The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4

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The French Revolution, Volume 1.
^M
The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2^M
^M
by Hippolyte A. Taine^M

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION VOLUME III.
PREFACE.
BOOK FIRST. The Establishment of the Revolutionary Government.
CHAPTER I.
BOOK SECOND. The Jacobin Program.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
BOOK THIRD. The Governors.
CHAPTER I. Psychology of the Jacobin Leaders.
CHAPTER II. The Rulers of the Country.
CHAPTER III. The Rulers. (continued).
BOOK FOURTH. The Governed.
CHAPTER I. The Oppressed.
CHAPTER II. Food and Provisions.
BOOK FIFTH. The End of the Revolutionary Government.
CHAPTER I.

PREFACE.

"In Egypt," says Clement of Alexandria,[1] "the sanctuaries of the
temples are shaded by curtains of golden tissue. But on going
further into the interior in quest of the statue, a priest of grave
aspect, advancing to meet you and chanting a hymn in the Egyptian
tongue, slightly raises a veil to show you the god. And what do you
behold? A crocodile, or some indigenous serpent, or other dangerous
animal, the Egyptian god being a beast sprawling on a purple carpet."

We need not visit Egypt or go so far back in history to encounter
crocodile worship, as this can be readily found in France at the end
of the last century. -- Unfortunately, a hundred years is too long
an interval, too far away, for an imaginative retrospect of the past.
At the present time, standing where we do and regarding the horizon
behind us, we see only forms which the intervening atmosphere
embellishes, shimmering contours which each spectator may interpret in
his own fashion; no distinct, animated figure, but merely a mass of
moving points, forming and dissolving in the midst of picturesque
architecture. I was anxious to take a closer view of these vague
points, and, accordingly, deported myself back to the last half of the
eighteenth century. I have now been living with them for twelve
years, and, like Clement of Alexandria, examined, first, the temple,
and next the god. A passing glance at these is not sufficient; it
was also necessary to understand the theology on which this cult is
founded. This one, explained by a very specious theology, like most
others, is composed of dogmas called the principles of 1789; they were
proclaimed, indeed, at that date, having been previously formulated by
Jean-Jacques Rousseau:

* The well known sovereignty of the people.

* The rights of Man.

* The social contract.

Once adopted, their practical results unfolded themselves naturally.
In three years these dogmas installed the crocodile on the purple
carpet insides the sanctuary behind the golden veil. He was selected
for the place on account of the energy of his jaws and the capacity of
his stomach; he became a god through his qualities as a destructive
brute and man-eater. -- Comprehending this, the rites which
consecrate him and the pomp which surrounds him need not give us any
further concern. -- We can observe him, like any ordinary animal, and
study his various attitudes, as he lies in wait for his prey, springs
upon it, tears it to pieces, swallows it, and digests it. I have
studied the details of his structure, the play of his organs, his
habits, his mode of living, his instincts, his faculties, and his
appetites. -- Specimens abounded. I have handled thousands of them,
and have dissected hundreds of every species and variety, always
preserving the most valuable and characteristic examples, but for lack
of room I have been compelled to let many of them go because my
collections was too large. Those that I was able to bring back with
me will be found here, and, among others, about twenty individuals of
different dimensions, which -- a difficult undertaking -- I have kept
alive with great pains. At all events, they are intact and perfect,
and particularly the three largest. These seem to me, of their kind,
truly remarkable, and those in which the divinity of the day might
well incarnate himself. - Authentic and rather well kept cookbooks
inform us about the cost of the cult: We can more or less estimate how
much the sacred crocodiles consumed in ten years; we know their bills
of daily fare, their favorite morsels. Naturally, the god selected
the fattest victims, but his voracity was so great that he likewise
bolted down, and blindly, the lean ones, and in much greater number
than the fattest. Moreover, by virtue of his instincts, and an
unfailing effect of the situation, he ate his equals once or twice a
year, except when they succeeded in eating him. -- This cult
certainly is instructive, at least to historians and men of pure
science. If any believers in it still remain I do not aim to convert
them; one cannot argue with a devotee on matters of faith. This
volume, accordingly, like the others that have gone before it, is
written solely for amateurs of moral zoology, for naturalists of the
understanding, for seekers of truth, of texts, and of proofs -- for
these alone and not for the public, whose mind is made up and which
has its own opinion on the Revolution. This opinion began to be
formed between 1825 and 1830, after the retirement or withdrawal of
eye witnesses. When they disappeared it was easy to convince a
credulous public that crocodiles were philanthropists; that many
possessed genius; that they scarcely ate others than the guilty, and
that if they sometimes ate too many it was unconsciously and in spite
of themselves, or through devotion and self-sacrifice for the common
good.

H. A. Taine, Menthon Saint Bernard, July 1884.

___________________________________________________________________

BOOK FIRST. THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT.

CHAPTER I.

I.

Weakness of former governments. - Energy of the new government. -
The despotic creed and instincts of the Jacobin.

So far, the weakness of the legal government is extreme. During four
years, whatever its kind, it has constantly and everywhere been
disobeyed. For four years it never dared enforce obedience.
Recruited among the cultivated and refined class, the rulers of the
country have brought with them into power the prejudices and
sensibilities of the epoch. Under the influence of the prevailing
dogma they have submitted to the will of the multitude and, with too
much faith in the rights of Man, they have had too little in the
authority of the magistrate. Moreover, through humanity, they have
abhorred bloodshed and, unwilling to repress, they have allowed
themselves to be repressed. Thus from the 1st of May, 1789, to June
2, 1793, they have administrated or legislated, escaping countless
insurrections, almost all of them going unpunished ; while their
constitution, an unhealthy product of theory and fear, have done no
more than transform spontaneous anarchy into legal anarchy.
Deliberately and through distrust of authority they have undermined
the principle of command, reduced the King to the post of a decorative
puppet, and almost annihilated the central power: from the top to the
bottom of the hierarchy the superior has lost his hold on the
inferior, the minister on the departments, the departments on the
districts, and the districts on the communes. Throughout all branches
of the service, the chief, elected on the spot and by his
subordinates, has come to depend on them. Thenceforth, each post in
which authority is vested is found isolated, dismantled and preyed
upon, while, to crown all, the Declaration of Rights, proclaiming "the
jurisdiction of constituents over their clerks,"[2] has invited the
assailants to make the assault. On the strength of this a faction
arises which ends in becoming an organized band ; under its clamor,
its menaces and its pikes, at Paris and in the provinces, at the polls
and in the parliament, the majorities are all silenced, while the
minorities vote, decree and govern; the Legislative Assembly is
purged, the King is dethroned, and the Convention is mutilated. Of
all the garrisons of the central citadel, whether royalists,
Constitutionalists, or Girondins, not one has been able to defend
itself, to re-fashion the executive instrument, to draw the sword and
use it in the streets: on the first attack, often at the first
summons, all have surrendered, and now the citadel, with every other
public fortress, is in the hands of the Jacobins.

This time, its occupants are of a different stamp. Aside from the
great mass of well-disposed people fond of a quiet life, the
Revolution has sifted out and separated from the rest all who are
fanatical, brutal or perverse enough to have lost respect for others;
these form the new garrison -- sectarians blinded by their creed, the
roughs (assommeurs) who are hardened by their calling, and those who
make all they can out of their offices. None of this class are
scrupulous concerning human life or property ; for, as we have seen,
they have shaped the theory to suit themselves, and reduced popular
sovereignty to their sovereignty. The commonwealth, according to the
Jacobin, is his; with him, the commonwealth comprises all private
possessions, bodies, estates, souls and consciences; everything
belongs to him; the fact of being a Jacobin makes him legitimately
czar and pope. Little does he care about the wills of actually living
Frenchmen; his mandate does not emanate from a vote ; it descends to
him from aloft, conferred on him by Truth, by Reason, by Virtue. As
he alone is enlightened, and the only patriot, he alone is worthy to
take command, while resistance, according to his imperious pride, is
criminal. If the majority protests it is because the majority is
imbecile or corrupt; in either case, it deserves to be brought to
heel. And, in fact, the Jacobin only does that and right away too;
insurrections, usurpations, pillaging, murders, assaults on
individuals, on judges and public attorneys, on assemblies, violations
of law, attacks on the State, on communities -- there is no outrage
not committed by him. He has always acted as sovereign instinctively
; he was so as a private individual and clubbist; he is not to cease
being so, now that he possesses legal authority, and all the more
because if he hesitates he knows he is lost; to save himself from the
scaffold he has no refuge but in a dictatorship. Such a man, unlike
his predecessors, will not allow himself to be turned out; on the
contrary, he will exact obedience at any cost. He will not hesitate
to restore the central power; he will put back the local wheels that
have been detached; he will repair the old forcing gear; he will set
it agoing so as to work more rudely and arbitrarily than ever, with
greater contempt for private rights and public liberties than either a
Louis XIV. or a Napoleon.

II. Jacobin Dissimulation.

Contrast between his words and his acts. - How he dissimulates his
change of front. -- The Constitution of June, 1793. - Its promises
of freedom.

In the mean time, he has to harmonize his coming acts with his recent
declarations, which, at the first glance, seems a difficult operation:
for, in the speeches he has made he has already condemned the actions
he meditates. Yesterday he exaggerated the rights of the governed,
even to a suppression of those of the government; to-morrow he is to
exaggerate the rights of the people in power, even to suppressing
those who are governed. The people, as he puts it, is the sole
sovereign, and he is going to treat the people as slaves; the
government, as he puts it, is a valet, and he is going to endow the
government with prerogatives of a sultan. He has just denounced the
slightest exercise of public authority as a crime; he is now going to
punish as a crime the slightest resistance to public authority. What
will justify such a volte-face and with what excuse can he repudiate
the principles with which he justified his takeover? -- He takes good
care not to repudiate them; it would drive the already rebellious
provinces to extremes; on the contrary, he proclaims them with renewed
vigor, through which move the ignorant crowd, seeing the same flask
always presented to it, imagines that it is always served with the
same liquor, and is thus forced to drink tyranny under the label of
freedom. Whatever the charlatan can do with his labels, signboards,
shouting and lies for the next six months, will be done to disguise
the new nostrum; so much the worse for the public if, later on, it
discovers that the draught is bitter; sooner or later it must swallow
it, willingly or by compulsion: for, in the interval, the instruments
are being got ready to force it down the public throat.[3]

As a beginning, the Constitution, so long anticipated and so often
promised, is hastily fabricated:[4] declarations of rights in thirty-
five articles, the Constitutional bill in one hundred and twenty-four
articles, political principles and institutions of every sort,
electoral, legislative, executive, administrative, judicial, financial
and military;[5] in three weeks all is drawn up and passed on the
double. -- Of course, the new Constitutionalists do not propose to
produce an effective and serviceable instrument; that is the least of
their worries. Hérault Séchelles, the reporter of the bill, writes on
the 7th of June, "to have procured for him at once the laws of Minos,
of which he has urgent need;" very urgent need, as he must hand in the
Constitution that week.[6] Such circumstance is sufficiently
characteristic of both the workmen and the work. All is mere show and
pretense. Some of the workmen are shrewd politicians whose sole
object is to furnish the public with words instead of realities;
others, ordinary scribblers of abstractions, or even ignoramuses, and
unable to distinguish words from reality, imagine that they are
framing laws by stringing together a lot of phrases. -- It is not a
difficult job; the phrases are ready-made to hand. "Let the plotters
of anti-popular systems," says the reporter, "painfully elaborate
their projects! Frenchmen . . . . have only to consult their
hearts to read the Republic there!"[7] Drafted in accordance with the
"Contrat-Social," filled with Greek and Latin reminiscences, it is a
summary "in pithy style" of the manual of current aphorisms then in
vogue, Rousseau's mathematical formulas and prescriptions, "the axioms
of truth and the consequences flowing from these axioms," in short, a
rectilinear constitution which any school-boy may spout on leaving
college. Like a handbill posted on the door of a new shop, it
promises to customers every imaginable article that is handsome and
desirable. Would you have rights and liberties? You will find them
all here. Never has the statement been so clearly made, that the
government is the servant, creature and tool of the governed; it is
instituted solely "to guarantee to them their natural, imprescriptible
rights." [8] Never has a mandate been more strictly limited: "The
right of expressing one's thoughts and opinions, either through the
press or in any other way; the right of peaceful assembly, the free
exercise of worship, cannot be interdicted." Never have citizens been
more carefully guarded against the encroachments and excesses of
public authority: "The law should protect public and private liberties
against the oppression of those who govern . . . offenses committed
by the people's mandatories and agents must never go unpunished. Let
free men instantly put to death every individual usurping sovereignty.
. . Every act against a man outside of the cases and forms which the
law determines is arbitrary and tyrannical; whosoever is subjected to
violence in the execution of this act has the right to repel it by
force. . . When the government violates the people's rights
insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people,
the most sacred of rights and the most indispensable of duties."

To civil rights the generous legislator has added political rights,
and multiplied every precaution for maintaining the dependence of
rulers on the people. -- In the first place, rulers are appointed by
the people and through direct choice or nearly direct choice: in
primary meetings the people elect deputies, city officers, justices of
the peace, and electors of the second degree; the latter, in their
turn, elect in the secondary meetings, district and department
administrators, civil arbitrators, criminal judges, judges of appeal
and the eighty candidates from amongst which the legislative body is
to select its executive council. -- In the second place, all powers
of whatever kind are never conferred except for a very limited term:
one year for deputies, for electors of the second degree, for civil
arbitrators, and for judges of every kind and class. As to
municipalities and also department and district administrations, these
are one-half renewable annually. Every first of May the fountain-head
of authority flows afresh, the people in its primary assemblies,
spontaneously formed, manifesting or changing at will its staff of
clerks. -- In the third place, even when installed and at work, the
people may, if it pleases, become their collaborator: means are
provided for "deliberating" with its deputies. The latter, on
incidental questions, those of slight importance, on the ordinary
business of the year, may enact laws; but on matters of general,
considerable and permanent interest, they are simply to propose the
laws, while, especially as regards a declaration of war, the people
alone must decide. The people have a suspensive veto and, finally, a
definitive veto, which they may exercise when they please. To this
end, they may assemble in extraordinary session; one-fifth of the
citizens who have the right to vote suffice for their convocation.
Once convoked, the vote is determined by a Yes or a No on the act
proposed by the legislative body. If, at the expiration of forty
days, one-tenth of the primary assemblies in one-half of the
departments vote No, there is a suspensive veto. In that event all
the primary assemblies of the Republic must be convoked and if the
majority still decides in the negative, that is a definitive veto.
The same formalities govern a revision of the established
constitution. -- In all this, the plan of the "Montagnards" is a
further advance on that of the Girondins; never was so insignificant a
part assigned to the rulers nor so extensive a part to the governed.
The Jacobins profess a respect for the popular initiative which
amounts to a scruple.[9] According to them the sovereign people should
be sovereign de facto, permanently, and without interregnum, allowed
to interfere in all serious affairs, and not only possess the right,
but the faculty, of imposing its will on its mandatories. -- All the
stronger is the reason for referring to it the institutions now being
prepared for it. Hence the Convention, after the parade is over,
convokes the primary assemblies and submits to them for ratification
the Constitutional bill has been drawn up.

III.

Primary Assemblies. - Proportion of Absentees. -- Unanimity of the
voters. -- Their motives for accepting the Constitution. -- Pressure
brought to bear on voters. - Choice of Delegates.

The ratification will, undoubtedly, be approved. Everything has been
combined beforehand to secure it, also to secure it as wanted,
apparently spontaneously, and almost unanimously. -- The primary
assemblies, indeed, are by no means fully attended; only one-half, or
a quarter, or a third of the electors in the cities deposit their
votes, while in the rural districts there is only a quarter, and
less.[10] Repelled by their experience with previous convocations the
electors know too well the nature of these assemblies; how the Jacobin
faction rules them, how it manages the electoral comedy, with what
violence and threats it reduces all dissidents to voting either as
figurants or claqueurs. From four to five million of electors prefer
to hold aloof and stay at home as usual. Nevertheless the
organization of most of the assemblies takes place, amounting to some
six or seven thousand. This is accounted for by the fact that each
canton contains its small group of Jacobins. Next to these come the
simple-minded who still believe in official declarations; in their
eyes a constitution which guarantees private rights and institutes
public liberties must be accepted, no matter what hand may present it
to them. And all the more readily because the usurpers offer to
resign; in effect, the Convention has just solemnly declared that once
the Constitution is adopted, the people shall again be convoked to
elect "a new national assembly . . . a new representative body
invested with a later and more immediate trust,"[11] which will allow
electors, if they are so disposed, to return honest deputies and
exclude the knaves who now rule. Thereupon even the insurgent
departments, the mass of the Girondins population, after a good deal
of hesitation, resign themselves at last to voting for it.[12] This
is done at Lyons and in the department of Calvados only on the 30th of
July. A number of Constitutionalists or neutrals have done the same
thing, some through a horror of civil war and a spirit of
conciliation, and others through fear of persecution and of being
taxed with royalism;[13] one conception more: through docility they
may perhaps succeed in depriving the "Mountain" of all pretext for
violence.

In this they greatly deceive themselves, and, from the first, they are
able to see once more the Jacobins interpretation of electoral
liberty. -- At first, all the registered,[14] and especially the
"suspects," are compelled to vote, and to vote Yes; otherwise, says a
Jacobin journal,[15] "they themselves will indicate the true opinion
one ought to have of their attitudes, and no longer have reason to
complain of suspicions that are found to be so well grounded." They
come accordingly, "very humbly and very penitent." Nevertheless they
meet with a rebuff, and a cold shoulder is turned on them; they are
consigned to a corner of the room, or near the doors, and are openly
insulted. Thus received, it is clear that they will keep quiet and
not risk the slightest objection. At Macon "a few aristocrats
muttered to themselves, but not one dared say No."[16] It would,
indeed, be extremely imprudent. At Montbrison, "six individuals who
decline to vote," are denounced in the procès-verbal of the Canton,
while a deputy in the Convention demands "severe measures" against
them. At Nogent-sur-Seine, three administrators, guilty of the same
offense, are to be turned out of office.[17] A few months later, the
offense becomes a capital crime, and people are to be guillotined "for
having voted against the Constitution of 1793."[18] Almost all the
ill-disposed foresaw this danger; hence, in nearly all the primary
assemblies, the adoption is unanimous, or nearly unanimous.[19] At
Rouen, there are but twenty-six adverse votes; at Caen, the center of
the Girondin opposition, fourteen; at Rheims, there are only two; at
Troyes, Besançon, Limoges and Paris, there are none at all; in fifteen
departments the number of negatives varies from five to one; not one
is found in Var; this apparent unity is most instructive. The
commune of St. Donau, the only one in France, in the remote district
of Cotês-du-Nord, dares demand the restoration of the clergy and the
son of Capet for king. All the others vote as if directed with a
baton; they have understood the secret of the plebiscite; that it is a
Jacobin demonstration, not an honest vote, which is required.[20] The
operation undertaken by the local party is actually carried out. It
beats to arms around the ballot-box; it arrives in force; it alone
speaks with authority; it animates officers; it moves all the
resolutions and draws up the report of proceedings, while the
representatives on mission from Paris add to the weight of the local
authority that of the central authority. In the Macon assembly "they
address the people on each article; this speech is followed by immense
applause and redoubled shouting of Vive la République! Vive la
Constitution! Vive le Peuple Français! " Beware, ye lukewarm, who do
not join in the chorus! They are forced to vote "in a loud,
intelligible voice." They are required to shout in unison, to sign the
grandiloquent address in which the leaders testify their gratitude to
the Convention, and give their adhesion to the eminent patriots
delegated by the primary assembly to bear its report to Paris.[21]

IV.

The Delegates reach Paris. -- Precautions taken against them. --
Constraints and Seductions.

The first act of the comedy is over and the second act now begins.--
The faction has convoked the delegates of the primary assemblies to
Paris for a purpose. Like the primary assemblies, they are to serve
as its instruments for governing; they are to form the props of
dictatorship, and the object now is to restrict them to that task
only. -- Indeed, it is not certain that all will lend themselves to
it. For, among the eight thousand commissioners, some, appointed by
refractory assemblies, bring a refusal instead of an adhesion;[22]
others, more numerous, are instructed to present objections and point
out omissions:[23] it is very certain that the envoys of the Girondist
departments will insist on the release or return of their excluded
representatives. And lastly, a good many delegates who have accepted
the Constitution in good faith desire its application as soon as
possible, and that the Convention should fulfill its promise of
abdication, so as to give way to a new Assembly. - As it is important
to suppress at once all these vague desires for independence or
tendencies for opposition a decree of the Convention "authorizes the
Committee of General Security to order the arrest of 'suspect'
commissioners;" it is especially to look after those who, "charged
with a special mission, would hold meetings to win over their
colleagues, . . . . and engage them in proceedings contrary to
their mandate."[24] In the first place, and before they are admitted
into Paris, their Jacobinism is to be verified, like a bale in the
customs-house, by the special agents of the executive council, and
especially by Stanislas Maillard, the famous September judge, and his
sixty-eight bearded ruffians, each receiving pay at five francs a day.
"On all the roads, within a circuit of fifteen or twenty leagues of
the capital," the delegates are searched; their trunks are opened, and
their letters read. At the barriers in Paris they find "inspectors"
posted by the Commune, under the pretext of protecting them against
prostitutes and swindlers. There, they are taken possession of, and
conducted to the mayoralty, where they receive lodging tickets, while
a picket of gendarmerie escorts them to their allotted domiciles.[25]
-- Behold them in pens like sheep, each in his numbered stall; there
is no fear of the dissidents trying to escape and form a band apart:
one of them, who comes to the Convention and asks for a separate hall
for himself and his adherents, is snubbed in the most outrageous
manner; they denounce him as an intriguer, and accuse him of a desire
to defend the traitor Castries; they take his name and credentials,
and threaten him with an investigation.[26] The unfortunate speaker
hears the Abbaye alluded to, and evidently thinks himself fortunate to
escape sleeping there that night. -- After this, it is certain that
he will not again demand the privilege of speaking, and that his
colleagues will remain quiet; and all this is the more likely