The French Revolution - Volume 3
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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6), by Hippolyte A. Taine
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Title: The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3)
Author: Hippolyte A. Taine
Annotator: Svend Rom
Translator: John Durand, 1880
Release Date: June 18, 2008 [EBook #2580]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRENCH REVOLUTION V3 ***
Produced by Svend Rom and David Widger
THE ORIGINS OF CONTEMPORARY FRANCE, VOLUME 4
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, VOLUME 3.
by Hippolyte A. Taine
Text Transcriber's Note: The numbering of Volumes, Books, Chapters and Sections are as in the French not the American edition. Annotations by the transcriber are initialled SR.
Svend Rom, April 2000.
HTML Producer's Note: Footnote numbering has been changed to include as a prefix to the original footnote number, the book and chapter numbers. A table of contents has been added with active links.
David Widger, June 2008
Please note that all references to earlier Volumes of the Origines of Contemporary France are to the American edition. Since there are no fixed page numbers in the Gutenberg edition these page numbers are only approximate. (SR).
PREFACE.
Contents
BOOK FIRST. THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT.
CHAPTER I. JACOBIN GOVERNMENT I. The despotic creed and instincts of the Jacobin. II. Jacobin Dissimulation. III. Primary Assemblies IV. The Delegates reach Paris V. Fête of August 10th VI. The Mountain. VII. Extent and Manifesto of the departmental insurrection VIII. The Reasons for the Terror. IX. Destruction of Rebel Cities X. Destruction of the Girondin party XI. Institutions of the Revolutionary Government
BOOK SECOND. THE JACOBIN PROGRAM.
CHAPTER I. THE JACOBIN PARTY I. The Doctrine. II. A Communist State. III. The object of the State is the regeneration of man. IV. Two distortions of the natural man. V. Equality and Inequality. VI. Conditions requisite for making a citizen. VII. Socialist projects. VIII. Indoctrination of mind and intellect.
CHAPTER II. REACTIONARY CONCEPT OF THE STATE. I. Reactionary concept of the State. II. Changed minds. III. Origin and nature of the modern State. IV. The state is tempted to encroach. V. Direct common interest. VI. Indirect common interest. VII. Fabrication of social instruments. VIII. Comparison between despotisms.
BOOK THIRD. THE MEN IN POWER.
CHAPTER I. PSYCHOLOGY OF THE JACOBIN LEADERS.
I. Marat. II. Danton. III. Robespierre.
CHAPTER II. THE RULERS OF THE COUNTRY. I. The Convention. II. Its participation in crime. III. The Committee of Public Safety. IV. The Statesmen. V. Official Jacobin organs. VI. Commissars of the Revolution. VII. Brutal Instincts. IX. Vice.
CHAPTER III. THE RULERS. (continued). I. The Central Government Administration. II. Subaltern Jacobins. III. A Revolutionary Committee. IV. Provincial Administration. V. Jacobins sent to the Provinces. VI. Quality of staff thus formed. VII. The Armed Forces.
BOOK FOURTH. THE GOVERNED.
CHAPTER I. THE OPPRESSED. I. Revolutionary Destruction. II. The Value of Notables in Society. III. The three classes of Notables. IV. The Clergy. V. The Bourgeoisie. VI. The Demi-notables. VII. Principle of socialist Equality. VIII. Rigor against the Upper Classes. IX. The Jacobin Citizen Robot. X. The Governors and the Governed.
CHAPTER II. FOOD AND PROVISIONS. I. Economical Complexity of Food Chain. II. Conditions in 1793. A Lesson in Market Economic s. III. Privation. IV. Hunger. V. Revolutionary Remedies. VI. Relaxation. VII. Misery at Paris.
BOOK FIFTH. THE END OF THE REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT.
CHAPTER I. THE CONVENTION. I. The Convention. II. Re-election of the Two-thirds. III. A Directory of Regicides. IV. Public Opinon. VI. The Directory. VII. Enforcement of Pure Jacobinism. VIII. Propaganda and Foreign Conquests. IX. National Disgust. X. Contrast between Civil and Military France.
PREFACE.
"In Egypt," says Clement of Alexandria,1101"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 i ndigenous serpent, or other dangerous animal, the Egyptian god being a be ast 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 C lement 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 formul ated 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 an d 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 succe eded in eating him. —This cult certainly is instructive, at least to hi storians 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 sol ely 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 o pinion began to be formed between 1825 and 1830, after the retirement or withdrawal of eye witnesses. When they disappeared it was easy to con vince 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. JACOBIN GOVERNMENT
I. The despotic creed and instincts of the
Jacobin.
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 littl e 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 ha ve administrated or legislated, escaping countless insurrections, almos t 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 iso lated, dismantled and preyed upon, while, to crown all, the Declaration of Rights, proclaiming "the jurisdiction of constituents over their clerks,"1102has 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 itsel f, 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 ema nate 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 w ill 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 ac ts 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 goi ng 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 compulsio n: for, in the interval, the instruments are being got ready to force it down the public throat.1103
As a beginning, the Constitution, so long anticipated and so often promised, is hastily fabricated:1104declarations of rights in thirty-five articles, the Constitutional bill in one hundred and twenty-four articles, political principles and institutions of every sort, electora l, legislative, executive, administrative, judicial, financial and military;1105in 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.1106f both the Such circumstance is sufficiently characteristic o 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 o f 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 plotte rs of anti-popular systems," says the reporter, "painfully elaborate their projects! Frenchmen.... have only to consult their hearts to read the Republic there!"1107 Drafted in accordance with the "Contrat-Social," filled with G reek and Latin reminiscences, it is a summary "in pithy style" of the manual of current aphorisms then in vogue, Rousseau's mathematical fo rmulas 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 d oor 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."1108Never 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 priva te liberties against the oppression of those who govern... offenses committe d 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 governme nt 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 p olitical 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, criminaljudges,judges of appeal
and the eighty candidates from amongst which the legislative body is to select its executive council.—In the second place, all pow ers 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 simpl y to propose the laws, while, especially as regards a declaration of war, the people alone must decide. The people have a suspensive veto and, fina lly, 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 gov ern 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.1109According 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
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. Ev erything 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.1110 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 o fficial 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,"1111 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.1112This 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, a nd others through fear of persecution and of being taxed with royalism;1113conception more: one 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,1114 and especially the "suspects," are compelled to vote, and to vote Yes; otherwise, says a Jacobin journal,1115themselves will "they indicate the true opinion one ought to have of thei r 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."1116It 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.1117few months later, the offense A becomes a capital crime, and people are to be guill otined "for having voted against the Constitution of 1793."1118Almost all the ill-disposed foresaw this danger; hence, in nearly all the primary assemblies , the adoption is unanimous, or nearly unanimous.1119Rouen, there are but twenty-six At 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.1120The 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.1121
IV. The Delegates reach Paris
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 com missioners, some, appointed by refractory assemblies, bring a refusal instead of an adhesion;1122more numerous, are instructed to present objections others, and point out omissions:1123it 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 onc e all these vague desires for independence or tendencies for oppositi on 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."1124the first In place, and before they are admitted into Paris, the ir Jacobinism is to be verified, like a bale in the customs-house, by the special agents of the executive council, and especially by Stanislas Mail lard, 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 "i nspectors" posted by the Commune, under the pretext of protecting them again st prostitutes and
