must be added vagrants,
+street-rovers, ruffians and robbers--the lees of Paris, which accumulate
+and come to the surface every time agitation occurs: they are to be
+found already at the first hour, behind the troop of women at the
+H�tel-de-Ville. Others are to follow during the evening and in the
+night. Others are waiting at Versailles. Many, both at Paris and
+Versailles, are under pay: one, in a dirty whitish vest, chinks gold and
+silver coin in his hand.--Such is the foul scum which, both in front and
+in the rear, rolls along with the popular tide; whatever is done to stem
+the torrent, it widens out and will leave its mark at every stage of its
+overflow.
+
+The first troop, consisting of four or five hundred women, begin
+operations by forcing the guard of the H�tel-de-Ville, which is
+unwilling to make use of its bayonets. They spread through the rooms
+and try to burn all the written documents they can find, declaring that
+there has been nothing but scribbling since the Revolution began.[1433]
+A crowd of men follow after them, bursting open doors, and pillaging
+the magazine of arms. Two hundred thousand francs in Treasury notes are
+stolen or disappear; several of the ruffians set fire to the building,
+while others hang an abb�. The abb� is cut down, and the fire
+extinguished only just in time: such are the interludes of the popular
+drama. In the meantime, the crowd of women increases on the Place de
+Gr�ve, always with the same unceasing cry, "Bread!" and "To Versailles!"
+One of the conquerors of the Bastille; the usher Maillard, offers
+himself as a leader. He is accepted, and taps his drum; on leaving
+Paris, he has seven or eight thousand women with him, and, in addition,
+some hundreds of men; by dint of remonstrances, he succeeds in
+maintaining some kind of order amongst this rabble as far as
+Versailles.--But it is a rabble notwithstanding, and consequently so
+much brute force, at once anarchical and imperious. On the one hand,
+each, and the worst among them, does what he pleases--which will be
+quite evident this very evening. On the other hand, its ponderous mass
+crushes all authority and overrides all rules and regulations--which is
+at once apparent on reaching Versailles.--Admitted into the Assembly, at
+first in small numbers, the women crowd against the door, push in with a
+rush, fill the galleries, then the hall, the men along with them, armed
+with clubs, halberds, and pikes, all pell-mell, side by side with the
+deputies, taking possession of their benches, voting along with them,
+and gathering about the President, who, surrounded, threatened, and
+insulted, finally abandons the position, while his chair is taken by
+a woman.[1434] A fishwoman commands in a gallery, and about a hundred
+women around her shout or keep silence at her bidding, while she
+interrupts and abuses the deputies:
+
+"Who is that speaker there? Silence that blabbermouth; he does not know
+what he is talking about. The question is how to get bread. Let papa
+Mirabeau speak--we want to hear him."
+
+A decree on subsistence having been passed, the leaders demand something
+in addition; they must be allowed to enter all places where they suspect
+any monopolizing to be going on, and the price of "bread must be fixed
+at six sous the four pounds, and meat at six sous per pound."
+
+"You must not think that we are children to be played with. We are ready
+to strike. Do as you are bidden."
+
+All their political injunctions emanate from this central idea. And
+further:
+
+"Send back the Flemish regiment--it is a thousand men more to feed, and
+they take bread out of our mouths."--"Punish the aristocrats, who hinder
+the bakers from baking." "Down with the skull-cap; the priests are the
+cause of our trouble!"--"Monsieur Mounier, why did you advocate that
+villainous veto? Beware of the lamp post!"
+
+Under this pressure, a deputation of the Assembly, with the President at
+its head, sets out on foot, in the mud, through the rain, and watched by
+a howling escort of women and men armed with pikes: after five hours
+of waiting and entreaty, it wrings from the King, besides the decree on
+subsistence, about which there was no difficulty, the acceptance,
+pure and simple, of the Declaration of Rights, and his sanction to the
+constitutional articles.--Such is the independence of the King and the
+Assembly.[1435] Thus are the new principles of justice established, the
+grand outlines of the Constitution, the abstract axioms of political
+truth under the dictatorship of a crowd which extorts not only blindly,
+but which is half-conscious of its blindness.
+
+"Monsieur le President," some among the women say to Mounier, who
+returns with the Royal sanction, "will it be of any real use to us? will
+it give poor folks bread in Paris?"
+
+Meanwhile, the scum has been bubbling up around the chateau; and the
+abandoned women subsidized in Paris are pursuing their calling.[1436]
+They slip through into the lines of the regiment drawn on the square, in
+spite of the sentinels. Th�roigne, in an Amazonian red vest, distributes
+money among them.
+
+"Side with us," some say to the men; "we shall soon beat the King's
+Guards, strip off their fine coats and sell them."
+
+Others lie sprawling on the ground, alluring the soldiers, and make such
+offers as to lead one of them to exclaim, "We are going to have a jolly
+time of it!" Before the day is over, the regiment is seduced; the women
+have, according to their own idea, acted for a good motive. When a
+political idea finds its way into such heads, instead of ennobling them,
+it becomes degraded there; its only effect is to let loose vices which a
+remnant of modesty still keeps in subjection, and full play is given to
+luxurious or ferocious instincts under cover of the public good.--The
+passions, moreover, become intensified through their mutual interaction;
+crowds, clamor, disorder, longings, and fasting, end in a state of
+frenzy, from which nothing can issue but dizzy madness and rage.--This
+frenzy began to show itself on the way. Already, on setting out, a woman
+had exclaimed,
+
+"We shall bring back the Queen's head on the end of a pike!"[1437]
+
+On reaching the S�vres bridge others added,
+
+"Let us cut her throat, and make cockades of her entrails!"
+
+Rain is falling; they are cold, tired, and hungry, and get nothing to
+eat but a bit of bread, distributed at a late hour, and with difficulty,
+on the Place d'Armes. One of the bands cuts up a slaughtered horse,
+roasts it, and consumes it half raw, after the manner of savages. It is
+not surprising that, under the names of patriotism and "justice," savage
+ideas spring up in their minds against "members of the National Assembly
+who are not with the principles of the people," against "the Bishop
+of Langres, Mounier, and the rest." One man in a ragged old red coat
+declares that "he must have the head of the Abb� Maury to play nine-pins
+with." But it is especially against the Queen, who is a woman, and in
+sight, that the feminine imagination is the most aroused.
+
+"She alone is the cause of the evils we endure.... she must be killed,
+and quartered." --Night advances; there are acts of violence, and
+violence engenders violence.
+
+"How glad I should be," says one man, "if I could only lay my hand on
+that she-devil, and strike off her head on the first curbstone!"
+
+Towards morning, some cry out,
+
+"Where is that cursed cat? We must eat her heart out... We'll take
+off her head, cut her heart out, and fry her liver!" --With the first
+murders the appetite for blood has been awakened; the women from Paris
+say that "they have brought tubs to carry away the stumps of the
+Royal Guards," and at these words others clap their hands. Some of the
+riffraff of the crowd examine the rope of the lamp post in the court of
+the National Assembly, and judging it not to be sufficiently strong, are
+desirous of supplying its place with another "to hang the Archbishop
+of Paris, Maury, and d'Espr�m�nil."--This murderous, carnivorous rage
+penetrates even among those whose duty it is to maintain order, one
+of the National Guard being heard to say that "the body-guards must be
+killed to the last man, and their hearts torn out for a breakfast."
+
+Finally, towards midnight, the National Guard of Paris arrives; but
+it only adds one insurrection to another, for it has likewise mutinied
+against its chiefs.[1438]
+
+"If M. de Lafayette is not disposed to accompany us," says one of the
+grenadiers, "we will take an old grenadier for our commander."
+
+Having come to this decision, they sought the general at the
+H�tel-de-Ville, and the delegates of six of the companies made their
+instructions known to him.
+
+"General, we do not believe that you are a traitor, but we think that
+the Government is betraying us.... The committee on subsistence is
+deceiving us, and must be removed. We want to go to Versailles to
+exterminate the body-guard and the Flemish regiment who have trampled
+on the national cockade. If the King of France is too feeble to wear
+his crown, let him take it off; we will crown his son and things will go
+better."
+
+In vain Lafayette refuses, and harangues them on the Place de Gr�ve; in
+vain he resists for hours, now addressing them and now imposing silence.
+Armed bands, coming from the Faubourgs Saint-Antoine and Saint-Marceau,
+swell the crowd; they take aim at him; others prepare the lamp-post. He
+then dismounts and endeavors to return to the H�tel-de-Ville, but his
+grenadiers bar the way:
+
+"Morbleu, General, you will stay with us; you will not abandon us!"
+
+Being their chief it is pretty plain that he must follow them; which
+is also the sentiment of the representatives of the commune at the
+H�tel-de-Ville, who send him their authorization, and even the order to
+march, "seeing that it is impossible for him to refuse."
+
+Fifteen thousand men thus reach Versailles, and in front of and along
+with them thousands of ruffians, protected by the darkness. On this side
+the National Guard of Versailles, posted around the chateau, together
+with the people of Versailles, who bar the way against vehicles, have
+closed up every outlet.[1439] The King is prisoner in his own palace,
+he and his, with his ministers and his court, and with no defense. For,
+with his usual optimism, he has confided the outer posts of the chateau
+to Lafayette's soldiers, and, through a humanitarian obstinacy which he
+is to maintain up to the last,[1440] he has forbidden his own guards
+to fire on the crowd, so that they are only there for show. With common
+right in his favor, the law, and the oath which Lafayette had just
+obliged his troops to renew, what could he have to fear? What could be
+more effective with the people than trust in them and prudence? And by
+playing the sheep one is sure of taming brutes!
+
+From five o'clock in the morning they prowl around the palace-railings.
+Lafayette, exhausted with fatigue, has taken an hour's repose,[1441]
+which hour suffices for them.[1442] A populace armed with pikes and
+clubs, men and women, surrounds a squad of eighty-eight National Guards,
+forces them to fire on the King's Guards, bursts open a door, seizes
+two of the guards and chops their heads off. The executioner, who is a
+studio model, with a heavy beard, stretches out his blood-stained hands
+and glories in the act; and so great is the effect on the National Guard
+that they move off; through sensibility, in order not to witness such
+sights: such is the resistance! In the meantime the crowd invade the
+staircases, beat down and trample on the guards they encounter, and
+burst open the doors with imprecations against the Queen. The Queen runs
+off; just in time, in her underclothes; she takes refuge with the King
+and the rest of the royal family, who have in vain barricaded themselves
+in the oeil-de-Boeuf, a door of which is broken in: here they stand,
+awaiting death, when Lafayette arrives with his grenadiers and saves
+all that can be saved--their lives, and nothing more. For, from the crowd
+huddled in the marble court the shout rises, "To Paris with the King!" a
+command to which the King submits.
+
+Now that the great hostage is in their hands, will they deign to accept
+the second one? This is doubtful. On the Queen approaching the balcony
+with her son and daughter, a howl arises of "No children!" They want to
+have her alone in the sights of their guns, and she understands that. At
+this moment M. de Lafayette, throwing the shield of his popularity over
+her, appears on the balcony at her side and respectfully kisses her
+hand. The reaction is instantaneous in this over-excited crowd. Both
+the men and especially the women, in such a state of nervous tension,
+readily jump from one extreme to another, rage bordering on tears. A
+portress, who is a companion of Maillard's,[1443] imagines that she
+hears Lafayette promise in the Queen's name "to love her people and be
+as much attached to them as Jesus Christ to his Church." People sob and
+embrace each other; the grenadiers shift their caps to the heads of the
+body-guard. Everything will be fine: "the people have won their King
+back."--Nothing is to be done now but to rejoice; and the cortege moves
+on. The royal family and a hundred deputies, in carriages, form the
+center, and then comes the artillery, with a number of women bestriding
+the cannons; next, a convoy of flour. Round about are the King's Guards,
+each with a National Guard mounted behind him; then comes the National
+Guard of Paris, and after them men with pikes and women on foot, on
+horseback, in cabs, and on carts; in front is a band bearing two severed
+heads on the ends of two poles, which halts at a hairdresser's, in
+S�vres, to have these heads powdered and curled;[1444] they are made to
+bow by way of salutation, and are daubed all over with cream; there are
+jokes and shouts of laughter; the people stop to eat and drink on the
+road, and oblige the guards to clink glasses with them; they shout and
+fire salvos of musketry; men and women hold each other's hands and
+sing and dance about in the mud.--Such is the new fraternity: a funeral
+procession of legal and legitimate authorities, a triumph of brutality
+over intelligence, a murderous and political Mardi-gras, a formidable
+masquerade which, preceded by the insignia of death, drags along with it
+the heads of France, the King, the ministers, and the deputies, that it
+may constrain them to rule to until according to its frenzy, that it may
+hold them under its them pikes until it is pleased to slaughter them.
+
+
+
+
+VI.--The Government and the nation in the hands of the revolutionary
+party.
+
+This time there can be no mistake: the Reign of Terror is fully and
+firmly established. On this very day the mob stops a vehicle, in which
+it hopes to find M. de Virieu, and declares, on searching it, that "they
+are looking for the deputy to massacre him, as well as others of whom
+they have a list."[1445] Two days afterwards the Abb� Gr�goire tells
+the National Assembly that not a day passes without ecclesiastics being
+insulted in Paris, and pursued with "horrible threats." Malouet is
+advised that "as soon as guns are distributed among the militia, the
+first use made of them will be to get rid of those deputies who are bad
+citizens," and among others of the Abb� Maury. "The moment I stepped out
+into the streets," writes Mounier, "I was publicly followed. It was a
+crime to be seen in my company. Wherever I happened to go, along
+with two or three of my companions, it was stated that an assembly of
+aristocrats was forming. I had become such an object of terror that they
+threatened to set fire to a country-house where I had passed twenty-four
+hours; and, to relieve their minds, a promise had to be given that
+neither myself nor my friends should be again received into it." In one
+week five or six hundred deputies have their passports[1446] made out,
+and hold themselves ready to depart. During the following month one
+hundred and twenty give in their resignations, or no longer appear
+in the Assembly. Mounier, Lally-Tollendal, the Bishop of Langres, and
+others besides, quit Paris, and afterwards France. Mallet du Pan writes,
+"Opinion now dictates its judgment with steel in hand. Believe or die is
+the anathema which vehement spirits pronounce, and this in the name
+of Liberty. Moderation has become a crime." After the 7th of October,
+Mirabeau says to the Comte de la Marck:
+
+"If you have any influence with the King or the Queen, persuade them
+that they and France are lost if the royal family does not leave Paris.
+I am busy with a plan for getting them away."
+
+He prefers everything to the present situation, "even civil war;"
+for "war, at least, invigorates the soul," while here, "under the
+dictatorship of demagogues, we are being drowned in slime." Given up
+to itself, Paris, in three months, "will certainly be a hospital, and,
+perhaps, a theater of horrors." Against the rabble and its leaders, it
+is essential that the King should at once coalesce "with his people,"
+that he should go to Rouen, appeal to the provinces, provide a Centre
+for public opinion, and, if necessary, resort to armed resistance.
+Malouet, on his side, declares that "the Revolution, since the 5th of
+October, "horrifies all sensible men, and every party, but that it
+is complete and irresistible." Thus the three best minds that are
+associated with the Revolution--those whose verified prophecies attest
+genius or good sense; the only ones who, for two or three years, and
+from week to week, have always predicted wisely, and who have employed
+reason in their demonstrations--these three, Mallet du Pan, Mirabeau,
+Mabuet, agree in their estimate of the event, and in measuring its
+consequences. The nation is gliding down a declivity, and no one
+possesses the means or the force to arrest it. The King cannot do it:
+"undecided and weak beyond all expression, his character resembles those
+oiled ivory balls which one vainly strives to keep together."[1447] And
+as for the Assembly, blinded, violated, and impelled on by the theory
+it proclaims, and by the faction which supports it, each of its grand
+decrees only renders its fall the more precipitate.
+
+
+*****
+
+
+[Footnote 1401: Bailly, "M�moires," II. 195, 242.]
+
+[Footnote 1402: Elys�e Loustalot, journalist, editor of the paper
+"R�volutions de Paris," was a young lawyer who had shown a natural
+genius for innovative journalism. He was to die already in 1790. (SR.)]
+
+[Footnote 1403: Montjoie, ch. LXX, p. 65.]
+
+[Footnote 1404: Bailly, II. 74, 174, 242, 261, 282, 345, 392.]
+
+[Footnote 1405: Such as domiciliary visits and arrests apparently made
+by lunatics. ("Archives de la Pr�fecture de Police de Paris.")--And
+Montjoie, ch. LXX. p.67. Expedition of the National Guard against
+imaginary brigands who are cutting down the crops at Montmorency and the
+volley fired in the air.--Conquest of Ile-Adam and Chantilly.]
+
+[Footnote 1406: Bailly, II. 46, 95, 232, 287, 296.]
+
+[Footnote 1407: "Archives de la Pr�fecture de Police," minutes of the
+meeting of the section of Butte des Moulins, October 5, 1789.]
+
+[Footnote 1408: Bailly, II. 224.--Dusaulx, 418, 202, 257, 174, 158. The
+powder transported was called poudre de traite (transport); the people
+understood it as poudre de tra�tre (traitor). M. de la Salle was near
+being killed through the addition of an r. It is he who had taken
+command of the National Guard on the 13th of July.]
+
+[Footnote 1409: Floquet, VII. 54. There is the same scene at Granville,
+in Normandy, on the 16th of October. A woman had assassinated her
+husband, while a soldier who was her lover is her accomplice; the woman
+was about to be hung and the man broken on the wheel, when the populace
+shout, "The nation has the right of pardon," upset the scaffold, and
+save the two assassins.]
+
+[Footnote 1410: Bailly, II. 274 (August 17th).]
+
+[Footnote 1411: Bailly, II, 83, 202, 230, 235, 283, 299.]
+
+[Footnote 1412: Mercure de France, the number for September 26th.--De
+Goncourt, p. 111.]
+
+[Footnote 1413: Mercier, "Tableau de Paris," I, 58; X. 151.]
+
+[Footnote 1414: De Ferri�res, I. 178.--Buchez and Roux, II. 311,
+316.--Bai11y, II. 104, 174, 207, 246, 257, 282.]
+
+[Footnote 1415: Mercure de France, September 5th, 1789. Horace Walpole's
+Letters, September 5, 1789.--M. de Lafayette, "M�moires," I. 272. During
+the week following the 14th of July, 6,000 soldiers deserted and went
+over to the people, besides 400 and 800 Swiss Guards and six battalions
+of the French Guards, who remain without officers, and do as they
+please. Vagabonds from the neighboring villages flock in, and there are
+more than "30,000 strangers and vagrants" in Paris.]
+
+[Footnote 1416: Bailly, II. 282. The crowd of deserters was so great
+that Lafayette was obliged to place a guard at the barriers to keep them
+from entering the city. "Without this precaution the whole army would
+have come in."]
+
+[Footnote 1417: De Ferri�res, I. 103.--De Lavalette, I. 39.--Bailly, I.
+53 (on the lawyers). "It may be said that the success of the Revolution
+is due to this class."--Marmontel, II. 243 "Since the first elections
+of Paris, in 1789, I remarked," he says, "this species of restless
+intriguing men, contending with each other to be heard, impatient to
+make themselves prominent....It is well known what interest this body
+(the lawyers) had to change Reform into Revolution, the Monarchy into
+a Republic; the object was to organize for itself a perpetual
+aristocracy."--Buchez and Roux, II. 358 (article by C. Desmoulins). "In
+the districts everybody exhausts his lungs and his time in trying to be
+president, vice-president, secretary or vice-secretary"]
+
+[Footnote 1418: Eug�ne Hatin, "Histoire de la Presse," vol. V. p. 113.
+"Le Patriote fran�ais" by Brissot, July 28, 1789.--"L'Ami du Peuple,"
+by Marat, September 12, 1789.--"Annales patriotiques et litt�raires," by
+Carra and Mercier, October 5, 1789,--"Les R�volutions de Paris," chief
+editor Loustalot, July 17th, 1789.--"Le Tribun du peuple," letters
+by (middle of 1789).--"R�volutions de France et de Brabant," by C.
+Desmoulins, November 28, 1789; his "France libre" (I believe of the
+month of August, and his "Discours de la Lanterne" of the month of
+September).--"The Moniteur" does not make its appearance until November
+24, 1789. In the seventy numbers which follow, up to February 3, 1790,
+the debates of the Assembly were afterwards written out, amplified, and
+put in a dramatic form. All numbers anterior to February 3, 1790, are
+the result of a compilation executed in the year IV. The narrative part
+during the first six months of the Revolution is of no value. The report
+of the sittings of the Assembly is more exact, but should be revised
+sitting by sitting and discourse by discourse for a detailed history
+of the National Assembly. The principal authorities which are really
+contemporary are, "Le Mercure de France," "Le Journal de Paris," "Le
+point de Jour" by Barr�re, the "Courrier de Versailles," by Gorsas, the
+"Courrier de Provence" by Mirabeau, the "Journal des D�bats et D�crets,"
+the official reports of the National assembly, the "Bulletin de
+l'Asembl�e Nationale," by Marat, besides the newspapers above cited
+for the period following the 14th of July, and the speeches, which are
+printed separately.]
+
+[Footnote 1419: C. Desmoulins, letters of September 20th and of
+subsequent dates. (He quote, a passage from Lucan in the sense
+indicated).--Brissot, "M�moires," passim.--Biography of Danton by
+Robinet. (See the testimony of Madame Roland and of Rousselin de
+Saint-Albin.)]
+
+[Footnote 1420: "Discours de la Lanterne." See the epigraph of the
+engraving.]
+
+[Footnote 1421: Buchez and Roux; III. 55; article of Marat, October lst.
+"Sweep all the suspected men out of the H�tel-de-Ville. . . . . Reduce
+the deputies of the communes to fifty; do not let them remain in office
+more than a month or six weeks, and compel them to transact business
+only in public."--And II. 412, another article by Marat.--Ibid. III.
+21. An article by Loustalot.--C. Desmoulins, "Discours de la Lanterne,"
+passim.--Bailly, II. 326.]
+
+[Footnote 1422: Mounier, "Des causes qui ont emp�che les Fran�ais d'�tre
+libre," I. 59.--Lally-Tollendal, second letter, 104.--Bailly, II. 203.]
+
+[Footnote 1423: De Bouill�, 207.--Lally-Tollendal, ibid, 141,
+146.--Mounier, ibid., 41, 60.]
+
+[Footnote 1424: Mercure de France, October 2, 1790 (article of Mallet du
+Pan: "I saw it"). Criminal proceedings at the Ch�telet on the events of
+October 5th and 6th. Deposition of M. Feydel, a deputy, No. 178.----De
+Montlosier, i. 259.--Desmoulins (La Lanterne). "Some members of the
+communes are gradually won over by pensions, by plans for making a
+fortune and by flattery. Happily, the incorruptible galleries are always
+on the side of the patriots. They represent the tribunes of the people
+seated on a bench in attendance on the deliberations of the Senate and
+who had the veto. They represent the metropolis and, fortunately, it
+is under the batteries of the metropolis that the constitution is being
+framed." (C. Desmoulins, simple-minded politician, always let the cat
+out of the bag.)]
+
+[Footnote 1425: "Proc�dure du Ch�telet," Ibid. Deposition of M. Malouet
+(No. 111). "I received every day, as well as MM. Lally and Mounier,
+anonymous letters and lists of proscriptions on which we were inscribed.
+These letters announced a prompt and violent death to every deputy that
+advocated the authority of the King."]
+
+[Footnote 1426: Buchez and Roux, I. 368, 376.---Bailly, II. 326,
+341.--Mounier, ibid., 62, 75.]
+
+[Footnote 1427: Etienne Dumont, 145.--Correspondence between Comte de
+Mirabeau and Comte de la Marck.]
+
+[Footnote 1428: "Proc�dure criminelle du Ch�telet," Deposition
+148.--Buchez and Roux, III. 67, 65. (Narrative of Desmoulins, article
+of Loustalot.) Mercure de France, number for September 5, 1789. "Sunday
+evening, August 30, at the Palais-Royal, the expulsion of several
+deputies of every class was demanded, and especially some of those from
+Dauphiny... They spoke of bringing the King to Paris as well as the
+Dauphin. All virtuous citizens, every incorruptible patriot, was
+exhorted to set out immediately for Versailles."]
+
+[Footnote 1429: These acts of violence were not reprisals; nothing of
+the kind took place at the banquet of the body-guards (October 1st).
+"Amidst the general joy," says an eye-witness, "I heard no insults
+against the National Assembly, nor against the popular party, nor
+against anybody. The only cries were 'Vive le Roi! Vive la Reine!
+We will defend them to the death!'" (Madame de Larochejacquelein,
+p.40.--Ibid. Madame Campan, another eye-witness.)--It appears to be
+certain, however, that the younger members of the National Guard at
+Versailles turned their cockades so as to be like other people, and it
+is also probable that some of the ladies distributed white cockades.
+The rest is a story made up before and after the event to justify the
+insurrection.--Cf. Lerol, "Histoire de Versailles," II. 20-107. Ibid.
+p. 141. "As to that proscription of the national cockade, all witnesses
+deny it." The originator of the calumny is Gorsas, editor of the
+Courrier de Versailles.]
+
+[Footnote 1430: "Proc�dure Criminelle du Ch�telet." Depositions 88, 110,
+120, 126, 127, 140, 146, 148.--Marmontel, "M�moires," a conversation
+with Champfort, in May, 1789.--Morellet, "M�moires," I. 398. (According
+to the evidence of Garat, Champfort gave all his savings, 3,000 livres,
+to defray the expenses of maneuvers of this description.)--Malouet
+(II. 2). knew four of the deputies "who took direct part in this
+conspiracy."]
+
+[Footnote 1431: "Proc�dure Criminelle du Ch�telet." 1st. On the Flemish
+soldiers. Depositions 17, 20, 24, 35, 87, 89, 98.--2nd. On the men
+disguised as women. Depositions 5, 10, 14, 44, 49, 59, 60, 110,
+120, 139, 145, 146, 148. The prosecutor designates six of them to
+be seized.--3rd. On the condition of the women of the expedition.
+Depositions 35, 83, 91, 98, 146, and 24.--4th. On the money distributed.
+Depositions 49, 56, 71, 82, 110, 126.]
+
+[Footnote 1432: "Proc�dure Criminelle du Ch�telet." Deposition 61.
+"During the night scenes, not very decent, occurred among these people,
+which the witness thought it useless to relate."]
+
+[Footnote 1433: "Proc�dure Criminelle du Ch�telet." Depositions 35, 44,
+81.--Buchez and Roux, III. 120. (Minutes of the meeting of the Commune,
+October 5th.) Journal de Paris, October 12th. A few days after, M. Pic,
+clerk of the prosecutor, brought "a package of 100,000 francs which he
+had saved from the enemies' hands," and another package of notes was
+found thrown, in the hubbub, into a receipt-box.]
+
+[Footnote 1434: "Proc�dure Criminelle du Ch�telet." Depositions 61,
+77, 81, 148, 154.--Dumont, 181.--Mounier, "Expos� justificatif," and
+specially "Fait relatif � la derni�re insurrection."]
+
+[Footnote 1435: "Proc�dure Criminelle du Ch�telet." Deposition 168. The
+witness sees on leaving the King's apartment "several women dressed as
+fish-wives, one of whom, with a pretty face, has a paper in her hand,
+and who exclaims as she holds it up, 'He! F..., we have forced the guy
+to sign.' "]
+
+[Footnote 1436: "Proc�dure Criminelle du Ch�telet." Depositions 89, 91,
+98. "Promising all, even raising their petticoats before them."]
+
+[Footnote 1437: "Proc�dure Criminelle du Ch�telet," Depositions 9, 20,
+24, 30, 49, 61, 82, 115, 149, 155.]
+
+[Footnote 1438: Proc�dure criminelle du Ch�telet." Depositions 7, 30,
+35, 40.--Cf. Lafayette, "M�moires," and Madame Campan, "M�moires."]
+
+[Footnote 1439: "Proc�dure Criminelle du Ch�telet." Deposition 24.
+A number of butcher-boys run after the carriages issuing from the
+Petite-Ecurie shouting out, "Don't let the curs escape!"]
+
+[Footnote 1440: "Proc�dure Criminelle du Ch�telet." Depositions 101, 91,
+89, and 17. M. de Miomandre, a body-guard, mildly says to the ruffians
+mounting the staircase: "My friends, you love your King, and yet you
+come to annoy him even in his palace!"]
+
+[Footnote 1441: Malouet, II. 2. "I felt no distrust," says Lafayette in
+1798; "the people promised to remain quiet."]
+
+[Footnote 1442: "Proc�dure Criminelle du Chatelet." Depositions 9, 16,
+60, 128, 129, 130, 139, 158, 168, 170.--M. du Repaire, body-guard, being
+sentry at the railing from two o'clock in the morning, a man passes his
+pike through the bars saying, "You embroidered b. . . , your turn
+will come before long." M. de Repaire, "retires within the sentry-box
+without saying a word to this man, considering the orders that have been
+issued not to act."]
+
+[Footnote 1443: "Proc�dure Criminelle du Ch�telet." Depositions 82,
+170--Madame Campan. II. 87.--De Lavalette, I.33.--Cf. Bertrand de
+Molleville, M�moires.]
+
+[Footnote 1444: Duval, "Souvenirs de la Terreur," I. 78. (Doubtful in
+almost everything, but here he is an eye-witness. He dined opposite the
+hair-dresser's, near the railing of the Park of Saint-Cloud.)--M. de
+Lally-Tollendal's second letter to a friend. "At the moment the King
+entered his capital with two bishops of his council with him in the
+carriage, the cry was heard, 'Off to the lamp post with the bishops!'"]
+
+[Footnote 1445: De Montlosier, I. 303.--Moniteur, sessions of the 8th,
+9th, and 10th of October.--Malouet, II. 9, 10, 20.--Mounier, Recherches
+sur les Causes, etc., and "Addresse aux Dauphinois."]
+
+[Footnote 1446: De Ferri�res, I. 346. (On the 9th of October, 300
+members have already taken their passports.) Mercure de France, No. of
+the 17th October. Correspondence of Mirabeau and M. de la Marck, I. 116,
+126, 364.]
+
+[Footnote 1447: Correspondence of Mirabeau and M. de la Marck, I.175.
+(The words of Monsieur to M. de la Marck.)]
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK SECOND. THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY, AND THE RESULT OF ITS LABORS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.--CONDITIONS REQUIRED FOR THE FRAMING OF GOOD LAWS.
+
+Among the most difficult undertakings in this world is the formulation
+of a national constitution, especially if this is to be a complete and
+comprehensive work. To replace the old structures inside which a great
+people has lived by a new, different, appropriate and durable set of
+laws, to apply a mold of one hundred thousand compartments on to the
+life of twenty-six million people, to construct it so harmoniously,
+adapt it so well, so closely, with such an exact appreciation of their
+needs and their faculties, that they enter it of themselves and move
+about it without collisions, and that their spontaneous activity
+should at once find the ease of familiar routine,--is an extraordinary
+undertaking and probably beyond the powers of the human mind. In any
+event, the mind requires all its powers to carry the undertaking out,
+and it cannot protect itself carefully enough against all sources of
+disturbance and error. An Assembly, especially a Constituent Assembly,
+requires, outwardly, security and independence, inwardly, silence
+and order, and generally, calmness, good sense, practical ability and
+discipline under competent and recognized leaders. Do we find anything
+of all this in the Constituent Assembly?
+
+
+
+
+I.--These conditions absent in the Assembly
+
+     Causes of disorder and irrationality--The place of meeting
+     --The large number of deputies--Interference of the galleries
+     --Rules of procedure wanting, defective, or disregarded.--The
+     parliamentary leaders--Susceptibility and over-excitement of
+     the Assembly--Its paroxysms of enthusiasm.--Its tendency to
+     emotion.--It encourages theatrical display--Changes which
+     these displays introduce in its good intentions.
+
+We have only to look at it outwardly to have some doubts about it. At
+Versailles, and then at Paris, the sessions are held in an immense hall
+capable of seating 2,000 persons, in which the most powerful voice must
+be strained in order to be heard. It is not calculated for the moderate
+tone suitable for the discussion of business; the speaker is obliged to
+shout, and the strain on the voice communicates itself to the mind; the
+place itself suggests declamation; and this all the more readily because
+the assemblage consists of 1,200, that is to say, a crowd, and almost
+a mob. 'At the present day (1877), in our assemblies of five or six
+hundred deputies, there are constant interruptions and an incessant
+buzz; there is nothing so rare as self-control, and the firm resolve to
+give an hour's attention to a discourse opposed to the opinions of the
+hearers.--What can be done here to compel silence and patience? Arthur
+Young on different occasions sees "a hundred members on the floor at
+once," shouting and gesticulating. "Gentlemen, you are killing me!" says
+Bailly, one day, sinking with exhaustion. Another president exclaims in
+despair, "Two hundred speaking at the same time cannot be heard; will
+you make it impossible then to restore order in the Assembly?" The
+rumbling, discordant din is further increased by the uproar of the
+galleries.[2101]
+
+"In the British Parliament," writes Mallet du Pan, "I saw the
+galleries cleared in a trice because the Duchess of Gordon happened
+unintentionally to laugh too loud."
+
+Here, the thronging crowd of spectators, stringers, delegates from the
+Palais-Royal, soldiers disguised as citizens, and prostitutes collected
+and marshaled, applaud, clap their hands, stamp and hoot, at their
+pleasure. This is carried to so great an extent that M. de
+Montlosier ironically proposes "to give the galleries a voice in
+the deliberations."[2102] Another member wishes to know whether the
+representatives are so many actors, whom the nation sends there to
+endure the hisses of the Paris public. Interruptions, in fact, take
+place as in a theater, and, frequently, if the members do not give
+satisfaction, they are forced to desist. On the other hand, the deputies
+who are popular with this energetic audience, on which they keep and
+eye, are actors before the footlights: they involuntarily yield to its
+influence, and exaggerate their ideas as well as their words to be in
+unison with it. Tumult and violence, under such circumstances, become
+a matter of course, and the chances of an Assembly acting wisely are
+diminished by one-half; on becoming a club of agitators, it ceases to be
+a conclave of legislators.
+
+Let us enter and see how this one proceeds. Thus encumbered, thus
+surrounded and agitated, does it take at least those precautions without
+which no assembly of men can govern itself. When several hundred persons
+assemble together for deliberation, it is evident that some sort of an
+internal police is necessary; first of all, some code of accepted usage,
+some written precedents, by which its acts may be prepared and defined,
+considered in detail, and properly passed. The best of these codes it
+ready to hand: at the request of Mirabeau, Romilly has sent over the
+standing orders of the English House of Commons.[2103] But with the
+presumption of novices, they pay no attention to this code; they imagine
+it is needless for them; they will borrow nothing from foreigners; they
+accord no authority to experience, and, not content with rejecting the
+forms it prescribes, "it is with difficulty they can be made to follow
+any rule whatever." They leave the field open to the impulsiveness of
+individuals; any kind of influence, even that of a deputy, even of one
+elected by themselves, is suspected by them; hence their choice of a
+new president every fortnight.--They submit to no constraint or control,
+neither to the legal authority of a parliamentary code, nor to the moral
+authority of parliamentary chiefs. They are without any such; they are
+not organized in parties; neither on one side nor on the other is a
+recognized leader found who fixes the time, arranges the debate, draws
+up the motion, assigns parts, and gives the rein to or restrains
+his supporters. Mirabeau is the only one capable of obtaining this
+ascendancy; but, on the opening of the Assembly, he is discredited by
+the notoriety of his vices, and, towards the last, is compromised by his
+connections with the Court. No other is of sufficient eminence to have
+any influence; there is too much of average and too little of superior
+talent.--Their self-esteem is, moreover, as yet too strong to allow any
+concessions. Each of these improvised legislators has come satisfied
+with his own system, and to submit to a leader to whom he would entrust
+his political conscience, to make of him what three out of four of these
+deputies should be, a voting machine, would require an apprehension of
+danger, some painful experience, an enforced surrender which he is far
+from realizing.[2104] For this reason, save in the violent party, each
+acts as his own chief, according to the impulse of the moment, and the
+confusion may be imagined. Strangers who witness it, lift their hands in
+pity and astonishment. "They discuss nothing in their Assembly,"
+writes Gouverneur Morris,[2105] "One large half of the time is spent
+in hallowing and bawling.... Each Man permitted to speak delivers the
+Result of his Lubrications," amidst this noise, taking his turn as
+inscribed, without replying to his predecessor, or being replied to by
+his successor, without ever meeting argument by argument; so that while
+the firing is interminable, "all their shots are fired in the air."
+Before this "frightful clatter" can be reported, the papers of the day
+are obliged to make all sorts of excisions, to prune away "nonsense,"
+and reduce the "inflated and bombastic style." Chatter and clamor, that
+is the whole substance of most of these famous sittings.
+
+"You would hear," says a journalist, "more yells than speeches; the
+sittings seemed more likely to end in fights than in decrees... . Twenty
+times I said to myself, on leaving, that if anything could arrest and
+turn the tide of the Revolution, it would be a picture of these meetings
+traced without caution or adaptation... All my efforts were therefore
+directed to represent the truth, without rendering it repulsive. Out
+of what had been merely a row, I concocted a scene... I gave all the
+sentiments, but not always in the same words. I translated their yells
+into words, their furious gestures into attitudes, and when I could not
+inspire esteem, I endeavored to rouse the emotions."
+
+There is no remedy for this evil; for, besides the absence of
+discipline, there is an inward and fundamental cause for the disorder.
+These people are too susceptible. They are Frenchmen, and Frenchmen
+of the eighteenth century; brought up in the amenities of the utmost
+refinement, accustomed to deferential manners, to constant kind
+attentions and mutual obligations, so thoroughly imbued with the
+instinct of good breeding that their conversation seems almost insipid
+to strangers.[2106]--And suddenly they find themselves on the thorny
+soil of politics, exposed to insulting debates, flat contradictions,
+venomous denunciation, constant detraction and open invective; engaged
+in a battle in which every species of weapon peculiar to a parliamentary
+life is employed, and in which the hardiest veterans are scarcely able
+to keep cool. Judge of the effect of all this on inexperienced, highly
+strung nerves, on men of the world accustomed to the accommodations
+and amiabilities of universal urbanity. They are at once beside
+themselves.--And all the more so because they never anticipated a
+battle; but, on the contrary, a festival, a grand and charming idyll, in
+which everybody, hand in hand, would assemble in tears around the throne
+and save the country amid mutual embraces. Necker himself arranges, like
+a theater, the chamber in which the sessions of the Assembly are to
+be held.[2107] "He was not disposed to regard the Assemblies of the
+States-General as anything but a peaceful, imposing, solemn, august
+spectacle, which the people would enjoy;" and when the idyll suddenly
+changes into a drama, he is so frightened that it seems to him as if a
+landslide had occurred that threatened, during the night, to break
+down the framework of the building.--At the time of the meeting of the
+States-General, everybody is delighted; all imagine that they are about
+to enter the promised land. During the procession of the 4th of May,
+
+"tears of joy," says the Marquis de Ferri�res, "filled my eyes... . In a
+state of sweet rapture I beheld France supported by Religion" exhorting
+us all to concord. "The sacred ceremonies, the music, the incense, the
+priests in their sacrificial robes, that dais, that orb radiant with
+precious stones. .. I called to my mind the words of the prophet... . My
+God, my country, and my countrymen, all were one with myself!"
+
+Such emotions repeatedly explode in the course of the session, and
+resulted in the passage of laws which no one could have imagined.
+
+"Sometimes,"[2108] writes the American ambassador, "a speaker gets up
+in the midst of a deliberation, makes a fine discourse on a different
+subject, and closes with a nice little resolution which is carried with
+a hurrah. Thus, in considering the plan of a national bank proposed by
+M. Necker, one of them took it into his head to move that every member
+should give his silver buckles, which was agreed to at once, and the
+honorable mover laid his upon the table, after which the business went
+on again."
+
+Thus, over-excited, they do not know in the morning what they will do
+in the afternoon, and they are at the mercy of every surprise. When they
+are seized with these fits of enthusiasm, infatuation spreads over all
+the benches; prudence gives way, all foresight disappears and every
+objection is stifled. During the night of the 4th of August,[2109]
+"nobody is master of himself. The Assembly presents the spectacle of an
+inebriated crowd in a shop of valuable furniture, breaking and smashing
+at will whatever they can lay their hands on."
+
+"That which would have required a year of care and reflection," says
+a competent foreigner, "was proposed, deliberated over, and passed by
+general acclamation. The abolition of feudal rights, of titles, of the
+privileges of the provinces, three articles which alone embraced a whole
+system of jurisprudence and statesmanship, were decided with ten or
+twelve other measures in less time than is required in the English
+Parliament for the first reading of an important bill."
+
+"Such are our Frenchmen," says Mirabeau again, "they spend a month in
+disputes about syllables, and overthrow, in a single night, the whole
+established system of the Monarchy!"[2110]
+
+The truth is, they display the nervousness of women, and, from one end
+of the Revolution to the other, this excitability keeps on increasing.
+
+Not only are they excited, but the pitch of excitement must be
+maintained, and, like the drunkard who, once stimulated, has recourse
+again to strong waters, one would say that they carefully try to expel
+the last remnants of calmness and common sense from their brains. They
+delight in pompous phrases, in high-sounding rhetoric, in declamatory
+sentimental strokes of eloquence: this is the style of nearly all their
+speeches, and so strong is their taste, they are not satisfied with
+the orations made amongst themselves. Lally and Necker, having made
+"affecting and sublime" speeches at the H�tel-de-Ville, the Assembly
+wish them to be repeated before them:[2111] this being the heart of
+France, it is proper for it to answer to the noble emotions of all
+Frenchmen. Let this heart throb on, and as strongly as possible, for
+that is its office, and day by day it receives fresh impulses. Almost
+all sittings begin with the reading of flattering addresses or of
+threatening denunciations. The petitioners frequently appear in person,
+and read their enthusiastic effusions, their imperious advice, their
+doctrines of dissolution. To-day it is Danton, in the name of Paris,
+with his bull visage and his voice that seems a tocsin of insurrection;
+to-morrow, the vanquishers of the Bastille, or some other troop, with a
+band of music which continues playing even into the hall. The meeting is
+not a conference for business, but a patriotic opera, where the eclogue,
+the melodrama, and sometimes the masquerade, mingle with the cheers and
+the clapping of hands.[2112]--A serf of the Jura is brought to the
+bar of the Assembly aged one hundred and twenty years, and one of the
+members of the cort�ge, "M. Bourbon de la Crosni�re, director of a
+patriotic school, asks permission to take charge of an honorable old
+man, that he may be waited on by the young people of all ranks, and
+especially by the children of those whose fathers were killed in the
+attack on the Bastille." [2113] Great is the hubbub and excitement. The
+scene seems to be in imitation of Berquin,[2114] with the additional
+complication of a mercenary consideration.
+
+But small matters are not closely looked into, and the Assembly, under
+the pressure of the galleries, stoops to shows, such as are held
+at fairs. Sixty vagabonds who are paid twelve francs a head, in the
+costumes of Spaniards, Dutchmen, Turks, Arabs, Tripolitans, Persians,
+Hindus, Mongols, and Chinese, conducted by the Prussian Anacharsis
+Clootz, enter, under the title of Ambassadors of the Human Race, to
+declaim against tyrants, and they are admitted to the honors of the
+sitting. On this occasion the masquerade is a stroke devised to hasten
+and extort the abolition of nobility.[2115] At other times, there is
+little or no object in it; its ridiculousness is inexpressible, for the
+farce is played out as seriously and earnestly as in a village award
+of prizes. For three days, the children who have taken their first
+communion before the constitutional bishop have been promenaded through
+the streets of Paris; at the Jacobin club they recite the nonsense they
+have committed to memory; and, on the fourth day, admitted to the bar
+of the Assembly, their spokesman, a poor little thing of twelve years,
+repeats the parrot-like tirade. He winds up with the accustomed oath,
+upon which all the others cry out in their piping, shrill voices, "We
+swear!" As a climax, the President, Trejlhard, a sober lawyer, replies
+to the little gamins with perfect gravity in a similar strain, employing
+metaphors, personifications, and everything else belonging to the
+stock-in-trade of a pedant on his platform:
+
+"You merit a share in the glory of the founders of liberty, prepared as
+you are to shed your blood in her behalf."
+
+Immense applause from the "left" and the galleries, and a decree
+ordering the speeches of both president and children to be printed. The
+children, probably, would rather have gone out to play; but, willingly
+or unwillingly, they receive or endure the honors of the sitting.[2116]
+
+Such are the tricks of the stage and of the platform by which the
+managers here move their political puppets. Emotional susceptibility,
+once recognized as a legitimate force, thus becomes an instrument
+of intrigue and constraint. The Assembly, having accepted theatrical
+exhibitions when these were sincere and earnest, is obliged to tolerate
+them when they become mere sham and buffoonery. At this vast national
+banquet, over which it meant to preside, and to which, throwing the
+doors wide open, it invited all France, its first intoxication was
+due to wine of a noble quality; but it has touched glasses with the
+populace, and by degrees, under the pressure of its associates, it has
+descended to adulterated and burning drinks, to a grotesque unwholesome
+inebriety which is all the more grotesque and unwholesome, because it
+persists in believing itself to be reason.
+
+
+
+
+II.--Inadequacy of its information.
+
+     Its composition--The social standing and culture of the
+     larger number--Their incapacity. Their presumption
+     --Fruitless advice of competent men.--Deductive politics
+     --Parties--The minority; its faults--The majority; its
+     dogmatism.
+
+If reason could only resume its empire during the lucid intervals!
+But reason must exist before it can govern, and in no French Assembly,
+except the two following this, have there ever been fewer political
+intellects.--Strictly speaking, with careful search, there could
+undoubtedly be found in France, in 1789, five or six hundred experienced
+men, such as the intendants and military commanders of every province;
+next to these the prelates, administrators of large dioceses the members
+of the local "parlements," whose courts gave them influence, and who,
+besides judicial functions, possessed a portion of administrative power;
+and finally, the principal members of the Provincial Assemblies, all of
+them influential and sensible people who had exercised control over
+men and affairs, at once humane, liberal, moderate, and capable of
+understanding the difficulty, as well as the necessity, of a great
+reform; indeed, their correspondence, full of facts, stated with
+precision and judgment, when compared with the doctrinaire rubbish of
+the Assembly, presents the strongest possible contrast.--But most of
+these lights remain under a bushel; only a few of them get into the
+Assembly; these burn without illuminating, and are soon extinguished in
+the tempest.' I. The venerable Machault is not there, nor Malesherbes;
+there are none of the old ministers or the marshals of France. Not one
+of the intendants is there, except Malouet, and by the superiority of
+this man, the most judicious of the Assembly, one can judge the services
+which his colleagues would have rendered. Out of two hundred and
+ninety-one members of the clergy,[2117] there are indeed forty-eight
+bishops or archbishops and thirty-five abbots or canons, but, being
+prelates and with large endowments, they excite the envy of their order,
+and are generals without any soldiers. We have the same spectacle among
+the nobles. Most of them, the gentry of the provinces, have been elected
+in opposition to the grandees of the Court. Moreover, neither the
+grandees of the Court, devoted to worldly pursuits, nor the gentry of
+the provinces, confined to private life, are practically familiar with
+public affairs. A small group among them, twenty-eight magistrates
+and about thirty superior officials who have held command or have been
+connected with the administration, probably have some idea of the peril
+of society; but it is precisely for this reason that they seem to be
+behind the age and remain without influence.--In the Third-Estate, out
+of five hundred and seventy-seven members, only ten have exercised
+any important functions, those of intendant, councillor of state,
+receiver-general, lieutenant of police, director of the mint, and others
+of the same category. The great majority is composed of unknown lawyers
+and people occupying inferior positions in the profession, notaries,
+royal attorneys, register commissaries, judges and assessors of;
+the pr�sidial, bailiffs and lieutenants of the bailiwick, simple
+practitioners confined from their youth to the narrow circle of an
+inferior jurisdiction or to a routine of scribbling, with no escape
+but philosophical excursions in imaginary space under the guidance of
+Rousseau and Raynal. There are three hundred and seventy-three of this
+class, to whom may be added thirty-eight farmers and husbandmen, fifteen
+physicians, and, among the manufacturers, merchants, and capitalists,
+some fifty or sixty who are their equals in education and in political
+capacity. Scarcely one hundred and fifty proprietors are here from the
+middle class.[2118] To these four hundred and fifty deputies, whose
+condition, education, instruction, and mental range qualified them for
+being good clerks, prominent men in a commune, honorable fathers of a
+family, or, at best, provincial academicians, add two hundred and eight
+cur�s, their equals; this makes six hundred and fifty out of eleven
+hundred and eighteen deputies, forming a positive majority, which,
+again, is augmented by about fifty philosophical nobles, leaving out the
+weak who follow the current, and the ambitious who range themselves on
+the strong side.--We may divine what a chamber thus made up can do, and
+those who are familiar with such matters prophesy what it will do.[2119]
+
+"There are some able men in the National Assembly," writes the American
+minister, "yet the best heads among them would not be injured by
+experience, and, unfortunately, there are great numbers who, with much
+imagination, have little knowledge, judgment, or reflection."
+
+It would be just as sensible to select eleven hundred notables from an
+inland province and entrust them to the repair of an old frigate. They
+would conscientiously break the vessel up, and the frigate they would
+construct in its place would founder before it left port.
+
+If they would only consult the pilots and professional
+shipbuilders!--There are several of such to be found around them, whom
+they cannot suspect, for most of them are foreigners, born in free
+countries, impartial, sympathetic, and, what is more, unanimous. The
+Minister of the United States writes, two months before the convocation
+of the States-General:[2120]
+
+"I, a republican, and just, as it were, emerged from that Assembly which
+has formed one of the most republican of republican constitutions,--I
+preach incessantly respect for the prince, attention to the rights of
+the nobility, and moderation, not only in the object, but also in the
+pursuit of it."
+
+Jefferson, a democrat and radical, expresses himself no differently. At
+the time of the oath of the Tennis Court, he redoubles his efforts to
+induce Lafayette and other patriots to make some arrangement with the
+King to secure freedom of the press, religious, liberty, trial by jury,
+the habeas corpus, and a national legislature,--things which he could
+certainly be made to adopt,--and then to retire into private life, and
+let these institutions act upon the condition of the people until they
+had rendered it capable of further progress, with the assurance that
+there would be no lack of opportunity for them to obtain still more.
+
+"This was all," he continues, "that I thought your countrymen able to
+bear soberly and usefully."
+
+Arthur Young, who studies the moral life of France so conscientiously,
+and who is so severe in depicting old abuses, cannot comprehend the
+conduct of the Commons.
+
+"To set aside practice for theory... in establishing the interests of a
+great kingdom, in securing freedom to 25,000,000 of people, seems to me
+the very acme of imprudence, the very quintessence of insanity."
+
+Undoubtedly, now that the Assembly is all-powerful, it is to be hoped
+that it will be reasonable:
+
+"I will not allow myself to believe for a moment that the
+representatives of the people can ever so far forget their duty to
+the French nation, to humanity, and their own fame, as to suffer
+any inordinate and impracticable views--any visionary or theoretic
+systems--... to turn aside their exertions from that security which is
+in their hands, to place on the chance and hazard of public commotion
+and civil war the invaluable blessings which are certainly in their
+power. I will not conceive it possible that men who have eternal fame
+within their grasp will place the rich inheritance on the cast of a die,
+and, losing the venture, be damned among the worst and most profligate
+adventurers that ever disgraced humanity."
+
+As their plan becomes more definite the remonstrances become more
+decided, and all the expert judges point out to them the importance of
+the wheels which they are willfully breaking.
+
+"As they have[2121] hitherto felt severely the authority exercised over
+them in the name of their princes, every limitation of that authority
+seems to them desirable. Never having felt the evils of too weak an
+executive, the disorders to be apprehended from anarchy make as yet no
+impression"--"They want an American Constitution,[2122] but with a
+King instead of a President, without reflecting they have no American
+citizens to support that Constitution... If they have the good sense
+to give the nobles, as nobles, some portion of the national power, this
+free constitution will probably last, But otherwise it will degenerate
+either into a pure monarchy, or a vast republic, or a democracy. Will
+the latter last? I doubt it. I am sure that it will not, unless the
+whole nation is changed."
+
+A little later, when they renounce a parliamentary monarchy to put in
+its place "a royal democracy," it is at once explained to them that such
+an institution applied to France can produce nothing but anarchy, and
+finally end in despotism.
+
+"Nowhere[2123] has liberty proved to be stable without a sacrifice of
+its excesses, without some barrier to its own omnipotence... . Under
+this miserable government... the people, soon weary of storms, and
+abandoned without legal protection to their seducers or to their
+oppressors, will shatter the helm, or hand it over to some audacious
+hand that stands ready to seize it."
+
+Events occur from month to month in fulfillment of these predictions,
+and the predictions grow gloomier and more gloomy. It is a flock of wild
+birds:[2124]
+
+"It is very difficult to guess whereabouts the flock will settle when
+it flies so wild... . This unhappy country, bewildered in the pursuit
+of metaphysical whims, presents to our moral view a mighty ruin. The
+Assembly, at once master and slave, new in power, wild in theory, raw in
+practice, engrossing all functions without being able to exercise any,
+has freed that fierce, ferocious people from every restraint of religion
+and respect... . Such a state of things cannot last... The glorious
+opportunity is lost and for this time, at least, the Revolution has
+failed."
+
+We see, from the replies of Washington, that he is of the same opinion.
+On the other side of the Channel, Pitt, the ablest practician, and
+Burke, the ablest theorist, of political liberty, express the same
+judgment. Pitt, after 1789, declares that the French have overleaped
+freedom. After 1790, Burke, in a work which is a prophecy as well as a
+masterpiece, points to military dictatorship as the termination of the
+Revolution, "the most completely arbitrary power that has ever appeared
+on earth." Nothing is of any effect. With the exception of the small
+powerless group around Malouet and Mounier, the warnings of Morris,
+Jefferson, Romilly, Dumont, Mallet du Pan, Arthur Young, Pitt and Burke,
+all of them men who have experience of free institutions, are received
+with indifference or repelled with disdain. Not only are our new
+politicians incapable, but they think themselves the contrary, and their
+incompetence is aggravated by their infatuation.
+
+"I often used to say, "writes Dumont,[2125] "that if a hundred persons
+were stopped at haphazard in the streets of London, and a hundred in the
+streets of Paris, and a proposal were made to them to take charge of the
+Government, ninety-nine would accept it in Paris and ninety-nine would
+refuse it in London... The Frenchman thinks that all difficulties can
+be overcome by a little quickness of wit. Mirabeau accepted the post of
+reporter to the Committee on Mines without having the slightest tincture
+of knowledge on the subject."
+
+In short, most of them enter politics "like the gentleman who, on being
+asked if he knew how to play on the harpsichord, replied, 'I cannot
+tell, I never tried, but I will see.'"
+
+"The Assembly had so high an opinion of itself, especially the left side
+of it, that it would willingly have undertaken the framing of the Code
+of Laws for all nations... Never has so many men been seen together,
+fancying that they were all legislators, and that they were there to
+correct all the errors of the past, to remedy all mistakes of the human
+mind, and ensure the happiness of all ages to come. Doubt had no
+place in their minds, and infallibility always presided over their
+contradictory decrees."--
+
+This is because they have a theory and because, according to their
+notion, this theory renders special knowledge unnecessary. Herein they
+are thoroughly sincere, and it is of set purpose that they reverse all
+ordinary modes of procedure. Up to this time a constitution used to be
+organized or repaired like a ship. Experiments were made from time to
+time, or a model was taken from vessels in the neighborhood; the first
+aim was to make the ship sail; its construction was subordinated to its
+work; it was fashioned in this or that way according to the materials on
+hand; a beginning was made by examining these materials, and trying to
+estimate their rigidity, weight, and strength.--All this is reactionary;
+the age of Reason has come and the Assembly is too enlightened to drag
+on in a rut. In conformity with the fashion of the time it works by
+deduction, after the method of Rousseau, according to an abstract notion
+of right, of the State and of the social compact.[2126] According to
+this process, by virtue of political geometry alone, they shall have the
+perfect vessel and since it perfect it follows that it will sail, and
+that much better than any empirical craft.--They legislate according
+to this principle, and one may imagine the nature of their discussions.
+There are no convincing facts, no pointed arguments; nobody would
+ever imagine that the speakers were gathered together to conduct real
+business. Through speech after speech, strings of hollow abstractions
+are endlessly renewed as in a meeting of students in rhetoric for the
+purpose of practice, or in a society of old bookworms for their own
+amusement. On the question of the veto "each orator in turn, armed with
+his portfolio, reads a dissertation which has no bearing whatever" on
+the preceding one, which makes a "sort of academical session,"[2127]
+a succession of pamphlets fresh every morning for several days. On the
+question of the Rights of Man fifty-four speakers are placed on the
+list.
+
+"I remember," says Dumont, "that long discussion, which lasted for
+weeks, as a period of deadly boredom,--vain disputes over words, a
+metaphysical jumble, and most tedious babble; the Assembly was turned
+into a Sorbonne lecture-room," and all this while chateaux were burning,
+while town-halls were being sacked, and courts dared no longer hold
+assize, while the distribution of wheat was stopped, and while society
+was in course of dissolution. In the same manner the theologians of the
+Easter Roman Empire kept up their wrangles about the uncreated light of
+Mount Tabor while Mahomet II was battering the walls of Constantinople
+with his cannon.--Ours, of course, are another sort of men, juvenile
+in feeling, sincere, enthusiastic, even generous, and further, more
+devoted, laborious, and in some cases endowed with rare talent. But
+neither zeal, nor labor, nor talent are of any use when not employed in
+the service of a sound idea; and if in the service of a false one, the
+greater they are the more mischief they do.
+
+Towards the end of the year 1789, there can be not doubt of this;
+and the parties now formed reveal their presumption, improvidence,
+incapacity, and obstinacy. "This Assembly," writes the American
+ambassador,[2128] "may be divided into three parties;--
+
+one called the aristocrats, consists of the high clergy, the
+parliamentary judges, and such of the nobility as think they ought to
+form a separate order." This is the party which offers resistance to
+follies and errors, but with follies and errors almost equally great.
+In the beginning "the prelates,[2129] instead of conciliating the cur�s,
+kept them at a humiliating distance, affecting distinctions, exacting
+respect," and, in their own chamber, "ranging themselves apart on
+separate benches." The nobles, on the other hand, the more to alienate
+the commons, began by charging these with, "revolt, treachery, and
+treason," and by demanding the use of military force against them. Now
+that the victorious Third-Estate has again overcome them and overwhelms
+them with numbers, they become still more maladroit, and conduct the
+defense much less efficiently than the attack. "In the Assembly," says
+one of them, "they do not listen, but laugh and talk aloud;" they
+take pains to embitter their adversaries and the galleries by their
+impertinence. "They leave the chamber when the President puts the
+question and invite the deputies of their party to follow them, or
+cry out to them not to take part in the deliberation: through this
+desertion, the clubbists become the majority, and decree whatever they
+please." It is in this way that the appointment of judges and bishops
+is withdrawn from the King and assigned to the people. Again, after the
+return from Varennes, when the Assembly finds out that the result of its
+labors is impracticable and wants to make it less democratic, the whole
+of the right side refuses to share in the debates, and, what is worse,
+votes with the revolutionaries to exclude the members of the Constituent
+from the Legislative Assembly. Thus, not only does it abandon its
+own cause, but it commits self-destruction, and its desertion ends in
+suicide.--
+
+A second party remains, "the middle party,"[2130] which consists of
+well-intentioned people from every class, sincere partisans of a good
+government; but, unfortunately, they have acquired their ideas of
+government from books, and are admirable on paper. But as it happens
+that the men who live in the world are very different from imaginary men
+who dwell in the heads of philosophers, it is not to be wondered at if
+the systems taken out of books are fit for nothing but to be upset by
+another book. Intellects of this stamp are the natural prey of utopians.
+Lacking the ballast of experience they are carried away by pure logic
+and serve to enlarge the flock of theorists.--The latter form the third
+party, which is called the "enrag�s (the wild men), and who, at the
+expiration of six months, find themselves "the most numerous of all."
+
+"It is composed," says Morris, "of that class which in America is known
+by the name of pettifogging lawyers, together with a host of curates and
+many of those persons who in all revolutions throng to the standard
+of change because they are not well.[2131] This last party is in close
+alliance with the populace and derives from this circumstance very great
+authority."
+
+All powerful passions are on its side, not merely the irritation of the
+people tormented by misery and suspicion, not merely the ambition and
+self-esteem of the bourgeois, in revolt against the ancient r�gime,
+but also the inveterate bitterness and fixed ideas of so many suffering
+minds and so many factious intellects, Protestants, Jansenists,
+economists, philosophers, men who, like Fr�teau, Rabout-Saint-Etienne,
+Volney, Siey�s, are hatching out a long arrears of resentments or hopes,
+and who only await the opportunity to impose their system with all the
+intolerance of dogmatism and of faith. To minds of this stamp the past
+is a dead letter; example is no authority; realities are of no account;
+they live in their own Utopia. Siey�s, the most important of them all,
+judges that "the whole English constitution is charlatanism, designed
+for imposing on the people;"[2132] he regards the English "as children
+in the matter of a constitution," and thinks that he is capable of
+giving France a much better one. Dumont, who sees the first committees
+at the houses of Brissot and Clavi�res, goes away with as much anxiety
+as "disgust."
+
+"It is impossible," he says, "to depict the confusion of ideas, the
+license of the imagination, the burlesque of popular notions. One
+would think that they saw before them the world on the day after the
+Creation."
+
+They seem to think, indeed, that human society does not exist, and that
+they are appointed to create it. Just as well might ambassadors "of
+hostile tribes, and of diverse interests, set themselves to arrange
+their common lot as if nothing had previously existed." There is no
+hesitation. They are satisfied that the thing can be easily done, and
+that, with two or three axioms of political philosophy, the first man
+that comes may make himself master of it. Immoderate conceit of this
+kind among men of experience would seem ridiculous; in this assembly of
+novices it is a strength. A flock which has lost its way follows those
+who appears to forge ahead; they are the most irrational but they
+are the most confident, and in the Chamber as in the nation it is the
+daredevils who become leaders.
+
+
+
+
+III.--The Power Of Simple, General Ideas.
+
+     Ascendancy of the revolutionary party--Theory in its favor--
+     The constraint thus imposed on men's minds--Appeal to the
+     passions--Brute force on the side of the party--It profits
+     by this--Oppression of the minority.
+
+Two advantages give this party the ascendancy, and these advantages are
+of such importance that henceforth whoever possesses them is sure of
+being master.--In the first place the prevailing theory is on the
+side of the revolutionaries, and they alone are, in the second place,
+determined thoroughly to apply it. This party, therefore, is the only
+one which is consistent and popular in the face of adversaries who are
+unpopular and inconsequent. Nearly all of the latter, indeed, defenders
+of the ancient r�gime, or partisans of a limited monarchy, are likewise
+imbued with abstract principles and philosophical speculation. The most
+refractory nobles have advocated the rights of man in their memorials.
+Mounier, the principal opponent of the demagogues, was the
+leader of the commons when they proclaimed themselves to be the
+National--Assembly.[2133] This is enough: they have entered the narrow
+defile which leads to the abyss. They had no idea of it at the first
+start, but one step leads to another, and, willing or unwilling, they
+march on, or are pushed on. When the abyss comes in sight it is too
+late; they have been driven there by the logical results of their own
+concessions; they can do nothing but wax eloquent and indignant;
+having abandoned their vantage ground, they find no halting-place
+remaining.--There is an enormous power in general ideas, especially
+if they are simple, and appeal to the passions. None are simpler than
+these, since they are reducible to the axiom which assumes the rights
+of man, and subordinate to them every institution, old or new. None are
+better calculated to inflame the sentiments, since the doctrine enlists
+human arrogance and pride in its service, and, in the name of justice,
+consecrates all the demands of independence and domination. Consider
+three-fourths of the deputies, immature and prejudiced, possessing no
+information but a few formulas of the current philosophy, with no thread
+to guide them but pure logic, abandoned to the declamation of lawyers,
+to the wild utterances of the newspapers, to the promptings of
+self-esteem, to the hundred thousand tongues which, on all sides, at the
+bar of the Assembly, at the tribune, in the clubs, in the streets, in
+their own breasts, repeat unanimously to them, and every day, the same
+flattery:
+
+"You are sovereign and omnipotent. Right is vested in you alone. The
+King exists only to execute your will. Every order, every corporation,
+every power, every civil or ecclesiastical association is illegitimate
+and null the moment you declare it to be so. You may even transform
+religion. You are the fathers of the country. You have saved France, you
+will regenerate humanity. The whole world looks on you in admiration;
+finish your glorious work--forward, always forward."
+
+Superior good sense and rooted convictions could alone stand firm
+against this flood of seductions and solicitations; but vacillating and
+ordinary men are carried away by it. In the harmony of applause which
+rises, they do not hear the crash of the ruins they produce. In any
+case, they stop their ears, and shun the cries of the oppressed; they
+refuse to admit that their work could possibly bring about evil results;
+they accept the sophisms and untruths which justify it; they allow the
+assassinated to be calumniated in order to excuse the assassins; they
+listen to Merlin de Douay, who, after three or four jacqueries, when
+pillaging, arson, and murder are going on in all the provinces, has just
+declared in the name of the Committee on Feudalism[2134] that "a law
+must be presented to the people, the justice of which may enforce
+silence on the feudatory egoists who, for the past six months, so
+indecently protest against plunder; the wisdom of which may restore to
+a sense of duty the peasant who has been led astray for a moment by
+his resentment of a long oppression." And when Raynal, the surviving
+patriarch of the philosophic party, one day, for a wonder, takes
+the plain truth with him into their tribune, they resent his
+straightforwardness as an outrage, and excuse it solely on the ground of
+his imbecility. An omnipotent legislator cannot depreciate himself; like
+a king he is condemned to self-admiration in his public capacity. "There
+were not thirty deputies amongst us," says a witness, "who thought
+differently from Raynal," but "in each other's presence the credit of
+the Revolution, the perspective of its blessings, was an article of
+faith which had to be believed in;" and, against their own reason,
+against their conscience, the moderates, caught in the net of their own
+acts, join the revolutionaries to complete the Revolution.
+
+Had they refused, they would have been compelled; for, to obtain the
+power, the Assembly has, from the very first, either tolerated
+or solicited the violence of the streets. But, in accepting
+insurrectionists for its allies, it makes them masters, and henceforth,
+in Paris as in the provinces, illegal and brutal force becomes the
+principal power of the State. "The triumph was accomplished through the
+people; it was impossible to be severe with them;"[2135] hence, when
+insurrections were to be put down, the Assembly had neither the courage
+nor the force necessary. "They blame for the sake of decency; they frame
+their deeds by expediency." and in turn justly undergo the pressure
+which they themselves have sanctioned against others. Only three or four
+times do the majority, when the insurrection becomes too daring--after
+the murder of the baker Fran�ois, the insurrection of the Swiss Guard at
+Nancy, and the outbreak of the Champ de Mars--feel that they themselves
+are menaced, vote for and apply martial law, and repel force with force.
+But, in general, when the despotism of the people is exercised only
+against the royalist minority, they allow their adversaries to be
+oppressed, and do not consider themselves affected by the violence which
+assails the party of the "right:" they are enemies, and may be given
+up to the wild beasts. In accordance with this, the "left" has made its
+arrangements; its fanaticism has no scruples; it is principle, it is
+absolute truth that is at stake; this must triumph at any cost. Besides,
+can there be any hesitation in having recourse to the people in the
+people's own cause? A little compulsion will help along the good cause,
+and hence the siege of the Assembly is continually renewed. This was the
+practice already at Versailles before the 6th of October, while now, at
+Paris, it is kept up more actively and with less disguise.
+
+At the beginning of the year 1790,[2136] the band under pay comprises
+seven hundred and fifty effective men, most of them deserters or
+soldiers drummed out of their regiments, who are at first paid five
+francs and then forty sous a day. It is their business to make or
+support motions in the coffee-houses and in the streets, to mix with
+the spectators at the sittings of the sections, with the groups at the
+Palais-Royal, and especially in the galleries of the National-Assembly,
+where they are to hoot or applaud at a given signal. Their leader is a
+Chevalier de Saint-Louis, to whom they swear obedience, and who receives
+his orders from the Committee of Jacobins. His first lieutenant at the
+Assembly is a M. Saule, "a stout, small, stunted old fellow, formerly an
+upholsterer, then a charlatan hawker of four penny boxes of grease (made
+from the fat of those that had been hung--for the cure of diseases of
+the kidneys) and all his life a sot.... who, by means of a tolerably
+shrill voice, which was always well moistened, has acquired some
+reputation in the galleries of the Assembly." In fact, he has forged
+admission tickets he has been turned out; he has been obliged to resume
+"the box of ointment, and travel for one or two months in the provinces
+with a man of letters for his companion." But on his return, "through
+the protection of a groom of the Court, he obtained a piece of ground
+for a coffee-house against the wall of the Tuileries garden, almost
+alongside of the National Assembly," and now it is at home in his
+coffee-shop behind his counter that the hirelings of the galleries "come
+to him to know what they must say, and to be told the order of the day
+in regard to applause." Besides this, he is there himself; "it is he
+who for three years is to regulate public sentiment in the galleries
+confided to his care, and, for his useful and satisfactory services,
+the Constituent Assembly will award him a recompense," to which the
+Legislative Assembly will add "a pension of six hundred livres, besides
+a lodging in an apartment of the Feuillants."
+
+We can divine how men of this stamp, thus compensated, do their work.
+From the top of the galleries[2137] they drown the demands of the
+"right" by the force of their lungs; this or that decree, as, for
+instance, the abolition of titles of nobility, is carried, "not by
+shouts, but by terrific howls."[2138] On the arrival of the news of the
+sacking of the H�tel de Castries by the populace, they applaud. On the
+question coming up as to the decision whether the Catholic faith shall
+be dominant, "they shout out that the aristocrats must all be hung, and
+then things will go on well." Their outrages not only remain unpunished,
+but are encouraged: this or that noble who complains of their hooting
+is called to order, while their interference and vociferations, their
+insults and their menaces, are from this time introduced as one of the
+regular wheels of legislative operations. Their pressure is still worse
+outside the Chamber.[2139] The Assembly is obliged several times to
+double its guard. On the 27th of September, 1790, there are 40,000
+men around the building to extort the dismissal of the Ministers, and
+"motions for assassination" are made under the windows, On the 4th of
+January, 1791, whilst on a call of the house the ecclesiastical deputies
+pass in turn to the tribune, to take or refuse the oath to the civil
+constitution of the clergy, a furious clamor ascends in the Tuileries,
+and even penetrates into the Chamber. "To the lamp post with all those
+who refuse!" On the 27th of September, 1790, M. Dupont, economist,
+having spoken against the assignats, is surrounded on leaving the
+Chamber and hooted at, hustled, pushed against the basin of the
+Tuileries, into which he was being thrown when the guard rescued him. On
+the 21st of June, 1790, M. de Cazal�s just misses "being torn to pieces
+by the people."[2140] Deputies of the "right" are threatened over and
+over again by gestures in the streets and in the coffee-houses; effigies
+of them with ropes about the neck are publicly displayed. The Abb� Maury
+is several times on the point of being hung: he saves himself once by
+presenting a pistol. Another time the Vicomte de Mirabeau is obliged
+to draw his sword. M. de Clermont-Tonnerre, having voted against the
+annexation of the Comtat to France, is assailed with chairs and clubs
+in the Palais-Royal, pursued into a porter's room and from thence to his
+dwelling; the howling crowd break in the doors, and are only repelled
+with great difficulty. It is impossible for the members of the "right"
+to assemble together; they are "stoned" in the church of the Capuchins,
+then in the Salon Fran�ais in the Rue Royale, and then, to crown the
+whole, an ordinance of the new judges shuts up their hall, and punishes
+them for the violence which they have to suffer.[2141] In short they are
+at the mercy of the mob. The most moderate, the most liberal, and the
+most manly both in heart and head, Malouet, declares that "in going to
+the Assembly he rarely forgot to carry his pistols with him."[2142]
+"For two years," he says, "after the King's flight, we never enjoyed one
+moment of freedom and security."
+
+" On going into a slaughter-house," writes another deputy, "you see some
+animals at the entrance which still have a short time to live, until
+the hour comes to dispatch them. Such was the impression which the
+assemblage of nobles, bishops, and parliamentarians[2143] on the right
+side made on my mind every time I entered the Assembly, the executioners
+of the left side permitting them to breathe a little longer."
+
+They are insulted and outraged even upon their benches; "placed
+between peril within and peril without, between the hostility of the
+galleries,"[2144] and that of the howlers at the entrance, "between
+personal insults and the abbey of Saint-Germain, between shouts of
+laughter celebrating the burning of their chateaux and the clamors
+which, thirty times in a quarter of an hour, cry down their opinions,"
+they are given over and denounced "to the ten thousand Cerberuses" of
+the journals and of the streets, who pursue them with their yells and
+"cover them with their slaver." Any expedient is good enough for putting
+down their opposition, and, at the end of the session, in full Assembly,
+they are threatened with "a recommendation to the departments," which
+means the excitement of riots and of the permanent jacquerie of the
+provinces against them in their own houses.--Parliamentary strategy
+of this sort, employed uninterruptedly for twenty-nine months, finally
+produces its effect. Many of the weak are gained over;[2145] even on
+characters of firm temper fear has a hold; he who would march under fire
+with head erect shuddered at the idea of being dragged in the gutter by
+the rabble; the brutality of the populace always exercises a material
+ascendancy over finely strung nerves. On the 12th of July, 1791,[2146]
+the call of the house decreed against the absentees proves that one
+hundred and thirty-two deputies no longer appear in their places. Eleven
+days before, among those who take no further part in the proceedings.
+Thus, before the completion of the Constitution, the whole of the
+opposition, more than four hundred members, over one-third of the
+Assembly, is reduced to flight or to silence. By dint of oppression, the
+revolutionary party has got rid of all resistance, while the violence
+which gave to it ascendancy in the streets, now gives to it equal
+ascendance within the walls of Parliament.
+
+
+
+
+IV.--Refusal to supply the ministry
+
+     Effects of this mistake--Misconception of the situation--The
+     committee of investigation--Constant alarms--Effects of
+     ignorance and fear on the work of the Constituent Assembly.
+
+Generally in an omnipotent assembly, when a party takes the lead and
+forms a majority, it furnishes the Ministry; and this fact suffices
+to give, or to bring back to it, some glimpse of common sense. For its
+leaders, with the Government in their own hands, become responsible for
+it, and when they propose or pass a law, they are obliged to anticipate
+its effect. Rarely will a Secretary of War or of the Navy adopt a
+military code which goes to establish permanent disobedience in the
+army or in the navy. Rarely will a Secretary of the Treasury propose an
+expenditure for which there is not a sufficient revenue, or a system of
+taxation that provides no returns. Placed where full information can
+be procured, daily advised of every details, surrounded by skillful
+counselors and expert clerks, the chiefs of the majority, who thus
+become heads of the administration, immediately drop theory for
+practice; and the fumes of political speculation must be pretty dense
+in their minds if they exclude the multiplied rays of light which
+experience constantly sheds upon them. Let the most stubborn of
+theorists take his stand at the helm of a ship, and, whatever be the
+obstinacy of his principles or his prejudices, he will never, unless he
+is blind or led by the blind, persist in steering always to the right
+or always to the left. Just so after the flight to Varennes, when the
+Assembly, in full possession of the executive power, directly controls
+the Ministry, it comes to recognize for itself that its constitutional
+machine will not work, except in the way of destruction; and it is the
+principal revolutionaries, Barnave, Duport, the Lameths, Chapelier, and
+Thouret,[2147] who undertake to make alterations in the mechanisms so
+as to lessen its friction. But this source of knowledge and reason,
+however, to which they are momentarily induced to draw, in spite of
+themselves and too late, has been turned off by themselves from the very
+beginning. On the 6th of November, 1789, in deference to principle
+and in dread of corruption, the Assembly had declared that none of
+its members should hold ministerial office. We see it in consequence
+deprived of all the instruction which comes from direct contact with
+affairs, surrendered without any counterpoise to the seductions
+of theory, reduced by its own decision to become a mere academy of
+legislation only.
+
+Nay, still worse, through another effect of the same error, it condemns
+itself by its own act to constant fits of panic. For, having allowed
+the power which it was not willing to assume to slip into indifferent or
+suspect hands, it is always uneasy, and all its decrees bear an uniform
+stamp, not only of the willful ignorance within which it confines
+itself, but also of the exaggerated or chimerical fears in which its
+life is passed.--Imagine a ship conveying a company of lawyers, literary
+men, and other passengers, who, supported by a mutinous and poorly fed
+crew, take full command, but refuse to select one of their own number
+for a pilot or for the officer of the watch. The former captain
+continues to nominate them; through very shame, and because he is a
+good sort of man, his title is left to him, and he is retained for the
+transmission of orders. If these orders are absurd, so much the worse
+for him; if he resists them, a fresh mutiny forces him to yield; and
+even when they cannot be executed, he has to answer for their being
+carried out. In the meantime, in a room between decks, far away from the
+helm and the compass, our club of amateurs discuss the equilibrium of
+floating bodies, decree a new system of navigation, have the ballast
+thrown overboard, crowd on all sail, and are astonished to find that
+the ship heels over on its side. The officer of the watch and the pilot
+must, evidently, have managed the maneuver badly. They are accordingly
+dismissed and others put in their place, while the ship heels over
+farther yet and begins to leak in every joint. Enough: it is the
+fault of the captain and the old staff of officers, They are not
+well-disposed; for a beautiful system of navigation like this ought to
+work well; and if it fails to do so, it is because some one interferes
+with it. It is positively certain that some of those people belonging
+to the former r�gime must be traitors, who would rather have the ship
+go down than submit; they are public enemies and monsters. They must
+be seized, disarmed, put under surveillance, and punished.--Such is the
+reasoning of the Assembly. Evidently, to reassure it, a message from the
+Minister of the Interior chosen by the Assembly, to the lieutenant of
+police whom he had appointed, to come to his office every morning, would
+be all that was necessary. But it is deprived of this simple resource by
+its own act, and has no other expedient than to appoint a committee of
+investigation to discover crimes of "treason against the nation."[2148]
+What could be more vague than such a term? What could be more
+mischievous than such an institution?--Renewed every month, deprived of
+special agents, composed of credulous and inexperienced deputies, this
+committee, set to perform the work of a Lenoir or a Fouch�, makes up for
+its incapacity by violence, and its proceedings anticipate those of
+the Jacobine inquisition.[2149] Alarmist and suspicious, it encourages
+accusations, and, for lack of plots to discover, it invents them.
+Inclinations, in its eyes, stand for actions, and floating projects
+become accomplished outrages. On the denunciation of a domestic who has
+listened at a door, on the gossip of a washerwoman who has found a scrap
+of paper in a dressing-gown, on the false interpretation of a letter,
+on vague indications which it completes and patches together by
+the strength of its imagination, it forges a coup d'�tat, makes
+examinations, domiciliary visits, nocturnal surprises and arrests;[2150]
+it exaggerates, blackens, and comes in public session to denounce the
+whole affair to the National Assembly. First comes the plot of the
+Breton nobles to deliver Brest to the English;[2151] then the plot for
+hiring brigands to destroy the crops; then the plot of 14th of July to
+burn Paris; then the plot of Favras to murder Lafayette, Necker, and
+Bailly; then the plot of Augeard to carry off the King, and many others,
+week after week, not counting those which swarm in the brains of the
+journalists, and which Desmoulins, Fr�ron, and Marat reveal with a
+flourish of trumpets in each of their publications.
+
+"All these alarms are cried daily in the streets like cabbages
+and turnips, the good people of Paris inhaling them along with the
+pestilential vapors of our mud."[2152]
+
+..............Now, in this aspect, as well as in a good many others, the
+Assembly is the people; satisfied that it is in danger,[2153] it makes
+laws as the former make their insurrections, and protects itself by
+strokes of legislation as the former protects itself by blows with
+pikes. Failing to take hold of the motor spring by which it might direct
+the government machine, it distrusts all the old and all the new wheels.
+The old ones seem to it an obstacle, and, instead of utilizing them,
+it breaks them one by one--parliaments, provincial states, religious
+orders, the church, the nobles, and royalty. The new ones are
+suspicious, and instead of harmonizing them, it puts them out of gear
+in advance--the executive power, administrative powers, judicial
+powers, the police, the gendarmerie, and the army.[2154] Thanks to
+these precautions it is impossible for any of them to be turned against
+itself; but, also, thanks to these precautions, none of them can perform
+their functions.[2155]
+
+In building, as well as in destroying, the Assembly had two bad
+counselors, on the one hand fear, on the other hand theory; and on the
+ruins of the old machine which it had demolished without discernment,
+the new machine, which it has constructed without forecast, will work
+only to its own ruin.
+
+
+*****
+
+
+[Footnote 2101: Arthur Young, June 15, 1789.--Bailly, passim,--Moniteur,
+IV. 522 (June 2, 1790).--Mercure de France (Feb. 11 1792).]
+
+[Footnote 2102: Moniteur, v. 631 (Sep. 12, 1790), and September 8th
+(what is said by the Abb� Maury).--Marmontel, book XIII. 237.--Malouet,
+I. 261.--Bailly, I. 227.]
+
+[Footnote 2103: Sir Samuel Romilly, "M�moires," I. 102, 354.--Dumont,
+158. (The official rules bear are dated July 29, 1789.)]
+
+[Footnote 2104: Cf. Ferri�res, I. 3. His repentance is affecting.]
+
+[Footnote 2105: Letter from Morris to Washington, January 24, 1790 See
+page 382, "A diary of the French revolution", Greenwood Press, Westport,
+Conn. 1972.--Dumont 125--Garat, letter to Condorcet.]
+
+[Footnote 2106: Arthur Young, I. 46. "Tame and elegant, uninteresting
+and polite, the mingled mass of communicated ideas has power neither
+to offend nor instruct..... All vigor of thought seems excluded from
+expression..... Where there is much polish of character there is little
+argument."--Cabinet des Estampes. See engravings of the day by Moreau,
+Prieur, Monet, representing the opening of the States-General. All the
+figures have a graceful, elegant, and genteel air.]
+
+[Footnote 2107: Marmontel, book XIII. 237.--Malouet, I. 261.--Ferri�res,
+I. 19.]
+
+[Footnote 2108: Gouverneur Morris, January 24, 1790.--Likewise (De
+Ferri�res, I.71) the decree on the abolition of nobility was not the
+order of the day, and was carried by surprise.]
+
+[Footnote 2109: Ferri�res, I. 189.--Dumont, 146.]
+
+[Footnote 2110: Letter of Mirabeau to Siey�s, June 11, 1790. "Our nation
+of monkeys with the throats of parrots."--Dumont, 146. "Siey�s and
+Mirabeau always entertained a contemptible opinion of the Constituent
+Assembly."]
+
+[Footnote 2111: Moniteur, I, 256, 431 (July 16 and 31, 1789).--Journal
+des D�bats et D�crets, 105, July 16th "A member demands that M. de Lally
+should put his speech in writing. The whole Assembly has repeated this
+request."]
+
+[Footnote 2112: Moniteur. (March 11, 1790). "A nun of St. Mand�, brought
+to the bar of the house, thanks the Assembly for the decree by which
+the cloisters are opened, and denounces the tricks, intrigues, and
+even violence exercised in the convents to prevent the execution of
+the decree."--Ibid. March 29, 1790. See the various addresses which are
+read. "At Lagnon, the mother of a family assembled her ten children,
+and swore with them and for them to be loyal to the nation and to
+the King."--Ibid. June 5, 1790. "M. Chambroud reads the letter of the
+collector of customs of Lannion, in Brittany, to a priest, a member
+of the National Assembly. He implores his influence to secure the
+acceptance of his civic oath and that of all his family, ready to wield
+either the censer, the cart, the scales, the sword, or the pen." On
+reading a number of these addresses the Assembly appears to be a
+supplement of the Petites Affiches (a small advertising journal in
+Paris).]
+
+[Footnote 2113: Moniteur, October 23, 1789.]
+
+[Footnote 2114: A well-known writer of children's stories.--
+21Tr.]
+
+[Footnote 2115: Ferri�res, II. 65 (June 10,1790).--De Montlosier, I.
+402. "One of these puppets came the following day to get his money
+of the Comte de Billancourt, mistaking him for the Duc de Liancourt.
+'Monsieur,' says he, 'I am the man who played the Chaldean yesterday.'"]
+
+[Footnote 2116: Buchez and Roux, X. 118 (June 16, 1791).]
+
+[Footnote 2117: See the printed list of deputies, with the indication of
+their baillage or s�n�chauss�e, quality, condition, and profession.]
+
+[Footnote 2118: De Bouill�, 75.--When the King first saw the list of the
+deputies, he exclaimed," What would the nation have said if I had made
+up my council or the Notables in this way?" (Buchez and Roux, IV. 39.)]
+
+[Footnote 2119: Gouverneur Morris, July 31, 1789.]
+
+[Footnote 2120: Gouverneur Morris, February 25, 1789.--Lafayette,
+"M�moires," V. 492. Letter of Jefferson, February 14, 1815.--Arthur
+Young, June 27 and 29, 1789.]
+
+[Footnote 2121: Morris, July 1, 1789.]
+
+[Footnote 2122: Morris, July 4, 1789.]
+
+[Footnote 2123: Mallet du Pan, Mercure, September 26, 1789.]
+
+[Footnote 2124: Gouverneur Morris, January 24, 1790; November 22, 1790.]
+
+[Footnote 2125: Dumont, 33, 58, 62.]
+
+[Footnote 2126: Sir Samuel. Romilly, "M�moirs," I. 102. "It was their
+constant course first, decree the principle and leave the drawing up
+of what they had so resolved (or, as they called it, la r�daction) for
+later. It is astonishing how great an influence it had on their debates
+and measures".--Ibid. I. 354. Letter by Dumont, June 2, 1789. "They
+prefer their own folly to all the results of British experience. They
+revolt at the idea of borrowing anything from our government, which is
+scoffed at here as one of the iniquities of human reason; although they
+admit that you have two or three good laws; but that you should presume
+to have a constitution is not to be sustained."]
+
+[Footnote 2127: Dumont, 138, 151.]
+
+[Footnote 2128: Morris, January 24, 1790.]
+
+[Footnote 2129: Marmontel, XII. 265.--Ferri�res,. I. 48� II. 50, 58,
+126.--Dumont, 74.]
+
+[Footnote 2130: Gouverneur Morris, January 24, 1790.--According to
+Ferri�res this party comprised about three hundred members.]
+
+[Footnote 2131: Here Ambassador Morris describes the kind of man who
+should form the backbone of all later revolutions whether communist or
+fascist ones. (SR.)]
+
+[Footnote 2132: Dumont, 33, 58, 62.]
+
+[Footnote 2133: De Lavergne, "Les Assembl�es Provinciales," 384.
+Deliberations of the States of Dauphiny, drawn up by Mournier and signed
+by two hundred gentlemen (July, 1788). "The rights of man are derived
+from nature alone, and are independent of human conventions."]
+
+[Footnote 2134: Report by Merlin de Douai, February 8, 1790,
+p.2.--Malouet, II, 51.]
+
+[Footnote 2135: Dumont, 133.--De Montlosier, I, 355, 361.]
+
+[Footnote 2136: Bertrand de Molleville, II. 221 (according to a police
+report).--Schmidt, "Tableaux de la R�volution," I. 215. (Report of the
+agent Dutard, May 13, 1793)--Lacretelle, "Dix Ans d'Epreuves," p.35. "It
+was about midnight when we went out in the rain, sleet, and snow, in the
+piercing cold, to the church of the Feuillants, to secure places for the
+galleries of the Assembly, which we were not to occupy till noon on the
+following day. We were obliged, moreover, to contend for them with a
+crowd animated by passions, and even by interests, very different from
+our own. We were not long in perceiving that a considerable part of the
+galleries was under pay, and that the scenes of cruelty which gave pain
+to us were joy to them. I cannot express the horror I felt on hearing
+those women, since called tricoteuses, take a delight in the already
+homicidal doctrines of Robespierre, enjoying his sharp voice and
+feasting their eyes on his ugly face, the living type of envy." (The
+first months of 1790.)]
+
+[Footnote 2137: Moniteur, V. 237 (July 26, 1790); V. 594. (September 8,
+1790); V. 631 (September 12, 1790); VI. 310 (October 6, 1790). (Letter
+of the Abb� Peretti.)]
+
+[Footnote 2138: De Ferri�res, II. 75.--Moniteur, VI. 373 (September 6,
+1790).--M. de Virieu. "Those who insult certain members and hinder the
+freedom of debate by hooting or applause must be silenced. Is it the
+three hundred spectators who are to be our judges, or the nation?" M.
+Chasset, President: "Monsieur opinionist, I call you to order. You speak
+of hindrances to a free vote; there has never been anything of the kind
+in this Assembly."]
+
+[Footnote 2139: Sauzay, I 140. Letter of M. Lompr�, liberal deputy, to
+M. S�guin, chanoine (towards the end of November, 1789). "The service
+becomes more difficult every day; we have become objects of popular
+fury, and, when no other resource was left to us to avoid the tempest
+but to get rid of the endowments of the clergy, we yielded to force. It
+had become a pressing necessity, and I should have been sorry to have
+had you still here, exposed to the outrages and violence with which I
+have been repeatedly threatened."]
+
+[Footnote 2140: Mercure de France, Nos. of January 15, 1791; October 2,
+1790; May 14,1791.--Buchez and Roux, V. 343 (April 13, 1790); VII.
+76 (September 2, 1790); X. 225 ( June 21, 1791).--De Montlosier, I.
+357.--Moniteur, IV, 427.]
+
+[Footnote 2141: Archives of the Police, exposed by the Committee of the
+district of Saint-Roch. Judgment of the Police Tribunal, May 15, 1790.]
+
+[Footnote 2142: Malouet, II. 68.--De Montlosier, II. 217, 257 (Speech of
+M. Lavie, September 18, 1791).]
+
+[Footnote 2143: I.e. members of the old local parlements.]
+
+[Footnote 2144: Mercure, October 1, 1791. (Article by Mallet du Pan.)]
+
+[Footnote 2145: Malouet II. 66. "Those only who were not intimidated
+by insults or threats, nor by actual blows, could come forward as
+opponents."]
+
+[Footnote 2146: Buchez and Roux, X. 432, 465.]
+
+[Footnote 2147: Malouet, II, 153.]
+
+[Footnote 2148: Decrees of July 23rd and 28th, 1789.--"Archives
+Nationales." Papers of Committee of Investigation, passim. Among other
+affairs see that of Madame de Persan (Moniteur, V. 611, sitting of
+September 9, 1790), and that of Malouet ("M�moires" II. 12).]
+
+[Footnote 2149: Buchez and Roux, IV. 56 (Report of Garan de Coulon); V.
+49 (Decision of the Committee of Investigation, December 28, 1789).]
+
+[Footnote 2150: The arrests of M. de Riolles, M. de Bussy, etc., of
+Madame de Jumilhac, of two other ladies, one at Bar-le-Duc and the other
+of Nancy, etc.]
+
+[Footnote 2151: Sitting of July 28, 1789, the speeches of Duport and
+Rewbell, etc.--Mercure, No. of January 1, 1791 (article by Mallet
+du Pan).--Buchez and Roux, V. 146l "Behold five or six successive
+conspiracies--that of the sacks of flour, that of the sacks of money,
+etc." (Article by Camille Desmoulins.)]
+
+[Footnote 2152: "Archives de la Pr�fecture de Police." Extract from the
+registers of the deliberations of the Conseil-G�n�ral of the district
+of Saint-Roch, October 10 1789: Arr�te: to request all the men in the
+commune to devote themselves, with all the prudence, activity, and force
+of which they are capable, to the discovery, exposure, and publication
+of the horrible plots and infernal treachery which are constantly
+meditated against the inhabitants of the capital; to denounce to the
+public the authors, abettors, and adherents of the said plots, whatever
+their rank may be; to secure their persons and insure their punishment
+with all the rigor which outrages of this kind call for. The commandant
+of the battalion and the district captains come daily to consult with
+the committee. "While the alarm lasts, the first story of each house is
+to be lighted with lamps during the night: all citizens of the district
+are requested to be at home by ten o'clock in the evening at the
+latest, unless they should be on duty... . All citizens are invited
+to communicate whatever they may learn or discover in relation to the
+abominable plots which are secretly going on in the capital."]
+
+[Footnote 2153: Letter of M. de Guillermy, July 31, 1790 ("Actes des
+Ap�tres," V. 56). "During these two nights (July 13th and 14th, 1789)
+that we remained in session I heard one deputy try to get it believed
+that an artillery corps had been ordered to point its guns against our
+hall; another, that it was undermined, and that it was to be blown up;
+another went so far as to declare that he smelt powder, upon which M. le
+Comte de Virieu replied that power had no odor until it was burnt."]
+
+[Footnote 2154: Dumont, 351. "Each constitutional law was a party
+triumph."]
+
+[Footnote 2155: Here Taine indicates how subversive parties may proceed
+to weaken a nation prior to their take-over.(SR.)]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. DESTRUCTION.
+
+
+
+
+I.--Two principal vices of the ancient r�gime.
+
+     Two principal reforms proposed by the King and the
+     privileged classes.--They suffice for actual needs.--
+     Impracticable if carried further.
+
+In the structure of the old society there were two fundamental vices
+which called for two reforms of corresponding importance.[2201]
+
+In the first place, those who were privileged having ceased to render
+the services for which the advantages they enjoyed constituted their
+compensation and their privileges were no longer anything but a
+gratuitous charge imposed on one portion of the nation for the benefit
+of the other. Hence the necessity for suppressing them.
+
+In the second place, the Government, being absolute, made use of public
+resources as if they were its own private property, arbitrarily and
+wastefully;[2202] it was therefore necessary to impose upon it some
+effective and regular restraints.
+
+To render all citizens equal before taxation, to put the purse of the
+tax-payers into the hands of their representatives, such was the twofold
+operation to be carried out in 1789; and the privileged class as well
+as the King willingly lent themselves to it. Not only, in this respect,
+were the memorials of nobles and clergy in perfect harmony, but the
+monarch himself; in his declaration of the 23rd of June, 1789, decreed
+the two articles. Henceforth, every tax or loan was to obtain the
+consent of the States-General; this consent was to be renewed at each
+new meeting of the States; the public estimates were to be annually
+published, discussed, specified, apportioned, voted on and verified by
+the States; there were to be no arbitrary assessments or use of public
+funds; allowances were to be specially assigned for all separate
+services, the household of the King included. In each province or
+district-general, there was to be an elected Provincial Assembly,
+one-half composed of ecclesiastics and nobles, and the other half of
+members of the Third-Estate, to apportion general taxes, to manage local
+affairs, to decree and direct public works, to administer hospitals,
+prisons, workhouses, and to continue its function, in the interval of
+the sessions, through an intermediary commission chosen by itself; so
+that, besides the principal control of the center, there were to be
+thirty subordinate controlling powers at the extremities. There was
+to be no more exemption or distinction in the matter of taxation; the
+roadtax (cov�e) was to be abolished, also the right of franc-fief[2203]
+imposed on plebeians; the rights of mortmain,[2204] subject to
+indemnity, and internal customs duties. There was to be a reduction of
+the captaincies, a modification of the salt-tax and of the excise,
+the transformation of civil justice, too costly for the poor, and of
+criminal justice, too severe for the humbler classes. Here we have,
+besides the principal reform, equalization of taxes; the beginning and
+inducement of the more complete operation which is to strike off the
+last of the feudal manacles. Moreover; six weeks later, on the 4th of
+August; the privileged, in an outburst of generosity, come forward
+of their own accord to cut off or undo the whole of them. This double
+reform thus encountered no obstacles, and, as Arthur Young reported to
+his friends, it merely required one vote to have it adopted.[2205]
+
+This was enough; for all real necessities were now satisfied. On the one
+hand, through the abolition of privileges in the matter of taxation,
+the burden of the peasant and, in general, on the small tax-payer
+was diminished one-half, and perhaps two thirds; instead of paying
+fifty-three francs on one hundred francs of net income, he paid no more
+than twenty-five or even sixteen;[2206] an enormous relief, and one
+which, with the proposed revision of the excise and salt duties, made a
+complete change in his condition. Add to this the gradual redemption
+of ecclesiastical and feudal dues: and after twenty years the peasant,
+already proprietor of a fifth of the soil, would, without the violent
+events of the Revolution, in any case have attained the same degree of
+independence and well-being which he was to achieve by passing through
+it. On the other hand, through the annual vote on the taxes, not only
+were waste and arbitrariness in the employment of the public funds put
+a stop to, but also the foundations of the parliamentary system of
+government were laid: whoever holds the purse-strings is, or becomes,
+master of the rest; henceforth in the maintenance or establishment of
+any service, the assent of the States was to be necessary. Now, in the
+three Chambers which the three orders were thenceforward to form, there
+were two in which the plebeians predominated. Public opinion, moreover,
+was on their side, while the King, the true constitutional monarch, far
+from possessing the imperious inflexibility of a despot, did not now
+possess the initiative of an ordinary person. Thus the preponderance
+fell to the communes, and they could legally, without any collision,
+execute multiply, and complete, with the aid of the prince and through
+him, all useful reforms.[2207]--This was enough; for human society,
+like a living body, is seized with convulsions when it is subjected to
+operations on too great a scale, and these, although restricted, were
+probably all that France in 1789 could endure. To equitably reorganize
+afresh the whole system of direct and indirect taxation; to revise,
+recast, and transfer to the frontiers the customs-tariffs; to suppress,
+through negotiations and with indemnity, feudal and ecclesiastical
+claims, was an operation of the greatest magnitude, and as complex as
+it was delicate. Things could be satisfactorily arranged only through
+minute inquiries, verified calculations, prolonged essays, and mutual
+concessions. In England, in our day, a quarter of a century has been
+required to bring about a lesser reform, the transformation of tithes
+and manorial-rights; and time likewise was necessary for our Assemblies
+to perfect their political education,[2208] to get of their theories, to
+learn, by contact with practical business, and in the study of details,
+the distance which separates speculation from practice; to discover that
+a new system of institutions works well only through a new system of
+habits, and that to decree a new system of habits is tantamount to
+attempting to build an old house.--Such, however, is the work they
+undertake. They reject the King's proposals, the limited reforms, the
+gradual transformations. According to them, it is their right and their
+duty to re-make society from top to bottom. Such is the command of pure
+reason, which has discovered the Rights of Man and the conditions of the
+Social Contract.
+
+
+
+
+II--Nature of societies, and the principle of enduring constitutions.
+
+Apply the Social Contract, if you like, but apply it only to those for
+whom it was drawn up. These were abstract beings, belonging neither to
+a period nor to a country, perfect creatures hatched out under the
+magic wand of a metaphysician. They had as a matter of fact come into
+existence by removing all the characteristics which distinguish one man
+from another,[2209] a Frenchman from a Papuan, a modern Englishman from
+a Briton in the time of Caesar, and by retaining only the part which is
+common to all.[2210] The essence thus obtained is a prodigiously meager
+one, an infinitely curtailed extract of human nature, that is, in the
+phraseology of the day,
+
+"A BEING WITH A DESIRE TO BE HAPPY AND THE FACULTY OF REASONING,"
+
+nothing more and nothing else. After this pattern several million
+individuals, all precisely alike, have been prepared while, through a
+second simplification, as extraordinary as the first one, they are all
+supposed to be free and all equal, without a past, without kindred,
+without responsibility, without traditions, without customs, like so
+many mathematical units, all separable and all equivalent, and then it
+is imagined that, assembled together for the first time, these proceed
+to make their primitive bargain. From the nature they are supposed to
+possess and the situation in which they are placed, no difficulty is
+found in deducing their interests, their wills, and the contract between
+them. But if this contract suits them, it does not follow that it suits
+others. On the contrary, if follows that is does not suit others; the
+inconvenience becomes extreme on its being imposed on a living society;
+the measure of that inconvenience will be the immensity of the distance
+which divides a hollow abstraction, a philosophical phantom, an empty
+insubstantial image from the real and complete man.
+
+In any event we are not here considering a specimen, so reduced and
+mutilated as to be only an outline of a human being; no, we are to the
+contrary considering Frenchmen of the year 1789. It is for them alone
+that the constitution is being made: it is therefore they alone who
+should be considered; they are manifestly men of a particular species,
+having their peculiar temperament, their special aptitudes, their own
+inclinations, their religion, their history, all adding up into a mental
+and moral structure, hereditary and deeply rooted, bequeathed to them by
+the indigenous stock, and to which every great event, each political
+or literary phase for twenty centuries, has added a growth, a
+transformation or a custom. It is like some tree of a unique species
+whose trunk, thickened by age, preserves in its annual rings and in its
+knots, branches, and curvatures, the deposits which its sap has made
+and the imprint of the innumerable seasons through which it has passed.
+Using the philosophic definition, so vague and trite, to such an
+organism, is only a puerile label teaching us nothing.--And all the more
+because extreme diversities and inequalities show themselves on this
+exceedingly elaborate and complicated background,--those of age,
+education, faith, class and fortune; and these must be taken into
+account, for these contribute to the formation of interests, passions,
+and dispositions. To take only the most important of these, it is clear
+that, according to the average of human life,[2211] one-half of the
+population is composed of children, and, besides this, one-half of the
+adults are women. In every twenty inhabitants eighteen are Catholic,
+of whom sixteen are believers, at least through habit and tradition.
+Twenty-five out of twenty-six millions of Frenchmen cannot read, one
+million at the most being able to do so; and in political matters only
+five or six hundred are competent. As to the condition of each class,
+its ideas, its sentiments, its kind and degree of culture, we should
+have to devote a large volume to a mere sketch of them.
+
+There is still another feature and the most important of all. These men
+who are so different from each other are far from being independent, or
+from contracting together for the first time. They and their ancestors
+for eight hundred years form a national body, and it is because they
+belong to this body that they live, multiply, labor, make acquisitions,
+become enlightened and civilized, and accumulate the vast heritage of
+comforts and intelligence which they now enjoy. Each in this community
+is like the cell of an organized body; undoubtedly the body is only
+an accumulation of cells, but the cell is born, subsists, develops and
+attains its individual ends only be the healthy condition of the whole
+body. Its chief interest, accordingly, is the prosperity of the whole
+organism, and the fundamental requirement of all the little fragmentary
+lives, whether they know it or not, is the conservation of the
+great total life in which they are comprised as musical notes in a
+concert.--Not only is this a necessity for them, but it is also a duty.
+We are all born with a debt to our country, and this debt increases
+while we grow up; it is with the assistance of our country, under the
+protection of the law, upheld by the authorities, that our ancestors
+and parents have given us life, property, and education. Each person's
+faculties, ideas, attitudes, his or her entire moral and physical being
+are the products to which the community has contributed, directly or
+indirectly, at least as tutor and guardian. By virtue of this the state
+is his creditor, just as a destitute father is of his able-bodied son;
+it can lay claim to nourishment, services, and, in all the force or
+resources of which he disposes, it deservedly demands a share.--This he
+knows and feels, the notion of country is deeply implanted within him,
+and when occasion calls for it, it will show itself in ardent emotions,
+fueling steady sacrifice and heroic effort.--Such are veritable
+Frenchmen, and we at once see how different they are from the simple,
+indistinguishable, detached monads which the philosophers insist on
+substituting for them. Their association need not be created, for it
+already exists; for eight centuries they have a "common weal" (la chose
+publique). The safety and prosperity of this common weal is at once
+their interest, their need, their duty, and even their most secret wish.
+If it is possible to speak here of a contract, their quasi-contract is
+made and settled for them beforehand. The first article, at all events,
+is stipulated for, and this overrides all the others. The nation must
+not be dissolved. Public authorities must, accordingly, exist, and
+these must be respected. If there are a number of these, they must be
+so defined and so balanced as to be of mutual assistance, instead of
+neutralizing each other by their opposition. Whatever government is
+adopted, it must place matters in the hands best qualified to conduct
+them. The law must not exist for the advantage of the minority, nor for
+that of the majority, but for the entire community.--In regard to this
+first article no one must derogate from it, neither the minority nor
+the majority, neither the Assembly elected by the nation, nor the nation
+itself, even if unanimous. It has no right arbitrarily to dispose of the
+common weal, to put it in peril according to its caprice, to subordinate
+it to the application of a theory or to the interest of a single class,
+even if this class is the most numerous. For, that which is the common
+weal does not belong to it, but to the whole community, past, present,
+and to come. Each generation is simply the temporary manager and
+responsible trustee of a precious and glorious patrimony which it has
+received from the former generation, and which it has to transmit to
+the one that comes after it. In this perpetual endowment, to which all
+Frenchmen from the first days of France have brought their offerings,
+there is no doubt about the intentions of countless benefactors; they
+have made their gifts conditionally, that is, on the condition that the
+endowment should remain intact, and that each successive beneficiary
+should merely serve as the administrator of it. Should any of the
+beneficiaries, through presumption or levity, through rashness or
+one-sidedness, compromise the charge entrusted to them, they wrong
+all their predecessors whose sacrifices they invalidate, and all their
+successors whose hopes they frustrate. Accordingly, before undertaking
+to frame a constitution, let the whole community be considered in its
+entirety, not merely in the present but in the future, as far as the
+eye can reach. The interest of the public, viewed in this far-sighted
+manner, is the end to which all the rest must be subordinate, and for
+which a constitution provides. A constitution, whether oligarchic,
+monarchist, or aristocratic, is simply an instrument, good if it attains
+this end, and bad if it does not attain it, and which, to attain it,
+must, like every species of mechanism, vary according to the ground,
+materials, and circumstances. The most ingenious is illegitimate if it
+dissolves the State, while the clumsiest is legitimate if it keeps the
+State intact. There is none that springs out of an anterior, universal,
+and absolute right. According to the people, the epoch, and the degree
+of civilization, according to the outer or inner condition of things,
+all civil or political equality or inequality may, in turn, be or cease
+to be beneficial or hurtful, and therefore justify the legislator in
+removing or preserving it. It is according to this superior and salutary
+law, and not according to an imaginary and impossible contract, that he
+is to organize, limit, delegate and distribute from the center to
+the extremities, through inheritance or through election, through
+equalization or through privilege, the rights of the citizen and the
+power of the community.
+
+
+
+
+III.--The estates of a society.
+
+     Political aptitude of the aristocracy.--Its disposition in
+     1789.--Special services which it might have rendered.--The
+     principle of the Assembly as to original equality.
+     --Rejection of an Upper Chamber.--The feudal rights of the
+     aristocracy.--How far and why they were worthy of respect.
+     --How they should have been transformed.--Principle of the
+     Assembly as to original liberty.--Distinction established by
+     it in feudal dues; application of its principle.--The
+     lacunae of its law.--Difficulties of redemption.--Actual
+     abolition of all feudal liens.--Abolition of titles and
+     territorial names.--Growing prejudice against the
+     aristocracy.--Its persecutions.--The emigration.
+
+Was it necessary to begin by making a clean sweep, and was it advisable
+to abolish or only to reform the various orders and corporations?--Two
+prominent orders, the clergy and the nobles, enlarged by the ennobled
+plebeians who had grown wealthy and acquired titled estates, formed a
+privileged aristocracy side by side with the Government, whose favors it
+might receive on the condition of seeking them assiduously and with
+due acknowledgment, privileged on its own domains, and taking advantage
+there of all rights belonging to the feudal chieftain without performing
+his duties. This abuse was evidently an enormous one and had to
+be ended. But, it did not follow that, because the position of the
+privileged class on their domains and in connection with the Government
+was open to abuse, they should be deprived of protection for person and
+property on their domains, and of influence and occupation under the
+Government.--A favored aristocracy, when it is unoccupied and renders
+none of the services which its rank admits of, when it monopolizes all
+honors, offices, promotions, preferences, and pensions,[2212] to the
+detriment of others not less needy and deserving, is undoubtedly a
+serious evil. But when an aristocracy is subject to the common law, when
+it is occupied, especially when its occupation is in conformity with its
+aptitudes, and more particularly when it is available for the formation
+of an upper elective chamber or an hereditary peerage, it is a vast
+service.--In any case it cannot be irreversibly suppressed; for,
+although it may be abolished by law, it is reconstituted by facts. The
+legislator must necessarily choose between two systems, that which lets
+it lie fallow, or that which enables it to be productive, that which
+drives it away from, or that which rallies it round, the public service.
+In every society which has lived for any length of time, a nucleus of
+families always exists whose fortunes and importance are of ancient
+date. Even when, as in France in 1789, this class seems to be exclusive,
+each half century introduces into it new families; judges, governors,
+rich businessmen or bankers who have risen to the tope of the social
+ladder through the wealth they have acquired or through the important
+offices they have filled; and here, in the medium thus constituted, the
+statesman and wise counselor of the people, the independent and able
+politician is most naturally developed.--Because, on the one hand,
+thanks to his fortune and his rank, a man of this class is above all
+vulgar ambitions and temptations. He is able to serve gratis; he is not
+obliged to concern himself about money or about providing for his family
+and making his way in the world. A political mission is no interruption
+to his career; he is not obliged, like the engineer, merchant, or
+physician, to sacrifice either his business, his advancement, or his
+clients. He can resign his post without injury to himself or to
+those dependent on him, follow his own convictions, resist the noisy
+deleterious opinions of the day, and be the loyal servant, not the
+low flatterer of the public. Whilst, consequently, in the inferior or
+average conditions of life, the incentive is self-interest, with him the
+grand motive is pride. Now, amongst the deeper feelings of man there is
+none which is more adapted for transformation into probity, patriotism,
+and conscientiousness; for the first requisite of the high-spirited
+man is self-respect, and, to obtain that, he is induced to deserve it.
+Compare, from this point of view, the gentry and nobility of England
+with the "politicians" of the United States.--On the other hand,
+with equal talents, a man who belongs to this sphere of life enjoys
+opportunities for acquiring a better comprehension of public affairs
+than a poor man of the lower classes. The information he requires is
+not the erudition obtained in libraries and in private study. He must
+be familiar with living men, and, besides these, with agglomerations
+of men, and even more with human organizations, with States, with
+Governments, with parties, with administrative systems, at home and
+abroad, in full operation and on the spot. There is but one way to reach
+this end, and that is to see for himself, with his own eyes, at once
+in general outline and in details, by intercourse with the heads of
+departments, with eminent men and specialists, in whom are gathered up
+the information and the ideas of a whole class. Now the young do not
+frequent society of this description, either at home or abroad, except
+on the condition of possessing a name, family, fortune, education and a
+knowledge of social observances. All this is necessary to enable a
+young man of twenty to find doors everywhere open to him to be received
+everywhere on an equal footing, to be able to speak and to write three
+or four living languages, to make long, expensive, and instructive
+sojourns in foreign lands, to select and vary his position in the
+different branches of the public service, without pay or nearly so, and
+with no object in view but that of his political culture Thus brought up
+a man, even of common capacity, is worthy of being consulted. If he is
+of superior ability, and there is employment for him, he may become a
+statesman before thirty; he may acquire ripe capacities, become prime
+Minister, the sole pilot, alone able, like Pitt, Canning, or Peel, to
+steer the ship of State between the reefs, or give in the nick of time
+the touch to the helm which will save the ship.--Such is the service to
+which an upper class is adapted. Only this kind of specialized stud farm
+can furnish a regular supply of racers, and, now and then, the favorite
+winner that distances all his competitors in the European field.
+
+But in order that they may prepare and educate themselves for this
+career, the way must be clear, and they must not be compelled to travel
+too repulsive a road. If rank, inherited fortune, personal dignity, and
+refined manners are sources of disfavor with the people; if, to obtain
+their votes, he is forced to treat as equals electoral brokers of low
+character; if impudent charlatanism, vulgar declamation, and servile
+flattery are the sole means by which votes can be secured, then, as
+nowadays in the United States, and formerly in Athens, the aristocratic
+body will retire into private life and soon settle down into a state
+of idleness. A man of culture and refinement, born with an income of a
+hundred thousand a year, is not tempted to become either manufacturer,
+lawyer, or physician. For want of other occupation he loiters about,
+entertains his friends, chats, indulges in the tastes and hobbies of an
+amateur, is bored or enjoys himself. As a result one of society's great
+forces is thus lost to the nation. In this way the best and largest
+acquisition of the past, the heaviest accumulation of material and
+of moral capital, remain unproductive. In a pure democracy the upper
+branches of the social tree, not only the old ones but the young ones,
+remain sterile. When a vigorous branch passes above the rest and
+reaches the top it ceases to bear fruit. The �lite of the nation is thus
+condemned to constant and irremediable failures because it cannot find
+a suitable outlet for its activity. It wants no other outlet, for in all
+directions its rival, who are born below it, can serve as usefully and
+as well as itself. But this one it must have, for on this its aptitudes
+are superior, natural, unique, and the State which refuses to employ
+it resembles the gardener who in his fondness for a plane surface would
+repress his best shoots.[2213]--Hence, in the constructions which aim to
+utilize the permanent forces of society and yet maintain civil equality,
+the aristocracy is brought to take a part in public affairs by the
+duration and gratuitous character of its mission, by the institution of
+an hereditary character, by the application of various machinery, all
+of which is combined so as to develop the ambition, the culture, and
+the political capacity of the upper class, and to place power, or the
+control of power, in its hands, on the condition that it shows itself
+worthy of exercising it.--Now, in 1789, the upper class was not unworthy
+of it. Members of the parliaments, the noblemen, bishops, capitalists,
+were the men amongst whom, and through whom, the philosophy of the
+eighteenth century was propagated. Never was an aristocracy more
+liberal, more humane, and more thoroughly converted to useful
+reforms;[2214] many of them remain so under the knife of the guillotine.
+The magistrates of the superior tribunals, in particular, traditionally
+and by virtue of their institution, were the enemies of excessive
+expenditure and the critics of arbitrary acts. As to the gentry of the
+provinces, "they were so weary," says one of them,[2215] "of the Court
+and the Ministers that most of them were democrats." For many years,
+in the Provincial Assemblies, the whole of the upper class, the clergy,
+nobles, and Third-Estate, furnishes abundant evidence of its good
+disposition, of its application to business, its capacity and even
+generosity. Its mode of studying, discussing, and assigning the local
+taxation indicates what it would have done with the general budget had
+this been entrusted to it. It is evident that it would have protected
+the general taxpayer as zealously as the taxpayer of the province,
+and kept as close an eye upon the public purse at Paris as on that of
+Bourges or of Montauban.--Thus were the materials of a good chamber
+ready at hand, and the only thing that had to be done was to convene
+them. On having the facts presented to them, its members would have
+passed without difficulty from a hazardous theory to common-sense
+practice, and the aristocracy which had enthusiastically given an
+impetus to reform in its saloons would, in all probability, have carried
+it out effectively and with moderation in the Parliament.
+
+Unhappily, the Assembly is not providing a Constitution for contemporary
+Frenchmen, but for abstract beings. Instead of seeing classes in society
+one placed above the other, it simply sees individuals in juxtaposition;
+its attention is not fixed on the advantage of the nation, but on the
+imaginary rights of man. As all men are equal, all must have an equal
+share in the government. There must be no orders in a State, no avowed
+or concealed political privileges, no constitutional complications or
+electoral combinations by which an aristocracy, however liberal and
+capable, may put its hands upon any portion of the public power.--On
+the contrary, because it was once privileged to enjoy important and
+rewarding public employment, the candidacy of the upper classes is now
+suspect. All projects which, directly or indirectly, reserve or provide
+a place for it, are refused: At first the Royal Declaration, which, in
+conformity with historical precedents, maintained the three orders in
+three distinct chambers, and only summoned them to deliberate together
+"on matters of general utility." Then the plan of the Constitutional
+Committee, which proposed a second Chamber, appointed for life by the
+King on the nomination of the Provincial Assemblies. And finally the
+project of Mounier who proposed to confide to these same Assemblies the
+election of a Senate for six years, renewed by thirds every two years.
+This Senate was to be composed of men of at least thirty-five years of
+age, and with an income in real property of 30,000 livres per annum. The
+instinct of equality is too powerful and a second Chamber is not wanted,
+even if accessible to plebeians. Through it,[2216]
+
+"The smaller number would control the greater;"... "we should fall
+back on the humiliating distinctions" of the ancient regime; "we should
+revivify the germ of an aristocracy which must be exterminated."....
+"Moreover, whatever recalls or revives feudal Institutions is bad, and
+an Upper Chamber is one of its remnants." ...."If the English have
+one, it is because they have been forced to make a compromise with
+prejudice."
+
+The National Assembly, sovereign and philosophic, soars above their
+errors, their trammel; and their example. The depository of truth, it
+has not to receive lessons from others, but to give them, and to offer
+to the world's admiration the first type of a Constitution which is
+perfect and in conformity with principle, the most effective of any in
+preventing the formation of a governing class; in closing the way to
+public business, not only to the old noblesse, but to the aristocracy
+of the future; in continuing and exaggerating the work of absolute
+monarchy; in preparing for a community of officials and administrators;
+in lowering the level of humanity; in reducing to sloth and brutalizing
+or blighting the elite of the families which maintain or raise
+themselves; and in withering the most precious of nurseries, that in
+which the State recruits its statesmen.[2217]
+
+Excluded from the Government, the aristocracy is about to retire
+into private life. Let us follow them to their estates: Feudal rights
+instituted for a barbarous State are certainly a great draw-back in a
+modern State. If appropriate in an epoch when property and sovereignty
+were fused together, when the Government was local, when life was
+militant, they form an incongruity at a time when sovereignty and
+property are separated, when the Government is centralized, when the
+regime is a pacific one. The bondage which, in the tenth century,
+was necessary to re-established security and agriculture, is, in the
+eighteenth century, purposeless thralldom which impoverishes the soil
+and fetters the peasant. But, because these ancient claims are liable
+to abuse and injurious at the present day, it does not follow that they
+never were useful and legitimate, nor that it is allowable to abolish
+them without indemnity On the contrary, for many centuries, and, on
+the whole, so long as the lord of the manor resided on his estates this
+primitive contract was advantageous to both parties, and to such an
+extent that it has led to the modern contract. Thanks to the pressure of
+this tight bandage, the broken fragments of the community can be
+again united, and society once more recover its solidity, force,
+and activity.--In any event, that the institution, like all human
+institutions, took its rise in violence and was corrupted by abuses is
+of little consequence; the State, for eight hundred years, recognized
+these feudal claims, and, with its own consent and the concurrence of
+its Courts, they were transmitted, bequeathed, sold, mortgaged, and
+exchanged, like any other species of property. Only two or three
+hundred, at most, now remained in the families of the original
+proprietors. "The largest portion of the titled estates," says a
+contemporary,[2218] "have become the property of capitalists, merchants,
+and their descendants; the fiefs, for the most part, being in the
+hands of the bourgeois of the towns." All the fiefs which, during two
+centuries past, have been bought by new men, now represent the economy
+and labor of their purchasers.--Moreover; whoever the actual holders
+may be, whether old or whether new men, the State is under obligation to
+them, not only by general right--and because, from the beginning, it
+is in its nature the guardian of all property,--but also by a special
+right, because it has itself sanctioned this particular species of
+property. The buyers of yesterday paid their money only under its
+guarantee; its signature is affixed to the contract, and it has bound
+itself to secure to them the enjoyment of it. If it prevents them
+from doing so, let it make them compensation; in default of the thing
+promised to them, it owes them the value of it. Such is the law in cases
+of expropriation for public utility; in 1834, for instance, the English,
+for the legal abolition of slavery, paid to their planters the sum of
+�20,000,000. --But that is not sufficient: when, in the suppression
+of feudal rights, the legislator's thoughts are taken up with the
+creditors, he has only half performed his task; there are two sides to
+the question, and he must likewise think of the debtors. If he is
+not merely a lover of abstractions and of fine phrases, if that which
+interests him is men and not words, if he is bent upon the effective
+enfranchisement of the cultivator of the soil, he will not rest content
+with proclaiming a principle, with permitting the redemption of rents,
+with fixing the rate of redemption, and, in case of dispute, with
+sending parties before the tribunals. He will reflect that the
+peasantry, jointly responsible for the same debt will find difficulty
+in agreeing among themselves; that they are afraid of litigation; that,
+being ignorant, they will not know how to set about it; that, being
+poor, they will be unable to pay; and that, under the weight of discord,
+distrust, indigence, and inertia, the new law will remain a dead letter,
+and only exasperate their cupidity or kindle their resentment. In
+anticipation of this disorder the legislator will come to their
+assistance; he will interpose commissions of arbitration between them
+and the lord of the manor; he will substitute a scale of annuities for a
+full and immediate redemption; he will lend them the capital which they
+cannot borrow elsewhere; he will establish a bank, rights, and a mode of
+procedure,--in short, as in Savoy in 1771, in England in 1845,[2219] and
+in Russia in 1861, he will relieve the poor without despoiling the rich;
+he will establish liberty without violating the rights of property; he
+will conciliate interests and classes; he will not let loose a brutal
+peasant revolt (Jacquerie) to enforce unjust confiscation; and he will
+terminate the social conflict not with strife but with peace.
+
+It is just the reverse in 1789 In conformity with the doctrine of the
+social contract, the principle is set up that every man is born free,
+and that his freedom has always been inalienable. If he formerly
+submitted to slavery or to serfdom, it was owing to his having had a
+knife at his throat; a contract of this sort is essentially null and
+void. So much the worse for those who have the benefit of it at the
+present day; they are holders of stolen property, and must restore it to
+the legitimate owners. Let no one object that this property was acquired
+for cash down, and in good faith; they ought to have known beforehand
+that man and his liberty are not commercial matters, and that unjust
+acquisitions rightly perish in their hands.[2220] Nobody dreams that
+the State which was a party to this transaction is the responsible
+guarantor. Only one scruple affects the Assembly; its jurists and
+Merlin, its reporter, are obliged to yield to proof; they know that
+in current practice, and by innumerable ancient and modern titles, the
+noble in many cases is nothing but an ordinary lessor, and that if, in
+those cases, he collects his dues, it is simply in his capacity as a
+private person, by virtue of a mutual contract, because he has given a
+perpetual lease of a certain portion of his land; and he has given
+it only in consideration of an annual payment in money or produce, or
+services, together with another contingent claim which the farmer pays
+in case of the transmission of the lease. These two obligations could
+not be canceled without indemnity; if it were done, more than one-half
+of the proprietors in France would be dispossessed in favor of the
+farmers. Hence the distinction which the Assembly makes in the feudal
+dues.--On the one hand it abolishes without indemnity all those dues
+which the noble receives by virtue of being the local sovereign, the
+ancient proprietor of persons and the usurper of public powers; all
+those which the lessee paid as serf, subject to rights of inheritance,
+and as former vassal or dependent. On the other hand, it maintains
+and decrees as redeemable at a certain rate all those which the noble
+receives through his title of landed proprietor and of simple lessor;
+all those which the lessee pays by virtue of being a free contracting
+party, former purchaser, tenant, farmer or grantee of landed estate.--By
+this division it fancies that it has respected lawful ownership by
+overthrowing illegitimate property, and that in the feudal scheme of
+obligations, it has separated the wheat from the chaff.[2221]
+
+But, through the principle, the drawing up and the omissions of its
+law, it condemns both to a common destruction; the fire on which it has
+thrown the chaff necessarily burns up the wheat.--Both are in fact bound
+up together in the same sheaf. If the noble formerly brought men under
+subjection by the sword, it is also by the sword that he formerly
+acquired possession of the soil. If the subjection of persons is invalid
+on account of the original stain of violence, the usurpation of the soil
+is invalid for the same reason. And if the sanction and guarantee of
+the State could not justify the first act of brigandage, they could not
+justify the second; and, since the rights which are derived from unjust
+sovereignty are abolished without indemnity, the rights which are
+derived from unjust proprietorship should be likewise abolished without
+compensation.----The Assembly, with remarkable imprudence, had declared
+in the preamble to its law that "it abolished the feudal system
+entirely," and, whatever its ulterior reservations might be, the fiat
+has gone forth. The forty thousand sovereign municipalities to which the
+text of the decree is read pay attention only to the first article, and
+the village attorney, imbued with the rights of man, easily proves to
+these assemblies of debtors that they owe nothing to their creditors.
+There must be no exceptions nor distinctions: no more annual rents,
+field-rents, dues on produce, nor contingent rents, nor lord's dues and
+fines, or fifths.[2222] If these have been maintained by the Assembly,
+it is owing to misunderstanding, timidity, inconsistency, and on all
+sides, in the rural districts, the grumbling of disappointed greed or of
+unsatisfied necessities is heard:[2223]
+
+"You thought that you were destroying feudalism, while your redemption
+laws have done just the contrary. . . . Are you not aware that what was
+called a Seigneur was simply an unpunished usurper? . . . That detestable
+decree of 1790 is the ruin of lease-holders. It has thrown the villages
+into a state of consternation. The nobles reap all the advantage of
+it. . . Never will redemption be possible. Redemption of unreal claims!
+Redemption of dues that are detestable!"
+
+In vain the Assembly insists, specifies and explains by examples and
+by detailed instructions the mode of procedure and the conditions of
+redemption. Neither the procedure nor its conditions are practicable. It
+has made no provisions for facilitating the agreement of parties and
+the satisfaction of feudal liens, no special arbitrators, nor bank for
+loans, nor system of annuities. And worse still, instead of clearing the
+road it has barred it by legal arrangements. The lease-holder is not
+to redeem his annual rent without at the same time compounding for the
+contingent rent: he is not allowed on his own to redeem his quota since
+he is tied up in solidarity with the other partners. Should his hoard
+be a small one, so much the worse for him. Not being able to redeem the
+whole, he is not allowed to redeem a part. Not having the money with
+which to relieve himself from both ground-rents and lord's dues he
+cannot relieve himself from ground-rents. Not having the money to
+liquidate the debt in full of those who are bound along with him-self,
+he remains a captive in his ancient chains by virtue of the new law
+which announces to him his freedom.
+
+In the face of these unexpected trammels the peasant becomes furious:
+His fixed idea, from the outbreak of the Revolution, is that he no
+longer owes anything to anybody, and, among the speeches, decrees,
+proclamations, and instructions which rumor brings to his ears, he
+comprehends but one phrase, and is determined to comprehend no other,
+and that is, that henceforth his obligations are removed. He does not
+swerve from this, and since the law hinders, instead of aiding him, he
+will break the law. In fact, after the 4th of August, 1789, feudal dues
+cease to be collected. The claims which are maintained are not enforced
+any more than those which are suppressed. Whole communities come and
+give notice to the lord of the manor that they will not pay any more
+rent. Others, with sword in hand, compel him to give them acquittances.
+Others again, to be more secure, break open his safe, and throw his
+title-deeds into the fire.[2224] Public force is nowhere strong enough
+to protect him in his legal rights. Officers dare not serve writs, the
+courts dare not give judgment, administrative bodies dare not decree in
+his favor. He is despoiled through the connivance, the neglect, or
+the impotence of all the authorities which ought to defend him. He is
+abandoned to the peasants who fell his forests, under the pretext that
+they formerly belonged to the commune; who take possession of his
+mill, his wine-press, and his oven, under the pretext that territorial
+privileges are suppressed.[2225] Most of the gentry of the provinces are
+ruined, without any resource, and have not even their daily bread; for
+their income consisted in seignorial rights, and in rents derived from
+their real property, which they had let on perpetual leases, and now,
+in accordance with the law, one-half of this income ceases to be paid,
+while the other half ceases to be paid in spite of the law. One hundred
+and twenty-three millions of revenue, representing two thousand millions
+and a half of capital in the money of that time, double, at least, that
+of the present day, thus passes as a gift, or through the toleration of
+the National Assembly, from the hands of creditors into those of their
+debtors. To this must be added an equal sum for revenue and capital
+arising from the tithes which are suppressed without compensation, and
+by the same stroke.--This is the commencement of the great revolutionary
+operation, that is to say, of the universal bankruptcy which, directly
+or indirectly, is to destroy all contracts, and abolish all debts in
+France. Violations of property, especially of private property, cannot
+be made with impunity. The Assembly desired to lop off only the
+feudal branch; but, in admitting that the State can annul, without
+compensation, the obligations which it has guaranteed, it put the ax to
+the root of the tree, and other rougher hands are already driving it in
+up to the haft.
+
+Nothing now remains to the noble but his title, his territorial name,
+and his armorial bearings, which are innocent distinctions, since they
+no longer confer any jurisdiction or pre-eminence upon him, and which,
+as the law ceases to protect him, the first comer may borrow with
+impunity. Not only, moreover, do they do no harm, but they are even
+worthy of respect. With many of the nobles the title of the estate
+covers the family name, the former alone being made use of. If one
+were substituted for the other, the public would have difficulty in
+discovering M. de Mirabeau, Lafayette, and M. de Moutmorency, under the
+new names Riquetti, M. Motti�, and M. Bouchard. Besides, it would be
+wrong to the bearer of it, to whom the abolished title is a legitimate
+possession, often precious, it being a certificate of quality and
+descent, an authentic personal distinction of which he cannot be
+deprived without losing his position, rank, and worth, in the human
+world around him.--The Assembly, however, with a popular principle
+at stake, gives no heed to public utility, nor to the rights of
+individuals. The feudal system being abolished, all that remains of
+it must be got rid of. A decree is passed that "hereditary nobility is
+offensive to reason and to true liberty;" that, where it exists, "there
+is no political equality."[2226] Every French citizen is forbidden to
+assume or retain the titles of prince, duke, count, marquis, chevalier,
+and the like, and to bear any other than the "true name of his family;"
+he is prohibited from making his servants wear liveries, and from having
+coats-of-arms on his house or on his carriage. In case of any infraction
+of this law a penalty is inflicted upon him equal to six times the sum
+of his personal taxes; he is to be struck off the register of citizens,
+and declared incapable of holding any civil or military office. There
+is the same punishment if to any contract or acquittance he affixes his
+accustomed signature; if; through habit or inadvertence, he adds the
+title of his estate to his family name--if; with a view to recognition,
+and to render his identity certain, he merely mentions that he once bore
+the former name. Any notary or public officer who shall write, or allow
+to be written, in any document the word ci-devant (formerly) is to be
+suspended from his functions. Not only are old names thus abolished, but
+an effort is made to efface all remembrance of them. In a little while,
+the childish law will become a murderous one. It will be but a little
+while and, according to the terms of this same decree, a military
+veteran of seventy-seven years, a loyal servant of the Republic, and a
+brigadier-general under the Convention, will be arrested on returning to
+his native village, because he has mechanically signed the register of
+the revolutionary committee as Montperreux instead of Vannod, and, for
+this infraction, he will be guillotined along with his brother and his
+sister-in-law.[2227]
+
+Once on this road, it is impossible to stop; for the principles which
+are proclaimed go beyond the decrees which are passed, and a bad law
+introduces a worse. The Constituent Assembly[2228] had supposed that
+annual dues, like ground-rents, and contingent dues, like feudal duties
+(lods et rentes), were the price of an ancient concession of land, and,
+consequently, the proof to the contrary is to be thrown upon the tenant.
+The Legislative Assembly is about to assume that these same rentals
+are the result of an old feudal usurpation, and that, consequently, the
+proof to the contrary must rest with the proprietor. His rights cannot
+be established by possession from time immemorial, nor by innumerable
+and regular acquittances; he must produce the act of enfeoffment which
+is many centuries old, the lease which has never, perhaps, been written
+out, the primitive title already rare in 1720,[2229] and since stolen
+or burnt in the recent jacqueries: otherwise he is despoiled without
+indemnity. All feudal claims are swept away by this act without
+exception and without compensation.
+
+In a similar manner, the Constituent Assembly, setting common law aside
+in relation to inheritances ab intestato, had deprived all eldest sons
+and males of any advantages.[2230] The Convention, suppressing the
+freedom of testamentary bequest, prohibits the father from disposing
+of more than one-tenth of his possessions; and again, going back to the
+past, it makes its decrees retrospective: every will opened after the
+14th of July, 1789, is declared invalid if not in conformity with
+this decree; every succession from the 14th of June, 1789, which is
+administered after the same date, is re-divided if the division has not
+been equal; every donation which has been made among the heirs after the
+same date is void. Not only is the feudal family destroyed in this way,
+but it must never be reformed. The aristocracy, being once declared a
+venomous plant, it is not sufficient to prime it away, but it must be
+extirpated, not only dug up by the root, but its seed must be crushed
+out.--A malignant prejudice is aroused against it, and this grows from
+day to day. The stings of self-conceit, the disappointments of ambition,
+and envious sentiments have prepared the way. Its hard, dry kernel
+consists of the abstract idea of equality. All around revolutionary
+fervor has caused blood to flow, has embittered tempers, intensified
+sensibilities, and created a painful abscess which daily irritation
+renders still more painful. Through steadily brooding over a purely
+speculative preference this has become a fixed idea, and is becoming
+a murderous one. It is a strange passion, one wholly of the brains,
+nourished by magniloquent phrases, but the more destructive, because
+phantoms are created out of words, and against phantoms no reasoning nor
+actual facts can prevail. This or that shopkeeper who, up to this time,
+had always formed his idea of nobles from his impressions of the members
+of the Parliament of his town or of the gentry of his canton, now
+pictures them according to the declamations of the club and the
+invectives of the newspapers. The imaginary figure, in his mind, has
+gradually absorbed the living figure: he no longer sees the calm and
+engaging countenance, but a grinning and distorted mask. Kindliness or
+indifference is replaced by animosity and distrust; they are overthrown
+tyrants, ancient evil-doers, And enemies of the public; he is satisfied
+beforehand and without further investigation that they are hatching
+plots. If they avoid being caught, it is owing to their address and
+perfidy, and they are only the more dangerous the more inoffensive
+they appear. Their sub-mission is merely a feint, their resignation
+hypocrisy, their favorable disposition, treachery. Against these
+conspirators who cannot be touched the law is inadequate; let us stretch
+it in practice, and as they wince at equality let us try to make them
+bow beneath the yoke.
+
+In fact, illegal persecution precedes legal prosecution; the privileged
+person who, by the late decrees, seems merely to be brought within the
+pale of the common law, is, in fact; driven outside of it. The King,
+disarmed, is no longer able to protect him; the partial Assembly repels
+his complaints; the committee of inquiry regards him as a culprit
+when he is simply oppressed. His income, his property, his repose, his
+freedom, his home, his life, that of his wife and of his children, are
+in the hands of an administration elected by the crowd, directed by
+clubs, and threatened or violated by the mob. He is debarred from the
+elections. The newspapers denounce him. He undergoes domiciliary
+visits. In hundreds of places his chateau is sacked; the assassins and
+incendiaries who depart from it with their hands full and steeped in
+blood are not prosecuted, or are shielded by an amnesty:[2231] it is
+established by innumerable precedents that he may be run down with
+impunity. To prevent him from defending himself, companies of the
+National Guard come and seize his arms: he must become a prey, and
+an easy prey, like game kept back in its enclosure for an approaching
+hunt.--In vain he abstains from provocation and reduces himself to
+the standing of a private individual. In vain does he patiently endure
+numerous provocations and resist only extreme violence. I have read
+many hundreds of investigations in the original manuscripts, and almost
+always I have admired the humanity of the nobles, their forbearance,
+their horror of bloodshed. Not only are a great many of them men of
+courage and all men of honor, but also, educated in the philosophy of
+the eighteenth century, they are mild, sensitive, and deeds of violence
+are repugnant to them. Military officers especially are exemplary, their
+great defect being their weakness: rather than fire on the crowd they
+surrender the forts under their command, and allow themselves to be
+insulted and stoned by the people. For two years,[2232] "exposed to a
+thousand outrages, to defamation, to daily peril, persecuted by clubs
+and misguided soldiers," disobeyed, menaced, put under arrest by their
+own men, they remain at their post to prevent the ranks from being
+broken up; "with stoic perseverance they put up with contempt of their
+authority that they may preserve its semblance, their courage is of that
+rarest kind which consists in remaining at the post of duty, impassive
+beneath both affronts and blows.--Through a wrong of the greatest
+magnitude, an entire class which have no share in the favors of
+the Court, and which suffered as many injuries as any of the common
+plebeians, is confounded with the titled parasites who besiege the
+antechambers of Versailles. Twenty-five thousand families, "the nursery
+of the army and the fleet," the elite of the agricultural proprietors,
+also many gentlemen who look after and turn to account the little
+estates on which they live, and "who have not left their homes a year in
+their lives," become the pariahs of their canton.[2233] After 1789, they
+begin to feel that their position is no longer tenable.[2234]
+
+" It is absolutely in opposition to the rights of man," says another
+letter from Franche-Comt�, "to find one's self in perpetual fear of
+having one's throat cut by scoundrels who are daily confounding liberty
+with license."
+
+"I never knew anything so wearying," says another letter from Champagne,
+"as this anxiety about property and security. Never was there a better
+reason for it. A moment suffices to let loose an intractable population
+which thinks that it may do what it pleases, and which is carefully
+sustained in that error."
+
+"After the sacrifices that we have made," says a letter from Burgundy,
+"we could not expect such treatment. I thought that our property would
+be the last violated because the people owed us some return for staying
+at home in the country to expend among them the few resources that
+remain to us. . . (Now), I beg the Assembly to repeal the decree on
+emigration; otherwise it may be said that people are purposely kept here
+to be assassinated. . . In case it should refuse to do us this justice,
+I should be quite as willing to have it decree an act of proscription
+against us, for we should not then be lulled to sleep by the protection
+of laws which are doubtless very wise, but which are not respected
+anywhere."
+
+" It is not our privileges," say several others, "it is not our nobility
+that we regret; but how is the persecution to which we are abandoned to
+be supported? There is no safety for us, for our property, or for our
+families. Wretches who are our debtors, the small farmers who rob us of
+our incomes, daily threaten us with the torch and the lamp post. We do
+not enjoy one hour of repose; not a night that we are certain to
+pass through without trouble. Our persons are given up to the vilest
+outrages, our dwellings to an inquisition of armed tyrants; we are
+robbed of our rentals with impunity, and our property is openly
+attacked. We, being now the only people to pay imposts, are unfairly
+taxed; in various places our entire incomes would not suffice to pay
+the quota which crushes us. We can make no complaint without incurring
+the risk of being massacred. The tribunals and the administrative
+bodies, the tools of the multitude, daily sacrifice us to its attacks.
+Even the Government seems afraid of compromising itself by claiming the
+protection of the laws on our behalf. It is sufficient to be pointed
+out as an aristocrat to be without any security. If our peasants, in
+general, have shown more honesty, consideration, and attachment toward
+us, every bourgeois of importance, the wild members of clubs, the vilest
+of men who sully a uniform, consider themselves privileged to insult us,
+and these wretches go unpunished and are protected! Even our religion
+is not free. One of our number has had his house sacked for having shown
+hospitality to an old cur� of eighty belonging to his parish who refused
+to take the oath. Such is our fate. We are not so base as to endure it.
+Our right to resist oppression is not due to a decree of the National
+Assembly, but to natural law. We are going to leave, and to die if
+necessary. But to live under such a revolting anarchy! Should it not be
+broken up we shall never set foot in France again!"
+
+The operation is successful. The Assembly, through its decrees and
+institutions, through the laws it enacts and the violence which it
+tolerates, has uprooted the aristocracy and cast it out of the country.
+The nobles, now the reverse of privileged, cannot remain in a country
+where, while respecting the law, they are really beyond its pale. Those
+who first emigrated on the 15th of July, 1789, along with the Prince de
+Cond�, received at their houses the evening before they left a list of
+the proscribed on which their names appeared, and a reward was
+promised to whoever would bring their heads to the cellar of the
+Palais-Royal--Others, in larger numbers, left after the occurrences
+of the 6th of October.--During the last months of the Constituent
+Assembly,[2235]
+
+"the emigration goes on in companies composed of men of every condition.
+. . . Twelve hundred gentlemen have left Poitou alone; Auvergne,
+Limousin, and ten other provinces have been equally depopulated of their
+landowners. There are towns in which nobody remains but common workmen,
+a club, and the crowd of devouring office-holders created by the
+Constitution. All the nobles in Brittany have left, and the emigration
+has begun in Normandy, and is going on in the frontier provinces.
+
+"More than two-thirds of the army will be without officers." On being
+called upon to take the new oath in which the King's name is purposely
+omitted, "six thousand officers send in their resignation."
+
+The example gradually becomes contagious; they are men of the sword, and
+their honor is at stake. Many of them join the princes at Coblentz,
+and subsequently do battle against France in the belief that they are
+contending only against their executioners.
+
+The treatment of the nobles by the Assembly is the same as the treatment
+of the Protestants by Louis XIV.[2236] In both cases the oppressed are a
+superior class of men. In both cases France has been made uninhabitable
+for them. In both cases they are reduced to exile, and they are
+punished because they exiled them selves. In both cases it ended in a
+confiscation of their property, and in the penalty of death to all who
+should harbor them. In both cases, by dint of persecution, they are
+driven to revolt. The insurrection of La Vend�e corresponds with the
+insurrection of the C�vennes; and the emigrants, like the refugees of
+former times, will be found under the flags of Prussia and of England.
+One hundred thousand Frenchmen driven out at the end of the seventeenth
+century, and one hundred thousand driven out at the end of the
+eighteenth century! Mark how an intolerant democracy completes the work
+of an intolerant monarchy. The moral aristocracy was mowed down in the
+name of uniformity; the social aristocracy is mowed down in the name of
+equality. For the second time, an absolute principle, and with the same
+effect, buries its blade in the heart of a living society.
+
+The success is complete. One of the deputies of the Legislative
+Assembly, early in its session, on being informed of the great increase
+in emigration, joyfully exclaims,
+
+"SO MUCH THE BETTER; FRANCE IS BEING PURGED!"
+
+She is, in truth, being depleted of one-half of her best blood.
+
+
+
+
+IV.--Abuse and lukewarmness in 1789 in the ecclesiastical bodies.
+
+     How the State used its right of overseeing and reforming
+     them.--Social usefulness of corporations.--The sound part in
+     the monastic institution.--Zeal and services of nuns.--How
+     ecclesiastical possessions should be employed.--Principle of
+     the Assembly as to private communities, feudal rights and
+     trust-funds.--Abolition and expropriation all corporations.
+     --Uncompensated suppression of tithes.--Confiscation of
+     ecclesiastical possessions.--Effect on the Treasury and on
+     expropriated services.--The civil constitution of the
+     clergy.--Rights of the Church in relation to the State.
+     --Certainty and effects of a conflict.--Priests considered as
+     State-functionaries.--Principal stipulations of the law.
+     --Obligations of the oath.--The majority of priests refuse to
+     take it.--The majority of believes on their side.
+     --Persecution of believers and of priests.
+
+
+There remained the corporate, ecclesiastic, and lay bodies, and,
+notably, the oldest, most opulent, and most considerable of all the
+regular and secular clergy.--Grave abuses existed here also, for, the
+institution being founded on ancient requirements, had not accommodated
+itself to new necessities.[2237] There were too many episcopal sees,
+and these were arranged according to the Christian distribution of
+the population in the fourth century; a revenue still more badly
+apportioned--bishops and abb�s with one hundred thousand livres a year,
+leading the lives of amiable idlers, while cur�s, overburdened with
+work, have but seven hundred; in one monastery nineteen monks instead
+of eighty, and in another four instead of fifty;[2238] a number of
+monasteries reduced to three or to two inhabitants, and even to one;
+almost all the congregations of men going to decay, and many of them
+dying out for lack of novices;[2239] a general lukewarmness among the
+members, great laxity in many establishments, and with scandals in some
+of them; scarcely one-third taking an interest in their calling, while
+the remaining two-thirds wish to go back to the world,[2240]--it is
+evident from all this that the primitive inspiration has been diverted
+or has cooled; that the endowment only partially fulfills its ends;
+that one-half of its resources are employed in the wrong way or
+remain sterile; in short, that there is a need of reformation in the
+body.--That this ought to be effected with the co-operation of the State
+and even under its direction is not less certain. For a corporation
+is not an individual like other individuals, and, in order that it may
+acquire or possess the privileges of an ordinary citizen, something
+supplementary must be added, some fiction, some expedient of the law.
+If the law is disposed to overlook the fact that a corporation is not a
+natural personage, if it gives to it a civil personality, if it declares
+it to be capable of inheriting, of acquiring and of selling, if it
+becomes a protected and respected proprietor, this is due to the favors
+of the State which places its tribunal and gendarmes at its service, and
+which, in exchange for this service, justly imposes conditions on it,
+and, among others, that of being useful and remaining useful, or at
+least that of never becoming harmful. Such was the rule under the
+Ancient R�gime, and especially since the Government has for the last
+quarter of a century gradually and efficaciously worked out a reform.
+Not only, in 1749, had it prohibited the Church from accepting land,
+either by donation, by testament, or in exchange, without royal
+letters-patent registered in Parliament; not only in 1764 had it
+abolished the order of Jesuits, closed their colleges and sold their
+possessions, but also, since 1766, a permanent commission, formed by
+the King's order and instructed by him, had lopped off all the dying and
+dead branches of the ecclesiastical tree.[2241] There was a revision of
+the primitive Constitutions; a prohibition to every institution to have
+more than two monasteries at Paris and more than one in other towns; a
+postponement of the age for taking vows--that of sixteen being no longer
+permitted--to twenty-one for men and eighteen for women; an obligatory
+minimum of monks and nuns for each establishment, which varies from
+fifteen to nine according to circumstances; if this is not kept up there
+follows a suppression or prohibition to receive novices: owing to
+these measures, rigorously executed, at the end of twelve years
+"the Grammontins, the Servites, the Celestins, the ancient order of
+Saint-B�n�dict, that of the Holy Ghost of Montpellier, and those
+of Sainte-Brigitte, Sainte-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie, Saint-Ruff, and
+Saint-Antoine,"--in short, nine complete congregations had disappeared.
+At the end of twenty years three hundred and eighty-six establishments
+had been suppressed, the number of monks and nuns had diminished
+one-third, the larger portion of possessions which had escheated were
+usefully applied, and the congregations of men lacked novices and
+complained that they could not fill up their ranks. If the monks were
+still found to be too numerous, too wealthy, and too indolent, it was
+merely necessary to keep on in this way; before the end of the century,
+merely by the application of the edict, the institution would be
+brought back, without brutality or injustice, within the scope of the
+development, the limitations of fortune, and the class of functions
+acceptable to a modern State.
+
+But, because these ecclesiastical bodies stood in need of reform it does
+not follow that it was necessary to destroy them, nor, in general,
+that independent institutions are detrimental to a nation. Organized
+purposely for a public service, and possessing, nearly or remotely under
+the supervision of the State, the faculty of self-administration, these
+bodies are valuable organs and not malign tumors.
+
+In the first place, through their institution, a great public benefit
+is secured without any cost to the government--worship, scientific
+research, primary or higher education, help for the poor, care of the
+sick--all set apart and sheltered from the cuts which public financial
+difficulties might make necessary, and supported by the private
+generosity which, finding a ready receptacle at hand, gathers together,
+century after century, its thousands of scattered springs: as an
+example, note the wealth, stability, and usefulness of the English and
+German universities.
+
+In the second place, their institution furnishes an obstacle to the
+omnipotence of the State; their walls provide a protection against the
+leveling standardization of absolute monarchy or of pure democracy. A
+man can here freely develop himself without donning the livery of
+either courtier or demagogue, he can acquire wealth, consideration and
+authority, without being indebted to the caprices of either royal or
+popular favor; he can stand firm against established or prevailing
+opinions sheltered by associates bound by their esprit de corps. Such,
+at the present day (1885), is the situation of a professor at Oxford,
+G�ttingen, and Harvard Such, under the Ancient R�gime, were a bishop, a
+member of the French Parliaments, and even a plain attorney. What can
+be worse than universal bureaucracy, producing a mechanical and servile
+uniformity! Those who serve the public need not all be Government
+clerks; in countries where an aristocracy has perished, bodies of this
+kind are their last place of refuge.
+
+In the third place, through such institutions, distinct original
+societies may come to be inside the great commonplace world. Here
+special personalities may find the only existence that suits them. If
+devout or laborious, not only do these afford an outlet for the deeper
+needs of conscience, of the imagination, of activity, and of discipline,
+but also they serve as dikes which restrain and direct them in a channel
+which will lead to the creation of a masterpiece of infinite value. In
+this way thousands of men and women fulfill at small cost, voluntarily
+and gratis, and with great effect, the least attractive and more
+repulsive social needs, thus performing in human society the role which,
+inside the ant-hill, we see assigned to the sexless worker-ant.[2242]
+
+Thus, at bottom, the institution was really good, and if it had to be
+cauterized it was merely essential to remove the inert or corrupted
+parts and preserve the healthy and sound parts.--Now, if we take only
+the monastic bodies, there were more than one-half of these entitled
+to respect. I omit those monks, one-third of whom remained zealous and
+exemplary-the Benedictines, who continue the "Gallia Christiana," with
+others who, at sixty years of age, labor in rooms without a fire;
+the Trappists, who cultivate the ground with their own hands, and the
+innumerable monasteries which serve as educational seminaries, bureaus
+of charity, hospices for shelter, and of which all the villages in their
+neighborhood demand the conservation by the National Assembly.[2243]
+I have to mention the nuns, thirty-seven thousand in fifteen hundred
+convents. Here, except in the twenty-five chapters of canonesses, which
+are a semi-worldly rendezvous for poor young girls of noble birth,
+fervor, frugality, and usefulness are almost everywhere incontestable.
+One of the members of the Ecclesiastical Committee admits in the
+Assembly tribunal that, in all their letters and addresses, the nuns ask
+to be allowed to remain in their cloisters; their entreaties, in fact,
+are as earnest as they are affecting.[2244] One Community writes,
+
+"We should prefer the sacrifice of our lives to that of our calling
+. . . . This is not the voice of some among our sisters, but of all. The
+National Assembly has established the claims of liberty-would it prevent
+the exercise of these by the only disinterested beings who ardently
+desire to be useful, and have renounced society solely to be of greater
+service to it?"
+
+"The little contact we have with the world," writes another "is the
+reason why our contentment is so little known. But it is not the less
+real and substantial. We know of no distinctions, no privileges amongst
+ourselves; our misfortunes and our property are in common. One in heart
+and one in soul. . . we protest before the nation, in the face of heaven
+and of earth, that it is not in the power of any being to shake our
+fidelity to our vows, which vows we renew with still more ardor than
+when we first pronounced them."[2245]
+
+Many of the communities have no means of subsistence other than the work
+of their own hands and the small dowries the nuns have brought with
+them on entering the convent. So great, however is their frugality and
+economy, that the total expenditure of each nun does not surpass 250
+livres a year. The Annonciades of Saint-Amour say,
+
+"We, thirty-three nuns, both choristers and those of the white veil,
+live on 4,400 livres net income, without being a charge to our families
+or to the public. . . If we were living in society, our expenses would
+be three times as much;" and, not content with providing for themselves,
+they give in charity.
+
+Among these communities several hundreds are educational establishments;
+a very great number give gratuitous primary instruction.--Now, in 1789,
+there are no other schools for girls, and were these to be suppressed,
+every avenue of instruction and culture would be closed to one of the
+two sexes, forming one-half of the French population. Fourteen thousand
+sisters of charity, distributed among four hundred and twenty convents,
+look after the hospitals, attend upon the sick, serve the infirm,
+bring up foundlings, provide for orphans, lying-in women, and repentant
+prostitutes. The "Visitation" is an asylum for "those who are not
+favored by nature,"--and, in those days, there were many more of the
+disfigured than at present, since out of every eight deaths one was
+caused by the smallpox. Widows are received here, as well as girls
+without means and without protection, persons "worn out with the
+agitation of the world," those who are too feeble to support the battle
+of life, those who withdraw from it wounded or invalid, and "the rules
+of the order, not very strict, are not beyond the health or strength
+of the most frail and delicate." Some ingenious device of charity thus
+applies to each moral or social sore, with skill and care, the proper
+and proportionate dressing. And finally, far from falling off, nearly
+all these communities are in a flourishing state, and whilst among the
+establishments for men there are only nine, on the average, to each,
+in those for women there is an average of twenty-four. Here, at
+Saint-Flour, is one which is bringing up fifty boarders; another, at
+Beaulieu, instructs one hundred; another, in Franche-Comt�, has charge
+of eight hundred abandoned children.[2246]--Evidently, in the presence
+of such institutions one must pause, however little one may care for
+justice and the public interest; and, moreover, because it is useless
+to act rigorously against them the legislator crushes them in vain, for
+they spring up again of their own accord; they are in the blood of every
+Catholic nation. In France, instead of thirty-seven thousand nuns, at
+the present day (1866) there are eighty-six thousand-that is to say,
+forty-five in every ten thousand women instead of twenty-eight.[2247]
+
+In any case, if the State deprives them of their property, along with
+that of other ecclesiastical bodies, it is not the State that ought
+to claim the spoil.--The State is not their heir, and their land,
+furniture, and rentals are in their very nature devoted to a special
+purpose, although they have no designated proprietor. This treasure,
+which consists of the accumulations of fourteen centuries, has been
+formed, increased, and preserved, in view of a certain object. The
+millions of generous, repentant, or devout souls who have made a gift
+of it, or have managed it, did so with a certain intention. It was their
+desire to ensure education, beneficence, and religion, and nothing else.
+Their legitimate intentions should not be frustrated: the dead have
+rights in society as well as the living, for it is the dead who have
+made the society which the living enjoy, and we receive their heritage
+only on the condition of executing their testamentary act.--Should
+this be of ancient date, it is undoubtedly necessary to make a liberal
+interpretation of it; to supplement its scanty provisions, and to take
+new circumstances into consideration. The requirements for which it
+provided have often disappeared; for instance, after the destruction of
+the Barbary pirates, there were no more Christians to be ransomed; and
+only by transferring an endowment can it be perpetuated.--But if, in the
+original institution, several accessory and special clauses have become
+antiquated, there remains the one important, general intention, which
+manifestly continues imperative and permanent, that of providing for a
+distinct service, either of charity, of worship, or of instruction. Let
+the administrators be changed, if necessary, also the apportionment of
+the legacy bequeathed, but do not divert any of it to services of an
+alien character; it is inapplicable to any but that purpose or to others
+strictly analogous. The four milliards of investment in real property,
+the two hundred millions of ecclesiastical income, form for it an
+express and special endowment. This is not a pile of gold abandoned on
+the highway, which the exchequer can appropriate or assign to those who
+live by the roadside. Authentic titles to it exist, which, declaring its
+origin, fix its destination, and your business is simply to see that
+it reaches its destination. Such was the principle under the ancient
+r�gime, in spite of grave abuses, and under forced exactions. When the
+ecclesiastical commission suppressed an ecclesiastical order, it was not
+for the purpose of making its possessions over to the public treasury,
+but to apply these to seminaries, schools, and hospitals. In 1789, the
+revenues of Saint-Denis supported Saint-Cyr; those of Saint Germain went
+to the Economats, and the Government, although absolute and needy, was
+sufficiently honest to adjust that confiscation was robbery. The greater
+our power, the greater the obligation to be just, and honesty always
+proves in the end to be the best policy.--It is, therefore, both just
+and useful that the Church, as in England and in America, that superior
+education, as in England and in Germany, that special instruction, as in
+America, and that diverse endowments for public assistance and utility,
+should be unreservedly secured in the maintenance of their heritage. The
+State, as testamentary executor of this inheritance, strangely abuses
+its mandate when it pockets the bequest in order to choke the deficit of
+its own treasury, risking it in bad speculations, and swallowing it
+up in its own bankruptcy, until of this vast treasure, which has been
+heaped up for generations for the benefit of children, the infirm,
+the sick and the poor, not enough is left to pay the salary of a
+school-mistress, the wages of a parish nurse, or for a bowl of broth in
+a hospital.[2248]
+
+The Assembly remains deaf to all these arguments, and that which makes
+its refuse to listen is not financial distress.--The Archbishop of Aix,
+M. de Boisjelin, offered, in the name of the clergy, to liquidate
+at once the debt of three hundred millions, which was urgent, by a
+mortgage-loan of four hundred millions on the ecclesiastical property,
+which was a very good expedient; for at this time the credit of the
+clergy is the only substantial one. It generally borrows at less than
+five per cent., and more money has always been offered to it than it
+wanted, whilst the State borrows at ten per cent., and, at this moment,
+there are no lenders.--But, to our new revolutionary statesmen,
+the cost-benefit of a service is of much less consequence than the
+application of a principle. In conformity with the Social Contract they
+establish the maxim that in the State there is no need of corporate
+bodies: they acknowledge nothing but, on the one hand, the State, the
+depositary of all public powers, and, on the other hand, a myriad of
+solitary individuals. Special associations, specific groups, collateral
+corporations are not wanted, even to fulfill functions which the State
+is incapable of fulfilling. "As soon as one enters a corporation," says
+and orator, "one must love it as one loves a family;"[2249] whereas
+the affections and obedience are all to be monopolized by the State.
+Moreover, on entering into an order a man receives special aid and
+comfort from it, and whatever distinguishes one man from another, is
+opposed to civil equality. Hence, if men are to remain equal and become
+citizens they must be deprived of every rallying point that might
+compete with that of the State, and give to some an advantage over
+others. All natural or acquired ties, consequently, which bound men
+together through geographical position, through climate, history,
+pursuits, and trade, are sundered. The old provinces, the old provincial
+governments, the old municipal administrations, parliaments, guilds
+and masterships, all are suppressed. The groups which spring up most
+naturally, those which arise through a community of interests, are
+all dispersed, and the broadest, most express, and most positive
+interdictions are promulgated against their revival under any pretext
+whatever.[2250] France is cut up into geometrical sections like a
+chess-board, and, within these improvised limits, which are destined
+for a long time to remain artificial, nothing is allowed to subsist
+but isolated individuals in juxtaposition. There is no desire to spare
+organized bodies where the cohesion is great, and least of all that
+of the clergy. "Special associations," says Mirabeau,[2251] "in the
+community at large, break up the unity of its principles and destroy
+the equilibrium of its forces. Large political bodies in a State are
+dangerous through the strength which results from their coalition and
+the resistance which is born out of their interests." ii--That of the
+clergy, besides, is inherently bad,[2252] because "its system is in
+constant antagonism to the rights of man." An institution in which a
+vow of obedience is necessary is "incompatible" with the constitution.
+Congregations "subject to independent chiefs are out of the social pale
+and incompatible with public spirit." As to the right of society over
+these, and also over the Church, this is not doubtful. "Corporate bodies
+exist only through society, and, in destroying them, society merely
+takes back the life she has imparted to them." "They are simply
+instruments fabricated by the law.[2253] What does the workman do
+when the tool he works with no longer suits him? He breaks or alters
+it."--This primary sophism being admitted the conclusion is plain. Since
+corporate bodies are abolished they no longer exist, and since they no
+longer exist, they cannot again become proprietors.
+
+"Your aim was to destroy ecclesiastical orders,[2254] because their
+destruction was essential to the safety of the State. If the clergy
+preserve their property, the clerical order is not destroyed: you
+necessarily leave it the right of assembling; you sanction its
+independence." In no case must ecclesiastics hold possessions. "If they
+are proprietors they are independent, and if they are independent they
+will associate this independence with the exercise of their functions."
+The clergy, cost what it will, must be in the hands of the State, as
+simple functionaries and supported by its subsidies. It would be too
+dangerous for a nation, "to admit in its bosom as proprietors a large
+body of men to whom so many sources of credit already give so great
+power. As religion is the property of all, its ministers, through this
+fact alone, should be in the pay of the nation;" they are essentially
+"officers of morality and instruction," and "salaried" like judges and
+professors. Let us fetch them back to this condition of things, which
+is the only one compatible with the rights of man, and ordain that
+"the clergy, as well as all corporations and bodies with power of
+inheritance, are now, and shall be for ever incapable of holding any
+personal or landed estate."[2255]
+
+Who, now, is the legitimate heir of all these vacated possessions?
+Through another sophism, the State, at once judge and party in the
+cause, assigns them to the State:
+
+"The founders presented them to the Church, that is to say, to the
+nation."[2256] "Since the nation has permitted their possession by
+the clergy, she may re-demand that which is possessed only through her
+authorization." "The principle must be maintained that every nation is
+solely and veritably proprietor of the possessions of its clergy."
+
+This principle, it must be noted, as it is laid down, involves the
+destruction of ecclesiastical and lay corporations, along with the
+confiscation of all their possessions, and soon we shall see appearing
+on the horizon the final and complete decree[2257] by which the
+Legislative Assembly,
+
+"considering that a State truly free should not suffer any corporation
+within its bosom, not even those which, devoted to public instruction,
+deserve well of the country," not even those "which are solely devoted
+to the service of the hospitals-and the relief of the sick," suppresses
+all congregations, all associations of men or of women, lay or
+ecclesiastical, all endowments for pious, charitable, and missionary
+purposes, all houses of education, all seminaries and colleges, and
+those of the Sorbonne and Navarre. Add to these the last sweep of the
+broom: under the Legislative Assembly the division of all communal
+property, except woods: under the Convention, the abolition of all
+literary societies, academies of science and of literature, the
+confiscation of all their property, their libraries, museums, and
+botanical gardens; the confiscation of all communal possessions
+not previously divided; and the confiscation of all the property of
+hospitals and other philanthropic establishments.[2258]--The abstract
+principle, proclaimed by the Constituent Assembly, reveals, by degrees,
+its exterminating virtues. France now, owing to it, contains nothing but
+dispersed, powerless, ephemeral individuals, and confronting them,
+the State, the sole, the only permanent body that has devoured all
+the others, a veritable Colossus, alone erect in the midst of these
+insignificant dwarfs.
+
+Substituted for the others, it is henceforth to perform their duties,
+and spend the money well which they have expended badly.--In the first
+place, it abolishes tithes, not gradually and by means of a process of
+redemption, as in England, but at one stroke, and with no indemnity,
+on the ground that the tax, being an abusive, illegitimate impost, a
+private tax levied by individuals in cowl and cassock on others in
+smock frocks, is a vexatious usurpation, and resembles the feudal
+dues. It is a radical operation, and in conformity with principle.
+Unfortunately, the puerility of the thing is so gross as to defeat its
+own object. In effect, since the days of Charlemagne, all the estates
+in the country which have been sold and resold over and over again
+have always paid tithes, and have never been purchased except with this
+charge upon them, which amounts to about one-seventh of the net revenue
+of the country. Take off this tax and one-seventh is added to the
+income of the proprietor, and, consequently, a seventh to his capital. A
+present is made to him of one hundred francs if his land is worth seven
+hundred-francs, and of one thousand if it is worth seven thousand,
+of ten thousand if it is worth seventy thousand, and of one hundred
+thousand if it is worth seven hundred thousand. Some people gain six
+hundred thousand francs by this act, and thirty thousand francs in
+Income.[2259] Through this gratuitous and unexpected gift, one hundred
+and twenty-three millions of revenue, and two milliards and a half of
+capital, is divided among the holders of real estate in France, and in
+a manner so ingenious that the rich receive the most. Such is the effect
+of abstract principles. To afford a relief of thirty millions a year
+to the peasants in wooden shoes, an assembly of democrats adds thirty
+millions a year to the revenue of wealthy bourgeois and thirty millions
+a year to opulent nobles. The first part of this operation moreover, is
+but another burden to the State; for, in taking off the load from
+the holders of real property, it has encumbered itself, the State
+henceforth, without pocketing a penny, being obliged to defray the
+expenses of worship in their place.--As to the second part of the
+operation, which consists in the confiscation of four milliards of real
+estate, it proves, after all, to be ruinous, although promising to
+be lucrative. It makes the same impression on our statesmen that the
+inheritance of a great estate makes on a needy and fanciful upstart.
+Regarding it as a bottomless well of gold, he draws upon it without
+stint and strives to realize all his fancies; as he can afford to pay
+for it all, he is free to smash it all. It is thus that the Assembly
+suppresses and compensates magisterial offices to the amount of four
+hundred and fifty millions; financial securities and obligations to the
+amount of three hundred and twenty-one millions; the household charges
+of the King, Queen, and princes, fifty-two millions; military services
+and encumbrances, thirty-five millions; enfeoffed tithes, one hundred
+millions, and so on.[2260] "In the month of May, 1789," says Necker,
+"the re-establishment of order in the finances were mere child's-play."
+At the end of a year, by dint of involving itself in debt, by increasing
+its expenses, and by abolishing or abandoning its income, the State
+lives now on the paper-currency it issues, eats up its capital, and
+rapidly marches onward to bankruptcy. Never was such a vast inheritance
+so quickly reduced to nothing, and to less than nothing.
+
+Meanwhile, we can demonstrate, from the first few months, what use the
+administrators will be able to make of it, and the manner in which
+they will endow the service to which it binds them.--No portion of this
+confiscated property is reserved for the maintenance of public worship,
+or to keep up the hospitals, asylums, and schools. Not only do all
+obligations and all productive real property find their way into the
+great national crucible to be converted into assignats[2261], but a
+number of special buildings, all monastic real estate and a portion
+of the ecclesiastical real estate, diverted from its natural course,
+becomes swallowed up in the same gulf. At Besan�on,[2262] three churches
+out of eight, with their land and treasure, the funds of the chapter,
+all the money of the monastic churches, the sacred vessels, shrines,
+crosses, reliquaries, votive offerings, ivories, statues, pictures,
+tapestry, sacerdotal dresses and ornaments, plate, jewels and precious
+furniture, libraries, railings, bells, masterpieces of art and of piety,
+all are broken up and melted in the Mint, or sold by auction for almost
+nothing. This is the way in which the intentions of the founders and
+donors are carried out.--How are so many communities, which are deprived
+of their rentals, to support their schools, hospices, and asylums? Even
+after the decree[2263] which, exceptionally and provisionally, orders
+the whole of their revenue to be accounted for to them, will it be paid
+over now that it is collected by a local administration whose coffers
+are always empty, and whose intentions are almost always hostile? Every
+establishment for benevolent and educational purposes is evidently
+sinking, now that the special streams which nourished them run into and
+are lost in the dry bed of the public treasury.[2264] Already, in 1790,
+there are no funds with which to pay the monks and nuns their small
+pensions for their maintenance. In Franche-Comt� the Capuchins of Baume
+have no bread, and, to live, they are obliged to re-sell, with the
+consent of the district, a portion of the stores of their monastery
+which had been confiscated. The Ursuline nuns of Ornans live on the
+means furnished them by private individuals in order to keep up the only
+school which the town possesses. The Bernardine nuns of Pontarlier are
+reduced to the lowest stage of want: "We are satisfied," the district
+reports, "that they have nothing to put into their mouths. We have
+to contribute something every day amongst ourselves to keep them
+from starving."[2265] Only too thankful are they when the local
+administration gives them something to eat, or allows others to give
+them something. In many places it strives to famish them, or takes
+delight in annoying them. In March, 1791, the department of Doubs, in
+spite of the entreaties of the district, reduces the pension of the
+Visitant nuns to one hundred and one livres for the choristers, and
+fifty for the lay-sisters. Two months before this, the municipality of
+Besan�on, putting its own interpretation on the decree which allowed
+nuns to dress as they pleased, enjoins them all, including even the
+sisters of charity, to abandon their old costume, which few among them
+had the means of replacing.--Helplessness, indifference, or malevolence,
+such are the various dispositions which are encountered among the new
+authorities whose duty it is to support and protect them. To let loose
+persecution there is now only needed a decree which puts the civil power
+in conflict with religious convictions. That decree is promulgated,
+and, on the 12th of July, 1790, the Assembly establishes the civil
+constitution of the clergy.
+
+Notwithstanding the confiscation of ecclesiastical property, and
+the dispersion of the monastic communities, the main body of the
+ecclesiastical corps remains intact: seventy thousand priests
+ranged under the bishops, with the Pope in the center as the
+commander-in-chief. There is no corporation more solid, more
+incompatible, or more attacked. For, against it are opposed implacable
+hatreds and fixed opinions: the Gallicanism of the jurists who, from
+St. Louis downwards, are the adversaries of ecclesiastical power; the
+doctrine of the Jansenists who, since Louis XIII., desire to bring back
+the Church to its primitive form; and the theory of the philosophers
+who, for sixty years, have considered Christianity as a mistake and
+Catholicism as a scourge. At the very least the institution of a clergy
+in Catholicism is condemned, and they think that they are moderate if
+they respect the rest.
+
+"WE MIGHT CHANGE THE RELIGION,"
+
+say the deputies in the tribune.[2266] Now, the decree affects
+neither dogma nor worship; it is confined to a revision of matters of
+discipline, and on this particular domain which is claimed for the
+civil power, it is pretended that demolition and re-construction may
+be effected at discretion without the concurrence of the ecclesiastical
+power.
+
+Here there is an abuse of power, for an ecclesiastical as well as civil
+society has the right to choose its own form, its own hierarchy, its own
+government.--On this point, every argument that can be advanced in favor
+of the former can be repeated in favor of the latter, and the moment one
+becomes legitimate the other becomes legitimate also. The justification
+for a civil or of a religious community or society may be the
+performance of a long series of services which, for centuries, it has
+rendered to its members, the zeal and success with which it discharges
+its functions, the feelings of gratitude they entertain for it, the
+importance they attribute to its offices, the need they have of it, and
+their attachment to it, the conviction imprinted in their minds that
+without it they would be deprived of a benefit upon which they set more
+store than upon any other. This benefit, in a civil society, is the
+security of persons and property. In the religious society it is
+the eternal salvation of the soul. iii In all other particulars the
+resemblance is complete, and the titles of the Church are as good as
+those of the State. Hence, if it be just for one to be sovereign and
+free on its own domain, it is just for the other to be equally sovereign
+and free, If the Church encroaches when it assumes to regulate the
+constitution of the State, then the State also encroaches when it
+pretends to regulate the constitution of the Church. If the former
+claims the respect of the latter on its domain, the latter must show
+equal respect for the former on its ground. The boundary-line between
+the two territories is, undoubtedly, not clearly defined and frequent
+contests arise between the two. Sometimes these may be forestalled or
+terminated by each shutting itself up within a wall of separation, and
+by their remaining as much as possible indifferent to each other, as
+is the case in America. At another, they may, by a carefully considered
+contract,[2267] each accord to the other specific rights on the
+intermediate zone, and both exercise their divided authority on that
+zone, which is the case in France. In both cases, however, the two
+powers, like the two societies, must remain distinct. It is necessary
+for each of them that the other should be an equal, and not a
+subordinate to which it prescribes conditions. Whatever the civil system
+may be, whether monarchical or republican, oligarchic or democratic, the
+Church abuses its credit when it condemns or attacks it. Whatever may be
+the ecclesiastical system, whether papal, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, or
+congregational, the State abuses its strength when, without the assent
+of the faithful, it abolishes their systems or imposes a new one upon
+them. Not only does it violate right, but its violence, most frequently,
+is fruitless. It may strike as it will, the root of the tree is beyond
+its reach, and, in the unjust war which it wages against an institution
+as vital as itself, it often ends in getting the worst of it.
+
+Unfortunately, the Assembly, in this as in other matters, being
+preoccupied with principles, fails to look at practical facts; and,
+aiming to remove only the dead bark, it injures the living trunk.--For
+many centuries, and especially since the Council of Trent, the vigorous
+element of Catholicism is much less religion itself than the Church.
+Theology has retired into the background, while discipline has come
+to the front. Believers who, according to Church law, are required to
+regard spiritual authority as dogma, in fact attach their faith to the
+spiritual authority much more than to the dogma.--
+
+Catholic Faith insists, in relation to discipline as well as to dogma,
+that if one rejects the decision of the Roman Church one ceases to be a
+Catholic; that the constitution of the Church is monarchical, that the
+ordaining of priests and bishops is made from above so that without
+communion with the Pope, its supreme head, one is schismatic and that no
+schismatic priest legitimately can perform a holy service, and that no
+true faithful may attend his service or receive his blessings without
+committing a sin.--It is a fact that the faithful, apart from a few
+Jansenists, are neither theologians nor canonists; that they read
+neither prayers nor scriptures, and if they accept the creed, it is in
+a lump, without investigation, confiding in the hand which presents it;
+that their obedient conscience is in the keeping of this pastoral guide;
+that the Church of the third century is of little consequence to them;
+and that, as far as the true form of the actual Church goes, the doctor
+whose advice they follow is not St. Cyprian, of whom they know nothing,
+but their visible bishop and their living cur�. Put these two premises
+together and the conclusion is self-evident: it is clear that they will
+not believe that they are baptized, absolved, or married except by this
+cur� authorized by this bishop. Let others be put in their places
+whom they condemn, and you suppress worship, sacraments, and the most
+precious functions of spiritual life to twenty-four millions of French
+people, to all the peasantry, all the children, and to almost all the
+women; you stir up in rebellion against you the two greatest forces
+which move the mind, conscience and habit.--And observe the result of
+this. You not only convert the State into a policeman in the service
+of heresy, but also, through this fruitless and tyrannous attempt of
+Gallican Jansenism, you bring into permanent discredit Gallican maxims
+and Jansenist doctrines. You cut away the last two roots by which a
+liberal sentiment still vegetated in orthodox Catholicism. You throw the
+clergy back on Rome; you attach them to the Pope from whom you wish to
+separate them, and deprive them of the national character which you
+wish to impose on them. They were French, and you render them
+Ultramontane.[2268] They excited ill-will and envy, and you render them
+sympathetic and popular. They were a divided body, and you give them
+unanimity. They were a straggling militia, scattered about under several
+independent authorities, and rooted to the soil through the possession
+of the ground; thanks to you, they are to become a regular, manageable
+army, emancipated from every local attachment, organized under one head,
+and always prepared to take the field at the word of command. Compare
+the authority of a bishop in his diocese in 1789 with that of a bishop
+sixty years later. In 1789, the Archbishop of Besan�on, out of fifteen
+hundred offices and benefices, had the patronage of one hundred, In
+ninety-three incumbencies the selections were made by the metropolitan
+chapter; in eighteen it was made by the chapter of the Madeleine;
+in seventy parishes by the noble founder or benefactor. One abb� had
+thirteen incumbencies at his disposal, another thirty-four, another
+thirty-five, a prior nine, an abbess twenty; five communes directly
+nominated their own pastor, while abbeys, priories and canonries were in
+the hands of the King.[2269] At the present day (1880) in a diocese the
+bishop appoints all the cur�s or officiating priests, and may deprive
+nine out of ten of them; in the diocese above named, from 1850 to
+1860, scarcely one lay functionary was nominated without the consent or
+intervention of the cardinal-archbishop.[2270] To comprehend the spirit,
+discipline, and influence of our contemporary clergy, go back to the
+source of it, and you will find it in the decree of the Constituent
+Assembly. A natural organization cannot be broken up with impunity; it
+forms anew, adapting itself to circumstances, and closes up its ranks in
+proportion to its danger.
+
+But even if, according to the maxims of the Assembly, faith and worship
+are free, as far as the sovereign State is concerned, the churches are
+subjects.--For these are societies, administrations, and hierarchies,
+and no society, administration, or hierarchy may exist in the State
+without entering into its--departments under the title of subordinate,
+delegate, or employee. A priest is now essentially a salaried officer
+like the rest, a functionary[2271] presiding over matters pertaining to
+worship and morality. If the State is disposed to change the number, the
+mode of nomination, the duties and the posts of its engineers, it is not
+bound to assemble its engineers and ask their permission, least of all
+that of a foreign engineer established at Rome. If it wishes to change
+the condition of "its ecclesiastical officers," its right to do so
+is the same, and therefore unquestioned. There is no need of asking
+anybody's consent in the exercise of this right, and it allows no
+interference between it and its clerks. The Assembly refuses to call a
+Gallican council; it refuses to negotiate with the Pope, and, on its
+own authority alone, it recasts the whole Constitution of the Church.
+Henceforth this branch of the public administration is to be organized
+on the model of the others.--In the first place[2272] the diocese is to
+be in extent and limits the same as the French department; consequently,
+all ecclesiastical districts are marked out anew, and forty-eight
+episcopal sees disappear.--In the second place, the appointed bishop is
+forbidden "to refer to the Pope to obtain any confirmation whatever."
+All he can do is to write to him "in testimony of the unity of faith and
+of the communion which he is to maintain with him." The bishop is thus
+no longer installed by his canonical chief, and the Church of France
+becomes schismatic.--In the third place, the metropolitan or bishop is
+forbidden to exact from the new bishops or cur�s "any oath other than
+that they profess the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion." Assisted
+by his council he may examine them on their doctrine and morals, and
+refuse them canonical installation, but in this case his reasons must
+be given in writing, and he signed by himself and his council. His
+authority, in other respects, does not extend beyond this for it is the
+civil tribunal which decides between contending parties. Thus is the
+catholic hierarchy broken up; the ecclesiastical superior has his hands
+tied; if he still delegates sacerdotal functions it is only as a matter
+of form. Between the cur� and the bishop subordination ceases to exist
+just as it has ceased to exist between the bishop and the Pope, and
+the Church of France becomes Presbyterian.--The people now, in effect,
+choose their own ministers, as they do in the Presbyterian church; the
+bishop is appointed by the electors of the department, the cure by the
+district electors, and, what is an extraordinary aggravation, these need
+not be of his communion. It is of no consequence whether the electoral
+Assembly contains, as at N�mes, Montauban, Strasbourg, and Metz, a
+notable proportion of Calvinists, Lutherans, and Jews, or whether its
+majority, furnished by the club, is notoriously hostile to Catholicism,
+and even to Christianity itself. The bishop and the cur� must be chosen
+by the electoral body; the Holy Ghost dwells with it, and with the
+civil tribunals, and these may install its elect in spite of any
+resistance.--To complete the dependence of the clergy, every bishop is
+forbidden to absent himself more than fifteen days without permission
+from the department; every cur� the same length of time without the
+permission of the district, even to attend upon a dying father or to
+undergo the operation of lithotomy. In default of this permission his
+salary is suspended: as a functionary under salary, he owes all his time
+to his bureau, and if he desires a leave of absence he must ask for
+it from his chiefs in the H�tel-de-Ville.[2273]--He must assent to all
+these innovations, not only with passive obedience, but by a solemn
+oath. All old or new ecclesiastics, archbishops, bishops, cur�s, vicars,
+preachers, hospital and prison chaplains, superiors and directors of
+seminaries, professors of seminaries and colleges, are to state in
+writing that they are ready to take this oath: moreover, they must take
+it publicly, in church, "in the presence of the general council, the
+commune, and the faithful," and promise "to maintain with all their
+power" a schismatic and Presbyterian Church.--For there can be no doubt
+about the sense and bearing of the prescribed oath. It was all very
+well to incorporate it with a broader one, that of maintaining the
+Constitution. But the Constitution of the clergy is too clearly
+comprised in the general Constitution, like a chapter in a book, and to
+sign the book is to sign the chapter. Besides, in the formula to which
+the ecclesiastics in the Assembly are obliged to swear in the tribune,
+the chapter is precisely indicated, and no exception or reservation is
+allowed.[2274] The Bishop of Clermont, with all those who have accepted
+the Constitution in full, save the decrees affecting spiritual matters,
+are silenced. Where the spiritual begins and where it ends the Assembly
+knows better than they, for it has defined this, and it imposes its
+definition on canonist and theologian; it is, in its turn, the Pope, and
+all consciences must bow to its decision. Let them take the "oath, pure
+and simple," or if they do not they are 'refractory." The fiat goes
+forth, and the effect of it is immense, for, along with the clergy, the
+law reaches to laymen. On the one hand, all the ecclesiastics who refuse
+the oath are dismissed. If they continue "to interfere with public
+functions which they have personally or corporately exercised" they
+"shall be prosecuted as disturbers of the peace, and condemned as
+rebels against the law," deprived of all rights as active citizens,
+and declared incompetent to hold any public office. This is the penalty
+already inflicted on the nonjuring bishop who persists in considering
+himself a bishop, who ordains priests and who issues a pastoral letter.
+Such is soon to be the penalty inflicted on the nonjuring cur� who
+presumes to hear confession or officiate at a mass.[2275] On the other
+hand, all citizens who refuse to take the prescribed oath, all electors,
+municipal officers, judges and administrative agents, shall lose
+their right of suffrage, have their functions revoked, and be declared
+incompetent for all public duties.[2276] The result is that scrupulous
+Catholics are excluded from every administrative post, from all
+elections, and especially from ecclesiastical elections; from which
+it follows that, the stronger one's faith the less one's share in the
+choice of a priest.[2277]--What an admirable law, that which, under the
+pretext of doing away with ecclesiastical abuses, places the faithful,
+lay or clerical, outside the pale of the law!
+
+This soon becomes apparent. One hundred and thirty four archbishops,
+bishops, and coadjutors refuse to take the oath; there are only four
+of them who do so, three of whom, MM. de Talleyrand, de Jarente, and
+de Brienne, are unbelievers and notorious for their licentiousness; the
+others are influenced by their consciences, above all, by their esprit
+de corps and a point of honor. Most of the cur�s rally around this staff
+of officers. In the diocese of Besan�on,[2278] out of fourteen hundred
+priests, three hundred take the oath, a thousand refuse it, and eighty
+retract. In the department of Doubs, only four consent to swear. In the
+department of Loz�re, there are only "ten out of two hundred and fifty."
+It is stated positively," writes the best informed of all observers that
+everywhere in France two-thirds of the ecclesiastics have refused the
+oath, or have only taken it with the same reservations as the Bishop of
+Clermont."
+
+Thus, out of seventy thousand priests, forty-six thousand are turned
+out of office, and the majority of their parishioners are on their side.
+This is apparent in the absence of electors convoked to replace them:
+at Bordeaux only four hundred and fifty came to the poll out of nine
+hundred, while elsewhere the summons brings together only "a third or
+a quarter" In many places there are no candidates, or those elected
+decline to accept. They are obliged, in order to supply their places,
+to hunt up unfrocked monks of a questionable character. There are two
+parties, after this, in each parish; two faiths, two systems of
+worship, and permanent discord. Even when the new and the old cur�s are
+accommodating, their situations bring them into conflict. To the former
+the latter are "intruders." To the latter the former are "refractories."
+By virtue of his being a guardian of souls, the former cannot dispense
+with telling his parishioners that the intruder is excommunicated, that
+his sacraments are null or sacrilegious, and that it is a sin to attend
+his mass. By virtue of his being a public functionary, the latter does
+not fail to write to the authorities that the "refractory" entraps the
+faithful, excites their consciences, saps the Constitution, and that
+he ought to be put down by force. In other words, the former draws
+everybody away from the latter, while the latter sends the gendarmes
+against the former, and persecution begins.--In a strange reversal,
+it is the majority which undergoes persecution, and the minority which
+carries it out. The mass of the constitutional cur� is, everywhere,
+deserted.[2279] In La Vend�e there are ten or twelve present in the
+church out of five or six hundred parishioners; on Sundays and holidays
+whole villages and market-towns travel from one to two leagues off to
+attend the orthodox mass, the villagers declaring that "if the old cur�
+can only be restored to them, they will gladly pay a double tax." In
+Alsace, "nine tenths, at least, of the Catholics refuse to recognize
+the legally sworn priests." The same spectacle presents itself in
+Franche-Comt�, Artois, and in ten of the other provinces.--Finally, as
+in a chemical composition, the analysis is complete. Those who believe,
+or who recover their belief, are ranged around the old cur�; all who,
+through conviction or tradition, hold to the sacraments, all who,
+through faith or habit, wish or feel a need to attend the mass. The
+auditors of the new cur� consist of unbelievers, deists, the indifferent
+members of the clubs and of the administration, who resort to the church
+as to the H�tel-de-ville or to a popular meeting, not through religious
+but through political zeal, and who support the "intruder" in order to
+sustain the Constitution. All this does not secure to him very fervent
+followers, but it provides him with very zealous defenders; and, in
+default of the faith which they do not possess, they give the force
+which is at their disposal. All means are proper against an intractable
+bishop or cur�; not only the law which they aggravate through their
+forced interpretation of it and through their arbitrary verdicts, but
+also the riots which they stir up by their instigation and which they
+sanction by their toleration.[2280] He is driven out of his parish,
+consigned to the county town, and kept in a safe place. The Directory of
+Aisne denounces him as a disturber of the public peace, and forbids
+him, under severe penalties, from administering the sacraments. The
+municipality of Cahors shuts up particular churches and orders the
+nonjuring ecclesiastics to leave the town in twenty-four hours. The
+electoral corps of Lot denounces them publicly as "ferocious brutes,"
+incendiaries, and provokers of civil war. The Directory of the Bas-Rhin
+banishes them to Strasbourg or to fifteen leagues from the frontier.
+At Saint-Leon the bishop is forced to fly. At Auch the archbishop is
+imprisoned; at Lyons M. de Boisboissel, grand vicar, is confined in
+Pierre-Encize, for having preserved an archiepiscopal mandate in his
+house; brutality is everywhere the minister of intolerance. A certain
+cure of Aisne who, in 1789, had fed two thousand poor, having presumed
+to read from his pulpit a pastoral charge concerning the observance of
+Lent, the mayor seizes him by the collar and prevents him from going to
+the altar; "two of the National Yeomanry" draw their sabers on him, and
+forthwith lead him away bareheaded, not allowing him to return to his
+house, and drive him to a distance of two leagues by beat of drum and
+under escort. At Paris, in the church of Saint-Eustache, the cur� is
+greeted with outcries, a pistol is pointed at his head, he is seized by
+the hair, struck with fists, and only reaches the sacristy through
+the intervention of the National Guard. In the church of the Th�atins,
+rented by the orthodox with all legal formality, a furious band
+disperses the priests and their assistants, upsets the altar and
+profanes the sacred vessels. A placard, posted up by the department,
+calls upon the people to respect the law, "I saw it," says an
+eye-witness, "torn down amidst imprecations against the department, the
+priests, and the devout. One of the chief haranguers, standing on the
+steps terminated his speech by stating that schism ought to be stopped
+at any cost, that no worship but his should be allowed, that women
+should be whipped and priests knocked on the head." And, in fact, "a
+young lady accompanied by her mother is whipped on the steps of
+the church." Elsewhere nuns are the sufferers, even the sisters of
+Saint-Vincent de Paul; and, from April, 1793, onward; the same outrages
+on modesty and against life are propagated from town to town. At Dijon,
+rods are nailed fast to the gates of all the convents; at Montpellier,
+two or three hundred ruffians, armed with large iron--bound sticks,
+murder the men and outrage the women.--Nothing remains but to put
+the gangsters under the shelter of an amnesty, which is done by the
+Constituent Assembly, and to legally sanction the animosity of local
+administrations, which is done by the Legislative Assembly.[2281]
+Henceforth the nonjuring ecclesiastics are deprived of their sustenance;
+they are declared "suspected of revolt against the law and of evil
+intentions against the country."--Thus, says a contemporary Protestant,
+"on the strength of these suspicions and these intentions, a Directory,
+to which the law interdicts judicial functions, may arbitrarily drive
+out of his house the minister of a God of peace and charity, grown gray
+in the shadow of the altar" Thus, "everywhere, where disturbances occur
+on account of religious opinions, and whether these troubles are due
+to the frantic scourgers of the virtuous sisters of charity or to the
+ruffians armed with cow-hides who, at N�mes and Montpellier, outrage all
+the laws of decorum and of liberty for six whole months, the non-juring
+priests are to be punished with banishment. Torn from their families
+whose means of living they share, they are sent away to wander on the
+highways, abandoned to public pity or ferocity the moment any scoundrel
+chooses to excite a disturbance that he can impute to them."--Thus we
+see approaching the revolt of the peasantry, the insurrections of N�mes,
+Franche-Comt�, la Vend�e and Brittany, emigration, transportation;
+imprisonment, the guillotine or drowning for two thirds of the clergy of
+France, and likewise for myriads of the loyal, for husbandmen, artisans,
+day-laborers, seamstresses, and servants, and the humblest among the
+lower class of the people. This is what the laws of the Constituent
+Assembly are leading to.--In the institution of the clergy, as in that
+of the nobles and the King, it demolished a solid wall in order to
+dig through it an open door, and it is nothing strange if the whole
+structure tumbles down on the heads of its inmates. The true course was
+to respect, to reform, to utilize rank and corporations: all that the
+Assembly thought of was the abolition of these in the name of abstract
+equality and of national sovereignty. In order to abolish these it
+executed, tolerated, or initiated all the attacks on persons and on
+property. Those it is about to commit are the inevitable result of those
+which it has already committed; for, through its Constitution, bad is
+changed to worse, and the social edifice, already half in ruins through
+the clumsy havoc that is effected in it, will fall in completely under
+the weight of the incongruous or extravagant constructions which it
+proceeds to extemporize.
+
+
+*****
+
+
+[Footnote 2201: Cf. "The Ancient R�gime," books I. and V.]
+
+[Footnote 2202: Perhaps we are here at the core of why all regimes end
+up becoming corrupt, inefficient and sick; their leaders take their
+privileges for granted and become more and more inattentive to the work
+which must be done if the people are to be kept at work and possible
+adversaries kept under control. (SR.)]
+
+[Footnote 2203: A special tax paid the king by a plebeian owning a fief.
+(TR)]
+
+[Footnote 2204: The right to an income from trust funds. (SR.)]
+
+[Footnote 2205: Arthur Young, I. 209, 223. "If the communes steadily
+refuse what is now offered to them, they put immense and certain
+benefits to the chance of fortune, to that hazard which may make
+posterity curse instead of bless their memories as real patriots who had
+nothing in view but the happiness of their country."]
+
+[Footnote 2206: According to valuations by the Constituent Assembly,
+the tax on real estate ought to bring 240,000,000 francs, and provide
+one-fifth of the net revenue of France, estimated at 1,200,000,000.
+Additionally, the personal tax on movable property, which replaced
+the capitation, ought to bring 60,000,000. Total for direct taxation,
+300,000,000, or one-fourth--that is to say, twenty-five per cent, of the
+net revenue.--If the direct taxation had been maintained up to the rate
+of the ancient r�gime (190,000,000, according to Necker's report in
+May, 1689), this impost would only have provided one-sixth of the net
+revenue, or sixteen percent.]
+
+[Footnote 2207: Dumont, 267. (The words of Mirabeau three months before
+his death:) "Ah, my friend, how right we were at the start when we
+wanted to prevent the commons from declaring themselves the National
+Assembly! That was the source of the evil. They wanted to rule the King,
+instead of ruling through him."]
+
+[Footnote 2208: Gouverneur Morris, April 29, 1789 (on the principles of
+the future constitution), "One generation at least will be required to
+render the public familiar with them."]
+
+[Footnote 2209: Cf. "The Ancient R�gime," book II, ch. III.]
+
+[Footnote 2210: French women did not obtain the right to vote until
+1946. (SR.)]
+
+[Footnote 2211: According to Voltaire ("L'Homme aux Quarante �cus"), the
+average duration of human life was only twenty-three years.]
+
+[Footnote 2212: Mercure, July 6, 1790. According to the report of
+Camus (sitting of July 2nd), the official total of pensions amounted to
+thirty-two millions; but if we add the gratuities and allowances out of
+the various treasuries, the actual total was fifty-six millions.]
+
+[Footnote 2213: I note that today in 1998, 100 years after Taine's
+death, Denmark, my country, has had total democracy, that is universal
+suffrage for women and men of 18 years of age for a considerable time,
+and a witty author has noted that the first rule of our unwritten
+constitution is that "thou shalt not think that thou art important". I
+have noted, however, that when a Dane praises Denmark and the Danes even
+in the most excessive manner, then he is not considered as a chauvinist
+but admired as being a man of truth. In spite of the process of
+'democratization' even socialist chieftains seem to favor and protect
+their own children, send them to good private schools and later abroad
+to study and help them to find favorable employment in the party or with
+the public services. A new �lite is thus continuously created by the
+ruling political and administrative upper class. (SR.).]
+
+[Footnote 2214: "The Ancient R�gime," p.388, and the following pages.--
+"Le Duc de Broglie," by M. Goizot, p. 11. (Last words of Prince Victor de
+Broglie, and the opinions of M. d'Argenson.)]
+
+[Footnote 2215: De Ferri�res, I. p.2.]
+
+[Footnote 2216: Moniteur, sitting of September 7, 1790, I. 431-437.
+Speeches, of MM. de Sillery, de Lanjuinais, Thouret, de Lameth, and
+Rabaut-Saint-Etienne. Barnave wrote in 1791: "It was necessary to be
+content with one single chamber; the instinct of equality required it. A
+second Chamber would have been the refuge of the aristocrats."]
+
+[Footnote 2217: Lenin should later create an elite, an aristocracy
+which, under his leadership was to become the Communist party. Lenin
+could not have imagined or at least would not have been concerned that
+the leadership of this party would fall into the hands of tyrants later,
+under the pressure of age and corruption, to be replaced by the KGB and
+later the FSB. (SR.)]
+
+[Footnote 2218: "De Bouill�," p. 50: "All the old noble families, save
+two or three hundred, were ruined."]
+
+[Footnote 2219: Cf. Doniol, "La R�volution et la F�odalit�."]
+
+[Footnote 2220: Moniteur, sitting of August 6, 1789. Speech of Duport:
+"Whatever is unjust cannot last. Similarly, no compensation for these
+unjust rights can be maintained." Sitting of February 27, 1790. M.
+Populus: "As slavery could not spring from a legitimate contract,
+because liberty cannot be alienated, you have abolished without
+indemnity hereditary property in persons." Instructions and decree of
+June 15-19, 1791: "The National Assembly has recognized in the most
+emphatic manner that a man never could become the proprietor of another
+man, and consequently, that the rights which one had assumed to have
+over the person of the other, could not become the property of the
+former." Cf. the diverse reports of Merlin to the Committee of Feudality
+and the National Assembly.]
+
+[Footnote 2221: Duvergier, "Collection des Lois et D�crets." Laws of the
+4-11 August, 1789; March 15-28, 1790; May 3-9, 1790; June 15-19, 1791.]
+
+[Footnote 2222: Agrier perci�res--terms denoting taxes paid in the shape
+of shares of produce. Those which follow: lods, rentes, quint, requint
+belong to the taxes levied on real property. 22Tr.]
+
+[Footnote 2223: Doniol ("Noveaux cahiers de 1790"). Complaints of the
+copy-holders of Rouergues and of Quercy, pp. 97-105.]
+
+[Footnote 2224: See further on, book III. ch. II. � 4 and also ch. III.]
+
+[Footnote 2225: Moniteur, sitting of March 2, 1790. Speech by Merlin:
+"The peasants have been made to believe that the annulation of the
+banalities (the obligation to use the public mill, wine-press, and oven,
+which belonged to the noble) carried along with it the loss to the
+noble of all these; the peasants regarding themselves as proprietors of
+them."]
+
+[Footnote 2226: Moniteur; sitting of June 9, 1790. Speech of M. Charles
+de Lameth--Duvergier (laws of June 19-23 1790; September 27 and October
+16, 1791).]
+
+[Footnote 2227: Sauzay, V. 400--410.]
+
+[Footnote 2228: Duvergier, laws of June 15-19, 1791; of June 18--July 6,
+1792; of August 25-28, 1792.]
+
+[Footnote 2229: "Institution du Droit Fran�ais," par Argou, I.103.
+(He wrote under the Regency.) "The origin of most of the feoffs is so
+ancient that, if the seigneurs were obliged to produce the titles of the
+original concession to obtain their rents, there would scarcely be one
+able to produce them. This deficiency is made up by common law."]
+
+[Footnote 2230: Duvergier (laws of April 8-15, 1791; March 7-11; October
+26, 1791; January 6-10, 1794).--Mirabeau had already proposed to reduce
+the disposable portion to one-tenth.]
+
+[Footnote 2231: See farther on, book III, ch. III.]
+
+[Footnote 2232: Mercure, September 10, 1791. Article by Mallet du
+Pan.--Ibid. October 15, 1791.]
+
+[Footnote 2233: Should Hitler or Lenin have read and understood the
+consequences of these events they would have deduced that given the
+command from official sources or recognized leaders ordinary people all
+over the world could easily be tempted to attack any group, being it
+Jews, Protestants, Hindus or foreigners. (SR.)]
+
+[Footnote 2234: "Archives Nationales," II. 784. Letters of M. de
+Langeron, October 16 and 18, 1789.--Albert Babeau, "Histoire de Troyes,"
+letters addressed to the Chevalier de Poterats, July, 1790.--"Archives
+Nationales," papers of the Committee on Reports, bundle 4, letter of M.
+le Belin-Chatellenot to the to the President of the National Assembly,
+July 1, 1791.--Mercure, October 15, 1791. Article by Mallet du Pan:
+"Such is literally the language of these emigrants; I do not add a
+word."--Ibid. May 15, 1790. Letter of the Baron de Bois d'Aizy, April
+29,1790, demanding a decree of protection fur the nobles. "We shall know
+(then) whether we are outlawed or are of any account in the rights of
+man written out with so much blood, or whether, finally, no other option
+is left to us but that of carrying to distant skies the remains of our
+property and our wretched existence."]
+
+[Footnote 2235: Mercure, October 15, 1791, and September 10, 1791. Read
+the admirable letter of the Chevalier de Mesgrigny, appointed colonel
+during the suspension of the King, and refusing his new rank.]
+
+[Footnote 2236: Cf. the "M�moires" of M. de Boustaquet, a Norman
+gentleman.]
+
+[Footnote 2237: Cf. "The Ancient R�gime," books I. and II.]
+
+[Footnote 2238: Boivin--Champeaux, "Notice Historique sur la R�volution
+dans le D�partement de L'Eure," the register of grievances. In 1788, at
+Rouen, there was not a single profession made by men. In the monastery
+of the Deux-Amants the chapter convoked in 1789 consisted of two
+monks.--"Archives Nationales," papers of the ecclesiastic committee,
+passim.]
+
+[Footnote 2239: "Apologie de l'�tat Religieux" (1775), with statistics.
+Since 1768 the decline is "frightful." "It is easy to foresee that
+in ten or twelve years most of the regular bodies will be absolutely
+extinct, or reduced to a state of feebleness akin to death."]
+
+[Footnote 2240: Sanzay, I. 224 (November, 1790). At Besan�on, out of 266
+monks, "79 only showed any loyalty to their engagements or any affection
+for their calling." Others preferred to abandon it, especially all the
+Dominicans but five, all but one of the bare footed Carmelites, and all
+the Grand Carmelites. The same disposition is apparent throughout the
+department, as, for instance, with the Benedictines of Cluny except one,
+all the Minimes but three, all the Capuchins but five, the Bernandins,
+Dominicans, and Augustins, all preferring to leave.--Montalembert, "Les
+Moines d'Occident," introduction, pp. 105-164. Letter of a Benedictine
+of Saint-Germain-des-Pr�s to a Benedictine of Vannes. "Of all the
+members of your congregation which come here to lodge, I have scarcely
+found one capable of edifying us. You may probably say the same of those
+who came to you from our place."--Cf. in the "M�moires" of Merlin de
+Thionville the description of the Chartreuse of Val St. Pierre.]
+
+[Footnote 2241: Ch. Guerin, "Revue des Questions Historiques" (July 1,
+1875; April 1, 1876).--Abb� Guett�e, "Histoire de l'Eglise de France,"
+XII, 128. ("Minutes of the meeting of l'Assembl�e du Clerg�," in
+1780.)--"Archives nationales," official reports and memorandums of the
+States-General in 1789. The most obnoxious proceeding to the chiefs of
+the order is the postponement of the age at which vows may be taken,
+it being, in their view, the ruin of their institutions.--"The Ancient
+R�gime," p. 403.]
+
+[Footnote 2242: In order for a modern uninstructed non-believing reader
+to understand the motivation which moved thousands of self-less sisters
+and brothers to do their useful and kind work read St. Matthew chapter
+25, verses 31 to 46 where Jesus predicts how he will sit in judgment on
+mankind and separate the sheep from the goats. (SR.)]
+
+[Footnote 2243: "The Ancient R�gime," P.33--Cf. Guerin "The monastery
+of the Trois-Rois, in the north of Franche-Comt�, founded four villages
+collected from foreign colonists. It is the only center of charity and
+civilization in a radius of three leagues. It took care of two hundred
+of the sick in a recent epidemic; it lodges the troops which pass from
+Alsace into Franche-Comt�, and in the late hailstorm it supplied the
+whole neighborhood with food."]
+
+[Footnote 2244: Moniteur, sitting of February 13,1790. (Speech of
+the Abb� de Montesquiou).--Archives Nationales," papers of the
+Ecclesiastical Committee, DXIX. 6, Visitation de Limoges, DXIX. 25,
+Annonciades de Saint-Denis; ibid. Annonciades de Saint Amour, Ursulines
+d'Auch, de Beaulieu, d'Eymoutier, de la Ciotat, de Pont Saint-Esprit,
+Hospitali�res d'Ern�e, de Laval; Sainte Claire de Laval, de Marseilles,
+etc. "]
+
+[Footnote 2245: Sauzay, I. 247. Out of three hundred and seventy-seven
+nuns at Doubs, three hundred and fifty-eight preferred to remain as they
+were, especially at Pontarlier, all the Bernardines, Annonciades,
+and Ursulines; at Besan�on, all the Carmelites, the Visitandines, the
+Annonciades, the Clarisses, the Sisters of Refuge, the Nuns of the
+Saint-Esprit and, save one, all the Benedictine Nuns.]
+
+[Footnote 2246: "Archives Nationales." Papers of the Ecclesiastical
+Committee, passim.--Suzay, I. 51.--Statistics of France for 1866.]
+
+[Footnote 2247: In 1993 this number has once more fallen, and continues
+to fall, to 55 900. "Quid", 1996 page 623. (SR.)]
+
+[Footnote 2248: Felix Rocquain, "La France apr�s le 18 Brumaire."
+(Reports of the Councillors of State dispatched on this service,
+passim).]
+
+[Footnote 2249: Moniteur, October 24, 1789. (Speech of Dupont de
+Nemours.) All these speeches, often more fully reported and with various
+renderings, may be found in "Les Archives Parlementaires," 1st series,
+vols. VIII. and IX.]
+
+[Footnote 2250: Duvergier, decree of June 14-17, 1791. "The annihilation
+of every corporation of citizens of any one condition or profession
+being on of the foundation-stones of the French constitution, it is
+forbidden to re-establish these de-facto under any pretext or
+form whatever. Citizens of a like condition or profession, such as
+contractors, shopkeepers, workmen of all classes, and associates in
+any art whatever shall not, on assembling together, appoint either
+president, or secretaries, or syndics, discuss or pass resolutions, or
+frame any regulations in relation to their assumed common interests."]
+
+[Footnote 2251: Moniteur, sitting of November 2nd, 1789.]
+
+[Footnote 2252: Moniteur, sitting of February 12, 1790. Speeches of
+Dally d'Agier and Barnave.]
+
+[Footnote 2253: Moniteur, sitting of August 10, 1789. Speech by Garat;
+February 12, 1790, speech by P�tion; October 30, 1789, speech by
+Thouret.]
+
+[Footnote 2254: Moniteur, sitting of November 2, 1789. Speech by
+Chapelier; October 24, 1789, speech by Garat; October 30, 1789, speech
+by Mirabeau, and the sitting of August 10, 1789.]
+
+[Footnote 2255: Moniteur, sitting of October 23, 1789. Speech by
+Thouret.]
+
+[Footnote 2256: Moniteur, sitting of October 23, 1789. Speech by
+Treilhard; October 24th, speech by Garat; October 30, speech by
+Mirabeau.--On the 8th of August, 1789, Al. de Lameth says in the
+tribune: "When an foundation was set up, it is to the nation, which the
+grant was given."]
+
+[Footnote 2257: Duvergier, laws of August 18, 1792; August 8-14, 1793;
+July 11, 1794; July 14, 1792; August 24, 1793.]
+
+[Footnote 2258: Moniteur, sitting of July 31, 1792. Speech of M.
+Boistard; the property of the hospitals, at this time was estimated at
+eight hundred millions.--Already in 1791 (sitting of January 30th) M.
+de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt said to the Assembly: "Nothing will more
+readily restore confidence to the poor than to see the nation assuming
+the right of rendering them assistance." He proposes to decree;
+accordingly, that all hospitals and places of beneficence be placed
+under the control of the nation. (Mercure, February 12, 1791.)]
+
+[Footnote 2259: Moniteur, sitting of August 10, 1789. Speech by
+Siey�s.--The figures given here are deduced from the statistics already
+given in the "Ancient R�gime."]
+
+[Footnote 2260: Moniteur, v. 571. sitting of September 4, 1790. Report of
+the Committee on Finances--V. 675, sitting of September 17, 1790. Report
+by Necker.]
+
+[Footnote 2261: A Revolutionary Government promissory bank note. (SR.)]
+
+[Footnote 2262: Sauzay, I. 228 (from October 10, 1790, to February 20,
+1791). "The total weight of the spoil of the monastic establishments in
+gold, silver, and plated ware, sent to the Mint amounted to more than
+525 kilograms (for the department)."]
+
+[Footnote 2263: Duvergier, law of October 8-14.]
+
+[Footnote 2264: Moniteur, sitting of June 3,1792. Speech of M. Bernard,
+in the name of the committee of Public Assistance: "Not a day passes
+in which we do not receive the saddest news from the departments on
+the penury of their hospitals."--Mercure de France, December 17, 1791,
+sitting of December 5. A number of deputies of the Department of the
+North demand aid for their hospitals and municipalities. Out of 480,000
+livres revenue there remains 10,000 to them. "The property of the
+Communes is mortgaged, and no longer affords them any resources. 280,000
+persons are without bread."]
+
+[Footnote 2265: Sauzay, I. 252 (December 3, 1790. April 13, 1791).]
+
+[Footnote 2266: Moniteur, sitting of June 1, 1790. Speeches by Camus,
+Treilhard, etc.]
+
+[Footnote 2267: But on the assumption that all religion has been
+invented by human beings for their own comfort or use, then what would
+be more natural than clever rulers using their power to influence the
+religious authorities to their own advantage. (SR.)]
+
+[Footnote 2268: Ultramontane: Extreme in favoring the Pope's supremacy.
+(SR.)]
+
+[Footnote 2269: Sauzay, I. 168.]
+
+[Footnote 2270: Personal knowledge, as I visited Besan�on four times
+between 1863 and 1867.]
+
+[Footnote 2271: Moniteur, sitting of May 30, 1790, and others following.
+(Report of Treilhard, speech by Robespierre.)]
+
+[Footnote 2272: Duvergier, laws of July 12th-August 14th; November
+14-25, 1790; January 21-26, 1791.]
+
+[Footnote 2273: Moniteur, sitting of May 31, 1790. Robespierre, in
+covert terms, demands the marriage of priests.--Mirabeau prepared a
+speech in the same sense, concluding that every priest and monk should
+be able to contract marriage; on the priest or monk presenting himself
+with his bride before the cur�, the latter should be obliged to
+give them the nuptial benediction etc. Mirabeau wrote, June 2, 1790:
+"Robespierre... has juggled me out of my motion on the marriage of
+priests."--In general the germ of all the laws of the Convention is
+found in the Constituent Assembly. (Ph. Plan, "Un Collaborateur de
+Mirabeau," p.56, 144.)]
+
+[Footnote 2274: Duvergier, laws of November 27th--December 26, 1790;
+February 5th, March 22nd, and April 5, 1791.--Moniteur, sitting of
+November 6, 1790, and those that follow, especially that of December
+27th. "I swear to maintain with all my power the French Constitution
+and especially the decrees relating to the Civil Constitution of the
+clergy."--Cf. sitting of January 2, 1791, speech by the Bishop of
+Clermont.]
+
+[Footnote 2275: Duvergier, law of May 7, 1791, to maintain the right
+of nonjuring priests to perform mass in national or private edifices.
+(Demanded by Talleyrand and Siey�s.)]
+
+[Footnote 2276: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3235. Letter of M. de
+Ch�teau-Randon, deputy of la Loz�re, May 28, 1791. After the decree
+of May 23rd, all the functionaries of the department handed in their
+resignations.]
+
+[Footnote 2277: Duvergier, law of May 21-29, 1791.]
+
+[Footnote 2278: Sauzay, I. 366, 538 to 593, 750.--"Archives Nationales,"
+F7, 3235, Letter of M. de Ch�nteau-Randon, May 10, 1791.--Mercure,
+April 23rd, and April 16, 1701. Articles of Mallet du Pan, letter from
+Bordeaux, March 20, 1791.]
+
+[Footnote 2279: Buchez and Roux, XII, 77. Report of Gallois and Gensonn�
+sent to La Vend�e and the Deux S�vres (July 25, 1791).--" Archives
+Nationales," F7, 3253, letter of the Directory of the Bas-Rhin (letter
+of January 7, 1792).--" Le District de Machecoul de 1788 � 1793," by
+Lallier.--" Histoire de Joseph Lebon," by Paris.--Sauzay, vol. I. and
+II. in full.]
+
+[Footnote 2280: Mercure, January 15th, April 23rd, May 16th and 30th,
+June 1st, November 23rd, 1791.--"Le District de Machecoul," by Lallier,
+173.--Sauzay, I. 295.--Lavirotte, "Annales d'Arnay-le-Duc" (February 5,
+1792).--"Archives Nationales," F7, 3223. Petition of a number of the
+inhabitants of Montpellier, November 17, 1791.]
+
+[Footnote 2281: Duvergier, decree of November 29, 1791.--Mercure,
+November 30, 1791 (article by Mallet du Pan).]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. THE CONSTRUCTIONS--THE CONSTITUTION OF 1791.
+
+That which is called a Government is a concert of powers, each with a
+distinct function, and all working towards a final and complete end. The
+merit of a Government consists in the attainment of this end; the worth
+of a machine depends upon the work it accomplishes. The important thing
+is not to produce a good mechanical design on paper, but to see that the
+machine works well when set up on the ground. In vain might its founders
+allege the beauty of their plan and the logical connection of their
+theorems; they are not required to furnish either plan or theorems, but
+an instrument.
+
+Two conditions are requisite to render this instrument serviceable and
+effective. In the first place, the public powers must harmonize with
+each other, if not, one will neutralize the other; in the second place
+they must be obeyed, or they are null.
+
+The Constituent Assembly made no provision for securing this harmony
+or this obedience. In the machine which it constructed the motions all
+counteract each other; the impulse is not transmitted; the gearing is
+not complete between the center and the extremities; the large central
+and upper wheels turn to no purpose; the innumerable small wheels near
+the ground break or get out of order: the machine, by virtue of its own
+mechanism, remains useless, over-heated, under clouds of waste steam,
+creaking and thumping in such a matter as to show clearly that it must
+explode.
+
+
+
+
+I.--Powers of the Central Government.
+
+     The Assembly on the partition of power.--Rupture of every
+     tie between the Legislature and the King.--The Assembly on
+     the subordination of the executive power.--How this is
+     nullified.--Certainty of a conflict.--The deposition of the
+     King is inevitable.
+
+Let us first consider the two central powers, the Assembly and
+the King.--Ordinarily when distinct powers of different origin are
+established by a Constitution, it makes, in the case of conflict between
+them, a provision for an arbiter in the institution of an Upper Chamber.
+Each of these powers, at least, has a hold on the other. The Assembly
+must have one on the King: which is the right to refuse taxation. The
+King must have one on the Assembly: which is the right of dissolving it.
+Otherwise, one of the two being disarmed, the other becomes omnipotent,
+and, consequently, insane. The peril here is as great for an omnipotent
+Assembly as it is for an absolute King. If the former is desirous of
+remaining in its right mind, it needs repression and control as much
+as the latter. If it is proper for the Assembly to restrain the King
+by refusing him subsidies, it is proper for him to be able to defend
+himself by appealing to the electors.--But, besides these extreme
+measures, which are dangerous and rarely resorted to, there is another
+which is ordinarily employed and is safe, that is, the right for the
+King to take his ministers from the Chamber. Generally, the leaders
+of the majority form the ministry, their nomination being the means of
+restoring harmony between the King and Assembly; they are at once men
+belonging to the Assembly and men belonging to the King. Through this
+expedient not only is the confidence of the Assembly assured, since the
+Government remains in the hands of its leaders, but also it is under
+restraint because these become simultaneously both powerful and
+responsible. Placed at the head of all branches of the service, they
+are, before proposing it or accepting it, in a position to judge whether
+a law is useful and practicable. Nothing is so healthy for a majority
+as a ministry composed of its own chiefs; nothing is so effective in
+repressing rashness or intemperance. A railway conductor is not willing
+that his locomotive should be deprived of coal, nor to have the rails he
+is about to run on broken up.--This arrangement, with all its drawbacks
+and inconveniences, is the best one yet arrived at by human experience
+for the security of societies against despotism and anarchy. For the
+absolute power which establishes or saves them may also oppress or
+exhaust them, there is a gradual substitution of differentiated powers,
+held together through the mediation of a third umpire, caused by
+reciprocal dependence and an which is common to both.
+
+Experience, however, is unimportant to the members of the Constituent
+Assembly; under the banner of principles they sunder one after another
+all the ties which keep the two powers together harmoniously.--There
+must not be an Upper Chamber, because this would be an asylum or a
+nursery for aristocrats. Moreover, "the nation being of one mind," it
+is averse to "the creation of different organs." So, applying ready-made
+formulas and metaphors, they continue to produce ideological definitions
+and distinctions.
+
+The King must not have a hold on the legislative body: the executive
+is an arm, whose business it is to obey; it is absurd for the arm to
+constrain or direct the head. Scarcely is the monarch allowed a delaying
+veto. Siey�s here enters with his protest declaring that this is a
+"lettre de cachet[2301] launched against the universal will," and
+there is excluded from the action of the veto the articles of the
+Constitution, all money-bills, and some other laws.--Neither the monarch
+nor the electors of the Assembly are to convoke the Assembly; he has no
+voice in or oversight of the details of its formation; the electors are
+to meet together and vote without his summons or supervision. Once the
+Assembly is elected he can neither adjourn nor dissolve it. He cannot
+even propose a law;[2302] per-mission is only granted to him "to invite
+it to take a subject into consideration." He is limited to his executive
+duties; and still more, a sort of wall is built up between him and the
+Assembly, and the opening in it, by which each could take the other's
+hand, is carefully closed up. The deputies are forbidden to become
+ministers throughout the term of their service and for two years
+afterwards. This is because fears are entertained that they might
+be corrupted through contact with the Court, and, again, whoever
+the ministers might be, there is no disposition to accept their
+ascendancy.[2303] If one of them is admitted into the Assembly it is not
+for the purpose of giving advice, but to furnish information, reply to
+interrogatories, and make protestations of his zeal in humble terms
+and in a dubious position.[2304] By virtue of being a royal agent he
+is under suspicion like the King himself, and he is sequestered in his
+bureau as the King is sequestered in his palace.--Such is the spirit
+of the Constitution: by force of the theory, and the better to secure a
+separation of the powers,[2305] a common understanding between them
+is for ever rendered impossible, and to make up for this impossibility
+there remains nothing but to make one the master and the other the
+clerk.
+
+This they did not fail to do, and for greater security, the latter
+is made an honorary clerk, The executive power is conferred on him
+nominally and in appearance; he does not possess it in fact, care having
+been taken to place it in other hands.--In effect, all executive agents
+and all secondary and local powers are elective. The King has no voice,
+directly or indirectly, in the choice of judges, public prosecutors,
+bishops, cur�s, collectors and assessors of the taxes, commissaries of
+police, district and departmental administrators, mayors, and municipal
+officers. At most, should an administrator violate a law, he may annul
+his acts and suspend him; but the Assembly, the superior power, has the
+right to cancel this suspension.--As to the armed force, of which he is
+supposed to be the commander-in-chief, this escapes from him entirely:
+the National Guard is not to receive orders from him; the gendarmerie
+and the troops are bound to respond to the requisitions of the municipal
+authorities, whom the King can neither select nor displace: in short,
+local action of any kind--that is to say, all effective action--is
+denied to him.--The executive instrument is purposely destroyed. The
+connection which existed between the wheels of the extremities and the
+central shaft is broken, and henceforth, incapable of distributing its
+energy, this shaft, in the hands of the monarch, stands still or
+else turns to no purpose. The King, "supreme head of the general
+administration, of the army, and of the navy, guardian of public peace
+and order, hereditary representative of the nation," is without the
+means, in spite of his lofty titles, of directly applying his pretended
+powers, of causing a schedule of assessments to be drawn up in a
+refractory commune, of compelling payment by a delinquent tax-payer, of
+enforcing the free circulation of a convoy of grain, of executing
+the judgment of a court, of suppressing an outbreak, or of securing
+protection to persons and property. For he can bring no constraint to
+bear on the agents who are declared to be subordinate to him; he has
+no resources but those of warning and persuasion. He sends to each
+Departmental Assembly the decrees which he has sanctioned, requesting
+it to transmit them and cause them to be carried out; he receives its
+correspondence and bestows his censure or approval--and that is all.
+He is merely a powerless medium of communication, a herald or public
+advertiser, a sort of central echo, sonorous and empty, to which news
+is brought, and from which laws depart, to spread abroad like a common
+rumor. Such as he is, and thus diminished, he is still considered to
+be too strong. He is deprived of the right of pardon, "which severs the
+last artery of monarchical government."[2306] All sorts of precautions
+are taken against him. He cannot declare war without a decree of the
+Assembly; he is obliged to bring war to an end on the decree of the
+Assembly; he cannot make a treaty of peace, an alliance, or a commercial
+treaty, without the ratification of these by the Assembly. It is
+expressly declared that he is to nominate but two-thirds of the
+rear-admirals, one-half of the lieutenant-generals, field-marshals,
+captains of Vessels and colonels of the gendarmerie, one-third of the
+colonels and lieutenant-colonels of the line, and a sixth of the naval
+lieutenants. He must not allow troops to stay or pass within 30,000
+yards of the Assembly. His guard must not consist of more than 1,800
+men, duly verified, and protected against his seductions by the civil
+oath. The heir-presumptive must not leave the country without the
+Assembly's assent. It is the Assembly which is to regulate by law
+the education of his son during minority.--All these precautions are
+accompanied with threats. There are against him five possible causes
+of dethronement; against his responsible Ministers, eight causes for
+condemnation to from twelve to twenty years of constraint, and eight
+grounds for condemnations to death.[2307] Everywhere between the lines
+of the Constitution, we read the constant disposition to assume an
+attitude of defense, the secret dread of treachery, the conviction that
+executive power, of whatever kind, is in its nature inimical to the
+public welfare.--For withholding the nomination of judges, the reason
+alleged is that "the Court and the Ministers are the most contemptible
+portion of the nation."[2308] If the nomination of Ministers is
+conceded, it is on the ground that" Ministers appointed by the people
+would necessarily be too highly esteemed." The principle is that "the
+legislative body alone must possess the confidence of the people," that
+royal authority corrupts its depository, and that executive power is
+always tempted to commit abuses and to engage in conspiracies. If it
+is provided for in the Constitution it is with regret, through the
+necessity of the case, and on the condition of its being trammeled by
+impediments; it will prove so much the less baneful in proportion as it
+is restrained, guarded, threatened, and denounced.--A position of this
+kind is manifestly intolerable; and only a man as passive as Louis XVI.
+could have put up with it. Do what he will, however, he cannot make it
+a tenable one. In vain does he scrupulously adhere to the Constitution,
+and fulfill it to the letter. Because he is powerless the Assembly
+regards him as lukewarm, and imputes to him the friction of the machine
+which is not under his control. If he presumes once to exercise his veto
+it is rebellion, and the rebellion of an official against his superior,
+which is the Assembly; the rebellion of a subject against his Sovereign,
+which is the people. In this case dethronement is proper, and the
+Assembly has only to pass the decree; the people have simply to
+execute the act, and the Constitution ends in a Revolution.--A piece
+of machinery of this stamp breaks down through its own movement. In
+conformity with the philosophic theory the two wheels of government must
+be separated, and to do this they have to be disconnected and
+isolated one from the other. In conformity with the popular creed, the
+driving-wheel must be subordinated and its influence neutralized: to
+do this it is necessary to reduce its energy to a minimum, break up its
+connections, and raise it up in the air to turn round like a top, or to
+remain there as an obstacle to something else. It is certain that,
+after much ill-usage as a plaything, it will finally be removed as a
+hindrance.
+
+
+
+
+II.--The Creation Of Popular Democracy.
+
+     Administrative powers.--The Assembly on the hierarchy.
+     --Grades abolished.--Collective powers.--Election introduced,
+     and the influence of subordinates in all branches of the
+     service.--Certainty of disorganization.--Power in the hands
+     of municipal bodies.
+
+Let us leave the center of government and go to the extremities, and
+observe the various administrations in working operation.[2309]
+
+For any service to work well and with precision, there must be a
+single and unique chief who can appoint, pay, punish and dismiss his
+subordinates.--For, on the one hand, he stands alone and feels his
+responsibility; he brings to bear on the management of affairs a degree
+of attention and consistency, a tact and a power of initiation of which
+a committee is incapable; corporate follies or defects do not involve
+any one in particular, and authority is effective only when it is in one
+hand.--On the other hand, being master, he can rely on the subalterns
+whom he has himself selected, whom he controls through their hopes
+or fears, and whom he discharges if they do not perform their duties;
+otherwise he has no hold on them and they are not instruments to be
+depended on. Only on these conditions can a railway manager be sure that
+his pointsmen are on the job. Only on these conditions can the foreman
+of a foundry engage to execute work by a given day. In every public or
+private enterprise, direct, immediate authority is the only known, the
+only human and possible way to ensure the obedience and punctuality of
+agents.--Administration is thus carried on in all countries, by one or
+several series of functionaries, each under some central manager who
+holds the reins in his single grasp.[2310]
+
+This is all reversed in the new Constitution. In the eyes of our
+legislators obedience must be spontaneous and never compulsory, and, in
+the suppression of despotism, they suppress government. The general rule
+in the hierarchy which they establish is that the subordinates should be
+independent of their superior, for he must neither appoint nor displace
+them: the only right he has is to give them advice and remonstrate
+with them.[2311] At best, in certain cases, he can annul their acts and
+inflict on them a provisional suspension of their functions, which can
+be contested and is revocable.[2312] We see, thus, that none of the
+local powers are delegated by the central power; the latter is simply
+like a man without either hands or arms, seated in a gilt chair. The
+Minister of the Finances cannot appoint or dismiss either an assessor or
+a collector; the Minister of the Interior, not one of the departmental,
+district, or communal administrators; the Minister of Justice, not one
+judge or public prosecutor. The King, in these three branches of the
+service, has but one officer of his own, the commissioner whose duty
+it is to advocate the observance of the laws in the courts, and, on
+sentence being given, to enforce its execution.--All the muscles of
+the central power are paralyzed by this stroke, and henceforth each
+department is a State apart, living by itself.
+
+An similar amputation, however, in the department itself, has cut
+away all the ties by which the superior could control and direct his
+subordinate.--If the administrators of the department are suffered to
+influence those of the district, and those of the district those of the
+municipality, it is only, again, in the way of council and solicitation.
+Nowhere is the superior a commander who orders and constrains, but
+everywhere a censor who gives warnings and scolds. To render this
+already feeble authority still more feeble at each step of the
+hierarchy, it is divided among several bodies. These consist of
+superposed councils, which administer the department, the district,
+and the commune. There is no directing head in any of these councils.
+Permanency and executive functions throughout are vested in the
+directories of four or eight members, or in bureaus of two, three,
+four, six, and even seven members whose elected chief, a president
+or mayor,[2313] has simply an honorary primacy. Decision and action,
+everywhere blunted, delayed, or curtailed by talk and the processes
+of discussion, are brought forth only after the difficult, tumultuous
+assent of several discordant wills.[2314] Elective and collective as
+these powers are, measures are still taken to guard against them. Not
+only are they subject to the control of an elected council, one-half
+renewable every two years, but, again, the mayor and public prosecutor
+of the commune after serving four years, and the procureur-syndic of
+the department or district after eight years service, and the district
+collector after six years' service, are not re-elected. Should these
+officials have deserved and won the confidence of the electors,
+should familiarity with affairs have made them specially competent and
+valuable, so much the worse for affairs and the public; they are not
+to be anchored to their post.[2315] Should their continuance in office
+introduce into the service a spirit of order and economy, that is of no
+consequence; there is danger of their acquiring to much influence, and
+the law sends them off as soon as they become expert and entitled to
+rule.--Never has jealousy and suspicion been more on the alert against
+power, even legal and legitimate. Sapping and mining goes on even
+in services which are recognized as essential, as the army and the
+gendarmerie.[2316] In the army, on the appointment of a non-commissioned
+officer, the other non-commissioned officers make up a list of
+candidates, and the captain selects three, one of whom is chosen by
+the colonel. In the choice of a sub-lieutenant, all the officers of
+the regiment vote, and he who receives a majority is appointed. In the
+gendarmerie, for the appointment of a gendarme, the directory of the
+department forms a list; the colonel designates five names on it,
+and the directory selects one of them. For the choice of a corporal,
+quartermaster or lieutenant, there is, besides the directory and the
+colonel, another intervention, that of the officers, both commissioned
+and non-commissioned. It is a system of elective complications and
+lot-drawings; one which, giving a voice in the choice of officers to the
+civil authorities and to military subordinates, leaves the colonel with
+only a third or one-quarter of his former ascendancy. In relation to the
+National Guard, the new principle is applied without any reservation.
+All the officers and non-commissioned officers up to the grade of
+captain are elected by their own men. All the superior officers are
+elected by the inferior officers. All under-officers and all inferior
+and superior officers are elected for one year only, and are not
+eligible for re-election until after an interval of a year, during which
+they must serve in the ranks.[2317]--The result is manifest: command, in
+every civil and in every military order, becomes upset; subalterns are
+no longer precise and trustworthy instruments; the chief no longer has
+any practical hold on them; his orders, consequently, encounter only
+tame obedience, doubtful deference, sometimes even open resistance;
+their execution remains dilatory, uncertain, incomplete, and at
+length is utterly neglected; a latent and soon flagrant system of
+disorganization is instituted by the law. Step by step, in the hierarchy
+of Government, power has slipped downwards, and henceforth belongs by
+virtue of the Constitution to the authorities who sit at the bottom of
+the ladder. It is not the King, or the minister, or the directory of the
+department or of the district who rules, but its municipal officers;
+and their sway is as omnipotent as it can be in a small independent
+republic. They alone have the "strong hand" with which to search the
+pockets of refractory tax-payers, and ensure the collection of the
+revenue; to seize the rioter by the throat, and protect life and
+property; in short, to convert the promises and menaces of the law
+into acts. Every armed force, the National Guard, the regulars, and the
+gendarmerie, must march on their requisition. They alone, among the body
+of administrators, are endowed with this sovereign right; all that the
+department or the district can do is to invite them to exercise it. It
+is they who proclaim martial law. Accordingly, the sword is in their
+hands.[2318] Assisted by commissioners who are appointed by the
+council-general of the commune, they prepare the schedule of taxation
+of real and personal property, fix the quota of each tax-payer, adjust
+assessments, verify the registers and the collector's receipts, audit
+his accounts, discharge the insolvent, answer for returns and authorize
+prosecutions.[2319] Private purses are, in this way, at their mercy,
+and they take from them whatever they determine to belong to the
+public.--With the purse and the sword in their hands they lack nothing
+that is necessary to make them masters, and all the more because the
+application of every law belongs to them; because no orders of the
+Assembly to the King, of the King to the ministers, of ministers to the
+departments, of departments to the districts, of the districts to
+the communes, brings about any real local result except through them;
+because each measure of general application undergoes their special
+interpretation, and can always be optionally disfigured, softened,
+or exaggerated according to their timidity, inertia, violence or
+partiality. Moreover, they are not long in discovering their strength.
+We see them on all sides arguing with their superiors against district,
+departmental, and ministerial orders, and even against the Assembly
+itself; alleging circumstances; lack of means, their own danger and the
+public safety, failing to obey, acting for themselves, openly disobeying
+and glorying in the act,[2320] and claiming, as a right, the omnipotence
+which they exercise in point of fact. Those of Troyes, at the festival
+of the Federation, refuse to submit to the precedence of the department
+and claim it for themselves, as "immediate representatives of the
+people." Those of Brest, notwithstanding the reiterated prohibitions of
+their district, dispatch four hundred men and two cannon to force the
+submission of a neighboring commune to a cure' who has taken the oath.
+Those of Arnay-le-Duc arrest Mesdames (the King's aunts), in spite
+of their passport signed by the ministers, hold them in spite of
+departmental and district orders, persist in barring the way to them
+in spite of a special decree of the National Assembly, and send two
+deputies to Paris to obtain the sanction of their decision. What with
+arsenals pillaged, citadels invaded, convoys arrested, couriers
+stopped, letters intercepted, constant and increasing insubordination,
+usurpations without truce or measure, the municipalities arrogate
+to themselves every species of license on their own territory and
+frequently outside of it. Henceforth, forty thousand sovereign bodies
+exist in the kingdom. Force is placed in their hands, and they make good
+use of it. They make such good use of it that one of them, the commune
+of Paris, taking advantage of its proximity, lays siege to, mutilates,
+and rules the National Convention, and through it France.
+
+
+
+
+III.--Municipal Kingdoms.
+
+     The Municipal bodies.--Their great task.--Their incapacity.
+     --Their feeble authority.--Insufficiency of their means of
+     action.--The role of the National Guard.--
+
+Let us follow these municipal kings into their own domain: the burden
+on their shoulders is immense, and much beyond what human strength can
+support. All the details of executive duty are confided to them; they
+have not to busy themselves with a petty routine, but with a complete
+social system which is being taken to pieces, while another is
+reconstructed in its place.--They are in possession of four milliards of
+ecclesiastical property, real and personal, and soon there will be two
+and a half milliards of property belonging to the emigrants, which must
+be sequestered, valued, managed, inventoried, divided, sold, and the
+proceeds received. They have seven or eight thousand monks and thirty
+thousand nuns to displace, install, sanction, and provide for. They have
+forty-six thousand ecclesiastics, bishops, canons, cur�s, and vicars,
+to dispossess, replace, often by force, and later on to expel, intern,
+imprison, and support. They are obliged to discuss, trace out, teach
+and make public new territorial boundaries, those of the commune, of the
+district and of the department. They have to convoke, lodge, and protect
+the numerous primary and secondary Assemblies, to supervise their
+operations, which sometimes last for weeks. They must install those
+elected by them, justices of the peace, officers of the National Guard,
+judges, public prosecutors, cur�s, bishops, district and departmental
+administrators. They are to form new lists of tax-payers, apportion
+amongst themselves, according to a new system of impost, entirely
+new real and personal taxes, decide on claims, appoint an assessor,
+regularly audit his accounts and verify his books, aid him with force,
+use force in the collection of the excise and salt duties, which being
+reduced, equalized, and transformed in vain by the National Assembly,
+afford no returns in spite of its decrees. They are obliged to find the
+funds for dressing, equipping, and arming the National Guard, to step in
+between it and the military commanders, and to maintain concord between
+its diverse battalions. They have to protect forests from pillage,
+communal land from being invaded, to maintain the octroi, to protect
+former functionaries, ecclesiastics, and nobles, suspected and
+threatened, and, above all, to provide, no matter how, provisions for
+the commune which lacks food, and consequently, to raise subscriptions,
+negotiate purchases at a distance and even abroad, organize escorts,
+indemnify bakers, supply the market every week notwithstanding
+the dearth, the insecurity of roads, and the resistance of
+cultivators.--Even an absolute chief; sent from a distance and from
+high place, the most energetic and expert possible, supported by the
+best-disciplined and most obedient troops, would scarcely succeed in
+such an undertaking; and there is instead only a municipality which has
+neither the authority, the means, the experience, the capacity, nor the
+will.
+
+In the country, says an orator in the tribune,[2321] "the municipal
+officers, in twenty thousand out of forty thousand municipalities, do
+not know how to read or write." The cur�, in effect, is excluded from
+such offices by law, and, save in La Vend�e and the noble is excluded by
+public opinion. Besides, in many of the provinces, nothing but patois
+is spoken.[2322] French, especially the philosophic and abstract
+phraseology of the new laws and proclamations, remains gibberish
+to their inhabitants. They cannot possibly understand and apply the
+complicated decrees and fine-spun instructions which reach them from
+Paris. They hurry off to the towns, get the duties of the office imposed
+on them explained and commented on in detail, try to comprehend, imagine
+they do, and then, the following week, come back again without having
+understood anything, either the mode of keeping state registers,
+the distinction between feudal rights which are abolished and those
+retained, the regulations they should enforce in cases of election,
+the limits which the law imposes as to their powers and subordination.
+Nothing of all this finds its way into their rude, untrained brains;
+instead of a peasant who has just left his oxen, there is needed here a
+legal adept aided by a trained clerk.--Prudential considerations must
+be added to their ignorance. They do not wish to make enemies for
+themselves in their commune, and they abstain from any positive action,
+especially in all tax matters. Nine months after the decree on the
+patriotic contribution, "twenty-eight thousand municipalities are
+overdue, not having (yet) returned either rolls or estimates."[2323] At
+the end of January, 1792, "out of forty thousand nine hundred and eleven
+municipalities, only five thousand four hundred and forty-eight have
+deposited their registers; two thousand five hundred and eighty rolls
+only are definitive and in process of collection. A large number have
+not even begun their sectional statements."[2324]--It is much worse
+when, thinking that they do understand it, they undertake to do their
+work. In their minds, incapable of abstraction, the law is transformed
+and deformed by extraordinary interpretations. We shall see what it
+becomes when it is brought to bear on feudal dues, on the forests, on
+communal rights, on the circulation of corn, on the taxes on provisions,
+on the supervision of the aristocrats, and on the protection of persons
+and property. According to them, it authorizes and invites them to do
+by force, and at once, whatever they need or desire for the time
+being.--The municipal officers of the large boroughs and towns, more
+acute and often able to comprehend the decrees, are scarcely in a
+better condition to carry them out effectively. They are undoubtedly
+intelligent, inspired by the best disposition, and zealous for the
+public welfare. During the first two years of the Revolution it is, on
+the whole, the best informed and most liberal portion of the bourgeoisie
+which, in the department as in the district, undertakes the management
+of affairs. Almost all are men of the law, advocates, notaries, and
+attorneys, with a small number of the old privileged class imbued
+with the same spirit, a canon at Besan�on, a gentleman at N�mes. Their
+intentions are of the very best; they love order and liberty, they give
+their time and their money, they hold permanent sessions and accomplish
+an incredible amount of work, and they often voluntarily expose
+themselves to great danger.--But they are bourgeois philosophers, and,
+in this latter particular, similar to their deputies in the National
+Assembly, and, with this twofold character, as incapable as their
+deputies of governing a disintegrated nation. In this twofold character
+they are ill-disposed towards the ancient r�gime, hostile to Catholicism
+and feudal rights, unfavorable to the clergy and the nobility, inclined
+to extend the bearing and exaggerate the rigor of recent decrees,
+partisans of the Rights of Man, and, therefore, humanitarians and
+optimists, disposed to excuse the misdeeds of the people, hesitating,
+tardy and often timid in the face of an outbreak--in short, admirable
+writers, exhorters, and reformers, but good for nothing when it comes to
+breaking heads and risking their own bones. They have not been brought
+up in such a way as to become men of action in a single day. Up to
+this time they have always lived as passive administrators, as quiet
+individuals, as studious men and clerks, domesticated, conversational,
+and polished, to whom words concealed facts, and who, on their evening
+promenade, warmly discussed important principles of government, without
+any consciousness of the practical machinery which, with a police-system
+for its ultimate wheel, rendered themselves, their promenade, and their
+conversation perfectly secure. They are not imbued with that sentiment
+of social danger which produces the veritable chief; the man who
+subordinates the emotions of pity to the exigencies of the public
+service. They are not aware that it is better to mow down a hundred
+conscientious citizens rather than let them hang a culprit without
+a trial. Repression, in their hands, is neither prompt, rigid, nor
+constant. They continue to be in the H�tel-de-Ville what they were
+when they went into it, so many jurists and scribes, fruitful in
+proclamations, reports, and correspondence. Such is wholly their role,
+and, if any amongst them, with more energy, desires to depart from it,
+he has no hold on the commune which, according to the Constitution, he
+has to direct, and on that armed force which is entrusted to him with a
+view to insure the observance of the laws.
+
+To insure respect for authority, indeed, it must not spring up on the
+spot and under the hands of its subordinates. It loses its prestige and
+independence when those who create it are precisely those who have to
+submit to it. For, in submitting to it, they remember that they have
+created it. This or that candidate among them who has but lately
+solicited their suffrages is now a magistrate who issues orders, and
+this sudden transformation is their work. It is with difficulty that
+they pass from the role of sovereign electors to that of docile subjects
+of the administration, and recognize a commander in one of their own
+creatures.[2325] On the contrary, they will submit to his control only
+in their own fashion, reserving to themselves in practice the powers the
+right to which they have conferred on him.
+
+"We gave him his place, and he must do as we want him to do."
+
+Such popular reasoning is the most natural in the world. It is as
+applicable to the municipal officer wearing his scarf as to the officer
+in the National Guard wearing his epaulettes; the former as well as
+the latter being conferred by the arbitrary voice of the electors, and
+always seeming to them a gift which is revocable at their pleasure. The
+superior always, and more particularly in times of danger or of great
+public excitement, seems, if directly appointed by those whom he
+commands, to be their clerk.--Such is municipal authority at this epoch,
+intermittent, uncertain, and weak; and all the weaker because the sword,
+whose hilt the men of the H�tel-de-Ville seem to hold, does not always
+leave its scabbard at their bidding. They alone are empowered to summon
+the National Guard, but it does not depend on them, and it is not at
+their disposal. To obtain its support it is needful that its independent
+chiefs should be willing to respond to their requisition; that the men
+should willingly obey their elected officers; that these improvised
+soldiers should consent to quit their plow, their stores, their
+workshops and offices, to lose their day, to patrol the streets at
+night, to be pelted with stones, to fire on a riotous crowd whose
+enmities and prejudices they often share. Undoubtedly, they will fire on
+some occasions, but generally they will remain quiet, with their arms
+at rest; and, at last, they will grow weary of a trying, dangerous, and
+constant service, which is disagreeable to them, and for which they are
+not fitted. They will not answer the summons, or, if they do, they will
+come too late, and in too small a number. In this event, the regulars
+who are sent for, will do as they do and remain quiet, following their
+example, while the municipal magistrate, into whose hands the sword has
+glided, will be able to do no more than make grievous reports, to his
+superiors of the department or district, concerning the popular violence
+of which he is a powerless witness.--In other cases, and especially in
+the country, his condition is worse. The National Guard, preceded by its
+drums, will come and take him off to the town hall to authorize by his
+presence, and to legalize by his orders, the outrages that it is about
+to commit. He marches along seized by the collar, and affixes his
+signature at the point of the bayonet. In this case not only is his
+instrument taken away from him, but it is turned against of holding it
+by the hilt, he feels the point: the armed force which he ought to make
+use of makes use of him.
+
+
+
+
+IV.--On Universal Suffrage.
+
+     The National Guard as electors.--Its great power.--Its
+     important task.--The work imposed on active citizens.--They
+     avoid it.
+
+Behold, then, the true sovereign, the elector, both National Guard and
+voter. They are the kings designed by the Constitution; there he is,
+in every hierarchical stage, with his suffrage, with which to delegate
+authority, and his gun to assure its exercise.--Through his free
+choice he creates all local powers, intermediary, central, legislative,
+administrative, ecclesiastical, and judiciary. He appoints directly, and
+in the primary assemblies, the mayor, the municipal board, the public
+prosecutor and council of the commune, the justice of the peace and
+his assessors, and the electors of the second degree. Indirectly, and
+through these elected electors, he appoints the administrators and
+procureurs-syndics of both district and department, the civil and
+criminal judges, the public prosecutor, bishops, and priests, the
+members of the National Assembly and jurors of the higher National
+Court[2326]. All these commissions which he issues are of short date,
+the principal ones, those of municipal officer, elector, and deputy,
+having but two years to run; at the end of this brief term their
+recipients are again subject to his vote, in order that, if he is
+displeased with them, he may replace them by others. He must not be
+fettered in his choice; in every well-conducted establishment the
+legitimate proprietor must be free easily and frequently to renew his
+staff of clerks. He is the only one in whom confidence can be placed,
+and, for greater security, all arms are given up to him. When his
+clerks wish to employ force he is the one to place it at their disposal.
+Whatever he desired as elector he executes as National Guard. On two
+occasions he interferes, both times in a decisive manner; and his
+control over the legal powers is irresistible because these are born out
+of his vote and are obeyed only through his support.--But these rights
+are, at the same time, burdens. The Constitution describes him as an
+"active citizen," and this he eminently is or should be, since public
+action begins and ends with him, since everything depends on his
+zeal and capacity, since the machine is good and only works well
+in proportion to his discernment, punctuality, calmness, firmness,
+discipline at the polls, and in the ranks. The law requires his
+services incessantly day and night, in body and mind, as gendarme and as
+elector.--How burdensome this service of gendarme must be, can be judged
+by the number of riots. How burdensome that of elector must be, the list
+of elections will show.
+
+In February, March, April, and May, 1789, there are prolonged parish
+meetings, for the purpose of choosing electors and writing out
+grievances, also bailiwick meetings of still longer duration to choose
+deputies and draw up the memorial. During the months of July and August,
+1789, there are spontaneous gatherings to elect or confirm the municipal
+bodies; other spontaneous meetings by which the militia is formed and
+officered; and then, following these, constant meetings of this same
+militia to fuse themselves into a National Guard, to renew officers and
+appoint deputies to the federative assemblies. In December, 1789, and
+January, 1790, there are primary meetings, to elect municipal officers
+and their councils. In May, 1790, there are primary and secondary
+meetings, to appoint district and departmental administrators. In
+October, 1790, there are primary meetings, to elect the justice of the
+peace and his assessors, also secondary meetings, to elect the district
+courts. In November, 1790, there are primary meetings, to renew
+one-half of the municipal bodies. In February and March, 1791, there
+are secondary meetings, to nominate the bishop and cur�s. In June, July,
+August, September, 1791, there are primary and secondary meetings,
+to renew one-half of the district and departmental administrators, to
+nominate the president, the public prosecutor, and the clerk of the
+criminal court, and to choose deputies. In November, 1791, there are
+primary meetings to renew one-half of the municipal council. Observe
+that many of these elections drag along because the voters lack
+experience, because the formalities are complicated, and because
+opinions are divided. In August and September, 1791, at Tours, they are
+prolonged for thirteen days;[2327] at Troyes, in January, 1790, instead
+of three days they last for three weeks; at Paris, in September and
+October, 1791, only for the purpose of choosing deputies, they last
+for thirty-seven days; in many places their proceedings are contested,
+annulled, and begun over again. To these universal gatherings, which
+put all France in motion, we must add the local gatherings by which a
+commune approves or gainsays its municipal officers, makes claims on the
+department, on the King, or on the Assembly, demands the maintenance
+of its parish priest, the provisioning of its market, the arrival
+or dispatch of a military detachment,--and think of all that these
+meetings, petitions, and nominations presuppose in the way of
+preparatory committees and preliminary meetings and debates! Every
+public representation begins with rehearsals in secret session. In the
+choice of a candidate, and, above all, of a list of candidates; in
+the appointment in each commune of from three to twenty-one municipal
+officers, and from six to forty-two notables; in the selection of twelve
+district administrators and thirty-six departmental administrators,
+especially as the list must be of a double length and contain twice
+as many officers as there are places to fill, immediate agreement is
+impossible. In every important election the electors are sure to be in
+a state of agitation a month beforehand, while four weeks of discussion
+and caucus is not too much to give to inquiries about candidates, and to
+canvassing voters. Let us add, accordingly, this long preface to each
+of the elections, so long and so often repeated, and now sum up the
+troubles and disturbances, all this loss of time, all the labor which
+the process demands. Each convocation of the primary assemblies, summons
+to the town-hall or principal town of the canton, for one or for several
+days, about three million five hundred thousand electors of the first
+degree. Each convocation of the assemblies of the second class compels
+the attendance and sojourn at the principal town of the department, and
+again in the principal town of the district, of about three hundred and
+fifty thousand elected electors. Each revision or re-election in the
+National Guard gathers together on the public square, or subjects to
+roll-call at the town-hall, three or four millions of National
+Guards. Each federation, after exacting the same gathering or the same
+roll-call, sends delegates by hundreds of thousands to the principal
+towns of the districts and departments, and tens of thousands to
+Paris.--The powers thus instituted at the cost of so great an effort,
+require an equal effort to make them work; one branch alone of the
+administration[2328] keeps 2,988 officials busy in the departments,
+6,950 in the districts, 1,175,000 in the communes--in all, nearly one
+million two hundred thousand administrators, whose places, as we have
+seen above, are no sinecures. Never did a political machine require so
+prodigious an expenditure of force to set it up and keep it in motion.
+In the United States, where it is now (around 1875) deranged by its own
+action, it has been estimated that, to meet the intentions of the law
+and keep each wheel in its proper place, it would be necessary for each
+citizen to give one whole day in each week, or on-sixth of his time,
+to public business. In France, under the newly adopted system, where
+disorder is universal, where the duty of National Guard is added to and
+complicates that of elector and administrator, I estimate that two days
+would be necessary. This is what the Constitution comes to, this is its
+essential and supreme requirement: each active citizen has to give up
+one-third of his time to public affairs.
+
+Now, these twelve hundred thousand administrators and three or four
+million electors and National Guards, are just the men in France who
+have the least leisure. The class of active citizens, indeed, comprises
+about all the men who labor with their hands or with their heads.
+The law exempts only domestics devoted to personal service or common
+laborers who, possessing no property or income, earn less than
+twenty-one sous a day. Every journeyman-miller, the smallest farmer,
+every village proprietor of a cottage or of a vegetable-garden, any
+ordinary workman, votes at the primary meetings, and may become a
+municipal officer. Again, if he pays ten francs a year direct tax, if he
+is a farmer or yeomen on any property which brings him in four hundred
+francs, if his rent is one hundred and fifty francs, he may become an
+elected elector and an administrator of the district or department.
+According to this standard the eligible are innumerable; in Doubs, in
+1790,[2329] they form two-thirds of the active citizens. Thus, the
+way to office is open to all, or almost all, and the law has taken no
+precaution whatever to reserve or provide places for the elite, who
+could best fill them. On the contrary, the nobles, the ecclesiastical
+dignitaries, the members of the parliaments, the grand functionaries of
+the ancient regime, the upper class of the bourgeoisie, almost all the
+rich who possess leisure, are practically excluded from the elections
+by violence, and from the various offices by public opinion: they
+soon retire into private life, and, through discouragement or disgust,
+through monarchical or religious scruples, abandon entirely a public
+career.--The burden of the new system falls, accordingly, on the most
+occupied portion of the community: on merchants, manufacturers, agents
+of the law, employees, shopkeepers, artisans, and cultivators. They
+are the people who must give up one-third of their time already
+appropriated, neglect private for public business, leave their harvests,
+their bench, their shop, or their briefs to escort convoys and patrol
+the highways, to run off to the principal town of the canton, district,
+or department, and stay and sit there in the town-hall,[2330] subject
+to a deluge of phrases and papers, conscious that they are forced to
+gratuitous drudgery, and that this drudgery is of little advantage to
+the public.--For the first six months they do it with good grace; their
+zeal in penning memorials, in providing themselves with arms against
+"brigands," and in suppressing taxes, rents, and tithes, is active
+enough. But now that this much is obtained or extorted, decreed as a
+right, or accomplished in fact, they must not be further disturbed. They
+need the whole of their time: they have their crops to get in, their
+customers to serve, their orders to give, their books to make up, their
+credits to adjust, all which are urgent matters, and neither ought to be
+neglected or interrupted. Under the lash of necessity and of the crisis
+they have put their backs to it, and, if we take their word for it, they
+hauled the public cart out of the mud; but they had no idea of putting
+themselves permanently in harness to drag it along themselves. Confined
+as this class has been for centuries to private life, each has his own
+wheelbarrow to trundle along, and it is for this, before all and above
+all, that he holds himself responsible. From the beginning of the year
+1790 the returns of the votes taken show that as many are absent as
+present; at Besan�on there are only nine hundred and fifty-nine voters
+out of thirty-two hundred inscribed; four months after this more than
+one-half of the electors fail to come to the polls;[2331] and throughout
+France, even at Paris, the indifference to voting keeps on increasing.
+Puppets of such an administration as that of Louis XV. and Louis XVI. do
+not become Florentine or Athenian citizens in a single night. The hearts
+and heads of three or four millions of men are not suddenly endowed with
+faculties and habits which render them capable of diverting one-third of
+their energies to work which is new, disproportionate, gratuitous, and
+supererogatory.--A fallacy of monstrous duplicity lies at the basis
+of the political theories of the day and of those which were
+invented during the following ten years. Arbitrarily, and without any
+examination, a certain weight and resistance are attributed to the human
+metal employed. It is found on trial to have ten times less resistance
+and twenty times more weight than was supposed.
+
+
+
+
+V.--The Ruling Minority.
+
+     The restless minority.--Its elements.--The clubs.--Their
+     ascendancy.--How they interpret the Rights of Man.--Their
+     usurpations and violence.
+
+In default of the majority, who shirk their responsibilities, it is the
+minority which does the work and assumes the power. The majority having
+resigned, the minority becomes sovereign, and public business, abandoned
+by the hesitating, weak, and absent multitude, falls into the hands of
+the resolute, energetic, ever-present few who find the leisure and
+the disposition to assume the responsibility. In a system in which all
+offices are elective, and in which elections are frequent, politics
+becomes a profession for those who subordinate their private interests
+to it, and who find it of personal advantage; every village contains
+five or six men of this class, every borough twenty or thirty, every
+town its hundreds and Paris its many thousands.[2332] These are
+veritable active citizens They alone give all their time and attention
+to public matters, correspond with the newspapers and with the deputies
+at Paris, receive and spread abroad the party watchword on every
+important question, hold caucuses, get up meetings, make motions, draw
+up addresses, overlook, rebuke, or denounce the local magistrates, form
+themselves into committees, publish and push candidates, and go into
+the suburbs and the country to canvass for votes. They hold the power
+in recompense for their labor, for they manage the elections, and are
+elected to office or provided with places by the successful candidates.
+There is a prodigious number of these offices and places, not only those
+of officers of the National Guard and the administrators of the commune,
+the district, and the department, whose duties are gratuitous,
+or little short of it, but a quantity of others which are
+paid,[2333]--eighty-three bishops, seven hundred and fifty deputies,
+four hundred criminal judges, three thousand and seven civil judges,
+five thousand justices of the peace, twenty thousand assessors forty
+thousand communal collectors, forty-six thousand cur�s, without counting
+the accessory or insignificant places which exist by tens and hundreds
+of thousands, from secretaries, clerks, bailiffs and notaries, to
+gendarmes, constables, office-clerks, beadles, grave-diggers, and
+keepers of sequestered goods. The pasture is vast for the ambitious; it
+is not small for the needy, and they seize upon it. Such is the rule in
+pure democracies: hence the swarm of politicians in the United States.
+When the law incessantly calls all citizens to political action, there
+are only a few who devote themselves to it; these become expert in this
+particular work, and, consequently, preponderant. But they must be paid
+for their trouble, and the election secures to them their places because
+they manage the elections.
+
+Two sorts of men furnish the recruits for this dominant minority: on
+the one hand the enthusiasts, and on the other those who have no social
+position. Towards the end of 1789, moderate people, who are minding
+their own business, retire into privacy, and are daily less disposed to
+show themselves. The public square is occupied by others who, through
+zeal and political passion, abandon their pursuits, and by those who,
+finding themselves hampered in their social sphere, or repelled from
+ordinary circles, were merely awaiting a new opening to take a fresh
+start. In these utopian and revolutionary times, there is no lack of
+either class. Flung out by handfuls, the dogma of popular sovereignty
+falls like a seed scattered around, to end up vegetating in heated
+brains, in the narrow and rash minds which, once possessed by an
+idea, adhere to it and are mastered by it. It falls amongst a class of
+reasoners who, starting from a principle, dash forward like a horse
+who has had blinders put on. This is especially the case with the legal
+class, whose profession accustoms them to deductions; nor less with the
+village attorney, the unfrocked monk, the "intruding" and excommunicated
+cur�, and above all, the journalist and the local orator, who, for
+the first time in his life, finds that he has an audience, applause,
+influence and a future before him. These are the only people who can do
+the complicated and constant work which the new Constitution calls for;
+for they are the only men whose desires are unlimited, whose dreams are
+coherent, whose doctrine is explicit, whose enthusiasm is contagious,
+who cherish no scruples, and whose presumption is unbounded. Thus has
+the rigid will been wrought and tempered within them, the inward spring
+of energy which, being daily more tightly wound up, urges them on to
+propaganda and to action.--During the second half of the year 1790 we
+see them everywhere following the example of the Paris Jacobins, styling
+themselves friends of the Constitution, and grouping themselves together
+in popular associations. Each town and village gives birth to a club of
+patriots who regularly every evening, or several times a week, meet "for
+the purpose of co-operating for the safety of the commonwealth."[2334]
+This is a new and spontaneous organ,[2335] an cancer and a parasite,
+which develops itself in the social body alongside of its legal
+organizations. Its growth insensibly increases, attracting to itself the
+substance of the others, employing them for its own ends, substituting
+itself for them, acting by and for itself alone, a sort of omnivorous
+outgrowth the encroachment of which is irresistible, not only because
+circumstances and the working of the Constitution nourish it, but also
+because its germ, deposited at a great depth, is a living portion of the
+Constitution itself.
+
+For, placed at the head of the Constitution, as well as of the decrees
+which are attached to it, stands the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
+According to this, and by the avowal of the legislators themselves,
+there are two parts to be distinguished in the law, the one superior,
+eternal, inviolable, which is the self-evident principle, and the other
+inferior, temporary, and open to discussion, which comprehends more or
+less exact or erroneous applications of this principle. No application
+of the law is valid if it derogates from the principle. No institution
+or authority is entitled to obedience if it is opposed to the rights
+which it aims to guarantee. These sacred rights, anterior to all
+society, take precedence of every social convention, and whenever we
+would know if a legal order is legitimate, we have merely to ascertain
+if it is in conformity with natural right. Let us, accordingly, in every
+doubtful or difficult case, refer to this philosophic gospel, to
+this incontestable catechism, this primordial creed proclaimed by the
+National Assembly.--The National Assembly itself invites us to do so.
+For it announces that
+
+"ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man are the sole
+causes of public misfortune, and of the corruption of governments."
+
+It declares that
+
+"the object of every political association is the preservation of
+natural and imprescriptible rights."
+
+It enumerates them, "in order that the acts of legislative power and
+the acts of executive power may at once be compared with the purpose
+of every political institution." It desires "that every member of the
+social body should have its declaration constantly in mind."--Thus we
+are told to control all acts of application by the principle, and
+also we are provided with the rule by which we may and should accord,
+measure, or even refuse our submission to, deference for, and toleration
+of established institutions and legal authority.
+
+What are these superior rights, and, in case of dispute, who will decide
+as arbitrator?--There is nothing here like the precise declarations
+of the American Constitution,[2336] those positive prescriptions which
+serve to sustain a judicial appeal, those express prohibitions which
+prevent beforehand certain species of laws from being passed, which
+prescribe limits to public powers, which mark out the province not to be
+invaded by the State because it is reserved to the individual.
+
+On the contrary, in the declaration of the national Assembly, most of
+the articles are abstract dogmas,[2337] metaphysical definitions, more
+or less literary axioms, that is to say, more or less false, now vague
+and now contradictory, open to various interpretations and to opposite
+constructions, These are good for platform display but bad in practice,
+mere stage effect, a sort of pompous standard, useless and heavy, which,
+hoisted in front of the Constitutional house and shaken every day
+by violent hands, cannot fail soon to tumble on the heads of passers
+by.[2338]--Nothing is done to ward off this visible danger. There is
+nothing here like that Supreme Court which, in the United States, guards
+the Constitution even against its Congress, and which, in the name of
+the Constitution, actually invalidates a law, even when it has passed
+through all formalities and been voted on by all the powers;
+which listens to the complaints of the individual affected by an
+unconstitutional law; which stays the sheriff's or collector's hand
+raised against him, and which above their heads gives judgment on his
+interests and wrongs. Ill-defined and discordant laws are proclaimed
+without any provision being made for their interpretation, application
+or sanction. No means are taken to have them specially expounded. No
+district tribunal is assigned to consider the claims which grow out of
+them, to put an end to litigation legally, peacefully, on a last appeal,
+and through a final decision which becomes a precedent and fixes the
+loose sense of the text. All this is made the duty of everybody, that is
+to say of those who are disposed to charge themselves with it,--in other
+words, the active minority in council assembled.--Thus, in each town
+or village it is the local club which, by the authorization of the
+legislator himself, becomes the champion, judge, interpreter and
+administrator of the rights of man, and which, in the name of these
+superior rights, may protest or rebel, as it seems best, not only
+against the legitimate acts of legal powers, but also against the
+authentic text of the Constitution and the Laws.[2339]
+
+Consider, indeed, these rights as they are proclaimed, along with
+the commentary of the speaker who expounds them at the club before an
+audience of heated and daring spirits, or in the street to the rude
+and fanatical multitude. Every article in the Declaration is a dagger
+pointed at human society, and the handle has only to be pressed to
+make the blade enter the flesh.[2340] Among "these natural and
+imprescriptible rights" the legislator has placed "resistance to
+oppression." We are oppressed: let us resist and take up arms. According
+to this legislator, "society has the right to bring every public agent
+of the Administration to account." Let us away to the H�tel-de-Ville,
+and interrogate our lukewarm or suspected magistrates, and watch their
+sessions to see if they prosecute priests and disarm the aristocrats;
+let us stop their intrigues against the people; let us force these
+slow clerks to hasten their steps.--According to this legislator
+"all citizens have the right to take part in person, or through their
+representatives, in the formation of the law." There must thus be no
+more electors privileged by their payment of a three-franc tax. Down
+with the new aristocracy of active citizens! Let us restore to the
+two millions of proletarians the right of suffrage, of which the
+Constitution has unjustly defrauded them!--According to this legislator,
+"men are born and remain free, and equal in their rights." Consequently,
+let no one be excluded from the National Guard; let everybody, even
+the pauper, have some kind of weapon, a pike or gun, to defend his
+freedom!--In the very terms of the Declaration, "the law is the
+expression of the universal will." Listen to these clamors in the open
+streets, to these petitions flowing in from the towns on all sides;
+behold the universal will, the living law which abolishes the written
+law! On the strength of this the leader of a few clubs in Paris are to
+depose the King, to violate the Legislative Assembly and decimate the
+National Convention.--In other terms, the turbulent, factious minority
+is to supplant the sovereign nation, and henceforth there is nothing to
+hinder it from doing what it pleases just when it pleases. The operation
+of the Constitution has given to it the reality of power, while the
+preamble of the Constitution clothes it with the semblance of right.
+
+
+
+
+VI.--Summary of the work of the Constituent Assembly.
+
+Such is the work of the Constituent Assembly. In several of its laws,
+especially those which relate to private interests, in the institution
+of civil regulations, in the penal and rural codes,[2341] in the
+first attempts at, and the promise of, a uniform civil code, in the
+enunciation of a few simple regulations regarding taxation, procedure,
+and administration, it planted good seed. But in all that relates to
+political institutions and social organization its proceedings are those
+of an academy of Utopians, and not those of practical legislators.--On
+the sick body entrusted to it, it performed amputations which were as
+useless as they were excessive, and applied bandages as inadequate as
+they were injurious. With the exception of two or three restrictions
+admitted inadvertently, and the maintenance of the show of royalty, also
+the obligation of a small electoral qualification, it carried out its
+principle to the end, the principle of Rousseau. It deliberately refused
+to consider man as he really was under its own eyes, and persisted
+in seeing nothing in him but the abstract being created in books.
+Consequently, with the blindness and obstinacy characteristic of a
+speculative surgeon, it destroyed, in the society submitted to its
+scalpel and its theories, not only the tumors, the enlargements, and the
+inflamed parts of the organs, but also the organs themselves, and even
+the vital governing centers around which cells arrange themselves to
+recompose an injured organ. That is, the Assembly destroyed on the one
+hand the time-honored, spontaneous, and lasting societies formed by
+geographical position, history, common occupations and interests, and
+on the other, those natural chiefs whose name, repute, education,
+independence, and earnestness designated them as the best qualified to
+occupy high positions. In one direction it despoils and permits the
+ruin and proscription of the superior class, the nobles, the members of
+Parliament, and the upper middle class. In another it dispossesses and
+breaks up all historic or natural corporations, religious congregations,
+clerical bodies, provinces, parliaments, societies of art and of all
+other professions and pursuits. This done, every tie or bond which
+holds men together is found to be severed; all subordination and every
+graduated scale of rank have disappeared. There is no longer rank and
+file, or commander-in-chief. Nothing remains but individual particles,
+26 millions of equal and disconnected atoms. Never was so much
+disintegrated matter, less capable of resistance, offered to hands
+undertaking to mold it. Harshness and violence will be sufficient to
+ensure success. These brutal hands are ready for the work, and the
+Assembly which has reduced the material to powder has likewise
+provided the mortar and pestle. As awkward in destruction as it is in
+construction, it invents for the restoration of order in a society which
+is turned upside down a machine which would, of itself, create
+disorder in a tranquil society. The most absolute and most concentrated
+government would not be strong enough to effect without disturbance a
+similar equalization of ranks, the same dismemberment of associations,
+and the same displacement of property. No social transformation can
+be peacefully accomplished without a well-commanded army, obedient and
+everywhere present, as was the case in the emancipation of the Russian
+serfs by Emperor Alexander. The new Constitution,[2342] on the contrary,
+reduces the King to the position of an honorary president, suspected
+and called in question by a disorganized State. Between him and the
+legislative body it interposes nothing but sources of conflict, and
+suppresses all means of concord. The monarch has no hold whatever on the
+administrative departments which he must direct; the mutual independence
+of the powers, from the center to the extremities of the State,
+everywhere produces indifference, negligence, and disobedience between
+the injunctions issued and their execution. France is a federation of
+forty thousand municipal sovereignties, in which the authority of legal
+magistrates varies according to the caprice of active citizens. These
+active citizens, too heavily loaded, shy away from the performance
+of public duty; in which a minority of fanatics and ambitious men
+monopolize the right to speak, to vote, all influence, the power and
+all action. They justify their multiple ursurpations, their unbridled
+despotism, and their increasing encroachments by the Declaration of
+the Rights of Man. The masterpiece[2343] of ideal abstractions and
+of practical absurdities is accomplished. In accordance with the
+Constitution spontaneous anarchy becomes legalized anarchy. The latter
+is perfect; nothing finer of the kind has been seen since the ninth
+century.
+
+
+*****
+
+
+[Footnote 2301: The name for the dreaded secret Royal warrant of arrest.
+(SR.)]
+
+[Footnote 2302: The initiative rests with the King on one point: war
+cannot be decreed by the Assembly except on his formal and preliminary
+proposition. This exception was secured only after a violent struggle
+and a supreme effort by Mirabeau.]
+
+[Footnote 2303: Speech by Lanjuinais, November 7, 1789. "We determined
+on the separation of the powers. Why, then, should the proposal he made
+to us to unite the legislative power with the executive power in the
+persons of the ministers?"]
+
+[Footnote 2304: See the attendance of the Ministers before the
+Legislative Assembly.]
+
+[Footnote 2305: "Any society in which the separation of the powers
+is not clearly defined has no constitution." (Declaration of Rights,
+article XVI.)--This principle is borrowed from a text by Montesquieu,
+also from the American Constitution. In the rest the theory of Rousseau
+is followed.]
+
+[Footnote 2306: Mercure de France, an expression by Mallet du Pan.]
+
+[Footnote 2307: Constitution of 1791, ch. II. articles 5, 6, 7.--Decree
+of September 25--October 6, 1791, section III. articles, 8 to 25.]
+
+[Footnote 2308: Speeches by Barnave and Roederer in the constituent
+Assembly.--Speeches by Barnave and Duport in the Jacobin Club.]
+
+[Footnote 2309: Principal texts. (Duvergier, "Collection des Lois et
+Decrets.")--Laws on municipal and administrative organization, December
+14 and 22, 1789; August 12-20, 1790; March 12, 1791. On the municipal
+organization of Paris, May 21st, June 27, 1790.--Laws on the
+organization of the Judiciary, August 16-24, 1790; September 16-29,
+1791; September 29, October 21, 1791.--Laws on military organization,
+September 23, October 29, 1790; January 16, 1791; July 27, 28,
+1791--Laws on the financial organization, November 14-24,.1790; November
+23, 1790; March 17, 1791; September 26, October 2, 1791.]
+
+[Footnote 2310: The removal of such managerial authority has since the
+second World war taken place inside the United Nations and other Western
+public administrations and seems to be the aim of much communist trade
+union effort. The result has everywhere been added cost and decreased
+efficiency. (SR.)]
+
+[Footnote 2311: This principle has been introduced in Western
+educational systems when clever self-appointed psychologists told
+parents and teacher alike that they could and should not punish their
+children but only talk and explain to them. (SR.)]
+
+[Footnote 2312: This description fits the staff regulations of the
+United Nations secretariat in which I served for 32 years. (SR.)]
+
+[Footnote 2313: Decrees of December 14 and December 22, 1789: "In
+municipalities reduced to three members (communes below five hundred
+inhabitants), all executive functions shall belong to the mayor alone."]
+
+[Footnote 2314: Could it be that Lenin took note of this and had it
+this translated in Russian and made use of it in his and later in
+Stalin's schools for international revolutionaries. It would in any
+case have weakened the Bourgeois Capitalist countries. In any case such
+measures have been introduced both in the international organizations
+and in most Western Democratic Governments after World War II. (SR.)]
+
+[Footnote 2315: This was in the United Nations called 'Rotation' and
+made the administration of missions and forces difficult, expensive and
+inefficient. This rotation was also used in the Indian and other armies
+in order to prevent the officers to reach an understanding or achieve
+any power over the troops under their command. (SR.)]
+
+[Footnote 2316: Laws of September 23--October 29, 1790; January 16,
+1791. (Titles II. And VII.)--Cf. the legal prescriptions in relation
+to the military tribunals. In every prosecuting or judicial jury
+one-seventh of the sworn members are taken from the non-commissioned
+officers, and one-seventh from the soldiers, and again, according to the
+rank of the accused, the number of those of the same rank is doubled.]
+
+[Footnote 2317: Law of July 28th, August 12, 1791.]
+
+[Footnote 2318: Laws of November 24, 1789 (article 52), August 10-14,
+1789.--Instruction of August 10-20, 1790; � 8--Law of October 21,
+November 21, 1789.]
+
+[Footnote 2319: Laws of November 14 and 23, 1790; January 13th,
+September 26th, October 9, 1792.]
+
+[Footnote 2320: Albert Babeau, I. 327 (F�te of the Federation, July 14,
+1790).--"Archives Nationales," F7, 3215 (May 17,1791, Deliberation of
+the council-general of the commune of Brest. May 17 and 19, Letters of
+the directory of the district).--Mercure, March 5, 1791. "Mesdames
+are stopped until the return of the two deputies, whom the Republic
+of Arnay-le-Duc has sent to the representatives of the nation to
+demonstrate to them the necessity of keeping the king's aunts in the
+kingdom."]
+
+[Footnote 2321: Moniteur, X. 132. Speech by M. Labergerie, November 8,
+1791.]
+
+[Footnote 2322: At Montauban, in the intendant's salon, the ladies of
+the place spoke patois only, the grandmother of the gentleman who has
+informed me of this fact did not understand any other language.]
+
+[Footnote 2323: Moniteur, V.163, sitting of July 18, 1791. Speech by M.
+Lecoulteux, reporter.]
+
+[Footnote 2324: Moniteur, XI. 283, sitting of February 2, 1792. Speech
+by Cambon: "They go away thinking that they understand what is explained
+to them, but return the following day to obtain fresh explanations. The
+attorneys refuse to give the municipalities any assistance, stating that
+they know nothing about these matters."]
+
+[Footnote 2325: The same may happen when a subordinate is promoted to be
+placed in charge of his or her former equals and colleagues. This is why
+it is often preferably to transfer someone who is recognized as being of
+superior talent whenever a promotions is to take place. (SR.)]
+
+[Footnote 2326: Law of May 11-15, 1791.]
+
+[Footnote 2327: Minutes of the meeting of the Electoral Assembly of the
+Department of Indre-et-Loire (1791, printed).]
+
+[Footnote 2328: De Ferri�res, I. 367.]
+
+[Footnote 2329: Suzay, I, 191 (21,711 are eligible out of 32,288
+inscribed citizens).]
+
+[Footnote 2330: Official report of the Electoral Assembly of the
+Department of Indre-et-Loire, Aug. 27, 1791. "A member of the Assembly
+made a motion that all the members composing it should be indemnified
+for the expenses which would be incurred by their absence from home and
+the long sojourn they had to make in the town where the Assembly was
+held. He remarked that the inhabitants of the country were those who
+suffered the most, their labor being their sole riches; that if no
+attention was paid to this demand, they would be obliged, in spite of
+their patriotism, to withdraw and abandon their important mission; that
+the electoral assemblies would then be deserted, or would be composed of
+those whose resources permitted them to make this sacrifice."]
+
+[Footnote 2331: Sauzay, I. 147, 192.]
+
+[Footnote 2332: For the detail of these figures, see vol. II. Book IV.]
+
+[Footnote 2333: De Ferri�res, I. 367. Cf. The various laws above
+mentioned.]
+
+[Footnote 2334: Constant, "Histoire d'un Club Jacobin en Province"
+(Fontainebleau) p.15. (Proc�s-verbaux of the founding of the clubs of
+Moret, Thomery, Nemours, and Montereau.)]
+
+[Footnote 2335: Later to change and become socialist and communist
+parties everywhere. (SR.)]
+
+[Footnote 2336: Cf. The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776
+(except the first phrase, which is a catchword thrown out for the
+European philosophers).--Jefferson proposed a Declaration of Rights for
+the Constitution of March 4, 1789, but it was refused. They were content
+to add to it the eleven amendments which set forth the fundamental
+rights of the citizen.]
+
+[Footnote 2337: Article I. "Men are born and remain free and equal in
+rights common to all. Social distinctions are founded solely on public
+utility." The first phrase condemns the hereditary royalty which is
+sanctioned by the Constitution. The second phrase can be used to
+legitimate hereditary monarchy and an aristocracy.--Articles 10 and 11
+bear upon the manifestations of religious convictions and on freedom of
+speech and of the press. By virtue of these two articles worship,
+speech, and the press may be made subject to the most repressive
+restrictions, etc.]
+
+[Footnote 2338: The International Bill of Human Rights of 1948 is quite
+different from the one approved in 1789. In 1948 there is no more any
+mention of any "right to resistance to oppression", there is a softening
+of the position on the right of property and new rights, to free
+education, to a country, to rest and leisure, to a high standard of
+health and to an adequate standard of living have been introduced.
+(SR.)]
+
+[Footnote 2339: Stalin and his successors organized such a system of
+"clubs" world-wide which even today remain active as "protectors" of the
+environment, refugees, prisoners, animals and the environment. (SR.)]
+
+[Footnote 2340: Buchez and Roux, XI. 237. (Speech by Malouet in relation
+to the revision, August 5, 1791.) "You constantly tempt the people with
+sovereignty without giving them the immediate use of it."]
+
+[Footnote 2341: Decrees of September 25--October 6, 1791; September
+28--October 6, 1791.]
+
+[Footnote 2342: Impartial contemporaries, those well qualified to judge,
+agree as to the absurdity of the Constitution. "The Constitution was a
+veritable monster. There was too much of monarchy in it for a republic,
+and too much of a republic for a monarchy. The King was a side-dish, un
+hors d'oeuvre, everywhere present in appearance but without any actual
+power." (Dumont, 339.) "It is a general and almost universal conviction
+that this Constitution is inexecutable. The makers of it to a man
+condemn it." (G. Morris, September 30, 1791.) "Every day proves more
+clearly that their new Constitution is good for nothing." (ibid.
+December 27, 1791.) Cf. The sensible and prophetic speech made by
+Malouet (August 5, 1791, Buchez and Roux, XI. 237).]
+
+[Footnote 2343: Taine's vivid description is likely to have encouraged
+any radical revolutionary having the luck to read his explicit
+description of how to proceed with the destruction of a na�ve corrupt
+capitalist, bourgeois society. (SR.)]
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK THIRD. THE APPLICATION OF THE CONSTITUTION. [3101]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+
+
+I.--The Federations.
+
+     Popular application of philosophic theory.--Idyllic
+     celebration of the Contrat-Social.--The two strata of the
+     human mind.--Permanent disorder.
+
+If there ever was an Utopia which seemed capable of realization, or,
+what is still more to the purpose, was really applied, converted into a
+fact, fully established, it is that of Rousseau, in 1789 and during the
+three following years. For, not only are his principles embodied in the
+laws, and the Constitution throughout animated with his spirit, but it
+seems as if the nation looked upon his ideological gambols, his abstract
+fiction, as serious. This fiction it carried out in every particular. A
+social contract, at one spontaneous and practical, an immense
+gathering of men associating together freely for the first time for the
+recognition of their respective rights, forming a specific compact,
+and binding themselves by a solemn oath: such is the social recipe
+prescribed by the philosophers, and which is carried out to the letter.
+Moreover, as this recipe is esteemed infallible, the imagination is
+worked upon and the sensibilities of the day are brought into play.
+It is admitted that men, on again becoming equals, have again become
+brothers.[3102] A sudden and amazing harmony of all volitions and
+all intelligences will restore the golden age on earth. It is proper,
+accordingly, to regard the social contract as a festival, an affecting,
+sublime idyll, in which, from one end of France to the other, all, hand
+in hand, should assemble and swear to the new compact, with song, with
+dance, with tears of joy, with shouts of gladness, the worthy beginning
+of public felicity. With unanimous assent, indeed, the idyll is
+performed as if according to a written program.
+
+On the 29th of November, 1789, at Etoile, near Valence, the federations
+began.[3103] Twelve thousand National Guards, from the two banks of the
+Rh�ne, promise "to remain for ever united, to insure the circulation of
+grain, and to maintain the laws passed by the National Assembly." On the
+13th of December, at Mont�limart, six thousand men, the representatives
+of 27 000 other men, take a similar oath and confederate themselves with
+the foregoing.--Upon this the excitement spreads from month to month
+and from province to province. Fourteen towns of the bailiwicks of
+Franche-Comt� form a patriotic league. At Pontivy, Brittany enters into
+federal relations with Anjou. One thousand National Guards of Vivarais
+and Languedoc send their delegates to Voute. 48 000 in the Vosges send
+their deputies to Epinal. During February, March, April, and May, 1790,
+in Alsace, Champagne, Dauphiny, Orl�anais, Touraine, Lyonnais, and
+Provence, there is the same spectacle. At Draguignan eight thousand
+National Guards take the oath in the presence of 20 000 spectators. At
+Lyons 50 000 men, delegates of more than 500 000 others take the civic
+oath.--But local unions are not sufficient to complete the organization
+of France; a general union of all Frenchmen must take place. Many of the
+various National Guards have already written to Paris for the purpose of
+affiliating themselves with the National Guard there; and, one the 5th
+of June, the Parisian municipal body having proposed it, the Assembly
+decrees the universal federation. It is to take place on the 14th
+of July, everywhere on the same day, both at the center and at the
+extremities of the kingdom. There is to be one in the principal town
+of each district and of each department, and one in the capital. To
+the latter each body of the National Guards is to send deputies in
+the proportion of one man to every two hundred; and each regiment one
+officer, one non-commissioned officer, and four privates. Fourteen
+thousand representatives of the National Guard of the provinces appear
+on the Champ de Mars, the theater of the festival; also eleven to twelve
+thousand representatives of the land and marine forces, besides
+the National Guard of Paris, and sixty thousand spectators on the
+surrounding slopes, with a still greater crowd on the heights of
+Chaillot and of Passy. All rise to their feet and swear fidelity to the
+nation, to the law, to the King and to the new Constitution. When the
+report of the cannon is heard which announces the taking of the oath,
+those of the Parisians who have remained at home, men, women, and
+children, raise their hands in the direction of the Champ de Mars
+and likewise make their affirmation. In every principal town of every
+district, department, and commune in France there is the same oath on
+the same day. Never was there a more perfect social compact heard of.
+Here, for the first time in the world, everybody beholds a veritable
+legitimate society, for it is founded on free pledges, on solemn
+stipulations, and on actual consent. They possess the authentic act and
+the dated official report of it.[3104]
+
+There is still something more--the time and the occasion betoken a union
+of all hearts. The barriers which have hitherto separated men from each
+other are all removed and without effort. Provincial antagonisms are
+now to cease: the confederates of Brittany and Anjou write that they
+no longer desire to be Angevins and Bretons, but simply Frenchmen. All
+religious discords are to come to an end: at Saint-Jean-du-Gard, near
+Alais, the Catholic cur� and the Protestant pastor embrace each other at
+the altar; the pastor occupies the best seat in the church, and at the
+Protestant meeting-house the cur� has the place of honor, and listens to
+the sermon of the pastor.[3105] Distinctions of rank and condition will
+no longer exist; at Saint-And�ol "the honor of taking the oath in the
+name of the people is conferred on two old men, one ninety-three and
+the other ninety-four years of age, one a noble and a colonel of the
+National Guard, and the other a simple peasant." At Paris, two hundred
+thousand persons of all conditions, ages, and sexes, officers and
+soldiers, monks and actors, school-boys and masters, dandies and
+ragamuffins, elegant ladies and fishwives, workmen of every class and
+the peasants from the vicinity, all flocked to the Champ de Mars to dig
+the earth which was not ready, and in a week, trundling wheelbarrows and
+handling the pick-ax as equals and comrades, all voluntarily yoked in
+the same service, converted a flat surface into a valley between two
+hills.--At Strasbourg, General Luckner, commander-in-chief, worked a
+whole afternoon in his shirt-sleeves just like the commonest laborer.
+The confederates are fed, housed, and have their expenses paid
+everywhere on all the roads. At Paris the publicans and keepers of
+furnished houses lower their prices of their own accord, and do not
+think of robbing their new guests. "The districts," moreover, "feast the
+provincials to their heart's content.[3106] There are meals every day
+for from twelve to fifteen hundred people." Provincials and Parisians,
+soldiers and bourgeois, seated and mingled together, drink each other's
+health and embrace. The soldiers, especially, and the inferior officers
+are surrounded, welcomed, and entertained to such an extent that they
+lose their heads, their health, and more besides. One "old trooper, who
+had been over fifty years in the service, died on the way home, used up
+with cordials and excess of pleasure." In short, the joy is excessive,
+as it should be on the great day when the wish of an entire century
+is accomplished.--Behold ideal felicity, as displayed in the books
+and illustrations of the time! The natural man buried underneath an
+artificial civilization is disinterred, and again appears as in early
+days, as in Tahiti, as in philosophic and literary pastorals, as in
+bucolic and mythological operas, confiding, affectionate, and happy.
+"The sight of all these beings again restored to the sweet sentiments of
+primitive brotherhood is an exquisite delight almost too great for the
+soul to support," and the Frenchman, more light-hearted and far more
+childlike than he is to-day, gives himself up unrestrainedly to his
+social, sympathetic, and generous instincts. Whatever the imagination
+of the day offers him to increase his emotions, all the classical,
+rhetorical, and dramatic material at his command, are employed for
+the embellishment of his festival. Already wildly enthusiastic, he
+is anxious to increase his enthusiasm.--At Lyons, the fifty thousand
+confederates from the south range themselves in line of battle around an
+artificial rock, fifty feet high, covered with shrubs, and surmounted by
+a Temple of Concord in which stands a huge statue of Liberty; the
+steps of the rock are decked with flags, and a solemn mass precedes the
+administration of the oath.--At Paris, an alter dedicated to the nation
+is erected in the middle of the Champ de Mars, which is transformed
+into a colossal circus. The regular troops and the federations of the
+departments stand in position around it, the King being in front
+with the Queen and the dauphin, while near them are the princes and
+princesses in a gallery, and the members of the National Assembly in
+an amphitheater; two hundred priests, draped in their albs and with
+tricolored belts, officiate around Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun; three
+hundred drums and twelve hundred musicians all play at once; forty piece
+of cannon are discharged at one volley, and four hundred thousand cheers
+go up as if from one threat. Never was such an effort made to intoxicate
+the senses and strain the nerves beyond their powers of endurance!--The
+moral machine is made to vibrate to the same and even to a greater
+extent. For more than a year past, harangues, proclamations, addresses,
+newspapers and events have daily added one degree more to the pressure.
+On this occasion, thousands of speeches, multiplied by myriads of
+newspapers, carry the enthusiasm to the highest pitch. Declamation foams
+and rolls along in a steady stream of rhetoric everywhere throughout
+France.[3107] In this state of excitement the difference between
+magniloquence and sincerity, between the false and the true, between
+show and substance, is no longer distinguishable. The Federation becomes
+an opera which is seriously played in the open street--children have
+parts assigned them in it; it occurs to no one that they are puppets,
+and that the words taken for an expression of the heart are simply
+memorized speeches that have been put into their mouths. At Besan�on,
+on the return of the confederates, hundreds of "youthful citizens" from
+twelve to fourteen years of age,[3108] in the national uniform, "with
+sword in hand," march up to the standard of Liberty. Three little girls
+from eleven to thirteen years old and two little boy of nine years
+each pronounce "a discourse full of fire and breathing nothing but
+patriotism;" after which, a young lady of fourteen, raising her voice
+and pointing to the flag, harangues in turn the crowd, the deputies, the
+National Guard, the mayor, and the commander of the troops, the scene
+ending with a ball. This is the universal finale--men and women,
+children and adults, common people and men of the world, chiefs and
+subordinates, all, everywhere, frisk about as in the last act of a
+pastoral drama. At Paris,--writes an eye-witness, "I saw chevaliers of
+Saint-Louis and chaplains dancing in the street with people belonging
+to their department."[3109] At the Champ de Mars, on the day of the
+Federation, notwithstanding that rain was falling in torrents, "the
+first arrivals began to dance, and those who came after them, joining
+in, formed a circle which soon spread over a portion of the Champ
+de Mars. . . .Three hundred thousand spectators kept time with their
+hands." On the following days dancing is kept up on the Champ de Mars
+and in the streets, and there is drinking and carousing; "there was
+a ball with refreshments at the Corn-Exchange, and on the site of the
+Bastille."--At Tours, where fifty-two detachments from the neighboring
+provinces are collected, about four o'clock in the afternoon,[3110]
+through an irresistible outburst of insane gaiety, "the officers,
+inferior officers, and soldiers, pell-mell, race through the streets,
+some with saber in hand and others dancing and shouting 'Vive le Roi!'
+'Vive la Nation!' flinging up their hats and compelling every one
+they met to join in the dance. One of the canons of the cathedral, who
+happens to be passing quietly along, has a grenadier's cap put on his
+head," and is dragged into the circle, and after him two monks; "they
+are often embraced," and then allowed to depart. The carriages of the
+mayor and the Marquise de Montausier arrive; people mount up behind,
+get inside, and seat themselves in front, as many as can find room,
+and force the coachmen to parade through the principal streets in this
+fashion. There is no malice in it, nothing but sport and the overflow of
+spirits. "Nobody was maltreated or insulted, although almost every one
+was drunk."--Nevertheless, there is one bad symptom: the soldiers of
+the Anjou regiment leave their barracks the following day and "pass
+the whole night abroad, no one being able to hinder them." And there is
+another of still graver aspect; at Orleans, after the companies of
+the National Militia had danced on the square in the evening, "a large
+number of volunteers marched in procession through the town with
+drums, shouting out with all their might that the aristocracy must be
+destroyed, and that priests and aristocrats should be strung up to the
+lamp post. They enter a suspected coffee-house, drive out the inmates
+with insults, lay hands on a gentleman who is supposed not to have cried
+out as correctly and as lustily as themselves, and come near to hanging
+him.[3111]--Such is the fruit of the philosophy and the attitudes of the
+eighteenth century. Men believed that, for the organization of a
+perfect society and the permanent establishment of freedom, justice, and
+happiness on earth, an inspiration of sentiments and an act of the will
+would suffice. The inspiration came and the act was fulfilled; they have
+been carried away, delighted, affected and out of their minds. Now comes
+the reaction, when they have to fall back upon themselves. The effort
+has succeeded in accomplishing all that it could accomplish, namely, a
+deluge of emotional demonstrations and slogans, a verbal and not a real
+contract ostentatious fraternity skin-deep, a well-meaning masquerade,
+an outpouring of feeling evaporating through its own pageantry--in
+short, an agreeable carnival of a day's duration.
+
+The reason is that in the human mind there are two strata. One
+superficial, of which men are conscious, the other deep down, of which
+they are unconscious.[3112] The former unstable and vacillating like
+shifting sand, the latter stable and fixed like a solid rock, to which
+their caprices and agitation never descend. The latter alone determines
+the general inclination of the soil, the main current of human activity
+necessarily following the bent thus prepared for it.--Certainly embraces
+have been interchanged and oaths have been taken; but after, as before
+the ceremony, men are just what many centuries of administrative
+thralldom and one century of political literature have made them. Their
+ignorance and presumption, their prejudices, hatreds, and distrusts,
+their inveterate intellectual and emotional habits are still preserved.
+They are human, and their stomachs need to be filled daily. They have
+imagination, and, if bread be scarce, they fear that they may not get
+enough of it. They prefer to keep their money rather than to give
+it away. For this reason they spurn the claims which the State and
+individuals have upon them as much as possible. They avoid paying their
+debts. They willingly lay their hands on public property which is badly
+protected; finally they are disposed to regard gendarmes and proprietors
+as detrimental, and all the more so because this has been repeated to
+them over and over again, day after day, for a whole year.--On the other
+hand there is no change in the situation of things. They are ever living
+in a disorganized community, under an impracticable constitution, the
+passions which sap public order being only the more stimulated by the
+semblance of fraternity under which they seemed to be allayed. Men
+cannot be persuaded with impunity that the millennium has come, for
+they will want to enjoy it immediately, and will tolerate no deception
+practiced on their expectations. In this violent state, fired by
+boundless expectations, all their whims appear reasonable and all
+their opinions rational. They are no longer able to find faults with
+or control themselves. In their brain, overflowing with emotions and
+enthusiasm, there is no room but for one intense, absorbing, fixed idea.
+Each is confident and over-confident in his own opinion; all become
+impassioned, imperious, and intractable. Having assumed that all
+obstacles are taken out of the way, they grow indignant at each obstacle
+they actually encounter. Whatever it may be, they shatter it on the
+instant, and their over-excited imagination covers with the fine name of
+patriotism their natural appetite for despotism and domination.
+
+France, accordingly, in the three years which follow the taking of the
+Bastille, presents a strange spectacle. In the words we find charity
+and in the laws symmetry; while the actual events present a spectacle of
+disorder and violence. Afar, is the reign of philosophy; close up is the
+chaos of the Carlovingian era.
+
+"Foreigners," remarks an observer,[3113] "are not aware that, with a
+great extension of political rights, the liberty of the individual is in
+law reduced to nothing, while in practice it is subject to the caprice
+of sixty thousand constitutional assemblies; that no citizen enjoys any
+protection against the annoyances of these popular assemblies; that,
+according to the opinions which they entertain of persons and things,
+they act in one place in one way and in another place in another way.
+Here, a department, acting for itself and without referring elsewhere,
+puts an embargo on vessels, while another orders the expulsion of a
+military detachment essential for the security of places devastated
+by ruffians; and the minister, who responds to the demands of those
+interested, replies: 'Such are the orders of the department.' Elsewhere
+are administrative bodies which, the moment the Assembly decrees relief
+of consciences and the freedom of nonjuring priests, order the latter
+out of their homes within 24 hours. Always in advance of or lagging
+behind the laws; alternately bold and cowardly; daring all things when
+seconded by public license, and daring nothing to repress it; eager to
+abuse their momentary authority against the weak in order to acquire
+titles to popularity in the future; incapable of maintaining order
+except at the expense of public safety and tranquility; entangled in
+the reins of their new and complex administration, adding the fury of
+passion to incapacity and inexperience; such are, for the most part,
+the men sprung from nothing, void of ideas and drunk with pretension,
+on whom now rests responsibility for public powers and resources, the
+interest of security, and the foundations of the power of government.
+In all sections of the nation, in every branch of the administration, in
+every report, we detect the confusion of authorities, the uncertainty
+of obedience, the dissolution of all restraints, the absence of all
+resources, the deplorable complication of enervated springs, without any
+of the means of real power, and, for their sole support, laws which,
+in supposing France to be peopled with men without vices or passions,
+abandon humanity to its primitive state of independence."
+
+A few months after this, in the beginning of 1792, Malouet sums up all
+in one phrase:
+
+"It is the Government of Algiers without the Dey."
+
+
+
+
+II.--Independence of the municipalities.
+
+     The causes of their initiative.--Sentiment of danger.
+     --Issy-l'Ev�que in 1789.--Exalted pride.--Brittany in 1790.
+     --Usurpations of the municipalities.--Capture of the
+     citadels.--Violence increased against their commanders.
+     --Stoppage of convoys.--Powerlessness of the Directories and
+     the ministers.--Marseilles in 1790.
+
+Things could not work otherwise. For, before the 6th of October, and the
+King's captivity in Paris, the Government had already been destroyed.
+Now, through the successive decrees of the Assembly, it is legally done
+away with, and each local group is left to itself.--The intendants have
+fled, military commanders are not obeyed, the bailiwicks dare hold no
+courts, the parliaments are suspended, and seven months elapse before
+the district and department administrations are elected, a year before
+the new judgeships are instituted, while afterwards, as well as before,
+the real power is in the hands of the communes.--The commune must arm
+itself, appoint its own chiefs, provide its own supplies, protect itself
+against brigands, and feed its own poor. It has to sell its national
+property, install the constitutional priest, and, amidst so many eager
+passions and injured interest, accomplish the transformation by which
+a new society replaces the ancient one. It alone has to ward off the
+perpetual and constantly reviving dangers which assail it or which it
+imagines. These are great, and it exaggerates them. It is inexperienced
+and alarmed. It is not surprising that, in the exercise of its
+extemporized power, it should pass beyond its natural or legal limit,
+and without being aware of it, overstep the metaphysical line which the
+Constitution defines between its rights and the rights of the State.
+Neither hunger, fear, rage, nor any of the popular passions can wait;
+there is no time to refer to Paris. Action is necessary, immediate
+action, and, with the means at hand, they must save themselves as well
+as they can. This or that mayor of a village is soon to find himself a
+general and a legislator. This or that petty town is to give itself
+a charter like Laon or Vezelay in the twelfth century. "On the 6th
+of October, 1789,[3114] near Autun, the market-town of Issy-l'Ev�que
+declares itself an independent State. The parish assembly is convoked
+by the priest, M. Carion, who is appointed member of the administrative
+committee and of the new military staff. In full session he secures the
+adoption of a complete code, political, judiciary, penal and military,
+consisting of sixty articles. Nothing is overlooked; we find ordinances
+concerning
+
+"the town police, the laying out of streets and public squares,
+the repairs of prisons, the road taxes and price of grain, the
+administration of justice, fines, confiscations, and the diet of the
+National Guards."
+
+He is a provincial Solon,[3115] zealous for the public welfare, and a
+man of executive power, he expounds his ordinances from the pulpit, and
+threatens the refractory. He passes decrees and renders judgments in the
+town-hall: outside the town limits, at the head of the National Guard,
+saber in hand, he will enforce his own decisions. He causes it to be
+decided that, on the written order of the committee, every citizen may
+be imprisoned. He imposes and collects taxes; he has boundary walls
+torn down; he goes in person to the houses of cultivators and makes
+requisitions for grain; he seizes the convoys which have not deposited
+their quote in his own richly stored granaries. One day, preceded by
+a drummer, he marches outside the walls, makes proclamation of "his
+agrarian laws," and proceeds at once to the partition of the territory,
+and, by virtue of the ancient communal or church property rights,
+to assign to himself a portion of it. All this is done in public and
+consciously, the notary and the scrivener being called in to draw up the
+official record of his acts; he is satisfied that human society has come
+to an end, and that each local group has the right to begin over again
+and apply in its own way the Constitution which it has accorded to
+itself without reference to anybody else.--This man, undoubtedly, talks
+too loudly, an proceeds too quickly; and first the bailiwick, next the
+Ch�telet, and afterwards the National Assembly temporarily put a stop
+to his proceedings; but his principle is a popular one, and the forty
+thousand communes of France are about to act like so many distinct
+republics, under the sentimental and constantly more powerless
+reprimands of the central authority.
+
+Excited and invigorated by a new sentiment, men now abandon themselves
+to the proud consciousness of their own power and independence. Nowhere
+is greater satisfaction found than among the new local chiefs, the
+municipal officers and commanders of the National Guard, for never
+before has such supreme authority and such great dignity fallen upon
+men previously so submissive and so insignificant.--Formerly the
+subordinates of an intendant or sub-delegate, appointed, maintained, and
+ill-used by him, kept aloof from transactions of any importance,
+unable to defend themselves except by humble protestations against the
+aggravation of taxation, concerned with precedence and the conflicts
+of etiquette,[3116] plain townspeople or peasants who never dreamt of
+interfering in military matters, henceforth become sovereigns in all
+military and civil affairs. This or that mayor or syndic of a little
+town or parish, a petty bourgeois or villager in a blouse, whom the
+intendant or military commander could imprison at will, now orders
+a gentleman, a captain of dragoons, to march or stand still, and the
+captain stands still or marches at his command. On the same bourgeois
+or villager depends the safety of the neighboring chateau, of the large
+land-owner and his family, of the prelate, and of all the prominent
+personages of the district in order that they may be out of harm's way
+he must protect them; they will be pillaged if, in case of insurrection,
+he does not send troops and the National Guard to their assistance. It
+is he who, lending or refusing public force to the collection of
+their rents, gives them or deprives them of the means of living. He
+accordingly rules, and on the sole condition of ruling according to the
+wishes of his equals, the vociferous multitude, the restless, dominant
+mob which has elected him.--In the towns, especially, and notably in the
+large towns, the contrast between what he was and what he is immense,
+since to the plenitude of his power is added the extent of his
+jurisdiction. Judge of the effect on his brain in cities like those of
+Marseilles, Bordeaux, Nantes, Rouen and Lyons, where he holds in his
+hand the lives and property of eighty or a hundred thousand men. And
+the more as, amid the municipal officers of the towns, three-quarters
+of them, prosecutors or lawyers, are imbued with the new dogmas, and are
+persuaded that in themselves alone, the directly elected of the
+people, is vested all legitimate authority. Bewildered by their recent
+elevation, distrustful as upstarts, in revolt against all ancient or
+rival powers, they are additionally alarmed by their imagination and
+ignorance, their minds being vaguely disturbed by the contrast between
+their role in the past and their present role: anxious on their own
+account, they find no security but in abuse and use of power. The
+municipalities, on the strength of the reports emanating from the
+coffee-houses, decide that the ministry are traitors. With an obstinacy
+of conviction and a boldness of presumption alike extraordinary, they
+believe that they have the right to act without and against their
+orders, and against the orders of the National Assembly itself, as
+if, in the now disintegrated France, each municipality constituted the
+nation.
+
+Thus, if the armed force of the country is now obedient to any body, it
+is to them and to them alone, and not only the National Guard, but also
+the regular troops which, placed under the orders of municipalities by
+a decree of the National Assembly,[3117] will comply with no other.
+Military commanders in the provinces, after September, 1787, declare
+themselves powerless; when they and the municipality give orders, it
+is only those of the municipality which the troops recognize. "However
+pressing may be the necessity for moving the troops where their
+presence is required, they are stopped by the resistance of the village
+committee."[3118] "Without any reasonable motive," writes the commander
+of the forces in Brittany, "Vannes and Auray made opposition to the
+detachment which I thought it prudent to send to Belle-Ile, to replace
+another one. . . The Government cannot move without encountering
+obstacles. . . . The Minister of War no longer has the direction of the
+army. . . . No orders are executed. . . Every one wants to command, and
+no one to obey. . . How could the King, the Government, or the Minister
+of War send troops where they are wanted if the towns believe that they
+have the right to countermand the orders given to the regiments and
+change their destination?"-And it is still worse, for, "on the false
+supposition of brigands and conspiracies which do not exist,[3119] the
+towns and villages make demands on me for arms and even cannon. . . The
+whole of Brittany will soon be in a frightful belligerent state on this
+account, for, having no real enemies, they will turn their arms against
+each other."--This is of no consequence. The panic is an "epidemic."
+People are determined to believe in "brigands and enemies." At Nantes,
+the assertion is constantly repeated that the Spaniards are going to
+land, that the French regiments are going to make an attack, that an
+army of brigands is approaching, that the castle is threatened, that
+it is threatening, and that it contains too many engines of war. The
+commandant of the province writes in vain to the mayor to reassure
+him, and to explain to him that "the municipality, being master of
+the chateau, is likewise master of its magazine. Why then should it
+entertain fear about that which is in its own possession? Why should
+any surprise be manifested at an arsenal containing arms and
+gunpowder?"--Nothing is of any effect. The chateau is invaded; two
+hundred workmen set to work to demolish the fortifications; they listen
+only to their fears, and cannot exercise too great precaution. However
+inoffensive the citadels may be, they are held to be dangerous; however
+accommodating the commanders may be, they are regarded with suspicion.
+The people chafe against the bridle, relaxed and slack as it is. It
+is broken and cast aside, that it may not be used again when occasion
+requires. Each municipal body, each company of the National Guard,
+wants to reign on its own plot of ground out of the way of any foreign
+control; and this is what is called liberty. Its adversary, therefore,
+is the central power. This must be disarmed for fear that it may
+interpose. On all sides, with a sure and persistent instinct, through
+the capture of fortresses, the pillage of arsenals, the seduction of the
+soldiery, and the expulsion of generals, the municipality ensures its
+omnipotence by guaranteeing itself beforehand against all repression.
+
+At Brest the municipal authorities insist that a naval officer shall be
+surrendered to the people, and on the refusal of the King's lieutenant
+to give him up, the permanent committee orders the National Guard to
+load its guns.[3120] At Nantes the municipal body refuses to recognize
+M. d'Hervilly, sent to take command of a camp, and the towns of the
+province write to declare that they will suffer no other than the
+federated troops on their territory. At Lille the permanent committee
+insists that the military authorities shall place the keys of the town
+in its keeping every evening, and, a few months after this, the National
+Guard, joined by mutinous soldiers, seize the citadel and the person of
+Livarot, its commander. At Toulon the commander of the arsenal, M.
+de Rioms, and several naval officers, are put in the dungeon. At
+Montpellier the citadel is surprised, and the club writes to the
+National Assembly to demand its demolition. At Valence, the commandant,
+M. de Voisin, on taking measures of defense, is massacred, and
+henceforth the municipality issues all orders to the garrison. At
+Bastia, Colonel de Rully falls under a shower of bullets, and the
+National Guard takes possession of the citadel and the powder magazine.
+These are not passing outbursts: at the end of two years the same
+insubordinate spirit is apparent everywhere.[3121] In vain do the
+commissioners of the National Assembly seek to transfer the Nassau
+regiment from Metz. Sedan refuses to receive it; while Thionville
+declares that, if it comes, she will blow up the bridges, and Sarrebuis
+threatens, if it approaches, that it will open fire on it. At Caen
+neither the municipality nor the directory dares enforce the law which
+assigns the castle to the troops of the line; the National Guard refuses
+to leave it, and forbids the director of the artillery to inspect the
+munitions.--In this state of things a Government subsists in name
+but not in fact, for it no longer possesses the means of enforcing
+obedience. Each commune arrogates to itself the right of suspending
+or preventing the execution of the simplest and most urgent orders.
+Arnay-le-Duc, in spite of passports and legal injunctions, persists in
+retaining Mesdames; Arcis-sur-Aube retains Necker, and Montigny is about
+to retain M. Caillard, Ambassador of France.[3122]--In the month of
+June, 1791, a convoy of eighty thousand crowns of six livres sets out
+from Paris for Switzerland; this is a repayment by the French Government
+to that of Soleure; the date of payment is fixed, the itinerary marked
+out; all the necessary documents are provided; it is important that it
+should arrive on the day when the bill falls due. But they have
+counted without the municipalities and the National Guards. Arrested at
+Bar-sur-Aube, it is only at the end of a month, and on a decree of the
+National Assembly, that the convoy can resume its march. At Belfort it
+is seized again, and it still remains there in the month of November. In
+vain has the directory of the Bas-Rhin ordered its release; the Belfort
+municipality paid no attention to the order. In vain the same directory
+dispatches a commissioner, who is near being cut to pieces. The personal
+interference of General Luckner, with the strong arm, is necessary,
+before the convoy can pass the frontier, after five months of
+delay.[3123] In the month of July 1791, a French vessel on the way from
+Rouen to Caudebec, said to be loaded with kegs of gold and silver, is
+stopped. On the examination being made, it has a right to leave; its
+papers are all correct, and the department enjoins the district to
+respect the law. The district, however, replies that it is impossible,
+since "all the municipalities on the banks of the Seine have armed
+and are awaiting the passing of the vessel," and the National Assembly
+itself is obliged to pass a decree that the vessel shall be discharged.
+
+If the rebellion of the small communes is of this stamp, what must be
+that of the larger ones?[3124] The departments and districts summon the
+municipality in vain; it disobeys or pays no attention to the summons.
+
+"Since the session began," writes the directory of Sa�ne-et-Loire; "the
+municipality of Ma�on has taken no step in relation to us which has not
+been an encroachment. It has not uttered a word, which has not been an
+insult. It has not entered upon a deliberation which has not been an
+outrage."
+
+"If the regiment of Aunis is not ordered here immediately," writes the
+directory of Calvados, "if prompt and efficient measures are not taken
+to provide us with an armed force, we shall abandon a post which we can
+not longer hold due to insubordination, license, contempt for all the
+authorities. We shall in this case be unable to perform the duties which
+were imposed upon us."
+
+The directory of the Bouches-du-Rhone, on being attacked, flies before
+the bayonets of Marseilles. The members of the directory of Gers, in
+conflict with the municipality of Auch, are almost beaten to death. As
+to the ministers, who are distrusted by virtue of their office, they are
+still less respected than the directories, They are constantly denounced
+to the Assembly, while the municipalities send back their dispatches
+without deigning to open them,[3125] and, towards the end of 1791, their
+increasing powerlessness ends in complete annihilation. We can judge
+of this by one example. In the month of December 1791, Limoges is not
+allowed to carry away the grain, which it had just purchased in Indre,
+a force of sixty horsemen being necessary to protect its transportation.
+The directory of Indre at once calls upon the ministers to furnish them
+with this small troop.[3126] After trying for three weeks, the minister
+replies that it is out of his power; he has knocked at all doors in
+vain. "I have pointed out one way," he says, "to the deputies of your
+department in the National Assembly, namely, to withdraw the 20th
+regiment of cavalry from Orleans, and I have recommended them to broach
+the matter to the deputies of Loiret." The answer is still delayed:
+the deputies of the two departments have to come to an agreement, for,
+otherwise, the minister dares not displace sixty men to protect a convoy
+of grain. It is plain enough that there is no longer any executive
+power. There is no longer a central authority. There is no longer a
+France, but merely so many disintegrated and independent communes, like
+Orleans and Limoges, which, through their representatives, carry on
+negotiations with each other, one to secure itself from a deficiency of
+troops, and the other to secure itself from a want of bread.
+
+Let us consider this general dissolution on the spot, and take up a case
+in detail. On the 18th of January 1790, the new municipal authorities
+of Marseilles enter upon their duties. As is generally the case, the
+majority of the electors have had nothing to do with the balloting.
+The mayor, Martin, having been elected by only an eighth of the active
+citizens.[3127] If, however, the dominant minority is a small one, it
+is resolute and not inclined to stop at trifles. "Scarcely is it
+organized,"[3128] when it sends deputies to the King to have him
+withdraw his troops from Marseilles. The King, always weak and
+accommodating, finally consents; and, the orders to march being
+prepared, the municipality is duly advised of them. But the municipality
+will tolerate no delay, and immediately "draws up, prints, and issues
+a denunciation to the National Assembly" against the commandant and
+the two ministers who, according to it, are guilty of having forged or
+suppressed the King's orders. In the meantime it equips and fortifies
+itself as for a combat. At its first establishment the municipality
+broke up the bourgeois guard, which was too great a lover of order, and
+organized a National Guard, in which those who have no property are
+soon to be admitted. "Daily additions are made to its military
+apparatus;[3129] entrenchments and barricades at the H�tel-de-Ville,
+are increasing, the artillery is increased; the town is filled with the
+excitement of a military camp in the immediate presence of an enemy."
+Thus, in possession of force, it makes use of it, and in the first place
+against justice.--A popular insurrection had been suppressed in the
+month of August 1789, and the three principal leaders, Rebecqui, Pascal,
+and Granet, had been imprisoned in the Chateau d'If. They are the
+friends of the municipal authorities, and they must be set free. At
+the demand of this body the affair is taken out of the hands of the
+grand-pr�v�t and put into those of the s�n�chauss�e, the former,
+meanwhile, together with his councilors, undergoing punishment for
+having performed their duty. The municipality, on its own authority,
+forbids them from further exercise of their functions. They are publicly
+denounced, "threatened with poniards, the scaffold, and every species of
+assassination." [3130] No printer dares publish their defense, for fear
+of "municipal annoyances." It is not long before the royal procureur and
+a councillor are reduced to seeking refuge in Fort Saint-Jean, while the
+grand-pr�v�t after having resisted a little longer, leaves Marseilles
+in order to save his life. As to the three imprisoned men, the municipal
+authorities visit them in a body and demand their provisional release.
+One of them having made his escape, they refuse to give the commandant
+the order for his re-arrest. The other two triumphantly leave the
+chateau on the 11th of April, escorted by eight hundred National Guards.
+They go, for form's sake, to the prisons of the s�n�chauss�e but the
+next day are set at liberty, and further prosecution ceases. As an
+offset to this, M. d'Ambert, colonel in the Royal Marine, guilty of
+expressing himself too warmly against the National Guard, although
+acquitted by the tribunal before which he was brought, can be set
+at liberty only in secret and under the protection of two thousand
+soldiers. The populace want to burn the house of the criminal lieutenant
+that dared absolve him. The magistrate himself is in danger, and is
+forced to take refuge in the house of the military commander.[3131]
+Meanwhile, printed and written papers, insulting libels by the municipal
+body and the club, the seditious or violent discussions of the district
+assemblies, and a lot of pamphlets, are freely distributed among the
+people and the soldiers: the latter are purposely stirred up in advance
+against their chiefs.--In vain are the officers mild, conciliatory, and
+cautious. In vain does the commander-in-chief depart with a portion of
+the troops. The object now is to dislodge the regiment occupying
+the three forts. The club sets the ball in motion, and, forcibly or
+otherwise, the will of the people must be carried out. On the 29th of
+April, two actors, supported by fifty volunteers, surprise a sentinel
+and get possession of Notre-Dame de la Garde. On the same day,
+six thousand National Guards invest the forts of Saint-Jean and
+Saint-Nicolas. The municipal authorities, summoned to respect the
+fortresses, reply by demanding the opening of the gates to the National
+Guard, that it may do duty jointly with the soldiers. The commandants
+hesitate, refer to the law, and demand time to consult their superiors.
+A second requisition, more urgent, is made; the commandants are held
+responsible for the disturbances they provoke by their refusal. If they
+resist they are declared promoters of civil war.[3132] They accordingly
+yield and sign a capitulation. One among them, the Chevalier de
+Beausset, major in Fort Saint-Jean, is opposed to this, and refuses his
+signature. On the following day he is seized as he is about to enter the
+H�tel-de-Ville, and massacred, his head being borne about on the end of
+a pike, while the band of assassins, the soldiers, and the rabble dance
+about and shout over his remains.--" It is a sad accident," writes the
+municipality.[3133] How does it happen that, "after having thus far
+merited and obtained all praise, a Beausset, whom we were unable to
+protect against the decrees of Providence, should sully our laurels?
+Having had nothing to do with this tragic affair, it is not for us
+to prosecute the authors of it." Moreover, he was "culpable. . ..
+rebellious, condemned by public opinion, and Providence itself seems to
+have abandoned him to the irrevocable decrees of its vengeance."--As to
+the taking of the forts, nothing is more legitimate. "These places were
+in the hands of the enemies of the State, while now they are in the
+hands of the defenders of the Constitution of the empire. Woe to
+whoever would take them from us again, to convert them into a focus of
+counter-revolution "--M. de Miran, commandant of the province, has, it
+is true, made a demand for them. But, "is it not somewhat pitiable to
+see the requisition of a Sieur de Miran, made in the name of the King he
+betrays, to surrender to his Majesty's troops places which, henceforth
+in our hands, guarantee public security to the nation, to the law, and
+to the King?" In vain does the King, at the request of the National
+Assembly,[3134] order the municipality to restore the forts to the
+commandants, and to make the National Guards leave them. The municipal
+authorities become indignant, and resist. According to them the wrong
+is all on the side of the commandant and the ministers. It is the
+commandants who, "with the threatening equipment of their citadels,
+their stores of provisions and of artillery, are disturbers of the
+public peace. What does the minister mean by driving the national troops
+out of the forts, in order to entrust their guardianship to foreign
+troops? His object is apparent in this plan. . . . he wants to kindle
+civil war."--"All the misfortunes of Marseilles originate in the secret
+under-standing existing between the ministers and the enemies of the
+State." The municipal corps is at last obliged to evacuate the forts,
+but it is determined not to give them up. The day following that on
+which it receives the decree of the National Assembly, it conceives the
+design of demolishing them. On the 17th of May, two hundred laborers,
+paid in advance, begin the work of destruction. To save appearances the
+municipal body betakes itself at eleven o'clock in the morning to the
+different localities, and orders them to stop. But, on its departure,
+the laborers keep on; and, at six o'clock in the evening, a resolution
+is passed that, "to prevent the entire demolition of the citadel, it
+is deemed advisable to authorize only that of the part overlooking the
+town." On the 18th of May the Jacobin club, at once agent, accomplice,
+and councilor of the municipal body, compels private individuals to
+contribute something towards defraying the expenses of the demolition.
+It "sends round to every house, and to the syndics of all corporations,
+exacting their quotas, and making all citizens subscribe a document by
+which they appear to sanction the action of the municipal body, and to
+express their thanks to it. People had to sign it, pay, and keep silent.
+Woe to any one that refused!" On the 20th of May the municipal body
+presumes to write to the Assembly, that "this threatening citadel, this
+odious monument of a stupendous despotism, is about to disappear." To
+justify its disobedience, it takes occasion to remark, "that the love of
+country is the most powerful and most enduring of an empire's ramparts."
+On the 28th of May it secures the performance in two theaters of a piece
+representing the capture of the forts of Marseilles, for the benefit
+of the men engaged in their demolition. Meanwhile, it has summoned
+the Paris Jacobins to its support; it has proposed to invite the Lyons
+federation and all the municipalities of the kingdom to denounce the
+minister. It has forced M. de Miran, threatened with death and watched
+by a party in ambush on the road, to quit Aix, and then demands his
+recall.[3135] Only on the 6th of June does it decide, at the express
+command of the National Assembly, to suspend the almost completed
+demolition.--Authorities to which obedience is due could not be treated
+more insolently. The end, however, is attained; there is no longer a
+citadel, and the troops have departed; the regiment commanded by Ernest
+alone remains, to be tampered with, insulted, and then sent off. It is
+ordered to Aix, and the National Guard of Marseilles will go there to
+disarm and disband it. Henceforth the municipal body has full sway. It
+"observes only those laws which suit it, makes others to its own liking,
+and, in short, governs in the most despotic and arbitrary manner."[3136]
+And not only at Marseilles, but throughout the department where, under
+no authority but its own, it undertakes armed expeditions and makes
+raids and sudden attacks.
+
+
+
+
+III.--Independent Assemblies.
+
+     Why they took the initiative.--The people in council.
+     --Powerlessness of the municipalities.--the violence to which
+     they are subject.--Aix in 1790.--Government disobeyed and
+     perverted everywhere.
+
+Were it but possible for the dissolution to stop here! But each commune
+is far from being a tranquil little state under the rule of a body
+of respected magistrates. The same causes which render municipalities
+rebellious against the central authority render individuals rebellious
+against local authority. They also feel that they are in danger and
+want to provide for their own safety. They also, in virtue of the
+Constitution and of circumstances, believe themselves appointed to
+save the country. They also consider themselves qualified to judge for
+themselves on all points and entitled to carry out their judgments with
+their own hands. The shopkeeper, workman or peasant, at once elector and
+National Guard, furnished with his vote and a musket, suddenly becomes
+the equal and master of his superiors; instead of obeying, he commands,
+while all who see him again after some years' absence, find that "in
+his demeanor and manner all is changed." "There was great agitation
+everywhere,"[3137] says M. de S�gur; "I noticed groups of men talking
+earnestly in the streets and on the squares. The sound of the drum
+struck my ear in the villages, while I was astonished at the great
+number of armed men I encountered in the little towns. On interrogating
+various persons among the lower classes they would reply with a proud
+look and in a bold and confident tone. I observed everywhere the effect
+of those sentiments of equality and liberty which had then become
+such violent passions."--Thus exalted in their own eyes they believed
+themselves qualified to take the lead in everything, not only in local
+affairs, but also in general matters. France is to be governed by them;
+by virtue of the Constitution they arrogate to themselves the right,
+and, by dint of ignorance, attribute to themselves the capacity, to
+govern it. A torrent of new, shapeless, and disproportionate ideas have
+taken possession of their brains in the space of a few months. Vast
+interests about which they have never thought, have to be considered.
+Government, royalty, the church, creeds, foreign powers, internal
+and external dangers, what is occurring at Paris and at Coblentz, the
+insurrection in the Low Countries, the acts of the cabinets of London,
+Vienna, Madrid, Berlin; and, of all this, they inform themselves as they
+best can. An officer,[3138] who traverses France at this time, narrates
+that at the post-stations they made him wait for horses until he had
+"given them details. The peasants stopped my carriage in the middle of
+the road and overwhelmed me with questions. At Autun, I was obliged, in
+spite of the cold, to talk out of a window opening upon the square and
+tell what I knew about the Assembly."--These on-dits are all changed
+and amplified in passing from mouth to mouth. They finally become
+circumstantial stories adapted to the caliber of the minds they pass
+into and to the dominant passion that propagates them. Trace the effect
+of these fables in the house of a peasant or fish-woman in an outlying
+village or a populous suburb, on brutish or almost brutal minds,
+especially when they are lively, heated, and over-excited--the effect
+is tremendous. For, in minds of this stamp, belief is at once converted
+into action, and into rude and destructive action. It is an acquired
+self-control, reflection, and culture which interposes between belief
+and action the solicitude for social interests, the observance of forms
+and respect for the law. These restraints are all wanting in the new
+sovereign. He does not know how to stop and will not suffer himself to
+be stopped. Why so many delays when the peril is urgent? What is the use
+of observing formalities when the safety of the people is at stake? What
+is there sacred in the law when it protects public enemies? What is more
+pernicious than passive deference and patient waiting under timid or
+blind officials? What can be more just than to do one's self justice
+at once and on the spot?--Precipitation and passion, in their eyes,
+are both duties and merits. One day "the militia of Lorient decide upon
+marching to Versailles and to Paris without considering how they are to
+get over the ground or what they will do on their arrival."[3139] Were
+the central government within reach they would lay their hands on it.
+In default of this they substitute themselves for it on their own
+territory, and exercise its functions with a full conviction of right,
+principally those of gendarme, judge, and executioner.
+
+During the month of October, 1789, at Paris, after the assassination of
+the baker Fran�ois, the leading murderer, who is a porter at the grain
+depot, declares "that he wanted to avenge the nation." It is quite
+probable that this declaration is sincere. In his mind, assassination is
+one of the forms of patriotism, and it does not take long for his way
+of thinking to become prevalent. In ordinary times, social and political
+ideas slumber in uncultured minds in the shape of vague antipathies,
+restrained aspirations, and fleeting desires. Behold them
+aroused--energetic, imperious, stubborn, and unbridled. Objection or
+opposition is not to be tolerated; dissent, with them, is a sure sign
+of treachery.--Apropos of the nonjuring priests,[3140] five hundred and
+twenty-seven of the National Guards of Arras write, "that no one could
+doubt their iniquity without being suspected of being their accomplices.
+. . . Should the whole town combine and express a contrary opinion, it
+would simply show that it is filled with enemies of the Constitution;"
+and forthwith, in spite of the law and the remonstrances of
+the authorities, they insist on the closing of the churches. At
+Boulogne-sur-Mer, an English vessel having shipped a quantity of
+poultry, game, and eggs, "the National Guards, of their own authority,"
+go on board and remove the cargo. On the strength of this, the
+accommodating municipal body approves of the act, declares the cargo
+confiscated, orders it to be sold, and awards one-half of the proceeds
+to the National Guards and the other half to charitable purposes. The
+concession is a vain one, for the National Guards consider that one-half
+is too little, "insult and threaten the municipal officers," and
+immediately proceed to divide the booty in kind, each one going home
+with a share of stolen hams and chickens.[3141] The magistrates must
+necessarily keep quiet with the guns of those they govern pointed at
+them.--Sometimes, and it is generally the case, they are timid, and
+do not try to resist. At Douai,[3142] the municipal officers, on being
+summoned three times to proclaim martial law, refuse, and end by avowing
+that they dare not unfold the red flag: "Were we to take this course
+we should all be sacrificed on the spot." Neither the troops nor the
+National Guards, in fact, are to be relied on. In this universal
+state of apathy the field is open to savages, and a dealer in wheat is
+hung.--Sometimes the administrative corps tries to resist, but in the
+end it has to succumb to violence. "For more than six hours," writes one
+of the members of the district of Etampes,[3143] "we were closed in by
+bayonets leveled at us and with pistols at our breasts; and they were
+obliged to sign a dismissal of the troops which had arrived to protect
+the market. At present "we are all away from Etampes; there is no
+longer a district or a municipality;" almost all have handed in their
+resignations, or are to return for that purpose.--Sometimes, and this
+is the rarest case,[3144] the officials do their duty to the end, and
+perish. In this same town, six months later, Simoneau, the mayor,
+having refused to cut down the price of wheat, is beaten with
+iron-pointed sticks, and his corpse is riddled with balls by the
+murderers.--Municipal bodies must take heed how they undertake to stem
+the torrent; the slightest opposition will soon be at the expense of
+their lives. In Touraine,[3145] "as the publication of the tax-rolls
+takes place, riots break out against the municipal authorities; they are
+forced to surrender the rolls they have drawn up, and their papers are
+torn up." And still more, "they kill, they assassinate the municipal
+authorities." In that large commune men and women "beat and kick them
+with their fists and sabots. . . . The mayor is laid up after it, and
+the procureur of the commune died between nine and ten o'clock in the
+morning. V�teau, a municipal officer, received the last sacrament this
+morning;" the rest have fled, being constantly threatened with death and
+incendiarism. They do not, consequently, return, and "no one now will
+take the office of either mayor or administrator."--The outrages which
+the municipalities thus commit against their superiors are committed
+against themselves. The National Guards, the mob, the controlling
+faction, arrogating to themselves in the commune the same violent
+sovereignty which the commune pretends to exercise against the State.
+
+I should never finish if I undertook to enumerate the outbreaks in
+which the magistrates are constrained to tolerate or to sanction popular
+usurpations, to shut up churches, to drive off or imprison priests, to
+suppress octrois, tax grain, and allow clerks; bakers, corn-dealers,
+ecclesiastics, nobles, and officers to be hung, beaten to death, or
+to have their throats cut. Ninety-four thick files of records in the
+national archives are filled with these acts of violence, and do not
+contain two-thirds of them. It is worth while to take in detail one
+case more, a special one, and one that is authentic, which serves as a
+specimen, and which presents a foreshortened image of France during
+one tranquil year. At Aix, in the month of December, 1790,[3146] in
+Opposition to the two Jacobin clubs, a club had been organized, had
+complied with all the formalities, and, like the "Club des Monarchiens"
+at Paris, claimed the same right of meeting as the others. But here, as
+at Paris, the Jacobins recognize no rights but for themselves alone,
+and refuse to admit their adversaries to the privileges of the law.
+Moreover, alarming rumors are circulated. A person who has arrived
+from Nice states that he had "heard that there were twenty thousand men
+between Turin and Nice, under the pay of the emigrants, and that at
+Nice a neuvaine[3147] was held in Saint Fran�ois-de-Paule to pray God to
+enlighten the French." A counter-revolution is certainly under way.
+Some of the aristocrats have stated "with an air of triumph, that the
+National Guard and municipalities are a mere toy, and that this sort of
+thing will not last long." One of the leading members of the new club,
+M. de Guiraitiand, an old officer of seventy-eight years, makes speeches
+in public against the National Assembly, tries to enlist artisans in his
+party, "affects to wear a white button on his hat fastened by pins with
+their points jutting out," and, as it is stated, he has given to several
+mercers a large order for white cockades. In reality, on examination,
+not one is found in any shop, and all the dealers in ribbons, on
+being interrogated, reply that they know of no transaction of that
+description. But this simply proves that the culprit is a clever
+dissimulator, and the more dangerous because he is eager to save the
+country.--On the 12th of December, at four o'clock in the afternoon,
+the two Jacobin clubs fraternise, and pass in long procession before
+the place of meeting, "where some of the members, a few officers of the
+Lyons regiment and other individuals, are quietly engaged at play
+or seeing others play." The crowd hoot, but they remain quiet. The
+procession passes by again, and they hoot and shout, "Down with the
+aristocrats to the lamp post with them!" Two or three of the officers
+standing on the threshold of the door become irritated, and one of them,
+drawing his sword, threatens to strike a young man if he keeps on. Upon
+this the crowd cries out, "Guard! Help! An assassin!" and rushes at
+the officer, who withdraws into the house, exclaiming, "To arms!" His
+comrades, sword in hand, descend in order to defend the door; M. de
+Guiramand fires two pistol shots and receives a stab in the thigh. A
+shower of stones smashes in the windows, and the door is on the point of
+being burst open when several of the members of the club save themselves
+by taking to the roof. About a dozen others, most of them officers,
+form in line, penetrate the crowd with uplifted swords, strike and get
+struck, and escape, five of them being wounded. The municipality orders
+the doors and windows of the club-house to be walled up, sends the
+Lyons regiment away, decrees the arrest of seven officers and of M. de
+Guiramand, and all this in a few hours, with no other testimony than
+that of the conquerors.
+
+But these prompt, vigorous and partial measures are not sufficient for
+the Jacobin club; other conspirators must be seized, and it is the club
+which designates them and goes to take them.--Three months before
+this, M. Pascalis, an advocate, on addressing along with some of his
+professional brethren the dissolved parliament, deplored the blindness
+of the people, "exalted by prerogatives of which they knew not the
+danger." A man who dared talk in this way is evidently a traitor.--There
+is another, M. Morellet de la Roquette, who refused to join the
+proscribed club. His former vassals, however, had been obliged to bring
+an action against him to make him accept the redemption of his feudal
+dues; also, six years before this, his carriage, passing along the
+public promenade, had run over a child; he likewise is an enemy of the
+people. While the municipal officers are deliberating, "a few members of
+the club" get together and decide that M. Pascalis and M. de la Roquette
+must be arrested. At eleven o'clock at night eighty trustworthy National
+Guards, led by the president of the club, travel a league off to seize
+them in their beds and lodge them in the town prison.--Zeal of this kind
+excites some uneasiness, and if the municipality tolerates the arrests,
+it is because it is desirous of preventing murder. Consequently, on the
+following day, December 13th, it sends to Marseilles for four hundred
+men of the Swiss Guard commanded by Ernest, and four hundred National
+Guards, adding to these the National Guard of Aix, and orders this
+company to protect the prison against any violence. But, along with the
+Marseilles National Guards, there came a lot of armed people who are
+volunteers of disorder. On the afternoon of the 13th the first mob
+strives to force the prison, and the next day, fresh squads congregate
+around it demanding the head of M. Pascalis. The members of the club
+head the riot with "a crowd of unknown men from outside the town, who
+give orders and carry them out." During the night the populace of Aix
+are tampered with, and the dikes all give way at the same moment. At the
+first clamors the National Guard on duty on the public promenade disband
+and disperse, while, as there is no signal for the assemblage of the
+others, notwithstanding the regulations, the general alarm is not
+sounded. "The largest portion of the National Guard draws off so as not
+to appear to authorize by its presence outrages which it has not been
+ordered to prevent. Peaceable Citizens are in great consternation;" each
+one takes to flight or shuts himself up in his house, the streets being
+deserted and silent. Meanwhile the prison gates are shattered with axes.
+The procureur-syndic of the department, who requests the commandant of
+the Swiss regiment to protect the prisoners, is seized, borne off, and
+runs the risk of losing his life. Three municipal officers in their
+scarves, who arrive on the ground, dare not give the order required by
+the commandant. At this decisive moment, when it is necessary to
+shed blood and kill a number of men, they obviously fear to take
+the responsibility; their reply is, "We have no orders to give."--An
+extraordinary spectacle now presents itself in this barrack courtyard
+surrounding the prison. On the side of the law stand eight hundred armed
+men, four hundred of the "Swiss" and four hundred of the National Guard
+of Marseilles. They are drawn up in battle array, with guns to their
+shoulders, with special orders repeated the evening before at three
+different times by the municipal district and departmental authorities
+and they have the sympathies of all honest people and of most of the
+National Guard. But the legal indispensable phrase does not pass the
+lips of those who by virtue of the Constitution should utter it, and a
+small group of convicts are found to be sovereign.--The three municipal
+officers are seized in their turn under the eyes of their own soldiers
+who remain motionless, and "with bayonets at their breasts they sign,
+under constraint, the order to give up M. Pascalis to the people." M. de
+la Roquette is likewise surrendered. "The only portion of the National
+Guard of Aix which was visible," that is to say, the Jacobin minority,
+form a circle around the gate of the prison and organize themselves into
+a council of war. And there they stand; at once "accusers, witnesses,
+judges, and executioners." A captain conducts the two victims to the
+public promenade where they are hung. Very soon after this old M.
+de Guiramand, whom the National Guard of his village have brought a
+prisoner to Aix, is hung in the same manner.
+
+There is no prosecution of the assassins. The new tribunal, frightened
+or forestalled, has for some time back ranged itself on the popular
+side; its writs, consequently, are served on the oppressed, against
+the members of the assaulted dub. Writs of arrest, summonses to attend
+court, searches, seizures of correspondence, and other proceedings,
+rain down upon them. Three hundred witnesses are examined. Some of the
+arrested officers are "loaded with chains and thrust into dungeons."
+Henceforth the club rules, and "makes everybody tremble."[3148] "From
+the 23rd to the 27th of December, more than ten thousand passports
+are delivered at Aix." "If the emigrations continue," write the
+commissioners, "there will be no one left at Aix but workmen without
+work and with no resources. Whole streets are uninhabited. . . . . As
+long as such crimes can be permitted with impunity fear will drive out
+of this town every one who has the means of living elsewhere."--Many
+come back after the arrival of the commissioners, hoping to obtain
+justice and security through them. But, "if a prosecution is not
+ordered, we shall scarcely have departed from Aix when three or four
+hundred families will abandon it. . . . And what man in his senses would
+dare guarantee that each village will not soon have some one hung in
+it?. . . Country valets arrest their masters. . . . The expectation
+of impunity leads the inhabitants of villages to commit all sorts of
+depredations in the forests, which is very harmful in a region where
+woods are very scarce. They set up the most absurd and most unjust
+pretensions against rich proprietors, and the fatal rope is ever the
+interpreter and the signal of their will." There is no refuge against
+these outrages. "The department, the districts, the municipalities,
+administer only in conformity with the multiplied petitions of the
+club." In the sight of all, and on one solemn day, a crushing defeat
+has demonstrated the weakness of the government officials; and, bowed
+beneath the yoke of their new masters, they preserve their legal
+authority only on the condition that it remains at the service of the
+victorious party.
+
+
+*****
+
+
+[Footnote 3101: Festivals approving the federation of all the National
+Guards in France. (SR.)]
+
+[Footnote 3102: See the address of the commune of Paris, June 5, 1790.
+"Let the most touching of all utterances be heard on this day (the
+anniversary of the taking of the Bastille), Frenchmen, we are brothers!
+Yes, brothers, freemen and with a country!" Roux et Buchez, VI. 275.]
+
+[Footnote 3103: Buchez and Roux, IV. 3, 309; V. 123; VI. 274,
+399.--Duvergier, Collection of Laws and Decrees. Decree of June 8 and 9,
+1790.]
+
+[Footnote 3104: For one who, like myself, has lived for years among the
+Moslems, the 5 daily ritual prayers all performed while turned towards
+Mecca, this description of the French taking of the oath, has something
+familiar in it. (SR.)]
+
+[Footnote 3105: Michelet, "Histoire de la R�volution Fran�aise," II,
+470, 474.]
+
+[Footnote 3106: De Ferri�res, II. 91.--Albert Babeau, I. 340. (Letter
+addressed to the Chevalier de Poterat, July 18, 1790.)--De Dampmartin,
+"Ev�nements qui se sont pass�s sous mes yeux," etc., 155.]
+
+[Footnote 3107: One may imagine the impression Taine's description made
+upon the thousands of political science students and others in the years
+after this book was printed and widely sold all over Europe. (SR.)]
+
+[Footnote 3108: Sauzay, I. 202.]
+
+[Footnote 3109: Albert Babeau, ib. I, 339--De Ferri�res, II, 92.]
+
+[Footnote 3110: "Archives Nationales," H. 1453, Correspondence of M. de
+Bercheney, May 23, 1790.]
+
+[Footnote 3111: "Archives Nationales," ibid, May 13, 1790. "M. de la
+Rifaudi�re was dragged from his carriage and brought to the guard-house,
+which was immediately filled with people, shouting, 'To the lamp post,
+the aristocrat!'--The fact is this: after his having repeatedly shouted
+Vive le Roi et la Nation! They wanted him to shout Vive la Nation!
+alone, upon which he gave Vive la Nation tant qu'elle pourra."--At
+Blois, on the day of the Federation, a mob promenades the streets with
+a wooden head covered with a wig, and a placard stating that the
+aristocrats must be decapitated.]
+
+[Footnote 3112: Might Freud ( 1856--1939) have been inspired, directly
+or indirectly, by Taine's observation? 'La R�volution' vol. I, was
+published in 1877 when Freud was 21 years old!! (SR.)]
+
+[Footnote 3113: Mercure de France, the articles by Mallet du Pan (June
+18th and August 16, 1791; April 14, 1792).]
+
+[Footnote 3114: Moniteur, IV. 560. (sitting of June 5, 1790) report
+of M. Freteau. "These facts are attested by fifty witnesses."--Cf. The
+number of April 19, 1791.]
+
+[Footnote 3115: Solon was a famous legislator who reformed Athens some
+2500 years ago. (SR.)]
+
+[Footnote 3116: "Archives Nationales," KK, 1105, Correspondence of M. de
+Thiard, military commandant in Brittany (September, 1789), "There are
+in every petty village three conflicting powers, the pr�sidial, the
+bourgeois militia, and the permanent committee. Each is anxious to
+outrank the other, and, on this occasion, a scene happened to come under
+my eyes at Landivisiau which might have had a bloody termination, but
+which turned out to be simply ridiculous. A lively dispute arose between
+three speakers to determine which should make the first address. They
+appealed to me to decide. Not to offend either of the parties, I
+decided that all three should speak at the same time; which decision was
+immediately carried out."]
+
+[Footnote 3117: Decree of August 10-14, 1789.]
+
+[Footnote 3118: "Archives Nationales," KK, 1105. Correspondence of M.
+de Thiard, September 21, 1789. "The troops now obey the municipalities
+only."--Also July 30th, August 11, 1790.]
+
+[Footnote 3119: "Archives Nationales," KK, 1105. Correspondence of 31.
+M. de Thiard, September 11 and 25, November 20, December 25 and 30,
+1789.]
+
+[Footnote 3120: Buchez and Roux, V.304 (April, 1790).--"Archives
+Nationales," Papers of the committee of Investigation, DXXIX. I (note of
+M. Latour-du-Pin, October 28, 1789)--? Buchez and Roux, IV. 3 (December
+1, 1789); IV. 390 (February, 1790); VI. 179 (April and May, 1790).]
+
+[Footnote 3121: Mercure de France, Report of M. Emery, sitting of July
+21, 1790, Number for July 32.--"Archives Nationales," F7, 3200. Letter
+of the directory of Calvados, September 26 and October 20, 1791.]
+
+[Footnote 3122: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3207. Letter of the minister
+Dumouriez, June 15, 1792. Report of M. Caillard, May 29, 1792.]
+
+[Footnote 3123: Mercure de France, No. for July, 1791 (sitting of the
+6th); Nos. for November 5 and 26, 1791.]
+
+[Footnote 3124: Albert Babeau, "Histoire de Troyes," vol. I.
+passim.--"Archives Nationales," F7, 3257. Address of the Directory of
+Sa�ne-et-Loire to the National Assembly, November 1, 1790.--F7, 3200.
+Letter of the Directory of Calvados, November 9, 1791.--F 7, 3195.
+Minutes of the meeting of the municipality of Aix, March 1, 1792 (on
+the events of February 26th); letter of M. Villard, President of the
+Directory, March 20, 1792.--F7, 3220. Extracts from the deliberations
+of the Directory of Gers, and a letter to the King, January 28, 1792.
+Letter of M. Lafitau, President of the Directory, January 30. (He was
+dragged along by his hair and obliged to leave the town.)]
+
+[Footnote 3125: Mercure de France, No. for October 30, 1790.]
+
+[Footnote 3126: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3226. Letter of the directory
+of Indre to M. Cahier, minister, December 6, 1791.--Letter of M.
+Delessart, minister, to the directory of Indre, December 31, 1791.]
+
+[Footnote 3127: Fabre, "Histoire de Marseille," II. 442. Martin had but
+3,555 votes, when shortly after the National Guard numbered 24,000 men.]
+
+[Footnote 3128: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3196. Letter of the minister,
+M. de Saint-Priest, to the President of the National Assembly, May 11,
+1790.]
+
+[Footnote 3129: "Archives Nationales," F7 3196. Letters of the military
+commandant, M. de Miran, March 6, 14, 30, 1790.]
+
+[Footnote 3130: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3196. Letter of M. de
+Bournissac, grand-privot, March 6,1790.]
+
+[Footnote 3131: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3196. Letters of M. du Miran,
+April 11th and 16th, and May 1, 1790.]
+
+[Footnote 3132: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3196. Proc�s-verbal of events
+on the 30th of April.]
+
+[Footnote 3133: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3196. Letters of the
+Municipality of Marseilles to the National Assembly, May 5 and 20,
+1790.]
+
+[Footnote 3134: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3196. Order of the king,
+May10. Letter of M. de Saint-Priest to the National Assembly, May 11.
+Decree of the National Assembly, May 12. Letter of the Municipality
+to the King. May 20. Letter of M. de Rubum, May 20. Note sent from
+Marseilles, May 31. Address of the Municipality to the President of the
+Friends of the Constitution, at Paris, May 5. In his narration of the
+taking of the forts we read the following sentence: "We arrived without
+hindrance in the presence of the commandant, whom we brought to an
+agreement by means of the influence which force, fear and reason give to
+persuasion."]
+
+[Footnote 3135: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3196, Letter of M. de Miran,
+May 5.--The spirit of the ruling party at Marseilles is indicated by
+several printed documents joined to the dossier, and, among others, by a
+"Requ�te � Desmoulins, procureur-g�n�ral de la Lanterne." It relates
+to a "patriotic inkstand," recently made out of the stones of the
+demolished citadel, representing a hydra with four heads, symbolizing
+the nobility, the clergy, the ministry and the judges. "It is from the
+four patriotic skulls of the hydra that the ink of proscription will be
+taken for the enemies of the Constitution. This inkstand, cut out of
+the first stone that fell in the demolition of Fort Saint-Nicolas, is
+dedicated to the patriotic Assembly of Marseilles. The magic art of the
+hero of the liberty of Marseilles, that Renaud who, under the mask of
+devotion, surprised the watchful sentinel of Notre-Dame de la Garde, and
+whose manly courage and cunning ensured the conquest of that key of the
+great focus of counter-revolution, has just given birth to a new trait
+of genius a new Deucalion, he personifies this stone which Liberty has
+flung from the summit of our menacing Bastilles, etc."]
+
+[Footnote 3136: "Archives Nationales," F7. 3198. Letters of the royal
+commissioners, April 13 and 5, 1791.]
+
+[Footnote 3137: De S�gur, "Memoires," III, 482 (early in 1790).]
+
+[Footnote 3138: De Dampmartin, I. 184 (January, 1791).]
+
+[Footnote 3139: "Archives Nationales," KK, 1105. Correspondence of M. de
+Thiard (October 12, 1789).]
+
+[Footnote 3140: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3250. Minutes from the
+meeting of the directory of the department. March 28, 1792. "As the
+ferment was at the highest point and fears were entertained that greater
+evils would follow, M. le Pr�sident, with painful emotion declared that
+he yielded and passed the unconstitutional act." Reply of the minister,
+June 23: "If the constituted authorities are thus forced to yield to the
+arbitrary will of a wild multitude, government no longer exists and we
+are in the saddest stage of anarchy. If you think it best I will propose
+to the King to reverse your last decision."]
+
+[Footnote 3141: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3250. Letter of M. Duport,
+minister of justice, December 24, 1791.]
+
+[Footnote 3142: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3248, Report of the members
+of the department, finished March 18, 1792.--Buchez and Roux, IX. 240
+(Report of M. Alquier).]
+
+[Footnote 3143: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3268. Extract from the
+deliberations of the directory of Seine-et-Oise, with the documents
+relating to the insurrection at Etampes, September 16, 1791. Letter of
+M. Venard, administrator of the district, September 20--" I shall not
+set foot in Etampes until the re-establishment of order and tranquility,
+and the first thing I shall do will be to record my resignation in the
+register. I am tired of making sacrifices, for ungrateful wretches."]
+
+[Footnote 3144: Moniteur, March 16, 1792.--Mortimer-Ternaux, "Histoire
+de la Terreur" (Proceedings against the assassins of Simoneau), I. 381.]
+
+[Footnote 3145: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3226. Letter and memorandum
+of Chenantin, cultivator, November 7, 1792. Extract from the
+deliberations of the directory of Langeais, November 5, 1792 (sedition
+at Chapelle-Blanche, near Langeais, October 5, 1792).]
+
+[Footnote 3146: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3105. Report of the
+commissioners sent by the National Assembly and the King, February 23,
+1791. (On the events of December 12 and 14, 1790)--Mercure de France,
+February 29, 5791. (Letters from Aix, and notably a letter from seven
+officers shut up in prison at Aix, January 30, 1791.) The oldest Jacobin
+Club formed in February, 1790, was entitled "(Club des vrais amis de
+la Constitution.)" The second Jacobin club, formed in October, 1790, was
+"composed from the beginning of artisans and laborers from the faubourgs
+and suburbs." Its title was" Soci�t� des fr�res anti-politiques," or
+"fr�res vrais, justes et utiles � la patrie." The opposition club,
+formed in December, 1790, bore the title, according to some, of "Les
+Amis du Roi, de la paix et de la religion;" according to others,
+"Les amis de la paix;" and finally, according to another report, "Les
+D�fenseurs de la religion, des personnes et des propriet�s."]
+
+[Footnote 3147: A special series of religious services. (TR)]
+
+[Footnote 3148: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3195. Letters of the
+commissioners, March 20, February 11, May 10, 1791.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. SOVEREIGNTY OF UNRESTRAINED PASSIONS.
+
+Under these conditions when passions are freed; any determined and
+competent man who can gather a couple of hundred men may form a band
+and slip through the enlarged or weakened meshes of the net held by the
+passive or ineffective government. An experiment on a grand scale
+is about to be made on human society; owing to the slackening of the
+regular restraints which have maintained it, it is now possible to
+measure the force of the permanent instincts which attack it. They are
+always there even in ordinary times; we do not notice them because they
+are kept in check; but they are not the less energetic and effective,
+and, moreover, indestructible. The moment their repression ceases,
+their power of mischief becomes evident; just as that of the water which
+floats a ship, but which, at the first leak enters into it and sinks it.
+
+
+
+
+I.--Old Religious Grudges
+
+     Montauban and N�mes in 1790.
+
+Religious passions, to begin with, are not to be kept down by
+federations, embraces, and effusions of fraternity. In the south, where
+the Protestants have been persecuted for more than a century, hatreds
+exist more than a century old.[3201] In vain have the odious edicts
+which oppressed them fallen into desuetude for the past twenty years; in
+vain have civil rights been restored to them since 1787: The past still
+lives in transmitted recollections; and two groups are confronting each
+other, one Protestant and the other Catholic, each defiant, hostile,
+ready to act on the defensive, and interpreting the preparations of its
+adversary as a plan of attack. Under such circumstances the guns go off
+of their own accord.--On a sudden alarm at Uz�s[3202] the Catholics,
+two thousand in number, take possession of the bishop's palace and the
+H�tel-de-Ville; while the Protestants, numbering four hundred, assemble
+outside the walls on the esplanade, and pass the night under arms,
+each troop persuaded that the other is going to massacre it, one
+party summoning the Catholics of Jal�s to its aid, and the other the
+Protestants of Gardonnenque.--There is but one way of avoiding civil war
+between parties in such an attitude, and that is the ascendancy of an
+energetic third party, impartial and on the spot. A plan to this
+effect, which promises well, is proposed by the military commandant of
+Languedoc.[3203] According to him the two firebrands are, on the
+one hand, the bishops of Lower Languedoc, and on the other, MM.
+Rabaut-Saint-Etienne, father and two sons, all three being pastors. Let
+them be responsible "with their heads" for any mob, insurrection, or
+attempt to debauch the army; let a tribunal of twelve judges be selected
+from the municipal bodies of twelve towns, and all delinquents be
+brought before it; let this be the court of final appeal, and its
+sentence immediately executed. The system in vogue, however, is just the
+reverse. Both parties being organized into a body of militia, each takes
+care of itself, and is sure to fire on the other; and the more readily,
+inasmuch as the new ecclesiastical regulations, which are issued from
+month to month, strike like so many hammers on Catholic sensibility, and
+scatter showers of sparks on the primings of the already loaded guns.
+
+At Montauban, on the 10th of May, 1790, the day of the inventory and
+expropriation of the religious communities,[3204] the commissioners
+are not allowed to enter. Women in a state of frenzy lie across the
+thresholds of the doors, and it would be necessary to pass over their
+bodies; a large mob gathers around the "Cordeliers," and a petition is
+signed to have the convents maintained.--The Protestants who witness
+this commotion become alarmed, and eighty of their National Guards march
+to the H�tel-de-Ville, and take forcible possession of the guard-house
+which protects it. The municipal authorities order them to withdraw,
+which they refuse to do. Thereupon the Catholics assembled at the
+"Cordeliers" begin a riot, throw stones, and drive in the doors with
+pieces of timber, while a cry is heard that the Protestants, who have
+taken refuge in the guard-house, are firing from the windows. The
+enraged multitude immediately invade the arsenal, seize all the guns
+they can lay their hands on, and fire volleys on the guard-house, the
+effect of which is to kill five of the Protestants and wound twenty-four
+others. The rest are saved by a municipal officer and the police; but
+they are obliged to appear, two and two, before the cathedral in their
+shirts, and do public penance, after which they are put in prison.
+During the tumult political shouts have been heard: "Hurrah for the
+nobles! Hurrah for the aristocracy! Down with the nation! Down with the
+tricolor flag!" Bordeaux, regarding Montauban as in rebellion against
+France, dispatches fifteen hundred of its National Guard to set the
+prisoners free. Toulouse gives its aid to Bordeaux. The fermentation is
+frightful. Four thousand of the Protestants of Montauban take flight;
+armed cities are about to contend with each other, as formerly in Italy.
+It is necessary that a commissioner of the National Assembly and of
+the King, Mathieu Dumas, should be dispatched to harangue the people of
+Montauban, obtain the release of the prisoners, and re-establish order.
+
+One month after this a more bloody affray takes place at N�mes[3205]
+against the Catholics. The Protestants, in fact, are but twelve thousand
+out of fifty-four thousand inhabitants, but the principal trade of the
+place is in their hands; they hold the manufactories and support thirty
+thousand workmen; in the elections of 1789 they furnished five out of
+the eight deputies. The sympathies of that time were in their favor;
+nobody then imagined that the dominant Church was exposed to any
+risk. It is to be attacked in its turn, and the two parties are seen
+confronting each other.--The Catholics sign a petition,[3206] hunt up
+recruits among the market-gardeners of the suburbs, retain the white
+cockade, and, when this is prohibited, replace it with a red rosette,
+another sign of recognition. At their head is an energetic man named
+Froment, who has vast projects in view; but as the soil on which he
+treads is undermined, he cannot prevent the explosion. It takes place
+naturally, by chance, through the simple collision of two equally
+distrustful bodies; and before the final day it has commenced and
+recommenced twenty times, through mutual provocations and denunciations,
+through insults, libels, scuffles, stone-throwing, and gun-shots.--On
+the 13th of June, 1790, the question is which party shall furnish
+administrators for the district and department, and the conflict begins
+in relation to the elections. The Electoral Assembly is held at the
+guard-house of the bishop's palace, where the Protestant dragoons and
+patriots have come "three times as many as usual, with loaded muskets
+and pistols, and with full cartridge-boxes," and they patrol the
+surrounding neighborhood. On their side, the red rosettes, royalists
+and Catholics, complain of being threatened and "treated contemptuously"
+(nargu�s). They give notice to the gate-keeper "not to let any dragoon
+enter the town either on foot or mounted, at the peril of his life," and
+declare that "the bishop's quarters were not made for a guard-house."--A
+mob forms, and shouting takes place under the windows; stones are
+thrown; the bugle of a dragoon, who sounds the roll-call, is broken and
+two shots are fired.[3207] The dragoons immediately fire a volley, which
+wounds a good many people and kills seven. From this moment, firing goes
+on during the evening and all night, in every quarter of the town, each
+party believing that the other wants to exterminate it, the Protestants
+satisfied that it is another St. Bartholomew, and the Catholics that
+it is "a Michelade."[3208] There is no one to act between them. The
+municipality authorities, far from issuing orders, receive them: they
+are roughly handled, hustled and jostled about, and made to march about
+like servants. The patriots seize the Abb� de Belmont, a municipal
+officer, at the H�tel-de-Ville, order him, on pain of death, to proclaim
+martial--law, and place the red flag in his hand. "March, rascal, you
+bastard! Hold up your flag--higher up still--you are big enough to do
+that!" Blows follow with the but-ends of their muskets. The poor man
+spits blood, but this is of no consequence; he must be in full sight at
+the head of the crowd, like a target, whilst his conductors prudently
+remain behind. Thus does he advance, exposed to bullets, holding the
+flag, and finally becomes the prisoner of the red rosettes, who release
+him, but keep his flag. There is a second march with a red flag held
+by a town valet, and fresh gunshots; the red rosettes capture this flag
+also, as well as another municipal officer. The rest of the municipal
+body, with a royal commissioner, take refuge in the barracks and order
+out the troops. Meanwhile Froment, with his three companies, posted
+in their towers and in the houses on the ramparts, resist to the last
+extremity. Daylight comes, the tocsin is sounded, the drums beat to
+arms, and the patriot militia of the neighborhood, the Protestants from
+the mountains, the rude C�venols, arrive in crowds. The red rosettes are
+besieged; a Capuchin convent, from which it is pretended that they have
+fired, is sacked, and five of the monks are killed. Froment's tower is
+demolished with cannon and taken by assault. His brother is massacred
+and thrown from the walls, while a Jacobin convent next to the ramparts
+is sacked. Towards night, all the red rosettes who have fought are slain
+or have fled, and there is no longer any resistance.--But the fury still
+lasts; the fifteen thousand rustics who have flooded the town think
+that they have not yet done enough. In vain are they told that the other
+fifteen companies of red rosettes have not moved; that the pretended
+aggressors "did not even put themselves in a state of defense;" that
+during the battle they remained at home, and that afterwards, through
+extra precaution, the municipal authorities had made them give up their
+arms. In vain does the Electoral Assembly, preceded by a white flag,
+march to the public square and exhort the people to keep the peace.
+"Under the pretext of searching suspicious houses, they pillage or
+destroy, and what-ever cannot be carried away is broken." One hundred
+and twenty houses are sacked in N�mes alone, while the same ravages
+are committed in the environs, the damage, at the end of three days,
+amounting to seven or eight hundred thousand livres. A number of poor
+creatures, workmen, merchants, old and infirm men, are massacred in
+their houses; some, "who have been bedridden for many years, are
+dragged to the sills of their doors to be shot." Others are hung on the
+esplanade and at the Cours Neuf, while others have their noses, ears,
+feet, and hands cut off; and are hacked to pieces with sabers and
+scythes. Horrible stories, as is commonly the case, provoke the most
+atrocious acts.
+
+A publican, who refuses to distribute anti-Catholic lists, is supposed
+to have a mine in his cellar filled with kegs of gunpowder and with
+sulfur matches all ready; he is hacked to pieces with a saber, and
+twenty guns are discharged into his corpse: they expose the body before
+his house with a long loaf of bread on his breast, and they again stab
+him with bayonets, saying to him: "Eat, you bastard, eat"--More than
+five hundred Catholics were assassinated, and many others, covered with
+blood, "are crowded together in the prisons, while the search for the
+proscribed is continued; whenever they are seen, they are fired upon
+like so many wolves." Thousands of the inhabitants, accordingly, demand
+their passports and leave the town. The rural Catholics, meanwhile,
+on their side, massacre six Protestants in the environs--an old man
+of eighty-two years, a youth of fifteen, and a husband and his wife
+in their farm-house. In order to put a stop to the murderous acts, the
+National Guard of Montpellier have to be summoned. But the restoration
+of order is for the benefit of the victorious party. Three-fifths of
+the electors have fled; one-third of the district and departmental
+administrators have been appointed in their absence, and the majority of
+the new directories is taken from the club of patriots. It is for this
+reason that the prisoners are prejudged as guilty. "No bailiff of the
+court dares give them the benefit of his services; they are not allowed
+to bring forward justifying facts in evidence, while everybody knows
+that the judges are not impartial."[3209]
+
+Thus do the violent measures of political and religious discord come to
+an end. The victor stops the mouth of the law when it is about to
+speak in his adversary's behalf; and, under the legal iniquity of an
+administration which he has himself established, he crushes those whom
+the illegal force of his own strong hand has stricken down.
+
+
+
+
+II.--Passion Supreme.
+
+     Dread of hunger its most acute form.--The non-circulation of
+     grain.--Intervention and usurpations of the electoral
+     assemblies.--The rural code in Nivernais.--The four central
+     provinces in 1790.--Why high prices are kept up.--Anxiety
+     and insecurity.--Stagnation of the grain market.--The
+     departments near Paris in 1791.--The supply and price of
+     grain regulated by force.--The mobs in 1792.--Village armies
+     of Eure and of the lower Seine and of Aisne.--Aggravation of
+     the disorder after August 10th.--The dictatorship of
+     unbridled instinct.--Its practical and political expedients.
+
+
+Passions of this stamp are the product of human cultivation, and break
+loose only within narrow bounds. Another passion exists which is neither
+historic nor local, but natural and universal, the most indomitable,
+most imperious, and most formidable of all, namely, the fear of hunger.
+There is no such thing with this passion as delay, or reflection, or
+looking beyond itself. Each commune or canton wants its bread, and a
+sure and unlimited supply of it. Our neighbor may provide for himself as
+best he can, but let us look out for ourselves first and then for other
+people. Each group of people, accordingly, through its own decrees, or
+by main force, keeps for itself whatever subsistence it possesses, or
+takes from others the subsistence which it does not possess. ii
+
+At the end of 1789,[3210] "Roussillon refuses aid to Languedoc; Upper
+Languedoc to the rest of the province, and Burgundy to Lyonnais;
+Dauphiny shuts herself up, and Normandy retains the wheat purchased for
+the relief of Paris." At Paris, sentinels are posted at the doors of all
+the bakers; on the 21st of October one of the latter is hung, and his
+head is borne about on a pike. On the 27th of October, at Vernon, a
+corn-merchant named Planter, who the preceding winter had supported the
+poor for six leagues around, has to take his turn. At the present moment
+the people do not forgive him for having sent flour to Paris, and he is
+hung twice, but is saved through the breaking of the rope each time.--It
+is only by force and under an escort that it is possible to insure the
+arrival of grain in a town; the excited people or the National Guards
+constantly seize it on its passage. In Normandy the militia of
+Caen stops wheat on the highways which is destined for Harcourt and
+elsewhere.[3211] In Brittany, Auray and Vannes retain the convoys
+for Nantes, and Lannion those for Brest. Brest having attempted to
+negotiate, its commissioners are seized, and, with knives at their
+throats, are forced to sign a renunciation, pure and simple, of the
+grain which they have paid for, and they are led out of Lannion and
+stoned on the way. Eighteen hundred men, consequently, leave Brest with
+four cannon, and go to recover their property with their guns loaded.
+These are the customs prevalent during the great famines of feudal
+times; and, from one end of France to the other, to say nothing of
+the out-breaks of the famished in the large towns, similar outrages or
+attempts at recovery are constantly occurring.--" The armed population
+of Nantua, Saint-Claude, and Septmoncel," says a dispatch,[3212] "have
+again cut off provisions from the Gex region; there is no wheat coming
+there from any direction, all the roads being guarded. Without the aid
+of the government of Geneva, which is willing to lend to this region
+eight hundred Cuttings of wheat, we should either die of starvation or
+be compelled to take grain by force from the municipalities which
+keep it to themselves." Narbonne starves Toulon; the navigation of the
+Languedoc canal is intercepted; the people on its banks repulse two
+companies of soldiers, burn a large building, and want to destroy the
+canal itself." Boats are stopped, wagons are pillaged, bread is forcibly
+lowered in price, stones are thrown and guns discharged; the populace
+contend with the National Guard, peasants with townsmen, purchasers
+with dealers, artisans and laborers with farmers and land-owners, at
+Castelnaudary, Niort, Saint-Etienne, in Aisne, in Pas-de-Calais, and
+especially along the line stretching from Montbrison to Angers--that
+is to say, for almost the whole of the extent of the vast basin of the
+Loire,--such is the spectacle presented by the year 1790.--And yet the
+crop has not been a bad one. But there is no circulation of grain. Each
+petty center has formed a league for the monopoly of food; and hence the
+fasting of others and the convulsions of the entire body are the
+first effects of the unbridled freedom which the Constitution and
+circumstances have conferred on each local group.
+
+"We are told to assemble, vote, and elect men that will attend to our
+business; let us attend to it ourselves. We have had enough of talk and
+hypocrisy. Bread at two sous, and let us go after wheat where it can
+be found!" Such is the reasoning of the peasantry, and, in Nivernais,
+Bourbonnais, Berri, and Touraine, electoral gatherings are the
+firebrands of the insurrections.[3213] At Saint-Sauge, "the first work
+of the primary meeting is to oblige the municipal officers to fix the
+price of wheat under the penalty of being decapitated." At Saint-G�ran
+the same course is taken with regard to bread, wheat, and meat; at
+Ch�tillon-en-Bayait it is done with all supplies, and always a third or
+a half under the market price, without mentioning other exactions.--They
+come by degrees to the drafting of a tariff for all the valuables they
+know, proclaiming the maximum price which an article may reach, and so
+establishing a complete code of rural and social economy. We see in the
+turbulent and spasmodic wording of this instrument their dispositions
+and sentiments, as in a mirror.[3214] It is the program of villagers.
+Its diverse articles, save local variations, must be executed, now one
+and now the other, according to the occasion, the need, and the time,
+and, above all, whatever concerns provisions.--The wish, as usual, is
+the father of the thought; the peasantry thinks that it is acting by
+authority: here, through a decree of the King and the National Assembly,
+there, by a commission directly entrusted to the Comte d'Estr�es. Even
+before this, in the market-place of Saint-Amand, "a man jumped on a heap
+of wheat and cried out, 'In the name of the King and the nation, wheat
+at one-half the market-price!"' An old officer of the Royal Grenadiers,
+a chevalier of the order of Saint-Louis, is reported to be marching at
+the head of several parishes, and promulgating ordinances in his own
+name and that of the King, imposing a fine of eight livres on whoever
+may refuse to join him.--On all sides there is a swarm of working
+people, and resistance is fruitless. There are too many of them, the
+constabulary being drowned in the flood. For, these rustic legislators
+are the National Guard itself, and when they vote reductions upon, or
+requisitions for, supplies, they enforce their demands with their guns.
+The municipal officials, willingly or unwillingly, must needs serve the
+insurgents. At Donjon the Electoral Assembly has seized the mayor of the
+place and threatened to kill him, or to burn his house, if he did not
+put the cutting of wheat at forty sous; whereupon he signs, and all the
+mayors with him, "under the penalty of death." As soon as this is done
+the peasants, "to the sound of fifes and drums," spread through the
+neighboring parishes and force the delivery of wheat at forty sous, and
+show such a determined spirit that the four brigades of gendarmes sent
+out against them think it best to retire.--Not content with taking what
+they want, they provide for reserve supplies; wheat is a prisoner. In
+Nivernais and Bourbonnais, the peasants trace a boundary line over which
+no sack of grain of that region must pass; in case of any infraction
+of this law the rope and the torch are close at hand for the
+delinquent.--It remains to make sure that this rule is enforced. In
+Berri bands of peasants visit the markets to see that their tariff is
+everywhere maintained. In vain are they told that they are emptying the
+markets; "they reply that they know how to make grain come, that they
+will take it from private hands, and money besides, if necessary." In
+fact, the granaries and cellars belonging to a large number of persons
+are pillaged. Farmers are constrained to put their crops into a common
+granary, and the rich are put to ransom; "the nobles are compelled to
+contribute, and obliged to give entire domains as donations; cattle are
+carried off; and they want to take the lives of the proprietors,"
+while the towns, which defend their storehouses and markets, are
+openly attacked.[3215] Bourbon-Lancy, Bourbon-l'Archambault,
+Saint-Pierre-le-Moutier, Montlu�on, Saint-Amand, Chateau-Gontier,
+Decises, each petty community is an islet assailed by the mounting
+tide of rustic insurrection. The militia pass the night under arms;
+detachments of the National Guards of the large towns with regular
+troops come and garrison them. The red flag is continuously raised for
+eight days at Bourbon-Lancy, and cannon stand loaded and pointed in
+the public square. On the 24th of May an attack is made on
+Saint-Pierre-le-Moutier, and fusillades take place all night on
+both sides. On the 2nd of June, Saint-Amand, menaced by twenty-seven
+parishes, is saved only by the preparations it makes and by the
+garrison. About the same time Bourbon-Lancy is attacked by twelve
+parishes combined, and Chateau-Gontier by the sabotiers of the forests
+in the vicinity. A band of from four to five hundred villagers arrests
+the convoys of Saint-Amand, and forces their escorts to capitulate;
+another band entrenches itself in the Chateau de la Fin, and fires
+throughout the day on the regulars and the National Guard.--The large
+towns themselves are not safe. Three or four hundred rustics, led
+by their municipal officers, forcibly enter Tours, to compel the
+municipality to lower the price of corn and diminish the rate of leases.
+Two thousand slate-quarry-men, armed with guns, spits, and forks, force
+their way into Angers to obtain a reduction on bread, fire upon the
+guard, and are charged by the troops and the National Guard; a number
+remain dead in the streets, two are hung that very evening, and the red
+flag is displayed for eight days. "The town," say the dispatches, "would
+have been pillaged and burnt had it not been for the Picardy regiment."
+Fortunately, as the crop promises to be a good one, prices fall. As the
+Electoral Assemblies are closed, the fermentation subsides; and towards
+the end of the year, like a clear spell in a steady storm, the gleam of
+a truce appears in the civil war excited by hunger.
+
+But the truce does not last long, as it is broken in twenty places
+by isolated explosions; and towards the month of July, 1791, the
+disturbances arising from the uncertainty of basic food supplies
+begin again, to cease no more. We will consider but one group in this
+universal state of disorder--that of the eight or ten departments which
+surround Paris and furnish it with supplies. These districts, Brie and
+Beauce, are rich wheat regions, and not only was the crop of 1790 good,
+but that of 1791 is ample. Information is sent to the minister from
+Laon[3216] that, in the department of Aisne, "there is a supply of
+wheat for two years. . . that the barns, generally empty by the month
+of April, will not be so this season before July," and, consequently,
+"subsistence is assured." But this does not suffice, for the source of
+the evil is not in a scarcity of wheat. In order that everybody, in a
+vast and populous country, where the soil, cultivation, and occupations
+differ, may eat, it is essential that food should be attainable by the
+non-producers; and for it to reach them freely, without delay, solely by
+the natural operation of supply and demand, it is essential that
+there should be a police able to protect property, transactions, and
+transport. Just in proportion as the authority of a State becomes
+weakened, and in proportion as security diminishes, the distribution of
+subsistence becomes more and more difficult: a gendarmerie, therefore,
+is an indispensable wheel in the machine by which we are able to secure
+our daily bread. Hence it is that, in 1791, daily bread is wanting to a
+large number of men. Simply through the working of the Constitution, all
+restraints, already slackened both at the extremities and at the center,
+are becoming looser and more loose each day. The municipalities, which
+are really sovereign, repress the people more feebly, some because the
+latter are the bolder and themselves more timid, and others because they
+are more radical and always consider them in the right. The National
+Guard is wearied, never comes forward, or refuses to use its arms. The
+active citizens are disgusted, and remain at home. At �tampes,[3217]
+where they are convoked by the commissioners of the department to take
+steps to re-establish some kind of order, only twenty assemble; the
+others excuse themselves by saying that, if the populace knew that they
+opposed its will, "their houses would be burnt," and they accordingly
+stay away. "Thus," write the commissioners, "the common-weal is given
+up to artisans and laborers whose views are limited to their own
+existence."--It is, accordingly, the lower class which rules, and the
+information upon which it bases its decrees consists of rumors which it
+accepts or manufactures, to hide by an appearance of right the outrages
+which are due to its cupidity or to the brutalities of its hunger. At
+�tampes, "they have been made to believe that the grain which had
+been sold for supplying the departments below the Loire, is shipped at
+Paimboeuf and taken out of the kingdom from there to be sold abroad." In
+the suburbs of Rouen they imagine that grain is purposely "engulfed
+in the swamps, ponds, and clay-pits." At Laon, imbecile and Jacobin
+committees attribute the dearness of provisions to the avidity of the
+rich and the malevolence of the aristocrats according to them, "jealous
+millionaires grow rich at the expense of the people. They know the
+popular strength," and, not daring to measure their forces with it, "in
+an honorable fight," have recourse "to treachery." To conquer the
+people easily they have determined to reduce them in advance by extreme
+suffering and by the length of their fast, and hence they monopolize
+"wheat, rye, and meal, soap, sugar, and brandy."[3218]--Similar reports
+suffice to excite a suffering crowd to acts of violence, and it must
+inevitably accept for its leaders and advisers those who urge it forward
+on the side to which it is inclined. The people always require leaders,
+and they are chosen wherever they can be found, at one time amongst the
+elite, and at another amongst the dregs. Now that the nobles are
+driven out, the bourgeoisie in retirement, the large cultivators
+under suspicion, while animal necessities exercise their blind and
+intermittent despotism, the appropriate popular ministers consist of
+adventurers and of bandits. They need not be very numerous, for in a
+place full of combustible matter a few firebrands suffice to start the
+conflagration. "About twenty, at most, can be counted in the towns of
+�tampes and Dourdan, men with nothing to lose and everything to gain by
+disturbances; they are those who always produce excitement and disorder,
+while other citizens afford them the means through their indifference."
+Those whose names are known among the new guides of the crowd are almost
+all escaped convicts whose previous habits have accustomed them to
+blows, violence, frequently to murder, and always to contempt for the
+law. At Brunoy,[3219] the leaders of the outbreak are "two deserters of
+the 18th regiment, sentenced and unpunished, who, in company with the
+vilest and most desperate of the parish, always go about armed and
+threatening." At �tampes, "the two principal assassins of the mayor
+are a poacher repeatedly condemned for poaching, and an old carabiniere
+dismissed from his regiment with a bad record against him."[3220] Around
+these are artisans "without a known residence," wandering workmen,
+journeymen and apprentices, vagrants and highway rovers, who flock into
+the towns on market-days and are always--ready for mischief when an
+opportunity occurs. Vagabonds, indeed, now roam about the country
+everywhere, all restrictions against them having ceased.
+
+"For a year past," write several parishes in the neighborhood of
+Versailles, "we have seen no gendarmes except those who come with
+decrees," and hence the multiplication of "murders and brigandage"
+between �tampes and Versailles, on the highways and in the country.
+Bands of thirteen, fifteen, twenty and twenty-two beggars rob the
+vineyards, enter farm-houses at night, and compel their inmates to lodge
+and feed them, returning in the same way every fortnight, all farms or
+isolated dwellings being their prey. An ecclesiastic is killed in his
+own house in the suburbs of Versailles, on the 26th of September, 1791,
+and, on the same day, a bourgeois and his wife are garroted and robbed.
+On the 22nd of September, near Saint-R�mi-Honor�, eight bandits ransack
+the dwelling of a farmer. On the 25th of September, at Villers-le-Sec,
+thirteen others strip another farmer, and then add with much politeness,
+"It is lucky for your masters that they are not here, for we would have
+roasted them at yonder fire." Six similar outrages are committed by
+armed ruffians in dwelling-places, within a radius of from three to four
+leagues, accompanied with the threats of the chauffeurs.[3221] "After
+enterprises of such force and boldness," write the people of this
+region, "there is not a well-to-do man in the country who can rely upon
+an hour's security in his house. Already many of our best cultivators
+are giving up their business, while others threaten to do the same in
+case these disorders continue."--What is worse still is the fact that in
+these outrages most of the bandits were "in the national uniform." The
+most ignorant, the poorest, and most fanatical of the National Guard
+thus enlist for the sake of plunder. It is so natural for men to believe
+in their right to that of which they feel the need, that the possessors
+of wheat thus become its monopolists, and the superfluity of the rich
+the property of the poor! This is what the peasants say who devastate
+the forest of Bruy�res-le-Chatel: "We have neither wood, bread, nor
+work--necessity knows no law."
+
+The necessaries of life are not to be had cheap under such a system.
+There is too much anxiety, and property is too precarious; there are too
+many obstacles to commerce; purchases, sales, shipments, arrivals and
+payments are too uncertain. How are goods to be stored and transported
+in a country where neither the central government, the local
+authorities, the National Guard, nor the regular troops perform their
+duties, and where every transaction in produce, even the most legal and
+the most serviceable, is subject to the caprice of a dozen villains whom
+the populace obey.--Wheat remains in the barn, or is secreted, or is
+kept waiting, and only reaches by stealth the hands of those who are
+rich enough to pay, not only its price, but the extra cost of the
+risk. Thus forced into a narrow channel, it rises to a rate which the
+depreciation of the assignats augments, its dearness being not only
+maintained, but ever on the increase.--Thereupon popular instinct
+invents for the cure of the evil a remedy which serves to aggravate
+it: henceforth, wheat must not travel; it is impounded in the canton in
+which it is gathered. At Laon, "the people have sworn to die rather than
+let their food be carried off." At �tampes, to which the municipality
+of Angers dispatches an administrator of its hospital to buy two
+hundred and fifty sacks of flour, the commission cannot be executed,
+the delegate not even daring to avow for several days the object of
+his coming; all he can do is "to visit incognito, and at night, the
+different flour-dealers in the valley, who would offer to furnish
+the supply, but fear for their lives and dare not even leave their
+houses."--The same violence is shown in the more distant circle of
+departments which surround the first circle. At Aubigny, in Cher,[3222]
+grain-wagons are stopped, the district administrators are menaced; two
+have a price set on their heads; a portion of the National Guard sides
+with the mutineers. At Chaumont, in Haute-Marne, the whole of the
+National Guard is in a state of mutiny; a convoy of over three hundred
+sacks is stopped, the H�tel-de-Ville forced, and the insurrection lasts
+four days; the directory of the department takes flight; and the people
+seize on the powder and cannons. At Douai, in the "Nord," to save
+a grain-dealer, he is put in prison; the mob forces the gates, the
+soldiers refuse to fire, and the man is hung, while the directory of
+the department takes refuge in Lille. At Montreuil-sur-Mer, in
+Pas-de-Calais, the two leaders of the insurrection, a brazier and a
+horse-shoer, "B�quelin, called Petit-Gueux," the latter with his saber
+in hand, reply to the summons of the municipal authorities, that "not a
+grain shall go now that they are masters," and that if they dare to make
+such proclamations "they will cut off their heads." There are no
+means of resistance. The National Guard, when it is convoked, does not
+respond; the volunteers when called upon turn their muskets down, and
+the crowd, assembled beneath the windows, shouts out its huzzahs. So
+much the worse for the law when it opposes popular passion: "We will not
+obey it," they say; "people make laws to please themselves."--By way
+of practical illustration, at Tortes, in Seine-Inf�rieure, six thousand
+armed men belonging to the surrounding parishes form a deliberative
+armed body; the better to establish their rights, they bring two cannon
+with them fastened by ropes on a couple of carts; twenty-two companies
+of the National Guard, each under its own banner, march beside them,
+while all peaceable inhabitants are compelled to fall in "under penalty
+of death," the municipal officers being at their head. This improvised
+parliament promulgates a complete law in relation to grain, which, as
+a matter of form, is sent for acceptance to the department, and to the
+National Assembly; and one of its articles declares that all husbandmen
+shall be forbidden "to sell their wheat elsewhere than on the
+market-places." With no other outlet for it, wheat must be brought
+to the corn markets (halles), and when these are full the price must
+necessarily fall.
+
+What a profound deception! Even in the granary of France wheat remains
+dear, and costs about one-third more than would be necessary to secure
+the sale of bread at two sous the pound, in conformity with the will of
+the people. For instance,[3223] at Gonesse, Dourdan, Corbeil, Mennecy,
+Brunoy, Limours, Brie-Comte-Robert, and especially at �tampes and
+Montlh�ry, the holders of grain are compelled almost weekly, through the
+clamors and violence of the people, to reduce prices one-third and
+more. It is impossible for the authorities to maintain, on their
+corn-exchange, the freedom of buying and selling. The regular troops
+have been sent off by the people beforehand. Whatever the tolerance or
+connivance of the soldiers may be, the people have a vague sentiment
+that they are not there to permit the ripping open of sacks of flour, or
+the seizing of farmers by the throat. To get rid of all obstacles and of
+being watched, they make use of the municipality itself, and force it
+to effect its own disarmament. The municipal officers, besieged in the
+town-hall, at times threatened with pistols and bayonets,[3224] dispatch
+to the detachments they are expecting an order to turn back, and entreat
+the Directory not to send any more troops, for, if any come, they have
+been told that "they will be sorry for it." Nowhere are there regular
+troops. At �tampes, the people repeat that "they are sent for and paid
+by the flour-dealers;" at Montlh�ry, that "they merely serve to arm
+citizens against each other;" at Limours, that "they make grain dearer."
+All pretexts seem good in this direction; the popular will is absolute,
+and the authorities complacently meet its decrees half-way. At
+Montlh�ry, the municipal body orders the gendarmerie to remain at the
+gates of the town, which gives full play to the insurrection.--The
+administrators, however, are not relieved by leaving the people free to
+act; they are obliged to sanction their exactions by ordinances. They
+are taken out of the H�tel-de-Ville, led to the marketplace, and there
+forthwith, under the dictation of the uproar which establishes prices,
+they, like simple clerks, proclaim the reduction. When, moreover, the
+armed rabble of a village marches forth to tyrannize over a neighboring
+market, it carries its mayor along with it in spite of himself, as an
+official instrument which belongs to it.[3225] "There is no resistance
+against force," writes the mayor of Vert-le-Petit; "we had to set forth
+immediately."--" They assured me," says the Mayor of Fontenay, "that,
+if I did not obey them, they would hang me."--On any municipal officer
+hazarding a remonstrance, they tell him that "he is getting to be an
+aristocrat." Aristocrat and hung, the argument is irresistible, and
+all the more so because it is actually applied. At Corbeil, the
+procureur-syndic who tries to enforce the law is almost beaten to
+death, and three houses in which they try to find him are demolished. At
+Montlh�ry, a seed merchant, accused of mixing the flour of beans (twice
+as dear) with wheaten flour, is massacred in his own house. At �tampes,
+the mayor who promulgates the law is cudgeled to death. Mobs talk of
+nothing but "burning and destroying," while the farmers, abused,
+hooted at, forced to sell, threatened with death and robbed, run away,
+declaring they will never return to the market again.
+
+Such is the first effect of popular dictatorship. Like all unintelligent
+forces, it operates in a direction the reverse of its intention: to
+dearness it adds dearth, and empties, instead of replenishing, the
+markets. That of �tampes often contained fifteen or sixteen hundred
+sacks of flour; the week following this insurrection there were, at
+most, sixty brought to it. At Montlh�ry, where six thousand men had
+collected together, each one obtains for his share only a small measure,
+while the bakers of the town have none at all. This being the case, the
+enraged National Guards tell the farmers that they are coming to see
+them on their farms. And they really go.[3226] Drums roll constantly
+on the roads around Montlh�ry, Limours, and other large market-towns.
+Columns of two, three, and four hundred men are seen passing under the
+lead of their commandant and of the mayor whom they take along with
+them. They enter each farm, mount into the granaries, estimate the
+quantity of grain thrashed out, and force the proprietor to sign an
+agreement to bring it to market the following week. Sometimes, as they
+are hungry, they compel people to give them something to eat and drink
+on the spot, and it will not do to enrage them,--a farmer and his wife
+come near being hung in their own barn.
+
+Their effort is useless: Wheat is impounded and hunted up in vain; it
+takes to the earth or slips off like a frightened animal. In vain do
+insurrections continue. In vain do armed mobs, in all the market-towns
+of the department,[3227] subject grain to a forced reduction of price.
+Wheat becomes scarcer and dearer from month to month, rising in price
+from twenty-six francs to thirty-three. And because the outraged farmer
+"brings now a very little," just "what is necessary to sacrifice
+in order to avoid threats, he sells at home, or in the inns, to the
+flour-dealers from Paris."--The people, in running after abundance, have
+thus fallen deeper down into want: their brutality has aggravated their
+misery, and it is to themselves that their starvation is owing. But
+they are far from attributing all this to their own insubordination;
+the magistrates are accused; these, in the eyes of the populace, are "in
+league with the monopolists." On this incline no stoppage is possible.
+Distress increases rage, and rage increases distress; and on this fatal
+declivity men are precipitated from one outrage to another.
+
+After the month of February, 1792, such outrages are innumerable; the
+mobs which go in quest of grain or which cut down its price consist
+of armies. One of six thousand men comes to control the market of
+Montlh�ry.[3228] There are seven to eight--thousand men who invade the
+market-place of Verneuil, and there is an army of ten and another of
+twenty-five thousand men, who remain organized for ten days near
+Laon. One hundred and fifty parishes have sounded the tocsin, and the
+insurrection spreads for ten leagues around. Five boats loaded with
+grain are stopped, and, in spite of the orders of district, department,
+minister, King, and National Assembly, they refuse to surrender them.
+Their contents, in the meantime, are made the most of: "The municipal
+officers of the different parishes, assembled together, pay themselves
+their fees, to wit: one hundred sous per diem for the mayor, three
+livres for the municipal officers, two livres ten sous for the guards,
+two livres for the porters. They have ordered that these sums should
+be paid in grain, and they reduce grain, it is said, fifteen livres the
+sack. It is certain that they have divided it amongst themselves, and
+that fourteen hundred sacks have been distributed." In vain do the
+commissioners of the National Assembly make speeches to them three hours
+in length. The discourse being finished, they deliberate, in presence of
+the commissioners, whether the latter shall be hung, drowned, or cut
+up, and their heads put on the five points of the middle of the abbey
+railing. On being threatened with military force, they make their
+dispositions accordingly. Nine hundred men who relieve each other watch
+day and night on the ground, in a well chosen and permanent encampment,
+while lookouts stationed in the belfries of the surrounding villages
+have only to sound the alarm to bring together twenty-five thousand
+men in a few hours.--So long as the Government remains on its feet it
+carries on the combat as well as it can; but it grows weaker from month
+to month, and, after the 10th of August, when it lies on the ground, the
+mob takes its place and becomes the universal sovereign. From this time
+forth not only is the law which protects provisioning powerless against
+the disturbers of sale and circulation, but the Assembly actually
+sanctions their acts, since it decrees[3229] the stoppage of all
+proceedings commenced against them, remits sentences already passed,
+and sets free all who are imprisoned or in irons. Behold every
+administration, with merchants, proprietors, and farmers abandoned to
+the famished, the furious, and to robbers; henceforth food supplies are
+for those who are disposed and able to take them.
+
+"You will be told," says a petition,[3230] "that we violate the law. We
+reply to these perfidious insinuations that the salvation of the people
+is the supreme law. We come in order to keep the markets supplied, and
+to insure an uniform price for wheat throughout the Republic. For, there
+is no doubt about it, the purest patriotism dies out (sic) when there is
+no bread to be had. . . . Resistance to oppression--yes, resistance to
+oppression is the most sacred of duties; is there any oppression more
+terrible than that of wanting bread? Undoubtedly, no. . . . Join us
+and '�a ira, �a ira!' We cannot end our petition better than with this
+patriotic air."
+
+This supplication was written on a drum, amidst a circle of firearms;
+and with such accompaniments it is equivalent to a command.--They are
+well aware of it, and of their own authority they often confer
+upon themselves not only the right but also the title. In
+Loire-et-Cher,[3231] a band of from four to five thousand men assume the
+name of "Sovereign Power." They go from one market-town to another,
+to Saint-Calais, Montdoubleau, Blois, Vend�me, reducing the cost of
+provisions, their troop increasing like a snowball--for they threaten
+"to burn the effects and set fire to the houses of all who are not as
+courageous as themselves."
+
+In this state of social disintegration, insurrection is a gangrene in
+which the healthy are infected by the morbid parts. Mobs are everywhere
+produced and re-produced, incessantly, large and small, like abscesses
+which break out side by side, and painfully irritate each other and
+finally combine. There are the towns against the rural districts and
+rural districts against the towns. On the one hand "every farmer
+who transports anything to the market passes (at home) for an
+aristocrat,[3232] and becomes the horror of his fellow-citizens in the
+village." On the other hand the National Guards of the towns spread
+themselves through the rural districts and make raids to save themselves
+from death by hunger.[3233] It is admitted in the rural districts that
+each municipality has the right to isolate itself from the rest. It
+is admitted in the towns that each town has the right to derive its
+provisions from the country. It is admitted by the indigent of each
+commune that the commune must provide bread gratis or at a cheap rate.
+On the strength of this there is a shower of stones and a fusillade;
+department against department, district against district, canton against
+canton, all fight for food, and the strongest get it and keep it for
+themselves.--I have simply described the North, where, for the past
+three years, the crops are good. I have omitted the South, where trade
+is interrupted on the canal of the Deux Mers, where the procureur-syndic
+of Aude has lately been massacred for trying to secure the passage of
+a convoy; where the harvest has been poor; where, in many places, bread
+costs eight sous the pound; where, in almost every department, a bushel
+of wheat is sold twice as dear as in the North!
+
+Strange phenomenon! and the most instructive of all, for in it we see
+down into the depths of humanity; for, as on a raft of shipwrecked
+beings without food, there is a reversion to a state of nature. The
+light tissue of habit and of rational ideas in which civilization has
+enveloped man, is torn asunder and is floating in rags around him; the
+bare arms of the savage show themselves, and they are striking out.
+The only guide he has for his conduct is that of primitive days, the
+startled instinct of a craving stomach. Henceforth that which rules in
+him and through him is animal necessity with its train of violent
+and narrow suggestions, sometimes sanguinary and sometimes grotesque.
+Incompetent or savage, in all respects like a Negro monarch, his sole
+political expedients are either the methods of a slaughter house or the
+dreams of a carnival. Two commissioners whom Roland, Minister of the
+Interior, sends to Lyons, are able to see within a few days the carnival
+and the slaughter-house.[3234]--On the one hand the peasants, all along
+the road, arrest everybody; the people regard every traveler as an
+aristocrat who is running away--which is so much the worse for those who
+fall into their hands. Near Autun, four priests who, to obey the law,
+are betaking themselves to the frontier, are put in prison "for their
+own protection;" they are taken out a quarter of an hour later, and,
+in spite of thirty-two of the mounted police, are massacred. "Their
+carriage was still burning as I passed, and the corpses were stretched
+out not far off. Their driver was still in durance, and it was it vain
+that I solicited his release."--On the other hand, at Lyons, the power
+has fallen into the hands of the degraded women of the streets. "They
+seized the central club, constituted themselves commissaries of police,
+signed notices as such, and paid visits of inspection to store-houses;"
+they drew up a tariff of provisions, "from bread and meat up to common
+peaches, and peaches of fine quality." They announced that "whoever
+dared to dispute it would be considered a traitor to the country,
+an adherent of the civil list, and prosecuted as such." All this is
+published, proclaimed and applied by "female commissaries of police,"
+themselves the dregs of the lowest sinks of corruption. Respectable
+housewives and workwomen had nothing to do with it, nor "working-people
+of any class." The sole actors of this administrative parody are
+"scamps, a few bullies of houses of ill-fame, and a portion of the dregs
+of the female sex."--To this end comes the dictatorship of instinct,
+yonder let loose on the highway in a massacre of priests, and here, in
+the second city of France, in the government of strumpets.
+
+
+
+
+III.--Egotism of the tax-payer.
+
+     Issoudun in 1790.--Rebellion against taxation.--Indirect
+     taxes in 1789 and 1790.--Abolition of the salt tax, excise,
+     and octrois.--Direct taxation in 1789 and 1790.--Delay and
+     insufficiency of the returns.--New levies in 1791 and 1792.
+     --Delays, partiality, and concealment in preparing the
+     rolls.--Insufficiency of, and the delay in, the returns.
+     --Payment in assignats.--The tax-payer relieves himself of
+     one-half.--Devastation of the forests.--Division of the
+     communal property.
+
+The fear of starvation is only the sharper form of a more general
+passion, which is the desire of possession and the determination not
+to give anything up. No popular instinct, had been longer, more rudely,
+more universally offended under the ancient r�gime; and there is none
+which gushes out more readily under constraint, none which requires a
+higher or broader public barrier, or one more entirely constructed of
+solid blocks, to keep it in check. Hence it is that this passion from
+the commencement breaks down or engulfs the slight and low boundaries,
+the tottering embankments of crumbling earth between which the
+Constitution pretends to confine it.--The first flood sweeps away the
+pecuniary claims of the State, of the clergy, and of the noblesse. The
+people regard them as abolished, or, at least, they consider their debts
+discharged. Their idea, in relation to this, is formed and fixed; for
+them it is that which constitutes the Revolution. The people have no
+longer a creditor; they are determined to have none, they will pay
+nobody, and first of all, they will make no further payment to the
+State.
+
+On the 14th of July, 1790, the day of the Federation, the population of
+Issoudun, in Touraine, solemnly convoked for the purpose, had just taken
+the solemn oath which was to ensure public peace, social harmony, and
+respect for the law for evermore.[3235] Here, probably, as elsewhere,
+arrangements had been made for an stirring ceremonial; there were young
+girls dressed in white, and learned and impressionable magistrates were
+to pronounce philosophical harangues. All at once they discover that the
+people gathered on the public square are provided with clubs, scythes,
+and axes, and that the National Guard will not prevent their use; on the
+contrary, the Guard itself is composed almost wholly of wine growers and
+others interested in the suppression of the duties on wine, of coopers,
+innkeepers, workmen, carters of casks, and others of the same stamp,
+all rough fellows who have their own way of interpreting the Social
+Contract. The whole mass of decrees, acts, and rhetorical flourishes
+which are dispatched to them from Paris, or which emanate from the new
+authorities, are not worth a halfpenny tax maintained on each bottle
+of wine. There are to be no more excise duties; they will only take the
+civic oath on this express condition, and that very evening they hang,
+in effigy, their two deputies, who "had not supported their interests"
+in the National Assembly. A few months later, of all the National Guard
+called upon to protect the clerks, only the commandant and two officers
+respond to the summons. If a docile taxpayer happens to be found, he
+is not allowed to pay the dues; this seems a defection and almost
+treachery. An entry of three puncheons of wine having been made, they
+are stove in with stones, a portion is drunk, and the rest taken to the
+barracks to debauch the soldiers; M. de Sauzay, commandant of the "Royal
+Roussillon," who was bold enough to save the clerks, is menaced, and for
+this misdeed he barely escapes being hung himself. When the municipal
+body is called upon to interpose and employ force, it replies that "for
+so small a matter, it is not worth while to compromise the lives of the
+citizens," and the regular troops sent to the H�tel-de-Ville are ordered
+by the people not to go except with the but-ends of their muskets in the
+air. Five days after this the windows of the excise office are smashed,
+and the public notices are torn down; the fermentation does not subside,
+and M. de Sauzay writes that a regiment would be necessary to restrain
+the town. At Saint-Amand the insurrection breaks out violently, and is
+only put down by violence. At Saint-�tienne-en-Forez, Bertheas, a clerk
+in the excise office, falsely accused of monopolizing grain,[3236]
+is fruitlessly defended by the National Guard; he is put in prison,
+according to the usual custom, to save his life, and, for greater
+security, the crowd insist on his being fastened by an iron collar.
+But, suddenly changing its mind, it breaks upon the door and drags him
+outside, beating him till he is unconscious. Stretched on the ground,
+his head still moves and he raises his hand to it, when a woman,
+picking up a large stone, smashes his skull.--These are not isolated
+occurrences. During the months of July and August, 1789, the tax offices
+are burnt in almost every town in the kingdom. In vain does the National
+Assembly order their reconstruction, insist on the maintenance of duties
+and octrois, and explain to the people the public needs, pathetically
+reminding them, moreover, that the Assembly has already given them
+relief;--the people prefer to relieve themselves instantly and entirely.
+Whatever is consumed must no longer be taxed, either for the benefit of
+the State or for that of the towns. "Entrance dues on wine and cattle,"
+writes the municipality of Saint-Etienne, "scarcely amount to anything,
+and our powers are inadequate for their enforcement." At Cambrai, two
+successive outbreaks compel the excise office and the magistracy of
+the town[3237] to reduce the duties on beer one-half. But "the evil, at
+first confined to one corner of the province, soon spreads;" the grands
+baillis of Lille, Douai, and Orchies write that "we have hardly a bureau
+which has not been molested, and in which the taxes are not wholly
+subject to popular discretion." Those only pay who are disposed to do
+so, and, consequently, "greater fraud could not exist." The taxpayers,
+indeed, cunningly defend themselves, and find plenty of arguments or
+quibbles to avoid paying their dues. At Cambrai they allege that, as
+the privileged now pay as well as the rest, the Treasury must be
+rich enough.[3238] At Noyon, Ham, and Chauny, and in the surrounding
+parishes, the butchers, innkeepers, and publicans combined, who have
+refused to pay excise duties, pick flaws in the special decree by which
+the Assembly subjects them to the law, and a second special decree is
+necessary to circumvent these new legal experts. The process at Lyons
+is simpler. Here the thirty-two sections appoint commissioners; these
+decide against the octroi, and request the municipal authorities to
+abolish it. They must necessarily comply, for the people are at hand and
+are furious. Without waiting, however, for any legal measures, they take
+the authority on themselves, rush to the toll-houses and drive out the
+clerks, while large quantities of provisions, which "through a singular
+predestination" were waiting at the gates, come in free of duty.--The
+Treasury defends itself as it best can against this universally bad
+disposition of the tax-payer, against these irruptions and infiltrations
+of fraud; it repairs the dike where it has been carried away, stops up
+the fissures and again resumes collections. But how can these be regular
+and complete in a State where the courts dare not condemn delinquents,
+where public force dares not support the courts,[3239] where popular
+favor protects the most notorious bandits and the worst vagabonds
+against the tribunals and against the public powers? At Paris, where,
+After eight months of impunity, proceedings are begun against the
+pillagers who, on the 13th of August, 1789, set fire to the tax offices,
+the officers of the election, "considering that their audiences
+have become too tumultuous, that the thronging of the people excites
+uneasiness, that threats have been uttered of a kind calculated to
+create reasonable alarm," are constrained to suspend their sittings and
+refer matters to the National Assembly, while the latter, considering
+that "if prosecutions are authorized in Paris it will be necessary to
+authorize them throughout the kingdom," decides that it is best "to veil
+the statue of the Law."[3240]
+
+Not only does the Assembly veil the statue of the Law, but it takes to
+pieces, remakes, and mutilates it, according to the requirements of the
+popular will; and, in the matter of indirect imposts all its decrees are
+forced upon it. The outbreak against the salt impost was terrible from
+the beginning; sixty thousand men in Anjou alone combined to destroy it,
+and the price of salt had to be reduced from sixteen to six sous.[3241]
+The people, however, are not satisfied with this. This monopoly has been
+the cause of so much suffering that they are not disposed to put up with
+any remains of it, and are always on the side of the smugglers against
+the excise officers. In the month of January, 1790, at B�ziers,
+thirty-two employees, who had seized a quantity of contraband salt on
+the persons of armed smugglers,[3242] are pursued by the crowd to the
+H�tel-de-Ville; the consuls decline to defend them and run away; the
+troops defend them, but in vain. Five are tortured, horribly mutilated,
+and then hung. In the month of March, 1790, Necker states that,
+according to the returns of the past three months, the deficit in
+the salt-tax amounts to more than four millions a month, which is
+four-fifths of the ordinary revenue, while the tobacco monopoly is no
+more respected than that of salt. At Tours,[3243] the bourgeois
+militia refuse to give assistance to the employees, and "openly protect
+smuggling," "and contraband tobacco is publicly sold at the fair, under
+the eyes of the municipal authorities, who dare make no Opposition to
+it." All receipts, consequently, diminish at the same time.[3244] From
+the 1st of May, 1789, to the 1st of May, 1790, the general collections
+amount to 127 millions instead of 150 millions; the dues and excise
+combined return only 31, instead of 50 millions. The streams which
+filled the public exchequer are more and more obstructed by popular
+resistance, and under the popular pressure, the Assembly ends by closing
+them entirely. In the month of March, 1790,[3245] it abolishes salt
+duties, internal customs-duties, taxes on leather, on oil, on starch,
+and the stamp of iron. In February and March, 1791, it abolishes octrois
+and entrance-dues in all the cities and boroughs of the kingdom, all the
+excise duties and those connected with the excise, especially all taxes
+which affect the manufacture, sale, or circulation of beverages. The
+people have in the end prevailed, and on the 1st of May, 1791, the day
+of the application of the decree, the National Guard of Paris parades
+around the walls playing patriotic airs. The cannon of the Invalides and
+those on the Pont-Neuf thunder out as if for an important victory.
+There is an illumination in the evening, there is drinking all night, a
+universal revel. Beer, indeed, is to be had at three sous the pot, and
+wine at six sous a pint, which is a reduction of one-half; no conquest
+could be more popular, since it brings intoxication within easy reach of
+the thirsty.[3246]
+
+The object, now, is to provide for the expenses which have been defrayed
+by the suppressed octrois. In 1790, the octroi of Paris had produced
+35,910,859 francs, of which 25,059,446 went to the State, and 10,851,413
+went to the city. How is the city going to pay for its watch, the
+lighting and cleaning of its streets, and the support of its hospitals?
+What are the twelve hundred other cities and boroughs going to do which
+are brought by the same stroke to the same situation? What will
+the State do, which, in abolishing the general revenue from all
+entrance-dues and excise, is suddenly deprived of two-fifths of its
+revenue?--In the month of March, 1790, when the Assembly suppressed the
+salt and other duties, it established in the place of these a tax of
+fifty millions, to be divided between the direct imposts and dues on
+entrance to the towns. Now, consequently, that the entrance-dues are
+abolished, the new charge falls entirely upon the direct imposts.
+Do returns come in, and will they come in?--In the face of so many
+outbreaks, any indirect taxation (VAT) is, certainly, difficult to
+collect. Nevertheless it is not so repulsive as the other because the
+levies of the State disappear in the price of the article, the hand of
+the Exchequer being hidden by the hand of the dealer. The Government
+clerk formerly presented himself with his stamped paper and the seller
+handed him the money without much grumbling, knowing that he would
+soon be more than reimbursed by his customer: the indirect tax is thus
+collected. Should any difficulty arise, it is between the dealer and the
+taxpayer who comes to his shop to lay in his little store; the latter
+grumbles, but it is at the high price which he feels, and possibly at
+the seller who pockets his silver; he does not find fault with the clerk
+of the Exchequer, whom he does not see and who is not then present
+In the collection of the direct tax, on the contrary, it is the clerk
+himself whom he sees before him, who abstracts the precious piece of
+silver. This authorized robber, moreover, gives him nothing in exchange;
+it is an entire loss. On leaving the dealer's shop he goes away with a
+jug of wine, a pot of salt, or similar commodities; on leaving the tax
+office he has nothing in hand but an acquittance, a miserable bit of
+scribbled paper.--But now he is master in his own commune, an elector, a
+National Guard, mayor, the sole authority in the use of armed force, and
+charged with his own taxation. Come and ask him to unearth the buried
+mite on which he has set all his heart and all his soul, the earthen pot
+wherein he has deposited his cherished pieces of silver one by one, and
+which he has laid by for so many years at the cost of so much misery and
+fasting, in the very face of the bailiff in spite of the prosecutions of
+the sub-delegate, commissioner, collector, and clerk!
+
+From the 1st of May, 1789, to the 1st of May, 1790,[3247] the general
+returns, the taille and its accessories, the poll-tax and "twentieths,"
+instead of yielding 161.000,000 francs, yield but 28,000,000 francs in
+the provinces which impose their own taxes (pays d'Etats); instead of
+28,000,000 francs, the Treasury obtains but 6,000,000. On the patriotic
+contribution which was to deduct one quarter of all incomes over four
+hundred livres, and to levy two and a half per cent. on plate, jewels,
+and whatever gold and silver each person has in reserve, the State
+received 9.700,000 francs. As to patriotic gifts, their total,
+comprising the silver buckles of the deputies, reaches only 361,587
+francs; and the closer our examination into the particulars of these
+figures, the more do we see the contributions of the villager, artisan,
+and former subjects of the taille diminish.--Since the month of October,
+1789, the privileged classes, in fact, appear in the tax-rolls, and they
+certainly form the class which is best off, the most alive to general
+ideas and the most truly patriotic. It is therefore probable that, of
+the forty-three millions of returns from the direct imposts and from the
+patriotic contribution, they have furnished the larger portion, perhaps
+two thirds of it, or even three-quarters. If this be the case, the
+peasant, the former tax-payer, gave nothing or almost nothing from his
+pocket during the first year of the Revolution. For instance, in regard
+to the patriotic contribution, the Assembly left it to the conscience of
+each person to fix his own quota; at the end of six months, consciences
+are found too elastic, and the Assembly is obliged to confer this right
+on the municipalities. The result is[3248] that this or that individual
+who taxed himself at forty-eight livres, is taxed at a hundred and
+fifty; another, a cultivator, who had offered six livres, is judged to
+be able to pay over one hundred. Every regiment contains a small number
+of select brave men, and it is always these who are ready to advance
+under fire. Every State contains a select few of honest men who advance
+to meet the tax-collector. Some effective constraint is essential in the
+regiment to supply those with courage who have but little, and in the
+State to supply those with probity who do not possess it. Hence, during
+the eight months which follow, from May 1st, 1790, to January 1st, 1791,
+the patriotic contribution furnishes but 11,000,000 livres. Two years
+later, on the 1st of February, 1793, out of the forty thousand communal
+tax-rolls which should provide for it, there are seven thousand which
+are not yet drawn up; out of 180,000,000 livres which it ought
+to produce, there are 70,000,000 livres which are still due.--The
+resistance of the tax-payer produces a similar deficit, and similar
+delays in all branches of the national income.[3249] In the month of
+June, 1790, a deputy declares in the tribune that "out of thirty-six
+millions of imposts which ought to be returned each month only nine have
+been received."[3250] In the month of November, 1791, a reporter on
+the budget states that the receipts, which should amount to forty or
+forty-eight millions a month, do not reach eleven millions and a half.
+On February 1, 1793, there remains still due on the direct taxes of 1789
+and 1790 one hundred and seventy-six millions. It is evident that
+the people struggle with all their might against the old taxes, even
+authorized and prolonged by the Constituent Assembly, and all that is
+obtained from them is wrested from them.
+
+Will the people be more docile under the new taxation? The Assembly
+exhorts them to be so and shows them how, with the relief they have
+gained and with the patriotism they ought to possess, they can and
+should discharge their dues. The people are able to do it because,
+having got rid of tithes, feudal dues, the salt-tax, octrois and excise
+duties, they are in a comfortable position. They should do so, because
+the taxation adopted is indispensable to the State, equitable, assessed
+on all in proportion to their fortune, collected and expended under
+rigid scrutiny, without perversion or waste, according to precise,
+clear, periodical and audited accounts. No doubt exists that, after the
+1st of January, 1791, the date when the new financial scheme comes into
+operation, each tax-payer will gladly pay as a good citizen, and the
+two hundred and forty millions of the new tax on real property, and
+the sixty millions of that on personal property, leaving out the
+rest--registries, license, and customs duties--will flow in regularly
+and easily of their own accord.
+
+Unfortunately, before the tax-gatherer can collect the first two levies
+these have to be assessed, and as there are complicated writings
+and formalities, claims to settle amidst great resistance and local
+ignorance, the operation is indefinitely prolonged. The personal and
+land-tax schedule of 1791 is not transmitted to the departments by the
+Assembly until June, 1791. The departments do not distribute it among
+the districts until the months of July, August, and September, 1791. It
+is not distributed by the districts among the communes before October,
+November, and December, 1791. Thus in the last month of 1791 it is not
+yet distributed to the tax-payers by the communes; from which it follows
+that on the budget of 1791 and throughout that year, the tax-payer
+has paid nothing.--At last, in 1792, everybody begins to receive this
+assessment. It would require a volume to set forth the partiality and
+dissimulation of these assessments. In the first place the office of
+assessor is one of danger; the municipal authorities, whose duty it
+is to assign the quotas, are not comfortable in their town quarters.
+Already, in 1790,[3251] the municipal officers of Monbazon have been
+threatened with death if they dared to tax industrial pursuits on the
+tax-roll, and they escaped to Tours in the middle of the night. Even at
+Tours, three or four hundred insurgents of the vicinity, dragging along
+with them the municipal officers of three market-towns, come and declare
+to the town authorities "that for all taxes they will not pay more than
+forty-five sous per household." I have already narrated how, in 1792,
+in the same department, "they kill, they assassinate the municipal
+officers" who presume to publish the tax-rolls of personal property. In
+Creuse, at Clugnac, the moment the clerk begins to read the document,
+the women spring upon him, seize the tax-roll, and "tear it up with
+countless imprecations;" the municipal council is assailed, and two
+hundred persons stone its members, one of whom is thrown down, has his
+head shaved, and is promenaded through the village in derision.--When
+the small tax-payer defends himself in this manner, it is a warning that
+he must be humored. The assessment, accordingly, in the village councils
+is made amongst a knot of cronies. Each relieves himself of the burden
+by shoving it off on somebody else. "They tax the large proprietors,
+whom they want to make pay the whole tax." The noble, the old seigneur,
+is the most taxed, and to such an extent that in many places his
+income does not suffice to pay his quota.--In the next place they make
+themselves out poor, and falsify or elude the prescriptions of the law.
+"In most of the municipalities, houses, tenements, and factories[3252]
+are estimated according to the value of the area they cover, and
+considered as land of the first class, which reduces the quota to
+almost nothing." And this fraud is not practiced in the villages alone.
+"Communes of eight or ten thousand souls might be cited which have
+arranged matters so well amongst themselves in this respect that not
+a house is to be found worth more than fifty sous."--Last expedient
+of all, the commune defers as long as it can the preparation of its
+tax-rolls. On the 30th of January, 1792, out of 40,211, there are only
+2,560 which are complete; on the 5th of October, 1792, the schedules are
+not made out in 4,800 municipalities, and it must be noted that all this
+relates to a term of administration which has been finished for more
+than nine months. At the same date, there are more than six thousand
+communes which have not yet begun to collect the land-tax of 1791, and
+more than fifteen thousand communes which have not yet begun to collect
+the personal tax; the Treasury and the departments have not yet received
+152,000,000 francs, there being still 222,000,000 to collect. On the 1st
+February, 1793, there still remains due on the same period 161,000,000
+francs, while of the 50,000,000 assessed in 1790, to replace the
+salt-tax and other suppressed duties, only 2,000,000 have been
+collected. Finally, at the same date, out of the two direct taxes of
+1792, which should produce 300,000,000, less than 4,000,000 have been
+received.--It is a maxim of the debtor that he must put off payment as
+long as possible. Whoever the creditor may be, the State or a private
+individual, a leg or a wing may be saved by dint of procrastination. The
+maxim is true, and, on this occasion, success once more demonstrates
+its soundness. During the year 1792, the peasant begins to discharge a
+portion of his arrears, but it is with assignats. In January, February,
+and March, 1792, the assignats diminish thirty-four, forty-four, and
+forty-five per cent. in value; in January, February, and March,
+1793, forty-seven and fifty percent.; in May, June, and July, 1793,
+fifty-four, sixty, and sixty-seven per cent. Thus has the old credit
+of the State melted away in its hands; those who have held on to their
+crowns gain fifty per cent. and more. Again, the greater their delay the
+more their debts diminish, and already, on the strength of this, the way
+to release themselves at half-price is found.
+
+Meanwhile, hands are laid on the badly defended landed property of this
+feeble creditor.--It is always difficult for rude brains to form any
+conception of the vague, invisible, abstract entity called the State,
+to regard it as a veritable personage and a legitimate proprietor,
+especially when they are persistently told that the State is everybody.
+The property of all is the property of each, and as the forests belong
+to the public, the first-comer has a right to profit by them. In the
+month of December, 1789,[3253] bands of sixty men or more chop down the
+trees in the Bois de Boulogne and at Vincennes. In April, 1790, in the
+forest of Saint-Germain, "the patrols arrest all kinds of delinquents
+day and night:" handed over to the National Guards and municipalities in
+the vicinity, these are "almost immediately released, even with the
+wood which they have cut down against the law." iii There is no means
+of repressing "the reiterated threats and insults of the low class of
+people." A mob of women, urged on by an old French guardsman, come and
+pillage under the nose of the escort a load of faggots confiscated for
+the benefit of a hospital; and in the forest itself, bands of marauders
+fire upon the patrols.--At Chantilly, three game-keepers are mortally
+wounded;[3254] both parks are devastated for eighteen consecutive days;
+the game is all killed, transported to Paris and sold.--At Chambord the
+lieutenant of the constabulary writes to announce his powerlessness; the
+woods are ravaged and even burnt; the poachers are now masters of the
+situation; breaches in the wall are made by them, and the water from
+the pond is drawn off to enable them to catch the fish.--At Claix, in
+Dauphiny, an officer of the jurisdiction of woods and forests, who has
+secured an injunction against the inhabitants for cutting down trees on
+leased ground, is seized, tortured during five hours, and then stoned
+to death.--In vain does the National Assembly issue three decrees and
+regulations, placing the forests under the supervision and protection of
+administrative bodies,--he latter are too much afraid of their charge.
+Between the central power, which is weak and remote, and the people,
+present and strong, they always decide in favor of the latter. Not one
+of the five municipalities surrounding Chantilly is disposed to assist
+in the execution of the laws, while the directories of the district
+and department respectively, sanction their inertia.--Similarly, near
+Toulouse,[3255] where the magnificent forest of Larramet is devastated
+in open day and by an armed force, where the wanton destruction by
+the populace leaves nothing of the underwood and shrubbery but "a few
+scattered trees and the remains of trunks cut at different heights,"
+the municipalities of Toulouse and of Tournefeuille refuse all aid.
+And worse still, in other provinces, as for instance in Alsace, "whole
+municipalities, with their mayors at the head, cut down woods which
+are confided to them, and carry them off."[3256] If some tribunal is
+disposed to enforce the law, it is to no purpose; it takes the risk,
+either of not being allowed to give judgment, or of being constrained
+to reverse its decision. At Paris the judgment prepared against the
+incendiaries of the tax-offices could not be given. At Montargis, the
+sentence pronounced against the marauders who had stolen cartloads
+of wood in the national forests had to be revised, and by the judges
+themselves. The moment the tribunal announced the confiscation of the
+carts and horses which had been seized, there arose a furious outcry
+against it; the court was insulted by those present; the condemned
+parties openly declared that they would have their carts and horses back
+by force. Upon this "the judges withdrew into the council-chamber, and
+when soon after they resumed their seats, that part of their decision
+which related to the confiscation was canceled."
+
+And yet this administration of justice, ludicrous and flouted as it
+may be, is still a sort of barrier. When it falls, along with the
+Government, everything is exposed to plunder, and there is no such thing
+as public property.--After August 10, 1792, each commune or individual
+appropriates whatever comes in its way, either products or the soil
+itself. Some of the plunderers go so far as to say that, since the
+Government no longer represses them, they act under its authority.[3257]
+"They have destroyed even the recent plantation of young trees." "One of
+the villages near Fontainebleau cleared off and divided an entire grove.
+At Rambouillet, from August 10th to the end of October," the loss is
+more than 100,000 crowns; the rural agitators demand with threats the
+partition of the forest among the inhabitants. "The destruction is
+enormous" everywhere, prolonged for entire months, and of such a kind,
+says the minister, as to dry up this source of public revenue for a
+long time to come.--Communal property is no more respected than
+national property. In each commune, these bold and needy folk, the rural
+populace, are privileged to enjoy and make the most of it. Not content
+with enjoying it, they desire to acquire ownership of it, and, for days
+after the King's fall, the Legislative Assembly, losing its footing in
+the universal breaking up, empowers the indigent to put in force the
+agrarian law. Henceforth it suffices in any commune for one-third of
+its inhabitants of both sexes, servants, common laborers, shepherds,
+farm-hands or cowherds, and even paupers, to demand a partition of the
+communal possessions. All that the commune owns, save public edifices
+and woods, is to be cut up into as many equal lots as there are heads,
+the lots to be drawn for, and each individual to take possession of his
+or her portion.[3258] The Operation is carried out, for "those who
+are least well off are infinitely flattered by it." In the district of
+Arcis-sur-Aube, there are not a dozen communes out of ninety in which
+more than two-thirds of the voters had the good sense to pronounce
+against it. From this time forth the commune ceases to be an
+independent proprietor; it has nothing to fall back upon. In case of
+distress it is obliged to lay on extra taxes and obtain, if it can, a
+few additional sous. Its future revenue is at present in the
+tightly buttoned pockets of the new proprietors.--The prevalence of
+short-sighted views is once more due to the covetousness of individuals.
+Whether national or communal, it is always public interest which
+succumbs, and it succumbs always under the usurpations of indigent
+minorities, at one time through the feebleness of public authority,
+which dares not oppose their violence, and at another through the
+complicity of public authority, which has conferred upon them the rights
+of the majority.
+
+
+
+
+IV.--Cupidity of tenants.
+
+     The third and fourth jacquerie.--Brittany and other
+     provinces in 1790 and 1791.--The burning of chateaux.
+     --Title-deeds destroyed.--Refusal of claims.--Destruction of
+     reservoirs.--Principal characteristics, prime motive and
+     ruling passion of the revolution
+
+When there is a lack of public force for the protection of public
+property, there is also a lack of it for the protection of private
+property, for the same greed and the same needs attack both. Let a man
+owe anything either to the State or to an individual, and the temptation
+not to pay is equally the same. In both cases it suffices to find a
+pretext for denying the debt; in finding this pretext the cupidity of
+the tenant is as good as the selfishness of the tax-payer. Now that the
+feudal system is abolished let nothing remain of it: let there be no
+more seignorial claims. "If the Assembly has maintained some of them,
+yonder in Paris, it did so inadvertently or through corruption: we
+shall soon hear of all being suppressed. In the meantime we will relieve
+ourselves, and burn the agreements in the places where they are kept."
+
+Such being the argument, the jacquerie breaks out afresh: in truth,
+it is permanent and universal. Just as in a body in which some of the
+elements of its vital substance are affected by an organic disease, the
+evil is apparent in the parts which seem to be sound: even where as yet
+no outbreak has occurred, one is imminent; constant anxiety, a profound
+restlessness, a low fever, denote its presence. Here, the debtor does
+not pay, and the creditor is afraid to prosecute him. In other places
+isolated eruptions occur. At Auxon,[3259] on an estate spared by the
+great jacquerie of July, 1789, the woods are ravaged, and the peasants,
+enraged at being denounced by the keepers, march to the chateau, which
+is occupied by an old man and a child; everybody belonging to the
+village is there, men and women; they hew down the barricaded door with
+their axes, and fire on the neighbors who come to the assistance of
+its inmates.--In other places, in the districts of Saint-�tienne and
+Montbrison, "the trees belonging to the proprietors are carried
+away with impunity, and the walls of their grounds and terraces are
+demolished, the complainants being threatened with death or with
+the sight of the destruction of their dwellings." Near Paris, around
+Montargis, Nemours, and Fontainebleau, a number of parishes refuse
+to pay the tithes and ground-rent (champart) which the Assembly has
+a second time sanctioned; gibbets are erected and the collectors are
+threatened with hanging, while, in the neighborhood of Tonnerre, a
+mob of debtors fire upon the body of police which comes to enforce the
+claims.--Near Amiens, the Comtesse de la Mire,[3260] on her estate of
+Davencourt, is visited by the municipal authorities of the village, who
+request her to renounce her right to ground-rent (champart) and thirds
+(tiers). She refuses and they insist, and she refuses again, when they
+inform her that "some misfortune will happen to her." In effect, two
+of the municipal officers cause the tocsin to be rung, and the whole
+village rushes to arms. One of the domestics has an arm broken by a
+ball, and for three hours the countess and her two children are subject
+to the grossest insults and to blows: she is forced to sign a paper
+which she is not allowed to read, and, in warding off the stroke of
+a saber, her arm is cleft from the elbow to the wrist; the chateau
+is pillaged, and she owes her escape to the zeal of some of her
+servants.--Large eruptions take place at the same time over entire
+provinces; one succeeds the other almost without interruption, the fever
+encroaching on parts which were supposed to be cured, and to such an
+extent that the virulent ulcers finally combine and form one over the
+whole surface of the social body.
+
+By the end of December, 1789, the chronic fermentation comes to a head
+in Brittany. Imagination, as usual, has forged a plot, and, as the
+people say, if they make an attack it is in their own defense.--A report
+spreads[3261] that M. de Goyon, near Lamballe, has assembled in his
+chateau a number of gentlemen and six hundred soldiers. The mayor
+and National Guard of Lamballe immediately depart in force; they find
+everything tranquil there, and no company but two or three friends,
+and no other arms than a few fowling-pieces.--The impulse, however, is
+given, and, on the 15th of January, the great federation of Pontivy has
+excited the wildest enthusiasm. The people drink, sing, and shout in
+honor of the new decrees before armed peasants who do not comprehend the
+French tongue, still less legal terms, and who, on their return home,
+arguing with each other in bas-breton, interpret the law in a peculiar
+way. "A decree of the Assembly, in their eyes, is a decree of arrest"
+and as the principal decrees of the Assembly are issued against the
+nobles, they are so many decrees of arrest against them.--Some days
+after this, about the end of January, during the whole of February, and
+down to the month of April, the execution of this theory is tumultuously
+carried out by mobs of villagers and vagabonds around Nantes,
+Auray, Redon, Dinan, Plo�rmel, Rennes, Guingamp, and other villages.
+Everywhere, writes the Mayor of Nantes,[3262] "the country-people
+believe that in burning deeds and contracts they get rid of their debts;
+the very best of them concur in this belief," or let things take
+their course; the excesses are enormous, because many gratify "special
+animosities, and all are heated with wine.--At Beuvres, "the peasants
+and vassals of the manor, after burning title-deeds, establish
+themselves in the chateau, and threaten to fire it if other papers,
+which they allege are concealed there, are not surrendered." Near Redon
+the Abbey of Saint-Sauveur is reduced to ashes. Redon is menaced, and
+Plo�rmel almost besieged. At the end of a month thirty-seven chateaux
+are enumerated as attacked: twenty-five in which the title-deeds are
+burnt, and twelve in which the proprietors are obliged to sign an
+abandonment of their rights. Two chateaux which began to burn are saved
+by the National Guard. That of Bois-au-Voyer is entirely consumed,
+and several have been sacked. By way of addition, "more than fifteen
+procureurs-fiscaux, clerks, notaries, and officers of seignorial courts
+have been plundered or burnt," while proprietors take refuge in the
+towns because the country is now uninhabitable for them.
+
+A second tumor makes its appearance at the same time at another
+point.[3263] It showed itself in Lower Limousin in the beginning of
+January. From thence the purulent inflammation spreads to Quercy,
+Upper Languedoc, Perigord, and Rouergue, and in February from Tulle to
+Montauban, and from Agen to P�rigueux and Cahors, extending over three
+departments.--Then, also, expectancy is the creator, according to rule,
+of its own object. By dint of longing for a law for the suppression
+of all claims, it is imagined that it is passed, and the statement
+is current that "the King and the National Assembly have ordered
+deputations to set up the maypole[3264] and to 'light up' the
+chateaux."--Moreover, and always in accordance with current practice,
+bandits, people without occupation, take the lead of the furious crowd
+and manage things their own way. As soon as a band is formed it arrests
+all the peaceable people it can find on the roads, in the fields, and in
+isolated farmhouses, and takes good care to put them in front in case
+of blows.--These miscreants add terror to compulsion. They erect gibbets
+for any one that pays casual duties or annual dues, while the parishes
+of Quercy threaten their neighbors of Perigord with fire and sword in
+a week's time if they do not do in Perigord as they have done in
+Quercy.--The tocsin rings, the drums beat, and "the ceremony" is
+performed from commune to commune. The keys of the church are forcibly
+taken from the cur� the seats are burned, and, frequently, the woodwork
+marked with the seigneur's arms. They march to the seigneur's mansion,
+tear down his weathercocks, and compel him to furnish his finest tree,
+together with feathers and ribbons with which to deck it, without
+omitting the three measures which he uses in the collection of his dues
+in grain or flour. The maypole is planted in the village square, and the
+weathercocks, ribbons, and feathers are attached to its top, together
+with the three measures and this inscription, "By order of the King and
+National Assembly, the final quittance for all rentals." When this
+is done it is evident that the seigneur, who no longer possesses
+weathercocks, or a seat in the church, or measures to rate his dues by,
+is no longer a seigneur, and can no longer put forth claims of any kind.
+Huzzahs and acclamations accordingly burst forth, and there is a revel
+and an orgy on the public square. All who can pay--the seigneur, the
+cur�, and the rich--are put under contribution for the festival, while
+the people eat and drink "without any interval of sobriety."--In this
+condition, being armed, they strike, and when resistance is offered,
+they burn. In Ag�nois, a chateau belonging to M. de Lameth, and another
+of M. d'Aiguillon; in Upper Languedoc, that of M. de Bournazel, and in
+Perigord that of M. de Bar, are burnt down:
+
+M. de Bar is almost beaten to death, while six others are killed
+in Quercy. A number of chateaux in the environs of Montauban and in
+Limousin are assaulted with firearms, and several are pillaged.--Bands
+of twelve hundred men swarm the country; "they have a spite against
+every estate;" they redress wrongs; "they try over again cases
+disposed of thirty years ago, and give judgments which they put into
+execution."--If anybody fails to conform to the new code he is punished,
+and to the advantage of the new sovereigns. In Ag�nois, a gentleman
+having paid the rent which was associated with his fief the people take
+his receipt from him, mulct him in a sum equal to that which he paid,
+and come under his windows to spend the money on good cheer, in triumph
+and with derision.
+
+Many of the National Guards who still possess some degree of energy,
+several of the municipalities which still preserve some love of order,
+and a number of the resident gentry, employ their arms against these
+excited swarms of brutal usurpers. Some of the ruffians, taken in the
+act, are judged somewhat after the fashion of a drum-head court-martial,
+and immediately executed as examples. Everybody in the country sees
+that the peril to society is great and urgent, and that if such acts go
+unpunished, there will be no such thing as law and property in
+France. The Bordeaux parliament, moreover, insists upon prosecutions.
+Eighty-three boroughs and cities sign addresses, and send a special
+deputation to the National Assembly to urge on prosecutions already
+commenced, the punishment of criminals under arrest, and, above all,
+the maintenance of the pr�v�t�s.[3265] In reply to this, the Assembly
+inflicts upon the parliament of Bordeaux its disapprobation in the
+rudest manner, and enters upon the demolition of every judicial
+corporation.[3266] After this, the execution of all pr�votal decisions
+is adjourned. A few months later the Assembly will oblige the King to
+declare that the proceedings begun against the jacquerie of Brittany
+shall be regarded as null and void, and that the arrested insurgents
+shall be set free. For repressive purposes, it dispatches a sentimental
+exhortation to the French people, consisting of twelve pages of literary
+insipidity, which Florian might have composed for his Estilles and
+his Nemorins.[3267]--New conflagrations, as an inevitable consequence,
+kindle around live coals which have been imperfectly extinguished. In
+the district of Saintes,[3268] M. Dupaty, counselor of the parliament of
+Bordeaux, after having exhausted mild resources, and having concluded
+by issuing writs against those of his tenantry who would not pay their
+rents, the parish of Saint-Thomas de Cosnac, combined with five or six
+others, puts itself in motion and assails his two chateaux of Bois-Roche
+and Saint-George-des-Agouts; these are plundered and then set on fire,
+his son escaping through a volley of musket-balls. They visit Martin,
+the notary and steward, in the same fashion; his furniture is pillaged
+and his money is taken, and "his daughter undergoes the most frightful
+outrages." Another detachment pushes on to the house of-the Marquis
+de Cumont, and forces him, under the penalty of having his house burnt
+down, to give a discharge for all the claims he has upon them. At the
+head of these incendiaries are the municipal officers of Saint-Thomas,
+except the mayor, who has taken to flight.
+
+The electoral system organized by the Constituent Assembly is beginning
+to take effect. "Almost everywhere," writes the royal commissioner, "the
+large proprietors have been eliminated, and the offices have been filled
+by men who strictly fulfill the conditions of eligibility. The result
+is a sort of rage of the petty rich to annoy those who enjoy large
+heritages."--Six months later, the National Guards and village
+authorities in this same department at Aujean, Migron, and Varaise,
+decide that no more tithes, agriers or champarts, nor any of the dues
+which are retained, shall be paid. In vain does the department annul the
+decision, and send its commissioners, gendarmes, and law-officers. The
+commissioners are driven away, and the officers and gendarmes are fired
+upon; the vice-president of the district, who was on his way to make his
+report to the department, is seized on the road and forced to give in
+his resignation. Seven parishes have coalesced with Aujean and ten
+with Migron; Varaise has sounded the tocsin, and the villages for four
+leagues round have risen; fifteen hundred men, armed with guns, scythes,
+hatchets and pitchforks, lend their aid. The object is to set free
+the principal leader at Varaise, one Planche, who was arrested, and
+to punish the mayor of Varaise, Latierce, who is suspected of having
+denounced Planche. Latierce is unmercifully beaten, and "forced to
+undergo a thousand torments during thirty hours;" then they set out
+with him to Saint-Jean-d'Angely, and demand the release of Planche. The
+municipality at first refuses, but finally consents on the condition
+that Latierce be given up in exchange for him. Planche, consequently, is
+set at liberty and welcomed with shouts of triumph. Latierce, however,
+is not given up; on the contrary, he is tormented for an hour and then
+massacred, while the directory of the district, which is less submissive
+than the municipal body, is forced to fly.--Symptoms of this kind are
+not to be mistaken, and similar ones exist in Brittany. It is evident
+that the minds of the people are permanently in revolt. Instead of the
+social abscess being relieved by the discharge, it is always filling
+up and getting more inflamed. It will burst a second time in the same
+places; in 1791 as in 1790, the jacquerie spreads throughout Brittany as
+it has spread over Limousin.
+
+This is because the determination of the peasant is of another nature
+than ours, his will being more firm and tenacious. When an idea obtains
+a hold on him it takes root in an obscure and profound conviction upon
+which neither discussion nor argument have any effect; once planted,
+it vegetates according to his notions, not according to ours, and no
+legislative text, no judicial verdict, no administrative remonstrance
+can change in any respect the fruit it produces. This fruit, developed
+during centuries, is the feeling of an excessive plunder, and,
+consequently, the need of an absolute release. Too much having been
+paid to everybody, the peasant now is not disposed to pay anything to
+anybody, and this idea, vainly repressed, always rises up in the manner
+of an instinct.--In the month of January, 1791,[3269] bands again
+form in Brittany, owing to the proprietors of the ancient fiefs having
+insisted on the payment of their rents. At first the coalesced parishes
+refuse to pay the stewards, and after this the rustic National Guards
+enter the chateaux to constrain the proprietors. Generally, it is the
+commander of the National Guard, and sometimes the communal attorney,
+who dictates to the lord of the manor the renunciation of his claims;
+they oblige him, moreover, to sign notes for the benefit of the parish,
+or for that of various private individuals. This is considered by them
+to be compensation for damages; all feudal dues being abolished, he must
+return what he received from them during the past year, and as they have
+been put to inconvenience he must indemnify them by "paying them for
+their time and journey." Such are the operations of two of the principal
+bands, one of them numbering fifteen hundred men, around Dinan and St.
+Malo; for greater security they burn title-deeds in the chateaux of
+Saint-Tual, Besso, Beaumanoir, La Rivi�re, La Belli�re, Chateauneuf,
+Chenay, Chausavoir, Tourdelon, and Chalonge; and as a climax they set
+fire to Chateauneuf just before the arrival of the regular troops.--In
+the beginning, a dim conception of legal and social order seems to be
+floating in their brains; at Saint-Tual, before taking 2,000 livres from
+the steward, they oblige the mayor to give them his consent in writing;
+at Yvignac, their chief, called upon to show the authority under which
+he acted, declares that "he is authorized by the general will of the
+populace of the nation."[3270]--But when, at the end of a month, they
+are beaten by the regular troops, made furious by the blows given and
+taken, and excited by the weakness of the municipal authorities who
+release their prisoners, they then become bandits of the worst species.
+During the night of the 22nd of February, the chateau of Villefranche,
+three leagues from Malestroit, is attacked. Thirty-two rascals with
+their faces masked, and led by a chief in the national uniform, break
+open the door. The domestics are strangled. The proprietor, M. de la
+Bourdonnaie, an old man, with his wife aged sixty, are half killed by
+blows and tied fast to their bed, and after this a fire is applied to
+their feet and they are warmed (chauff�). In the meantime the plate,
+linen, stuffs, jewelry, two thousand francs in silver, and even watches,
+buckles, and rings,--everything is pillaged, piled on the backs of
+the eleven horses in the stables, and carried off.--When property is
+concerned, one sort of outrage provokes another, the narrow cupidity
+of the lease-holder being completed by the unlimited rapacity of the
+brigand.
+
+Meanwhile, in the south-western provinces, the same causes have produced
+the same results; and towards the end of autumn, when the crops are
+gathered in and the proprietors demand their dues in money or in
+produce, the peasant, immovably fixed in his idea, again refuses.[3271]
+In his eyes, any law that may be against him is not that of the
+National Assembly, but of the so-called seigneurs, who have extorted or
+manufactured it; and therefore it is null. The department and district
+administrators may promulgate it as much as they please: it does not
+concern him, and if the opportunity occurs, he knows how to make them
+smart for it. The village National Guards, who are lease-holders like
+himself, side with him, and instead of repressing him give him their
+support. As a commencement, he replants the maypoles, as a sign of
+emancipation, and erects the gibbet by way of a threat.--In the district
+of Gourdon, the regulars and the police having been sent to put them
+down, the tocsin is at once sounded: a crowd of peasants, amounting to
+four or five thousand, arrives from every surrounding parish, armed with
+scythes and guns; the soldiers, forming a body of one hundred, retire
+into a church, where they capitulate after a siege of twenty-four hours,
+being obliged to give the names of the proprietors who demanded their
+intervention of the district, and who are Messrs. H�bray, de Fontange,
+and many others. All their houses are destroyed from top to bottom,
+and they effect their escape in order not to be hung. The chateaux of
+Repaire and Salviat are burned. At the expiration of eight days Quercy
+is in flames and thirty chateaux are destroyed.--The leader of a band
+of rustic National Guards, Joseph Linard, at the head of a village
+army, penetrates into Gourdon, installs himself in the H�tel-de-Ville,
+declares himself the people's protector against the directory of the
+district, writes to the department in the name of his "companions in
+arms," and vaunts his patriotism. Meanwhile he commands as a conqueror,
+throws open the prisons, and promises that, if the regular troops
+and police be sent off; he and his companions will withdraw in good
+order.--This species of tumultuous authority, however, instituted by
+acclamation for attack, is powerless for resistance. Scarcely has Linard
+retired when savagery is let loose. "A price is set upon the heads
+of the administrators; their houses are the first devastated; all the
+houses of wealthy citizens are pillaged; and the same is the case
+with all chateaux and country habitations which display any signs of
+luxury."--Fifteen gentlemen, assembled together at the house of M.
+d'Escayrac, in Castel, appeal to all good citizens to march to the
+assistance of the proprietors who may be attacked in this jacquerie,
+which is spreading everywhere;[3272] but there are too few proprietors
+in the country, and none of the towns have too many of them for their
+own protection. M. d'Escayrac, after a few skirmishes, abandoned by the
+municipal officers of his village, and wounded, withdraws to the house
+of the Comte de Clarac, a major-general, in Languedoc. Here, too, the
+chateau, is surrounded,[3273] blockaded, and besieged by the local
+National Guard. M. de Clarac descends and tries to hold a parley with
+the attacking party, and is fired upon. He goes back inside and throws
+money out of the window; the money is gathered up, and he is again fired
+upon. The chateau is set on fire, and M. d'Escayrac receives five shots,
+and is killed. M. de Clarac, with another person, having taken refuge in
+a subterranean vault, are taken out almost stifled the next morning but
+one by the National Guard of the vicinity, who conduct them to Toulouse,
+where they are kept in prison and where the public prosecutor takes
+proceedings against them. The chateau of Bagat, near Montouq, is
+demolished at the same time. The abbey of Espagnac, near Figeac, is
+assaulted with fire-arms; the abbess is forced to refund all rents she
+has collected, and to restore four thousand livres for the expenses of a
+trial which the convent had gained twenty years before.
+
+After such successes, the extension of the revolt is inevitable; and
+at the end of some weeks and months it becomes permanent in the three
+neighboring departments.--In Creuse,[3274] the judges are threatened
+with death if they order the payment of seignorial dues, and the same
+fate awaits all proprietors who claim their rents. In many places, and
+especially in the mountains, the peasants, "considering that they form
+the nation, and that clerical possessions are national," want to have
+these divided amongst themselves, instead of their being sold. Fifty
+parishes around La Souterraine receive incendiary letters inviting them
+to come in arms to the town, in order to secure by force, and by staking
+their lives, the production of all titles to rentals. The peasants, in a
+circle of eight leagues, are all stirred up by the sound of the tocsin,
+and preceded by the municipal officers in their scarves; there are four
+thousand of them, and they drag with them a wagon full of arms: this is
+for the revision and re-constitution of the ownership of the soil.--In
+Dordogne,[3275] self-appointed arbitrators interpose imperiously between
+the proprietor and the small farmer, at the time of harvest, to prevent
+the proprietor from claiming, and the farmer from paying, the tithes or
+the r�ve;[3276] any agreement to this end is forbidden; whoever shall
+transgress the new order of things, proprietor or farmer, shall be hung.
+Accordingly, the rural militia in the districts of Bergerac, Excideuil,
+Rib�rac, Mucidan, Montignac, and Perigueux, led by the municipal
+officers, go from commune to commune in order to force the proprietors
+to sign an act of withdrawal; and these visits "are always accompanied
+with robberies, outrages, and ill-treatment from which there is no
+escape but in absolute submission." Moreover, "they demand the abolition
+of every species of tax and the partition of the soil. "--It is
+impossible for "proprietors moderately rich" to remain in the country;
+on all sides they take refuge in Perigueux, and there, organizing in
+companies, along with the gendarmerie and the National Guard of the
+town, overrun the cantons to restore order. But there is no way of
+persuading the peasantry that it is order which they wish to restore.
+With that stubbornness of the imagination which no obstacle arrests,
+and which, like a vigorous spring, always finds some outlet, the people
+declare that "the gendarmes and National Guard" who come to restrain
+them "are priests and gentlemen in disguise."--The new theories,
+moreover, have struck down to the lowest depths; and nothing is easier
+than to draw from them the abolition of debts, and even the agrarian
+law. At Rib�rac, which is invaded by the people of the neighboring
+parishes, a village tailor, taking the catechism of the Constitution
+from his pocket, argues with the procureur-syndic, and proves to him
+that the insurgents are only exercising the rights of man. The book
+states, in the first place, "that Frenchmen are equals and brethren,
+and that they should give each other aid;" and that "the masters
+should share with their fellows, especially this year, which is one of
+scarcity." In the next place, it is written that "all property belongs
+to the nation," and that is the reason why "it has taken the possessions
+of the Church." Now, all Frenchmen compose the nation, and the
+conclusion is clearly apparent. Since, in the eyes of the tailor, the
+property of individual Frenchmen belongs to all the French, he, the
+tailor, has a right to at least the quota which belongs to him.--One
+travels fast and far on this downhill road, for every mob considers
+that this means immediate enjoyment, and enjoyment according to its own
+ideas. There is no care for neighbors or for consequences, even when
+imminent and physical, and in twenty places the confiscated property
+perishes in the hands of the usurpers.
+
+This voluntary destruction of property can be best observed in the
+third department, that of Corr�ze.[3277] Not only have the peasants here
+refused to pay rents from the beginning of the Revolution; not only have
+they "planted maypoles, supplied with iron hooks, to hang the first
+one that dared to claim or to pay them;" not only are violent acts of
+every description committed "by entire communes," "the National Guards
+of the small communes participating in them;" not only do the culprits,
+whose arrest is ordered, remain at liberty, while "nothing is spoken
+of but the hanging of the constables who serve writs," but farther,
+together with the ownership of the water-sources, the power of
+collecting, directing, and distributing the water is overthrown, and, in
+a country of in a country of steep slopes, the consequences of such
+an operation may be imagined. Three leagues from Tulle, in a forming a
+semi-circle, a pond twenty feet in depth, and covering an area of three
+hundred acres, was enclosed by a broad embankment on the side of a
+very deep gorge, which was completely covered with houses, mills, and
+cultivation. On the 17th of April, 1791, a troop of five hundred armed
+men assembled by the beat of a drum, and collected from three villages
+in the vicinity, set themselves to demolish the dike. The proprietor,
+M. de Sedi�res, a substitute-deputy in the National Assembly, is not
+advised of it until eleven o'clock in the evening. Mounting his horse,
+along with his guests and domestics, he makes a charge on the insane
+wretches, and, with the aid of pistol and gun shots, disperses them. It
+was time, for the trench they had dug was already eight feet deep,
+and the water was nearly on a level with it: a half-hour later and the
+terrible rolling mass of waters would have poured out on the inhabitants
+of the gorge.--But such vigorous strokes, which are rare and hardly ever
+successful, are no defense against universal and continuous attacks.
+The regular troops and the gendarmerie, both of which are in the way of
+reorganization or of dissolution, are not trustworthy, or are too weak.
+There are no more than thirty of the cavalry in Creuse, and as many in
+Corr�ze. The National Guards of the towns are knocked up by expeditions
+into the country, and there is no money with which to provide for their
+change of quarters. And finally, as the elections are in the hands of
+the people, this brings into power men disposed to tolerate popular
+excesses. At Tulle, the electors of the second class, almost all chosen
+from among the cultivators, and, moreover, catechized by the club,
+nominate for deputies and public prosecutor only the candidates who are
+pledged against rentals and against water privileges.--Accordingly, the
+general demolition of the dikes begins as the month of May approaches.
+This operation continues unopposed on a vast pond, a league and a half
+from the town, and lasts for a whole week; elsewhere, on the arrival of
+the guards or of the gendarmerie, they are fired upon. Towards the end
+of September, all the embankments in the department are broken down:
+nothing is left in the place of the ponds but fetid marshes; the
+mill-wheels no longer turn, and the fields are no longer watered. But
+those who demolish them carry away baskets full of fish, and the soil of
+the ponds again becomes communal.--Hatred is not the motive which impels
+them, but the instinct of acquisition: all these violent outstretched
+hands, which rigidly resist the law, are directed against property, but
+not against the proprietor; they are more greedy than hostile. One of
+the noblemen of Corr�ze,[3278] M. de Saint-Victour, has been absent for
+five years. From the beginning of the Revolution, although his feudal
+dues constitute one-half of the income of his estate, he has given
+orders that no rigorous measures shall be employed in their collection,
+and the result is that, since 1789, none of them were collected.
+Moreover, having a reserve stock of wheat on hand, he lent grain, to the
+amount of four thousand francs, to those of his tenants who had none.
+In short, he is liberal, and, in the neighboring town, at Ussel, he even
+passes for a Jacobin. In spite of all this, he is treated just like the
+rest. It is because the parishes in his domain are "clubbist," governed
+by associations of moral and practical levelers; in one of them "the
+brigands have organized themselves into a municipal body," and have
+chosen their leader as procureur-syndic. Consequently, on the 22nd of
+August, eighty armed peasants opened the dam of his large pond, at the
+risk of submerging a village in the neighborhood, the inhabitants of
+which came and closed it up. Five other ponds belonging to him are
+demolished in the course of the two following weeks; fish to the value
+of from four to five thousand francs are stolen, and the rest perish in
+the weeds. In order to make this expropriation sure, an effort is made
+to burn his title-deeds; his chateau, twice attacked in the night, is
+saved only by the National Guard of Ussel. His farmers and domestics
+hesitate, for the time being, whether or not to cultivate the ground,
+and come and ask the steward if they could sow the seeds. There is no
+recourse to the proper authorities: the administrators and judges, even
+when their own property is concerned, "dare not openly show themselves,"
+because "they do not find themselves protected by the shield of the law.
+"--Popular will, traversing both the old and the new law, obstinately
+persists in its work, and forcibly attains its ends. Thus, whatever the
+grand terms of liberty, equality, and fraternity may be, with which the
+Revolution graces itself, it is, in its essence, a transfer of property;
+in this alone consists its chief support, its enduring energy,
+its primary impulse and its historical significance.--Formerly, in
+antiquity, similar movements were accomplished, debts were abolished or
+lessened, the possessions of the rich were confiscated, and the public
+lands were divided; but this operation was confined to a city and
+limited to a small territory. For the first time it takes place on a
+large scale and in a modern State.--Thus far, in these vast States, when
+the deeper foundations have been disturbed, it has ever been on account
+of foreign domination or on account of an oppression of conscience.
+In France in the fifteenth century, in Holland in the sixteenth and in
+England in the seventeenth century, the peasant, the mechanic, and the
+laborer had taken up arms against an enemy or in behalf of their faith.
+On religious or patriotic zeal has followed the craving for prosperity
+and comfort, and the new motive is as powerful as the others; for in
+our industrial, democratic, and utilitarian societies it is this which
+governs almost all lives, and excites almost all efforts. Kept down for
+centuries, the passion recovers itself by throwing off government
+and privilege, the two great weights which have borne it down. At the
+present time this passion launches itself impetuously with its whole
+force, with brutal insensibility, athwart every kind of proprietorship
+that is legal and legitimate, whether it be public or private. The
+obstacles it encounters only render it the more destructive,
+beyond property it attacks proprietors, and completes plunder with
+proscriptions.
+
+
+*****
+
+
+[Footnote 3201: The expression is that of Jean Bon Saint-Andr� to
+Mathieu Dumas, sent to re-establish tranquillity in Montauban (1790):
+"The day of vengeance, which we have been awaiting for a hundred years,
+has come!"]
+
+[Footnote 3202: De Dampmartin, I. 187 (an eye-witness).]
+
+[Footnote 3203: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3223 and 3216. Letters of
+M. de Bouzols, major general, residing at Montpellier, May 21, 25, 28,
+1790.]
+
+[Footnote 3204: Mary Lafon, "Histoire d'une Ville Protestante ".(with
+original documents derived from the archives of Montauban).]
+
+[Footnote 3205: Archives Nationales," F7, 2216. Proc�s-verbal of the
+Municipality of N�mes and report of the Abb� de Belmont.--Report of the
+Administrative commissioners, June 28, 1790.--Petition of the Catholics,
+April 20.--Letters of the Municipality, the commissioners, and M.
+de Nausel, on the events of May 2 and 3.--Letter of M. Rabaut
+Saint-Etienne, May 12--Petition of the widow Gas, July 30.--Report
+(printed) of M. Alquier, February 19, 1791.--Memoir (printed) of the
+massacre of the Catholics at N�mes, by Froment (1790).--New address
+of the Municipality of N�mes, presented by M. de Marguerite, mayor and
+deputy (1790), printed. Mercure de France, February 23, 1791.]
+
+[Footnote 3206: The petition is signed by 3,127 persons, besides
+1560 who put a cross declaring that they could not write. The
+counter-petition of the club is signed by 262 persons.]
+
+[Footnote 3207: This last item, stated in M. Alquier's report, is denied
+by the municipality. According to it, the red rosettes gathered around
+the bishop's quarters had no guns.]
+
+[Footnote 3208: An insurrection in the sixteenth century, when the
+Protestants fired on the Catholics on St. Michael's Day.--320TR.]
+
+[Footnote 3209: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3216. Letter of M. de Lespin,
+Major at N�mes, to the commandant of Provence, M de Perigord, July
+27, 1790: "The plots and conspiracies which were attributed to the
+vanquished party, and which, it was believed, would be discovered in the
+depositions of the four hundred men in prison, vanish as the proceedings
+advance. The veritable culprits are to be found among the informers."]
+
+[Footnote 3210: Buchez and Roux, III. 240 (Memorandum of the Ministers,
+October 28, 1789).--"Archives Nationales," D, XXIX. 3. Deliberation of
+the Municipal council of Vernon (November 4, 1789)]
+
+[Footnote 3211: "Archives Nationales," KK, 1105. correspondence of M. de
+Thiard, November 4, 1789.--See similar occurrences, September 4, October
+23, November 4 and 19, 1789, January 27 and March 27, 1790]
+
+[Footnote 3212: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3257. Letter from Gex, May
+29, 1790.--Buchez and Roux, VII. 198, 369 (September, October, 1790).]
+
+[Footnote 3213: "Archives Nationales," H. 1453. correspondence of M. de
+Bercheny, Commandant of the four central provinces. Letters of May
+25, June 11, 19, and 27, 1790.--" Archives Nationales," D. XXIX. 4.
+Deliberations of the district administrators of Bourbon-Lancy, May 26.]
+
+[Footnote 3214: "Archives Nationales," H. 2453. Minutes of the meeting
+of a dozen parishes in Nivernais, June 4. "White bread is to be 2 sous,
+and brown bread 11/2 sous. Husbandmen are to have 30 sous, reapers 10
+sous, wheelwrights 10 sous, bailiffs 6 sous per league. Butter is to
+be at 8 sous, meat at 5 sous, pork at 8 sous, oil at 8 sous the pint, a
+square foot of masonry-work 40 sous, a pair of large sabots 3 sous. All
+rights of pasturage and of forests are to be surrendered. The roads
+are to be free everywhere, as formerly. All seignorial rents are to be
+suppressed. Millers are to take only one thirty-second of a bushel.
+The seigneurs of our department are to give up all servile holidays and
+ill-acquired property. The cur� of Bi�ze is simply to say mass at nine
+o'clock in the morning and vespers at two o'clock in the afternoon, in
+summer and winter; he must marry and bury gratis, it being reserved to
+us to pay him a salary. He is to be paid 6 sous for masses, and not to
+leave his cur� except to repeat his breviary and make proper calls on
+the men and women of his parish. Hats must be had from 3 livres to 30
+sous. Nails 3 livres the gross. Cur�s are to have none but circumspect
+females of fifty for domestics. Cur�s are not to go to either fairs or
+markets. All cur�s are to be on the same footing as the one at Bi�ze.
+There must be no more wholesale dealers in wheat. Law officers who make
+unjust seizures must return the money. Farm leases must expire on St.
+Martin's Day. M. le Comte, although not there, M. de Tontenelle, and M.
+de Commandant must sign this document without difficulty. M. de Mingot
+is formally to resign his place in writing: he went away with his
+servant-woman--he even missed his mass on the first Friday of the
+F�te-Dieu, and it is supposed that he slept in the woods. Joiners' wages
+shall be fixed at the same rate as wheelwrights'. Ox-straps are not
+to cost over 40 sous, yokes 10 sous. Masters must pay one-half of the
+tailles. Notaries are to take only the half of what they had formerly,
+as well as comptrollers. The Commune claims the right of protest against
+whatever it may have forgotten in the present article, in fact or in
+law." (It is signed by about twenty persons, several of them being
+mayors and municipal clerks.)]
+
+[Footnote 3215: "Archives Nationales," H. 1453. The same correspondence,
+May 29, June 11 and 17, September 15, 1790.--ibid, F7, 3257. Letter of
+the municipal authorities of Marsigny, May 3; of the municipal officers
+of Bourbon-Lancy, June 5. Extract from letters written to M. Amelot,
+June 1st.]
+
+[Footnote 3216: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3185, 3186. Letter of the
+President of the Tribunal of the district of Laon, February 8, 1792.]
+
+[Footnote 3217: "Archives Nationales F7, 3268. Proc�s-verbal and
+observations of the two commissioners sent to �tampes September 22-25,
+1791.]
+
+[Footnote 3218: "Archives Nationales F7, 3265. The following document,
+among many others, shows the expedients and conceptions of the popular
+imagination. Petition of several inhabitants of the commune of Forges
+(Seine Inf�rieure) "to the good and incorruptible Minister of the
+Interior" (October 16, 1792). After three good crops in succession,
+the famine still continues. Under the ancient r�gime wheat was
+superabundant; hogs were fed with it, and calves were fattened with
+bread. It is certain, therefore, that wheat is diverted by monopolists
+and the enemies of the new regime. The farms are too large; let them
+he divided. There is too much pasture-ground: sow it with wheat. Compel
+each farmer and land-owner to give a statement of his crop: let the
+quantity be published at the church service, and in case of falsehood
+let the man be put to death or imprisoned, and his grain he confiscated.
+Oblige all the cultivators of the neighborhood to sell their wheat at
+Forges only, etc."]
+
+[Footnote 3219: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3268. Report of the
+commissioners sent by the department, March 11, 1792 (apropos of the
+insurrection of March 4).--Mortimer-Ternaux, I. 381.]
+
+[Footnote 3220: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3268. Letters of several
+mayors, district administrators, cultivators of Velizy, Villacoublay,
+La celle-Saint-Cloud, Montigny, etc. November 12, 1791.--Letter of M.
+de Narbonne, January 13, 1792; of M. Sureau, justice of the peace in the
+canton of �tampes, September 17, 1791.--Letter of Bruy�res-le-Ch�tel,
+January 28, 1792.]
+
+[Footnote 3221: A term applied to brigands at this epoch who demand
+money and objects of value, and force their delivery by exposing the
+soles of the feet of their victims to a fire.--32TR.]
+
+[Footnote 3222: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3203. Letter of the Directory
+of Cher, August 25, 1791.--F7, 3240. Letter of the Directory of Haute
+Marne, November 6, 1791.--F7, 3248. Minutes of the meeting of the
+members of the department of the Nord, March 18, 1791.--F7, 3250.
+Minutes of the meeting of the municipal officers of Montreuil-sur-Mer,
+October 16, 1791.--F7, 3265. Letter of the Directory of Seine Infereure,
+July 22, 1791.--D, XXIX. 4. Remonstrances of the municipalities
+assembled at Tostes, July 21, 1791.--Petition, of the municipal officers
+of the districts of Dieppe, Cany, and Caudebec, July 22, 1791.]
+
+[Footnote 3223: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3268 and 3269, passim.]
+
+[Footnote 3224: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3268 and 3269, passim.
+Deliberations of the Directory of Seine-et-Oise, September 20, 1791
+(apropos of the insurrection. September 16, at �tampes).--Letter of
+Charpentier, president of the district, September 19.--Report of the
+Department Commissioners, March 11, 1792 (on the insurrection at Brunoy,
+March 4.)--Report of the Department Commissioners, March 4, 1792 (on
+the insurrection at Montlh�ry, February 13 to 20).--Deliberation of the
+Directory of Seine-et-Oise, September 16, 1791 (on the insurrection at
+Corbeil).--Letters of the mayors of Limours, Lonjumeau, etc.]
+
+[Footnote 3225: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3268 and 3269,
+passim.--Minutes of the meeting of the Municipality of Montlh�ry,
+February 28, 1792: "We cannot enter into fuller details without exposing
+ourselves to extremities which would be only disastrous to us."--Letter
+of the justice of the peace of the canton, February 25: "Public outcry
+teaches me that if I issue writs of arrest against those who massacred
+Thibault, the people would rise."]
+
+[Footnote 3226: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3268 and 3269, passim.
+Reports of the gendarmerie, February 24, 1792, and the following
+days.--Letter of the sergeant of Limours, March 2; of the manager of the
+farm of Plessis-le-Comte, February 23.]
+
+[Footnote 3227: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3268 and 3269,
+passim.--Memorandum to the National Assembly by the citizens of
+Rambouillet, September 17, 1792.]
+
+[Footnote 3228: "Archives Nationales," F7 3268 and 3269, Passim.
+Minutes of the meeting of the Municipality of Montlh�ry, February
+27, 1792.--Buchez and Roux, XIII. 421, (March, 1792); and XIII.,
+317.--Mercure de France, February 25, 1792. (Letters of M. Dauchy,
+President of the Directory of the Department; of M. de Gouy, messenger
+sent by the minister, etc.)--Moniteur, sitting of February 15, 1792.]
+
+[Footnote 3229: Decree of September 3, 1792.]
+
+[Footnote 3230: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3268 and 3269. Petition of
+the citizens of Montfort-l'Amaury, Saint-L�ger, Gros-Rouvre, Gelin,
+Laqueue, and M�r�, to the citizens of Rambouillet.]
+
+[Footnote 3231: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3230. Letter of an
+administrator of the district of Vend�me, with the deliberation of the
+commune of Vend�me, November 24, 1792.]
+
+[Footnote 3232: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3255. Letter of the
+administrators of the Department of Seine-Inf�rieure, Octobers 23,
+1792.--Letters of the Special Committee of Rouen, October 22 and
+23, 1792: "The more the zeal and patriotism of the cultivators is
+stimulated, the more do they seem determined to avoid the market-places,
+which are always in a State of absolute destitution."]
+
+[Footnote 3233: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3265. Letter of David, a
+cultivator, October 20, 1792.--Letter of the Department Administrators,
+October 13, 1792, etc.--Letter (printed) of the minister to the
+convention, November 4.--Proclamation of the Provisional Executive
+council, October 31, 1792. (The setier of grain of two hundred and forty
+pounds is sold at 60 francs in the south, and at half that sum in the
+north.)]
+
+[Footnote 3234: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3255. Letters of Bonnemant,
+September 11, 1792; of Laussel, September 22, 1792.]
+
+[Footnote 3235: "Archives Nationales," H, 1453. Correspondence of M.
+de Bercheny, July 28, October 24 and 26, 1790.--The same disposition
+lasted. An insurrection occurred in Issoudun after the three days of
+July, 1830, against the combined imposts. Seven or eight thousand wine
+growers burnt the archives and tax-offices and dragged an employee
+through the streets, shouting out at each street-lamp, "Let him be
+hung!" The general sent to repress the outbreak entered the town only
+through a capitulation; the moment he reached the H�tel-de-Ville a
+man of the Faubourg de Rome put his pruning-book around his neck,
+exclaiming, "No more clerks where there is nothing to do!"]
+
+[Footnote 3236: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3203. Letter of the Directory
+of Cher, April 9, 1790.--Ibid, F7, 3255. Letter of August 4, 1790.
+Verdict of the pr�sidial, November 4, 1790.--Letter of the Municipality
+of Saint-Etienne, August 5, 1790.]
+
+[Footnote 3237: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3248. Letter of M. S�nac de
+Mejlhan, April 10, 1790.--Letter of the grands baillis, June 30, 1790.]
+
+[Footnote 3238: Buchez and Roux, VI. 403. Report of Chabroud on the
+insurrection at Lyons, July 9 and 10, 1790.--Duvergier, "Collection des
+D�crets." Decrees of August 4 and 15, 1790.]
+
+[Footnote 3239: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3255. Letter of the Minister,
+July 2, 1790, to the Directory of Rh�ne-et-Loire. "The King is informed
+that, throughout your department, and especially in the districts of
+Saint-Etienne and Montbrison, license is carried to the extreme;
+that the judges dare not prosecute; that in many places the municipal
+officers are at the head of the disturbances; and that, in others, the
+National Guard do not obey requisitions."--Letter of September 5, 1790.
+"In the bourg of Thisy, brigands have invaded divers cotton-spinning
+establishments and partially destroyed them and after having plundered
+them, they have sold the goods by public auction."]
+
+[Footnote 3240: Buchez and Roux, VI. 345. Report of M. Muguet, July 1,
+1790.]
+
+[Footnote 3241: Minutes of the meeting of the National Assembly.
+(Sitting of October 24, 1789.)--Decree of September 27, 1789, applicable
+the 1st of October. There are other alleviations applicable on the 1st
+of January, 1790.]
+
+[Footnote 3242: Mercure de France, February 27, 1790. (Memorandum of the
+garde des sceaux, January 16.)--Observations of M. Necker on the report
+made by the Financial committee, at the sitting of March 12, 1790.]
+
+[Footnote 3243: "Archives Nationales," H, 1453. Correspondence of M. de
+Bercheny, April 24, May 4 and 6, 1790: "It is much to be feared that the
+tobacco-tax will share the fate of the salt-tax."]
+
+[Footnote 3244: Mercure de France, July 31, 1790 (sitting of July 10.)
+M. Lambert, Comptroller General of the Finances, informs the Assembly of
+"the obstacles which continual outbreaks, brigandage, and the maxims of
+anarchical freedom impose, from one end of France to the other, on the
+collection of the taxes. On one side, the people are led to believe
+that, if they stubbornly refuse a tax contrary to their rights, it
+abolition will be secured. Elsewhere, smuggling is openly carried on
+by force; the people favor it, while the National Guards refuse to act
+against the nation. In other places hatred is excited, and divisions
+between the troops and the overseers at the toll-houses: the latter
+are massacred, the bureaus are pillaged, and the prisons are forced
+open."--Memorandum from M. Necker to the National Assembly, July 21,
+1790.]
+
+[Footnote 3245: Decrees of March 21 and 22, 1790, applicable April 21
+following.--Decrees of February 19 and March 2, 1791, applicable May 1
+following.]
+
+[Footnote 3246: De Goncourt, "La Societ� Fran�aise pendant la
+R�volution," 204.--Maxime Du Camp, "Paris, sa vie et ses organes," VI.
+11.]
+
+[Footnote 3247: "Compte des Revenus et D�penses au 1er Mai,
+1789."--Memorandum of M. Necker, July 21, 1790.--Memoranda presented by
+M. de Montesquiou, September 9, 1791.--Comptes-rendus by the minister,
+Clavi�res, October 5, 1792, February 1, 1792.--Report of Cambon,
+February, 1793.]
+
+[Footnote 3248: Boivin-Champeaux, 231.]
+
+[Footnote 3249: Mercure de France, May 28, 1791. (Sitting of May
+22.)--Speech of M. d'Allarde: "Burgundy has paid nothing belonging to
+1790."]
+
+[Footnote 3250: Moniteur, sitting of June 1, 1790. Speech by
+M. Freteau.--Mercure de France. November 26, 1791. Report by
+Lafont-Ladebat.]
+
+[Footnote 3251: "Archives Nationales," H, 2453. correspondence of M.
+de Bercheny, June 5, 1790, etc.--F7, 3226. Letters of Chenantin,
+cultivator, November 7, 1792, also of the prosecuting attorney, November
+6.--F7, 3269. Minutes of the meeting of the municipality of Clugnac,
+August 5th, 1792.--F7, 3202. Letter of the Minister of Justice, Duport,
+January 3, 1792. "The utter absence of public force in the district of
+Montargis renders every operation of the Government and all execution of
+the laws impossible. The arrears of taxes to be collected is here very
+considerable, while all proceedings of constraint are dangerous and
+impossible to execute, owing to the fears of the bailiffs, who dare not
+perform their duties, and the violence of the tax-payers, on whom there
+is no check."]
+
+[Footnote 3252: Report of the Committee on Finances, by Ramel, 19th
+Flor�al, year II (The Constituent Assembly had fixed the real tax of a
+house at one-sixth of its letting value.)]
+
+[Footnote 3253: Mercure de France, December 12, 1789.--"Archives
+Nationales," F7, 3268. Memorandum from the officers in command of
+the detachment of the Paris National Guard stationed at
+Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (April, 1790). Certificate of the Municipal
+Officers of Poissy, March 31.]
+
+[Footnote 3254: Mercure de France, March 12 and 26, 1791.--"Archives
+Nationales," H, 1453. Letter of the police-lieutenant of Blois, April
+22, 1790.--Mercure de France, July 24, 1790. Two of the murderers
+exclaimed to those who tried to save one of the keepers, "Hanging is
+well done at Paris! Bah, you are aristocrats! We shall be talked about
+in the gazettes of Paris." (Deposition of witnesses.)--Decrees and
+proclamations regarding the protection of the forests, November 3 and
+December 11, 1789.--Another in October, 1790.--Another June 29, 1791.]
+
+[Footnote 3255: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3219. Letter of the bailli de
+Virieu, January 26, 1792.]
+
+[Footnote 3256: Mercure de France, December 3, 1791. (Letter from
+Sarreluis, November 15, 1791.)--"Archives Nationales," F7, 3223. Letter
+of the Municipal Officers of Montargis. January 8, 1792.]
+
+[Footnote 3257: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3268. Letter of the overseer
+of the national domains at Rambouillet, October 31, 1792.--Report of the
+minister Clavi�res, February 1. 1793.]
+
+[Footnote 3258: Decrees of August 14, 1792, June 10, 1793.--"Archives
+Nationales," Missions des Repr�sentants, D, � 7. (Deliberation of the
+district of Troyes, 2 Ventose, an. III.)--At Thuneli�res, the drawing
+took place on the 10th Fructidor, year II, and was done over again in
+behalf of a servant of Billy, an influential municipal officer who
+"was the soul of his colleagues."--Ibid. Abstract of operations in the
+district of Arcis-sur-Aube, 30 Pluviose, year III. "Two-thirds of the
+communes hold this kind of property. Most of them have voted on and
+effected the partition, or are actually engaged on it."]
+
+[Footnote 3259: Mercure de France, January 7, 1790. (Chateau of Auxon in
+Haute-Saone.)--"Archives Nationales," F7, 3255. (Letter of the minister
+to the Directory of Rhone-et-Loire, July 2, 1790.)--Mercure de France,
+July 17, 1790. (Report of M. de Broglie, July 13, and decree of July
+13-18.)--"Archives Nationales," H, 1453. (Correspondence of M. de
+Bercheny, July 21, 1790.)]
+
+[Footnote 3260: Mercure de France, March 19, 1790. Letter from Amien,
+February 28. (Mallet du Pan publishes in the Mercure only letters which
+are signed and authentic.)]
+
+[Footnote 3261: "Archives Nationales," KK, 1105. (Correspondence of M.
+de Thiard; letters of Chevalier de B�vy, December 26, 1789, and others
+up to April 5, 1790.)--Moniteur, sitting of February 9, 1790.--Mercure
+de France, February 6 and March 6, 1790 (list of chateaux).]
+
+[Footnote 3262: "Archives Nationales," KK, 1105. (correspondence of M.
+de Thiard.) Letters of the Mayor of Nantes, February 16,!790, of the
+Municipality of Redon, February 19, etc.]
+
+[Footnote 3263: Mercure de France, February 6 and 27, 1790. (Speech of
+M. de Foucault, sittings of February 2 and 5)--Moniteur (same dates).
+(Report of Gr�goire, February 9; speeches by MM. Sall� de Chaux and de
+Noailles, February 9.)--Memorandum of the deputies of the town of Tulle,
+drawn up by the Abb� Morellet (from the deliberations and addresses of
+eighty-three boroughs and cities in the province).]
+
+[Footnote 3264: In allusion to the feudal custom of paying seignorial
+dues on the first of May around a maypole. See further on. 32TR]
+
+[Footnote 3265: Criminal Courts without appeal.--32TR.]
+
+[Footnote 3266: Moniteur, sitting of March 4, 1790.--Duvergier, decrees
+of March 6, 1790, and August 6-10 1790]
+
+[Footnote 3267: The address is dated February 11, 1793. This singularly
+comic document would alone suffice to make the history of the Revolution
+perfectly comprehensible.]
+
+[Footnote 3268: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3203. (Letters of the royal
+commissioner, April 30 and May 9, 1790.)--Letter of the Duc de Maill�,
+May 6.--Report from the administrators of the department, November 12,
+1790.--Moniteur VI. 515.]
+
+[Footnote 3269: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3225. Letter of the Directory
+from Ille-et-Vilaine, January 30, 1791, and letter from Dinan, January
+29--Mercure de France, April 2 and 16, 1791. Letters from Rennes, March
+20th; from Redon, March 12.]
+
+[Footnote 3270: So expressed in the minutes of the meeting.]
+
+[Footnote 3271: Moniteur, sitting of December 15, 1790. (Address of the
+department of Lot, December 7.)--Sitting of December 20 (Speech by M. de
+Foucault.)--Mercure de France, December 18, 1790. (Letter from Belves,
+in Perigord, December 7.)--Ibid., January 22, 29, 1791. (Letter from M.
+de Clarac, January 18.)]
+
+[Footnote 3272: December 17, 1790.]
+
+[Footnote 3273: January 7, 1791.]
+
+[Footnote 3274: Revolutionary archives of the department of Creuse,
+by Duval. (Letter of the administrators of the department, March 31,
+1791.)--"Archives Nationales," F7, 3209. (Deliberation of the
+Directory of the Department, May 12, 1791--Minutes of the meeting of the
+municipality of La Souterraine, August 23, 1791.)]
+
+[Footnote 3275: "Archives Nationales", F7, 3269.--Order of the directory
+of the district of Rib�rac, August 5, 1791, and requisitions of the
+prosecuting attorney of the department, August 24, and September
+11.--Letter of the king's commissioner, August 22.]
+
+[Footnote 3276: A sort of export duty.--32TR.]
+
+[Footnote 3277: "Archives Nationales," P7, 3204.--Letter, from the
+Directory of the Department, June 2, 1791; September 8 and 22.--Letter
+from the Minister of Justice, May 15, 1791.--Letter from M. de
+Lentilhac, September 2.--Letter from M. Melon-Padon, Royal Commissioner,
+September.--Mercure de France, May 14, 1791. (Letter of an eye-witness,
+M.de Loyac, April 25, 1791.)]
+
+[Footnote 3278: "Archives Nationales," F7. 3204. Letters from M. de
+Saint-Victour, September 25, October 2 and 10, 1791.--Letter from the
+steward of his estate, September 18.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. Development of the ruling Passion.
+
+
+
+
+I.--Attitude of the nobles. Their moderate resistance.
+
+If popular passion ended in murder it was not because resistance was
+great or violent. On the contrary, never did an aristocracy undergo
+dispossession with so much patience, or employ less force in the defense
+of its prerogatives, or even of its property. To speak with exactness,
+the class in question receives blows without returning them, and when
+it does take up arms, it is always with the bourgeois and the National
+Guard, at the request of the magistrates, in conformity with the law,
+and for the protection of persons and property. The nobles try to avoid
+being either killed or robbed, nothing more: for nearly three years
+they raise no political banner. In the towns where they exert the most
+influence and which are denounced as rebellious, for ex-ample in Mende
+and Arles, their opposition is limited to the suppression of riots, the
+restraining of the common people, and ensuring respect for the law, It
+is not the new order of things against which they conspire, but against
+brutal disorder.--At Mende," says the municipal body,[3301] "we had
+the honor of being the first to furnish the contributions of 1790. We
+supplied the place of our bishop and installed his successor without
+disturbance, and without the assistance of any foreign force . . . . We
+dispersed the members of a cathedral body to which we were attached by
+the ties of blood and friendship; we dismissed all, from the bishop down
+to the children of the choir. We had but three communities of mendicant
+monks, and all three have been suppressed. We have sold all national
+possessions without exception."--The commander of their gendarmerie is,
+in fact, an old member of the body-guard, while the superior officers of
+the National Guard are gentlemen, or belong to the order of Saint-Louis.
+It is very evident that, if they defend themselves against Jacobins,
+they are not insurgent against the National Assembly.--In Arles,[3302]
+which has put down its populace, which has armed itself, which has shut
+its gates, and which passes for a focus of royalist conspiracy, the
+commissioners sent by the King and by the National Assembly, men
+of discretion and of consideration, find nothing, after a month's
+investigation, but submission to the decrees and zeal for the public
+welfare.
+
+"Such," they say, "are the men who have been calumniated because,
+cherishing the Constitution, they hold fanaticism, demagogues and
+anarchy, in horror. If the citizens had not roused themselves when the
+moment of danger arrived, they would have been slaughtered like their
+neighbors (of Avignon). It is this insurrection against crime which the
+brigands have slandered." If their gates were shut it was because "the
+National Guard of Marseilles, the same which behaved so badly in the
+Comtat, flocked there under the pretext of maintaining liberty and of
+forestalling the counter-revolution, but, in reality, to village the
+town."
+
+Vive la Nation! Vive la Loi! Vive le Roi were the only cries heard at
+the very quiet and orderly elections that had just taken place.
+
+"The attachment of the citizens to the Constitution has been spoken
+of. . . . Obedience to the laws, the readiest disposition to discharge
+public contributions, were remarked by us among these pretended
+counter-revolutionaries. Those who are subject to the license-tax came
+in crowds to the H�tel-de-Ville." Scarcely "was the bureau of receipts
+opened when it was filled with respectable people; those on the contrary
+who style themselves good patriots, republicans or anarchists, were not
+conspicuous on this occasion; but a very small number among them have
+made their submission. The rest are surprised at being called upon for
+money; they had been given a quite different hope."
+
+In short, during more than thirty months, and under a steady fire of
+threats, outrages, and plunder, the nobles who remain in France neither
+commit nor undertake any hostile act against the Government that
+persecutes them. None of them, not even M. de Bouill�, attempts to carry
+out any real plan of civil war; I find but one resolute man in their
+ranks at this date, ready for action, and who labors to form one
+militant party against another militant party: he is really a politician
+and conspirator; he has an understanding with the Comte d'Artois; he
+gets petitions signed for the freedom of the King and of the Church;
+he organizes armed companies; he recruits the peasants; he prepares
+a Vend�e for Languedoc and Provence; and this person is a bourgeois,
+Froment of N�mes.[3303] But, at the moment of action, he finds only
+three out of eighteen companies, supposed by him to be enlisted in
+his cause, that are willing to march with him. Others remain in their
+quarters until, Froment being overcome, they are found there and
+slaughtered; the survivors, who escape to Jal�s, find, not a stronghold,
+but a temporary asylum, where they never succeed in transforming their
+inclinations into determinations.[3304]--The nobles too, like other
+Frenchmen, have been subject to the lasting pressure of monarchical
+centralization. They no longer form one body; they have lost the
+instinct of association. They no longer know how to act for themselves;
+they are the puppets of administration awaiting an impulse from the
+center, while at the center the King, their hereditary general, a
+captive in the hands of the people, commands them to be resigned and to
+do nothing.[3305] Moreover, like other Frenchmen, they have been
+brought up in the philosophy of the eighteenth century. "Liberty is
+so precious," wrote the Duc de Brissac,[3306] "that it may well be
+purchased with some suffering; a destroyed feudalism will not prevent
+the good and the true from being respected and loved."--They persist in
+this illusion for a long time and remain optimists. As they feel kindly
+towards the people, they cannot comprehend that the people should
+entertain other sentiments toward them; they firmly believe that
+the troubles are transient. Immediately on the proclamation of the
+Constitution they return in crowds from Spain, Belgium, and Germany;
+at Troyes there are not enough post-horses for many days to supply
+the emigrants who are coming back.[3307] Thus they accept not only the
+abolition of feudalism with civil equality, but also political equality
+and numerical sovereignty.
+
+Some consideration for them, some outward signs of respect, a few bows,
+would, in all probability, have rallied them sincerely to democratic
+institutions. They would soon consent to be confounded with the crowd,
+to submit to the common level, and to live as private individuals. Had
+they been treated like the bourgeois or the peasant, their neighbors,
+had their property and persons been respected, they might have accepted
+the new r�gime without any bitterness of feeling. That the leading
+emigrant nobles and those forming a part of the old court carry on
+intrigues at Coblentz or at Turin is natural, since they have lost
+everything: authority, places, pensions, sinecures, pleasures, and
+the rest. But, to the gentry and inferior nobles of the provinces,
+chevaliers of Saint-Louis, subaltern officers and resident proprietors,
+the loss is insignificant. The law has suppressed one-half of their
+seignorial dues; but by virtue of the same law their lands are no longer
+burdened with tithes. Popular elections will not provide them with
+places, but they did not enjoy them under the arbitrary ministerial
+rule. Little does it matter to them that power, whether ministerial or
+popular, has changed hands: they are not accustomed to its favors, and
+will pursue their ordinary avocations--the chase, promenading, reading,
+visiting, and conversing--provided they, like the first-comer, the
+grocer at the corner, or their farm-servant, find protection, safety,
+and security on the public road and in their dwellings.[3308]
+
+
+
+
+II.--Workings of the popular imagination with respect to them.
+
+     The monomania of suspicion.--The nobles distrusted and
+     treated as enemies.--Situation of a gentleman on his
+     domain.--M. de. Bussy
+
+Popular passion, unfortunately, is a blind power, and, for lack of
+enlightenment, suffers itself to be guided by spectral illusions.
+Imaginary conceptions work, and work in conformity with the structure of
+the excited brain which has given birth to them:
+
+What if the Ancient Regime should return!
+
+What if we were obliged to restore the property of the clergy!
+
+What if we should be again forced to pay the salt tax, the excise,
+the taille, and other dues which, thanks to the law, we no longer pay,
+besides other taxes and dues that we do not pay in spite of the law!
+
+What if all the nobles whose chateaux are burnt, and who have given rent
+acquittances at the point of the sword, should find some way to avenge
+themselves and recover their former privileges!
+
+Undoubtedly they brood over these things, make agreements amongst each
+other, and plot with the strangers; at the first opportunity they
+will fall upon us: we must watch them, repress them, and, if needs be,
+destroy them.--This instinctive process of reasoning prevailed from
+the outset, and, in proportion as excesses increase, prevails to a
+much greater extent. The noble is ever the past, present, and future
+creditor, or, at the very least, a possible one, which means that he is
+the worst and most odious of enemies. All his ways are suspicious, even
+when he is doing nothing; whatever he may do it is with a view of arming
+himself.
+
+M. de Gilliers, who lives with his wife and sister one league out of
+Romans in Dauphiny,[3309] amuses himself by planting trees and flowers;
+a few steps from his house, on another domain, M. de Montchorel, an old
+soldier, and M. Osmond, an old lawyer from Paris, with their wives and
+children, occupy their leisure hours in somewhat the same manner. M.
+de Gilliers having ordered and received wooden water-pipes, the report
+spreads that they are cannon. His guest, M. Servan, receives an English
+traveling-trunk, which is said to be full of pistols. When M. Osmond and
+M. Servan stroll about the country with pencils and drawing-paper, it
+is averred that they are preparing topographical plans for the Spaniards
+and Savoyards. The four carriages belonging to the two families go to
+Romans to fetch some guests: instead of four there are nineteen, and
+they are sent for aristocrats who are coming to hide away in underground
+passages. M. de Senneville, decorated with a cordon rouge (red ribbon),
+pays a visit on his return from Algiers: the decoration becomes a blue
+one, and the wearer is the Comte d'Artois[3310] in person. There is
+certainly a plot brewing, and at five o'clock in the morning eighteen
+communes (two thousand armed men) arrive before the doors of the two
+houses; shouts and threats of death last for eight hours; a gun fired a
+few paces off at the suspects misfires; a peasant who is aiming at them
+says to his neighbor, "Give me a decent gun and I will plant both
+my balls in their bodies!" Finally, M. de Gilliers, who was absent,
+attending a baptism, returns with the Royal Chasseurs of Dauphiny and
+the National Guard of Romans, and with their assistance delivers his
+family.--It is only in the towns, that is, in a few towns, and for a
+very short time, that an inoffensive noble who is attacked obtains any
+aid; the phantoms which people create for themselves there are less
+gross; a certain degree of enlightenment, and a remnant of common sense,
+prevent the hatching of too absurd stories.--But in the dark recesses
+of rustic brains nothing can arrest the monomania of suspicion. Fancies
+multiply there like weeds in a dark hole: they take root and vegetate
+until they become belief, conviction, and certainty; they produce the
+fruit of hostility and hatred, homicidal and incendiary ideas. With eyes
+constantly fixed on the chateau, the village regards it as a Bastille
+which must be captured, and, instead of saluting the lord of the manor,
+it thinks only of firing at him.
+
+Let us take up one of these local histories in detail.[3311] In the
+month of July, 1789, during the jacquerie in M��onnais, the parish of
+Villiers appealed for assistance to its lord, M. de Bussy, a former
+colonel of dragoons. He had returned home, treated the people of his
+village to a dinner, and attempted to form them into a body of guards
+to protect themselves against incendiaries and brigands; along with the
+well-disposed men of the place "he patrolled every evening to restore
+tranquillity to the parish." On a rumor spreading that "the wells were
+poisoned," he placed sentinels alongside of all the wells except his
+own, "to prove that he was acting for the parish and not for himself."
+In short, he did all he could to conciliate the villagers, and to
+interest them in the common safety.--But, by virtue of being a noble
+and an officer he is distrusted, and it is Perron, the syndic of the
+commune, to whom the commune now listens. Perron announces that the King
+"having abjured his sworn word," no more confidence is to be placed in
+him, and, consequently, neither in his officers nor in the gentry. On
+M. de Bussy proposing to the National Guards that they should go to the
+assistance of the chateau of Thil, which is in flames, Perron prevents
+them, declaring that "these fires are kindled by the nobles and the
+clergy." M. de Bussy insists, and entreats them to go, offering to
+abandon "his terrier," that is to say all his seignorial dues, if they
+will only accompany him and arrest this destruction. They refuse to do
+so. He perseveres, and, on being informed that the chateau of Juillenas
+is in peril, he collects, after great efforts, a body of one hundred
+and fifty men of his parish, and, marching with them, arrives in time to
+save the chateau, which a mob was about to set on fire. But the popular
+excitement, which he had just succeeded in calming at Juillenas, has
+gained the upper hand amongst his own troop: the brigands have seduced
+his men, "which obliges him to lead them back, while, along the road,
+they seem inclined to fire at him."--Having returned, he is followed
+with threats even to his own house: a band comes to attack his chateau;
+finding it on the defensive, they insist on being led to that of
+Courcelles.--In the midst of all this violence M. de Bussy, with about
+fifteen friends and tenants, succeeds in protecting himself and, by
+dint of patience, energy, and cool blood, without killing or wounding a
+single man, ends in bringing back security throughout the whole canton.
+The jacquerie subsides, and it seems as if the newly restored order
+would be maintained. He sends for Madame de Bussy to return, and some
+months pass away.--The popular imagination, however, is poisoned, and
+whatever a gentleman may do, he is no longer tolerated on his estate. A
+few leagues from there, on April 29, 1790, M. de Bois-d'Aisy, deputy
+to the National Assembly, had returned to his parish to vote at the
+new elections.[3312] "Scarcely has he arrived," when the commune of
+Bois-d'Aisy gives him notice through its mayor "that it will not regard
+him as eligible." He attends the electoral meeting which is held in the
+church there, a municipal officer in the pulpit inveighs against nobles
+and priests, and declares that they must not take part in the elections.
+All eyes turn upon M. de Boisd'Aisy, who is the only noble present.
+Nevertheless, he takes the civic oath, which nearly costs him dear, for
+murmurs arise around him, and the peasants say that he ought to have
+been hanged like the lord of Sainte-Colombe, to prevent his taking the
+oath. In fact, the evening before, the latter, M. de Vitteaux, an
+old man of seventy-four years of age, was expelled from the primary
+assembly, then torn out of the house in which he had sought refuge, half
+killed with blows, and dragged through the streets to the open square;
+his mouth was stuffed with manure, a stick was thrust into his ears,
+and "he expired after a martyrdom of three hours." The same day, in the
+church of the Capuchins, at S�mur, the rural parishes which met together
+excluded their priests and gentry in the same fashion. M. de Damas
+and M. de Sainte-Maure were beaten with clubs and stones; the cur�
+of Massigny died after six stabs with a knife, and M. de Virieu saved
+himself as he best could.--With such examples before them it is probable
+that many of the nobles will no longer exercise their right of suffrage.
+M. de Bussy does not pretend to do it. He merely tries to prove that he
+is loyal to the nation, and that he meditates no wrong to the National
+Guard or to the people. He proposed, at the out-set, to the volunteers
+of M��on to join them, along with his little troop; they refused to have
+him and thus the fault is not on his side. On the 14th of July, 1790,
+the day of the Federation on his domain, he sends all his people off to
+Villiers, furnished with the tricolour cockade. He himself, with three
+of his friends, attends the ceremony to take the oath, all four in
+uniform, with the cockade on their hats, without any weapons but their
+swords and a light cane in their hands. They salute the assembled
+National Guards of the three neighboring parishes, and keep outside
+the enclosure so as not to give offense. But they have not taken into
+account the prejudices and animosities of the new municipal bodies.
+Perron, the former syndic, is now mayor. A man named Bailly, who is the
+village shoemaker, is another of the municipal officers; their councilor
+is an old dragoon, one of those soldiers probably who have deserted or
+been discharged, and who are the firebrands of almost every riot that
+takes place. A squad of a dozen or fifteen men leave the ranks and
+march up to the four gentlemen, who advance, hat in hand, to meet them.
+Suddenly the men aim at them, and Bailly, with a furious air, demands:
+"What the devil do you come here for?" M. de Bussy replies that, having
+been informed of the Federation, he had come to take the oath like
+the rest of the people. Bailly asks why he had come armed. M. de Bussy
+remarks that "having been in the service, the sword was inseparable from
+the uniform," and had they come there without that badge they would have
+been at fault; besides, they must have observed that they had no other
+arms. Bailly, still in a rage, and, moreover, exasperated by such good
+reasons, turns round with his gun in his hand towards the leader of the
+squad and asks him three times in succession, "Commander, must I fire?"
+The commander not daring to take the responsibility of so gratuitous a
+murder, remains silent, and finally orders M. de Bussy to "clear out;"
+"which I did," says M. de Bussy.--Nevertheless, on reaching home, he
+writes to the municipal authorities clearly setting forth the motive of
+his coming, and demands an explanation of the treatment he had received.
+Mayor Perron throws aside his letter without reading it, and, on the
+following day, on leaving the mass, the National Guards come, by way of
+menace, to load their guns in sight of M. de Bussy, round his garden.--A
+few days after this, at the instigation of Bailly, two other proprietors
+in the neighborhood are assassinated in their houses. Finally, on a
+journey to Lyons, M. de Bussy learns "that the chateaux in Poitou
+are again in flames, and that the work is to begin again
+everywhere."--Alarmed at all these indications, "he resolves to form a
+company of volunteers, which, taking up their quarters in his chateau,
+can serve the whole canton on a legal requisition." He thinks that about
+fifteen brave men will be sufficient. He has already six men with him
+in the month of October, 1790; green coats are ordered for them, and
+buttons are bought for the uniform. Seven or eight domestics may be
+added to the number. In the way of arms and munitions the chateau
+contains two kegs of gunpowder which were on hand before 1789, seven
+blunderbusses, and five cavalry sabers, left there in passing by M.
+de Bussy's old dragoons: to these must be added two double-barreled
+fowling-pieces, three soldiers' muskets, five brace of pistols, two poor
+common guns, two old swords, and a hunting-knife. Such is the garrison,
+such the arsenal, and these are the preparations, so well justified and
+so slight, which prejudice conjointly with gossip is about to transform
+into a great conspiracy.
+
+The chateau, in effect, was an object of suspicion in the village from
+the very first day. All its visitors, whenever they went out or came
+in, with all the details of their actions, were watched, denounced,
+exaggerated, and misinterpreted. If through the awkwardness or
+carelessness of so many inexperienced National Guards, a stray ball
+reaches a farm-house one day in broad daylight, it comes from the
+chateau; it is the aristocrats who have fired upon the peasants.--There
+is the same state of suspicion in the neighboring towns. The municipal
+body of Valence, hearing that two youths had ordered coats made "of a
+color which seemed suspicious," send for the tailor; he confesses the
+fact, and adds that "they intended to put the buttons on themselves."
+Such a detail is alarming. An inquiry is set on foot and the alarm
+increases; people in a strange uniform have been seen passing on their
+way to the chateau of Villiers; from thence, on reaching the number of
+two hundred, they will go and join the garrison of Besan�on; they will
+travel four at a time in order to avoid detection. At Besan�on they are
+to meet a corps of forty thousand men, commanded by M. Autichamp, which
+corps is to march on to Paris to carry off the King, and break up the
+National Assembly. The National Guards along the whole route are to
+be forced into the lines. At a certain distance each man is to receive
+1,200 francs, and, at the end of the expedition, is to be enrolled
+in the Artois Guard, or sent home with a recompense of 12,000
+francs.--Meanwhile, the Prince de Cond�; with forty thousand men, will
+come by the way of Pont Saint-Esprit in Languedoc, rally the disaffected
+of Carpentras and of the Jal�s camp to his standard, and occupy Cette
+and the other seaports; and finally, the Comte d'Artois, on his side,
+will enter by Pont-Beauvoisin with thirty thousand men.--A horrible
+discovery! The municipal authorities of Valence immediately inform those
+of Lyons, Besan�on, Ch�lons, Ma�on, and others beside. On the strength
+of this the municipal body of Ma�on, "considering that the enemies of
+the Revolution are ever making the most strenuous efforts to annihilate
+the Constitution which secures the happiness of this empire," and "that
+it is highly important to frustrate their designs," sends two hundred
+men of its National Guard to the chateau of Villiers," empowered to
+employ armed force in case of resistance." For greater security,
+this troop is joined by the National Guards of the three neighboring
+parishes. M. de Bussy, on being told that they were climbing over the
+wall into his garden, seizes a gun and takes aim, but does not fire, and
+then, the requisition being legal, throws all open to them. There are
+found in the house six green coats, seven dozens of large buttons, and
+fifteen dozens of small ones. The proof is manifest. He explains what
+his project was and states his motive--it is a mere pretext. He makes a
+sign, as an order, to his valet--there is a positive complicity. M. de
+Bussy, his six guests, and the valet, are arrested and transported to
+Ma�on. A trial takes place, with depositions and interrogatories, in
+which the truth is elicited in spite of the most adverse testimony;
+it is clear that M. de Bussy never intended to do more than defend
+himself.--But prejudice is a blindfold to hostile eyes. It cannot be
+admitted that, under a constitution which is perfect, an innocent man
+could incur danger; the objection is made to him that "it is not natural
+for an armed company to be formed to resist a massacre by which it is
+not menaced;" they are convinced beforehand that he is guilty. On a
+decree of the National Assembly the minister had ordered all accused
+persons to be brought to Paris by the constabulary and hussars; the
+National Guard of Ma�on, "in the greatest state of agitation," declares
+that, "as it had arrested M. de Bussy, it would not consent to his
+transport by any other body. . . Undoubtedly, the object is to allow him
+to escape on the way," but it will know how to keep its captive secure.
+The guard, in fine, of its own authority, escorts M. de Bussy to Paris,
+into the Abbaye prison, where he is kept confined for several months--so
+long, indeed, that, after a new trial and investigation, the absurdity
+of the accusation being too palpable, they are obliged to set him at
+liberty.--Such is the situation of most of the gentry on their own
+estates, and M. de Bussy, even acquitted and vindicated, will act wisely
+in not returning home.
+
+
+
+
+III.--Domiciliary visits.
+
+     The fifth jacquerie.--Burgundy and Lyonnais in 1791.--M. de
+     Chaponay and M. Guillin-Dumoutet
+
+He would be nothing but a hostage there. Alone against thousands, sole
+survivor and representative of an abolished r�gime which all detest,
+it is the noble against whom everybody turns whenever a political shock
+seems to shake the new r�gime. He is at least disarmed, as he might
+be dangerous, and, in these popular executions, brutal instincts and
+appetites break loose like a bull that dashes through a door and rages
+through a dwelling-house. In the same department, some months later,
+on the news arriving of the arrest of the King at Varennes, "all
+nonjuring[3313] priests and ci-devant nobles are exposed to the horrors
+of persecution." Bands forcibly enter houses to seize arms: Commarin,
+Grosbois, Montculot, Chaudenay, Cr�anc�, Toisy, Chatellenot, and other
+houses are thus visited, and several are sacked. During the night
+of June 26-27, 1791, at the chateau of Cr�anc� "there is pillaging
+throughout; the mirrors are broken, the pictures are torn up, and the
+doors are broken down." The master of the house, "M. de Comeau-Cr�nc�,
+Knight of St. Louis, horribly maltreated, is dragged to the foot of the
+stairs, where he lies as if dead:" previous to this, "he was forced to
+give a considerable contribution, and to refund all penalties collected
+by him before the Revolution as the local lord of the manor. "--Two
+other proprietors in the neighborhood, both Knights of St. Louis, are
+treated in the same way. "That is the way in which three old and brave
+soldiers are rewarded for their services!" A fourth, a peaceable man,
+escapes beforehand, leaving his keys in the locks and his gardener in
+the house. Notwithstanding this, the doors and the clothes-presses were
+broken open, the pillaging lasting five hours and a half; with
+threats of setting the house on fire if the seigneur did not make his
+appearance. Questions were asked "as to whether he attended the mass of
+the new cur� whether he had formerly exacted fines, and finally, whether
+any of the inhabitants had any complaint to make against him." No
+complaint is made; on the contrary, he is rather beloved.--But, in
+tumults of this sort, a hundred madmen and fifty rogues prescribe the
+law to the timid and the indifferent. These outlaws declared that "they
+were acting under orders; they compelled the mayor and prosecuting
+attorney to take part in their robberies; they likewise took the
+precaution to force a few honest citizens, by using the severest
+threats, to march along with them." These people come the next day to
+apologize to the pillaged proprietor, while the municipal officers draw
+up a statement of the violence practiced against them. The violence
+nevertheless, is accomplished, and, as it will go unpunished, it is soon
+to be repeated.
+
+A beginning and an end are already made in the two neighboring
+departments. There, especially in the south, nothing is more instructive
+than to see how an outbreak stimulated by enthusiasm for the public good
+immediately degenerates under the impulse of private interest, and ends
+in crime.--Around Lyons,[3314] under the same pretext and at the same
+date, similar mobs perform similar visitations, and, on all these
+occasions, "the rent-rolls are burnt, and houses are pillaged and set on
+fire. Municipal authority, organized for the security of property, is in
+many hands but one facility more for its violation. The National
+Guard seems to be armed merely for the protection of robbery and
+disorder."--For more than thirty years, M. de Chaponay, the father of
+six children of whom three are in the service, expended his vast income
+on his estate of Beaulieu, giving occupation to a number of persons,
+men, women, and children. After the hailstorm of 1761, which nearly
+destroyed the village of Moran�e, he rebuilt thirty-three houses,
+furnished others with timber for the framework, supplied the commune
+with wheat, and, for several years, obtained for the inhabitants a
+diminution of their taxation. In 1790, he celebrated the Federation
+Festival on a magnificent scale, giving two banquets, one of a hundred
+and thirty seats, for the municipal bodies and officers of the National
+Guards in the vicinity, and the other of a thousand seats for the
+privates. If any of the gentry had reason to believe himself popular
+and safe it was certainly this man.--On the 24th of June, 1791, the
+municipal authorities of Moran�e, Lucenay, and Chazelai, with their
+mayors and National Guards, in all nearly two thousand men, arrive at
+the chateau with drums beating and flags flying. M. de Chaponay goes out
+to meet them, and begs to know to what he owes "the pleasure" of their
+visit. They reply that they do not come to offend him, but to carry out
+the orders of the district, which oblige them to take possession of the
+chateau and to place in it a guard of sixty men: on the following day
+the "district" and the National Guard of Villefranche are to come and
+inspect it.--Be it noted that these orders are imaginary, for M. de
+Chaponay asks in vain to see them; they cannot be produced. The cause of
+their setting out, probably, is the false rumor that the National Guard
+of Villefranche is coming to deprive them of a booty on which they had
+calculated.--Nevertheless M. de Chaponay submits; he merely requests
+the municipal officers to make the search themselves and in an orderly
+manner. Upon this the commandant of the National Guard of Lucenay
+exclaims, with some irritation, that "all are equal and all must go
+in," and at the same moment all rush forward. "M. de Chaponay orders the
+apartments to be opened; they immediately shut them up, purposely to
+let the sappers break through the doors with their axes."--Everything is
+pillaged, "plate, assignats, stocks of linen, laces and other articles;
+the trees of the avenues are hacked and mutilated; the cellars are
+emptied, the casks are rolled out on the terrace, the wine is suffered
+to run out, and the chateau keep is demolished. . . . The officers urge
+on those that are laggard." Towards nine o'clock in the evening M. de
+Chaponay is informed by his servants that the municipal authorities have
+determined upon forcing him to sign an abandonment of his feudal dues
+and afterwards beheading him. He escapes with his wife through the only
+door which is left unguarded, wanders about all night, exposed to the
+gun-shots of the squads which are on his track, and reaches Lyons only
+on the following day.--Meanwhile the pillagers send him notice that if
+he does not abandon his rentals, they will cut down his forests and
+burn up everything on his estate. The chateau, indeed, is fired three
+distinct times, while, in the interval, the band sack another chateau at
+Bay�re, and, on again passing by that of M. de Chaponay, demolish a
+dam which had cost 10,000 livres.--The public prosecutor, for his part,
+remains quiet, notwithstanding the appeals to him: he doubtless says to
+himself that a gentleman whose house has been searched is lucky to have
+saved his life, and that others, like M. Guillin-Dumoutet, for example,
+have not been as fortunate.
+
+The latter gentleman, formerly captain of a vessel belonging to the
+India Company, afterwards Commandant at Senegal, now retired from active
+life, occupied his chateau of Poleymieux with his young wife and two
+infant children, his sisters, nieces, and sister-in-law--in all, ten
+women belonging to his family and domestic service--one Negro servant
+and himself; an old man of sixty years of age; here is a haunt of
+militant conspirators which must be disarmed as soon as possible.[3315]
+Unfortunately, a brother of M. Guillin, accused of treason to the
+nation, had been arrested ten months previously, which was quite
+sufficient for the clubs in the neighborhood. In the month of December,
+1790, the chateau had already been ransacked by the people of the
+parishes in the vicinity: nothing was found, and the Department first
+censured and afterwards interdicted these arbitrary searches. On this
+occasion they will manage things better.--On the 26th of June, 1791, at
+ten o'clock in the morning, the municipal body of Poleymicux, along with
+two other bodies in their scarves, and three hundred National Guards,
+are seen approaching, under the usual pretext of searching for arms.
+Madame Guillin presents herself; reminds them of the interdict of the
+Department, and demands the legal order under which they act. They
+refuse to give it. M. Guillin descends in his turn and offers to open
+his doors to them if they will produce the order. They have no order
+to show him. During the colloquy a certain man named Rosier, a former
+soldier who had deserted twice, and who is now in command of the
+National Guard, seizes M. Guillin by the throat; the old captain defends
+himself; presents a pistol at the man, which misses fire, and then,
+throwing the fellow off, withdraws into the house, closing the door
+behind him.--Soon after this, the tocsin sounds in the neighborhood,
+thirty parishes start up, and two thousand men arrive. Madame Guillin,
+by entreaties, succeeds in having delegates appointed, chosen by the
+crowd, to inspect the chateau. These delegates examine the apartments,
+and declare that they can find nothing but the arms ordinarily kept on
+hand. This declaration is of no effect: the multitude, whose excitement
+is increased by waiting, feel their strength, and have no idea of
+returning empty-handed. A volley is fired, and the chateau windows
+are riddled with balls. As a last effort Madame Guillin, with her two
+children in her arms, comes out, and going to the municipal officers,
+calls upon them to do their duty. Far from doing this they retain her
+as a hostage, and place her in such a position that, if there is firing
+from the chateau, she may receive the bullets. Meanwhile, the doors are
+forced, the house is pillaged from top to bottom, and then set on fire;
+M. Guillin, who seeks refuge in the keep, is almost reached by the
+flames. At this moment, some of the assailants, less ferocious than
+the rest, prevail upon him to descend, and they answer for his life.
+Scarcely has he shown himself when others fall on him; they cry that he
+must be killed, that he has a life-rent of 36,000 francs from the State,
+and "this will be so much saved for the nation." "He is hacked to pieces
+alive;" his head is cut off and borne upon a pike; his body is cut up,
+and sent piece by piece to each parish; several wash their hands in his
+blood, and besmear their faces with it. It seems as if tumult, clamor,
+incendiarism, robbery, and murder had aroused in them not only the cruel
+instincts of the savage, but the carnivorous appetites of the brute;
+some of them, seized by the gendarmerie at Chasselay, had roasted the
+dead man's arm and dined upon it.[3316]--Madame Guillin, who is saved
+through the compassion of two of the inhabitants of the place, succeeds,
+after encountering many dangers, in reaching Lyons; she and her children
+lost everything, "the chateau, its dependencies, the crop of the
+preceding year, wine, grain, furniture, plate, ready money, assignats,
+notes, and contracts." Ten days later, the department gives notice to
+the National Assembly that "similar projects are still being plotted and
+arranged, and that there are (always) threats of burning chateaux and
+rent-rolls;" that no doubt of this can possibly exist: "the inhabitants
+of the country only await the opportunity, to renew these scenes of
+horror."[3317]
+
+
+
+
+IV.--The nobles obliged to leave the rural districts.
+
+     They take refuge in towns.--The dangers they incur.--The
+     eighty-two gentlemen of Caen
+
+Amidst these multiplied and reviving Jacqueries there is nothing left
+but flight, and the nobles, driven out of the rural districts, seek
+refuge in the towns. But here also a jacquerie awaits them. As the
+effects of the Constitution are developed, successive administrations
+become feebler and more partial; the unbridled populace has become
+more excitable and more violent; the enthroned club has become more
+suspicious and more despotic. Henceforth the club, through or in
+opposition to the administrative bodies, leads the populace, and the
+nobles will find it as hostile as the peasants. All their reunions,
+even when liberal, are closed like that in Paris, through the illegal
+interference of mobs, or through the iniquitous action of the popular
+magistrates. All their associations, even when legal and salutary, are
+broken up by brute force or by municipal intolerance, They are punished
+for having thought of defending themselves, and slaughtered because they
+try to avoid assassination.--Three or four hundred gentlemen, who
+were threatened on their estates, sought refuge with their families in
+Caen;[3318] and they trusted to find one there, for, by three different
+resolutions, the municipal body promised them aid and protection.
+Unfortunately, the club thinks otherwise, and, on August 23, 1791,
+prints and posts up a list of their names and residences, declaring that
+since "their suspected opinions have compelled them to abandon the rural
+districts," they are emigrants in the interior;" from which it follows
+that "their conduct must be scrupulously watched," because "it may be
+the effect of some dangerous plot against the country." Fifteen are
+especially designated; among others "the former cur� of Saint-Loup, the
+great bloodhound of the aristocrats, and all of them very suspicious
+persons, harboring the worst intentions."--Thus denounced and singled
+out, it is evident that they can no longer sleep peacefully: moreover,
+now that their addresses are published, they are openly threatened with
+domiciliary visits and violence. As to the administrative authorities,
+their intervention cannot be expected on; the department itself gives
+notice to the minister that, as the law stands, it cannot put the
+chateau in the hands of the regulars,[3319] as this would, it is said,
+excite the National Guard. Besides, how without an army is this post to
+be wrested from the hands which hold it? It is impossible with only the
+resources which the Constitution affords us." Thus, in the defense of
+the oppressed, the Constitution is a dead letter.--Hence it is that the
+refugees, finding protection only in themselves, undertake to help
+each other. No association can be more justifiable, more pacific, more
+innocent. Its object is "to demand the execution of the laws constantly
+violated, and to protect persons and property." In each quarter they
+will try to bring together "all good citizens;" they will form a
+committee of eight members, and, in each committee, there will always
+be "an officer of justice or a member of the administrative body with
+an officer or subaltern of the National Guard." Should any citizen be
+attacked in person or property the association will draw up a petition
+in his favor. Should any particular act of violence require the
+employment of public force, the members of the district will assemble
+under the orders of the officer of justice and of the National Guard
+to enforce obedience. "In all possible cases" they "will avoid with the
+greatest care any insult of individuals; they will consider that
+the object of the meeting is solely to ensure public peace, and that
+protection from the law to which every citizen is entitled."--In short,
+they are volunteer constables. Turn the inquiry which way they will,
+a hostile municipality and a prejudiced tribunal can put no other
+construction upon it; they find nothing else. The only evidence against
+one of the leaders is a letter in which he tries to prevent a gentleman
+from going to Coblentz, striving to prove to him that he will be more
+useful at Caen. The principal evidence against the association is that
+of a townsman whom they wished to enroll, and of whom they demanded his
+opinions. He had stated that he was in favor of the execution of the
+laws; upon which they told him: "In this case you belong to us, and
+are more of an aristocrat than you think you are. Their aristocracy, in
+effect, consists wholly in the suppression of brigandage. No claim is
+more unpalatable, because it interposes an obstacle to the arbitrary
+acts of a party which thinks it has a right to do as it pleases. On
+the 4th of October the regiment of Aunis left the town, and all good
+citizens were handed over to the militia, "in uniform or not," they
+alone being armed. That day, for the first time in a long period, M.
+Bunel, the former cur� of Saint-Jean, with the consent and assistance of
+his sworn successor, officiates at the mass. There is a large gathering
+of the orthodox, which causes uneasiness among the patriots. The
+following day M. Bunel is to say mass again; whereupon, through the
+municipal authorities, the patriots forbid him to officiate, to which he
+submits. Nevertheless, for lack of due notice, a crowd of the faithful
+have arrived and the church is filled. A dangerous mob! The patriots
+and National Guards arrive "to preserve order," which has not been
+disturbed, and which they alone disturb. Threatening words are exchanged
+between the servants of the nobles and the National Guard. The latter
+draw their swords, and a young man is hewn down and trampled on; M. de
+Saffrey, who comes to his assistance unarmed, is himself cut down and
+pierced with bayonets, and two others are wounded.--Meanwhile, in a
+neighboring street, M. Achard de Vagogne, seeing a man maltreated by
+armed men, approaches, in order to make peace. The man is shot down
+and M. Achard is covered with saber and bayonet gashes: "there is not a
+thread on him which is not dyed with the blood that ran down even into
+his shoes." In this condition he is led to the chateau along with M. de
+Saifrey. Others break down the door of the house of M. du Rosel, an old
+officer of seventy-five years, of which fifty-nine have been passed in
+the service, and pursue him even over the wall of his garden. A fourth
+squad seizes M. d'H�ricy, another venerable officer, who, like M. du
+Rosel, was ignorant of all that was going on, and was quietly leaving
+for his country seat.--The town is full of tumult, and, through the
+orders of the municipal authorities, the general alarm is sounded.
+
+The time for the special constables to act has come; about sixty
+gentlemen, with a number of merchants and artisans, set out. According
+to the rules of their association, and with significant scruple, they
+beg an Officer of the National Guard, who happens to be passing, to put
+himself at their head; they reach the Place Saint-Sauveur, encounter the
+superior officer sent after them by the municipal authorities, and, at
+his first command, follow him to the H�tel-de-Ville. On reaching this,
+without any resistance on their part, they are arrested, disarmed, and
+searched. The rules and regulations of their league are found on their
+persons; they are evidently hatching a counter-revolution. The uproar
+against them is terrible. "To keep them safe," they are conducted to the
+chateau, while many of them are cruelly treated on the way by the
+crowd. Others, seized in their houses--M. Levaillant and a servant of M.
+d'H�ricy--are carried off bleeding and pierced with bayonets. Eighty-two
+prisoners are thus collected, while fears are constantly entertained
+that they may escape. "Their bread and meat are cut up into little
+pieces, to see that nothing is concealed therein; the surgeons, who are
+likewise treated as aristocrats, are denied access to them." Nocturnal
+visits are, at the same time, paid to their houses; every stranger is
+ordered to present himself at the H�tel-de-Ville, to state why he comes
+to the town to reside, and to give up his arms; every nonjuring priest
+is forbidden to say mass. The Department, which is disposed to resist,
+has its hands tied and confesses its powerlessness. "The people," it
+writes, "know their strength: they know that we have no power; excited
+by disreputable citizens, they permit whatever serves their passions or
+their interests; they influence our deliberations, and force us to those
+which, under other circumstances, we should carefully avoid."--Three
+days after this the victors celebrate their triumph "with drums, music,
+and lighted torches; the people are using hammers to destroy on the
+mansions the coats-of-arms which had previously been covered over with
+plaster;" the defeat of the aristocrats is accomplished.--And yet their
+innocence is so clearly manifest that the Legislative Assembly itself
+cannot help recognizing it. After eleven weeks of durance the order is
+given to set them free, with the exception of two, a youth of less
+than eighteen years and an old man, almost an octogenarian, on whom two
+letters, misunderstood, still leave a shadow of suspicion.--But it is
+not certain that the people are disposed to give them up. The National
+Guard refuses to discharge them in open daylight and serve as their
+escort. Even the evening before numerous groups of women, a few men
+mingled with them, talk of murdering all those fellows the moment they
+set foot outside the chateau." They have to be let out at two o'clock
+in the morning, secretly, under a strong guard, and to leave the town
+at once as six months before they left the rural districts.--Neither in
+country nor in the town[3320] are they under the protection of civil
+or religious law; a gentleman, who is not compromised in the affair,
+remarks that their situation is worse than that of Protestants and
+vagabonds during the worst years of the Ancient R�gime of them and who
+abuse the use of them? Why should one be on an equality for purposes of
+payment, and distinguished?
+
+"Does not the law allow (nonjuring) priests the liberty of saying mass?
+Why then can we not listen to their mass except at the risk of our
+lives? Does not the law command all citizens to preserve the public
+peace? Why then are those whom the cry to arms has summoned forth to
+maintain public order assailed as aristocrats? Why is the refuge of
+citizens which the laws have declared sacred, violated without orders,
+without accusation, without any appearance of wrong-doing? Why are all
+prominent citizens and those who are well off disarmed in preference to
+others? Are weapons exclusively made for those but lately deprived only
+for purposes of annoyance and insult?"
+
+He has spoken right. Those who now rule form an aristocracy in
+an inverse sense, contrary to the law, and yet more contrary to
+nature.[3321] For, by a violent inversion, the lower grades in the
+graduated scale of civilization and culture now are found uppermost,
+while the superior grades are found at the uniform. The Constitution
+having suppressed inequality, this has again arisen in an inverse sense.
+The populace, both of town and country, taxes, imprisons, pillages, and
+slays more arbitrarily, more brutally, more unjustly than feudal barons,
+and for its serfs or villains it has its ancient chieftains.
+
+
+
+
+V.--Persecutions in private life.
+
+Let us suppose that, in order not to excite suspicion, they are
+content to be without arms, to form no more associations, not to attend
+elections, to shut themselves up at home, to strictly confine themselves
+within the harmless precincts of domestic life. The same distrust, the
+same animosity, still pursues them there.--At Cahors,[3322] where
+the municipal authorities, in spite of the law, had just expelled the
+Carthusians who, under legal sanction, chose to remain and live
+in common, two of the monks, before their departure, give to M. de
+Beaumont, their friend and neighbor, four dwarf pear-trees and some
+onions in blossom in their garden. On the strength of this, the
+municipal body decree that
+
+"the sieur Louis de Beaumont, formerly count, is guilty of having
+audaciously and maliciously damaged national property," condemns him
+to pay a fine of three hundred livres, and orders "that the four
+pear-trees, pulled up in the so-called Carthusian garden, be brought on
+the following day, Wednesday, to the door of the said sieur de Beaumont,
+and there remain for four consecutive days, guarded, day and night, by
+two fusiliers, at the expense of the said sieur de Beaumont; and upon
+the said trees shall be placed the following inscription, to wit:
+Louis de Beaumont, destroyer of the national property. And the judgment
+herewith rendered shall be printed to the number of one thousand
+copies, read, published, and posted at the expense of the said sieur
+de Beaumont, and duly addressed throughout the department of Lot to the
+districts and municipalities thereof, as well as to all societies of the
+Friends of the Constitution and of Liberty."
+
+Every line of this legal invective discloses the malignant envy of
+the local recorder, who revenges himself for having formerly bowed too
+low.--The following year, M. de Beaumont, having formally and under
+notarial sanction bought a church which was sold by the district, along
+with the ornaments and objects of worship it contained, the mayor and
+municipal officers, followed by a lot of workmen, come and carry away
+and destroy everything--confessionals, altars, and even the saint's
+canonised body, which had been interred for one hundred and fifty years:
+so that, after their departure, "the edifice resembled a vast barn
+filled with ruins and rubbish."[3323] It must be noted that, at this
+very time, M. de Beaumont is military commandant at Perigord. The
+treatment he undergoes shows what is in reserve for ordinary nobles. I
+do not recommend them to attend official sales of property.[3324]--Will
+they even be free in their domestic enjoyments, and on entering a
+drawing-room are they sure of quietly passing an evening there?--At
+Paris, even, a number of persons of rank, among them the ambassadors
+of Denmark and Venice, are listening to a concert in a mansion in the
+Faubourg Saint-Honor� given by a foreign virtuoso, when a cart enters
+the court loaded with fifty bundles of hay, the monthly supply for the
+horses. A patriot, who sees the cart driven in, imagines that the King
+is concealed underneath the hay, and that he has come there for the
+purpose of plotting with the aristocrats about his flight. A mob
+gathers, and the National Guard arrives, along with a commissioner,
+while four grenadiers stand guard around the cart. The commissioner,
+in the meantime, inspects the hotel; he sees music-stands, and the
+arrangements for a supper; comes back, has the cart unloaded, and states
+to the people that he has found nothing suspicious. The people do not
+believe him, and demand a second inspection. This is made by twenty-four
+delegates; the bundles of hay, moreover, are counted, and several of
+them are unbound, but all in vain. Disappointed and irritated, having
+anticipated a spectacle, the crowd insists that all the invited guests,
+men and women, should leave the house on foot, and only get into
+their carriages at the end of the street. "First comes a file of empty
+carriages;" next, "all the guests in their evening attire, and the
+ladies in full dress, trembling with fear, with downcast eyes, between
+two rows of men, women, and children, who stare them in the face, and
+overwhelm them with insults."[3325]
+
+Suspected of holding secret meetings, and called to account in his own
+house, has the noble at least the right to frequent a public saloon,
+to eat in a restaurant, and to take the fresh air in a balcony?--The
+Vicomte de Mirabeau, who has just dined in the Palais-Royal, stands at
+the window to take the air, and is recognized; there is a
+gathering, and the cry is soon heard, "Down with Mirabeau-Tonneau
+(barrel-Mirabeau)!"[3326] "Gravel is flung at him from all sides, and
+occasionally stones. One of the window-panes is broken by a stone.
+Immediately picking up the stone, he shows it to the crowd, and, at
+the same time, quietly places it on the sill of the window, in token of
+moderation." There is a loud outcry; his friends force him to withdraw
+inside, and Bailly, the mayor, comes in person to quiet the aggressors.
+In this case there are good reasons for their hatred. The gentleman
+whom they stone is a bon-vivant, large and fat, fond of rich epicurean
+Suppers; and on this account the populace imagine him to be a monster,
+and even worse, an ogre. With regard to these nobles, whose greatest
+misfortune is to be over-polished and too worldly, the over-excited
+imagination revives its old nursery tales.--M. de Montlosier, living in
+the Rue Richelieu, finds that he is watched on his way to the National
+Assembly. One woman especially, from thirty to thirty-two years of age,
+who sold meat at a stall in the Passage Saint-Guillaume, "regarded him
+with special attention. As soon as she saw him coming she took up a
+long, broad knife which she sharpened before him, casting furious looks
+at him." He asks his housekeeper what this means. Two children of that
+quarter have disappeared, carried off by gipsies, and the report is
+current that M. de Montlosier, the Marquis de Mirabeau, and other
+deputies of the "right," meet together "to hold orgies in which they eat
+little children."
+
+In this state of public opinion there is no crime which is not imputed
+to them, no insult which is not freely bestowed on them. "Traitors,
+tyrants, conspirators, assassins," such is the current vocabulary of
+the clubs and newspapers in relation to them. "Aristocrat" signifies
+all this, and whoever dares to refute the calumny is himself an
+aristocrat.--At the Palais-Royal, it is constantly repeated that M. de
+Castries, in his last duel, made use of a poisoned sword, and an officer
+of the navy who protests against this false report is himself accused,
+tried on the spot, and condemned "to be shut up in the guard-house or
+thrown into the fountain."[3327]--The nobles must beware of defending
+their honor in the usual way and of meeting an insult with a challenge!
+At Castelnau, near Cahors,[3328] one of those who, the preceding year,
+marched against the incendiaries, M. de Bellud, Knight of Saint-Louis,
+on coming down the public square with his brother, a guardsman, is
+greeted with cries of "The aristocrat! to the lamp post!" His brother is
+in a morning coat and slippers, and not wishing to get into trouble they
+do not reply. A squad of the National Guard, passing by, repeats the
+cry, but they still remain silent. The shout continues, and M. de
+Bellud, after some time has elapsed, begs the captain to order his men
+to be quiet. He refuses, and M. de Bellud demands satisfaction outside
+the town. At these words the National Guards rush at M. de Bellud with
+fixed bayonets. His brother receives a saber-cut on the neck, while he,
+defending himself with his sword, slightly wounds the captain and one
+of the men. The two brothers, alone against the whole body, fight on,
+retreating to their house, in which they are blockaded. Towards seven
+o'clock in the evening, two or three hundred National Guards from
+Cahors arrive to reinforce the besiegers. The house is taken, and
+the guardsman, escaping across the fields, sprains his ankle and is
+captured. M. de Bellud, who has found his way into another house,
+continues to defend himself there: the house is set on fire and burnt,
+together with two others alongside of it. Taking refuge in a cellar he
+still keeps on firing. Bundles of lighted straw are thrown in at the
+air-holes. Almost suffocated, he springs out, kills his first assailant
+with a shot from one pistol, and himself with another. His head is cut
+off with that of his servant. The guardsman is made to kiss the two
+heads, and, on his demanding a glass of water, they fill his mouth
+with the blood which drops from the severed head of his brother. The
+victorious gang then set out for Cahors, with the two heads stuck on
+bayonets, and the guardsman in a cart. It comes to a halt before a house
+in which a literary circle meets, suspected by the Jacobin club. The
+wounded man is made to descend from the cart and is hung: his body is
+riddled with balls, and everything the house contains is broken up,
+"the furniture is thrown out of the windows, and the house pulled
+down."--Every popular execution is of this character, at once prompt and
+complete, similar to those of an Oriental monarch who, on the instant,
+without inquiry or trial, avenges his offended majesty, and for
+every offense, knows no other punishment than death. At Tulle, M. de
+Massy,[3329] lieutenant of the "Royal Navarre," having struck a man that
+insulted him, is seized in the house in which he took refuge, and, in
+spite of the three administrative bodies, is at once massacred.--At
+Brest, two anti-revolutionary caricatures having been drawn with
+charcoal on the walls of the military coffee-house, the excited crowd
+lay the blame of it on the officers; one of these, M. Patry, takes it
+upon himself, and, on the point of being torn to pieces, attempts to
+kill himself. He is disarmed, but, when the municipal authorities come
+to his assistance, they find him "already dead through an infinite
+number of wounds," and his head is borne about on the end of a
+pike.[3330]--
+
+
+
+
+VI.--Conduct of officers.
+
+     Their self-sacrifice.--Disposition of the soldiery.
+     --Military outbreaks.--Spread and increase of
+     insubordination.--Resignation of the officers.
+
+Much better would it be to live under an Eastern king, for he is not
+found everywhere, nor always furious and mad, like the populace. Nowhere
+are the nobles safe, neither in public nor in private life, neither in
+the country nor in the towns, neither associated together nor separate.
+Popular hostility hangs over them like a dark and threatening cloud from
+one end of the territory to the other, and the tempest bursts upon them
+in a continuous storm of vexations, outrages, calumnies, robberies, and
+acts of violence; here, there, and almost daily, bloody thunderbolts
+fall haphazard on the most inoffensive heads, on an old man asleep, on a
+Knight of Saint-Louis taking a walk, on a family at prayers in a church.
+But, in this aristocracy, crushed down in some places and attacked
+everywhere, the thunderbolt finds one predestined group which attracts
+it and on which it constantly falls, and that is the corps of officers.
+
+
+
+
+VI.--Conduct of the officers.
+
+     Their self-sacrifice.--Disposition of the soldiery.
+     --Military outbreaks.--Spread and increase of
+     insubordination.--Resignation of the officers.
+
+With the exception of a few fops, frequenters of drawing-rooms, and the
+court favorites who have reached a high rank through the intrigues of
+the antechamber, it was in this group, especially in the medium ranks,
+that true moral nobility was then found. Nowhere in France was there so
+much tried, substantial merit. A man of genius, who associated with
+them in his youth, rendered them this homage: many among them are
+men possessing "the most amiable characters and minds of the highest
+order."[3331] Indeed, for most of them, military service was not a
+career of ambition, but an obligation of birth. It was the rule in each
+noble family for the eldest son to enter the army, and advancement was
+of but little consequence. He discharged the debt of his rank; this
+sufficed for him, and, after twenty or thirty years of service, the
+order of Saint-Louis, and sometimes a meager pension, were all he had
+a right to expect. Amongst nine or ten thousand officers, the great
+majority coming from the lower and poorer class of provincial nobles,
+body-guards, lieutenants, captains, majors, lieutenant-colonels, and
+even colonels, have no other pretension. Satisfied with favors[3332]
+restricted to their subordinate rank, they leave the highest grades of
+the service to the heirs of the great families, to the courtiers or to
+the parvenus at Versailles, and content themselves with remaining the
+guardians of public order, and the brave defenders of the State. Under
+this system, when the heart is not depraved it becomes exalted; it is
+made a point of honor to serve without compensation; there is nothing
+but the public welfare in view, and all the more because, at this
+moment, it is the absorbing topic of all minds and of all literature.
+Nowhere has practical philosophy, that which consists in a spirit
+of abnegation, more deeply penetrated than among this unrecognized
+nobility. Under a polished, brilliant, and sometimes frivolous exterior,
+they have a serious soul; the old sentiment of honor is converted
+into one of patriotism. Set to execute the laws, with force in hand to
+maintain peace through fear, they feel the importance of their mission,
+and, for two years, fulfill its duties with extraordinary moderation,
+gentleness, and patience, not only at the risk of their lives, but
+amidst great and multiplied humiliations, through the sacrifice of their
+authority and self-esteem, through the subjection of their intelligent
+will to the dictation and incapacity of the masters imposed upon them.
+For a noble officer to respond to the requisitions of an extemporized
+bourgeois municipal body,[3333] to subordinate his competence, courage,
+and prudence to the blunders and alarms of five or six inexperienced,
+frightened, and timid attorneys, to place his energy and daring at the
+service of their presumption, feebleness, and lack of decision,
+even when their orders or refusal of orders are manifestly absurd or
+injurious, even when they are opposed to the previous instructions of
+his general or of his minister, even when they end in the plundering
+of a market, the burning of a chateau, the assassination of an innocent
+person, even when they impose upon him the obligation of witnessing
+crime with his sword sheathed and arms folded,[3334]--this is a hard
+task. It is hard for the noble officer to see independent, popular, and
+bourgeois troops organized in the face of his own troops, rivals and
+even hostile, in any case ten times as numerous and no less exacting
+than sensitive--hard to be expected to show them deference and extend
+civilities to them, to surrender to them posts, arsenals, and citadels,
+to treat their chiefs as equals, however ignorant or unworthy, and
+whatever they may be--here a lawyer, there a Capuchin, elsewhere a
+brewer or a shoemaker, most generally some demagogue, and, in many a
+town or village, some deserter or soldier drummed out of his regiment
+for bad conduct, perhaps one of the noble's own men, a scamp whom he has
+formerly discharged with the yellow cartridge, telling him to go and
+be hung elsewhere. It is hard for the noble officer to be publicly and
+daily calumniated on account of his rank and title, to be characterized
+as a traitor at the club and in the newspapers, to be designated by
+name as an object of popular suspicion and fury, to be hooted at in the
+streets and in the theater, to submit to the disobedience of his men, to
+be denounced, insulted, arrested, fleeced, hunted down and slaughtered
+by them and by the populace, to see before him a cruel, ignoble, and
+unavenged death--that of M. de Launay, murdered at Paris--that of M.
+de Belzunce, murdered at Caen--that of M. de Beausset, murdered at
+Marseilles--that of M. de Voisins, murdered at Valence--that of M. de
+Rully, murdered at Bastia, or that of M. de Rochetailler, murdered at
+Port-au-Prince.[3335] All this is endured by the officers among the
+nobles. Not one of the municipalities, even Jacobin, can find any
+pretext which will warrant the charge of disobeying orders. Through tact
+and deference they avoid all conflict with the National Guards. Never
+do they give provocation, and, even when insulted, rarely defend
+themselves. Their gravest faults consist of imprudent conversations,
+vivacious expressions and witticisms. Like good watch-dogs amongst a
+frightened herd which trample them under foot, or pierce them with
+their horns, they allow themselves to be pierced and trampled on without
+biting, and would remain at their post to the end were they not driven
+away from it.
+
+All to no purpose: doubly suspicious as members of a proscribed class,
+and as heads of the army, it is against them that public distrust
+excites the most frequent explosions, and so much the more as the
+instrument they handle is singularly explosive. Recruited by volunteer
+enlistment "amongst a passionate, turbulent, and somewhat debauched
+people," the army is composed of "all that are most fiery, most
+turbulent, and most debauched in the nation."[3336] Add to these the
+sweepings of the alms-houses, and you find a good many blackguards
+in uniform! When we consider that the pay is small, the food bad,
+discipline severe, no promotion, and desertion endemic, we are no longer
+surprised at the general disorder: license, to such men, is too powerful
+a temptation. With wine, women, and money they have from the first
+been made turncoats, and from Paris the contagion has spread to
+the provinces. In Brittany,[3337] the grenadiers and chasseurs of
+Ile-de-France "sell their coats, their guns, and their shoes, exacting
+advances in order to consume it in the tavern;" fifty-six soldiers of
+Penthi�vre "wanted to murder their officers," and it is foreseen that,
+left to themselves, they will soon, for lack of pay, "betake themselves
+to the highways, to rob and assassinate." In Euree-et-Loir, the
+dragoons,[3338] with saber and pistols in hand, visit the farmers'
+houses and take bread and money, while the foot soldiers of the
+"Royal-Comtois" and the dragoons of the "Colonel-G�n�ral" desert in
+bands in order to go to Paris, where amusement is to be had. The main
+thing with them is "to have a jolly time." In fact, the extensive
+military insurrections of the earliest date, those of Paris, Versailles,
+Besan�on, and Strasbourg, began or ended with a revel.--Out of these
+depths of gross desires there has sprung up natural or legitimate
+ambitions. A number of soldiers, for twenty years past, have learned how
+to read, and think themselves qualified to be officers. One quarter of
+those enlisted, moreover, are young men born in good circumstances, and
+whom a caprice has thrown into the army. They choke in this narrow, low,
+dark, confined passage where the privileged by birth close up the issue,
+and they will march over their chiefs to secure advancement. These are
+the discontented, the disputants, the orators of the mess-room, and
+between these barrack politicians and the politicians of the street an
+alliance is at once formed.--Starting from the same point they march on
+to the same end, and the imagination which has labored to blacken the
+Government in the minds of the people, blackens the officers in the
+minds of the soldiers.
+
+The Treasury is empty and there are arrears of pay. The towns, burdened
+with debt, no longer furnish their quotas of supplies; and at Orleans,
+with the distress of the municipality before them, the Swiss of
+Chateauvieux were obliged to impose on themselves a stoppage of one sou
+per day and per man to have wood in winter.[3339] Grain is scarce, the
+flour is spoilt, and the army bread, which was bad, has become worse.
+The administration, worm-eaten by old abuses, is deranged through the
+new disorder, the soldiers suffering as well through its dissolution
+as through their extravagance.--They think themselves robbed and
+they complain, at first with moderation; and justice is done to their
+well-founded claims. Soon they exact accounts, and these are made out
+for them. At Strasbourg, on these being verified before Kellermann and
+a commissioner of the National Assembly, it is proved that they have not
+been wronged out of a sou; nevertheless a gratification of six francs a
+head is given to them, and they cry out that they are content and have
+nothing more to ask for. A few months after this fresh complaints arise,
+and there is a new verification: an ensign, accused of embezzlement and
+whom they wished to hang, is tried in their presence; his accounting is
+tidy; none of them can cite against him a proven charge, and, once more,
+they remain silent. On other occasions, after hearing the reading of
+registers for several hours, they yawn, cease to listen, and go outside
+to get something to drink.--But the figures of their demands, as these
+have been summed up by their mess-room calculators, remain implanted in
+their brains; they have taken root there, and are constantly springing
+up without any account or refutation being able to extirpate them. No
+more writings nor speeches--what they want is money: 11,000 livres for
+the Beaune regiment, 39,500 livres for that of Forez, 44,000 livres for
+that of Salm, 200,000 livres for that of Chateauvieux, and similarly for
+the rest. So much the worse for the officers if the money-chest does not
+suffice for them; let them assess each other, or borrow on their note
+of hand from the municipality, or from the rich men of the town.--For
+greater security, in divers places, the soldiers take possession of the
+military chest and mount guard around it: it belongs to them, since they
+form the regiment, and, in any case, it is better that it should be in
+their hands than in suspected hands.--Already, on the 4th of June, 1790,
+the Minister of War announces to the Assembly that "the military body
+threatens to fall into a perfect state of anarchy." His report shows
+"the most incredible pretensions put forth in the most plain-spoken
+way--orders without force, chiefs without authority, the military chest
+and flags carried away, the orders of the King himself openly defied,
+the officers condemned, insulted, threatened, driven off; some of them
+even captive amidst their own troops, leading a precarious life in
+the midst of disgust and humiliations, and, as the climax of horror,
+commanders having their throat cut under the eyes and almost in the arms
+of their own soldiers."
+
+It is much worse after the July Federation. Entertained, flattered,
+and indoctrinated at the clubs, their delegates, inferior officers and
+privates, return to the regiment Jacobins; and henceforth correspond
+with the Jacobins of Paris, "receiving their instructions and reporting
+to them,"[3340]--Three weeks later, the Minister of War gives notice to
+the National Assembly that there is no limit to the license in the army.
+"Couriers, the bearers of fresh complaints, are arriving constantly."
+In one place "a statement of the fund is demanded, and it is proposed to
+divide it." Elsewhere, a garrison, with drums beating, leaves the town,
+deposes its officers, and comes back sword in hand. Each regiment is
+governed by a committee of soldiers. "It is in this committee that the
+detention of the lieutenant-colonel of Poitou has been twice arranged;
+here it is that 'Royal-Champagne' conceived the insurrection" by which
+it refused to recognize a sub-lieutenant sent to it. "Every day
+the minister's cabinet is filled with soldiers who are sent as
+representatives to him, and who proudly come and intimate to him the
+will of their constituents." Finally, at Strasbourg, seven regiments,
+each represented by three delegates, formed a military congress.
+The same month, the terrible insurrection of Nancy breaks out--three
+regiments in revolt, the populace with them, the arsenal pillaged, three
+hours of furious fighting in the streets, the insurgents firing from the
+windows of the houses and from the cellar openings, five hundred
+dead among the victors, and three thousand among the vanquished.--The
+following month, and for six weeks,[3341] there is another insurrection,
+less bloody, but more extensive, better arranged and more obstinate,
+that of the whole squadron at Brest, a mutiny of twenty thousand men,
+at first against their admiral and their officers, then against the new
+penal code and against the National Assembly itself. The latter,
+after remonstrating in vain, is obliged not only not to take rigorous
+measures, but again to revise its laws.[3342]
+
+From this time forth, I cannot enumerate the constant outbreaks in the
+fleet and in the army.--Authorized by the minister, the soldier goes
+to the club, where he is repeatedly told that his officers, being
+aristocrats, are traitors. At Dunkirk, he is additionally taught how to
+get rid of them. Clamors, denunciations, insults, musket-shots--these
+are the natural means, and they are put in practice: but there is
+another, recently discovered, by which an energetic officer of whom they
+are afraid may be driven away. Some patriotic bully is found who comes
+and insults him. If the officer fights and is not killed, the municipal
+authorities have him arraigned, and his chiefs send him off along with
+his seconds "in order not to disturb the harmony between the soldier and
+the citizen." If he declines the proposed duel, the contempt of his men
+obliges him to quit the regiment. In either case he is got out of the
+way.[3343]--They have no scruples in relation to him. Present or absent,
+a noble officer must certainly be plotting with his emigrant companions;
+and on this a story is concocted. Formerly, to prove that sacks of flour
+were being thrown into the river, the soldiers alleged that these sacks
+were tied with blue cords (cordons bleus). Now, to confirm the belief
+that an officer is conspiring with Coblentz, it suffices to state that
+he rides a white horse; a certain captain, at Strasbourg, barely escapes
+being cut to pieces for this crime; "the devil could not get it out of
+their heads that he was acting as a spy, and that the little grey-hound"
+which accompanies him on his rides "is used to make signals. "--One year
+after, at the time when the National Assembly completes its work, M.
+de Lameth, M. Fr�teau, and M. Alquier state before it that Luckner,
+Rochambeau, and the most popular generals, "no longer are responsible
+for anything." The Auvergne regiment has driven away its officers and
+forms a separate society, which obeys no one. The second battalion of
+Beaune is on the point of setting fire to Arras. It is almost necessary
+to lay siege to Phalsbourg, whose garrison has mutinied. Here,
+"disobedience to the general's orders is formal." There "are soldiers
+who have to be urged to stand sentinel; whom they dare not put in
+confinement for discipline; who threaten to fire on their officers; who
+stray off the road, pillage everything, and take aim at the corporal who
+tries to bring them back." At Blois, a part of the regiment "has just
+arrived without either clothes or arms, the soldiers having sold all on
+the road to provide for their debauchery." One among them, delegated by
+his companions, proposes to the Jacobins at Paris to "de-aristocratise"
+the army by cashiering all the nobles. Another declares, with the
+applause of the club, that "seeing how the palisades of Givet are
+constructed, he is going to denounce the Minister of War at the tribunal
+of the sixth arrondissement of Paris."
+
+It is manifest that, for noble officers, the situation is no longer
+tenable. After waiting patiently for twenty-three months, many of them
+left through conscientiousness, when the National Assembly, forcing a
+third oath upon them, struck out of the formula the name of the King,
+their born general.[3344]--Others depart at the end of the Constituent
+Assembly, "because they risk being hung." A large number resign at the
+end of 1791 and during the first months of 1792, in proportion as
+the new code and the new recruiting system for the army develop their
+results.[3345] In fact, on the one hand, through the soldiers and
+inferior officers having a voice in the election of their chiefs and
+a seat in the military courts, "there is no longer the shadow of
+discipline; verdicts are given from pure caprice; the soldier contracts
+the habit of despising his superiors, of whose punishments he has no
+fear, and from whom he expects no reward; the officers are paralyzed
+to such a degree as to become entirely superfluous personages." On the
+other hand, the majority of the National Volunteers are composed of "men
+bought by the communes" and administrative bodies, worthless characters
+of the street-corners, rustic vagabonds forced to march by lot or
+bribery,"[3346] and along with them, enthusiasts and fanatics to such an
+extent that, from March, 1792, from the spot of their enlistment to
+the frontier, their track is everywhere marked by pillage, robbery,
+devastation, and assassinations. Naturally, on the road and at the
+frontier, they denounce, drive away, imprison, or murder their officers,
+and especially the nobles. 3/4 And yet, in this extremity, numbers of
+noble officers, especially in the artillery and engineer corps, persist
+in remaining at their posts, some through liberal ideas, and others out
+of respect for their instructions; even after the 10th of August, even
+after the 2nd of September, even after the 21st of January, like their
+generals Biron, Custine, de Flers, de Broglie, and de Montesquiou, with
+the constant perspective of the guillotine that awaits them on leaving
+the battlefield and even in the ministerial offices of Carnot.
+
+
+
+
+VII.--Emigration and its causes.
+
+     The first laws against the emigrants.
+
+It is, accordingly, necessary that the officers and nobles should go
+away, should go abroad; and not only they, but also their families.
+"Gentlemen who have scarcely six hundred livres income set out on
+foot,"[3347] and there is no doubt as to the motive of their departure.
+"Whoever will impartially consider the sole and veritable causes of
+the emigration," says an honest man, "will find them in anarchy. If the
+liberty of the individual had not been daily threatened, if;" in the
+civil as in the military order of things, "the senseless dogma, preached
+by the factions, that crimes committed by the mob are the judgments of
+heaven, had not been put in practice, France would have preserved three
+fourths of her fugitives. Exposed for two years to ignominious dangers,
+to every species of outrage, to innumerable persecutions, to the steel
+of the assassin, to the firebrands of incendiaries, to the most
+infamous charges, 'to the denouncement of' their corrupted domestics,
+to domiciliary visits" prompted by the commonest street rumor, "to
+arbitrary imprisonment by the Committee of Inquiry," deprived of their
+civil rights, driven out of primary meetings, "they are held accountable
+for their murmurs, and punished for a sensibility which would touch the
+heart in a suffering criminal."--" Resistance is nowhere seen; from
+the prince's throne to the parsonage of the priest, the tempest has
+prostrated all malcontents in resignation." Abandoned "to the restless
+fury of the clubs, to informers, to intimidated officials, they find
+executioners on all sides where prudence and the safety of the State
+have enjoined them not even to see enemies. . . . Whoever has detested
+the enormities of fanaticism and of public ferocity, whoever has
+awarded pity to the victims heaped together under the ruins of so many
+legitimate rights and odious abuses, whoever, finally, has dared to
+raise a doubt or a complaint, has been proclaimed an enemy of
+the nation. After this representation of malcontents as so many
+conspirators, every crime committed against them has been legitimated in
+public opinion.[3348] The public conscience, formed by the factions
+and by that band of political corsairs who would be the disgrace of a
+barbarous nation, have considered attacks against property and towns
+simply as national justice, while, more than once, the news of the
+murder of an innocent person, or of a sentence which threatened him
+with death, has been welcomed with shouts of joy Two systems of natural
+right, two orders of justice, two standards of morality were accordingly
+established; by one of these it was allowable to do against one's
+fellow-creature, a reputed aristocrat, that which would be criminal if
+he were a patriot. . . . Was it foreseen that, at the end of two
+years, France, teeming with laws, with magistrates, with courts, with
+citizen-guards, bound by solemn oaths in the defense of order and the
+public safety, would still and continually be an arena in which wild
+beasts would devour unarmed men "--With all, even with old men, widows
+and children, it is a crime to escape from their clutches. Without
+distinguishing between those who fly to avoid becoming a prey, and
+those who arm to attack the frontier, the Constituent and Legislative
+Assemblies alike condemn all absentees. The Constituent Assembly[3349]
+trebled their real and personal taxes, and prescribed that there should
+be a triple lien on their rents and dues. The Legislative Assembly
+sequestrates, confiscates, and puts into the market their possessions,
+real and personal, amounting to nearly fifteen hundred millions of cash
+value. Let them return and place themselves under the knives of the
+populace; otherwise they and their posterity shall all be beggars.--At
+this stroke indignation overflows, and a bourgeois who is liberal and
+a foreigner, Mallet du Pan, exclaims,[3350] "What! twenty thousand
+families absolutely ignorant of the Coblentz plans and of its
+assemblies, twenty thousand families dispersed over the soil of Europe
+by the fury of clubs, by the crimes of brigands, by constant lack of
+security, by the stupid and cowardly inertia of petrified authorities,
+by the pillage of estates, by the insolence of it cohort of tyrants
+without bread or clothes, by assassinations and incendiarism, by the
+base servility of silent ministers, by the whole series of revolutionary
+scourges,--what' these twenty thousand desolate families, women and old
+men, must see their inheritances become the prey of national robbery!
+What! Madame Guillin, who was obliged to fly with horror from the
+land where monsters have burnt her dwelling, slaughtered and eaten
+her husband, and who live with impunity by the side of her home--shall
+Madame Guillin see her fortune confiscated for the benefit of the
+communities to which she owes her dreadful misfortunes! Shall M. de
+Clarac, under penalty of the same punishment, go and restore the ruins
+of his chateau, where an army of scoundrels failed to smother him!"--So
+much the worse for them if they dare not come back! They are to undergo
+civil death, perpetual banishment, and, in case the ban be violated,
+they will be given up to the guillotine. In the same case with them
+are others who, with still greater innocence, have left the territory,
+magistrates, ordinary rich people, burgesses, or peasants, Catholics,
+and particularly one entire class, the nonjuring clergy, from the
+cardinal archbishop down to the simple village vicar, all prosecuted,
+then despoiled, then crushed by the same popular oppression and by the
+same legislative oppression, each of these two persecutions exciting and
+aggravating the other to such an extent that, at last, the populace and
+the law, one the accomplice of the other, no longer leave a roof nor
+a piece of bread, nor an hour's safety to a gentleman or to a
+priest.[3351]
+
+
+
+
+VIII.--Attitude of the non-juring priests.
+
+     How they become distrusted.--Illegal arrests by local
+     administrations.--Violence or complicity of the National
+     Guards.--Outrages by the populace.--Executive power in the
+     south.--The sixth jacquerie.--Its two causes.--Isolated
+     outbreaks in the north, east, and west,--General eruption in
+     the south and in the center.
+
+The ruling passion flings itself on all obstacles, even those placed by
+itself across its own track. Through a vast usurpation the minority
+of non-believers, indifferent or lukewarm, has striven to impose its
+ecclesiastical forms on the Catholic majority, and the situation
+thereby created for the Catholic priest is such that unless he becomes
+schismatic, he cannot fail to appear as an enemy. In vain has he obeyed!
+He has allowed his property to be taken, he has left his parsonage, he
+has given the keys of the church to his successor, he has kept aloof;
+he does not transgress, either by omission or commission, any article of
+any decree. In vain does he avail himself of his legal right to abstain
+from taking an oath repugnant to his conscience. This alone makes him
+appear to refuse the civic oath in which the ecclesiastical oath is
+included, to reject the constitution which he accepts in full minus a
+parasite chapter, to conspire against the new social and political order
+of things which he often approves of; and to which he almost always
+submits.[3352] In vain does he confine himself to his special and
+recognized domain, the spiritual direction of things. Through this
+alone he resists the new legislators who pretend to furnish a spiritual
+guidance, for, by virtue of being orthodox, he must believe that the
+priest whom they elect is excommunicated, that his sacraments are vain;
+and, in his office as pastor, he must prevent his sheep from going to
+drink at an impure source. In vain might he preach to them moderation
+and respect. Through the mere fact that the schism is effected, its
+consequences unfold them selves, and the peasants will not always remain
+as patient as their pastor. They have known him for twenty years; he has
+baptized them and married them; they believe that his is the only true
+mass; they are not satisfied to be obliged to attend another two or
+three leagues away, and to leave the church, their church which their
+ancestors built, and where from father to son they have prayed for
+centuries, in the hands of a stranger, an intruder and heretic, who
+officiates before almost empty benches, and whom gendarmes, with guns in
+their hands, have installed. Assuredly, as he passes through the street,
+they will look upon him askance: it is not surprising that the women and
+children soon hoot at him, that stones are thrown at night through his
+windows, that in the strongly Catholic departments, Upper and Lower
+Rhine, Doubs and Jura, Loz�re, Deux-S�vres and Vend�e, Finist�re,
+Morbihan, and C�tes-du-Nord, he is greeted with universal desertion,
+and then expelled through public ill-will. It is not surprising that
+his mass is interrupted and that his person is threatened;[3353] that
+disaffection which thus far had only reached the upper class, descends
+to the popular strata; that, from one end of France to the other, a
+sullen hostility prevails against the new institutions; for now the
+political and social constitution is joined to the ecclesiastical
+constitution like an edifice to its spire, and, through this sharp
+pinnacle, seeks the storm even within the darkening clouds of heaven.
+The evil all springs out of this unskillful, gratuitous, compulsory
+fusion, and, consequently, from those who effected it.
+
+But never will a victorious party admit that it has made a mistake.
+In its eyes the nonjuring priests are alone culpable; it is irritated
+against their factious conscience; and, to crush the rebellion even in
+the inaccessible sanctuary of personal conviction, there is no legal or
+brutal act of violence which it will not allow itself to commit.
+
+Behold, accordingly, a new sport thrown open; and the game is immensely
+plentiful. For it comprises not only the black or gray robes, more than
+forty thousand priests, over thirty thousand nuns, and several thousand
+monks, but also the devoted orthodox, that is to say the women of the
+low or middle class, and, without counting provincial nobles, a majority
+of the serious, steady bourgeoisie, a majority of the peasantry-almost
+the whole population of several provinces, east, west, and in the south.
+A name is bestowed on them, as lately on the nobles; it is that of
+fanatic, which is equivalent to aristocrat, for it also designates
+public enemies likewise placed by it beyond the pale of the law.
+
+Little does it matter whether the law favors them, for it is interpreted
+against them, arbitrarily construed and openly violated by the partial
+or intimidated administrative bodies which the Constitution has
+withdrawn from the control of the central authority and subjected to
+the authority of popular gatherings. From the first months of 1791,
+the hounding begins; the municipalities, districts, and departments
+themselves often take the lead in beating up the game. Six months later,
+the Legislative Assembly, by its decree of November 29,[3354] sounds the
+tally-ho, and, in spite of the King's veto, the hounds on all sides dash
+forward. During the month of April, 1792, forty-two departments pass
+against nonjuring priests "acts which are neither prescribed nor
+authorized by the Constitution," and, before the end of the Legislative
+Assembly, forty-three others will have followed in their train.--Through
+this series of illegal acts, without offense, without trial, non-jurors
+are everywhere in France expelled from their parishes, relegated to the
+principal town of the department or district, in some places imprisoned,
+put on the same footing with the emigrants, and despoiled of their
+property, real and personal.[3355] Nothing more is wanting against them
+but the general decree of deportation which is to come as soon as the
+Assembly can get rid of the King.
+
+In the meantime, the National Guards, who have extorted the laws,
+endeavor to aggravate them in their application; and there is nothing
+strange in their animosity. Commerce is at a standstill, industry
+languishes, the artisan and shopkeeper suffer, and, in order to account
+for the universal discontent, it is attributed to the insubordination
+of the priest. Were it not for his stubbornness all would go well, since
+the Constitution is perfect, and he is the only one who does not accept
+it. But, in not accepting it, he attacks it. He, therefore, is the last
+obstacle in the way of public happiness; he is the scapegoat, let us
+drive the obnoxious creature away! And the urban militia, sometimes
+on its own authority, sometimes instigated by the municipal body its
+accomplice; is seen disturbing public worship, dispersing congregations,
+seizing priests by the collar, pushing them by the shoulders out of
+the town, and threatening them with hanging if they dare to return.
+At Douay,[3356] with guns in hand, they force the directory of the
+department to order the closing of all the oratories and chapels in
+hospitals and convents. At Caen, with loaded guns and with a cannon,
+they march forth against the neighboring parish of Verson, break into
+houses, gather up fifteen persons suspected of orthodoxy--canons,
+merchants, artisans, workmen, women, girls, old men, and the infirm--cut
+off their hair, strike them with the but-ends of their muskets, and lead
+them back to Caen fastened to the breach of the cannon; and all this
+because a nonjuring priest still officiated at Verson, and many pious
+persons from Caen attended his mass: Verson, consequently, is a focal
+center of counter-revolutionary gatherings. Moreover, in the houses
+which were broken into, the furniture was smashed, casks stove in, and
+the linen, money, and plate stolen, the rabble of Caen having joined
+the expedition.--Here, and everywhere, there is nothing to do but to
+let this rabble have its own way; and as it operates against the
+possessions, the liberty; the life, and the sense of propriety of
+dangerous persons, the National Militia is careful not to interfere
+with it. Consequently, the orthodox, both priests and believers, men and
+women, are now at its mercy, and, thanks to the connivance of the armed
+force, which refuses to interpose, the rabble satisfy on the proscribed
+class its customary instincts of cruelty, pillage, wantonness, and
+destructiveness.
+
+Whether public or private, the order of the day is always to hinder
+worship, while the means employed are worthy of those who carry them
+out.--Here, a nonjuring priest having had the boldness to minister to
+a sick person, the house which he has just entered is taken by assault,
+and the door and windows of a house occupied by another priest are
+smashed.[3357] There, the lodgings of two workmen, who are accused of
+having had their infants baptized by a refractory priest, are sacked and
+nearly demolished. Elsewhere, a mob refuses to allow the body of an
+old cur�, who had died without taking the oath, to enter the cemetery.
+Farther on, a church is assaulted during vespers, and everything is
+broken to pieces: on the following day it is the turn of a neighboring
+church, and, in addition, a convent of Ursuline nuns is devastated.--At
+Lyons, on Easter-day, 1791, as the people are leaving the six o'clock
+mass, a troop, armed with whips, falls upon the women.[3358] Stripped,
+bruised, prostrated, with their heads in the dirt, they are not left
+until they are bleeding and half-dead; one young girl is actually at the
+point of death; and this sort of outrage occurs so frequently that even
+ladies attending the orthodox mass in Paris dare not go out
+without sewing up their garments around them in the shape of
+drawers.--Naturally, to make the most of the prey offered to them,
+hunting associations are formed. These exist in Montpellier, Arles,
+Uz�s, Alais, N�mes, Carpentras, and in most of the towns or burgs of
+Gard, Vaucluse, and l'H�rault, in greater or less number according to
+the population of the city: some counting from ten to twelve, and others
+from two to three hundred determined men, of every description: among
+them are found "strike-hards" (tape-dur), former brigands, and escaped
+convicts with the brand still on their backs. Some of them oblige their
+members to wear a medal as a visible mark of recognition; all assume
+the title of executive power, and declare that they act of their own
+authority, and that it is necessary to "quicken the law."[3359] Their
+pretext is the protection of sworn priests; and for twenty months,
+beginning with April, 1791, they operate to this effect with heavy
+knotted dubs garnished with iron points," without counting sabers and
+bayonets. Generally, their expeditions are nocturnal. Suddenly, the
+houses of "citizens suspected of a want of patriotism," of nonjuring
+ecclesiastics, of the monks of the Christian school, are invaded;
+everything is broken or stolen, and the owner is ordered to leave the
+place in twenty-four hours: sometimes, doubtless through an excess of
+precaution, he is beaten to death on the spot. Besides this, the band
+also works by day in the streets, lashes the women, enters the churches
+saber in hand, and drives the nonjuring priest from the altar. All of
+this is done with the connivance and in the sight of the paralyzed
+or complaisant authorities, by a sort of occult and complementary
+government, which not only supplies what is missing in the
+ecclesiastical law, but also searches the pockets of private
+individuals.--At N�mes, under the leadership of a patriotic
+dancing-master, not content with "decreeing proscriptions, killing,
+scourging, and often murdering," these new champions of the Gallican
+Church undertake to reanimate the zeal of those liable to contribution.
+A subscription having been proposed for the support of the families of
+the volunteers about to depart, the executive power takes upon itself
+to revise the list of offerings: it arbitrarily taxes those who have not
+given, or who, in its opinion, have given too little some "poor workmen
+fifty livres, others two hundred, three hundred, nine hundred, and
+a thousand, under penalty of wrecked houses and severe treatment."
+Elsewhere, the volunteers of Baux and other communes near Tarascon help
+themselves freely, and, "under the pretext that they are to march for
+the defense of the country, levy enormous contributions on proprietors,"
+on one four thousand, and on another five thousand livres. In default of
+payment, they carry away all the grain on one farm, even to the reserve
+seed, threatening to make havoc with everything, and even to burn, in
+case of complaint, so that the owners dare not say a word, while the
+attorney-general of the neighboring department, afraid on his own
+account, begs that his denunciation may be kept secret.--From the slums
+of the towns the jacquerie has spread into the rural districts. This is
+the sixth and the most extensive seen for three years.[3360]
+
+Two spurs impel the peasant on.--On the one hand he is frightened by
+the clash of arms, and the repeated announcements of an approaching
+invasion. The clubs and the newspapers since the declaration of Pilnitz,
+and the Orators in the Legislative Assembly for four months past, have
+kept him alarmed with their trumpet-blasts, and he urges on his oxen in
+the furrow with cries of "Woa, Prussia!" to one, and to the other, "Gee
+up, Austria!" Austria and Prussia, foreign kings and nobles in league
+with the emigrant nobles, are going to return in force to re-establish
+the salt-tax, the excise, feudal-dues, tithes, and to retake national
+property already sold and re-sold, with the aid of the gentry who have
+not left, or who have returned, and the connivance of non-juring
+priests who declare the sale sacrilegious and refuse to absolve the
+purchasers.--On the other hand, Holy Week is drawing near, and for the
+past year qualms of conscience have disturbed the purchasers. Up to
+March 24, 1791, the sales of national property had amounted to only 180
+millions; but, the Assembly having prolonged the date of payment and
+facilitated further sales in detail, the temptation proves too strong
+for the peasant; stockings and buried pots are all emptied of their
+savings. In seven months the peasant has bought to the amount of 1,346
+millions,[3361] and finally possesses in full and complete ownership the
+morsel of land which he has coveted for so many years, and sometimes an
+unexpected plot, a wood, a mill, or a meadow. At the present time he has
+to settle accounts with the church, and, if the pecuniary settlement is
+postponed, the Catholic settlement comes on the appointed day.
+According to immemorial tradition he is obliged to take the communion
+at Easter,[3362] his wife also, and likewise his mother; and if he,
+exceptionally, does not think this of consequence, they do. Moreover, he
+requires the sacraments for his old sick father, his new-born child, and
+for his other child of an age to be confirmed. Now, communion, baptism,
+confession, all the sacraments, to be of good quality, must proceed from
+a safe source, just as is the case with flour and coin; there is only
+too much counterfeit money now in the world, and the sworn priests are
+daily losing credit, like the assignats. There is no other course to
+pursue, consequently, but to resort to the non-juror, who is the only
+one able to give valid absolutions. And it so happens that he not only
+refuses this, but he is said to be inimical to the whole new order of
+things.--In this dilemma the peasant falls back upon his usual resource,
+the strength of his arms; he seizes the priest by the throat, as
+formerly his lord, and extorts an acquittance for his sins as formerly
+for his feudal dues. At the very least he strives to constrain the
+non-jurors to swear, to close their separatist churches, and bring the
+entire canton to the same uniform faith.--Occasionally also he avenges
+himself against the partisans of the non-jurors, against chateaux
+and houses of the opulent, against the nobles and the rich, against
+proprietors of every class. Occasionally, likewise, as, since the
+amnesty of September, 1791, the prisons have been emptied, as one-half
+of the courts are not yet installed,[3363] as there has been no police
+for thirty months, the common robbers, bandits, and vagrants, who swarm
+about without repression or surveillance, join the mob and fill their
+pockets.
+
+Here, in Pas-de-Calais,[3364] three hundred villagers, headed by a
+drummer, burst open the doors of a Carthusian convent, steal everything,
+eatables, beverages, linen, furniture, and effects, whilst, in the
+neighboring parish, another band operates in the same fashion in the
+houses of the mayor and of the old cur�, threatening "to kill and
+burn all," and promising to return on the following Sunday.--There,
+in Bas-Rhin, near Fort Louis, twenty houses of the aristocrats are
+pillaged.--Elsewhere in Ile-et-Vilaine, bodies of rural militia,
+combined, go from parish to parish, and, increasing in numbers in
+consequence of their very violence until they form bands of two thousand
+men. They close churches, drive away nonjuring priests, remove clappers
+from the bells, eat and drink what they please at the expense of the
+inhabitants, and often, in the houses of the mayor or tax-registrar,
+indulge in the pleasure of breaking everything to pieces. Should any
+public officer remonstrate with them they shout, "At the aristocrat!"
+One of these unlucky counselors is struck on the back with the but-end
+of a musket, and two others have guns aimed at them; the chiefs of the
+expedition are in no better predicament, and, according to their own
+admission, if they are at the head of the mob it is to make sure they
+themselves will not be pillaged or hung. The same spectacle presents
+itself in Mayenne, in Orne, in Moselle, and in the Landes.[3365]--These,
+however, are but isolated irruptions, and very mild; in the south and
+in the center, the plague is apparent in an immense leprous spot, which
+extending from Avignon to Perigueux, and from Aurillac to Toulouse,
+suddenly covers, nearly without with any discontinuity, ten departments,
+Vaucluse, Ard�che, Gard, Cantal, Corr�ze, Lot, Dordogne, Gers,
+Haute-Garonne, and H�rault. Vast rural masses are set in motion at the
+same time, on all sides and owing to the same causes: the approach of
+war and the coming of Easter.--In Cantal, at the assembly of the canton
+held at Aurillac for the recruitment of the army,[3366] the commander
+of a village National Guard demands vengeance "against those who are not
+patriots," and the report is spread that an order has come from Paris to
+destroy the chateaux. Moreover, the insurgents allege that the priests,
+through their refusal to take the oath, are bringing the nation into
+civil war: "we are tired of not having peace on their account; let them
+become good citizens, so that everybody may go to mass." On the strength
+of this, the insurgents enter houses, put the inhabitants to ransom,
+not only priests and former nobles, "but also those who are suspected
+of being their partisans, those who do not attend the mass of the
+constitutional priest," and even poor people, artisans and tillers of
+the ground, whom they tax five, ten, twenty, and forty francs, and
+whose cellars and bread-bins they empty. Eighteen chateaux are pillaged,
+burnt, or demolished, and among others, those of several gentlemen and
+ladies who have not left the country. One of these, M. d'Humi�res, is an
+old officer of eighty years; Madame de Peyronenc saves her son only by
+disguising him as a peasant; Madame de Beauclerc, who flies across the
+mountain, sees her sick child die in her arms. At Aurillac, gibbets are
+set up before the principal houses; M. de Niossel, a former lieutenant
+of a criminal court, put in prison for his safety, is dragged out, and
+his severed head is thrown on a dunghill; M. Collinet, just arrived
+from Malta, and suspected of being an aristocrat, is ripped open, cut
+to pieces, and his head is carried about on the end of a pike. Finally,
+when the municipal officers, judges, and royal commissioner commence
+proceedings against the assassins, they find themselves in such great
+danger that they are obliged to resign or to run away. In like manner,
+in Haute-Garonne,[3367] it is also "against non-jurors and their
+followers" that the insurrection has begun. This is promoted by the fact
+that in various parishes the constitutional cur� belongs to the
+club, and demands the riddance of his adversaries. One of them at
+Saint-Jean-Lorne, "mounted on a cart, preaches pillage to a mob of
+eight hundred persons." Each band, consequently, begins by expelling
+refractory priests, and by forcing their supporters to attend the mass
+of the sworn priest.--But such success, wholly abstract and barren, is
+of little advantage, and peasants in a state of revolt are not satisfied
+so easily. When parishes march forth by the dozen and devote their day
+to the service of the public, they must have some compensation in wood,
+wheat, wine, or money,[3368] and the expense of the expedition may be
+defrayed by the aristocrats. Not merely the upholders of non-jurors
+are aristocrats, as, for example, an old lady here and there, "very
+fanatical, and who for forty years has devoted all her income to acts of
+philanthropy," "but well-to-do persons, peasants or gentlemen;" for, "by
+keeping their wine and grain unsold in their cellars and barns, and by
+not undertaking more work than they need, so as to deprive workmen in
+the country of their means of subsistence," they design "to starve out"
+the poor folk. Thus, the greater the pillage, the greater the service
+to the public. According to the insurgents, it is important "to diminish
+revenues enjoyed by the enemies of the nation, in order that they
+may not send their revenues to Coblentz and other places out of the
+kingdom." Consequently, bands of six or eight hundred or a thousand men
+overrun the districts of Toulouse and Castelsarrasin. All proprietors,
+aristocrats, and patriots are put under contribution. Here, in the
+house of "the philanthropic but fanatical old maid, they break open
+everything, destroy the furniture, taking away eighty-two bushels of
+wheat and sixteen hogsheads of wine." Elsewhere, at Roqueferri�re,
+feudal title-deeds are burnt, and a chateau is pillaged. Farther on, at
+Lasserre, thirty thousand francs are exacted and the ready money is
+all carried off. Almost everywhere the municipal officers, willingly or
+unwillingly, authorize pillaging. Moreover, "they cut down provisions to
+a price in assignats very much less than their current rate in silver,"
+and they double the price of a day's work. In the meantime, other bands
+devastate the national forests, and the gendarmes, in order not to be
+called aristocrats, have no idea but of paying court to the pillagers.
+
+After all this, it is manifest that property no longer exists for
+anybody except for paupers and robbers.--In effect, in Dordogne,[3369]
+under the pretext of driving away nonjuring priests, frequently mobs
+gather to pillage and rob whatever comes in their way. . . . All the
+grain that is found in houses with weathercocks is sequestrated."
+The rustics exploit, as communal property, all the forests, all the
+possessions of the emigrants; and this operation is radical; for
+example, a band, on finding a new barn of which the materials strike
+them as good, demolish it so as to share with each other the tiles and
+timber.--In Corr�ze, fifteen thousand armed peasants, who have come to
+Tulle to disarm and drive off the supporters of the non-jurors, break
+everything in suspected houses, and a good deal of difficulty is found
+in sending them off empty-handed. As soon as they get back home, they
+sack the chateaux of Saint-Gal, Seilhac, Gourdon, Saint-Basile, and La
+Rochette, besides a number of country-houses, even of absent plebeians.
+They have found a quarry, and never was the removal of property more
+complete. They carefully carry off, says an official statement, all that
+can be carried--furniture, curtains, mirrors, clothes-presses, pictures,
+wines, provisions, even floors and wooden panels, "down to the smallest
+fragments of iron and wood-work," smashing the rest, so that nothing
+"remains of the house but its four walls, the roof and the staircase."
+In Lot, where for two years the insurrection is permanent, the damage
+is much greater. During the night between the 30th and 31st of January,
+"all the best houses in Souillac" are broken open, "sacked and pillaged
+from top to bottom,"[3370] their owners being obliged to fly, and so
+many outbreaks occur in the department, that the directory has no time
+to render an account of them to the minister. Entire districts are
+in revolt; as, "in each commune all the inhabitants are accomplices,
+witnesses cannot be had to support a criminal prosecution, and crime
+remains unpunished." In the canton of Cabrerets, the restitution of
+rents formerly collected is exacted, and the reimbursement of charges
+paid during twenty years past. The small town of Lauzerte is invaded by
+surrounding bodies of militia, and its disarmed inhabitants are at
+the mercy of the Jacobin suburbs. For three months, in the district of
+Figeac, "all the mansions of former nobles are sacked and burnt;" next
+the pigeon-cots are attacked, "and all country-houses which have a good
+appearance." Barefooted gangs "enter the houses of well-to-do people,
+physicians, lawyers, merchants, burst open the doors of cellars, drink
+the wine," and riot like drunken victors. In several communes these
+expeditions have become a custom; "a large number of individuals are
+found in them who live on rapine alone," and the club sets them the
+example. For six months, in the principal town, a coterie of the
+National Guard, called the Black Band, expel all persons who are
+displeasing to them, "pillaging houses at will, beating to death,
+wounding or mutilating by saber-strokes, all who have been proscribed in
+their assemblies," and no official or advocate dares lodge a complaint.
+Brigandage, borrowing the mask of patriotism, and patriotism borrowing
+the methods of brigandage, have combined against property at the same
+time as against the ancient r�gime, and, to free themselves from all
+that inspires them with fear, they seize all which can provide them with
+booty.
+
+And yet this is merely the outskirts of the storm; the center is
+elsewhere, around N�mes, Avignon, Arles, and Marseilles, in a country
+where, for a long time, the conflict between cities and the conflict
+between religions have kindled and accumulated malignant passions.[3371]
+Looking at the three departments of Gard, Bouches-de-Rh�ne and Vaucluse,
+one would imagine one's self in the midst of a war with savages.
+In fact, it is a Jacobin and plebeian invasion, and, consequently,
+conquest, dispossession, and extermination,--in Gard, a swarm of
+National Guards copy the jacquerie: the dregs of the Comtat come to the
+surface and cover Vaucluse with its scum; an army of six thousand from
+Marseilles sweeps down on Arles.--In the districts of N�mes, Sommi�res,
+Uz�s, Alais, Jalais, and Saint-Hippolyte, title-deeds are burnt,
+proprietors put to ransom, and municipal officers threatened with death
+if they try to interpose; twenty chateaux and forty country-houses are
+sacked, burnt, and demolished.--The same month, Arles and Avignon,[3372]
+given up to the bands of Marseilles and of the Comtat, see confiscation
+and massacres approaching.--Around the commandant, who has received the
+order to evacuate Aries,[3373] "the inhabitants of all parties" gather
+as suppliants, "clasping his hands, entreating him with tears in their
+eyes not to abandon them; women and children cling to his boots," so
+that he does not know how to free himself without hurting them; on his
+departure twelve hundred families emigrate. After the entrance of the
+Marseilles band we see eighteen hundred electors proscribed, their
+country-houses on the two banks of the Rhone pillaged, "as in the times
+of Saracen pirates," a tax of 1,400,000 livres levied on all people in
+good circumstances, absent or present, women and girls promenaded
+about half-naked on donkeys and publicly whipped." "A saber committee"
+disposes of lives, proscribes and executes: it is the reign of sailors,
+porters, and the dregs of the populace.--At Avignon,[3374] it is that of
+simple brigands, incendiaries and assassins, who, six months previously,
+converted the Glaci�re[3375] into a charnel-house. They return in
+triumph and state that "this time the Glaci�re will be full." Five
+hundred families had already sought asylum in France before the first
+massacre; now, the entire remainder of the honest bourgeoisie, twelve
+hundred persons, take to flight, and the terror is so great that the
+small neighboring towns dare not receive emigrants. In fact, from this
+time forth, both departments throughout Vaucluse and Bouches-de-Rh�ne
+are a prey: Bands of two thousand armed men, with women, children, and
+other volunteer followers, travel from commune to commune to live as
+they please at the expense of "fanatics." The well-bred people are not
+the only ones they despoil. Plain cultivators, taxed at 10,000 livres,
+have sixty men billeted on them; their cattle are slain and eaten before
+their eyes, and everything in their houses is broken up; they are driven
+out of their lodgings and wander as fugitives in the reed-swamps of the
+Rhone, awaiting a moment of respite to cross the river and take refuge
+in the neighboring department.[3376] Thus, from the spring of 1792,
+if any citizen is suspected of unfriendliness or even of indifference
+towards the ruling faction, if, through but one opinion conscientiously
+held, he risks the vague possibility of mistrust or of suspicion, he
+undergoes popular hostility, pillage, exile, and worse besides; no
+matter how loyal his conduct may be, nor how loyal he may be at heart,
+no matter that he is disarmed and inoffensive; it is all the same
+whether it be a noble, bourgeois, peasant, aged priest, or woman; and
+this while public peril is yet neither great, present, nor visible,
+since France is at peace with Europe, and the government still subsists
+in its entirety.
+
+
+
+
+IX.--General state of opinion.
+
+     The three convoys of non-juring priests on the Seine.--
+     Psychological aspects of the Revolution.
+
+What will it be, then, now when the peril, already become palpable and
+serious, is daily increasing, now when war has begun, when Lafayette's
+army is falling back in confusion, when the Assembly declares the
+country in danger, when the King is overthrown, when Lafayette defects
+and goes abroad, when the soil of France is invaded, when the frontier
+fortresses surrender without resistance, when the Prussians are entering
+Champagne, when the insurrection in La Vend�e adds the lacerations of
+civil war to the threats of a foreign war, and when the cry of treachery
+arises on all sides?--Already, on the 14th of May, at Metz,[3377] M.
+de Fiquelmont, a former canon, seen chatting with a hussar on the Place
+Saint-Jacques, was charged with tampering with people on behalf of the
+princes, carried off in spite of a triple line of guards, and beaten,
+pierced, and slashed with sticks, bayonets, and sabers, while the mad
+crowd around the murderers uttered cries of rage: and from month to
+month, in proportion as popular fears increase, popular imagination
+becomes more heated and its delirium grows.--You can see this yourself
+by one example. On the 31st of August, 1792,[3378] eight thousand
+non-juring priests, driven out of their parishes, are at Rouen, a town
+less intolerant than the others, and, in conformity with the decree
+which banishes them, are preparing to leave France. Two vessels have
+just carried away about a hundred of them; one hundred and twenty others
+are embarking for Ostend in a larger vessel. They take nothing with them
+except a little money, some clothes, and one or at most two portions of
+their breviary, because they intend to return soon. Each has a regular
+passport, and, just at the moment of leaving, the National Guard have
+made a thorough inspection so as not to let a suspected person escape.
+It makes no difference. On reaching Quilleboeuf the first two convoys
+are stopped. A report has spread, indeed, that the priests are going to
+join the enemy and enlist, and the people living round about jump
+into their boats and surround the vessels. The priests are obliged to
+disembark amidst a tempests of "yells, blasphemies, insults, and abuse:"
+one of them, a white-headed old man, having fallen into the mud, the
+cries and shouts redouble; if he is drowned so much the better, there
+will be one less! On landing all are put in prison, on bare stones,
+without straw or bread, and word is sent to Paris to know what must be
+done with so many cassocks. In the meantime the third vessel, short of
+provisions, has sent two priests to Quilleboeuf and to Pont-Audemer to
+have twelve hundred pounds of bread baked: pointed out by the village
+militia, they are chased out like wild beasts, pass the night in a wood,
+and find their way back with difficulty empty-handed. The vessel itself
+being signaled, is besieged. "In all the municipalities on the banks of
+the river drums beat incessantly to warn the population to be on their
+guard. The appearance of an Algerian or Tripolitan corsair on the shores
+of the Adriatic would cause less excitement. One of the seamen of the
+vessel published a statement that the trunks of the priests transported
+were full of every kind of arms." and the country people constantly
+imagine that they are going to fall upon them sword and pistol in hand.
+For several long days the famished convoy remains moored in the stream,
+are carefully watched. Boats filled with volunteers and peasants row
+around it uttering insults and threats: in the neighboring meadows the
+National Guards form themselves in line of battle. Finally, a decision
+is arrived at. The bravest, well armed get into skiffs, approach the
+vessel cautiously, choose the most favorable time and spot, rush on
+board, and take possession; and are perfectly astonished to find neither
+enemies nor arms.--Nevertheless, the priests are confined on board, and
+their deputies, must make their appearance before the mayor. The latter,
+a former usher and good Jacobin, being the most frightened, is the most
+violent. He refuses to stamp the passports, and, seeing two priests
+approach, one provided with a sword-cane and the other with an
+iron-pointed stick, thinks that there is to be a sudden attack. "Here
+are two more of them," he exclaims with terror; "they are all going to
+land. My friends, the town is in danger!"--On hearing this the crowd
+becomes alarmed, and threatens the deputies; the cry of "To the lamp
+post!" is heard, and, to save them, National Guards are obliged to
+conduct them to prison in the center of a circle of bayonets.--It must
+be noted that these madmen are "at bottom the kindest people in the
+world." After the boarding of the ship, one of the most ferocious,
+by profession a barber, seeing the long beards of these poor priests,
+instantly cools down, draws forth his tools, and good-naturedly sets
+to work, spending several hours in shaving them. In ordinary times
+ecclesiastics received nothing but salutations; three years previously
+they were "respected as fathers and guides." But at the present moment
+the rustic, the man of the lower class, is out of his bearings. Forcibly
+and against nature, he has been made a theologian, a politician, a
+police captain, a local independent sovereign; and in such a position
+his head is turned. Among these people who seem to have lost their
+senses, only one, an officer of the National Guard, remains cool; he is,
+besides, very polite, well-behaved, and an agreeable talker; he comes
+in the evening to comfort the prisoners and to take tea with them
+in prison; in fact, he is accustomed to tragedies and, thanks to his
+profession, his nerves are in repose--this person is the executioner.
+The others, "whom one would take for tigers," are bewildered sheep; but
+they are not the less dangerous; for, carried away by their delirium,
+they bear down with their mass on whatever gives them umbrage.--On
+the road from Paris to Lyons[3379] Roland's commissioners witness this
+terrible fright. "The people are constantly asking what our generals
+and armies are doing; they have vengeful expressions frequently on their
+lips. Yes, they say, we will set out, but we must (at first) purge the
+interior."
+
+Something appalling is in preparation. The seventh jacquerie is drawing
+near, this one universal and final--at first brutal, and then legal
+and systematic, undertaken and carried out on the strength of abstract
+principles by leaders worthy of the means they employ. Nothing like it
+ever occurred in history; for the first time we see brutes gone mad,
+operating on a grand scale and for a long time, under the leadership of
+blockheads who have become insane.
+
+There is a certain strange malady commonly encountered in the quarters
+of the poor. A workman, over-taxed with work, in misery and badly fed,
+takes to drink; he drinks more and more every day, and liquors of the
+strongest kind. After a few years his nervous system, already weakened
+by spare diet, becomes over-excited and out of balance. An hour comes
+when the brain, under a sudden stroke, ceases to direct the machine; in
+vain does it command, for it is no longer obeyed; each limb, each
+joint, each muscle, acting separately and for itself starts convulsively
+through discordant impulses. Meanwhile the man is gay; he thinks himself
+a millionaire, a king, loved and admired by everybody; he is not aware
+of the mischief he is doing to himself he does not comprehend the advice
+given him, he refuses the remedies offered to him, he sings and shouts
+for entire days, and, above all, drinks more than ever.--At last his
+face grows dark and his eyes become blood-shot. Radiant visions give way
+to black and monstrous phantoms; he sees nothing around him hut menacing
+figures, traitors in ambush, ready to fall upon him unawares, murderers
+with upraised arms ready to cut his throat, executioners preparing
+torments for him; and he seems to be wading in a pool of blood. So he
+precipitates, and, in order that he himself may not be killed, he
+kills. No one is more to be dreaded, for his delirium sustains him;
+his strength is prodigious, his movements unforeseen, and he endures,
+without heeding them, suffering and wounds under which a healthy man
+would succumb.--France, like such a madman, exhausted by fasting under
+the monarchy, drunk by the unhealthy drug of the Social-Contract, and by
+countless other adulterated or fiery beverages, is suddenly struck with
+paralysis of the brain; at once she is convulsed in every limb through
+the incoherent play and contradictory twitching of her discordant
+organs. At this time she has traversed the period of joyous madness, and
+is about to enter upon the period of somber delirium: behold her capable
+of daring, suffering, and doing all, capable of incredible exploits and
+abominable barbarities, the moment her guides, as erratic as herself,
+indicate an enemy or an obstacle to her fury.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+*****
+
+
+[Footnote 3301: Moniteur, XI. 763. (Sitting of March 28,
+1792.)--"Archives Nationales," F7, 3235. (Deliberation of the Directory
+of the Department, November 29, 1791, and January 27, 1792.--Petition
+of the Municipality of Mende and of forty-three others, November 30,
+1791.)]
+
+[Footnote 3302: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3198. Minutes of the meeting
+of the municipal officers of Arles, September 2, 1791.--Letters of the
+Royal Commissioners and of the National Assembly, October 24, November
+6, 14, 17, 21, and December 21, 1791.--The Commissioners, to be
+impartial, attend in turn a mass by a nonjuring priest and one by a
+priest of the opposite side. "The church is full" with the former and
+always empty with the latter.]
+
+[Footnote 3303: "M�moire" of M. M�rilhon, for Froment, passim.--Report
+of M. Alquier, p. 54.--De Dampmartin, I. 208.]
+
+[Footnote 3304:--De Dampmartin, I. 208.They would exclaim to the
+catholic peasants: "Allons, mes enfants, Vive le Roi!" (shouts of
+enthusiasm): "those wretches of democrats, let us make an example of
+them, and restore the sacred rights of the throne and the altar!"--"As
+you please," replied the rustics in their patois, "but we must hold
+fast to the Revolution, for there are some good things about it."--They
+remain calm, refuse to march to the assistance of Uz�s, and withdraw
+into their mountains on the first sign of the approach of the National
+Guard.]
+
+[Footnote 3305: This is what the author Soljenitsyne observed about
+his Russian countrymen in an interview with M. Pivot in the French
+television in 1998. (SR.)]
+
+[Footnote 3306: Dauban, "La Demagogie � Paris," p.598; Letter of M. de
+Brissac, August 25, 1789.]
+
+[Footnote 3307: Moniteur, X. 339. (Journal de Troyes, and a letter from
+Perpignan, November, 1791.)]
+
+[Footnote 3308: Mercure de France, No. for September 3, 1791. "Let
+Liberty be presented to us, and all France will kneel before her;
+but noble and proud hearts will eternally resist the oppression which
+assumes her sacred mask. They will invoke liberty, but liberty without
+crime, the liberty which is maintained without dungeons, without
+inquisitors, without incendiaries, without brigands, without forced
+oaths, without illegal coalitions, without mob outrages; that liberty,
+finally, which allows no oppressor to go unpunished, and which does
+not crush peaceable citizens beneath the weight of the chains it has
+broken."]
+
+[Footnote 3309: Rivarol, "M�moires," p.367. (Letter of M. Servan,
+published in the "Actes des Ap�tres.")]
+
+[Footnote 3310: The King's brother, later to become King of France under
+the name of Louis XVIII. (SR.)]
+
+[Footnote 3311: "Archives Nationa1es," F7. 3257. Official reports,
+investigations, and correspondence in relation with the affair of M.
+Bussy (October, 1790).]
+
+[Footnote 3312: Mercure de France, May 15, 1790. (Letter of Baron de
+Bois-d'Aisy, April 29, read in the National Assembly.)--Moniteur, IV.
+302. Sitting of May 6. (Official statement of the Justice of the Peace
+of Vitteaux, April 28.)]
+
+[Footnote 3313: "Archives Nationales," DXXIX. 4. Letter of M.
+Belin-Chatellenot (near Asnay-le-Duc) to the President of the National
+Assembly, July 1, 1791. "In the realm of liberty we live under the most
+cruel tyranny, and in a state of the most complete anarchy, while the
+administrative bodies and the police, still in their infancy, seem to
+act only in fear and trembling. . . . So far, in all crimes, they
+are more concerned with extenuating the facts, than in punishing the
+offense. The result is that the guilty have had no other restraint on
+them than a few gentle phrases like this: Dear brothers and friends,
+you are in the wrong, be careful," etc.--Ibid. , F7, 3229. Letter of the
+Directory of the Department of Marne, July 13, 1791. (Searches by the
+National Guard in chateaux and the disarming of formerly privileged
+persons.) "None of our injunctions were obeyed." For example, there is
+breakage and violence in the residence of M. Guinaumont at Merry, the
+gun, shot and powder of the game-keeper even are carried off. "M. de
+Guinaumont is without the means of defending himself against a mad dog
+or any other savage brute that might come into his woods or into
+his courtyard." The Mayor of Merry, with the National Guard, under
+compulsion, tells them in vain that they are breaking the law.--Petition
+of Madame d'Ambly, wife of the deputy, June 28, 1791. Not having the
+guns which she had already given up, she is made to pay 150 francs.]
+
+[Footnote 3314: "Archives Nationales," DXXIX. 4. Letters of the
+Administrators of the Department of Rh�ne-et-Loire, July 6, 1791. (M.
+Vilet is one of the signers.)--Mercure de France, October 8, 1791.]
+
+[Footnote 3315: Mercure de France, August 20, 1791, the article by
+Mallet du Pan. "The details of the picture I have just sketched were
+all furnished me by Madame Dumoutet herself." I am "authorized by her
+signature to guarantee the accuracy of this narrative."]
+
+[Footnote 3316: Mercure de France, August 20, 1791, the article by
+Mallet du Pan. "The proceedings instituted at Lyons confirmed this
+banquet of cannibals."]
+
+[Footnote 3317: The letter of the Department ends with this either na�ve
+or ironical expression: "You have now only one conquest to make, that of
+making the people obey and submit to the law."]
+
+[Footnote 3318: "Archives Nationales," P7, 3,200. See documents relating
+to the affair of November 5, 1792, and the events which preceded it
+or followed it, and among others "Lettres du Directoire et du
+Procureur-syndic du Departement;" "P�tition et M�moire pour les
+D�t�nus;" "Lettres d'un T�moin," M. de Morant.--Moniteur, X. 356.
+"Minutes of the meeting de la Municipalit� de Caen" and of the
+"Directoire du Departement," XI.1264, 206. "Rapport de Guadet," and
+documents of the trial.--"Archives Nationales," ibid. .--"Lettres de
+M. Cahier," Minister of the Interior, January 26, 1792, of M. C. D.
+de Pont�coulant, President of the Department Directory, February 3,
+1792.--Proclamation by the Directory.]
+
+[Footnote 3319: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3200. Letter of September
+26, 1791.--Letter found on one of the arrested gentlemen. "A cowardly
+bourgeoisie, directors in cellars, a clubbist (Jacobin) municipality,
+waging the most illegal war against us."]
+
+[Footnote 3320: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3200. Letter of the
+Attorney-General of Bayeux, May 14, 1792, and of the Directory of
+Bayeux, May 21, 1792.--At Bayeux, likewise; the refugees are denounced
+and in peril. According to their verified statements they scarcely
+amounted to one hundred. "Several nonjuring priests, indeed, are found
+among them. (But) the rest, for the most part, consist of the heads of
+families who are known to reside habitually in neighboring districts,
+and who have been forced to leave their homes after having been, or
+fearing to become, victims of religious intolerance or of the threats of
+factions and of brigands."]
+
+[Footnote 3321: Lenin has probably read this during his studies in Paris
+and maybe been confirmed in his plan to create a new elite, an elite he
+eventually began to make use of from 1917 and onwards, an elite which
+continues to rule Russia and a great part of the world today. (SR.)]
+
+[Footnote 3322: Mercure de France, June 4, 1790 (letter from Cahors, May
+17, and an Act of the Municipality, May 10, 1790).]
+
+[Footnote 3323: "Archives Nationales," F7, 1223. Letter of count Louis
+de Beaumont, November 9, 1791. His letter, in a very moderate tone,
+thus end: "You must admit, sir, that it is very disagreeable and even
+incredible, that the Municipal Officers should be the originators of the
+disorders which occur in this town."]
+
+[Footnote 3324: Mercure de France, January 7, 1792. M. Granchier de Riom
+petitions the Directory of his Department in relation to the purchase of
+the cemetery, where his father had been interred four years before; his
+object is to prevent it from being dug up, which was decreed, and to
+preserve the family vault. He at the same time wishes to buy the church
+of Saint-Paul, in order to insure the continuance of the masses in
+behalf of his father's soul. The Directory replies (December 5, 1791):
+"considering that the motives which have determined the petitioner in
+his declaration are a pretense of good feeling under which there is
+hidden an illusion powerless to pervert a sound mind, the Directory
+decides that the application of the sieur Granchier cannot be granted."]
+
+[Footnote 3325: De Ferri�res, II. 268 (April 19, 1791).]
+
+[Footnote 3326: De Montlosier, II. 307, 309, 312.]
+
+[Footnote 3327: Moniteur, VI. 556. Letter of M d'Aymar, commodore,
+November 18, 1790.]
+
+[Footnote 3328: Mercure de France, May 28, and June 16, 1791 (letters
+from Cahors and Castelnau, May 18).]
+
+[Footnote 3329: Mercure de France, number of May 28, 1791. At the
+festival of the Federation, M. de Massy would not order his cavalry to
+put their chapeaux on the points of their swords, which was a difficult
+maneuver. He was accused of treason to the nation on account of this,
+and obliged to leave Tulle for several months.--"Archives Nationales,"
+F7, 3204. Extract from the minutes of the tribunal of Tulle, May 10,
+1791.]
+
+[Footnote 3330: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3215, "Minutes of the meeting
+des Officiers Municipaux de Brest," June 23, 1791.]
+
+[Footnote 3331: "M�moires de Cuvier" ("Eloges Historiques," by
+Flourens), I, 177. Cuvier, who was then in Havre (1788), had pursued the
+higher studies in a German administrative school. "M. de Surville," he
+says, an officer in the Artuis regiment, "has one of the must refined
+minds and most amiable characters I ever encountered. There were a good
+many of this sort among his comrades, and I am always astonished how
+such men could vegetate in the obscure ranks of an infantry regiment."]
+
+[Footnote 3332: De Dampmartin, I. 133. At the beginning of the year
+1790, "inferior officers said: 'We ought to demand something, for
+we have at least as many grievances as our troopers,' "--M. de la
+Rochejacquelein, after his great success in La Vend�e, said: "I hope
+that the King, when once he is restored, will give me a
+regiment." He aspired to nothing more ("M�moires de Madame de la
+Rochejacquelein").--Cf. "Un Officier royaliste au Service de la
+Republique," by M. de Bezancenet, in the letters and biography of
+General de Dommartin killed in the expedition to Egypt.]
+
+[Footnote 3333: Correspondence of MM. de Thiard, de Caraman, de Miran,
+de Bercheny, etc., above cited, passim.--Correspondence of M. de Thiard,
+May 5, 1780: "The town of Vannes has an authoritative style which begins
+to displease me. It wants the King to furnish drum-sticks. The first log
+of wood would provide these, with greater ease and promptness."]
+
+[Footnote 3334: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3248, March 16, 1791.
+At Douai, Nicolon, a grain-dealer, is hung because the municipal
+authorities did not care to proclaim martial law. The commandant, M. de
+la Noue, had not the right of ordering his men to move, and the murder
+took place before his eyes.]
+
+[Footnote 3335: The last named, especially, died with heroic meekness
+(Mercure de France, June 18, 1791).--Sitting of June 9, speeches by two
+officers of the regiment of Port-au-Prince, one of them an eye-witness.]
+
+[Footnote 3336: "De Dampmartin," II. 214. Desertion is very great, even
+in ordinary times, supplying foreign armies with "a fourth of their
+effective men."--Towards the end of 1789, Dubois de Cranc�, an old
+musketeer and one of the future "men of the mountain," stated to the
+National Assembly that the old system of recruiting supplied the army
+with "men without home or occupation, who often became soldiers to
+avoid civil penalties" (Moniteur, II. 376, 381, sitting of December 12,
+1789).]
+
+[Footnote 3337: "Archives Nationales," KK, 1105, Correspondence of M.
+de Thiard, September 4 and 7, 1789, November 20, 1789, April 28, and May
+29, 1790. "The spirit of insubordination which begins to show itself
+in the Bassigny regiment is an epidemic disease which is insensibly
+spreading among all the troops. . . . The troops are all in a state of
+gangrene, while all the municipalities oppose the orders they receive
+concerning the movements of troops."]
+
+[Footnote 3338: "Archives Nationales," H,1453. Correspondence of M. de
+Bercheny, July 12, 1790.]
+
+[Footnote 3339: "M�moire Justificatif" (by Gr�goire), on behalf of two
+soldiers, Emery and Delisle.--De Bouill�, "M�moires."--De Dampmartin,
+I.128, 144.--"Archives Nationales," KK, 1105, Correspondence of M. de
+Thiard, July 2 and 9, 1790.--Moniteur, sittings of September 3 and June
+4, 1790.]
+
+[Footnote 3340: De Bouill�, p. 127.--Moniteur, sitting of August 6,
+1790, and that of May 27, 1790.--Full details in authentic documents of
+the affair at Nancy, passim.--Report of M. Emmery, August 16, 1790, and
+other documents in Buchez and Roux, VII. 59-162.--De Bezancenet, p.35.
+Letters of M. de Dommartin (Metz, August 4, 1790). "The Federation
+there passed off quietly, only, a short time after, some soldiers of a
+regiment took it into their heads to divide the (military) fund, and at
+once placed sentinels at the door of the officer having charge of the
+chest, compelling him to open it (d�sacquer). Another regiment has since
+put all its officers under arrest. A third has mutinied, and wanted to
+take all its horses to the market-place and sell them.. . . Everywhere
+the soldiers are heard to say that if they want money they know where to
+find it."]
+
+[Footnote 3341: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3215, letters of the Royal
+Commissioners, September 27, October 1, 4, 8, 11, 1790. the commencement
+of the Revolution, had most to do with the insurrections in the
+interior. "What means can four commissioners employ to convince 20,000
+men, most of whom are seduced by the real enemies of the public welfare?
+In consequence of the replacing of the men the crews are, for the most
+part, composed of those who are almost ignorant of the sea, who know
+nothing of the rules of subordination, and who, at the commencement of
+the Revolution, had most to do with the insurrections in the interior."]
+
+[Footnote 3342: Mercure de France. October 2, 1790. Letter of the
+Admiral, M. d'Albert de Rioms, September 16. The soldiers of the
+Majestueux have refused to drill, and the sailors of the Patriote to
+obey.--"I wished to ascertain beforehand if they had any complaint to
+make against their captain?--No.--If they complained of myself?--No.--If
+they had any complaints to make against their officers?--No.--It is the
+revolt of one class against another class; their sole cry is 'Vive la
+Nation et les Aristocrates � la lanterne!' The mob have set up a gibbet
+before the house of M. de Marigny, major-general of marines; he has
+handed in his resignation. M. d'Albert tenders his resignation."--Ibid,
+June 18, 1791 (letter from Dunkirk, June 3).]
+
+[Footnote 3343: De Dampmartin, I. 222, 219. Mercure de France, September
+3, 1791. (Sitting of August 23.)--Cf. Moniteur (same date). "The Ancient
+R�gime," p.377.]
+
+[Footnote 3344: Marshal Marmont, "M�moires," I. 24. "The sentiment I
+entertained for the person of the King is difficult to define. . .
+(It was) a sentiment of devotion of an almost religious character, a
+profound respect as if due to a being of a superior order. At this time
+the word king possessed a magic power in all pure and upright hearts
+which nothing had changed. This delicate sentiment. . . still existed
+in the mass of the nation, especially among the well-born, who,
+sufficiently remote from power, were rather impressed by its brilliancy
+than by its imperfections." De Bezancenet, 27. Letter of M. de
+Dommartin, August 24, 1790. "We have just renewed our oath. I hardly
+know what it all means. I, a soldier, know only my King; in reality I
+obey two masters, who, we are told, will secure my happiness and that of
+my brethren, if they agree together."]
+
+[Footnote 3345: De Dampmartin, I. 179. See the details of his
+resignation (III. 185) after June 20, 1792.--Mercure de France, April
+14, 1792. Letter from the officers of the battalion of the Royal
+chasseurs of Provence (March 9). They are confined to their barracks by
+their soldiers, who refuse to obey their orders, and they declare that,
+on this account, they abandon the service and leave France.]
+
+[Footnote 3346: Rousset, "Les Volontaires de 1791 � 1794", p. 106. Letter
+of M. de Biron to the minister (August, 1792); p.225, letter of Vezu,
+commander of the 3rd battalion of Paris, to the army of the north (July
+24, 1793).--"A Residence in France from 1792 to 1795" (September,
+1792. Arras). See notes at the end of vol. II. for the details of these
+violent proceedings.]
+
+[Footnote 3347: Mercure de France, March 5, June 4, September 3, October
+22, 1791. (Articles by Mallet du Pan.--Ibid., April 14, 1792). More than
+six hundred naval officers resigned after the mutiny of the squadron
+at Brest. "Twenty-two grave revolts in the ports on shipboard remained
+unpunished, and several of them through the decisions of the naval
+jury." "There is no instance of any insurrection, in the ports or on
+shipboard, or any outrage upon a naval officer, having been punished.
+. . . It is not necessary to seek elsewhere for the causes of the
+abandonment of the service by naval officers. According to their letters
+all offer their lives to France, but refuse to command those who will
+not obey."]
+
+[Footnote 3348: This was done by Hitler against the Jews and by the
+Communists against their "enemy" the bourgeois. (SR.)]
+
+[Footnote 3349: Duvergier, "Decrees of August 1-6, 1791; February 9-11,
+1792; March 30 to April 8, 1792; July 24-28, 1792; March 28 to April 5,
+1793."--Report by Roland, January 6, 1793. He estimates this property
+at 4,800 millions, of which 1,800 millions must be deducted for the
+creditors of the emigrants; 3,000 millions remain. Now, at this date,
+the assignats are at a discount of 55 per cent. from their nominal
+figure.]
+
+[Footnote 3350: Mercure de France,, February 18, 1792.]
+
+[Footnote 3351: Already Tacitus noted some 2000 years ago that, "It is
+part of human nature to hate the man you have hurt." (SR.)]
+
+[Footnote 3352: Cf. on this general attitude of the clergy, Sauzay, V.
+I. and the whole of V. II.--Mercure de France, September 10, 1791: "No
+impartial man will fail to see that, in the midst of this oppression,
+amidst so many fanatical charges of which the reproach of fanaticism and
+revolt is the pretext, not one act of resistance has yet been manifest.
+Informers and municipal bodies, governed by clubs, have caused a large
+number of non-jurors to be cast into dungeons. All have come out of
+them, or groan there untried, and no tribunal has found any of them
+guilty."--Report of M. Cahier, Minister of the Interior, February
+18, 1792. He declares that "he had no knowledge of any priest being
+convicted by the courts as a disturber of the public peace, although
+several had been accused."--Moniteur May 6, 1792. (Report of Fran�ais de
+Nantes) "Not one has been punished for thirty months."]
+
+[Footnote 3353: On these spontaneous brutal acts of the Catholic
+peasants, cf. "Archives Nationales," F7, 3236 (Loz�re, July-November,
+1791). Deliberation of the district of Florac, July 6, 1791, and
+the official statement of the commissioner of the department on the
+disturbances in Espagnac. On the 5th of July, Richard, a constitutional
+cur�, calls upon the municipality to proceed to his installation. "The
+ceremony could not take place, owing to the hooting, of the women and
+children, and the threats of various persons who exclaimed: 'Kill him!
+strangle him, he is a Protestant, is married, and has children;' and
+owing to the impossibility of entering the church, the doors of which
+were obstructed by the large number of women standing in front of
+them:"--On the 6th of July, he is installed, but with difficulty.
+"Inside the church a crowd of women uttered loud cries and bemoaned the
+removal of their old cur� On returning, in the streets, a large number
+of women, unsettled by the sight of the constitutional cure, turned
+their faces aside. . . and contented themselves with uttering disjointed
+words.--without doing anything more than cover their faces with their
+bonnets, casting themselves on the ground."--July 15. The clerk will
+no longer serve at the mass nor ring the bells; the cur�, Richard,
+attempting to ring them himself, the people threaten him with
+ill-treatment if he runs the risk.--September 8, 1791. Letter from the
+cur� of Fau, district of Saint-Ch�ly. "That night I was on the brink
+of death through a troop of bandits who took my parsonage away from
+me, after having broken in the doors and windows."--December 30, 1791.
+Another cur� who goes to take possession of his parsonage is assailed
+with stones by sixty women, and thus pursued beyond the limits of the
+parish.--August 5, 1791. Petition of the constitutional bishop of Mende
+and his four vicars. "Not a day passes that we are not insulted in the
+performance of our duties. We cannot take a step without encountering
+hooting. If we go out we are threatened with cowardly assassination,
+and with being beaten with clubs."--F7, 3235 (Bas-Rhin, letter from
+the Directory of the Department, April 9, 1792): "Ten out of eleven, at
+least, of the Catholics refuse to recognize sworn priests."]
+
+[Footnote 3354: Duvergier, decrees (not sanctioned) of November 29
+and May 27, 1792.--Decree of August 26, 1792, after the fall of the
+throne.--Moniteur, XII. 200 (sitting of April 23, 1793). Report of the
+Minister of the Interior.]
+
+[Footnote 3355: Lallier, "Le District de Machecoul," p.261,
+263.--"Archives Nationales," F7, 3234. Demand of the prosecuting
+attorney of the commune of Tonneins (December 21, 1791) for the arrest
+or expulsion of eight priests "at the slightest act of internal or
+external hostility."--Ibid., F7, 3264. Act of the Council-general
+of Corr�ze (July 16, 17, 18, 1792) to place in arrest all nonjuring
+priests.--Between these two dates, act, of various kinds and of
+increasing severity are found in nearly all the departments against the
+non-jurors.]
+
+[Footnote 3356: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3250. Official statement by
+the directory of the department, March 18, 1791, with all the documents
+in relation thereto.--F7, 3200. Letter of the Directory of Calvados,
+June 13, 1792, with the interrogations. The damages are estimated at
+15,000 livres.]
+
+[Footnote 3357: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3234. An Act of the Directory
+of Lot, February 24, 1792, on the disturbances at Marmande.--F7, 3239,
+official statement of the municipal body of Rheims, November 5, 6, 7,
+1791. The two workmen are a harness-maker and a wool-carder. The priest
+who administered the baptism is put in prison as a disturber of the
+public peace.--F7, 3219. Letter of the royal commissioner at the
+tribunal of Castelsarrasin, March 5, 1792.--F7, 3203. Letter of the
+directory of the district of La Rochelle, June 1, 1792. "The armed
+force, a witness of these crimes and summoned to arrest these persons in
+the act, refused to obey."]
+
+[Footnote 3358: Memorandum by Camille Jourdan (Sainte-Beuve, "Causeries
+du Lundi," XII. 250). The guard refuses to give any assistance, coming
+too late and merely "to witness the disorder, never to repress it."]
+
+[Footnote 3359: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3217. Letters of the cur�
+of Uz�s, January 29, 1792; of the cur� of Alais, April 5, 1792; of the
+administrators of Gard, July 28, 1792; of the prosecuting attorney, M.
+Griolet, July 2, 1792; of Castanet, former gendarme, August 25, 1792;
+of M. Griolet, September 28, 1792.--Ibid. , F7, 3223. Petition by M.M.
+Thueri and Dev�s in the name of the oppressed of Montpellier, November
+17, 1791; letter of the same to the minister, October 28, 1791; letter of
+M. Dupin, prosecuting attorney, August 23, 1791; Act of the Department,
+August 9, 1791; Petition of the inhabitants of Courmonterral, August 25,
+1791]
+
+[Footnote 3360: Moniteur, XII. 16, sitting of April 1, 1792. Speech by
+M. Laureau. "Behold the provinces in flames, insurrection in nineteen
+departments, and revolt everywhere declaring itself. . . The only
+liberty is that of brigandage; we have no taxation, no order, no
+government." Mercure de France, April 7, 1792. "More than twenty
+departments are now participating in the horrors of anarchy and in a
+more or less destructive insurrection."]
+
+[Footnote 3361: Moniteur, XII. 30. Speech by M. Caillasson. The total
+amount of property sold up to November 1, 1791, is 1,526 millions; the
+remainder for sale amounts to 669 millions.]
+
+[Footnote 3362: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3225. Letter of the Directory
+of Ille-et-Vilaine, March 24, 1792. "The National Guards of the district
+purposely expel all nonjuring priests, who have not been replaced, under
+the pretext of the trouble they would not fail to cause at Easter."]
+
+[Footnote 3363: Moniteur, XI. 420. (Sitting of February 18, 1792.)
+Report by M. Cahier, Minister of the Interior.]
+
+[Footnote 3364: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3250. Deposition of the
+municipal officers of Gosnay and Hesdiguel (district of B�thune), May
+18, 1792. Six parishes took part in this expedition; the mayor's wife
+had a rope around her neck, and came near being hung.--Moniteur, XII,
+154, April 15, 1792.--"Archives Nationales," F7, 3225. Letter of the
+Directory of Ile-et-Vilaine, March 24, 1792, and official statement
+of the commissioners for the district of Vitr�; letter of the same
+directory, April 21, 1792, and report of the commissioners sent to
+Acign�, April 6.]
+
+[Footnote 3365: Moniteur, XII. 200. Report of M. Cahier, April 23, 1792.
+The directories of these four departments refuse to cancel their illegal
+acts, alleging that "their armed National Guards pursue refractory
+priests."]
+
+[Footnote 3366: Mercure de France, April 7, 1792. Letters written from
+Aurillac.--"Archives Nationales," F7, 3202.--Letter of the directory
+of the district of Aurillac, March 27, 1792 (with seven official
+statements); of the directory of the district of Saint-Flour, March 19
+(with the report of its commissioners); of M. Duranthon, minister
+of justice, April 22; petition of M. Lorus, municipal officer of
+Aurillac.--Letter of M. Duranthon, June 9, 1792. "I am just informed by
+the royal commissioner of the district of Saint-Flour that, since the
+departure of the troops, the magistrates dare no longer exercise their
+functions in the midst of the brigands who surround them."]
+
+[Footnote 3367: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3219. Letters of M. Niel,
+administrator of the department of Haute-Garonne, February 27, 1792; of
+M. Sainfal, March 4; of the directory of the department, March 1; of the
+royal commissioner, tribunal of Castelsarrasin, March 13.]
+
+[Footnote 3368: The following are some examples of these rustic desires:
+At Lunel, 4000 peasants and village National Guards strive to enter,
+to hang the aristocrats. Their wives are along with them, leading their
+donkeys with "baskets which they hope to carry away full." ("Archives
+Nationales," F7, 3523. Letter of the municipal body of Lunel, November
+4, 1791.) At Uz�s it is with great difficulty that they can rid
+themselves of the peasants who came in to drive out the Catholic
+royalists. In vain "were they given plenty to eat and to drink;" they go
+away "in bad humor, especially the women who led the mules and asses to
+carry away the booty, and who had not anticipated returning home with
+empty hands." (De Dampmartin, I. 195.) In relation to the siege of
+Nantes by the Vend�ans: "An old woman said to me, 'Oh, yes, I was there,
+at the siege. My sister and myself had brought along our sacks. We
+counted on entering at least as far as the Rue de la Casserie'" (the
+street of jeweler's shops). (Michelet, V 211.)]
+
+[Footnote 3369: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3209. Letters of the royal
+commissioner at the tribunal of Mucidan, March 7, 1792; of the public
+prosecutor of the district of Sarlat, January. 1792.--Ibid. , F7, 3204.
+Letters of the administrators of the district of Tulle, April 15, 1792;
+of the directory of the department, April 18; petition of Jacques Labruc
+and his wife, with official statement of the justice of the peace, April
+24. "All these acts of violence were committed under the eyes of the
+municipal authorities. They took no steps to prevent them, although they
+had notice given them in time."]
+
+[Footnote 3370: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3223. Letters of M. Brisson,
+commissioner of the naval classes of Souillac, February 2, 1792; of the
+directory of the department, March 14, 1792.--Petition of the brothers
+Barri� (with supporting documents), October 11, 1791.--Letter of the
+prosecuting attorney of the department, April 4, 1792. Report of the
+commissioners sent to the district of Figeac, January 5, 1792. Letter of
+the administrators of the department, May 27, 1792.]
+
+[Footnote 3371: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3217. Official reports of the
+commissioners of the department of Gard, April 1, 2, 3, and 6, 1792, and
+letter of April 6. One land-owner is taxed 100,000 francs.--Ibid., F7,
+3223. Letter of M Dupin, prosecuting attorney of l'H�rault, February 17
+and 26, 1792. "At the chateau of Pignan, Madame de Lostanges has not
+one complete piece of furniture left. The cause of these disturbances
+is religious passion. Five or six nonjuring priests had retreated to
+the chateau,"--Moniteur, sitting of April 16, 1792. Letter from the
+directory of the department of Gard.--De Dampmartin, II, 85. At Uz�s,
+fifty or sixty men in masks invade the ducal chateau at ten o'clock in
+the evening, set fire to the archives, and the chateau is burnt.]
+
+[Footnote 3372: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3196. Official statements
+of Augier and Fabre, administrators of the Bouches-de-Rh�ne, sent to
+Avignon, May 11, 1792. (The reappearance of Jourdan, Mainvielle, and the
+assassins of La Glaci�re took place April 29.)]
+
+[Footnote 3373: De Dampmartin, II. 63. Portalis, "Il est temps de
+parler" (pamphlet), passim. "Archives Nationales," F7, 7090. Memorandum
+of the commissioners of the municipal administration of Arles, year IV.,
+Niv�se 22.]
+
+[Footnote 3374: Mercure de France, May 19, 1792. (Sitting of May 4.).
+Petition of forty inhabitants of Avignon at the bar of the Legislative
+Assembly.--"Archives Nationales," F7, 3195. Letter of the royal
+commissioners at the tribunal of Apt, March 15, 1792; official report
+of the municipality, March 22; Letters of the Directory of Apt, March 23
+and 28, 1792.]
+
+[Footnote 3375: Large cellar where the ice collected during the winter
+was kept for later use. (SR.)]
+
+[Footnote 3376: "Archives Nationales," ibid. Letter of Amiel, president
+of the bureau of conciliation at Avignon, October 28, 1792, and other
+letters to the minister Roland.--F7, 3217, Letter of the Justice of the
+Peace at Roque-Maure, October 31, 1792.]
+
+[Footnote 3377: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3246. Official report of the
+municipality of Metz (with supporting documents), May 15, 1792.]
+
+[Footnote 3378: "M�moires de l'Abb� Baton," one of the priests of the
+third convoy (a bishop is appointed from S�ez), p. 233.]
+
+[Footnote 3379: "Archives Nationales" F7, 3225. Letter of citizen
+Bonnemant, commissioner to minister Roland, September 11, 1792.]
+
+
+End of The French Revolution, Volume 1.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Origins of Contemporary France,
+Volume 2 (of 6), by Hippolyte A. Taine
+
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