The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1

H >> Hippolyte A. Taine >> The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1

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One by one, reformative ideas penetrate to his office of
consulting advocate; conversation has sufficed to propagate them,
homely common sense needing no philosophy to secure their recognition.

"The tax on property," said he, in 1750, "should be proportioned
and equally distributed among all the king's subjects and the members
of the government, in proportion to the property each really possesses
in the kingdom; in England, the lands of the nobility, the clergy and
the Third-Estate pay alike without distinction, and nothing is more
just."

In the six years which follow the flood increases. People
denounce the government in the cafés, on their promenades, while the
police dare not arrest malcontents "because they would have to arrest
everybody." The disaffection goes on increasing up to the end of the
reign. In 1744, says the bookseller Hardy, during the king's illness
at Metz, private individuals cause six thousand masses to be said for
his recovery and pay for them at the sacristy of Notre Dame; in 1757,
after Damiens's attempt on the king's life, the number of masses
demanded is only six hundred; in 1774, during the malady which carries
him off, the number falls down to three. The complete discredit of
the government, the immense success of Rousseau, these two events,
occurring simultaneously, afford a date for the conversion of the
Third-Estate to philosophy[25]. A traveler, at the beginning of the
reign of Louis XVI, who returns home after some years' absence, on
being asked what change he noticed in the nation, replied, "Nothing,
except that what used to be talked about in the drawing-rooms is
repeated in the streets."[26] And that which is repeated in the
streets is Rousseau's doctrine, the Discourse on Inequality, the
Social Contract amplified, popularized and repeated by adherents in
every possible way and in all their forms. What could be more
fascinating for the man of the Third-Estate? Not only is this theory
in vogue, and encountered by him at the decisive moment when, for the
first time, he turns his attention to general principles, but again it
provides him with arms against social inequality and political
absolutism, and much sharper than he needs. To people disposed to put
restraints on power and to abolish privileges, what guide is more
sympathetic than the writer of genius, the powerful logician, the
impassioned orator, who establishes natural law, who repudiates
historic law, who proclaims the equality of men, who contends for the
sovereignty of the people, who denounces on every page the usurpation,
the vices, the worthlessness, the malefactions of the great and of
kings! And I omit the points by which he makes acceptable to a rigid
and laborious bourgeoisie, to the new men that are working and
advancing themselves, his steady earnestness, his harsh and bitter
tone, his eulogy of simple habits, of domestic virtues, of personal
merit, of virile energy, the commoner addressing commoners. It is not
surprising that they should accept him as a guide and welcome his
doctrines with that fervor of faith called enthusiasm, and which
invariably accompanies the newborn idea as well as the first love.

A competent judge, and an eye-witness, Mallet du Pan,[27] writes
in 1799:

"Rousseau had a hundred times more readers among the middle and
lower classes than Voltaire. He alone inoculated the French with the
doctrine of the sovereignty of the people and with its extremist
consequences. It would be difficult to cite a single revolutionary
who was not transported over these anarchical theories, and who did
not burn with ardor to realize them. That Contrat Social, the
disintegrator of societies, was the Koran of the pretentious talkers
of 1789, of the Jacobins of 1790, of the republicans of 1791, and of
the most atrocious of the madmen. . . . I heard Marat in 1788 read
and comment on the Contrat Social in the public streets to the
applause of an enthusiastic auditory."

The same year, in an immense throng filling the great hall of
the Palais de Justice, Lacretelle hears that same book quoted, its
dogmas put forward by the clerks of la Bazoche, "by members of the
bar,[28] by young lawyers, by the ordinary lettered classes swarming
with new-fledged specialist in public law." Hundreds of details show
us that it is in every hand like a catechism. In 1784[29] certain
magistrates' sons, on taking their first lesson in jurisprudence of an
assistant professor, M. Saveste, have the "Contrat Social" placed in
their hands as a manual. Those who find this new political geometry
too difficult learn at least its axioms, and if these repel them they
discover at least their palpable consequences, so many handy
comparisons, the trifling common practice in the literature in vogue,
whether drama, history, or romance[30]. Through the "Eloges" by
Thomas, the pastorals of Bernadin de Saint-Pierre, the compilation of
Raynal, the comedies of Beaumarchais and even the "Young Anarcharsis"
and the literature of the resuscitated Greek and Roman antiquity, the
dogmas of equality and liberty infiltrate and penetrate the class able
to read[31]. "A few days ago," says Métra,[32] "a dinner of forty
ecclesiastics from the country took place at the house of curate of
Orangis, five leagues from Paris. At the dessert, and in the truth
which came out over their wine, they all admitted that they came to
Paris to see the 'Marriage of Figaro.' . . Up to the present time it
seems as if comic authors intended to make sport for the great at the
expense of the little, but here, on the contrary, it is the little who
laugh at the expense of the great." Hence the success of the piece.
-- Hence a steward of a chateau has found a Raynal in the library,
the furious declamation of which so delights him that he can repeat it
thirty years later without stumbling, or a sergeant in the French
guards embroiders waistcoats during the night to earn the money with
which to purchase the latest books. -- After the gallant picture
of the boudoir comes the austere and patriotic picture; "Belisarious"
and the "Horatii" of David reflect the new attitude both of the public
and of the studios[33] The spirit is that of Rousseau, "the republican
spirit;"[34] the entire middle class, artists, employees, curates,
physicians, attorneys, advocates, the lettered and the journalists,
all are won over to it; and it is fed by the worst as well as the best
passions, ambition, envy, desire for freedom, zeal for the public
welfare and the consciousness of right.

V. REVOLUTIONARY PASSIONS.

Its effects therein. - The formation of revolutionary passions.
- Leveling instincts. - The craving for dominion. - The Third-Estate
decides and constitutes the nation. - Chimeras, ignorance,
exaltation.

All these passions intensify each other. There is nothing like
a wrong to quicken the sentiment of justice. There is nothing like
the sentiment of justice to quicken the injury proceeding from a
wrong[35]. The Third-Estate, considering itself deprived of the place
to which it is entitled, finds itself uncomfortable in the place it
occupies and, accordingly, suffers through a thousand petty grievances
it would not, formerly, have noticed. On discovering that he is a
citizen a man is irritated at being treated as a subject, no one
accepting an inferior position alongside of one of whom he believes
himself the equal. Hence, during a period of twenty years, the
ancient régime while attempting to grow easier, appear to be still
more burdensome, and its pinpricks exasperate as if they were so many
wounds. Countless instances might be quoted instead of one. -- At
the theater in Grenoble, Barnave,[36] a child, is with his mother in a
box which the Duc de Tonnerre, governor of the province, had assigned
to one of his satellites. The manager of the theater, and next an
officer of the guard, request Madame Barnave to withdraw. She
refuses, whereupon the governor orders four fusiliers to force her
out. The audience in the stalls had already taken the matter up, and
violence was feared, when M. Barnave, advised of the affront, entered
and led his wife away, exclaiming aloud, "I leave by order of the
governor." The indignant public, all the bourgeoisie, agreed among
themselves not to enter the theater again without an apology being
made; the theater, in fact, remaining empty several months, until
Madame Barnave consented to reappear there. This outrage afterwards
recurred to the future deputy, and he then swore "to elevate the caste
to which he belonged out of the humiliation to which it seemed
condemned." In like manner Lacroix, the future member of the
Convention,[37] on leaving a theater, and jostled by a gentleman who
was giving his arm to a lady, utters a loud complaint. "Who are you?
" says the person. Still the provincial, he is simple enough to give
his name, surname, and qualifications in full. "Very well," says the
other man, "good for you -- I am the Comte de Chabannes, and I am in
a hurry," saying which, "laughing heartily," he jumps into his
vehicle. "Ah, sir, exclaimed Lacroix, still much excited by his
misadventure, "pride and prejudice establish an awful gulf between man
and man !" We may rest assured that, with Marat, a veterinary surgeon
in the Comte d'Artois's stables, with Robespierre, a protégé of the
bishop of Arras, with Danton, an insignificant lawyer in Mery-sur-
Seine, and with many others beside, self-esteem, in frequent
encounters, bled in the same fashion. The concentrated bitterness
with which Madame Roland's memoirs are imbued has no other cause.
"She could not forgive society[38] for the inferior position she had
so long occupied in it."[39] Thanks to Rousseau, vanity, so natural to
man, and especially sensitive with a Frenchman, becomes still more
sensitive. The slightest discrimination, a tone of the voice, seems a
mark of disdain. "One day,[40] on alluding, before the minister of
war, to a general officer who had obtained his rank through his merit,
he exclaimed, 'Oh, yes, an officer of luck.' This expression, being
repeated and commented on, does much mischief." In vain do the
grandees show their condescending spirit, "welcoming with equal
kindness and gentleness all who are presented to them." In the mansion
of the Due de Penthièvre the nobles eat at the table of the master of
the house, the commoners dine with his first gentleman and only enter
the drawing room when coffee is served. There they find "in full
force and with a superior tone" the others who had the honor of dining
with His Highness, and "who do not fail to salute the new arrivals
with an obliging civility indicating patronage."[41] No more is
required; in vain does the Duke "carry his attentions to an extreme,"
Beugnot, so pliable, has no desire to return. They bear them ill-
will, not only on account of their slight bows but again on account of
their over-politeness. Champfort acrimoniously relates that
d'Alembert, at the height of his reputation, being in Madame du
Deffant's drawing room with President Hénault and M. de Pont-de-Veyle,
a physician enters named Fournier, and he, addressing Madame du
Deffant, says, "Madame, I have the honor of presenting you with my
very humble respects;'' turning to President Hénault, "I have the
honor to be your obedient servant," and then to M. de Pont-de-Veyle,
"Sir, your most obedient," and to d'Alembert, "Good day, sir."[42] To
a rebellious heart everything is an object of resentment. The Third-
Estate, following Rousseau's example, cherishes ill-feeling against
the nobles for what they do, and yet again, for what they are, for
their luxury, their elegance, their insincerity, their refined and
brilliant behavior. Champfort is embittered against them on account
of the polite attentions with which they overwhelm him. Sieyès bears
them a grudge on account of a promised abbey which he did not obtain.
Each individual, besides the general grievances, has his personal
grievance. Their coolness, like their familiarity, attentions and
inattentions, is an offense, and, under these millions of needle-
thrusts, real or imaginary, the mind gets to be full of gall. In
1789, it is full to overflowing.

"The most honorable title of the French nobility," writes
Champfort, "is a direct descent from some 30,000 armed, helmeted,
armletted and armored men who, on heavy horses sheathed in armor, trod
under foot 8 or 10 millions of naked men, the ancestors of the actual
nation. Behold these well-established claims to the respect and
affection of their descendants! And, to complete the respectability of
this nobility, it is recruited and regenerated by the adoption of
those who have acquired fortune by plundering the cabins of the poor
who are unable to pay its impositions."[43] --

"Why should not the Third-Estate send back," says Sieyès, "into
the forests of Franconia every family that maintains its absurd
pretension of having sprung from the loins of a race of conquerors,
and of having succeeded to the rights of conquest? [44] I can well
imagine, were there no police, every Cartouche[45] firmly establishing
himself on the high-road -- would that give him a right to levy
toll? Suppose him to sell a monopoly of this kind, once common enough,
to an honest successor, would the right become any more respectable in
the hands of the purchaser? . . . Every privilege, in its nature,
is unjust, odious, and against the social compact. The blood boils at
the thought of its ever having been possible to legally consecrate
down to the eighteenth century the abominable fruits of an abominable
feudal system. . . . The caste of nobles is really a population
apart, a fraudulent population, however, which, for lack of
serviceable faculties, and unable to exist alone, fastens itself upon
a living nation, like the vegetable tumors that support themselves on
the sap of the plants to which they are a burden, and which wither
beneath the load." -- They suck all, everything being for them.
"Every branch of the executive power has fallen into the hands of this
caste, which staffed (already) the church, the robe and the sword. A
sort of confraternity or joint paternity leads the nobles each to
prefer the other and all to the rest of the nation. . . . The
Court reigns, and not the monarch. The Court creates and distributes
offices. And what is the Court but the head of this vast aristocracy
that covers all parts of France, and which, through its members,
attains to and exercises everywhere whatever is requisite in all
branches of the public administration?" -- Let us put an end to "this
social crime, this long parricide which one class does itself the
honor to commit daily against the others. . . . Ask no longer what
place the privileged shall occupy in the social order; it is simply
asking what place in a sick man's body must be assigned to a malignant
ulcer that is undermining and tormenting it . . . to the loathsome
disease that is consuming the living flesh." -- The solution is self-
evident: let us eradicate the ulcer, or at least sweep away the
vermin. The Third-Estate, in itself and by itself, is "a complete
nation," requiring no organ, needing no aid to subsist or to govern
itself, and which will recover its health on ridding itself of the
parasites infesting its skin.

"What is the Third-Estate?" says Sieyès, "everything. What,
thus far, is it in the political body?[46] Nothing. What does it
demand? To become something."

Not something but actually everything. Its political ambition
is as great as its social ambition, and it aspires to authority as
well as to equality. If privileges are an evil that of the king is
the worst for it is the greatest, and human dignity, wounded by the
prerogative of the noble, perishes under the absolutism of the king.
Of little consequence is it that he scarcely uses it, and that his
government, deferential to public opinion, is that of a hesitating and
indulgent parent. Emancipated from real despotism, the Third-Estate
becomes excited against possible despotism, imagining itself in
slavery in consenting to remain subject. A proud spirit has recovered
itself, become erect, and, the better to secure its rights, is going
to claim all rights. To the people who since antiquity has been
subject to masters, it is so sweet, so intoxicating to put themselves
in their places, to put the former masters in their place, to say to
himself, they are my representatives, to regard himself a member of
the sovereign power, king of France in his individual sphere, the sole
legitimate author of all rights and of all functions! -- In
conformity with the doctrines of Rousseau the registers of the Third-
Estate unanimously insist on a constitution for France; none exists,
or at least the one she possesses is of no value. Thus far "the
conditions of the social compact have been ignored;"[47] now that they
have been discovered they must be written out. To say, with the
nobles according to Montesquieu, that the constitution exists, that
its great features need not be changed, that it is necessary only to
reform abuses, that the States-General exercise only limited power,
that they are incompetent to substitute another regime for the
monarchy, is not true. Tacitly or expressly, the Third-Estate refuses
to restrict its mandate and allows no barriers to be interposed
against it. It requires its deputies accordingly to vote "not by
orders but each by himself and conjointly." -- "In case the
deputies of the clergy or of the nobility should refuse to deliberate
in common and individually, the deputies of the Third-Estate,
representing twenty-four millions of men, able and obliged to declare
itself the National Assembly not-withstanding the scission of the
representation of 400,000 persons, will propose to the King in concert
with those among the Clergy and the Nobility disposed to join them,
their assistance in providing for the necessities of the State, and
the taxes thus assented to shall be apportioned among all the subjects
of the king without distinction."[48] -- Do not object that a
people thus mutilated becomes a mere crowd, that leaders cannot be
improvised, that it is difficult to dispense with natural guides,
that, considering all things, this Clergy and this Nobility still form
a select group, that two-fifths of the soil is in their hands, that
one-half of the intelligent and cultivated class of men are in their
ranks, that they are exceedingly well-disposed and that old historic
bodies have always afforded to liberal constitutions their best
supports. According to the principle enunciated by Rousseau we are
not to value men but to count them. In politics numbers only are
respectable; neither birth, nor property, nor function, nor capacity,
is a title to be considered; high or low, ignorant or learned, a
general, a soldier, or a hod-carrier, each individual of the social
army is a unit provided with a vote; wherever a majority is found
there is the right. Hence, the Third-Estate puts forth its right as
incontestable, and, in its turn, it proclaims with Louis XIV, "I am
the State."

This principle once admitted or enforced, they thought, all will
go well.

"It seemed," says an eye-witness,[49] "as if we were about to
be governed by men of the golden age. This free, just and wise
people, always in harmony with itself, always clear-sighted in
choosing its ministers, moderate in the use of its strength and power,
never could be led away, never deceived, never under the dominion of;
or enslaved by, the authority which it confided. Its will would
fashion the laws and the law would constitute its happiness."

The nation is to be regenerated, a phrase found in all writings
and in every mouth. At Nangis, Arthur Young finds this the sub-stance
of political conversation[50]. The chaplain of a regiment, a curate
in the vicinity, keeps fast hold of it; as to knowing what it means
that is another matter. It is impossible to find anything out through
explanations of it otherwise than "a theoretic perfection of
government, questionable in its origin, hazardous in its progress, and
visionary in its end." On the Englishman proposing to them the British
constitution as a model they "hold it cheap in respect of liberty" and
greet it with a smile; it is, especially, not in conformity with "the
principles." And observe that we are at the residence of a grand
seignior, in a circle of enlightened men. At Riom, at the election
assemblies,[51] Malouet finds "persons of an ordinary stamp,
practitioners, petty lawyers, with no experience of public business,
quoting the 'Contrat Social,' vehemently declaiming against tyranny,
and each proposing his own constitution." Most of them are without any
knowledge whatever, mere traffickers in chicane; the best instructed
entertain mere schoolboy ideas of politics. In the colleges of the
University no history is taught[52]. "The name of Henry IV., says
Lavalette, was not once uttered during my eight years of study, and,
at seventeen years of age, I was still ignorant of the epoch and the
mode of the establishment of the Bourbons on the throne." The stock
they carry away with them consists wholly, as with Camille Desmoulins,
of scraps of Latin, entering the world with brains stuffed with
"republican maxims," excited by souvenirs of Rome and Sparta, and
"penetrated with profound contempt for monarchical governments."
Subsequently, at the law school, they learn something about legal
abstractions, or else learn nothing. In the lecture-courses at Paris
there are no students; the professor delivers his lecture to copyists
who sell their copy-books. If a pupil should attend himself and take
notes he would be regarded with suspicion; he would be charged with
trying to deprive the copyists of the means of earning their living.
A diploma, consequently, is worthless. At Bourges one is obtainable
in six months; if the young man succeeds in comprehending the law it
is through later practice and familiarity with it. -- Of foreign
laws and institutions there is not the least knowledge, scarcely even
a vague or false notion of them. Malouet himself entertains a meager
idea of the English Parliament, while many, with respect to
ceremonial, imagine it a copy of the Parliament of France. -- The
mechanism of free constitutions, or the conditions of effective
liberty, that is too complicated a question. Montesquieu, save in the
great magisterial families, is antiquated for twenty years past. Of
what avail are studies of ancient France? "What is the result of so
much and such profound research? Laborious conjecture and reasons for
doubting."[53] It is much more convenient to start with the rights of
man and to deduce the consequences. Schoolboy logic suffices for that
to which collegiate rhetoric supplies the tirades. -- In this great
void of enlightenment the vague terms of liberty, equality and the
sovereignty of the people, the glowing expressions of Rousseau and his
successors, all these new axioms, blaze up like burning coals,
discharging clouds of smoke and intoxicating vapor. High-sounding and
vague language is interposed between the mind and objects around it;
all outlines are confused and the vertigo begins. Never to the same
extent have men lost the purport of outward things. Never have they
been at once more blind and more chimerical. Never has their
disturbed reason rendered them more tranquil concerning real danger
and created more alarm at imaginary danger. Strangers with cool blood
and who witness the spectacle, Mallet du Pan, Dumont of Geneva, Arthur
Young, Jefferson, Gouverneur Morris, write that the French are insane.
Morris, in this universal delirium, can mention to Washington but one
sane mind, that of Marmontel, and Marmontel speaks in the same style
as Morris. At the preliminary meetings of the clubs, and at the
assemblies of electors, he is the only one who opposes unreasonable
propositions. Surrounding him are none but the excited, the exalted
about nothing, even to grotesqueness[54]. In every act of the
established régime, in every administrative measure, "in all police
regulations, in all financial decrees, in all the graduated
authorities on which public order and tranquility depend, there was
naught in which they did not find an aspect of tyranny. . . . On
the walls and barriers of Paris being referred to, these were
denounced as enclosures for deer and derogatory to man." --

"I saw," says one of these orators, "at the barrier Saint-
Victor, sculptured on one of the pillars -- would you believe it? -
- an enormous lion's head, with open jaws vomiting forth chains as a
menace to those who passed it. Could a more horrible emblem of
slavery and of despotism be imagined!" -- "The orator himself
imitates the roar of the lion. The listeners were all excited by it
and I, who passed the barrier Saint-Victor so often, was surprised
that this horrible image had not struck me. That very day I examined
it closely and, on the pilaster, I found only a small buckler
suspended as an ornament by a little chain attached by the sculptor to
a little lion's mouth, like those we see serving as door-knockers or
as water-cocks." -- Perverted sensations and delirious conceptions
of this kind would be regarded by physicians as the symptoms of mental
derangement, and we are only in the early months of the year 1789! --
In such excitable and over-excited brains the powerful fascination of
words is about to create phantoms, some of them hideous, the
aristocrat and the tyrant, and others adorable, the friend of the
people and the incorruptible patriot, so many disproportionate,
imaginary figures, but which will replace actual living persons, and
which the maniac is to overwhelm with his praise or pursue with his
fury.