The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3

H >> Hippolyte A. Taine >> The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3

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NOTES:

[1] Law of May 28, 29, 1791 (according to official statements, the
total of active citizens amounted to 4,288,360). -- Laws of July 23,
Sept. 12, Sept. 29, 1791. -- Buchez et Roux, XII. 310.

[2] Bucher Ct Roux, XII. 33. -- Mortimer-Ternaux, "Histoire de la
Terreur," II. 205, 348. -- Sauzay, II. ch. XVIII -- AIbert Babeau, I.
ch. XX.

[3] Lenin repeated this performance in 1917 and Stalin attempted to
do the same in the rest of the World. (SR)..

[4] The following letter, by Camille Desmoulins (April 3, 1792), shows
at once the time consumed by public affairs, the sort of attraction
they had, and the kind of men which they diverted from their business.
"I have gone back to my old profession of the law, to which I give
nearly all the time which my municipal or electoral functions, and the
Jacobins (club), allow me -- that is to say, very little. It is very
disagreeable to me to come down to pleading bourgeois cases after
having managed interests of such importance, and the affairs of the
government, in the face of all Europe."

[5] I cannot help but think of the willful proliferation of idle
functionaries, pensioners and other receivers of public funds which
today vote for the party which represents their interests. (SR.)

[6] Sauzay, II. 83-89 and 123. A resolution of the inhabitants of
Chalèze, who, headed by their municipal officers, declare themselves
unanimously "non-conformists," and demand "the right of using a temple
for the exercise of their religious opinions, belonging to them and
built with their contributions" On the strength of this, the municipal
officers of Chalèze are soundly rated by the district administration,
which thus states what principles are: "Liberty, indefinite for the
private individual, must be restricted for the public man whose
opinions must conform to the law: otherwise, . . he must renounce all
public functions."

[7] Archives Nationales," F7, 3,253 (letter of the department
directory, April 7, 1792). "On the 25th of January, in our report to
the National Assembly, we stated the almost general opposition which
the execution of the laws relating to the clergy has found in this
department . . . nine-tenths, at least, of the Catholics refusing to
recognize the sworn priests. The teachers, influenced by their old
curés or vicars, are willing to take the civic oath, but they refuse
to recognize their legitimate pastors and attend their services. We
are, therefore, obliged to remove them, and to look out for others to
replace them. The citizens of a large number of the communes,
persisting in trusting these, will lend no assistance whatever to the
election of the new ones; the result is, that we are obliged, in
selecting these people, to refer the matter to persons whom we
scarcely know, and who are scarcely better known to the directories of
the district. As they are elected against the will of the citizens,
they do not gain their confidence, and draw their salaries from the
commune treasury, without any advantage to public instruction,"

[8] Mercure de France, Sep. 3, 1791. "The right of attending primary
meetings is that of every citizen who pays a tax of three livres;
owing to the violence to which opinions are subject, more than one-
half of the French are compelled to stay away from these reunions,
which are abandoned to persons who have the least interest in
maintaining public order and in securing stable laws, with the least
property, and who pay the fewest taxes."

[9] "The French Revolution," Vol. I. p. 182 and following pages.

[10] "Correspondence of M. de Staël" (manuscript), Swedish ambassador,
with his court, Sept 4, 1791. "The change in the way of thinking of
the democrats is extraordinary; they now seem convinced that it is
impossible to make the Constitution work. Barnave, to my own
knowledge, has declared that the influence of assemblies in the future
should be limited to a council of notables, and that all power should
be in the government"

[11] Ibid. Letter of July 17, 1791. "All the members of the Assembly,
with the exception of three or four, have passed a resolution to
separate from the Jacobins; they number about 3oo." -- The seven
deputies who remain at the Jacobin Club, are Robespierre, Pétion,
Grégoire, Buzot, Coroller, and Abbé Royer.

[12] "Les Feuillants" Was a political club consisting of
constitutional monarchists who held their meetings in the former
Feuillants monastery in Paris from 1791 to 1792. (SR).

[13] Decree of Sept 29, 30, 1791, with report and instructions of the
Committee on the Constitution.

[14] Decree of May 17, 1791. -- Malouet, XII. 161. 'There was nothing
left to us but to make one great mistake, which we did not fail to
do."

[15] A few months after this, on the election of a mayor for Paris,
the court voted against Lafayette, and for Pétion

[16] M. de Montlosier, "Mémoires," II. 309. "As far as concerns
myself, truth compels me to say, that I was stuck on the head by three
carrots and two cabbages only." -- Archives of the prefecture of
police (decisions of the police court, May 15, 1790). Moniteur, V.
427. "The prompt attendance of the members at the hour of meeting, in
spite of the hooting and murmurings of the crowd, seemed to convince
the people that this was yet another conspiracy against liberty."

[17] This is what is, today in 1998, taking place whenever any
political faction, disliked by the Socialists, try to arrange a
meeting. (SR).

[18] Malout, II. 50. - Mercure de France, Jan. 7, Feb. 5, and April
9, 1791 (letter of a member of the Monarchical Club

[19] Ferrières, II. 222. "The Jacobin Club sent five or six hundred
trusty men, armed with clubs," besides "about a hundred national
guards, and some of the Palais-Royal prostitutes."

[20] Journal des Amis de la Constitution." Letter of the Café
National! Club at Bordeaux, Jan. 20, 1791. -- Letters of the "Friends
of the Constitution," at Brives and Cambray, Jan. 19, 1791.

[21] "The French Revolution," I. pp. 243, 324.

[22] Mercure de France, Dec.18, 1790, Jan. 17, June 8, and July 14,
1791. -- Moniteur, VI. 697. -- "Archives Nationales," F7, 3,193.
Letter from the Directory of the department of Aveyron, April 20,
1792. Narrative of events after the end of 1790. -- May 22, 1791, the
club of "The Friends of Order and Peace" is burned by the Jacobins,
the fire lasting all night and a part of the next day. (Official
report of the Directory of Milhau, May 22, 1791).

[23] "The French Revolution," I. 256, 307.

[24] Mercure de France, Dec. 14, 1790 (letter from Villeneuve-St.-
Georges, Nov.29).

[25] "Archives Nationales," II. 1,453. Correspondence of M. Bercheny.
Letter from Pau, Feb. 7, 1790. "No one has any idea of the actual
state of things, in this once delightful town. People are cutting each
other's throats. Four duels have taken place within 48 hours, and ten
or a dozen good citizens have been obliged to hide themselves for
three days past"

[26] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3,249. Memorial on the actual
condition of the town and district of Mortagne, department of Orne
(November, 1791).

[27] Revolutionary song with the refrain: "Les aristocrates, à la
lanterne, tous les aristocrates on les pendra" (all the aristocrats
will hang). (SR)

[28] On the 15th of August, 1791, the mother-superior of the Hôtel-
Dieu hospital is forcibly carried off and placed in a tavern, half a
league from the town, while the rest of the nuns are driven out and
replaced by eight young girls from the town. Among other motives that
require notice is the hostility of two pharmacists belonging to the
club; in the Hotel-Dieu the nuns, keeping a pharmacy from which they
sold drugs at cost and thereby brought themselves into competition
with the two pharmacists.

[29] Cf. "Archives Nationales," DXXIX. 13. Letter of the municipal
officers and notables of Champceuil to the administrators of Seine-et-
Oise, concerning elections, June 17, 1791. -- Similar letters, from
various other parishes, among them that of Charcon, June 16: "They
have the honor to inform you that, at the time of the preceding
primary meetings, they were exposed to the greatest danger; that the
curé of Charcon, their pastor, was repeatedly stabbed with a bayonet,
the marks of which he will carry to his grave. The mayor, and several
other inhabitants of Charcon, escaped the same peril with difficulty."
- Ibid., letters from the administrators of Hautes-Alpes to the
National Assembly (September, 1791), on the disturbances in the
electoral assembly of Gap, August 29, 1791.

[30] Police searches of private homes. (SR).

[31] "The French Revolution," pp. 159, 160, 310, 323, 324. -
Lauvergne, "Histoire du département du Var," (August 23).

[32] '"Archives Nationales," F7, 3,198, deposition of Vérand-Icard,
an elector at Arles, Sep. 8, 1791. - Ibid., F7, 3,195. Letter of the
administrators of the Tarascon district, Dec. 8, 1791. Two parties
confront each other at the municipal elections of Barbantane, one
headed by the Abbé Chabaud, brother of one of the Avignon brigands,
composed of three or four townsmen, and of "the most impoverished in
the country," and the other, three times as numerous, comprising all
the land-owners, the substantial métayers and artisans, and all "who
are most interested in a good administration" The question is, whether
the Abbé Chabaud is to be mayor. The elections took place Dec.5th,
1791. Here is the official report of the acting mayor: mayor: "We,
Pierre Fontaine, mayor, addressed the rioters, to induce them to keep
the peace. At this very moment, the said Claude Gontier, alias Baoque,
struck us with his fist on the left eye, which bruised us
considerably, and on account of which we are almost blind, and,
conjointly with others, jumped upon us, threw us down, and dragged us
by the hair, continuing to strike us, from in front of the church
door, till we came in front of the door a, the town hall."

[33] Ibid., F7, 3,229. Letters of M. de Laurède, June 18, 1791; from
the directory of the department, June 8, July 31, and Sept. 22, 1791;
from the municipality, July 15, 1791. The municipality "leaves the
release of the prisoners in suspense," for six months, because, it
says, the people is disposed to "insurrectionise against their
discharge." - Letter of many of the national guard, stating that the
factions form only a part of it.

[34] Mercure de France, Dec. 10, 1791, letter from Montpellier, dated
Nov. 17, 1791. -- " Archives Nationales," F7, 3,223. Extracts from
letters, on the incidents of Oct. 9 and 12, 1791. Petition by Messrs.
Théri and Devon, Nov. 17, 1791. Letter addressed them to the Minister,
Oct. 25. Letters of M. Dupin, syndical attorney of the department, to
the Minister, Nov.14 and 15, and Dec. 26, 1791 (with official
reports). -- Among those assassinated on the 14th and 15th of
November, we find a jeweler, an attorney, a carpenter, and a dyer.
"This painful Scene," writes the syndic attorney, "has restored quiet
to the town."

[35] Buchez et Roux, X. 223 (1'Ami du Peuple, June 17, 19, 21, 1791)

[36] "'Archives Nationales,' F7, 3204. letter by M. Melon de Tradou,
royal commissary at Tulle, Sept. 8, 1791

CHAPTER II.

I.
Composition of the Legislative Assembly. -- Social rank of the
Deputies. Their inexperience, incompetence, and prejudices.

If it be true that a nation should be represented by its superior men,
France was strangely represented during the Revolution. From one
Assembly to another we see the level steadily declining; especially is
the fall very great from the Constituent to the Legislative Assembly.
The actors entitled to perform withdraw just as they begin to
understand their parts; and yet more, they have excluded themselves
from the theatre, while the stage is surrendered to their substitutes.

"The preceding Assembly," writes an ambassador,[1] "contained men of
great talent, large fortune, and honorable name, a combination which
had an imposing effect on the people, although violently opposed to
personal distinctions. The actual Assembly is but little more than a
council of lawyers, got together from every town and village in
France."

In actual fact, out of 745 deputies, indeed, "400 lawyers belong, for
the most part, to the dregs of the profession"; there are about twenty
constitutional priests, "as many poets and literary men of but little
reputation, almost all without any fortune," the greater number being
less than thirty years old, sixty being less than twenty-six,[2]
nearly all of them trained in the clubs and the popular assemblies".
There is not one noble or prelate belonging to the ancient régime, no
great landed proprietor,[3] no head of a service, no eminent
specialist in diplomacy, in finance, in the administrative or military
arts. But three general officers are found there, and these are of the
lower rank,[4] one of them having held his appointment but three
months, and the other two being wholly unknown. -- At the head of the
diplomatic committee stands Brissot, itinerant journalist, lately
traveling about in England and the United States. He is supposed to be
competent in the affairs of both worlds; in reality he is one of those
presuming, threadbare, talkative fellows, who, living in a garret,
lecture foreign cabinets and reconstruct all Europe. Things, to them,
seem to be as easily worked out as words and sentences: one day,[5] to
entice the English into an alliance with France, Brissot proposes to
place two towns, Dunkirk and Calais, in their hands as security;
another day, he proposes "to make a descent on Spain, and, at the same
time, to send a fleet to conquer Mexico." -- The leading member on the
committee on finances is Cambon, a merchant from Montpellier, a good
accountant, who, at a later period, is to simplify accounting and
regulate the Grand Livre of the public debt, which means public
bankruptcy. Mean-while, he hastens this on with all his might by
encouraging the Assembly to undertake the ruinous and terrible war
that is to last for twenty-three years; according to him, "there is
more money than is needed for it."[6] In actual fact, the guarantee
of assignats is used up and the taxes do not come in. They live only
on the paper money they issue. The assignats lose forty per centum,
and the ascertained deficit for 1792 is four hundred millions.[7] But
this revolutionary financier relies upon the confiscations which he
instigates in France, and which are to be set agoing in Belgium; here
lies all his invention, a systematic robbery on a grand scale within
and without the kingdom.

As to the legislators and manufacturers of constitutions, we have
Condorcet, a cold-blooded fanatic and systematic leveler, satisfied
that a mathematical method suits the social sciences fed on
abstractions, blinded by formulœ, and the most chimerical of perverted
intellects. Never was a man versed in books more ignorant of mankind;
never did a lover of scientific precision better succeed in changing
the character of facts. It was he who, two days before the 20th of
June, amidst the most brutal public excitement, admired "the calmness"
and rationality of the multitude; "considering the way people
interpret events, it might be supposed that they had given some hours
of each day to the study of analysis." It is he who, two days after
the 20th of June, extolled the red cap in which the head of Louis XVI.
had been muffled. "That crown is as good as any other. Marcus
Aurelius would not have despised it."[8] -- Such is the discernment
and practical judgment of the leaders; from these one can form an
opinion of the flock. It consists of novices arriving from the
provinces and bringing with them the principles and prejudices of the
newspaper. So remote from the center, having no knowledge of general
affairs or of their unity, they are two years behind their brethren of
the Constituent Assembly. They are described in the following manner
by Malouet,[9]

"Most of them, without having decided against a monarchy, had decided
against the court, the aristocracy, and the clergy, ever imagining
conspiracies and believing that defense consisted solely in attack.
There were still many men of talent among them, but with no
experience; they even lacked that which we had obtained. Our patriot
deputies, in great part, were aware of their errors; the novices were
not, they were ready to begin all over again."

Moreover, they have their own political bent, for nearly all of them
are upstarts of the new régime. We find in their ranks 264 department
administrators, 109 district administrators, 125 justices and
prosecuting-attorneys, 68 mayors and town officers, besides about
twenty officers of the National Guard, constitutional bishops and
curés. The whole amounting to 566 of the elected functionaries, who,
for the past twenty months, have carried on the government under the
direction of their electors. We have seen how this was done and under
what conditions, with what compliances and with what complicity, with
what deference to clamorous opinion, with what docility in the
presence of rioters, with what submission to the orders of the mob,
with what a deluge of sentimental phrases and commonplace
abstractions. Sent to Paris as deputies, through the choice or
toleration of the clubs, they bear along with them their politics and
their rhetoric. The result is an assemblage of narrow, perverted,
hasty, inflated and feeble minds; at each daily session, twenty word-
mills turn to no purpose, the greatest of public powers at once
becoming a manufactory of nonsense, a school of extravagancies, and a
theatre for declamation.

II.

Degree and quality of their intelligence and Culture.

Is it possible that serious men could have listened to such weird
nonsense until the bitter end?

"I am a tiller of the soil,"[10] says one deputy, "I now dare speak
of the antique nobility of my plow. A yoke of oxen once constituted
the pure, incorruptible legal worthies before whom my good ancestors
executed their contracts, the authenticity of which, far better
recorded on the soil than on flimsy parchment, is protected from any
species of revolution whatever."

Is it conceivable that the reporter of a law, that is about to exile
or imprison forty thousand priests, should employ in an argument such
silly bombast as the following?[11]

"I have seen in the rural districts the hymeneal torch diffusing only
pale and somber rays, or, transformed into the flambeaux of furies,
the hideous skeleton of superstition seated even on the nuptial couch,
placed between nature and the wedded, and arresting, etc. . . . Oh
Rome, art thou satisfied? Art thou then like Saturn, to whom fresh
holocausts were daily imperative? . . . Depart, ye creators of
discord! The soil of liberty is weary of bearing you. Would ye breathe
the atmosphere of the Aventine mount? The national ship is already
prepared for you. I hear on the shore the impatient cries of the
crew; I see the breezes of liberty swelling its sails. Like
Telemachus, ye will go forth on the waters to seek your father; but
never will you have to dread the Sicilian rocks, nor the seductions of
a Eucharis."

Courtesies of pedants, rhetorical personifications, and the invective
of maniacs is the prevailing tone. The same defect characterizes the
best speeches, namely, an overexcited brain, a passion for high-
sounding terms, the constant use of stilts and an incapacity for
seeing things as they are and of so describing them. Men of talent,
Isnard, Guadet, Vergniaud himself, are carried away by hollow sonorous
phrases like a ship with too much canvas for its ballast. Their minds
are stimulated by souvenirs of their school lessons, the modern world
revealing itself to them only through their Latin reminiscences. --
François de Nantes is exasperated at the pope "who holds in servitude
the posterity of Cato and of Scœvola." -- Isnard proposes to follow
the example of the Roman senate which, to allay discord at home, got
up an outside war: between old Rome and France of 1792, indeed, there
is a striking resemblance. -- Roux insists that the Emperor (of
Austria) should give satisfaction before the 1st of March; "in a case
like this the Roman people would have fixed the term of delay; why
shouldn't the French people fix one? . . ." "The circle of Popilius"
should be drawn around those petty, hesitating German princes. When
money is needed to establish camps around Paris and the large towns,
Lasource proposes to dispose of the national forests and is amazed at
any objection to the measure. "Cœsar's soldiers," he exclaims,
"believing that an ancient forest in Gaul was sacred, dared not lay
the axe to it; are we to share their superstitious respect?"[12] ---
Add to this collegiate lore the philosophic dregs deposited in all
minds by the great sophist then in vogue. Larivière reads in the
tribune[13] that page of the "Contrat Social," where Rousseau declares
that the sovereign may banish members "of an unsocial religion," and
punish with death "one who, having publicly recognized the dogmas of
civil religion, acts as if he did not believe in them." On which,
another hissing parrot, M. Filassier, exclaims, "I put J. J.
Rousseau's proposition into the form of a motion and demand a vote on
it." -- In like manner it is proposed to grant very young girls the
right of marrying in spite of their parents by stating, according to
the "Nouvelle Héloise"

"that a girl thirteen or fourteen years old begins to sigh for the
union which nature dictates. She struggles between passion and duty,
so that, if she triumphs, she becomes a martyr, something that is rare
in nature. It may happen that a young person prefers the serene shame
of defeat to a wearisome eight year long struggle."

Divorce is inaugurated to "preserve in matrimony that happy peace of
mind which renders the sentiments livelier."[14] Henceforth this will
no longer be a chain but "the acquittance of an agreeable debt which
every citizen owes to his country. . . Divorce is the protecting
spirit of marriage."[15]

On a background of classic pedantry, with only vague and narrow
notions of ordinary instruction, lacking exact and substantial
information, flow obscenities and enlarged commonplaces enveloped in a
mythological gauze, spouting in long tirades as maxims from the
revolutionary manual. Such is the superficial culture and verbal
argumentation from which vulgar and dangerous ingredients the
intelligence of the new legislators is formed.[16]

III.

Aspects of their sessions. -- Scenes and display at the club. -- Co-
operation of spectators.

From this we can imagine what their sessions were. "More in-coherent
and especially more passionate than those of the Constituent
Assembly"[17] they present the same but intensified characteristics.
The argument is weaker, the invective more violent, and the dogmatism
more intemperate. Inflexibility degenerates into insolence, prejudice
into fanaticism, and near-sightedness into blindness. Disorder
becomes a tumult and constant din an uproar. Suppose, says an eye-
witness,

"a classroom with hundreds of pupils quarreling and every instant on
the point of seizing each other by the hair. Their dress neglected,
their attitudes angry, with sudden transitions from shouting to
hooting . . is a sight hard to imagine and to which nothing can be
compared."

It lacks nothing for making it a club of the lowest species. Here, in
advance, we contemplate the ways of the future revolutionary
inquisition. They welcome burlesque denunciations; enter into petty
police investigations; weigh the tittle-tattle of porters and the
gossip of servant-girls; devote an all-night session to the secrets of
a drunkard.[18] They enter on their official report and without any
disapproval, the petition of M. Huré, "living at Pont-sur-Yonne, who,
over his own signature, offers one hundred francs and his arm to
become a killer of tyrants." Repeated and multiplied hurrahs and
applause with the felicitations of the president is the sanction of
scandalous or ridiculous private misconduct seeking to display itself
under the cover of public authority. Anacharsis Clootz, "a Mascarille
officially stamped," who proposes a general war and who hawks about
maps of Europe cut up in advance into departments beginning with
Savoy, Belgium and Holland "and thus onward to the Polar Sea," is
thanked and given a seat on the benches of the Assembly.[19]
Compliments are made to the Vicar of Sainte-Marguerite and his wife is
given a seat in the Assembly and who, introducing "his new family,"
thunders against clerical celibacy.[20] Crowds of men and women are
permitted to traverse the hall letting out political cries. Every sort
of indecent, childish and seditious parade is admitted to the bar of
the house.[21] To-day it consists of "citoyennes of Paris," desirous
of being drilled in military exercises and of having for their
commandants "former French guardsmen;" to-morrow children come and
express their patriotism with "touching simplicity," regretting that
"their trembling feet do not permit them to march, no, fly against the
tyrants;" next to these come convicts of the Château - Vieux escorted
by a noisy crowd; at another time the artillerymen of Paris, a
thousand in number, with drums beating; delegates from the provinces,
the faubourgs and the clubs come constantly, with their furious
harangues, and imperious remonstrances, their exactions, their threats
and their summonses. -- In the intervals between the louder racket a
continuous hubbub is heard in the clatter of the tribunes.[22] At each
session "the representatives are chaffed by the spectators; the nation
in the gallery is judge of the nation on the floor;" it interferes in
the debates, silences the speakers, insults the president and orders
the reporter of a bill to quit the tribune. One interruption, or a
simple murmur, is not all; there are twenty, thirty, fifty in an hour,
clamoring, stamping, yells and personal abuse. After countless useless
entreaties, after repeated calls to order, "received with hooting,"
after a dozen "regulations that are made, revised, countermanded and
posted up" as if better to prove the impotence of the law, of the
authorities and of the Assembly itself, the usurpations of these
intruders keep on increasing. They have shouted for ten months "Down
with the civil list! Down with the ministerials! Down with those curs!
Silence, slaves!' On the 26th of July, Brissot himself is to appear
lukewarm and be struck on the face with two plums. "Three or four
hundred individuals without either property, title, or means of
subsistence . . . have become the auxiliaries, petitioners and umpires
of the legislature," their paid violence completely destroying
whatever is still left of the Assembly's reason.[23]