The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1

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

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42

[13] Arthur Young, I. 283 (Aug. 13, 1789); I. 289 (Aug. 19, 1789).

[14] Archives nationales, H, 274. Letters respectively of M. de
Caraman (March 18 and April 12, 1789); M. d'Eymar de Montmegran (April
2); M. de la Tour (March 30). "The sovereign's greatest benefit is
interpreted in the strangest manner by an ignorant populace."

[15] Doniol, "Hist. Des classes rurales," 495. (Letter of Aug. 3,
1789, to M. de Clermont-Tonnerre).

[16] Archives nationales, H. 1453. (Letter of Aug. 3, 1789, to M.
de Clermont-Tonnere).

[17] Procès-verbaux de l'ass. Prov. D'Orléanais," p. 296."Distrusts
still prevails throughout the rural districts. . . Your first orders
for departmental assemblies only awakened suspicion in certain
quarters."

[18] "Tableau de Paris," XII. 186.

[19] Mme. Vigée-Lebrun, I. 158, (1788); I. 183 (1789).

[20] Archives nationals, H. 723. (Letter of M. de Caumartin,
intendant at Besançon, Dec. 5, 1788).

[21] D'Argenson, March 13, 1752.

[22] "Corresp.," of Métra, V, 179 (November 22, 1777).

[23] Beugnot, I. 142. "No inhabitant of the barony of Choiseul
mingled with any of the bands composed of the patriots of Montigny,
smugglers and outcasts of the neighborhood." - See, on the poachers of
the day, "Les deux amis de Bourbonne," by Diderot.

[24] De Calonne, "Mémoires presentés à l'ass. des notables," No. 8.
- Necker, "De l'Administration des Finances," I. 195.

[25] Letrosne, "De l'Administration des Finances," 59.

[26] Archives nationales, H. 426. (Mémoires of the farmers-general,
Jan. 13, 1781, Sept. 15, 1782). H, 614. (Letter of M. de Coetlosquet,
April 25, 1777). H, 1431. Report by the farmers-general, March 9,
1787.

[27] Archives nationales, H, 1453. Letter of the Baron de Bezenval,
June 19, 1789.

[28] "Mandrin," by Paul Simian, passim. - "Histoire de Beaume,"
by Rossignol, p. 453. - "Mandrin," by Ch. Jarrin (1875). Major Fisher,
who attacks and disperses the gang, writes that the affair is urgent
since, "higher to the North near Forez, one can find two or three
hundred vagrants who only wait for a chance to unite with them."
(p.47.)

[29] Mercier, XI. 116.

[30] See above, book I. p. 55.

[31] Letrosne, ibid. (1779), p. 539.

[32] Archives nationales, F16, 965, and H, 892. (Ordinance of
August 4 1764; a circular of instructions of July 20, 1767; a letter
of a police lieutenant of Toulouse, September 21, 1787).

[33] Archives nationales, H, 724; H, 554; F4 2397; F16 965. -
Letters of the jailers of Carcassonne (June 22, 1789); of Béziers
(July 19, 1786); of Nimes (July 1, 1786); of the intendant, M. d'Aine
(March 19, 1786).

[34] Archives nationales, H, 554. (Letter of M. de Bertrand,
intendant of Rennes, August 7, 1785).

[35] Archives nationales, H, 426. (Remonstrances, Feb. 1783). - H,
554. (Letter of M. de Bertrand, Aug. 17, 1785).

[36] Archives nationales, H, 614 (Mémoire by René de Hauteville,
parliamentary advocate, Saint-Brieuc, Dec. 25, 1776.)

[37] "Process-verbaux de l'ass. Prov. de Soissonnais" (1787) p.
457.

[38] Archives nationales, H, 616 (A letter of M. De Boves,
intendant of Rennes, April 23, 1774).

[39] Périn, "La Jeunesse de Robespierre," 301. (Doléances des
parroisses rurales en 1789).

[40] Hippeau, "Le Gouvern. de Normandie," VII. 147-177 (1789). -
Boivin-Champeaux, "Notice hist. sur la Révolution dans le département
de l'Eure," p. 83 (1789).

[41] Théron de Montaugé, p. 87. (Letter of the prior of the
convent, March, 1789).

[42] "Procès-verbaux de l'Ass. prov. de Lyonnais," p.57. -
Archives nationales, F4, 2073. Memorandum of Jan. 24, 1788.
"Charitable assistance is very limited, the provincial authorities
providing no resources for such accidents."

[43] Levasseur, "La France industrielle," 119. - In 1862, the
population being almost triple (1 696 000) there are but 90 000
paupers.

[44] Albert Babeau, "Hist. de Troyes," I. 91. (Letter of the mayor
Huez, July 30, 1788).

[45] Floquet, VII, 506.

[46] Archives nationales, H, 1453. (Letter of M. de Sainte-Suzanne,
April 29, 1789).

[47] Arthur Young, I. 256.

[48] "Correspond. secrèt inédite," from 1777 to 1792, published by
M. de Lescure, II. 351 (May 8, 1789). Cf. C. Desmoulins, "La
Lanterne," of 100 rioters arrested at Lyons 96 were branded.

[49] De Bezenval, II. 344, 350. - Dussault, "La Prise de la
Bastille," 352. - Marmontel, II, ch. XIV, 249. --Mme. Vigée-Lebrun, I.
177, 188.

[50] Mercier, I. 32; VI. 15; X. 179; XI. 59; XII. 83. - Arthur
Young, I. 122.

[51] In the original, pain de Gonesse, - bread, made in a village
of this name near Paris, and renowned for its whiteness. - TR.

[52] "Dialogues sur le commerce des blés," by Galiani (1770). "If
the strong of the markets are content, no misfortune will happen to
the administration. The great conspire and rebel; the bourgeois
murmurs and lives a celibate; peasants and artisans despair and go
away; porters get up riots."

CHAPTER IV. The Armed Forces.

I.

Military force declines. - How the army is recruited. - How the
soldier is treated.

Against universal sedition where is force? - The measures and
dispositions which govern the 150,000 men who maintain order are the
same as those ruling the 26 millions people subject to it. We find
here the same abuses, disaffection, and other causes for the
dissolution of the nation which, in their turn, will dissolve the
army.

Of the 90 millions of pay[1] which the army annually costs the
treasury, 46 millions are for officers and only 44 millions for
soldiers, and we are already aware that a new ordinance reserves ranks
of all kinds for verified nobles. In no direction is this inequality,
against which public opinion rebels so vigorously, more apparent. On
the one hand, authority, honors, money, leisure, good-living, social
enjoyments, and plays in private, for the minority. On the other hand,
for the majority, subjection, dejection, fatigue, a forced or betrayed
enlistment, no hope of promotion, pay at six sous a day,[2] a narrow
cot for two, bread fit for dogs, and, for several years, kicks like
those bestowed on a dog.[3] On the one hand, a nobility of high
estate, and, on the other, the lowest of the populace. One might say
that this was specially designed for contrast and to intensify
irritation. "The insignificant pay of the soldier," says an economist,
"the way in which he is dressed, lodged and fed, his utter dependence,
would render it cruelty to take any other than a man of the lower
class."[4] Indeed, he is sought for only in the lowest layers of
society. Not only are nobles and the bourgeoisie exempt from
conscription, but again the employees of the administration, of the
fermes and of public works, "all gamekeepers and forest-rangers, the
hired domestics and valets of ecclesiastics, of communities, of
religious establishments, of the gentry and of nobles,"[5] and even of
the bourgeoisie living in grand style, and still better, the sons of
cultivators in easy circumstances, and, in general, all possessing
influence or any species of protector. There remains, accordingly, for
the militia none but the poorest class, and they do not willingly
enter it. On the contrary, the service is hateful to them; they
conceal themselves in the forests where they have to be pursued by
armed men: in a certain canton which, three years later, furnishes in
one day from fifty to one hundred volunteers, the young men cut off
their thumbs to escape the draft.[6] To this scum of society is added
the sweepings of the depots and of the jails. Among the vagabonds that
fill these, after winnowing out those able to make their families
known or to obtain sponsors, "there are none left," says an intendant,
"but those who are entirely unknown or dangerous, out of which those
regarded as the least vicious are selected and efforts are made to
place these in the army."[7] - The last of its affluents is the
half-forced, half-voluntary enlistment by which the ranks are for the
most part filled, the human waste of large towns, like adventurers,
discharged apprentices, young reprobates turned out of doors, and
people without homes or steady occupation. The recruiting agent who is
paid so much a head for his recruits and so much an inch on their
stature above five feet, "holds his court in a tavern, treating
everyone" promoting his merchandise:

"Come, boys, soup, fish, meat and salad is what you get to eat in
the regiment;" nothing else, "I don't deceive you - pie and Arbois
wine are the extras."[8]

He pours the wine, pays the bill and, if need be, yields his
mistress. "After a few days debauchery, the young libertine, with no
money to pay his debts, is obliged to sell himself, while the laborer,
transformed into soldier, begins to drill under the lash." - Strange
recruits these, for the protection of society, all selected from the
class which will attack it, down-trodden peasants, imprisoned
vagabonds, social outcasts, poor fellows in debt, disheartened,
excited and easily tempted, who, according to circumstances, become at
one time rioters, and at another soldiers. - Which lot is preferable?
The bread the soldier eats is not more abundant than that of the
prisoner, while poorer in quality; for the bran is taken out of the
bread which the locked-up vagabond eats, and left in the bread which
is eaten by the soldier who locks him up[9]. In this state of things
the soldier ought not to mediate on his lot, and yet this is just what
his officers incite him to do. They also have become politicians and
fault-finders. Some years before the Revolution[10] "disputes
occurred" in the army, "discussions and complaints, and, the new ideas
fermenting in their heads, a correspondence was established between
two regiments. Written information was obtained from Paris, authorized
by the Minister of War, which cost, I believe, twelve louis per annum.
It soon took a philosophic turn, embracing dissertations, criticisms
of the ministry, and of the government, desirable changes and,
therefore, the more diffused." Sergeants like Hoche, and fencing-
masters like Augereau, certainly often read this news, carelessly left
lying on the tables, and commented on it during the evening in their
soldier quarters. Discontent is of ancient date, and already, at the
end of the late reign, grievous words are heard. At a banquet given by
a prince of the blood,[11] with a table set for a hundred guests under
an immense tent and served by grenadiers, the odor these diffused
upset the prince's delicate nose. "These worthy fellows," said he, a
little too loud, "smell strong of the stocking." One of the grenadiers
bluntly responded, "Because we haven't got any," which "was followed
by profound silence." During the ensuring years irritation smolders
and augments; the soldiers of Rochambeau have fought side by side with
the free militia of America, and they keep this in mind. In 1788,[12]
Marshal de Vaux, previous to the insurrection in Dauphiny, writes to
minister that "it is impossible to rely on the troops," while four
months after the opening of the States-General 16,000 deserters
roaming around Paris leads the revolts instead of suppressing
them.[13]

II.

The social organization is dissolved. - No central rallying
point. - Inertia of the provinces. - Ascendancy of Paris.

Once this barrier has disappeared, no other embankment remains
and the inundation spreads all over France like over an immense plain.
With other nations in like circumstances, some obstacles have been
encountered; elevations have existed, centers of refuge, old
constructions in which, in the universal fright, a portion of the
population could find shelter. Here, the first crisis sweeps away all
that remains, each individual of the twenty-six scattered millions
standing alone by himself. The administrations of Richelieu and Louis
XIV. had been a long time at work insensibly destroying the natural
groupings which, when suddenly dissolved, unite and form over again of
their own accord. Except in Vendée, I find no place, nor any class, in
which a good many men, having confidence in a few men, are able, in
the hour of danger, to rally around these and form a compact body.
Neither provincial nor municipal patriotism any longer exists. The
inferior clergy are hostile to the prelates, the gentry of the
province to the nobility of the court, the vassal to the seignior, the
peasant to the townsman, the urban population to the municipal
oligarchy, corporation to corporation, parish to parish, neighbor to
neighbor. All are separated by their privileges and their jealousies,
by the consciousness of having been imposed on, or frustrated, for the
advantage of another. The journeyman tailor is embittered against his
foreman for preventing him from doing a day's work in private houses,
hairdressers against their employers for the like reason, the pastry-
cook against the baker who prevents him from baking the pies of
housekeepers, the village spinner against the town spinners who wish
to break him up, the rural wine-growers against the bourgeois who, in
the circle of seven leagues, strives to have their vines pulled
up,[14] the village against the neighboring village whose reduction of
taxation has ruined it, the overtaxed peasant against the under taxed
peasant, one-half of a parish against its collectors, who, to its
detriment, have favored the other half.

"The nation," says Turgot, mournfully,[15] "is a society composed
of different orders badly united and of a people whose members have
few mutual liens, nobody, consequently, caring for any interest but
his own. Nowhere is there any sign of an interest in common. Towns and
villages maintain no more relation with each other than the districts
to which they are attached; they are even unable to agree together
with a view to carry out public improvements of great importance to
them."

The central power for a hundred and fifty years rules through its
division of power. Men have been kept separate, prevented from acting
in concert, the work being so successful that they no longer
understand each other, each class ignoring the other class, each
forming of the other a chimerical picture, each bestowing on the other
the hues of its own imagination, one composing an idyll, the other
framing a melodrama, one imagining peasants as sentimental swains, the
other convinced that the nobles are horrible tyrants. - Through
this mutual misconception and this secular isolation, the French lose
the habit, the art and the faculty for acting in an entire body. They
are no longer capable of spontaneous agreement and collective action.
No one, in the moment of danger, dares rely on his neighbors or on his
equals. No one knows where to turn to obtain a guide. "A man willing
to be responsible for the smallest district cannot be found; and, more
than this, one man able to answer for another man[16]." Utter and
irremediable disorder is at hand. The Utopia of the theorists has been
accomplished, the savage condition has recommenced. Individuals now
stand in by themselves; everyone reverting back to his original
feebleness, while his possessions and his life are at the mercy of the
first band that comes along. He has nothing within him to control him
but the sheep-like habit of being led, of awaiting an impulsion, of
turning towards the accustomed center, towards Paris, from which his
orders have always arrived. Arthur Young[17] is struck with this
mechanical movement. Political ignorance and docility are everywhere
complete. He, a foreigner, conveys the news of Alsace into Burgundy:
the insurrection there had been terrible, the populace having sacked
the city-hall at Strasbourg, of which not a word was known at Dijon;
"yet it is nine days since it happened; had it been nineteen I
question if they would more than have received the intelligence."
There are no newspapers in the cafés; no local centers of information,
of resolution, of action. The province submits to events at the
capital; "people dare not move; they dare not even form an opinion
before Paris speaks." - This is what Monarchical centralization leads
to. It has deprived the groups of their cohesion and the individual of
his motivational drive. Only human dust remains, and this, whirling
about and gathered together in massive force, is blindly driven along
by the wind.[18]

III.

Direction of the current. - The people led by lawyers. -
Theories and piques the sole surviving forces. - Suicide of the
Ancient regime.

We are all well aware from which side the gale comes, and, to
assure ourselves, we have merely to see how the reports of the Third-
Estate are made up. The peasant is led by the man of the law, the
petty attorney of the rural districts, the envious advocate and
theorist. This one insists, in the report, on a statement being made
in writing and at length of his local and personal grievances, his
protest against taxes and deductions, his request to have his dog free
of the clog, and his desire to own a gun to use against the
wolves[19]. Another one, who suggests and directs, envelopes all this
in the language of the Rights of Man and that of the circular of
Sieyès.

"For two months," writes a commandant in the South,[20] "inferior
judges and lawyers, with which both town and country swarm, with a
view to their election to the States-General, have been racing after
the members of the Third-Estate, under the pretext of standing by them
and of giving them information. . . They have striven to make them
believe that, in the States-General, they alone would be masters and
regulate all the affairs of the kingdom; that the Third-Estate, in
selecting its deputies among men of the robe, would secure the might
and the right to take the lead, to abolish nobility and to cancel all
its rights and privileges; that nobility would no longer be
hereditary; that all citizens, in deserving it, would be entitled to
claim it; that, if the people elected them, they would have accorded
to the Third-Estate whatever it desired, because the curates,
belonging to the Third-Estate, having agreed to separate from the
higher clergy and unite with them, the nobles and the clergy, united
together, would have but one vote against two of the Third-Estate. . .
. If the third - Estate had chosen sensible townspeople or merchants
they would have combined without difficulty with the other two orders.
But the assemblies of the bailiwicks and other districts were stuffed
with men of the robe who had absorbed all opinions and striven to take
precedence of the others, each, in his own behalf, intriguing and
conspiring to be appointed a deputy."

"In Touraine," writes the intendant,[21] "most of the votes have
been bespoken or begged for. Trusty agents, at the moment of voting,
placed filled-in ballots in the hands of the voters, and put in their
way, on reaching the taverns, every document and suggestion calculated
to excite their imaginations and determine their choice for the gentry
of the bar."

"In the sénéchausée of Lectoure, a number of parishes have not
been designated or notified to send their reports or deputies to the
district assembly. In those which were notified the lawyers, attorneys
and notaries of the small neighboring towns have made up the list of
grievances themselves without summoning the community. . . Exact
copies of this single rough draft were made and sold at a high price
to the councils of each country parish". -

This is an alarming symptom, one marking out in advance the road
the Revolution is to take: The man of the people is indoctrinated by
the advocate, the pikeman allowing himself to be led by the
spokesman.[22]

The effect of their combination is apparent the first year. In
Franche-Comté[23] after consultation with a person named Rouget, the
peasants of the Marquis de Chaila "determine to make no further
payments to him, and to divide amongst themselves the product of the
wood-cuttings." In his paper "the lawyer states that all the
communities of the province have decided to do the same thing. . . His
consultation is diffused to such an extent around the country that
many of the communities are satisfied that they owe nothing more to
the king nor to the seigniors. M. de Marnésia, deputy to the
(National) Assembly, has arrived (here) to pass a few days at home on
account of his health. He has been treated in the rudest and most
scandalous manner; it was even proposed to conduct him back to Paris
under guard. After his departure his chateau was attacked, the doors
burst open and the walls of his garden pulled down. (And yet) no
gentleman has done more for the people on his domain the M. le Marquis
de Marnésia. . . Excesses of every kind are on the increase; I have
constant complaints of the abuse which the national militia make of
their arms, and which I cannot remedy." According to an utterance in
the National Assembly the police imagines that it is to be disbanded
and has therefore no desire to make enemies for itself. "The baillages
are as timid as the police-forces; I send them business constantly,
but no culprit is punished." -- "No nation enjoys liberty so
indefinite and so disastrous to honest people; it is absolutely
against the rights of man to see oneself constantly liable to have his
throat cut by the scoundrels who daily confound liberty with license."
- In other words, the passions utilize the theory to justify
themselves, and the theory appeal to passion to be carried out. For
example, near Liancourt, the Duc de Larochefoucauld possessed an
uncultivated area of ground; "at the commencement of the
revolution,[24] the poor of the town declare that, as they form a part
of the nation, untilled lands being national property, this belongs to
them," and "with no other formality" they take possession of it,
divide it up, plant hedges and clear it off. "This, says Arthur Young,
shows the general disposition. . . . Pushed a little farther the
consequences would not be slight for properties in this kingdom."
Already, in the preceding year, near Rouen, the marauders, who cut
down and sell the forests, declare, that "the people have the right to
take whatever they require for their necessities." They have had the
doctrine preached to them that they are sovereign, and they act as
sovereigns. The condition of their intellects being given, nothing is
more natural than their conduct. Several millions of savages are thus
let loose by a few thousand windbags, the politics of the café finding
an interpreter and ministrants in the mob of the streets. On the one
hand brute force is at the service of the radical dogma. On the other
hand radical dogma is at the service of brute force. And here, in
disintegrated France, these are the only two valid powers remaining
erect on the debris of the others.

______________________________________________________________________

Notes:

[1] Necker, "De l'Administration des Finances," II. 422, 435.

[2] The wages have in 1789 been estimated to be 7 sous 4 deniers of
which 2 sous and 6 deniers would have to be paid for the bread.
(Mercure de France, May 7, 1791.)

[3] Aubertin, 345. Letter to the Comte de St. Germain (during the
Seven Years War). "The soldier's hardships make one's heart bleed; he
passes his days in a state of abject misery, despised and living like
a chained dog to be used for combat."

[4] De Tocqueville, 190, 191.

[5] Archives nationales, H, 1591.

[6] De Rochambeau, "Mémoires," I. 427. - D'Argenson, December 24,
1752. "30,000 men have been punished for desertion since the peace of
1748; this extensive desertion is attributed to the new drill which
fatigues and disheartens the soldier, and especially the veterans." -
Voltaire, "Dict. Phil.," article "Punishments." "I was amazed one day
on seeing the list of deserters, for eight years amounting to 60,000."

[7] Archives nationales, H, 554. (Letter of M. de Bertrand,
intendant of Rennes, August 17, 1785).

[8] Mercier, XI, 121.

[9] Now we know better. The most healthy bread is the one in which
some bran is left, such bran is not only good for the digestion but
contains vitamins and minerals as well. (SR).

[10] De Vaublanc, 149.

[11] De Ségur, I, 20 (1767).

[12] Augeard, "Mémoires," 165.

[13] Horace Walpole, September 5, 1789.

[14] Laboulaye, "De l'Administration française sous Louis XVI."
(Revue des Cours littéraires, IV, 743). - Albert Babeau, I, 111.
(Doléances et veux des corporations de Troyes).

[15] De Tocqueville, 158.

[16] Ibid. 304. (The words of Burke.)

[17] Travels in France, I. 240, 263.

[18] What an impression this view must have made on Lenin who
sought, between 1906 and 1909 in Paris, the means and ways with which
to re-create the French revolution in Russia. (SR.)

[19] Beugnot, I. 115, 116.

[20] Archives nationales, procès-verbaux and cahiers of the States-
General, vol. XIII, p. 405. (Letter of the Marquis de Fodoas,
commandant of Armagnac, to M. Necker, may 29, 1789.)