Alma Lutz - "Susan B. Anthony"

William Wordsworth - "Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I."

John Philip Newman - "'America for Americans!'"

Herman Gastrell Seely - "A Son of the City"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2

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




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."[24] On Monday, June 22nd, "d'Espréménil
barely escapes being knocked down; the Abbé Maury. . . owes his
escape to the strength of a curé, 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."[25]
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.[26] 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.[27] - Owing
to this intervention of the galleries the radical minority,
numbering about thirty,[28] 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,[29]
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;[30] 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,[31] 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.[32] "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 Châtelet, 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 Café 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.[33] 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;[34] 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,[35] 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.[36] Elsewhere, on the Boulevard,
before the Hôtel 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 Hôtel-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,[37] "all the barriers, from the
Faubourg Saint-Antoine to the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, 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[38] 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.[39] 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,[40] "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[41] 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 Hôtel-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 Hôtel-de-Ville to inspect the fortress; he
receives several discharges without returning them, and lets the
first bridge be carried without firing a shot.[42] 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,"[43] 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,[44] and, on
the other hand, they were unnerved by the sight of the immense
crowd. Eight or nine hundred men only[45] 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,[46] "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;[47] 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 Hôtel-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; n 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-Honoré, 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'Espréménil,
Lefèvre d'Amécourt, and others besides.[48] A reward is promised to
whoever will bring their heads to the Café 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 Hôtel-de-Ville, having shown himself somewhat
lukewarm,[49] 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 Grève;
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[50] 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.

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