composed by him.) “The convention, Nivôse I, has approved of the orders and other measures taken by you. We can add nothing to its approval. The Committee of Public Safety subjects all operations to the same principles, that is to say, it conforms to yours and acts with you.”
[35] Sainte-Beuve, “Nouveaux Lundis,” VIII., 105. (Unpublished report by Vice-admiral Villaret-Joyeuse, May 28, 1794.)
[36] Carnot, “Mémoires,” I., 107.
[37] Ibid., I., 450, 523, 527, “we often ate only a morsel of dry bread on the Committee’s table.”
[38] Moniteur, XXI., 362. (Speech by Cambon, Session of Thermidor 11, year II.)
[39] Beugnot, “Mémoires,” II., 15. (Stated by Jean Bon himself in a conversation at Mayence in 1813.)
[40] Gaudia, duc de Gaéte, “Mémoires,” I., 16, 28. “I owed my life to Cambon personally, while, through his firmness, he preserved the whole Treasury department, continually attacked by the all-powerful Jacobin club.” – On the 8th of Thermidor, Robespierre was “very severe on the administration of the Treasury, which he accused of an aristocratic and anti-revolutionary spirit…. Under this pretext, it was known that the orator meant to propose an act of accusation against the representative charged with its surveillance, as well as against the six commissioners, and bring them before the Revolutionary Tribunal, whose verdict could not be doubtful.” – Buchez et Roux, XXXIII., 431, 436, 441. Speech by Robespierre, Thermidor 8, year II. . . “. Machiavellian designs against the small fund-holders of the State. . . . A contemptible financial system, wasteful, irritating, devouring, absolutely independent of your supreme oversight. . . . Anti-revolution exists in the financial department. . . . Who are its head administrators? Brissotins, Feuillants, aristocrats and well- known knaves – the Cambons, the Mallarmés, the Ramels!”
[41] Carnot, “Mémoires,” I., 425.
[42] Moniteur, XXIV., 47, 50. (Session of Germinal 2, year II.) Speeches by Lindet and Carnot with confirmatory details. – Lindet says that he had signed twenty thousand papers. – Ibid., XXXIII., 591. (Session of Ventôse 12, year III. Speech by Barère.) “The labor of the Committee was divided amongst the different members composing it, but all, without distinction, signed each other’s work. I, myself, knowing nothing of military affairs, have perhaps, in this matter, given four thousand signatures.” – Ibid., XXIV., 74. (Session of Germinal 6, year III.) Speech of Lavesseur, witness of an animated scene between Carnot and Robespierre concerning two of Carnot’s clerks, arrested by order of Robespierre. – Carnot adds ” I had myself signed this order of arrest without knowing it.” – Ibid., XXII., 116. (Session of Vendémiaire 8, year II., speech by Carnot in narrating the arrest of General Huchet for his cruelties in Vendée.) On appearing before the committee of Public Safety, Robespierre defended him and he was sent back to the army and promoted to a higher rank; I was obliged to sign in spite of my opposition.”
[43] Carnot, “Mémoires,” I., 572. (Speech by Carnot, Germinal 2, year III.)
[44] Sénart, “Mémoires,” 145, 153. (Details on the members of the two Committees.)
[45] Reports by Billaud on the organization of the revolutionary government, November 18, 1793 and on the theory of democratic government, April 20, 1794. – Reports by Robespierre on the political situation of the Republic, November 17, 1793; and on the principles of revolutionary government, December 5, 1793. – Information on the genius of revolutionary laws, signed principally by Robespierre and Billaud, November 29, 1793. – Reports by Robespierre on the principles of political morality which ought to govern the Convention, February 5, 1794; and on the relationship between religious and moral ideas and republican principles, May 7, 1794.
[46] Billaud no longer goes on mission after he becomes one of the Committee of Public Safety. Robespierre never went. Barère, who is of daily service, is likewise retained at Paris. – All the others serve on the missions and several repeatedly, and for a long time.
[47] Moniteur, XXIV., 60. The words of Carnot, session of Germinal 2, year III.- Ibid., XXII., 138, words of Collot, session of Vendémiaire 12, year III. “Billaud and myself have sent into the departments three hundred thousand written documents, and have made at least ten thousand minutes (of meetings) with our own hand.”
[48] Dussault “Fragment pour servir à l’histoire de la Convention.”
[49] Thibaudeau, I., 49.
[50] Arnault, “Souvenirs d’un Sexagenaire,” II., 78.
[51] “Mémoires d’un Bourgeois de Paris,” by Veron, II., 14. (July 7, 1815.)
[52] Cf. Thibaudeau, “Mémoires,” I., 46. “It seemed, then, that to escape imprisonment, or the scaffold, there was no other way than to put others in your place.”
[53] Carnot, “Mémoires.” I., 508.
[54] Carnot, I., 527. (Words of Prieur de la Côte d’Or.)
[55] Carnot, ibid., 527. (The words of Prieur.)
[56] “La Nouvelle Minerve,” I., 355, (Notes by Billaud-Varennes, indited at St. Domingo and copied by Dr. Chervin.) “We came to a decision only after being wearied out by the nightly meetings of our Committee.”
[57] Decree of September 17, 1793, on “Suspects.” Ordinance of the Paris Commune, October 10, 1793, extending it so as to include “those who, having done nothing against the Revolution, do nothing for it.” – Cf. “Papers seized in Robespierre’s apartments,” II., 370, letter of Payan. “Every man who has not been for the Revolution has been against it, for he has done nothing for the country. . . . In popular commissions, individual humanity, the moderation which assumes the veil of justice, is criminal.”
[58] Mortimer-Ternaux, VIII., 394, and following pages; 414 and following pages, (on the successive members of the two Committees).
[59] Wallon, “Histoire du Tribunal Révolutionaire,” III., 129-131. Hérault de Sechelles, allied with Danton, and accused of being indulgent, had just given guarantees, however, and applied the revolutionary regime in Alsace with a severity worthy of Billaud. (Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol. V., 141.) “Instructions for civil commissioners by Hérault, representative of the people,” (Colmar, Frimaire 2, year II.,) with suggestions as to the categories of persons that are to be “sought for, arrested and immediately put in jail,” probably embracing nineteen-twentieths of the inhabitants.
[60] Dauban, “Paris en 1794, 285, and following pages. (Police Reports, Germinal, year II.) Arrest of Hébert and associates “Nothing was talked about the whole morning but the atrocious crimes of the conspirators. They were regarded as a thousand times more criminal than Capet and his wife. They ought to be punished a thousand times over. . . . The popular hatred of Hébert is at its height . . . . The people cannot forgive Hébert for having deceived them. . . . Popular rejoicings were universal on seeing the conspirators led to the scaffold.”
[61] Moniteur, XXIV., 53. (Session of Germinal 2, year III.) Words of Prieur de la Côte-d’Or: “The first quarrel that occurred in the Committee was between Saint-Just and Carnot; the latter says to the former, ‘I see that you and Robespierre are after a dictatorship.'” – Ibid., 74. Levasseur makes a similar statement.-Ibid., 570. (Session of Germinal 2, year III., words of Carnot): “I had a right to call Robespierre a tyrant every time I spoke to him. I did the same with Saint-Just and Couthon.”
[62] Carnot, I., 525. (Testimony of Prieur.) Ibid., 522. Saint-Just says to Carnot: “You are in league with the enemies of the patriots. It is well for you to know that a few lines from me could send you to the guillotine in two days.”
[63] Buchez et Roux, XXX., 185. (Reply of Billaud, Collot, Vadier and Barère to the renewed charges against them by Lecointre.) – Moniteur, XXIV., 84. (Session of Germinal 7, year III.) Words of Barère: “On the 4th of Thermidor, in the Committee, Robespierre speaks like a man who had orders to give and victims to point out.” – ” And you, Barère,” he replies, “remember the report you made on the2nd of Thermidor,”
[64] Heraclitus ( c. 540-480 BC) pre-Socratic philosopher, who believed in a cosmic justice where sinners would be punished and haunted by the Erinyes, (the furies) the handmaids of justice. (SR).
[65] Saint-Just, report on the Girondists, July 8, 1793; on the necessity of imprisoning persons inimical to the Revolution, Feb.26, 1794; on the Hébertists, March 13; on the arrest of Herault-Séchelles and Simond, March 17; on the arrest of Danton and associates March 31; on a general policy, April 15. – Cf., likewise, his report on declaring the government revolutionary until peace is declared, Oct. 10, 1793, and his report of the 9th of Thermidor, year II.
[66] Buchez et Roux, XXXI., 346. (Report of March 13, 1794.) – XXXII., 314. (Report of April 15.)
[67] See “The Revolution,” II., 313.
[68] A single phrase often suffices to give the measure of a man’s intellect and character. The following by Saint-Just has this merit. (Apropos of Louis XVI. who, refraining from defending himself, left the Tuileries and took refuge in the Assembly on the 10th of August.) “He came amongst you; he forced his way here. . . . He resorted to the bosom of the legislature; his soldiers burst into the asylum. . . . He made his way, so to say, by sword thrusts into the bowels of his country that he might find a place of concealment.”
[69] Particularly in the long report on Danton containing a historic survey of the factions, (Buchez et Roux, XXXII., 76,) and the report on the general police, (Ibid., 304,) with another historic document of the same order. “Brissot and Ronsin (were) recognized royalists. . . . Since Necker a system of famine has been devised. . . . Necker had a hand in the Orleans faction. . . . Double representation (of the Third Estate) was proposed for it.” Among other charges made against Danton; after the fusillade on the Champ de Mars in July, 1791 “You went to pass happy days at Arcis-sur-Aube, if it is possible for a conspirator against his country to be happy. . . . When you knew that the tyrant’s fall was prepared and inevitable you returned to Paris on the 9th of August. You wanted to go to bed on that evil night. . . . Hatred, you said, is insupportable to me and (yet) you said to us ‘I do not like Marat,’ etc.” There is an apostrophe of nine consecutive pages against Danton, who is absent.
[70] Buchez et Roux, Ibid., 312. “Liberty emanated from the bosom of tempests; its origin dates with that of the world issuing out of chaos along with man, who is born dissolved in tears.” (Applause.) – Ibid., 308. Cf. his portrait, got up for effect, of the “revolutionary who is “a treasure of good sense and probity.”
[71] Ibid., 312. “Liberty is not the chicanery of a palace; it is rigidity towards evil.”
[72] Barère, ” Mémoires,” I. 347. “Saint-Just . . . discussed like a vizier.”
[73] Buchez et Roux, XXXII., 314. “Are the lessons furnished by history, the examples afforded by all great men, lost to the universe? These all counsel us to lead obscure lives; the lowly cot and virtue form the grandeurs of this world. Let us seek our habitations on the banks of streams, rock the cradles of our children and educate them in Disinterestedness and Intrepidity.” – As to his political or economic capacity and general ideas, read his speeches and his “Institutions,” (Buchez et Roux, XXVIII., 133; XXX., 305, XXXV., 369,) a mass of chemical and abstract rant.
[74] Carnot, I., 527. (Narrated by Prieur.) “Often when hurriedly eating a bit of dry bread at the Committee table, Barère with a jest, brought a smile on our lips.”
[75] Veron, II., 14.-Arnault, II., 74. – Cf., passim, “Mémoires de Barère,” and the essay on Barère by Macaulay.
[76] Vilate, Barère Edition, 184, 186, 244. ” Fickle, frank, affectionate, fond of society, especially that of women, in quest of luxuries and knowing how to spend money.” – Carnot, II. 511. In Prieur’s eyes, Barère was simply “a good fellow.”
[77] Moniteur, XXI., 173. (Justification of Joseph Lebon and “his somewhat harsh ways.”) “The Revolution is to be spoken of with respect, and revolutionary measures with due regard. Liberty is a virgin, to raise whose veil is a crime.” – And again: “The tree of Liberty grows when watered with the blood of tyrants.”
[78] Moniteur, XX., 580, 582, 583, 587. – “Campagnes de la Révolution Française dans les Pyrénées-Orientales,” by Fervel, II., 36 and following pages. – General Dugommier, after the capture of Toulouse, spared the English general O’Hara, taken prisoner in spite of the orders of the Convention. and received the following letter from the committee of Public Safety. “The Committee accepts your victory and your wound as compensations.” On the 24th of December, Dugommier, that he may not be present at the Toulon massacres, asks to return to the convention and is ordered off to the army of the eastern Pyrenees. – In 1797, there were thirty thousand French prisoners in England.
[79] Moniteur, XVIII., 291. (Speech by Barère, session of Brumaire 8, year II.) At this rate, there are one hundred and forty deputies on mission to the armies and in the departments. – Before the institution of the Committee of Public Safety, (April 7, 1793) there were one hundred and sixty representatives in the departments, sent there to hasten the levy of two hundred thousand men. (Moniteur, XVII., 99, speech by Cambon, July 11, 1793.) The Committee gradually recalled most of these representatives and, on the 16th July, only sixty-three were on mission. – (Ibid., XVII., 152, speech by Gossuin, July 16.) – On the 9th of Nivôse, the committee designated fifty-eight representatives to establish the revolutionary government in certain places and fixing the limits of their jurisdictions. (Archives Nationales, AF., II., 22.) Subsequently, several were recalled, and replaced by others. – The letters and orders of the representatives on mission are filed in the National Archives according to departments, in two series, one of which comprises missions previous to Thermidor 9, and the other missions after that date.
[80] Thibaudeau, “Histoire du Terrorisme dans le department de la Vienne,” p.4. “Paris, Brumaire 15, the sans-culotte Piorry, representative of the people to the sans-culottes composing the popular club of Poitiers.”
[81] Archives Nationales, AF., II., 116. (Letter of Laplanche, Orleans, September 10, 1793. – “Also procès-verbaux of the Orleans sections, September 7.) “I organized them, after selecting them from the popular club, into a revolutionary committee. They worked under my own eye, their bureau being in an adjoining chamber. . . I required sure, local information, which I could not have had without collaborators of the country. . . . The result is that I have arrested this night more than sixty aristocrats, strangers or ‘suspects.’ – “De Martel, “Études sur Fouche,” 84. Letter of Chaumette, who posted Fouché concerning the Nevers Jacobins. “Surrounded by royalists, federalists and fanatics, representative Fouché had only 3 or 4 persecuted patriots to advise him.”
[82] Archives Nationales, AF., II., 88. Speech by Rousselin, Frimaire 9 – Ibid., F.7, 4421. Speech and orders issued by Rousselin, Brumaire 25. – Cf.. Albert Babeau, “Histoire de Troyes pendant la Revolution,” vol. II. Missions of Gamier de Rousselin and Bô.
[83] Archives Nationales, AF., II., 145. (Order of Maignet, Avignon, Floreal 13, year II., and proclamation of Floréal 14.) – Ibid., AF., II., 111, Grenoble. Prairial 8, year II. Similar orders issued by Albitte and Laporte, for renewing all the authorities of Grenoble. – Ibid, AF., II., 135. Similar order of Ricord at Grasse, Pluviôse 28, and throughout the Var. – Ibid., AF., II., 36. Brumaire, year II., circular of the Committee of Public Safety to the representatives on mission in the departments: “Before quitting your post, you are to effect the most complete purification of the constituted authorities and public functionaries.”
[84] Decrees of Frimaire 6 and 14, year II.
[85] Archives Nationales, AF., II., 22. Acts of the committee of Public Safety, Nivôse 9, year II.
[86] Ibid., AF., II., 37. Letter to the Committee on the War, signed by Barère and Billaud-Varennes, Pluviôse 23,, year II.
[87] Ibid., AF., II., 36. Letter of the Committee of Public Safety to Le Carpentier, on mission in l’Orne, Brumaire 19, year II. “The administrative bodies of Alençon, the district excepted, are wholly gangrened; all are Feuillants, or infected with a no less pernicious spirit. . . . For the choice of subjects, and the incarceration of individuals, you can refer to the sans-culottes: the most nervous are Symaroli and Préval. – At Montagne, the administration must be wholly removed, as well as the collector of the district, and the post- master; . . . purify the popular club, expel nobles and limbs of the law, those that have been turned out of office, priests, muscadins, etc. . . . Dissolve two companies, one the grenadiers and the other the infantry who are very muscadin and too fond of processions. . . . Re-form the staff and officers of the National Guard. To secure more prompt and surer execution of these measures of security you may refer to the present municipality, the Committee of Surveillance and the Cannoneers.
[88] Ibid., AF.,II., 37. To Ricord, on mission at Marseilles, Pluviôse 7, year II, a strong and rude admonition: he is going soft, he has gone to live with Saint-Même, a suspect; he is too biased in favor of the Marseilles people who, during the siege “made sacrifices to procure subsistences;” he blamed their arrest, etc. – Floréal 13, year II., to Bouret on mission in the Manche and at Calvados. “The Committee are under the impression that you are constantly deceived by an insidious secretary who, by the bad information he has given you, has often led you to give favorable terms to the aristocracy, etc.” – Ventôse 6, year II., to Guimberteau, on mission near the army on the coasts of Cherbourg: “The committee is astonished to find that the military commission established by you, undoubtedly for striking off the heads of conspirators, was the first to let them off. Are you not acquainted with the men who compose it? For what have you chosen them? If you do not know them, how does it happen that you have summoned them for such duties? ” – Ibid., and Ventôse 23, order to Guimberteau to investigate the conduct of his secretary
[89] See especially in the “Archives des Affaires étrangères,” vols. 324 to 334, the correspondence of secret agents sent into the interior.
[90] Archives Nationales, AF.,II., 37, to Fromcastel on mission in Indre-et-Loire, Floréal 13, year II. “The Committee sends you a letter from the people’s club of Chinon, demanding the purging and organization of all the constituted authorities of this district. The committee requests you to proceed at once to carry out this important measure.”
[91] Words of Robespierre, session of the convention September 24, 1793. – On another representative, Merlin de Thionville, who likewise stood fire, Robespierre wrote as follows: “Merlin de Thionville, famous for surrendering Mayence, and more than suspected of having received his reward.”
[92] Guillon, II., 207. – “Fouché,” by M. de Martel, 292.
[93] Hamel, III., 395, and following pages. – Buchez et Roux, XXX., 435. (Session of the Jacobin club, Nivôse 12, year II. Speech of Collot d’Herbois.) “To-day I no longer recognize public opinion; had I reached Paris three days later, I should probably have been indicted.”
[94] Marcelin Boudet, “Les conventionnels d’Auvergne,” 438. (Unpublished memoir ot Maignet.)
[95] Buchez et Roux, XXXIV., 165, 191. (Evidence of witnesses on the trial of Carrier.) – Paris, II., 113, “Histoire de Joseph Lebon.” “The prisons,” says Le Bon, “overflowed at Saint-Pol. I was there and released two hundred persons. Well, in spite of my orders, several were put back by the committee of Surveillance, authorised by Lebas, a friend of Darthé. What could I do against Darthé supported by Saint- Just and Lebas? He would have denounced me.” – Ibid., 128, apropos of a certain Lefèvre, “veteran of the Revolution,” arrested and brought before the revolutionary tribunal by order of Lebon. “It was necessary to take the choice of condemning him, or of being denounced and persecuted myself, without saving him.” – Beaulieu, “Essai,” V., 233. “I am afraid and I cause fear was the principle of all the revolutionary atrocities.”
[96] Ludovic Sciout, “Histoire de la Constitution civile du Clergé, IV., 136. (Orders of Pinét and Cavaignac, Pluviôse 22, and Ventôse 2.) – Moniteur, XXIV., 469. (Session of Prairial 30, year III., denunciation of representative Laplanche at the bar of the house, by Boismartin.) On the 24th of Brumaire, year II., Laplanche and General Seepher installed themselves at St. Lô in the house of an old man of seventy, a M. Lemonnier then under arrest. “Scarcely had they entered the house when they demanded provisions of every kind, linen, clothes, furniture, jewelry, plate, vehicles and title-deeds – all disappeared.” Whilst the inhabitants of St. Lô were living on a few ounces of brown bread, “the best bread, the choicest wines, pillaged in the house of Lemonnier, were lavishly given in pans and kettles to General Seepher’s horses, also to those of representative Laplanche.” Lemonnier, set at liberty, could not return to his emptied dwelling then transformed into a storehouse. He lived at the inn, stripped of all his possessions, valued at sixty thousand livres, having saved from his effects only one silver table-service, which he had taken with him into prison.
[97] Marcelin Boudet, 446. (Notes of M. Ignace de Barante.) Also 440. (Unpublished memoir of Maignet).
[98] Archives Nationales, AF., II., 59. Extract from the minutes of the meetings of the People’s club of Metz, and depositions made before the committee of Surveillance of the club, Floreal 12, year II., on the conduct of representative Duquesnoy, arrived at Metz the evening before at six o’clock. – There are thirty-two depositions, and among others those of M. Altmayer, Joly and Clédat. One of the witnesses states: “As to these matters, I regarded this citizen (Duquesnoy) as tipsy or drunk, or as a man beside himself.” – This is customary with Duquesnoy. – Cf. Paris, “His. de Joseph Lebon,” I., 273, 370.- “Archives des Affaires étrangères,” vol. 329. Letter of Gadolle, September 11, 1793. “I saw Duquesnoy, the deputy, dead drunk at Bergues, on Whit-Monday, at11 o’clock in the evening.” – “Un Séjour en France, 1792 to 1796, p. 136. “His naturally savage temper is excited to madness by the abuse of strong drink. General de …..assures us that he saw him seize the mayor of Avesnes, a respectable old man, by the hair on his presenting him with a petition relating to the town, and throw him down with the air of a cannibal.” “He and his brother were dealers in hops at retail, at Saint Pol. He made this brother a general.”
[99] Alexandrine des Echerolles, “Une famile noble sous la Terreur,” 209. At Lyons, Marin, the commissioner, “a tall, powerful, robust man with stentorian lungs,” opens his court with a volley of “republican oaths. . . ” . . The crowd of supplicants melts away. One lady alone dared present her petition. “Who are you?” She gives her name. “What! You have the audacity to mention a traitor’s name in this place?” Get away and, giving her a push, he put her outside the door with a kick.
[100] Ibid. A mass of evidence proves, on the contrary, that people of every class gave their assistance, owing to which the fire was almost immediately extinguished.
[101] Ibid. The popular club unanimously attests these facts, and despatches six delegates to enter a protest at the convention. Up to the 9th of Thermidor, no relief is granted, while the tax imposed by Duquesnoy is collected. On the 5th Fructidor, year II., the order of Duquesnoy is cancelled by the committee of Public Safety, but the money is not paid back.
[102] Paris, I., 370. (Words of Duquesnoy to Lebon.)
[103] Carnot, “Mémoires,” I., 414. (Letter of Duquesnoy to the central bureau of representatives at Arras.) The import of these untranslatable profanities being sufficiently clear I let them stand as in the original.-Tr.
[104] “Un Sejour en France,” 158, 171. – Manuscript journal of Mallet du Pan (January, 1795).- Cf. his letters to the convention, the jokes of jailors and sbirri, for instance. – (Moniteur, XVIII., 214, Brumaire I, year II.) – Lacretelle, “Dix Années d’Epreuves,” 178. “He ordered that everybody should dance in his fief of Picardy. They danced even in prison. Whoever did not dance was “suspect.” He insisted on a rigid observance of the fêtes in honor of Reason, and that everybody should visit the temple of the Goddess each decadi, which was the cathedral (at Noyon). Ladies, bourgeoises, seamstresses, and cooks, were required to form what was called the chain of Equality. We dragoons were forced to be performers in this strange ballet.”
[105] De Martel, “Fouché,” 418. (Orders of Albitte and Collot, Nivôse 13, year II.)
[106] Camille Boursier, ” Essai sur la Terreur en Anjou,” 225. Letter of Vacheron, Frimaire 15, year II.) “Republiquain, it is absolutely necessary, immediately, that you have sent or brought into the house of the representatives, a lot of red wine, of which the consumption is greater than ever. People have a right to drink to the Republic when they have helped to preserve the commune you and yours live in. I hold you responsible for my demand.” Signed, le republiquain, Vacheron.”
[107] Ibid., 210. Deposition of Madame Edin, apropos of Quesnoy, a prostitute, aged twenty-six, Brumaire 12, year III.; and of Rose, another prostitute. Similar depositions by Benaben and Scotty.
[108] Dauban, “La Demagogie en 1793,” p.369. (Extracts from the unpublished memoirs of Mercier de Rocher.) – Ibid., 370. “Bourdon de l’Oise had lived with Tuncq at Chantonney, where they kept busy emptying bottles of fine wine. Bourdon is an excellent patriot, a man of sensibility, but, in his fits of intoxication, he gives himself up to impracticable views. “Let those rascally administrators,” he says, “be arrested!” Then, going to the window, – he heard a runaway horse galloping in the street- “That’s another anti-revolutionary! Let ’em all be arrested!” – Cf. “Souvenirs,” by General Pélleport, p.21. At Perpignan, he attended the fête of Reason. “The General in command of the post made an impudent speech, even to the most repulsive cynicisim. Some prostitutes, well known to this wretch, filled one of the tribunes; they waved their handkerchiefs and shouted ” Vive la Raison! ” After listening to similar harangues by representatives Soubrang and Michaud, Pélleport, although half cured (of his wound) returns to camp: “I could not breathe freely in town, and did not think that I was safe until facing the enemy along with my comrades.”
[109] Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol.332; correspondence of secret agents, October, 1793. “Citizen Cusset, representative of the people, shows no dignity in his mission; he drinks like a Lapithe, and when intoxicated commits the arbitrary acts of a vizier.” For the style and orthography of Cusset, see one of his letters. (Dauban, “Paris en 1794,” p 14.) – Berryat St. Prix, “La Justice Révolutionnaire,” (2nd ed.) 339.
[110] Ibid., 371. (According to “Piecès et Documents” published by M. Fajon.) – Moniteur, XXIV., 453. (Session of Floréal 24, year III.) Address of the commune of Saint-Jean du Gard. – XXI., 528. (Session of Fructidor 2, year III.) Address of the Popular club of Nîmes.
[111] Moniteur, XXIV., 602. (Session of Prairial 13, year III.) Report of Durand Meillan: “This denunciation is only too well supported by documents. It is for the convention to say whether it will hear them read. I have to state beforehand that it can hear nothing more repulsive nor better authenticated.”- De Martel, “Fouché, 246. (Report of the constituted authorities of la Nièvre on the missions of Collot d’Herbois, Laplanche, Fouché and Pointe, Prairial 19, year III.) Laplanche, a former Benedictine, is the most foul-mouthed.” In his speech to the people of Moulins-Engelbert, St. Pierre-le-Montier, and Nevers, Laplanche asked girls to surrender themselves and let modesty go. “Beget children,” he exclaims, “the Republic needs them. continence is the virtue of fools.” Bibliotheque Nationale, Lb. 41, No. 1802. (Denunciation, by the six sections of the Dijon commune to the convention, of Leonard Bourdon and Piochefer Bernard de Saintes, during their mission in Côte-d’Or.) Details on the orgies of Bernard with the municipality, and on the drunkenness and debaucheries of Bourdon with the riff-raff~ of the country; authentic documents proving the robberies and assassinations committed by Bernard. He pillaged the house of M. Micault, and, in four hours, had this person arrested, tried and guillotined; he attended the execution himself, and that evening, in the dead man’s house, danced and sang before his daughter with his acolytes.
[112] “Souvenirs,” by General Pélleport, p.8. He, with his battalion, is inspected in the Place du Capitale, at Toulouse, by the representative on mission. “It seems as if I can still see that charlatan: He shook his ugly plumed head and dragged along his saber like a merry soldier, wishing to appear brave. It made me feel sad.”
[113] Fervel, “Campagnes des Français dans les Pyrenees Orientals,” I., 169. (October, 1793.) – Ibid., 201, 206. – Cf. 188. Plan of Fabre for seizing Roses and Figuières, with eight thousand men, without provisions or transports. “Fortune is on the side of fools,” he said. Naturally the scheme fails. Collioure is lost, and disasters accumulate. As an offset to this the worthy general Dagobert is removed. Commandant Delatre and chief-of-staff Ramel are guillotined. In the face of the impracticable orders of the representatives the commandant of artillery commits suicide. On the devotion of the officers and enthusiasm of the troops, Ibid., 105, 106, 130, 131, 162.
[114] Sybel (Dosquet’s translation [French]), II., 435; III., 132, 140. (For details and authorities, cf. the Memoirs of Marshal Soult.)
[115] Gouvion St. Cyr, “Mémoires sur les campagnes de 1792 à la paix de Campio-Formio,” I., pp.91 to 139. – Ibid., 229. “The effect of this was to lead men who had any means to keep aloof from any sort of promotion.” – Cf., ibid., II., 131 (November, 1794,) the same order of things still kept up. By order of the representatives the army encamps during the winter in sheds on the left bank of the Rhine, near Mayence, a useless proceeding and mere literary parade. “They would listen to no reason; a fine army and well-mounted artillery were to perish with cold and hunger, for no object whatever, in quarters that might have been avoided.” The details are heart-rending. Never was military heroism so sacrificed to the folly of civilian commanders.
[116] See Paris, “Histoire de Joseph Lebon,” I., ch. I, for biographical details and traits of character.
[117] Ibid., I., 13. – His mother became crazy and was put in an asylum. Her derangement, he says, was due to “her indignation at his oath of allegiance (to the Republic) and at his appointment to the curacy of Nouvelle-Vitasse.”
[118] Ibid., I., 123. Speech by Lebon in the church of Beaurains.
[119] Ibid., II., 71, 72. – Cf. 85. “Citizen Chamonart, wine- dealer, standing at the entrance of his cellar, sees the representative pass, looks at him and does not salute him. Lebon steps up to him, arrests him, treats him as an “agent of Pitt and Cobourg.”. . . .” They search him, take his pocket-book and lead him off to the Anglaises (a prison”).
[120] Ibid., II., 84.
[121] Moniteur, XXV., 201. (Session of Messidor 22, year III.) “When in the tribune (of the Convention) prison conspiracies were announced. . . . my dreams were wholly of prison conspiracies.”
[122] Ibid., 211. (Explanations given by Lebon to the Convention.) – Paris, II., 350, 351. (Verdict of the jury.)
[123] Paris, II., 85.
[124] Buchez et Roux, XXXIV., 181. (Depositions of Monneron, a merchant.)
[125] Ibid., 184. (Deposition of Chaux.) – Cf. 200. (Depositions of Monneron and Villemain, merchants.)
[126] Ibid., 204. (Deposition of Lamarie, administrator of the department.)
[127] Ibid., 173. (Deposition of Erard, a copyist.) – 168. (Deposition of Thomas, health officer.) “To all his questions, Carrier replied in the grossest language.”
[128] Ibid., 203. (Deposition of Bonami, merchant.)
[129] Ibid., 156. (Deposition of Vaujois, public prosecutor to the military commission.)
[130] Ibid., 169. (Deposition of Thomas.) – Berryat Saint-Prix, pp. 34, 35.. – Buchez et Roux, 118. “He received the members of the popular club with blows, also the municipal officers with saber thrusts, who came to demand supplies”. . . .” He draws his saber (against the boatman) and strikes at him, which he avoids only by running away.”
[131] Buchez et Roux, XXXIV., 196. (Deposition of Julien.) “Carrier said to me in a passion: “It is you, is it, you damned beggar, who presumes to denounce me to the Committee of Public Safety. . . . As it is sometimes necessary for the public interests to get rid of certain folks quickly, I won’t take the trouble to send you to the guillotine, I’ll be your executioner myself!”
[132] Ibid., 175. (Deposition of Tronjolly.) 295. (Depositions of Jean Lavigne, a shopkeeper; of Arnandan, civil commissioner; also of Corneret, merchant.) 179. (Deposition of Villemain). – Berryat Saint-Prix, 34. “Carrier, says the gendarme Desquer, who carried his letters, was a roaring lion rather than an officer of the people.” “He looked at once like a charlatan and a tiger,” says another witness.
[133] Ibid., XXXIV., 204. (Deposition of Lamarie.)
[134] Ibid., 183. (Deposition of Caux.)
[135] Mallet-Dupan, Mémoires,” II., 6. (Memorial of Feb. I, 1794.) On André Dumont, “Un Séjour en France,” 158, 171. – On Merlin de Thionville, Michelet, VI., 97.
[136] De Martel, “Fouché” 100.
[137] Mallet-Dupan, II., 46.
[138] Buchez et Roux, XXXII., 413, 423. (Letter of Julien to Robespierre.)
[139] Archives Nationales, AF., II., III. An order issued by Bourbotte, Tours, Messidor 5, year II., “requiring the district administration to furnish him personally, as well as for the citizens attached to his commission, forty bottles of red wine and thirty of white wine, to be taken from the cellars of emigrés, or from those of persons condemned to death; and, besides this, fifty bottles of common wine other than white or red.” – On the 2nd of Messidor, ale is drunk and there is a fresh order for fifty bottles of red wine, fifty of common wine, and two bottles of brandy. – De Martel, ” Fouché,” 419, 420. – Moniteur, XXIV., 604. (Session of Prairial 13, par III.) “Dugué reads the list of charges brought against Mallarmé. He is accused . . . . of having put in requisition whatever pleased him for his table and for other wants, without paying for anything, not even for the post-horses and postillions that carried him.” – Ibid. 602. Report of Perès du Gers. “He accuses Dartigoyte . . . of having taken part with his secretaries in the auction of the furniture of Daspe, who had been condemned; of having kept the most valuable pieces for himself, and afterwards fixing their price; of having warned those who had charge of the sale that confinement awaited whoever should bid on the articles he destined for himself.” – Laplanche, ex-Benedictine, said in his mission in Loiret, that “those who did not like the Revolution must pay those who make it.”
[140] Buchez et Roux, XXXII., 426. (Extract from the Memoirs of Sénart.) – Hamel, III., 565. (Description of Teresa’s domicile by the Marquis de Paroy, a petitioner and eye-witness.)
[141] The reader might read about Tallien in the book written by Thérèse Chatrles-Vallin: “Tallien,” “Le mal-aimé de la Révolution”, Ed. Jean Picollec, Paris 1997. (SR).
[142] Buchez et Roux, XXXIII., 12. (Extract from the Memoirs of Sénart.) “The certified copies of these drafts are on file with the committee of General Security.”
[143] Report of Courtois, 360. (Letters of Julien to Robespierre, Pluviôse 15 and 16, year II.) – Buchez et Roux, XXXIV., 199, 200, 202, 203, 211. (Depositions of Villemain, Monneron, Legros, Robin.) – Berryat Saint-Prix, 35. (Depositions of Fourrier, and of Louise Courant, sempstress.)
[144] See, on Tallien,” Mémoires de Sénart.” – On Javogues, Moniteur, XXIV., 461, Floreal 24, III. Petition against Javogues, with several pages of signatures, especially those of the inhabitants of Montbrison: “In the report made by him to the Convention he puts down coin and assignats at seven hundred and seventy-four thousand six hundred and ninety-six francs, while the spoils of one person provided him with five hundred thousand francs in cash.” – On Fouché, De Martel, 252. – On Dumont, Mallet-Dupan, “Manuscript notes.” (January, 1795.) On Rovère, Michelet, VI., 256. – Carnot, II., 87. (According to the Memoirs of the German Olsner, who was in Paris under the Directory:) “The tone of Barras’ Salon was that of a respectable gambling house; the house of Reubell resembled the waiting-room of an inn at which the mail-coach stops.”
[145] Buchez et Roux, XXXII., 391, and XXXIII., 9. (Extracts from the Memoirs of Sénart.)
[146] Carnot, “Mémoires,” I. 416. Carnot, having shown to the Committee of Public Safety, proofs of the depredations committed on the army of the North, Saint-Just got angry and exclaimed: “It is only an enemy of the Republic that would accuse his colleagues of depredations, as if patriots hadn’t a right to everything!”
[147] As to Caligula see Suetonius and Philo.- With respect to Hakem, see “L’Exposé de la Religion des Druses,” by M. de Sacy.
[148] Saint-Just, speaking in the Convention, says: “What constitutes a republic is the utter destruction of whatever is opposed to it.”
[149] Orders issued by Saint-Just and Lebas for the departments of Pas-de-Calais, Nord, la Somme et l’Aisne. – Cf. “Histoire de l’Alsace,” by Strbel, and “Recueil de pieces authentiques pour servir à l’histoire de la Révolution à Strasbourg,” 3 vols.-Archives Nationales AF., II., 135, orders issued Brumaire 10, year II., and list of the one hundred and ninety-three persons taxed.
[150] Buchez et Roux, XXXI., 32. (Saint-Just’s reply to Mayor Monet.) – De Sybel, II., 447, 448. At the first interview Saint-Just said to Schneider: “Why use so much ceremony? You know the crimes of the aristocrats? In the twenty-four hours taken for one investigation you might have twenty-four condemned.”
[151] “Journal de marche du sergent Fricasse,” p.34. (Narrative by Marshal Soult.)
[152] Cf. in the Bible, the story of Ahasuerus who, out of respect for his own majesty, can-not retract the order he has issued against the Jews, but he turns the difficulty by allowing them to defend themselves.
[153] Mallet-Dupan, II., 47.
[154] Berryat Saint-Prix, “La Justice Revolutionnaire,” XVII.-Marcelin Boudet, “Les Conventionnels d’Auvergne,” 269. – Moniteur, Brumaire 27, year III., report by Calès.
[155] Paris, “Histoire de Joseph Lebon,” I., 371; II., 341, 344.-De Martel, “Fouché,” 153. – Berryat Saint-Prix, 347, 348.
[156] Berryat Saint-Prix, 390. -Ibid., 404. (On Soubrié, executioner at Marseilles, letter of Lazare Giraud, public prosecutor): “I put him in the dungeon for having shed tears on the scaffold, in executing the anti-revolutionists we sent to be executed.”
[157] Moniteur, XVIII., 413. (Session of the Convention, letter of Lequinio and Laignelot, Rochefort, Brumaire 17, year II.) “We have appointed the patriot Anse guilloteneur and we have invited him, in dining with us, to come and assume his prescribed powers, and water them with a libation in honor of the Republic. – Paris, II., 72.
[158] Marcelin Boudet, 270. (Testimony of Bardanèche de Bayonne.)
[159] Guil1on, “Histoire de la ville de Lyons pendant la Revolution,” II., 427, 431, 433.
[160] “Mémoire du Citoyen Fréron,” (in the Barrière collection,) p.357. (Testimony of a survivor.)
[161] Paris, II., 32
[162] Delandine, “Tableaux des prisons de Lyons,” p.14.
[163] Camille Boursier, “Essai sur la Terreur en Anjou,” 164. (Letter of Boniface, ex-Benedictine, president of the Revolutionary committee, to Representative Richard, Brumaire 3, year II.) “We send you the said Henri Verdier, called de la Saurinière. . . . It will not be long before you will see that we make the guillotine a present. . . . The Committee begs you to send him sacram sanctam guillotinam, and the republican minister of his worship. . . Not an hour of the day passes that new members do not come to us whom we desire to initiate in its mysteries, (sic).”
[164] Thibaudeau, “Histoire du Terrorisme dans le départment de la Vienne,” 34, 48. – Berryat Saint-Prix, 239.
[165] Archives Nationales F.7, 4435. (Letter of Lebon, Floréal 23, year II.) – Paris, I. 241.
[166] Buchez et Roux, XXXIV., 184, 200. (Depositions of Chaux, Monneron and Villemain.)
[167] Register of the Revolutionary Tribunal of Nantes, copied by M. Chevrier. (M. Chevrier has kindly sent me his manuscript copy.) – Berryat Saint-Prix, 94. – Archives Nationales, F7. 4591. (Extract from the acts of the Legislative Committee, session of Floréal 3, year III. Restitution of the confiscated property of Alexander Long to his son.) Dartigoyte, at Auch, did what Carrier did at Nantes. “It follows from the above abstract duly signed that on the 27th Germinal, year II., between eight and nine o’clock in the evening, Alexandre Long, Sr., was put to death on the public square of the commune of Auch by the executioner of criminal sentences, without any judgment having been rendered against the said Long.” – In many places an execution becomes a spectacle for the Jacobins of the town and a party of pleasure. For instance, at Arras, on the square devoted to executions, a gallery was erected for spectators with a room for the sale of refreshments, and, during the execution of M. de Montgon, the “Ça ira” is played on the bass drum. (Paris, II., 158, and I., 159.) A certain facetious representative has rehearsals of the performance in his own house. “Lejeune, to feed his bloodthirsty imagination, had a small guillotine put up, on which he cut off the heads of all the poultry consumed at his table. . . . Often, in the middle of the repast, he had it brought in and set to work for the amusement of his guests.” (Moniteur, XXIV., 607, session of June I, 1795, letter from the district of Besançon, and with the letter, the confirmatory document.) “This guillotine, says the reporter, is deposited with the Committee of Legislation.”
CHAPTER III. THE RULERS. (continued).
I. The Central Government Administration.
The administrative body at Paris. – Composition of the group out of which it was recruited. – Deterioration of this group. – Weeding-out of the Section Assemblies. – Weeding out of the popular clubs. – Pressure of the government.
To provide these local sovereigns with the subordinate lieutenants and agents which they require, we have the local Jacobin population, and we have seen the composition of the recruits,[1]
* the distressed and the perverted of every class and degree, especially the lowest,
* the castaways,
* envious and resentful subordinates, * small shopkeepers in debt,
* the migrating, high-living workers, * barflies,
* vagrants,
* men of the gutters,
* street-walkers,
– in short, every species of “anti-social vermin,” male and female,[2] including a few honest crack-brains into which the fashionable theory had freely found its way; the rest, and by far the largest number, are veritable beasts of prey, speculating on the established order of things and adopting the revolutionary faith only because it provides food for their appetites. – In Paris, they number five or six thousand, and, after Thermidor, there is about the same number, the same appetites rallying them around the same dogma,[3] levelers and terrorists, “some because they are poor, others because they have broken off the habit of working at their trade,” furious with “the scoundrels who own a coach house, against the rich and the hoarders of objects of prime necessity.” Many of them “having soiled themselves during the Revolution, ready to do it again provided the rich rascals, monopolists and merchants can all be killed,” all “frequenters of popular clubs who think themselves philosophers, although most of them are unable to read,” at the head of them the remnant of the most notorious political bandits,
* the famous post-master, Drouet, who, in the tribune at the Convention, declared himself a “brigand,”[4] * Javogues, the robber of Montbrison and the “Nero of Ain,” * the drunkard Casset, formerly a silk-worker and later the pasha of Thionville,
* Bertrand, the friend of Charlier, the ex-mayor and executioner of Lyons,
* Darthé, ex-secretary of Lebon and the executioner at Arras, * Rossignol and nine other Septembriseurs of the Abbaye and the Carmelites, and, finally, the great apostle of despotic communism, * Babeuf, who, sentenced to twenty years in irons for the falsification of public contracts, and as needy as he is vicious, rambles about Paris airing his disappointed ambitions and empty pockets along with the swaggering crew who, if not striving to reach the throne by a new massacre,[5] tramp through the streets slipshod, for lack of money “to redeem a pair of boots at the shoemakers,” or to sell some snuff-box their last resource, for a morning dram.[6]
In this class we see the governing rabble fully and distinctly. Separated from its forced adherents and the official robots who serve it as they would any other power, it stands out pure and unalloyed by any neutral influx; we recognize here the permanent residue, the deep, settled slime of the social sewer. It is to this sink of vice and ignorance that the revolutionary government betakes itself for its staff-officers and its administrative bodies.
Nowhere else could they be found. For the daily task imposed upon them, and which must be done by them, is robbery and murder; excepting the pure fanatics, who are few in number, only brutes and blackguards have the aptitudes and tastes for such business. In Paris, as in the provinces, it is from the clubs or popular associations in which they congregate, that they are sought for. – Each section of Paris contains one of these clubs, in all forty-eight, rallied around the central club in the Rue St. Honoré, forty-eight district alliances of professional rioters and brawlers, the rebels and blackguards of the social army, all the men and women incapable of devoting themselves to a regular life and useful labor,[7] especially those who, on the 31st of May and 2nd of June, had aided the Paris Commune and the “Mountain” in violating the Convention. They recognize each other by this sign that, “each would be hung in case of a counter-revolution,”[8] laying it down “as an incontestable fact that, should a single aristocrat be spared, all of them would mount the scaffold.”[9] They are naturally wary and they stick together: in their clique “everything is done on the basis of good fellowship;”[10] no one is admitted except on the condition of having proved his qualifications “on the 10th of August and 31st of May.”[11] And, as they have made their way into the Commune and into the revolutionary committees behind victorious leaders, they are able, through the certificates of civism which these arbitrarily grant or refuse, to exclude, not only from political life but, again, from civil life, whoever is not of their party.
“See,” writes one of Danton’s correspondents,[12] “the sort of persons who easily obtain these certificates, – the Ronsins, the Jourdans, the Maillards, the Vincents, all bankrupts, keepers of gambling-hells and cut-throats. Ask these individuals whether they have paid the patriotic contribution, whether they regularly pay the usual taxes, whether they give to the poor of their sections, to the volunteer soldiers, etc.; whether they mount guard or see it regularly done, whether they have made a loyal declaration for the forced loan. You will find that they have not. . . . The Commune issues certificates of civism to its satellites and refuses them to the best citizens.”
The monopoly is obvious; they make no attempt to conceal it; six weeks later,[13] it becomes official: several revolutionary committees decide not to grant certificates of civism to citizens who are not members of a popular club.” And strict exclusion goes on increasing from month to month. Old certificates are canceled and new ones imposed, which new certificates have new formalities added to them, a larger number of endorsers being required and certain kinds of guarantees being rejected; there is greater strictness in relation to the requisite securities and qualifications; the candidate is put off until fuller information can be obtained about him; he is rejected at the slightest suspicion:[14] he is only too fortunate if he is tolerated in the Republic as a passive subject, if he is content to be taxed and taxed when they please, and if he is not sent to join the “suspects” in prison; whoever does not belong to the band does not belong to the community.
Amongst themselves and in their popular club it is worse, for
“the eagerness to get any office leads to every one denouncing each other; “[15]
consequently, at the Jacobin club in the rue St. Honoré, and in the branch clubs of the quarter, there is constant purging, and always in the same sense, until the faction is cleansed of all honest or passable alloy and only a minority remains, which has its own way at every balloting. One of them announces that, in his club, eighty doubtful members have already been gotten rid of; another that, in his club, one hundred are going to be excluded.[16] On Ventose 23, in the “Bon-Consei1” club, most of the members examined are rejected: “they are so strict that a man who cannot show that he acted energetically in critical times, cannot form part of the assembly; he is set aside for a mere trifle.” On Ventôse 13, in the same club, “out of twenty- six examined, seven only are admitted; one citizen, a tobacco dealer, aged sixty-eight, who has always performed his duty, is rejected for having called the president Monsieur, and for having spoken in the tribune bareheaded; two members, after this, insisted on his being a Moderate, which is enough to keep him out.” Those who remain, consist of the most restless and most loquacious, the most eager for office, the self-mutilated club being thus reduced to a nucleus of charlatans and scoundrels.
To these spontaneous eliminations through which the club deteriorates, add the constant pressure through which the Committee of Public Safety frightens and degrades it. The lower the revolutionary government sinks, and the more it concentrates its power, the more servile and sanguinary do its agents and employees become. It strikes right and left as a warning; it imprisons or decapitates the turbulent among its own clients, the secondary demagogues who are impatient at not being principal demagogues, the bold who think of striking a fresh blow in the streets, Jacques Roux, Vincent, Momoro, Hébert, leaders of the Cordeliers club and of the Commune. After these, the indulgent who are disposed to exercise some discernment or moderation in terrorism, Camille Desmoulins, Danton and their adherents; and lastly, many others who are more or less doubtful, compromised or compromising, wearied or eccentric, from Maillard to Chaumette, from Antonelle to Chabot, from Westermann to Clootz. Each of the proscribed has a gang of followers, and suddenly the whole gang are obliged to do a volte- face; those who were able to show initiative, grovel, while those who could show mercy, become hardened. Henceforth, amongst the subaltern Jacobins, the roots of independence, humanity, and loyalty, hard to extirpate even in an ignoble and cruel nature, are eradicated even to the last fiber, the revolutionary staff, already so debased, becoming more and more degraded, until it is worthy of the office assigned to it. The confidants of Hébert, those who listen to Chaumette, the comrades of Westermann, the officers of Ronsin, the faithful readers of Camille, the admirers and devotees of Danton, all are bound to publicly repudiate their incarcerated friend or leader and approve of the decree which sends him to the scaffold, to applaud his calumniators, to overwhelm him on trial: this or that judge or juryman, who is one of Danton’s partisans, is obliged to stifle a defense of him, and, knowing him to be innocent, pronounce him guilty; one who had often dined with Desmoulins is not only to guillotine him, but, in addition to this, to guillotine his young widow. Moreover, in the revolutionary committees, at the Commune, in the offices of the Committee of General Safety, in the bureau of the Central Police, at the headquarters of the armed force, at the revolutionary Tribunal, the service to which they are compelled to do becomes daily more onerous and more repulsive. To denounce neighbors, to arrest colleagues, to go and seize innocent persons, known to be such, in their beds, to select in the prisons the thirty or forty unfortunates who form the daily food of the guillotine, to “amalgamate” them haphazard, to try them and condemn them in a lot, to escort octogenarian women and girls of sixteen to the scaffold, even under the knife-blade, to see heads dropping and bodies swinging, to contrive means for getting rid of a multitude of corpses, and for removing the too-visible stains of blood. Of what species do the beings consist, who can accept such a task, and perform it day after day, with the prospect of doing it indefinitely? Fouquier-Tinville himself succumbs. One evening, on his way to the Committee of Public Safety, “he feels unwell” on the Pont-Neuf and exclaims: “I think I see the ghosts of the dead following us, especially those of the patriots I have had guillotined!”[17] And at another time: “I would rather plow the ground than be public prosecutor. If I could, I would resign.” — The government, as the system becomes aggravated, is forced to descend lower still that it may find suitable instruments; it finds them now only in the lowest depths: in Germinal, to renew the Commune, in Floréal, to renew the ministries, in Prairial, to re- compose the revolutionary Tribunal, month after month, purging and re- constituting the committees of each quarter[18] of the city. In vain does Robespierre, writing and re-writing his secret lists, try to find men able to maintain the system; he always falls back on the same names, those of unknown persons, illiterate, about a hundred knaves or fools with four or five second-class despots or fanatics among them, as malevolent and as narrow as himself. – The purifying crucible has been used too often and for too long a time; it has overheated; what was sound, or nearly so, in the elements of the primitive fluid has been forcibly evaporated; the rest has fermented and become acid; nothing remains in the bottom of the vessel but the lees of stupidity and wickedness, their concentrated and corrosive dregs.
II. Subaltern Jacobins.
Quality of subaltern leaders. – How they rule in the section assemblies. – How they seize and hold office.
Such are the subordinate sovereigns[19] who in Paris, during 14 months dispose as they please, of fortunes, liberties and lives. – And first, in the section assemblies, which still maintain a semblance of popular sovereignty, they rule despotically and uncontested. –
“A dozen or fifteen men wearing a red cap,[20] well-informed or not, claim the exclusive right of speaking and acting, and if any other citizen with honest motives happens to propose measures which he thinks proper, and which really are so, no attention is paid to these measures, or, if it is, it is only to show the members composing the assemblage of how little account they are. These measures are accordingly rejected, solely because they are not presented by one of the men in a red cap, or by somebody like themselves, initiated in the mysteries of the section.”
” Sometimes,” says one of the leaders,[21] “we find only ten members of the club at the general assembly of the section; but there are enough of us to intimidate the rest. Should any citizen of the section make a proposition we do not like, we rise and shout that he is an schemer, or a signer (of former constitutional petitions). In this way we impose silence on those who are not in line with the club.” –
Since September, 1793, operation is all the easier because the majority, is now composed of beasts of burden, ruled with an iron hand.
“When something has to be effected that depends on intrigue or on private interest,[22] the motion is always put by one of the members of the Revolutionary Committee of the section, or by one of those fanatical patriots who join in with the Committee, and otherwise act as its spies. Immediately the ignorant men, to whom Danton has allowed forty sous for each meeting, and who, from now on crowd an assembly, where they never came before, welcome the proposition with loud applause, shouting and demanding a vote, and the act is passed unanimously, notwithstanding the contrary opinions of all well- informed and honest citizens. Should any one dare make an objection, he would run the risk of imprisonment as a suspect,[23] after being treated as an aristocrat or federalist, or at least, refused a certificate of civism, ( a serious matter) if he had the misfortune to need one, did his survival depend on this, either as employee or pensioner.” – In the Maison-Commune section, most of the auditory are masons, “excellent patriots,” says one of the clubbists of the quarter:[24] they always vote on our side; we make them do what we want.” Numbers of day-laborers, cab-drivers, cartmen and workmen of every class, thus earn their forty sous, and have no idea that anything else might be demanded from them. On entering the hall, when the meeting opens, they write down their names, after which they go out “to take a drink,” without thinking themselves obliged to listen to the rigmarole of the orators; towards the end, they come back, make all the noise that is required of them with their lungs, feet and hands, and then go and “take back their card and get their money.”[25] – With paid applauders of this stamp, they soon get the better of any opponents, or, rather, all opposition is suppressed beforehand. “The best citizens keep silent” in the section assemblies, or “stay away;” these are simply “gambling-shops” where “the most absurd, the most unjust, the most impolitic of resolutions are passed at every moment.[26] Moreover, citizens are ruined there by the unlimited sectional expenditure, which exceeds the usual taxation and the communal expenses, already very heavy. At one time, some carpenter or locksmith, member of the Revolutionary Committee, wants to construct, enlarge or decorate a hall, and it is necessary to agree with him. Again, a poor speech is made, full of exaggeration and political extravagance, of which three, four, five and six thousand impressions are ordered to be printed. Then, to cap the climax, following the example of the Commune, no accounts are rendered, or, if this is done for form’s sake, no fault must be found with them, under penalty of suspicion, etc.” — The twelve leaders, proprietors and distributors of civism, have only to agree amongst themselves to share the profits, each according to his appetite; henceforth, cupidity and vanity are free to sacrifice the common weal, under cover of the common interest. – The pasture is vast and it is at the disposal of the leaders. In one of his orders of the day, Henriot says:[27]
“I am very glad to announce to my brethren in arms that all the positions are at the disposal of the government. The actual government, which is revolutionary, whose intentions are pure, and which merely desires the happiness of all, . . . . will search everywhere, even into the attics for virtuous men, . . . . poor and genuine sans-culottes.” And there is enough to satisfy them thirty-five thousand places of public employment in the capital alone:[28] it is a rich mine; already, before the month of May, 1793, “the Jacobin club boasted of having placed nine thousand agents in the administration,”[29] and since the 2nd of June, “virtuous men, poor, genuine sans-culottes,” arrive in crowds from “their garrets,” dens and hired rooms, each to grab his share. — They besiege and install themselves by hundreds the ancient offices in the War, Navy and Public-Works departments, in the Treasury and Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Here they rule, constantly denouncing all the remaining, able employees thus creating vacancies in order to fill them.[30] Then there are twenty new administrative departments which they keep for themselves: commissioners of the first confiscation of national property, commissioners of national property arising from emigrants and the convicted, commissioners of conscripted carriage-horses, commissioners on clothing, commissioners on the collecting and manufacturing of saltpeter, commissioners on monopolies, civil- commissioners in each of the forty-eight sections, commissioners on propagandas in the departments, Commissioners on provisions, and many others. Fifteen hundred places are counted in the single department of subsistence in Paris,[31] and all are salaried. Here, already, are a number of desirable offices. – Some are for the lowest rabble, two hundred, at twenty sous a day, paid to “stump-speakers,” employed to direct opinion in the Palais-Royal, also among the Tuileries groups, as well as in the tribunes of the Convention and of the Hôtel-de- Ville;[32] two hundred more at four hundred francs per annum, to waiters in coffee-houses, gambling-saloons and hotels, for watching foreigners and customers; hundreds of places at two, three, and five francs a day with meals, for the guardians of seals, and for garrisoning the domiciles of “suspects”; thousands, with premiums, pay, and full license, for brigands who, under Ronsin, compose the revolutionary army, and for the gunners, paid guard and gendarmes of Henriot. – The principal posts, however, are those which subject lives and freedom to the discretion of those who occupy them: for, through this more than regal power, they possess all other power, and such is that of the men composing the forty-eight revolutionary committees, the bureaus of the Committee of General Security and of the Commune, and the staff-officers of the armed force. They are the prime-movers and active incentives of the system of Terror, all picked Jacobins and tested by repeated selection, all designated or approved by the Central Club, which claims for itself the monopoly of patriotism, and which, erected into a supreme council of the party, issues no patent of orthodoxy except to its own henchmen.[33]
They immediately assume the tone and arrogance of dictatorship. ” Pride has reached its highest point:[34] … One who, yesterday, had no post and was amiable and honest, has become haughty and insolent because, deceived by appearances, his fellow-citizens have elected him commissioner, or given him some employment or other.” Henceforth, he behaves like a Turkish agha amongst infidels, and, in command, carries things out with a high hand. – On the 20th of Vendémiaire, year II., “in the middle of the night,” the committee of the Piques section summons M. Bélanger, the architect. He is notified that his house is wanted immediately for a new Bastille. – “But, said he, ‘I own no other, and it is occupied by several tenants; it is decorated with models of art, and is fit only for that purpose.’ – ‘Your house or you go to prison!’ – ‘But I shall be obliged to indemnify my tenants.’ – ‘Either your house or you go to prison; as to indemnities, we have vacant lodgings for your tenants, as well as for yourself, in (the prisons of) La Force, or Sainte-Pélagie.’ Twelve sentinels on the post start off at once and take possession of the premises; the owner is allowed six hours to move out and is forbidden, henceforth, to return; the bureaus, to which he appeals, interpret his obedience as ‘tacit adhesion,’ and, very soon, he himself is locked up.”[35] – Administrative tools that cut so sharply need the greatest care, and, from time to time, they are carefully oiled:[36] on the 20th of July, 1793, two thousand francs are given to each of the forty-eight committees, and eight thousand francs to General Henriot, “for expenses in watching anti-revolutionary maneuvers;” on the 7th of August, fifty thousand francs “to indemnify the less successful members of the forty-eight committees;” three hundred thousand francs to Gen. Henriot “for thwarting conspiracies and securing the triumph of liberty;” fifty thousand francs to the mayor, “for detecting the plots of the malevolent;” on the 10th of September, forty thousand francs to the mayor, president and procureur-syndic of the department, “for measures of security; ” on the 13th of September, three hundred thousand francs to the mayor “for preventing the attempts of the malevolent;” on the 15th of November, one hundred thousand francs to the popular clubs, “because these are essential to the propagation of sound principles.” – Moreover, besides gratuities and a fixed salary, there are the gratifications and perquisites belonging to the office.[37] Henriot appoints his comrades on the staff of paid spies and denunciators, and, naturally, they take advantage of their position to fill their pockets; under the pretext of incivism, they multiply domiciliary visits, make the master of the house ransom himself, or steal what suits them on the premises.[38] – In the Commune, and on the revolutionary-committees, every extortion can be, and is, practiced.
“I know,” says Quevremont, “two citizens who have been put in prison, without being told why, and, at the end of three weeks or a month, let out and do you know how? By paying, one of them, fifteen thousand livres, and the other, twenty-five thousand. . . . Gambron, at La Force, pays one thousand five hundred livres a month for a room not to live amongst lice, and besides this, he had to pay a bribe of two thousand livres on entering. This happened to many others who, again, dared not speak of it, except in a whisper.”[39]
Woe to the imprudent who, never concerning themselves with public affairs, and relying on their innocence, discard the officious broker and fail to pay up at once! Brichard, the notary, having refused or tendered too late, the hundred thousand crowns demanded of him, is to put his head “at the red window.” – And I omit ordinary rapine, the vast field open to extortion through innumerable inventories, sequestrations and adjudications, through the enormities of contractors, through hastily executed purchases and deliveries, through the waste of two or three millions given weekly by the government to the Commune for supplies for the capital, through the requisitions of grain which give fifteen hundred men of the revolutionary army an opportunity to clean out all the neighboring farms, as far as Corbeil and Meaux, and benefit by this after the fashion of the chauffeurs.[40] – With such a staff, these anonymous thefts cannot surprise us. Babeuf, the falsifier of public contracts, is secretary for provisions to the Commune; Maillard, the Abbaye Septembriseur, receives eight thousand francs for his direction, in the forty-eight sections, of the ninety-six observers and leaders of public opinion; Chrétien, whose smoking-shop serves as the rendezvous of rowdies, becomes a juryman at eighteen francs a day in the revolutionary Tribunal, and leads his section with uplifted saber;[41] De Sade, professor of crimes, is now the oracle of his quarter, and, in the name of the Piques Section, he reads addresses to the Convention.
III.
A Minister of Foreign Affairs. – A General in command. – The Paris Commune. – A Revolutionary Committee.
Let us examine some of these figures closely: the nearer they are to the eye and foremost in position, the more the importance of the duty brings into light the unworthiness of the potentate. – There is already one of them, whom we have seen in passing, Buchot, twice noticed by Robespierre under his own hand as “a man of probity, energetic and capable of fulfilling the most important functions,”[42] appointed by the Committee of Public Safety “Commissioner on External Relations,” that is to say, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and kept in this important position for nearly six months. He is a school-master from the Jura,[43] recently disembarked from his small town and whose “ignorance, low habits and stupidity surpass anything that can be imagined . . . The chief clerks have nothing to do with him; he neither sees nor asks for them. He is never found in his office, and when it is indispensable to ask for his signature on any legislative matter, the sole act to which he has reduced his functions, they are compelled to go and force it from him in the Café Hardy, where he usually passes his days.” It must be borne in mind that he is envious and spiteful, avenging himself for his incapacity on those whose competency makes him sensible of his incompetence; he denounces them as Moderates, and, at last, succeeds in having a warrant of arrest issued against his four chief clerks; on the morning of Thermidor 9, with a wicked leer, he himself carries the news to one of them, M. Miot. Unfortunately for him, after Thermidor, he is turned out and M. Miot is put in his place. With diplomatic politeness, the latter calls on his predecessor and “expresses to him the usual compliments.” Buchot, insensible to compliments, immediately thinks of the substantial, and the first thing he asks for is to keep provisionally his apartment in the ministry. On this being granted, he expresses his thanks and tells M. Miot that it was very well to appoint him, but “for myself, it is very disagreeable. I have been obliged to come to Paris and quit my post in the provinces, and now they leave me in the street.” Thereupon, with astounding impudence, he asks the man whom he wished to guillotine to give him a place as ministerial clerk. M. Miot tries to make him understand that for a former minister to descend so low would be improper. Buchot regards such delicacy as strange, and, seeing M. Miot’s embarrassment, he ends by saying: “If you don’t find me fit for a clerk, I shall be content with the place of a servant.” This estimate of himself shows his proper value.
The other, whom we have also met before, and who is already known by his acts,[44] general in Paris of the entire armed force, commander- in-chief of one hundred and ten thousand men, is that former servant or under-clerk of the procureur Formey, who, dismissed by his employer for robbery, shut up in Bicêtre, by turns a runner and announcer for a traveling show, barrier-clerk and September assassin, has purged the Convention on the 2nd of June – in short, the famous Henriot, and now simply a brute and a sot. In this latter capacity, spared on the trial of the Hébertists, he is kept as a tool, for the reason, doubtless, that he is narrow, coarse and manageable, more compromised than anybody else, good for any job, without the slightest chance of becoming independent, unemployed in the army,45 having no prestige with true soldiers, a general for street parade and an interloper and lower than the lowest of the mob; his mansion, his box at the Opera- Comique, his horses, his importance at festivals and reviews, and, above all, his orgies make him perfectly content. – Every evening, in full uniform, escorted by his aides-de-camp, he gallops to Choisy-sur- Seine, where, in the domicile of a flatterer named Fauvel, along with some of Robespierre’s confederates or the local demagogues, he revels. They toss off the wines of the Duc de Coigny, smash the glasses, plates and bottles, betake themselves to neighboring dance-rooms and kick up a row, bursting in doors, and breaking benches and chairs to pieces – in short, they have a good time. – The next morning, having slept himself sober, he dictates his orders for the day, veritable masterpieces in which the silliness, imbecility and credulity of a numskull, the sentimentality of the drunkard, the clap-trap of a mountebank and the tirades of a cheap philosopher form an unique compound, at once sickening and irritating, like the fiery, pungent mixtures of cheap bars, which suit his audience better because they contain the biting, mawkish ingredients that compose the adulterated brandy of the Revolution. – He is posted on foreign maneuvers, and enlarges upon the true reasons for the famine: “A lot of bread has been lately found in the privies: the Pitts and Cobourgs and other rascals who want to enslave justice and reason, and assassinate philosophy, must be called to account for this. Headquarters, etc.”[46] He has theories on religions and preaches civic modesty to all dissenters: “The ministers and sectaries of every form of worship are requested not to practice any further religious ceremonies outside their temples. Every good sectarian will see the propriety of observing this order. The interior of a temple is large enough for paying one’s homage to the Eternal, who requires no rites that are repulsive to every thinking man. The wise agree that a pure heart is the sublimest homage that Divinity can desire. Headquarters, etc.” – He sighs for the universal idyllic state, and invokes the suppression of the armed force:
“I beg my fellow-citizens, who are led to the criminal courts out of curiosity, to act as their own police; this is a task which every good citizen should fulfill wherever he happens to be. In a free country, justice should not be secured by pikes and bayonets, but through reason and philosophy. These must maintain a watchful eye over society; these must purify it and proscribe thieves and evil-doers. Each individual must bring his small philosophic portion with him and, with these small portions, compose a rational totality that will turn out to be of benefit and to the welfare of all. Oh, for the time when functionaries shall be rare, when the wicked shall be overthrown, when the law shall become the sole functionary in society! Headquarters, etc. ” — Every morning, he preaches in the same pontifical strain. Imagine the scene – Henriot’s levee at head-quarters, and a writing table, with, perhaps, a bottle of brandy on it; on one side of the table, the rascal who, while buckling on his belt or drawing on his boots, softens his husky voice, and, with his nervous twitchings, flounders through his humanitarian homily; on the other side the mute, uneasy secretary, who may probably be able to spell, but who dares not materially change the grotesque phraseology of his master.
The Commune which employs the commanding-general is of about the same alloy, for, in the municipal sword, the blade and hilt, forged together in the Jacobin shop, are composed of the same base metal. – Fifty-six, out of eighty-eight members, whose qualifications and occupations are known, are decidedly illiterate, or nearly so, their education being rudimentary, or none at all.[47] Some of them are petty clerks, counter-jumpers and common scribblers, one among them being a public writer; others are small shopkeepers, pastry-cooks, mercers, hosiers, fruit-sellers and wine-dealers; yet others are simple mechanics or even laborers, carpenters, joiners, cabinet- makers, locksmiths, and especially three tailors, four hair-dressers, two masons, two shoemakers, one cobbler, one gardener; one stone- cutter, one paver, one office-runner, and one domestic. Among the thirty-two who are instructed, one alone has any reputation, Paris, professor at the University and the assistant of Abbé Delille. Only one, Dumetz, an old engineer, steady, moderate and attending to the supplies, seems a competent and useful workman. The rest, collected from amongst the mass of unknown demagogues, are six art-apprentices or bad painters, six business-agents or ex-lawyers, seven second or third-rate merchants, one teacher, one surgeon, one unfrocked married priest, all of whom, under the political direction of Mayor Fleuriot- Lescot and Payen, the national agent, bring to the general council no administrative ability, but the faculty for verbal argumentation, along with the requisite amount of talk and scribbling indispensable to a deliberative assembly. And it is curious to see them in session. Toward the end of September, 1793,[48] one of the veterans of liberal philosophy and political economy, belonging to the French Academy and ruined by the Revolution, the old Abbé Morellet, needs a certificate of civism, to enable him to obtain payment of the small pension of one thousand francs, which the Constituent Assembly had voted him in recompense for his writings; the Commune, desiring information about this, selects three of its body to inquire into it. Morellet naturally takes the preliminary steps. He first writes “a very humble, very civic note,” to the president of the General Council, Lubin Jr., formerly an art-apprentice who had abandoned art for politics, and is now living with his father a butcher, in the rue St. Honoré; he calls on this authority, and passes through the stall, picking his way amongst the slaughterhouse offal; admitted after some delay, he finds his judge in bed, before whom he pleads his cause. He then calls upon Bernard, an ex-priest, “built like an incendiary and ill-looking,” and respectfully bows to the lady of the house, “a tolerably young woman, but very ugly and very dirty.” Finally, he carries his ten or a dozen volumes to the most important of the three examiners, Vialard, ” ex-ladies’ hair-dresser; ” the latter is almost a colleague, “for,” says he, ” I have always liked technicians, having presented to the Academy of Sciences a top which I invented myself.” Nobody, however, had seen the petitioner in the streets on the 10th of August, nor on the 2nd of September, nor on the 31st of May; how can a certificate of civism be granted after such evidences of lukewarmness? Morellet, not disheartened, awaits the all-powerful hair-dresser at the Hôtel-de-Ville, and accosts him frequently as he passes along. He, “with greater haughtiness and distraction than the most unapproachable Minister of War would show to an infantry lieutenant,” scarcely listens to him and walks on; he goes in and takes his seat, and Morellet, much against his will, has to be present at ten or twelve of these meetings. What strange meetings, to which patriotic deputations, volunteers and amateurs come in turn to declaim and sing; where the president, Lubin, “decorated with his scarf,” shouts the Marseilles Hymn five or six times, “Ca Ira,” and other songs of several stanzas, set to tunes of the Comic Opera, and always “out of time, displaying the voice, airs and songs of an exquisite Leander. . . I really believe that, at the last meeting, he sung alone in this manner three quarters of an hour at different times, the assembly repeating the last line of the verse.” – ” How odd!” exclaims a common woman alongside of Morellet, “how droll, passing all their time here, singing in that fashion! Is that what they come here for?” – Not alone for that: after the circus-parade is over, the ordinary haranguers, and especially the hair-dresser, come and propose measures for murder “in infuriate language and with fiery gesticulation.” Such are the good speakers[49] and men for show. The others, who remain silent, and hardly know to write, act and do the rough work. A certain Chalaudon, member of the Commune,[50] is one of this kind, president of the Revolutionary Committee of the section of “L’Homme armé,” and probably an excellent man-hunter; for “the government committees assigned to him the duty of watching the right bank of the Seine, and, with extraordinary powers conferred on him, he rules from his back shop one half of Paris. Woe to those he has reason to complain of, those who have withdrawn from, or not given him, their custom! Sovereign of his quarter up to Thermidor 10, his denunciations are death-warrants. Some of the streets, especially that of Grand Chantier, he “depopulates.” And this Marais exterminator is a “cobbler,” a colleague in leather, as well as in the Commune, of Simon the shoemaker, the preceptor and murderer of the young Dauphin.
Still lower down than this admirable municipal body, let us try to imagine, from at least one complete example, the forty-eight revolutionary committees who supply it with hands. – There is one of them of which we know all the members, where the governing class, under full headway, can be studied on the spot and in action.[51] This consists of the underworld, nomadic class which is revolutionary only through its appetites; no theory and no convictions animate it; during the first three years of the Revolution it pays no attention to, or cares for, public matters; if, since the 10th of August, and especially since the 2nd of June, it takes any account of these, it is to get a living and gorge itself with plunder. – Out of eighteen members, simultaneously or in succession, of the “Bonnet Rouge,” fourteen, before the 10th of August and especially since the 2nd of June, are unknown in this quarter, and had taken no part in the Revolution. The most prominent among these are three painters, heraldic, carriage and miniature, evidently ruined and idle on account of the Revolution, a candle-dealer, a vinegar-dealer, a manufacturer of saltpeter, and a locksmith; while of these seven personages, four have additionally enhanced the dignity of their calling by vending tickets for small lotteries, acting as pawnbrokers or as keepers of a biribi[52] saloon. Seated along with these are two upper-class domestics, a hack-driver, an ex-gendarme dismissed from the corps, a cobbler on the street corner, a runner on errands who was once a carter’s boy, and another who, two months before this, was a scavenger’s apprentice, the latter penniless and in tatters before he became one of the Committee, and since that, well clad, lodged and furnished. Finally, a former dealer in lottery-tickets, himself a counterfeiter by his own admission, and a jail-bird. Four others have been dismissed from their places for dishonesty or swindling, three are known drunkards, two are not even Frenchmen, while the ring- leader, the man of brains of this select company is, as usual, a seedy, used-up lawyer, the ex-notary Pigeot, and expelled from his professional body on account of bankruptcy. He is probably the author of the following speculation: After the month of September, 1793, the Committee, freely arresting whomsoever it pleased in the quarter, and even outside of it, makes a haul of “three hundred heads of families” in four months, with whom it fills the old barracks it occupies in the rue de Sèvres. In this confined and unhealthy tenement, more than one hundred and twenty prisoners are huddled together, sometimes ten in one room, two in the same bed, and, for their keeping, they pay three hundred francs a day. As sixty-two francs of this charge are verified, there is of this sum, (not counting other extortions or concessions which are not official), two hundred and thirty-eight francs profit daily for these ‘honest’ contractors. Accordingly, they live freely and have “the most magnificent dinners ” in their assembly chamber; the contribution of ten or twelve francs apiece is ” nothing ” for them. – But, in this opulent St. Germain quarter, so many rich and noble men and women form a herd which must be conveniently stalled, so as to be the more easily milked. Consequently, toward the end of March, 1794, the Committee, to increase its business and fill up the pen, hires a large house on the corner of the boulevard possessing a court and a garden, where the high society of the quarter is assigned lodgings of two rooms each, at twelve francs a day, which gives one hundred and fifty thousand livres per annum, and, as the rent is twenty-four hundred francs, the Committee gain one hundred and forty-seven thousand six hundred livres by the operation; we must add to this twenty sorts of profit in money and other matters – taxes on the articles consumed and on supplies of every description, charges on the dispatch and receipt of correspondence and other gratuities, such as ransoms and fees. A penned-up herd refuses nothing to its keepers,[53] and this one less than any other; for if this herd is plundered it is preserved, its keepers finding it too lucrative to send it to the slaughter-house. During the last six months of Terror, but two out of the one hundred and sixty boarders of the “Bonnet Rouge” Committee are withdrawn from the establishment and handed over to the guillotine. It is only on the 7th and 8th of Thermidor that the Committee of Public Safety, having undertaken to empty the prisons, breaks in upon the precious herd and disturbs the well-laid scheme, so admirably managed. – It was only too well managed, for it excited jealousy; three months after Thermidor, the ” Bonnet Rouge” committee is denounced and condemned; ten are sentenced to twenty years in irons, with the pillory in addition, and, among others, the clever notary,[54] amidst the jeering and insults of the crowd. – And yet these are not the worst; their cupidity had mollified their ferocity. Others, less adroit in robbing, show greater cruelty in murdering. In any event, in the provinces as well as in Paris, in the revolutionary committees paid three francs a day for each member, the quality of one or the other of the officials is about the same. According to the pay-lists which Barère keeps, there are twenty-one thousand five hundred of these committees in France.[55]
IV. Provincial Administration.
The administrative staff in the provinces. – Jacobinism less in the departmental towns than in Paris. – Less in the country than in the towns. – The Revolutionary Committees in the small communes. – Municipal bodies lukewarm in the villages. – Jacobins too numerous in bourgs and small towns. – Unreliable or hampered as agents when belonging to the administrative bodies of large or moderate-sized towns. – Deficiency of locally recruited staff.
Had the laws of March 21 and September 5, 1793, been strictly enforced, there would, instead of 21,500 have been 45,000 of these revolutionary committees. They would have been composed of 540,000 members costing the public 591 millions per year.[56] This would have made the regular administrative body, already twice as numerous and twice as costly as under the ancient régime, an extra corps expending, “simply in surveillance,” one hundred millions more than the entire taxation of the country, the greatness of which had excited the people against the ancient régime. – Happily, the poisonous and monstrous fungal growth was only able to achieve half its intended size; neither the Jacobin seed nor the bad atmosphere it required to make it spread could be found anywhere. “The people of the provinces,” says a contemporary,[57] “are not up to the level of the Revolution; it opposes old habits and customs and the resistance of inertia to innovations which it does not understand.” “The plowman is an estimable man,” writes a missionary representative, ” but he is generally a poor patriot.”[58] Actually, there is on the one hand, less of human sediment in the departmental towns than in the great Parisian sink, and, on the other hand, the rural population, preserved from intellectual miasmas, better resists social epidemics than the urban population. Less infested with vicious adventurers, less fruitful in disordered intellects, the provinces supply a corps of inquisitors and terrorists with greater difficulty.
And first, in the thousands of communes which have less than five hundred inhabitants,[59] in many other villages of greater population, but scattered[60] and purely agricultural, especially in those in which patois is spoken, there is a scarcity of suitable subjects for a revolutionary committee. People make use of their hands too much; horny hands do not write every day; nobody desires to take up a pen, especially to keep a register that may be preserved and some day or other prove compromising. It is already a difficult matter to recruit a municipal council, to find a mayor, the two additional municipal officers, and the national agent which the law requires; in the small communes, these are the only agents of the revolutionary government, and I fancy that, in most cases, their Jacobin fervor is moderate. Municipal officer, national agent or mayor, the real peasant of that day belongs to no party, neither royalist nor republican;[61] his ideas are rare, too transient and too sluggish, to enable him to form a political opinion. All he comprehends of the Revolution is that which nettles him, or that which he sees every day around him, with his own eyes; to him ’93 and ’94 are and will remain “the time of bad paper (money) and great fright,” and nothing more.[62] Patient in his habits., he submits to the new as he did to the ancient régime, bearing the load put on his shoulders, and stooping down for fear of a heavier one. He is often mayor or national agent in spite of himself; he has been obliged to take the place and would gladly throw the burden off. For, as times go, it is onerous; if he executes decrees and orders, he is certain to make enemies; if he does not execute them, he is sure to be imprisoned; he had better remain, or go back home “Gros-Jean,” as he was before. But he has no choice; the appointment being once made and confirmed, he cannot decline, nor resign, under penalty of being a “suspect;” he must be the hammer in order not to become the anvil. Whether he is a wine-grower, miller, ploughman or quarry-man, he acts reluctantly, “submitting a petition for resignation,” as soon as the Terror diminishes, on the ground that “he writes badly,” that “he knows nothing whatever about law and is unable to enforce it;” that “he has to support himself with his own hands;” that “he has a family to provide for, and is obliged to drive his own cart” or vehicle; in short, entreating that he “may be relieved of his charge.”[63] – These involuntary recruits are evidently nothing more than common laborers; if they drag along the revolutionary cart they do it like their horses, because they are pressed into the service.
Above the small communes, in the large villages possessing a revolutionary committee, and also in certain bourgs, the horses in harness often pretend to draw and do not, for fear of crushing some one. – At this epoch, a straggling village, especially when isolated, in an out-of-the-way place and on no highway, is a small world in itself, much more secluded than now-a-days, much less accessible to Parisian verbiage and outside pressure; local opinion here preponderates; neighbors support each other; they would shrink from denouncing a worthy man whom they had known for twenty years; the moral sway of honest folks suffices for keeping down “blackguards.”[64] If the mayor is republican, it is only in words, perhaps for self-protection, to protect his commune, and because one must howl along with the other wolves. – – -Moreover, in other bourgs, and in the small towns, the fanatics and rascals are not sufficiently numerous to fill all the offices, and, in order to fill the vacancies, those who are not good Jacobins have been pushed forward or admitted into the new administrative corps, lukewarm, indifferent, timid or needy men, who take the place as an asylum or ask for it as a means of subsistence. ” Citizens,” one of the recruits, more or less under restraint, writes later on,[65] ” I was put on the Committee of Surveillance of Aignay by force, and installed by force.” Three or four madmen on it ruled, and if one held any discussion with them, “it was always threats . . . . Always trembling, always afraid, – that is the way I passed eight months doing duty in that miserable place.” – Finally, in medium-sized or large towns, the dead-lock produced by collective dismissals, the pell-mell of improvised appointments, and the sudden renewal of an entire set of officials, threw into the administration, willingly or not, a lot of pretended Jacobins who, at heart, are Girondists or Feuillantists, but who, having been excessively long-winded, are assigned offices on account of their stump-speeches, and who thenceforth sit alongside of the worst Jacobins, in the worst employment. “Members of the Feurs Revolutionary Committee – those who make that objection to me,” wrote a lawyer in Clermont,[66] “are persuaded that those only who secluded themselves, felt the Terror. They are not aware, perhaps, that nobody felt it more than those who were compelled to execute its decrees. Remember that the handwriting of Couthon which designated some citizen for an office also conveyed a threat, and in case of refusal, of being declared ‘suspect,’ a threat which promised in perspective the loss of liberty and the sequestration of property! Was I free, then, to refuse?” – Once installed, the man must act, and many of those who do act let their repugnance be seen in spite of themselves: at best, they cannot be got to do more than mechanical service.
“Before going to court,” says a judge at Cambray, “I swallowed a big glass
of spirits to give me strength enough to preside.”
He leaves his house with no other intention than to finish the job, and, the sentence once pronounced, to return home, shut himself up, and close his eyes and ears.
“I had to pronounce judgment according to the jury’s declaration – what could I do?”[67]
Nothing, but remain blind and deaf: “I drank. I tried to ignore everything, even the names of the accused.” – It is plain enough that, in the local official body, there are too many agents who are weak, not zealous, without any push, unreliable, or even secretly hostile; these must be replaced by others who are energetic and reliable, and the latter must be taken wherever they can be found.[68] This reservoir in each department or district is the Jacobin nursery of the principal town; from this, they are sent into the bourgs and communes of the conscription. The central Jacobin nursery for France is in Paris, from whence they are dispatched to the towns and departments.
V. Jacobins sent to the Provinces.
Importation of a staff of strangers. – Paris Jacobins sent into the provinces. – Jacobins of enthusiastic towns deported to moderate ones. – The Jacobins of a district headquarters spread through the district. – Resistance of public opinion. – Distribution and small number of really Jacobin agents.
Consequently, swarms of Jacobin locusts spread from Paris out over the provinces, and from the local country-towns over the surrounding country. – In this cloud of destructive insects, there are various figures of different sizes: in the front rank, are the representatives on mission, who are to take command in the departments; in the second rank, “the political agents,” who, assigned the duty of watching the neighboring frontier, take upon themselves the additional duty of leading the popular club of the town they reside in, or of urging on its administrative body.[69] Besides that, there issue from the Paris headquarters in the rue St. Honoré, select sans-culottes who, authorized or delegated by the Committee of Public Safety, proceed to Lyons, Marseilles, Bordeaux, Tonnerre, Rochefort and elsewhere, to act as missionaries among the too inert population, or form the committees of action and the tribunals of extermination that are recruited with difficulty on the spot.[70] – Sometimes also, when a town has a bad record, the popular club of a sounder-minded city sends its delegates there, to bring it into line; thus, four deputies of the Metz club arrive without notice in Belfort, catechize their brethren, associate with them on the local Revolutionary Committee, and, suddenly, without consulting the municipality, or any other legal authority, draw up a list of “moderates, fanatics and egoists,” on whom they impose an extraordinary tax of one hundred and thirty-six thousand six hundred and seventeen livres;[71] in like manner, sixty delegates from the club of Côte-d’Or, Haute-Marne, Vosges, Moselle, Saone-et-Loire and Mont-Terrible, all “tempered by the white heat of Pére Duchesne,” proceed to Strasbourg at the summons of the representatives, where, under the title of “propagandists,” they are to regenerate the town. – At the same time, in each department, the Jacobins of the principal town are found scattered along the high ways, that they may inspect their domain and govern their subjects. Sometimes, it is the representative on mission, who, personally, along with twenty “hairy devils,” makes his round and shows off his traveling dictatorship; again, it is his secretary or delegate who, in his place and in his name, comes to a second-class town and draws up his documents.[72] At another time, it is “a committee of investigation and propaganda” which, “chosen by the club and provided with full powers,” comes, in the name of the representatives, to work up for a month all the communes of the district.[73] Again, finally, it is the revolutionary committee of the principal town, which,” declared central for the whole department,”[74] delegates one or the other of its members to go outside the walls, and purge and recompose suspected municipalities. – Thus does Jacobinism descend and spread itself, story after story, from the Parisian center to the smallest and remotest commune: throughout provincial France, whether colorless or of uncertain color, the imposed or imported administration imposes its red stigma.
But the stamp is only superficial; for the sans-culottes, naturally, are not disposed to confer offices on any but men of their sort, while in the provinces, especially in the rural districts, such men are rare. As one of the representatives says: there is a “dearth of subjects.” – At Mâcon, Javogues tries in vain;[75] he finds in the club only “disguised federalists;” the people, he says, “will not open their eyes it seems to me that this blindness is due to the physique of the country, which is very rich.” Naturally, he storms and dismisses; but, even in the revolutionary committee, none but dubious candidates are presented to him for selection; he does not know how to manage in order to renew the local authorities. “They play into each others’ hands,” and he ends by threatening to transfer the public institutions of the town elsewhere, if they persist in proposing to him none but bad patriots. – At Strasbourg,[76] Couturier, and Dentzel, on mission, report that: “owing to an unexampled coalition among all the capable citizens, obstinately refusing to take the office of mayor, in order, by this course, to clog the wheels, and subject the representatives to repeated and indecent refusals,” he is compelled to appoint a young man, not of legal age, and a stranger in the department. – At Marseilles, write the agents,[77] “in spite of every effort and our ardent desire to republicanize the Marseilles people, our pains and fatigues are nearly all fruitless. . . . Public spirit among owners of property, mechanics and journey-men is everywhere detestable. . . . The number of discontented seems to increase from day to day. All the communes in Var, and most of those in this department are against us. . . . they constitute a race to be destroyed, a country to be colonized anew. . . .
“I repeat it, the only way to work out the Revolution in the federalized departments, and especially in this one, is to deport all the indigenous population who are able to bear arms, scatter them through the armies and put garrisons in their places, which, again, will have to be changed from time to time.” – At the other extremity of the territory, in Alsace, “republican sentiments are still in the cradle; fanaticism is extreme and incredible; the spirit of the inhabitants in general is in no respect revolutionary. . . Nothing but the revolutionary army and the venerated guillotine will cure them of their conceited aristocracy. The execution of the laws depends on striking off the heads of the guilty, for nearly all the rural municipalities are composed only of the rich, of clerks of former bailiffs, almost always devoted to the ancient régime.”[78]- And in the rest of France, the population, less refractory, is not more Jacobin; here where the people appear “humble and submissive” as in Lyons and Bordeaux, the inspectors report that it is wholly owing to terror;[79] there, where opinion seems enthusiastic, as at Rochefort and Grenoble, they report that it is “artificial heat.”[80] At Rochefort, zeal is maintained only “by the presence of five or six Parisian Jacobins.” At Grenoble, Chépy, the political agent and president of the club, writes that “he is knocked up, worn out, and exhausted, in trying to keep up public spirit and maintain it on a level with events,” but he is “conscious that, if he should leave, all would crumble.” – There are none other than Moderates at Brest, at Lille, at Dunkirk; if this or that department, the Nord, for instance, hastened to accept the “Montagnard” constitution, it is only a pretense: “an infinitely small portion of the population answered for the rest.”[81] – At Belfort, where “from one thousand to twelve hundred fathers of families alone are counted,” writes the agent,[82] “one popular club of thirty or forty members, at the most, maintains and enforces the love of liberty.” – In Arras, “out of three or four hundred members composing the popular club” the weeding-out of 1793 has spared but “sixty-three, one tenth of whom are absent.”[83] At Toulouse, “out of about fourteen hundred members” who form the club, only three or four hundred remain after the weeding-out of 1793,[84] “mere machines, for the most part,” and “whom ten or a dozen intriguers lead as they please.” – The same state of things exists elsewhere, a dozen or two determined Jacobins-twenty-two at Troyes, twenty-one at Grenoble, ten at Bordeaux, seven at Poitiers, as many at Dijon-constitute the active staff of a large town:[85] the whole number might sit around one table. – The Jacobins, straining as they do to swell their numbers, only scatter their band; careful as they are in making their selections, they only limit their number. They remain what they always have been, a small feudality of brigands superposed on conquered France.[86] If the terror they spread around multiplies their serfs, the horror they inspire diminishes their proselytes, while their minority remains insignificant because, for their collaborators, they can have only those just like themselves.
VI.
Quality of staff thus formed. – Social state of the agents. – Their unfitness and bad conduct. – The administrators in Seine-et-Marne. – Drunkenness and feasting. – Committees and Municipalities in the Côte-d’Or. – Waste and extortions. – Traffickers in favors at Bordeaux. – Seal breakers at Lyons. – Monopolizers of national possessions. – Sales of personal property. – Embezzlements and Frauds.-A procès-verbal in the office of the mayor of Strasbourg. – Sales of real-estate. – Commissioners on declarations at Toulouse. – The administrative staff and clubs of buyers in Provence. – The Revolutionary Committee of Nantes.
But when we regard the final and last set of officials of the revolutionary government closely, in the provinces as well as at Paris, we find among them we hardly anyone who is noteworthy except in vice, dishonesty and misconduct, or, at the very least, in stupidity and grossness. – First, as is indicated by their name, they all must be, and nearly all are, sans-culottes, that is to say, men who live from day to day on their daily earnings, possessing no income from capital, confined to subordinate places, to petty trading, to manual services, lodged or encamped on the lowest steps of the social ladder, and therefore requiring pay to enable them to attend to public business;[87] it is on this account that decrees and orders allow them wages of three, five, six, ten, and even eighteen francs a day. – At Grenoble, the representatives form the municipal body and the revolutionary committee, along with two health-officers, three glovers, two farmers, one tobacco-merchant, one perfumer, one grocer, one belt-maker, one innkeeper, one joiner, one shoemaker, one mason, while the official order by which they are installed, appoints “Teyssière, licoriste,” national agent.[88] – At Troyes,[89] among the men in authority we find a confectioner, a weaver, a journeyman- weaver, a hatter, a hosier, a grocer, a carpenter, a dancing-master, and a policeman, while the mayor, Gachez, formerly a private soldier in the regiment of Vexin, was, when appointed, a school-teacher in the vicinity. – At Toulouse,[90] a man named Terrain, a pâté dealer, is installed as president of the administration; the revolutionary committee is presided over by Pio, a journeyman-barber; the inspiration, “the soul of the club,” is a concierge, that of the prison. – The last and most significant trait is found at Rochefort,[91] where the president of the popular club is the executioner. – If such persons form the select body of officials in the large towns, what must they be in the small ones, in the bourgs and in the villages? ” Everywhere they are of the meanest”[92] cartmen, sabot – (wooden shoe) makers, thatchers, stone-cutters, dealers in rabbit-skins, day laborers, unemployed craftsmen, many without any pursuit, or mere vagabonds who had already participated in riots or jacqueries, bar flies, having given up work and designated for a public career only by their irregular habits and incompetence to follow a private career. – Even in the large towns, it is evident that discretionary power has fallen into the hands of nearly raw barbarians; one has only to note in the old documents, at the Archives, the orthography and style of the committees empowered to grant or refuse civic cards, and draw up reports on the opinions and pursuits of prisoners. “His opinions appear insipid (Ces opignons paroisse insipide)[93] . . . . He is married with no children.” (Il est marie cent (sans) enfants).. . . Her profession is wife of Paillot-Montabert, she is living on her income, his relations are with a woman we pay no attention to; we presume her opinions are like her husband’s.”[94] The handwriting, unfortunately, cannot be represented here, being that of a child five years old.[95]
“As stupid as they are immoral,”[96] says Representative Albert, of the Jacobins he finds in office at Troyes. Low, indeed, as their condition may be, their feeling and intelligence are yet lower because, in their professions or occupations, they are the refuse instead of the élite, and, especially on this account, they are turned out after Thermidor, some, it is true, as Terrorists, but the larger number as either dolts, scandalous or crazy, simply intruders, or mere valets. – At Rheims, the president of the district is[97] “a former bailiff, on familiar terms with the spies of the Robespierre régime, acting in concert with them, but without being their accomplice, possessing none of the requisite qualities for administration.” Another administrator is likewise “a former bailiff, without means, negligent in the highest degree and a confirmed drunkard.” Alongside of these sit “a horse-dealer, without any means, more fit for shady dealings than governing, moreover a drunkard, a dyer, lacking judgment, open to all sorts of influences, pushed ahead by the Jacobin faction, and having used power in the most arbitrary manner, rather, perhaps, through ignorance than through cruelty, a shoemaker, entirely uninstructed, knowing only how to sign his name,” and others of the same character. In the Tribunal, a judge is noted as
“true in principle, but whom poverty and want of resources have driven to every excess, a turncoat according to circumstances in order to get a place, associated with the leaders in order to keep the place, and yet not without sensibility, having, perhaps, acted criminally merely to keep himself and his family alive.”
In the municipal body, the majority is composed of an incompetent lot, some of them being journeymen-spinners or thread twisters, and others second-hand dealers or shopkeepers, “incapable,” “without means,” with a few crack-brains among them: one, “his brain being crazed, absolutely of no account, anarchist and Jacobin;” another, “very dangerous through lack of judgment, a Jacobin, over-excited; ” a third, “an instrument of tyranny, a man of blood capable of every vice, having assumed the name of Mutius Scvola, of recognized depravity and unable to write.” – Similarly, in the Aube districts, we find some of the heads feverish with the prevailing epidemic, for instance, at Nogent, the national agent, Delaporte, “who has the words ‘guillotine’ and ‘revolutionary tribunal’ always on his lips, and who declares that if he were the government he would imprison doctor, surgeon and lawyer, who delights in finding people guilty and says that he is never content except when he gets three pounds’ weight of denunciations a day.” But, apart from these madcaps, most of the administrators or judges are either people wholly unworthy of their offices, because they are “inept,” “too uneducated,” “good for nothing,” “too little familiar with administrative forms,” “too little accustomed to judicial action,” ” without information,” “too busy with their own affairs,” “unable to read or write,” or, because “they have no delicacy,” are “violent,” “agitators,” “knaves,” “without public esteem,” and more or less dishonest and despised.[98] – As an example a fellow from Paris, who was at first at Troyes, a baker’s apprentice,[99] and afterwards a dancing-master; then he appeared at the Club, making headway, doubtless, through his Parisian chatter, until he stood first and soon became a member of the district. Appointed an officer in the sixth battalion of Aube, he behaved in such a manner in Vendée that, on his return, ” his brethren in arms” broke up the banner presented to him, “declaring him unworthy of such an honor, because he cowardly fled before the enemy.” Nevertheless, after a short plunge, he came back to the surface and, thanks to his civil compeers, was reinstated in his administrative functions; during the Terror, he was intimate with all the Terrorists, being one of the important men of Troyes. – The mayor of the town, Gachez, an old soldier and ex-schoolmaster, is of the same stuff as this baker’s apprentice. He, likewise, was a Vendéan hero; only, he was unable to distinguish himself as much as he liked, for, after enlisting, he failed to march; having pocketed the bounty of three hundred livres, he discovered that he had infirmities and, getting himself invalidated, he served the nation in a civil capacity. “His own partisans admit that he is a drunkard and that he has committed forgery.” Some months after Thermidor he is sentenced to eight years imprisonment and put in the pillory for this crime. Hence, “almost the entire commune is against him; the women in the streets jeer him, and the eight sections meet together to request his withdrawal.” But Representative Bô reports that he is every way entitled to remain, being a true Jacobin, an admirable terrorist and “the only sans- culotte mayor which the commune of Troyes has to be proud of.”[100]
It would be awarding too much honor to men of this stamp, to suppose that they had convictions or principles; they were governed by animosities and especially by their appetites,[101] to satiate which they[102] made the most of their offices. – At Troyes, “all provisions and foodstuffs are drawn upon to supply the table of the twenty-four” sans-culottes[103] to whom Bô entrusted the duty of weeding-out the popular club; before the organization of “this regenerating nucleus” the revolutionary committee, presided over by Rousselin, the civil commissioner, carried on its “gluttony” in the Petit-Louvre tavern, “passing nights bozing” and in the preparation of lists of suspects.[104] In the neighboring provinces of Dijon, Beaune, Semur and Aignayle-Duc, the heads of the municipality and of the club always meet in taverns and bars. At Dijon, we see “the ten or twelve Hercules of patriotism traversing the town, each with a chalice under his arm:”[105] this is their drinking-cup; each has to bring his own to the Montagnard inn; there, they imbibe copiously, frequently, and between two glasses of wine “declare who are outlaws.” At Aignay-le- Duc, a small town with only half a dozen patriots “the majority of whom can scarcely write, most of them poor, burdened with families, and living without doing anything, never quit the bars, where, night and day, they revel;” their chief, a financial ex-procureur, now “concierge, archivist, secretary and president of the popular club,” holds municipal council in the tavern. “Should they go out it was to chase female aristocrats,” and one of them declares “that if the half of Aignay were slaughtered the other half would be all the better for it.” – There is nothing like drinking to excite ferocity to the highest pitch. At Strasbourg the sixty mustachioed propagandist lodged in the college in which they are settled fixtures, have a cook provided for them by the town, and they revel day and night “on the choice provisions put in requisition,” “on wines destined to the defenders of the country.”[106] It is, undoubtedly, when coming out from one of these orgies that they proceed, sword in hand, to the popular club,[107] vote and force others to vote “death to all prisoners confined in the Seminary to the number of seven hundred, of every age and of both sexes, without any preliminary trial.” For a man to become a good cut-throat, he must first get intoxicated;[108] such was the course pursued in Paris by those who did the work in September: the revolutionary government being an organized, prolonged and permanent Septembrisade, most of its agents are obliged to drink hard.[109] – For the same reasons when the opportunity, as well as the temptation, to steal, presents itself, they steal. – At first, during six months, and up to the decree assigning them pay, the revolutionary committees “take their pay themselves;”[110] they then add to their legal salary of three and five francs a day about what they please: for it is they who assess the extraordinary taxes, and often, as at Montbrison, “without making any list or record of collections.” On Frimaire 16, year II., the financial committee reports that “the collection and application of extraordinary taxes is unknown to the government; that it was impossible to supervise them, the National treasury having received no sums whatever arising from these taxes.”[111] Two years after, four years after, the accounts of revolutionary taxation of forced loans, and of pretended voluntary gifts, still form a bottomless pit; out of forty billions of accounts rendered to the National Treasury only twenty are found to be verified; the rest are irregular and worthless. Besides, in many cases, not only is the voucher worthless or not forthcoming, but, again, it is proved that the sums collected disappeared wholly or in part. At Villefranche, out of one hundred and thirty-eight thousand francs collected, the collector of the district deposited but forty- two thousand; at Baugency, out of more than five hundred thousand