The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3

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This Etext prepared by Svend Rom
Note that I have followed the numbering of Volumes, Books, Chapters
and Sections in the French not the American edition. The remarks made
me are initialled SR.

Svend Rom, April 2000.

The French Revolution, Volume 2
^M
The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3^M
^M
by Hippolyte A. Taine^M

THE REVOLUTION. Volume II. THE JACOBIN CONQUEST.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION VOLUME II.
THE JACOBIN CONQUEST.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION VOLUME II.

BOOK FIRST. THE JACOBINS.
CHAPTER I. The Establishment of the new political organ. 6
I. The Revolutionary Party.
II. The Jacobins.
III. Jacobin Mentality.
IV. What the Theory Promises.

CHAPTER II. The Party.
I. Formation of the Party
II. Jacobin and other Associations
III. The Press.
IV. The Clubs.
V. Jacobin Power.

BOOK SECOND. THE FIRST STAGE OF THE CONQUEST.
CHAPTER I. The Jacobins in Power.
I. Manipulating the Vote.
II. Danger of holding Public Office.
III. Pursuit of the Opponents.
IV. Turmoil.
V. Tactics of Intimidation.

CHAPTER II. The Legislative Assembly.
I. New Incompetent Assembly.
II. Jacobin Intelligence and Culture.
III. Their Sessions.
IV. The political Parties.
V. Means and Ways.
VI. Political Tactics.
CHAPTER III. Policy of the Assembly.
I. Lawlessness.
II. Revolutionary Laws.
III. War.
IV. Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
V. Citoyens! Aux Armes!!
CHAPTER IV. The Departments.
I. Provence in 1792.
II. The expedition to Aix.
III. Marseilles against Arles.
IV. The Jacobins of Avignon.
V. The Class Struggle.
CHAPTER V. PARIS.
I. Weakening of the King.
II. The Armed Revolutionaries.
III. Jacobin Rabble-rousers.
IV. The King in front of the people.
CHAPTER VI. The Birth of the Terrible Paris Commune.
I. The Plan of the Girondists.
II. Girondists Foiled.
III. Preparations for the Coup.
IV. The Commune in Action.
V. Purging the Assembly.
VI. Take-over.
VII. The King's Submission.
VIII. Paris and its Jacobin leaders.

BOOK THIRD. THE SECOND STAGE OF THE CONQUEST.
CHAPTER I. Mob rule in times of anarchy.
I. Brigands.
II. Homicidal Part of Revolutionary Creed.
III. Terror is their Salvation.
IV. Carnage.
V. Abasement and Stupor.
VI. Jacobin Massacre.
CHAPTER II. THE DEPARTMENTS.
I. The Sovereignty of the People..
II. Robbers and Victims.
III. Local Dictature.
IV. Jacobin Violence, Rape and Pillage.
V. The Roving Gangs.
VI. The Programme of the Party.
CHAPTER III. The New Sovereigns..
I. Sharing the Spoils.
II. Doctoring the Elections
III Electoral Control..
IV: The New Republican Assembly.
V. The Jacobins forming alone the Sovereign People.
VI. Composition of the Jacobin Party.
VII. The Jacobin Chieftains.
CHAPTER IV. TAKEN HOSTAGE.
I. Jacobin tactics and power.
II. Jacobin characters and minds.
III. Physical fear and moral cowardice.
IV. Jacobin victory over Girondist majority.
V. Jacobin violence against the people.
VI. Jacobin tactics.
VII. The central Jacobin committee in power.
VIII. Right or Wrong, my Country.

Preface:

In this volume, as in those preceding it and in those to come, there
will be found only the history of Public Authorities. Others will
write that of diplomacy, of war, of the finances, of the Church; my
subject is a limited one. To my great regret, however, this new part
fills an entire volume; and the last part, on the revolutionary
government, will be as long.

I have again to regret the dissatisfaction I foresee this work will
cause to many of my countrymen. My excuse is, that almost all of them,
more fortunate than myself, have political principles which serve them
in forming their judgments of the past. I had none; if indeed, I had
any motive in undertaking this work, it was to seek for political
principles. Thus far I have attained to scarcely more than one; and
this is so simple that will seem puerile, and that I hardly dare
express it. Nevertheless I have adhered to it, and in what the reader
is about to peruse my judgments are all derived from that; its truth
is the measure of theirs. It consists wholly in this observation: that

HUMAN SOCIETY, ESPECIALLY A MODERN SOCIETY, IS A VAST AND COMPLICATED
THING.

Hence the difficulty in knowing and comprehending it. For the same
reason it is not easy to handle the subject well. It follows that a
cultivated mind is much better able to do this than an uncultivated
mind, and a man specially qualified than one who is not. From these
two last truths flow many other consequences, which, if the reader
deigns to reflect on them, he will have no trouble in defining.

H. A. Taine, Paris 1881.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

BOOK FIRST. THE JACOBINS.

CHAPTER I. THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE NEW POLITICAL ORGAN.

In this disorganized society, in which the passions of the people are
the sole real force, authority belongs to the party that understands
how to flatter and take advantage of these. As the legal government
can neither repress nor gratify them, an illegal government arises
which sanctions, excites, and directs these passions. While the former
totters and falls to pieces, the latter grows stronger and improves
its organization, until, becoming legal in its turn, it takes the
other's place.

I.

Principle of the revolutionary party. - Its applications.

As a justification of these popular outbreaks and assaults, we
discover at the outset a theory, which is neither improvised, added
to, nor superficial, but now firmly fixed in the public mind. It has
for a long time been nourished by philosophical discussions. It is a
sort of enduring, long-lived root out of which the new constitutional
tree has arisen. It is the dogma of popular sovereignty. -- Literally
interpreted, it means that the government is merely an inferior clerk
or servant.[1] We, the people, have established the government; and
ever since, as well as before its organization, we are its masters.
Between it and us no infinite or long lasting "contract". "None which
cannot be done away with by mutual consent or through the
unfaithfulness of one of the two parties." Whatever it may be, or
provide for, we are nowise bound by it; it depends wholly on us. We
remain free to "modify, restrict, and resume as we please the power of
which we have made it the depository." Through a primordial and
inalienable title deed the commonwealth belongs to us and to us only.
If we put this into the hands of the government it is as when kings
delegate authority for the time being to a minister He is always
tempted to abuse; it is our business to watch him, warn him, check
him, curb him, and, if necessary, displace him. We must especially
guard ourselves against the craft and maneuvers by which, under the
pretext of preserving law and order, he would tie our hands. A law,
superior to any he can make, forbids him to interfere with our
sovereignty; and he does interfere with it when he undertakes to
forestall, obstruct, or impede its exercise. The Assembly, even the
Constituent, usurps when it treats the people like a lazybones (roi
fainéant), when it subjects them to laws, which they have not
ratified, and when it deprives them of action except through their
representatives.[2] The people themselves must act directly, must
assemble together and deliberate on public affairs. They must control
and censure the acts of those they elect; they must influence these
with their resolutions, correct their mistakes with their good sense,
atone for their weakness by their energy, stand at the helm alongside
of them, and even employ force and throw them overboard, so that the
ship may be saved, which, in their hands, is drifting on a rock.[3]
Such, in fact, is the doctrine of the popular party. This doctrine
is carried into effect July 14 and October 5 and 6, 1789. Loustalot,
Camille Desmoulins, Fréron, Danton, Marat, Pétion, Robespierre
proclaim it untiringly in the political clubs, in the newspapers, and
in the assembly. The government, according to them, whether local or
central, trespasses everywhere. Why, after having overthrown one
despotism, should we install another? We are freed from the yoke of a
privileged aristocracy, but we still suffer from "the aristocracy of
our representatives."[4] Already at Paris, "the population is
nothing, while the municipality is everything". It encroaches on our
imprescriptible rights in refusing to let a district revoke at will
the five members elected to represent it at the Hôtel-de-Ville, in
passing ordinances without obtaining the approval of voters, in
preventing citizens from assembling where they please, in interrupting
the out-door meetings of the clubs in the Palais Royal where
"Patriots are driven away be the patrol." Mayor Bailly, "who keeps
liveried servants, who gives himself a salary of 110,000 livres," who
distributes captains' commissions, who forces peddlers to wear
metallic badges, and who compels newspapers to have signatures to
their articles is not only a tyrant, but a crook, thief and "guilty of
lése-nation." -- Worse are the abuses of the National Assembly. To
swear fidelity to the constitution, as this body has just done, to
impose its work on us, forcing us to take a similar oath, disregarding
our superior rights to veto or ratify their decisions,[5] is to
"slight and scorn our sovereignty". By substituting the will of 1200
individuals for that of the people, "our representatives have failed
to treat us with respect." This is not the first time, and it is not
to be the last. Often do they exceed their mandate, they disarm,
mutilate, and gag their legitimate sovereign and they pass decrees
against the people in the people's name. Such is their martial law,
specially devised for "suppressing the uprising of citizens", that is
to say, the only means left to us against conspirators, monopolists,
and traitors. Such a decree against publishing any kind of joint
placard or petition, is a decree "null and void," and "constitutes a
most flagrant attack on the nation's rights."[6] Especially is the
electoral law one of these, a law which, requiring a small
qualification tax for electors and a larger one for those who are
eligible, "consecrates the aristocracy of wealth." The poor, who are
excluded by the decree, must regard it as invalid; register themselves
as they please and vote without scruple, because natural law has
precedence over written law. It would simply be "fair reprisal" if, at
the end of the session, the millions of citizens lately deprived of
their vote unjustly, should seize the usurping majority by the threat
and tell them:

"You cut us off from society in your chamber, because you are the
strongest there; we, in our turn, cut you off from the living society,
because we are strongest in the street. You have killed us civilly -
we kill you physically."

Accordingly, from this point of view, all riots are legitimate.
Robespierre from the rostrum[7] excuses jacqueries, refuses to call
castle-burners brigands, and justifies the insurgents of Soissons,
Nancy, Avignon, and the colonies. Desmoulins, alluding to two men hung
at Douai, states that it was done by the people and soldiers combined,
and declares that: "Henceforth, -- I have no hesitation in saying it
-- they have legitimated the insurrection;" they were guilty, and it
was well to hang them.[8] Not only do the party leaders excuse
assassinations, but they provoke them. Desmoulins, "attorney-general
of the Lantern, insists on each of the 83 departments being threatened
with at least one lamppost hanging." (This sobriquet is bestowed on
Desmoulins on account of his advocacy of street executions, the
victims of revolutionary passions being often hung at the nearest
lanterne, or street lamp, at that time in Paris suspended across the
street by ropes or chains. - (Tr.)) Meanwhile Marat, in the name of
principle, constantly sounds the alarm in his journal:

"When public safety is in peril, the people must take power out of
the hands of those whom it is entrusted . . . Put that Austrian woman
and her brother-in-law in prison . . . Seize the ministers and their
clerks and put them in irons . . . Make sure of the mayor and his
lieutenants; keep the general in sight, and arrests his staff. . . The
heir to the throne has no rights to a dinner while you want bread.
Organize bodies of armed men. March to the National Assembly and
demand food at once, supplied to you out of the national stocks. . .
Demand that the nation's poor have a future secured to them out of the
national contribution. If you are refused join the army, take the
land, as well as gold which the rascals who want to force you to come
to terms by hunger have buried and share it amongst you. Off with the
heads of the ministers and their underlings, for now is the time; that
of Lafayette and of every rascal on his staff, and of every
unpatriotic battalion officer, including Bailly and those municipal
reactionaries - all the traitors in the National Assembly!"

Marat, indeed, still passes for a furious ranter among people of some
intelligence. But for all that, this is the sum and substance of his
theory: It installs in the political establishment, over the heads of
delegated, regular, and legal powers an anonymous, imbecile, and
terrific power whose decisions are absolute, whose projects are
constantly adopted, and whose intervention is sanguinary. This power
is that of the crowd, of a ferocious, suspicious sultan, who,
appointing his viziers, keeps his hands free to direct them and his
scimitar ready sharpened to cut of their heads.

II. The Jacobins. -

Formation of the Jacobins. - The common human elements of his
character. - Conceit and dogmatism are sensitive and rebellious in
every community. - How kept down in all well-founded societies. -
Their development in the new order of things. -Effect of milieu on
imagination and ambitions. - The stimulants of Utopianism, abuses of
speech, and derangement of ideas. - Changes in office; interests
playing upon and perverted feeling.

That a speculator in his closet should have concocted such a theory is
comprehensible; paper will take all that is put upon it, while
abstract beings, the hollow simulacra and philosophic puppets he
concocts, are adapted to every sort of combination. - That a lunatic
in his cell should adopt and preach this theory is also
comprehensible; he is beset with phantoms and lives outside the actual
world, and, moreover in this ever-agitated democracy he is the eternal
informer and instigator of every riot and murder that takes place; he
it is who under the name of "the people's friend" becomes the arbiter
of lives and the veritable sovereign. -- That a people borne down with
taxes, wretched and starving, indoctrinated by public speakers and
sophists, should have welcomed this theory and acted under it is again
comprehensible; necessity knows no law, and where the is oppression,
that doctrine is true which serves to throw oppression off.

But that public men, legislators and statesmen, with, at last,
ministers and heads of the government, should have made this theory
their own;

* that they should have more fondly clung to it as it became more
destructive;

* that, daily for three years they should have seen social order
crumbling away piecemeal under its blows and not have recognized it as
the instrument of such vast ruin;

* that, in the light of the most disastrous experience, instead of
regarding it as a curse they should have glorified it as a boon;

* that many of them - an entire party; almost all of the Assembly -
should have venerated it as a religious dogma and carried it to
extremes with enthusiasm and rigor of faith;

* that, driven by it into a narrow strait, ever getting narrower and
narrower, they should have continued to crush each other at every
step;

* that, finally, on reaching the visionary temple of their so-called
liberty, they should have found themselves in a slaughter-house, and,
within its precincts, should have become in turn butcher and brute;

* that, through their maxims of a universal and perfect liberty they
should have inaugurated a despotism worthy of Dahomey, a tribunal like
that of the Inquisition, and raised human hecatombs like those of
ancient Mexico;

* that amidst their prisons and scaffolds they should persist in
believing in the righteousness of their cause, in their own humanity,
in their virtue, and, on their fall, have regarded themselves as
martyrs -

is certainly strange. Such intellectual aberration, such excessive
conceit are rarely encountered, and a concurrence of circumstances,
the like of which has never been seen in the world but once, was
necessary to produce it.[8]

Extravagant conceit and dogmatism, however, are not rare in the human
species. These two roots of the Jacobin intellect exist in all
countries, underground and indestructible. Everywhere they are kept
from sprouting by the established order of things; everywhere are they
striving to overturn old historic foundations, which press them down.
Now, as in the past, students live in garrets, bohemians in lodgings,
physicians without patients and lawyers without clients in lonely
offices, so many Brissots, Dantons, Marats, Robespierres, and St.
Justs in embryo; only, for lack of air and sunshine, they never come
to maturity. At twenty, on entering society, a young man's judgment
and pride are extremely sensitive. - - Firstly, let his society be
what it will, it is for him a scandal to pure reason: for it was not
organized by a legislative philosopher in accordance with a sound
principle, but is the work of one generation after another, according
to manifold and changing necessities. It is not a product of logic,
but of history, and the new-fledged thinker shrugs his shoulders as he
looks up and sees what the ancient tenement is, the foundations of
which are arbitrary, its architecture confused, and its many repairs
plainly visible. -- In the second place, whatever degree of perfection
preceding institutions, laws, and customs have reached, these have not
received his approval; others, his predecessors, have chosen for him,
he is being subjected beforehand to moral, political, and social forms
which pleased them. Whether they please him or not is of no
consequence. Like a horse trotting along between the poles of a wagon
in the harness that happens to have been put on his back, he has to
make best of it. -- Besides, whatever its organization, as it is
essentially a hierarchy, he is nearly always subaltern in it, and must
ever remain so, either soldier, corporal or sergeant. Even under the
most liberal system, that in which the highest grades are accessible
to all, for every five or six men who take the lead or command others,
one hundred thousand must follow or be commanded. This makes it vain
to tell every conscript that he carriers a marshal's baton in his
sack, when, nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand, he
discovers too late, on rummaging his sack, that the baton is not
there. - - It is not surprising that he is tempted to kick against
social barriers within which, willing or not, he is enrolled, and
which predestine him to subordination. It is not surprising that on
emerging from traditional influences he should accept a theory, which
subjects these arrangements to his judgment and gives him authority
over his superiors. And all the more because there is no doctrine more
simple and better adapted to his inexperience, it is the only one he
can comprehend and manage off-hand. Hence it is that young men on
leaving college, especially those who have their way to make in the
world, are more or less Jacobin, - it is a disorder of growing up.[9]
-- In well organized communities this ailment is beneficial, and soon
cured. The public establishment being substantial and carefully
guarded, malcontents soon discover that they have not enough strength
to pull it down, and that on contending with its guardians they gain
nothing but blows. After some grumbling, they too enter at one or the
other of its doors, find a place for themselves, and enjoy its
advantages or become reconciled to their lot. Finally, either through
imitation, or habit, or calculation, they willingly form part of that
garrison which, in protecting public interests, protects their own
private interests as well. Generally, after ten years have gone by,
the young man has obtained his rank in the file, where he advances
step by step in his own compartment, which he no longer thinks of
tearing to pieces, and under the eye of a policeman who he no longer
thinks of condemning. He even sometimes thinks that policeman and
compartment are useful to him. Should he consider the millions of
individuals who are trying to mount the social ladder, each striving
to get ahead of the other, it may dawn upon him that the worst of
calamities would be a lack of barriers and of guardians.

Here the worm-eaten barriers have cracked all at once, their easy-
going, timid, incapable guardians having allowed things to take their
course. Society, accordingly, disintegrated and a pell-mell, is turned
into a turbulent, shouting crowd, each pushing and being pushed, all
alike over-excited and congratulating each other on having finally
obtained elbow-room, and all demanding the new barriers shall be as
fragile and the new guardians as feeble, as defenseless, and as inert
as possible. This is what has been done. As a natural consequence,
those who were foremost in the rank have been relegated to the last;
many have been struck down in the fray, while in this permanent state
of disorder, which goes under the name of lasting order, elegant
footwear continue to be stamped upon by hobnailed boots and wooden
shoes. - The fanatic and the intemperate egoists can now let
themselves go. They are no longer subject to any ancient
institutions, nor any armed might which can restrain them. On the
contrary, the new constitution, through its theoretical declarations
and the practical application of these, invites them to let themselves
go. -- For, on the one hand, legally, it declares to be based upon
pure reason, beginning with a long string of abstract dogmas from
which its positive prescriptions are assumed to be rigorously deduced.
As a consequence all laws are submitted to the shallow comments of
reasoners and quibblers who will both interpret and break them
according to the principles.[10] -- On the other hand, as a matter of
fact, it hands over all government powers to the elections and confers
on the clubs the control of the authorities: which is to offer a
premium to the presumption of the ambitious who put themselves forward
because they think themselves capable, and who defame their rulers
purposely to displace them. - Every government department,
organization or administrative system is like a hothouse which serves
to favor some species of the human plant and wither others. This one
is the best one for the propagation and rapid increase of the coffee-
house politician, club haranguer, the stump-speaker, the street-
rioter, the committee dictator -- in short, the revolutionary and the
tyrant. In this political hothouse wild dreams and conceit will assume
monstrous proportions, and, in a few months, brains that are now only
ardent become hotheads.

Let us trace the effect of this excessive, unhealthy temperature
on imaginations and ambitions. The old tenement is down; the
foundations of the new one are not yet laid; society has to be made
over again from top to bottom. All willing men are asked to come and
help, and, as one plain principle suffices in drawing a plan, the
first comer may succeed. Henceforth political fancies swarm in the
district meetings, in the clubs, in the newspapers, in pamphlets, and
in every head-long, venturesome brain.

"There is not a merchant's clerk educated by reading the 'Nouvelle
Héloise,'[11] not a school teacher that has translated ten pages of
Livy, not an artist that has leafed through Rollin, not an aesthete
converted into journalists by committing to memory the riddles of the
'Contrat Social,' who does not draft a constitution. . . As nothing is
easier than to perfect a daydream, all perturbed minds gather, and
become excited, in this ideal realm. They start out with curiosity and
end up with enthusiasm. The man in the street rushes to the enterprise
in the same manner as a miser to a conjurer promising treasures, and,
thus childishly attracted, each hopes to find at once, what has never
been seen under even the most liberal governments: perpetual
perfection, universal brotherhood, the power of acquiring what one
lacks, and a life composed wholly of enjoyment."

One of these pleasures, and a keen one, is to daydream. One soars
in space. By means of eight or ten ready-made sentences, found in the
six-penny catechisms circulated by thousands in the country and in the
suburbs of the towns and cities,[12] a village attorney, a customs
clerk, a theater attendant, a sergeant of a soldier's mess, becomes a
legislator and philosopher. He criticizes Malouet, Mirabeau, the
Ministry, the King, the Assembly, the Church, foreign Cabinets,
France, and all Europe. Consequently, on these important subjects,
which always seemed forever forbidden to him, he offers resolutions,
reads addresses, makes harangues, obtains applause, and congratulates
himself on having argued so well and with such big words. To hold fort
on questions that are not understood is now an occupation, a matter of
pride and profit.