The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2

H >> Hippolyte A. Taine >> The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2

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

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[16] 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 Étampes,[17] 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
Étampes, "they have been made to believe that the grain which had
been sold for supplying the departments below the Loire, is shipped
at Paimbœuf 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."[18] - 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 Étampes 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,[19] 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 Étampes, "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."[20] 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 Étampes 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-Rémi-
Honoré, 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.[21] "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
Bruyères-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 Étampes, 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,[22] 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 Hôtel-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, "Bèquelin,
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-Inférieure, 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,[23] at Gonesse, Dourdan,
Corbeil, Mennecy, Brunoy, Limours, Brie-Comte-Robert, and especially
at Étampes and Montlhéry, 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,[24] 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 Étampes, the people repeat that "they are sent
for and paid by the flour-dealers;" at Montlhéry, 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 Montlhéry, 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
Hôtel-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.[25] "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 Montlhéry, a seed merchant,
accused of mixing the flour of beans (twice as dear) with wheaten
flour, is massacred in his own house. At Étampes, 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 Étampes often contained fifteen
or sixteen hundred sacks of flour; the week following this
insurrection there were, at most, sixty brought to it. At
Montlhéry, 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.[26] Drums roll constantly on the roads
around Montlhéry, 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,[27] 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 Montlhéry.[28] 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[29] 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,[30] "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 'Ça
ira, ça 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,[31] 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, Vendôme,
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,[32] 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.[33] 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.[34] - 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.

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