that is to say, 608 000 persons deprived of their liberty. The first two categories form a total of 433 000 persons, sufficiently near Beaulieu’s figures.
[14] Paris, “Histoire de Joseph Lebon,” II., 371, 372, 375, 377, 379, 380. – “Les Angoisses de la Mort,” by Poirier and Monjay of Dunkirk (second edition, year III.). “Their children and trusty agents still remained in prison; they were treated no better than ourselves. . . . we saw children coming in from all quarters, infants of five years, and, to withdraw them from paternal authority, they had sent to them from time to time, commissioners who used immoral language with them.”
[15] Mémoires sur les Prisons,” (Barrière et Berville collection), II., 354, and appendix F. Ibid., II., 2262. – The women were the first to pass under rapiotage.” (Prisons of Arras and that of Plessis, at Paris.)
[16] Documents on Daunou,” by Taillandier. (Narrative by Daunou, who was imprisoned in turn in La Force, in the Madelonettes, in the English Benedictine establishment, in the Hotel des Fermes, and in Port-Libre.) – On prison management cf., for the provinces, “Tableaux des Prisons de Toulouse,” by Pescayre; “Un Sejour en France,” and “Les Horreurs des Prisons d’Arras,” for Arras and Amiens; Alexandrines des Echerolles, “Une Famille noble sous la Terreur,” for Lyons; the trial of Carrier for Nantes; for Paris, “Histoire des Prisons” by Nougaret, 4 vols., and the “Mémoires sur les Prisons,” 2 vols.
[17] Testimony of Representative Blanqui, imprisoned at La Force, and of Representative Beaulieu, imprisoned in the Luxembourg and at the Madelonettes. – Beaulieu, “Essais,” V., 290: “The conciergerie was still full of wretches held for robbery and assassination, poverty- stricken and repulsive. – It was with these that counts, marquises, voluptuous financiers, elegant dandies, and more than one wretched philosopher, were shut up, pell-mell, in the foulest cells, waiting until the guillotine could make room in the chambers filled with camp- bedsteads. They were generally put with those on the straw, on entering, where they sometimes remained a fortnight… It was necessary to drink brandy with these persons; in the evening, after having dropped their excrement near their straw, they went to sleep in their filth. . . . I passed those three nights half-sitting, half- stretched out on a bench, one leg on the ground and leaning against the wall.” – Wallon, “La Terreur,” II., 87. (Report of Grandpré on the Conciergerie, March 17, 1793. “Twenty-six men collected into one room, sleeping on twenty-one mattresses, breathing the foulest air and covered with half-rotten rags.” In another room forty-five men and ten straw-beds; in a third, thirty-nine poor creatures dying in nine bunks; in three other rooms, eighty miserable creatures on sixteen mattresses filled with vermin, and, as to the women, fifty-four having nine mattresses and standing up alternately. – The worst prisons in Paris were the Conciergerie, La Force, Le Plessis and Bicêtre. – “Tableau des Prisons de Toulouse,” p. 316. “Dying with hunger, we contended with the dogs for the bones intended for them, and we pounded them up to make soup with.”
[18] “Recueil de Pièces, etc.,” i., p.3. (Letter of Frédéric Burger, Prairial 2, year II.)
[19] Alfred Lallier, “Les Noyades de Nantes,” p. 90. – Campardon, “Histoire de Tribunal Révolutionnaire de Paris,” (trial of Carrier), II., 55. (Deposition of the health-officer, Thomas.) ” I saw perish in the revolutionary hospital (at Nantes) seventy-five prisoners in two days. None but rotten mattresses were found there, on each of which the epidemic had consumed more than fifty persons. At the Entrepot, I found a number of corpses scattered about here and there. I saw children, still breathing, drowned in tubs full of human excrement.”
[20] Narrative of the sufferings of unsworn priests, deported in 1794, in the roadstead of Aix, passim.
[21] “Histoire des Prisons,” I., 10. “Go and visit,” says a contemporary, (at the Conciergerie), the dungeons called ‘the great Csar,’ ‘Bombie,’ ‘St. Vincent.’ ‘ Bel Air,’ etc., and say whether death is not preferable to such an abode.” Some persons, indeed, the sooner to end the matter, wrote to the public prosecutor, accusing themselves, demanding a king and priests, and are at once guillotined, as they hoped to be. – Cf. the narrative of “La Translation des 132 à Nantois Paris,” and Riouffe, “Mémoires,” on the sufferings of prisoners on their way to their last prison.
[22] Berryat Saint-Prix, p. IX., passim.
[23] Campardon, II., 224.
[24] Berryat Saint-Prix, 445. – Paris, “Histoire de Joseph Lebon,” II., 352. – Alfred Lallier, p. 90. – Buchez et Roux, XXXII., 394.
[25] Berryat Saint-Prix, pp.23, 24.
[26] Berryat Saint-Prix, p.458. “At Orange, Madame de Latour-Vidan, aged eighty and idiotic for many years, was executed with her son. It is stated that, on being led to the scaffold, she thought she was entering a carriage to pay visits and so told her son.” – Ibid., 471. After Thermidor, the judges of the Orange commission having been put on trial, the jury declared that ” they refused to hear testimony for the defense and did not allow the accused even informal lawyers to defend them.”
[27] Camille Boursier,” La Terreur en Anjou,” p.228. (Deposition of Widow Edin.) “La Persac, a nun ill and infirm, was ready to take the oath. Nicolas, Vacheron’s agent, assisted by several other persons, dragged her out of bed and put her on a cart; from ninety to ninety- four others were shot along with her.”
[28] Berryat Saint-Prix, p. 161. The following are samples of these warrants: “S. (shot), Germinal 13, Widow Menard, seventy-two years old, an old aristocrat, liking nobody, habitually living by herself.” – Warrant of the Marseilles committee, Germinal 28, year II., condemning one Cousinéri for having continually strayed off as if to escape popular vengeance, to which he was liable on account of his conduct and for having detested the Revolution.” – Camille Boursier, p.72, Floréal 15, year II., execution of “Gerard, guilty of having scorned to assist at the planting of a Liberty-pole, in the commune of Vouille, Sep., 1792, and inducing several municipal officers to join him in his insolent and liberticide contempt.”
[29] Wallon, “Histoire du Tribunal Révolutionnaire de Paris, V., 145.
[30] Ibid., v., 109. (Deposition of Madame de Maillé.) – V., 189. (Deposition of Lhullier.) – Cf. Campardon, in the same affairs.
[31] Campardon, II., 189, 190, 193, 197. (Depositions of Beaulieu, Duclos, Tirard, Ducray, etc.)
[32] Berryat Saint-Prix, 395. (Letter of Representative Moyse Bayle,) – Ibid., 216. (Words of Representative Lecarpentier at Saint-Malo.) “Why such delays? Of what use are these eternal examinations? What need is there of going so deep into this matter? The name, profession and the upshot, and the trial is over.” – He publicly stated to the informers: You don’t know what facts you require to denounce the Moderates? Well, a gesture, one single gesture, suffices.”
[33] Letter of Payan to Roman Formosa, judge at Orange: “In the commissions charged with punishing the conspirators, no formalities should exist; the conscience of the judge is there as a substitute for these. . . The commissions must serve as political courts; they must remember that all the men who have not been on the side of the Revolution are against it, since they have done nothing for the country. . . I say to all judges, in the name of the country, do not risk saving a guilty man.” – Robespierre made the same declaration in the Jacobin Club. Frimaire 19, year II.: “We judge, in politics, with the suspicions of an enlightened patriotism.”
[34] “Mémoires de Fréron” and on Fréron, (collection Barrière et Berville,) p.364. Letter of Fréron, Toulon, Nivôse 16. “More than eight hundred Toulonese have already been shot.”
[35] Lallier, p.90. (The eleven distinct drownings ascertained by M. Lallier extend up to Pluviôse 12, year II.)
[36] Moniteur, XXII., 227. (Official documents read in the Convention, Ventôse 21, year III.) These documents authenticate an ulterior drowning. Ventôse 9, year II., by order of Lefévre, adjutant general, forty-one persons were drowned, among whom were two men seventy-eight years of age and blind, twelve women, twelve young girls, fifteen children, of which ten were between six and ten years old, and five at the breast. The drowning took place in the Bourgneuf bay.-Carrier says in the Convention, (Moniteur, XXII., p.578), in relation to the drowning of pregnant women: “At Laval, Angers, Saumur, Chaban-Gontier, everywhere the same things took place as at Nantes.”
[37] Camille Boursier, p.159.
[38] Ibid., 203. Representative Francastel announces “the firm determination to purge, to bleed freely this Vendean question.” This same Francastel wrote to General Grignon: “Make those brigands tremble! Give them no quarter! The prisons in Vendée are overflowing with prisoners! . . . The conversion of this country into a desert must be completed. Show no weakness and no mercy. . . These are the views of the Convention. . . . I swear that Vendée shall be depopulated.”
[39] Granier de Cassagnac, “His. du Directoire,” II., 241. – (Letter of General Hoche to the Minister of the Interior, Feb. 2, 1796.) “Only one out of five remains of the population of 1789.”
[40] Campardon, II., 247, 249, 251, 261, 321. (Examination of Fouquier-Tinville, Cambon’s words.)
[41] Article by Guffroy, in his journal Le Rougiff: “Down with the nobles, and so much the worse for the good ones, if there are any! Let the guillotine stand permanently throughout the Republic. Five millions of inhabitants are enough for France!” – Berryat Saint-Prix, 445. (Letter of Fauvety, Orange, Prairial 14, year II.) “We have but two confined in our arrondissement. What a trifle!” – Ibid., 447. (Letter of the Orange Committee to the Committee of Public Safety, Messidor 3.) As soon as the Committee gets fully agoing it is to try all the priests, rich merchants and ex-nobles.” – (Letter of Juge, Messidor 2.) “Judging by appearances more than three thousand heads will fall in the department.” – Ibid., 311. At Bordeaux, a huge scaffold is put up, authorized by the Military Committee, with seven doors, two of which are large and like barn-doors, called a four- bladed guillotine, so as to work faster and do more. The warrant and orders for its construction bear date Thermidor 3 and 8, year II. – Berryat Saint-Prix, 285. Letter of Representative Blutel, on mission at Rochefort, after Thermidor: “A few men, sunk in debauchery and crime, dared proscribe (here) virtues, patriotism, because it was not associated with their sanguinary excitement: the tree of Liberty, they said, required for its roots ten feet of human gore.”
[42] “Recueil de Pièces Authentiques, concernant le Revolution à Strasbourg,” I., 174, 178. Examples of revolutionary taxes. – Orders of Representatives Milhaud, Ruamps, Guyadin, approving of the following contributions, Brumaire 20, year II.
On 3 individuals of Stutzheim…………………150,000 livres. ” 3 ” Offenheim….. ……………30,000 ” “21 ” Molsheim …………………367,000 ” ” 17 ” Oberenheim………………..402,000 ” ” 84 ” Rosheim…………………..503,000 ” ” 10 ” Mutzig……………………114,000 “
Another order by Daum and Tisseraud, members of the committee who temporarily replace the district administrators: “Whereas, it is owing to the county aristocrats that the Republic supports the war,” they approve of the following taxes:
On the aristocrats of Geispolzheim, 400,000 livres. ditto of Oberschffolsheim 200,000 ” ditto of Düttlenheim 150,000 ” ditto of Duppigheim 100,000 ” ditto of Achenheim 100,000 “
List of contributions raised in the rural communes of the district of Strasbourg, according to an assessment made by Stamm, procureur pro tem. of the district, amounting to three millions one hundred and ninety-six thousand one hundred livres.
[43] “Recueil des Pieces Authentiques,” etc., I., 23. By order of the representatives under date of Brumaire 25, year II. “The municipality of Strasbourg stripped the whole commune of shoes in twenty-four hours, sending for them from house to house.” – Ibid.. p.32. Orders of Representatives Lemaire and Baudot, Frimaire I, year II., declaring that kitchen-utensils, boilers, sauce-pans, stew-pans, kettles and other copper and lead vessels, as well as copper and lead not worked- up, found at Strasbourg and in the departments, be levied on.” – Archives Nationales, AF., I., 92. (Orders of Taillefer, Brumaire 3, year II. Villefranche 1’Avergnon.) Formation of a Committee of ten persons directed to make domiciliary visits, and authorized to take possession of all the iron, lead, steel and copper found in the houses of “suspects,” all of which kitchen utensils, are to be turned into cannon. – Mallet-Dupan, “Mémoires,” I., 15.
[44] Moniteur, XXV., 188. (Speech by Blutels, July 9, 1795.)
[45] “Recueil du Pièces Authentiques,” etc., I., 24. – Grégoire, reports on Vandalism, Fructidor 14, year II., and Brumaire 14, year III. (Moniteur, XXII., 86 and 751.) – Ibid., Letter of December 24, 1796: “Not millions, but billions have been destroyed.” – Ibid.,, “Mémoires,” I., 334: “It is incalculable, the loss of religious, scientific and literary objects. The district administrations of Blanc (Indre) notified me that to ensure the preservation of a library, they had the books put in casks.” – Four hundred thousand francs were expended in smashing statues of the Fathers of the church, forming a circle around the dome of the Invalides. – A great many objects became worthless through a cessation of their use: for example, the cathedral of Meaux was put up at auction and found no purchaser at six hundred francs. The materials were valued at forty- five thousand francs, but labor (for taking it down) was too high. (Narrative by an inhabitant of Meaux.)
[46] Les Origines du Système Financier Actuel,” by Eugene Sturm, p.53, 79.
[47] Meissner, “Voyage à Paris,” (end of 1795), p. 65. “The class of those who may have really gained by the Revolution…. is composed of brokers, army contractors, and their subordinates, a few government agents and fermiers, enriching themselves by their new acquisitions, and who are cool and shrewd enough to hide their grain, bury their gold and steadily refuse assignats.” – Ibid., 68, 70. ” On the road, he asks to whom a fine chateau belongs, and they tell him with a significant look, ‘to a former scruffy wretch.’ – ‘Oh, monsieur,’ said the landlady at Vesoul, ‘for every one that the Revolution has made rich, you may be sure that it has made a thousand poor.'”
[48] The following descriptions and appreciations are the fruit of extensive investigation, scarcely one tenth of the facts and texts that have been of service being cited. I must refer the reader, accordingly, to the series of printed and written documents of which I have made mention in this and the three preceding volumes.
[49] “The Ancient Regime,” book II., ch 2, § IV.
[50] Ibid., book IV., chs. I., II., III.
[51] Lacretelle, “Histoire de France au 18eme Siecle,” V., 2. – -” The Ancient Regime,” pp. 163, 300.
[52] Morellet, “Mémoires,” I., 166. (Letter by Rderer to Beccaria’s daughter, May 20, 1797).
[53] Beccaria (Cesare Bonesana, marquis de) (Milan 1738 – id. 1794). Italian jurist, whose “Traité des délits et des peines (1764) contributed to the reforms and the softening of of European penal law. (SR)
[54] Mallet-Dupan, “Mémoires,” II., 493. “While the Duke of Orleans was undergoing his examination he read a newspaper.” – Ibid., 497. “Nobody died with more firmness, spirit and dignity than the Duke of Orleans. He again became a royal prince. On being asked in the revolutionary tribunal whether he had any defense to make, he replied, ‘Rather die to-day than to-morrow: deliberate about it.'” His request was granted. – The Duc de Biron refused to escape, considering that, in such a dilemma, it was not worth while. “He passed his time in bed, drinking Bordeaux wine. . . . Before the tribunal, they asked his name and he replied, ‘Cabbage, turnip, Biron, as you like, one is as good as the other.’ ‘How!’ exclaimed the judges, ‘you are insolent!’ ‘And you – you are windbags! I Come to the point; Guillotine, that is all you have to say, while I have nothing to say.'” Meanwhile they proceeded to interrogate him on his pretended treachery in Vendée, etc. “‘You do not know what you are talking about! You ignoramuses know nothing about war! Stop your questions. I reported at the time to the Committee of Public Safety, which approved of my conduct. Now, it has changed and ordered you to take my life. Obey, and lose no more time.’ Biron asked pardon of God and the King. Never did he appear better than on the (executioner’s) cart.”
[55] Morellet, II., 31.-“Mémoires de la Duchesse de Tourzel,” “de Mlle. des Écherolles,” etc.-Beugnot, “Mémoires, I., 200-203. “The wittiest remarks, the most delicate allusions, the most brilliant repartees were exchanged on each side of the grating. The conversation was general, without any subject being dwelt on. There, misfortune was treated as if it were a bad child to be laughed at, and, in fact, they did openly make sport of Marat’s divinity, Robespierre’s sacerdoce and the magistracy of Fouquier. They seemed to say to all these bloody menials: ‘You may slaughter us when you please, but you cannot hinder us in being aimable'”-Archives Nationales, F.7, 31167. (Report by the watchman, Charmont, Nivôse 29, year II.) “The people attending the executions are very much surprised at the firmness and courage they show (sic) on mounting the scaffold. They say that it looks (sic) like going to a wedding. People cannot get used to it, some declaring that it is supernatural.”
[56] Sauzay, I.. introduction. – De Tocqueville, “L’Ancien Regime et la Revolution,” 166. “I have patiently read most of the reports and debates of the provincial États,’ and especially those of Languedoc, where the clergy took much greater part than elsewhere in administrative details, as well as the procès-verbaux of the provincial assemblies between 1779 and 1787, and, entering on the study with the ideas of my time, I was surprised to find bishops and abbés, among whom were several as eminent for their piety as their learning, drawing up reports on roads and canals, treating such matters with perfect knowledge of the facts, discussing with the greatest ability and intelligence the best means for increasing agricultural products, for ensuring the well-being of the people and the property of industrial enterprises, oftentimes much better than the laymen who were interested with them in the same affairs.”
[57] “The Ancient Regime,” p.300. – ” The Revolution,” vol. I., p. 116. ??Buchez et Roux, I., 481. The list of notables convoked by the King in 1787 gives an approximate idea of this social staff. Besides the leading princes and seigniors we find, among one hundred and thirty-four members, twelve marshals of France, eight Councillors of State, five maîtres de requêtes, fourteen bishops and archbishops, twenty presidents and seventeen procureurs géneraux des parlements, or of royal councils, twenty-five mayors, prévôts des marchands, capitouls, and equerries of large towns, the deputies of the “Etats” of Burgundy, Artois, Brittany and Languedoc, three ministers and two chief clerks. – The capacities were all there, on hand, for bringing about a great reform; but there was no firm, strong, controlling hand, that of a Richelieu or Frederic II.
[58] See “The Revolution II” Ed. Lafont page 617. US ediction P. 69. (SR.)
[59] “Mémoires de Gaudin,” duc de Gaëte.
[60] Mallet-Dupan, “Mémoires,” II., 25, 24. “The War Committee is composed of engineer and staff-officers, of which the principal are Meussuer, Favart, St. Fief, d’Arcon, LafitteClavé and a few others. D’Arcon directed the raising of the siege of Dunkirk and that of Maubenge. . . . These officers were selected with discernment; they planned and carried out the operations; aided by immense resources, in the shape of maps, plans and reconnaissances preserved in the war department, they really operated according to the experience and intelligence of the great generals under the monarchy.”
[61] Miot de Melito, “Mémoires,” I., 47. – Andre Michel, “Correspondance de MalletDupan avec la Cour de Vienne,” I., 26. (January 3, 1795.) “The Convention feels so strongly the need of suitable aids to support the burden of its embarrassments as to now seek for them among pronounced royalists. For instance, it has just offered the direction of the royal treasury to M. Dufresne, former chief of the department under the reign of the late King, and retired since 1790. It is the same spirit and making a still more extraordinary selection, which leads them to appoint M. Gerard de Rayneval to the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, chief-clerk of correspondence since the ministry of the Duc de Choiseul until that of the Comte de Montmorin inclusive. He is a man of decided opinions and an equally decided character; in 1790 I saw him abandon the department through aversion to the maxims which the Revolution had forcibly introduced into it.
[62] Marshal Marmont, “Mémoires.” At nine years of age he rode on horseback and hunted daily with his father.
[63] Among other manuscript documents, a letter of M. Symn de Carneville, March II, 1781. (On the families of Carneville and Montmorin-Saint-Herem, in 1789.) The latter family remains in France; two of its members are massacred, two executed, a fifth “escaped the scaffold by forestalling the justice of the people;” the sixth, enlisted in the revolutionary armies, received a shot at nineteen years of age which made him blind. The other family emigrated, and its chiefs, the count and viscount Carneville commanded, one, a free company in the Austrian service, and the other, a regiment of hussars in Conde’s army. Twelve officers of these two corps were brothers-in- law, nephews, first-cousins and cousins of the two commanders, the first of whom entered the service at fifteen, and the second at eleven. – Cf. “Mémoires du Prince de Ligne.” At seven or eight years of age I had already witnessed the din of battle, I had been in a besieged town, and saw three sieges from a window. A little older, I was surrounded by soldiers; old retired officers belonging to various services, and living in the neighborhood fed my passion.- Turenne said “I slept on a gun-carriage at the age of ten. My taste for war was so great as to lead me to enlist with a captain of the ‘Royal Vaissiaux,’ in garrison two leagues off. If war had been declared I would have gone off and let nobody know it. I joined his company, determined not to owe my fortune to any but valorous actions.” – Cf. also “Mémoires du Maréchal de Saxe.” A soldier at twelve, in the Saxon legion, shouldering his musket, and marching with the rest, he completed each stage on foot from Saxony to Flanders, and before he was thirteen took part in the battle of Malplaquet.
[64] Alexandrine des Echerolles, “Un Famille Noble sous la Terreur,” p.25. – Cf. “Correspondance de Madelle de Féring,” by Honore Bonhomme. The two sisters, one sixteen and the other thirteen, disguised as men, fought with their father in Dumouriez’ army. – See the sentiment of young nobles in the works of Berquin and Marmontel. (Les Rivaux d’ Eux-meme.)
[65] ” The Revolution,” I., 158, 325. Ibid., the affair of M. de Bussy, 306; the affair of the eighty-two gentlemen of Caen, 316. – See in Rivarol (“Journal Politique Nationale”) details of the admirable conduct of the Body-guards at Versailles, Oct. 5 and 6, 1789.
[66] The noble families under the ancient regime may be characterized as so many families of soldiers’ children.
[67] “L’Ancien Régime et la Revolution,” by M. de Tocqueville, p.169. My judgment, likewise based on the study of texts, and especially manuscript texts, coincides here as elsewhere with that of M. de Tocqueville. Biographies and local histories contain documents too numerous to be cited.
[68] Sauzay, I., introduction, and Ludovic Sciout, ” Histoire de la Constitution Civile du Clergé,” I., introduction. (See in Sauzay, biographical details and the grades of the principal ecclesiastical dignitaries of the diocese Besançon.) The cathedral chapter, and that of the Madeleine, could be entered only through nobility or promotion; it was requisite for a graduate to have a noble for a father, or a doctor of divinity, and himself be a doctor of divinity or in canon law. Analogous titles, although lower down, were requisite for collegiate canons, and for chaplains or familiars.
[69] The Revolution,” I., 233. – Cf. Emile Ollivier, “L’Eglise et l’Etat au Concile du Vatican,” I., 134, II., 511.
[70] Morellet, “Mémoires,” I., 8, 31. The Sorbonne, founded by Robert Sorbon, confessor to St. Louis, was an association resembling one of the Oxford or Cambridge colleges, that is to say, a corporation possessing a building, revenues, rules, regulations and boarders; its object was to afford instruction in the theological sciences; its titular members, numbering about a hundred, were mostly bishops, vicars-general, canons, curés in Paris and in the principal towns. Men of distinction were prepared in it at the expense of the Church. – The examinations for the doctorate were the tentative, the mineure, the Sorbonique and the majeure. A talent for discussion and argument was particularly developed. – Cf. Ernest Renan, “Souvenirs d’Enfance et de Jeunesse,” p.279, (on St. Sulpice and the study of Theology).
[71] Cf. the files of the clergy in the States-General, and the reports of ecclesiastics in the provincial assemblies.
[72] “The Revolution,” p.72. (Ed. Lafont I, p 223 etc.)
[73] In some dioceses, notably that of Besançon, the rural parishes were served by distinguished men. (Sauzay, I., 16.) “It was not surprising to encounter a man of European reputation, like Bergier, so long curé of Flangebouche; an astronomer of great merit, like M. Mongin, curé of la Grand’Combe des Bois, whose works occupy an honorable place in Lalande’s bibliography, all passing their lives in the midst of peasants. At Rochejean, a priest of great intelligence and fine feeling, M. Boillon, a distinguished naturalist, had converted his house into a museum of natural history as well as into an excellent school. . . . It was not rare to find priests belonging to the highest social circles, like MM. de Trevillers, of Trevillers, Balard de Bonnevaux of Bonétage, de Mesmay of Mesmay, du Bouvot, at Osselle, cheerfully burying themselves in the depths of the country, some on their family estates, and, not content to share their income with their poor parishioners, but on dying, leaving them a large part of their fortunes.
[74] De Tocqueville, “L’Ancien Regime,” 134, 137.
[75] Terms signifying certain minor courts of law.
[76] Albert Babeau, “La Ville sous l’Ancien Régime,” p. 26. – (Advertisements in the “Journal de Troyes,” 1784, 1789.) “For sale, the place of councillor in the Salt-department at Sézannes. Income from eight to nine hundred livres. Price ten thousand livres.” – “A person desires to purchase in this town (Troyes) an office in the Magistracy or Finances, at from twenty-five thousand to sixty thousand livres; cash paid down if required.”
[77] De Tocqueville, “L’Ancien Régime,” p.356. The municipal body of Angers comprised, among other members, two deputies of the présidial, two of the Forest and Streams department, two of the Election, two of the Salt-department, two of the Customs, two of the Mint, two Council judges. The system of the ancient regime, universally, is the grouping together of all individuals in one body with a representative of all these bodies, especially those of the notables. The municipal body of Angers, consequently, comprises two deputies of the society of lawyers and procureurs, two of the notarial body, one of the University, one of the Chapter, a Syndic of the clerks, etc. – At Troyes (Albert Babeau,” Histoire de Troyes Pendant la Révolution,” p.23.) Among the notables of the municipality may be found one member of the clergy, two nobles, one officer of the bailiwick, one officer of the other jurisdictions, one physician, one or two bourgeois, one lawyer, one notary or procureur, four merchants and two members of the trade guild.
[78] Albert Babeau, “La Ville,” p.26. (Cf. note on preceding page.) The Collector’s Office at Reteil, in 1746, is sold at one hundred and fifty thousand livres; it brings in from eleven thousand to fourteen thousand livres. – The purchaser, besides, has to pay to the State the “right of the golden marc” (a tax on the transfer of property); in 1762, this right amounted to nine hundred and forty livres for the post of Councillor to the bailiwick of Troyes. D’Esprémenil, councillor in the Paris Parliament, had paid fifty thousand livres for his place, besides ten thousand livres taxation of the “golden marc.”
[79] Emile Bos, “Les Avocats au conseil du Roi,” p.340. Master Peruot, procureur, was seated on the balcony of the Theatre Français when Count Moreton Chabrillant arrives and wants his place. The procureur resists and the count calls the guard, who leads him off to prison. Master Peruot enters a complaint; there is a trial, intervention of the friends of M. de Chabrillant before the garde des sceaux, petitions of the nobles and resistance of the entire guild of advocates and procureurs. M. de Chabrillant, senior, offers Peruot forty thousand livres to withdraw his suit, which Peruot refuses to do. Finally, the Count de Chabrillant is condemned, with six thousand livres damages, (which are given to the poor and to prisoners), as well as to the expense of printing two hundred impressions of the verdict. – Duport de Cheverney, ” Mémoires,” (unpublished), communicated by M. Robert de Crevecceur: “Formerly a man paid fifty thousand livres for an office with only three hundred livres income; the consideration, however, he enjoyed through it, and the certainty of remaining in it for life, compensated him for the sacrifice, while the longer he kept it, the greater was the influence of himself and children.”
[80] Albert Babeau, ” La Ville,” p. 27; – “Histoire de Troyes,” p. 21. – This portrait is drawn according to recollections of childhood and family narrations. I happen to have known the details of two or three small provincial towns, one of about six thousand inhabitants where, before 1800, nearly all the notables, forty families, were relations; to-day all are scattered. The more one studies documents, the more does Montesquieu’s definition of the incentive of society under the ancient régime seem profound and just, this incentive consisting of honor. In the bourgeoisie who were confounded with the nobility, namely the Parliamentarians, their functions were nearly gratuitous; the magistrate received his pay in deference. (Moniteur, V., 520. Session of August 30, 1790, speech by d’Espremenil.) “Here is what it cost a Councillor; I take myself as an example. He paid fifty thousand livres for his place, and ten thousand more for the tax of the ‘marc d’or.’ He received three hundred and eighty-nine livres ten sous salary, from which three hundred and sixty-seven livres ‘capitation’ had to be deducted. The King allowed us forty-five livres for extra service of ‘La Tournelle’. How about the fees? is asked. The (grande chambre) superior court, asserted to have received the largest amount, was composed of one hundred and eighty members; the fees amounted to two hundred and fifty thousand livres, which were not a burden on the nation, but on the litigants. M. Thouret, who practiced in the Rouen parliament, will bear witness to this. I appeal to him to say conscientiously what sum a Councillor derived from his office – not five hundred livres . . . When a judgment cost the litigant nine hundred livres the King’s portion was six hundred Iivres . . . To sum up, the profits of an office were seven livres ten sous.”
[81] Albert Babeau, “La Ville,” ch. II., and “Histoire de Troyes,” I., ch. 1. At Troyes, fifty merchants, notables, elected the judge- consul and two consuls; the merchants’ guild possessed its own hall and had its own meetings. At Paris, the drapers, mercers, grocers, furriers, hatters and jewelers formed the six bodies of merchants. The merchants’ guild everywhere took precedence of other industrial communities and enjoyed special privileges. “The merchants,” says Loyseau, “hold rank (qualité d’honneur), being styled honorable men, honest persons and bourgeois of the towns, qualifications not attributed to husbandmen, nor to sergeants, nor to artisans, nor to manual laborers.” – On paternal authority and domestic discipline in these old bourgeois families see the History of Beaumarchais and his father. (” Beaumarchais,” by M. de Lomenie, vol. I.)
[82] Albert Babeau, “Le village sous l’Ancien Régime,” p. 56, ch. III and IV., (on the village syndics), and pp. 357 and 359. ” The peasants had the right to deliberate on their own affairs directly and to elect their principal agents. They understood their own needs, were able to make a sacrifice for school and church . . . . for repairs of the town clock and the belfry. They appointed their own agents and generally elected the most capable.” – Ibid, “La Ville sous 1’Ancien Regime,” p.29. The artisans’ guilds numbered at Paris one hundred and twenty-four. at Amiens sixty-four, and at Troyes fifty, also Chalons-sur-Marne, at Angers twenty-seven. The edicts of 1776 reduced them to forty-four at Paris, and to twenty as the maximum for the principal towns within the jurisdiction of the Paris parliament. – “Each guild formed a city within a city . . . Like the communes, it had its special laws, its selected chiefs, its assemblies, its own building or, at least, a chamber in common, its banner, coat-of-arms and colors.” – Ibid., ” Histoire de Troyes Pendant la Revolution,” I., 13, 329. Trade guilds and corporations bear the following titles, drawn up in 1789, from the files of complaints: apothecaries, jewelers and watch-makers, booksellers and printers, master-barbers, grocers, wax and candle-makers, bakers and tailors, master shoemakers, eating- house-keepers, inn-keepers and hatters, master-masons and plasterers in lime and cement, master-joiners, coopers and cabinet-makers, master-cutlers, armorers, and polishers; founders, braziers, and pin- makers; master-locksmiths, ironmongers, tinsmiths and other metal workers, vinegar-makers, master-shearers, master rope-makers, master- tanners, dealers and master-dyers and dressers; master saddle and harness-makers, charcoal-burners, carters, paper-makers and band-box- makers, cap-makers and associates in arts and trades. – In some towns one or two of these natural guilds kept up during the Revolution and still exist, as, for example, that of the butchers at Limoges.
[83] F. Leplay, “Les Ouvriers Européens,” V., 456, 2nd ed., (on workmen’s guilds), Charpentier, Paris.
[84] F. Leplay, “Les Quvriers Européens,” (2nd ed.) IV., 377, and the monographs of four families (Bordier of Lower Brittany, Brassier of Armagnac, Savonnier of Lower Provence, Paysan of Lavedan, ch. 7, 8 and 9). – Ibid., “L’Organization de la Famille,” p.62, and the whole volume. – M. Leplay, in his exact, methodical and profound researches, has rendered a service of the highest order to political science and, consequently, to history. He has minutely observed and described the scattered fragments of the old organization of society; his analysis and comparison of these fragments shows the thickness and extent of the stratum almost gone, to which they belonged. My own observations on the spot, in many provinces in France, as well as the recollections of my youth, agree with M. Leplay’s discoveries. – On the stable, honest and prosperous families of small rural proprietors, Cf. Ibid., p. 68, (Arthur Young’s observation in Béarn), and p.75. Many of these families existed in 1789, more of them than at the present time, especially in Gascony, Languedoc, Auvergne, Dauphiny, Franch-Comté, Alsace and Normandy. – Ibid., “L’Organization du Travail,” pp.499, 503, 508. (Effects of the “Code Civile” on the transmission of a manufactory and a business establishment in France, and on cultivation in Savoy; the number of suits in France produced by the system of forced partition of property.)
[85] F. Leplay, “L’Organization de la Famille,” p.212. (History of the Mélonga family from 1856 to 1869 by M. Cheysson.) Also p.269. (On the difficulty of partitions among ascendants, by M. Claudio Jannet.)
[86] Rétif de la Bretonne, “Vie de mon Pere,” (paternal authority in a peasant family in Burgundy). The reader, on this point, may test the souvenirs of his grand-parents. With reference to the bourgeoisie I have cited the family of Beaumarchais. Concerning the nobles, see the admirable letter by Buffon June 22, 1787, (correspondence of Buffon, two vols., published by M. Nadaud de Buffon), telling his son how he ought to act on account of his wife’s behavior.
[87] Moniteur, XIX., 669.
[88] Dauban, ” Paris en 1794,” p.245. (Report by Bacon, Ventôse 25, year II.)
[89] Ibid. (Report by Perrière, Ventôse 26.)
[90] Ironical, slang for a hog. TR.
[91] Ibid., 245. (Report by Bacon, speech of an orator to the general assembly of the section “Contrat-Social,” Ventôse 25.)
[92] “Un Sejour en France.” (Sep., 1792.) Letter of a Parisian: “It is not yet safe to walk the streets in decent clothes. I have been obliged to procure and put on pantaloons, jacket, colored cravat and coarse linen, before attempting to go outdoors.” – Beaulieu, “Essais,” V., 281. “Our dandies let their moustaches grow long; while they rumpled their hair, dirtied their hands and donned nasty garments. Our philosophers and literary men wore big fur caps with long fox- tails dangling over their shoulders; some dragged great trailing sabers along the pavement – they were taken for Tartars . . . . In public assemblies, in the theatre boxes, nothing was seen in the front rows but monstrous red bonnets. All the galériens of all the convict prisons in Europe seem to have come and set the fashion in this superb city which had given it to all Europe.” – ” Un Séjour en France,” p. 43. (Amiens, September, 1792.) “Ladies in the street who are well- dressed or wear colors that the people regard as aristocratic are commonly insulted. I, myself, have been almost knocked down for wearing a straw hat trimmed with green ribbons.” – Nolhac, “Souvenirs de Trois Années de la Révolution at Lyons,” p.132. “It was announced that whoever had two coats was to fetch one of them to the Section, so as to clothe some good republican and ensure the reign of equality.”
[93] Buchez et Roux, XXVI., 455. (Speech by Robespierre, in the Jacobin club, May 10, 1793.): “The rich cherish hopes for an anti- revolution; it is only the wretched, only the people who can save the country.” – Ibid., XXX. (Report by Robespierre to the Convention, December 25, 1793.): “Virtue is the appanage of the unfortunate and the people’s patrimony.” – Archives Nationales, AF.,II., 72. (Letter of the municipality of Montauban, Vendémiaire 23, year IV.) Many workmen in the manufactories have been perverted “by excited demagogues and club orators who have always held out to them equality of fortunes and presented the Revolution as the prey of the class they called sans-culottes . . . . The law of the ‘maximum,’ at first tolerably well carried out, the humiliation of the rich, the confiscation of the immense possessions of the rich, seemed to be the realization of these fine promises.”
[94] Archives Nationales, F.7, 4421. Petition of Madeleine Patris. – Petition of Quétrent Cogniér, weaver, “sans-culotte, and one of the first members of the Troyes national guard.” – (The Style and orthography of the most barbarous kind.)
[95] bid., AF., II. 135. (Extract from the deliberations of the Revolutionary Committee of the commune of Strasbourg, list of prisoners and reasons for arresting them.) At Oberschffolsheim, two farmers “because they are two of the richest private persons in the commune.” – “Recueil de Pieces, etc.,” I.. 225. (Declaration by Welcher, revolutionary commissioner). “I, the undersigned, declare that, on the orders of citizen Clauer, commissioner of the canton, I have surrendered at Strasbourg seven of the richest in Obershffolsheim without knowing why.” Four of the seven were guillotined.
[96] Buchez et Roux, XXVI., 341. (Speech by Chasles in the Convention, May 2, 1793.)
[97] Moniteur, XVIII., 452. (Speech by Hébert in the Jacobin club, Brumaire 26.)-Schmidt, “Tableaux de la Révolution Française,” 19. (Reports of Dutard, June II. – Archives Nationales. F7., 31167. (Report of the Pourvoyeur, Nivôse 6, year II.) “The people complain (se plain) that there are still some conspirators in the interior, such as butchers and bakers, but particularly the former, who are (son) an intolerable aristocracy. They (il) will sell no more meat, etc. It is frightful to see what they (il) give the people.”
[98] “Recueil de Police,” etc., I., 69 and 91. At Strasbourg a number of women of the lower class are imprisoned as “aristocrats and fanatics,” with no other alleged motive. The following are their occupations: dressmaker, upholsteress, housewife, midwife, baker, wives of coffee-house keepers, tailors, potters and chimney-sweeps. – Ibid., II., 216. “Ursule Rath, servant to an émigré arrested for the purpose of knowing what her master had concealed. . . . Marie Faber, on suspicion of having served in a priest’s house.” – Archives Nationales, AF., II., 135. (List of the occupations of the suspected women detained in the cells of the National college.) Most of them are imprisoned for being either mothers, sisters, wives or daughters of émigrés or exiled priests, and many are the wives of shopkeepers or mechanics. One, a professional nurse, is an “aristocrat and fanatic.” (Another list describes the men); a cooper as “aristocrat;” a tripe- seller as “very incivique, never having shown any attachment to the Revolution;” a mason has never shown “patriotism,” a shoemaker is aristocrat at all times, having accepted a porter’s place under the tyrant;” four foresters “do not entertain patriotic sentiments,” etc. – “Recueil de Pièces, etc.,” II., 220. Citoyenne Genet, aged 75, and her daughter, aged 44, are accused of having sent, May 22, 1792, thirty-six francs in silver to the former’s son, an émigré and were guillotined. – Cf. Sauzay, vols. III., IV., and V. (appendices), lists of émigrés and prisoners in Doubs, where titles and professions, with motives for confining them, will be found. – At Paris, even (Archives Nationales, F.7, 31167. report of Latour-Lamontagne, September 20, 1793), aversion to the government descends very low. “Three women (market-women) all agree on one point-the necessity of a new order of things. They complain of the authorities without exception. . . . If the King is not on their lips, it is much to be feared that he is already in their hearts. A woman in the Faubourg St. Antoine, said: If our husbands made the Revolution we know how to make a counter-revolution if that should be necessary.”
[99] See above ch. V., § 4. – Archives Nationales, F.7, 4435, No. 10. (Letter of Collot d’Herbois to Couthon, Frimaire 11, year II.)
[100] Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol.331. (Letter of Bertrand, Nîmes, Frimaire 3.) “We are sorry to see patriots here not very delicate in the way they cause arrests, in ascertaining who are criminal, and the precious class of craftsmen is no exception.”
[101] Berryat Saint-Prix, “La Justice Révolutionnaire,” 1st ed., p.229.
[102] “Un Séjour en France,” p. 186. “I notice that most of the arrests now made are farmers.” (In consequence of the requisitions for grain, and on account of the applications of the law of the maximum.)
[103] “Bulletin du Tribunal Révolutionnaire,” No.431. (Testimony of Tontin, secretary of the court.) Twelve hundred of these poor creatures were set free after Thermidor 9.
[104] Moniteur, session of June 29, 1797. (Report of Luminais.) ??Danican, “Les Brigands Démasqués,” p. 194.
[105] Meillan, “Mémoires, p. 166.
[106] Berryat Saint-Prix, “La Justice Révolutionnaire,” p. 419. – Archives Nationales, AF., II., 145. (Orders issued by Representative Maignet, Floréal 14, 15 and 17, year II.) “The criminal court will try and execute the principal criminals; the rest of the inhabitants will abandon their houses in twenty-four hours, and take their furniture along with them. The town will then be burnt. All rebuilding or tillage of the soil is forbidden. The inhabitants will be apportioned among neighboring communes; nobody is allowed to leave the commune assigned to him under penalty of being treated as an emigré. All must appear once every ten days at the municipality under penalty of being declared ‘suspect’ and imprisoned.”
[107] “Recueil de Piecès, etc.,” I., 52. (Carret de Beudot and La Coste, Pluviôse 6, year II.) “Whereas, it being impossible to find jurors within an extent of one hundred leagues, two-thirds of the inhabitants having emigrated.” – Moniteur, Aug.28 and 29, 1797. (Report by Harmand de la Meuse.) – Ibid., XIX., 714. (Session of Ventôse 26, year II., speech by Baudot.) “Forty thousand persons of all ages and both sexes in the districts alone of Haguenau and Wissembourg, fled from the French territory on the lines being retaken. The names are in our hands, their furniture in the depot at Saverne and their property is made over to the Republic.”
[108] Albert Babeau, “Histoire de Troyes,” II., 160. “A gardener had carefully accumulated eight thousand two hundred and twenty-three livres in gold, the fruit of his savings; threatened with imprisonment, he was obliged to give them up.”
[109] Archives Nationales, AF.,II., 116. (Orders of Representative Paganel, Toulouse, Brumaire 12, year II.) “The day has arrived when apathy is an insult to patriotism, and indifference a crime. We no longer reply to the objections of avarice; we will force the rich to fulfill the duties of fraternity which they have abjured.” – Ibid. (Extract from the minutes of the meetings of the Central committee of Montauban, April II, 1793, with the approval of the representative, Jeanbon-Saint-André.) “The moment has at length come when moderatism, royalism and pusillanimity, and all other traitorous or useless sects to the country, should disappear from the soil of Liberty.” All opinions opposed to those of sans-culotterie are blamable and merit punishment.
[110] Archives Nationales, F.7, 2471. (Minutes of the Revolutionary Committee of the Tuileries section, meeting of September 17, 1793.) List of seventy-four persons put under arrest and among them, M. de Noailles, with the following note opposite his name: “The entire family to be arrested, including their heir Guy, and Hervet, their old intendant, rue St. Honoré.”
[111] Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol. 322. (Letters of Ladonay, Chalons, September 17 and 20, 1792.) “At Meaux, the brigands have cut the throats of fifteen prisoners, seven of whom are priests whose relations belong to the town or its environs. Hence an immense number of malcontents.” – Sauzay, I., 97. “The country curés are generally recruited from among the rural bourgeoisie and the most respected farmers’ families.”
[112] Sauzay, passim, especially vols. 3, 4, 5, and 6.
[113] Archives Nationales, F.7, 4437. Address of the popular club of Clavisson (Gard.), Messidor 7, year II. – Rodolphe Reuss, “Séligman Alexandre, sur les Tribulations d’un Israelite Strasbourgeois Pendant la Terreur,” p. 37. Order issued by General Diéche to Coppin, in command of the “Seminaire” prison. “Strive with the utmost zeal to suppress the cackle of aristocrats.” Such is the sum of the instructions to jail keepers.
[114] Archives Nationales, AF., II., 88. (Edict issued by Representative Milhaud, Narbonne, Ventôse 9, year II.) Article II. “The patriotic donation will be doubled if, in three days, all boats are not unloaded and all carts loaded as fast as they arrive.” Article IV. “The municipality is charged, on personal responsibility, to proportion the allotment on the richest citizens of Narbonne.” Article VII. “If this order is not executed within twenty-four hours, the municipality will designate to the commandant of the post the rich egoists who may have refused to furnish their contingent, etc.” Article VIII. “The commandant is specially charged to report (the arrests of the refractory rich) to the representative of the people within twenty-four hours, he being responsible on his head for the punctual execution of the present order.” – Ibid., AF., II. 135. (Orders of Saint-Just and Lebas, Strasbourg, Brumaire 10, year II.) The following is equally ironical; the rich of Strasbourg are represented as “soliciting a loan on opulent persons and severe measures” against refractory egoists.
[115] Archives Nationales, AF., II., 92. Orders of Representative Taillefer, Villefranche, Aveyron, Brumaire 3, year II., and of his delegate, Deitheil, Brumaire 11, year II.
[116] This is the case in Lyons, Bordeaux, Marseilles, and at Paris, as we see in the signatures of the petition of the eight thousand, or that of the twenty thousand, and for members of the Feuillants clubs, etc.
[117] Archives Nationales, AF., II., 116. (Minutes of the public session of Ventôse 20, year II., held at Montargis, in the Temple of Reason, by Benon, “national agent of the commune and special agent of the people’s representative.” Previous and subsequent orders, by Representative Lefert.) Eighty-six persons signed, subject to public penance, among them twenty-four wives or widows, which, with the four names sent to the Paris tribunal and the thirty-two imprisoned, makes one hundred and twenty-two. It is probable that the one hundred and six who are wanting to complete the list of two hundred and twenty- eight had emigrated, or been banished in the interval as unsworn priests. – Ibid., D.S., I., 10. (Orders by Delacroix, Bouchet and Legendre, Conches, Frimaire 8 and 9, year II.) The incarceration of the municipal officers of Conches for an analogous petition and other marks of Feuillantism.
[118] The real sentiments and purposes of the Jacobins are well shown at Strasbourg. (“Recueil de Pieces, etc.,” I., 77. Public meeting of the municipal body, and speech by Bierlyn, Prairial 25, year II.) ” How can the insipid arrogance of these (Strasbourg) people be represented to you, their senseless attachment to the patrician families in their midst, the absurd feuil1antism of some and the vile sycophancy of others? How is it, they say, that moneyless interlopers, scarcely ever heard of before, dare assume to have credit in a town of sensible inhabitants and honest families, from father to son, accustomed to governing and renowned for centuries?” – Ibid., 113. (Speech of the mayor Mouet, Floréal 21, year II.) “Moral purification (in Strasbourg) has become less difficult through the reduction of fortunes and the salutary terror excited among those covetous men . . . Civilization has encountered mighty obstacles in this great number of well-to-do families who have nourished souvenirs of, and who regret the privileges enjoyed by, these families under the Emperors; they have formed a caste apart from the State carefully preserving the gothic pictures of their ancestors they were united only amongst themselves. They are excluded from all public functions. Honest artisans, now taken from all pursuits, impel the revolutionary cart with a vigorous hand.”
[119] Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol. 1411. (Instructions for the civil commissioners by Hérault, representative of the people, Colmar, Frimaire 2, year II.) He enumerates the diverse categories of persons who were to be arrested, which categories are so large and numerous as to include nine out of ten of the inhabitants.
[120] Dauban, “Paris en 1794,” p.264. (Report of Pourveyeur, Ventôse 29.) “They remark (sic) that one is not (sic) a patriot with twenty- thousand livres (sic) income, and especially a former advocate- general.”
[121] De Martel, “Fouché,” p.226, 228. For instance, at Nevers, a man of sixty-two years of age, is confined “as rich, egoist, fanatic, doing nothing for the Revolution, a proprietor, and having five hundred livres revenue.”
[122] Buchez et Roux, XXVI., ’77. (Speech by Cambon, April 27, 1793.)
[123] “Who are our enemies? The vicious and the rich.” – ” All the rich are vicious, in opposition to the Revolution.” (Notes made by Robespierre in June and July, 1793, and speech by him in the Jacobin club, May 10, 1793.)
[124] Guillon, II., 355. (Instructions furnished by Collot d’Herbois and Fouché, Brumaire 26, year II.)
[125] De Martel, 171, 181. (Orders of Fouché, Nevers, August 25 and October 8, 1793.)
[126] Guillon.-Archives des Affaires étrangères, F. 1411. Reports by observers at Paris, Aug. 12 and 13, 1793. “The rich man is the sworn enemy of the Revolution.”
[127] Archives Nationales, AF., II., 135. (Orders of Saint-Just and Lebas, Strasbourg, Brumaire 10, year II., with the list of names of one hundred and ninety-three persons taxed, together with their respective amounts of taxation.) – Among others, “a widow Franck, banker, two hundred thousand livres.” – Ibid., AF., II., 49. (Documents relating to the revolutionary tax at Belfort.) “Vieillard, Moderate and egoist, ten thousand francs; Keller, rich egoist, seven thousand; as aristocrats, of whom the elder and younger brother are imprisoned, Barthélémy the younger ten thousand, Barthélémy senior, three thousand five hundred, Barthelemy junior seven thousand, citoyenne Barthélémy, mother, seven thousand, etc.”
[128] “Recueil de Pièces, etc.,” I., 22. (Letter of the Strasbourg authorities.) De Martel, p. 288. (Letter of the authorities of Allier.) “Citizens Sainay, Balome, Heulard and Lavaleisse were exposed on the scaffold in the most rigorous season for six hours (at Moulins) with this inscription – “bad citizen who has given nothing to the charity-box.”
[129] “Recueil de Pièces, etc.,” I., 16.
[130] Ibid., I., 159. (Orders of Brumaire 15, year II.)
[131] Archives Nationales, F.7, 2475. (Minutes of the Revolutionary committee of the Piques section.) September 9, 1793, at 3 o’clock in the morning, the committee declares that, for its part, “it has arrested twenty-one persons of the category below stated.” October 8, it places two sans-culottes as guards in the houses of all those named below, in the quarter, even those who could not be arrested on account of absence. “It is time to take steps to make sure of all whose indifference (sic) and moderatism is ruining the country.”
[132] Berryat Saint-Prix, pp.36, 38. carrier declares suspect “merchants and the rich.”
[133] Moniteur, XVIII., 641. (Letter of the representatives imprisoned at Bordeaux, Frimaire 10, year II.)
[134] Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol.329. (Letter of Brutus, October 3, 1793.)
[135] Ibid., vol.329. (Letter of Charles Duvivier, Lille, Vendémiaire 15, year II.)
[136] Speech by Barère, Ventôse 17, year II.
[137] Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol. 331. Letter by Darbault, political agent, Tarbes, Frimaire II, year II. (Project for doing away with middle men in trade, brokers and bankers.) “The profession of a banker is abolished. All holders of public funds are forbidden to sell them under a year and one day after the date of their purchase. No one must be at the same time wholesale and retail dealer, etc.” Projects of this sort are numerous. As to the establishment of a purely agricultural and military Republic, see the papers of Saint-Just, and the correspondence of the Lyons Terrorists. According to them the new France needs no silk-weavers. The definite formulas of the system are always found among the Babeuvists. “Let the arts perish, if it must be so, provided real Equality remains.” (Sylvain Maréchal,” Maniféste des Egaux.”)
[138] “Revue Historique,” November, 1878. (Letter of M. Falk, Paris, Oct.19, 1795.)
[139] “Etude sur l’histoire de Grenoble Pendant la Terreur,” by Paul Thibault. (List of notorious “suspects” and of ordinary “suspects” for each district in the Isere, April and May, 1793.) – Cf. the various lists of Doubs in Sauzay, and of Troyes, in Albert Babeau.
[140] “Recueil de Pièces, etc.,” I., 19, and the second letter of Frederic Burger, Thermidor 25. – Archives Nationales, AF., II.,111.(Order of Representatives Merlincourt and Amar, Grenoble, April 27, 1793.) “The persons charged with the actual government of and instruction in the public establishments known in this town under the titles of, 1st, Orphelines; 2nd Presentins; 3rd Capuchins; 4th , Le Propagation; 5th , Hospice for female servants. . . . are put under arrest and are forbidden to take any part whatever in the functions relating to teaching, education or instruction.”
[141] Moniteur, XXI., 645. (Session of the Convention, Fructidor 14, year II.) – “Bibliotèque nationale,” LB41, 1802, (Denounciation of the six sections of the commune of Dijon), 3: “Woe betide those are seen in any way, either due to an honest affluence, a good education, an elegant dress or some talent or other, as being different from their fellow citizens! They are likely to be persecuted or to be killed.”
[142] Perhaps there is a connection with Mao Zedong and the Chinese Cultural Revolution. (SR.)
[143] Moniteur, XVIII., 51. (Letter by Carrier, Brumaire 17, year II.) – Berryat Saint-Prix, pp.36 and 38.
[144] Berriat-Saint-Prix, 240 (The imprisoned at Brest.) – Duchaltelier (“Brest pendant la Terreur,” 205). Of the 975 prisoners, 106 were former nobles, 239 female nobles, 174 priests or monks, 206 nuns, 111 seamstresses, female workers etc, 56 were farmers, 46 artisans or workers, 17 merchants, 3 with a liberal profession. One is imprisoned for having secret opinions” a girl, “for being witty and laughing at the patriots.”
[145] Mallet-Dupan, “Correspondance Politique.” Introduction, p. VIII. (Hamburg, 1796.)
[146] Portalis, “De la Révision des Jugements,” 1795. (Saint-Beuve, “Causeries du Lundi,” V., 452.) – Moniteur. XXII, 86 (Report of Grégoire, 14 Fructidor, year II): “Dumas said that all clever men (les hommes d’esprit) should be sent to the guillotine. . . Henriot proposed to burn the National Library. . . . and his proposal is repeated in Marseille. . . The systematic persecution of talented persons was organized. . . . ” Shouts had been heard in the sections: “Beware of that man as he as written a book.”
[147] “Tableau des Prisons de Toulouse” by Pescayre, prisoner, year III, p. 317 ( Messidor 22nd, year II). Pinson, secretary of the reception, indoctrinated as follows the old duke de Lesparre: “Citoyen, your detention is used by your country as a means of conversion. Eight of your immediate family have, because they did not take advantage of his opportunity, carried their heads to the scaffold. What have you done to avoid the sword of justice? Speak! What are your feelings? Let us hear your principles. Have you at last renounced the arrogance of the ancient regime? Do you believe in equality established by nature and ordained by the Convention? Who are the sans-culottes you associate with? Is your cell not a meeting place for the aristocrats? . . . It is I, who in the future will be your company; I, who will make you familiar with the republican principles, who will make you love them, and who will take care of your improvement.”
[148] Taillandier, Mémoires écrits par Daunau, à Port-Libre, in Aug. 1794, p.51, 52.
[149] Granier du Cassagnac, “Histoire du Directoire,” i., 107. (Trial of Babeuf, extracts from Buonarotti, programme des “Egaux.”) All literature in favor of Revelation must be prohibited: children are to be brought up in common; the child will no longer bear his father’s name; no Frenchman shall leave France; towns shall be demolished, chateaux torn down and books proscribed; all Frenchmen shall wear one special costume; armies shall be commanded by civil magistrates; the dead shall be prosecuted and obtain burial only according to the favorable decision of the court; no written document shall be published without the consent of the government, etc.” – Cf. “Les Meditations de Saint-Just.”
[150] Guillon de Montléon, II., 174.
[151] “Memoires sur les Prisons,” I., 211, II., 187. – Beaulieu, “Essais,” V., 320. “The prisons became the rendezvous of good society.”
[152] “The Revolution,” vol.3, ch. 6, ante.
[153] Chateaubriand: “Génie du Christianisme,” part 4, book II., notes on the exhumations at St. Denis taken by a monk, an eye-witness. Destruction, August 6 and 8, 1793, of fifty-one monuments. Exhumation of bodies, October 12 and 25, 1793. – Camille Boursier, “Essai sur la Terreur en Anjou,” p.223. (Testimony of Bordier-Langlois.) “I saw the head of our good Duke Réné, deposited in the chapel of St. Bernardin, in the Cordéliers at Angers, tossed like a ball by some laborers from one to the other.”
[154] R. Chantelauze, “Louis XVII.,” (according to unpublished documents). This book, free of declamation and composed according to the critical method, sets this question at rest.
[155] Wallon, “Histoire du Tribunal Revolutionnaire,” III., 285. – Campardon, “Hist. du Tribunal Révolutionnaire de Paris,” I., 306. Brochet, one of the jury, was formerly a lackey.
[156] The above simply conveys the sense of the document, which is here given in the original: “Si tu n’est pas toute seulle et que le compagnion soit a travailier tu peus ma chaire amie venir voir juger 24 mesieurs tous si-deven président on conselier au parlement de Paris et de Toulouse. Je t’ ainvite a prendre quelque choge aven de venir parcheque nous naurons pas fini de 3 hurres. Je tembrase ma chère amie et épouge.” (TR).
[157] Wallon, III., 402.
[158] Campardon, II., 350. – Cf. Causeries du Lundi,” II., 164. Saint-Beuve’s comment on the examination. “André Chénier, natife de Constantinoble….son frère vice-consulte en Espagne. “Remark the questions on his health and correspondence and the cock-and-bull story about the ‘maison a cotté.’ ” – They ask him where his servant was on the 10th of August, 1792, and he replies that he could not tell. “A lui representé qua lepoque de cette journee que touts les bons citoyent ny gnoroit point leurs existence et quayant enttendue batte la générale cettait un motife de plus pour reconnoitre tous les bons citoyent et le motife au quelle il setait employée pour sauvee la Republique. A repondue quil avoit dite l’exacte véritée. A lui demandée quel etoit dite l’exacte veritée – a repondue que cetoit toutes ce qui etoit cy dessue.”
CHAPTER II. Food and Provisions.
I. Economical Complexity of Food Chain.
Complexity of the economical operation by which articles of prime necessity reach the consumer.- Conditions of the operation. – Available resources. – Cases in which these are not available. – Case of the holder of these being no longer disposed to make them.
Suppose a man forced to walk with his feet in the air and his head downward. By using extremely energetic measures he might, for a while, be made to maintain this unwholesome attitude, and certainly at the expense of a bruised or broken skull; it is very probable, moreover, that he would use his feet convulsively and kick terribly. But it is certain that if this course were persisted in, the man would experience intolerable pain and finally sink down; the blood would stop circulating and suffocation would ensue; the trunk and limbs would suffer as much as the head, and the feet would become numb and inert. – Such is more or less the history of France under its Jacobin pedagogues; their rigid theory and persistent brutality impose on the nation an attitude against nature; consequently she suffers, and each day suffers more and more; the paralysis increases; the functions get out of order and cease to act, while the last and principal one,[1] the most urgent, namely, physical support and the daily nourishment of the living individual, is so badly accomplished, against so many obstacles, interruptions, uncertainties and deficiencies, that the patient, reduced to extreme want, asks if to-morrow will not be worse than to-day, and whether his semi-starvation will not end in complete starvation.
Nothing, apparently, is simpler, and yet really more complex, than the physiological process by which, in the organized body, the proper restorative food flows regularly to the spot where it is needed, among the innumerably diverse and distant cells. In like manner, nothing is simpler at the first glance, and yet more complex, than the economical process by which, in the social organism, provisions and other articles of prime necessity, flow of themselves to all points of the territory where they are needed and within reach of each consumer. It is owing to this that, in the social body as in the organized body, the terminal act presupposes many others anterior to and co-ordinate with it, a series of elaborations, a succession of metamorphoses, one elimination and transportation after another, mostly invisible and obscure, but all indispensable, and all of them carried out by infinitely delicate organs, so delicate that, under the slightest pressure, they get out of order, so dependent on each other that an injury to one affects the operations of the rest, and thus suppresses or perverts the final result to which, nearly or remotely, they all contribute.
Consider, for a moment, these precious economical organs and their mode of operation. In any tolerably civilized community that has lasted for any length of time, they consist, first in rank, of those who possess wealth arising from the accumulation of old and recent savings, that is to say, those who possess any sort of security, large or small, in money, in notes, or in kind, whatever its form, whether in lands, buildings or factories, in canals, shipping or machinery, in cattle or tools, as well as in every species of merchandise or produce. – And see what use they make of these: each person, reserving what he needs for daily consumption, devotes his available surplus to some enterprise, the capitalist his ready money, the real- estate owner his land and tenements, the farmer his cattle, seed and farming implements, the manufacturer his mills and raw material, the common-carrier his vessels, vehicles and horses, the trader his warehouses and stock of goods for the year, and the retailer his shop and supplies for a fortnight. To which everybody, the agriculturist, merchant and manufacturer, necessarily adds his cash on hand, the deposits in his bank for paying the monthly salaries of his clerks, and at the end of the week, the wages of his workmen. – Otherwise, it would be impossible to till the soil, to build, to fabricate, to transport, to sell; however useful the work might be, it could not be perfected, or even begun, without a preliminary outlay in money or in kind. In every enterprise, the crop presupposes labor and seed corn. If I want to dig a hole I am obliged to hire a pick and the arms to wield it, or, in other terms, to make certain advances. But these advances are made only on two conditions: first, that he who makes them is able to make them, that is to say, that he is the possessor of an available surplus; and next, being the owner of this surplus, that he desires to make them, with this proviso that he may gain instead of losing by the operation. – If I am wholly or partially ruined, if my tenants and farmers do not pay their rent,[2] if my lands or goods do not bring half their value in the market, if the net proceeds of my possessions are threatened with confiscation or pillage, not only have I fewer securities to dispose of, but, again, I become more and more uneasy about the future; over and above my immediate consumption I have to provide for a prospective consumption; I add to my reserve stores especially of coin and provisions; I hold on to the remnant of my securities for myself and those who belong to me; they are no longer available and I can no longer make loans or enter upon my enterprise. And, on the other hand, if the loan or enterprise, instead of bringing me a profit, brings me loss; if the law is powerless or fails to do me justice and adds extra to ordinary risks; if my work once perfected is to become the prey of the government, of brigands or of whoever pleases to seize it; if I am compelled to surrender my wares and merchandise at one-half their cost; if I cannot produce, put in store, transport or sell except by renouncing all profit and with the certainty of not getting back my advances, I will no longer make loans or enter upon any under-taking whatever.
Such is the disposition and situation of people able to make advances in anarchical times, when the State falters and no longer performs its customary service, when property is no longer adequately protected by the public force, when jacqueries overspread the country and insurrections break out in the towns, when chateaux are sacked, archives burnt, shops broken into, provisions carried off and transportation is brought to a halt, when rents and leases are no longer paid, when the courts dare no longer convict, when the constable no longer dares serve a warrant, when the gendarmerie holds back, when the police fails to act, when repeated amnesties shield robbers and incendiaries, when a revolution brings into local and central power dishonest and impoverished adventurers hostile to every one that possesses property of any kind. – Such is the disposition and situation of all who are in possession of the means to initiate projects in socialistic times
* when the usurping State, instead of protecting private property, destroys or seizes it;
* when it takes for itself the property of many of the great corporations;
* when it suppresses legally established credits without indemnity; * when, by dint of expenditure and the burdens this creates, it becomes insolvent;
* when, through its paper-money and forced circulation, it annuls indebtedness in the hands of the creditor, and allows the debtor to go scot-free;
* when it arbitrarily seizes current capital; * when it makes forced loans and requisitions; * when its tax on productions surpasses the cost of production and on merchandise the profit on its sale;
* when it constrains the manufacturer to manufacture at a loss and the merchant to sell at a loss;
* when its principles, judged by its acts, indicate a progression from partial to a universal confiscation. –
Ineluctably every phase of disease engenders the evil which follows: it is like a poison the effects of which spread or pass onwards. Each function, affected by the derangement of the adjacent one, becoming disturbed in its turn. The perils, mutilation and suppression of property diminish available securities as well as the courage that risks them, that is to say, the mode of, and disposition to, make advances. Through a lack of funds, useful enterprises languish, die out or are not undertaken. Consequently, the production, supply, and sale of indispensable articles slacken, become interrupted and cease altogether. There is less soap and sugar and fewer candles at the grocery, less wood and coal in the wood-yard, fewer oxen and sheep in the markets, less meat at the butcher’s, less grain and flour at the corn-exchange, and less bread at the bakeries. As articles of prime necessity are scarce they become dear; as people contend for them their dearness increases; the rich man ruins himself in the struggle to get hold of them, while the poor man never gets any, and the bare necessities become unattainable.
II. Conditions in 1793. A Lesson in Market Economics.
Economical effect of the Jacobin policy from 1789 to 1793. – Attacks on property. – Direct attacks. – Jacqueries, effective confiscations and proclamation of the socialist creed. – Indirect attacks. – Bad administration of the public funds. – Transformation of taxation and insignificance of the returns. – Increased expenditures. – The War- budget and subsistence after 1793. – Paper money. – Enormous issues of it. – Credit of the Assignats run down. – Ruin of Public creditors and of all private credit. – Rate of interest during the Revolution. – Stoppage of trade and industry. – Bad management of new land-owners. – Decrease of productive labor. – Only the small rural land-owner works advantageously. – Why he refuses Assignats. – He is no longer obliged to sell his produce at once. – High cost of food. – It reaches a market with difficulty and in small quantities. – The towns buy at a high price and sell at a low one. – Food becomes dearer and famine begins. – Prices during the first six months of 1793.
Such is the hardship in France at the moment when the Jacobin conquest has been completed, a misery of which the Jacobins are the cause due to the systematic war they have waged against property during the preceding four years.
From below, they have provoked, excused, amnestied, or tolerated and authorized all the popular attacks on property,[3] countless insurrections, seven successive jacqueries, some of them so extensive as to cover eight or ten departments at the same time. The last one let loose on all France a universal and lasting brigandage, the arbitrary rule of paupers, vagabonds and ruffians; every species of robbery, from a refusal to pay rents and leases to the sacking of chateaux and ordinary domiciles, even to the pillage of markets and granaries. Free scope was given to mobs which, under a political pretext, tax and ransom the “suspects ” of all classes at pleasure, not alone the noble and the rich but the peaceable farmer and well-to- do artisan. In short, the country reverted back to a natural state, the sovereignty of appetites, greed and lust, to mankind’s return to a savage, primitive life in the forests. Only a short time before, in the month of February, 1793, through Marat’s recommendation, and with the connivance of the Jacobin municipality, the Paris riff-raff had broken into twelve hundred groceries and divided on the spot, either gratis or at the price it fixed, sugar, soap, brandy and coffee.
From above, they had undertaken, carried out and multiplied the worst assaults on property, vast spoliations of every sort; the suppression of hundreds of millions of incomes and the confiscation of billions of capital; the abolition without indemnity of tithes and quitrents; the expropriation of the property of the clergy, of emigrés, that of the order of Malta, that of the pious, charitable and educational associations and endowments, even laic; seizures of plate, of the sacred vessels and precious ornaments of the churches. And, because they have the power, others still more vast. After August 10, their newspapers in Paris and their commissioners in the departments,[4] have preached
“the agrarian law, the holding of all property in common, the leveling of fortunes, the right of each fraction of the sovereign people” to help itself by force to all food and stores at the expense of the owner, to hunt down the rich, proscribe “land-owners, leading merchants, financiers and all men in possession of whatever is superfluous.”
Rousseau’s dogma that “the fruit belongs to everybody and the soil to no one” is established at an early date as a maxim of State in the Convention, while in the deliberations of the sovereign assembly socialism, openly avowed, becomes ascendant, and, afterwards, supreme. According to Robespierre,[5]
“whatever is essential to preserve life is common property to society at large. It is only the excess which may be given up to individuals and surrendered to commercial enterprise.”
With still greater solemnity, the pontiff of the sect, in the Declaration of Rights which, unanimously adopted by the all-powerful Jacobin club, is to serve as the corner-stone of the new institutions, pens the following formula heavy with their consequences:[6]
“Society must provide for the support of all its members. The aid required by indigence is a debt of the rich to the poor. The right of property is limited, and applies only to that portion which the law guarantees. Every ownership, any trade, which bears prejudicially on the existence of our fellow-creatures is necessarily illicit and immoral.”
The meaning of this is more than clear: the Jacobin populace, having decided that the possession of, and trade in, groceries was prejudicial to its existence, the grocers’ monopoly is, therefore, immoral and illicit, and consequently, it pillages their shops. Under the rule of the populace and of the “Mountain,” the Convention applies the theory, seizes capital wherever it can be found, and notifies the poor, in its name,
“that they will find in the pocket-books of the rich whatever they need to supply their wants.”[7]
Over and above these striking and direct attacks, an indirect and hidden attack, even more significant, which slowly undermines the basis of all present and future property. State affairs are everybody’s affairs, and, when the State ruins itself, everybody is ruined along with it. For, it is the country’s greatest debtor and its greatest creditor, while there is no debtor so free of seizure and no creditor so absorbing, since, making the laws and possessing the force, it can, firstly, repudiate indebtedness and send away the fund- holder with empty hands, and next, increase taxation and empty the taxpayer’s pocket of his last penny. There is no greater menace to private fortunes than the bad administration of the public fortune. Now, under the pressure of Jacobin principles and of the Jacobin faction, the trustees of France have administered the country as if they purposely meant to ruin their ward; every known means for wasting a fortune have been brought into play by them. – In the first place, they have deprived him of three-fourths of his income. To please the people and enforce the theory, the taxes on articles consumed, on salt, with the excise subsidies and the octroi duties on liquors, meat, tobacco, leather and gunpowder, have been abolished, while the new imposts substituted for the old ones, slowly fixed, badly apportioned and raised with difficulty have brought in no returns. On the 1st of February, 1793,[8] the Treasury had received on the real and personal taxation of 1791, but one hundred and fifty millions instead of three hundred millions. On the same taxes for 1792, instead of three hundred millions it had obtained nothing at all. At this date, and during the four years of the Revolution, the total arrears of taxation amounted to six hundred and thirty-two millions – a bad debt that can hardly be recovered, and, in fact, it is already reduced one-half, since, even if the debtor could and was disposed to pay, he would pay in assignats, which, at this time, were at a discount of fifty per cent. – In the second place, the new managers had quadrupled the public expenditure.[9] What with the equipment and excursions of the National Guards federations, patriotic festivals and parades, the writing, printing and publication of innumerable documents, reimbursements for suppressed offices, the installation of new administrations, aid to the indigent and to its charity workshops, purchases of grain, indemnities to millers and bakers, it was under the necessity of providing for the cost of the universal demolition and reconstruction. Now, the State had, for the most part, defrayed all these expenses. At the end of April, 1793, it had already advanced to the city of Paris alone, one hundred and ten million francs, while the Commune, insolvent, kept constantly extorting fresh millions.[10] By the side of this gulf, the Jacobins had dug another, larger still, that of the war. For the first half of the year 1793 they threw into this pit first, one hundred and forty millions, then one hundred and sixty millions, and then one hundred and ninety million francs; in the second six months of 1793 the war and provisions swallowed up three hundred million francs per month, and the more they threw into the two gulfs the deeper they became.[11]
Naturally, when there is no collecting a revenue and expenses go on increasing, one is obliged to borrow on one’s resources, and piecemeal, as long as these last. Naturally, when ready money is not to be had on the market, one draws notes and tries to put them in circulation; one pays tradesmen with written promises in the future, and thus exhausts one’s credit. Such is paper money and the assignats, the third and most efficient way for wasting a fortune and which the Jacobins did not fail to make the most of. – Under the Constituent Assembly, through a remnant of good sense and good faith, efforts were at first made to guarantee the fulfillment of written promises the holders of assignats were almost secured by a first mortgage on the national possessions, which had been given to them coupled with an engagement not to raise more money on this guarantee, as well as not to issue any more assignats.[12] But they did not keep faith. They rendered the security afforded by this mortgage inoperative and, as all chances of re-payment disappeared, its value declined. Then, on the 27th of April, 1792, according to the report of Cambon, there begins an unlimited issue; according to the Jacobin financiers, nothing more is necessary to provide for the war than to turn the wheel and grind out promises to pay: in June, 1793, assignats to the amount of four billion three hundred and twenty millions have already been manufactured, and everybody sees that the mill must grind faster. This is why the guarantee, vainly increased, no longer suffices for the monstrous, disproportionate mortgage; it exceeds all limits, covers nothing, and sinks through its own weight. At Paris, the assignat of one hundred francs is worth in specie, in the month of June, 1791, eighty-five francs, in January, 1792, only sixty-six francs, in March, 1792, only fifty. three francs; rising in value at the end of the Legislative Assembly, owing to fresh confiscations, it falls back to fifty-five francs in January, 1793, to forty-seven francs in April, to forty francs in June, to thirty-three francs in July.[13] – Thus are the creditors of the State defrauded of a third, one-half, and two-thirds of their investment, and not alone the creditors of the State but every other creditor, since every debtor has the right to discharge his obligations by paying his debts in assignats. Enumerate, if possible, all who are defrauded of private claims, all money-lenders and stockholders who have invested in any private enterprise, either manufacturing or mercantile, those who have loaned money on Contracts of longer or shorter date, all sellers of real estate, with stipulations in their deeds for more or less remote payment, all landowners who have leased their grounds or buildings for a term of years, all holders of annuities on private bond or on an estate, all manufacturers, merchants and farmers who have sold their wares, goods and produce on time, all clerks on yearly salaries and even all other employees, underlings, servants and workmen receiving fixed salaries for a specified term. There is not one of these persons whose capital, or income payable in assignats, is not at once crippled in proportion to the decline in value of assignats, so that not only the State falls into bankruptcy but likewise every creditor in France, legally bankrupt along with it through its fault.
In such a situation how can any enterprise be commenced or maintained? Who dares take a risk, especially when disbursements are large and returns remote? Who dares lend on long credits – ? If loans are still made they are not for a year but for a month, while the interest which, before the Revolution was six, five or even four per cent. per annum, is now two per cent. a month on securities.” It soon runs up higher and, at Paris and Strasbourg we see it rising, as in India and the Barbary States, to four, five, six and even seven per cent. a month.[14]
What holder of raw material, or of manufactured goods, would dare make entries on his books as usual and allow his customer the indispensable credit of three months? What large manufacturer would presume to make goods up, what wholesale merchant would care to make shipments, what man of wealth or with a competence would build, drain and construct dams and dykes, repair, or even maintain them with the positive certainty of delays in getting back only one-half his outlays and with the increasing certainty of getting nothing?
During a few years the large establishments collapsed in droves:
* After the ruin of the nobles and the departure of wealthy foreigners, every craft dependent on luxurious tastes, those of Paris and Lyons, which were the standard for Europe, all the manufactories of rich fabrics and furniture, and other artistic, elegant and fashionable articles.
* After the insurrection of the blacks in St. Domingo, and other troubles in the West Indies, the great colonial trade and remarkable prosperity of Nantes and Bordeaux, including all the industrial enterprises by which the production, transportation and circulation of cotton, sugar and coffee were affected;[15]
* After the declaration of war with England, the shipping interest;
* After the declaration of war with all Europe, the commerce of the continent.[16]
Failure after failure, an universal crash, utter cessation of extensively organized and productive labor: instead of productive industries, I see none now but destructive industries, those of the agricultural and commercial vermin, those of dealers in junk and speculators who dismantle mansions and abbeys, and who demolish chateaux and churches so as to sell the materials as cheap as dirt, who bargain away national possessions, so as to make a profit on the transaction. Imagine the mischief a temporary owner, steeped in debt, needy and urged on by the maturity of his engagements, can and must do to an estate held under a precarious title and of suspicious acquirement, which he has no idea of keeping, and from which, meanwhile, he derives every possible benefit:[17] not only does he put no spokes in the mill-wheel, no stones in the dyke, no tiles on the roof, but he buys no manure, exhausts the soil, devastates the forest, alienates the fields, and dismembers the entire farm, damaging the ground and the stock of tools and injuring the dwelling by selling its mirrors, lead and iron, and oftentimes the window-shutters and doors. He turns all into cash, no matter how, at the expense of the domain, which he leaves in a run-down condition, unfurnished and for a long time unproductive. In like manner, the communal possessions, ravaged, pillaged and then pieced out and divided off, are so many organisms which are sacrificed for the immediate relief of the village poor, but of course to the detriment of their future productiveness and an abundant yield.[18]
Alone, amongst these millions of men who have stopped working, or work the wrong way, the petty cultivator labors to advantage; free of taxes, of tithes and of feudal imposts, possessing a scrap of ground which he has obtained for almost nothing or without stretching his purse strings, he works in good spirits.[19] He is sure that henceforth his crop will no longer be eaten up by the levies of the seignior, of the décimateur and of the King, that it will belong to him, that it will be wholly his, and that the worse the famine in the towns, the dearer he will sell his produce. Hence, he has ploughed more vigorously than ever; he has even cleared waste ground; getting the soil gratis, or nearly so, and having to make but few advances, having no other use for his advances, consisting of seed, manure, the work of his cattle and of his own hands, he has planted, reaped and raised grain with the greatest energy. Perhaps other articles of consumption will be scarce; it may be that, owing to the ruin of other branches of industry, it will be hard to get dry-goods, shoes, sugar, soap, oil, candles, wine and brandy; it may happen that, owing to the bungling way in which agricultural transformations have been effected, all produce of the secondary order, meat, vegetables, butter and eggs, may become scarce. In any event, French foodstuffs par excellence is on hand, standing in the field or stored in sheaves in the barns; in 1792 and 1793, and even in 1794, there is enough grain in France to provide every French inhabitant with his daily bread.[20]
But that is not enough. In order that each Frenchman may obtain his bit of bread every day, it is still essential that grain should reach the markets in sufficient quantities, and that the bakers should every day have enough flour to make all the bread that is required; moreover, the bread offered for sale in the bakeries should not exceed the price which the majority of consumers can afford to pay. Now, in fact, through a forced result of the new system, neither of these conditions is fulfilled. – In the first place, wheat, and hence bread, is too dear. Even at the old rate, these would still be too dear for the innumerable empty or half-empty purses, after so many attacks on property, industry and trade, now that so many hundreds of workmen and employees are out of work, now that so many land-owners and bourgeois receive no rents, now that incomes, profits, wages and salaries have diminished by hundreds of thousands. But wheat, and, consequently, bread, has not remained at old rates. Formerly a sack of wheat in Paris was worth 50 francs. In February, 1793, it is worth sixty-five francs; in May, 1793, one hundred francs and then one hundred and fifty; and hence bread, in Paris, early in 1793, instead of being three sous the pound, costs six sous, in many of the southern departments seven and eight sous, and in other places ten and twelve sous.[21] The reason is, that, since August 10, 1792, after the King’s fall and the wrenching away of the ancient keystone of the arch which still kept the loosened stones of the social edifice in place, the frightened peasant would no longer part with his produce; he determined not to take assignats, not to let his grain go for anything but ringing coin. To exchange good wheat for bad, dirty paper rags seemed to him a trick, and justly so, for, on going to town every month he found that the dealers gave him less merchandise for these rags. Being distrustful and a hoarder, he must have good, old fashioned crowns, with the ancient effigy, so as to lay them away in a jar or old woollen stocking; give him specie or he will keep his grain. For he is not, as formerly, obliged to part with it as soon as it is cut, to pay taxes and rent; the bailiff and sheriff are no longer there to constrain him; in these times of disorder and demagoguism, under impotent or partial authorities, neither the public nor the private creditor has the power to compel payment, while the spurs which formerly impelled the farmer to seek the nearest market are blunted or broken. He therefore stays away, and he has excellent reasons for so doing. Vagabonds and the needy stand by the roadside and at the entrances of the towns to stop and pillage the loaded carts; in the markets and on the open square, women cut open bags of grain with their scissors and empty them, or the municipality, forced to do it by the crowd, fixes the price at a reduced rate.[22] – The larger a town, the greater the difficulty in supplying its market; for its provisions are drawn from a distance; each department, each canton, each village keeps its own grain for itself by means of legal requisitions or by brutal force; it is impossible for wholesale dealers in grain to make bargains; they are styled monopolists, and the mob, breaking into their storehouses, hangs them out of preference.[23] As the government, accordingly, has proclaimed their speculations “crimes,” it is going to interdict their trade and substitute itself for them.[24] – But this substitution only increases the penury still more; in vain do the towns force collections, tax their rich men, raise money on loan, and burden themselves beyond their resources;[25] they only make the matter worse. When the municipality of Paris expends twelve thousand francs a day for the sale of flour at a low price in the markets, it keeps away the flour- dealers, who cannot deliver flour at such low figures; the result is that there is not flour enough in the market for the six hundred thousand mouths in Paris; when it expends seventy-five thousand francs daily to indemnify the bakers, it attracts the outside population, which rushes into Paris to get bread cheap, and for the seven hundred thousand mouths of Paris and the suburbs combined, the bakers have not an adequate supply. Whoever comes late finds the shop empty; consequently, everybody tries to get there earlier and earlier, at dawn, before daybreak, and then five or six hours before daybreak. in February, 1793, long lines of people are already waiting at the bakers’ door, these lines growing longer and longer in April, while in June they are enormously long.[26] Naturally, for lack of bread, people fall back on other aliments, which also grow dearer; add to this the various contrivances and effects of Jacobin politics which still further increase the dearness of food of all sorts, and also of every other necessary article: for instance, the extremely bad condition of the roads, which renders transportation slower and more costly; the prohibition of the export of coin and hence the obtaining of food from abroad; the decree which obliges each industrial or commercial association, at present or to come, to ” pay annually into the national treasury one-quarter of the amount of its dividends;” the revolt in Vendée, which deprives Paris of six hundred oxen a week; the feeding of the armies, which takes one-half of the cattle brought to the Poissy market; shutting off the sea and the continent, which ruins manufacturers and extensive commercial operations; the insurrections in Bordeaux, Marseilles and the South, which still further raise the price of groceries, sugar, soap, oil, candles, wine and brandy.[27] – Early in 1793, a pound of beef in France is worth on the average, instead of six sous twenty sous; in May, at Paris, brandy which, six months before, cost thirty-five sous, costs ninety-four sous; in July, a pound of veal, instead of five sous, costs twenty-two sous. Sugar, from twenty sous, advances to four francs ten sous; a candle costs seven sous. France, pushed on by the Jacobins, approaches the depths of misery, entering the first circle of its Inferno; other circles follow down deeper and deeper, narrower still and yet more somber; under Jacobin impulsion is she to descend to the lowest?
III. Privation.
First and general cause of privations. – The socialist principle of the Revolutionary government. – Measures against large as well as small properties. – Expropriation of all remaining corporations, enormous issues of paper-money. forced rates of its circulation, forced loans, requisitions of coin and plate, revolutionary taxes, suppression of special organs of labor on a large scale. – New measures against small proprietorship. – The Maximum, requisitions for food and labor. – Situation of the shop-keeper, cultivator and laborer. – Effect of the measures on labor on a small scale. Stoppage of sales.
Obviously, if the people is not being fed properly and in places not at all, it is because one of the central and most important fibers of the economical machine has been incapacitated. It is evident that this fiber controls the sentiment by which man holds on to his property, fears to risk it, refuses to depreciate it, and tries to increase it.[28] Obviously in the real human being, such as he actually is made up, this intense sentiment, tenacious, always stirring and active, is the magazine of inward energy which provides for three-fourths, almost the whole, of that unremitting effort, that calculating attention, that determined perseverance which leads the individual to undergo privation, to contrive and to exert himself, to turn to profitable account the labor of his hands, brain and capital, and to produce, save and create for himself and for others various resources and comforts.
(It is probable that disinterested motives, pure love for one’s neighbor, for humanity, for country, do not form a hundredth part of the total energy that produces human activity. It must not be forgotten that the actions of men are alloyed with motives of a lower order, such as love of fame, the desire of self-admiration and of self-approval, fear of punishment and hope of reward beyond the grave, all of these being interested motives, and without which disinterested motives would be inoperative excepting in two or three souls among ten thousand.[29])
Thus far, in society as a whole, this sentiment has been only partially touched, and the injury has mainly been to the well-to-do or rich classes. At first only one-half of its useful energy has been destroyed since only those services rendered by the rich and wealthy classes have been dispensed with. Little else than the labor of the capitalist, proprietor or contractor has been suppressed, whose far- reaching, combined, comprehensive labor, the rewards of which consist of objects of luxury and convenience, ensure for society that abundant supplies are always on hand, through ready and spontaneous distribution of indispensable commodities. There remains (for the Jacobins) to crush out what is left of this laborious and nutritive fiber; the remnant of useful energy has to be destroyed down to its extirpation among the people. Here there must be a suppression, as far as possible, of all manual, rude labor even on a small scale, and of its rudimentary fruits; the discouragement of the insignificant shopkeeper, mechanic and ploughman must be effected; the corner-grocer must be prevented from selling his sugar and candles, and the cobbler from mending shoes: the miller must think of giving up his mill and the wagoner of abandoning his cart; the farmer must be convinced that the best thing he can do is to get rid of his horses, eat his pork himself,[30] let his oxen famish and leave his crops to rot on the ground. – The Jacobins are to do all this, for it is the inevitable result of the theory that they have proclaimed and which they apply. According to this theory the stern, strong, deep-seated instinct through which the individual stubbornly holds on to what he has, to what he makes for himself and for those that belong to him, is just the unwholesome fiber that must be rooted out or paralyzed at any cost; its true name is “egoism, incivism,” and its operations consist of outrages on the community, which is the sole legitimate proprietor of property and products, and, yet more, of all persons and services. Body and soul, all belongs to the State, nothing to individuals, and, if need be, the State has the right to take not only lands and capital, but, again, to claim and tax at whatever rate it pleases all corn and cattle, all vehicles and the animals that draw them, all candles and sugar; it has the right to appropriate to itself and tax at whatever rate it pleases, the labor of shoemaker, tailor, miller, wagoner, ploughman, reaper and thrasher. The seizure of men and things is universal, and the new sovereigns do their best at it; for, in practice, necessity urges them on; insurrection thunders at their door; their supporters, all crackbrains with empty stomachs, the poor and the idle, and the Parisian populace, listen to no reason and blindly insist on things haphazard; they are bound to satisfy their patrons at once, to issue one on top of the other all the decrees they call for, even when impracticable and mischievous to starve the provinces so as to feed the city, to starve the former to-morrow so as to feed the latter to-day. – Subject to the clamors and menaces of the street they dispatch things rapidly; they cease to care for the future, the present being all that concerns them; they take and take forcibly; they uphold violence by brutality, they support robbery with murder; they expropriate persons by categories and appropriate objects by categories, and after the rich they despoil the poor. – During fourteen months the revolutionary government thus keeps both hands at work, one hand completing the confiscation of property, large and medium, and the other proceeding to the entire abolition of property even on a small scale.
Against large or medium properties it suffices to extend and aggravate the decrees already passed. – The spoliation of the last of existing corporations must be effected: the government, confiscates the property of hospitals, communes, and all scientific or literary associations.[31]
To this we must add the spoliation of State credits and all other credits: it issues in fourteen months 5 100 millions of assignats, at one time and with one decree 1,400 million and another time 2,000 millions. It thus condemns itself to complete future bankruptcy. It also calls in the 1,500 million of assignats bearing the royal stamp (à face royale) and thus arbitrarily converts and reduces the public debt on the Grand Ledger, which is already, in fact, a partial and declared bankruptcy. Six months imprisonment for whoever refuses to accept assignats at par, twenty years in irons if the offence is repeated and the guillotine if there is an incivique intention or act, which suffices for all other creditors.[32]
The spoliation of individuals, a forced loan of a billion on the rich, requisitions for coin against assignats at par, seizures of plate and jewels in private houses, revolutionary taxes so numerous as not only to exhaust the capital, but likewise the credit, of the person taxed,[33] and the resumption by the State of the public domain pledged to private individuals for the past three centuries. How many years of labor are requisite to bring together again so much available capital, to reconstruct in France and to refill once again those private reservoirs which are to contain the accumulated savings essential for the out-flow required to drive the great wheel of each general enterprise? Take into account, moreover, the enterprises which are directly destroyed, root and branch, by revolutionary executions, enforced against the manufacturers and traders of Lyons, Marseilles and Bordeaux, proscribed in a mass,[34] guillotined, imprisoned, or put to flight, their factories stopped, their storehouses put under sequestration, with their stocks of brandy, soap, silk, muslins, leather, paper, serges, cloth, canvas, cordage and the rest; the same at Nantes under Carrier, at Strasbourg under Saint-Just, and everywhere else.[35] – “Commerce is annihilated,” writes a Swiss merchant,[36] from Paris, and the government, one would say, tries systematically to render it impossible. On the 27th of June, 1793, the Convention closes the Bourse; on the 15th of April, 1794, it suppresses “financial associations” and “prohibits all bankers, merchants and other persons from organizing any establishment of the said character under any pretext or title whatsoever.” On the 8th of September, 1793, the Commune places seals “in all the counting-houses of bankers, stockbrokers, agents and silver-dealers,”[37] and locks up their owners; as a favor, considering that they are obliged to pay the drafts drawn on them, they are let out, but provisionally, and on condition that they remain under arrest at home, “under the guard of two good citizens,” at their own expense. Such is the case in Paris and in other cities, not alone with prominent merchants, but likewise with notaries and lawyers, with whom funds are on deposit and who manage estates; a sans-culotte with his pike stands in their cabinet whilst they write, and he accompanies them in the street when they call on their clients. Imagine the state of a notary’s office or a counting-room under a system of this sort! The master of it winds up his business as soon as he can, no matter how, makes no new engagements and does as little as possible. Still more inactive than he, his colleagues, condemned to an indefinite listlessness, under lock and key in the common prison, no longer attend to their business. – There is a general, total paralysis of those natural organs which, in economic life, produce, elaborate, receive, store, preserve, exchange and transmit in large quantities; and as an after effect, embarrass, saturate, or weaken all the lesser subordinate organs to which the superior ones no longer provide outlets, intermediary agencies or aliment.
It is now the turn of the small enterprises. Whatever their sufferings may be they are ordered to carry their work out as in normal times, and they will be forced to do this. The Convention, pursuing its accustomed rigid logical course with its usual shortsightedness, lays on them its violent and inept hands; they are trodden down, trampled upon and mauled for the purpose of curing them. Farmers are forbidden to sell their produce except in the markets, and obliged to bring to these a quota of so many sacks per week, military raids compelling them to furnish their quotas.[38] Shopkeepers are ordered “to expose for sale, daily and publicly, all goods and provisions of prime necessity” that they have on hand, while a maximum price is established, above which no one shall sell “bread, flour and grain, vegetables and fruits, wine, vinegar, cider, beer and brandy, fresh meat, salt meat, pork, cattle, dried, salted, smoked or pickled fish, butter, honey, sugar, sweet-oil, lamp-oil, candles, firewood, charcoal and other coal, salt, soap, soda, potash, leather, iron, steel, castings, lead, brass, hemp, linen, woolens, canvas and woven stuffs, sabots, shoes and tobacco.” Whoever keeps on hand more than he consumes is a monopolist and commits a capital crime; the penalty, very severe, is imprisonment or the pillory, for whoever sells above the established price:[39] such are the simple and direct expedients of the revolutionary government, and such is the character of its inventive faculty, like that of the savage who hews down a tree to get at its fruit. – Consequently, after the first application of the “maximum” the shopkeeper is no longer able to carry on business; his customers, attracted by the sudden depreciation in price of his wares, flock to his shop and empty it in a few days;[40] having sold his goods for half what they cost him,[41] he has got back only one-half of his advances; therefore, he can only one-half renew his assortment, less than a half, since he has not paid his bills, and his credit is declining, the (Jacobin) representatives on mission having taken all his coin, plate and assignats. Hence, during the following month, buyers find on his unfurnished counters nothing but rubbish and refuse.
In like manner, after the proclamation of the maximum,[42] the peasant refuses to bring his produce to market, while the revolutionary army is not everywhere on hand to take it from him by force: he leaves his crop unthrashed as long as he can, and complains of not finding the men to thrash it. If necessary, he hides it or feeds it out to his animals. He often barters it away for wood, for a side of bacon or in payment for a day’s work. At night, he carts it off six leagues to a neighboring district, where the local maximum is fixed at a higher rate. He knows who, in his own vicinity, still has specie in his pocket and he underhandedly supplies him with his stores. He especially conceals his superabundance and, as formerly, pretends to be poor and suffering. He is on good terms with the village authorities, with the mayor and national agent who are as interested as he is in evading the law, and, on a bribe being necessary, he gives it. At last, he allows himself to be sued, and his property attached; he goes to prison and tires the authorities out with his obstinacy. Hence, from week to week, less flour and grain and fewer cattle come to market, while meat becomes scarcer at the butcher’s, and bread at the baker’s. – Having thus paralyzed the lesser organs of supply and demand the Jacobins now have only to paralyze labor itself, the skilled hands, the active and vigorous arms. This is simply done by replacing the independent private workshop by the compulsory national workshop in this way replacing piece-work by work by the day, and the attentive, energetic workman who minds his business and expects to earn money in return by inattentive apathic workmen pressed into a poorly paid service but paid even when they botch the job or laze about. – This is what the Jacobins do by forcibly commanding the services of all sorts of laborers,[43] “all who help handle, transport and retail produce and articles of prime necessity,” “country people who usually get in the crops,” and, more particularly, thrashers, reapers, carters, rafts men, and also shoemakers, tailors, blacksmiths and the rest. – At every point of the social organism, the same principle is applied with the same result. Substitute everywhere an external, artificial and mechanical constraint for the inward, natural and animating stimulant, and you get nothing but an universal atrophy. Deprive people of the fruits of their labor, and yet more, force them to produce by fear, confiscate their time, their painstaking efforts and their persons, reduce them to the condition of fellahs, create in them the sentiments of fellahs, and you will have nothing but the labor and productions of fellahs, that is to say, a minimum of labor and production, and hence, insufficient supplies for sustaining a very dense population, which, multiplied through a superior and more productive civilization, will not long subsist under a barbarous, inferior and unproductive régime. When this systematic and complete expropriation terminates we see the final result of the system, no longer a dearth, but famine, famine on a large scale, and the destruction of lives by millions. – Among the Jacobins,[44] some of the maddest who are clear-sighted, on account of their fury, Guffroy, Antonelle, Jean Bon Saint-André, Collot d’Herbois, foresee the consequences and accept them along with the principle. Others, who avoid seeing it, are only the more determined in the application of it. However, they all work together with all their might to aggravate the misery of which the lamentable spectacle is so vainly exposed under their eyes.
IV. Hunger.
Famine. – In the provinces. – At Paris. – People standing in lines under the Revolutionary government to obtain food. – Its quality. – Distress and chagrin.
Collot d’Herbois wrote from Lyons on November 6, 1793: “There is not two days’ supply of provisions here.” On the following day: “The present population of Lyons is one hundred and thirty thousand souls at least, and there is not sufficient subsistence for three days.” Again the day after: “Our situation in relation to food is deplorable.” Then, the next day: “Famine is beginning.”[45] – Near by, in the Montbrison district, in February, 1794, “there is no food or provisions left for the people;” all has been taken by requisition and carried off, even seed for planting, so that the fields lie fallow.[46] – At Marseilles, “since the maximum, everything is lacking; even the fishermen no longer go out (on the sea) so that there is no supply of fish to live on.”[47] – At Cahors, in spite of multiplied requisitions, the Directory of Lot and Representative Taillefer[48] state that “the inhabitants, for more than eight days, are reduced wholly to maslin bread composed of one-fifth of wheat and the rest of barley, barley-malt and millet.” – At Nîmes,[49] to make the grain supply last, which is giving out, the bakers and all private persons are ordered not to sift the meal, but to leave the bran in it and knead and bake the “dough such as it is.” – At Grenoble,[50] “the bakers have stopped baking; the country people no longer bring wheat in; the dealers hide away their goods, or put them in the hands of neighborly officials, or send them off.” – ” It goes from bad to worse,” write the agents of Huningue;[51] one might say even, that they would give this or that article to their cattle rather than sell it in conformity with the tax.” – The inhabitants of towns are everywhere put on rations, and so small a ration as to scarcely keep them from dying with hunger. “Since my arrival in Tarbes,” writes another agent,[52] “every person is limited to half a pound of bread a day, composed one-third of wheat and two-thirds of corn meal.” The next day after the fête in honor of the tyrant’s death there was absolutely none at all. “A half-pound of bread is also allowed at Evreux,[53] “and even this is obtained with a good deal of trouble, many being obliged to go into the country and get it from the farmers with coin.” And even “they have got very little bread, flour or wheat, for they have been obliged to bring what they had to Evreux for the armies and for Paris.”
It is worse at Rouen and at Bordeaux: at Rouen, in Brumaire, the inhabitants have only one quarter of a pound per head per diem of bread; at Bordeaux, ” for the past three months,” says the agent,[54] ” the people sleep at the doors of the bakeries, to pay high for bread which they often do not get . . . There has been no baking done to- day, and to-morrow only half a loaf will be given to each person. This bread is made of oats and beans . . . On days that there is none, beans, chestnuts and rice are distributed in very small quantities,” four ounces of bread, five of rice or chestnuts. “I, who tell you this, have already eaten eight or ten meals without bread; I would gladly do without it if I could get potatoes in place of it, but these, too, cannot be had.” Five months later, fasting still continues, and it lasts until after the reign of Terror, not alone in the town, but throughout the department. “In the district of Cadillac, says Tallien,[55] “absolute dearth prevails; the citizens of the rural districts contend with each other for the grass in the fields; I have eaten bread made of dog-grass.” Haggard and worn out, the peasant, with his pallid wife and children, resorts to the marsh to dig roots, while there is scarcely enough strength in his arms to hold the plough. – The same spectacle is visible in places which produce but little grain, or where the granaries have been emptied by the revolutionary drafts. “In many of the Indre districts,” writes